Paul had the pleasure of interviewing Anthony Iannarino about his new book, The Negativity Fast, and is excited to share Anthony’s practical advice to salespeople facing tough times.
Show Notes
“…get rid of the negative part by doing something positive. …find somebody to help and see if you can lift them up. I promise you you’ll feel a whole lot better.” Anthony Iannarino
“…it’s the trajectory and the gratitude that you have for your life that changes who you are, and now everything is so different because you’ve had the trauma.” Anthony Iannarino
“When you lose a deal, you should not be negative about that at all because there’s two things that can happen: you either decide that you have a loss, or you have a lesson… Focus on the lesson… What would you do different?” Anthony Iannarino
“If you understand they were rejecting an offer and not you—much easier for you to process that.” Anthony Iannarino
To learn more about Anthony Iannarino, go to TheSalesBlog.com. There you can pre-order his book, The Negativity Fast, and view accompanying resources.
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How can “The Negativity Fast” boost my sales? With Anthony Iannarino
And I, I woke up being, what I thought was being abducted. That’s what I thought was happening to me. And again, I’m an 8, so I’m going to be very difficult uh, which I was. And I had two people that were paramedics. I didn’t know they were paramedics. The interesting thing about having a grand mal seizure, you don’t know you had one—everybody else does, but you have no idea that you had one. Anthony Iannarino
Well, it’s been a while since we’ve had a guest on the show, so I was pumped when Anthony Iannarino agreed to be on our show today. Now, if you’re in sales, you know who Anthony is. I mean, this guy is a bestselling author, internationally recognized speaker on sales success, personal development, and leadership. Now a little more about Anthony. Anthony’s three privately held staffing firms generate annual revenues of 50+ million dollars. Now, the great part about this, Anthony isn’t just a guy who writes about sales or speaks to sales audience, he’s a sales guy, and he provides these transformational workshops to various organizations throughout the world.
Now one of the things that really struck me on today’s interview is to hear Anthony’s story, to talk about how to be grateful for everything that happens in our life, not just the good stuff. And it’s timely because he has a new book coming out called The Negativity Fast. Now, this is a topic near and dear to my heart. You know, in Selling Through Tough Times, we talk about the importance of maintaining a mental resilience. And I was amazed in reading this book of all the practical advice Anthony has for salespeople that are facing tough times.
Now we’re going to have plenty of links to Anthony’s new book; again, it’s called The Negativity Fast. It actually launches October 31st. That’s a scary date. Get it? Halloween. Yeah. Okay. That was such a terrible joke. Anyway, his book launches October 31st. We’re going to have plenty of links. You can pick it up on Amazon, wherever you get your books. I’ve read the book, and I am pumped. This book is not only going to help salespeople, but it’s going to help everyone who struggles with negativity, even anxiety and fear. This book is powerful. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed interviewing Anthony. Without any further ado, on to the show,
Paul: Welcome everyone to today’s episode of the Q and A Sales Podcast, and I am pleased to have Anthony Iannarino with us on today’s show. Anthony, how you doing?
Anthony: I’m wonderful. Thanks for having me on.
Paul: I’ve got to say, Anthony, this is kind of a pinch-me moment for me. I’ve been a fan of yours for years, and this is the first time on the podcast. So, if you’ll indulge me for just a moment. Since we’re both in the sales space, one question I always like to ask sales leaders like yourself is, why do you love sales?
Anthony: Well, let’s start at the beginning. I was raised by a single mom raising four kids by herself on a 4 dollar and 50 cents against her commission. And so we were what you would call poor. So we ate macaroni and cheese and fish sticks every day. And then somebody told me, “If you will go knock on doors and ask people to buy a newspaper, they will give you money.” And I said “Uh, I could do that.” I knocked on every door in three apartment complexes, and that made my Sunday route 300 papers, which takes a long time by yourself, even on a bicycle. And then at 15 I started making cold calls for muscular dystrophy. And I was the only person to ever get any deals. But I got two deals for people to do bike-a-thlons to raise money. And then I joined the family’s business thinking that it’d be easy, right? It’s family business. Turns out the expectations are quite a bit higher than you imagine in a family business. Now you know this, right? (Paul: Oh, yeah.) So there’s no escaping it.
