Do What You Love In The Service Of People Who Love What You Do, with Steve Faber [Episode 732]

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Steve Farber, author of “Love is Just Damn Good Business: Do What You Love in the Service of People Who Love What You Do,” joins me on this episode.

Key Takeaways

• People who are great at what they do love their company, team, and customers. Steve explains the impact of translating love into action in your work.
• Do soft skills make you nervous? Can love be quantified? Steve talks about the net promoter score and employee engagement as examples of love metrics. If you can’t measure something, is it still worthwhile to do?
• What is the measure of a relationship? If you’re not hitting your numbers, that is a measure of failed relationships. The highest-performing salespeople have great relationships. Selling is all about relationships.
• Steve shares a case study of a top salesperson who asked herself if her customers loved her. She went on a campaign to gain their love by serving them in a way that showed her love for them. Listen in for her results!
• How do you develop love? Steve discusses relationships in transactional and complex sales roles. We always want the customer to love our brand, product, and service. Steve tells how to sustain those customer conditions.
• Can you simultaneously want to serve the customer and close the deal? Steve gives a hypothetical example of a salesperson motivated only by money. Will they be loyal?
• A sales manager who loves their team will hold their team’s feet to the fire when they are living below potential. Love has high expectations. Love has a low tolerance for negativity. Love is good business!
• What about employee development? Andy and Steve explore the impetus for improvement. Steve breaks down what he means by doing ‘what you love in the service of people who love what you do.’ It starts with you.
• How do you find what you love? Steve devotes a section of his book to that question. Don’t wait around for it to dawn on you. Search for it. First, ask, “What do I love about the work that I’m doing now?”
• Steve talks about his development as a musician and then going into business. He started as a broker and then founded a brokerage. He explains why he was miserable in it, and what he looked for, next.
• Discover your purpose and apply it to your work. Andy talks about sampling careers before settling on your chosen career path.
• Steve shares a story for  the first time of his son’s motivation for education and where it took him.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul  

It’s time to accelerate. Hey friends, this is Andy. Welcome to Episode 732 732 of Accelerate the sales podcast of record. I have another excellent episode lined up for you today. Joining me as my guest is best-selling author and renowned speaker Steve Farber. Some of you may know Steve as the author of the book titled the radical leap. Well, in this week’s episode, I’ll be talking to Steve about his new book, titled love this just damn good business. Do what you love in the service of people who love what you do. And I have to admit, I love that phrase, do what you love in the service of people who love what you do. So, in this conversation, Steve and I are playing off this idea of doing what you love in the service of people who love what you do, we dive into the impact of translating love into action in your business. Talk about how love can be quantified and measured, how to gain the love of your customers. We’re talking about why love leads to greater expectations and accountability within the organization. And we’ll also dive into how to discover what you love to do. So all that and much, much more Now, before we get to Steve, I want to take a second to talk to you about vanilla soft. Vanilla soft is the industry’s leading sales engagement platform, but mostly simply refers to it as the solution. It’s the solution to ensure sales development reps make the right number of attempts for every lead. It’s the solution to ensure sales development reps use more than just email that they consistently use LinkedIn and the dreaded telephone. As part of their sales playbook. It’s the solution to serve sales development reps, the next best lead over and over again. So to hit their numbers. The solution starts with the right sales cadence. And that’s why you need to check out vanilla soft guide on sales cadences. It’s titled sales cadences. what works what doesn’t, and why you’re frustrated and you can get it now at vanilla soft.com. forward slash Andy Paul. That’s right. Get it at vanilla soft calm forward slash Andy Paul. Okay, let’s jump into Steve. Steve. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Yeah, look forward to talking. today. We’re going to talk about your new book. Love is just damn good business. Said it’s a book I really enjoyed reading. What was the impetus to write this book?

