Chris Kelly on Sales Cookbooks, Habit Stacking, and Personal Motivation

Transcript

0:03 Tell me more about why we shouldn't be focused on it being a business activity and something else.

0:08 Yeah. Um so you know I think I think because it's just not personal, right?

0:14 So if you think of just a hierarchy of a human, right? And and what they care about and some some companies won't like me for saying this is like there's the

0:23 corporate cookbook, right? Or like hey like here's how many I don't know here's here's your quota, right? Imagine that's what drives like uh the waterfall of a

0:32 cookbook, right? From like doing a deal down to okay, what kind of behavior do we need to do to eventually get to a deal and all the math in between, right?

0:40 Like the conversions. So there's there's that which is important and like I mean people care about their jobs, don't get me wrong. And then you know down a layer

0:48 more important like income. So like sometimes we'll see income cookbooks, right? which is like, hey, I want to make, you know, I don't know, $100,000

0:57 and how do I go and do that based on my commissions and what do I need to do each day to get to that income, right?

1:03 Which is closely or more more closely associated to someone's personal goals, right?

1:08 And I think good leaders would would help people figure out what their their personal goals are and how they link back to their income, especially if

1:15 we're dealing with sellers. And then another layer down is is personal stuff.

1:21 Okay. So, income's personal, but but how about things like, you know, just general human improvement, things we want to do every day that we get a buzz

1:30 buzz out of, right? Like, I don't know um exercising or uh you know, journaling or uh reading, right? Like those those

1:37 are all things we read about in books that we should do but we don't always do. Okay? And they and they breed long-term human improvement, right?

1:45 Okay. Uh versus I don't know like the person who doesn't have a cookbook, they they probably death scroll, right? for for too many hours of the day. You know what I'm saying, right?

1:53 Um, and don't get me wrong, I I scroll sometimes, but I also make sure I I hit my journal, I hit my exercise, I hit my my reading, or even things like

2:02 investing or paying down debt, whatever someone's financial situation is, right?

2:06 So, I think that's another layer down, right, in the into the personal world of I want a recipe to succeed, right? Um,

2:14 so, so that's what I think about when it comes to like business versus personal stuff and and getting layers down into the cookbook. Um, which can breed, I think, better habits, right?

2:26 Yeah. So, is it more of like making it more personal to somebody or like helping them find like an intrinsic motivation

2:34 so that it becomes really easy to perform on?

2:37 Um, sorry, repeat that question one more time. Is it is it like the goal here with like reframing it? Is it make it

2:45 personal or more intrinsic versus like you know like saying all right here my external motivator is uh I want to you

2:55 know please the the corporate you know cookbook idea versus like my internal motivator would be this is this is something that I

3:02 actually care about internally or just hey this is more just personal for me and that's what the important part is.

3:08 Yeah, I think I think it should be it should be two, right? So again, it's not that you know a personal cookbook should just have all personal stuff in it. I

3:17 think yeah, what I'm suggesting is that at least in my experience having struggled with you know I've been doing this for about 15

3:24 years with Sandler. So call it like I can't exactly remember call it like by you know year seven of having a cookbook and like being in and out of the

3:33 cookbook, right? Like starting over again. Oh my, you know, like or I don't know, like I've got a a pipeline problem, right? And and oh, better do my

3:40 cookbook again, right? That's sort of like I think the the wave that we see with most clients and I'll put myself into that mix.

3:48 And then realizing like okay, like the you know the even the income thing or the corporate thing isn't breeding discipline. So I I need something more intrinsic if I use your language.

3:58 Yeah. The intrinsic part is like the part that I really care about that I want to get done. Okay? And that gets me

4:07 into, you know, the cookbook. Imagine like opening up the cookbook. So like I've got some intrinsic things like journaling or, you know, investing,

4:14 right? Uh once a week that gets me into the cookbook early in the day. And then what I get when I get in there early in

4:22 the day is I get all the reminders about other things that are important. So it breeds the discipline. Like the term

4:30 I've heard before from a colleague of mine and there's there's some psychology written about this is habit stacking.

4:36 Okay. Um have you heard of of habit stacking?

4:40 Uh offhand but Okay. Yeah.

4:43 So it's like the simplest analogy I can give around habit stacking is most of us we've spent our lives brushing our teeth. Right. Okay. But most of us well I guess myself I struggle with flossing.

4:55 Okay. So, right there.

