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Glenn Mattson
Hey, welcome back, this session of Building Blocks to Success, we'll be taking a look at what I call living the lifeline. Every decision that we have has a result and an outcome. I want to make sure that we own the decisions and because we have to own our results and outcomes. So come on the journey and learn how to have a successful mindset.
Glenn Mattson
Hey, in our past episodes, we've talked about in the behavior side really how to have goals, how to convert those goals into a plan, how to break those big plans into bite sized pieces, and how to make sure those bite sized pieces are things that we can track, we can believe in, and we learn how to win. Now we have to realize that there's some things that are truisms, and when we look at our behaviors and goals. When people have goals, you have to realize you're gonna get knocked down, you're gonna have roadblocks, you're gonna have things that are not going to be working out the way that you want to. And that's resiliency, right? And we're all born resilient, or none of us would walk quite honestly, we, we stand and we fall, we fall and we stand back up and we fall and we finally learn how to gain balance. That's resiliency and we have a natural resiliency and a lot of us have forgotten what that means, right? So resiliency is, is really recognizing what we can control and can't control in accepting what we can't control and working around it. It's it's also having a high resilient person is realizing that we have choices and the choices that we make have a repercussion. And we have to own those repercussions. One of the big things about resilient people is they view change or a challenge not as a negative not as oh, here we go again. And again, they're not looking forward towards it. But people are that are highly resilient, are not running from challenges. They're not running from difficulties, right. So one of the things I found with high resilient people that was really interesting is they had two major attributes that I want to bring up today.
Glenn Mattson
There's a few more, but the two that I want to talk about is their adaptability to change. What I mean by their adaptability at change is that when something took them off course, they spent very little time really trying to figure out why it happened, how it happened. They just moved with the flow, and then kept moving forward. They didn't spend a lot of time on why the roadblock happened. Their mindset is every problem has a solution is what's the solution. What's the solution?
Glenn Mattson
The other thing besides adaptability of change, which was interesting, is their ability to really take action. They don't spend a lot of time pondering and waiting. Their belief is that action is the only thing that's going to fix a roadblock. It doesn't fix by itself. So when a roadblock happens, they have a tendency to be quite active and looking for solutions and taking action. So whenever we have goals and we look at successful people, right you always hear these words grit, determination, fortitude, love the word tenacity, right? Gotson discipline, but it basically all comes down to is that when things don't go well, how, how strong are you going to be about staying the course? Right? Look self-discipline is the ability to push forward and stay motivated, take action. Tenacity is all about mental and moral strength to resist the opposition or hardest right so when you get knocked down, getting back up. What about when you hit pain, and you hit discomfort, and you hit negativism, and it's dealing with courage, that's fortitude. So all these things are going to happen and all these things are necessary to be successful. And you hear about in all these different podcasts and everything you read about successful people's, they have this, there's this crazy passion to get to where they want to go, and they understand that you're going to hit roadblocks, you're going to hit issues that occurred. Instead of being surprised by them, you got to lean into it.
Glenn Mattson
So today, I want to take a look at this thing called the lifeline. And these are, this is something that I hear quite a bit with people that are trying to be successful. But those that are successful, for the most part, have already figured this out. And it's called living the lifeline. Living the lifeline, we have to do a little bit of a recourse here and take a look at visually, a circle for a moment. Let's suppose inside that circle or maybe even easier is looking at a face watch, right or excuse me, the face of a watch. At three o'clock is your beliefs, at six o'clock is the decisions that you make, at say eight o'clock, are the results of those decisions and at 10 o'clock are the outcomes. Right? So it's a wheel. So if your beliefs create decisions, your decisions create a result, and result creates an outcome.
Glenn Mattson
What I want to talk about today is owning that lifeline. What I mean by that is you make a decision to do or not to do something. The second you make the decision, it's going to have a rippling effect, which is the results and outcome. I want to make sure that you never, ever complain about results or outcomes, because they're based on the decisions you make. Look if you want to see it visually. Let's suppose we go to a golf course. Now I am not a great golfer. So I have a unique ability to put the ball into the water no matter where I am, it's a waterhole or not. So sure enough, we're on a par three and pick out lousy bogs and know I'm going to put it into the water. I hit it and sure enough goes right in the water. Ball hits the water and then rings are formed. We as individuals spend so much time, energy, money and effort on the rings, the ripples. When a ball hits hard, those ripples are pretty high. They cause waves sometimes. But we spend all our time on the waves and the ripples, on the outcome, but what we don't spend time on is the cause.
