The Value of Tenacity – The Story of Maurice “The Rocket” Richard was one of a series of Value Tales books my parents bought for us kids.  This book was a storybook tale on how The Rocket made it to the NHL.

I’ve hung on to the books, and now my kids are reading them.  I was reading the Value of Tenacity book with my kids the other night and wondered if reading it as a young kid helped to shape me into who I am today.

Some interesting quotes came out of the story book, here’s a few for you to consider:

“no one ever gets ahead who quits when the going gets tough”

“all you need is tenacity”

“The only way you’re going to improve is to play with and against players who are better than you are”

“We all have a lesson to learn from Maurice Richard; that with complete an utter dedication to our work we can achieve great things”

The Rocket was a fierce competitor, he was the first to score 50 goals in a season and was the first to reach 500 career goals.  When he retired he was the all time leading scorer in the NHL.

If you think about it.  Tenacity is a trait that most of us had as a baby or child.  Unfortunately, for some it is bred out of them some how.  Over the years, I’ve had a slump here and there and as a pick me up I go back to the time I got my first high paying job.

I had just finished 1st year university and it was time to find a summer job.  I always had a job waiting for me in the family business but I wanted to experience what most people did…work for someone else.  I knew the things I didn’t want to do: work at McDonald’s, or Kmart as a stock boy.  I was willing to try something different…I sold Webster’s Dictionaries door-to-door.  I sold a few but for the amount of books I had to lug around I decided it wasn’t worth it.  I tried selling Kirby Vacuums door-to-door…I made one demonstration sold none – packed it in.

In the meantime, a couple of my friends landed jobs at the Department of Highways & Transportation – a government dream job.  They made it sound like the cat’s meow.  They worked on an engineering crew, worked outside, got paid $16.00/ hour and often times a lot more with all the overtime work.  I decided that I wanted to do exactly what my friends did.  There was only one problem – they were not hiring.  That fact did not deter me, I still went in and applied for a job – I was rejected, hiring was done for the summer.  For 2 weeks straight, I would visit the office every other day to see if things had changed.  One day the hiring manager finally relented…”you just don’t give up eh kid?  Go buy some steel toed boots you can start tomorrow”.  I had scored the jackpot.  The icing on the cake was that once you were hired you were an automatic hire every summer. 

I use that same tenacity today for everything I set my mind at accomplishing.  Got goals?  How bad do you want to reach them?  In sales, we experience rejection all the time.  How you deal with rejection and overcome it is what separates you from mediocre to sales superstar.  How do you become a superstar?  by being tenacious, by offering value, by learning new sales techniques, by networking more, by branding yourself as a resource for everything, by becoming a hub, a connector, the go to guy or gal.  Take action!

Most humans go through 4 levels of learning. 

Ever analyze a baby walking or figured out the process of riding a bike?  The process of learning how to walk or ride a bike is the same.

Step One – Unconscious Incompetence

Simply stated, you don’t even know what you don’t know.  I find it funny when people say I’m no good at this or no good at that…well how do you know?  Last time I checked, most of us are born into the world with the same skill set…breathing, eating, crying, peeing and pooping.  Everything else is learned.

Step Two – Conscious Incompetence

This is the step where you realize how crappy you are at doing something and how difficult it is to do.  This is where a good majority of skill attainment or goal achievement is abandoned because of poor self-esteem, lack of willpower, tenacity or courage to forge ahead.

Step Three – Conscious Competence

In this step, you powered through step 2 and realize you can do the skill that you’ve set out to learn.  Having said this, you are still doing it the hard way…perhaps relying on sheer willpower to get you through.  In the case of riding a bike, you see this phase just before the training wheels come off.  The balance isn’t quite there yet so you force the body awkwardly in the opposite direction to try and maintain the bike upright on 2 wheels.  Or in the case of learning how to golf, your head is filled with so many swing thoughts the end result is an un-natural looking and ineffective swing.

Step Four – Unconscious Competence

This is the stage where what was previously difficult becomes automatic.  You attain this stage with repetitive practice.  Any skill can be mastered and become automatic with enough practice.  Ask Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods how many shots or swings they’ve taken over their careers and they’ll tell you hundreds of thousands of times.  Ask them how many times they’ve done the same in their mind and herein lies the secret…they’ve rehearsed their routines in their mind just as many times if not more than they did physically.

Listen to any champion’s after speech.  Most of them will say that they’ve envisioned this moment all my life or I practised that shot over and over again in my head as a kid.

Walt Disney once said – “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”

The key to becoming good at anything is taking ACTION.  It’s also important to understand that the sub-conscious mind is a POWERFUL engine that once tapped into can make skills easy to master or goals easier to attain just like riding a bike becomes easy and automatic.

