62: Scott Ingram - Inspiration Squared

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is, well, me. So for fans of the show, I get a ton of requests to share my own story, and I, I really haven't done it in any depth. So after 2 and a half years, I thought it was about time. And I also met my own criteria and finished as the number one performer on my own sales team last year. So the timing felt right. And rather than introduce myself, I'm going to introduce you to our host today. Jeff Bajorek has become a great friend and sounding board for me over the last couple of years, and he's a regular listener. Attended the first ever Sales Success Summit last year, which you can also listen to our debrief together in a special bonus episode that we did last May, along with the co-host of his own podcast, The Why and the Buy. Jeff, you ready to switch places with me?

1:15 Jeff Bajorek: Yes, Scott, I am thrilled. Really appreciate you having me come on here and interview you, kind of turn the tables a little bit because, you know, I mean, I've been one of those people clamoring for a while to say, well, you know, hold on, you're, you're someone who has been very successful with a lot of companies at a lot of levels. And, you know, because of the strict criteria that you have for this show, you haven't quite qualified for that. And congratulations for, I guess, finally climbing that mountain, getting all the way to the top. This is really cool. And I know I'm not alone, as you pointed out, in people that want to hear your story. So let me ask you this. What do you think are the 3 things And I know you start every show this way, but what are the 3 things that you believe have helped you get to that summit, to reach that peak, so to speak? And as a little follow-up, do you think you're going to need to tweak any of those things to keep you there?

2:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't think that there's any tweaking. I'll talk through the 3 things, but I think that they have been pretty consistent ingredients to my success. So let me outline them and then we can go into them in a little bit of detail. So the first one is Collaboration and networking. Geez, I'm just tempted to keep going. So let me just leave it there. So collaboration and networking. Number 2 is having a consistent daily process. I feel like that's really one of my superpowers. And then the 3rd thing is being strategically minded and playing the long game. So if we go back to those, the collaboration and networking, people are at the center of everything that I do, especially selling for a professional services organization, people are also my product. And everything, whether I'm working with my clients, I'm working internally with my team and collaborating with them, or just working with friends and mentors and working to improve myself, it's the network and the way that I work with all of those individuals that probably makes the biggest difference. And the reason I don't really have to change any of these things is because they all grow and they all evolve, right? So all of those relationships grow and my ability to collaborate and work with those people continues to improve. So that's, that's really what helps me leverage up my game. I'm sure we'll dig into this a lot more a little bit later in the interview, but the consistent daily process for me is especially just the way that I set up my day in the morning that helps me really be focused and really nail the priorities that I need to get done. And, and that's the sort of the corollary to people wanting to know about my story is how the heck are you doing all of this? You know, not only are you managing a quota like all the rest of us, but you're also publishing books and hosting summits and hosting podcasts and doing all of this. Like, how do you make all of that happen? So I'm sure we'll dig into that in a little bit more detail. And then this last point of being strategically minded and playing the long game. To me, I think sales careers are very long, right? To me, this is my profession. This is what I do. And I'm not so worried about the deal closing tomorrow. I mean, I'm not even worried so much. Obviously it matters. I care about this month and this quarter, but there's a much longer game afoot and there's a much sort of larger impact that you can have when you look over the course of a longer time horizon. In so many levels. Not only do I think about that from a career level and the things that I'm trying to accomplish, but I also think about that in terms of the impact that I can have on my clients and what we can do together. And if I'm only thinking about and reacting to the project that they're asking me about and they're interested in right now, and we're not looking at what happens in 2020 and what happens in 2025 and where are they going with their careers and with their… with the growth of their business. Bringing that into account has really helped me, again, I think, play at a different level.

5:32 Jeff Bajorek: I would totally agree. And I mean, I think, you know, we see salespeople on a regular basis talk about having a longer-term strategy, right? I mean, it almost goes the wrong way. And I'm curious how you keep a certain level of urgency. And we'll get into these, you know, a little bit more through the rest of the things that we want to talk about in this interview, but while I have you right here, how do you play the long game while still having some sense of urgency? Or maybe not a sense of urgency, but some sense of still knowing that you need to close deals now. You need to… I mean, how do you keep deals moving through? Because some people say, oh, I'm just playing the long game, and then that gives them essentially a license to really not do anything on a daily basis, right? Your daily process then is the flip side to that coin and the things that you set yourself up to do on a day-to-day basis to make sure that deals are constantly moving through the pipeline, to make sure that relationships are constantly being nurtured and fostered. How do you balance the two?

6:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So the word I feel like I want to use here is momentum. Right. And you can't get to that long-term vision if you're not making almost daily incremental process against it. Right. So having that longer view is really about creating a shared vision like this is where we're going, this is what we're going to accomplish. And then you have to dial that all the way back to potentially today. And, you know, one of the things that I will do in my process is I literally look at every deal that I've got in my pipeline. I look at every account that I'm managing and just think for a minute about, is there something that I can do today to move this particular deal or this particular client forward? And what is that? And, and what do I need to do? And that's where I think you're able to sort of maintain that momentum and keep things going. And again, getting down to sort of the granular steps. The one thing I would love if somebody were able to fully apply this to sales. I have been involved in different endurance sports over time, right? So, I've done a marathon. I've done triathlons in the past. And what's amazing about those processes is you just get like a 13-week or 16-week or however long training program and you do these steps and holy cows, you know, you're in great shape at the end of it and you accomplish that thing. I wish that there was something that formulaic that worked in sales. Unfortunately, I think there's just a bit more nuance. This isn't just, hey, go run 26 miles one time and you're good. It's a little more complicated than that.

8:09 Jeff Bajorek: Well, and you may see that there are manuals or processes and things like that that are written out specifically for a specific type of sales in a specific company, in a specific, you know, for a specific company in a specific, you know, industry or place. But you're right, there's way more to it than the actual steps. But what I love about your approach, what it sounds like, the way I would categorize it, your approach to your pipeline is visibility of your pipeline before you even talk about putting more into the pipe, your visibility of it. And okay, today, this week, what can I do with these prospects? What can I do with these accounts? What can I do with these relationships or these people, these collaborators, if it is in that situation? What can I do right now? What's next? And there aren't enough people doing that. And I think that this… that's going to fit into, you know, the answer to the first question I want to ask you is, you know, aside from your role as a podcast host, aside from your role as an events producer, when we think about the Sales Success Summit and some of the other things you want to do along with that, you carry a bag. What is the company you work for? Tell us about that company. What do you sell and how in your role did you manage to finally get to the top?

9:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So the company I work for is called Relationship One, and we are a professional services firm that works predominantly in the Oracle Marketing Cloud ecosystem. So I started… well, not started, the middle of my kind of marketing technology career had me spend some time at Eloqua, and then we went public and then were acquired by Oracle. And Relationship One was my favorite partner as I was selling in that role. And so had the opportunity to come join them about 3 years ago. And the role is, my title is Account Director. I think I would look like a Strategic Account Manager or Global Account Manager is probably what most people would sort of describe this role as, because I work with about 15 of our largest clients. They're all within the Fortune 1000. There's a couple of that are on the lower end of the 1,000. The vast majority are Fortune 500. You've heard of virtually all of them. And my role is really representing the team and connecting the things that they're trying to do with their marketing technology platforms with the services that we, that we offer. And there's also some licensed tools that kind of fit into that mix. To really help them make use of the investment that they've made in Oracle.

10:54 Jeff Bajorek: So I'm just a sales guy, Scott. I've sold a lot of things, but I've not sold specifically a lot of stuff in the tech space. To me, you said a lot of things without saying much. Help me understand and help some of the other listeners out there who don't sell into the tech space. What a product lifecycle… not so much a lifecycle, but what does a product sale look like and what exactly are you selling? I mean, you're selling a service agreement. And when you're helping other people with their investment, and Oracle, obviously we're talking about databases and access to them and analytics and the insights that can come out of how people are using what they're using, how people are accessing what they're accessing. But are you a consultant? Are you selling consulting services? Are you selling certain chunks of cloud storage? Oracle's a big company. They do a lot of things. You're a channel partner with Oracle, if I understand this correctly, with Relationship One. But what exactly are you helping people do? And obviously it's going to vary from customer to customer, but What is going on out there and how are you irreplaceable in that chain?

11:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, good question. So you're right, the sea of marketing technology is insane. And, you know, over the last number of years, there's been a lot of emphasis on, you know, people talking about their marketing tech stacks, right? They have all these different tools from email and advertising, all this other stuff that they're doing. We're not really selling any of those products. We leave that up to Oracle. We will frequently partner with Oracle and help them sell those solutions. What we're delivering is the implementation of those solutions. So we're getting everything set up. And the way I like to think about it a lot, for those who are familiar with kind of the marketing tech stack kind of idea, I think of us as the lines that connect the dots, right? What makes a marketing stack like that powerful is when it all works together, right? And it's connected to the business goals, the marketing goals of that organization. I mean, Technology at the end of the day is just a tool, right? It's what you do with the tool that really matters. And that's what we're about. That I have a whole team of consultants that are doing everything from helping devise that strategy and connect the dots between the business objectives and the technology, all the way down to we're literally making the data connections between solution A and solution B and helping them execute on that, on that particular vision. So the work that I'm doing, it's interesting that you asked if I'm a consultant, kind of. While the deeper expertise lies within my team, I've been playing this game a lot and I've always been in the technology space and in sales. And one of the things that I've been able to do really well is I speak English, I speak business. So while I understand very, very deep technical things, That doesn't matter to the average VP of marketing or chief marketing officer, right? What they care about is what's the outcome? What am I going to get from this? And that's ultimately what I'm helping them sort of drive to. And it's a process, right? A lot of times when you're… this is a little bit of a different sale. And the first time in years, really since I started my career, that I've been in professional services. It's way more nebulous. I don't have anything that I can demo for you. I could show you Melissa, but I don't, I really don't have anything that I can demonstrate. So it's a very kind of cerebral sale. Again, it's helping the client believe and trust that we can deliver on what we're talking about and whatever that particular vision is, and you're able to sort of relate that back to the track record and the things that you've, that you've done before in making that all happen. So, you know, there's a lot of different workshops and scoping and things that we're doing collaboratively together to sort of figure this out. And that goes back to the incremental nature, right? Occasionally I will do really, really significant deals, but that tends to come after we've done a series of smaller sort of projects deals, and they often build upon each other, right? So we've, we've sort of, we've done a project, we figured out what is the big project. Now we understand how big it is and what the impact of it's going to be. And now we're ready to do the bigger deal. So that's, that's how these things kind of tend to progress in professional services. And it's interesting because for the most part, I work with existing clients, but there is nothing's guaranteed, right? Unlike when you're selling software, especially when you're selling SaaS, you're selling a subscription. So, when you're an account manager in that type of a scenario, well, your clients are already committed and spending a certain amount of money every year. When I start my year, it's basically a blank slate, right? They're not committed to spend any amount of money with me this year. So, it's about sort of rebuilding that. And again, it's just having that shared vision, having shared alignment, having built a lot of trust and a proven track record of delivering. And continuing to build from there.

16:22 Jeff Bajorek: Well, you said 2 things there that I think anybody listening right now, if they didn't realize this before, they realize it now. And your stock just went through the roof. You start every year at zero with some suspects, maybe a few prospects, but nobody is committed. And you also sell something that is so not specific that it's actually more difficult to sell. And if anybody's listening right now and Scott and I… I'm sure somebody is listening right now, but anybody who's listening right now, I want you you to think about that. How much time do you spend with your marketing departments? How much time do you spend in sales meetings with your teams, with your management, you know, whoever it is that you meet with regularly? And you think about specific talking points, you think about specific target markets. If you're a small business owner, you've been told to go through the exercise of finding your avatar and where do those people hang out and what do they eat and where do they sleep and all those other things so that you've got something so specific that all you have to do is deliver the message. Scott doesn't know what he's selling or who he's selling it to until he gets out there and creates something out of nothing. Scott, we can't see each other right now because we don't have video turned on this call, but I am tipping my proverbial hat to you because that's really hard to do. So let's get into the nitty-gritty here. How much did you sell last year? What were you expected to sell? By how much did you exceed the expectations of you? And maybe more importantly, how did you celebrate?

17:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So first, you're giving me entirely too much credit because the starting point that I have is we've done business with all of these clients before. Right. So we are a known entity. We have developed a level of trust and some credibility in showing that we're actually able to deliver on the things that Scott says that we're going to be able to do.

18:08 Jeff Bajorek: Oh, sure. And I see that. And I don't mean to cut you off there. But the thing is, you said it very specifically. There's no commitment beyond that. You've got a great reputation. What you're telling me, Scott, is that Scott Scott Ingram and Relationship One, and of course Oracle have stellar reputations, but a reputation doesn't make a sale.

18:25 Scott Ingram: Fair enough. Yes. And beyond that, yeah, there is a lot of sort of inventing and we just have to kind of figure out what this is. The flip side though is I'm also not constrained. I'm not limited by my product does this and only this, right? I have the creativity of many really, really incredible experienced consultants. And so there's a lot of things that we can do, even if we've never done it before. There's a lot of things that we're able to kind of go figure out and do together. So, from a results standpoint, I have to be a little bit careful here. We are a closely held private company. We're pretty close-lipped in terms of how the inner workings work and the numbers. What I will say is that I delivered $3 million last year, and over the last 3 years, uh, have done just over $7 million in sales in this professional services space.

19:13 Jeff Bajorek: Wow, that's pretty tremendous, creating that kind of revenue, really, I mean, from scratch. And if you did You know, if you did $3 million, a little over $3 million last year, you probably did a little less than $3 million the year before and just a little over $1 million in your first year. Those are some serious numbers.

19:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You actually guessed at it pretty good.

19:33 Jeff Bajorek: Yeah, that's quite a growth curve if you think about it. I mean, you get going and then you almost double in your second year and somehow you're still not number one. And then you kind of tip the scales at number one last year. How did you celebrate that? I mean, did you just kind of take your wife to dinner? Did you you know, have some Austin barbecue? Did you… I mean, what was it like to finally get to number 1 after I know it had been in your sights for so long? And I mean, listen, you kind of have made a reputation for yourself for hanging around with top producers. How does it feel to be welcomed into your own club?

20:08 Scott Ingram: You know, I think that I've said from the beginning and one of the sort of reasons for the show is we've heard probably for most of our careers, if you're anything like me, the Jim Rohn quote that says you're the average of the 5 people people you spend the most time with. And really, until I launched the podcast, I never fully acted on that. And so the podcast became sort of an intentional, I need to surround myself with the best people and their mindsets and what they're thinking and that sort of process. And it worked. You know, I had some great competition. What's funny is the small world nature of all of this. Our previous top performer, and he still gives me a good run for my money, my friend Keith. I actually, before I even started working at Relationship One, connected him with the organization. So I basically recruited him from the outside a couple of years before I joined the organization. He was at a competitive partner that wasn't doing so well and was looking for the next step in his career. And I said, look, these guys are the very best. Let me get you introduced over there. And I just sort of coordinated that whole thing between the two of them. And that's worked out phenomenally well. Keith has done extraordinarily well for the organization, and Relationship One has certainly benefited from that. And I know been a great spot for him. What was the question?

21:30 Jeff Bajorek: How did you celebrate, and what is it like to be a member of your own club?

21:34 Scott Ingram: Oh, now I know why I avoided the question. I suck at celebrating, man. I, you know, I think that if you've heard many of these interviews, what you hear pretty consistently is people just decide. They're going to be the best. And that's really sort of what it was for me. And when you're that intentional, it was just sort of a foregone conclusion. So there was nothing to celebrate. It just, it was. But what's interesting though, and I was actually planning on trying to do this this year. I'm really glad I didn't. Things ha… I really believe that things happen for a reason, and I definitely needed another year to be able to do this. I already have enough on my plate. And Jeff, I know you know a little bit of this vision. But I've now worked for a couple of smaller organizations where there is no President's Club, and I've wanted to create essentially a collaborative kind of a President's Club co-op for these smaller organizations. I mean, certainly larger organizations could participate, whether they want that to be their thing or they want to turn it into a quarterly incentive type of a program, but really bringing the top performers from a lot of smaller organizations together kind of like the summit, right? So, I still want to have some content, right, and some ability for us to learn and improve and understand what each other are doing, but more importantly, just to celebrate, right, and enjoy ourselves and be recognized and do that kind of stuff. So, frankly, that is, it's not my strong suit. I have really, really high expectations of myself, and, you know, when I accomplish those things frequently, I'm already on to the next I can totally identify with that.

23:14 Jeff Bajorek: And this is actually something I was talking to some people about just a few days ago. I'm not real good at celebrating either. When you, you know, at what point do you continue to celebrate these wins or does it just become what's expected? And if it's not expected of you, do you just expect it of yourself? You know, and I've won awards. I've been given bonuses. I was given a really nice watch that's way more expensive than I would ever buy myself, you know, and it's a nice thing. And I look at that and I remind myself that I accomplished something. But look, man, I get up every day to do what I do. Of course I'm gonna do it. And a lot of the guests that you've had on this show are exactly that. And it almost… I think there's a balance there, and I certainly don't have it right. Some people have it a lot better than I do in terms of, you know, where do you make sure you take the time to, well, reward yourself, or at least recognize yourself for the things that you've accomplished, but not get so far out of whack that, listen, if everything's a celebration, are you ever getting any work done? I mean, the funny thing is they talk about Nick Saban at Alabama. Of course, he hasn't won in a couple of years. Oh my goodness. But he's in the national championship every year. He wins, he loses. They say, what are you going to do? He's like, I'm late for recruiting. I got to get going. I'm already behind. There's this kind of self-imposed sense of urgency, this kind of productive paranoia that if you're not first, you're behind and you've got to get caught up. Up. And some people just operate that way. And I think, you know, to go back and maybe do an informal survey of all the guests you've had on this show, it might be… I definitely believe you would see some themes. And, you know, it's almost like, you know, they say youth is wasted on the young. You've got it and you don't know what to do with it. You know, when you're highly successful, the last thing you ever want to do is take it for granted. And sometimes celebrating feels like you've taken that for granted. And if you ever get that figured out, Scott, let me me know.

