It's 30th of January. I'm going to give you a little something from Epic Tears to start us off with. you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters. Don't wish to seem knowledgeable. And if some regard you as important, distrust yourself. You know, a lot of people jump on discovery calls me and at the end they say, I'm quite surprised. I thought, I thought you were going to be a real idiot. Why is that? Because I play the clown a lot, I think. And I think it's a...

a great character to play in life because it's not revealing all your your card. What I wouldn't want to be is somebody that tries to appear very clever, but he's actually an idiot. That reminds me, we had an interview recently just on that side note with a guy who was like, I'm just a massive fan of Jack's. Like, I just think it'd be so fun working for him. I had to bring him back down to Earth a bit and be like, it's a persona. It's not real. When you're in front of him, you might be this hot and very disappointed.

that it's a, there's a job to do as well. It's not just a, it's not just dick jokes. Um, so look, you don't have to stay on top of everything. I think what we're talking about here is sales can be this big, scary skillset, right? You can think about how am I opening the calls? How am I asking the questions? How am I booking the meetings? How am I sitting the meetings? How am I doing discoveries, demos, closing, chasing, follow all these different things can quickly pile on top. And actually when you try and catch two rabbits,

You'll catch an aunt or call back to previous in the month. Yeah. so really what you want to do is look at this as how can I make those incremental gains? Okay. So in, mean, I'll make it about jujitsu and jujitsu. There's a thing of if I'm to get better at an arm bar, so I'm only wanting to get an arm bar. I'm going to ignore all the things that only folks on the arm bar. I naturally have to accept that then I will be bad at everything else.

Yeah. I just focused on the one thing other things will suffer, but in the grand scheme of things, once I add that to my game, everything else raises up a bit as well. in sales, might be, well, I'm just going to focus on my tone. I'm not going to focus on a closing strategy or a question. I'm just going to get better at that tone at the start of the call and it'll get my brain fixated on that. And maybe at the start while I'm doing that other things might suffer, but once I've nailed it, it becomes part of my overall game.

then my whole sales approach has raised. Does that make sense? Yeah. It just becomes part of you eventually. And I think it's so like, I know this is all about sales, but it is so much about life as well that like, if you focus on, I'm really, really going to get good at sales and focus on my career. then maybe your personal life or your relationship or other things might suffer. And that's fine because not everything is forever and everything comes in seasons and there are times to go to war.

and there are times to hibernate and recoup and things like that. it's so kind of, it's there in sales, isn't it? Focus on one bit of the cycle. What can you really, really, really get good at? And a lot of the time you'll see, if you choose to focus on tone and you really get good at it, that might carry you through a lot of the way because you overthink the other areas.

And although you might think, my clothing technique is bad, but because you're focusing on one other thing, you're probably not overthinking on that element. And you end up actually performing quite well anyway. And you'll probably learn things along the way because when, when you're not focusing on them or you're not looking at them all the time, you start to maybe see things arise. You might learn lessons throughout. Yeah. I'll give you a practical example. Do remember when I think it was just before you joined the business, I was talking to you about the mirroring as a technique. I've done this with loads of people.

So mirroring as a technique is repeating one to three words from what someone just said. From what someone just said? What someone just said. Exactly. But I remember telling you about it when we were walking the dog, you come to visit me in the countryside and was walking the dog and I think you'd said something like, there's no way that I'd work. And my response was, there's no way that I'd work. Yeah, because I just don't believe that something like that works. Surely someone would notice. Surely someone would notice. Yeah, because if someone was repeating the last three words from what I just said, I'd notice.

And actually what you realize then is, it does work. And I told you what I've just been doing. The point I'm making is you can practice skills in low stakes environments. The sales hat doesn't have to come off at the of the day. Sales is communication, isn't it? So if it's, want to get better at asking questions. Well, to a family or a spouse or whoever it may be, how do I ask a question that makes them look at me and go, that's a, that's an interesting question. Let me have a little think about that. Okay. There's a victory.

How do I have a conversation where I'm not involved with the person that's making me a coffee at the coffee shop? You know, how do I do these things in low stakes environments so I can stack on the evidence shop before I get in my next day's dialing? Okay, I've tried it in real life and it worked. If it's true in life, it's gonna be true in sales. you can, something that I definitely push people to do is try and experience rejection in low stakes environments. So there's something called rejection therapy.

where you go out into certain situations and you might embarrass yourself publicly, or you might ask for a pound off in the coffee shop, or you might do something silly that puts you so out of your comfort zone that you absolutely hate, but then once you've done it, you realize actually no one's died and I'm all okay. And once you do enough of that, you're building up that resilience. Like we talk about resilience, resilience, we want salespeople to be resilient. But what is that? Well, resilience is...

so much evidence that they've been through hard times and they keep bouncing back time and time again. And they can kind of go through that unfaced. That's what we're looking for. So find those low stakes environment, pick a skill set, sit down with a friend, family member and think what sales skill can I maybe practice tonight that I'm trying to improve that's going to help me get to my A game in sales. Wow. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zach Thompson.

Remember you will die. Don't throw the wasps out.