Ep 186 - Rise to the Challenge

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of Electricpreneurs Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where me, your host Clay Neumeier, and my esteemed co-host, joseph the Salesbot, lou Canny, show up for you five days a week to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level service. Oh, that's okay, that's okay.

That felt good. Yeah, I like that.

Premium level service. We're having fun with it today.

Oh yeah, I love how we're nerding out here, because it's just like the Louis. I love it.

Lovely taking it up a notch and adding some voice inflection. A little bit of pause right after. If you're with us and you're having a premium service day, let us know by well engaging with us at the Facebook Electricpreneurs Secrets Chat. Right now we've got a let's go. I can't see who even said it yet. I better pull this up on Facebook. Joe, how are you doing today, brother?

Man, I'm doing good. It's one of those days where I am powering my day through the excessive consumption of caffeine, which is very, very unlikely. Normally. I'm like a four ounce of caffeine kind of guy, but when you don't sleep and you get stress coming up in the future, you power it down with something.

I feel an excessive chat coming on. It's actually our brother, edwin, with us in the chat. Edwin, I hope you're having a rockstar day, my brother. Absolutely, edwin, what I don't know what the weather's doing over your way, joe, but it is mad brick oh no. Mad, did I say that right? Yes yes, he did.

It is mad brick when you come to New York. You'll fit in, Don't worry. It's just the concept of mad is very. Brick is cold. So to say it's mad brick means it's very cold, but it's actually not right. Here in New York it's actually 78 degrees today, which is super usual. We had three back to back days where it's going to be in the high seventies and then it's going to literally just drop off the shelf and go right back into the forties, that's T-shirt and shorts. Yeah.

Like 70. I don't want to go in an attic today.

I mean, do we ever want to go in an attic? Give me a crawl space. I'm a crawl space guy Put me under a house. I will fit under it like a rat, I don't care.

Is that where mad brick came from in the crawl space? No, I didn't make this, you're like I'm cold, I'm really cold, and there's some brick and this is mad brick.

I didn't take. I take no credit for any of this. I did not come with a word. I'm simply just educating you on its use.

Okay. Well, if it's mad brick where you are, wherever you're listening from, in the VA, with Edwin or other places, please let us know. Is it really cold there and do you use that term? Oh God, we better move on. This is dangerous territory.

I love it. Man, you're making me laugh already. You haven't even got a few minutes into the podcast. I'm already double.

What better way to make it happen?

You know, I was going to say start the day, but that's a.

that's a Pacific time, yeah.

I've been up for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, but for nine hours already.

So no, I just woke up, not quite man, not quite Listen. Today Edwin says it's mad fire here, so pretty warm. I'm guessing over there is fire, hot, fire must be hot.

A fire is usually meant for very good Fire is good.

Oh, it fires down a temperature. Okay, I've got much to learn. In fact, my youngest last night was asking me hey, what are some of the things that used to say when you were my age?

Oh God.

And she's 11 or 12. So I started telling her all the cheesy little pickup lines that I used on her mom at one point.

Right.

You remember some of those.

Did you have any?

in your arsenal.

No, no, you have to realize. Remember, my background was not in having friends or having dates. If anything, I was hyper oblivious to anyone flirting with me.

Oh, time out. Don't get me wrong. I just practiced in the mirror. I didn't actually deliver.

Oh, all, right, Well, my case.

There are some bad ones, like did it hurt, oh, when you fall from heaven, oh God.

Yeah.

Yeah, right, they get. They get pretty bad Only because she knows Dorian dropped some of that same game on her years ago. Joe, moving on, we got to rise to the challenge. This topic continues. We're talking about the 75 E hard challenge you mentioned yesterday. E does not necessarily mean electrical, yes, improvement.

