Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message.

The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, techniques, and expert interviews on the sales topics you care about.

The following are notes from Ep. 185- The Importance of Lifelong Learning

Listen to the conversation here:

Or read below 

00:14
Tom Stanfill
Welcome back to another episode of Sales with ASLAN.

00:17
Tom Stanfill
I'm your host, Tom Stanfill, and I am in the studio today with my new best friend from Sydney Austin, Australia, Charlie Pidcock. Hey, Charlie. Welcome to the show, my friend.

00:30
Charlie Pidcock
G'day, Tom. I feel like I've sat through quite a few of these, so I'm looking forward to the conversation.

00:37
Tom Stanfill
Oh, that's true. You probably have as one of our new partners, you probably have listened to a couple of podcasts. And so, yeah, I'm really glad that you joined our organization after meeting you and our partner meeting what was that? About a month and a half ago and getting to know you a little bit better, which I love having representation in Australia, because we've done some work in Australia, but we've never had a partner. And so I just love the fact that you're covering that part of the globe for us and that we've got somebody such with such experience and quality to serve our customers in Australia and spread the message. But before we get too deep into why you're on the podcast, we do need to mention our co host who's not here, Mr. Norris.

01:28
Tom Stanfill
For those of you that know and love Tab, you may have heard, but he was in a little bit of a car accident. It was the car. He was moving a car that was the battery had died and he was trying to get it started and roll it down the hill so he could charge a battery, and he got caught up by the door. Long story, but he's okay. But the car did run over him, and he escaped with very few injuries. But he needs another week before he's back in the studio. So, Charlie, what have you heard about his accident?

02:02
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah, well, for starters, I had nothing to do with it.

02:06
Tom Stanfill
That's true. Nor did I. Nor did I. Good point. Just for the record.

02:14
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah, no, I just got the note that was internal broadcast a week or so ago from Mark Lampson, and I passed on back my regards to Tab and his family and wished him a speedy he's.

02:29
Tom Stanfill
He's I went and visited. I mean, he sent me a picture of the tire that rolled over his shoulder. I mean, it's actually a miracle it didn't roll over his head, but somehow the door knocked him in a certain way so that the tire ran over his shoulder and missed his head. And anything that was important cracked a couple of ribs, a couple of vertebrae. But he's going to be completely fine and just he's sore, but it's just amazing that he's with us. So anyway, that's why he's not the studio. So if, you know, Tab, send prayers his way, but hopefully we'll have him back in the studio soon. But were going to have you on the episode either way. We were excited.

03:07
Tom Stanfill
I was excited to get to know you more after our meeting a month and I guess a month and a half ago in Rhode Island after you posed a question. Obviously I enjoyed hanging out with you and getting to know you, but when you challenged the group and this is what I want to talk about today with the question. And you remember the question.

03:29
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah.

03:32
Tom Stanfill
Go ahead, just repeat the question.

03:34
Charlie Pidcock
Well, I framed it by trying to understand why a particular fellow chose me to do sales training for his 400 million dollar business.

03:45
Tom Stanfill
Okay.

03:46
Charlie Pidcock
And I asked him what he thought was the number one difference between the best salesperson that he ever worked with and the rest. And I've kind of played with that quite a bit. And this particular fellow, I worked for him when he was a regional manager 20 years ago, and I said to him, all you've ever thought about is being a CEO since I've known you 25 years. And I said, Is that right? And he said, yeah. And I said, I can't really explain it, but all I've ever thought about is what makes the best salesperson. And that seed was planted in me a long time ago, and I think it's just been germinating ever since. And it just popped about a year or two ago.

04:32
Tom Stanfill
Okay.

04:33
Charlie Pidcock
So my mind's been working on that painfully.

04:38
Tom Stanfill
I've said that before, too. It's like, for some reason, that's been a fascination of mine since I can remember working, is why are certain people really good at influence? Why do they excel at relationships? Why are they good at understanding and reading people? And when they speak, people listen. And then other people who not necessarily are less intelligent, maybe even more intelligent, struggle to get their message to resonate. And I've always like, why is that? And why do people have such difficulty time connecting? And why is influence and communication so counterintuitive? So, yeah, I've been fascinated about that as well. So obviously we've turned it into a career.

05:18
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah, that's right. I think, to be fair, I often say that salespeople fall into or people fall into sales by chance, not by choice. You don't really go through high school thinking, I want to be a salesperson. You go through being wanting to be a teacher, an engineer, electrician or something.

05:44
Tom Stanfill
I want to be rich.

