Each year we ask #SalesNation what their favourite 5 episodes of the Salesman Podcast were over the previous 12 months. Thousands of you voted this episode with Geoff Woods “Best Of 2020”.
Geoff Woods is the Vice President of The ONE Thing and hosts The ONE Thing podcast, which is in the top 5% of all podcasts in the world.
In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Geoff explains how we can become extraordinarily productive and achieve extraordinary results in our sales roles.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- Geoff on Linkedin
- The ONE Thing podcast
- Book: The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
- The1Thing.com
- The One Thing Goal Setting Retreat
Transcript
Will Barron:
On this final best of 2020 episode, as voted on by you guys, Sales Nation, over 1,000 of you voted, which is incredible. I thank you for the feedback on this. We have the legend that is Geoff Woods. On this episode, we started by talking about productivity, extreme productivity, how it’s become extremely productive for both your sales job and your work life and just your life in general. Then Geoff starts to kick my ass little bit live on air. You got to see essentially a coaching session from Geoff helping me become more productive in real time. I’ve gotten tonnes of feedback from this, tonnes of comments on LinkedIn, YouTube, and everywhere else it was posted, and so I know you got a tonne of episode out of this the first time round. If you missed it, here you go. This is the episode with Geoff. Just before we get into it, I just want to say thank you.
Do Salespeople Need to be Extraordinarily Productive to Hit Quota in This Period of Uncertainty? · [01:19]
Will Barron:
2020 has been an up and down year for everyone, but for us, listener wise, downloads wise, attention wise, you guys have shared our content, you’ve helped us take things to the next level. We’ve got some really genuinely exciting stuff to announce in Q1 2021 in just a few weeks from now. There’ll be a post from me in January talking about what we did right, what we did wrong, what we want to do moving forward. I can’t tell you just yet, but there’s a tonne of exciting things to come. So, I want to thank you all, I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and with that, let’s jump into the show. As a salesperson. Do we need to be extra ordinary productive, or extraordinarily productive just to even hit quota at this point? Is this the new standard that we need to be hitting in the times that we’re living in?
“As a salesperson in any industry, when you go into a recession, you actually have to double your lead generation efforts to produce the same results.” – Geoff Woods · [01:51]
Geoff Woods:
You know, something I learned from my partner, Gary Keller, which for those of you, if you’ve heard of Keller Williams, the real estate company, he’s the co-founder of it and the current CEO, when he talks about how, at least in the real estate industry, everything goes in cycles, every seven years or so, there’s booms and recessions. He says, as a salesperson in any industry, when you go into a recession, you actually have to double your lead generation efforts to produce the same results. He says a lot of salespeople, especially in a good market, they start to have great results. They’re hitting their numbers and they think they’re doing awesome. But what they’re not looking at is what’s the trend? How high is the tide? Because in a great market, you could be average and still crushing it. But all of a sudden, when the tide comes out, you start to really see who are the real performers.
Geoff Woods:
So, I think, Will, with everything that’s going on right now, depending on the industry that you’re in, I think just a good lesson is while things are so uncertain right now, how do we become the type of people who become even more purposeful with our prospecting so that our results are still there, and that when the economy comes back and when things go back to normal, if they ever go back to normal, all of a sudden we’ve got this momentum that allows us to come out taking market share.
How Industry and Market Performance Impact a Salesperson’s Productivity · [03:05]
Will Barron:
I want into get the tactics and then some tips and training behind productivity in a second. But you said something that was really interesting there, Geoff. How do we know if, and this is a mindset question, I guess, how do we know if our lower or average performance now is due to the marketplace? It’s inevitable, as people are buying, whatever it is, versus a lack of our performance or a lack of our reaching our own potential.
Geoff Woods:
I think that’s going to be very industry specific. There are some industries like real estate, for example, that you can look and see, where are you in a cycle? If you’re crushing it, but it’s the hottest market it’s been in decades, okay, you need to look at that. I also think you can look at your peers.
Will Barron:
Sure.
Geoff Woods:
How are you doing in comparison to your peers? Are you middle of the pack? Are you at the top of the stack ranks?
Geoff Describes the Traits of an Extraordinary Productive Salesperson · [03:49]
Will Barron:
I’m going to ask you this now, and this is a massively loaded question, which I know you’re going to throw back at me, but is being extraordinarily productive, does that mean working more hours or just trying to squeeze more in, or is the more to it than that, Geoff?
