When people feel like they belong, they are more motivated and productive. Offering your team members branded gear is a powerful tool for fostering a sense of pride and team spirit among your employees. It also helps create conversations that can attract new customers and team members. Just think about how serious your high school football coach was about having the team in uniform or the military's commitment to being in uniform. It matters!
Thanks for listening!
When people feel like they belong, they are more motivated and productive. Offering your team members branded gear is a powerful tool for fostering a sense of pride and team spirit among your employees. It also helps create conversations that can attract new customers and team members. Just think about how serious your high school football coach was about having the team in uniform or the military's commitment to being in uniform. It matters!
Thanks for listening!
Welcome back to the gross show. I'm here with my partners in crime, Eric Watkins and Jeff Weiner. Are you guys doing today?
Eric Watkins:Hello, hello, welcome back.
Scott Scully:I am fired up about today and our content. But before we get into it, Jeff, we stirred it up a little bit out there in the lake or in your pasture.
Jeff Winters:We haven't talked about it. We haven't talked about it. But Scott's post has stirred some emotions.
Scott Scully:People are not happy
Jeff Winters:on another podcast in some other galaxy, where they're also doing two truths and a lie. This is like the your post about I wouldn't be blinded by our skin. Well, no, it's, it's 50%. Not even 50%. Like 75% of the comments are truth. And that people are lining up to say truth, and some that are saying, lie. And there's some back and forth. We've struck a chord, if you will,
Scott Scully:I am now have the worst post on LinkedIn that this person has ever seen. But more good news, Jeff has the best, Jeff has the best the best. So we're celebrating being at that both ends
Jeff Winters:today. And I should, in fairness, have what someone said was the best post of 2023 on LinkedIn because I am indeed the sheriff, the sheriff, so if I don't know what people want, who does this week, one of this week's truths comes from David Greenfeld, and he's he's quoting someone else, but I love this quote, genius, is persistence in disguise. Genius is persistence deep at deep, it's deep. But if you think about it, I think there's a lot of people out there who think that great ideas, great inventions, incredible accomplishments and achievements happen in the blink of an eye or in a flash. And really, when you talk to those people, you'd realize, no, that's not what happened. It was just incredible amounts of persistence and iteration iteration and persistence. And I just thought that was a really cool, quote, genius is just persistence, persistence in disguise.
Scott Scully:And Gordon truth was, Benjamin Franklin had a kazillion inventions, right. Tons of failures before success. Yeah, persistence, for sure. I'm truth all the way.
Eric Watkins:Yeah, I'm actually reading a book right now about Thomas Edison. And like, coming up with the light bulb and going through that process. And so from the outside looking in, you're like, This guy's a genius. But, you know, he just slept, I think it was three hours a night, and continuously worked at that craft. Truth.
Jeff Winters:Truth. Number two, it's a little longer. That was short. So I'm gonna make this a little longer. This is from our friend, Scott Barker. So it turns out, I'm actually an office guy. There's time and place for remote work. I'll probably work from home one day a week, but nothing can replace in person collaboration. I saw a tweet that solidified it for me. And the premise was, would you want your competition to be in office? Or remote?
Scott Scully:Oh, that's an amazing way to put it.
Eric Watkins:It is a great way to put it truth. Never thought about it like that.
Jeff Winters:Would you want you Well, what do you want? Scott, you want our competition to be in office or remote?
Scott Scully:I want them to be so far away from each other that it's hard to communicate.
Eric Watkins:different continents, different
Scott Scully:continents. That is a great way to put it. Isn't that
Jeff Winters:so smart? I love it. So truth.
Scott Scully:You would never say that you wanted your competition to be
Eric Watkins:all collaborating working together? Yeah. No, of
Jeff Winters:course not. In a lighthearted live, but I think maybe underneath the surface, the less lighthearted.
Eric Watkins:Can we congratulate you first for actually picking something we agreed with? Yeah,
Scott Scully:this is good. You actually had nice work to live to truth, no false arrests,
Eric Watkins:no false or no false arrest today. We're feeling
Jeff Winters:good. It's okay to have some disagree. unpopular opinion. Sunday. scaries are just a part of life. No matter how much you love or hate your job, you're always going to feel some type of way on Sunday. I think this is a lie. And I also don't like it. I've always had a visceral reaction when people are like, how are you doing? Like four days from Friday? Thursday, how are you feeling good. Friday is just around the corner. Sunday, I get anxious, I'm scared. I'm nervous. I'm this and I gotta go to work. And it's like, I don't I don't think that's true for everyone. It's not true for me. It's not true for me. And that's a really important part of my life is I've made the decision to not be anxious on Sunday night. Because I have to go to work in the morning and do something that I either hate or I'm not like, you can combat that man. But you guys have strategies for what you do to make sure you're feeling good going into the week. But don't let yourself live your entire life 52 weeks a year with one day a week feeling like shit about what you gotta go do the next day. That's terrible. I don't think that's true. I think it's a lie.