What happened to me is that I was an operator in staffing for five years. In those five years, it was a number of years here in Columbus, and then a number of years in Los Angeles, and I realized that I really knew how to help people. I knew how to have a conversation with them, that I could help them. And without meaning to, my manager came over to me and asked me about this list of clients, and he said, “Whose clients are these?” And I looked at the list and they were all mine. He said, “How did you get these clients?” Now at the time, I have hair that’s like touching my belt. Okay? So I’m playing Rock and Roll in Los Angeles. And he can’t figure out like,”How did this guy get this?” And I said, “It’s really easy. I call people. I mean the people that come in, they already wrote down where they used to work. So I call ’em and I ask ’em if I can help ’em, and I drive out to see ’em and we talk, then they become my clients.”
And he said, “What you said there is beautiful. I want you to cut your hair and become a full-time salesperson.” And that’s the last thing that I would’ve ever considered in my life. So I said, “Listen, I’m not here playing Rock and Roll. I’m in a hair metal band, so I have to have hair to do that.” He said, you can cut it up to like here and wear a ponytail. We’re in Los Angeles, it’s fine.” And I was a terrible salesperson when somebody made me a salesperson, until—it took about, I don’t know, maybe two months before I realized this isn’t working for me. Like this, talking about us, I’m mostly just talking about them. And I won my first big deal as a salesperson in that period of time. It was $10 million a year for five years for a company called Randall Chicken. Two days, or two weeks rather after I won that deal, I had a grand mal seizure, and my boss collected $450,000 of commission, and I went back to Columbus, Ohio with no commission. It’s a sad story, isn’t it? But, I realized I could help people.
Paul: Gosh, you realized you could help people and although you mentioned, gosh, kind of a sad story, a tough story, well, the good news is we’re going to talk about The Negativity Fast and how to get past that here in just a little bit.
So, we’ve got the new book coming out, and as I was talking to you before the interview, man, there were several sections that really resonated with me. And so I’d love to just ask a few questions and get your comments, get your thoughts, and share that with the sales community. Because we know, in sales, looking at your story, there are plenty of opportunities to get negative. So, one that really, that really struck me was how we talk ourselves into a negative state.
And, in your book, you mentioned a story about, you’re flying back to Columbus—and I know the same thing. Being in St. Louis, I’m taking a lot of connecting flights as well. Flight gets delayed. This actually happened to me this week. In your book, you mentioned, “Okay, I know I’m going to get in late. That’s going to affect my work the next day.” And you’re talking yourself into this state. I did the exact same thing flying back from Baltimore this week. So maybe share your thoughts on maybe why we get into that negative state—how we can get out of it, most importantly.
Anthony: Yeah, you can talk yourself in and out of that. The good part is you can talk yourself out of it. So that’s a really important thing. I will tell you what the science is. So this is the first book that I didn’t just write from my own experiences. So this is part of my experience, but what I wanted to do is I wanted to make sure that anything that I claim in this book, I can cite as being scientifically proven. Okay? So I’m not just guessing at things. I knew some things, but I had some people that were challenging me to make sure that everything was right. So, it’s right.
So let me give you the beginning of this. There’s a thing called negativity bias. And we all have it because if you were a paleolithic like hunter, you’re going out to try to hunt what you need to eat, and it’s trying to eat you at the same exact time, so you can’t be super optimistic about these kind of things. You have to be careful and pessimistic, right? So this is what scientists believe that this would only show up in a human being if it was helpful for us. So, it’s really helpful for you to be negative. And, I wanted to make sure that I was careful here not to pretend like you have to be positive all the time. When negative things happen in your life, you are allowed to be negative, and I want permission to be negative when negative things happen in my life. I don’t want to stew on those. I don’t want to have it go on for a long time, but I’ll give you the four things.
