It's the 3rd of January. Wow, maybe with you, maybe not. Wow, do you know any songs about January? Uh, January Jones. January Jones. Nice cones.

Okay, third of January.

How many have laid waste to your life when you weren't aware of what you were losing? How much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusement? How little of your own was left to you? You will realize you are dying before your time. Seneca on the brevity of life. He knew some. Didn't that Seneca? I think he was my favorite.

Yeah, not Epictetus. No, they're all good, but Seneca just had something about him. Yeah, what doesn't matter to you? And be respectful. Well, we're talking about business, aren't we? Yeah, sales and sales, and bit, right?

So I think from a sales perspective, what's definitely happened is we've almost been paralyzed by tech. Right? So what I mean by that is what you can do is end up chasing perfection, but in chasing perfection, what you actually end up doing is chasing procrastination. Right? So you have this diary that's full of, "I'm going to do a bit of account research here," then, "I'm going to respond to that email here," and actually what you're left with is, as a salesperson, your day should be about driving revenue activities. So things that result in revenue, and then what you're left with is a day where that just hasn't happened at all.

So if you actually went through your diary and you were absolutely ruthless with it and said, "I'm only going to focus on things that make me the business money," what you're actually left with, you'd find that suddenly you're getting rid of meetings. "Do I need to be there for that one?" No, I've got to target it. I'm not going to. And suddenly you're left with a diary that's a lot more focused.

What about you?

There's so much good stuff. I get—I geek out on this stuff because it also has a knock-on effect. So you get to the end of the day, if you haven't really won the day because you've been procrastinating all day, then you have that kind of feeling of like shame, maybe. So it's pointless. There was that—have you seen that thing that went around on social media, and it was like this meeting with eight different people from eight different departments cost the business £500? Do you really need it? And it works out for you.

So it's really important to say, "Is this a good use of our time? Could this meeting be an email? Does it drive revenue?" All those different things. One of the things I've heard recently—and I'm still guilty about—but there's something that when you look at your emails first thing in the morning, if you've got lots and lots of emails to respond to and you don't do it then and there, you've kind of opened up Pandora's Box. You've left it like half open.

So actually, we talk a lot about eating the frog. If you have to focus on these revenue-driving tasks, is it that you get in and you say, "You know what, I'm doing my first cold calling block 9:00 to 11:00, from 11:00 till 12:00, then I'm going to look at emails"? Because then I've done the hardest part of the day. So it's about just making sure that when you go through—I do it on a Monday morning, I'll go through my calendar for the week and I go, "That's pointless."

And I think this is a great reminder to people that are booking meetings for themselves or for their company as well. When you're on the phone to people and you're booking a meeting, make sure the motivation is there because other people are going to be on a Monday, "Do I need to be there?" And you know when you get ghosted, people like delete your—or cancel last minute, that's because they looked and gone, "This actually doesn't drive anything forward."

Yeah, exactly. You're forgettable.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So someone's doing that to you. There's a guy in our team—shout out to Kane—who I remember coming to the office in Manchester in January, and he didn't get involved in like the office back and forth, the jokes about the weekend and stuff, till he booked a meeting. So he'd come in in the morning, sit down, headset on, you'd see him jump up to the board, get his meeting in, and then he'd be like, "Right, what's everyone up to?"

So he would put—he delayed the gratification till the work was done.

I think one of the things that you were talking about before as well, around meetings, I don't know if it's Jeff Bezos or someone like that, but they set out meetings where they say, "Right, before we get in, here's actually the goal of where I want to end up with at the end of the meeting." And often what happens is everyone agrees like, "Well, should we just agree to do that and not have the meeting then?"

Yeah, yeah. Yes, sounds great. Let's just have an hour back in our diary then. So just getting to what is the desired outcome of this before I even get there and just kind of sum it into the day.

And from like a productivity hack, like if you know that when you're cold calling—I see it in business all the time—that actually cold calling is like a skill, it's like a sport. You have to be present. If you're an F1 driver, you're not scrolling Instagram at the same time, are you? You're focusing on the road. Hope not! Tell you what, mate, I know, madness!

But like, don't be scrolling through LinkedIn, or don't be on Slack, or don't be on Teams. Like, be in that moment, be present, because actually those other things don't matter. What is the task at hand? What is going to get you to the point? Like, I always think about this compound theory in sales. And actually, you want to have this amazing year. You don't have to like land one big deal, right?

I'm just going to focus on calling Microsoft every single day. Think about like, okay, this is my target. I'm going to break it down. This is how many meetings, this is how many calls I need to do. I'm just going to do the small thing every single day. And by winning the day, I win the week, I win the month, and then I'll win the year. And December 31st rolls around, and we're going, "Ho, let's buy a Lamborghini, baby!" Beautiful, beautiful.

I think there's a sense of—there's this idea of neuroplasticity, right? So if you're starting with these—well, I'm going to be so big on habits, how do I know I am? But if you're starting with the wiring, right, of, "That's how my perfect day looks, that's how my perfect week looks," it will feel wrong to do something else. The alarm bell will go off and you're like, "Oh, we don't normally do this."

And I remember when I was starting off, we have a meeting, obviously I had to get some heavy lifting at the start. So I'd allow myself to go to the gym in the morning, walk the dog or whatever, but I have a diarized slot of, I have to call during this time. And what I'd do is I'd set myself a goal as well. So I'd say, "I need to have booked two meetings for myself regardless of the time that takes to do it."

So some days I might do it in a couple of hours, great, couple of hours, let's go and play with the babies, let's—whatever may, but sometimes it would take me the whole day. But I'd be ruthless about it. I'm here to do a job, I'll do the things that need to be done on the outside, but I've sat down now, it's diarized, and I'm not getting up till the job is done.

Yeah, I absolutely love it. I think you've got to just throw yourself into it and remember, like, whatever it is you're doing, it isn't forever. So like, it might feel harder. I know that a lot of people that are probably watching this are young salespeople, maybe their first job, second job, they're in their 20s, 30s. You're not going to be 65 and cold calling. Like, it's not forever. But do the hard things now, and like, you'll just build your skill set, you'll grow, you'll build a net, all of these different things. You'll just get better and better and better. Just be ruthless.

I've been Jack Frimston.

I've been Zach Thompson.

Remember, you will die.

True or false, Brian May.