“Working long hours is cheating. It’s cheating because you can work long hours, and if you do the wrong activities, but you work long enough, you work hard enough, you can muscle your way to a result, but you cheat yourself out of what it means to live a life.” – Geoff Woods · [04:45]
Geoff Woods:
I used to think that way. I used to think that. When I was in corporate sales, I thought that if I wanted to be number one, if I wanted to get to P club, that I had to work harder than everybody, because when I looked at the people who had been there before, that’s what they did. They outworked everybody. When I co-founded this company with the coauthors of The One Thing, I remember being in a mastermind with Gary, and he said, “You know, working long hours is cheating.” This stopped me dead in my tracks. I’m going, “What are you talking about? You’ve got to hustle. You’ve got to grind.” He said, “It’s cheating because you can work long hours, and if you do the wrong activities, but you work long enough, you work hard enough, you can muscle your way to a result, but you cheat yourself out of what it means to live a life.”
“For people who want to achieve extraordinary results right now, it’s actually not about working longer hours. It’s actually about being clear on what are the 20% priorities or activities that if I focus on those things, that drives 80% of my results. How do I start investing my time throughout the day instead of spending it.” – Geoff Woods · [05:35]
Geoff Woods:
That was the gut punch for me, because it was in that moment that I could vividly imagine all the days that I worked so long and hard, not necessarily doing the right things. I was busy, I wasn’t productive. Then at night, when I was sitting on the couch with my family, I told myself I was being present, but actually I was checking my email or I was writing a proposal. Gary said, the secret, if you want to live an extraordinary life, you actually have to be as efficient and as effective as possible during the hours that you were working. At a pre-prescribed time, you got to shut it down and go and live your life. So, Will, for people who want to achieve extraordinary results right now, it’s actually not about working longer hours. It’s actually about being clear on what are the 20% priorities or activities that if I focus on those things, that drives 80% of my results. How do I start investing my time throughout the day instead of spending it?
Will Barron:
Do you feel like people are too… and not just salespeople, people in general, are too accepting of this trade of their life, this one thing that they can never get back, this resource for cash, or you go a step further of trading your life for that slightly bad BMW or whatever it is that we’re all aiming towards?
Geoff Woods:
I don’t think they realise they’re doing that. I think for a lot of people, we all want to look good, we want to feel good. Let’s be honest. A lot of salespeople have egos. So, the moment we start to acknowledge that, we might just suppress it. It takes a very self-aware and emotionally mature professional to have that honest conversation with themselves.
Productivity is All About Decluttering the Unnecessary Stuff From Your Schedule · [06:38]
Will Barron:
You touched on, I guess, step one here, right? Focusing on maybe we can narrow this down from 20 to 3% of things that we should be doing that’s getting results. Is that step one in all of this just trying to cut out some of the bullshit that we don’t need to be doing?
Geoff Woods:
Well, essentially, yes. Here’s a case study of it: Apple. When Steve Jobs came back as CEO from 1997 to 1999, he took the company from 350 active projects down to 10. He literally shut down 340 initiatives that had already had capital and resources allocated, let alone all the new opportunities he said no to. Because the organisation narrowed their focus to 10 priorities, Apple went on to become one of the most valuable companies in the world. When COVID hit, I think a lot of, depending on your industry, a lot of people’s worlds were rocked. I work with one of the… there’s a Fortune 50 pharmaceutical company that we advise, and when I sat down with the leadership, they didn’t know what to do, because you have very high paid sales professionals, thousands of them who sell by getting in front of doctors in hospitals and in their private practises.
“What stops us from reinventing ourselves is an attachment to the way things used to be.” – Geoff Woods · [08:23]
Geoff Woods:
All of a sudden, they could not go and sell the way they’ve historically sold. What do you do? This is when what they were lacking was clarity. I heard a quote from somebody I’m in a relationship with named Keith Cunningham. He said, “What stops us from reinventing ourself is an attachment to the way things used to be.” I’ll say that again. What stops us from reinventing ourselves is an attachment to the way things used to be a lot. People are attached about the way they used to sell, the way they used to prospect or closed deals. The people who were, are willing to let go of that old way and reinvent a way based on the hand that’s been dealt to us now are the ones that are succeeding.
Geoff Woods:
That’s what we did. We helped them say, “Let go of that. That is out the window, and let’s make the assumption you’re never able to do that again. You’re just going to shut the company down? Hell no, you’re going to come up with a new way, so let’s do it. What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” We had conversations to identify that one activity that their reps could do. Here’s what it was. We call it the Adele script. You pick up the phone, you call your customers and you go, “Hello. How are you?”
