Duane Marino is a sales training expert who brings a new perspective to sales training that meets today’s educated, internet savvy, consumer head on.
In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Duane is sharing how we can set goals that actually get smashed, rather than goals that get forgotten about 3 weeks down the line.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- DuaneMarino.com
- Book: Unstoppable Attitude: The Principles, Practices, Patterns & Psychology for Achieving Your Highest Goals
- Book: Unstoppable Money: A Little Book About Big Money
- Duane on LinkedIn
Transcript
Will Barron:
Coming up on today’s episode of The Salesman Podcast.
Duane Marino:
Goal setting is also extremely personal. Some people might goal set to be debt-free and they feel great about that. Other people goal set to accumulate assets, to buy cars. Some people want X number of dollars in the bank. Some people look at arriving as having free time.
Will Barron:
Hello, sales nation. I’m Will Barron, host of The Salesman podcast, the world’s most listened to B2B sales show where we help you not just hit your sales target but really thrive in sales. If you haven’t already, make sure to click subscribe, and let’s meet today’s guest.
Duane Marino:
It’s Duane Marino here, happy to be on your podcast again. And I’m based out of Toronto, Canada. I work all over North America. And what I specialise in is coaching, training, developing, screening for corporations, salespeople, and sales managers. I’m really just a niche to that part of the business world, so sales professionals is really who I help.
Duane Explains Why it’s the Actions After a Goal is Set That Drive Results · [01:03]
Will Barron:
On this episode we’re doing … We’re diving into goal setting, and this episode might change your life. Not just setting goals arbitrary sometime in the future that may or may not happen, we’re diving into the systems that make them happen for certain so that we can smash through them. Let’s jump right in. Clearly, there’s no magical formula to just setting a goal and that does all the work for you. Clearly, it’s the things that we do after the goal setting that’s important. Is that something you agree with? And it’s not the highest leverage point of all this. It’s not necessarily the goal itself, it’s the hustle and the effort after the fact.
Duane Marino:
That’s 100% correct. It’s the activities you do. Activity goals is what I call it. It’s really where the money’s at and its satisfaction. Result goals are what you want to achieve. They’re secondary.
Why Is It That When We Set Goals, 99% of Them Don’t Get Achieved? · [01:30]
Will Barron:
So why is it then, Duane, that every January, in particular, but I’m sure people are doing this all year round, we set a bunch of goals, we forget about them two days later, and then we find the post-it notes on the back of the fridge telling us not eat shite food and we still do it anyway? Why is it that when we set goals, 99% of them don’t get achieved?
Duane Marino:
I think there’s a bunch of reasons. One of my slogans in my workshop is actually, “Stop setting goals and start setting up systems.” One of the problems with New Year’s resolutions, there’s no system so we do whatever we’re doing 365 days a year for however old we are, all of sudden we get some idea. Half the time maybe drunk or hungover the idea comes to us. We go, okay, great this is how my year’s going to go. And if you’re lucky you write it down on a post-it note. A lot of people just keep it even mental and there’s nothing that’ll reinforce it. There’s no system, there’s no process.
“Unless there’s a system or process that you’re doing regularly that includes habits and rituals that move you towards the goal, you’re not going to reprogram your brain, you’re not going to reprogram your life. And, of course, you’ll just slide right back into your old habits, if you ever even change them at all.” – Duane Marino · [02:21]
Duane Marino:
And unless there’s that system or process that you’re doing regularly, that includes habits and rituals that move you towards the goal, you’re not going to reprogram your brain, you’re not going to reprogram your life. And, of course, you just slide right back into your old habits if you ever even change them at all. I think the whole system that we’re taught about New Year’s resolutions … And the fact that goal setting is not taught in any formal education, which is really crazy when you think about it. I don’t know if there’s a reason behind that, but it’s something we’re just not brought up even understanding
Will Barron:
It’s to keep the people oppressed, Duane, and that’s why we don’t do it. The same with why don’t we teach … I’m 32, I don’t have kids but I will do soon. Why don’t we teach kids about money, finances, sales, and business, and entrepreneurship skills, in general, whether you’re going to be an entrepreneur or not? Clearly, they’re useful, aren’t they?
Duane Marino:
Well, I’m going to go one step further that. Not only was it taken out of our educational system about 100 years ago, all over the world, for the most part, except for some parts of Asia they still teach it, it’s now gone the other way where they’re making you feel guilty for making money. If you have any kind of a drive you’re an achiever. And that somehow we get what we want in life because we steal it from other people. It’s literally going the other way where you’re almost feeling guilty for achieving goals or setting goals at all. There’s a lot of pressure on people to stay average or below average. And you know what? It may just be so the people that have the knowledge, and the skills, and the understanding can take advantage of other people equal liberties. I hate to think conspiracy theory or something, but I would call it actually a business plan from people that write the educational systems. I think they full well know what they’re doing.
Will Barron:
Well, we’re totally digressing here, we’ll come back onto goals in a second. But there is … There’s a sort of people in the 19th century, in the Industrial Revolution, who were essentially programming individuals and workers for their particularly workplaces via education, higher education. There’s a sort of evidence for that, and I don’t think it’s even a conspiracy theory at this point. But we digress, Duane. Going back onto … Because I could talk about all this stuff for another five hours.
Duane Marino:
Me too.
The First Step to Goal Setting · [04:19]
Will Barron:
Probably about 5% of the audience going, talk more about it, and the other 95% is, we didn’t tune in for this. So goal setting. How do we know then … Because clearly we narrow it down to systems, habits, and a whole lot more, and all the layers that go underneath all of this. Where is the starting point? Is the starting point to say, “I want to do X by X date?” Is that the thing that we build everything else upon? Or is there a better way of going about it?
Duane Marino:
I take my cues here from a GPS. GPS is better than a paper map for one specific reason. It triangulates your position knows where you are. So for me, with goal setting, of course, you got to decide what direction you want to take your life and business into. But the hardest thing that people have really got to understand is that you have to have an honest assessment of yourself, and that honest assessment might have to come from a third party. But if you’re not honest with yourself in terms of your skills, your habits, your attitude, what you’re doing or not doing really well, it’s like having a pessimistic GPS or an optimistic GPS.
