Part of growing as a professional is recognizing trends and patterns.  When you see them, use them to optimize your efforts and improve yourself. 

Reflecting on my 26 years as a working adult, I can see moments where I did things no one else did that separated me from the pack.  

Today, I want to talk about a few moments because I need to remind myself of what I’ve done.  Today’s blog is more for me than you because I’m at a crossroads in my professional life.  I have a mission this year, and I need to figure out how to do more while not doing too much, if that makes sense.  More on that later.   

STORY #1 

I remember in 1999 watching the other sales reps at WGRR use paper and pen vs. their computer to manage their days. I found a product, ACT, that I could use to manage my customer list and daily schedule.  I could keep detailed notes on clients and set essential reminders needed to optimize my relationship with them in the future.   This was also my first foray into automation.  We’d have these specials every quarter, and while everyone else contacted every client one at a time, I had set up a fax system that allowed me to merge segments of clients into mass faxes.  I recall one year in particular when this worked like a charm.  Every November, we held a “one-day sale.”  The idea was simple: one day, we sold our radio spots for the 1st quarter at a DEEP discount since the demand was how after the holidays every year.  We’d have a month’s notice, and most reps would use the 3-4 weeks leading up to the “one-day sale” running around town, only preparing for that day.  Then the day would come, and they’d spend all day hammering the phones to close deals. Everyone would be fried by 3-4 pm, but they’d typically have solid results.  

The major flaw I found in this process was that due to everyone’s hyper-focus on the one-day sale, they had lost all sales momentum heading into December and were starting over their sales year.  I personally thought years of the one-day sale had caused the issue in Q1, not demand.  In 2000, for my 2nd one-day sale, I decided to do what no one else was doing: leverage marketing automation to shorten the sales cycle and not distract me from my everyday job. To appreciate this, you must realize email, as we know it today, was not out yet.  For me, talking to my clients was either a phone call or driving to their business.   My solution was to create a segmented list of clients I thought fit this promotion’s profile and send out mass faxes to “prime the pump.”  I didn’t want to call and stop by customers and start from scratch; I wanted them to know why I was contacting them.  And I wanted people to self-select, opting in or out.  

It worked great. My sales cycle for this one-day sale turned into a week instead of the 3-4 others were taking.  This allowed me to spend the remaining weeks leading up to the event doing my job as I had been all year. This not only prepared me for the day of the event way more than others, but it also kept my momentum going.  

But we can’t forget the results of the one-day sale. That was the icing on the cake.  In the days leading up to the event, I built up massive FOMO (fear of missing out) with hype emails about the day, highlighting the limited inventory and contests for early buyers.  I used my mass faxing system through ACT to fax ALL OF MY CUSTOMERS who’d expressed interest at one time.  So, while everyone else was spending hours, heck, days dialing for dollars, I did this with the click of one button 🙂  

THEN, it was the big day, the Thursday before Thanksgiving.  At 8 am, I sent my mass fax, and the signed agreements came back in DROVES!  The average rep would sell $20,000 in commercials that day; I had $120,000 sold by 10 am and spent the rest of the day working on my everyday business.  I would go on to dominate the one-day sale every time we did it; no one came close to me, EVER.  And I have no interruptions in my regular sales since I’ve never lost focus on doing my day-to-day job.  

STORY #2

Ironically, I decided to simultaneously start a side hustle with my brother and dad.  In the summer of 1999, my dad brought my brother and me the idea of creating a consignment boat and RV dealership.  He wanted to do business with his kids.  We didn’t have the money to rent a location for this, so one of us had an idea (I’m still not sure who it was to this day ).  The idea was to create a website to list our inventory and use to sell to consumers versus a traditional brick-and-mortar store.  

Remember, this was 1999! The internet was nothing like today; creating websites was a huge project. I still don’t know what pushed me to do this, but I bought a book on building websites using Adobe Pagemill, and within a few weeks, our website was live.  Looking back at those years, I can’t help but be proud of what I did.  I had no technical ability whatsoever.  And at the same time, I’m pissed at myself for not turning that into what I see it could have become now, Boat Trader Online.  But it is what it is, right 🙂 

Long story short, within 6 months, we would rent our first location in Erlanger, Kentucky, and within 5 years, we would have 3 stores and $15 million in annual sales.  

WHY AM I TELLING THESE STORIES? 

I have an enormous task ahead of me in 2025.  

America’s Best Restaurants is set for our biggest year ever; this will be our breakthrough year; it has to be!  But it’s not without its challenges. As the CEO, I don’t have a simple task; I have many.  And the tricky part about that is the pressure we put on ourselves to tackle them all daily.  

So, as I thought about this year and what I needed “to be” to my team, I decided to chop my job into five.  The image above is what I’m doing to force myself to focus. I’ve completely changed my daily schedule to be one-dimensional every day before 1 pm.  I focused on that day’s topic from when I woke up around 5 am until after lunch.  My goal is to spend my early mornings working on ME. Then around the 8 am shift, digging deep into that day’s topic to find one thing we can optimize or build that week.  I aim to look at what we’re doing and listen to my team.  And then develop a plan that will help us continue moving forward.