25:14 Scott Ingram: Will do, will do.

25:15 Jeff Bajorek: Not yet. So how did you get started, right? I mean, you've been selling for a while. I'm not going to put a number on the years. We don't need to talk about how old we are. But I mean, when did this all start for you? What made you decide you could get into sales, and let alone be successful at it?

25:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so like most people, I started as an accidental salesperson but became more intentional about it sort of over the course of my career. So when I was 20 years old, I started my first company. It was an IT consulting company in Southern California called Gray Matter Technologies, which was a really big surprise years later when I was binging through Breaking Bad. And if you haven't done that, just look it up. It was, it was a little bit of a mind trip because the fictitious company in Breaking Bad was called Gray Matter Technologies also. And anyway, I, you know, I created this company and it turns out if you don't sell anything and you don't have clients, you don't have a company. So very quickly, I just got sort of thrown into the deep end of I had to figure out how to sell and was very lucky and found some mentors and really came through that process and did very well over time. And 5 years later, I was engaged and decided that we needed to cash out of Orange County at the time. And because I kind of had an idea of what the real estate market was going to do at the time. So this is back in 2004. So I sold the company, I sold my condo, and we moved to Austin, Texas. So that's about 15 years ago. And I flailed around a little bit after making that move, but relatively quickly decided, you know what, running a company is interesting, but there's a lot of parts of that that I don't enjoy. And the part that I enjoyed the most and had the most impact was the sales piece. And I really decided at that point that, you know what, I want this to be my profession. I want to go do sales and not have to worry about delivery and finance and HR and all this other stuff that goes on. Let me just focus on sales. And so I started my real sales career with ADP in their major account space, spent a couple of years with them until about 2009, frankly got frustrated. You know, we were pretty deep into the recession at this point. ADP is a very hierarchical organization. So when you have about 9 layers of people above you who are all missing their number, I just, I didn't enjoy the micromanagement that ensued. So I left ADP. We won't talk about… there's a couple of funky middle points here that just aren't really worth talking about too much. But it was shortly after that, that I joined… I really got into the marketing technology space. And that's really where I've been for about the last 10 years. So I started with a company called Bazaarvoice. That was my first IPO. And then shortly after Bazaarvoice, I joined Eloqua. That was my second IPO and my first acquisition. So We went public, we were public for like one quarter, and then we were acquired by Oracle. I spent a little bit of time with Oracle, 6 months or so, and then just decided, you know what, I enjoy selling to big companies. I don't so much enjoy working for them and just all of the bureaucracy that sort of goes with that. So since then, I've been again back into kind of the small midsize organization space and have had just a really great ride here with Relationship One.

28:42 Jeff Bajorek: So you've got a really… I mean, I think you cover all the bases there. I mean, you, you know, bootstrapping and startups and being ripped off by TV shows for trademarks and things like that. I'm sure that you settled out of court with…

28:56 Scott Ingram: I had already sold the company. I had no stake at that point.

29:00 Jeff Bajorek: But I mean, you've gone from the small, hey, we started a little IT support company, to, hey, I worked for a company that went IPO and then was acquired. And I mean, you've, you've really run the gamut. What would you have done differently if you could go all the way back to the beginning? Is there somewhere you wish you would have stayed? Was there somewhere, if you had it to do all over again, you would have done differently? Or has it all just added up to, my name's Scott Ingram and this is where I am today because of everything I've done, and I wouldn't change a darn thing?

29:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's really close to the latter. I think that all of the experiences I've had have been really formative. And have contributed to where I am today. You know what, the only thing I would have changed, I kind of alluded to the wrong term. Shortly after I came to Austin, I created an organization called Network in Austin. And because when I moved here, I built my company in California all on relationships and referrals. And when I came to Austin, I knew my real estate agent. We didn't know anybody here. And so I'm trying to get plugged into the community and just understand what's going on, where I need to be and everything else. And so, you'll notice there's definitely a theme in the things that I create from an entrepreneurial perspective. Typically, I'm just scratching my own itch. Like, there's something that drives me crazy and I'm like, I can't be the only one and I need the answer to this. So, I built that organization. And when I left ADP, I went to go work on that full-time for about 9 months. And that was… it was just really painful. I mean, that… it was always profitable, but not like feed a family profitable. And I had a very, very young family at the time. And it just, it was super, super challenging and hard. And I wish I could have, frankly, all of that cash back. I dug a hole that was not very fun that took a while to fill back in. And so I would take that back. And my advice there is, because since then it feels like there's so much, I don't know, emphasis on the side hustles and entrepreneurial this and that. What I would say there is like, have something like super, super real. Like the entrepreneurial path is crazy. You think sales is hard? Like sales is just one part. That's just one of the hats you have to wear when you're doing the entrepreneur thing. And so my approach, I mean, if you look at the things that I'm doing now, it's completely on the side. And frankly, Actually, for me to leave, it would be sort of crazy, right? I've got a great day job. I've got a great income. They're supportive of this additional work that I do. The additional work makes me better in my day job. And so I think that that's a much, much smarter path that I had to learn the hard way. This whole, you know, jumping off a cliff without a net too often results in splat. And I pretty much went splat in that period and I would like to unsplat. Flat.

32:01 Jeff Bajorek: Fair enough. I think there are so many other ways to be productive, to scratch those proverbial itches and still make sure there's food on your table. I know you live in Austin. There's a ton of great food there. I don't know very many people who enjoy food as much as I do. So that's of utmost importance to me anyway. And I think there's a lot of people that, you know, will say you can do anything you want if you just… if you've got a great idea, you're not the only one. And I'm just going to go turn this into a business. And, you know, someone like you who's been there and said, yeah, maybe there's a way to do that and not, you know, leverage your entire lifestyle or finances on it. And there's probably a better way to go about doing that. But what would you say looking back is the thing you're most proud of, right, in your career? What are you most proud for having accomplished?

32:52 Scott Ingram: So I think that it really comes down to the people that I've been able to help. And I've been able to do that in a lot of ways, whether it was, it was my clients. I think of, of one particular client where he has had just an absolute rocket ship rise in, in his career. I mean, he's had huge, huge promotions every year or 2. And while I can't take a whole lot of credit for what he's done for himself in that perspective, I know that I was was largely responsible for the platform behind it. And this goes back to when I was working with Oracle and it basically did the hardest deal of my life. It was just a renewal deal, but it was insanely difficult, but we found a way to get it done. And it's funny, I found out later that the leadership at the highest levels at Oracle had written the deal off because they didn't think it was possible. And so, So, knowing that I was able to get that done and maintain sort of that platform for Ryan to grow in his career is just so fulfilling. And, you know, I think about Keith and how well he's done at Relationship One and the impact that he's had and how much he's enjoyed that ride. It's those things that I really am the most fulfilled by and enjoy the most. I mean, the deal wins are fine and they're great and we all enjoy the commission check, but I love the contribution.

34:23 Jeff Bajorek: What would you say was your breakthrough? When did you look in the mirror and say, yep, I can do this, I can be really good at this, and I'm going to be number one someday?

34:35 Scott Ingram: Oh, that's a good question. You know, I think it took me, it took me a long time to get there. I feel like I really, I don't know, as I think about it, like I think about ADP and on the surface I did really well at ADP, right? I made President's Club. They had, they had this thing. ADP is funny, right? Because the later in the fiscal year you get, like the, the commission percentages like really ratchet up and then the calendar resets and you're like, oh my God, I'm making like no money. And so what they do to combat that is they have this thing called Super Starts and it's like this stack rank reward system. And so maybe like the top 10% go after the first, I don't know what it is, you know, 3 or 4 or 5 months of the new fiscal. So, you know, I qualified for one of those, didn't even get to go on the trip. My wife was very, very pregnant at the time, so I couldn't talk her into going by myself, which would have been really stupid had I won that argument. And so like on the surface, I did really well. Like I barely missed being Rookie of the Year and all this other stuff, but man, it was so, it was so hard. And I felt like I was struggling so much. And I really, I rode the rollercoaster of sales for like the first number of years. And I don't know if it's maturity, if it's just age or if it's experience or the combination But I feel like I've really just sort of settled in, and you realize like, yeah, it's a roller coaster. It is what it is. You enjoy the highs. You don't worry about the lows so much, and you just kind of keep going through it. And you know, I then I got to a spot. I don't know three, four, or five years ago where it was like, you know what? I think I get this right. I'm getting a really good feel for the game. I see what what the best people are doing. And I think there's also the decision of around like, just taking this seriously. Like, are you in it for real? Are you here to be the best? Or are you just mailing it in? And, you know, I was like, you know what, like, game on, let's do this. And, you know, that's… I don't think that there was a specific point that that switch got flipped necessarily. It was a little bit of an evolution. And you start to sort of recognize the little signs of greatness along the way. You're like, hey, I'm getting sort of good at this. Like, that worked really well. And as you continue to develop those skills, it just builds and you get the confidence and it starts to happen.