There’s a thing called negative potency, and that means our emotions are stronger when something is negative than positive. You would think it’d be the other way. Like, we really like the positive. It disappears really fast. It’s not that potent. There’s this thing called steeper negative gradient. So what that means is, the closer you get to a negative event, the more you start to get anxious. And you don’t have the same thing when it’s positive. Like, it doesn’t get better for you—this is how we are wired. When you combine a negative and a positive experience together, the negative one wins out. It actually, it is more powerful than the positive one. And in that one, if you lost a hundred dollar bill and then you found $150 fifteen minutes later, you’d still be mad about the loss of that money even though you’re up $50. Like that’s how we’re wired.
If you read Thinking Fast and Slow, that’s Kahneman’s work. And negative differentiation—our brain uses a lot more resources and it takes careful assessment about what’s negative and it holds onto those things. So, when you’re at the airport and you start saying to yourself that voice, I don’t know what that voice sounds like to you, but it normally sounds to me like, You’re going to feel bad tomorrow, you’re going to be wasted. There’s no way you’re going to be productive. And you know how important it’s for you to be productive. And I’m like, “Yeah, I know, I know, I know I do. I’m worried already.” And then it’ll tell me something like, You should eat a big bag of peanut butter M and Ms. And then I have to say to it like, “I don’t want those M and Ms.” But I do want those M and Ms because I’m at O’Hare and I haven’t had dinner and I’m trying to get home.
That’s just what happens. You start having that voice talk you into being negative, but you can push back and you can say, “Listen, even if I get six hours of sleep instead of eight hours of sleep, I’m going to be fine. I’m going to do just enough that I’m going to be—whatever I promise people it’s going to get done. Don’t worry about it.
You can talk yourself out of it too. So talk yourself out of it. You can start saying, “I don’t really need seven hours of sleep. I can do six and I’ll be fine, and I’ll be able to get everything I need to be done. It’ll get done and that’ll be it.” So you can do that. I don’t think that we teach people these things, but the science and the research is, you can talk yourself out of it. If you can talk yourself into it, you can talk yourself out of it. Or you could try to just get rid of that voice. But the voice is, for me, it’s always there. I sometimes talk to myself through that voice. You might do that too. I have heard though that some people don’t have that voice and I’m like, must be very lonely in there.
Paul: Yeah. Who are you going to talk to? Am I right?
Anthony: Yeah, exactly.
Paul: That’s interesting. I’ve found, that sometimes, I feel like I can’t change the conversation that’s going on inside my head, kind of like you mentioned—you can control it. And it’s interesting. That tends to happen at the crucial moments. You know, as both of us are speakers, I can recall times where you know, a flight gets in at 3:00 in the morning, I’m presenting at 7:00 AM. I may get 2 ½ hours of sleep, but I make it a point to tell myself, “You can do this. You’ve done this before.” I have a buddy who was a Marine, and they told him as a Marine, you really only need 45 minutes of sleep per night. So I remember holding onto that, like, I’m digging deep to find facts to maybe trick myself into it. So, yeah, no, that’s, that’s great advice. And thanks for explaining the science behind it as well.
Another thing, shortly after this section, when I was reading about talking yourself into this negative state, something that really, I want to say, blew my mind, is that—and I want to quote you as accurately as I can, so please tell me if I did so. I could be someone else’s source of negativity. And when I read that, that really struck me because I genuinely view myself as a positive guy and I want to be a positive influence. But the more I thought about it, you’re absolutely right. I mean, tell me more about that.
Anthony: Have you ever taken an Enneagram test? Do you know what that is?
Paul: I have not.
Anthony: It’s a personality test.
Paul: Oh, personality test. Okay.