4:56 There you go. Right. So, like, so the idea is is if I brush my teeth every day and I know I'm going to do that and I want to add another habit, I just

5:05 make sure the flossing or like I don't know the multivitamin, whatever it is for for the person is next to me brushing my teeth, right? Because I know I'm going to brush my teeth.

5:15 So, if I brush my teeth and I got and my my multivitamin is right next to it, I've got a better chance of taking the multivitamin and eventually breeding

5:22 another habit. So it's, you know, you stack a habit on top of another, right?

5:27 Same idea with the cookbook. Okay? If I, if I know that I've got a passion about, you know, journaling early in the morning, if that's part of my cadence,

5:35 and I believe that will help me improve as a person, which I care deeply about. Yeah.

5:40 Okay. That's my habit. That's my my passion. It gets me into the cookbook where I'm passionate, but

5:47 I'm less passionate about building my business. And it reminds me about all the behaviors I've got to do.

5:53 And uh then I you know start hitting on the behaviors, I fulfill the cookbook and I win my day, right? Whether it's,

6:01 you know, closing a deal or just getting some prospecting done or calling on existing accounts where I've got good relationships, all those things that we

6:10 should be doing every day. Does that make sense?

6:12 Yeah. So, so I I think I wasn't following it early on, but basically what you're saying is, hey, integrate the activities to grow your business, to

6:21 be successful with your personal life activities. It makes it easier to do. Uh so uh one of the things that you know I

6:30 try to stay disciplined on is like working out and I have a home gym and I find myself very very busy all the time

6:37 but like around midday I'll just be like all right I'm going to like send an email and then go do a rep and then I'm going to come back and I'm going to you

6:45 know fix this issue and then I'm going to go do a rep and then I'm going to and like it becomes like this overlapping instance of I'm kind of you know making

6:53 you know my cold calls and I'm working out at the same time that's intertwined and it's kind of a nice way to be able

7:00 to like hey make it all happen and from what I'm understanding from your perspective is hey just instead of

7:07 instead of separating these two things integrate them get your easy wins or your more personal wins uh in and then

7:15 combine those. Um I like that as like a as an easy way to like start the ramp up period instead of like sitting there cold and looking at something be like I

7:24 don't feel like doing it. It's like, no, I'm already doing it. Yeah. Exactly. Right. So, I'm Yeah.

7:28 Exactly. I'm already in the recipe. I'm already in the ingredients of the cookbook. Yeah.

7:33 So, you know, and I've got other things to do again that I'm I may be less passionate about. But, by the way, I should share you I think

7:41 I'm thinking of clients as well as, you know, being a bit self- serving, which is that's been my experience, but others others, you know, what they probably

7:48 need in their cookbook is their daily cookbook, right? is is um they need to add some personal stuff. They got a passion about business. Like that's just

7:57 how they're wired, right? Okay. And that's what gets them in. Um meanwhile though, like you know, you hear things like burnout and stuff like that, you

8:05 know, I think that's that's also a a place where we can become more agile with our life. So if I if if I get, you

8:12 know, my business cookbook completed, am I on my way to burnout or do I still take care of myself? Right? And again, I'll use the examples I shared earlier,

8:19 like am I reading a little bit? Am I am I journaling a little bit? Am I um you know exercising or getting a breath of fresh air now that the weather's a bit

8:27 warmer? Uh depending on where people live, right? Yeah.

8:31 Yeah. So with so with the habit stacking, what have you seen as like um effective strategies to like really pair

8:38 the habits correctly or like start that process of understanding how?

8:44 Yeah. Well, I think um I think it starts with a process of understanding what you want, right? And we'll be generic here, call that goal setting, right? I think a

8:52 lot of people have goals between their ears, but they've not gone through like that formula really figuring out what you want. Like if if you can see it over uh what is it my left shoulder here?

9:03 Okay, you know there's there's the vision board. Um you know that's where annually we put together our ideas. We get visual with them and that that

9:12 becomes like highly congruent with things that go into our cookbook, right? You it's like that staircase, right?

9:18 like you want something cool uh but what are the stairs or the steps to get there right and those initial steps are like the behavioral cookbook

9:26 if you know what I'm saying right so I think it's it first off it's got to be you know people need to understand themselves and and that can take time

9:34 and effort um you know second is identifying yes the behaviors that are going to going to take us up that

9:42 staircase towards the goals we want right um and then thirdly of course it's activating and figuring out like over time I think what we're actually

9:51 passionate about what we care about right which is often the habits we're willing to partake in but like making a

9:59 cold call sometimes we're not willing or we're less willing to partake in that okay so it's like what am I willing to

10:06 do and then what am I less willing to do and do they live in the same template or or you know recipe if you would and and

10:13 that's I think what I've seen as effective Yeah.

