81: Embracing Challenge, Overcoming Fear with Ben Niemeier

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.

0:24 Scott Ingram: This episode is sponsored by Outreach. You can check them out and get a free copy of their new book, Sales Engagement: How the World's Fastest Growing are modernizing sales through humanization at scale by clicking over to top1.fm/outreach. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Ben Niemeier. Ben is a senior account executive at Konrad Technologies, where he's been the number one top performer the last 3 years running. Welcome to the show, Ben.

0:50 Ben Niemeier: Thank you, Scott.

0:51 Scott Ingram: So glad you're here. And I love the way that this got set up. You attended the Sales Success Summit and in part of your feedback kind of called yourself out and said, you know, the thing that I'm not great at is really highlighting myself and, and what I've done. And oh, by the way, I've been a top performer and, and maybe we should talk about this. So I, I appreciate you outing yourself and, and allowing this conversation. And, and as always, I know you listen to the show. What I want to do is jump right into some immediate value and talk through the 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success.

1:24 Ben Niemeier: Yeah. So I think the first would be embracing challenge over comfort as a philosophy of life. And, and what I mean by that is that I've incorporated this idea through the things that I do in my profession and in my personal life. I call it sort of leaning into fears. And that plays a lot of, a lot of roles and aspects in doing things that you, that you suck at sometimes. Actually, scientifically, it increases white matter in your brain, which is called myelin. And it actually makes you and helps you improve on a lot of things that you do. And so I think that getting out of your comfort zone is where growth happens. And there's a great quote from Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, saying growth and comfort do not exist, do not coexist. And I firmly believe in that quote. I've got it in my headline on my LinkedIn page. And so essentially, you know, being able to live in that uncomfortable, being comfortable, being uncomfortable, I think goes a long way to, to reach the, to reach the levels of success that you have desired for yourself. And that at the heart of that as well are disciplines because disciplines outlive motivation. And it's not always great and fun to do certain things that we know we need to do. And by sort of holding yourself accountable to those things, I think that's a fair measure of where you are in your life right now.

2:43 Scott Ingram: That's solid. What's the second one?

2:45 Ben Niemeier: The second one would be that I have… that generally is that I'm weird and that I have a bit of a, I think, a unique perspective on a lot of subjects, that I have a drive to be an aspiring polymath is what I call it, which is basically like learning a lot of being like a jack of all trades, but learning a lot of different things, science, history, different avenues that kind of make me intensely curious. And so my intense curiosity does not stop at work and it certainly doesn't stop at home. It's just who I am as a person. And I think that that in my professional life drives me to always be wondering, you know, why is something working this way? On a human level, what does this person deeply want? What are they trying to accomplish? How does this business work? What are the misconceptions of this business? I work a lot with, I work a lot with very high-tech clients that are in like the AI, robotics, and autonomous driving spaces. And so there's a, you've got, you've got a lot of things there to learn. And I think being intensely curious also kind of helps you connect over with people and people love to, to tell you about things too. And, and what I, what I wrapped up into that is, My trio of EQ, IQ, TQ about what I consider to be 3 core tenets of future sales success, meaning emotional intelligence, intelligence or knowledge quotient, and your technical quotient. And technical quotient can mean a lot of different things, but it is more having a pulse of technology, the direction that it's having in your own career, in your own business, how you can utilize it in sales. And also how it's impacting businesses, because you've got to have, you've got to have a feel for that to help, to help your clients navigate, you know, essentially a very disruptive economy that we've been dealing with for many years now.

4:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. And your third point?

4:36 Ben Niemeier: Third thing is other orientation and tactical empathy. And I reference the formula for trust from David Maister's Trusted Advisor book, which is credibility times reliability times intimacy. Divided by self-orientation is what equates to trust. Having a deep empathetic drive to understand what your prospects or clients or companies or all the people you interact with, also internal teams, because internal sales and internal relationships and everything else are crucial to being successful. I certainly can't contribute my success all to myself. I think being able to find out what someone cares about and helping them achieve what they want to achieve is ultimately, you know, one of the core tenets of sales success that, that has helped me out along my career.

5:27 Scott Ingram: Well, what I think I'm hearing more holistically across these last couple is it's really finding that right amount of balance. I mean, before you and I hit the record button, we were talking about the introvert-extrovert scale, right? And it sounds like you're pretty well balanced in that element as well.

5:42 Ben Niemeier: I think so. Like, I mean, balance for me, balance is like a lifelong struggle, to be honest, because it's… I tend to be, you know, all in. Or all out. And, you know, the whole idea of, of kind of an even keel and the idea of balance is a little bit sometimes foreign to me. I think if you take the timeline and stretch it out long enough, you find balance. But if you look at the little, the little dips and peaks in there, they're probably more, you know, highs and lows that end up there. So, but yeah, I agree. It is, it is finding that, finding your, finding your place on the spectrum. And, you know, we, I think we all kind of dip in and out of certain, certain areas of that space throughout whatever it is, our careers, our lives, our days. But yeah, I think that's a, that's a good way of putting it.

6:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, okay. So let's, let's put this in the perspective and provide some context around your day job. So what is your role? Who is Konrad Technologies? Kind of walk us through the, the, your world a little bit.

6:40 Ben Niemeier: So my, my role, I'm an account executive and I've been with this company for about 4 years. We are a systems integration company. We're a channel partner of a larger company that sells test and measurement equipment and software. So what we do is we work with companies that are basically developing their, their advanced electronics, essentially. So it could be in any space, it could be something in an airplane, it could be something in a car, it could be something in a medical device. These particular units have to be validated, qualified throughout while they're designing these products and also when they produce these products, because they have to essentially make sure that they work, or there's lots of risk and critical downside if they don't. And a lot of those companies tend to find themselves in the better to stick to their core competencies and expertise and not develop the systems themselves that do that work. So my company does custom test systems. We call them custom automated test systems for those companies. And also, we also do some software work, some enterprise software work for data processing on the back end of that system.

7:48 Scott Ingram: Got it. Now your, your history with, with Austin and National Instruments all makes a little bit more sense to me.

7:53 Ben Niemeier: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and I… okay. So yes, that's why.

7:56 Scott Ingram: There you go. Now, before we talk more about Ben's results, let me tell you a little bit more about Outreach, who has sponsored this episode. Ever feel like you can't really connect with prospects or have an organized workflow to get deals closed? Outreach is the number one sales engagement platform that streamlines effective playbooks for high-touch revenue organizations. So that they can focus their time, effort, and resources on driving better customer engagement and repeatable success. Revenue teams choose Outreach because it's designed to fit the needs of every workflow, role, and team. It's dependable, secure, and scalable, and applies machine learning and AI to power better engagement and rep efficiency. You can check them out at top1.fm/outreach to chat with them and receive a free copy of their new book, Sales Engagement: How the World's Fastest Growing Companies Are Modernizing Sales Through Humanization at Scale. All right, Ben. So now let's talk about your results. What what exactly have you done to be the top performer the last three years?

8:57 Ben Niemeier: So you want to talk more specific, like percent of plan and revenue?

9:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

9:01 Ben Niemeier: So I don't really have a region necessarily, and we can talk a little bit, a little bit, a little bit about next if you want. Kind of the craziness that has happened throughout the last four years of of my company and what sort of different selling scenarios I was working through. But my… so when I came on to the company 4 years ago, we were a different company. We were VI Engineering at that time. We were essentially doing the same type of work, and there were 3 sales guys there. And 3 months after I started, they all left. So I had a phone call. I was working home office somewhere in the Midwest, and I got a phone call from our operating director, and she said that the VP of Sales was leaving. And I thought, oh, like, well, what's, what's next? Are you going to ask me to be the VP of sales? I just started. I have no idea what the heck I'm doing. I can never do this. Turns out that didn't really happen. But also about a month later, the other sales guy had left too. So I started off work with no training, no sales manager, no real idea like how to operate in this new business working environment. This was a very different business model at the time. I had basically a very ground-up territory because my initial role was just to come in and be a business development guy and drive new business and go find new prospects. So within 18 months, I kind of dug myself out of that hole. And my second year, I cleared 138% of my target. Last year was my big year, which I hit 161% of my target. This year, although we're recording this in early November, I'm not 100% sure how the pipeline is going to flesh out, but I think it's probably going to be pretty close to the same. But right now I'm at 130%. 130% of my target.

10:42 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. So take us back to and just walk us through the origin story. How did you get into sales in the first place?

