Focus

138: Jill Konrath: I’m over the hill, I lost my mojo

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast. Where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Okay, Fast Leader legion today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today who I’ve admired her work and her for a long time. Jill Konrath was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was the oldest of four kids and she was always expected to set a good example to her younger siblings, Tiny, Text and Seth. In her spare time she love fishing, reading, searching for hard-to-find items like agates and four-leaf clovers and solving puzzles all the time. During high school and college she worked as a waitress and loved getting tips. Her first job was as a teacher but Jill quickly got bored. After four years she came up with an idea to start her own company but before launching her new endeavor she realized she needed to learn how to sell first. Hired by Xerox as a salesperson, Jill quickly excelled. She loved the constant challenges as well as being able to impact her income through working hard and working smart.

After a few years, she moved into technology sales then finally started her own business as a consultant specializing in new product launches ensuing she was always solving a new puzzle and getting paid well to do it. Today Jill is an international keynote speaker with nearly 1/3 million LinkedIn followers. She’s also the best-selling author of four books each tackles an emerging sales challenge requiring her to search for new ideas and test new approaches. Selling to big companies deals with setting up meetings with corporate decision-makers who never answer phones or respond to emails. Snap selling tackle strategies for getting crazy busy buyers to move off the status quo, agile selling focuses on helping reps and new sales positions get up to speed as soon as possible and her most recent more sales less time is filled with ideas to help overwhelm sellers bring in more revenue while working fewer hours.

According to Jill her books are her gift to the world. Her two kids are her most precious legacy and her cat keeps her company on a daily basis. Jill still lives in the Minneapolis area and is always on the lookout for new challenging puzzles to solve. Jill Konrath, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Jill Konrath:   I’m ready to help.

Jim Rembach:    I appreciate you being here. I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we get to know you even better.

Jill Konrath:   My current passion is to remove the distraction that we’re all facing that’s pulling us away from our time and taking all of our time but also I think it’s really impacting our quality of thinking and our ability to be the best person that we can be. I found it was an issue that I was facing I tackled it and study for a couple years and I think it’s huge because so many people are just working their tails off and they’re getting up in the morning and jumping into email and they’re going straight through the day and at o’clock they shut down and the last thing they do is check email and they’re exhausted and they’re not bringing them best offs to their lives or to their work.

Jim Rembach:   You know I think that’s a great point. I have the opportunity to follow you and I’ve been in your list and get your content and information and pull down a lot of checklists and it’s really added a lot of value to my thinking but I see a lot of your work is really kind of set in—the practical you kind of point out the obvious that causes us to go—I knew that but I’m not doing that.

Jill Konrath:   Yes, yes. I really feel in some ways sort of like a boring person because it’s not like I’m coming up with this new theories or anything but I observe problems and I go—well, what are we going to do about this this is really an issue. And then I just set myself on—of course, in studying what it takes and experimentation and it really isn’t rocket science it’s really common sense when you come right down to it. But you’re right I’m struggling with the same issues that I tackle so its uncommon sense I guess I would say. 

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s a great point because a lot of times we talk about common sense not being common and definitely a lot of the things that are covered in more sales less time it’s like—okay, I just need to do a better job and this is what the book is all about creating some type of structure and plan in order to be able to get moving forward. And one of the things that I really loved that you put together that’s in the book, and we’re going to put a link in the show notes page for people to get this is Your Time Master Manifesto. And I really wanted to take—and it hit me so much and for me it’s one of those things if I didn’t tattoo it on my body I’m definitely going to have it on my desk because it’s going to help me with conditioning and that is I create my life rather than let life just happen to me. I value my time it’s all I have when it’s gone I’ll never get it back. I wake up each day refreshed ready to start my work joyfully. I begin my day with what matters most. I’m clear on my priorities. I think about what I’m doing and why (5:29 inaudible) business is craziness I work in block of time this gets me in the flow. I embrace tools that help me get more done or protect me from myself. I schedule my entire day in my calendar and adjust as needed. I create fun challenges to get me started and achieve my goals. I constantly experiment finding better ways to do every aspect of my job. I treat myself to fun energy renewing breaks throughout the day. I prevent distractions by sitting quietly till they pass. I don’t do everything I delegate or say no. I reflect at the end of each day and I accept my responsibility for creating the life I want it’s up to me. I love that.

Jill Konrath:   Thank you, thank you. It wasn’t what I started out with when I wrote the book that was not how it was living my life. I was living at the mercy of everything else that was happening in my life and doing my best to serve every master and every master it would be anybody who sent me an email sometimes. 