37:01 Jeff Bajorek: It's funny, there isn't always a specific moment, right, when the, when the switch flips. Sometimes you just wake up and you're in a different mood or you have a different attitude about things. But there's something about looking around and realizing that you belong where you are. And not everybody recognizes that. And it's too bad because it's quite a feeling when you do. And you start to think about yourself differently when you realize that other people think about you differently. And there's something about that self-awareness that you're, you're absolutely right. It's, you know, look, you ride the roller coaster, right? Everybody rides the roller coaster for a while, and then you figure out a way to kind of smooth those hills and, you know, peaks and valleys out a little bit and just make it more fun. And then you can start to actually press some buttons and see how this thing kind of works. And that's… I mean, that's as someone who largely from the outside has watched you, you know, with, with the podcast and with the summit and with the idea of this, you know, collaborative President's Club thing as well. What if we did this? What if we did this? Here's a need that's not yet met. And I started taking… and it sounds like you've done the same thing… is taking my approach to sales and kind of applying it outside of of the business and outside of my job, right? And just how it… how I can work with other people. And then that, you know, as you've mentioned, just kind of starts to fulfill you on a broader scale. Let me switch gears a little bit and get back to, you know, as I rant on your podcast, let me get back to something a little more poignant to the discussion here. What does a day in the work life of Scott Ingram look Like, do you have something you have to do first thing in the morning? Do you have something that you, you know, once you get to work, you never fail to do? Do you do the same things in order? Have you even got it figured out yet? What's your daily routine like? Yeah.

38:56 Scott Ingram: So there's 2 super core things that have to happen every morning or most mornings for sort of the wheels to stay on the tracks. So the first thing is I am a super early riser. And again, those who've listened to the show likely know this, depending on the day, I'm up most often at 4:30. Sometimes I'll sleep until 5:30. Whoa. Because that for me, it just, it gives me, there's no distraction then, right? Nobody's, nobody's bugging you. Nobody calls you at 5:00 AM. Nobody's emailing you at 5:00 in the morning. And the first thing that I typically do is I try and get some type of workout in. And this has evolved and changed over the years. And as I have different interests, the thing that I'm obsessed with right now is my Peloton. I finished my ride this morning. I didn't realize it was this close. Tomorrow I will do my 200th ride. And I've had that bike for not quite 15 months, you know, something like that. So that's amazing. I used to teach spin way back in the day and the Peloton for me does everything that I wish I had from a stats perspective when I was teaching those classes, just to understand how hard people were actually working. And for me, it pushes every competitive button I have. There's a leaderboard. It's just, it pushes all my buttons. So that to me, that is, shoot, the last 14 days I've done a Peloton ride, 13 of them. So that's a really regular thing when I'm home. I also haven't been on the road the last 2 weeks, which is miraculous.

40:31 Jeff Bajorek: Right.

40:33 Scott Ingram: So that's a really, really core piece that just sort of sets everything on the right track. The next thing is I have a system that has been evolving and maturing and being perfected for the last, I don't even know, 12 years or something. And it all started with a friend of mine gave me, you know, he, he was a sales information junkie like me, and at one point handed me this bag, and this is a while ago, but he handed me a bag with just a ton of books and stuff. And it was, it was mostly on CDs at the time. Some of it was on tapes. And one of the things in there, and I've never been able to find this again, although I've never looked very hard for it. What I listened to, what the magic thing that was in that bag was the recording of, I think it was a 2-day seminar of David Allen going through his entire Getting Things Done process. That was magical. I read the book years later. I was like, this is horrible. So somehow or other you have to find… and it was just because the bar had been set so high. Somehow you have to find the seminar series. It all really started with that, and I have baked that down and sort of distilled that into a system that works for me. And it all begins with a process that I go through every morning, and it's really just a really big tree. Gosh. So I will go through my email accounts and everything goes to inbox zero. And I'll go through my calendar mostly to understand how much like non-meeting capacity to do stuff do I have today. Like when I'm on the road, it's like, oh, there's zero. Okay, let's make sure… let me just understand any fires or potential fires that I have to deal with today. Otherwise, let me just give myself a break. Let me focus on what I'm doing today and move on. I will also in that process confirm all of my meetings. I hate not having a meeting happen. I just, I want to know in advance, right? Because I'm going to make use of that time, right? So, and then once I understand that, and then I'm also kind of reviewing, like I said at the beginning, I'm reviewing my pipeline, I'm reviewing my accounts and thinking about what can I do today to move these deals forward? What are the action items that I need to do? And then just given the amount of working ability I have in that day, I'm gonna build a priority list of the things that I'm gonna do. And most of that gets maintained in a tool called Todoist. And so I use the web version, it also works on my phone. And that, then I don't have to think about it, right? Once I've done that in the morning, takes me, I don't know, kind of depends on the day and how much email there is to deal with. It's about 30 minutes to an hour. But once that's done, I don't really have to think about anything the rest of the day, right? I'm just, I'm in execution mode. And that is, that's really also been the secret to how I'm able to do all of this other stuff with the podcasts and the books and everything else, right? It's like, okay, these are the priorities. And a lot of times I'll treat it as a reward. Like, okay, if I can crank out like all of these things that I need to do with my clients and my deals and all of this stuff in the day job, once that's done, I can have some fun and work on some podcast stuff. And then I'll start to crank through those tasks typically in the early evening. So the day after that is all over the place, right? It really depends on meetings and kind of what I'm working through. I do try to structure my day a little bit because I know I have the most energy and the most ability to focus in the morning. I do tend to crash kind of mid-afternoon. And so the way that I combat that is that's just when I put my meetings because I can't, I'm not going to crash if I'm having an engaging conversation somebody. I've never wiped out during one of those. So that's really the way I try and build it, right? Like get stuff done, just crank as much as I can in the morning, try not to have too many meetings. I mean, there's always stuff that sneaks in, but trying to try to keep that as open as I can. And then in the afternoon, that's when I'll work through all of my meetings and stuff. And then in the early evening is typically when I'm doing the work on the books and the podcast and all of that stuff. My daughters, I have 2 daughters who are 11 and 13, And they're both very active. So a lot of times there is a drive to and from cheer practice or diving practice or tennis lessons or whatever it is. But a lot of times those are long practice sessions. And so that buys me 90 minutes or a couple of hours to really dig in and get sort of a second chunk of work done on all the side hustle fun. And then I'm also super intentional about having time carved out that I am with them. So we… they're on slightly different schedules now, so this is getting a little bit harder to do, but in general, I'm trying to have breakfast with them every morning. I'm having dinner with them every night. I'm basically with them on the weekends. I'll do a little bit of extra work and other stuff on the weekends, but for the most part, I get to be relatively present when they're around in those times, and that's something I'm pretty intentional about.

45:41 Jeff Bajorek: Well, I think you have to be because, you know, when you don't have an office to check into, when people aren't expecting to see you in at a certain time and out at another time, it's really easy to let that go haywire and just be, you know, on always. And, you know, that was my next question for you was, okay, so you're up at 4:30, you're on the bike. Let's say you're showered and ready to hit your day at 6:00. You know, is that fair? It's about right. I mean, when do you shut it down for the day? Day typically. And if you're up at 4:30, how early are you going to bed? Or are you just one of those android people that just doesn't need to sleep?

46:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, not that. So I basically just live sort of a time-shifted day. I go to bed as soon as I can get my daughters to sleep.

46:20 Jeff Bajorek: Yeah. Okay.

46:21 Scott Ingram: Typically that is about 9:30. The earlier the better. But I try and be unconscious by, you know, no later than, no later than 10. I operate really, really well on 7 hours I actually tend to, I get, I slowed down, like 8 is too much. 8 hours and I'm just, I'm kind of funky, but too many days of 6 in a row and I start to have a problem. So it's just kind of finding that balance in there. 7 is the sweet spot for me, but, but doesn't always, doesn't always happen. So I'm typically winding down kind of the, all of the work by, you know, 8 or 8:30. And I don't take, my phone doesn't go upstairs. You know, like once that happens, like I'm with my daughters, my youngest still lets me read to her. Oldest that, that ship sailed a while ago. And I love, I love doing it. That's, that's one of my favorite things. I hope that ship doesn't, doesn't sail anytime soon, but I have a bad feeling that it's about to.

47:16 Jeff Bajorek: What is an example of something you wanted to integrate into this routine as it's evolved that you just couldn't put in it?

47:26 Scott Ingram: Right.