Glenn Mattson
I want to spend some time on our focus today is learning and living with the impact or lack of of your choices. So when you have goals give decisions. And we talked about those with smarter goals. They're very specific, and they're actionable and trackable. So we're looking at this thing called the decision timeline. And it supersedes and overlays with a successful mindset. Successful mindset is really about the same belief, but three different points of time. Before you go do something successful mindset is really about responsibility. Responsibility is hey, everything in front of me is mine. In the midst of something, good or bad, so you're in the middle of it. Things aren't going the way it's supposed to that's ownership. After the fact, sales calls over, you're looking over your shoulder, that's accountability. Successful people are responsible. They take ownership, and they're 100% accountable.
Glenn Mattson
Living the lifeline has three or four things that merge at once. The first is I want you to write down, think about, have in front of your computer, jot it down in your book, always remember this, maybe you're gonna put it in your note’s sections of your phone. All sales problems happen for one of two reasons. Now you can take out the word sales and put in management, recruiting, hiring, developing, personal, all personal problems happen. All problems happen for one of two reasons. So we're going to talk about sales.
Glenn Mattson
All sales problems happen for one of two reasons. One is either you said or you did something you're not supposed to. Write that down. You did, or you said something that you're not supposed to. Maybe you made a phone call, maybe you made a suggestion, maybe said a few words, sent an email, you did something or said something you're not supposed to because of that you have a result and an outcome. Never want you to have the ability to blame the result and outcome if you didn't do or didn't say something you're supposed to.
Glenn Mattson
What about the flip side? Second one is right, you asked, or you did something you were not supposed to. So maybe you didn't ask the right questions. Maybe you wimped out and went down a different path. Maybe you didn't take them through a right questioning process. These are things that you chose to do or not to do. And because of that, you get the results that you got. Maybe that result is a think it over. Maybe that result is yes, they said yes to a second appointment, but the following day, they cancel it, you can't get back on the phone. And then you're going to turn around and say what it's a bad prospect? You tell me it's a bad lead. No, it's a bad salesperson, got to take responsibility. There is no bad leads, there is no bad prospects. There's only bad sales calls.
Glenn Mattson
So what did the thing that you didn't do that you should have done? What was the question that you should have asked, and you didn't? Because of that, where are you? I have lots of people who can ask great questions. But are you asking the right questions at the right time? Are you the one that suggested hey, why don't I take all this information I'll go back and put something together for you to react to, when you know they're not qualified, when you know, they're not ready to make a decision? And you just did it because you didn't know what else to do. So you wimped out. Look, I remember years ago. It took me one of the ways that I prospected what we call executive briefings. In an executive briefing, we would fill a room with business owners and go speak and at the end of it, they would say yes, no, when we meet them. It would typically take an entire month for us to fill the room. We'd make phone calls. This is the back of the day when there was no social media, it was just simply sending out mail and making phone calls. And then it would take about a month worth of work to fill a room. So at the time, I'm living in Queens, it's about a 45 minute drive to the office. My mentor and boss lived literally a minute away. Six streets away from the office. We have a meeting at nine o'clock. And I have 35 business owners showing up. It is seven o'clock and my car's not starting. It's just basically dead. I'm panicking, I'm sweating. I don't know what to do. I have two hours. Takes me 40 minutes to get there. Five minutes to set up. I have an hour buffer. I'm panicking. 7:15 rolls around. I've done everything I knew what to do to get the car going. And it's way past my paygrade; I have no idea. Then I'm pretty resilient. So call Mark up. Said Mark, here's the situation. I've been up, I've done this., I've tried this, I've jumped it. I've done everything I knew how to do to get this car started, it ain't starting. And in an hour and 45 minutes I have 30 business owners showing up. Can you at least start the program and then I'll get there however I can get there? All he said to me one line. Why are you calling me, not a taxi? Click.
Glenn Mattson
Straight off the phone I said, that was pretty harsh. You're not gonna help me out. If you're right there. You're getting half you know you're getting a chunk of this money anyways, why don't you help me out? But he was helping me out, it was the best help he could have done. That wasn't his problem, it was my problem. My car didn't start. I had to find a solution. I did get a taxi. I did get to the office on time. I owned it. You could say Glenn that wasn't you're decision. But yeah, my decision was to figure out how to get around this problem, how to own it.
Glenn Mattson
I remember one time, I was late for a meeting, I was closing this individual. I knew in my head that had to do something called the post sell. I just ran out of time. So I chose not to do it. I left the meeting then got in my car because I was late. I backed out, not paying attention, and I actually had the back of my bumper hit a pylon in the parking garage. So not only am I late for a meeting, now I hit the back of my car, I go to the next meeting. That didn't go as well, as I was hoping. In the meeting that I left that the person said yes to the following day, they backed out. I can sit there and yell and rant and rave, but at the end of the day, I made the decision not to do the post sell. I'm the one who chose not to ask the last three questions because I was late. The reason I was late is because I wasn't asking questions earlier when I should have. So the end of the day would basically happened was that I didn't get the sale because I didn't ask the questions. I have to own that. No one else's fault, but my own. So moving forward, never made that mistake again.