“When you really understand what that one thing is that makes everything else easier or unnecessary, it’s a lot easier to start looking at all the other stuff on your plate for what it is: a distraction.” – Geoff Woods · [09:50]
Geoff Woods:
The teams that we worked with that did this, that understand that this was their one thing, that until they picked up the phone and called their customers asking, “Hello, how are you doing?” Not with the heart of a sales person, but with the heart of a servant, somebody who cares, just to check in on them, a care call, those teams, their results crushed everybody else. Here’s the thing, Will. When you really understand what that one thing is that makes everything else easier or unnecessary, it’s a lot easier to start looking at all the other stuff on your plate for what it is: a distraction until that one thing has done.
The Pandemic Illustrated that Salespeople Don’t Necessarily Have to Change Their Normal Way of Doing Things, They Just Have to Adapt · [10:15]
Will Barron:
How do we, again, it’s probably a mindset question, Geoff, and I hate asking mindset questions because there’s no real answer, right? Often it’s less tangible. But if we’re stuck with the attachments of the past and the way we’ve done things previously, or perhaps we’re, in a way, describing that from another angle, might be that we’re lazy and we don’t want to change because we shouldn’t have to change. How can we reprogram ourselves to push into the uncertainty of doing something new or trying something new? How can we make that shift?
Geoff Woods:
Well, the answer is you don’t have to change, but if you’re unwilling to adapt to new circumstances, you have to lower your aim for what’s possible in your life.
Will Barron:
So, it’s fair to say then that if you want to compromise, every time you compromise, you reduce your potential.
Geoff Woods:
Sure. I mean, I watched Gary draw this on a whiteboard once, but when he looks at his career, and you have to context, Keller Williams is the largest real estate company in the world, 200,000 plus people. Gary is a self-made billionaire. He drew his career in a chart. He said, “This is what it looked like. I had explosive growth, then plateau, then explosive growth, then plateau, then explosive growth, then plateau.” He said, “I looked at this and asked the question, what happened in those moments when I moved from plateau back to explosive growth?” The answer was he disrupted himself.
“As a salesperson, you could even ask, what’s the product or sales approach that’ll put me out of business? How do I invent it first?” – Geoff Woods · [11:53]
Geoff Woods:
There’s a question he’s asked, and my other partner, Jay, this is written on his whiteboard in Sharpie. What’s the business that’ll put us out of business, and how do I build it first? As a salesperson, you could even ask, what’s the product or sales approach that’ll put me out of business? How do I invent it first? He was always willing to let go of the way things used to be, to reinvent the way that he needed to behave to get to that next level.
“If you are out to achieve extraordinary results, you cannot take an ordinary approach. You have to start doing things that others are not doing. Especially in a time like now.” – Geoff Woods · [12:11]
Geoff Woods:
I think for a lot of us, if you are out to achieve extraordinary results, you cannot take an ordinary approach. You have to start doing things that others are not doing. Especially in a time right now, I got a call the moment COVID hit and they said, “Look, there’s a gift in every shift.”
Geoff Woods:
So, your job is to first and foremost build a productive moat around your customer base, literally, call all of them, do whatever you need to do to keep them as a customer. Even if we have to give stuff away for free, we will do it, because in their mind, we want them to be a customer. We want them to feel like we are in the trenches with them so that when we come out of this, we have momentum, because a lot of people aren’t going to do that. Then they said, just get on the phone with your customers and do the Adele script. “Hello. How are you?” Figure out where the new market is. After making enough of those calls, Will, I started to figure out what the biggest challenges were that our current customer base had, and I figured out how to fulfil that void very quickly, and our business exploded. So, I think if you are willing to change the way you look at things, to change your approach, you can come out of this thing way ahead.
Focus on That One Productive Needle Mover · [13:30]
Will Barron:
You’ve kind of just touched on it there, but there seems like there’s almost a bit of a paradox here, Geoff, of to push into uncertainty, to push ourselves. We need to let go of everything in the past, which means experimenting, doing perhaps lots of new stuff, but then we also want to use Plato’s law, the one thing principles, and focus on the one thing that really moves things forward. So, is this a one, two step process, or is this something that we should be doing side-by-side, constant experimentation and then constantly looking for new ways to improve that one thing that really moves the needle for us as salespeople?
Geoff Woods:
Yeah. I would encourage you to view it like dominoes, Will. At any point in your life, did you ever line up dominoes and try to knock them down?
Will Barron:
Probably at some point, yeah.