Scott Scully:He did say you always feel you can feel a certain way, right? So I'm not on a Sunday thinking, I'm miserable about going to work. But I will say, I hate planned things on Sundays, like Sunday afternoon, Sunday evenings, because I want a little downtime before going into the week. So I do feel like Sunday for me, especially the second part of Sunday is a day of rest. And if something gets in the way of that it kind of aggravates me. So I do feel something on Sunday, but definitely not. I'm not looking forward to the week
Jeff Winters:you don't do so you don't do activities on Sunday night. I hate it.
Eric Watkins:I hate it on the same way.
Jeff Winters:I am, too. I'm so happy. I didn't we never knew this. But
Eric Watkins:although I did, I do play basketball Sunday nights. And that's the perfect the perfect thing to do before the week. Like in regard to I think a lot of this has to do with how you choose to live your weekend as well. We've been doing this 75 hard. So we've gone What 50 Something days without drinking. And it's it's completely different. No, not that I was drinking a ton. But I think a lot of these people that have Sunday's Sunday scaries are doing it to themselves. Yeah, they're going out there having eight cocktails on Saturday. And I'm not saying don't enjoy yourself, don't you know, live your life, by all means. But part of that plays into why you're so anxious and scared for Monday. Because you gotta go from what you just did to your body to you know, I gotta be awake, alert and running. And there's something about not drinking that I feel like gives you a little bit of an edge over everybody else or
Jeff Winters:exercising. Or what Scott, whatever you're doing, like restful, meditative, meditative. Okay,
Eric Watkins:it's got meditates for three hours every Sunday.
Scott Scully:You didn't know that.
Jeff Winters:I'm glad I got two truths and a lie. It's a lie. All right.
Scott Scully:Thank you, Jeff. We are now headed to the 50 for 50, what is the 5050 you may ask? That is our 50 most important business growth strategies, the things that we have tested, that we feel like you should set up immediately to ensure predictable growth. And today, we got another good one. It's branded gear, one of my favorites. And I think most of the time when people think branded gear, they think about it as handouts, as a marketing tool, to get you know, to give to prospects or to show your customers that you love them, and that you appreciate them. And by all means, those things are important, but I'm talking about getting your army in uniform. It's something that we do. And God what a way to make you feel like you're on a team, that there are so many studies that say that people feel like they belong, they actually feel more motivated, proud of the organization they're we're working with, they feel like they're closer to the to the team just could go on and on and on about this, you know, we have a store here. And you can go and we and we've spent a lot of time thinking about the items that we have within the store. And most days when you walk around, I'd say 60% have this branded gear on. And yet people are out there thinking well, I'm just not going to be a better organization if I've got my logo on sweatshirts or zip ups and why is that going to impact my growth and then I would point to teams like Oregon, that used to have a hard time getting people to go join that team. And all of a sudden, you know, their affiliation with with Nike turned into these new beautiful uniforms. And oh my god, like all the kids coming up talk about Oregon. Like when I was growing up, people didn't talk about the Oregon football team or the Oregon basketball team. Everybody talks about Oregon and what they're gonna wear next and they're fired up and then the crowds like in it because they're all in their gear. And it just matters I think back in in high school football and how serious our coach was about our uniform. I think about the military and how serious they are about being in uniform and showing different levels and it's just huge. Your business will be more productive and will grow at a higher rate if your army is like in gear in branded gear. Live In the brand, what do you guys think about that? Probably sounds crazy.