Glenn Mattson
Are you having the ability to own your decisions, or you having the ability to own the resources or the output of those decisions? Living the lifeline is insanely important. Regarding your growth. You can't own your decisions. How are you ever going to learn on what you did or didn't do? Learning from your mistakes, is what makes us grow. Learning from our mistakes is what gives us the opportunity not to make them again. Learning from our mistakes is called experience. And experience is what we need. So we don't make mistakes again. The more we make, the better we are later. But we have to own them. So when it comes to successful mindset, living the lifeline, do not make excuses on why things happen or didn't happen. Don't blame the prospect. Don't blame your manager. Don't blame the economy, don't blame your product. If you don't own your decisions, you don't own your result. If you don't own your outcomes, how will you ever figure out how to address them and fix them?
Glenn Mattson
By placing blame someplace else is one of the most significant ways to look at someone who choosing not to be successful. Making excuses is rampant inside companies and organizations inside individuals. It's shocking. It's like a truck backing up. You can hear wah, wah wah. Part of the issue is that if you're an excuse maker, you'll accept them from others, you accept them from your friends, you'll accept them from your clients, you'll accept them from your prospects. You get what you give. So stop making excuses. If you stop making them over time, you'll stop getting them because you don't like them. You don't listen to them, you're not gonna accept them, because you don't give them. Part of the issue is when you give them you don't even hear them.
Glenn Mattson
So living the lifeline is all about having the ability to understand that you have choices that you have to make about doing your behavior. If you choose to do it, great, if an outcome happens, not the way you want to own up, what did you say? How did you say it? What was your tactic like? What was your tone like? Look at how you can be better instead of blaming outside forces. Living the lifeline is gonna give you one of the best ways and fastest ways to grow. Because every time that you look at what you've done or didn't do, you take stock on what worked and what didn't work. And next time you add that into the conversation or into your decision, that's called growth. And a lot of times what you'll start to find out so things that you were wimping out about the most the toughest decisions that you're having, once you start learning how to make those decisions, it builds your confidence immensely. And that's momentum. And momentum is massive.
Glenn Mattson
So moving forward as you start to build your goals, I can't stress enough the successful mindset and how important it is in your ability to make sure that you can grow at the level you want to and maintain that momentum and look for experience. Look for lessons every day. You've heard me talk about this numerous times, that every day, at the end of the day, you should ask yourself five simple questions. These five simple questions are some of the best self coaching questions you can ask yourself every day five of them. Keep a track of this for 30 days. Look back at what you wrote down, go to your phone, put it notes, go to your computer, wherever you need to.
Glenn Mattson
Here your five questions, you ready? First one. What could I have done better today? What could I have done better today? You did it. What could I have done better? Number two, what could I have done differently? Maybe what you did just stinks and you gotta really change your direction, you gotta pivot. What can you do differently? Third, more, what can I do more of? Maybe you did it, you're just not doing enough of it. Things like active listening. Right? Questioning techniques, dials. So better, more, and different. Next two, what do I have to stop doing what I have been doing? Maybe it's procrastination. Last one is what I have to start doing that I haven't been doing? So now you got three. Awesome, right? So there's total five. Better, more, different, start, stop. Every day at the end of the day, give stock, best time to do it? Driving back from work to home. Gives you set your gives you ability to just level set, decompress. If you're working out of the house. When you're all done for the day before you turn off your computer and go from one room to the other. You have the ability. Put on your headset, just veg out for 30 seconds. Ask yourself these five questions, jot down the answers, put that in your to do list for the next day and start. Baby steps man make baby steps.
Glenn Mattson
So as you start to look at your life, you start to look at your goals as you look at your daily behaviors. Remember, learning to live the lifeline is making sure that you realize every decision that you make has a result and outcome. Never ever, ever, ever pass the blame for the results and outcome when it always comes from your decisions. All sales problems, all personal problems happen for one of two reasons either because you did or you said something you are not supposed to or you did not do or you did not say something you were supposed to.
Glenn Mattson
Next time we talk let's talk about some of the motivational factors that we have when it comes to taking a look at goal setting.
Glenn Mattson
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
S1E8 with Glenn Mattson: Goals, Commitment & Accountability
S1E3 with Glenn Mattson: The Success Triangle & Attitude