Geoff Woods:
Yeah. I mean, as kids, we’ve all done this. It would be ridiculous to take, let’s say 20 dominoes and to line them up completely scattered and go and knock each one down individually. We don’t do that. What do we do? We line them up in order. We space them out in a way that if I just knock the first one down, what happens, Will?
Will Barron:
Hopefully the rest of them get knocked down as well. Right?
“The point is that everything you want out of life happens sequentially, not simultaneously. It’s just one thing at a time.” – Geoff Woods · [14:40]
Geoff Woods:
That’s right. The point is that everything you want out of life happens sequentially, not simultaneously. It’s just one thing at a time. So, if we look at, “Okay, well, what’s that activity, that one thing that I need to be doing every day that will unleash extraordinary results in my life? How do I reinvent my approach, versus how do I handle the administrative things?” We look at all this stuff that’s on our plate and treat it like it matters equally. We try to think we have to get it all done, and that builds our anxiety and our stress, and we get confused and we just shut down, or we focus on what we know we can do. The opportunity is to view them like dominoes, and ask the question: “I can only do one first, which would it be?”
Geoff Woods:
I remember when COVID hit. I mean, I looked at our business and our P&L and I realised 90% of our income was at stake. It was overwhelming. Yet, when I looked at the dominoes, I said, “What’s the one thing I can do? The one thing I can do right now is I can just call our customers, not to sell them, but to serve them, to genuinely check in and see, how are they doing? How is this affecting them? What are their thoughts? What can we possibly do to support them, paid or free? How do we be a partner to them?” Because I just did that one thing to start, not that it’s the only thing I did throughout the day, but because I just made a point of understanding that was the one thing I could do in that moment, the path of everything else truly just showed itself.
Will Barron:
So, Geoff, it took me a good week during the… what can we call it? The toilet paper hysteria phase of COVID right? It genuinely took me a good week to go, “Right,” my conclusion during this period was, “Let’s look at the numbers and see if anything’s changed.” Our sales had gone up, because we do online sales trading, and everyone else in the market wants to push some dude or woman into your office to throw up some PowerPoints and do some slide presentations, because they can charge 20 grand for that versus what they can charge via remote learning or a self-paced course.
Geoff Reveals How Long it Took Him to Realise that All He Needed to Do was Adapt Instead of Changing How He Did Things When Covid Hit · [17:10]
Will Barron:
So, our product sales were not… but it genuinely took me a week of, “Crap, what does this mean? What do I need to change? I need to develop this and do that.” The answer was staring me in the face of, “I need to just keep doing what we’re doing and just keep plodding along.” That’s what I’ve done ever since. Mentally, I’ve been fine during this process. How long did it take you to get to your conclusion to call customers after the initial hysteria? Probably, I assume it came down on you, as it came down to me and probably most of the audience as well.
Geoff Woods:
I mean, the moment that things got real in Austin, because that’s where we’re based out of, Austin, Texas, I got a call from my partner, Jay, that day. He said, “Your business plan for the year is dead. I’m divorcing you from all financial commitments you’ve made, any sales numbers. It’s out the window. Your job is to first and foremost survive. So, stable price, and then start, once that’s done, identify the activities you can start doing so that we come out of this thriving with even more market share. But step one is survive. Get on the phone with your customers, do the Adele script, figure out, build a moat around them so that we’ve got that protected, and figure out where the market is going.”
Geoff Woods:
Will, I was on the phone with people that afternoon. What was amazing was in less than a week, literally in less than five business days, our numbers were up, because I quickly found the need and was able to say, “What if we were able to help you with that?” Because the pain was so high for people, they’re like, “Sure, what do we need to do? Let’s go.” I mean, I had deals that had been stalled that were revived and closed, that were the biggest deals we’ve done in the history of the company as a result of this.
Salespeople Should be Moving Forward and Hunting Down Deals Because the Pandemic Changed the Way We Do Things But There’s Still Money to be Made · [19:12]
Will Barron:
Because that’s good news, right? And I think we should dwell on this a little bit. If you’re doing the biggest deals, we’re just about to do the biggest deal, fingers crossed, by the time this show goes out, it should be done. We’re just about to do the biggest both training deal and then sponsorship deal for the podcast and all the YouTube content that we’ve ever done. You alluded to this at the top of the show, Geoff, that clearly this is industry dependent. There’s no airline sponsors coming our way to promote business travel in the near future. But there is money flowing, the economy, I don’t want to publicise politicise this, but however you look at it, there is ups and downs and things going back and forth, but that’s something that we should keep in mind, right? That deals are getting done right now. We shouldn’t be backing off. We should, as you’re talking about, people should be pushing forward. Right?