47:26 Jeff Bajorek: Like, I'm looking at you saying 4:30 in the morning. No, that's not me. I've tried it. Nope, couldn't do it. I will work a little bit further into the evening, or I will try to compress more into the same amount of time during the day. But, you know, I'm up… what I find is my body likes to wake up around between 5:30 and 6:00, right? And it's not often that I sleep in, right? If I see 7 o'clock on the weekends, it's like, whoa. I mean, so that I kind of feel like that's my body's natural rhythm, and to try to push it any earlier than that just feels too unnatural for me to kind of make it work. So what But for you, what was something that you really thought was a good idea? You've interviewed so many people for a couple of your different podcasts, and I know you've talked about these things. Was there something that you thought was a great idea, but in implementation just didn't work for you?

48:15 Scott Ingram: I have experimented with a lot of different parts of this. It seems like working out in the afternoon would be great. It just, that absolutely doesn't work for me, especially right now. So right now I have been dropping my oldest daughter off at school, which frankly is frustrating for me because it goofs up my morning. Like I'm in the flow and that needs to happen like right when I'm in the zone and it has been really screwing with me. And so I've been thinking about, gosh, if I could just, you know, move the Peloton workout to the afternoon or lunch or something and it just, It doesn't work for me, right? There's always something that becomes more important or has my attention, or I can't get the energy or the motivation kind of going. So that's one example. Got it.

49:03 Jeff Bajorek: That's exactly the opposite of me. I was actually trying to work out first thing in the morning because if you don't do it first thing in the morning, it doesn't get done right. And then I realized there were only so many things I could do first thing in the morning, and working out was not the most important. Important because that's my creative time. That's when I'm most inspired to go do work, right? To then mail it in at the gym feels like, you know, a waste of those golden hours. And so I kind of flipped it around and I thank Dan Pink for this. I read his book When last year and I work out in the afternoon because that's when I normally hit that crash, right? If I don't have a meeting in the afternoon, I kind of subscribe to your, your strategy. If I've got a meeting to have in the afternoon, I'm not going to bonk during that thing. That's… no, that's when I've got to be fired up and ready to roll, and I will be. But if I don't have a meeting, I go to the gym then, and I can shut my brain off, give myself permission to do that, get a really good workout in, and know that I really haven't squandered any of that other time. The conversation around routines is fascinating to me, and so many people have so many different things that they do, and for so many different reasons. And I mean, it sounds like yours is pretty well ingrained. I know mine is still actively evolving because there's just feels like there's so many things to do. When, when did you determine what you really didn't need to do? How long did it take you to give yourself permission to say, look, here's what I have to do. If I have any free time, I don't have to use it. When I'm on the road, look, I'm going from meeting to my hotel room. When I get to my hotel room, maybe I've got a dinner meeting later or whatever, but when I'm in this room, I'm… it's okay for me just to put my feet up and watch what, ESPN or whatever's on in the afternoon, you know, to just kind of not really veg out but relax. I mean, how long did it take for you in your career to just give yourself permission to not be on all the time?

50:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think that's always been there a little bit. And I think it's less about doing those things and more about not feeling guilty about it. You know, like there was these days, and this is pretty binary for me, like whether I'm working on the plane or I'm just not. And I used to feel really guilty about that. You know, when I just decided, no, you know what, I'm not, I'm not opening the laptop. I'm just, I'm going I'm gonna get a book and I'm gonna read, you know, heck, oh my God, I might actually read some fiction or something.

51:25 Jeff Bajorek: What?

51:26 Scott Ingram: Every now and then, you know. So it's… I think it really comes down to letting yourself do some of those things and rewarding yourself in those ways. I mean, we talked about sort of how I reward myself with, with more work later in the day, right? But I think there's other times where it's, it's just like being intentional about it, especially when you're traveling. Traveling is so hard. And recognizing that and the toll that it takes and making sure that you do carve out time for the workouts and being a little bit mindful about what you're eating and just working in some fun time. Now, a lot of times I'll try and work that fun time into something that I'm able to do with my clients. So if there's something that they love doing or a restaurant they want to go to, or, you know, Absolutely, we're gonna do that kind of stuff. But at the same time, if I'm in a city and I haven't done something, or I was on before Peloton, I was on just this outrageous Fitbit kick. And, you know, I was 10,000 steps every day for like, I was crazy, crazy consistent with that. And I would go out for these epic walkabouts and, you know, I'd go to San Francisco and walk around like the entire bay and across the Golden Gate Bridge and at some point go, I guess I should probably call Help me understand what…

52:48 Jeff Bajorek: I mean, you've got 2 podcasts, well, 3 podcasts now that you're in charge of. I've been saying for a long time that I've got more friends with podcasts than podcasts I can listen to on a regular basis. You read, you allegedly read fiction from time to time. How do you decide what to consume? How do you decide from a content standpoint what not to consume? Do you watch fiction TV? Like, do you… I mean, are you fired up about Game of Thrones coming back? Like, what, you know, how do you decide what to consume? How do you put boundaries around that so that you're not consuming anything that isn't helpful? And, you know, what does that information diet look like?

53:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so let's go backwards. I don't watch… I don't watch much TV. I know that I have a highly addictive and competitive personality. And so I won't start things. I won't watch an… I've never watched an episode of Game of Thrones because I know what that can lead to. Right, right.

53:50 Jeff Bajorek: That's exactly why I've never seen Breaking Bad. No, we're the same in that regard.

53:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I mean, Breaking Bad is one of very few examples of that kind of show that I have… like Sopranos, Breaking Bad. I mean, there's, there's a couple… Narcos. There's like, there's a couple over time that I have allowed myself to involve in. But by and large, I just, I won't touch it. Um, my other vice, and, and now we're outside of the vice season, but football for me, and I've talked about this a little bit on the show. I mean, my hack there is I try and record most of the games and then just watch them on a delay and try and watch it in an hour and a half or 2 hours instead of the 3 and a half that a live, that a live game takes. The rest of of the stuff is predominantly podcasts and audiobooks. There are fewer and fewer podcasts that I'm… I listen to like religiously where I, I don't miss an episode. I almost listen to every marketing book podcast that my friend Douglas Burdette hosts. Just, that's a great industry podcast. Douglas does a really good job with that show. He actually reads every book like in its entirety before he interviews the author. I think he's the only guy in the world who does that.

55:03 Jeff Bajorek: Yeah.

55:04 Scott Ingram: And so I really appreciate that, but I listen to them very fast. My average listening speed is about 1.8x. I use an app called Pocket Casts to do that, which not only lets me speed it up and like on the Tim Ferriss Show, it starts at the 4 or 4.5-minute mark. So I skip all the BS ads in the beginning. It also lets me build essentially a playlist. And so I'm constantly of reorganizing and organizing what I'm gonna listen to, and then it just goes from one to the next to the next to the next. From an Audible standpoint, I'm a big Audible fan. The majority of that comes from suggestions, and it's just one of those things like, you know what, I've heard this book mentioned 3 or 4 times. That happens a lot of times. And then I also tend to go on, I don't know, I go down down very deep threads, right? So, years ago, and I'm coming back to this a little bit, but years ago, I went on a super deep, like, habit routine exploration, right? I've been on a positive psychology kick that got kicked off. I read Tony Hsieh's Happiness, and that led to all kinds of other stuff, or I'm sorry, Delivering Happiness is the name of his book. And then recently, you mentioned Dan Pink's Win. I've had a trip early this year where I was just in the car a ton between clients in the Bay Area, and it was, it was just kind of a perfect storm of Scott needed to spend 6 hours in the car kind of thing over the course of a couple of days. And so I listened to… I first listened to Win by Dan Pink, and then I listened to Deep Work by Cal Newport.

56:47 Jeff Bajorek: That's on my list.

56:48 Scott Ingram: It is. It's fantastic. So, and coming back to what you were talking about in terms of the organizing your day, the, the one thing that I'm struggling with from a when perspective is it sounds like almost everybody crashes in the afternoon. So, is that really when I want to be having some of the most important conversations I have with my clients? It's actually something I'm really giving some thought to because I don't want them to be at their lowest point when we're having these discussions. I want them to be at a high point too. So, I may move a couple more things into the morning because it's not just about me, right? It's also about them and their experience and where their head's at. And, and I want to be mindful of that. So, you know, there's a lot there. Beyond that, I really try and filter a lot. I've turned off so much stuff, and reading Deep Work sort of re-engrained this. I noticed after, or as I was listening to that, that a lot of notifications on my phone had sort of crept back in. And so I just got super intentional about turning a ton of that stuff off. I was, I mean, I was on some really good email lists. I was getting this one, oh shoot, what's the app? Pocket. Pocket has this awesome kind of daily email recap of some of the most popular, and it tends to be kind of more deep dive articles. It's great stuff, but I didn't really need that. I don't need 3 more things that are each going to take me 10 minutes to go read, right? And so, it's just, again, being really intentional about what you're deciding to consume, right? Like, if you're only like, this podcast is meh, and it's not impacting you that much, and there's something that's more impactful, stop listening to this. You know, go do something else. Like, I think we just get in these ruts of so many different things And you really just have to think about the intentionality of your headspace and of the content and all of this stuff. And I love LinkedIn. It's about the only social network that I allow myself to indulge in. I literally disabled my Facebook account a couple of years ago. But yet, even with LinkedIn, like, you got to be careful. You can quickly go off into the rabbit hole. So, you know, I'm really starting to be more mindful about putting boundaries around myself and, you know, and getting into focus periods. And you brought this up in your tip on the Daily Sales Tips podcast about just carving out time a couple of times a day to be intensely focused. And the distractions are such an issue that you've got to be maniacal to carve out that time and do that. I just started using an app. It's a derivative of… it's like a free version. There's a tool called Inbox Pause, but there are other like Chrome plugins that will do this. And what they do is it just stops your new emails from showing up because I'm like, I need to… the work I need to do, a lot of it is in email. Well, how do you work undistracted in email when new emails keep coming in? And so it just keeps that from happening and it's fantastic.