Anthony: Yeah, there’s nine different types of personalities generally. I’m what’s called an 8, and that means I’m a challenger and I’m a protector. And it also means I’m a very difficult human being. So my wife is a 9. She’s a peacemaker. So I know for certain that I can be the source of negativity for other people, especially if one or two things happens. If you’re bullying somebody, I will intervene. I mean, I will not stand by and watch it because that’s not something I’m going to allow to have happen. And if you try to take advantage of me, then we’re going to have a real difficult conversation together. And it will be very blunt, and it will be, it will be Mike Weinberg blunt. That’s how, like, it’ll be very straight in your face. You’ll know what I’m saying to you. You will not have any trouble understanding what I’m saying.
Most of the time I try to be like my wife, she’s a peacemaker, a 9, so I just always think, “I should just be a 9 today. I should just be diplomatic. Just be careful with people. Don’t get negative and see how things go.” It does work a lot better. She has no conflict in her life, but I have a bit. And, if that’s who you are, that’s who you are. There are other personalities that are a lot easier to get along with. Like a 7 is more like a Peter Pan. Easy to get along with. Not a lot of conflict, very enthusiastic and fun. But I would tell you, if you haven’t done that, you should look at your Enneagram because it will tell you a lot about you, and about how you might want to adjust. So if you’re an 8 like me, you should try to be a 9. Or a 5. A 5 is just somebody who just watches you, like, let’s say Sam Harris—total 5. Jordan Peterson—total 5. They live right here. Yeah. Everything is right here. So, yes. I would just tell you, if you knew more about yourself, it seems easier to get control over what triggers you.
Paul: Yeah, no, that’s a great point. I think I’m going to consult Google or chat gbt to find out a way to get an Enneagram test code here. So, one other piece that I think is important. You have a chapter in the book, I believe it’s titled, “Forgetting Your Problems and Concerns” or “How to Forget Your Problems and Concerns” and that is such an important fact. You know, in sales, every single week, you know, we’ve got quotas to hit. We’ve got deals that we missed. We tend to pine over those failures, those negative events as you mentioned earlier, more so than, maybe celebrate even the positives. And one technique you mentioned in “How to Forget Your Problems and Concerns” is what you called helpers high and this idea of helping other people. And, you know, that’s one thing that I’ve noticed. When I’m feeling negative or if I’m in a bad mood, I found the best way to lift myself up is to lift others up as well. And, somehow—I didn’t know the science behind it, but it just felt good when I would do that.
How do you think salespeople can take that same concept and idea and just apply it to their day-to-day?
Anthony: There’s a number of ways to do it. The things that I talk about that I do, I started giving homeless people money, very, very young. My mom was very charitable, and I picked that up from her. And we did a lot of things. Like there were people that lived near us that didn’t have anything for Christmas, and we didn’t have anything either, but we found a way to make sure that we gave them food and presents. So, I’ve been doing that for a long time, and it does make you feel good to do something. Even if they don’t know that you did it. But I started to do that.
If you’re a salesperson, one of the things that you need to determine is, “Am I going to focus on this negativity that I lost this deal, or am I going to go and find somebody who I can help get the better results that they can’t get without my help?” So, you can immediately think, “The best thing for me to do after losing something like this is find somebody I can go help and give them the consultation, the advice, the recommendations, and then help them get better results for their business.” And it’s too bad about the negativity bias because, the positive part doesn’t last nearly as long as the negative part.
So what you have to do is try to get rid of the negative part by doing something positive. That’s the best thing to do. You’re exactly right. Find somebody to help, and see if you can lift them up, and you’ll feel—I promise you, you’ll feel a whole lot better. For one reason though is because you’re forgetting about yourself because you’re focusing on another human being. That’s one of the things I like most about sales, is I really like to focus on other people.