Geoff Woods:
Absolutely. I mean, in the history of since economies have been around, there’s been busts and booms. There’s bear markets, there’s bull markets. Money is always flowing. The question is: where do people need help most right now, and how do you help them solve that problem? I want to get really tactical here, Will, because I feel like we’re, for the people that are doing well right now, or it might be in a good mindset, this is probably energising for them. I also want to acknowledge, there’s probably people that are just so overwhelmed right now and unclear on what that next step looks like that it’s almost paralysing.
“As a coach, we know we’ve asked the right question when you actually don’t know the immediate answer because if you know the immediate answer, there’s no growth. There’s no growth in terms of your learning or your mindset.” – Geoff Woods · [21:04]
Geoff Woods:
For those of you that I’m speaking to, I think you have to pause and ask yourself the question, what’s one thing I can do right now such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary? That is a loaded question. For those of you that immediately went, “I don’t know,” that’s okay. As a coach, we know we’ve asked the right question when you actually don’t know the immediate answer, because if you know the immediate answer, there’s no growth. There’s no growth in terms of your learning or your mindset. That question requires that you search. I would suggest to you that your one thing, maybe after you finish this episode, is that you actually open up your paper planner or digital calendar and time block 10 minutes, literally. Can you find and prioritise 10 minutes today where you sit down with a pen and paper, ask the question, and just start journaling the answer?
“Time is our most valuable resource. The problem is, most people spend it, they don’t invest it. They spend their time in their inbox going from meeting to meeting, saying yes if somebody calls them and asks, “Hey, do you got a minute?” They look up at the end of the day being really busy and questioning if they got anything done. That’s spending your time. The people who invest their time hold their seconds accountable to producing a return.” – Geoff Woods · [22:04]
Geoff Woods:
For that 10 minutes, you put your phone on do not disturb, or you put it on aeroplane mode, or God forbid, you turn it off, you shut your email down. I’m not saying minimise, I’m saying hard shut down, or even just turn your computer off. Literally just silence the distractions around you for 10 minutes, your future actually depends on it, and search for the answer. Here’s why this matters, Will. Most people, time is our most valuable resource. The problem is, most people spend it. They don’t invest it. They spend their time in their inbox going from meeting to meeting, saying yes if somebody them them and asks, “Hey, do you got a minute?” They look up at the end of the day being really busy and questioning if they got anything done. That’s spending your time.
“The only way you move from spending to investing time is that you stop reacting to everything.” – Geoff Woods · [22:36]
Geoff Woods:
The people who invest their time hold their seconds accountable to producing a return. The only way you move from spending to investing is that you stop reacting to everything, you actually pause and get clarity on, “Of all the dominoes I can whack away at first, which is the lead one?” What’s that one? Once you have that clarity, just start whacking away at it until it falls.
The Shift from Spending Time to Investing Time: Geoff Coaches Will on Productivity and How to Focus on the One Thing That Will Drive the Most Results · [23:57]
Will Barron:
For me, Geoff, years ago now that I read The ONE… it might’ve been during the beginning of launching the show five, six years ago, a full five years ago, my one thing, which reigns today, is grow the podcast audience. When I grow the podcast audience, we get more sponsorships, more inbound leads, I have to do less selling, we get more training inquiries and then sales to individuals. If I double the podcast audience, my revenue probably doubles alongside that, or near enough, anyway. That’s always been my focus. Obviously then cascading from that, I guess, other dominoes, if we’re using this metaphor or analogy, whatever it is, simile, whichever one it is, then to promote the show and grow it, I have to create content, which then leads to doing everything else down one stream, and then I’ve got to manage all the ads and do prospecting for that. So, everything runs from me, from creating or growing the show’s audience. Can you give us a couple of other examples of this, either for yourself, or without naming your clients, with some of your clients as well?
Geoff Woods:
Yeah, sure.
Will Barron:
Just to make this real for the audience.
Geoff Woods:
Can I coach you here?
Will Barron:
Of course you can.
Geoff Woods:
Okay. I’m turning the tables, because what you’re falling into is what we call an 18th domino. There was a study in 198 published in the American Journal of Physics, that they found that a two inch domino, didn’t just knock down one of equal size, it could actually knock down one that was 50% larger. So, two inches can knock over three, three can knock over four-and-a-half. By the 18th domino, Will, that two inch domino could knock over the Leaning Tower of Pisa. By the 23rd, you can knock down the Eiffel Tower. By the 31st domino, you’re 3,000 feet above Mount Everest, the tallest peak in the world, and by just the 57th domino, you could actually build a structure that would reach almost from the earth to the moon.
