Triumphing Over Turmoil: Turning Regret into Motivation with Mike O'Kelly | SOS Ep. 348

Ever had one of those weeks where it feels like everything is out of control and you're just surviving? 

That's the chaos I, Mike O'Kelly, found myself in this week, smack dab in the aftermath of an exhausting Labor Day weekend. Yet, I didn't let that stop me from submitting a speech for an upcoming business conference, even though I barely had time to prepare. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

The Surviving Outside Sales podcast, hosted by Mike O'Kelly, presented by Sales Builder Academy. The goal is to survive and thrive all phases of outside sales, whether you're getting in, dominating or getting out. Surviving Outside Sales. Now on with the show. Welcome to the Surviving Outside Sales podcast. I'm your host, mike O'Kelly.

Speaker 1: 0:33

Hope everybody had a fantastic Labor Day weekend. The O'Kelly family got a couple days out of town, so a little chance to rest and recover. We went out to the beach with a couple friends of ours, their families and their kids. So there were six adults, five toddlers, one infant. So my voice is a little bit gone because, yes, there's probably a lot of correcting of toddlers at the beach and if anybody has taken a vacation with family members, they know what I mean. Thank you so much to everybody who's been listening. I really appreciate that.

Speaker 1: 1:14

One of the things I want to talk about today is I just finished a video submission to do a speech at a business conference that I'm going to be attending in a couple weeks and, I'll be honest, I did not have time to prepare for it. Okay, I was on a call last Tuesday, we left the beach on Friday, we got back today, a couple hours ago, and the video submission was a little late. I had a crazy week last week. I was hiring people to help run the business my wife and I are doing and it was a absolute S show, a shit show, with everything that I had to do. I was working nights and I had to push everything off until this week. So today I technically was off, but tomorrow morning I have to hit the ground running and I have about 800 things to do. But the videos were due for the speech. There's about 15, 20 people that are going to be vying for this position to be able to speak on stage and I didn't have time to prepare. I did not get a chance to do a lot of dress rehearsals. I did two versions before the final one. It was one edit. I had to go all the way through and I recorded myself here in the house and I just had an outline and I went with it and there was a time limit and I had to fall underneath the time limit and I kept thinking to myself I've got too much going on because we just we had some news that popped about an hour ago. That is going to add about 50 different things on my list, but it's funny.

Speaker 1: 3:03

The topic that I said I'd like to talk about is regret, and I don't want to. I don't want to have regret, and one of the things I talked about was pretending as if today was the last day that you had on the surf. What would you do if you only had one day in business or in life, if you had to work and you had to go out and you had to do something? You couldn't just sit at home and you couldn't visit with family, just to say you had one day left to work and you were going to be judged on that one day. What would you do? And what would you be doing? If you don't love what you are doing? You've got to do something else. This life is way too short to do anything else Way too short.

Speaker 1: 4:30

The regret and the story that I shared was when I was a minor league baseball player, listening to the podcast. I played the minor leagues for two seasons, or parts of three, but two full seasons, and one was with the Atlanta Braves organization. I had just come off from a 70 game college season where we won the conference championship and we went to the Clemson regional, the NCAA tournament for baseball. And then I go play 70 games in the Atlanta Braves farm system in Danville, virginia. I was exhausted, I was beat, I was tired, I was beat down, I was worn down. I phoned it in the last couple of weeks of the season. I just tried to get through it. I didn't realize that. I didn't realize it was a possibility that they were going to fire me, that I was going to get cut. That's exactly what happened. I got one hit in my last 27 at bats. That's what happens when you phone it in. You go one for 27.

Speaker 1: 5:35

If any of you are listening to me right now and you're struggling in sales, are you phoning it in or are you going after it? Are you doing what is necessary to take full advantage of your opportunity or are you just packing it in, like I did, just going through the motions? Are you doing what you love? The thing that really bothers me about that was I was doing what I love. Since I was five years old, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. For 17 years I thought about it. I had braves across the chest, I had my name across my shoulders. I was doing it, I was living it. I was in professional baseball, I still was looking towards the next season, the off season, a chance to rest. You've listened to this podcast before. You know that I talk about looking through the front windshield, not the rear view mirror. I don't look back and dwell on it. I look back on it and I simply say I will not let that happen again. I will not be complacent. I will not let opportunities pass. So when I only had a couple hours to get this speech done and let me tell you I am exhausted If you've been to the beach with toddlers, we were at the beach every single day.

Speaker 1: 7:08

We were at the pool every single day, almost every single day Kids were running around like crazy wouldn't go to bed. We constantly had to go in there and threaten them. Threaten their lives or not threaten their lives. I don't want people to call child services, but we had to go in there and threaten them. They were up super early, much earlier than they normally are, because all the kids were staying in the same room on bunk beds and one person wakes up. They wake the rest up. Everybody knows how that goes. We didn't get a lot of sleep. It was probably the worst weekend of sleep I've had in a really long time, not to mention lugging all the gear down to the beach, setting it all up, lugging it back.

Speaker 1: 7:48

I'm exhausted, but I have an opportunity to do something great. Why would I pass that up? Because I'm afraid I'm not prepared. Folks, you're never prepared 100% for anything in life. Why let that hold you back? Why look in the rearview mirror and say, man, I should have taken that job, I should have taken that role, I should have taken that opportunity, I should have worked with that person? Why would you do that to yourself?

Speaker 1: 8:19

Regret is the killer of souls. So right now, if you're listening and you have an opportunity to do something, do it. If you've been thinking yourself, I'm just not quite sure Do it. Take massive action. Some of the most successful people in the world. You ask them what do you regret? They always say the same thing Not taking action, going cheap, not going all in, not going for it. That's all you have to do. Go for it. I never have regret for the actions I took when I was all in. The only time I've ever had regret is when I've half-assed it. I've gone through the motions and I haven't put my all in or haven't put all the effort in that I should have Do it and start today. Thank you so much. Really do appreciate it. Hope everybody has a fantastic rest of their day and we'll see you tomorrow. Surviving outside sales.