In today’s episode of the Salesman Podcast, we chat with Thibaut Meurisse about how we can master the way we think. He also touches on how to control assumptions, how to avoid falling into pitfalls of cognitive biases, and how to deal with someone when they are clearly delusional.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- Master Your Thinking by Thibaut Meurisse
- The Dip by Seth Godin
- Thibaut’s Mastery Series
- WhatIsPersonalDevelopment.org
Transcript
Will Barron:
Coming up on today’s episode of the Sales Man Podcast.
Thibaut:
Because so many people already know they work very hard. They want to be writers or whatever, or a salesman, I don’t know. They want to achieve a goal, but they never get there. You see them a year later or two years later, five years, it’s driving me crazy. I’m like, “What are you doing?” They just need to understand how it works.
Thibaut:
I think the brain is not designed to be able to process a factor, but need to think of to succeed. Many things we don’t know about reality and what’s going to happen in the future. And also, it’s a way, it’s a good thing because maybe if you knew beforehand what you have to do to succeed, you will not start.
Will Barron:
Hello, sales nation. My name is Will Barron. I’m the host of the Sales Man Podcast, the world’s most downloaded B2B sales show. On today’s episode, we have Thibaut. He’s the author of ‘Master Your Thinking’, which you can find on Amazon. And on today’s episode, that’s what we’ll get into, ‘master your thinking’, how to control your assumptions, how to avoid falling into the pitfalls of cognitive biases, and how to deal with someone when they are genuinely delusional. When they’re not living in an appropriate reality to do business with them, but you’ve got to get the deal done. You’ve got to sign those contracts with these individuals to get our commission payments. So how to deal with those folks and a whole lot more. Everything we talk about is available in the show notes for this episode over at salesman.org. So with that said, let’s jump right into it.
The Relationship Between Success and Our Ability To Think Accurately and Clearly · [01:45]
Will Barron:
I think we’re going to start to talk about how to master the way that we can think, and then we might end up on emotions, focus, or one of the other books and many amounts of, I guess, self improvement content that you have in your mastery book series. There’s tonnes of things we can go with this episode, but we’ll start with how to master the way we think and our ability to think. So with that, let’s tee things up. Can you share with us, I know this is anecdotal, there’s probably no real number you can put on this, but how much of success that we have in life comes from our ability to think accurately and clearly?
“You can work hard all your life if you want, but if what you do has no impact, if you have the wrong strategy, it’s never going to happen.” – Thibaut Meurisse · [02:30]
Thibaut:
Okay, yeah. I think it has a lot to do with how we are thinking accurately because so many people, they work very hard. They want to be writers or whatever, or salesman, I don’t know. They want to achieve a goal. But they never get there, like, you see them like a year later, two years later, five years later, it drives me crazy. I’m like, what are you doing? I just need to understand how it works, you to go back to the basics and what is working, what is not working. Because you can be kind work hard all your life if you want, but if what you do has no impact, if you have the wrong strategy, its never going to happen. It’s never going to work. I’ve been able to sell other books.
Thibaut:
I’m very fortunate because I had this kind of strategy in mind and say, okay, I can see these guys on Amazon are doing well. I know what they’re doing. There is a market for what I’m doing, I think I’m okay. I can be better. So if I keep doing it, keep sticking to this strategy I have, I will get there, which I did. But many people would just along the way they will start something else. Oh, let me try this podcast interview. Or, I don’t know, if you start doing coaching. So they try to do too many different things at the same time. Oftentimes they have different, I guess they mix business models together trying to make it work, but we they have a clear understanding of what they need to do to achieve the goal and what the goals are in the first place, I guess. So, yeah. I have friends like that, spend years trying to achieve goals, not working, and I’m just like, what are you doing? Wake up. It’s not working.
Thibaut Explains The Cognitive Biases That affect Our Ability to Follow a Plan · [03:50]
Will Barron:
Thibaut, why is it then? Because what you’ve just said makes total sense. And everyone’s nodding their head as they’re listening to this. Understand the process. Hopefully model someone else who’s having success in sales. Just copy what they’re doing the best you can and follow on. It’s easy to say, but it seemingly difficult to do. So are there any cognitive biases that affect our ability to just follow a plan? What stops us being able to focus on just the simple things here?
