My friend and colleague Nathaniel Montgomery used to teach improv comedy. He noticed that when he asked for volunteers, very few adults would raise their hands. Only the ones who had experience and felt confident in their improv skills would volunteer to come up on stage. But those who were there as beginners to learn improv wouldn’t volunteer to try it.

Logically, that makes no sense. How were they to learn the skill without practicing? But I’m sure many of us can relate. As a general rule, adults only volunteer to play a game that they’re good at. In the improv class, they only wanted to come up if they could have a perfect turn and impress everyone.

Contrast that with the improv classes he taught to children. In the children’s class, when Nathaniel asked for volunteers, every child would raise their hand. They would be wriggling in their seats, waving their hands, hoping to get called on. Even the kids who were on stage because they just had their turn would raise their hands to go again. They didn’t care if they were good or not. They only cared about the fun of playing the game.

The irony is, the more people cared about looking good on stage, the more stiff they were and the worse the performance was. The more they were afraid of being boring, the more boring they were. The more that people did not care about how they performed, the more relaxed they were and the better the performance was. So in the adult improv class, they had a mantra: “I suck and I love to fail.” They did exercises and games that celebrated failure. The more the players became okay with not looking good, the better they looked on stage.

It’s a lot like falling in love. When a young man has decided that Jane is the only woman for him, and he’s got to have a date with Jane or else, and if he doesn’t get Jane to fall in love with him and marry him his life will be over, how relaxed is he going to be in asking Jane out? He’ll probably be so tense that he’ll scare her away. And if he does get the date, he’ll be so concerned about impressing her that he’ll be stiff and formal and needy that she’ll never want to see him again. Have you ever said, “Why do the guys who don’t need a girlfriend attract all the girls? Some people just have all the luck!” But it’s not luck! It’s the fact that they don’t need anything that has them relaxed an fun and just being themselves, and that’s attractive!

How would you be in your sales calls if you didn’t care about making the sale? If you were just having fun with having a conversation with someone and finding out all about their needs and challenges and looking for ways you could help them solve their problems? A lot of us sales people are competitive. But what if we stopped caring about winning, stopped caring about looking good, stopped caring about being the best salesperson, stopped caring about being a success, and just started caring. Caring about our prospects and clients. Having fun with the game.

So be average. Be boring. Be okay with losing. Be okay with failure. Play the game even though you suck. And then you’ll start playing better than you’ve ever played before.

Steve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson

The Man Who Planted Trees is an inspiring short story that I’ve enjoyed reading and re-reading many times. It is a testament to the power of one man to transform the world and to touch thousands of lives, even if no one knows who he is. It also shows us how happy we can be without the frantic clutter of modern life when our lives are lived in service to others. To me, the story is impressive both at face value and as an allegory of our business and our lives.

During my recent time of planning, I was reminded that the most powerful planning is when we invest our time in activities that will pay off for years to come, not just in the short term.

As a gift to you, here is an illustrated version of the story in PDF form:
http://number1employee.com/files/The-Man-Who-Planted-Trees.pdf

Enjoy!

Steve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.

High school. We all remember it. The anxieties. The drama. The cliques. The pain of being looked down on. Death by a thousand cuts.

Besides the endeavor to get an education (or a boyfriend or girlfriend), or the related athletic or artistic activities, the main thing many of us focused on in high school is “Do they like me?” What we wore, how we walked, how we talked, what we said or did, even what we ate, was all calculated in terms of how we would be looked at by other people.

Unfortunately, too often that type of thinking carries over into our adult lives, and can affect our sales or our business. In a sales conversation, if I’m thinking, “What will they think of me?”, I’ve already lost. Now my focus is on me instead of on serving the client. If I have a client that’s hired me to advise them, but they’re not taking the recommendations and not doing what they should, my wanting them to like me does not serve them. Because it allows them to keep doing the activities that get the wrong results.

For me to be an adult, a professional, I am no longer focused on “Will they like me?” Instead, I am doing what needs to be done and speaking what needs to be said, in a way that truly serves the other person. And everyone benefits.

Steve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.