I believe E is essential. The reason being is because the things that are in this challenge aren't meant to rah-rah, puff your chest like I can do this. It's more of these are the essential things that a happy person would do, and to establish that not only can you be happy, but you can be productive, you can be grateful, you can be successful, and those things build on themselves. They build on each other. So I call it the 75E challenge because these are 75 days of essential activities that make you a better person.

Nice. I love that Yesterday we touched on the first four, really being that. Proper preparation prevents piss, poor performance. Planning your day ahead, preparing for your day ahead. We talked about getting enough sleep and a consistent sleep schedule. We all know what it's like to wake up on the wrong side of the bed, right, we talked about that. Edwin says he sees it as a lifestyle. I would have to agree. My brother and I hope that many of the other listeners and viewers and people that take this challenge with us also see it that way. We talked about gratitude. How important the attitude of gratitude is. Have you ever heard this one? Your attitude equals your altitude.

I have. Actually I don't know exactly who said that. Is that Jim Rohn?

It might have been a Jim Rohn thing, many people have probably said that one, but I believe it wholeheartedly. Really waking up, feeling good about the day, feeling an appreciation when we talked about this earlier we said it very nicely. It's not going to come to my tongue now but really waking up and expressing grace puts you in a positive light for the things we already have going for us. I can put that in perspective. All right, hit it Okay.

So a lot of it. I'm going to speak to all the parents out there, right? So let's say, you get up and, whatever time it is, imagine waking up to the sound of kids crying in the background, or to sound, oh, I threw up, or, oh, this person took this person. It's like no, it never feels good to be woken up in that way. So imagine waking up even five minutes before all the commotion happens, and your first thought is simply say thank you, thank you for the opportunity to wake up, thank you for the opportunity to get ahead of the day, thank you for the opportunity to serve, thank you for the opportunity to grow, thank you, thank you. And now you're in that place, and then the kids cry. What that does is, instead of reacting with what the heck man, I'm sleeping, it's what's going on. How can I help? Just a little bit of a shift. Gratitude can move mountains if you can start your day with it.

Absolutely yeah, and I would agree. And, by the way, what the heck? I'm trying to record a podcast over here. Stop it. I'm just kidding A little joke there. But no, seriously, man, you know what I've seen in sort of the decay of what's the word I'm looking for. I want to say not just religion, but in a multicultural society like I live in Canada. We know this, we've addressed this, but do people really understand how multicultural Canada is and the very diverse nature of it and how many people have come from so many different places because we welcome so many different people and help so many different people with this massive cold land mass that we have to share? I've noticed more and more that funerals have less and less tradition in them, weddings have less and less tradition and ceremony to them. Even dinner has less and less grace to it. Now it's the minority that actually say grace at the dinner table. At least in my exposure and the people in my circles, I've noticed that more and more and I really don't tie that necessarily to religion. I don't think you have to be religious to say grace, but isn't it kind of crazy that we've come down to a place where we even have to talk about it, because so few are the ones that truly practice gratitude every day.

It really is one of those things that isn't happening enough. And it's not just the fact that we need to make prayers before we eat or anything like that. I just believe that being in a place of perpetual gratitude just allows you to do everything with betterness. I mean, imagine eating the food. In the very least, it's one thing to feel like, oh, this isn't the thing I wanted to eat, maybe it wasn't, but this is a nice surprise but being grateful to have that opportunity to be like man. There are people who don't have this. I'm glad that I have this. Thank you for this. It's just a little shift. And then all the meals, the leftovers that you wouldn't have really enjoyed, you can look at in a different light.

Man, if you take the positive approach, you'll have the happiness advantage, and I think that's kind of crazy too I mean tying into the last point what we just discussed. That's kind of crazy to think that we actually have to teach gratitude at this point. But it's also crazy that I'm losing my words. Joe, I'm embarrassed now. I've lost my words, I've lost my train of thought, but ultimately, that people don't celebrate this stuff. We're not forward in celebrating the little wins. We're not forward in celebrating the positivity. We're not forward in giving without expectation of immediate receipt.