 

Steve Farber  

Well, you know, it’s really handy when it comes down to a simple observation that I’ve made. After doing this work now for 30 years, I think I can make a very simple conclusion and an observation that will not surprise you to hear. And that observation is love is just damn good business. Huh? I mean, seriously, it keeps coming back around to that when I look at the best companies that I’ve worked with the most effective leaders that I’ve known and worked with over the years. It always comes down to that. So really, and I’m not the first one to notice this, certainly, and I and I haven’t made this up. But but so often, you see, you hear this language, right? You hear you hear people who are really, really great at what they do. They talk about how much they love their company or they love their team or they love their customers or they love So I just heard this word so much, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t just because I hear the language. When I look at those leaders and I look at those companies and see what they do, really, in essence, they’re taking that, you know, when some would disregard a sentiment or a feeling. And they’re translating that into action into the way that they do business and into the way that they lead. And I just don’t think we shine the spotlight on that as much as we should. So that’s that’s where the impetus for the book came from.

 

Andy Paul  

I love the premise such as do what you love and service that people who love what you do. Now, when she points you out, you walk about and talk about the book. This idea of soft skills often makes people nervous. If you consider that this love is a soft skill, because increasingly in this data driven age, we can’t quite know we’re nervous with things we can’t quantify. But you make the case that you really can quantify this

 

Steve Farber  

Yeah, I think We are, you know, in essence, I think we already do. We just don’t call it that. So for example, you know, one of the ideas that we bring out in the book in a couple of different ways is the net promoter score. So the net promoter score for the uninitiated among us, is, is simply a measure of the answer to a very simple question, how likely are you to refer us to our product or service or company to family or friend, right? scale of one to 10? But a simple question, and really what that is, is it’s a love metric, right? Give you a 10. I’m saying I love you. It doesn’t say that, you know, specifically on, you know, on the metric, you know, that that’s that that is, you know, the highest number but essentially, that’s our experience. So we do measure it. In a lot of ways we measure not only do we measure Net Promoter Score, but we measure employee engagement. And all of these things are just another way of saying I love this place. I love this. And having said that, love is a hard thing to measure. If we, if we think of it solely as, as a feeling or an abstract, like I said before sentiment, and you know, how do you measure that other than it’s just a very subjective thing? I know I have it. I know if I don’t. I know I love my kids. I don’t measure it. Um, you know, but still, I think it’s, it makes us nervous. Because if I can’t, there are those among us who believe if I can’t measure it, it is not worthwhile to do and why and I think that’s fallacious.

 

Andy Paul  

Yeah. Why don’t we see this in spades in sales, right. So primarily the sales audience is Yeah, I’ve spent good In my career, teaching people about relationships and how to build relationships, you know, effective relationships in a sales context. And increasingly, we’re seeing this pushback against this whole idea of relationships in sales, because, yeah, because it’s like, well, I don’t I don’t want people to I don’t need people to like me, I want them to respect me. And it’s, and it’s, I think they’re just uncomfortable with this term relationship on one hand, on the second hand, on the other hand, they can’t measure the value of that relationship, right? They’re not given a metric or by so obsessed with metrics these days. I don’t have a metric for relationships. Like I say, Yeah, you do. It’s you’re not hitting your numbers. That’s a big metric relationship. You think? You think it’s because you didn’t do a good demo? Well, no, I can track every failure back to your failure of relationship.

 

Steve Farber  

I’ll tell you who does not have a problem with that. What salespeople do not have a problem? And you tell me if I’m right or wrong, because you’re the sales expert. Salespeople that do not have a problem with this idea of the highest performing salespeople in every organization. Pretty much, right? I mean, they, they there they are, unless you’re in a very kind of a transact transactional, right? No, that’s that’s a different kind of a different animal. But if you look at the, you know, the really, you know, top notch enterprise oriented salespeople, it’s, it’s all about relationships. In fact, it’s so obvious that it even seems redundant to say it out loud anymore.

 

Andy Paul  

Yeah, why I agree. And that’s why I’m always sort of taken aback when people think, because there’s so often this connotation of relationship as well. You know, we have to be friends. And I can imagine some of the same things happening when you talk about love. It’s like, yes, people think Well, that seems a little unnecessarily machinery.

