⚡️ Today’s level up ⚡️
Today’s edition shares the next version of the personal operating system I use to keep my purposeful performance on track each day.
Let’s go!
Read time: <5 minutes
If you missed last week, read it here.
What is Thrive Space?
In the summer of 2020, I found myself at an interesting intersection:
– Like the rest of the world, I was trying to grasp and adjust to living and working during a global pandemic.
– I had the largest quota in the company on my head but had a depleted pipeline that was not made any easier by the pandemic (because my main vertical was travel and hospitality, which was essentially shut down for business during that time).
– I was asked to co-chair our “work from anywhere” approach as a 1,300-person company, called Project Beehive because I had shared this memo with our CEO earlier that year, which was both exciting and challenging.
All of this coincided with spending more time at home rather than the normal travel-crazed schedule I had prior to the pandemic. I started reading more, became more introspective, aspired to get healthier, and became more curious about life beyond sales.
After reading The Perfect Day Formula, Deep Work, Atomic Habits, and When, I got serious about better understanding what I was doing each day and how that impacted my business performance, particularly the actions and habits that are not normally tracked in sales, like sleep, hours of deep work, amount of time spent in meetings, and other criteria.
So, I created a simple sheet, and Thrive Space 1.0 was born.
Here’s how it has evolved
The first version was very basic, and it was based on two simple principles:
1| Understand what you’re doing each day
2| Try not to “break the chain” (aka stay consistent with using it)
By simply tracking what was happening in my life and work, I could understand how that contributed to an overall “thrive score,” with the idea that the days with the highest thrive score were days I wanted to repeat.
As I kept with it, over the course of 2021 and 2022, the sheet became more sophisticated. I started getting more granular by tracking my energy potential (from an app called Rise) and I started tracking my mood (via an app called Gyroscope).
Then, I started layering in my financial performance and side business performance (like LinkedIn and newsletter growth) so I could start correlating the human data with the professional data, and then review to see how I can improve and harmonize both.
At the micro level, I learned from my consistent daily practice that my highest thrive score “sweet spot” was:
– Achieving 8/10 points on my personal intentions score
– My mood was above 92 at the end of the day
– I completed 6 Pomodoro Technique intervals
– I slept for 7 hrs and 5 mins the night before
– I had 87% energy potential for the day
– I had a 97% WHOOP Recovery score
– My sleep debt was down to 2.6 hrs
– I was in 2 hrs of meetings
– I worked a total of 7.5 hrs
At the macro level, I learned something even more interesting: operating the “old way,” where I was traveling all the time, very sleep-deprived, and in more meetings each day, I closed $11M in ARR within twenty-four months.
However, operating this “new way,” I was able to achieve $16.3M in ARR within eighteen months against a more constrained account list by increasing my sleep, reducing the amount of time worked (especially shallow work and meetings), and increasing the number of breaks I took.
That’s when I went on a global podcast tour and started sharing my insights on LinkedIn every day, talking about how I not only broke into the mythical seven-figure annual earners’ club in sales once but did it three years in a row. Plus, I did it by not significantly adding any new sales skills or meeting with more clients but simply taking care of myself and thoughtfully managing my energy and the work I focused on.
These may seem like “duh” insights, but in an industry that prizes pseudo productivity (measured by activity where more emails, calls, and meetings must mean you’re being successful), it was welcomed with open arms in the sales community, particularly with sellers.
I even had one student, Donal, who was able to customize his Thrive Space, and use it to guide his first year at Salesforce to impressive results:
– Reach 111% to Q4 quota
– Achieve 160% to goal for new logos
– Earn an award for driving team culture and performance
This performance allowed him to take an entire month off work to go on vacation to Spain for ten days and then camping with his family for two weeks.
You can see those early versions of Thrive Space 1.0 here.
What Thrive Space 2.0 is all about
Since then, I’ve been working to make Thrive Space even more actionable and useful, and now, Thrive Space 2.0 is finally here.
I want to give you a glimpse and invite you to a special event (see below) where I will go into even more detail so you can fully adopt it into your own daily workflow.
The design principles
First, let’s break down the design principles behind Thrive Space 2.0:
1. Human first, Professional second. When your human battery is charged, your professional self will be more capable.
2. Work should feel like a fun game you get to play every day. When work is play, you’re able to operate on a higher plane using creativity and joy to guide your performance.
3. The only scoreboard that matters is your own. Thrive Space is a respite from the often flawed use of gamification in sales – using leaderboards to try to motivate performance, whereas Thrive Space 2.0 is meant to serve as a personal guide to improvement, self-awareness, and self-mastery.
4. Not all tasks are equal. Not everything can be a priority, so by better understanding what is important to you and giving those tasks a higher score, you can make better decisions, which lead to better outcomes.
5. Break up the day into quarters. If something goes wrong in one quarter, it doesn’t have to wreck the day; you can simply move on to the next quarter and make up for lost ground.
The quarters
As we discovered last week, the key to managing an effective workday is to break it up into quarters with an intentional focus for each one. Then, ensure good routines anchor both sides of the day, and you take quality breaks between each quarter.
An opportunity to make it your own
Next week, on March 27th, I’ll be holding two 90-minute sessions (a 60-minute tour + a 30-minute Q&A). The intent is to help you personalize and implement Thrive Space 2.0 into your daily workflow.
Make More Hustle Less Club Members only: March 27, 1 – 2:30 PM EST ($10). To book, go to your member hub page and go to the Calendar area to register.
The recording will be provided to all confirmed attendees, whether you attend live or not.
That’s a wrap. See you next week!
Here’s how I can help you right now:
1 | Unlock the 7 Figure Seller OS
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2 | Download The 7 Figure Open Letter
Get the creative strategic selling strategy that landed a $5.9M deal with a top 4 major global airline. Bonus inside!
3 | Book a 1:1 coaching session right now
You can book a 60-minute coaching session with me (although the Pro above option provides access to 1:1 coaching with me at a 70% discount.