It's the 18th of February. This is the true athlete. The person in rigorous training against false impressions. Remain firm. You who suffer, don't be kidnapped by your impressions. The struggle is great. The task divine to gain mastery, freedom, happiness and tranquility.

Epictetus. I always talk about the worst day of our lives is coming. Okay. And it sounds so morbid. It sounds brutal, but we both got both our parents still. But there is going to be a day soon that will change our world forever. And that could be something awful happening, the loss of a loved one, something a redundancy. Something's going to happen that's going to change your world. Those bad days are coming.

And I think about how do we prepare for them? So the Stoics, you know what the Stoics used to do? They'd go into their children's bedroom at night and they'd stand over the cot and they'd meditate on their children dying and they'd imagine a world where their children didn't wake up in the morning. And that sounds awful and brutally morbid. But what it does is it allows you to be grateful and say, but that isn't the truth. And right now I have them, so I'm going to make the most of them.

I follow a guy on social media called Jesse Itzler and he says well how old are you now and how old do you how often do see your parents? Well, I'm 32 my parents are 75 and I see my parents twice a year. Okay, so if they live till 85, which is the expected life expectancy That's 20 more times for your parents and it really makes you think of actually I've got to make sure that I'm making the most of this life and I'm preparing for those

hard times. So doing hard things now gives you an easy life and we do things throughout our days and throughout our years that help us that hopefully when those storms do arrive, we're prepared. Yeah. You know, the other thing that Sturridge used to do that I found so interesting, think it might have been Seneca had talked about it, but wealthy people, successful people in ancient Rome used to have a room in their house.

that was laid out like a poor person lived in it or a homeless person lived in it even. And they go in, they'd wear uncomfortable clothes, they'd sleep on the floor. And then what they'd be left with then is a renewed gratitude for where they are in life. But then also they'd know that well being really uncomfortable and it not working out wasn't that bad. I still survived and still made it through on eating beans and sleeping on the floor. And I remember when we started out,

on our business and those, you know, there's the, there's the rocky starts that we all have of trying to make payroll and all this sort of stuff. I remember you said to me once, if it didn't work out, we'd just go and get another job. The actual alternative to not working out sometimes isn't the worst thing ever. And being aware of that and prepared for that allows you to sort of go two feet in rather than maybe being a bit reluctant to fully commit. And one of the things I say is.

You don't go back to level one. Okay. So let's imagine a parallel world where you're just about 10 30. You've got your fourth child on the way. You start your business. The business fails. Well, you're not, you're not 18 year old Zach that's getting his first sales job. You're somebody that's already got a wealth of experience that's tried something. There are so many companies out there that are looking for experienced people. You don't go back to level one and the knowledge you get and the, the learnings that you take from your failures and your rejection.

They're powerful. That's really, really good. And I think like you, you're just never going back to square one. So if it all disappeared tomorrow and the worst situation was I had to go and get a job at Amazon pushing parcels, I'd be all right with that. And I think if you can make yourself at home and have peace with that, well, actually it gives you the mindset of, well, I don't need to worry. And it doesn't make me second guess what I'm doing. so it's really about preparing.

Let's spin this and maybe think of it from the sales angle. We talked about the first day kit What is it important that people salespeople should be preparing for? Be preparing for what happens if you miss target be preparing for what happens if you have a bad month a bad week a bad day What is the counter to that? But knowing that to your point knowing of a dad from a cold call People aren't usually getting sacked for missing target once or even twice. I know people have not hit target for

a few years, still been in a business, but they offered something to the business that couldn't be replaced. closed that one deal. They closed that one deal. I think another one's committed and all the leaders believe in it as well. So it's just, it's just meditating on what is the alternative. So if the bad thing happens, what, what's the reality of what would happen? What would happen to you? What would you become? You probably wouldn't be in that bad a spot. You might want to bounce back and have some things in place, but the reality is it's probably not.

death that you're going towards. And look around you at your social network and think, if it all went wrong and I had to move back in with my parents at 32, that there are worse things out there. So it's about preparing for those moments. So I think for salespeople listening, look ahead. What does your week or your month look like that you can prepare for if things were to go wrong? I'm not saying plan as if they are going to go wrong, but just have that thought of if it did go wrong.

Am I prepared? I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zack Thompson. Remember you will die. Bouncing round like a kangaroo on Viagra.