 

Steve Farber  

Let me let me Give me an example. Sure. So I was speaking at a conference and a woman in the audience came up to me afterwards and she said, You know, I’m a big fan of your book, the radical leap, and, and so is my top salesperson. And she said, let me tell you her story. So great love to hear it. She said, Well, we refer to her. Her name is Vicki. And we refer to her on our team as the original love doctor.

 

That’s her nickname.

 

That sounds interesting. She said, Yeah, she’s our top salesperson. She’s really amazing. You should talk to her. I said, I’d love to hear a story. So she gave me her cell phone number, and I called her up one day out of the blue. She answered the phone and I said, Is this the original love?

 

Andy Paul  

She probably was concerned at that point about the call.

 

Steve Farber  

She kind of freaked her out a little bit. Yeah. So then, you know, I of course, I said who is this? So I explained, you know, I told her I was of course she was. She was excited to tell me your story, which is this. She hadn’t read. I think she had read the radical leap. She had read, you know, my ideas on love where she heard me in a conference. I can’t remember exactly where. But she said that she started to ask yourself the question. Do my customers know, companies like it? target and Walmart, right? Do my customers love me? Because I know they like me. I’ve got a good relationship with them. They do a lot of business with me, but do they love me? So she went on this? And she said the answer to that was really No, I don’t think so. So she went on a campaign to get her customers to love her, which on the surface sounds kind of manipulative. But here’s but here’s why it wasn’t. Because she, I mean, she really reflected on this and she said, Okay, well, the fact of the matter is, there’s really no reason for them to love me unless I really do. Love them. Do I love as you started with that? Am I really serving them in a way that shows that I love them? Mm hmm. Just ask the question. Well, when I’m when I’m with people that I love in my personal life, friends and family, what do I do? What does it look like? Well, for one thing, I know what’s going on in their lives and other stories and other kids. I know. She just did this analysis. And she allowed herself First of all, to, you know, to have that feeling for her customers. And then whenever she saw them, and they do a lot of traveling together and trade shows and all that kind of thing. That’s what she started to do. She started to act with them like she does with everybody else that she loves in her, you know, in her personal life, of course, in an appropriate way. Right, right. Obviously. Hope That’s obvious. And what do you think happened? This was already a top performing salesperson, okay. This is not the transactional world. We were talking about a few minutes, right? These are high end sales per sales volume increased right? By $300 million. Now, I know she does big contracts. It’s a big company, but I don’t care how you slice it. That’s big.

 

Andy Paul  

That’s pretty big. Right?

 

Steve Farber  

And, and so so, you know, how do you measure it? That’s how.

 

Andy Paul  

So let me ask you a question. Because of this again, we have a sales audience here. And you know, the big trend in sales, which you may or may not be familiar with trends, if you do work with the SAS companies, is sort of the hyper specialization of the sales role. And so, instead of having one person like Vicki who goes out and she prospects or customers and she closes them and she services them on an ongoing basis, because she increased the sales to them. Now, we’ve got somebody who’s role in the business development rep sales development rep an entry level role. That is prospect, right, there’s trying to get that meeting set right or to then hand off to an account exec, who’s, you know, in some cases very transactional, there’s called closers, but there’s our traditional sales rep. And they only take it to the first order, and then they hand it off to customer success, who then manages and handles renewals and so on? That love right in between really from you from the customer side, right? Yeah. How do you develop that? You’re constantly handing somebody else handing the ball off to somebody else.

 