10:18 I mean, not to get too meta, but like could if somebody is trying to trying to figure out how to have it stack,

10:26 maybe part of the cookbook would be, well, let me spend time figuring out how to do this. And that could be then eventually evolve to the point where you

10:34 go, all right, I I'm going to spend time each day. I'm going to do my activities to figure out how I'm going to, you know, put together the cookbook. And

10:42 then as it starts coming together, I start eliminating the necessity of starting the journey.

10:48 Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. I agree with you. And um you know, I think uh we got to be careful with this topic as

10:55 well because sometimes when we when we start that journey and you know, we try to figure

11:02 out the habit too quickly sometimes we'll falter, right? So we shouldn't be hard on ourselves. Again, I'll go back to what I said earlier, you know? You

11:12 think I'd be able to figure it out in seven years, but I was in and out of the cookbook and in and out of discipline and, you know, um I would need like

11:20 painful moments to re-engage in in the discipline until I' I'd say yeah, about the last 8 years, highly consistent.

11:27 Okay. Uh if I'm honest, where I fall out of my cookbook a little bit is coming up because again, I'm in Toronto um and um

11:36 yeah, we're into our warm weather season.

11:38 Yeah. So sometimes it can slip a little bit, especially if I've got, you know, a couple of weeks off, right? I'll I'll

11:46 I'll tend to slip even out of my personal cookbook items, right? Which I mentioned earlier, like journaling, exercising, reading, like I'll still do

11:53 some of that, but I'll forget to track it, right? Okay. And then um uh and then sometimes that can have an impact on my business cookbook because when I stop tracking my personal stuff, guess what?

12:04 I stop tracking my business stuff. Okay?

12:06 And that can be like the slippery slope where I stop understanding my business or you know gaps in my uh in my efforts.

12:14 Right. So um yeah so this good reminder for me I shouldn't slip this this summer period. Right. So appreciate you.

12:22 Yeah. Give yourself some grace. Right.

12:24 Yeah. Um I guess so you know it's one thing to say like uh it's all about consistency like that that's the easy

12:32 part to say that and then there's the follow through and like you said that you had like that moment of like you know uh the seven year mark to 8 year mark

12:40 all of a sudden it seems like it switched like what was the change there? What was the catalyst?

12:46 How did you create the the actual output instead of just the uh the effort for it?

12:51 Yeah. Yeah. uh well I guess probably a little bit of experience with you know trying to do it. So call that some chemistry and not getting the right outcome.

13:00 So changing changing and getting those personal areas in there and just saying okay like what do I really want to track? What do I really want? And

13:09 you know this is going to sound like very like high level but just want to feel good. Okay that was like basically

13:16 what I wanted. I just wanted to feel good feel energized.

13:20 Um yeah, like just be happy. Okay. And again, that's super high level, isn't it? But that's where like you know the

13:28 basics of life like exercising, feeding yourself properly, you know, reading, journaling came in. Um but the other the

13:35 other piece, the other the other I'd say like um point of of uh where like I I

13:43 hinged into being more disciplined was I was just fed up with not being disciplined. Yeah.

13:47 Okay. Um, you know, you you you know, cookbooking and and tracking and paying attention to what you do to make sure you're doing the right things when

13:56 you're doing them, like being intentional with your day.

14:00 That sounds great. Okay. But the evidence was I was not doing it, which was creating choppiness. And I just at

14:08 some point I just got fed up. I'm like, "Okay, I'm gonna do this. I got to figure it out, but I want to I want to get a bit of, you know, dopamine buzz

14:17 when I do it. And that's where the personal stuff came in. Right.

14:20 Okay. So, that that was the that's where this is like recommendation came from is hey, what if I in like combine these two things, the personal and the business.

14:29 Yeah.

14:30 Then you started combining it and then that's when it became sticky. And then prior you hadn't done that. Oh, okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yeah.

14:38 Supposed to pick up early on. I'm being Oh, that's my fault.

14:42 My fault. Yeah. And I think that's the journey, you know, most clients go on, right? Is, you know, they look at the the Sandler

14:49 cookbook and it's like bing. It's a business thing, right? It's a corporate thing. It's a micromanagement thing even sometimes, right? People think of it

14:57 that way. Um, and that's a good place to start. Like we all need to go through our journey.

