7 Minutes to better Selling Podcast Ep. 19

Welcome to the 7 Minutes to Better Selling Podcast

I'm your host, Colin Lake, President and Founder of Developing the Next Leaders. So today we have the wonderful honor

of introducing Matt Johnson onto the call. So Matt, welcome. Thanks so much

Hey, Colin. Yeah, hey, Colin, great to see you. Salespeople, Matt, are pulled in like

all these different directions, trying to like do so many things at once

and trying to like operate at the highest level. So Matt, how do you get to this

like this amazing like position you're in today as a thought leader, an author of some books that

I own and read and spent plenty of time on, and then ultimately the president of On Target Living

You know, I would say the biggest reason I'm here is because of my father, who you heard from

And as we were jumping on, you were saying, man, you look so much like your father. I think

I guess that's the biggest reason I'm here. I grew up with this health freak. Now, I didn't

think of him as a freak, but a lot of people thought of him as a health freak in the 80s and

90s, doing some things that no one really was thinking about. And so I grew up with it. Now

fast forward, I go off to school and within a month, my health goes in the wrong direction

Poor skin, no energy, kind of feeling lethargic. I played college golf. My golf game went into the

toilet and I started to realize, oh my gosh, this stuff that we were just taught or the life we

lived actually had value. And so that was kind of my aha moment. I went to school for it. My first

job out of college was with a fortune 500 company trying to help with the health and wellness

And early on, Colin, what I really realized is that they were trying to do health and wellness

but it wasn't a priority. And so whether it was marketing or sales or all these things that they

wanted to do more, they kept pushing aside the health of their people

And so from that point forward I just said I got to control my destiny And I came on board with my father my twin sister And we been doing this on Target Living all over the world to help people expand their capacity

What is like one or two steps you'd say? Like, how do you go from like feeling like, like just almost like feeling like I'm doing more with less to like I'm doing less with more

Like, how do you get this like thing in balance of saying, okay, I'm operating at a high level, number one

and I'm like feeling really good about what I'm accomplishing. You know, I got a lot of things that I could say, but at the end of the day, I think we

compare ourselves to others. That's part of sales. That's part of competition

We both played sports. A lot of us played sports, but there's competition. And so you're comparing

but when you think about your productivity, when you think about your health, when you think about

your energy, that's a comparison to yourself. And so the big thing, Colin, that the problem exists

is because we don't have that self-awareness. When I work with people that are making a good

living, doing pretty well in sales and not necessarily prioritizing their health, they

don't have the self-awareness of what could be. And so the biggest thing that I have to say to

folks is you got to start thinking inward first. And one of the opportunities we have

is to understand to do more with less, we actually have to do less. So if we want to do more

we have to rest more. And that's where, you know, these things called micro breaks that I'm a true

believer in, we got to give ourself more of these micro breaks, these relaxation periods throughout

the day so that we can optimally perform several times throughout the day. Let me give you an

If you go from a meeting or a phone call or a Zoom or a Skype or whatever it is to social media to another call to another meeting without a break your maximum output is going to suffer And if you watch any athletes any musicians any top performers they know they need a break You know if you go to a concert

they're not going to play for eight hours straight and expect to be an awesome concert

They do it for a small period because that rest is critical

Matt, I'm going to give you a comment I learned my sophomore year in high school and get your

reaction to it. A constipated brain produces a diuretic mouth. Wow. And so when your brain's all

locked up, people just tend, in particular in a sales world, people just tend to go, you know, just keep on talking, keep on talking. They almost can't get out of their own way. They just keep on

talking. And so what I'm hearing from you, what this teacher suggested is like, if you don't keep

your brain, you know, connected to like everything else in your body by like pulling it all together

from time to time, you don't have the time to really be collected with your thoughts. And then

ultimately the words come out of your mouth. Colin, that's exactly it. You've done several

great podcasts on listening and we can't be a good listener unless we have the calmness and the

stillness in our mind. And that's what a micro break is, is it's given us that break. We have

72,000 thoughts a day. And if we expect to be different, unique, a differentiator

We have to understand that it's the energy over those thoughts. And that's where we need that clarity

We need those micro breaks. I wrote that down. Yes, most people, Colin, here's the problem that I'm seeing in my world, whether it's

a sales individual leader, corporate America in general, is we're more anxious

We're more stressed. We're in more of a hurry. There's more complexities, competition, because we can't be with our thoughts

So we distract ourself. We think that we're multitasking when we're multi-switching

The reality at the end of the day is if you can get so focused and really optimize your energy now you managing your energy first versus managing your time first And that time I think Colin you know this better than most It not about the time It about the energy you have

over the time you have. And that's, that's to me, fundamentally what we're trying to teach people

to optimize their health. Yeah. Matt, I'm going to give you the mic back in just a second

in terms of like telling people where to connect with you, how to get more in touch with or in tune

with what our on target living is teaching. But I want to maybe just share this thought

This podcast is designed to share tips, tools, strategies, tactics on how to sell better

And so one of the things we have missed to this point, just listening to you, is we've got to

optimize this. We're the ultimate tool that we have to fix. And then all those tools, tips

strategies, tactics, all this stuff can actually take hold in the way that we intended to

So I'm grateful for what you've shared. And any last thoughts, please share that

But otherwise, tell the folks how to get connected with you because I'd love them all too. Yeah, if you want to sell better, if you want to be a better parent, you want to be a better

leader, you want to be a better listener, it all begins by putting the oxygen mask on

yourself first. And I think one of the positives out of COVID that I hope everyone grasped is that our most

precious asset or greatest asset is our health. And if you want to be a better salesman, woman, leader, whatever it is, entrepreneur, you need to invest in your health

That allows you to give more. And if you want to follow more of our stuff, you can just Instagram OnTargetLiving, our website, OnTargetLiving.com

We have podcasts and resources. But Colin, you're a leading example of what we teach

And when we met you, you were performing at a high level. and then you realize, wow, I didn't realize how much higher I can achieve

That's what taking care of your health does. Thanks, MJ. Good selling

See you guys