Steve Farber  

Yeah, so in that case, great question. So there are lots of jobs, whether the sales related or not then are more transactional where the the connection with the end user, the customer is by its nature transactional. So a relationship there is different. But that’s just one dimension. I think there’s the, the engagement of love goes beyond creating that kind of sales relationship. So here’s what Here’s what I mean. And let me kind of step back for a minute and put it in the right context. Okay? Fundamentally, ultimately, what we’re after as business people, whatever role we play, is we want our customers to love us. It comes back to the net promoter score, right? We want them to love our product, our service, our company, our brand, the experience of working with us, right? Because anything short of that doesn’t really give us a competitive advantage because we all know you look at tons of research on this customer and say I’m satisfied with you, it gives you a five on the net promoter score. There is no greater likelihood they’re gonna they’re gonna stick around. Leave, right? There’s nothing holding in there. So we want our customers to love us. That’s to think of that as the starting premise. The only way to really make that happen for our customers in a meaningful and sustainable way over time, is to create an environment or a culture that people love working. And I can’t create that kind of culture or contribute to that kind of culture. Unless I love this myself first. Mm hmm. So when you’re talking about, you know, the hyper specialization of the sales process, the other generic term that we use, not necessarily accurately, is that’s a team. Right? It’s a sales team.

 

Andy Paul  

Theoretically. 

 

Steve Farber  

Now, though, you know, just because something is called the team doesn’t mean that function does that role. Right. But from from the customer’s perspective, from the clients perspective, that’s precisely what it is the The customer doesn’t make a distinction between Oh, you’re the guy that set the appointment and you’re the, you know, you’re the woman that called me up and you’re the person that they have an experience that’s either going to be positive, really positive, neutral or really negative, right? And we all contribute to that experience all of us, everybody that touches them and everybody that doesn’t. Mm hmm. Oh, so love is a cultural thing, the more we can create an environment that people love, what we’re passionate for it stands for our values, believe we can make a contribution, you know, valuable contribution to each other and to the world and to our customers. Our customers will feel that in the experience of doing business with us, we are more likely to be more responsive, to be more productive, to be more engaged, to be more profitable in the way that we do work. Because if I love this place, and I love what we’re trying to do, my standards go up

 

Andy Paul  

Right. And I think this is one of the lines that’s really hard for sales organizations to cross, which is that, look, I’m hiring these salespeople, I just want them to be motivated purely by money. Yeah. Right. And so if their incentive is purely monetary, then their incentive to buy into a culture of love or whatever. Yeah, fairly minimal. And this is what you see often communicated to customers, right, is that they understand that the salesperson is very transactional, just there. You know what we do every time, right? We say look, we’re trying to build a trust based relationship and we love you and then we get to the end of the month, you know, we’re all here to serve you. And then we get down to the month then, but if you close this month, we’ll give you a 10% discount. And suddenly your motivations are completely transparent to the customer. It’s not about serving them. It’s not about love. It’s about Yeah, I just need to get this deal.

 

Steve Farber  

Yeah, I think I think we get tripped up because we consider those, those phases, those motivations as mutually exclusive, that it’s all about the money or it’s not about money. It’s about all, not all of it. Money is important, sir. And salespeople you know salespeople who are paid on commission are obviously motivated by money. The question from a sales management standpoint is: Is that it? Is that all there is that motivates them? And the answer of course, is no. If I listen, if I let me let me speak in extremes, sir, I hate I hate this place. Right. I can’t stand it. I don’t like the people. I don’t like the work. I know. The only reason I’m here is because they pay me a boatload of money. Right? There’s a lot of people in that circumstance who are really good salespeople. They make lots of money, and they’re freakin miserable, right? Every day, okay, so if that’s the case, now let’s say there’s a startup down the street that is recruiting this person. Let’s say you’re that person. Right? And you go and he checks it out, Okay, I’m gonna make, maybe I’ll make a little less money there. Maybe maybe not as a startup, I don’t know. You go and you check it out. And the places lit up. I mean, people love being there. There’s a lot of energy. There’s a great camaraderie, camaraderie, there’s a good vibe in the place. Chances are pretty good, as motivated by money as I am. I’m going to take the chance to go there. Because the money could potentially be just as good if not better. But my experience is going to be phenomenal. phenomenally different. Why wouldn’t I go? Why wouldn’t I go? Sure. So the environment that we create in sales teams and in companies is our best recruitment and retention. I don’t know if tool is the right word, but that’s certain that word comes from right. And if all we’re doing is just driving the money, and we sacrifice everything else for it, which is the way unfortunately many people think they’re supposed to lead, where we are undercutting our own performance ultimately, ultimately, yeah, but the other thing Andy, is that is that I think there is a misconception that if I love you, everything is okay.