Eric Watkins:You know, it probably does. But it doesn't, since we've lived in it for so long if you go walk around, like we have, like Scott said, we have a store, like we have a huge store with tons of different items. And you walk around this building, and you see people in all different colors and types of swag. And we call it abstract swag. So there's so many advantages for the business. For the everybody being a part of a team, I'm going to talk about one selfish one, as an employee who wears a lot of swag. For mornings out of five, I don't have to think about what I'm wearing. All I have to think about is what color pullover I'm wearing for the day. And, and on top of that they look nice, they look professional. It's just, you know, there's so much we do in our lives and choices we have to make, why not, you know, it just helps your employees not have to worry about what just something as small as what they're going to wear today,
Jeff Winters:I'm going to go more specific. So I want to give people some insight into what we're saying buy gear, so we've got plenty of stuff that's got the abstract logo on it. That stuff's awesome, and definitely falls into this category. But then we've got this other section of gear that has really important initiatives, either emblazoned on it or the catchphrases on the hat. And it's things that we're working toward. I'm looking at Scott right now. He's got a sweatshirt on. This is one team one dream, that was the that was the mantra for last year, when we were bringing people together, we've got one this year be kind growing grind. And I've heard this at other organizations, too. If you have an initiative ongoing part of your job as a leader is to make sure that that initiative is always in the conscious of people who are working toward those goals. A lot of that's verbal, some of that's written, but you know what, I love walking around with a T shirt that has my goal on it. So everybody just gets a little reminder throughout. Oh, yeah, you know, just maybe I don't see it five out of six times I see in a day. But one It caught me today. I was like, yeah, one team one dream. Let me let me think about that for a second
Scott Scully:I spot on Jeff, that's, that's one of the more important ones is the ability through gear to be able to get that annual mission across or could be your mission in general or problem you solve.
Eric Watkins:The other part of this. I don't even think we've mentioned it yet, is when you have an organization like ourselves primarily focused in St. Louis, and so many employees. This is marketing for us. They're walking around, they're leaving work, they're going to happy hour, whatever it may be, they're wearing this nice looking swag or that logo and people ask them, oh, hey, where do you work? What do you know about what do you like about it? And that's how we get a lot of employees. Like it's, it's hard to find good employees in this day and age. That's one other way to do it.
Scott Scully:It's a great way to show tenure, like when people are walking around with some of the old school year, right opposite around just kind of puts you in the Oh, those are the 12 plus year people or those are the five year people to kind of cool that side benefits kind of cool to can't have shitty stuff
Eric Watkins:though. Yeah, some people should throw away some of that. No,
Jeff Winters:no, no, not that stuff I'm talking about. I'm talking about the gear. Here's really good. Yeah, like, it's to the point where I'm out with my friends. And they're like, let me get one of those. Like, let me get one of those. And you know me, I'm a good friend. So I gave him the address, no discount they can buy.
Scott Scully:You will be surprised at how many of your team members will want to wear the gear because they believe in what you do. They they're proud of where they work. And they want to show people where they work and talk about what they're doing. And this is an incredible way when they're out at a restaurant. People ask them questions. And it's a way for them to celebrate what they do and attract talent, like we said before, so people will be more productive. You will drive even greater results by making sure that your people are in your gear and you guys are one team live in one dream. We are now headed to mining for growth gold
Eric Watkins:mining for growth gold. Okay, today, we have the golden question. What an eight, the golden question. It's been around for a while here at abstract and I talked, you know, a couple episodes ago about not over qualifying leads. So I felt it only right to come back and talk about how to make leads just a little bit better for yourselves if you're doing this internally or for your partners, if you're working for other companies. So this is simple. You go into the appointment called once you set the appointment at the end of the appointment call. You ask this question, Jeff, if you see value in what we provide, and ultimately decide to move forward with our services. What does that decision making process look like? Period Shut up. We're asking for the decision making process. If the hypothetical if they were to move forward with our services, this seems really small. And the first things that come to mind are WoW is really invasive. And I bet a lot of people aren't going to want to answer that question. And I'll just tell you, that's wrong. We ask it all the time. They answer, they just come out strictly and answer it. Number two, this is the number one mistake that salespeople make is not knowing the decision making process going into the sale, there's a lot of mistakes, but that's one of the biggest ones, because you have to know where you're trying to get to before you even get started. So it's one little piece of information that we can load up for our salespeople understanding that decision making process. So I'll give you an example. I asked that. And then Jeff says, you know, I, you know, pretty much I make the decision on who we partner with here, but I have to run it up the ladder to Scott to make sure that he agrees with it, that little line from that appointment call. Now, when I hand this lead over to the sales rep, they can a reach out to Scott on LinkedIn and try to make a connection prior to the call. And be they know in that call. My goal now is not just to sell Jeff, I have to sell Jeff in a way where he's going to advocate to Scott and I'm going to get Scott's attention to get this deal in golden question, simple thing at the end of every appointment call.