Duane Marino:
So if you fire up that GPS and the first thing you decide you want to go to someplace and it continually tells you you’re a mile or kilometre further away than you are, that pessimistic GPS is going to send you down the wrong road. And if it’s an optimistic GPS and it says you’re a kilometre or two closer, you’re just as messed up. The first step in goal setting, in my opinion, Will, is to be deadpan honest with yourself. Not beat yourself up, but just how are you doing with these areas you’re thinking about changing? I think that’s step number one.
How to Set Practical Sales Goals · [06:00]
Will Barron:
I know there’s actually quite a lot of research on this, clinical research, on goal setting for pessimists. They tend to set lower goals and achieve them versus optimists tend to set bigger goals and achieve less of them but have more mobility in their careers and other places in their life. And being optimist typically is a better place to be. But with that said, let’s narrow this down to sales goals, and perhaps we can come on to just goals in life, in general, in a second. But regards to … Clearly, you got sales target. Should the goal be to hit our sales targets and then we need a 360 assessment from our partners in and out of work or how much hustle we’re doing putting in all this kind of thing? Is that the best way to go about it or is the arbitrary number that we are given as a sales target, is that the wrong place to start?
Duane Marino:
What I do or what I teach is you have an idea of where you want to go. You do set a definite endpoint. But for salespeople, once they develop their skills that really never stops. I do a lot of skills-based training, but there’s really three things to have your goal set around. The first one is lead generation. Any business that you’re in, lead generation whatever that means to you, has got to be front and centre. A lot of salespeople avoid it. Well, you know what? You can’t close an empty chair, and you can’t sell to somebody who’s not on the other end of the phone, or on your website so lead generation is the first place to start. Then the next place to start in your specific goal setting is demonstrations. Showing your wears, showing your product to potential people that have found you through whatever lead generation sources you’re using.
Duane Marino:
And then the third one is proposals. You’ve got to start doing more quotes. So the more lead generation, the more demonstration, the more proposals, that’s what’s going to give you your lift in your sales volume. So I would say to start goal setting in those three areas. Down the road set a date. You want an evidence-based goal setting system where you’re okay, by June 15th I want to be here. If we don’t set a target that’s evidence-based by date, and then something by numbers, which is typically something penetration-based like a percentage, income-based. Volume-based is a dollar sign. Make sure it’s a … Something that’s tangible so you know if you’ve shot over it if you’re falling short, but those two constraints have got to be there is something measurable and something date-based, based on whatever you want to improve. And again, I argue lead generation, demonstrations, and proposals are the three most important things salespeople have to be focused on.
How to Set Sub-Goals and a Practical Action Plan · [08:16]
Will Barron:
So you’ve touched on something important here. Clearly, having a goal of just hitting a sales target, $20 million at the end of the year, it’s vast, it’s difficult to … Even for someone who’s … I’m pretty confident to say you’re more bright than what I am, Duane, but I’m sure even you, it’s hard to contemplate all of that and calculate all in your brain, and your conscious doesn’t want to really do all that processing. And so I found when I do goals like that I procrastinate on them. So we’re narrowing this goal down into smaller sub-goals that will get us there. How granular do we need to be with all of this? Is it enough to have I guess three goals for the year or the quarter of so many calls, emails, knocking on doors? So many demonstrations from that, or a percentage of them converting and then a percentage of them converting into quotes as well. Do we need to go deeper than that or is it important to stay at a high level so that we don’t get bogged down in all the details?
Duane Marino:
I think there’s a couple elements there. Diving deep, some people get very hung up into writing numbers and they actually stop doing it because their numbers aren’t panning out the way that they want. So I really like ratios infractions more than percentages. Percentages I think sometimes are a very tough thing to keep up with and be honest with yourself about. But as far as drilling down, again, if you look at those three steps in the sales and example, how do you get those happening? How do you do a quality job when you’re in them? The more you do the better off you are. And like I’m always saying, sales is a numbers game, but you do need to know your numbers. In my business, which I niched into on the sales side of it, a lot of my business automotive, and there’s proven ratios there. We know certain measurements and numbers will lead to certain things. That’s true for any business. So if you’re starting your own company from scratch and nobody’s ever done anything like what you have, these benchmarks can be researched.
“If you improve in any area in your life and you know it’s a result of picking a goal, working on the activities, and executing it, it gives you muscle, momentum, and understanding that goal setting actually works and you’ll start moving that same psychology into other areas of life.” – Duane Marino · [10:04]
Duane Marino:
The other part real quick is, I often talk about you can’t separate the person from the salesperson. So part of the things with goal setting is whatever area you goal set in, it could be spiritual, it could be debt, it could be income, it could be knowledge, it could be skill, it could be social, personal, emotional, physical, mental, whatever it is. And one of my books called Unstoppable Attitude … There we go. There’s a little commercial. I’ve got a whole bunch of things on goal setting in here, and one of them is called the 10 areas of goal setting. And what I found is if you improve in any area in your life and you know it’s a result of picking a goal, and working on the activities, and executing it, it gives you muscle, and momentum, and understanding that goal setting actually works and you’ll start moving that same psychology into other areas of life. It could be health, finances, business sales, whatever else.
Duane Marino:
So I’m a big believer in people having goals or to-do lists or wish lists that they’re working on in multiple areas of their life because it just gives … It will just keep reinforcing this idea of goal setting actually as an effective way and a very fulfilling way to live because you’re really always just trying to improve yourself, and you’re only come competition should be you. Every day ask yourself, am I getting a little bit better than my younger self in any way that’s relative to where I want to take my life. And if you have a bunch of areas that you’re working on, you can always win that game because even if you can’t get better at your business today … Maybe you’re doing five more pushups or maybe doing something else in a relationship with your wife or your children, so multiple goals and multiple areas to me are really important in keeping people’s self-confidence up and keeping their brain engaged in the whole process.