When I had my kids in acting school, I was practicing with them because I thought it’d make me a better speaker. And the teacher was like, “I’ve never seen anybody give anybody that much focus for that long.” And I’m like, a sales call could be 90 minutes, and I have to focus on that other person. I already know everything I know. I don’t know what they don’t know, and they don’t know what they don’t know. So, I give them my full attention without talking about my company. I’ve been telling this to people. When people buy from me, they have no idea what the name of my company is. They really don’t. And then, they’ll get an invoice and that’s when they figure out what the name of my company is. They’ve never heard it before. We never mention it. No one ever asks. We’re so focused on them, that the whole thing is about them, which it should be anyway. Like, if they have questions, they’ll ask.
I think move on and go do something positive. You don’t have to live with the negative. You can go do something for someone else, whether it’s homelessness. I buy a lot of dogs. I don’t keep the dogs, but I buy them because I want to help try to get them out. I’m like a bail bondsman for dogs in Humane Society. I try to pay their way out to make it easier for people to get them. And I always feel great doing that. The last time I did it, I think I bought nine dogs and then they put a picture of me with this pit bull on their website. It came through my feed. I saw it. And some woman who read that story bought every one of the cats. I mean, I don’t know how many cats are in there. I mean, it’s hundreds and she bought them all. They were all paid for. I thought that’s just probably the best thing (Paul: Oh, wow.) that could’ve done. She didn’t know you could buy them and not keep them. She bought them.
Paul: She bought em’ and she didn’t keep them. I guess she would look, what is it, Ernest Hemingway’s house down in Key West that has all those feral cats now running around? Hundred cats. Wow, that’s a lot.
Anthony: Well, I don’t know. There’s probably more than that. There was a lot in there.
Paul: Yeah. Wow. Well that, it’s great to see that that one action inspired others to take similar action and that, that felt great. Excellent.
You know, one thing we’ve heard all the cliches, you know, the silver lining in the cloud; it’s always darkest before it’s dawn. The importance of reframing negative events you know, one line again struck me in your book when you talked about the importance of gratitude. And I hope we have time to talk about that as well. But you mentioned to be grateful for everything that happens in your life. And as I hold that thought in my mind, I then read the next section where you talked about reframing negative events. And you’ve experienced a negative event that many people don’t experience, and you’re able to frame it in a positive way. So, if you would, tell us about that day in October in 1992, and really how that has set you on the path that you’re on right now.
Anthony: I’d been off of the 405 freeway for maybe three minutes, and I woke up being, what I thought was, being abducted. That’s what I thought was happening to me. And again, I’m an 8, so I’m going to be very difficult, which I was. And I had two people that were paramedics. I didn’t know they were paramedics. The interesting thing about having a grand mal seizure, you don’t know you had one, everybody else does, but you have no idea that you had one. So I got out of this ambulance because I’ve forced them to let me out, and I walked into my apartment and I was just going to be done with this whole thing. And fortunately, they came in and one of them started to be pretty rough with me, like, verbally. And he was a big guy. And, luckily, my neighbor came by and said, “If you don’t want to go with them, I’ll take you to U C L A,” which is just a few minutes away from me. I went there, I got a CAT scan, then an MRI. If you get a CAT scan and then you get an MRI, you’re in trouble. Like you can be certain of that. So that means there’s something that they saw that they needed to get a better picture of. And then I was diagnosed with brain cancer, which I did not have.
So fortunately for me, I had something called an Arterial Venous Malformation, and that’s a group of arteries and veins that grow into a big knot. It was right here on this side. So the scar goes all the way back around here. I called my parents. They wanted to come out. I said, “No, I’m going to come back to you.” My aunt happened to know—. She happened to work for a neurosurgeon, and the neurosurgeon said, “There’s only one person you need to talk to: Dr. John Tew, University of Cincinnati, right down the street from Columbus—Ninety minutes. The difference between God and Dr. John Tew is that God doesn’t think he’s John Tew, that’s the difference. Like this guy’s like very confident—like very, very confident. And I asked him, “How many of these have you done?” And he said, “3000.” That’s a lot of brain surgeries. So, I feel very comfortable with him. But there was a guy sitting next to him and he said, “But this is one of the largest AVMs we’ve seen, and there’s going to be a lot of blood unless we go in and we close everything down. We’re going to use an epoxy and glue that thing shut.”