Jeff Winters:This is a huge advantage for the salesperson, because the more questions that you can get before the call. So you don't have to spend time figuring this stuff out. And you can, whether it's more time on price or term or, or presenting or discussing the problem that prospect has, the better off you are that you are so much better off. And just to add Eric, you know, by the way, maybe instead of me connecting with Scott on LinkedIn, if I'm the salesperson, maybe I go to my boss and that my boss reached out to Scott and go, Hey, you know, I know Jeff from our team is meeting with Steve from your team. Just wanted to let you know, we're really energized about the potential partnership. And I like to make sure that you had me you want to put a face with a company and you had me on the radar case, things move forward. There's so many different things you can do proactively. If I know that the appointments, you've talked about it before, the amount of information you can glean after the appointment is set just from asking five or six questions that no one will ever remember. Like it's not going to be bad. Put your sales team at a big competitive advantage.
Scott Scully:Alright, Eric, I love it. And I don't think it's just a tip. I think it should be almost mandatory that with every set appointment for a future business opportunity that you know what the decision making processes and who influences because you're going to prep in a whole different way, like Jeff's really good example. Right, right there of two higher ups connecting to support what's about ready to happen. I love it. And if I was out there listening, I would implement a sap that question and say it's not even a qualified appointment, unless they're bringing forth that information. So that sales rep can be prepared.
Eric Watkins:Love it, and no, very, very rarely does somebody pushed back on us. Oh, I don't want to tell you that. I don't want to give you that information. I mean, very, very rarely. But that is the golden question. We were mining for growth gold. And what we found we found the golden question.
Jeff Winters:Gold for sure. A lot of gold so much gold
Eric Watkins:so much ago.
Scott Scully:So now that we're sitting on a pot of gold. Are you gonna spend?
Jeff Winters:You know, there's always room for one more holiday in the calendar isn't there? There's never enough holidays. Fourth of July, Memorial Day, New Year's Day, I could go on. I want to add another one to your calendar. No. I want to add another 12 holidays to your calendar 1212 New holidays. You're welcome. For you salespeople, you founders, you leaders and those holidays are what we call el DOM. There is El DOM. The stay with me now last month, yes, el DOM needs to be a holiday. I want to change the way you think about the last day of the month. Because I'll tell you a change for us. This came to us from my brother, Tony Hawk, amazing member of our sales team. We love you. He came to us and we're the last day of the month we come in and just like any other day, just like any other day, you know, we're gonna close some deals. We're gonna have some lunch. And he said, This is terrible. This is a joke. Where's the music? Where's the themes? Where's the energy? Where's the hourly contest? This needs to be a holiday and if you bring the Energy up to a fever pitch, you will close materially exponentially more deals. And so we did. And every last day of the month became a holiday. What does that mean? We had themes, we had meals, everybody dresses up, we have contests. Every hour, we have something we'll do after work, we have all sorts of things on El DOM, and the magic happens. And you look around and deals start to close, you go, Oh, this is kind of interesting. Deals are close. And then they start and more and more and more, and people are high fiving. And they're jumping up in the air. And it is a it's a day unlike any other. And the Masters it's it's the masters. If you don't have this in your company, by the way, this doesn't just have to be sales. It can be sales, development, it can be marketing, it can be fulfillment, delivery, can be operations, it can be account management, implementing seldom make it a holiday, make it a huge deal, have a big board, have contests have food, it's a blast, your results will go up a ton. And it's easy to implement. Nobody's against el DOM. Everybody loves holidays. I just gave you 12 more.
Scott Scully:You're making it fun. People fear the last day of the month, and a lot of times going into that day, maybe a little behind. thinking how am I ever going to get this done. And when you're putting somebody's mind right at the beginning of that last day of the month, you end up pulling it out as a team. I love it. Thank you, Tony, Tony.
Eric Watkins:Yeah, that's great. I remember when you guys first came in, and we're saying L Dom, we're like LDAP LDAP. What's LDAP it was like this big deal. And we did something for the last day of the month, but just putting the name to it. Like just use the name. The name matters. The name
Scott Scully:matters if you want it to mean something. You got to name it got a name, maybe even build a logo. Feel
Eric Watkins:it. Use it. It's just it's awesome. We took it right away. Oh, it's
Jeff Winters:amazing. Now you got as you should. And now it's my wife knows my kids know my brother. You know how we look for elder cousin? About LDAP it does now
Scott Scully:and you know what we need to do what? We need to put some LDAP sweatshirts in the store.
