This week I had an incredible meeting with a team of struggling account managers that resulted in a massive increase in their sales pipeline. My intention for was the meeting was to help the team hit their personal goals for 2027 by creating 60 new leads in 1 hour; 2X more than a team normally generates in a full year - an ambitious goal. So, I told them a story of when I was an account manager and had a customer out in the country. During the week he operated a successful construction business and on the weekends he worked on his farm and traveled by horse and buggy. I judged him as somebody who was too old school and unwilling to try new technology - I never even asked the question. Fast forward two months, I was in the customer’s workshop and he told me he had just invested in something expensive. He brings out a brand new high-end measuring system from a competitor. I missed the deal because I never asked the question - worse I didn’t even know there was a deal to be had. The account managers got the message loud and clear. Don’t judge, opportunity is everywhere. During the next hour we generated 44 leads for new customers and tons of excitement for the new year. The takeaway for me through this experience is that setting the intention to be a guide was far more impactful than attempting to be the manager.

Last Sunday she was terrified she'd lose her job. This Monday she woke up excited. Same job. Same company. So what changed? Where she was listening from. Last week she was listening from fear — Sunday scaries all day, "is Friday my last day?" This week, after one conversation, she woke up ready to make a difference. Nothing about her job changed. She did. Three distinctions that moved her: What's so vs. the story. "This situation is volatile" is a story. What's so: her boss handed her the green light to build the role. Stories aren't wrong — they just don't give you power. Listening from vs. listening for. Before any big conversation, ask yourself three questions: What am I listening from? What am I listening for? Who am I being? Contribution vs. validation. "Does that make sense? Can you take a look?" — that's listening for validation. Come from contribution instead, and it stops being about you. Being comes before doing. Every time. Which one do you need most right now? Drop it below. 👇

Here's a pattern I see all the time, and maybe you know it too. You know exactly what you should be doing. The workout. The sleep. The thing you keep telling yourself you'll start Monday. Or maybe it's the project you've been putting off, or the sales number you said you'd hit this quarter. You even go a few days strong — a few good workouts, a few good calls. Then something throws you off — stress, exhaustion, a bad night, a slow week — and you slip. And instead of just getting back on track, you go into the spiral. You start beating yourself up. You tell yourself the story: I'm not consistent. I always do this. What's wrong with me. And that story is the real problem. Not the slip. Here's the thing — knowing what to do doesn't give you doing it. Being does. You can know exactly what you need to do — hit the number, finish the project, get the reps in — and still not do it, because you haven't stepped into being the person who does it yet. And the fix isn't gutting it out harder or shaming yourself into it. It's forgiving yourself fast and getting back on track fast — not letting one off day, or one bad week, turn into a lost quarter because you're too busy punishing yourself to just start again. Where's the gap for you right now — between what you know you should do, and who you're actually being?

Your life follows what you give your attention to. That's it. That's the whole game. Not "focus" like some productivity buzzword. Attention is the direction of your mental energy — and it decides what you perceive, what you believe, what you keep thinking about, and eventually what you act on. Here's the part that'll mess with you a little: when you keep your attention locked on something, you start noticing things that were invisible to you before. People. Resources. Ideas. Opportunities. Not because they weren't there. Because you weren't tuned to them. Attention → perception → recognition → action → results. Your brain isn't showing you all of reality. It's showing you the slice you've trained it to look for. So the real question isn't "am I working hard enough." It's what have I been giving my attention to — and is that actually where I want my life to go? Give it a minute today. Notice what your attention's been locked on this week. That's your answer. — John