Reshaping Your Career: The Transition from Stagnation to Outside Sales | SOS Ep. 352

Are you rising with the sun, eager to tackle your workday or are you caught in the churning tides of stagnation? 

As your host, I, Mike O’Kelly, discuss the powerful question of when it's appropriate to consider a career change. If you're not bounding into Mondays with drive and vigor or if you're not excited about initiating positive changes for your clients or prospects, it might be time to cast a wider net. Chasing money alone won't lead to fulfillment; it's just as crucial to challenge yourself, to grow, and to constantly evaluate if you're escalating or sinking in your current position.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Surviving Outside Sales podcast. I'm your host, mike O'Kelly, just got back from a seven day vacation and I tell you what I am more exhausted than I was before I left, but the mind is definitely recharged, the body not so much. But we had a great vacation. We were at the beach, there was a pool at the house we rented and it was a good time. It was a good time. I thank you to everybody who's been listening and reaching out to me.

Speaker 1: 0:33

I'm getting back into work mode this week, but I'm excited to get back. You know you don't want to stay on vacation forever and that's kind of the topic today. Today's gonna be very brief, just a couple minutes, because I don't need to belabor the point. I've mentioned this before, talked about it on social media and especially LinkedIn, but when you know it's time to move on, it's one of the hardest things to know in your career. So I'm going to make it very simple for you. Okay, if you are not looking forward to Monday, if you are not looking forward to being a change maker and a solution maker for your prospects, your clients, it's time to move on. At that point, if you're not excited to bring change about in someone else's life, in someone else's business. It's time for you to find another opportunity and it's time for you to move on. Life is too short to stick in an opportunity that you don't want to go to work, you're not excited about it, you don't have passion for it. Okay, there's tons of opportunity out there, all right. So if that is you, if you're listening right now and you're thinking to yourself man, I really do not want to come to work today. And if you have that more than once, sometimes you're just tired. But if you really are thinking to yourself I don't want to be doing this anymore. It doesn't matter how good the pay is. Okay, you're really robbing your future self from opportunities that might present. And it's interesting, you have no idea if the opportunity that is out there waiting for you could bring you 2x, 3x, 4x the compensation that you're currently stuck with right now.

Speaker 1: 2:26

If you are in an opportunity right now where you're not making good money but you just think, hey, it's a steady paycheck, it's consistent, that's the wrong mindset, that's a limiting mindset, and I think that you really need to examine that mindset. So how to know if you're in the right role or not, if you are excited about changing other people's lives. If you really believe that what you're doing is making a difference, that's how you know you're on the right path. The difference between making you know 300,000 and 200,000 is a lot, but what's the tradeoff if you're making you know, let's say, 300,000 and you're absolutely miserable? What's the tradeoff? You get some bills paid. You have plenty of income generating gears in the future. There's not a limited amount of money out there in the universe. You can have side projects. You can have 1099s. It's a topic I talked about yesterday. There's other ways to have multiple streams of income. It's not limited to just your W2. So what I would do is I would just examine am I excited about what I'm doing? Am I passionate about what I'm doing? Do I want to be the change in people's lives? And if you're saying no to any of those, that's how you know it's time to move on. Also, besides that, when you are no longer challenged at your job, it's time to move on and find a challenge, because when you aren't being challenged, your skill set is actually declining.

Speaker 1: 4:05

There is no such thing as maintenance. I'll tell you a quick story. When I was in high school, my high school strength and conditioning coach was Robert Blanton. Bob Blanton worked out with Arnold Schwarzenegger and trained with him back in the I guess was the 70s and our strength coach was a powerlifter and famously, back in the 80s there was this television show called the Wide World of Sports and the Wide World of Sports had a saying and it was the thrill of victory in the agony of defeat and for two and a half years him failing to do a powerlift was the agony of defeat clip in the video from the 70s. And he said the most powerful thing to me when I was a senior because I had gotten my prepackage from William Mary for the strength and conditioning and on the top it said William Mary's maintenance strength program. And coach Blanton looked at it and he said he shook his head side to side and he sighed. And I said what is it, coach? And he said, mike, I'm going to give you some advice.

Speaker 1: 5:22

In this world, you're either getting better, you're getting stronger, you're getting faster, you're getting smarter or you're declining. Whatever skill you're trying to improve, you're either improving it or you are declining. There is no such thing as maintenance. In essence, you can't freeze your skill set. You are declining if you are not pushing yourself to get better. There is no maintenance. It doesn't exist. You can't just get to a certain level and say, well, I'm just going to keep my skill set here. And the reason why you can't do that is because the industry is moving around you. It's elevating and you need to elevate with it.

Speaker 1: 6:12

So you have to ask yourself the question am I in a position right now where I'm challenging myself? Am I getting better? Or are you just floating through the day, just trying to get to the weekend, just waiting for that next paycheck to hit the bank so you can pay more bills? That's not a way to live life. That's my opinion. You might disagree with it and that's perfectly acceptable if you disagree with it, but I think my plan is better. I think my 10-year plan is better than your 10-year plan. If that's what you're going to do, you're going to wait it out. So if you want to know as a recap, if you want to know if you're on the right path, are you being challenged? Do you get excited to solve people's problems? Do you get excited for meetings? Are you dreading Mondays? Are you dreading the work week? Are you just trying to get to the weekend. If the answer is yes to either of those, it's time for you to examine what you're doing in your career.

Speaker 1: 7:11

If you would like to bounce some ideas off of me, I do a free strategy session for any single person who wants to Just reach out to me on LinkedIn. Just shoot me a DM and say, mike, I would like to take you up on that free strategy session. I've done that for shoot close to 50 people. I've met a lot of people along the way. I've heard stories. I'm here to help. I'm here to help any way, shape or form I can for outside sales professionals, especially in my wheelhouse, which is the medical sales world.

Speaker 1: 7:42

But if you're not in the medical sales world, I've talked to people in advertising. I've talked to people in chemical sales. I've talked to people in paint supplies. I've talked to people in tire sales, bev sales, wine sales, car sales you name it. It's not just that. The show is called Surviving Outside Sales. I've had a lot of people reach out to me, or you can go to my website, mikehockellycom, slash connect, and you can reach out to me that way. So hope everybody has a great start to their week and we'll see you tomorrow. Surviving Outside Sales Hejeking. So then I relax to myself.