10:48 Ben Niemeier: Yeah, so I find that this story, like, it's cliché now to say that you never wanted to be in sales or you didn't think you'd be in sales or you hated sales or whatever. And like, I'm kind of the same way. So I got an engineering degree in college. Midway through school, I knew very well I was not like going to be a guy in a lab doing engineering stuff because it bored me to tears. But I ended up just sort of taking on that path and saying, well, this will allow me to do something related that I'll find my own path through when I get older. And so I left school. When I left school, I went to go work for an oilfield services company as an engineer, but it was kind of a weird engineering role where they kind of molded you to do the job as they defined it. Very weird. Much different type of position or industry that I'm, that I'm in right now. And the '08-'09 crash hit and that company laid off, I think about 15,000 people that year. And I was one of those 15,000. So about a year later, I found myself as an inside sales engineer for National Instruments for a different company there in Austin. And at the time I thought, you know, I'm starting a new industry. My recent 3 years probably aren't a great qualification for anything other than to say that I've made it out of college and, and had some professional experience. So I was willing to take, you know, significant salary hit and maybe just an ego hit because I was so eager to get back in the job market. And so I took on this inside sales role and I said to myself, I'm just gonna go do this job, sounds like a good opportunity, and in 6 to 12 months I'll figure out what else I wanted to. Right now I just need to get back on my feet sort of thing. And that obviously didn't happen. So I got into Inside sales, I had, I had a good time doing it. When you're new at sales, you just work hard. Like you don't really know what, what the heck you're doing. You just, you just think you're gonna make up for everything by, and probably my, my biggest mistake was that I thought I was gonna solve everyone's problem by increasing my product knowledge. So I just consumed documents and information like crazy. And I was like the super guru of products and I could answer all these questions. And it was like my thing. And I got really interested in that. And I had a manager at the time that, you know, I feel like I kind of hit my ceiling in that job in about a year and a half or so. And then I moved on into a kind of a pre-launch role that was like an applications role where you do a little more technical work. And then you kind of choose if you want to go into marketing or do you want to go into sales? And I went into sales. I went into field sales and I went out into… I ended up going back to Indiana where I where I was born, and I worked out there for a couple of years working for this company, started another role after 2 years there, and then 2 years after that, I ended up in my company now, which is… they've all been sales roles. They've all been very kind of had their own little twist or different focus. But yeah, that's how, that's how I ended up here.

13:45 Scott Ingram: Nice. And I want to go back and we'll circle back around to the kind of chaos that you started into, because I think that that scenario unfortunately is not very uncommon. But knowing what you know now and kind of the experience that you've had, if you were starting over today, is there anything that you would have done differently in terms of managing your career?

14:06 Ben Niemeier: So from a career, this is, you know, this is, I thought a lot about this question because there's a lot of nuance in it. And, you know, on one side you can say, I wouldn't change anything because all the mistakes I made allowed me to be the person that I am today. And I learned from them. And now my situational knowledge is, you know, direct from all the failures that I had. And I agree with that on one aspect. And on another aspect, for me, I constantly battle with something that, that for me, I call my, my 9/11 moment. So my 9/11 moment is a little bit, you know, 9/11 was, was a black swan. No one saw it coming. And if you think about the way that we talk about the world, you can think about the world before 9/11 and after 9/11, like all the things that changed, our paradigm shift, the things we thought about were completely different. And it was just, you know, there's this clear, there's this clear line in the sand, if you will, that you say, okay, that was the world before that. And that was the world after that. And for me, there's a, there's a delineated line in my head where I'm this person after this, and I'm this person before that. And that, that happened to me. This, this sort of thing happened to me personally about 3 years ago. So in the, in the bulk of this, of this job, like when I came into the role, I was studying sales development. I was reading books. I just kind of started to follow some, some sales gurus at the time. It was Grant Cardone, which really wasn't a great fit for what I was doing. He was very kind of car salesy, but I liked his mentality and his sort of like do anything, do everything, kind of go get it sort of thing. But at the same time, so anyway, so if I, if I fast forward to when I look at the way that I've been able to be more intentional and be more integrated and be more purposeful in my life in the last 3 years. I wish I could have brought that to my whole 10 years, let's say. And I wish I wouldn't have had to make all those mistakes or float around in life the way that I felt that I was for so long, because I often think, well, where could I be right now if I would have been, you know, living with this, living with this intention for most of my adult life or most of my sales career or any part of my of my life, but I guess that's just like the human condition that we have to deal with and accept because I wouldn't, I certainly love where I am right now, but you know, sometimes you, you can sit back and wonder, man, like I wish I could have done this earlier. Oh, I wish I would have known that 5 years ago because I would have been able to take advantage of this thing or whatever.

16:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll, we'll definitely talk more about that as, as we get ready to wrap up. Cause I'm curious how you would sort of translate that into advice for folks that are, that are earlier in their career, but that's, that's for later. Let's… I want to come back to just the, the chaos thing, right? Where you, you come into this role, you don't know what you're doing, your leadership just sort of evaporates, and, and you're on your own. How, how did you work through that and, and really, I mean, turn that around into a lot of good consistent success?

17:12 Ben Niemeier: Yeah, that's a good question, and I try to think about What really, like, what was it? Because, you know, like, as I was mentioning earlier, we had, so the, the guy who I thought would be kind of the accountability manager or the sales manager had ended up leaving. And he had, he brought in a fill-in guy who was transitioning out of another company who ended up being gone within a year. So we were dealing with a lot of transition. I, you know, I'd have a manager for 6 months, but he wasn't really a manager and then he wouldn't be there anymore. And so, you know, when I started, I just like committed, okay, like You are 100% responsible for your own professional and personal development. So get after it, like go look up sales processes, figure out what fits and what doesn't. Go invest in things that you need to, whether it's books, podcasts, personal coaching, whatever, and hold yourself accountable. You know, essentially nothing… if someone's not there to take care of you, you have to master your me management essentially, because you are ultimately accountable for your results and you are the only person that accounts accountable for your activities and your actions. And so quickly, I think probably one of the biggest lessons that I learned throughout that sort of early period is the difference between motivation and discipline. Because I was very, you know, when you look at a job description, a lot of times they say we want somebody very self-motivated, and motivation is very temporary. And you can keep trying to, you know, put more fuel in the fire, but eventually, you know, you just have bad weeks or bad months, or, you know, you're just in a mood one day or whatever, and you start to… and your output or your productivity tends to be fluctuating all over the place. What I found is that if I hold myself to a discipline and I can make my… essentially my discipline muscle better, stronger, I could hold myself better accountable and my production scales with it. So part of that was, okay, accept you're on your own. This is good and it's bad. It's, you know, like you're, I kind of treated it like you own the company, like you're an entrepreneur, but you got all this stuff behind you. We're a startup, go out and, and make something happen. Like, cause really that's kind of the way that we operate. We don't have a ton of resources behind us. We're very thin in like in our marketing and that sort of spend. And so, you know, it's probably a combination of grit. It's certainly a combination of, again, of me-management as I call it. Or, and I think also just in the, in the, in the process of that, being more committed to personal development in itself, you know, the old Jim Rohn, work on yourself more than your job or your business quote. Only I, I think it, it returns on your professional development 10x. And, you know, you wanna be somebody, be someone worth buying from. And sales is personal and sales is you and your professional development is your personal development. And that's what I love about this, this, this role. Because sometimes, sometimes the line blurs where you're like, is this professional me? Is this personal me? Like, I, I don't believe there really is a… there is a difference. And so I think sort of the way that you do anything is the way that you do everything. And so part of that is, you know, taking on essentially radical responsibility. I think you mentioned too, you, you… Dichotomy of Leadership was one of your favorite books, you know, just total ownership. Take complete ownership in anything that goes wrong. Take ownership and think about what could I have done differently? I failed a lot when I first started because I was like in the dark, try, you know, trying to figure out what, what the heck was going on. And slowly, you know, you learn from your mistakes and, and you try to avoid pitfalls that you are about to fall into, hopefully by taking advice from the right people, reading the right books. And taking the right, getting the right perspectives that allow you to essentially, you know, accelerate your, your path through that without having to make those failures to get there.

21:16 Scott Ingram: That is, is awesome. I'm going to go back and listen to that again myself. But I'd love to know, as you went on that journey, what were the, the pieces? What were the books, the programs like? What were the things that made the biggest difference that ended up being the most kind of foundational and fundamental to who you are today?

21:37 Ben Niemeier: I think like, you know, specific books, Anthony Iannarino really helped me kind of hone in a little bit on the philosophy, defining my philosophy, understanding it, and thinking about bigger ideas around what it takes to be a B2B consultative seller in today's world, essentially. Those guys, that little tribe of guys, Jeb Blount, Anthony Iannarino, Mike Weinberg. I can't remember how I ended up kind of falling into their mind space, but, you know, that was kind of my leap from, oh, okay, these are actually the, the things I should be learning. Okay, these actually apply to what I'm doing. And what can I consume to, you know, to, to take in this, this knowledge? I mean, read books, do podcasts, events and, and so forth. So I think, you know, I think when I look back at it, it was like there's kind of a 2-step process, which is maybe more than 2 steps, but there's 2, there's 2 real keys here. It's like you master the sales acumen and then more, more commonly, especially I think for, for professional sellers today is you've gotta have sound business acumen. And in the beginning when you're kind of trying to find your feet inside the sales world, you just consume a ton of sales stuff. And that is important in the beginning because you should kind of know what your personal feelings are about process and what you think fits most for your personality and your business and your industry, et cetera. And then later on, as you've got a better handle on that and you kind of have your own style to mix into it, obviously it's very important that you start to think about the way that you can go in and have a business conversation with, with the right people, because, you know, the solution selling, enterprise selling, that sort of thing. I mean, this is imperative to go in and have ideas and insights and talk the level, the level of jargon with those people about, about their business.

23:32 Scott Ingram: So we obviously talk a lot about the sales acumen side, but we really don't spend enough time talking about the business acumen side. What, what helped you the most develop that? How did you go about that?