Thibaut:
I don’t know. I think, I don’t know. I think some people just have unrealistic expectations. For instance, they feel like, okay, if I have a book, if I spend a year or two year, write a book, I’m going to sell millions of copies and I’m going to be successful or whatever. And I have to say, at the beginning I thought that with a blog, it would be so successful I would be making money. I would have millions of page views or whatever. It never happened. Never worked. But I think it’s part of the process to be able to refine your thinking. It’s okay to get it wrong at the beginning. And then you have to think, okay, it doesn’t work out. What is working out? What am I good at? And then for me, I realised like, okay, I wrote a book. People like it.
“Success is based on testing a lot of things, getting feedback and being smart enough to look at what is working and what is not working.” – Thibaut Meurisse · [04:53]
Thibaut:
I like writing the book. I got great reviews on it. I’m making a little bit of money. And there is a market out there so I can make this happen so I could see that. So it’s based on testing a lot of things, getting feedback and being smart enough, I guess, to look at what is working and what is not working. It’s okay. This is working. I’m going to focus on that. And I’m going to forget about that. So it’s part of letting go as well of a lot of things because people to want to do everything sometimes. It feel like, if I’m everywhere online, for instance, it’s a big trap. If I have a podcast, books, coaching, mastermind, and if I do seminars, webinars, I’m going to be successful. Oftentimes it doesn’t work like that. It’s more like, what is the one thing that works for me?
Thibaut:
And what if I keep doing that, 100% focused on that one thing for the next year or two years or three years? That’s what I did personally. I think it’s working really pretty well, but there’s a rift. What if it doesn’t work? I think it’s why people are afraid of that because they’re like, oh, what if I don’t try everything and only do books writing, or only do coaching I might fail. And the answer is, yes, you might fail, but if you don’t do that, you will fail. You’re actually much more likely to fail. So that’s kind of I guess reality in a sense. So that’s what I would say.
Thibaut Talks About Delusions and The Psychology of Expectations · [06:02]
Will Barron:
Why are we somewhat delusional? It seems like a human trait, right? Of you mentioned there with, if we launch a blog, we expect in a couple of years. We’re going to have millions of page views on that. I’ve been there myself. Like projecting, building business plans, and thinking that we’re going to do incredible things. For salespeople, it might be well, I’m going to get into this new role, this new company, this product, and it’s going to be easy. I’m going to crush it. And a year later, reality comes around and just slaps in the face. Why is it that we have, because clearly it’s good to have high expectations and big dreams, but why do we, I guess a lot of the time push into this realm of, it’s just almost delusion.
“We often don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. And it’s a good thing because maybe if you knew beforehand what you have to do to succeed, you may not start.” – Thibaut Meurisse · [07:03]
Thibaut:
I think it’s just, the brain is not designed to be able to, I guess, process and factor I need to think of to succeed. We don’t know many things we don’t know about reality and what’s going to happen in the future. And also it’s a way, I guess, to, it’s a good thing because maybe if you knew beforehand what you have to do to succeed, you may not start. So part of it, I think is actually good and then over time you need to be like okay now I need to put the work. Okay, [inaudible 00:07:18] I will need to do that 10%. actually, I need to do that. And that’s okay. At least you’re not willing to do it because you don’t have the passion or you don’t have the drive or whatever, then you will fail. And that’s okay. And you move on to the next thing that you really want to do. So I think it’s natural process to select, I guess, people who really want to succeed, but it’s very hard to, from the get-go to to know, to have this reality, realistic expectations I think. Maybe it’s impossible. It’s part of the process.
