Are you a sociopath, or are you playing the game?
**As an aside, I find it interesting to see all of the habits I’ve picked up to alleviate the stress of actually putting words on a page, and now that I’ve given myself a maximum of 60 uninterrupted minutes to publish something, it’s extremely noticeable how much time is wasted fiddling. See: Shuffling cards, drinking water like a camel, reformatting, SNACKS, remembering that one thing you were supposed to text that one person like 3 months ago but never did. (Boom, figured out my lead-in)
Getting in touch. Doing what you said you were going to do when you got in touch (surprisingly effective). Staying in touch.
That’s it, that’s the game.
Go home folks, the show’s over, nothing to see here.
It’s become increasingly clear to me over the past year or so that skills you acquire in one industry/ role are readily transferable, and usually you won’t notice it. See good memes for: Improvise, adapt, overcome.
A year back I figured I wasn’t quite the best salesman in the world, but was still blessed with the gift of the gab, and always had a keen interest in doing something productive with my cash monies.
So is the natural progression, I ended up in the magical land of Venture Capital, where everyone has the next Uber, and most days you’re alerted to the fact that you’re outworked by 16yr old founders in low-socioeconomic areas raising more than 20x your yearly salary for something they hatched up after school one day in Mom’s garage. Nice.
Even though I now work in a similar BizDev-ish type role, I remain steadfast in my opinion that most of the various skills I’ve learned since being in the workforce have benefited each and every role I’ve served since.
However, there’s one skill that seems to remain illusive to most folks, no doubt including myself at times, and it’s blatantly simple.
Do what you say you’re going to do.
As per the title, I originally came across this idea in writing a few years ago, listening in to a copy of “Sell It Like Serhant”. His core tenants as a luxury New York realtor of following up, through, and back, was echoed widely by my manager at the time, and for good reason.
This motherf*cker went from starting out as a realtor on the first day of the GFC, making a whopping $9k in his first year, to selling over $1b of real estate in the decade following.
Go you good thing.
Now obviously his success is due to a range of factors I haven’t given myself the luxury of time to get into, but I’d argue that the following played a nice little role in shifting him to the front of the pack:
People forget to follow up, they have no systems in place. You’re hot, or you’re not. People don’t do what they say they’re going to do. Strike one and it’s done. People don’t come back for seconds after a lame first course. *(What if that was just the entree?
In business, I’ve found it alarming as to the sheer amount of promises made and not kept. Not to toot my own horn, but I make a conscious effort to follow through on any promises made, or at least update the other party on steps taken to bring home the bacon.
This seems to open a lot of doors, and without having any formal tertiary education, it’s been one of the driving factors of me differentiating myself amongst competitors, even though on the surface is seems like such a simple thing.
As for following up or through, I’m sure you can find a parallel to dating in there somewhere, but to paraphrase the un-ironic words of Tony Robbins - I am NOT your f*cking guru on that one ladies and gentleman.
So as we draw to a close with 50 seconds less, I reflect on the fact that there is little to no meat in this x word expanse, and that maybe tomorrow I’ll be a tad more succinct.
60 Minutes 30/07/22
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