05:46
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah. And invariably what happens is you're in the early stages of your career and you don't have the self awareness or experience, but it doesn't feel right, and someone has a conversation with you, and that leads to maybe a customer service role or whatever the case is, and then the journey begins. So you fall into it by chance. But the really good ones, the ones that eventually get to become great, make the choice to learn their craft, to apply themselves, to always be curious about opportunities to better themselves, whether that's through a course, through a podcast. These days through a book, leaning into failure, all those sorts of things. Not letting wins get the better of you because they can go to your head and that's the worst thing that can happen.

06:45
Tom Stanfill
So yeah, that's interesting. I was delivering a workshop last week and I closed with this sort of I don't know. I couldn't say it's an epiphany, but something that just land fresh for me as I was looking at the people that I was interacting with and I was thinking about a couple of other workshops that I delivered in the last twelve months. And the number one reps, the top reps, are always the most engaged and always ask the most questions and always act like they're learning something for the first time. And they're the ones that should have the exact opposite position of saying, look, I'm already very successful, I'm already making a lot of money. What are you going to tell me? That's not their posture. Their posture is always leaning in. I could learn just one other thing.

07:35
Tom Stanfill
I could get a little bit better. And I've never really connected it with to this idea that they've made a choice. They've made a choice to be a professional. So we, you know, I always talk about in sales there's four levels. There's like the lowest level are people that sort of deliver a billboard. This is what the company tells me to say. Or the other sort of same level but sort of a different role is like my relationship manager and just basically I'm here to get you what you need. You let me know what you need and I'll get it for you. So either I'm delivering the company message or I'm here to just be reactive to whatever the customer need.

08:08
Tom Stanfill
Then there's sort of the sales rep who understands the features and benefits and they're trying to solve kind of product problems, product needs, but they don't see the big picture. Then there's the consultants who do understand the business and the big picture and sell solution. But that's not the highest level. The highest level is a trusted partner. These are the people that actually earn a seat at the table. The decision makers leaning into them and saying, look, I want you to be part of my team because you're going to help me grow my business and I can't get to where I want to go without you. And to me I equate that level as being professional.

08:45
Tom Stanfill
Like you're professional athletes when you reach that level and so very few people, I think of it as levels like you would sports or music or anything where there's amateur versus professional. And I agree with you. I think it's a decision that people make. It's like this is something I'm going to excel at.

09:04
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah, it's interesting. In a program that I deliver, I play a snippet from the documentary on a Sane Bolt.

09:17
Tom Stanfill
Okay?

09:18
Charlie Pidcock
When people think about a Sane Bolt, they gosh, he's so natural. He makes it look so easy, right? Yeah. He runs for 10 seconds four times every four years and gets a gold medal around his back or his neck and all this glory, right. And what they don't see is this two and a half minute snippet where he's training at altitude. I think it's at Colorado or something. There are four people on the athletic track, right? Two other athletes, his coach and his father. And his father's just shaking his head because the same bolt is going around and around this track until he can't speak anymore. He's physically ill on the side of the track. And when he sort of comes to, he says that he says, the race is the easy part. All the work is done in front of nobody.

10:09
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Right. It's the preparation. It's the pressure. Yeah.

10:14
Charlie Pidcock
He doesn't believe in competition. The competition is the easy part, he says. And I just think it's a really good lesson for people who want to be great at anything, whether it's sales or engineering or doctoring or teaching or whatever, like just preparation.

10:34
Tom Stanfill
I think it's easy to default to the idea that the naturally gifted are the ones that succeed versus the people that work the hardest, and there is no shortcuts. And anytime you watch a documentary of someone who's accomplished something great, it's always amazes me of how much failure they faced, how much discipline was required, and when you hear the things that they went through. Like, I watched the Sly Stallone Sylvester Stallone documentary over the weekend. I mean, just the amount of rejection that he received every step of the way and how hard he worked when everybody else was going out and drinking and partying, and at his age, he's like, no, I'm closing the door. And all weekend I'm writing this script, and I'm going to rewrite it and rewrite it, rewrite it.

11:21
Tom Stanfill
Anybody else would be thinking, well, who are you to write a script? You don't know anything about screenplays, and you don't know anything about acting, and you've never done anything. He's like, this is where I'm going, and this is what I'm doing, and there is no shortcuts.

11:36
Charlie Pidcock
And the other thing that kind of fires me up is a quote by a guy called Ivan Meisner, and he says, the key to success is the uncommon application of common knowledge.

11:48
Tom Stanfill
Uncommon application of common knowledge. I love that.

