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~~Introduction to an Introduction: Gary Harvey and Guts and Humor, or What You Can Learn from the Frontline~~
In January of 2016 Gary was diagnosed with Stage Three Prostate Cancer and he wondered what was next. He had a radical proctectomy surgery and began radiation that summer every day for two months. He took monthly injection of Lupron. This loss of testosterone ended with him having hot flashes and an increased empathy with his wife and the women in his life. He realized that it is what it is, and he’s committed to approaching life with some humor. Humor doesn’t take away the seriousness of a situation, nor does it mean you put your head in the sand and ignore the situation. He takes his business seriously, not himself. As months progressed things looked good, but in June of 2017 his PSA had quadrupled and this indicator that cancer was spreading caused panics for his doctors.
They found about six to seven spots of cancer in his bones and he began chemotherapy treatment which started his journey. These are the cards that he was dealt, and he has focused on dealing with it by dealing with what’s going on between his ears. What goes on with Gary, he believes, is dealing with the behaviors and attitude that are associated with how he engages the reality of his circumstances. He tuned up how he thought and what he believed in order to effectively fight against the outcome and work toward the results he wanted.
~~The Lessons Learned: 10 Lessons of Guts and Humor from the Frontline, or Cancer? I’m Cancer’s Cancer~~
A few definitions are important that tie into the lessons. Guts is being willing to challenge. Having the courage, fortitude and stamina. Humor is the faculty of perceiving what is amusing or comical; the mental disposition or temperament.
These are ten lessons, but they aren’t in priority. All of them have equal number one priority, but it’s built out of a list. This will come from a patient mindset with a sales philosophy.
1. Don’t Get Into the Victim Trap
People asked Gary if he ever wondered “Why me?” Why would he get this disease as opposed to anybody else? And his answer was always, “Never.” Never did that pop into his brain, and if it did, he thought, “Why not me? What would make me so special that I wouldn’t get this?” There’s no reason either way; it just happened, and it is what it is.
A victim mentality won’t you heal. And without healing you can’t do anything for anyone else. When a victim standpoint becomes a prominent mindset for any individual then, sadly, these individuals create self-fulfilling prophecies that they fall in line with. It doesn’t matter what training you get, but get some training to get better and improve yourself, and stop the victim mentality that you’re allowing to happen to you when you have complete control of yourself in the situation.
If you have the victim mindset you tend to draw to yourself the people who will persecute you and you invite people to take advantage of you. If we put out negative energy, then negative things will happen. The flipside, if you put out positive things then you’ll get back to positive things. This isn’t an advocation to put your head in the sand and hope you survive. If you choose to not participate in the garbage and negative head-trash, then you build out what you want to see. The real battle always starts between the ears.
2. Ask Questions
As sales people we know we should be asking questions, but sadly we know too many people don’t. Doctors aren’t always right and nor are prospects. Question them and challenge them both. Prospects need to be challenged about their ways of thinking that may not behoove them. In a sales role most of our prospects are in delay and denial and it serves us best to challenge their thinking to get them out of that place so they don’t get stuck. Ask questions to get answers on the things people are willing to avoid.
3. Put Things into Perspective
As Gary says, “As a patient, I’m alive!” No matter what you have or what news you receive, it’s important to remember that we’re alive and we only deal with partial side affects of what we engage with. Nos in sales won’t kill you. The reality is that sales means nos, but the willingness to take those personally ignores the fact that it isn’t a big deal. Nos won’t kill you. Doing it can be a challenge, but it mostly takes a mixture of guts and optimism. Gary’s constant place as being optimistic and positive allow him to keep things in perspective because he doesn’t naturally see things from a negative light. His ability to reflect on life as a gift rather than a burden allows him to understand that all experiences create byproducts and focusing on the bycatch allows for an individual to see the pieces of growth that are associated with every experience in life. All journeys, including difficult ones, have positives.
4. Don’t Make Assumptions
Make sure you reverse and get clarity. Don’t allow wishy-washy words. Don’t make assumptions as a patient or a salesperson. More specific and associated with asking questions and its importance is also to stop making assumptions. When he asked his doctor how long he needs to be on a specific drug, a doctor said, “probably about two years, because I see the best results after two years.” A non-Sandler trained individual wouldn’t ask what best means, and it’s important to understand the clarity behind the statements given.
5. Just Go Do It
Stop planning beating cancer and just go do it. Paralysis of indecision has got to stop. So often people see health as a fork in the road and we need to stop getting ready to get ready and commit to the behaviors attitudes and changes that we need to see happen. Rather than engaging in the mindset of the foot stuck on first and someone getting ready to get ready. Instead of spending so much time trapped in planning you need to commit to the action and the behavior that is associated with the success you want. You must behave your way into a new attitude. The it is whatever any person wants to make it. Think about how all the its in your life have direct 1-to-1 correlations to how you feel in your life and what improvements you could make.
6. Flatten the Hill
Gary choose conqueror not cancer as his C word. He wasn’t interested in conquering the hill of cancer, he wanted to flatten it. If he conquers it then it still is there, so he built in a mindset of flattening the disease as an opportunity to grow. This opportunity engages what you can learn from yourself, about yourself, and about the entire venture. In sales prospects are not our problem and are never the problem, we are. Recognizing these things flatten down the hills that we create and build out opportunities where we can see, rather than the obstacle, the absence of the head-trash which we saw as something to cause issues for us.
7. Look How Do You Project Yourself
You have two options in life whatever your role is. You have two options over how you project yourself. If anything happens to you, whether it be Gary’s cancer battle, or whether you have challenges running a business or managing people, or dealing with a sales. The two options are do you project yourself with what’s happening to you, negatively or positively? If you take it personally and let it happen to you then you will allow that projection to be negative. Gary takes ownership of who he is, not of what he has. Do you take a choice of projecting yourself optimistically or positively? Or do you choose to project out negativity and things that work to cripple and break down your mentality? How you project yourself when you face adversity will have a direct correlation on the outcome. He is serious about his situation, but the more positive you are about anything, the better chance you will have a positive outcome.
8. Are You Planting Your Feet?
Don’t believe authority completely. Doctors can be and have been wrong. Plant your feet and be willing to engage, ask questions, and avoid assumptive statements given by other people. The mental power that you build should work to reinforce your standpoints. You can’t outperform what you believe. If you believe whatever results are given to you then you will find yourself falling into a self-fulfilling prophecy which dooms and diminishes your situation in the world.
9. Resources for Success
Who do I network with and who do I make sure is a part of my ongoing basis who can help me through what I’m going through? In sales you need to understand who you need to reach out to and to do so you need to get some humility and put arrogance aside. Arrogance takes no guts, its pure arrogance. There’s no humor in being arrogant. Some resources that you could be using you might need to flush. If there are negative influences that you’d be better off without then you should be willing to break away. If something someone does and how they live doesn’t serve them well then chances are they won’t serve you well.
10. Gratitude!
During your battle if you’ve got anything, who are you letting know that you love them, care about them, and are thanking them with gratitude because they’re present and there for whenever you need them? Every three weeks Gary, during chemo, makes a point to have chats and conversations with the nurses because they’re spending all day with people who have been told they’re going to die. His focus on gratitude is to build out the work to be done in order to emphasize the relationships you’ve created. In business it is important to recognize friendships and long-term engagements and it’s important to tell your clients, with gratitude, how much they care, without being forced to say it by virtue of the circumstances that are haunting.
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