15:02 Yeah. Um, but I I'd say if you if you can, you know, cut the journey short and like get into the cookbook, I think

15:10 having personal stuff in there that people are again innately passionate for is is really a good thing. Yeah. Yeah.

15:17 Well, I think you know what's interesting about like uh finding the reward and like the the business side of

15:24 the cookbook. Um, you know, as as humans, we're kind of wired to not really be able to fully understand like

15:32 long-term effects. Like, we all understand that it's supposed to be important, but it's not intuitive to have it. And anything that goes into like, hey, here's the habits that I'm

15:41 going to establish for growing my business, you're going to see those in like 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, like a year

15:49 later. And so, while you're working through something, you're like, "All right, is this going to work for me?" You got to wait so long and pick up the

15:58 phone and, you know, make the email and do like the diligent thing that's just like not the fun sexy stuff.

16:05 And you're going to have to wait for a long time to be able to see, hey, is this actually paying off? What are the repercussions? Like, oh, like the pipeline I see today is from six months

16:14 ago. The pipeline I see in six months is from today. And it's, you know, it's one of those things where it's like that's kind of hard, you know, as as a human

16:22 just to like really wrap your head around it at times.

16:25 Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Um, do you want me to comment on that? Please.

16:30 Um, I think I think uh yeah, the results is what you're talking about can be further out, right? Um, depending on and

16:38 we're getting into sales now, like a cycle, but even like human improvement, like think about it like you know, if you want a bigger bicep, you can't just do three reps and get a big bicep. It's

16:47 it's no different, right? Um, but I think the buzz that you get or don't get, you know, at the end of each day is

16:55 when you do the the discipline and and you fuel the math, you know, like whether it's u, you know, making call

17:02 attempts into a new client or making call attempts into existing clients depending on your role or again doing

17:09 three three curls like biceps curls. At the end of the day, the human when they have a cookbook and they've got their

17:17 math, one of two things happen. They either know they did it and that gives us a buzz because we did the tough stuff. We know it. And that that is the that's the daily buzz you get, right?

17:28 Which feels great. Now, on the other side of the equation, we either know our math and we don't do it

17:37 and we know we know we didn't do it. And that that can hurt, okay? That can kind of like

17:45 suck us dry, okay? You know what I'm saying? Like uh and leave us not feeling great because we know we didn't do it, okay? Between the years. And usually,

17:53 how does that reflect? It reflects in, you know, how we behave and are we happy or or not so happy versus when we do do it, even if we don't get, you know, that

18:01 result right away, we're only going to get in six months. We're on our way and we know it. Okay. Um, like I think of again I I'll I'll take I'll go back to

18:10 my first year in this business when I had zero dollars in revenue and I did for a while by the way. It was a tough start. Um, and uh, you know, I was in my

18:19 life I I had at the time you know three kids at home and like you know a home to pay for and I I'd left a corporate job

18:26 all that kind of stuff. Um, and I remember coming home from the office some days where I didn't do it

18:34 and I knew it and I wasn't, you know, I wasn't the best person I should be at at home those evenings, right, around

18:42 like people I deeply care about. But the days I did do it, didn't matter what happened, I'd come home and and family

18:50 members like they knew I did I did my stuff that day. In fact, like here's a super secret. Uh, I remember early days

18:58 in doing like especially like the cold prospecting cookbook that we had to do to to build up the business.

19:04 Um, my son Ryan, he's 21 now, so but this is about 15 years ago. So, he was a little guy. He was really my accountability partner. So, he would check in with me at the end of each day.

19:16 Yeah.

19:16 And ask me if I if I did my prospecting behavior, which is primarily what we had to do back then. And we had a little thermometer.

19:24 Okay. and he would get to color in if I did did my behavior based on the number of attempts I had to make and the number of conversations I was supposed to have.

19:34 Uh so yeah, I guess call it child labor, but uh he was helpful at the time. It was he was a good accountability partner. Yeah.

19:40 Yeah. No, I I think that's an okay use of child labor. I grew up on a farm. We had to do a bunch of farm activity which

19:48 still hold like near and dear to my heart.

19:51 I think it was a lot more effort than you know coloring in a thermometer.

19:55 Yeah, he was just coloring in. So, and event and we're still doing what we're doing. And uh you know, bluntly like speaking of personal stuff, we've you know, we've gotten to do some cool stuff

20:03 with our kids because of all of those initial efforts, right?