Will Barron:
So I totally agree with you and I want to drill this down a little bit deeper and get a number from you if the number is … I guess it depends but we’ll get some arbitrary number from you. I know that with my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, with business, and with the other business, which the audience doesn’t know about yet, I could only do the three things. So I don’t have kids. I’m in a long-term relationship and I go and see my family back home in St. Helens near Liverpool regularly, but as soon as I start to … Something else starts to creep into this … At the beginning of the year, I was doing loads of clay pigeon shooting, for example. As soon as one, two more things come in I just start dropping the ball with everything else.
Goal Setting and the Number of Focus Areas You Should Have · [11:36]
Will Barron:
So three focuses, family aside that’s always the base of everything for me, is enough. Anything else I get distracted, anything less I start getting bored. I need to … And this might be an excuse. You can tell me if this is just me procrastinating. But I feel like I need to bounce around different things. And I can do 12, 14 hour days as long as I can go from one thing to another, to another, and over the week everything gets done. So with that said, Duane, is there a magic number? Is the answer it depends? And I guess it depends on what stage of your life you’re in as well, but how many focuses should we have because we can get overwhelmed with all this surely.
Duane Marino:
I read statistics and stats and studied biopsychology, that most people cannot focus on more than seven things or seven items at a time. If I think of my goal setting list that I could actually pull out right now, I probably have 20 different things on it, and they go back to these 10 areas that I talked about. Well, I mean, that’s a really great point. For myself, I’ve got three areas of my life. It could be business, it could be family, it could be myself, really taking care of myself, but then in those areas, I have multiple goals.
“I think you can have multiple activity goals, which are things you’re working on to take you to the endpoint. But if you have too many endpoints, you’re probably just going to spin your wheels for too long and confuse yourself.” – Duane Marino · [13:12]
Duane Marino:
As long as they’re all supporting the common cause, I think you can come at a bunch of ways. There might be an argument that if you’re coming at a bunch of ways, a multi-prong approach, if one’s a little bit weaker, maybe a few other ones a little bit stronger will pick it up. So I think there might be some benefit in having diverse actions going after one specific goal that you’re after. So I guess to answer your question how they’re processing it, I think you can have multiple activity goals, which are things you’re working on to take you to the endpoint. But if you have too many endpoints, you’re probably just going to spin your wheels for too long and confuse yourself so I don’t know the magic number. I wish I could tell you that.
Will Barron:
We need the magic number, Duane, that’s what we need. Okay. Let me-
Duane Marino:
Have somebody comment on it.
Duane’s Goal Setting Process · [13:30]
Will Barron:
Let me phrase this another way because I think there might be another angle of attack here. And I don’t know if that … You said 20 as a random number that popped up then. If you had 20 goals in your list, how many of them are, right, I want to smash this by the end of the year versus, right, for the past 85 days I’ve been doing this and I just need to continue it? Just to differentiate between I guess a system or a habit that you’re implementing versus the system or habit will let me achieve one, two, three things in the future.
Duane Marino:
Off the top of my head here I would tell you five of the goals have a definitive timeline. Absolutely definitive timeline. It’s measurable through a metric. The other things that I’m calling goals are more ways that I want to live, who I want to become, but they’re not necessarily tangible, measurable endpoint goals like we think of in business. So there’s a combination of things there.
Will Barron:
Perfect. Because that … This is what I want to dive into next. Because I’m … So I’ve got some end … One of my goals next year, and if I don’t achieve it now everyone will laugh their heads off at me. I want to get my blue belt in Jiu-Jitsu, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t get it unless I get injured. I pretty … I’m pretty terrible at it being a big lanky bastard, and skinny, and no coordination whatsoever. And I started about a year ago, so two years is probably reasonable, and I only get to go two or three times a week as well, so that’s a goal.
How Important are Goal Setting Habits? · [14:45]
Will Barron:
But I don’t really focus on that so much I focus on, I’ve got to attend a class at least twice a week and I’ve got to spar at least two, three times a week otherwise that goal won’t happen. So how much of a focus … If we have an end goal of yada, yada, yada and it’s the pipe dream, and some people would suggest sit in there and visualise it and all these things on top which we’ll touch on the second perhaps. But how important is it than to focus on the habits that will get us there versus just salivating over the end result?
“The mistake that some people make is to set an end target and then they don’t become activity obsessed. So I often talk about being outcome-oriented but activity-obsessed. And top people, if you follow them, they’re absolutely obsessed with the day-to-day, minute by minute.” – Duane Marino · [15:28]
Duane Marino:
Well, it’s everything. It’s everything. You can pray, meditate, and have wishful thinking and all of which I do, but at the end of the day, you got to take some action. So the mistake that some people make is to set an end target and then they don’t become activity obsessed. So I often talk about being outcome-oriented but activity-obsessed. And top people, if you follow them, they’re absolutely … They’re obsessed with the day-to-day, the minute by minute. Of course, you get some time off once in a while, but activity obsession is going to do something else for you. Part of goal setting is time management. And what I found years ago, I really started goal setting. It was a bit of a story I’m not going to share with you because it takes probably five minutes to do a good job. But it’s September the 13th, 2001, two days after 9/11, I found myself in South Detroit at a football game, and then my whole goal setting thing started to take place actually that night and I never stopped it.
Duane Marino:
But one of the things that goal setting allowed me to do is I started just spending my time completely differently. And it was in inadvertent. I didn’t do it on purpose. After about three to six months I notice I’m watching no television unless it’s absolutely a movie or a sporting event I wanted to watch, because what stop … What starts happening with a subconscious mind is every time you’re doing something, if you become very emotionally attached to your goal, part of your brain goes why am I doing this? This has nothing to do with anything on my goal list. This, therefore, is a complete waste of time for me. It’s not helping me recharge my batteries, it’s not benefiting anybody. And so you start spending your time differently.
“I think time management courses are a little ridiculous because you’re only ever going to make time for things that you want to do. We’ll always make time for the stuff we want to do. The key is wanting to do the work to get that goal and then time management changes completely.” – Duane Marino · [16:58]
Duane Marino:
So to me, time management, and goal setting, and those activities, it’s the same topic. And I think until you become really committed and start changing your habits you’ll notice your laziness going away, your fear goes away as a result of you being focused on the end game, you really can’t appreciate the importance of time management, but really time management by itself … I think time management courses are a little ridiculous because you’re only ever going to make time for things that you want to do. We’ll always make time for the thing stuff we want to do. The key is wanting to do the work to get that goal and then time management changes completely.