11:52
Charlie Pidcock
So it's the habits and the routines that you work really hard at every single you know, half a dozen years ago, I was listening to a podcast on a fellow and he suggested that to find and keep operating rhythm, you should do eight things before 08:00 every morning. And the number one thing is to get a good night's sleep. Your productivity is 60% to 70% determined by a good night's sleep. And the people who kind of burn the midnight candle or work too longer hours. They think they're doing the right thing, but in fact, they're not because they're just not productive. So lots of little kind of things like that uncommon application of common knowledge is the key to success. I wish I'd learned that a long time before I was 50, not just a few years.

12:50
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, and it really isn't that complicated. A lot of times I think about that before I'm standing in front of an audience and thinking, I'm just going to be talking about this real simple principle, this real simple idea. So why do they need to hear it? But the reality is, so few people really have mastered the common things that are required to be successful in our line of work. It's hard to get people to really tell you the truth. It's hard for people to be willing to examine their biases and embrace a new way of thinking and then actually change their behavior. I mean, that's what we're called to do in our role, is get people to change direction and change how they think and how they act. And that's a major accomplishment to get somebody to move in a totally different direction.

13:40
Tom Stanfill
Because selling isn't about education. If the person is sitting there and saying, hey, tell me what to do and I'll do it, that's great. But that's not why we're earning a commission. We're earning a commission because we're changing the way people think about how they see their problems and how they solve their problems. And that's why we earn the six figure incomes or in some cases, seven figure incomes.

14:05
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah. I remember when I first started my sales training business, a friend of mine couldn't deliver a program to the Australian arm of an $80 billion global business.

14:22
Tom Stanfill
Okay.

14:22
Charlie Pidcock
And I looked at the content and I delivered the content to this $80 billion business, and they were wowed with it. What struck me was that I was delivered exactly the same content 20 years beforehand when I was working for my family business, and our turnover was $22 million.

14:47
Tom Stanfill
Wow.

14:47
Charlie Pidcock
20 years beforehand. And I just went, this is great. And it's just a continual professional development never stops. I'm not undermining it at all. It just surprised me because we don't always retain that knowledge and do it over and over again. We look for quick fixes or silver bullets or a new idea of ways of doing things, and it's the uncommon application of common knowledge.

15:21
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, that's so true. So true. All right, well, let's get back to the question that you ask us to get us talking about what makes a salesperson. What's the number one characteristic of a successful sales rep? You asked that question. We all went around the room. I think one person got the correct answer. The answer you were looking for? I don't remember, but I know I didn't. I think I said something about persistence. But what's the answer?

15:54
Charlie Pidcock
Well, it's my game. So I made up the answer, and I know it's not one word. Right. It's probably 25, 45 different words. My word is conviction. Because if you wouldn't buy it, you probably shouldn't sell it. And if you know within yourself that this is such good value and this is fundamentally going to change the way that your client does business, whatever that business looks like, it's going to work. That conviction is palpable and it's elusive and patchy. Conviction, it doesn't always live within you. Sometimes it deserts you for a period of time. And I was reflecting this morning and just about what are the potentially the couple of components of conviction. And I think that motivation is a big part of it. You have to have that drive over a long period of time to build your conviction.

17:01
Charlie Pidcock
I think a lot of us talk.

17:04
Tom Stanfill
To me about that. So why are you saying motivation is connected to conviction? Because motivation sounds like something you do. Conviction seems like it'd be about something you believe.

17:15
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah. I think you have to be motivated to and part of it's an acceptance of not knowing everything and going on a journey to find it out.

17:34
Tom Stanfill
Motivation lead the pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit of truth, the pursuit of what's the best way leads you to conviction.

17:43
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah. Well, you grab curiosity along the way as well. Right. Because you have to continually try to understand. And I've done a lot of work on my own listening skills after learning some interesting statistics on how quickly humans speak versus how many words per minute we speak at, how many words per minute we listen at, and how many words per minute we think at. And when you really look at that, humans, we're programmed for distraction. And because our brain works so much faster than our mouth, what people say is only the first thing they say is only about 14% chance. It's what they're actually thinking. So the curiosity and ability to hold yourself and ask the question, what else gets you closer to what their real problem might be? And in some cases, they don't even know it.

18:46
Charlie Pidcock
And it's up to us as trusted advisors to hold the moment, to build the moment where they feel safe, to let their mind spit out. Well, I hadn't really thought about that.

19:05
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. As they're processing what they're trying to say, or they may know what they want to say, but they're a little guarded. So the conviction so just to make sure I'm tracking with you, if I have conviction, which, by the way, how would you define that? How would you define conviction? I mean, I know we all kind of know what that means, but interested to see if you have a definition.