“Until you go in, you don’t know what you don’t know.” – Will Barron · [07:51]
Will Barron:
I like what you said, two things here, which I really like. One until you go in, you don’t know what you don’t know. And that sounds again, dead simple. Almost counter-intuitive, but that’s really important. And then I love the way you framed it up as well in a positive light of if you knew how difficult it is going to be, you would have probably done something else in the first place. I think that’s really motivating, right? If we’re in a sales job, it’s tough, we’ve just gone through a global pandemic, economic crisis that could implode again at any moment. Well, if you knew all of this a few years ago, you’d probably have gone into, I don’t know what an easier role would be, but maybe you’d gone into an easier role. So let me ask you this then. How do we know when we should quit?
How to Tell It’s The Right Time to Quit · [08:27]
Will Barron:
How do we know when we reach a point where we’ve got some feedback. We’ve done this and this but we’re still passionate about the project. We’re still passionate about getting these deals done. We’re passionate about maybe not selling itself, but what the revenue, the commissions will bring us. How do we know when we should go, okay, we’ve wasted enough time on this now. And there’s a cognitive bias here, I’m sure, when we overinvest into things before changing and chopping to the correct direction quicker, but how do we know when we’ve invested too much into something and we should stop and change tactics?
Thibaut:
It’s actually very hard to know. I think there’s no right answer. But one thing you can do is just decide like I’m going to spend three years on it or five years on it. If it doesn’t work out, I’m going to quit. Actually what I did, what I did three years ago. And I said, okay, I’m going to spend three years only writing books. Only writing books. Every time I go onto something else, no, stop, go back to writing. Go back to writing. Which I did hundreds of times. And if I don’t get some success in three years, I will think about what’s next then basically. So I gave myself this timeframe to think about it and to re-think. So I guess you can do that as well. Like you have a timeframe, okay. I’m going to work on this project for two or three years. If it doesn’t work out, I will stop. I will re-think about it and I will make a decision.
Thibaut:
Yeah, and one more thing is like, if you don’t have any feedback, good feedback from reality and from the world, from the customer, it after three years, I guess, I don’t know, that’s kind of strange, right? So for me, why I kept going is because I got this good feedback from the beginning, says, okay, people like it, there is a market. So there’s no way I could not have some success. So I kept going. So I would say, yeah, have some good feedback, make sure there’s a market for it because creating a new market is possible, I guess, but it’s very, very hard.
Thibaut:
Unless you want to add [inaudible 00:10:25] with these big guys. So have a market, know if you’re good at what you’re doing, look at what feedback you’re getting from your customer, know if they are willing to pay you. Did you make a sale? That’s important because if you can make one sale, you can make ten, hundred and thousand and more. That’s also my mindset. If I can get something, do it just one time, one sale, one client, I can do it 10X, 100, 1000X probably. So I know there’s a way for me to achieve some results. So that’s what I would say. Hope it makes sense.
Thibaut’s Three to Five-Year Timeframe of Gauging His Chances of Success at Anything · [10:51]
Will Barron:
That makes total sense. So this is very interesting. This is something I see in, over on salesman.org we’ve got a training programme, we have a community, and then everyone’s going back forth and chatting. And there’s thousands of people in there now. And something I see cropping up regularly. And this is the exact opposite of what you just described. I see a lot of salespeople and the statistics are, a B2B sales person is in a sales role for just around two years before they chop and change roles. Also, it takes about six months for a sales person to even if they are very experienced by the time they get into a new company with new company culture, new products, new services, new markets, new customers, to engage with. It takes about six months for them to be what we call ramped up and trained in that market. So really in that two year period, the salespeople that are swapping and changing are only experimenting, getting feedback, and then probably quitting or seeing that the grass is perhaps green on the other side, in a different organisation for a year and a half, which maybe that’s just not long enough to have success. Maybe that two, three year period is perhaps what we need with some of this.
Thibaut:
What I think is it’s three to five years is a good timeframe to get some traction on anything I think. If after three years, four years, five year, there is no growth on what you’re doing, no positive news, no money, nothing, might be time to think about what you’re doing wrong. Maybe move on or change your strategy I think.