Well, look at the culture we're living in. We're almost all of us are dominated by this grind mentality of what you have is never good enough. And if you're not living in this place, if you're a POS, if you're not doing this, then you're lazy. If you're not doing a billion crunches by 7 am, you're lazy. So it's hard to feel grateful when you're always feeling under the boot of something else. Being grateful doesn't mean that you're now this alpha. Being grateful just says I'm allowed to be happy with what is happening right now. It doesn't mean that's my limit, but I'm grateful to at least experience the moment that I'm experiencing right now. And I think if people were able to put that in perspective of you don't have to be there to be happy. You could be on your way to being there and being happy with the journey.

Yep, and I'm reminded, as Mandy's mentioning the Happiness Advantage book, sean Aker. Good Read for anyone that hasn't had that one yet. Thank you, mandy, and thank you, juliet for engaging so much. People are chasing happiness like never before. In fact, I think this was even written a while back in the seven habits of highly effective people, stephen Arkavi. I've mentioned that one a few times. He says that we used to actually gauge our wealth and our happiness and their joy in life by the time that we had available to us. Yep, that was a direct symptom of how successful we were, for our inability, or ability rather, to detach from outcomes and attach to living in today and having that time. But nowadays people actually measure success and wealth by business, and it's the same thing, kind of a perpetual thing, that we're in here. Right, we're teaching people to better their business, but the spin I want to definitely encourage here is we're doing that so that you get control. This challenge is about reclaiming control. We want you to have all that so that you can be happy, because it's likely that the people you worked for in the past, the situations you found yourself in, weren't it, and that's why we're here, isn't it?

Yeah, you know, too often when you chase the things, more things come. But when you're chasing the feeling of I'm in a place of joy, I'm chasing the state of being. You focus on the feeling rather than the acquisition. Have you ever noticed that some people say I'll be happy when and it's like I'll be happy when I lose the weight, I'll be happy when I stop smoking, I'll be happy when I hire a CSR, it doesn't matter what it is but they're delaying their happiness on an outcome. But when you delay it on an outcome, all you'll find is you get there and you're literally running on a treadmill. It's a treadmill with, like an old fashioned movie where they're like moving the slides behind you and you're just moving in place. That's all it is. Yeah, being grateful just simply says I'm okay with the walk right now, getting from here to there. I'm gonna be at least happy while I'm getting there because I know I'm moving in the right direction.

Yeah, if you really were listening and you wanted to have your mind twisted up a little bit, I could highly recommend as well. There's a book by a guy named Eckert Tolle. He really lives in that mindfulness space and making the most of your moments. And there's a book called the Power of Now. This is a book that, for me, it really changed the way I looked at things and it forces you to, because it's the kind of book that you read a paragraph and it stops you in your tracks to reread it and reread it and really contemplate what the hell just happened on the page here, because it challenges the way that you see everything. It's not the kind of book that's like, hey, this is about 300 pages and I could read that in a month at 10 pages a day. You'll never do it, you'd never capture it. It's more like I'm going to capture a passage today. I'm gonna focus on a page and see what kind of shift I can achieve. That makes sense. It does Really powerful stuff. Anyways, moving on from gratitude, then we talked about the physical fitness aspect of it, the exercise and the chemical change, the release of endorphins and all the benefits from that, and we kind of dropped the mic right at study and making the band a university. So why don't we jump in on that one man and try to help some people here make the most of that commute time?

