It's Easier to Dream Than to Do

How much do you daydream about being promoted, recognized, richer, or inspiring to others? Or reading about others who are doing it?

Compare that to how much effort you spend on making those daydreams happen. Clocking hours at work doesn't count. What are you learning that's important to your goals—and not just through watching videos or reading books, but by doing it? (The best way to learn how to market or sell is to… market or sell.) How are you contributing beyond what's expected at work, or from customers?

In any job or career—you have a golden opportunity now, to do more with what you've got than you realize. For example, even if you're working for a toxic manager, you're learning the ins and outs of what doesn't work or spotting toxicity at work. If you pay attention rather than blaming them for everything. You can do a lot with that in the future. Great managers know greatness because they've seen crap management, too. And next time you'll be smarter about looking for and accepting a job.

It's useful to envision success, and get clear on what that looks for you. But when you let “dreaming replace the doing,” you're in trouble.

It's fun to dream about success. Making it happen—and keeping it going—is a lot tougher. And far more rewarding.

If you're working on a career, just like starting a business there will be a Year of Hell while you Do The Time, times when you feel like it's never going to happen. Which is why so many people give up on dreams too early, and too often.

Here's the point: to learn how to create money for you, your family, or a business, there are several seemingly boring, humdrum passions you need to nurture that are just as vital, honorable, and important as any “sexy passions” such as food, fashion, motorsports, travel, romance, and art.

For example:

• Creating financial stability and choices for your family.
• Marketing and selling products, yourself, and your ideas.
• Saying “no” to people, ideas, and opportunities that threaten to overwhelm you.
• Spotting problems that others would be willing to pay to solve.
• Finding new ways every month, every week, and every day to learn in your routine job, and learn something new (avoiding the Grass Is Greener trap).
• Learning outbound prospecting, and how to drum up business.
• Communicating clearly in emails, speaking, or messaging.
• Creating and maintaining relationships: authentic curiosity about others, impeccable honesty, small talk, eye contact.
• Connecting with people, making small talk, having conversations—not just via email, texts, or social media (or dating) apps.
• Building your confidence by taking on new challenges, and “going for it,” then—whether you succeed or fail—learning and try, try again.
• Exiting toxic situations whether with a manager, business, or customer.
• Having the hard conversations with coworkers or customers that you've been avoiding, even when it scares the heck out of you.

These passions aren't sexy, but they're examples of what you need to do to make as much money as you want, doing what you love. Work—every day—to find passion in what you do, including in making customers successful, learning how to make money, and managing people.

Get good at these kinds of humdrum passions and they can take you anywhere in life, to an epic career with or without your current business, or off pursuing your sexy passions, making your friends jealous by posting pictures and videos from your Costa Rican surfing art trip. So, now:

• Pick an important life or work goal.
• What are you doing about it, or need to, to reach it?
• How can you get paid to learn and do it here, wherever you are right now?
• What baby step can you take today to move forward?

How I Motivate Myself When I Am Tired, Confused, or Don't Want to Do It

Have you heard of the popular way of creating smart goals? Use SMART as the acronym for Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, Time-related goals.

Well, the acronym doesn't work for me. My mind simply doesn't function in a way that has me writing out these goals and then keeping track. And the busier and more overwhelmed I am, the harder it is to focus on anything other than the top one or two priorities—once burned into my brain with concrete dates that I never have to refer back to (like the due date for this manuscript).

What works for me is creating Forcing Functions made of up simple ASSes:

1. 1. Announce to others that you'll create a …
2. 2. Specific Outcome, by a …
3. 3. Specific Date

If you're an overachiever, you could probably combine the two approaches into SMARTASS goals, but that's too much for me.

Yes, that was a joke. Look, you can have serious goals without being so serious all the damn time! Just change the acronym to SAS if you want a safe-for-work acronym.

Or keep it super simple: tell some people what you'll do, and when you will do it.

This doesn't mean announcing “Hi everyone, I'm going to beat my quota this quarter by 10%.” Make your stated goal as inescapable as possible, with something you have total control over, that will help lead to the results you want: “Hi, everyone, I've scheduled two CEO group breakfasts for October 1st and November 3rd that I'm going to host.”

Remember the example of (a) telling people (or yourself) you're going start exercising more, vs. (b) signing up for a marathon and announcing it. It's the same principle.

It's especially effective with events, which I've used time and again, and what Jason has used for his big SaaStr Annual conference (SaaStrAnnual.com). Announce the exact date for an event—even before you have the details nailed down or feel ready.

The announcement of a date will get your brain working on the challenge even before you mean to. It'll propel you.

Don't let the panic stop you. The best way to deal with any fear or panic is to get moving and take one more step toward your deadline.