Will Barron:
Sure. I guess for more context here, five years seems like a long time for this. But, if you split up your working life into three to five year chunks, you’ve got, say kind of 10 to 15 goals, 10 to 15 opportunities at this to find what you really want to do. And maybe you do it for 10 years, 15 years once you really get that feedback and you really caught on and you get the product market fit and all this good stuff. Or for salespeople the job kind of role fit that, or the individual and job fit. So you’ve got multiple at-bats at all of this. So it’s not end of the world stuff to be able to put a kind of three to five-year timeline on it.
Thibaut:
Yeah. And also like, if you’re a salesman, then you’re learning, right. You’re learning skills. So even if you fail at making sales, you’re working on your craft, like a writer, and you’re working on your craft. So when you have to start again in a new industry, for instance, you already have so much knowledge on what you’d have to do. So it’s faster in a sense.
Will Barron:
Sure. Yeah. You’re reducing those feedback loops over time. That makes total sense. And this conversation reminds you a little bit. If you read the book, I think it’s called “The Dip” by Seth Godin.
Thibaut:
I haven’t read this one. Yeah.
How to Overcome the Sunk Cost Fallacy · [13:28]
Will Barron:
Okay, so, he talks about the data and research, and I’m not going to give numbers because I’ll butcher it because I’ve not read it in years now. But what he says is very successful people do two things. They quit the right things at the right time, and this is obvious, right? And then they stick with the things that are going to lead to success over the long term. And very few people, I mean, there might be a few TikTok stars, or any Vine back a few years ago that upload 20 videos and start earning millions, or for people who win the lottery. But for most people, it’s a five to 10 to 20 year period to build kind of the wealth that we all perhaps aspire to build. And so he says that the most important, well, he said the most important thing is successful people quit the wrong things early. And then just by default of doing that, they then end up sticking to the right things long term.
Thibaut:
Would you say they quit the wrong thing too late?
Will Barron:
They have a rapid feedback loop. So when they try lots of things and they find that, oh, this isn’t quite right. They quit. If they’ve invested money into a training product, they just bin off. It doesn’t matter. I can’t remember the name of the cognitive bias, but there’s a cognitive bias where once we invest into something [crosstalk 00:14:45].
Thibaut:
Yeah. Sunk cost.
Will Barron:
The sunk cost fallacy, right?
Thibaut:
The sunk cost fallacy, right.
Will Barron:
So we need to do need to avoid that. Cool. All right. So we’re avoiding the sunk cost fallacy. Thibaut, are there any other cognitive biases that people get hanged up on?
Thibaut Talks About the Assumptions Trap · [15:03]
Thibaut:
Yeah. I was thinking of, a big one is making the assumption that because you don’t like something or you don’t want something or you want products, your customer doesn’t like it. And I think it’s such a big trap. You think, never assume that people are like you. Like let’s say, I don’t know, see, I don’t say I don’t buy anything online. I never buy something online. Doesn’t mean that my customer does not want to buy something online. I don’t buy something that is worth a thousand dollars or more. It doesn’t mean that there’s not people out there who want to pay $10,000, a hundred thousand dollars. No, it’s just, maybe I’m making an assumption and just testing the markets for whatever you’re trying to sell. I think it’s so important. Avoiding making as assumptions as much as possible. Or being aware of what these are and working on it. Asking is it true and asking yourself, is it true?
Will Barron:
How do we train ourselves to do this? And I’ll give you an example here. So we’ve just got a new puppy. So I find myself regularly saying to my partner, she’ll say X, Y, Z. And I keep saying to her, do you know that to be true? Because neither of us has had a dog before. I’ve read loads of books, watched loads of videos. But even when you read in a book and a video, it doesn’t mean that it’s factual. It could still be an opinion. So I find myself asking my partner regularly. Do you know that to be true? That at the moment, Walter, the dog is eating stones. It’s just loves eating stones. Apparently this is something that golden retrievers and Labradors do. So we’ve got kind of cornered off a lot the garden. And, basically the garden’s quite big, but we’re trying to keep him in the grassed area so he doesn’t have access to stones.