1:00:02 Jeff Bajorek: You know, it's… that's funny. I'm going to look that up because I work on a Mac and the Mac will allow you to shut off notifications and go do not disturb. But there are some limitations to it. Like, I can shut off the sound, but that only happens when the email program is closed or something. Like, there were these little loopholes that just seemed to be really kind of stupid. And when you think about why that is and how so many people have all these push notifications, and, and now websites are offering you push notifications. So if you have a browser open, they can tell you when a new blog has been posted or something like that. Everything is clamoring for your attention, and how do you not give it up? And when there are flashing lights and sirens and tones and vibrations and all these other things, how does that not get your attention? And then when you look at your phone… I mean, here's the test: when you look at your phone, how many red circles are on the screen? Screen. And then when you swipe to the next screen, you know, of apps, how many red circles are there? It is astonishing how much is out there, and it's almost embarrassing, but it's come to this. You actually have to put boundaries around your time and say, no, this is the time I only get to do this. And you almost have to pretend as if you're going to the doctor's office in the basement of the hospital where there's no cell reception, right? If you were going to be there, you'd give yourself a pass. Well, if that means that that's where you have to open up a new coworking space, and maybe there's a business idea for us there, Scott. Let's go to the place where you really can't be found and we'll charge people $400 a month to be there. You know, that's almost where you need to go to do any good work. And I've heard about Deep Work. I've heard multiple people recommend it to me, and it is now next on my audible.com queue right after I get done with Built to Last, which I'm working on right now. But you've mentioned a couple Of apps, what are a handful of apps that you can't live without? Red circles in them or not.

1:02:06 Scott Ingram: So if you turn off all notifications on those apps, the red circles go away also. Yeah, I know that. You know that's that's been sort of a new trick for me. I mean, and LinkedIn is actually one of the for me is is one of the worst offenders of that. I'm like no, I will go dip into LinkedIn when I'm ready to go dip into LinkedIn. I don't need it. You know. Beeping at me all the time. So from an app perspective, I mean, probably the most important is all of the G Suite stuff. So Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive, Docs, and Sheets, and all of that stuff. That's pretty… I couldn't exist without that stuff. Thank God. I don't, I don't think I could live in an Outlook environment again, just because my process doesn't really fit into that. Beyond that, there's a lot of things that sort of go around that getting things done process. So Evernote, actually my checklist for that process, even though I do it every morning, I still check every single box. That checklist lives in Evernote and so do all of my notes for everything because I just want to be able to search for stuff, right? I need, hey, I know that I talked with Jeff about this 2 months ago. Let me just, it's all in Evernote. Todoist, I talked about before. I talked about Pocket Casts. It's funny, I recommended this to people and this is probably the only app I've actually spent money on in my life. And somebody the other day I recommended, he's like, man, this is like $3.99. I'm like, trust me, last time I pulled my stats on the app, it has saved me a month of time with the speeding up and all the skipping silence that you don't even notice. All… it's incredible. And then we talked about Inbox Pause. There's another one that I'm playing with because I'm actually trying to build build essentially a focus routine. And so the book that I'm actually rereading at this point, because I am on this kind of… I'll call it a focus kick, right? It's less about the habit and more about just the intentional use of time. So this combination of When and Deep Work, and the last one I'll add to that is Atomic Habits.

1:04:12 Jeff Bajorek: Another great one.

1:04:13 Scott Ingram: And so what I've taken away from that is is just sort of the environmental programming, right? Like, we're bad at avoiding this stuff, so make it so that you don't have to avoid it. Just make it go away. And so I'm really trying to build this focus muscle, and one of the tools that I'm using around that… there's a website called brain.fm, and I don't know, there's all sorts of like hippie hoo-ha behind this about the frequency of the music or whatever the heck it's doing. I don't care, but the process is like, okay, plug in the headphones, put on the headphones, play this. And typically I'll set it for 30 minutes or an hour. And apparently it's some type of magical music. Okay, fine. I don't care if it's working. That's great. But it's more about when this kind of music is playing and when I have my headphones on and I'm not doing a podcast interview, I am in the zone and I'm trying to basically trigger the zone, you know, that much, that much faster. So that's, that's kind of the game that I'm playing. So brain.fm would be the last tool. Oh, and my God, Like LinkedIn. I can't live without LinkedIn.

1:05:21 Jeff Bajorek: Okay, I love it. I'll take a look at brain.fm. It's funny you mentioned, you know, if you get distracted by stuff, why don't you just eliminate the distractions rather than trying to make it discipline? I finally just bit the bullet and found this coworking space a couple miles from my house. And even though there's no one home during most of the day, like, I'm still in my house. And what I've noticed just in the 2 days I've gone so far this week… I'm not even going every day… I get more done in a concentrated concentrated couple of hours than I ever would at home because I'm where I go to do work and nothing else. And it's such a silly thing. And I'm actually kind of kicking myself that I haven't done it, that I didn't do it earlier. But it's always like that, that thing like, do I spend a few hundred bucks a month on this thing that if I was only more disciplined, I could do myself? And that is sometimes that's the challenge you need to make, especially if you're bootstrapping something or you're starting a small business or a side hustle or whatever. That's what it takes. There's a certain… you got to make sure that you can at least pass that test. But when you get to the point where those stupid little tests are actually inhibiting your ability to do the deep work that you're capable of, for crying out loud, go at the very least invest in some noise-canceling headphones and find a dark corner of your house where you can shut a door and get that work done. That's such a strong point that you made there. And thanks for giving me permission to go and do that. I'll send you an invoice or you can send me an invoice. When it comes to your selling style, do you have a particular style, or are you branding yourself as the Ingram method?

1:07:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you know, I think that I've been influenced by so many different things. I mean, at this point in my career, I'm sure that I've read hundreds of sales books, and so, you know, all of those things, I'm sure in some way ways have contributed, but there's not one. And I don't know that I would call it the Ingram way either, or the Ingram process or anything like that. I think that you have to, you really just have to develop your own and you have to pick and choose and see what fits your personality and what fits your style. And so for me, it's being very, very customer-centric. Centric, right? It's really trying to get into their heads and understand them and understand their business. And I really, I'm intentional about trying to do that at both of those levels explicitly, right? So yes, I want to understand the business challenge and the business goal and all of those things, but I also want to understand the personal goal and the personal aspirations and the personal challenges because at the end of the it's a human that's going to sign my contract, right? Or that's going to help me champion this idea throughout the organization. And there's, you know, a lot of different humans involved there. So it's, it's really working at that level. And I think the other place that this idea of the long game really comes into play is just always doing the right thing. You know, I think when you think about, even though I could get this little short-term win, I could get this little deal, but it's not going to have the impact and the that and the other thing, or it may, it's maybe not the right, the exact right thing for that client. When you're playing the long game, you don't worry about that stuff because, you know, in the end you're going to come out ahead. Right. And when you've got a strong enough pipeline and strong enough relationships and enough stuff going on, you don't have to worry about that and cut corners and do those kinds of things. So anyway, I'm kind of rambling, but all of that. Sort of informs what that is, but then also having a process around it, right? And so, I'm constantly not only working to understand that vision, but as we talked about before, building the roadmap, right? How do we define how we're going to go do this together? What are the steps? What do we do today? What do we do tomorrow? What, you know, and in a lot of ways, I feel like I And I've never done any official training, but I was just thinking about this the other day. I'm essentially a project manager. And if you look at a lot of the things that I do, you know, when you, when you do a podcast like this, but this is a project. When you're working on a book project, you're working on an event, it's a project. When you're working on a deal with your client, it's a project. And so when you treat it that way and you think about these are the critical path kind of things, like this has to happen before that has to happen, but even though that, that's further away, oh, well, let's make sure that we get in front of that and we care of that? And who's responsible for that? Who, you know, who do I need input from to take care of those things? All of those sort of have defined what this is that I've sort of built for myself. And someday, you know, maybe I'll figure out how to document the whole thing, but I don't know that that would be valuable. I think everybody has to, you just have to kind of go figure it out, you know, and the fastest way to go do that is to find the best people in your organization, hopefully somebody that stylistically fits you. I've talked about my friend Keith, my coworker here. Keith and I stylistically are like opposite ends of the spectrum, and I can't do what Keith does, and Keith can't do what I do. So that's not helpful to me. I have to use my process, and I think you have to be mindful of that as you're developing your own system, is making sure that all of those things align with who you are and the way that you operate and what your strengths are and doesn't put you in a position that you're not going to win. You're trying to fake it and be somebody else.

