Doing the 3 am Run in Silk Pajamas
WMMM #069 - This week I share lessons from Sin City.
Jeff Keplar Newsletter July 13, 2024 4 min read
Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014.
World Champion.
Earned $52 million playing cards.
Kid Poker
We never know when or where we’ll find pearls of wisdom.
This week, Win More, Make More - Compete Like the Best turns to the world of professional poker.
Daniel Negreanu is an 8-time champion and is the highest-earning player in live poker history.
Ryan Hawk, host of the Learning Leader podcast, interviewed Daniel recently.
We pull our lessons for this week from that interview with Daniel, also known as “Kid Poker”: “Responding to Failure, Risking It All.”
Luck of the Draw
To avoid criticism
Say nothing
Do nothing
Be nothing.
How do we respond in the following scenario?
Our advice is sought on the sales process.
We aren’t winning enough deals.
We continue to miss our forecasts.
We cannot predict if we will win or lose or when we will know the outcome.
Upon inspection, we learn that we rarely know:
The decision process of the Buyer
The decision maker
Their priorities in evaluating their options
Their timing for making a decision
Who might be involved from both parties
What happens if they “Do Nothing”
What caused them to reach out to us?
We are not asking the Buyer for this information.
We learn that our executive team believes that this information is “none of our business.”
We have “no right to ask these questions of a prospective customer.”
This is no place for “high-pressure sales tactics.”
Do we avoid criticism?
Do we say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing?
Owner versus Victim
In sales, much like poker, there are things within our control and things we cannot control.
In poker, they call the things they can’t control “the element of chance.”
“Luck.”
They have no control over the cards they are dealt.
Daniel shares one of the principles he used to reach the top of his game.
Focus on what you can control.
The hand he is dealt is situational.
He has a process that includes a framework for dealing with each possible situation.
It is not perfect.
Success is not guaranteed.
But the odds are with him over the long run if he executes his process.
Expect to make mistakes.
Losses are inevitable.
How he deals with them sets him apart.
Daniel realizes that he will never truly master the game of poker completely.
It’s a game of incomplete information.
You will always be making mistakes.
So, he makes it his objective to make his mistakes smaller.
When he loses, he takes ownership.
Others, the failures that don’t make it, blame the hand they were dealt and play the luck factor.
“If you believe you are unlucky, you are.”
Have an Owner’s Mentality versus a Victim’s Mentality.
The real pros take ownership.
Did I execute the process?
Did I miss anything?
How can I improve my game?
Could I have prepared better?
They understand that winning is not guaranteed.
They own the outcome.
They have resilience.
In our sales scenario, if we say and do nothing, it is inevitable that:
We will not win more deals
We will continue to miss our sales objectives
We will not get better at knowing if we will win and why.
We will continue to be “victims” of poor sales execution.
The Victim Mentality is to blame the executive team.
We were dealt a bad hand.
Our executive team does not understand the value of professional sales.
Taking ownership, in our scenario, means saying something.
Provide the advice that is sought from us.
It’s the process that has helped us reach the top of our profession.
Over the long run, the odds are with us.
Show resilience.
Focus on what we can control.
How might we enable the executive team to self-discover what we know to be true?
Doing the 3 am Run in Silk Pajamas
Kid Poker confesses to Ryan Hawk that he is a big fan of the Rocky movies, especially Rocky 3.
He is already the champ, doing commercials and kissing babies.
Meanwhile, Clubber Lang is grinding, sweating, and putting in the time in the gym.
When Clubber beats Rocky, it tells him that when he reached the top, he forgot what it took to get there.
Like many, I associate Las Vegas, “Sin City,” with gambling and big-time prize fights.
Daniel has spent much time in Vegas and continues his boxing analogies.
A famously successful boxer, whose name Daniel could not remember, was asked:
“Do you find it difficult to motivate yourself?’
“You know what, it’s a lot harder to do the 3 am run in silk pajamas.’
Once you reach an element of success, staying there, maintaining, and continuing to find ways to challenge yourself becomes very difficult.
Have a growth mindset.
Look for ways to continue to improve.
Do everything like you do anything.
Lessons Learned
1) Focus on behaviors, not outcomes.
2) Execute our process - the odds are with us.
3) Be an Owner, not a Victim.
4) Even in silk pajamas, do the 3 am run.
Thank you for reading.
Jeff
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