How to Train Yourself Not To Make Assumptions and Avoid the Confirmation Bias · [16:50]
Will Barron:
Or my partner was saying, well, it’s just normal, all golden and labs do it. Like, I kind of just alluded to then. But I remember saying to her this morning, do you know that for a fact? Is that true what you’re saying? Or is that an assumption that you’ve made? Now, then we went and Googled it and found that it is somewhat of a fact, there’s multiple people that report this, but how do we, I feel like it’s easier to point it out in someone else, but how do we train ourselves not to make assumptions? And then I guess it’s two steps, make an assumption and then take action on an assumption that can lead to difficulties, right?
Thibaut:
Okay. I think the one thing you can do is ask yourself, how can I be wrong? You tend to look at is no, the confirmation bias. So you look, oh, I’m thinking this, so this may be right. You look for more information to basically make you feel good because you’re right. I’m right. I was right. Do the opposite, right? Which is, no, looking at how can have you be wrong? It could be political view, religious view, anything. Business. So asking yourself, how can you be wrong, I think is a good, good start. Which is hard to do because of ego. And we all want to be right. And that’s a good thing about every person in the world, they think they are right. That’s amazing if you think about it. Like 7 billion, 7.5 might be, and they think they are right, because otherwise it would change something. Most of the time. So that tell you how much of thinking is inaccurate in at least some way or another. Right? So be humble about that and try to learn as much as you can by asking yourself, or feedback. Ask feedback from your customer, from your friends, from your family, how could I be wrong? I think it would be a good start.
Do You Really Need a Coach to Help You Master the Way You Think? · [18:07]
Will Barron:
Perfect. I was just about to say that. Is it physically possible to do ourselves, or do we need a coach, mentor? Do we need our sales management or sales leaders to kind of interview us regularly and stay on top of this? Is it possible to be so self-aware and diminish your ego so much that you can do this reliably?
Thibaut:
Partially, I think. I think you always have a blind spot. We have blind spots. I think that’s inevitable. So we can do some work on ourselves and as well having a boss, a coach a mentor, someone that can tell you hey here think about that. Maybe you’re wrong here. Kind of challenge you. Especially if you’re a CEO, you really want to have a team of people attacking you every day. That’s like, oh, great, great, no, you’re wrong here, you’re wrong there. You want to have people around that are challenging you all the time. That’s how you design the better [inaudible 00:19:02] reality and have better results in your business or other areas of your life. So that’s what I would recommend.
Will Barron:
That’s something I see am in more modern sales versus when I was in sales perhaps kind of seven, eight years ago in that it’s less of a few things. Sales used to be a lot more of a boys club than what it is now. A lot more like bravado and like banter. Now it’s more of a, not an old places, but it seems to be in the companies I’m engaging with more of a business unit. That’s not so siloed off against everyone else. And so they don’t get away while the shenanigans that like they used to. And the customers don’t want to be taken out on the golf course to win business anymore. They want to engage and have a consultative process, right. And learn something in their conversations as opposed to be kind of sold out at and have someone throw a pitch down their throat.
How Do Emotions Affect Our View on Reality · [20:19]
Will Barron:
So some of this are disappearing, but I feel like that’s something that is perhaps happening more organically within like company’s cultures. There’s more sit-down meetings. There’s more discussions. It’s probably just, people are scared to get sued as well. So HR is involved in a lot more of this stuff as well. So with all that said then Thibaut, because I feel like we’re two dudes here, right? Having this conversation over Skype and we’re both in a relatively logical mindsets. We’re having a nice chat. How does this change when emotions get involved? So it’s one thing to say, yeah, just ask how this could go wrong, do this, do this. But when you’ve got perhaps a customer, who’s screaming down the phone at you, or perhaps you work life’s going great, but your home life’s falling apart and there’s other things going on then that’s affecting your emotional state. How does our emotions affect our kind of view on reality?
