Happy Sunday Everyone (From Kona).
I had coffee with a great business partner a couple of weeks ago. Point of the meeting was to review 2019 and discuss 2020 plans, as individuals and together. We spent 45 minutes on personal stuff and 15 minutes on work, as always. Last week I received a really nice note from her. I was going to summarize it here but thought it would mean more if I used her words vs. my own so I asked her permission and Elena said “absolutely”. Here is what she said “Dear Hunter-I am not sure I can make this card profound enough for you to keep it but I do want to say a heartfelt thank you for your partnership, support, and friendship. I do sincerely believe that my affiliation with you and your team elevated my business and me personally. I don’t know if I stress this enough when I speak with you. I look forward to a phenomenal 2020 with you”. For all you sales people, please note Elena wouldn’t return my phone call 5 years ago and looked at me like she wanted to stab my eyes out when she finally agreed to meet with me for 15 minutes under the promise we’d stop calling her if she didn’t find value in our time together (and yes she’s reading this now alongside of you which brings me great joy and a smile).
I’m not sharing this note to congratulate myself in front of all of you. I’m sharing this note with you because it summarizes everything I want to be true in my relationships with my business partners. It’s not what is true 100% of the time but it’s what I strive for. I want to have a sincere impact on the people I work with and spend time with. With coaching and talking to a lot of sales people, I think we all get confused with what we want because we haven’t put any definition of what it actually looks like. We don’t all need the same definition of what we want but we do need to understand it ourselves. The world is not my oyster. If the world was my oyster I’d be thoroughly confused. If I put a definition and an explanation on what I want my oyster to look like, I’m much more likely to find my oyster. Elena summarized in one very special note the culmination of my personal oyster.
My oyster:
1. Big fat juicy relationships that go far beyond a transaction.
2. Hanging out with open honest people. When I’m with these people I have no guard rails. Hanging out with people that don’t judge you is magical. I constantly need to reverse this lens to make sure no one thinks I’m judging them either. I also have to make sure I’m in fact NOT judging them, and if I am, remind myself to STOP IT. Who am I to judge?
3. Hanging around with growth-minded people. Growth to me is the same as betterment. People that want to be a little better today than yesterday, a little kinder, a little more open to learning, a little more open to being open. I need this for me…it keeps me from closing which is my natural tendency.
4. Having a very positive impact on people and people having a very positive impact on me. From my view, this can only come from the first three. We don’t grow, and develop by having a bunch of surface level, crap, conversations about nothing.
5. Winning the game of life together. Big picture altruism…why not?
I love the relationship I have with Elena and I believe she’d the same. What’s interesting for both of us is the relationship wouldn’t exist had I not kept calling, and it wouldn’t exist had she not broken down and said “yes”. We need to remind ourselves that most things worth having don’t come easy at the start. Knowing my oyster or my “why” keeps me hungrier for the search and allows me to tolerate some bull sh$t stuff I don’t like doing because I know what’s around the corner, and I love the opportunity of what’s to come. Elena is the perfect reminder.
Side note-The importance and meaning behind a hand written note and taking the time to make it count is a lost art. I promise you Elena’s note will sit in my top left drawer for when I need a personal pep talk.
Have a great rest of your weekend.