Geoff Woods:
Here’s the mistake people make. They envision that earth to the moon. “I’m going to double the size of my podcast audience.” “I’m going to quadruple the size of my podcast audience.” They have a vision or a big goal, but when they try to ask, “What’s my one thing?” “Okay, I’m going to grow the show.” They think it’s their one thing, but it’s actually an 18th domino, meaning the Leaning Tower of Pisa is in fact leaning. Have you ever seen it in real life, Will?
Will Barron:
I haven’t. No.
Geoff Woods:
Okay. It is leaning. If I challenged any one of you to actually run and push it over, could they do it?
Will Barron:
Course not.
Geoff Woods:
No way. But this is what’s happening in our careers and personal lives, is we see something that we feel like we should be able to do, but day after day after day, we’re ramming our head against the wall because it’s still too big. A lead domino, your one thing is a two inch domino. It is so small that effortlessly, with the flick of a finger, it’ll fall. So, Will, can I help you go smaller?
Will Barron:
Course you can.
Geoff Woods:
Guys, pay attention to the questions I’m going to ask here. There’s two 20% questions that drive 80% of the clarity. If he gives me a result, I’m going to ask what’s one thing you can do to accomplish that, and if he gives me something that’s vague, I’m going to ask how will you know if you’re successful? So, you said double the size of the show, for example.
Will Barron:
Sure. Yep.
Geoff Woods:
That’s a result. So, I’ll ask, what’s one thing you can do, Will, such that by doing it would make doubling the show easier or unnecessary?
Will Barron:
The one thing that we’re focused on, this will tie together in a second, that we’re focused on this year is growing the YouTube audience. You’ll know all this, Geoff. I won’t bore the audience too much. Podcasts is not very discoverable platform. It’s very difficult to spread a podcast. YouTube will promote the content on the platform and share your video with like videos, so there’s a growth mechanism there. So, to grow the podcast, I’m trying to grow the YouTube channel.
Geoff Woods:
So, I’m hearing, if you could only pull one lever to grow the podcast audience, it’s growing the YouTube audience?
Will Barron:
Correct, yes.
Geoff Woods:
Cool, cool. What’s one thing you can do to grow your YouTube audience?
Will Barron:
Better, difficult to define better, more consistent YouTube video content.
Geoff Woods:
By the way, folks, Will, did you notice how I asked that question and all of a sudden you’re going… you’re having to really-
Will Barron:
I feel the pressure, Geoff, that’s what’s happening. I’ve got a sweaty armpit. I’m wearing a grey jumper, for everyone listening, a grey polo shirt, this is the worst polo shirt to wear for these kinds of questions.
Geoff Woods:
Note to self, when being asked coaching questions, don’t wear a grey coloured shirt. By the way, Will, you’re not alone. I’m asking questions that are requiring you to search past the wall of I don’t know, and that’s uncomfortable. But the cool thing about right now is we’ve created this space where you can seek that clarity, because then all of a sudden, watch what happens to your focus and your execution. It’s night and day. So, I heard you say create more consistent content.
Will Barron:
Yep.
Geoff Woods:
How will you know if you’re successful? How do you measure the success of consistent content?
Will Barron:
Again, I might be going… I’m sure you’ll coach me onto the right track here, last month we did daily video content and a few podcasts in there as well on YouTube. It did well. The consistent for us is daily content on the YouTube platform.
Geoff Woods:
Awesome. Folks, I’m going to keep pulling the curtain back to walk you through this. He went from consistently create content for YouTube to really defining it. How will we know if we’re successful? I would create a piece of content a day for YouTube. Great. Now that’s something where there’s more accountable, and people might go, “Oh, that’s his one thing.” Create one piece of content a day for YouTube. Nope. Still too big. Will, what’s one thing you can do to make sure you create one piece of content for YouTube a day?
Will Barron:
What I want to say, but I feel like this is a cop-out answer, because this is too perfect to wrap up this part of the show, I should time block some time in my diary every day to create video content.
Geoff Woods:
Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So, making sure that you have time blocked every day to create it. Will, what’s one thing you can do to make sure you have a time blocked?
Will Barron:
Probably hire Geoff to have a big stick behind me every Monday as I’m planning my diary to whack me over the head to when I decide to do some nonsense like Instagram posts.
Geoff Woods:
That’s one option. I would say that’s not your best option. Do me a favour.
Will Barron:
Sure.
Geoff Woods:
By the way, folks, when you hit a wall and you feel like you’re not really sure, watch what I do here. Will, close your eyes.