19:31
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah, that would have been a good thing to look up. I think it's the fundamental belief that what I've got is exactly what you need.

19:43
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I can solve your problem better than anybody else I can, which could be a combination of what I offer, who I am, what process I have, the backup that the company might provide me, all of those things. But ultimately, I feel confident that you should choose my recommendation over everybody else's versus hope that you do.

20:11
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah, without a doubt. I'm not sure if we talked about this when I was with you a month or so ago, but it comes in all sorts of different my initial Charlie Pidcock CP. I also got CP on my shirt, but the submeaning for me is Conviction Pill, because as a developer of salespeople, which I call myself over and above just about anything else, I'm trying to give salespeople, it doesn't matter who they are or where I meet them, I'm trying to give them a Conviction pill. I've choked on a few of myself over the years as well. That's listening to your podcast. It's reading a book. It's having an experience that works out well. It's accepting one that doesn't. It's attending a variety of different courses, some of which I'm interested and engaged with, some of which really don't feel right.

21:12
Charlie Pidcock
And it's leaning into that uncomfortable feeling that I'm trying to learn something that I actually don't agree with. And that's the change in beliefs or changing values.

21:23
Tom Stanfill
That's the curiosity. That's the motivation and the curiosity that you're talking about. It's the curiosity to know, and it's the motivation to actually go do the work to uncover the truth about whatever it is that you're trying to solve. Yeah, that's interesting. When I think about conviction as you're talking, I think about what drives conviction in me. And I think one of the things as I go back to is regardless of what I sell, regardless of what the customer says, regardless of what's popular, regardless of anything, what's the truth or what's the principle? And if I can land on the principle, like, this is just true.

22:09
Tom Stanfill
This is how the world works according to whatever it is that I want to be talking about or what I'm like change if I'm talking to the customer about change, and here's what has to happen in order for change, regardless of what I offer, it's just the truth. These are the things that this is what drives change. These are the best piece of the principle. And a principle is a law. It always is true, regardless of your instincts, regardless of your opinions. And so I always think about what are the best practices and how can I figure that out so that when I get to that place, I stand on those principles rather than I stand on my ability or I stand on what's actually happened. So I'm sharing from my experience of what I've seen work versus what someone told me to say.

23:06
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah.

23:09
Tom Stanfill
Do you feel like that's kind of one of the bigger problems? I think say this versus, okay, I'll say that, and then the customer says something that undermines what the company told you to say and then it's, well, that didn't work because not vetted.

23:28
Charlie Pidcock
When I started my own business, I had a sales trainer and coach for a couple of years, and it was very helpful in some respects, but they were quite big on scripts and to the point where I sounded like a robot. And I'm not a robot, neither of my clients. And if it doesn't sound good and I don't really believe in it, my clients or prospects, they're not going to believe it either. All right. I really struggled and then the minute I kind of dropped them, all these windows or opportunities started to open up because I was just myself. And I think it's really important for developers of salespeople to allow people to be their best salespeople in a way that works for them forever. I've heard that extroverts make the best salespeople because they're outgoing and engaging and all those sorts of things.

24:31
Charlie Pidcock
And then I heard a few years later that the introverts make the best salespeople because they're the best listeners. And as far as I'm concerned, it's all rubbish. My firm view and experience is that if someone really wants to learn sales, it doesn't really matter. They will work it out.

24:47
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, there are definitely talents that certain people have that will allow them to be successful, maybe a little bit easier than the others. But it also can be also that comes with corresponding weaknesses that can make them less successful than others. Like the charismatic people and the people that are people are more naturally drawn to them. They tend to talk too much and they tend to depend a little bit too much on their charismatic ability to communicate, then really understand the customer and then the people. You could go on and on. But like you said, it's ultimately a choice. It is a decision. That's what I love about selling. It is a decision to be successful.

25:28
Tom Stanfill
If you want to understand the customer's business and what problems they have and really become an expert at solving their problems, and you understand the solutions that you offer and you know who you can help and who you can't. And you work hard and you follow the process to reach those people and share that message. You're going to be successful in sales. You may not want to do it, but I remember saying this early on in one of those opportunities I had to speak at one of those sales kickoff meetings at the beginning of the year. I said this one thing I love about sales success is a choice. That's not true in all the professions, but if you want to do the work, you will be successful on any organization. You can walk and you say, I can show you.

