Sam Taggart – The Importance Of Grit

15 Min Read

Last Updated: August 23, 2021
Ad 00:06 Hey, this is Mike at Salesrabbit.com. We’ve got four great new product coming out: Movers, Weather, Data Grid AI, and Digital Contracts. These things are going to change the face of the field sales industry come visit us at salesrabbit.com to learn more. Sam Taggart 00:20 Hi everybody my name is Sam Taggart with door to door podcast and today’s another episode that I’m just doing by myself I found that sometimes I just go through these concepts and and and I just like to get them out and share them with the world. So if you’ve liked our podcast, we really appreciate shares, feedback, reviews, likes, whatever that is. And you know before I dive into this reminder, we have the recruiting summit coming up September 23, and 24th. We’ve got our 26th in Austin, Texas, we’ve got a what else Oh, ultimate sales boot camp where Cole Hatter and Cody Sperber, the clever investor, these guys are like juggernauts in the real estate world and sales world. And we’re going to be in Arizona, August 30. And first, so don’t miss that. And limited ticket on both of these, I think we only have probably 30 tickets as sales or as to recruiting summit and probably 50 tickets, the ultimate sales bootcamp left. So if you really want to step up your game and learn from some of the best and invest in yourself and say, hey, let’s go let’s go to those events or go to our website that add that add experts calm and and look on our events section and you’ll find access to those. So I’m going to dive in. So as you guys have known, you know, I’ve kind of had this theme the knock life recently because, you know, I believe everybody has opportunities to just go to go knock the door and get it and I used to have a team named grit. And back my first year at Vivint, 2012. There is a guy named Nick cancer and co managed a squad and it was staying for grit, which is grind relentless improvement and teamwork. And we came up with this acronym. And, you know, I want to kind of dive into this concept because I think the door to door world in the direct sales world is some of the most grittiest people when Jordan Belfort came to speak at door to door con a couple years ago, he was like wow, like this brought me back to my roots. He used to sell meat door to door and then he also didn’t the stocks and stuff like that. But what’s cool is a lot of people that see door door people and know them for what they are, there’s an element of like, Oh, I couldn’t do that. That would be way too hard for me. And when people say that I almost kind of perk up and I’m like, yep, I am in a hard job. And I am doing something that’s tough. And I am proud of how good I am at it and how hard I work at it and how much I’ve practiced at it. And there is an element of grit that you don’t have that I do. And I’m willing to, I’m willing to hustle for what i what i want to make. And you know, so there’s this element of in James chapter one, verse 22, it says, be doers of the word, not hearers only deceiving your own selves. And so there’s this element of false hustle that I don’t want you to get trapped in. And when we get trapped in this hell, like I’m working so hard, I’m doing the things I’m, I’m saying the right things, or whatever it is. And it’s, there’s so many times where we’re just, we’re talkers, and hearers, and learners, and you’re like, I watched all of Sam’s videos, and I’m like, that’s fantastic. But you don’t do the work. And I was talking to a friend the other day, because I’m out knocking a lot still and, and I was like, Man, it’s so crazy to see how many people go through all of our stuff, get training, get get support, earn a great opportunity, and just that or not. And I’m like, you’re never gonna get paid. I mean, it feels good to be part of the team, it feels good to be on, like on the roster and have a jersey, but you don’t get paid. And so there’s a rep that, Oh, this is a good quote. So it says well done is more powerful than Well said, I love that. And I had this friend of mine, Steve, where he talks like, he makes millions of dollars. Like he, he’s one of those guys, where you’re, you’re always around him good friend, and he’s always sitting there going, Hey, you know, I back in my day, I’ve made 800 grand one year and oh, and then I, you know, I’m starting this business and I’m starting this business and I’ve got this thing on the side. And yet you’re, you know, I’m like, cool. Every time I see you, you’re available, you know, really productive people. They’re not that available. Why? Because they’re being productive. And you know, very rarely will I answer my call when you call me. And that’s because I’m in a meeting. That’s because I’m on the doors. That’s because I’m doing something And oftentimes, like a good a good litmus test is if people call you a lot and you’re always available to answer the phone, there’s a pretty good indication you’re not doing the work. And so, you know, he would always play pickleball and basketball and you know, it’s it’s, it’s almost like, you call him and he’s like, Oh, yeah, I’ll be right there. And I’m like, how how I I’m three weeks booked out if you are like hey, can we help out. I’m like, yeah, maybe in like October. And that’s just my schedule. Like I’m a I love doing and I love the grid and I love the hard work. Do I like