“Never make any big decisions in your life when you’re angry or depressed.” – Thibaut Meurisse · [20:44]
Thibaut:
Well, I think I’d like to say that you don’t want to make a decision and when you are in a bad emotional state, right? Like never make a big decision in your life when you’re angry or depressed. Be kind to yourself. Okay. I’m not feeling good now. So try to be aware of that and say, oh, I’m going to wait. And once I’m feeling better, I can make decisions. So that’s one tip. Obviously it’s easier said than done, and I get that because if you’re angry, try to remind yourself, I’m not making decisions when you’re in that state of mind. And then you have many ways to start. Things like morning routine or things you can do every day in the morning to start with good thinking.
Thibaut:
Start with meditation, it can help you really condition your mind every single day. So I think something you can do to improve your, I would say your emotional state. That helps with productivity as well, because if you can be calm in the morning, you have your own time a little bit, and then you go to work, you’re in a better mental state, focused, ready to work on your big tasks. Maybe, I don’t know what you do, maybe it’s cold calling, or some sales work. So that’s a big part of what I do, conditioning the mind, because we know we tend to have a lot of negative emotions kind of by design. Just because the brain is always trying to survive. You’re looking for threads and we have kind of this tendency to have a lot of negative emotions.
Thibaut:
So it’s good to just train ourselves to focus on the positive things, like gratitude as well is a big thing. Self compassion. Always be nice to yourself. Because you’re always trying to do our best. We’re always trying to do our best with what we have at any time, even if it doesn’t seem that way from maybe someone else looking at you. So that’s what I would say. Like a few tips I could imagine that one can do.
Thibaut’s Daily Morning Routine · [22:30]
Will Barron:
I love this idea of being kind to yourself. Because that seems somewhat selfish on occasion, right? [crosstalk 00:22:41] we’re probably on the same wavelength here. I can’t look after other people unless I’m in a good place myself. If I saw myself at first, I can then look after the dog, me girlfriend and stuff. But if I don’t look after myself, I then am frustrated with them. I’m frustrated with work. I’m frustrated with the sales that we do. And so I totally agree what you say now we need to start. I almost try and keep every day as a clean slate. And again, a lot of this is easier said than done, right. But a lot of that comes from me from having that good morning routine. So what does your morning routine look like? How do you reset yourself if you’ve had like a miserable evening the day before?
“When we are overstimulated with social media, emails, videos, all this stuff, it’s very hard to focus on this important tasks you need to get done every day.” – Thibaut Meurisse · [23:44]
Thibaut:
Well, it depends. I like to these day I’m just waking up thinking of I’m selling books, I’m having an impact. I’m thinking of these positive things about my business going on. I like to just take some vitamins, drink a cup of tea. So I really like to take my time because I want to be in this kind of brainwave and quiet and focused and calm because I realise that when we are like overstimulated with like social media, emails, videos, all this stuff, it’s very hard to focus on this important tasks you need to get done every day. Your most important task is usually very hard. Very challenging mentally or emotionally. And I think it’s, a big thing for me is to start my day with first working on my most important task, which is right now is writing for me as a writer, obviously.
Thibaut:
So that’s been a big tip I really want people to do if they can. Obviously sometime they cannot, for some reason. But calm your mind, do some meditation and some stretching or something else. Drink your tea, breath or do whatever you want to do to calm yourself. And then you start working. I like to set my goals every day in the morning. So I’m writing down some of the goals for the day and then work on that. Start working. That’s what I do. And it’s very good to stay focused and to get more done. So that’s what I recommend.
The Essence of Tackling the Most Important Task First Thing in The Morning · [25:18]
Will Barron:
And just the process of having, we call it MIT, most important task of the day. Just having that alone, resolves so much pain I know my life and some of the, we talked about this in the community over at salesman.org. Because then you’ve got no excuse to faf around. You’ve got to focus. And once I find that personally, once I start doing something, all of the over nonsense falls apart. For me, the hardest part is that that moment of putting pen to paper or picking up the phone or whatever it is. Once I’ve done that, I’ll procrastinate on that for hours like sometimes. That’s one of my kind of biggest issues, but once I start it, then you’re almost in this like a flow state and then you can carry on throughout the rest of the day right.
