Billy Keels  0:01  

The truth about having the right person in your corner. Today's episode is sponsored by Billy Keels Advisory Services. If you want to learn more about how to make your 99 optional, just go to make it optional.com Once again, that's make it optional.com

Speaker 1  0:19  

helping you build freedom without losing your edge. This is the Going Long Podcast with Billy Keels.

Billy Keels  0:32  

The truth about having the right person in your corner is the episode for you. If you have ever doubted yourself and you have tried to figure out you want to go to the next level, and you just don't believe that you can, like, just invest a couple of minutes with me, because, like, this one story, it's going to help you realize that it is so critical to have the right person in your corner, and even when you don't recognize that they're there, they're always there, you just have to be paying attention, and so what I want to do is really bring you to the point of it's actually summer of 2013 I am take yourself to Barcelona, Spain. It's a point in my career where life is going well. I've just early on started to realize that, hey, listen, I need to do something. I just started making my first investments inside businesses, or in my first side business, let me say specifically, and also had the opportunity to have a career change. And the thing is, is as I'm moving to this career change, I'm going from a level where I was managing a business that was about $100 million business, I was doing that across Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and there was an opportunity for me to actually get promoted faster to a role of managing director, because that was the thing that I really set my sights on, that was the role that I really wanted, and so in order to do that, I had to leave the business, the line of business that I was in, which is a model, which is selling solutions over the phone, inside, and stuff like that, and actually get out and carry the proverbial bag, and do that face to face, and do that in an enterprise software space. Well, if you haven't noticed, this little accent of mine, it's American, and the opportunity was actually to stay in Spain, because it was a life decision at the time, it was the best thing for my family, and so decided to stay in Spain. Right, there's all these different things that you are managing, and the idea was to stay in Spain. Well, you know what? This guy from the US had actually been living abroad for many years, but had never actually been living in Spain, working in Spanish culture, and actually speaking Spanish and Catalan Mayor King language, so my York is not very good, but anyway, let me not digress, because I do this all the time, so I wanted to get into this new role, into a new country, well, similar country, but now working in the country and language, and I wanted it all, but I wasn't really sure that I was ready, right, I mean, I've been living in the country at this point for like seven eight years, but I never had to use real formal Spanish. It was always like, you know, I'll get by. But the thing is, is most importantly, what I wanted to be able to do was leverage that Europe, Middle East, and Africa experience, managing this, you know, nine figure business, being able to have a responsibility there, and wanted to be able to get the next role, like I was taking this lateral move for what I was pretty sure was going to be a move into some geography, and in the back of my mind I'm thinking, well, I want to do all this stuff, but you know, I really want to be able to make sure that I'm continuing to keep my track record of success, I wanted to keep that going, like take the sidestep, and then when I take the sidestep, then I start to move up the ladder, you know? You trade a couple some time and buy a couple years, get some more experience, and move up. That was the, that was the game that I was playing, and also, you know, why not? I wanted to prove myself that I could do it, and I want to make my family proud, and to say, at the same time, because that's at the time, that's the things, those were the things that I was really, really focused on the most, but, but here's the thing, going through this process, going through the selection process, even though I was a high achiever, you know, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't, I didn't think I'd be ready for this, and so I went through the selection process, because, of course, you have to go through selection process, and there were a number of other candidates that wanted to go, and people from different, different places, different countries, even locally. And when I went through the process, I realized that it was going to be the first time working in Spanish language, as I mentioned before, and I knew the business well enough, because I'd led people that were selling the exact same solutions, but just through a different sales channel, and this, the imposter syndrome, the hey, you can't do it, hey, you've never done it, and I wasn't 100% ready, did start to creep in, and like, if you want to hear about that, you can go to a whole loop of things that, no pun intended, but like these loops that we put ourselves. And I did a whole episode in 622 if you want to go check that one out, but anyway, I thought to myself I wanted to almost back out because I wasn't 100% ready. Well, the good fortune of being able to go through these selection process, so I went through selection process, and this is the whole point about the truth about having the right person in your corner. Now I went through this selection process, two different sales managers that I interviewed with, but what became really obvious is, yes, the interviews were really, really challenging, and yes, I was super nervous and sweating, and my nose was sweating, and I was like, I can't speak the language well enough, but I knew the business, but I just couldn't express myself in the way that I really wanted to be able to do, but having the right person in your corner that can get past the sweat, that can get past the fumbling over your words, that can get past all of the things that you think are making you look silly or making you look stupid, they are actually recognizing that not just the talent that you have, they're also recognizing the potential in you, and so this came through. I was so blessed, so fortunate to be able to go through this selection process at the time, because you know what, having the right person is absolutely what made it so I went through the selection process, and eventually I was selected as the person to fill the role. Now, there's a whole story behind that, and I'll, and I'll tell you a bit more about it as we go through, but I got the role, but I got the role because there were not just two, but one of the sales managers specifically said, "Hey, look, I really, I see the potential in this guy. I see that he can perform in this role today, even though he's not from this country, even though he doesn't speak this language very well enough, or, you know, not native language, or not, not to the level of a language a native speaker at that point in time. My Spanish has improved a bit since then, but I've also done a lot of work, so, but here's the thing, without the support of those people, of having the right people in my corner on paper, it's