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s too easy especially for someone who is a caring type of individual who wants to help and even like you said about your books that your gift back to the world. That type of personality and focus it’s just so difficult to say no. 

Jill Konrath:   It’s hard to say no and it’s about providing good service and wanting to make people feel like they’re working with somebody who takes care of them and who interested in them. It’s just about being a good servant leader and doing things right. You have to learn how to put a protection around yourself so you can really be the kind of person that you want to be otherwise you get so lost in the mess that you’re not bringing your best self to table and that really bothers me and not bring my best self to the table. It should bother everybody because we’re all a gift to the world. I said in my books– we are all a gift to the world and we all have certain things that we do that contribute to the workplace, that contribute to families, that contribute to our greater community. And if we’re getting caught up and distractions that are pulling us here and there we’re not bringing any of our best self to anything and we’re just a fragment of what we could be.

I think you probably just explained why we have so much issue with depression and opioid addiction and things like that is because people are not getting that sense of fulfillment because of all of those things.

Jill Konrath:   The craziness that we’re experiencing and the push that we’re under in our whole society to do more a and more and more faster-faster-faster is actually exacerbating the problem because it makes us do behaviors that actually don’t help us to accomplish the goals that we’re really trying to accomplish.

I think it’s a great point. There’s so many statistics associated with people who like just give up   vacation time because they’re so busy doing work that they don’t feel like they could step away we’ve had this many years of this whole thinking of lean and what I think I say is that if you you’re always focused on doing more with less in fact you are going to do less because you have so much more to do.

Jill Konrath:   Yeah, that’s exactly true that is exactly true, that is exactly true. 

You just get locked up.

Jill Konrath:   Yes.

One of the things we talked about off mic and you had asked about some of the people who are Fast Leader show listeners and I had mentioned about a lot of them are actually folks working with organizations. When you start thinking about it, really everybody is in sales we are trying to get people’s attention, we still have our job that we’re supposed to be doing and a task and responsibilities associated with that but in order to move forward and really make impact we’ve got to get other people to buy in or buy what were actually selling. And so I think the whole sales concept is really a universal concept. Do you actually see that being different or do you ascribe to that?

Jill Konrath:   No I totally agree with that. All of us are trying to influence other people to accept our ideas or to try something new that would change from the status quo. Most people would not like to call it sales because they are ascribe the selling term to a manipulative, greedy, slimy, used car salesperson who wants to get them out of a lot with the biggest Commission check they can make  and they don’t care about you. That’s what people see they don’t understand that in reality the best salespeople make you feel really good about yourself and they really help you accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish and they oftentimes bring new ideas insights and information that you would never thought of that make you go, oh my god, this is really what we should be doing that would really help. And that’s what everybody who’s like a leader thinks if that’s what they’re doing so they don’t realize that is what’s selling us about it it’s curves were  doing it well, if you’re doing it. But everybody has to buy into their ideas and I think that’s the term that’s used in a corporate environment.

Jim Rembach:   Well, definitely. I mean if you want to call it persuasion or influenced in order to make you feel better internally go right ahead.

Jill Konrath:   Yeah. 

Jim Rembach:   But it’s still something that you try to get people to actually buy and accept and give up something in exchange for which is either their time or the resources it’s maybe not a monetary sale but it’s still in essence some type of give-and-take. 

Jill Konrath:   Right. If a company’s implementing a new strategy and trying to go a certain way I mean you immediately get resistance to because now people don’t want to have to learn new ways. They don’t want to have to go through the pain of being incompetent again as they have to figure things out they like the way it is. Every leader is constantly selling change and that’s really what it boils down to we’re all we’re all selling change. Whether you’re asking people to change their behaviors to get more done or to change their behaviors by doing things the new way or to bring in a new colleague and make that person feel at home I mean there’s so many different things but it’s all about selling why change is necessary and what value it will bring to the person who decides to change. 

Jim Rembach:      Certainly. And one of the things that I also liked about the book is that you have tons of resources, apps, other articles and information, the depth of research that you go through in order to be able to put together your books is quite impressive and goes back to that whole piece of—yes, it may be practical but there’s so much information that you pull in from different sources in order to validate it. But when you when you start thinking about the tips and the  tactics and all of those helpful resources and you’ve had a lot of links within your book in order to be able to people to get those, what’s the thing that people are actually downloading and wanting more of? 