 

Andy Paul  

Apparently help held by people has never been married before. Exactly.

 

Steve Farber  

It’s funny because in the business context, that’s what scares us, right? It’s like, well, so the expectation is something like, you know, Andy, you haven’t hit your numbers now for two months in a row.

 

But I love you. So that’s okay.

 

That’s okay. You pay, you don’t go through a rough patch and maybe you’ll turn around in another six months or so. Because I love you. I don’t want to, you know, hold your feet to the fire. That’s not what it looks like. So, ironically Hmm, maybe it’s ironic. almost an ironical, great word is that love real love, if I really love you, if I’m your if I’m your sales manager, and I really love you, I believe in you, I know you have talent that I see that you are not living up to your own potential, my my, I’m gonna hold your feet to the fire even more than if I didn’t care about you if all if you’re just a number to me, right. In other words, love comes with higher standards, not lower standards, higher expectations, not lower expectations. And this is the ironic part. Oftentimes, higher levels of love are accompanied by lower levels of tolerance. Because if I really love this place and what we’re doing, I don’t tolerate people slacking off. I don’t tolerate subpar behavior. I don’t tolerate, you know, the bad attitude and the and use the negativeness. Because we’re better than that here. You say, so. So this is why love is just damn good business. It’s hard. It’s not soft, fluffy, California touchy feely, hoo, ha, crap. It really challenges us to raise our standards all the way around.

 

Andy Paul  

Yeah, so let’s translate that down to the individual level. Right, because, yeah, one of the big problems, and I will just take sales as an example is and I think it’s true, probably across the board, but increasingly the onus is put on the individual for their own personal development in their career. Right. Yeah. But these are investing less than training and the training they’re given is ineffective. And so a question is, yeah, how Do you take this concept to people? Yeah. I had a love for what I do. I love my customers. But that’s hard when people take that next step to say, Yeah, I need to invest in getting better and improving and be able to elevate my ability to add value to my customers. And that’s a very hard bridge to get people to take these days. Because, you know, it’s like, as I say, yeah, people think life is an open book test these days, right? everything, all the information is available to me. Why do I need to? Why do I need to learn it? If I can always access it? And so we see this, this rising specter of noise with the Dunning Kruger effect you’ve talked about in your book is Yeah, how do you get people to invest?

 

Steve Farber  

Well, it’s a great question. And, and it goes to the heart of how the book is structured. Actually. The subtitle of the book is do what you love in the service. People who love what you do, right? Which is also the framework that I’m suggesting people consider. Okay, right. So there’s three elements to that. Do what you love. Part One, in the service of people, part two. We love what you do. Part Three, okay? Yes, I’m doing what I love. But that’s not enough. If all I was doing is what I love, you know, for my own development, because it makes me feel good, because whatever. I mean, that’s fine. But if that’s where it stops, when you take that to an extreme, it’s just another way of saying narcissism. As long as I’m doing what I love really doesn’t matter. Anybody else? Right. So the second point that is important, you know, I need to light my own fire as it were, I could speak poetically. You know, what is it about this work that I love or the people that I work with are the things that we the values that we stand for the future that we’re trying to create, only to find something there, but then the second In part in the service of people is the context. So I’m using what I love, but I’m using that to serve, I’m using that to serve you, you my customer, you my colleague, you my co worker, you might family, whatever the context is, right? So now I have a connection in the way that I serve you. And because it’s rooted in, in my own heart, I’m not serving you to some minimal, you know, expectation because just because I’m supposed to, I’m serving you, because I want to have a significant impact on your life. And when I do that, when I do that, you reciprocate. So that’s who loves what you do. Right? Right. So it all comes back around. So personal development is really important. And we need to take it to the next step is how do I use what I’m learning and my knowledge and my wisdom and what I know, if I yeah, it’s easy for me to Google something like you said, you know, that I can get knowledge everywhere. But the challenge is to take what I’m learning and use that to serve you. Right. That’s the leadership element. And that’s the competitive business element.

