It's the 6th of February. It feels like I could sing a song, but I'm not going to. Aww. Would you like one? Please. Maybe after if you're good. Seneca, Moral Letters, 28.7. I don't agree with those who plunge headlong into the middle of the flood and who, accepting a turbulent life, struggle daily in great spirit with difficult circumstances. The wise person will endure that but won't choose it.

choosing to be at peace rather than at war. You have a choice, don't you? We sometimes, we have these conversations when everything's going well and it's really good and the targets are being hit. We have a tendency to be like, feels too good to be true. Yeah. How's the diary looking? Yeah. It's looking all right. And I'm sleeping quite well and there's no chaos. There's no fires to put out. don't like it. Yeah. It's weird, isn't it? But what is that? Why are you feeling like something?

It's something common, it's something brewing. think it's human nature for your brain to play tricks on you that everything's going to go wrong. And it's about acknowledging, okay, well, this is my brain kind of feeding negative thoughts. If it's good, if it's not good, you're worrying about why it's not good. And if it's good, you're worrying that it's all going to go away. But I always say, go back to evidence, evidence that you have. And you know what? It's February the 6th. Is it a good time to talk about the evidence shelf?

Have you not talked about it so far? I've not. We've spoke about evidence, but I've not spoke about the evidence shelf. and then you tease, get it on the shelf. Okay. So the evidence shelf, you know this one, but there's a metaphorical shelf behind everybody. Okay. And that is where you stack your evidence. So in life, as we go through life, we're going to endure hard things, we'll endure difficult situations.

And once you come out of those situations, you can have a piece of evidence. remember, confidence is competence. The more evidence that you have, the more confident you're going to feel that you know that you can do it. If I asked you to go and build a house today and you've got no evidence that you've ever done it before, and I know you very well, Zach, you wouldn't be able to build a house. What are we able to build? You'd be able to build a boat. You'd sail into the distance and I'd never see you again. But if you've built nine houses,

Well, your evidence shelf is absolutely stacked. Okay. So somebody that's had their first cold calling job at 16 and you've been doing this for about 15 years now, you've got so much evidence that you've never died from a cold call. No one's ever actually been that awful to you. You've always woke up the next day and you've got evidence that I can hit target. I can hold my own. I can have difficult conversations, which means that you lack that anxiety when you go into those situations. So

Every time you go through and you achieve something of a book to meeting, I closed a big deal, I had a difficult conversation. Think about those as pieces of evidence and you can put them metaphorically on your evidence shelf. You can write them down. You can put them in a folder. If it's a, actual call that you can go back and listen to and build evidence throughout your life so that you can focus on it in those times of despair or worry of can I do this? Yes, I can. Wow. I've got evidence. Room for a

couple of bits on top there. Please. My shelf is sturdy. Okay. Well, I always think skills and let's say sales skills come into the world like us, don't they? They're weak and in need of nourishment and the nourishment for sales skills is exposure. So at the start, should feel a bit strange. It should feel like there's a bit of that imposter syndrome going on because you just haven't had the exposure yet. The evident shelf isn't full of exposure. You haven't got the thousand hours. You haven't got the thousand dials.

So just got to get those on there first. And the word confidence is derived from, think the Latin meaning would be done with belief. Wow. That's what confidence means. And belief comes from exposure. Yeah. So if I do the thing enough, there'll be a point where I believe. And, you know, this could go back to when you were a baby, you knew this because you tried to stand up and you fell down. You tried to walk and you fell over.

And you might've been unstirred on your legs, but you didn't go, oh, nevermind this. I'm just not going to bother walking anymore. Yeah. Your brain is wired in a way where if you want it enough and certainly walking is something that it's wired. So we have to do this. You'll do it and you'll find a way, but you'll do it through repetition and exposure. Yeah. I love that. So it's about seeking out the evidence from maybe if it's your first sales job and you don't have that evidence, seek it out from other parts of your life. Have I?

during school or during college did I get up and perform or present or talk to strangers? Have I done hard things that give me evidence that actually I know I can get through those difficult times? Wow. Really good. What else do you want to talk about? What I find in a lot of sales companies is there's 10 names on the board and it's a battle. It's a real battle. And I've worked in sales environments where it can actually get nasty. Me too. Of people that...

The people at the top are spitting down on the people at the bottom and the people on the bottom are probably pulling, pulling apart the people at the top and saying, well, you're only at the top because your dad's the owner of the company or whatever, or you get the hot leads, you get the warm leads, I'm doing this. The way we like to think of sales is that the competitions within like yourself is with you. I'm a true believer in sales. Everybody can win. Everybody can win. Everybody can hit target.

everybody can achieve. Yeah, they probably are going to be high performers. And the reason they're there are probably they want to be the best. And there's nothing wrong with having that competitive attitude, but actually the competition is with yourself. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think that's a really good mantra to live by, isn't it? Because, you know, certainly in our team, when we first come in, one of the first things we say is no matter how well you do it, you're never too big to take the bins out. yeah.

And the type business we've got is a humbling one where you can have clients that you're smashing it on. They do really well. Like, you know what we're doing so well, we have someone to bring this in-house. Can you come and train us and help us build a team? And the person is then left in our team thinking, right. I've lost my, favorite client. Right. I'll jump in and do something totally different. And then suddenly the back down the ladder, cause they're trying to learn again and build themselves back up. And because we've got that, you're never too big to take the bins out.

And the fights outside, not inside what you then left with is no one's looking at them thinking like, ha ha, nice one. I'm glad you're struggling. They're actually going, well I've worked on a client like before. help you. Let me help you with that. I think that cultivates a much more enjoyable environment to work in. Definitely. And I've definitely worked in those where it's like, we only hire people from semi-professional sporting backgrounds because they're really competitive. And then you've got a room full of people who are.

so competitive that actually it's not fun. It's not team atmosphere. The team works better. like a beehive mentality. The bees aren't all going insane. Like who's the best bee. Yeah. They've got a job to do that is productive for the hive. So it's what's useful for the hive. And if you're a sales leader, I think like you don't want to have one person that's performing. You want your team to perform. So actually think about how do I get everyone like a lot of people think, well,

If one person's really good, everyone will try and get there. And there's an element of that kind of competition, but make it a strong environment. Make it so that everybody can win and they want to win and see everyone win. Do you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, Cristiano Ronaldo. I don't know anything about football, but yeah, he's the star striker of the day. Is he? He was just in. Ronaldo has won the star striker, but it's all about the team he plays for, which is...

Great. Yeah. I think they're good, aren't they, lads? Really, really Blow your throat whistle, ref. Well done, football. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zack Thompson. Remember you'll die.