that fun? Heck yes, I like that fun. But the reality is I’m spending so much time doing the thing, not just visualizing the thing. I think there’s an element of like manifestation that’s so powerful in today’s talk. But I’m like, manifestation that doesn’t meet action is just a dream. And you’ve got to put the two together. So sometimes I don’t know how to explain it, like a productive or really high achiever in business or sales. Sometimes they get frustrated. And so I want you to, I want you to ask yourself right now, if I’m around really high achieving people, do they get frustrated with how much I talk about being successful? versus I’m just doing the actions? It’s like, when you’re playing sports? And there’s somebody that’s like, Oh, yeah, man, like, I got you like, Oh, dude, I’m on a streak. I’m hot right now, like, and then you’re like, you haven’t scored a bucket, like, you can’t play defense. And, you know, I play basketball. And it’s just like, a lot of times, there’s so much smack talk. And I’m like, cool. I don’t really, I don’t know, my personality type, like, the grit inside of me is like, you guys can talk all you want, like, I’m just gonna let my points do the talking. And if I’m losing, I’m gonna shut my mouth and be like, well, I’m losing an eye on that. Or if I’m winning, I’m going to shut my mouth and just be like, yeah, I’m putting in work like scoreboard. And the same thing applies is too often we get so emotionally attached in the talking of the smack talk that we forget that we’re actually playing the game. And there’s a there’s a principle, and this is for business leaders and business owners, and I caught death by business cards. And it’s when you’re printing out business, like you start a business, and you’re like, Oh, I gotta get business cards, I got to get a website, I got to get a logo, I gotta get shirts, Oh, my gosh, we’re gonna have this super cool marketing thing, my social medias gonna look so good. And you get so obsessed with your own brand, and your own logo and your own act like your own image. And because you think those things are really important to be successful in business. And so any advice you’d give a business owner right out the gate, because I coach a lot of businesses is I say, go get your first 10 deals, and then you can make a website, go get your first 10 deals, and then I’ll let you go get some business cards. And because I’ve seen, I bet you statistically, it’s more often than not, that people make business cards before they even make money. And then they never end up making money. So they have these useless business cards living in a drawer. I guarantee you that’s actually really common. Or they’re they spent five grand on a website or 500 bucks on a website or whatever. And I’m like, nobody ever went to your website. And maybe you shared it with your mom. And you’re like, Oh, yeah, Mom, check out my new company, check company website. And I’m like, cool, go get some deals. And that That, to me is grit. Like, somebody doesn’t care about the website, they care about the deals. And eventually, I promise you’ll make money and you can afford some websites and stuff like that. And so when I was a, I’m going to kind of weave in this story of grit. And I remember I was eight years old, this is really my first experience in sales. And I was I remember I’d go to my parents, my parents were well off and, and they, they really liked the element of teaching me how to work. So ever since I was probably four, it was spent four hours minimum on Saturday in the garden, and we lived in like three acres up in the mountains. So weeds were abundant. And we would spend literally four or five hours every Saturday before you could go watch cartoons before you could go play with your friends. You ended up dirty is dirty, and you just pulling weeds and I hated bone weeds. And so when I was eight, I was like, Okay, I’ll make some money. And I never got allowance, you know, all my friends are getting like 20 bucks a week or whatever the number was 100 bucks. And I’m over here just like oh, my rent payment to live here. My food payment is work hard on Saturday. And so I wanted my own money. And I go diving for golf balls, and I go find a bunch of golf balls, I get a big bin, I wash them all off and I start selling golf balls at the golf course. And then the marshal was like, dude, you can’t do this. And I was like, Oh, good and No. So what I did is I then was like, okay, the grid in me was like, All right, I’m gonna go on the street where cars drive, but it’s the cross between two holes where the carts have to cross across the street. And I was like, Well, I’m on public property, like we can’t tell me to like not eliminating golf balls on the street. So I was actually shocked that I was intuitive enough to think of that. And so then went on a busy day I go on busy days, and they would they would be stuck kind of waiting for the first group to go ahead of them. And so I then was like not getting a lot of people to stop like they just drive right past me. I was like screw that they’re stopping up there at the T. So the grid inside of me was like, Okay, I’ll walk up there with my bin and some chips and some lemonade, and I’ll sell them and they’re awkwardly standing. They’re like, hey, because obviously we’re thirsty, hungry, and you probably need some new balls. So would you guys