Bloody hell! Another month down. Can you believe it? can't believe it. I think you can believe it. Okay, I believe it. Good. Thanks for your reassurance on that. It's the 28th of February. Today's about Epictetus. Easy for you to say. Easy for me to say. I'm gonna give you the quote of the day. You're sitting comfortably? I'm very comfortable. The soul is like a bowl of water.

and our impressions are like the ray of light falling upon the water. When the water is troubled, it appears that the light itself is moved too, but it isn't. So when a person loses their composure, it isn't their skills and virtues that are troubled, but the spirit in which they exist. And when that spirit calms down, so do those things. You know, if you're watching this at home, just rewind that and listen to it again, because that was bloody beautiful. Which-

bit. The quote is just, about the way I read it? The way he read it was all right, but the stoics epic teeters man. If he was alive today, I reckon he'd be up there with JK Rowling. For what? Moolah. No, his opinions. Controversial opinions. Don't talk about that. So let's, let's talk about in sales, you can lose control, right? You can lose control of had this great routine.

I was doing the bit every day, but I've traveled a bit. I've gone to that event. I've kind of lost my mojo a little bit. What do you say to those people who, how do they get back to getting them, get, get in their mojo? You got to go back to basics. You've got, you've got to do the mighty reset and something we do. We might do a big fast on a Sunday. So you might just fast for a whole day and then it kind of gets the system moving again. You might start the day with something hard. So maybe like an ice bath could be like a big run.

Making sure I, I, I, I, you don't drink anymore, but I know that on the, the times when we did used to drink, that you need to be focused on a Monday morning, it would be very hard to wake up. But I knew that if I didn't do some form of hard exercise and get the blood pumping on a Monday morning, I wouldn't get through the day. And I probably wouldn't be awake or happy again till Wednesday. You'd be screwed. I'd be screwed. So I think it's about resetting, going back to basics. What are the things that make you feel good that you know?

Is it being with friends and loved ones? Is it being out in nature? Is it a nice walk? Is it hard exercise? Is it Reese? Just what, maybe a spa day? What gets you back to your kind of neutral zone where you can then start to build on it and bring those habits and discipline back in. Exactly. And you can do that with, even like the podcast that you're listening to or Demeter that you're listening to. There's listing for, for enjoyment, but there's also, so getting the name of the guy, lead singer of black flag.

just get his name, but he was on Joe Rogan's podcast once and he said, I've basically got protein listening where I'm looking for growth and I'll force myself to listen to things that either I'm interested in learning more about or music that I don't normally listen to to give myself another perspective. I'm looking to focus on growth. And then I've got comfort listening, which is more about I'm listening to the tracks that I grew up on and stuff like that. And I think on a Sunday,

If I'm going out and taking my dogs for a walk and I'm thinking about Monday morning, getting myself in gear, it starts there. It starts with putting maybe a business podcast on, or if I'm trying to improve an aspect of being a parent or whatever it may be that I'm trying to work on, I get the listening there. And the reason that I do that is it gets the cogs going. It gets me thinking, I start to come up with my own ideas. that's interesting. How they've put that. I could probably apply it in this way to the business. And there's loads of different ways that you can think of this.

Another bit of thing, another bit of thinking that you can do here is how do I then do a little bit of spring cleaning about what's been going on? I've lost a bit of control of what's happening in my sales process. Lost control, the followups. I've got people I need to chase. And what you can do is you can sit there and do the close the file email. And it's a little audit exercise that you can do. Would you like me to explain it Jack? I would, would love you to explain it because we're, we're, we're big fans of this, this phrase of being the minimalistic salesperson.

So keeping things very tidy, very lean and getting rid of all the junk. So close the file. Please. There's times where, you know, you might be speaking to someone and there's this guaranteed next step in, but for whatever reason it falls away the next that they couldn't make it. They send you an email. I'll be back in touch. Okay. Well, here's what I'll do. I'll go over those ones and the subject line will be close the file. I'll say, hi Jack. I'm guessing you've got a different direction or life's got in the way.

Are you happy for me to close the file on this one? Kind of regards your Lord and savior, Zach Thompson. And the response rate on that is huge. Close the file. What does it mean? Chris Voss came up with it. It's a great move. The response you normally get from that is either yes, please close the file. We've got a different direction or, no, no, no. Hold fire on that. And they re-engage. But the point is you're left with a yes or a no response rather than the

I was just chasing to find out if you had any thoughts on the email. said, no, that's all right. You can, you can wait there. But someone going, I'm just taking this away from you now. You've taken too long. No, no, no, no. You don't get to decide on that. Exactly. Exactly. What have you seen happen from it? You got any good stories about close the file? I've done training with two companies where I've taught that technique and I usually do it before lunch. And I thought, we'll come back after lunch. We'll have it the first one, eight minutes. Here's an opportunity that's still happening. And it was done.

And then the second one, we came back after lunch and they were like, they've come back. They've passed. They've intro'd me to somebody else. So like different results happen, but it's like, you've got to remember people are so busy and there's things on their to-do list. And I have things on my to-do list that haven't been actioned yet. And they might have been on there for months because they feel like it's something that is going to happen, but there may be like low priority tasks. So there is something in that that you want to ask, why is it like low priority tasks? But it gets everything moving again. And that is the, that is the kind of illusion of control, isn't it? Beautiful. So when you lose control, go back to basics and that could be the basic habits and routine that you've got. What were you doing in your day that got you one foot in front of the other doing the thing? What did life look like? Get back to that. And then if you've lost control of your pipeline, you don't know where things are. Employ the closed, the file.

Close the file email. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zack Thompson. Remember you will die. Starry starry night.