20:07 So, um yeah, sometimes you just got to be patient and again get the buzz from doing the behavior. That's the gift, right? You know you won your day when

20:15 you do the behavior, when you do the tough stuff. You know you kind of lost your day when you don't. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, of all the

20:23 positions that you can have within an organization from a business perspective, to me, sales is the most

20:29 emotional. And then to try to carve out an emotional place here and then carve

20:37 out a different one in your home and then not be like, "Oh, these things are completely separate." It's like, that's no, they're going to be totally entwined. They're going to be both

20:46 emotional spaces. do the things what I'm picking up from you is, you know, do the things in your in your work life to make

20:53 sure that your emotions are strong and feel good when you go then take take it home to your home life. And if that's what's going to be like the interplay

21:00 between those two things, then why would you separate them is, you know, bring the the home and the emotional part of the home and the emotional part

21:08 of the work into a single idea. make it very like intentional so that then you can really think through how that's

21:16 gonna like, you know, build the momentum in both areas. Um, it's interesting. I I would have never thought of it this from this perspective

21:24 of, you know, I got my cookbook. I'm like, "All right, my cookbook is call, email, LinkedIn." And it's like, that's uh that's one way to do it.

21:35 And then there's like a much more holistic perspective to then have it bring it all together. Yeah. Yeah. And again, like I said earlier, Austin, like, you know, different styles, right?

21:45 I mean, for some, like, you know, what you described, which is like, you know, call meeting, you know, close, whatever, right? I mean, that works for them, like

21:53 they're they're in they they they want that they want that math and they want to fuel it. Like that's just what motivates them at that period in their life. For

22:01 others, you know, maybe to do the tough business stuff, you need you need again some some help from some of the personal

22:08 passions. That was that was just my experience, right? So, uh and you know, there's plenty of people out there in the world who are of my style if you

22:16 think of just people stylistically and how they they think and what motivates them. So, um so it'd be applicable to a good chunk of the population.

22:23 Yeah. If uh if we were going to assign it to like a disk personality, do you think that there's like a hey, if

22:32 you're a D, then you're probably you're probably going to want to separate the thing and just pick math. And then if you're is Yeah.

22:39 Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You're right in that quadrant, right? If we think of like, you know, the more bottom line styles are the dominance, the reds, the

22:47 D's, the the C's. Okay. Although they like chemistry, right, in math. So they're more like just yeah, a bit more

22:55 calculated and bottom line if you would, right? And then yeah, the I's and the S's. They might need a bit of the more

23:02 like, you know, intuitive emotionbased stuff to help them remind them about the chemistry, the math, and to get it done,

23:11 right? Yeah. So, I think you're you're spot on there.

23:13 Nice. Cool. All right. We had our upfront contract to to have this meeting for 30 minutes. We're at the 30 minute mark. I I hope you don't mind, but do

23:21 you would you spend like the next 30 seconds, a minute, you know, what what's the one big takeaway you want people to have from listening in?

23:30 Yeah, good question. Um, I think that everyone has had a

23:41 cookbook, and I don't mean like a, you know, a recipe cookbook. Yeah, everyone at some point in their life,

23:50 especially cuz we're it's probably adults listening to this, um has had some sort of like cookbook,

23:58 okay? Where they had to they had to put ingredients into something to achieve an excellent outcome, right? Whether that's

24:05 uh you know I don't know you trained for a triathlon and like you knew what the the training inputs needed to be you

24:13 track them and then you you hit your time goal or some other some other version that that's just one example. We've all had one.

24:21 Okay. And and for people struggling with the sales cookbook, I want them to think back to that time they did have a cookbook and why did they lean in? Why

24:30 did they lean in? Okay. Why do they want the inputs? Why do they want to track it? Cuz they really ultimately just want the goal, right? And if they can think

24:38 back to what fueled them to wanting to track and and get there and do the tough stuff, I think sometimes that's where we

24:45 find our motivational triggers that can help us build, keep, track, and fuel a business

24:54 or sales cookbook. So, I think that would be the biggest takeaway.

24:57 Nice. Yeah. I mean, I really appreciate this. you've given me a whole new perspective on cookbook and how to think

25:05 about it. And I I'm more of an is so I'm probably the one that's this most relevant to uh and I hadn't it would

25:13 never have occurred to me until you you know you walked me through all this kind of stuff and I really appreciate that insight.

25:20 Yeah. No, thanks Austin. I' I've enjoyed the the conversation. Appreciate it. All right. Placement.