be interested or whatever, whatever my pitch was, when I was eight, I’m sure it wasn’t as smooth. But anyway, they they, they would always buy. So I came home with almost 100 bucks one day. And I remember my dad looking at me, and he’s like, what eight year old goes home and he goes and makes 100 bucks in a day, like, What is this, and I just remember, like, I was that that wheel, that willingness to go knock on the tee box and say, I will come to you, I’m not going to hope that you stop your golf cart in the middle of this drive, as I think was like a big lesson. And it always cemented into me. Like, if you want something to go knock it, and the grid is going to survive, that cockroach is going to say I will always be the survivor. And I love passive, the difference between like passive business people versus active business people. And there’s, you know, what’s so cool about door to door. And when I consult a lot of companies, they don’t have a door to a program, you know, they’re, they’re like, Oh, we just do leads or we’re buy leads or we have online sales, we get referrals. And I’m like, that’s so passive. The gritty are the active the proactive that say I don’t have anything on the calendar, I make shit happen. When you’re up to nothing, nothing is usually next when you’re Yeah, I love that. That’s a Matthew McConaughey from the book, green lights. And then I want to I want to dive into this treadmill principle. So Will Smith. He said, If we get on a treadmill together, there’s two things you get out first, I’m going to die. It’s really simple. And I love this principle. Because Harvard Business study, George valiant, he said, Put treadmill steep and fast for five minutes and took 130 sophomores in college and had them run on it. So they said, Okay, we’re gonna put it super steep, and go five minutes fast. And see what happens is sophomores. And some quit within a minute, some lasted five minutes. But the average lasts about four minutes. And he said, then they followed them for two years. For every two years for 60 years, and this is cool. I love studies where they, they literally took sample sizes for years. And they said we’re gonna play the long game on these studies. And so those are lasted longer had more success in all life categories, which is crazy. So Angela Duckworth in the book grit. So if you’ve read any the book, it’s it’s phenomenal book, she says what if they could have opened up the option for people to come back the next day to try it again, and see how many actually came back, then let them try it over and over again. Because there’s a lot of people that maybe quit and 60 seconds and you’re like, Hey, you want to give it another shot. And there’s an element of grit, that would have been a true measure of grit. Because when you don’t come back the next day, you permanently turn your back on a commitment, your effort plummets to zero. As a consequence, your skill stopped to improve. And at the same time you stop producing anything with whatever skill you have. And it’s that anxiously engaged in a good cause and the willingness to say, I’m going to do it again, despite getting knocked down. And I watch and train and I work with a lot of business owners down to the first year sales reps. And just to watch their defeat after doors when I go shadow him or to see business owners kind of be like, Oh, this didn’t work. So nothing’s ever gonna work. And it’s like getting in that trap. I’m like, dude, where’s the grip man? Like, that’s like, the whole struggle is the is the process like you need that. And then you get into what we call momentum. And momentum begets momentum. And the way that and the best ways to start is to start. So momentum begets momentum. And the best way to start is start that’s by Gil pinching. And it’s not about speed. It’s it’s about momentum. And if you think like when you when you reframe, like big days, think of like a big selling day, you’re like, Oh, I got six today. But then the next three days you don’t sell, like, for me, I’m like, that’s when you’re just racing to go get a sixth spot, or you’re like, Oh, it’s all due to luck, the area and you’re now you’re now blaming external factors of why we’re successful? And I’m like, No, no, it’s it’s can you get in a rhythm to create momentum? And then are you able to say no to all the polls, and all the distractions of people that are going to take you out of this momentum, and have discipline to say I’m in flow state, don’t mess with me. I’m in flow state, don’t mess with me, I’m grinding. And oftentimes, there’s just so many things that pull us and distract us out of flow state. So it’s like we’ve all heard, the easiest time to get a sale is right after a sale. And so often people get in the mindset of, I get one sale, and I go home, I’m a one and done kind of guy. And I challenge you to be I get a sale, I go to another sale and I go to another sale. And I leapfrog myself because I’m using the momentum of my attitude and my positivity and my success then carry into the energy of my next transaction. So if we are always jumping, jump into different opportunities, I promise you’re not. You’re not going to be successful. So think about I have a friend named ralphie. And he has been struggling for years to find successful, like financial success and his late 20s. And he, the problem is, is is like I’ve looked at he’s