Jill Konrath:   Wow, I don’t know. I think anything related to preventing distraction is what people are commenting most about. And I really believe that that is the starting point and until you can get your distractions under control it’s really hard to do anything else that will help you achieve more. Our life right now is built on distraction and we’re so attuned to checking our email like every time a message comes in and we’ve got all these alerts that constantly are pulling us here whether it’s announcing who’s ahead in the latest golf game or breaking news out of Washington and what’s happening right now. We’ve got all these alerts, buzzes pop-ups that are constantly at us in and until we can get a hold of that everybody is feeling fragmented in their thinking and everybody is taking much longer to do what needs to get done. Most people are so unaware of how this distraction is literally the root cause of the crazy business that they’re feeling. People are looking at things like Sane Box a lot of people have tried sane box since I mentioned it and unrolled at me couple apps, freedom is an app that people use. Freedom is an apps, only just explain some of these apps, sane box and unroll.me help you get control of your inbox and help you like sane box will take my emails and separate them. I get to make the decision as they come. 

Is this something I want in my main inbox or is just something I can read later like it’s from a vendor I do business with? Or it’s a newsletter that I find interesting but don’t have to read right now and it’s not essential and shouldn’t be interrupting my day versus here are the things that are crucial and I should be interrupting my day because this is what I’m following up on, so something like that is really important to people. Freedom is a protection app and it literally stops you from going online. It’s like you put a block on your computer or any of your devices, your cell phone, and you say, I want to prevent myself from going online even for 60 minutes or 90 minutes or two and a half hours. When I go online I get sucked into everything else and it interrupts my thinking and I can’t do the critical thinking that I need or the strategic thinking that I need to really come up with a good solution to my challenge. People are really interested in how to protect their time, and I strongly suggest using technology, they are there to help us too not just distract us. When you live in an online world the first thing you have to do is learn how to live in it because nobody taught us how. The iPhone is only been out for ten years and all this big problems are really things that have emerged in the last ten years since we’ve had the ability to pick up our cell phone at any time and any moment. 

Jim Rembach:   It’s interesting that you say that. One of the jokes that I always bring up about people thinking crazy things about society is that you know what? None of this stuff really happened until cable TV. 

Jill Konrath:   Interesting, yeah. 

Jim Rembach:   We never worried about the person who was doing something to some kids across the country or this one time incident that is such an outlier it hasn’t really happened in 100 years and now we start worrying about that all the time. They slice in the media and everybody wants to be covered we didn’t have that we were just—I guess in ignorant bliss prior to—

Jill Konrath:   That’s really true. It’s so funny like, I go online to—what’s the weather’s going to be like? I’m traveling someplace, what’s the weather like? Or even just what’s it like here in Minneapolis? And I go on the weather app and boom I’m sucked into the sinkhole in Florida or sucked into—you’ll never believe what this fisherman did. I watched a big shark circling a boat the other day and it’s like, Jiminy Crickets, what am I doing here I just wanted to see what the temperature was going to be like today? But we’re just living in an environment that just pulls us out and once we start getting pulled out we just go down a rabbit hole and it’s one thing after another and a half an hour can disappear. To me what’s even worse about that half hour disappearing is that the time it takes us to get back to where we were and to get our thinking back in it. And then they say it’s take 10 to 20 times the length of the interruption to get your head back to where it was and so you really think of the costliness of this distractions. It’s easily an hour to a day that evaporates and then we have to work later and longer to do it and the quality of our thinking is less. We are less strategic, we come up with fewer ideas we come up with worse solutions to our problems. To me that’s just a crime that that our brains are being lost in this and the best ideas that we can come up with are just gone too. 

Jim Rembach:   We just had some bad habits and your tool helps hopefully correct some of those bad habits and sometimes we have to put on blockers on ourselves because just can’t do it. Just like what you say we get sucked in and we can’t control. And you now what? There’s people who are experts that’s causing it to happen and we’re just allowing it. 

Jill Konrath:   Yes, yes. There’s people—that is their job to distract us and we are a species of animal who is designed for distraction because we actually have a part of our brain that’s supposed to look around and go—is there anything out there I should be aware of that’s new that might come and jump at me and eat me up? Literally, when we go online our amygdala this part of the brain jumps to the forefront of our brain and says, hey guys I got it. And it literally takes over from our executive function then what part of our brain that we think it should be running the show but the amygdala takes over, Oh God, new stuff, new stuff. And then the brain releases dopamine which is a feel-good hormone and goes, good job, good job. We got more of it and so we get hooked in this dopamine addiction, because it’s highly addictive, and it feels so good. And then we recreate the interruptions even when we get offline we interrupt ourselves because we are so used to being interrupted. What we have to do is to learn to live with the technology in a way that we haven’t before because we’ve never had to deal with this.