How to Build Healthy Habits for Successful Goal Setting · [17:23]
Will Barron:
So how do then … Because this is where I wanted to get with all this is the nitty-gritty of it. This is the less wishy-washy and more in the practical elements and the day-to-day side of things. How do we … It seems almost you had a switch that was flipped that … And you … Feel free to tell the story if it feels appropriate. But how do we flip that switch? Because I know personally, I’ll go through a week or two weeks and I’ll be head … Like right now, head down in a bunch of projects I’m doing. I’m out working anyone that I know within this space, both direct competition and then my friends who are entrepreneurs and salespeople, and that as well. I’m doing way more than they not necessarily can but what they can even comprehend.
Will Barron:
And it’s not that I think I’m special it’s just I’ve set a deadline for Christmas of a bunch of stuff and I’m going to look like a complete idiot if I don’t finish it. So it’s stressful. It’s not like I’m doing it organically, it’s not like it’s just coming along. And I’m never sure whether that is the best way to be because the work gets done, but I’m not having a great time whilst I’m doing it if that makes sense.
Will Barron:
And it seems like there’s a magic place when you … Or when I interview super high performers. When I read books on people like Steve Jobs who were just so driven, and so committed, and they perhaps shunned a whole one part of their life to achieve these incredible things, but it seems like it’s almost … Not flowing through them but it seems like they’re almost enough flow state constantly going through it and I don’t get that. I have to put a lot of stress on my head to get in these high workflow, highly productive modes over weeks or months of time. So Duane, when you teed this up, you almost said it was almost like a light bulb moment and then it happened. Was that the case? And if it is, how can we implement this ourselves?
Duane Marino:
The night of that football game I went with three very important people in my life now, they weren’t then. They’re now a big part of my business and important to me. And through all the stress of 9/11, they basically all pulled out their goals and gratitude cards that I want to talk about in a minute. It’s a concept of gratitude. And they were just talking about how when something goes wrong with the economy or things like that, things are going to get a little rough, and if you’re got your eyes on the prize and you’re more focused on the person beside you, the odds of you going down as much are not as great.
Duane Marino:
Even if the market stays quiet you might go up a bit. If it starts to go up you go up even more. So I really … I read about this. I then really had a one-on-one conversation with people that had lived this way for a few years, and I just looked at them and I said, “Okay, they’re doing better than I am. They’re a little older than me. I might as well try this.” Here’s an actual physical roadmap. People are … Pulled it out in front of me, they swear by it, might as well do it so I had a little bit of blind faith jumping in.
“There’s three reasons why I think people don’t do the goal setting thing: fear, habits, and laziness.” – Duane Marino · [19:49]
Duane Marino:
And on the personal leverage side, I just wrote down a couple of notes here if I could. There’s three reasons why people I think don’t do the goal setting thing. And it’s fear, habits, and laziness. While those things also for me are major motivators. So I definitely am afraid of failure or I don’t like the idea of losing. I hate losing when I compete so I use fear of failure, for lack of a better word, to work hard, dive deep, and do things when I don’t feel like doing it. Habits to me are one of my strong points because I’m a very habitual person, but I’ve modelled my habits after what I want to do.
“The great thing about habits is that good habits are hard to break. So the more you do things over and over, habits actually can become fantastic crutches and pillars in goal setting.” – Duane Marino · [20:20]
Duane Marino:
So the great thing about habits is good habits are hard to break. So the more you do things over and over, habits and fear actually can become fantastic crutches and pillars in goal setting. And then the third one is a lot of people don’t say, “Well, because I’m a little bit lazy.” Well, laziness to me is overcome when I start imagining my life getting a lot worse if I don’t do these things or imagine getting a lot better if I do so I create these two opposite visions of all right here’s the direction I want to go with my physical health, with my debt, with my finances, with my business, and if I do this it could get this much better. And if I don’t do it, it could get this much worse. And I over exaggerate both of those to really push me in a direction, and I keep those two things in my mind all the time. So fear, habits, and laziness can be tremendous motivators.
How to Use Positive Mental Imagery to Achieve Goals · [21:05]
Will Barron:
What does it look like when you are getting the … Particularly, if I project myself 10 years into the future and I’m at the same place or I’ve gone backwards, that’s a huge motivator for me. How does that look like for … Or, how do you … Do you sit in a chair and think and meditate on this and then go oh, shit, I better get my finger and get some work done today? Or, is this something you do quarterly? Is this something that you’re always thinking about of holy heck I’m wasting an opportunity here? How does that manifest itself for you?
Duane Marino:
I was lucky to be around family members and friends when I was younger that their lives didn’t end up the way they wanted to. All great people. I loved them. I didn’t have a terrible childhood it was nothing like that. My parents were great, they were good people. But none of my friends and family really were living the life that I thought I wanted to live. So there’s two things that I do there. I remember people and I also look at people around me that are what I call lessons. You’re either a lesson or an example. And there’s a lot of people that I see that do things over time or things get worse and I just go hey, listen, if I do those things to me it can get worse for me too. So I use some people that maybe aren’t in the position I want to be in as motivators I want to avoid. I call those anti-heroes.
Duane Marino:
And I also have a bunch of heroes. People that I look up to, people I maybe haven’t even met but I’ve read about. And I move towards what those heroes are doing, and how they act, and how they believe, and value things, and what they do. So I have these … The anti-heroes. I have the heroes. These are my … What I’m trying to move towards, what I’m trying to away from. And my third one, I call it be a hero. I specifically pick people within my company, and my friends and family. They don’t know who they are, they don’t know I’m doing it, but I try to raise my bar, and with my children and stuff, so that one day maybe one of these people are going to say in their mind or somebody else out loud … I don’t need any credit for it. “Man, am I ever glad Duane came into my life. I’m glad Duane was here during those years because he really elevated my expectations to reimagine what he was doing.”