23:43 Ben Niemeier: It's an ongoing thing. I mean, you know, I read the Journal every day, or I shouldn't say I read it every day. I at least read my summary email every day. I get the paper every day. I try to consume as much of it as I can. You know, a few years ago, I started going through the 10-Ks of the companies that I that I was doing business with to try and extract something insightful and, you know, and try to think, well, how does my, you know, what am I solving for this client and how does it relate to their 10 risks or their 15 objectives for the year? There were a lot of books like MBA, The Right Way MBA, I think Josh something, I can't think of his name. There's 10-Day MBA, which is sort of like a, hey, you don't need, you don't need to go to business school. Just read my book. They're really good for foundational, just sort of, oh, this is the idea of how you take and what these key insights are. What are the macroeconomic factors? What are the micro things? That sort of thing. So I'm still teaching myself many things about this on a weekly basis because it's certainly something that I'm still very interested in or still… I'm not going to say I'm lacking, but I'm still continuing to refine my my acumen.

24:54 Scott Ingram: So no, that's, that's really good. I think that's a good call out. I think that that is a question I think at some point it would all make sense to pose to the community in terms of, you know, what's really the best way to develop your business acumen? Because it is, if you're in B2B sales, like it's, it's foundational. And it's one that, you know, I haven't thought about enough lately until you, you brought it up, but it really is critically, critically important. And I think you gave a couple of great suggestions and would love to kind of put that question out to the community to to, to dig into that some more. So I love hearing the stories, right? I mean, I, I… we call the show Sales Success Stories for a reason. What's your favorite sales stories? Now, whether you, you won or you lost, but hopefully it was something that taught you a lot.

25:39 Ben Niemeier: You know, I was trying to think about this on a, like, a very specific… in a very specific way about whether there was a deal or a story that, you know, that stuck with me. And I think that there were, there were a lot of things that sort of would group into a theme. And early on, I think it was probably mostly failure. So I think it was generally that, you know, coming out of, coming out of where I was or where I had success in sales and now getting into more complex sales and a lot more consensus building and complexity around what exactly the customer was investing in and that sort of thing. And kind of back to the point about the business acumen. I think I was quite naive of that when I first started this job. And, you know, you just, you don't know what you don't know sort of thing. And, you know, so I, I probably continually just sort of walked in thinking that if there was an opportunity or, you know, let's say we had a repeat client who was coming back to us for more, for more, for more business, that it was a done deal. And often it was never a done deal and it took a lot of losses and a lot of beatings to be like, well, wait, what, what the heck is going on? Like, why, why aren't these customers making these decisions? And, you know, or why are they making these decisions? And what do, what do I and what don't I know about this? And that's what kind of led me down a little bit of a shift in qualifying what I was, you know, what I was working with. And also just a, just kind of a framework and a paradigm in the way that you're going in and having those conversations around, you know, bigger picture qualifying and things of that nature.

27:19 Scott Ingram: Nice. So, Ben, you've had a lot of success certainly of late, right? And it sounds like there was kind of a big transformation and in some ways kind of a sort of a switch that got flipped and you've gone on and continued to grow and have a lot of success. What are you most proud of?

27:38 Ben Niemeier: I think I'm most proud of the first thing that I mentioned about why I believe I've been able to be successful. So I think that's just the way that I live. And just to revisit that point, it's about leaning into fears and embracing challenge over comfort, because that has allowed me to step out of… I guess step into my stretch zone and allot me opportunities that I just never would have been or would have been too scared to take. Opportunities I would have been too scared to dive into, or, you know, oh, I can't do that. I suck at that. I, you know, I don't want to do that. Well, I'm not good at that. At this thing, or that thing scares me, or I don't want to, you know, that sort of attitude, which I generally probably had for the first 30-plus years of my life. And so just keeping that, you know, and just sort of the way that I live, and it's like, that's a lifestyle. And that lifestyle transfers into my work, and it transfers into, you know, my weekends, and it transfers into everything in life. And I constantly catch myself wondering in reflection, where's the limit? I look back and wow, in true reflection, I mean, a lot has changed and I've been able to really put myself out there in a lot of different ways. And, I just get really excited to think about what does 10 years of that look like? What does 20 years of that look like? And, just look what you've done in the course of a few years. That gets me excited. That makes me reflect on a little bit of something that I'm proud of, I guess. But more importantly, it probably makes me feel more excited about my future because I hope, I hope that, you know, before the day I die, I'm excited for my future rather than looking back at, you know, what I was able to pull off or what I'm most proud of because, you know, that's what, that's what makes life worth living for.

29:29 Scott Ingram: So, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it really does sound like you, you had sort of this I don't know if it was a point in time or if there was a collection of events. Maybe you can identify the trigger, but it sounds like there really was a shift in you and your mentality and the way that you're attacking this, you know, roughly 3 years ago where this all turned around. Do you know what that was and like what was the trigger and what changed? Like what was the core of that?

29:57 Ben Niemeier: Oh, completely. So I went through a lot of therapy to talk through this. So a little over 3 years ago, I was in a relationship doing something. I was basically in a relationship that I should never have been in. And I was in a situation with this person that I never should have gotten into. And after sort of repeating some, you know, like when you, when you go through relationships and, you know, I don't know what your history is like prior to your, to your wife, but, you know, like you, you kind of, you tend to find behaviors that are things tend to end the same, right? So it's like, things go well for a certain amount of time and then things go bad and kind of the same behaviors tend to ruminate and, and are cyclical while you blame the other person for they were too this or they were too that and it's them, it's not me and whatever. And so I was in like, I was in like one of those transitionary phases where things weren't going well with us at the time. And weirdly, I just, I stumbled on this book And this book explained everything about the way that I viewed my life. And I swear it felt like it was written about me and that it was giving me all of these things about, hey, like you do this and this person does this and this is why they think this and da da da. And I mean, I was like, I was sweating bullets and I, I, I listened to this book. I bought it on audio. I bought it on, you know, a paperback and I, I probably listened to it 3 times in the first week. And immediately at that point, I'm like, okay, the first thing I, the first thing I had to check was, okay, you gotta get outta this relationship. Like you've been wanting to get out of it forever. You're too scared to do it. Get the heck out. Like get out. I know it's gonna be tough. You got a lot of stuff, you got a lot of baggage you gotta get rid of. But regardless, on the other side of this fear is some crazy freedom you don't even understand yet. And just go do it. And so over about 3 weeks after that, I did that and I ended up moving a little bit closer to where my company is and the office. And kind of started over again and just started treating life this way. And, and there was a lot of, you know, deep reflection and cleaning out the, the BS and, you know, taking a good hard look at, at, at your life and what you wanted out of your life and, and the mistakes you made and, and how you got here and where you want to go and being very intentional about it and, and being forthright to go face some of the things that, you know, you may have not have wanted to face because you were scared of them. Essentially. And just doing that, I mean, that completely, you know, just living that way makes me sell that way. And it makes me think about business that way. And it makes me communicate and operate within my teams internally that way. And so it wasn't really so much a thoughtful thing to like sort of bring that philosophy into work because like I was saying earlier, you know, like you are your professional self. I don't, of course, there's probably a couple of things you may do inside the work walls that you don't do outside of work. But generally, I mean, I can say I'm 99% the same person I am on a Saturday at 2 o'clock than I am in the office on Monday morning. And I think most people would agree with that. And so, you know, part of that kind of, I don't know, rocket fuel or whatever was going on at that point is sort of what kicked me off and, and, and got me to where I am right now.

33:13 Scott Ingram: That's fascinating. What you have to tell me what this book was.

33:15 Ben Niemeier: So No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover is the book. Yeah, it's a very, it's a very embarrassing and yet humbling idea to think about, you know, my past. And I, you know, my, my wife now, I tell her too. And I'm like, when she asks me about things that are more than 3 or 4 years ago, I'm like, well, yeah, that was before, you know, I was, you know, I was thinking this way. I, I called myself a PUD cuz I just, I didn't feel like I was, I was just floating through life. And she doesn't quite understand. She's like, what do you mean? Like before that? I'm like, well, yeah, I did all these dumb things here because I didn't even know what I was doing. And I was thinking this way. And, you know, this wasn't working and whatever. And I'm like, I was, it was almost as if I was living unconsciously for my adult life up until this point. And so, yeah, when I tell that story to people, they always ask me what the book was and they're like, oh, so what does that mean? You're not supposed to be nice? And I'm like, no, no, no, it's not that. And just for, you know, right time, right place, right. You know, there was a giant receptor in my mind just waiting for this thing to show up when it did. And when it did, I mean, it just, it hit me like a ton of bricks and it was like, oh, okay. And now, you know, all of a sudden I felt like, okay, now I've got, I've got some permission to start acting the way that I actually believe. And, and that just sort of spurned… that essentially really snowballed a number of things that, that I think got me to kind of where I'm, where I am right now.

34:38 Scott Ingram: Man, that's, that's fascinating. I mean, so do you think that book would work for other people or it was just you and your situation like that? It was just it was just for you.

34:47 Ben Niemeier: I think it's a great book for any, for anybody to read. Now it is, it is directly written for men. They do say women can read it. So if like their husband or boyfriend or whatever is reading it, they have a perspective as to like what he's, you know, thinking about or learning about. And, you know, there's probably different, differing degrees of people that I guess would consider themselves to have kind of, uh, potentially things that they see in themselves or I mean, the, the book, at the core of the book, it's about, it's essentially about holding in, averting conflict, holding in the way that you really feel about things and being a people pleaser and seeking validation from anything and everybody else. And essentially that'll get you so far in life. And that got me surprisingly good results in sales, but like there was always something missing and there was clearly always something missing in my life. And you know, if you're not super fulfilled and and happy and go-getting, whatever in life, like that just comes through in your work. And so this whole thing's like a, you know, a positive feedback loop. Like the more you, you dump this good stuff into it, whether it's, you know, something that, that you do is completely unrelated to your work. Like that comes out in the passion you're able to extend into the way that you talk about, you know, your, your product or service or the attitude and energy you bring into a client meeting because, you know, things are going well. And so you bring in good vibes and this opens up people People want to talk more, people want to be around you more. And, you know, that, that makes things easier to build rapport and, and connect with, with other humans and, you know, and, and build off of all the, the EQ, the EQ, IQ stuff, right? The human, the human element of, of sales, which, you know, it's kind of making a resurgence now, but, you know, sometimes it's been kind of ignored, but it's critical to, to, I think, the success of salespeople. And I think probably anybody listening to this podcast would agree to that.