Will Barron:
Okay.
Geoff Woods:
Take a deep breath. What’s one thing you can do to ensure that every day you have time blocked to create that content?
Will Barron:
I’ll tell you the first thing that came to mind. This might be self-destructive rather than productive. The easiest way to do it, I am a sucker for being accountable to other people, probably a whole conversation in itself. The easiest way for me would probably be to get a sponsor for daily content on YouTube, even if it was just negligible the amount of revenue, and that would be the one thing, being responsible to looking after our partners, that’d probably get me to do it.
Geoff Woods:
That’s interesting. That’s interesting. We could go down that rabbit hole, but I think-
Will Barron:
I feel like that’d be another three hours of psychotherapy right there, Geoff.
Geoff Woods:
I think that’s a distraction. What I’m now doing, because we’re at such a granular level, is what I’m looking for, Will, is a trigger, something that you already do habitually in your day that we can attach this to. One example might be, do you close your computer down every day?
Will Barron:
My computer, Geoff, has been on for about three months and probably needs to be shut down, so no.
Geoff Woods:
Your computer’s going to die.
Will Barron:
Geoff, the answer probably is to just have it as the most important task of the day and do it first thing when I get down. The editing, the production, that’s all fine. Recording is easy. I like being in front of the camera. Obviously, none of this would work otherwise, but it’s the righting of the content.
Geoff Woods:
Hold on. You’re almost there. When you said I every day when I get down, what does that mean?
Will Barron:
Get to the office. What I was saying though, Geoff, was it’s the writing that can be procrastinated on. So, it’s probably get to the office, write a video, or even better, frigging hire someone to write some of the content so I can polish it up afterwards. They’re probably the two avenues, right?
Geoff Woods:
What I really heard you say is it’s actually not the time, it’s having the idea to record.
Will Barron:
Nope, full of ideas. It is literally, and this has been, I was always a student who under-performed through school, college, all that, it’s sitting down and doing the writing. Go on.
Geoff Woods:
When I get to the office, I will pick up a pen and start writing. That’s the lead domino. What do you normally do when you first get to the office?
Will Barron:
I probably check in with the team. That’s the first thing that we do. Then I wouldn’t say it was totally reactive. We have schedules and we do plan things out, but it’s more reactive than sitting down and doing something for myself versus catering to them.
Be Accountable to the One Thing That Drives the Most Results · [32:55]
Geoff Woods:
Here’s your accountability, my friend. You don’t get to talk to your team until you hand them the script, and you need to empower them to say, “I don’t earn the right to huddle with you until I’ve sat down and written out what I’m going to record for YouTube that day, and I need your help.” So, two things just happened here. One, do you believe that when you get to the office, you can grab a pen and start writing?
Will Barron:
Of course.
Geoff Woods:
Do you hear how he said it. Of course.
Will Barron:
I’ll tell you why, Geoff, because subconsciously, something was ticking away in my brain, and maybe it just to be devil’s advocate and for the podcast conversation, perhaps this wouldn’t happen in a one-on-one coaching call, but I was looking for not necessarily an excuse, but I was looking for reasons why… yeah, an excuse, for want of a better way of describing it.
Geoff Woods:
There you go. By the way, if writing the whole thing is too much for you, can you write one sentence?
Will Barron:
Of course, yep.
Geoff Woods:
If people are going, “But that seems insignificant,” folks, I’m not asking you to knock down all 57 dominoes. I’m asking you to knock down one, one that would make knocking down the rest easier or unnecessary, because Will, if you actually sat down, get to the office, sat down, grabbed a pen and wrote one sentence, are you more or less likely to write a second?
Will Barron:
Well, that is it. As soon as I write anything, we’re rocking and rolling. It’s that initial overcoming that procrastination, but I’m not sat there watching telly, we’re doing other tasks.
Geoff Woods:
There you go.
Will Barron:
But, yeah, it’s getting that initial, the document open, everything else closed, a smile on my face and a cup of coffee that we’re actually making progress. I’m happy to write. I actually quite enjoy the writing, but it is that initial, I guess, momentum that you’ve got to… and you mentioned that word a bunch of times in this conversation, Geoff, that momentum that we’ve got to get rocking and rolling with.
Geoff Woods:
That’s right. When you get off of this interview, Will, my hope is that the first thing you do is you go and you actually say to your team, “I just had a conversation. I’m realising the most important thing I can do for this business and to protect your jobs is to continue to grow the size of the podcast audience, because it makes everything else easier or unnecessary. The one thing I can do to grow the audience is to grow our YouTube presence, because it’s discoverable. The one thing I can do to grow the YouTube presence is to make sure that we produce consistent content. We’ll know we’re successful if we launch one piece of content a day on YouTube. The one thing I can do to make sure we get that done is I have to write out what we’re going do for the day.”