Sure be happy to so for me, I realized that a lot of my travel time prior to implementing these styles was that it would be a lot of wasted time. It'd be like I knew I needed to drive 45 minutes to get to the shop there and back 45 minutes. The problem was is that when you're thinking about what you can do in that time is you find you often fill the space with emptiness. You're listening to music, you're listening to YouTube videos. You're just doing things that move the clock but that actually don't move you or your position in life. And for me remember, I struggled in a huge way with communication Like it was just one of the things where I I couldn't quite grasp how social communication and social interaction worked. I didn't know I was autistic at the time, I just knew that I needed to be better. So what I started doing was any kind of coach that I had, any training, that I had, any material that I can get a hand on. I would literally put I've downloaded onto a flash drive. And I remember I thought it was so cool because in 2012, I bought a Honda Civic with a built-in flash drive and I was like, man, I'm making it right, but I had I plugged in the flash drive and I would turn my van into a university. The moment I had I had a commitment that the moment I'd turned the key the flash drive would automatically turn on. I would leave the sound on in my van or my car and it would have to play educational material. It had to be sales related, it had to be communication related and that means every day, 45 minutes. Every morning I was training. Every ride back was training. Every ride to and from any kind of job site was training. So if you think about it, imagine how much time you spend in the van each day. If you can take that time and instead put it into your own self-education, you can get a college degree without even realizing it 100%.

I actually I think I speak about that in the value piece. I did the math at one point where I was driving to and from a project every day and I was spending about three hours on the road every day and if you really break down the credit hours of a bachelor's degree typically considered a four year program, I was able to demonstrate how I could have actually received the same amount quantity of learnings in about half that time just on the road, in that focused state. And one of the things I've always known, noticed and come to love about traveling is have you ever found where you're, in that state where you're kind of like, oh, I just drove two, three miles and I don't even remember it. Yeah, you just get so focused on like the road and the lines and the just things. It's in that state that I find so much power in just listening and learning and contemplating.

That's actually a Zen philosophy In the Doubted Ching. Have you ever gotten familiar with the Doubted Ching?

No, no, no man Educated.

All right, what it is is there's a concept known as non-doing. It's the thought of saying exactly what you're talking about. You were in the car, you were driving, you were obeying the rules of the road. You suddenly disappeared from what you were doing and you don't know how many minutes went by 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes and you got safely from A to B and you're like how the fuck did I do that? How did I not die? I didn't think of anything right now. Yeah, that's the concept of non-doing, because you'll actually realize that when you're focused on the thing itself and that's the only thing you're focused on, all the distractions that I seem to fade away and you actually get some space to breathe and, like when you're in a place of true receptiveness, the amount of being able to absorb information is much easier, because, reverse, the inverse of this is imagine being in that van but instead of having the sales music on or the sales tapes or the intros or the trainings or anything like that, you now have both windows down and you're in a traffic jam. Could you listen to the same thing with the same intention and absorb it with all that stimuli around you?

No, distracted you wouldn't be, of course, but when you were able to commit to doing something, and doing it to such a level where we come subconscious it's, it's truly a place of Nirvana and honestly, it's a big part of why we created this podcast in the way that we did Developed rather, because when it was created it kind of had a different purpose as rise to rise. But when we teamed up and made it what it is today, it was the realization that we wanted to be behind the windshield of the van with you guys in the trenches five days a week, because it's in that time that a lot of your growth will happen. It's not just about the growth, it's also about the inspiration. As my mentor used to say, you're not tired, you're uninspired. Inspiration has a lot to do with that feeling of whether we're tired or whether we're feeling up and ready for the next challenge. Exactly, I get a lot of that inspiration available to me through audiobooks, podcasts, other mentors that we get to listen to and all the various formats and content that they provide Superpower. I agree to be mindful the time we got to keep moving. So the next one was measurement, joe. How does measurement affect your progress as a salesperson, as a person in general?

Now, when you say measurement, do you mean more like the acquisition of goals? The tracking goals Can be a little more specific with it.

Yeah, so going into the framework, really, what we're talking about is like post-call diagnostics.

Yes.

Ormans.