36:45 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. So the question I usually usually ask at this point, and, and maybe we've already been there, but I, I like to ask kind of the, the biggest challenge you've had to face, or, or if you'll put us at a time when you felt like you were struggling the most. Have we already been there, or, or do you have a different story for us here?

37:01 Ben Niemeier: I mean, from a work standpoint, I would say that when I look back on it, it wasn't that hard. Like, and if you, if you write it… like, when I wrote it down, like, I was just writing down some notes. I'm like, let me think about what my last 4 years was like. And it's like, okay, you started your company, your boss and the other guy left, you were on your own, this VP came in, but he kind of left. And then you guys got bought out and a different leadership came into the company. And then within a year they were gone. And while you're sitting here sort of, you know, I guess a bit of a rock or foundational piece of, of while all that chaos was happening, I was able to still do my job and do it well, partially, I think, just because I was like, I'm not like… and a lot of it was just nonsense. I mean, it was just, just a lot of change and some dramatic things, you know, and things of that nature that just didn't directly affect my job, or I tried not to let it directly affect my job. And I, you know, I guess really if I summed it up, I'd say, you know, I knew my mission and I stuck with it. And, you know, I think it's easier to you know, especially if you have a new manager or something and this person comes in and kind of wants to take you a different way, that you have a real okay ability to go in and create conflict against that. So kind of back to that earlier point about the nice guy thing, like had that have happened to me 4 or 5 years ago, I would have just silently under my breath been mad at this person or people or whatever and not been able to hold my own. Because I just didn't have the self-confidence or the ability to, to face that stuff. So like, I think those were struggles, but I don't like, I don't know. I, I think of struggle as being just such a bigger word than maybe what, what it is. So I tend to try to be more humble, I guess, in thinking that I didn't go through too much of a struggle.

38:59 Scott Ingram: Right. No, that, I mean, just that, that mindset right there, I think, I think says something that's sort of fascinating. I want to talk more. I mean, you just, you opened up something that I, it's probably, if I were to sort of thematically group the types of questions that I get when, when people reach out to me privately, I would say probably the majority, not the majority of all questions, but the biggest, the biggest theme is some type of struggle or conflict with their manager. And, and I think it's along the lines of what you've described where it's I have confidence in my way and what I'm doing, and I'm having success in this. And yet this other individual is coming in trying to set me down a completely different path that at the end of the day probably isn't going to work for them because it's not them, right? If that makes sense. So maybe get a little bit more granular, like how did you manage through that particular situation? Because I know a lot of people struggle with it.

39:58 Ben Niemeier: So my… I don't know if I have good advice for this, but I can tell you what I went through. So My managing director, so like the overseer, the CEO of the US branch in our case, I have a very good relationship with her. She is not a sales manager, but she is ultimately my boss. We trust each other. We've been able to sort of have very frank, closed-door conversations about what's happening inside the company and, you know, what are the struggles that I'm dealing with and what am I actually thinking? Like, what am I not politically positioning What am I actually thinking about this? And having her through that transition about, you know, to go in and have kind of a backup to say, hey, look, I don't really agree with this. I don't know where this is going. I think this is a little crazy. I'm gonna keep doing this thing. Are you good with that? And generally she was supportive of it. So it's from an office politics standpoint, I probably did not handle it in any sort of good textbook way because it tended to be… I mean, we, we got, you know, this, this previous… we weren't really… we never really clicked. And it never got, you know, where we were like up against each other. But at many points, I think we were just generally, you know, at some points I would just ignore things he was saying or just sort of say, yeah, okay, well, this isn't worth fighting over. I'm just going to keep doing this. Because I knew that all that really mattered was my production. And if I'm going to go out here I'm going to win, you know, this $2.5 million deal, whatever, while the sales that you're talking about aren't even anywhere near closing, then my work will prove itself to have justified my process to get there, or by not diverting what I was doing to, to do what you think I should be doing. And so I know exactly the kind of question you're asking because I'm trying to put myself in somebody's shoes there. But it… this probably is a sucky answer because it's kind of unique to the situation that I was in to kind of bypass that, you know, sort of like temporarily until, until some things changed. So I probably don't have… I don't have great advice for those things. I mean, I guess my, my main thought of it would be, you know, and people talk about quitting people and not companies, but, you know, are you… do you want to work for someone or work at a place that that doesn't value your independent sort of ideas. And I hate the idea of that. Like, I mean, if I, if somebody told me, well, look, this is how we do whatever, this is how we prospect, this is how we do this. You must make X number amount of dials. You must have 3X pipeline coverage. You must have the SDRs do all these things specifically. And then you will go and blah, blah, blah. Like, I would hate that because, you know, like I think that generally most successful salespeople are rule breakers because we are creative and we're independent and we just work our own way. And that's why we like sales, because we like to be ourselves in sales. If you suck at that or you don't perform at that, then maybe you should take a step back and say, okay, well, maybe I should listen to my manager talk about this, this, this. But if you're doing well and it's just not by the book, then maybe you shouldn't work for this person who doesn't let you do it by the book, or the company that doesn't believe in that. Or maybe there's another person within that organization or sales organization department that you can reach out to that and express that sort of, you know, that, that discussion. And I think obviously relationships, trust, longevity throughout those things. I mean, the ability to say, look, I've got these results, you know who I am, You know why I'm saying this. That is kind of, you know, and that's put me in this difficult place where, you know, where I'm having this conversation. And maybe just to keep rambling on this point, I think that often there's not enough candor and confrontation in the workplace. And some people probably don't like that, and they probably don't like my style all the time, but I thrive on that. And I love like just stripping out all the crud And saying, well, look, like, what are we actually talking about here right now? Like, I mean, let's strip it all down and have a real conversation. Why do we need to, you know, kid glove this or sugarcoat it or, you know, weave around the real things that you're thinking right now and that I'm thinking right now? Like, let's have a conversation. Let's get real. Let's get real or let's not play. I mean, it's really that simple, right? I mean, and if I were in a business environment or working for people who I couldn't do that with, I'd be miserable and I'd quit. I mean, there's no way I could work. I could, I could survive in a, in a, maybe I could survive an environment like that, but I couldn't thrive in an environment like that because I feel like that was self-sacrificing essentially.

44:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. So man, I think you, you basically hit on the points that I typically get to. And I think what, what you helped me see a little bit better though is you've got to identify, is this a like holistic company culture thing, in which case it's just not fixable and you got to go away. Or, and this I think tends to be more likely, it's just a conflict with that particular individual. And so typically my advice is, you know, you've got to manage higher up, right? So you've got to go talk to that person's boss or to the CEO, or, you know, again, it depends on the size of the organization and the structure and things like that, but you need to, may need to go up a level or 2, and maybe you've got a mentor there, however you've sort of set up that, that relationship. And to your point, like, let's forget about the politics and all this silly stuff. Like, let's just be real about what that conversation is. And if that's… I basically find that generally those managers, they're temporary, right?

45:58 Ben Niemeier: Exactly.

45:59 Scott Ingram: They go away relatively quickly. And I think that oftentimes gets accelerated because people are having these conversations and going, yeah, you know what, like, this isn't the, the right fit. So as long as that issue isn't systemic, and as long as that's not the overarching culture, and the culture is one that's going to allow this a little bit more, then it's, it's a scenario where you're either just kind of waiting it out and, you know, put your head down and doing your thing. And, and again, hopefully you've, you've performed at a high enough level that, you know, you can buck the system a little bit and not get too much, too much blowback. Or it, it may be like, look, this is just tenable for me. I like the company and I like what we're doing here. Maybe I need to look at working on another team, right? And maybe I need to be reassigned, right? So those, those tend to be the things that, that I'll advise people around. And again, it's, it's looking at that bigger picture. And there's always going to be individual conflicts, right? Everybody's not going to get together, get along perfectly.

47:03 Ben Niemeier: Right. And I think it, I think there's context to that question every to everyone who's asking him because it's like, well, how long have you been in the role? What have you… what is your history? What's the manager's tenure? What do you think he cares about? What do you think is going on? Is there someone else you can go talk to? Is there, you know, a peer or like you said, a manager over? Because yeah, it could be… it could just be one-on-one. This guy's a jerk and I don't like him and he's treating me some way because whatever. He just doesn't like my face or he thinks that I, you know, whatever. And, or there is, like you said, there's a cultural thing there. And it's like, hey, we are a cookie-cutter sales organization. You will do these things. You will handle the process this way. You will blah, blah, blah. I could never work in a place like that. But, you know, also you have to assume that someone knows, and maybe they don't if they're particularly young, what they're getting into when they take on a new role and the right questions and the right ideas to go into that discussion. Around about the freedom that you would have to implement your, your sales, whatever methodologies or processes or, you know, way of doing things essentially, because you might be able to qualify or disqualify that before making that mistake.

48:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, one of these days, I mean, among the litany of things I'd love to do is, is just create a essentially a due diligence process, right? Because I think so much of this comes back to did you ask the right questions, right? Did you, did you really evaluate a new opportunity, a new organization the right way? Because if you do it right, you're going to see these, these issues long before they come to fruition. And you, again, if you see it far enough ahead, you go, oh, okay. Yep. I learned enough to know that that is not the right place for me. And you didn't waste 6 months in the wrong role where you're just stuck and you essentially got into a bad relationship. And I always, that's an area where I think you have to be very selfish, right? Because Think about the percentages, right? This is the one job I'm going to have. This is what I'm going to put 100% of my professional effort into. Yet on that team, just for that manager, you're one of how many? 5, 6, 10. In that company, you're one of how many, right? So the percentages and how much they care diminishes, and it's never going to be the 100% that it is for you. So it becomes incumbent upon you to go figure that out because they're not going to tell you.

49:31 Ben Niemeier: Exactly, exactly. So yeah, and I mean, if you're, you know, if you're young and say, like, obviously depending on the type of… I would tend to think that someone asking that question is probably early mid-career-ish and is kind of trying to navigate that scenario. And that can be a really hard conversation. I think that can be difficult. You know, I mean, certainly, you know, confrontation, whatever, like some people just don't have that style. They're… it just doesn't work for, for who they are or maybe who they're talking to. And so it is, it is, I mean, it really is. And, you know, like Debbie was talking about, you know, that when she's interviewing with 15 companies or whatever when she was looking at her new role, and she's got a matrix, you know, with all these different things, like, you know, she's qualifying the hell out of these things. And, and I'm sure… but she's, she's a seasoned pro and she's been through good companies, bad companies. And so she's got enough situational knowledge to go in and say, here's how I sell. And you can start to just pick up vibes about how people feel about that, right? Like, are you guys going to, you know, do you need me to do XYZ? Do you care more about metrics? Do you care more about this? Like, what is the culture? What all these things. And then, and then so even if the, you know, your manager changes over time, ideally, if there is a core, I guess culture is the best word for it, about how the sales organization operates, then that should hold to what you agreed upon or knew you were getting into is, I guess, kind of the way I think about it.

51:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. And just, just to call out here, Ben's referring to the panel we did at the Sales Success Summit. Debe Rapson was on a panel that we called Career Games. The actual title was longer than that. I can't remember what it was, but we'll…

51:15 Ben Niemeier: Checkers, chess, or pinball, I think.

51:16 Scott Ingram: There you go. Yeah. So it was a great… it was a fascinating, fascinating conversation. It is available in recorded form. So we'll have a link to that in the show notes. And if you're not already on the listener list, as soon as you join that, you go to top1.fm. I'm happy to send you the video of your choice from the summit, and that may be the video that you choose. It was a particularly… there were a lot of good conversations, but that one was a particularly good one. Ben, let's transition now and talk about just the habits and routines and that type of stuff. And I'm sure that this is a part of you given your your, your mention earlier around the discipline pieces. But just walk us through the, the day in the life. What, what does that look like? I mean, you know how I typically ask this question, right? Like, alarm goes off, what time did that happen? And I want blow-by-blow until your, your head hits the pillow.

52:06 Ben Niemeier: Yeah, so I wake up at 5 every day. That doesn't always happen, but I certainly try to make it happen 90% of the time. I have like a weird… so I, I track my… I journal a lot in OneNote. And on Sunday evening, I'll sit down and, and plan out my week. And so the way that I've started to frame my years is around mastery tracks. And my mastery tracks are the things that I want to master up or level up in competency. And those on my board right now are biology, financial analyst, sales profession, musician, French, German, and diving, actually. So I try to… so I take some of those pieces and I say, okay, I wake up at 5, I give myself 2, essentially 3 hours, actually 4 hours to exercise, do 1 to 1.5 hours of those tracks, and then get into work. So workout, sometimes it's yoga, sometimes it's going to the gym, Sometimes I started… I don't know if you ever heard of GORUCK recently. My wife's been doing this for a while. I just started doing this endurance military backpacking thing with her. It's kind of an interesting new fitness thing. I know you're a triathlon guy.

53:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. Well, I've done Tough Mudders and things like that, and I actually saw a group that must be what they were doing. And this was in Austin in August, so, you know, imagine doing that when it's 100+ degrees in the middle of the afternoon.

53:38 Ben Niemeier: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, so I really spent my first first 3 to 4 hours. And I, you know, I could get up and check. I don't check email. I don't do work stuff. Like, this is my high energy point. I'm focusing on myself and I want to get done all the fun stuff that I get to do today because by the time 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock hits, I'm going to be gassed and have no willpower or motivation to do anything. And then, so I'm home office, so I don't have to drive to work. Obviously there's a lot of time saved there and I'll start. So I I tend to work my day through a bit of a method that I kind of stole out of Cal Newport's book, Deep Work. And some people call it like the Pomodoro technique. And I create 3 90-minute blocks, like productivity blocks that I'll give my day to. So I'll say, all right, you're going to research these companies in this 90 minutes. And then this 90 minutes, you're going to follow up on these things. And then maybe this 90 minutes, you're going to do these 2 presentations and finish up this proposal. So what that literally is, is like I have a timer sitting on my desk. I scroll it to 90 minutes. I write down what I want to get done in my 90 minutes. And then like you said, the purge, nothing gets in. So I don't go look at LinkedIn. I don't check my email. I don't do anything else. I don't browse on the internet or do any of that stuff. Focus 90 minutes to these things. And then you, you know, it's like a little focus checkbox or to-do list. And I get those things done and I try to find a way to do those 3 90-minute things in my full day. Now that doesn't always work out because meetings, travel, whatever kind of throws a bit of a wrench into that, but it's my intention. So sometimes I might get 2 of them in. So I really just try to sit down and say, okay, what's the most important thing I need to do today? That is getting the first, that's getting the first focus of the first 90 minutes. So that'll drive me through essentially through my day. And I'm sure you know this, like if you do this right and you get 1 or 2 of these little 90-minute minute blocks in, like you will feel like you've done a week's work of productivity in a day because, you know, everything is bombarding you. Your email's coming in at you, your whatever that you need to do. You just thought of something you needed to do. So you need to go off and do that thing. Like I'm very ADD sometimes. And so the way that I can compile and sit down with a journal and say, okay, here are the things you're going to do on Monday. You're going to learn this thing on Monday. You're going to do this on Monday. Okay. And if, if stuff I'm thinking about has to, has to happen, I can write it down. And then therefore I don't have to stress out about forgetting about it or something. And then you can spend your other intermediate time outside of those, outside of those 4 and a half hours to take phone calls, do admin work, and, or whatever else it is you have going on in your day, essentially. So a lot of that starts with Sunday. So Sunday night's kind of like when my day begins. If I can't get this in on Sunday, I feel so stressed out on Monday morning. Just, it's just a sit down. Okay. Here's what your workouts look like next week. Here's what you see yourself doing Monday, Tuesday. Okay, you're traveling on Wednesday. Here are my work week goals. Do you have any specific week goals? Should you take 10 minutes and look at the last week and just, you know, are there any notes in there about things you should focus on? I try to put a couple like big themes of the week, like, oh, I really want to focus on getting the right amount of sleep or honing in my diet or whatever it may be, just to kind of keep those conscious and, and, and present. Because obviously the busier we get, it's much easier just to kind of get tossed off in a million different directions. And again, if you're not super intentional about what you're doing and focusing on what you're doing, you're gonna let somebody else control your time. And before you know it, your day's gone and you feel really busy, but you got nothing done.

57:17 Scott Ingram: Man, I love this. All right, so a few follow-ups. The, the Sunday process, how long does that take you?

57:23 Ben Niemeier: Like like 15 minutes maybe. Like, you know, I just said I could just run my template over from my weekly thing and I'm like, you know, here's the… I wanna… I'm gonna do the finance online class, you know, Wednesday morning for an hour, and I'm gonna do this biology lecture on Tuesday. And by the way, that's not associated with my work at all. I just have a personal thing for biology. And, you know, sometimes that deviates a little bit because we have to be a little creative and impromptu, but generally, like, I've been able to hold it pretty steady. And then it's just, it's just kind of high-level stuff. I mean, you know, if I write down a note like, hey, like think about, you know, what, what worked well last week? Is there anything specific that you wrote down? Was there anything intentional you wanted to say or that you want to think about, you know, that, that you're struggling, that you're thinking about or struggling with just to keep it conscious? Because, you know, that's, that's ultimately, you know, what I'm just trying to do is just to keep, keep it at the forefront and give myself feedback and hold myself accountable for things. And organize myself in a place that kind of calms my mind enough to say, okay, like I can go forth and do these things because I know that all of my, all of my thoughts live, live on this OneNote thing, you know, in an online journal essentially.

58:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Would you mind sharing maybe like an anonymized version of your template that we can put in the, in the show notes?

58:39 Ben Niemeier: Sure, sure.

58:40 Scott Ingram: Awesome. So you'll find that at top1.fm/this episode's number, which I never remember, or top1.fm/ ben-niemeyer. That's… we always label the episodes that way. So you can either get there by the number or by the guest's name, first-last. So we'll definitely include that, which will be fantastic. So next question, in the morning when you're doing the mastery tracks, is that just one track per day? Or will you do a couple of different things? Like, what does that look like?