Duane Marino:
So being a hero, getting some heroes, getting some anti-heroes. At the end of the day, it’s all psychology. It’s all a freaking mind game. So if you don’t play the mind game to win … You might follow the mind game society or newspaper it has for you, and that’s not a mind game that I want to partake in most of the time so it’s really just an inner game. And the more you understand the inner game, the more you study it, the more you read it, and then the more you live it, you really find out how connected the inner world and the art world is. I know it sounds a little zen or Buddhist or I don’t know woo woo. But the inner world is completely what ends up happening in your outer world, it’s just a total reflection of who you are.
Will Barron:
How much of this all comes … And I don’t want to summarise the episode today because I’ve got more things to go through, but how much of this comes down to the fact that if all of our … If everyone listened to this our IQ went down by 50 points, and someone said to us that we were too dumb to do anything other than what they said. They say, “All right, do these three or four things,” and we just did them every single day, would we end up having more success than our high IQs are? Clearly, everyone who listens to the show, yourself included, is super intelligence, would we end up doing better off?
“This is my opinion on this. People with exceptionally high IQs and exceptionally low IQs statistically don’t do much better than each other by the end of their lives because one group over-thinks and the other group under-thinks.” – Duane Marino · [23:34]
Duane Marino:
I can’t … I’ve got three things that I’ve written down when we’re talking. This is one of them. So let me … This is my opinion on this. I talk about it all the time. IQ has been studied. People with exceptionally high IQs and exceptionally low IQs statistically don’t do much better than each other by the end of their lives because one group overthinks the other group can’t think. And that’s not a shot it’s just how it is. So a very successful person often has … They’ve been gifted with an average IQ. And even if they are very smart or can recognise patterns quicker than everyone else, they have found a way to dumb things down a little bit and just keep plotting along. Then there’s OQ. OQ is called openness quotient. You can be too open and be taken advantage of by people because you’re naive, but you can also be too sceptical and never look at anything, and never consider something outside of what you’re doing.
Duane Marino:
So the sweet spot there is being open-minded and sceptical, but all the money is in EQ. EQ is the emotional closure. Are you resilient? Can you handle adversity? Are you grateful for basic things given to you? So if I had to pick sort of an ideal profile for a successful person or a successful salesperson, it would be someone who’s really got … A above average IQ would be great, but an IQ which is okay but not too over the top or too low. Being open-minded and sceptical so you’re really going to study and look at things all the time and not go down any crazy rabbit holes you shouldn’t go down, but you’ll still look at and consider things that might help you. And then on the third one, EQ. Handle adversity, be grateful, be resilient. Those three things coming together along with goal setting really … And I will tell you why I came across that rating.
Duane Marino:
I was probably too open-minded for my own good at one point in my life. And also, definitely was not resilient, could not handle adversity, and wasn’t grateful for anything. And I saw what that did to me. IQ is pretty much the same through your life. And just to conclude on the gratitude piece. Why I write down my goals and gratitudes on the same piece of paper? You talk about people like Steve Jobs and stuff. They have bad days. I mean, things happen to everybody, obviously. And even in the midst of him passing away, becoming ill there towards the end, he still would watch his interviews. He was still pretty focused and motivated. Never really would believe that would happen to him which is a great thing.
Duane Marino:
But gratitude to me is the base because I can have a bad day, but go, but at least I’m still alive. Or maybe I don’t feel great and I can … But at least I can still walk. Okay, my business had a bad month but at least I still got a roof over my head. I will always take a negative and try to flip it into something I’m grateful for because it improves my sales energy, it improves my mojo and that is picked up by other people, it’s also picked up by myself. And gratitude to me is a powerful, powerful emotion so you can just go at it day in and day out no matter what’s going on around you.
Internal Motivation and Goal Setting · [26:42]
Will Barron:
So how much of quote-unquote success, whether that be me getting the Nissan GT-R on my table, or we’re just talking about … And congratulations on your new office space, and we are looking for office space at the moment to expand. These are hard physical things that we see in front of us and go, that dude, that girl, whoever it is they’re doing well because they’ve got X, Y, Z material thing. But how much of then success that we feel, that we should be aiming towards comes down to having the GT-R, the Porsche, or whatever it is versus just the perception that we grant ourselves that we are successful right now? If that makes sense. Because clearly if we can be successful on the journey going up this … The seemingly mountainous terrain to success or whatever end goals are, it makes sense to do that because otherwise why choose to be miserable in the process.
Will Barron:
So how much of … If you … If we interviewed … I don’t know because you’re successful. I aspire to be … You’re a few steps ahead of me where I want to be with this business. How much of it comes down to me just going oh, Duane’s more successful than me, I’ll be miserable until I get there versus I go well, I’m doing okay, I can be grateful and successful in the process? I’m not asking a very good question here but do you know what I mean?
Duane Marino:
I understand your question, I do. What I’m interpreting this. There’s a bunch of elements there. So first thing I suggest people never do is get a disease that I call comparisonitis. And comparisonitis is always looking at somebody as maybe doing better or worse than you. Reason being … Let’s say I want to get a boat and I get the biggest nicest boat I can find. Well, I need to park this thing in slips where other big boats park. And sooner or later a bigger, newer boat’s going to pull up beside me and I’m going to feel like shit again. So comparisonitis … And there’s two points to that. A, I do look at people that motivate me that I aspire to be like, but I know everybody’s life conditions are different. But I more look at them as a potential outcome for myself than I’m moving towards. If I want to pay the price if I want to pay that price. There’s times in my life where I’ve decided not to do it.
Duane Marino:
But the only comparative thing I really look at, and I said it earlier, is myself. Jealousy is a crippling, crippling thing for a lot of people. I just think it’s an awful emotion. I’ve been very blessed to not have it in me. I’ve never been jealous of anybody. If somebody is better than me I’m just like, I might ask you a question. How did you do this? I don’t want the details but give me some steps because I want to get better. So I think one thing is you can’t always be externally motivated. There has to be an internal motivation where you compare yourself to you. If that makes sense?
Will Barron:
That makes total sense.
Duane Marino:
The other aspect of what you just said … I just lost my train of thought. Where were we going with that? Yourself.