26:09
Tom Stanfill
If you do these things, you will be successful. And then people say, Well, I'm not doing that. Okay, you may not be willing to do it. And I think that's where our conviction comes from, is doing the work to figure out what's actually true, which we always talk about at Aslyn, that's the best way to overcome an objection is just tell the customer the truth. And the reality is a lot of people don't know the.

26:38
Charlie Pidcock
I am. I think the reason that I ended up at ASLAN as a partner was because we have much the same philosophies and I do a little piece on the three keys to business development. The first part, and it kind of blends into curiosity, but the first thing is to have a mindset of being in service. So don't turn up to sell. Don't turn and see what you can get from a conversation. See what you can give. See what you can leave people. But too many people turn up to see what they can get out of a conversation. And you guys call it commission breath, right?

27:21
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Right.

27:22
Charlie Pidcock
The intention is transparent, as you say. So the second thing is lifelong learning. I think that if you are trying to learn as, you have a mindset of being in service that supports curiosity, it builds conviction because you don't walk in with the answer and throw it up over your prospect.

27:49
Tom Stanfill
Right. Yeah.

27:52
Charlie Pidcock
The kind of final thing is to make sure that you're with the one you're with. So be present in the conversation that you're having. Again, the pace of business has been sped up by technology, and people are missing the beautiful moments. They're thinking about what they've got to do after the conversation or what they haven't done before it. They're not just taking the opportunity to be present and to really be with themselves, with the person, and just let the curiosity float around the room.

28:25
Tom Stanfill
I love that phrase beautiful moment. And I got to tell you, the way you articulated how technology has changed the speed of just the speed of business and how we interact and meet, and everybody's got less time. They're running late for the meeting, and immediately they've got something booked at the end of the meeting at the top of the hour, and everybody's racing, and then they're behind, and you miss the beautiful moments of really being with the person and truly seeing them as a unique human being and humanizing the interaction. And I realized, teaching a workshop last week, that I'm guilty of that because you're always feeling like you're on the clock and you have less time because it used to be you would travel.

29:19
Tom Stanfill
You would travel someplace, you would meet with people on site that would always give you more time in between and after. There'd be times to talk. But now it's like you show up, you introduce yourself, you're off, and you kind of get in this rhythm. And I think it's hurting. It can be a detriment to our ability to have better conversations and learn more.

29:43
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah. I think we all fall for it from time to time for whatever reason. That's why I say sometimes it's a lucid conviction. But I had a grandfather that I was very close to. He passed away when I was 30, but I learned two lessons from him. One of them was 20 years old and I painted his house for him. It took us about a week to do it. On the last day, I was on the couch reading at a National Geographic magazine. And I can't remember what the article was, but I remember very clearly that Mum turned up to pick me up and take me home. And I said, I just want to finish this article, I'm interested in it. And she said, no, we've got to go. So I turned to Pop and I just spent seven days painting his house.

30:29
Charlie Pidcock
And I said, do you mind if I take this national Geographic. And he said no. And he was the most generous man that I've ever met. Right. And he said no. And he said, I haven't yet read it and I might learn something. And my 20 year old brain said, what the hell do you need to learn at 85? I didn't say it out loud, thankfully. And my now 54 year old brain is grateful for the foundation of lifelong learning that he gave me that day. Right.

31:00
Tom Stanfill
Wow.

31:01
Charlie Pidcock
So if he can learn at 85, then I've got a long way to go in terms of staying curious. Right.

31:09
Tom Stanfill
That sparks a question. Sorry, did I cut you off?

31:13
Charlie Pidcock
Well, I just got one other lesson I learned of him, which was about four or five years later, and I was in my career by then, right?

31:20
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

31:21
Charlie Pidcock
And he was a foreman for BHP. He actually moved out from Chicago to Sydney in the early 19 hundreds with his father, who was a steel maker. They manufactured the steel that went over the Sydney Harbor Bridge. But he said to me, Charlie, when I was about 25, said, charlie, never take a job that can be one day overtaken by a machine. And I said, Why is that, Pop? And he said, if you think about when I lived, we've had plane travel, we've had microwave ovens and computers and a range of other things, right. He said, Never take a job that can be one day overtaken by a machine because it's only a matter of time before someone invents that machine. And for me, the lesson I took about out of that was the power and the importance of human connection.

32:12
Charlie Pidcock
And Pop was unbelievable. There were 28 grandchildren at his funeral and every single one of us thought were his favorite.

32:20
Tom Stanfill
Wow.

32:21
Charlie Pidcock
And I just go, he had 28 grandchildren, and we all thought we're his favorite, right. Everyone turned up to his funeral, it was just beautiful. Right. But that's a lesson.