there's no way that I would have made it, and you know what, and as I started having imposter syndrome, and starting to see that talking myself out of it, because I wasn't a quote unquote 100% ready, well, you're never 100% ready. That was another episode. I already gave you the episode. Go check it out. But the thing is, is it was about having an outside-in perspective, someone that could see not just the value that I could create today, they saw the potential in me for the future. And so, once I got the role, in part, thanks to someone who had the faith in me that tested my ability, my acumen around the business, and really weighted that more than the linguistic capacity, because they, I guess, they heard that I was pretty good at languages, at least Latin-based languages. I've not tried anything outside of that, except English, not pretty good at that, but here's the thing, so what did I do? I sat to it like it was about, okay, cool, I've got the role. Well, now this person that that bet on me, having the right person in my corner, now it was about being able to prove that I was worth the bet, right? Because there's a, as someone who is constantly overachieving, that was one of the mechanisms that was also going on, which is also how I recognize it when I'm working with my clients, because guess what, that was me, and maybe to some part still is there, but the focus was really on where was I already strong, and being able to show just from a leadership being able to build consensus with teams, and also understanding the solutions at a high level, understood the solutions that needed to be positioned to help solve problems for my client, so it was about how do I put together the right focus on my strengths, and I've talked a lot about that. This is one of my core philosophies, and Marcus Buckingham, and First Break All the Rules. We talked about that in the past, or in previous episodes, but I was focused on the things that I did really, really well, and then there came to a point where yes, I had to have a specific, and I created a plan for myself, how I was going to improve in terms of language. I started listening to more podcasts, I started watching even more TV in Spanish and Catalan language, and the idea was really, truly to get in front of clients, get in front of as many clients as I possibly could. I knew that I was going to have to be really, really bad before I was good and be good before I was great in performing in the role, and that's exactly what I did. I invested in a lot of time getting on planes and flying from Barcelona to Palma de Mallorca, Palma de Mallorca, or to Madrid, Madrid, as they say, and so I invested that time, because I knew that that's what I needed, and to really once again reinforce the decision that was made by that person that was in my corner, right, because I didn't want to not just let them down, I didn't want to let myself down either, and so none of that comes without some, some, some tribulation that comes along. In a way, and of course, I didn't understand the software from a client perspective, because I had not done that in a different language, in the Spanish language, but you know what, I was feeling it, I had a lack of confidence, because I didn't, it was something that I wasn't familiar with, right, and so there's all this internal conflict that I had, because I'd managed this 100 million dollar business. I'd led these teams of people, and now I was back on the front line in carrying my sales bag. I was going through the challenges of not really understanding the language 100% because I didn't have the formal Spanish. But you know what? Day after day, I got better and better, and I was focused on the task, and I also had that right person that was in my corner. Guess what became my manager, so I could go back and I could ask him the questions. What worked here? I'd tell him what worked there, and then figure out what needed to be changed. But there was this moment in this feeling of not being familiar with, not being secure, and that's just a part of the process. I learned to accept it, and so when everything came to fruition at the end of the year. Well, of course, I had the right portion that was in my corner, and I'm very grateful that I had that person in my corner. But the reality was, my first year sucked. I achieved 48% of my quota, was terrible, because that's what the company, that's what the machine needed me to produce, the corporate machine, and I produced 48% although I invested a whole heck of a lot of time, a whole heck of a lot of hours, and that was just year one, year 234, became much, much, much better, but we'll stick year one, because I didn't achieve the quota, I got 48% but what I really understood from that whole process, and really understanding the value of in the truth about having the right person in your corner is over time I realized that I had a massive increase in confidence in my abilities to be able to achieve beyond the objectives, I knew that I could do it, even though the first year in less than a year didn't achieve the quota, but my factor of confidence was up. The fact that I could actually be in a different language, in a different culture, and perform at a really, really high level, and it was able to reinforce a lot of the leadership skills that I had, and eventually would, would go on to do well over 300 and some odd percent, and do that consistently, consistently go to Winner Circle, which is, you know, Hawaii, and all these other kinds of things, so, but none of that would have happened if I didn't have the right person in my corner rooting for me, taking, making a bet on me, recognizing something that I didn't recognize in myself, and I hope for you that there's that person that's out there if you're feeling you want to take that step, but you just aren't 100% sure, because once again, you're never going to be 100% sure ever. And when you got the right person in your corner, and they're there to back you up, to push you, to help you, maybe in the beginning you don't succeed at 100% but this is a long game, and that's what having the right person in your corner, they give you the fundamentals, and then as you have the fundamentals, that's what you need, and you do more repetition and more repetition, and you get to the point that you are becoming even much more confident in yourself, so if you, if this is you, well, look look, find the right person, find the right person, and having that right person in your corner is going to mean the world to you, and being able to continue to grow and evolve, and if it's not you, but you know somebody who's struggling with this today, they still don't know how to find the right person, share today's episode with them, share so that you can show them that you care by getting on the phone, meeting up with them for coffee conversation, but go from theory to practice. Don't just stay in the theory of the stuff that I'm talking about. Actually, take it, try it, put it into practice. Is it a new language? Is it a new skill? Is that side business that you want to do? You got to take the first step. Okay. And while you're putting this into practice. Guess where I'll be. I'll be right here preparing for the next episode. So, until then, go out and make it a great day. And thank you very, very much.

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