The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
- Warren Buffett -
It wasn't much of a lunch; basic describes it fairly accurately. It was an important part of my day though, not so much for the lunch itself, but to mark the moment.
Today I secured a client I've been working on for a couple weeks. It's a lucrative deal and after a final two hour meeting I walked away happily having won the business. The revenue is the equivalent of my entire annual budget and considering I'm only six weeks into my reporting year you can probably understand why I'm celebrating. It's not my first deal for this new company; that happened in my first week just over a month ago and I've secured several others since but this deal is something special.
The company remunerate me by way of a healthy salary and commissions on total me-generated revenue and writing this business means I'll hit my annual budget easily. That means anything more I generate now, for close to the eleven months left of my reporting year will exceed it and my commission's rise exponentially. It's a good position to be in.
I never used to celebrate successes overly much; a win was a win and that was that; I'd regroup and deploy again in pursuit of the next. There was no chest beating or celebrations and I'd play down the accolades that came...I just got on with things.
But I came to the understanding that it was not a good way to be and that a small celebration, commensurate to the size of the achievement, was in fact very beneficial.
It's a pin in the map, a waypoint from which to begin the next leg of the journey. It's a psychological marker and I came to realise that marking the end of a journey prior to embarking on the next has emotional and motivational value, even just through acknowledging the hard work and effort to get there. In the years since discovering that, I've marked my success on each occasion but commensurate to the scale of achievement. This means I didn't go out and buy a new Aston Martin every time I won a new account; not even every second time.
Today's celebratory activities
Today, my celebration involved a café and sandwich made up of tuna, tomato, red onion and mayonnaise plus a cup of coffee. I know, it doesn't seem that special considering the scale of the success I had today, but it's enough.
It was a simple moment of reflection and thought, an acknowledgement of my efforts, persistence and consistency, and as I sat there chomping on my sandwich I thought about the journey I'd taken to gain that achievement taking the time to feel good about it. I sipped my coffee, ordered another, and said to myself, you did a fucken good job G-dog. An hour later I drew a line beneath it and moved on.
I'm working on two more deals like this currently, each as lucrative as the one secured today, and it's difficult not to be somewhat excited.
The thing is, that excitement doesn't win deals in my industry; it takes hard fucken work, flexibility, knowledge, influencing skills, adaptability, persistence, personality, ability to deal with rejection, strategy, consistency, good timing, prioritization, resilience and a bazillion other things. Those things come to a person over time and fortunately I've had jobs which have delivered many lessons over many years, some learned the hard way, but all valuable. So I'll do those things with these other deals, and the many more I'll need to put together to retain my job and job satisfaction, and celebrate the wins in between.
Yesterday the General Manager flew in to my State, a surprise visit, and he said a few things that felt good to hear; he seems to like what I'm doing. But in truth that doesn't really matter as it's myself I need to impress as no one will ever drive me harder than I do myself. It was nice to hear him speak well of me though, and I think he'll be pleased to see today's deal go through.
Do you celebrate the successes you have as they occur and if so how do you do so? Is it a night out, (one of my favourite things to do to celebrate), a purchase of something you've set as your success-reward or other such celebratory thing to mark your success. Feel free to tell me about it in the comments below.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised so be humble and kind
Any images in this post are my own