32:32
Tom Stanfill
Wow.

32:32
Charlie Pidcock
Charlie. When you practice and when you are present, you can shift people big time.

32:41
Tom Stanfill
Anyway, I love that. Well, look at the impact. Look at the impact that he had on you. And I think that's one of the things that we miss is the power that we have, regardless of our role, the power that we have on how we treat people, whether you're customers, friends, as a parent, as a grandparent, the impact that we have on people, it's powerful.

33:10
Charlie Pidcock
It builds conviction.

33:12
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Well, because you saw it modeled, you experienced it. Yeah. It's an interesting thing about conviction, too, is that if you don't have it, find it. I mean, that's kind of part of that the motivation and part of finding it. Yes, there's the analysis that you need to do. But I think finding people who are walking the talk or who do have the conviction related to something that's important to you and seeing what drives them, it sounds like that's your pop had that impact on you, like learning, and then you became convicted that was an important thing.

33:54
Charlie Pidcock
Well, I think you put a seed in me that I've been watering yeah. Long time. And I have been open to it, obviously. I remember it, and I've been working hard on lots of different things. So more recently, people have said, you're lucky, you're natural at sales, and I got to cut them off. And I can say I've worked really hard at it. Thanks very much. I spent 25 years in businesses, running sales teams, doing sales myself, and I had an Epiphany about seven or eight years ago after the passing of a friend. And since that moment and a couple of other things that happened, I've never had such clarity about what I was put on the planet to do.

34:40
Charlie Pidcock
And part of that's conviction, which sounds really awesome until the going gets tough, and then you go, well, if I've got such conviction, then I've got to keep going. So the only way to that conviction is through the hard times. And it's leaning into those and having and building resilience consistently that continues to build conviction.

35:08
Tom Stanfill
I think this sparks some questions about barriers to conviction, and you just mentioned one, but I'll go back to that one in a second. But I want to talk about one of the I think barriers to conviction is the idea that you just don't know everything. There's something you're missing. And I think people that have more of analytical brain are aware of all of the details and what they're more naturally tuned into, what they don't know, versus glossing over that. And people that have maybe more conceptual brain like, don't worry about the details, but I guess this is the best way to say it is their conviction is undermined by the fact that they don't know everything because you can't know everything. Well, how is it made? And what if it does break and how do I really know that data.

36:06
Tom Stanfill
So any advice for people who have more of that type of brain that's more analytical and wants to know it all so that they can be right, safe and sure before they ever make a recommendation?

36:23
Charlie Pidcock
I look at it a little bit differently to that. Okay. I don't think the type of brain makes any difference to a lot of people. I think embedded in either thinking you know everything or not willing, accept to accept that you do is laced insecurity. And that comes from life experience, good or bad. I was lucky enough to have a manager that used to say, I'm not intimidated by what I don't know. I admired him because of the courage to say, I don't know everything. And I've worked with a lot of people over my years who could not ever say that, much less think it. And it inhibits their careers and most of that's through insecurity and a lack of conviction.

37:22
Charlie Pidcock
So they'll tend to stay in the same place, doing the same thing for a long time until they're not willing to get out of their comfort zone. And no growth happens inside one's comfort zone.

37:40
Tom Stanfill
Exactly. Life begins outside your comfort zone.

37:43
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah. And so there's another piece of work that I've done, which was the six different components of what I call sales mastery.

37:55
Tom Stanfill
Okay.

37:55
Charlie Pidcock
And it's mindset, potential, awareness, direction, skills and knowledge. And there's about 15 wedges to the pie. I'll send it with you.

38:12
Tom Stanfill
Just say that one more time. Mindset, skill set, and awareness. Mindset, skill set, awareness, knowledge, direction. Direction and potential. And potential. Okay. These are the six drivers of mastery is what you're saying.

38:35
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah. And there's a few subcomponents. But the very last slice of the pie came about seven or eight years ago when I dropped my son off at his job at the marina. And I'd never met his boss before, and I never met him afterwards, but his boss said to me, I really like working with your son. He just loves to learn. He's really coachable. And I went, that's good. I'm glad. The very next day, I dropped my daughter at her job. She used to muck out stables at a horse riding school. And I met her boss three times. Once, the second or third time was that day. And she said to me exactly the same thing about my daughter who was two or three years younger than Henry. He said, I love Scarlett. She just wants to learn. She's really interested.