Eric Watkins:A full circle circles. Oh circle, sir.
Scott Scully:Jeff, you're on fire today.
Eric Watkins:Yeah, you are great episode.
Unknown:You're feeling good? Yes.
Scott Scully:Well, we're there to everybody's most favorite section of the crow show. To do or not to do to this
Jeff Winters:off yet. We didn't kill this off. Now.
Eric Watkins:This is back with. All right, we're talking about Scott and I have a little basketball game after work. And we're trying to get Jeff to join us. We're gonna go to some employees here internally put together a little pickup game. So we're going to a nearby rec center. And we're going to play a little basketball. My question is, you know, I'm 32 now I'm coming on 33 I'm waking up, my knees are cracking. You know, my ankles a little tight. My back's hurt. And I can only imagine. I can only imagine how it's gonna look. As I keep getting older. Should you? I thought he was gonna see if you were 53 If I was Scott's a if I was just a throw some dirt on him. Why don't you? Here's my question though. It is risky. You hear of the people they're tearing their Achilles they tear their ACL they break their whatever they you know, throw off your summer, whatever it may be. Is it worth it? To play real sports after the age of 30? Or not? Should you keep playing basketball? Should You Play that Thanksgiving football game? Or do you stick to golf? Do you stick to pickleball
Scott Scully:It is painful, though. My knee already hurts. We were not even there. That's a great question. Depends on just how competitive you are and what that does for you. I think you have to be doing some level of you can't do zero activity and then go out not having exercise for three years and then play a game of full court pickup basketball. So you definitely got to be prepared for it. Don't don't just decide that you want to go back to your high school and play in the alumni football game if you haven't played football for 20 years but if you're a competitive first person that works out stays in shape and that drives yet so go for it
Jeff Winters:ya know I'm a I'm a give up guy on this one. Like you just it is like it's over like your time has passed it necessarily 30 But whatever agent is for you like you got just got to cut it off. And you'll know when that is because you start getting you said it's like knee cracks but like I've talked to talking to my buddies 38 years old now yeah, I'm I can't get to work because I popped my patella Come on, man. You can't be popular. You got work. Do you have family? You can
Eric Watkins:screw up your patella sounds like a dance move. Yeah,
Jeff Winters:no, no, no, no, no, that's over. I think. I think that's when you go to I think that's why pickleball was invented pickleball was invented as a transition for young people to you know, play a sport and feel like they're still competing and actually not be very body that's why that's what pickleball and network Pickleball is. Pickleball means and French is like transition.
Scott Scully:I sweat more from ping pong pickleball
Jeff Winters:that's why people feel like with pickleball people like Oh, it's great exercise and I'm competing. Yeah, not really but whatever who cares? Like you feel good?
Eric Watkins:I think I actually think you should give it I'm not going to I'm going to still stick through it but I think it's dumb to think I'm gonna come in and like in crutches one day,
Jeff Winters:right? What are you going to pick up?
Eric Watkins:No, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep going I'm gonna fight through it.
Jeff Winters:Yeah, but you're 30 like you're you're a couple years you don't know
Scott Scully:this you guys are sending me a message without looking at me directly. This
Jeff Winters:is sad already got a fucking ambulance for you later. I just I got it. I'm gonna have it outside.
Eric Watkins:The funny thing is Scott is in the best shape and he'll say he's not he's in the best shape of all three of us who he'll go run for like hours and hours when we play basketball.
Scott Scully:That's different so not true.
Jeff Winters:It's different like the basketball the football like that stuff if you use muscles you don't ordinarily basketball hurt. Yeah, bad. You know what doesn't pickle I get to go do pickleball not stretch go home do some other shit hard. Yeah. Croquet. Yeah, car yeah, it's not Yeah, right horse stuff like that.
Scott Scully:I say do it.
Eric Watkins:I'm gonna say no but put yes, no, but yes. And Jeff we know where you stand.
Jeff Winters:Don't show up to work with a pop patella.
Scott Scully:All right, great show. Thank you grow nation, you continue to support what we're doing here. Again, we just want to make it a little bit easier in your journey to 50 mil and beyond. Keep giving us your feedback. Keep interacting, like and post and subscribe and share and all that good stuff. We hope you have a good week. Be kind drill and grind.
Unknown:Let's grow up. Let's grow let's grow. The grow show was sponsored by abstract cloud solutions certified Salesforce consulting services.