Will Barron:
I have no idea, Duane.
Will Barron:
But you-
Duane Marino:
Oh, I know what it was.
Will Barron:
Go ahead.
“Goal setting is also extremely personal. Some people might set a goal to be debt-free and they feel great about that. Other people set goals to accumulate assets, to buy cars. Some people want X number of dollars in the bank. Everybody’s blueprint’s different. Everybody’s life is different. It’s supposed to be. So that’s another thing. We can’t get into trying to judge ourselves by how somebody else has decided to live their life.” – Duane Marino · [29:17]
Duane Marino:
I know what it was. Sorry. Goal setting is also extremely personal. Some people might goal set to be debt-free and they feel great about that. Other people goal set to accumulate assets, to buy cars. Some people want X number of dollars in the bank. Some people look at arriving as having free time, having great relationships, being extremely vibrant. So this goes back to having multiple goals in multiple areas because everybody’s blueprint’s different. Everybody’s life is different. It’s supposed to be. So that’s another thing we can get into is trying to judge ourselves by how somebody else has decided to live their life. There’s a big self-awareness piece here. This doesn’t happen overnight. Once you start doing this … What I found about … For the first year of me goal setting, what I was writing down was the societal would, should, could. The familial you better do this and don’t do that.
Duane Marino:
The friends. Well, I’ve got this and you should do that. And all of a sudden it got to a point where I’m like these aren’t even my ideas that I’m writing down so I started to eliminate a bunch of stuff off my list. Go what do I really want? And that’s when it really changed for me, and the gratitude again was part of it because I realised I’m just wired differently than you and you are the person beside you. So there’s a big self-awareness piece. Doesn’t have … People’s goal set and they go, I want to make this happen. There’s there’s a lot of other deep psychology that goes on that you discover about yourself in the world when you really start to do this process properly.
Will Barron:
I understood some of this when I spoke to some of … When I last … When I left the last company I worked for. I went back and forth with some of the senior management. And one of the things I realised was they were all on this … So I had Pete Sage on the show a while ago and he described it best to me of this hamster wheel of just more money, more money and you can’t win as you described because there’s always someone with a bigger boat or a nice car whatever it was. And everyone I spoke to in the executive positions within this organisation, multiple billion in revenue, it’s a private really held organisation so everyone’s doing well at the top of it, they were all after the nicer Rolex, the bigger car, whatever it was, and there was no end game for the game to play. And that to me is a flawed game, right. And that pushed me towards me starting this business. And clearly, I still sell the ad space and the podcast. I’m still salesperson at heart of all of this.
Good Versus Bad Goals · [31:50]
Will Barron:
I’m doing everything to become financially independent so I don’t need to chase the Rolex. I don’t need to be wearing a ridiculous monkey suit, although I do love wearing suits. All that stuff it doesn’t need to happen to get me to the next level because the game’s already somewhat won if you don’t need to work for the money. So long story short, that really came to me when I interviewed or was interview by … Exit interviewed by these individuals. And with that, how do we know … And for me, financial dependence, a chunk of money each month coming in through real estate and other businesses that I’m working on that I’m owned but don’t run kind of thing, that’s my life long term goals of all of this.
Will Barron:
With all that, it’s not to say that my goal is better than their goal, my goal is right versus their goal. Maybe they love chasing that big paycheck every month. Maybe they love spending all their cash and having to start again at the beginning of each year. Who knows. To me, that’s a stupid decision. For them, it might be what motivates them to carry on going forward. So that, Duane, how do we know when we’ve set a good goal that we should be striving towards and sticking to no matter how tough it gets? And how do we know when we set a really shitty goal perhaps that we should have bought from at some point during the process?
“I think when you’re evaluating your goals, any goal you set should make yourself or somebody else better. It always should be moving towards something that’s better. There should never be anything in there that is going to make you feel guilty or feel bad.” – Duane Marino · [32:49]
Duane Marino:
The money is interesting. And again, not a commercial but why not. In my money book, I talk about moving away from financial slavery. I think freedom is really what we all want. And freedom comes in terms of doing what you want with your own time and having enough money to live life that you want to live. So I think when you’re evaluating your goals, any goal you set should make yourself or somebody else better. It always should be moving towards something that’s better. There should never be anything in there that is going to make you feel guilty or feel bad. Or, we should not be setting goals we have to cause harm to people because I think there’s part of you that eventually is going to get sick of going after that. So I think it’s got to be a well-intended goal. And if that goal is empowering you or somebody else, and now at that point, it’s just how big is the goal? What’s the size of the goal?
Duane Marino:
And I also think if you look at life as a game, and I talk about that and this book in one of the chapters is that life is maybe a game. Literally, they’re saying this. It might even be virtual reality games we don’t know. As soon as you stop playing the game, as soon as you stop playing the game so you’re not losing or not winning or helping other people … I’ve seen some people being taken out the game. There’s a point where you might decide you want to bring any value in your world anymore you want to help other people. Next thing you know you’re out of company, you’re out of the relationship, maybe you’re out of this life. I think we are built to improve. I think we’re built to become great. And great at 90 is greater … Is different than great at 39, and is different than greater … Then being great at 19. So I think there’s again, a lot of elements here. But in your heart, and in your head, and in your gut people know if they’re fulfilling their life potential.
Duane Marino:
And I ask this question to all of our listeners. Out of 10, given the total potential that you have to help yourself and other people, and make money, and pay off your debt, and spend your time the way you want, right now give yourself a number. How much of your potential are you using out of 10? I certainly … I can never say I’m a 10. And when you start setting goals, even more goals, sometimes what that does is makes a 10 even more unattainable until you start moving towards those. I mean, if I look back 10 years ago, 15 years ago, my eight then relative to today is probably a three because I’ve changed, I’ve improved. It’s not all financial, but I just … Every master was once a disaster. And I sometimes look at what I used to know, I’m still doing okay compared to what I know I’m going to be capable of doing now, there’s no comparison. It’s just … It’s a constant whittling away. It’s constant work.