Everyone of us has the ability to get to step four quickly for any skill or desired outcome.  Conscious physical effort gets you there and mental visualization will help you get over the top. 

To learn more about visualization techniques check out these articles:

Visualization Techniques and Sports Performance

How To Use Imagery and Self-Hypnosis for Sports

Remember, these techniques can be used for any skill or outcome you wish to have.

Usually around the end of December or early January people wonder how do I get a raise.  I read a post from Darren Hardy at success.com on Our Love-Hate relationship with Money that addresses this issue. 

Here’s my take on HOW to GET a RAISE:

I tend to agree with Hardy, in that money is really a report card on how much value you bring to the table.  This is why I think running a business or being a commissioned salesperson is the ultimate way of determining your value.  Your bank account is your on-going feedback mechanism to determine if you are making the grade.  Did you put more into your bank account compared to last month or the same period last year?  If not, why?  In Hardy’s article he states…

cross out M-O-N-E-Y and replace it with V-A-L-U-E…

this is your clue.

In a sales environment it’s easy to get a raise….offer more VALUE to your clients.  How do you do that?  In any way, shape or form that will help make their lives easier or better.  When you can do that your clients usually reward you in the form of more business or more referrals.

I’m a salaried employee…how do I get a raise?  Pretty simple, once you understand this plain and simple truth.  As an employee, you are an expense item on the income statement.  And for the most part, businesses only care about 3 things:

1. how to increase revenues,
2. how to minimize expenses,
3. how to earn the most profit,

So, if you are a salaried individual you need to figure out how to become an asset.  Assets when deployed properly either generate revenues or increase profits through efficiency…which camp do you fit in?  Can you increase sales or make things more efficient?  You get your raise when the cost of losing you far outweighs the cost of giving you a raise.

I’ve always had the belief that if you chase the MONEY it will always elude you.  But if you strive to offer VALUE…the MONEY will follow.

You can get Darren’s Article by going to this post: Our Love-Hate Relationship with Money

You bet you can.  Queue in Gary Vaynerchuk.  He’s a 30 something guy from New Jersey who took over the family wine business.  How did he do it?  He started blogging with one sole purpose in mind – helping people.  Helping people understand wine.  You can check out his blog called WineLibrary.

From Gary’s About Me page you’ll see his key goals for the blog are twofold: “First, I want people to try different wines. How can you have a favorite if you only know a few? Second, I tell people to trust their palates. If a wine appeals to your palate, then it’s a good choice. Don’t feel pressured to like popular brands or what experts recommend. Buy what ‘brings the thunder’ for you.”

In the video I’ve attached below you see Vaynerchuk at a speaking engagement at Web 2.0 Expo NY.  Where he answers questions like:

• if you’re not happy in life what should you do?
• why you need to build a brand,
• does he like answering  what wine goes with beef?,
• what you need to do to succeed,
• what tools should you use to build your brand?
• the fundamental question you need to ask yourself,
• what opportunities are out there,
• can you get started without cash?,
• why do people not succeed?

The video is from a couple years ago…personally I found it motivational and I hope you do too.  Enjoy.

You want to talk about commitment?  How about committing to wearing a name tag for a consecutive 3674 days?  In fact, Scott has actually tattooed a name tag on his chest.  Scott Ginsberg has made a brand of himself by being approachable and by being a bit of a contrarian.

He recently did a video interview on The Rise to The Top which discusses:

• How the Name Tag Thing Started,
• How The Name Tag Thing turned into a business that generates well over 6 figures for him annually (for the most part without any hired help),
• Scott’s System of Offering Value,
• Some keys to marketing & promoting yourself online and offline,
• His key to execution,

…much much more.

It’s a 40 minute video so if you’re pressed for time here are some of my take-a-ways and my thoughts:

It all starts with ACTION…it’s a fundamental law of physics.  Things don’t move unless force is applied.  In the world of commerce, it can be argued that if you’re doing nothing your actually moving backward because your competitors are doing something.

Don’t worry so much about “HOW” you’re going to something versus “WHY”.  “HOW” is the biggest contributor to stifling ACTION.  Get on the path toward “WHY” a figure the “HOW” along the way because “HOW” always changes.

You should always be MARKETING…PERIOD!  If your VALUE proposition can’t be found then people can’t pay you for it can they?

Don’t worry about becoming or being an expert…be a resource instead.  The reality is that people only really care about how YOU can make THEIR world a better place for THEM.

To be GREAT you need a SYSTEM.

In order to Win you need COMMITMENT.  Are you committed to:

• honing your craft or value proposition?,
• providing VALUE to your customer?,
• your family?,
• to YOU?