Jim Rembach:   Absolutely. We’re talking about here—being able to focus, change our own behaviors, get set in the right direction it is just associating connecting with a whole lot of emotion and one of the things that we look at on the show in order to get some better direction are quotes. Is there a quote or two that you can share?

Jill Konrath:   I can give you a call I can give you a game and I do talk about it in the book. One of the things I discovered was that me Jill Konrath is highly addictive to these things and I’m interested and curious and so for me to work in a distraction-free environment—I love distractions. I literally found that I was policing myself all the time to avoid that and I didn’t have the willpower to keep up the policing all the time it was just like constant effort to be really good with my time because it required so much change. One of the things I found and this was really ridiculous but I did decide to try to create a game to keep me plain and I created an avatar in the game that I was going to play with. The avatar I called the time master. And so I walk into my office and I was trying to be really good, but the game I set up was just a disaster it wasn’t fun and required tracking and it was worse than it started with. But when I came in as the avatar, the time master, I literally started behaving differently.

And to me that was a fascinating thing that’s simply by acting as if I was this wise time master, literally I’d stand up straighter as I walked into my office, I have a my time master poster that I created, I’d stand up straighter when I walked in I’d stare at that little sign and I got the time master and I’d sit down and I’d start behaving differently. So, it wasn’t a slogan it was literally changing my persona and saying I’m not going to be Jill today because Jill gets hooked on all these things but the time master knows how to run the day effectively. And that’s really true the time master did. So, what happened over time is that the time master slowly started seeping into my bones and the more I acted like the time master the more I realized why I really do have control and I really can take this thing and I really can set up my data to be different and the time master became who I went to run my days and then I became the time master.

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s a great story and thanks for sharing because we oftentimes don’t put enough credibility in the power of what we can do when we just change our mindset.

Jill Konrath:   Yes it was. It was fascinating to me that simply by saying I’m not going to act as Jill because poor Jill she’s incapable of managing her day effectively all she does is want to go read email and then get sucked in but by simply being the time master it changed the whole dynamic that I felt as I was operating during the day it released the pressure it allowed me to just be who I am and it was really effective. Most people don’t realize that there’s more of you than you know. You get hooked into a simple routine but you need to do is find some way to break the routine and do it easily and not constantly be fighting the habits that you’ve assumed. A fighting habits is so hard I mean anybody who’s ever dieted, which I have, knows that fighting habits is hard. It’s about learning a new way of eating and being a food master and a healthy eater and seeing yourself as that and that changes everything. We are capable of more than we know we’re really capable more than we know how. 

Jim Rembach:   Definitely. A lot of times we have to go through lessons in life in order to be able to figure those out and those are humps that we have to get over. Talking about being a young girl and having those puzzles and then wanting to help others and becoming a teacher and realizing that it wasn’t for you. There’s a lot of humps that we have to get over in order to be where we are today, is there a time where you’ve had to get over the hump that you could share? 

Jill Konrath:   I’ll just share the one that kind of sent me in the trajectory I am in today, okay. While back I was a consultant in the Minneapolis area. I was working with a number of the large corporations in town and the product launches which we talked about earlier and I had actually gotten myself  down to I was working with only two big companies that were within a 20 minute drive of my house. It was really nice and I was working in multiple business units of those corporations. What happened within a three-month period both of those companies came under pressure from Wall Street at the exact same time and eliminated all outside consultants and I had five months of work booked out ahead of me with these companies it’s 95% of my work and gone it  was literally gone overnight. 

And so I had to go back and into reinvention, actually they said it was going to come back, it took me a while and I thought it would be coming back. Then after about six months I went, oh my god, I can’t wait for them to come back I need revenue coming in the door right now what am I going to do? And then I didn’t know and I went through a crisis of faith in terms of who am I and what do I bring to the world and I was lost and I had no value proposition then I finally got myself focused again and went to market and nobody answered their phone and all calls rolled the voicemail I went, what the heck just happened I used to be good at studying up medians and now—. And then I thought, oh my god, I’m over the hill  I’ve lost my mojo and then I finally started talking to people about it and I realized that I wasn’t the only human being going through this experience. The experience was universal and virtually every entrepreneur, small business owner I was talking to was having the same problem. My sales friends were having the same issue and then suddenly I discovered that it was like this universal problem that everybody was facing. And once I was able to detach myself from it and realize it wasn’t just me then it became a problem I wanted to solve. 