Thibaut:
Yeah. I think I know when you talk about productivity, I think there’s simple things you can do as you mentioned, is to work on your most important task. First thing in the morning. That’s only thing you would need to do. If you can do that you will be fine because then you would feel better about yourself. You’ll do most of in the afternoon and if you do that consistently every single day with that’s really the only thing we need to do I think in term of productivity. As opposed to having all these complicated like to-do list and software and get things done, whatever. I just, I think it’s kind of pointless because unless you’re really, really disciplined, then you can move up to to a very complex system. But I think for 99% of people, sit down and take a piece of paper, write down your most important tasks, maybe three, two or three tasks every day and work on it.
Dissecting Brian Tracy’s “Eat That Frog” Metaphor · [26:23]
Will Barron:
And for salespeople, your most important task every day is very likely unless you’ve got like a massive contract that needs work to get the deal closed. It’s prospecting. It is, as you said before, cold calling or it’s cold emailing, or it’s reaching out on LinkedIn or whatever it is. Just get it done. Once you’ve done that at the beginning of the day, the rest of it’s easy. Are you aware or familiar with the, I think it’s Brian Tracy, who has the frog metaphor. So for the audience who might not be aware, it’s, if you’ve got to, you have to eat this frog at some point during the day, well, there’s two types of people. There’s people who will just eat it, get it done, and then carry on with the day as normal.
Will Barron:
Fine they’ve done it. The other set of people are, which is me, a procrastinator, will put it off until the last minute. But now you’ve wasted the whole day faffing around stressing about eating this frog and you’ve got to do it anyway. And you’ve just, all the other tasks that you thought you do before and they’ve all been a mess and a [inaudible 00:26:56] because you’ve been stressed about the frog and then you get it done and then you do eat it at 11 o’clock at night, and you’re like, oh, it wasn’t that bad anyway. So Brian Tracy’s metaphor is just eat the damn frog, get it done.
Thibaut:
And I think I just said like, it’s okay. We all procrastinate. Right? I mean, nobody’s perfect. So same thing, be self-compassionate. You’ve got to procrastinate some day, it doesn’t matter. I mean, as long as you try your best every day. So for me be a big tip when it comes to emotions is really just like the self compassion part of it, which is not selfish. As you said, it’s like selfless because if you’re in a good emotional state, you can be happier. You’re more productive. You’re nicer with your family. Nicer with your colleagues, nicer with your employees. There’s just so many benefits. I see as a safety net to your wellbeing, because if you don’t have the compassion, if you don’t practise that every day, you’re going to get to depression sometimes. But if you this kind of safety net. Oh, it’s okay. No, sometimes I have bad day, everybody’s like that, and you have this kind of self-talk it will really help you move up to feeling better about yourself. So I think it’s really important to practise that daily life.
Thibaut Describes Why It’s Tricky to Tell Other People to Manage Their Reality and Reset Their Expectations · [28:15]
Will Barron:
Amazing stuff. Well, I’ve got one final question for you Thibaut and that is kind of going slightly off topic here, or on topic, but perhaps less focused on ourselves. Is there any way to call out someone or communicate with someone when we know that they’re falling into all of the traps that we’ve talked about in this episode of perhaps they’re slightly delusional, perhaps they kind of are distorting the reality that they’re living in and that’s affecting us. This could be a customer who has a massive exaggerated expectation of what our product is going to do. And then we’re trying to explain with them what it can actually do. Is there a way to communicate with an individual like this and reset their expectations?
Thibaut:
Yeah. That’s a great question. I wish I had the answer to that.
Will Barron:
I know, It’s difficult, right?
Thibaut:
[inaudible 00:28:57] misaligned with realities, basically what it is. Meaning they have unrealistic expectations. I guess there’s no point trying to like attack them or being angry just because it doesn’t work. If you tried to push, maybe push against you. Right? So more like being aware, being present, maybe asking some questions to make them realise something in a different way or sending them some documents or some readings to do. Oh, if you want, maybe you can check out that without forcing anything it’s maybe the best shot you have of convincing someone. Because I don’t really know what else you can do to be honest.