The Benefits of Having External Accountabilities When Setting Goals · [35:00]
Will Barron:
Love it. We could probably talk about the elements or the idea of life being a game on and off air for the next five hours, but there’s one thing that I want to tie things up with here. So typically for the show, we’ve been down to the inner game side of things. Is it important and is it useful I guess? How do we do it? Is it worth bringing in external accountability into our goals and our habits? Is this a useful tool or should most people be able to just do this internally without the pressure of someone else on their back to make it happen?
“If you’re going to tell anyone about your goals, be very selective. You don’t want to tell anybody that you think may not fully support you in this goal or this plan.” – Duane Marino · [35:58]
Duane Marino:
I think it’s useful. I do think it’s useful. I’ve done that a few times. There’s other times where I haven’t because maybe I didn’t feel committed to the goal. I didn’t want to be embarrassed or I didn’t want to start the process, and that’s already a good filter. You realise you’re not that committed if you want to bring … You don’t want to bring in a coach or tell someone. I just always say, “Goals must be written. You have to look at them every day for even a few moments or rewrite them every day to keep programming your mind.” And pertaining to what you just said. Tell selective people. If you’re going to tell anyone about your goals be very selective. You don’t want to tell anybody that you think may not fully support you in this goal or this plan. Negative peer pressure, jealousy, people that might be thinking oh, you think you’re better than me. Oh, you don’t like the way you were raised, is that why you’re doing this?
Duane Marino:
Telling people about your goals, it can be very beneficial but you have very, very careful who you tell what to. Or you’re better off actually just going for it and having people say to you in a year or two years, “Well, what the hell happened? How the fuck … How did you do that? How did you do this brother?” And you go, “Do you really want to know?” And then you tell them what you did. If you don’t have people around you, you think you can tell your goals too just don’t tell anybody. And just a lot of people love coming back at you in six months or six years going, “Hey, what happened to this? Hey, where’s your big idea there? Oh, that didn’t work out.” Because a lot of people like bringing people down so you have to be careful how you position that.
Will Barron:
Definitely. And I know … The reason that question’s top of mind and we can wrap up with this is we … I’m trying to implement some accountability system in our training product sales school but I’ve not sussed out what it is yet. And you’ve alluded to all the reasons why. Just the … In that it can be … I feel like it could be damaging. You could go from having a dialogue and a conversation to someone being embarrassed that they’ve not achieved a goal so they just don’t have any dialogue with you moving forward which stops you just helping them in over ways. So it seems like a tricky one and I’ve not really come up with a solution on that front. But it seems like-
Duane Marino:
I wouldn’t-
Will Barron:
Sorry, go ahead.
Duane Marino:
I would sort of … I would briefly … I would advocate there is some sort of a log or a checklist or a calendar. And software is good but when you minimise software a beit on your phone, your computer, et cetera, et cetera, [inaudible 00:37:33] not pressure. I’m still a big believer in call it a day planner or a written goal list, but also a checklist and a log. Look at it every day. Did I do what I had to do today? And if not, you can do it tomorrow, but I believe if it doesn’t get written it doesn’t get done. And again, stop setting goals. You got to start setting up systems and processes.
How to Keep Your Goals and Targets Top of Mind · [38:10]
Will Barron:
Perfect. And just on that front, on the written side of things, I think we touched about this last time we spoke in that there is evidence, or scientific evidence, that writing things out for whatever reason, whether it’s the fact that you move in your hand, it’s wired to your brain in a certain way from a young age that it sticks in your brain and you’re more likely to have it top of mind X days number out from the time you wrote it down. Should we be writing our goals down every day? Should we be sticking them on Post-it notes around the house? How do we keep our goals, our targets, our habits top of mind? Because again, it’s one thing to listen to this show and … Barry’s listening and he goes, “Jesus, freaking that was amazing. I love this. Duane’s a legend. I’m going to do this.” And then he writes it all down and forgets to action on it six months later. How do we keep all this top of mind so that we just carry on doing it and it becomes a non-option to quit?
Duane Marino:
Okay. So what you just talked about there, they say neurons that fire together wire together. And the more you fire these neurons the better off they’re going to be wired. So there’s a few ways we can do this. We know that just verbally doing it or saying it to yourself doesn’t work. We know that if you start to write it down that works a little bit better. If you write it down and look at it every day that’s a little bit better. Again, if you write it down every single day, that’s the best there is. So you almost got to pick your octane. Which one do you want to do? I don’t write down my goals every day. I do look at them every day and do work on them every day, and have a day planner where certain goals will get processed. But I’m definitely in a category of I have my goals written, I look at them daily, I rewrite the stuff that’s important in my plans because again, neurons that fire together wire together.
“The goal must be emotional. If the goal is not emotional it won’t resonate with you or even other people that might be able to help you.” – Duane Marino · [39:40]
Duane Marino:
And I think there’s one more element there and I’m going to get a little woo woo here because I like the woo woo. I could go through probably … In the office you talked a little bit. I just bought us one of them. 10 different situations in my life now where I start to emotionally with repetition give energy to a goal and that is the key. The goal must be emotional. If the goal’s not emotional it won’t resonate with you or even other people that might be able to help you. In someway somehow, which I cannot explain logically, somebody in a completely unrelated area, often people I don’t even know, I’ll get a call or a text or an email or somebody will send me something and it’s exactly almost that goal handed to me on a plate.
Duane Marino:
So call it consciousness, call it the internet where we’re all somehow connected someway somehow, we’ve all had some experiences with that in some way in our life. There is element to goal setting I completely believe. That the more you reinforce it emotionally the more you charge this thing and it’s going to give you what you want for good or for bad so be careful what goals you set. I just don’t think it’s our own actions all the time. It’s definitely not a left-brain activity. It’s a big topic for me. There’s a lot of dynamics here I’ve experienced the last two or three decades of my life, some of which I truthfully can’t even explain. That it just works. Commit to it because it works. And it’s been written about for a few thousand years, the power of word, the power of language, the power of knowing what you want. For some reason, Will, it seems to me the way it is.