Dr. Tew told me that he cut two arteries and one vein. It popped right out of my head, but it had bruised the back of my right temporal lobe and they had to remove that piece of brain. And after that I was angry, and I was also on phenobarbital and Dilantin and a whole bunch of other drugs. And I got more and more angry over time. And it took a while for this. I don’t know if it was physiological, psychological, both, when this sort of thing happens. But what it caused me to do is to say, I’m now the scarecrow. I have to have a brain, you know, I’m missing a piece of brain. So I decided to go to college at 23. at 26, rather. And I tried to drop out of high school every day of my life. I hated high school. I loved college. I graduated summa cum laude with one B, so I had a 3.93 grade average. I won the Dean’s academic scholarship to law school, and I did really well there. Decided not to be a lawyer because it didn’t look like a lot of fun, so I thought better of that. And then I went to Harvard Business School, so I’ve spent nine years.
I was always a reader, but this changed my trajectory. So, when you hear people say something like, “Cancer’s the best thing that happened to me,” and you’re like, “Did you never have a birthday party?” Like, “Did you not get married? Do you have children?” Like, what are these things? But, once you have that sort of trauma, you realize it’s the trajectory and the gratitude you have for your life that changes who you are. And now everything is so different because you’ve had the trauma. If somebody hasn’t had that trauma, they won’t recognize it until they have that kind of a trauma where you realize everything changed for me because of this one thing. And, at some point it didn’t mean anything to me anymore. I don’t count the years or dates or anything like that. I think my mom does. But I don’t. I know it’s done and I’m here, and so far, everything’s been good.
Paul: Yeah, that’s great.
Anthony: And if you want to talk about gratitude—we should probably tell people about gratitude. As I made sure I was telling the truth in this book, when you read about gratitude, the first thing that happens to you is you go, “No way. Not that many things. It can’t do all these things.” It can lower your blood pressure, it can improve your immune system, it can help you to get rid of depression. I mean, all of these things that it claims, you just see this. It gets rid of anxiety, stress. And the list just goes on and on, and you’re like, how powerful is this strategy of being grateful? And it turns out like everything that I wrote in this book, if you just did that one, everything would be easier for you. Everything would be better for you if you were just grateful.
And there’s a way to do this that I like a lot better than a gratitude journal. I write down the things I’m grateful for every day, but this is a better way to do it. So Martin Seligman, who’s the father of positive psychology, had people do this. Millions of people. Millions of people, because this was in Time Magazine, and they had this website, and it’s called Three Book Blessings. So if you want to feel better, I can tell you how to do this. Instead of saying, I love my family. I love my kids over and over and over again, right? Because that’s what you’re going to feel the most grateful for all the time, is your people. If you would write down three things that went well for you at the end of your day, and then why they went well for you—if you would do that for two weeks—you will not have any anxiety, any stress, any negativity. Like that all goes away. And no one knows how long it lasts. But Seligman—who’s like way, way up at the top of the food chain here—he believes that it’s more powerful than psychoanalysis or pharmaceuticals. So if you are super negative, if you just do this, this will help start changing how you feel.
I’ve done this with one of my companies, where we have a place called Three Blessings, and everybody writes them down and we share them with each other, and everybody supports each other. And I thought, that’ll last about two weeks. Still going. People still like looking at the good things that happen to them. And it will change how you, let’s just say, how you live. It will change how you live. It will cause you to feel like this is all these great things that happen. And if you start going back through like a journal, and you see all these good things that happened to you, it starts to outweigh the negative stuff. The negative stuff gets stuck in here, but you can move it. And I’ve done it and I still do it.
So if you just did that, that’ll get you a really good head start on this.