lived in five different states over the last six years. He’s gone. six different companies tried out all these different MLM to door door companies to side hustles to e commerce. And I’m just like, Whoa, settle in, make a commitment and just put your head down and grind. And it’s almost like the fear of picking a skill and running with it. They’re like I want He’s like, I want to have all these skills. I want to be good at e commerce and I want to be good at this. And I want to be good at this. And, and I’m like, No, the gritty is the willingness to do the boring thing over and over and over again, to develop a skill that’s going to pay dividends. That’s what grit is. And it’s Yeah, how many times do they did professional athletes squat? It’s like, Okay, is there any more creative ways to work out? No, it’s just a simple exercise called squatting. Nobody likes like, but we do it because that’s what we do. And I think too often, we just think we can replace the true principle called the 10,000 hour rule by Malcolm Gladwell. And that is a fact. And if you only put 1000 hours in here, and 2000 hours in there, and 500 hours in here, and 50 hours in there, you’re not going to be successful, you didn’t gain any real life skills. So to become a master and to get real, paid real big bucks, stay in the farm in the soil in which you started, meaning I go to a farm, I get a big plot, I tell the ground, I plant the seeds. And then I bounced, and I go start farming somewhere else. And so well, that was dumb, and everyone saw the harvest. Or you’re like, Okay, I got a great crop of corn this year. And then the next year like, well, let’s just try potatoes, you’re like, no, it takes time to master the crop of corn. And you’ve got to develop Okay, how do you do it? And how do you plan it? And how do you you know, in your fixing the, the fertilization and the timing of when you plan it, and you get get really good at creating the corn you don’t just like, Alright, let’s try raspberries. Now. You’re just like, no. So don’t get some people get stuck in this, almost like exploratory phase. So think of it as like, I’m always exploring, and they might be 4050 years old, and they’re still trying to figure it out. They’re like, I don’t know what I want to do my life. I’m like, Well, how about maybe the career path, maybe the job, maybe your job is going to change. But what’s the skill set that you develop that people pay you gladly for. And so developing these skill sets, is going to then make you always marketable, and like endorsed or sales, for example, they, they never really got good at it. And then I’m like, okay, your pattern that you’re training yourself is to just get okay at things and always make Okay, money, instead of say, I’m going to commit to being really good at this, so that I can use these life skills into other things if I were to move on. And I think that like, too often, we fail to grasp that concept. So I’d invite you to practice grit. So these are just a few key principles of saying, okay, grit, is the ability to enter and come back, even though things are tough. And I’m reading this book, anti fragile right now. And it’s so good. And humans are meant to be anti fragile. So the opposite of fragile, most people would say is robust, strong, things like that. But it’s like, that would be the equivalent of saying the opposite of positive is neutral. And I’m like, No, the opposite of positive isn’t neutral. It’s, it’s negative. Like it’s a minus, there’s a plus and a minus. So the opposite of fragile would be minus fragility, anti fragile, which then would be when we break things, so they’re easily broken. So anti fragile be when you break things that actually get stronger. Like it actually goes in reverse, there’s a negative effect that gets better. And humans are meant to be challenged and put under stressed and, and really have struggle, and then invite you to ask, am I embracing the suck? Am I comfortable with the uncomfortable? And am I willing to play the game of grit? Or do I give up way too easy. So I know that things are tough. It’s like mid, it’s almost August, and some of you guys are in the summer, you’re right there in the last stretch. And this is where the difference between the boys and the men is that 30 seconds on the treadmill versus the five minutes on a treadmill. And if you’re like, well, I don’t want everyone to knock doors again. I’m done. I’m just trying to coast it out. Like my advice to you would be simply this. How else would that show up in the rest of your life, if you just coast it out. If you committed to a full summer, then finish out the frickin full summer, do the real work. Because whether you do this again or not, you’re never going to regret putting 100% in instead of just being like, this isn’t for me, I hate this, I’m done. Because that is a reflection of how you price show up in the rest of your life, whether that’s in your relationship, so that that’s another business ventures whether that’s in finance, and this is the opportunity to break that pattern and really practice grit and be good at it and it’s deliberate practice. So I hope you guys got some value out of this. I would rewatch this share this some of your team members probably need this. So tag them in this and we’ll see you guys on the next episode. Much love
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