Will Barron:
It is tricky. And you’ve described something I like to do then of this is one of the reasons why I like to document everything in sales conversations. So I’m negotiating a big contract at the moment. It’s the biggest contract we’ve ever done, salesman.org for a big sponsorship deal. It’s taken months to put together. And on the back of this, there’s a few questions that have popped up now that we talked about months ago. And some of the people I spoke about months ago, obviously they’ve got loads of things on, they’ve forgotten about what we agreed, but after every conversation I will send up a follow-up email of this is what we talked about. This is what we agreed and at the bottom, I’ll always write, if there’s something that you kind of don’t agree with, or I’ve got the wrong idea or the wrong angle or the wrong end of this reply to this email and let me know so that we’re clear.
Will Barron:
So I like to document everything because there’s a few conversations, that’ve come up now that, hey, well we, we assumed this, this and this, which is what we’re talking about. Right? We assume this, our expectation is this, which is not what we discussed. So all I have to do now is as you described, link them to the emails that they’ve not replied to and they’ve acknowledged in the past. And then that resets everyone’s expectations and brings it all back down to the reality. Now I might be living in a delusional reality myself, but at least at this point everyone’s living in my delusional reality as opposed to everyone having their own delusional reality, which is, I guess, kind of how most of the world lives most of the time.
Thibaut:
Yeah. Yes. It’s because we come together, we cannot manage to live together because we have so many different realities that kind of, I guess it’s collective intelligence or something. You have to make it work in a sense.
Will Barron:
Amazing. Well with that [crosstalk 00:31:11]. Go on, I interrupted you there.
Thibaut:
No, I mean, what you said is great about [inaudible 00:31:15], write everything down, say this is what we agreed on. This is what we’re going to do. This is what we promise. That’s the best you can do when it comes to new customers in this kind of relationship. Then you can come back and say, oh, you agree on that. I sent you this email, they can be oh, okay, yeah.
Will Barron:
Yeah. And I find a lot of people, no matter how big their egos are, will, then go, oh yes, I did agree on that. And then they’ll just forget that they spent 20 minutes on the phone arguing with you prior. Because again, we want to protect our egos. I think there’s a cognitive bias to this as well of once we agree to something we like to then stick with that. Even if there’s a huge amount of evidence contrary to it. So if individuals agree to something over an email, then that’s almost a kind of ammunition to get them to agree to it in the future.
Thibaut:
Yeah. It’s harder to change I guess. True. Yeah.
Thibaut’s 8-Book Mastery Series and What They are About · [28:15]
Will Barron:
Cool. Right. Well with that Thibaut, tell us about, because you got like, is it seven books in the series? I’ve read, “Master Your Thinking”, which is what we’ve covered on today’s episode. But tell us about the series of books and where we can find out more about yourself as well.
Thibaut:
Yeah. So I have a [inaudible 00:32:18] 20 books, but I have like seven books in a series that is very successful. So I had this “Master Your Emotion”. I have motivation, I have thinking, destiny, beliefs, success. I think that’s it. I guess so. Yeah. So each book is addressing a topic. Like for instance, focus is about what we talked about avoiding the shiny object syndrome, being focused on one thing understanding your main task and all this stuff. So yeah. So each book is pretty practical with an action guide. They can ask themselves different questions, write down their answer, take action. Because I want people to take action. That’s why I write books in the first place. Because if you don’t take action, it’s kind of pointless. Becomes [inaudible 00:32:59] as long as your heart and your mind know. [inaudible 00:33:02], but it’s al intellectual. But you have no practical wisdom, you don’t know what you’re talking which I think is a big trap to achieving success in anything. So that’s yeah. So they can check my series of books on Amazon, just type my name. They will find me and that’s it. Yep.
Will Barron:
Amazing stuff. Well, I’ll link to the books, F&Ls in the show notes of this episode over at salesman.org. And with that, Thibaut, I want to thank you again for joining us on the salesman podcast.
Thibaut:
Thank you so much for having me. It was fun.