Paul: Excellent. I love that. The gratitude piece is critical and Seligman’s example, that is just incredible, because you—. I feel like you not only dive into and reflect on what has gone well, but when you get into the why, perhaps that calls attention to the behaviors you know, the behavior that led to that result.
Anthony: Or the help that somebody else gave you.
Paul: Excellent. Yeah. The help that somebody gave you as well. Excellent. So we’re getting close to the end of our time, but I do have just a couple final questions.
Anthony: I was warned about these.
Paul: The last chapter is titled “The Negativity Fast,” so, I was thinking it’d be interesting if you could, if you could help salespeople with a negativity fast geared towards what they’re experiencing every single day. What are three techniques, three things you would include in that fast specific to salespeople?
Anthony: We’ll go wider and then get a little bit more narrow. So, the first thing, if you are someone who consumes a lot of media, so, especially if it’s cable news, whether it’s Fox or MSNBC, any of these things, if you’re ingesting this, what you’re doing is poisoning your mindset. That’s what you’re doing. So the first thing is, anything that’s negative like that, get rid of it. I’m going to tell you, if you’re worried, like, well, something might happen and I won’t know. Yes, you will. Because all the negative people are going to run to tell you that this negative thing just happened and you should be paying attention to it. And it turns out that almost none of those things are anything you can do anything about. Okay, so I’m not happy about a war in Ukraine and now one in Israel. Like, I’m not. But what can I do about it? If I sit and focus on that, I’m going to get continually more and more negative. So, get that stuff out of the way.
When you lose a deal, you should not be negative about that at all, because there’s two things that can happen. You either decide that you have a loss, or you have a lesson. And if you would focus on the lesson and say, “I’m responsible.” If you’re responsible for the wins, you’re responsible for the losses, right? (Paul: To some degree, yeah.)
Anthony: Yeah. So focus on the lesson. What would you do different? What are you going to do different now, in the future, that you’ve lost this deal? And that means I didn’t lose anything. I got a lesson. That lesson’s going to help me do better in the future. The other thing about this is when you’re in sales, it is a difficult job to do, and so one of the things that I would tell you is a reframe here. A lot of people come to me and say, “How do you deal with the rejection?” And I’m like, “You’re not being rejected. They don’t know you well enough to reject you.” For somebody to really reject you, they need to know you so they know all the bad things about you that they don’t like.
I had a girlfriend, when I was 17, named Jennifer. And Jennifer came to me one day and said, “I’m breaking up with you and I want you to know why.” I didn’t really need to know why. I mean, it would’ve been fine without the explanation, but she decided she was going to give it to me anyway. And she said, “Listen, you’re a loser. You’re always going to be a loser. My mom thinks you’re a loser. All my sisters think you’re a loser, and I’m breaking up with you.” That’s rejection. That is real rejection. And look, from the trajectory at that time when I was 17, she wasn’t wrong at all. Right before she died, she reached out to me to say, “I apologize. And I want you to know that I don’t believe that you’re a loser.” She didn’t have to do that, but she did.
So I would just tell you, if you think that you’ve been rejected, it’s not a rejection. It’s a rejection of the meeting, or it’s a rejection of your proposal. It’s not you. They’re not looking at you and going like, I’m not going to buy from this person. They’re trying to figure out the best thing for them to do. If it wasn’t you, figure out what you didn’t do right, and then work on it. There’s a whole bunch of people that can help you do that. Including my host. We can help, right? You can definitely help. There’s ways that you can get better at these things. But if you decide that it’s a rejection of you, you will be negative. If you understand they were rejecting an offer, not you—much easier for you to process that.
Paul: Excellent. Great. Great thoughts, great advice. So, one final question. And this is really just out of my curiosity more than anything. Given the amount of research for this book, again, well researched. Like you said, you’re telling the truth in this book. It’s not just merely what you think. Although that provides a lot of value as well. In researching this book, I was curious if you found anything that highlights the role of spirituality when facing negativity or overcoming negativity, or if anything, and I’m not, you know, fishing for an answer here as well, but I was just curious what you thought.