39:34
Charlie Pidcock
She's really engaged, and she's really coachable. And I went. So that became the last piece in the pie, because not long after that, I saw an aframe on the side of a kid's sporting event, and it said, be careful of uncoachable kids because they become unemployable adults. Oh, my God. That's very true. And so for whatever reason, my kids have whatever I've done to them, they've ended up, in some ways, coachable. And with that, you can do just about anything. And if you're not coachable, if you are insecure, then lifelong learning and curiosity are really challenging.

40:21
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Wow, that's so powerful. Because you think about the fact that somebody knows how to help you get what you want. Like, everybody wants something and somebody knows how to get it, and all you have to do is find people who know how to help you get what you want. And I think you're right. Because we are either insecure fear for whatever reason, we don't want to know our blind spots, or it's hard for us to act. For some of us. And I know it was for me. Earlier in my career, I said this to one of my sons we all want something. And there's somebody in your circle that knows how to get what you want. And all we have to do is reach out and ask people who've already done it or just know the path or know what has to happen.

41:20
Tom Stanfill
It's kind of like something that you're doing. It's like there's people who around you who've become a partner or started their training business or worked with ASLAN for 20 years, and they've already done it. So you can never have the mindset, oh, I'm just going to talk to them and see what I can learn from them, or I'm too insecure to be wrong or to need help. That just doesn't make any sense. But the reality is it's just foolish not to lean into other people to say, hey, you know, something that I don't know and why would I compete with you? Or why would I be so fearful that I wouldn't ask for help?

42:02
Tom Stanfill
But I can tell you that's the way I was when I was my younger career, I was too interested in performing or being perceived a certain way to ask for help or to fail because of just how that might affect my image, which was so immature. But as I got older, I'm like, I just love coaching. Yeah, coach me and I'm willing to be wrong, like you said of your manager.

42:26
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah, I think it's pretty normal.

42:29
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, that's probably true.

42:33
Charlie Pidcock
Before you're 30 or sometimes even 40, I think that's part of life's journey. But you've got to be ripe for that. And I think, unfortunately, insecurity is kind of a negative. There's lots of negative connotations with it. More recently, I've looked at some work around comfort zone and just working from comfort zone to get into learning and growth zones, you've got to go through fear. And I think I was in a conversation the other day when were talking about fear. And there's sort of two kinds of fear. There's the internal one, which is where insecurity lies, and working through that. But then there's also external fear, which is the fear from the environment that you're in, which might be toxic, there may be bullies in it, or it might be a business that's going bad.

43:34
Charlie Pidcock
There's some internal ones you can control, but the external fear based stuff is very difficult to control if you're not in a position to do so.

43:45
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, that's true. And how you manage that fear is critical. But I do think the key when it related to conviction is recognize that there's no plausible reason to allow fear to keep you from moving in the direction that you want to go. Because like you said, it's just how you interpret it. If I do fail, then I learn. You learn. And anybody that you study and see their career, it's failure is part of the process. And I remember learning that early on in my career. It's like, no, I'm going to fail. I remember when I started speaking or I started trying to do things that had a lot of fear associated with it, and I learned that's just going to happen. I'm going to try these things, I'm going to learn and I'm going to get coach and I'm going to get feedback.

44:40
Tom Stanfill
But it's just part of the process. And you can also practice in certain safer environments, but it's just part of the process. It doesn't have anything to do with who I am. It's just part of the process. And if I try something new, I'm going to struggle. Talk to me a little bit about conviction related to keep moving. I think that can be obviously, maybe even more powerful is when all the headwinds, it's not just about what I need to learn and not what information I need to seek and motivated to be curious and teachable. But it's like the ODS are stacked against me, the market stacked against me. There's things that are happening that are outside of my control, and some people have the internal motivation to just say, I'm going to keep going.

45:38
Tom Stanfill
Anything you've learned about how to do that for those of us that might be struggling to keep moving in the face of a lot of headwinds?

45:48
Charlie Pidcock
Yeah, without a doubt. I think most of our learnings as humans comes from failure.

45:55
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

45:56
Charlie Pidcock
And I had an experience when I was 30 OD years old, when I lost my job. And I had an appointment with my boss, who and I walked in and they were with the managing director and they fired me on the spot and they walked me to my office, made me fill a cardboard box up and chaperone me out like I was a criminal.

46:24
Tom Stanfill
Wow.

46:24
Charlie Pidcock
And I thought, this is a bit rugged. And they left me on the side of the road with the cab in the cardboard box and put me in a car. I just went, Jeez, I'm feeling pretty bad here. And I was 20 minutes to home and I just seemed to be sinking and sinking. And I got home and my wife and I had recently bought this house and she had our then three month old on her hip. When I got to the porch and it was 09:00 in the morning, and she said, what are you doing here? And I said, I'm not really sure, but I'm pretty sure I don't have a job anymore.