59:08 Ben Niemeier: So I was… I found that what I would try to do… so I'm… I think sometimes my ambition is to a fault. And so when I tried to cram a little bit of everything in a morning. It got so ridiculous that I just kind of lost motivation and the ability to feel like I was making any real progress. So what I did was just commit the day of that track to a specific thing. So like, if I'm just gonna go, let's say like it's a sales acumen thing, it's like, okay, what, what are you doing right now for sales? Are you reading a book or are you going to do these online videos through, you know, like the online course that you're going through, or what is it in sales that you're continually… to kind of like my curriculum, I guess. And then, you know, Wednesday, watch this video of this financial analyst thing because this is part of, you know, your business acumen track, or go do this thing. So that… so I tend to spend 60 to 90 minutes focused every day on that new… on one specific track. And that track make maybe 2 days that week, could be 1 day that week or whatever, just kind of where I feel like there's a, okay, I'm not doing enough sales or I'm not doing enough this or, you know, that sort of thing.

1:00:19 Scott Ingram: Okay, nice. And then in a perfect day, when do your 90-minute blocks happen?

1:00:26 Ben Niemeier: First thing is typically easiest because doing the worst thing and most important thing is just the best thing to do first thing in the day. And then I'll tend to probably hit the 2 in the afternoon. I'm a, I'm a fasting guy. I've been fasting for like many years, so I don't really eat lunch and I don't eat breakfast, so I don't have to have to take like a lunch break. And so that as well is a very, for me, like an upping productivity thing because I can just keep drinking coffee and, and Diet Pepsi, and I can just run through whatever, and I don't have to really pause and, and think about those So first thing in the morning is usually the easiest, but you know, sometimes there's just, there's meetings you have to be in or whatever. There's scheduled stuff that you can't get around. I think if you can get that anchor 90-minute one in, your day is good. I mean, literally, if you can just get this one 90 and you say, this is the most important thing, like this is the thing I must do, and you're able to pull it off, it can do wonders. And the rest of the day feels like you're going downhill.

1:01:25 Scott Ingram: Well, yeah, I was going to say it builds momentum, right? Because you start the day with that win and you're not like in a hole. You're like, oh man, okay, if that's what I can do in 90 minutes, now what else can I do? Get done.

1:01:34 Ben Niemeier: Exactly, exactly. I mean, it's a perfect day, and it's like, I mean, yeah, you get 3 of those in, and it's… if you've got, if you've got, if you've got things to do in those 90 minutes that really matter, I mean, you can get a lot done. And it's just, it's actually kind of crazy to think about that, you know, that we have to be so intentional about our productivity now. Maybe it's just all the digital noise in our lives, but I don't know what people were like 20 years ago if they had to be so kind of focused about this, or if it was was just our, you know, that we've evolved our, our ability to lose our concentration. But, you know, I see, as, as that book points out, I mean, that is what will be valued in the marketplace in the future. Like, anybody can go get on social media and be a digital guru or whatever, but the type of people who can, you know, encapsulate themselves outside of the noise and, and concentrate and go deep about the things that need to be done and, and can focus That's where all the magic happens because, you know, that's where you create the insight. That's where you have ideas about, you know, whatever that next meeting you have or about something you want to do in your life. Like otherwise we're just like, you know, we all have a little bit of ADD and it's like, uh, da da da da da da. Right? And then and then before you know it, nothing gets done because you you there's so much out there that that nothing gets done really.

1:02:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. So great book. Highly recommended. So Deep Work by by Cal Newport. And you know, it's one of those things if you if you do a focused, not distracted 90 minutes, it is amazing how much work you can get done in that, in that timeframe. I mean, you're not kidding. I mean, it's, it's at least a day's worth of real work.

1:03:13 Ben Niemeier: Exactly. It's crazy. Like when you first did it, I'm like, whoa, I just, I got all that done. And I'm like, and it's only 11 o'clock in the morning. Like, I don't even know what to do with my other 290 minutes. Cause I, you know, I overexcelled at this now and I'm like, it's nuts. I mean, yeah, I highly, and maybe 90 minutes doesn't work for everybody. You know, they, they say 25 minutes with a 5-minute break is, is there. So, you know, that may vary for certain people, but I think having some level of intentional time calendar control to say, I'm not answering your calls, I'm not answering your emails, don't bother me. And I'm not gonna give into my own, you know, self, whatever, to go look up the latest thing on YouTube or whatever. And I'm going to focus on these things because they are important and I will write them down and then I will Ultimately accomplish these things at the end of my my time block.

1:04:04 Scott Ingram: Yeah, awesome, awesome, awesome. So I want to come back to. I mean, we this has been sprinkled throughout for sure, but I'd love to dig into like maybe the types of resources. And we've talked about books, we've talked about podcasts, we've talked about events, and and the question that I typically ask is just around information diet. Go into the details around that, right? Like what what are you consuming? When are you consuming it? And what What, I don't know, channel is maybe the best word I'm coming up with, do you find to be most effective to sort of accelerate your learning and your mastery?

1:04:35 Ben Niemeier: Wow, there's lots. So sales podcasts, I listen to Andy Paul Accelerate. He's like the sassiest sales guy ever. I love his podcast. I think, I think you were on his podcast.

1:04:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, a time or two.

1:04:46 Ben Niemeier: Not too long ago. Yeah. Sell or Die, I think is also, I think that's actually where I originally heard you and found this podcast and this community. Community. Try to… I try to plug in. I like Gitomer and his sort of no BS crudeness. Brutal Truth is also… and then B2B Revenue, Brian Burns' podcast has been very valuable for me. Of course, the Sales Success Podcast I started listening to about 3 months ago. Art of Procurement, which I picked up… somebody mentioned that on this, on this show. I don't listen to it a lot, but occasionally it has given some ideas around how those conversations are within procurement and just kind of giving you a different perspective on the way to think about procurement as a salesperson. Because I think just generally we assume that everyone in procurement just wants to wreck our deal and slash us down to the lowest cost sort of thing. But I think you find through that podcast that there are different ideas. You know, I think, I think we, I think there's a bit of a paradigm shift in a procurement person. And maybe just sort of stereotype that they get, that we get as sales too, that procurement just wants to discount all of our deals. But I think that we can use them more proactively and have them be more of the strategic conversation when you're engaging in some of these opportunities. Books, I'm not like, you know, I've heard people say like, I read 12 sales books this year and my goal was to read a book a week and this sort of thing. And I'm like, Like, you're insane. Like, how can you possibly consume, implement, think on it, you know, iterate on it and be able to actually do anything with that information if you are consuming that much information? And, you know, I can, I can, I can draw back to personally. So back to kind of like the, the 9/11 moment, I guess what I'm gonna call it. Personal development was like my only mission and I would go and read read books like mad. And it was like, okay, you want to read about how to be more, you know, less socially anxious, and you want to go learn how to be this, and you want to go learn more about that. And I mean, I was just like consuming so much self-personal development books. And the reality is like it makes you feel a little better in the moment because you feel like you're doing something, but you got to go out and do it. Like you can read so many books on swimming, but you got to go out and swim And I think sales books and generally sort of prescriptive books around, you know, process or, you know, ways to think about selling and that nature, I think they need to be digested at a slow drip. So I tended, you know, on average, I'm probably reading maybe 2 or 3 sales books a year. Anthony Iannarino is definitely one, Blount, Aan Kasala, and Andy Paul as well. I mean, basically the same names there that I read through those guys. As far as like the avenues of other, other knowledge, so I do, I currently subscribe to Anthony Iannarino's Sales Accelerator. So he's got some, lots of different materials inside for all sorts of business situations and videos and classes. And he tends to run like a weekly assignment where you go through and do probably what's probably equivalent to about 20 minutes of total video stuff a week. And that's intentional to be, hey, here's a topic, here's a few videos on it, think about it and think about how you're going to apply it rather than reading a sales book. And obviously it's really hard to stop at chapter 2 and then wait on that for a week and then go back to chapter 3. And so that's definitely, you know, something that, that, that falls under my, my sales track. Udemy has actually been, has some fascinating stuff. So the, the financial analyst stuff I was talking to you about, there's a great class on there. From a guy who used to be a hedge fund manager who basically now just commits his whole career to teaching classes on, on this program. It's like $10 and it is so full of amazing, amazing knowledge on macro, microeconomics, how business works, what, what is the IMF, how does GDP work and all these, I mean, these things, I, I never knew these things and I'm like, oh my God, this all starts to make sense. And that forum in general, I think if you're just looking to learn something, it's actually pretty easy and pretty accessible to do it. And there's lots of places like that online as well that are just fantastic for self-education and they're more structured. And you can tend to find maybe a college professor or some quote unquote expert of something that structures that curriculum in a way that you can go in, you can self-pace. And obviously you assume that if it's like a well-reviewed thing, that they know what they're doing. And so, yeah. And then, you know, like generally that's my sales, my sales digestion. And then, yeah, that's pretty much, that's pretty much what I, what I got.

1:09:39 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then tools and apps. So you've talked about OneNote a couple of times. What's, what's kind of your personal tech stack? What can't you live without?

