Dealfront (00:03) I set out on a narrow way many years ago Wow 20th of March face the storm with courage because Bro, there's gonna be a lot of broken roads. I want you to bless him face the storm with courage come closer I may wish to avoid torture, but if the moment comes when I must face it I'll aim to endure it with courage strength and dignity

Of course, I'd rather not be caught in a war, but if war finds me, I'll strive to bear the wounds, hunger and hardships with honor. I'm not so reckless as to wish for illness, but if I have to face it, I'll work to handle it without losing composure or integrity. The goal isn't to seek out these challenges, but to cultivate the resilience and virtue needed to face them. Have a guess?

Mark Sorrellius. Seneca. Wow. Psych. Beautiful lesson there. Actually, you shouldn't go seeking out pain. You shouldn't seek out like hardships like war or famine or illness. But actually, when they come, that's where a lot of the lessons come from. That's where you learn the most. When we think about our four years in business, we've had some laughs. We have. We've had some real laughs. It's been a laugh a minute. But the best lessons...

have come from the hardest times. The best lessons have been from when we've lost our biggest clients or the best lessons have been from where we thought we had a deal landing, but it didn't come through in time. And you're thinking, how am going to pay everybody? That's when you learn and that's when you get better. And that's what builds that resilience. It's about facing the storm. The storm's there. Have you got an umbrella? Jack. Yeah, Jack. I think about

the moments where now it feels like, things are working. Actually, because of that, Tentum makes us feel a little bit nervous, don't they? But there's been a lot of moments where actually, like you mentioned in one of the previous episodes about a client who was a sure thing, and obviously there's no such thing as a sure thing, falling away from a year's commitment to just not being a client anymore, that...

in probably the early days of the business would have felt like, oh, I don't know about that, but actually there's the muscle memory. There's the feeling there of like, not only have I been there before and been in that storm before, but I know what the other side looks like. I know it gets sunny again. You know what I mean? I know that actually it works out. It's like, and then what? Yeah. And then what? That's really powerful. Just being able to play out these events and go, okay, and then what happens? And you're only a few, and then what happens? And then what happens? Maybe two or three before you're like, well, then I'll just sort of catch.

carry on doing what I was doing. And it's all, it's all fine. And the pressure, think with people in sales typically comes from resting on the sure thing, resting on the feeling and resting on relationships can sometimes be a thing, but it's a lot of these things that aren't in your control. And what the Stokes would say to us is like, well, what's actually in your control? If you've done everything you could possibly is in your control. If you have, then you've got nothing to be hard on yourself about.

There's only one certainty in life and that is my best friend. It's death. When we lost that was a real, and it's something that I didn't speak about for a long time because it probably felt still like a bit of a wound. But now looking back three years ago, that was one of the best things that ever happened to us as an agency because we had one monster client. And the advice always is don't let one client or one customer be 80 % of your revenue. But it was and you learn from that.

I remember the day that I had to tell the team and I always think about like, how do you deliver bad news, but also give hope and give things. I'll share a story that I don't know if I told you, but I shared a story and you might remember this story. I said, when I was 20 years old, I went to CAVOS. And while I was in CAVOS as a young 20 year old, we were there together. We were running around telling people that we were chasing status.

I fell in love with a girl as a naive 20 year old and it was four o'clock in the morning, the sun was rising and we swam out to this little jetty and I thought this was going to be the moment that we were finally going to kiss. We were hanging off the jetty and she looked at me in the eyes and I looked at her in the eyes and I don't know what overcome but I just went, I'll race you back and I just swam back to shore and I never kissed her. You dropped the ball. I just dropped it.

See, no, it wasn't just someone else. But I think that was, and I told the story and they went, why have you told us that? And I went, well, actually things don't always go the way that you want it to go. And we've lost our massive client, but it's about how you come back from that. And eventually I kissed the girl and there is a story in that. Yeah, I'll tell you the rest off there. But it's about how you come back from hard situations, hard situations are always going to be there, like good old Seneca's saying, but it's how you adapt.

When things don't go your way today, if something that you had planned falls through or something that you didn't want to happen, happens, these things are always going to be there. Think about the hero in the story. When you watch a great movie, the hero isn't the hero because he lives a normal life and everything's always good. It's because he comes through hard times. Exactly. Remember, you either win or learn. Sometimes you're the hammer, sometimes you're the nail. Lovely. That's beautiful. Thank you.

I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zack Thompson. Remember you would die? Bang.