1:11:07 Jeff Bajorek: Well, it's really interesting. You kind of approaching it as if you're a project manager. One of the things that a good project manager does is identifies all the steps along the process and all the steps from beginning to end of the project and, you know, genesis to completion of the project. And so many salespeople don't really even know what they need to do next, let alone what they need to do 4 or 5 steps down the road. But a project manager does, and therefore you know what all of those things are and where they need to happen and when they need to happen. And that gives you kind of a high-level visibility over the entire process. That is not a way you're going to see it written about very often anyway, but it's a very effective way to kind of highlight all of those steps in the sales cycle or in your workflow or in your… the buyer's journey or the sales process or whatever. So that's, that's really interesting. But then, you know, much in the same way that you wouldn't see it described that way. There are some things that your friend Keith does that you can't even imagine making work yourself. What are some of those things that maybe you've seen other reps do that you think is just insane? And what are some things that you do… and maybe you've hinted at it already with the project management kind of viewpoint… but what are some things that you do that people hear about and look at you sideways?

1:12:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so let me take that from a little bit of a higher level, right? I think the thing that I see more broadly that I think is insane for most people is that there's a level of good enough or like, I've got this, right? I think I've seen too many people in my career who got to a point where they're like, okay, cool. I've really, I've got this figured out. I've got this nailed. And they kind of ride that. And to me, there's never good enough, right? There's always an opportunity to improve and be better in everything, right? So that really drives me in a lot of ways. And then I think the flip side of that, as far as the thing that I'm doing that a lot of people may not recognize, is kind of this long-game approach, right? And not having the patience to, you know, take that, like, no, there's a deal on the table, I can go get this, you know, even though it may not be kind of the right thing for the customer. I have been, I don't know, between all of the networking that I have done and the 10 years that I've spent in the marketing technology space, the world is such a tiny, tiny, tiny place that I really feel like what comes around goes around. And the world is so small these days that those cycles are getting faster, right? So, what comes around isn't gonna be 10 years from now, it's gonna be like tomorrow. And I want all of those things that are coming around for me to be positive things and not things that are going to whack me upside the head and cause me issues. And if you just look at average tenure in roles these days, like, we're all moving up and, and moving around with so much more velocity, right? So if, if you take great care of somebody, you know, who knows, like tomorrow they're going to be executive at the company that you've always wanted to do business with. And the flip side is true too, right? Like, if you screw somebody over, like just wait, like they're gonna show up, you're gonna be working on the deal of a lifetime. And they're gonna pop up and be like, oh, that guy? Nope, deal's off. Never again. Right? And so that to me is really what guides that. I mean, and frankly, to me, it's just, it's being human and doing the right thing. I mean, it's, this isn't hard, right? To me, it's being transparent and telling the truth because frankly, my memory is not amazing. Like if it's not in Evernote, it didn't exist. And I can't remember, I can't keep up with stuff that's not accurate and not the truth. Like if I tell you what's true, that's always going to be true. And then I don't get myself myself in trouble.

1:15:16 Jeff Bajorek: You can have a really short memory if you always tell the truth. And that statement keeps coming to mind. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said it. It was probably someone before him, and it's probably been misquoted to a bunch of people. But if you're always consistent in what you do, and if there is a consistent method to the madness, then you don't have to worry about backtracking. You don't tie yourself up in knots. You don't have to worry about the way you treated that guy at that thing at that time and then be concerned that he or a friend of his is going to be in charge of a decision that you need to come through, right? If you always tell the truth, you can afford to have a really short memory and you can afford to have a really… you sleep well because you have a really clean conscience too. And that's… that I think is one of the most significant aspects of the long game as you've called it, you're not shortchanging anybody to get a deal done quicker. There's a time and a place for this, and we're going to roll through how, you know, as we get into the years of experience that you've had under your belt, and clearly anybody who looks you up and sees your profile, they see the success that you've been this more recent, you know, climbing the mountain to be top performer at Relationship One. That's our top individual contributor. I mean, that's another jewel in the crown, so to speak. When you… if you were to put your arm around the proverbial shoulder of a new salesperson there in any industry, how do you help them or how would you advise them to start looking at the long game, even if it means putting at risk some of the short-term results, which is what their managers are asking them for? When someone's new in an organization, they want to make a big splash. They want to make a good impression. They want to try to build some of that credibility. And earn that benefit of the doubt sometimes. How do you span that gap? Because if you're thinking only long-term, it's hard to drive short-term results. If you're only thinking short-term, the long-term becomes really demoralizing, right? Because all those bridges are burned before you can even cross them. How do you encourage people to kind of break those rules? And do you have a strategy for that, or is it really really just get out there and do what you believe to be the right thing every day?

1:17:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I think it's balance, right? So there's a couple of things, and we keep coming back to kind of the, the balance of the long term with the short term. One of the tips I talked about on the other Daily Sales Tips podcast is this idea of minimum viable habits, right? So if you can break that long-term vision down all the way to, if I were to just do this every day, and if you're doing something every day and sort of benefiting from the compounding effect that that creates, you often don't have to do a lot of that little thing every day. Where we get in trouble is, well, you know, I need to do whatever that thing is, right? I need to do 2 of them a day. And then you get to the end of the month and you haven't done any. And then it's daunting because you're like, crud, I have to do 60. That sucks. It's hard. It's this giant mountain. And so I'm constantly looking for just… it's the consistency, it's the regularity, it's the… it's building the habit and building those muscles. You know, when I think about this audience and this community and what it takes to build, it's just about patience, right? I'm not worried about how many downloads I got yesterday. It's way more than it was a year a year ago. It's way more than it was, you know, as we started the show. It just grows, but I don't have to worry about it. I know that if I do good work and, you know, find great people to talk to and, and have these great conversations, it's going to be a natural evolution. It will get there. And I don't have that pressure of like, oh gosh, I've got to get this sponsorship, or I've got to get these dollars, or I've got to get the sale, or whatever it is on the other end, because you have to kind of find ways to get that pressure off of yourself. Maybe, maybe that's the key, right? And so, I mean, a lot of people have different ideas from what their manager thinks or what that standard operating procedure is. And my advice is always do what they're asking, but you're gonna have to go above and beyond, right? So find a way to build a bit of a split test, right? So can you A/B test that? So If they want you to make 50 dials a day and you think that the better approach would be to, I don't know, whatever that is, right? You want sort of a higher quality type of touch. You want to start using video in your process or whatever it is. Okay, great. Do the 50 dials, right? Don't not do what your boss is asking you to do. That's a recipe for a very short tenure. Do that. Then go above and beyond and test that hypothesis. Hypothesis, right? Send 10 really qualified emails or do your outreach in a different way. Like, whatever that is, you need to sort of create enough action and motion and data to prove your point, right? You can't… theory is great, but you have to act. And, you know, from a learning perspective, it's the same thing. You can listen to all the podcasts in the world and read all the books in the world, and you're gonna sound super smart, but have you done any of it? You have to figure out which of those things actually work for you, and the only way to get there is to do it and to do enough repetitions that you have enough of a sample size. You can't make a decision because, well, I tried this 5 times and it didn't work. Like, wait, what? Or the flip side, like, I did this 5 times and it worked 3 out of 5. Okay, but do it 50 and see if it works 30 out of 50, or maybe you just got lucky, right? So you really have to develop enough of these repetitions. And some things you're not going to be good at it for the first, I don't know, 50 times, 100 times. I don't know if I was good at this podcast the first few times I did it. I mean, I cheated because I had other shows before because I knew I wanted to do this and I wanted to be good at it. So I got my bad radio out, you know, before, before I came here. Fortunately, the very first podcast I ever did doesn't exist. And I think that's a good thing because, yeah, there were… I edited some of that myself. And that was, that was a big lesson too. Like, it was, it was pretty bad.