And so I spent literally a full year researching what did it take to get corporate decision-makers to answer their phones return my calls respond to my emails. And then after I figure out how to do it for myself, again I was a teacher, and so now I want to say, well I don’t want everybody have to go through this horrible learning curve that I just went through how can I create a methodology that everybody can use. So, then I created my methodology then I had to extract myself and create a broader methodology that would appeal to and work with a variety of businesses. Once I did that then I wrote the book selling to big companies and then I started doing training and speaking on the topic and that was just the first step in moving from being a nice quiet consultant to being a very visible person in the greater sales field.

Jim Rembach:   You did it you’ve done a very good job with that. I know you have a lot of things going on you’ve have this new book of course and I’m sure because of someone who likes to continue to teach and learn and solve puzzles there’s more to come along. But when you start looking at all of these things, what’s one of your goals?

Jill Konrath:   Right now? My goal…my goal right now is very specific it’s to help other people with this issue of time. it’s like—to me a book is a baby I birthed this baby and I need to raise this child that I have and raising this child means letting people know and helping them understand that they can change their life that it doesn’t have to be this crazy high-stress life that we’re doing. So, for the next couple years my focused goal is to work with people and help people understand they can take back control and they can do more while working less, so, that’s a very specific goal right now. Long term, I don’t know where I’m going I kind of always wait for the next challenge to capture me and I don’t know what it is right now I just know that it won’t come until I raise my child a little bit. I know that sounds weird but that’s what it’s always happens it’s like I got take this out and share it with the world because this is stuff that I spent a lot of time learning researching figuring out and it changes smile it’s changed my life it’s changed a lot of people’s lif and so I need to share it. 

Jim Rembach:   And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick work from our sponsor: 

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Alright, here we go Fast Leader listeners it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Jill, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to move us onward and upward faster. Keith Peirce, are you ready to hoedown? 

Jill Konrath:   Oh, sure. 

Jim Rembach:   What think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Jill Konrath:   Wow! The truth. The truth my husband passed away recently and both my elderly parents are sick and so I’m kind of dealing with some personal issues that are holding me where I am and keeping me from moving in new directions. 

Jim Rembach:   My deepest sympathies on the loss of your husband. 

Jill Konrath:   Thank you. 

Jim Rembach:   What is the best leadership advice you have ever received? 

Jill Konrath:   The best leadership advice…I remember the first leadership advice I ever received was when my—I was being promoted into a sales management role and my boss said to me, Jill you’re going to be awfully surprised that other people don’t work as hard as you do. It was like, whoa I had no idea I thought everybody was as motivated and driven as I was and I discovered quickly that it wasn’t the case. Then I had to learn how to work with people to motivate them and to get them to be challenged and not get down and to step into new areas into trying new things. 

Jim Rembach:   What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success? 

Jill Konrath:   Oh, one of my secrets…that I turn all problems into challenges. 

Jim Rembach:   What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Jill Konrath:   My voice. 

Jim Rembach:   What would be one book, and it would be from any genre that you recommend to our listeners, and of course, lists or now of course we’re going to put a link to “More Sales Less Time” on your show notes page. 

Jill Konrath:   The book that that impacted me a lot was a book called Your Highest Goal. It says that whenever you do anything identify what your highest goal is before you do it because it will change how you tackle the challenge and it had a profound impact on what I’m doing for the last 12 years. 

Jim Rembach:  Okay, Fast Leader Legion you could find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Jill Konrath. Okay, Jill, this is my last hump day hold on question. Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. What skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Jill Konrath:   I think what I take back is my mindset more than anything. The mindset of—and I just kind of  mentioned it earlier that rather than letting myself get down about anything that everything is a challenge and to not be afraid if I haven’t figured it out it’s just temporary, I just haven’t figured it out yet, and I think the mindset is more important than a piece of knowledge.

Jim Rembach:  Jill, it was an honor to spend time with you today, can you please share with the Fast Leader legion how they can connect with you?

Jill Konrath:   They can connect with me via my website at JillKonrath.com where they can follow me on LinkedIn which is probably the easiest way and please tell people that my last name starts with a K. 

Jim Rembach:  Jill, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the fast leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

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