I've seen these work for anyone. My wife, Jessica, says they're the best way she's found to propel herself into getting important but not urgent things done, that otherwise get pushed aside with the daily hustle of a big family.

Don't Assume Motivation Will Find You: You Must Find It

Especially when I'm tired, motivation hides. It cowers. It runs away. It doesn't just come to me. Motivation is attracted by action. Ninty percent of the time I don't start working after I'm motivated. It's only after I start something—a workout, writing, drawing sketches—then motivation shows up and keeps me going.

As excited as I was about writing this very section, I resisted writing it until my fingers started moving. Because as I write these words, I'm on an airplane to visit clients, tired, and sad from saying goodbye to my wife and kids. What I want to do is read a book or watch a movie on the plane, but I have an inescapable deadline with my publisher to meet.

What's in Your Control?

A goal is something you're striving for: “Have 100 people show up at an event on April 20” or “Lose 10 lbs. by August 1.” You can announce it, but you don't have 100% control over it. If you're new to this, start by designing Forcing Functions that are 100% in your control, that you can't hide from.

More examples:

• Agree to give a talk someplace—even if you don't know what you'll present.
• Announce you're going to hold a training session to teach people about one particular industry.
• Specialize people's roles so that prospectors prospect, and closers close.
• Raise sponsorship money for an event or publication that isn't yet complete.
• First publish a Kickstarter page, and then raise money through it.
• To learn a language, buy a one-way ticket to that country.
• To limit your smartphone use, switch to a dumb/flip phone.

Technically, Forcing Functions don't have to have a specific date—like raising money from investors. But when you're exposing your people to this for the first time, you'll want to start with specific dates. They work.

In Review

1. Pick a date (often two to three weeks out, unless it's a big thing).
2. Choose what's going to happen on that date.
3. Tell other people about it!

Tips

• You know you're doing it right when your Forcing Function makes you flip between feeling anxious and feeling excited. That means you're challenging yourself.
• Do everything possible to avoid chickening out. You may find yourself coming up with very creative excuses to bail out of your commitment.
• When it's done, and you wonder “what's next?”—then sit down and come up with another Forcing Function.

May the Force be with you!

A New ABC

Alec Baldwin gave the greatest sales rant of all time in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. In it, he reminded the team to “ABC = Always Be Closing.” (Search YouTube for “glengarry alec” to find it; it's the best investment of seven minutes you can make). But it exemplifies a “Sell something to someone whether they need it or not” approach.

The best kinds of sales are when both parties win. You make money, they get a problem solved, and you both feel good about it. So, here's an alternative ABC if you're new to selling:

1. A. Ask questions: Listen more than you talk. Insightful questions make it easy to have conversations with customers or prospects, learn about their problems, and know what solution will help them best. People won't be ready to listen to you until after you've listened to them.
2. B. Be Honest: About why you're doing this, and what your personal story is. In being curious about them, their situation, and what they care about. What you're passionate about. Why you think they should or should not do this. That you're new and don't know the answers, but that you know where to get them.
3. C. Customer Success: If you stay focused on what will help your customers succeed, you can't go wrong. That doesn't mean only selling them on what they ask for—because people don't always know what they need. Become an expert in what you do, and you will guide people in helping decide what's best for them. Through experience, you'll learn how to challenge people to get out of their comfort zone, to make a decision and move forward—even when at first they're uncertain or resistant.

Other Tips on Keeping Sales Both Real and Really Effective

• Practice: The only way it gets easier, and you get better, is by doing a lot of selling. And as you gain experience, it'll become easy to identify when you should challenge people on their beliefs: “You should/should not do this for these specific reasons …”
• Pleasant persistence: Do you find yourself saying, “I sent them a message and they didn't respond, so they must not be interested”? Following up, repeatedly, is vital. Not optional. Required. Who says they even saw or read your note? Don't be afraid to follow up on your follow-ups; just do it in friendly ways. The only way you'll be annoying is by actually being annoying.
• ABT, “Always Be Testing”: The best way to learn is to try it out and see what happens. You can't whiteboard your way to success.
• ABL: “Always Be Learning”: If you close zero out of 10 opportunities, step back and figure out what needs to change.
• Take “no” as information, not criticism: If people aren't buying, look at is as market research. Are you targeting the right people with the right need, right time, and right message? What needs to change to improve?
• It's a numbers game: The more swings you take, the more possible hits you get. The more you sell, the more practice you get and the more chances you have to fall down and learn.
• People buy on their time, not yours: Don't be desperate or needy.
• How to ask “hard” questions, such as finding out if they have the money to pay for it: just ask them: Pretend you're asking about the weather, “Is it raining where you are?” “How would you pull together the budget for this?” Get help in crafting better questions and role-playing to practice.
• It's a multistep process: Read the next section!