1:22:02 Jeff Bajorek: I won't even go back and listen to my first couple podcasts. And I'm glad the first couple blogs I wrote are gone. And I'm glad, you know, some of those that were the 100th blogs that I've written are no longer… no, are no longer in existence as I've changed websites and things. And, you know, what's funny, you know, as you say, you got it. First of all, do what your manager's asking. And if you think there's a better way to do it, fine, do it her way and your way, and at least have an A/B test to be able to have an intelligent conversation. If you're gonna break the rules, you You better have as much substantiation as possible for why and some data to back that up, if at all possible. It can't just be theory because you're nobody until you've proven it. But being willing to fail and believing in something so much like this podcast, you know, look, you've come so far in the time that you've been doing this and your level of sophistication has grown, but you can't grow unless you start somewhere. And that's the thing. Everybody wants to be good right away. Everybody wants to be an overnight success. You know how many overnights it takes to be an overnight success? That's what nobody's talking about, or at least no one that anybody's listening to is talking about. And, and that's the, the interesting thing. And, and for someone who's new to this game, you don't just come right out of the box swinging for the fences. That's not how it works. But how about someone who's been out of the box for a while? How about someone who's in the middle of their career and they've believed for too long that the adage of, you know, teaching an old dog new tricks just won't work. Or, you know, I've been championing mediocrity for the last 25 years, 10 more, and maybe I can hang them up. If I do really well, maybe I can hang them up in 8 years. I mean, do you have advice for people who maybe want to be a little better but feel as if their routine is too well ingrained at this point to make any changes?

1:23:58 Scott Ingram: Well, I do, but here's, here's the challenge. I would guess that that person didn't start listening to this show and certainly isn't still listening to the show, right? But what I would say is it's a decision, right? You have to decide, I'm going to be great. And if you're far enough into your career, you probably already have a really good sense of what that's going to take and what that is. So it's just a matter of making the decision that you're going to do it and start working against doing it. And then again, finding… it's, it's, I think it's less about the tactics. It's less about the specific things that you're gonna do and finding ways to make sure that you're actually going to do them. Because I'll tell you, I mean, as, as core as my daily sort of morning process that we talked about is, there are times when I will get out of that routine and I'm not nearly as organized. Like, my life sort of becomes a mess. But sometimes that'll devolve and that'll go on for weeks. So I set up myself the beginning of this year an accountability partner, and the deal with him is any day that I miss this, this year, I'm gonna pay you $10. Every single day that I miss. So if I do miss a day, it happens, right? Life happens. But damn if I'm gonna miss 2 days. And, and those are of the… where we get into. So I think what you have to do is make that decision, define the things that you need to do to get to the level that you want to be at, and then figure out how to hold yourself accountable to that, right? Whether that's you hire a coach, you partner with somebody else on your team that's going to help hold you accountable, something. Because my guess is if you've been doing it the lazy way for this long, it's going to be really hard to retrain those muscles that have like bad muscle memory.

1:25:59 Jeff Bajorek: Definitely. Speaking of the long game, and we're coming up on the end of time here, I've got a curveball question to throw at you. This is on behalf of all of your listeners who just really want to know where this whole thing is headed. What do you want to be when you grow up and what do you want this podcast to be when grows up.

1:26:18 Scott Ingram: So for me, and actually let me, let me start with, I mean, the question that you always ask at the close of every one of your shows on The Why and the Buy is, is what is your why? And for me, my why is, is about inspiration. And it's actually a little bit more than that. I thought about this a number of years ago. For me, it's inspiration squared. And there's 2 sides to it. So the one side is is I want to be able to inspire, right? I want to be a great example and show people what's possible and lead folks to greater things. At the same time, I want to be and love to be inspired. So that's so much of what this is. You know, for the time being, I'm in an incredible spot. I have a great job. I love selling. So I have a great opportunity to do that. I've discovered it's kind of rare to find an organization that is supportive of that. And, and I really, I knew that I wanted to do this kind of stuff and, and qualified around that as I was coming in because I didn't have that kind of support in a previous role. And, you know, again, it's, there's, there's no good reason, there's no compelling reason for me right now to walk away from, from all of that. To your point though, I also believe in most overnight success stories take 10 years to build. And so I see myself as being very early on that journey, right, in building sort of this inspirational platform and community and things that I want to deliver and help sort of the next generation of do it the right way and take this game of sales and really professionalize it and show the world what it's really, really, really about. Because if there's anything that I've learned from this show is the best of the best are those that care the most. They're just the best freaking humans. And so that's really kind of the game. In the meantime, it's just, it's one foot in front of the other. You know, this year we're actually getting ready to release… this is maybe a bit of a sneak preview for folks beyond those who are on the listener list, which you should all be on. If you're listening to this and you're not getting the email from me once a week, it's not very much. Please, please, please, please go to top1.fm and get yourself on that list because they already know about this. But I'm getting ready to release a book called B2B Sales Mentors on April 2nd. And this is really just, it's kind of a sampler, right? It's a preview of 10 stories that came from the first book and it's 10 preview stories from the second book that we're getting, is already well underway, and we're getting ready to release at the second day of this year's Sales Success Summit on October 15th. So it's just continuing to do those things, right? We'll, we'll do 2 books this year. I don't think that'll be normal. I think in the future we'll just kind of get into the once a year kind of, kind of sequence. The summit doesn't, just keeps going. I love that thing. It is mind-blowing to me. Here, here are… I don't even know how many months away that thing is, 8 months away, 9 months away. I've already sold more tickets than we had people attending last year. So we're well on our way to selling that thing out. I'm working on some things behind the scenes on that event. It's gonna be cool. And then, you know, as we get into next year, I think that I'll have the bandwidth in 2020 to do the first President's Club Cruise and start to figure out that thing. And at some point, sure, you know, it may make sense for me to transition and kind of work on this whole Sales Success Media thing full-time. But the beauty of the position I'm in is I get to be extraordinarily patient. And I think that that patience allows me to make… again, it's that long-term view, right? It allows me to make really good decisions, and I don't have any pressure pressures to do anything that's not going to serve this community the best way I can.

1:30:31 Jeff Bajorek: That's awesome. You know, you've worked really hard to put yourself in that position. You've spent the nights working to become an overnight success, and that long-term strategy has informed every step that you take. You know, was it right to press go? You know, some people would have just tried to press go on the cruise idea and then fallen short and then given up on it. I know I did with a couple of things. I was like, this is dumb. It didn't work out. Wait, you mean I can't just turn a key and tweet this thing and everybody's gonna sign up for it? Like, wait, how does this not work? Oh, okay. Well, all right, well, screw that idea. Let's, let's move on to something else, you know. But having a long-term outlook on things or view on things, you say, look, one step in front of the other. It's gonna take a while, but you know what, I'm not in a hurry because I'm still a young young man. I've got other priorities right now. I still get to read to my daughter every night, and who knows when that's going to go away. So right now, that's what's most important. And I can get my work stuff done during the day while she's at school. I can get some stuff done while she's at practice and I'm sitting in the car waiting for her, sitting in the bleachers waiting for her, or whatever. I mean, it just… that long-term scope of things allows you visibility of so much more because you allow yourself to look. And I just… you've said it a bunch of times, and I can't echo it any more than what you've already alluded to. But just, you know, and it's not just stop and smell the roses. It's, okay, what really needs to be done right now? Let's take care of that. And let's, you know, make sure you make the most of the rest of the time that you have, because it's always fleeting. So I've got one more question for you before before we wrap, but you've talked about a lot today. And, you know, if you were going to challenge your listeners to some sort of test over the next 7 days or so, what would you challenge them to do? What is one, maybe 2 things that you would challenge the listeners of this show to do other than subscribe to the mailing list? You've already thrown that gauntlet down. What would you ask them to do and what would make the biggest impact on their careers?

1:32:38 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so it's one thing. It's definitely not 2 things. And that is to define the one thing about yourself, your process, you know, draw inspiration from wherever. I mean, I'm thinking right now about a couple of sales tips that I was working through last night that'll go out on the other feed. So maybe it is developing your business acumen to a deeper level. Maybe it is finding some insights that you can bring to your clients. Maybe it's developing your personal brand or it's finding a mentor. Figure out that one thing for you that is going to make the biggest impact and then focus on it. And I don't think that this is something that you finish in a week. I think it's really the definition and putting some structure around and figuring out, almost building a curriculum for yourself to develop that thing. So define your thing, define where you want to be and what greatness at that particular thing is and figure out, define the path to get there, right? What book do you need to read? Who can help mentor you, right? Who's already in that position that you can reach out to that you can learn from and just get better. And then once you've got that thing knocked down or you, or you've got a good trajectory on it, define another thing, right? This is a process you can repeat whether it's monthly or quarterly or you work on a couple of these a year. Year. It doesn't matter. But I think making the decision, getting really clear and focused, not worrying about… there's 1,000 things you could do. I mean, my God, there's probably a dozen things in here that you're like, oh, that was, that was a decent idea. I should try that. Okay, good. But what one thing is going to make the biggest difference that you can actually implement and do?

1:34:27 Jeff Bajorek: I always knew I liked you, Scott. And having gotten the opportunity to interview you on your own show, I like you even more. Thanks for doing the great work that you do. Thanks for allowing me the privilege of being the guy to interview you as a top 1 performer instead of the top 1 interviewer. And just keep doing great work.

1:34:47 Scott Ingram: Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate you taking the time to be here with us and ask the questions that I know a lot of other people that wanted to ask. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode, and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.