47:03
Tom Stanfill
I'm pretty sure.

47:05
Charlie Pidcock
Well, the fear I saw on her face come over her is something that I never want to see again. Tom. It was awful. I can still see it.

47:12
Tom Stanfill
Right, wow.

47:14
Charlie Pidcock
And I just went to myself in that moment after I'd drunk a bottle or two of scotch, that I'm never letting someone do that to me again, so they risk me looking after my family and that's something I take pretty seriously. So I've always tried to I think that was not the first time, but it was one of the big I wouldn't even call it a bit of pill, I would call it like a pineapple and that I had to swallow rough bit first. And I think how you get through that is through resilience. And it wasn't easy, it's not easy to talk about it. It tears me up from time to time that I jeopardize the house and whatever, and it was nothing in the whole seamless sins, but at the time it was pretty serious.

48:18
Charlie Pidcock
So I've learned a lot about resilience over the last ten or so years. And there's a book written by a guy called Hugh Van Kylenberg. He's an Australian fellow, he's around about my age and it just seemed though we lived the same sort of a life in some respects, not in others. But he talks about resilience as being three things and these are the things that get me through the tough times. And the first thing is, it's an acronym and it's Gem, he calls it. And the G stands for gratitude. So as hard as things are, be grateful because you got two arms and your legs and you're not in the Gaza Strip at the moment, all right? Be grateful, because most of us don't have to deal with what those poor people on both sides are dealing with.

49:09
Tom Stanfill
Right.

49:12
Charlie Pidcock
The second thing is E, which is empathy. And for a long time, and this embarrasses me to say it, but I confused empathy with sympathy. And the same boss who said to me that I'm not intimidated by what I don't know, he told me that I didn't have empathy. And I said, yeah, I got heaps of empathy. I feel sorry for heaps of people. I didn't understand what empathy was at that time, but having empathy for those around and what they're going through is important. And the final one, the M, is mindfulness. I've been meditating a lot over the last five or six or seven years and that has made me a little bit more, I think, resilient, I think tent, I think broader in terms of not worrying about what I can't control.

50:13
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

50:15
Charlie Pidcock
So I think just practicing those three things every day, whatever that looks like yeah, that's a great has got me through.

50:25
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, that's a great tools and great story. It's funny, I went through a similar not funny, but I went through a similar situation right before I started ASLAN and the company that had bought my company, Tab joined me there and he was working with me and they fired the president, who's the one that really I worked for. And apparently there were some accusations of fraud. I don't know what it was, but we somehow got swept up in that and they walked in and literally there's my whole organization that I started and was running, but it was down to the other umbrella. They basically saying you need to leave and I talked them out of doing that, at least giving me to the end of the day.

51:15
Tom Stanfill
But it was like the next day I'm on the street, it's Christmas, he gave me two week severance and I remember just nose bloodied. But the learning is one is you catastrophize everything and rather than just break it down to a day, what can I do today? And this is when living in a day to day, just today, how am I doing today? What am I grateful for today? And out of that though, also came ASLAN. So what seemed to be I'm jumping off a cliff led me to where I needed to be and starting it with Tab.

51:57
Tom Stanfill
I mean, they basically were able to take the training component of the business and take it they didn't want it's and it's where I kind of feel like my heavenly father is looking after me and saying, I have a better plan for you and what is that plan? And I need to just trust and do the things I need to do what I can control, what can I control and just live with.

52:27
Charlie Pidcock
Mean, as difficult as that was at the time, there's no way I'd trade it for anything because it taught me so much and that's helpful.

52:38
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Beautiful. Charlie, this has been amazing. I've loved getting to know you more. There's no surprise in a lot of the wisdom that you've shared because I could tell as soon as I met you in Is, this is a man that I'd like to work with and look forward to, partner with and learning from. So thank you for joining us and I know you'll be back. I wish you much success. I need to come visit you in Sydney. Did you move from Sydney?

53:08
Charlie Pidcock
Not yet.

53:09
Tom Stanfill
Okay.

53:09
Charlie Pidcock
You're going to the middle of next year?

53:12
Tom Stanfill
Middle of next year. Okay, my friend. Well, I look forward okay, just a couple hours.

53:18
Charlie Pidcock
There's a bed for you up there, mate.

53:21
Tom Stanfill
My friend. Well, thanks for joining us and also thanks to our listeners for joining us for another episode of sales with ASLAN and we look forward to visiting with you on our next episode.