Anthony: Oh, no. There’s plenty of science on that. There’s plenty of science on that. I didn’t deal with the spiritual part of this enough. (Paul: Mm-hmm.) I probably should have done more. If you want to feel better and get rid of negativity, if you decide that you’re going to pray, that will do a whole bunch of things for you. (Paul: Yeah.) So, contemplative praying is really powerful. It’s as powerful as gratitude. People don’t know that. (Paul: Yeah.) But, if you are not a meditator, but you’re somebody who prays, you’re going to get the same outcome. I mean, you’re going to get the same outcome as somebody who’s meditating. The science is there. Everybody knows that you can do this, and whether it’s meditation or prayer or whatever your spiritual thing is, that’s going to work just as well for you.
I do think that we have a spiritual component here that is part of this, and there is something about us that we are what we are. So, if you think that prayer will help, it will help—it will. And maybe even that prayer would be—. If you wanted to maybe double down on that, is to pray and give thanks for all the things that you should be grateful for. That together would be a really powerful way to do something like that if you’re not already doing it.
If you’re not doing anything, you can, you need to do something. Whether it’s mindfulness, whether it’s prayer, whether it’s some sort of a spiritual meditation. All of those things work. We all know that now. The science is there. We know this is all true. So if it works for you, it’s a good first step.
Paul: Excellent. Well, I know it’s always worked with me, so. That’s great. Well, you know, Anthony, I really appreciate you being here. You know, one final thought. Let’s talk a little bit about the book: how to get it, when is it going to be available, what resources are available as well.
Anthony: It kind of feels like it’s available because you can see actual copies, right? But that does not mean that they’re available yet. This one is available on October 31st. It’ll probably get to you the next day. The books are, they’re already published. They’re produced, so they’re going to Barnes & Noble and Amazon right now. And if you want to go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, I would ask you to go to thesalesblog.com, and at the top you’ll see a Negativity Fast link. And when you click on that link, we have a whole bunch of bonuses. So there’s a workbook. The workbook’s rather long. It’s very helpful. So all—. We have exercises. Two exercises for every chapter and so you can focus on the ones that you want. If you buy multiple copies, there’s lots of other things that we’ll do for you. We’re going to have a video course for people. We have some things if it’s teams. If you buy for your teams, we do a training. If you buy enough of them, we do a keynote for you. So I already have booked, somebody bought 500 and I’m doing a keynote for them for buying those books.
So, go see whatever bonus thing you want, and we’ll try to make sure we can help you get that. All you have to do is, you’ll see on that page there’s a place where you can put a receipt for whatever: one book, two books, however many books, and we’ll make sure that you get all of your bonuses.
Paul: Excellent. That’s great. we’ll make sure we put several links that you mentioned on the show notes for the episode here. So it’ll be on our website. I’ll put some information in my newsletter as well just to help get people to where they want to go.
Anthony: Thanks for doing that, and thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Paul: Absolutely. No, my pleasure. Thanks for, thanks for being here and—.
Anthony: We’ll do this the other way when your next book comes out.
Paul: That’s right. I got an idea, right now brewing, that I’m toying with. Yeah. It’s going to be an interesting concept for a book. It’s not a typical type of sales book, so I look forward to sharing more information about that.
Anthony: Get busy. You’ve got to start typing. You got to start getting the fingers moving like this if you want to get that book done.
Paul: Absolutely. Alright everyone, thank you for tuning into the show today.
Just a reminder, make sure you visit TheQandASalesPodcast.com. While you’re there, you can ask me a question and I’ll turn it into a future show. Make sure you share this episode with your colleagues. And really, especially someone who is maybe facing a tough time or experiencing negativity in their life. This message can help.
More than anything, though, you know what to do—make it a big day.