Will Barron:
And I believe what you’re saying. I don’t necessarily think there’s a woo woo element to it. I think a lot of it just comes down to your subconscious and pattern recognition. Again, there’s evidence on this and stories on this with pessimists and optimists. Pessimists will … In one experiment, they put a five pound note or $5 notes on the floor and pessimists would just walk past it. They wouldn’t see it because they are thinking in their subconscious oh, that’s someone else’s money they’re going to pick up in a second.
Duane Marino:
That’s-
Will Barron:
An optimist picks it up and goes “Free money. Congratulations to me.”
Duane Marino:
That thing in our brain has been studied, it’s called RAS, reticular activating system. And it’s like when you buy a new car, all of a sudden you notice that car on the road everywhere. They just showed up. Well, they were there all the time. So whatever you’re interested in, absolutely you’re right, your brain will find a way to find it. Definitely.
Duane’s Advise to His Younger Self on How to Become Better at Selling · [41:48]
Will Barron:
And so just from my perspective, not to believe what you’re saying because, obviously, we all have our beliefs, but I believe the same thing as what you’re saying is what you think about you become, but I believe it’s due to just the fact that we’re just software running on multiple platforms during our brain. With that, Duane, I’ve got one final question. I asked you this last time you came on the show so I’m going to ask you again. And that is if you could go back in time and speak to your younger self and give them some advice to help them become better at selling that’s nothing to do with goal setting because we’ve dove deep into that in this episode, what would that one piece of advice be?
Duane Marino:
I often say that people compete because they either love to win or hate to lose. I’m both. I’m much more a person that hates losing. So what I tend to do when I goal set … And it’s important people that are listening to this to know which one you are. Do you love winning or hate losing? You’ve got to goal set in both areas. So you’ve got a goal set on what would be something that’s unacceptable to you, that’s a loss. And you got to keep moving your ideas of losses up so you keep moving up, and up, and up in terms of your expectations of yourself.
Duane Marino:
But also, what’s the potential topic? What would be the ultimate most absurd win I could have? And you start going towards more of that. I was always goal setting on either one or the other. Things I want to avoid or things I want to gain. The best goal setting I call it a box goal. What’s your upside you’re after and what’s the downside, the worst downside you’re willing to tolerate? And then you have to move them both up all the time, which I now do with my goal setting so I’m always trying to avoid dropping below this level and I’m also seeking a higher high. I wish I knew that psychology. That only came across my screen here, my brain whatever you want to call it, maybe seven or eight years ago, and it’s a big change in how you see things.
Will Barron:
That is a fascinating question to ask. I’ve never thought about this before. If I lose at something I’m happy to go, it is what it is I put the effort in. But I’m driven to win. I don’t see … And, obviously, this is subjective depending on what you … But you have to-
Duane Marino:
Let me ask you this question. What fires up your nervous system more right now? The idea of getting $100,000 or pounds or whatever it is, or euro? Or the idea of losing $100,000, pounds, or euro? Which one of those actually upsets you or excites you more? Getting it or losing it?
Will Barron:
So instinctively I feel if I was to lose it I’d just get it back. I’d be back even it wouldn’t bother me. I’ve got the chops to do that pretty quickly. But it becomes a competition to get the 100 … The additional 100,000 or however we’re framing it up so that would be motivating for me more so than the risk of losing it if that makes sense.
Duane Marino:
And a lot of people would answer that totally opposite.
Will Barron:
I’ve never thought about it that way before either.
Duane Marino:
They go, getting 100 grand would be great, but if I lost 100 grand I’d shoot myself. Well, you’re that person now. They hate to lose. They got to keep raising their bar and what they think a loss is or go stagnant.
Will Barron:
I know I do … And we’re … We’ll wrap up in a second, but I know I do on this. This is fascinating. This is perhaps a topic for another time. But I do have … And I’ve read of people talk about this as well. A baseline layer both financially. And if I’m feeling tired. If I’m feeling tired I need to take some time off of X amount of cash in the bank and I’m okay, right, shit, we need to double down here. And I don’t know what my top end is.
Will Barron:
I don’t feel like I’ve ever got to the point where I’ve gone okay, I need … I can take the foot off the gas. I’m sure there is an endpoint and it might be in the tens of millions, which I’m not going to achieve over the next few years or so. Maybe there is a point where I can take the foot off the gas. But on the flip side, I do know that there is a bottom point where I’m okay, this is not acceptable. And I don’t know a better way to describe it than that but I guess that ties into it as well.
Duane Marino:
It does. And funny you said … I mean, we can talk about this forever. Any extra cash that I have I move it in an account in a bank that I can’t get to or go to so my account always looks low. So I know I’ve got more someplace else, but it drives me to keep filling that up, and I get to a certain point and I move it out. And I do the same thing with properties. I need a certain amount of debt to keep myself motivated because I am a person that primarily hates to lose. So I’ve learned to hack that game a little bit so I’m always a little uncomfortable because I always think oh geez, that’s not acceptable. That keeps me going. Somebody else might love watching the dollars, the zeros in the bank account, and the equity in the properties. I grow it through the other side.
Will Barron:
Makes total sense.
Duane Marino:
As long as you [inaudible 00:45:50] difference.
Parting Thoughts · [45:53]
Will Barron:
For sure. Well, with that, because we covered a lot of ground in this one. Duane, tell us about the books, the online training, and where we can find out more about you as well, sir.
Duane Marino:
Okay. So I’ve got the blue book, Unstoppable Selling, it’s on Amazon or online through several resources. The red book, Unstoppable Attitude, which is your own private therapist. And the green book, Unstoppable Money. It’s great to be making money but it’s what you do with it. So go online and buy one of my books that would be great. MarinoTV is my online learning portal. It’s a multimillion-dollar virtual training platform. Over 3,000 videos to help sales professionals from all industries. You can find out about that to my website which is D-U-A-N-E, Duane Marino, M-A-R-I-N-O.com. Will, I really appreciate talking with you again it’s been great.
Will Barron:
I looked up you. I’m learning a lot as we go through this as well. You’re welcome back anytime you know that. I’ll link to everything that we just described in the show notes of this episode over at … We’ll do salesman.org/unstoppableDuane. That can be the show notes for this episode. And with that, thanks again for coming on. I appreciate your time.
Duane Marino:
Thanks so much, Will.