Okay, not a problem. Self-evaluation, that's how I mentally categorize there. Enough, okay. So it's impossible to play a game without seeing the target, like we've all heard this. This rule right, yeah. But at the same time, I don't believe that time is linear. I believe that we're all moving in a similar direction and they're all ending in a similar place. The problem is is that you can choose to improve that journey or you can choose to just go along with the flow. When you take time for reflection and improvement, you're recognizing and saying what I'm doing today, even if I slightly tweaked, it, could impact tomorrow exponentially. The way that I would do that was we would do things known as post-call self diagnostics. After every single call, we would sit back down and say okay, let's review what happened on this call. What went right, what went wrong? What could we have improved upon? What did they say? Why do we think that they said it? What was the overall outcome? What could we have changed? And when you're really looking in it, I Found that I stopped blaming the customer. I Just stopped blaming them because the outcome wasn't their fault. Hmm, I'm here to be a conduit. They called for a solution. I'm here to provide the solution. But at the end, I'm just a conduit from A to B, and If they didn't invest with me, it's not that they didn't want it, it's that I somehow didn't communicate its value enough. And I learned that as I was trying to learn how to speak better and how to communicate myself better the only way I can improve, because I didn't have anyone really like do this, do this, do this. It was more like okay, well, this is the framework. I know. How can I improve on it from there? Does that make sense?

Absolutely yeah, if you can measure it, you can manage it. And so the post call self-evaluation that you are doing is really just a tool for measurement, and when you do that consistently and you show up every time and you do that post call or, as we call it today, the post call diagnostics, because that data becomes an information set that you can act from and that's the compound effect that's working for you. It's also about making time for reflection, which is kind of the same principle, what we talked about in counseling and self-development. But there's another hidden piece here To measure means we took action, and that in itself is a blessing, isn't it? That in itself is a driving factor.

Yeah, those who don't take action can't measure anything. It's impossible to do so Like if you were to say I'm going to sit here right now, I'm going to stare at a blank wall, not going to contemplate anything, I'm not going to do anything. And then I came to an hour later and said all right, let's measure what you've done. What would you have improved? What would you have changed? You didn't do anything. There's nothing to change.

I would rather someone who goes to bat, swings and whiffs and throws the bat into the field trying to hit the ball, because then at least you could say all right, we can improve this, we can watch the tape, we can review it, we can see what you went wrong, we can see what you're doing you want to, from the 30,000 foot view, if we're looking at two people, one person's running this play, running this challenge, this lifestyle, as as Edwin called it, and you've mentioned that way too versus the person who's reactively going through life and we all know these people and maybe it's you right now, if you're listening woke up late, the alarm hit the snooze, right, you buzz. You got late to the shop. You just had a coffee, as we mentioned, probably in the lineup for the bathroom going to be maybe late for your first call. Now you're working in a range time for people to expect you. You're not. Maybe you forgot to brush your teeth, you're not well groomed, there's a stain on your shirt, you didn't prepare, the battery's not charged. All these things are adding up and then finally, after the call is done, we tend to make a quick excuse and dismiss. And even worse when it goes well, oh yeah, well, that was expected Dismiss. And, of course, the person who had the proactive approach, had the time, followed this challenge and actually stopped after and went. Okay, what went well? What didn't go well? Why? How could I improve that? Reflect on the objections, right. Do the work on the reflection after. It's so, so, so important, and you could see the vastly different outcomes in a single day. Now look 300 days down. Or as for the challenge, look 75 days down. Are those two people in the same place as far as their personal development go, in even 75 days?

You know, something he said that was really interesting that I wanted to call attention to was when you were saying that a person was trying to get to their call within a window, and I feel like that also describes the kind of person that we're trying to influence and change. I personally believe that if I was going to give you a window of 9 to 11, I was going to be there at nine. If not, I was already there at 855 and waiting until it was nine o'clock from a drive into your driveway.

To be appropriate, absolutely.