Geoff Woods:
“Here’s where I need your help. I need accountability. Moving forward, effective tomorrow, my one thing is to make sure I sit down and write one sentence. When I get to the office, the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to sit down, I’m going to grab a pen, and I’m going to write one sentence. I don’t earn the right to have a huddle with you until that sentence is done, so I need your help that if you see me come and try to huddle with you, you need to ask me, “Did you write your one thing? Did you get it done?” If not, literally push me away.” Will, watch what happens.
Will Barron:
So, you’re tied up the show here, Geoff, and we’ll have you on in the not too distant future, and I’ll report back to the audience whether I’m talking nonsense or whether I committed to this. Obviously, I’m going to try and commit to this, but last time you were on the show, and I’ll link to this in the show notes, we won’t go in depth into it. We had a conversation of what it means to be productive, why we’re being productive, why we are trading our time, our energy on all these basically non-renewable resources for cash and for other opportunities.
Will Reveals How Geoff Coached Him on Accountability and Motivated Him to Start Contributing to Charity · [36:45]
Will Barron:
I don’t know if you remember this conversation. We’ll put you on the spot if you’re unsure of it, but you’ve coached me in that call, and the one thing that I wanted to aspire to, that I wanted to do, was to fund scientific research into things that are slightly underfunded or not interesting for big drugs companies to throw trillions or millions of dollars at. Since our last call, we’ve now donated over $125,000 to these different charities. It’s just a percentage of revenue from the organisation goes to these different companies. That all came from the last call that I had with you, Geoff. So, I wanted to just give you, because that would not exist if it wasn’t for the conversation that we had.
Will Barron:
So, I just wanted to wrap up this conversation on productivity with that, because when you become productive, and this is what I’ve found, as I increase my productivity, as we can donate to charities and these different scientific ventures that we’re helping, in a small way, we’re helping fund, and trying to progress with different things that we do with publicity and that behind them, there’s a reason for the productivity then, and goes full circle and motivates you to put more effort in and to make these changes and to move to uncertainty. I just wanted to wrap up the show with that, Geoff, because you were integral to leading me down that pathway from a coaching perspective, and then everyone associated with these charities, I guess, I can speak on their behalf and say thank you for that as well, mate.
Geoff Woods:
That’s my pleasure. Thank you very much for sharing that.
Parting Thoughts · [38:33]
Will Barron:
Good man. Geoff, I feel like we covered a lot of ground in this one. As always, tell us where we can find out more about you, The One Thing, the podcast, and everything else that you’ve got going on as well, because I’m sure people will want to learn more.
“The world doesn’t need a new way to set goals. You need a way to have a relationship with them. It’s not about setting your goals. It’s about getting clarity on what your goals are and having a really simple path that you can follow to achieve them.” – Geoff Woods · [39:14]
Geoff Woods:
Absolutely. For those of you that are listening on the podcast, the highest value that we can deliver to you for free is our podcast. If you look up The One Thing, The, O-N-E, T-H-I-N-G, The One Thing podcast, you can go find it there. For those of you that would like to figure out how you actually start putting this into practise, our website is the1thing.com. That’s with the number one, instead of being spelled out, so the1thing.com. One of the things that I would say, Will, is I think one of the best things that we do to help people achieve more is the world doesn’t need a new way to set goals. You need a way to have a relationship with them. It’s not about setting your goals. It’s about getting clarity on what your goals are and having a really simple path that you can follow to achieve them.
Geoff Woods:
If you go to the1thing.com/setmygoals, you can learn more about this year we’re facilitating a virtual goal setting retreat series. One weekend is specifically focused on a couples goal setting retreat so that couples can actually be aligned. Again, it’s for individuals and teams. It’s very affordable, and it’s one of the best things that we do. So, for those of you, if you want to take this further, go to the1thing.com/setmygoals.
Will Barron:
Amazing stuff. Well, I’ll link to all of that in the show notes this episode over at salesmen.org. Geoff, I want to thank you for you your time, the mid podcast coaching session as well, and I want to thank you for everything you’re doing over at The One Thing. I’m really a huge fan of you guys, as the audience probably knows by now, the number of times you’ve been on the show. With that, I want to thank you for joining us again.
Geoff Woods:
Awesome, Will. Thanks for having me.