1:09:47 Ben Niemeier: So I'm not like a big tech stack person and it could be likely just because, so it, I mean, it tends to be that, like, from a social media standpoint, I don't have social media, like, at all. Like, I have, I have LinkedIn. That's it. I have Sales Navigator, and it has been great. We use DiscoverOrg internally. We just started using that with ZoomInfo. That's obviously great to get contact information that if, you know, sending InMails or things of that nature in LinkedIn doesn't work. So I tend to find them on Sales Navigator for prospecting, and then using ZoomInfo or DiscoverOrg to get contact information and reach out to somebody. And one OneNote and that's it. I don't have a whole lot of like automated posting things or like super duper techie things. I know a lot about these things, but I've actually found that like my virtual journal and my virtual note-taker, you know, I go into meetings, I write notes down. I don't type things. I don't, I don't bring my laptop in if I can avoid it. And I don't bring my phone in. And cause I'm very analog in that way. And I just find that it works works better for me that way, even if it does take a little bit of time to recompile it in the digital sense. But yeah, I mean, I'm pretty, pretty thin on the tech stack for, for the stuff I can't live without.

1:11:04 Scott Ingram: Well, but here's what's crazy. Like, this is… it feels like becoming a pretty consistent theme. Like, it's almost like the more successful the seller, the less technology they have, right? Because this…

1:11:18 Ben Niemeier: I've had…

1:11:18 Scott Ingram: I can't tell you how many times I've had this conversation lately, right? Right. And people are like embarrassed by it. Like, well, I don't know, I use my calendar and I take notes in a notebook. And, you know, there's, there's, there's not a lot of whiz-bang going on. And I think it goes back to some of these deep work kind of ideas, right? It's, it's just fewer sources for distraction because most of those other technologies want to tell you stuff all the time. You're like, look, I don't, I don't need to be told stuff. I got it, right?

1:11:44 Ben Niemeier: Exactly. And I mean, so where automation helps you, of course it's great to utilize those things. I, I remember like DeJuan talking about a tool where he could like buffer his LinkedIn posts. I mean, if I were posting LinkedIn 10 times a day, that would be an amazing tool. Personally, my buyers tend to not live on LinkedIn, so I don't do a lot of, you know, content creation and thought derivatives and things like that on LinkedIn. But if I did, that would be a pretty freaking awesome tool to use. And so, you know, it's kind of lame to say that, But like analog is pretty cool and now it's kind of cool in a super digital space. And I'm not against, certainly not against, you know, value-add technology. I do think there's probably a cutoff point where it gets to be too much. And I think we all become reliant on it, which I think we do in our day-to-day lives already anyway, that when it comes down to it, I mean, you're right. Like, like shed, shed the stuff you don't need. Like, it's not about adding, adding, stacking, stacking. Like, let's get rid of the stuff that isn't, that isn't value adding and strip it down and lighten our load. Because, you know, I think in doing that, you can, you know, attribute more attention and intention to, to the task at hand.

1:13:00 Scott Ingram: So brilliance, man. All right. So I've got to know, given kind of the breadth of work that you've done against mastery, like what's Do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

1:13:12 Ben Niemeier: Like, I tend to say it in just like one sentence, which is just sales is not something you do to someone. It's something you do for and with them. And, you know, when I look back at… let's take it back to the initial conversation. So when I started out in sales and outside field sales, the company at the time had a culture and had a training sense where they were Like, don't call yourself a salesperson, 'cause no one wants to talk to you if you're a salesperson. So don't put salesperson in your email, call yourself a field engineer or a field sales engineer. Like, make sure you call yourself an engineer because nobody wants to talk to salespeople. And that just like honed, you know, that just synthesized my idea about, oh, salespeople are sleazy. You know, they're just gonna sell you something you don't need. No one likes a salesperson. So you just like, if you go in with that idea of that into prospecting, into new meetings, into clients, and you just think, I know you don't really want me here, so I'm just gonna act like this certain way, or I'm gonna act like I don't really want anything from you, and that sort of idea. Like, that was detrimental to kind of shifting the, I don't know, the veil off of what sales could have been. And so I think keeping that in mind and having a different paradigm shift around Hey, like, I'm here to help you. And yes, I am a professional salesperson. And if you don't, if you've got a problem with salespeople, that's, you know, that's not my problem. I mean, it is our problem, but I'm not going to take it personal. And I'm going to tell you why and show you why you don't need to have that, you know, that attitude towards me. I'm here to help you. And do you want to be helped? Like, if you're constantly ducking out or you just don't want to be involved in, in going along these journeys, maybe you're not a good fit for, you know, me or our company or whatever. And so I guess that's… I don't know how else you wrap that up in a sort of quaint sort of way as far as a philosophy, but I think putting it all out on the table and, and framing it to, you know, from a service mentality and from a with-you mentality to guide, you know, clients through those journeys together as opposed to going in in pitching your stuff or showing up and throwing up, as I've heard it called before, which was significantly different than the way that I went out into sales when I first got there.

1:15:33 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. So just point of clarification, that opening line, sales isn't something you do to someone, it's something you do for and with them, I wholeheartedly agree with and found myself saying it and went back and needed to find the origin on that. And that is Anthony Iannarino gets, gets attribution for that one. That is, that is a phrase that he coined, and I think it's a great one.

1:15:57 Ben Niemeier: Yeah, yeah, it really is. And I think, I think he, he mentioned that, or he said that too, and I'm like, oh, it's like one of those lightbulb moments, and you're like, yeah, oh, okay. So like, just think about, you know, when you're thinking about questions, you're thinking about what's going on in somebody's world, you're thinking about your existing clients or prospect, like, if you just think about out that in the way that you're approaching that situation, it changes the entire game.

1:16:21 Scott Ingram: Exactly, exactly. Now what about your style? How, how would you describe that?

1:16:24 Ben Niemeier: I have a hard time answering this question because like, well, so you know, my style, my style in, in, in a personal sense is, is just me. And you know, I'm a little weird. I'm not afraid to ask somebody a very personal question. I mean, not, not like too personal, but like to the point where where, you know, if I'm meeting somebody new and we're out to lunch, like, I, I want to have a very visceral human interaction and I want to get to know this person and I want to know what drives them personally, what they care about, et cetera. And so like, I don't know exactly what I know. I remember, was it Ryan O'Hara talking about the 12 psychotypes of who you are in sales? And that's what, like, I don't, I don't, I don't remember, you know, like, yeah. And he was going to be the, you know, he's the hero or whatever. I don't I don't know what… first of all, I don't know those buckets offhand and I don't know what bucket I would fall into. But I've heard this… when I hear… I think it's like Questions for the Complex Sale or Mastering the Complex Sale, one of those books. They talk about storytelling in sales and they kind of use an analogy of the Star Wars movie and they talk about the world is a certain way and then something changes and the hero resists and then a mentor comes along and then he saves the… he fights the dragon or whatever and comes out prevailing. Are the mentor in that, in that story. You're not the hero. Like, your customer is the hero. So, you know, part of, part of that idea around like sales is something you're doing for someone. I just want to make, you know, I want to make my clients look good, feel good, have a, have something to rest this experience on. Because ultimately, I don't want to do business with people that it doesn't benefit, even if in the short term, you know, we can, we can make something happen. So I'm very upfront with with those conversations about, you know, hey, I think, you know, I could take your money, but I don't think we're a good fit for you. Or, hey, I don't… this really isn't our area of expertise. We probably shouldn't be the person doing this for you. And just having a very, you know, open, I guess, kind of weird, honest, and direct conversation around connecting with people. And then hopefully, you know, being able to lead that into bigger picture discussions and building relationships and making clients successful. Successful.

1:18:37 Scott Ingram: Nice. So you, you mentioned when you, you like to kind of go to lunch with people and, and really dig into what drives them. What's your answer to that?

1:18:45 Ben Niemeier: That's a good question. So I thought, I thought about this a little bit, and really what I've… I mean, and I can, I can speak to what drives me today, and, and probably this theme keeps coming up. But so when I… I'm gonna go really weird with this, with this. Okay, so When I look at it, it's a little over 3 years where I've had this kind of intentional, personal, integral part of pursuit of passion that I've been living for this point in my life. If you're lucky, if you get to live to the median lifespan of someone in the US, you live about 4,000 weeks. That gets you to, I think, 79 or something, 79 or 80 years old. This forced me to stop for a second. Second and think about where are you in the week scale, right? So my journal, the beginning of my journal entry is you're on this week, like you're on whatever, 1976 week. And when I stopped, and to tie this back into too what you were talking about earlier about what would you have done differently, well, when I take that $4,000, you get your first $1,000 in the US at least. I mean, most Western standards, it's okay to to live up to 18 and to kind of skate by without having to contribute anything to the world, to society, to yourself. So there's a quarter of your life, bang, like you're a kid, you get excuses to be kind of a doofus or whatever, and then something starts happening. So, and then, but when I looked at, okay, well, I'll give myself the $1,000, and then so where, where are the weeks between that and and sort of my 9/11 moment. And that was about 800 weeks. So then I look at it and I'm like, crap. So it's almost half of my life. So I've spent almost 1,800 weeks of, if I'm lucky, just live 4,000 weeks. Now, of course I could go more, I could get bonus, but 1,800 living in what I would consider, you know, sort of floating mode, just being pushed around and letting life do whatever the heck it wanted to do to me, which leaves me right now roughly about about 1,100 or 1,200 weeks. And so I feel that I, I am playing catch-up that will never end because I always feel like you're making up for all that time that you weren't doing this on creating, you know, being more, doing more, having more, contributing more of yourself to your personal development, to your, you know, to the relationships that you have to your community, to the world? And what is your intention on, you know, on your time here? And will, will you leave the planet better off than when you showed up? That's, that's at the core of what like really drives me. I mean, that's, that's what gets me up in the morning. That's what keeps me doing, you know, uncomfortable things. And that's what keeps me striving to just keep getting a little bit better at everything. Because, you know, the better you get, if you get 1% better every day, as they say, well, you're a little bit better tomorrow. So your 1% is a little bit more the next day. And you never really, you know, you never, you never, there's no finish line. And, you know, like McConaughey, I think said something about, I want to be myself in 5 years, but then when I get there in 5 years, you know, I want to be myself 5 years in the future from that. So it's sort of always having this kind of slightly unattainable vision of yourself that you're constantly striving towards, but you never actually can reach.