Right, no such thing as on time. Yeah, there were people who I know who were like, well, it's nine to 11. I could get there at 11 and be okay. But if you weren't up early and you weren't in a place of gratitude and you didn't have everything prepared and your adorferents weren't already up because you didn't exercise, you wouldn't be inclined and itching to get to your first call, because at nine o'clock or eight o'clock you've already been up for four hours. You've already been up for three hours, like you were already up. There's nothing stopping you from taking the day. But if you were to get up at seven, seven, 30 and get to the shop and not have to worry about breakfast and then sit in the bathroom because you didn't get anything done, or then you have to rush out to your call, maybe you get gas and whatever it is, you're not gonna be as successful. So I just thought it was something that was worth highlighting.

When you have the window, get there on time, 100%. We've got one more piece and we've got action items and we've got about three minutes flat. You think we can hit it. Let's go for it All right. The last piece is teaching. Learn, do teach. This is one of the most powerful frameworks that I've put to use personally in the last decade and a half and I know you have two, joe, and we've done that in different capacities, different ways, all the way through apprenticeship training to sales training and tutoring people on the side, and not for an exchange. The only exchange is to give and then to receive in dividends of a better understanding of what you're teaching. You solidify knowledge when you teach it to someone else. You have to answer to their objections and they're seeking understanding, and that helps you retain that information as well. So when you learn, as we talked about in the van, making the van in university, we do and then measure, and then we are also teaching to others and you've actually employed the trifecta, I believe, of mastery, and that's why I learned to teach. Important, joe, tell us a bit about how you would tutor on the side to help solidify your own ventures and sales master.

So I remember that there were always times when I would go to conferences and I would learn about people and I would go to different trainings and there were always people who just couldn't quite get it and I always felt like I was pretty advanced. After a period of time I started to understand things and started to click and I didn't like leaving people behind. It didn't make me feel good, it really didn't. So I would find these people that were out of my state, so they were clearly not competition, and I would literally work with them for free, because my logic was one I'm giving back, but two even if they never improved for a second by them giving me their objections and their struggles, I would be better equipped to handle my own because I talk through it. And I actually found that the more people I tutored, the better I got at what I was doing. So I wanted to tutor more, and almost for a selfish reason, you know, but think about it. How selfish can you be when you're giving something away for free to people that you'll never meet you? Just, I just wanted to do it. It made me feel good.

It's a gift man, it's an act of kindness and service and it improved you along the way, undoubtedly, joe. We got to crank out some action items. Brother, go ahead and hit us with a basic, if you can, sure.

So this week's action assignment, for the most part, has been investing in this 75E challenge. Right, I would say, the most bare minimum action that someone can take is at least evaluated. Right, we have the value piece. We are giving it away. This is a lifestyle that we are going to be committing to as well. We're not just saying, oh, do this, we won't. It's like we're going to help you with this and we want to take it step by step with you All. I ask if for someone to put up a hand up like literally bare minimum action, hand up, that's all you've got to do and I will send you the entire process. That doesn't get any more basic than that, right? No, man.

That's great, and the all start to add to that. Just want to differentiate us for a moment and let you know that this differs from 75E hard. The original challenge here's how, if you miss a day, we don't disqualify you, we don't say restart, we just want you to not count that day. I want you to see in how many days it takes you to get 75E good, intentional days out, because every single day that you put forth in this challenge is absolutely going to impact your growth, and one of the biggest things that happens when people fall off the wagon is that we go. I missed the gym today, so I'm off now. I'm out of it. I don't need to go this week at all. The excuse snowballs and it grows and we package that problem up. Instead, give yourself the grace of allowing life to happen. Things don't go perfectly. That's OK, but the only way to lose is to quit, and we want you to get to the 75 and see how fast you can do it. So join us in that challenge. As Joe said, we'll be doing it too. You guys, we got to rock, but this has been another episode. Rise to the challenge with us on Electric Pinner Secrets, the Electricians podcast where we're showing up for you five days a week in our own middle endurance race to help you master sales, simplify pricing and deliver premium level electrical service. Take care.

Looking forward to seeing you.