⚡️ Today’s level up ⚡️

In this edition, we’ll look at a very well-known, yet super simple concept and commit to applying it every day for the remaining 78 working days this calendar year to achieve bigger-than-expected results.

The mission:

→ Read this in <5 minutes right now

→ Understand the power of focusing on “the one thing”

→ Develop your commitment system for the rest of this year

Let’s go…

Focus on less to earn more

Raise your hand if you’ve read Atomic Habits by James Clear 🙋‍♂️ (if not, then you need to get on that sh*t right now!).

Whether you have or haven’t, it’s hard to escape this graphic floating all over the internet, which illustrates the power of making tiny gains each day:

In Clear’s book and online writing, he’s alluding to the powerful concept of marginal gains to improve just 1% each day.

Explained in his words:

“Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.”

He goes on further to explain:

“In the beginning, there is basically no difference between making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse. (In other words, it won’t impact you very much today.) But as time goes on, these small improvements or declines compound and you suddenly find a very big gap between people who make slightly better decisions on a daily basis and those who don’t. This is why small choices don’t make much of a difference at the time, but add up over the long-term.”

Simple, yet profoundly impactful.

If you do just this one thing, you’ll be in a much better place at the end of the year

↑ This is my total in sales from December 2020 through June 2021 after applying my “one thing” commitment system.

Doing it is so simple, it’s hard!

And it’s something we hear all the time, yet 99% of sellers still don’t do it.

Here’s how it works:

Commit to completing your most important task (MIT) before you give your time, energy, and attention (TEA) away to others. In sales, our MIT is typically a revenue-generating activity, which means our TEA is literally money if we harness and direct it appropriately.

How did this approach come about for me?

Rewind to the first half of 2020, my pipeline was absolutely decimated due to Covid because I was a new logo specialist.

Not only that, but my pipeline was already depleted to nearly zero after locking in my last deal at the time on 12/31/19. Adding more fuel to the fire, a lot of my prospects were in the travel, hospitality, and retail industries, of which many executives I was working with were furloughed.

But after the initial shock and awe of the pandemic slowing the world down, I started reading Atomic Habits and focusing on implementing a solid morning and evening routine.

I then committed to focusing on everything in my control and creating a system that enabled me to get the most important thing done at the right time each day.

Here was a winning recipe for me:

→ Tried to make quality sleep the foundation to my day

→ Moved my meetings to 10am and later

→ Kept the first 90 minutes of the workday to just myself (no email, Slack, or chat)

→ Defined my MIT for tomorrow at the end of each day

→ Completed my MIT after my personal “warmup” and before my first meeting

→ I ALWAYS made my MIT something that would generate income

$30M in TCV ($16M in ARR) closed in net new initiatives in just 7 months was the result of designing a quality commitment system.

The timeline, process, and results looked like this:

Create your commitment system in 3 simple steps

Designing a good commitment system is not hard. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Get a tool you’ll trust to capture your MITs

This doesn’t have to be overcomplicated.

If paper and pen works for you, go for it. If you keep a second brain in Notion, have at it. Got something else, nice.

I personally use Todoist for my task management.

I like the priority and label features, the cross-platform usage (the iPhone widgets are amazing!), and the ability to integrate with other key apps.

Screenshot from Todoist.com

Step 2: Time-box your calendar

This is where most sellers fall short, because they lack the discipline (a critical trait especially at the start of the day) to not look at email or Slack before completing their MIT.

If you want a good book for help with that, I recommend reading Indistractable by Nir Eyal.

The best tool I have found for time-boxing my day and working in a much calmer, undistracted way is Sunsama. It brings together my email, calendars, and tasks (integrates with Todoist) from a single place. This is a huge advantage I get each day and even makes work feel like a fun game!

Screenshot from Sunsama.com

Step 3: Apply the “don’t break the chain” rule

In comedian folklore, the story goes that Jerry Seinfeld developed a rule early in his career where he “couldn’t break the chain.”

The way it worked is he’d write a joke every day and mark it off on his calendar with a big red X. It became a game for him and a visual reminder that he couldn’t break the chain.

This simple tactic works because when you get into the habit of doing your MIT before checking email or having your first meeting, you’ll soon feel the benefits. That fuels momentum and can end up being the difference between making your quota or not, or getting into accelerator territory that may help you enter the 7 figure earners club finally!

If you do break the chain…just be sure not to do it twice!

See you next time!

TL;DR

• – You can get 37x better each year by improving just 1% each day
• – A simple, but impactful way to get better is complete your most important task (MIT) before giving your time, energy, and attention away to others
• – Follow these 3 simple steps to develop your one thing commitment system:

1. 1. 1/ Get a trusted tool to capture your MITs
   2. 2/ Time-box your calendar
   3. 3/ Start every day with a discipline mindset and “don’t break the chain”

***

When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Get the exact system I’ve used to go from earning $200K to over $1M a year in SaaS sales without burning out here. (2,000+ students)

2. Join a community of Purpose-Curious™ sellers in the Make More Hustle Less Club where we develop a personal operating system together here. (300+ members)

3. Book a 1:1 coaching session to up-level your performance here. (Limited spots available)

I may earn a small commission on some of the links on this page at no additional charge to you. Everything I recommend I used before partnering in a rev-share program.