1:22:23 Scott Ingram: Man, that is, that's big. I feel like any other questions I ask are going to be a total letdown from that. But, you know, I think that that philosophy is incredible. So thank you for giving us that. And now we get to talk crazy. And I feel like this will align with you well. So I always like to ask if there's something you believe that the average sales rep would think is crazy.

1:22:46 Ben Niemeier: You know, I thought about this, and I couldn't come up with… I guess the best answer that I have to it is maybe close to what we just talked about, which is that there's an answer to your problem in technology. And I'm not, you know, obviously not all reps think this, but if you look at where the multitude of sales technologies exist today, and while I think that some of them have great benefit, that, you know, it's, it's that we're just one tech thing away from, you know, whatever, getting over the, the problem that, that customers are hard to reach, or that everybody's super distracted today, or that, you know, my product doesn't do this, or my selling cycle is too much that. I, I think there's maybe a little bit of an idea there that, that I completely don't agree with.

1:23:37 Scott Ingram: There you go. There you go. What about the opposite? Is there something thing the average seller believes, or the stereotypical seller believes, that you think is crazy?

1:23:45 Ben Niemeier: Oh wait, I thought that was that question.

1:23:46 Scott Ingram: I don't… I never can keep these straight. Like, I think I just asked the same question 2 times. I, I don't… they don't make any sense.

1:23:54 Ben Niemeier: Well, so like, I would think like, you know, the average seller is like such a… it's like an impossible archetype, right? And if I actually were to answer that question again, to say what do I Is there something that I that I think an average rep thinks is crazy that I don't think is crazy? I think a lot of people ignore the creativity in sales, and and maybe it's you know kind of back to that earlier piece about you will do things this way. My manager is saying this is how you do XYZ, and that's very process based. But you know, like we don't live in a linear world, and humans don't behave. Behave linearly. And you have to be very… well, I mean, you have to get creative in certain scenarios, and you have to be a little bit, you know, thinking on your feet and taking different approaches to the way that you're driving momentum in a sale, or that you're going to reach out to somebody in prospect. Or to think that… to think that a sales process is here to save you, I think, is complete… completely mad. And, and while it is important There is a, there's a very strong human element to all of this that I think you have to be able to manage and adapt to, which kind of comes back to play in creativity.

1:25:11 Scott Ingram: That's so funny. You've started a couple of these answers along the lines of, yeah, I don't know that I have anything to share there. But in more than one instance, I've thought, well, I should cut you off and let you off the hook. And we'll just move on to the next question, and then gold nuggets tumble out of your mouth. So I'm just going to keep asking the questions, and I'm going to keep shutting up because amazing things keep happening. So great, great stuff. And this is the point that I was looking forward to. I mean, based on some of the earlier statements in our conversation where we… this is kind of the advice dispensing section. So now this is an advice to yourself, right? Where you would have, you know, ruined your future timeline and messed up the whole Back to the Future scenario. This is more for somebody in a similar situation today. What advice would you give to somebody that's just starting out in their sales career?

1:26:04 Ben Niemeier: I would generally think that most people who intentionally want to be in sales probably want to accelerate their position in career maturity way too early, meaning that I think that, you know, mostly if you look at kind of generationally, we can go into millennial sort of ideas, but like to have more patience, I guess, really. Because, you know, if you look back and if you, I think if you talk to people that are, you know, far more successful than I am, we all kind of start out the same. Like there's a way that you get through your, your hardcore grit stage of sales. And that is like just hard work and you can be pretty good in that phase. You can You can, you might crush a quota or 2 depending on the situation you're in. It doesn't scale long-term and that's okay. And while you're just making up for what you don't know with hard work in the beginning, start to build up what you don't know and get as many touches early on as you can to fail. Like get out there to fail. Like I wish I could go out, like we all talk about, we, you know, we spend 20% of our time selling. Sometimes I wish I could have started my selling career in car sales because I imagine those guys talk to 20 customers a day and they're closing deals. They're practicing, you know, well, does this work? Does that work? Or, you know, I wrote down this and that guy said that. And, you know, I'm starting to see all these patterns. So partially I think some patience about your level of knowledge and ability. It will come if you're intentional about it. It, collecting feedback and being more, being a bit of a, being a bit of a scientist in your job. Experiment with things, see what happens, write down, you know, common things you hear, think about trends that are happening in, you know, in the same conversations you're having. And also where you are getting that knowledge, be very intentional and try to get advice from people who would recommend the type of authors or social whatever presences of selling that you go after and focus on those things. Don't listen to 50 different people talk about 50 different processes or why this is wrong and that's wrong. Oh, but that guy said this. Oh, but this guy said it was that. Like, commit to a little tribe of, of knowledge and go out and fail. Like, go out and fail and just keep working harder to fail more, and you'll realize that all that failure has a bunch of gold in it if you, if you take the the right way.

1:28:32 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. You know, one of the things, I mean, one of the main reasons why I do these interviews is because there's so much good. I mean, there's, there's a lot of great content out there in kind of the sales expert space. But what about the flip side? What about somebody that is now further into their career, they're more established? I mean, maybe this was you before your epiphany, right? You, there's been like some level of success, maybe you're good but not great. Like, what's your advice to them to, to that leap?

1:29:02 Ben Niemeier: It really is about growth mindset, I think. And I don't… you can't teach that to somebody. There's something, there's a switch, you know, I could go super deep about this because I think some of the troubles that you have is when you try to… there's a failure of empathy to assume that, you know, some of the aha moments or that some of the, you know, basically some of the wiring that you have is is in everyone. And so this turned on for me, so if this thing just happens, it will turn on for them. And it just seems like there's a lot of people in the middle, fudgy stuff that don't really rise to the top for any number of reasons. So it's likely that someone who is, who is open to the idea of, of their, their intentional trajectory of their sales career is either, you know, is not performing to the level that they want because they're either misguided or because maybe they just haven't, you know, the right trigger event hasn't happened to kind of kick them into the next gear. What I would say generally is to maybe more of a general prescription of try some new things, like, and not sales things, like go try hobbies that you don't know how to do. Like, go do karate that you're gonna suck at, or go do something that you're scared to look at, how you're gonna… you know, people are gonna judge you to look at, you know, when you don't know how to do it. You can be really crazy and go try like stand-up comedy. I did improv for a little bit. Like, go do things in your life that scare the hell out of you and realize that all that stuff in your head was just in your head, and it's not deal. And I think slow, you know, I think by doing a couple of those things at least, like this sort of idea or this sort of world opens up to you that you can, that life is literally what you make it. And all the, you know, for all the confirmation bias you want to, you want to pick up on is that, you know, your worldview is, is what you make it. Like the world doesn't exist a certain way. It exists the way you make it. And if you want to change it. You've got to change yourself. I think probably one of the easiest ways to do that, if you're not already doing that, is to start reading, to start acquiring knowledge and to go after things that interest you, and then start to dig into your fears and start to dig into things that you think you might be passionate about or you're interested about or something you did want to do, but you didn't do it because some silly reason. I'm too old. That sounds dumb. I'm going to kill myself. Don't do do incredibly crazy things, but like, whatever, like go do something and prove to yourself that, that it's all in your head. And I think that over a little bit of time of that, if you have the right wiring to, to hit that switch, I think that can kind of put people into turbo mode, I think. And that just tends to, that just tends to, to bleed into every part of your life, including sales.

1:32:04 Scott Ingram: That's, that's awesome. So I feel like we should wrap up. It's no, it's not a feel like we should wrap up. It's, we've been talking for so long that I have some other things that I have to get to. Because I could keep going for a really long time. But obviously we've covered tons and tons and tons of ground, and I always like to end on something actionable. And, and I think you provided something actionable there, but maybe you have a different answer to this idea of, for the, for the person listening to this, what's something that they can do that they can challenge themselves with over the course of the next 1 to 2 weeks before the next interview episode goes live and we've got a new challenge for them? What would you have them do to improve themselves and improve their results?

1:32:45 Ben Niemeier: So I think it comes back… if it's really a practical, tactical answer, it is do something you're afraid of. Do something that you don't think you're good at. Do something that you've been putting off for whatever reason and teach yourself that probably whatever you were scared of or whatever you were thinking of really isn't… is all in your head. And I think that kind of allows you to start taking little baby steps or stepping stones or whatever that allow you to explore new, exciting avenues in, in your life.

1:33:19 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Ben, this has been incredible. Thank you for spending as much time as you have with me today. I think our audience is really going to enjoy it. I hope that when they do try something that scares them, or that they're afraid of, That they will email us or pile onto the comments. If you go to top1.fm forward slash again, whatever this episode's number is, leave a comment there. Tell us the crazy thing that you did. I'll make sure to share it with Ben, and we'll talk about it. Ben, thanks again. This has been like said really incredible. I appreciate you.

1:33:49 Ben Niemeier: I appreciate it. Thank you, Scott. 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.