 

Andy Paul  

Right. And that’s, and I’ve said this for a long time. And what I’ve written is that Yeah, sales isn’t the individual salesperson. This is a leadership position. I mean, it starts with you, it doesn’t start with your manager, it starts with you. So I would jump ahead to another part of the book, which I liked is, is this idea sort of finding what you love? Yeah, there’s actually been things written about I think it’s just a few months ago, study came out saying this whole idea of finding your passion is maybe counterproductive. Yeah, you probably saw that. But yeah, like this, this part of the book, you talk about finding what you love. And what you’re saying is that it’s not happenstance. This is something that’s a deliberate pursuit.

 

Steve Farber  

Yeah, I believe it is for most of us. I mean, there are people we’ve all known that just from the time they were young just had a sense just having that knowing of, of who they were and what they were going to do with their lives and their purpose. And I think the earlier on in life that we can discover that the better it is, but most of us have to work at it. And, and it’s about and I think that’s an empowering thought, right? It’s because we all have this, most of us have this sense that finally what I love, having a purpose in life, whatever, whatever kind of philosophical phraseology you want to get into. Intuitively, it feels like that’s a healthy thing to have. But, if we think that somehow one day, it’s going to dawn on us and we just have to wait around for that to happen. That’s, that’s not particularly healthy, because it puts us in a kind of a vicious theme mentality when we don’t have that, right. So instead search for it. So it’s really easy to start doing that. And you can, there’s a very simple question, you can start asking yourself right now, the bigger question is, why do I love the work that I’m doing now? And if the answer to that is well, you know, I don’t agree. Which is a legitimate answer if it’s real right. Then there’s another variation on that which is well, what do I love about it? Is there something that I love about this work? Because I’m not suggesting you have to love everything about your work. I don’t love everything about my work. Hmm. You know, you can tell right now I’m in a hotel room, right? I don’t want to travel. It might work. I don’t love hotel rooms. And bad WiFi that comes with it. I don’t. I don’t love airports. Right? I don’t love, I don’t particularly love. You know, the mechanics of marketing and you know, all that kind of back end stuff. But there are things that I have to do that I don’t love doing in order to do the work that I love, right. And there’s a technical term for that. It’s called being an adult. So I’m not suggesting and I love everything about your work. But I think most of us assume that there’s nothing about our work that we love. But yeah, I really, you know, I’ve got a really great friend that I met here, I believe in our values, the mission of the company is really great. The product is amazing. So what is it that you love, and if you start focusing on that, and then seeing what kind of impact that has on not only how you feel, but how you act and behave and perform, what we begin to discover is that there are things around us that that are right under our nose that we’re already passionate about is really part of our so called purpose. We just haven’t paid attention to it. So we have to start looking under all kinds of rocks sometimes to make that happen. I want to. This was my experience. This is exactly my own experience. Yeah. So you talk

 

Andy Paul  

You talk about it in the book, right?

 

Steve Farber  

Yeah. So I started it out. You know, I wasn’t, I was a sales guy once upon a time. I mean, I guess you can argue that I still am in service like all of us are. But I started out in business. When I started out wanting to be a musician, I am a musician but I started out wanting to make a living as a musician also started out really young with a family and discovered that those two paths so I opted for feeding people versus just playing music. And, I went into business and I had a friend who was in the Commodities Futures business which, so you know, got a job. Right. And, and pure sales. Yeah, pure sales, getting on the phone, talking to prospects trying to, you know, open accounts, and make trades. And I was really good at it. The only problem was, the Before I got to the problem, the other thing that I discovered that I was good at was that I was an entrepreneur. So I started out being a broker for somebody. And within a couple of years, I had my own brokerage firm and shop. So before I was 30 years old, and now I was running a sales team. And the only problem with the whole scenario was that I freaking hated it. I hated everything about it. And, and the main reason is not everything. I love my team. I love the act of doing business. Right? It’s kind of a generic way, right? But I, the people lost their money all the time, because that’s the nature of that beast that is expected to surpass. It wasn’t that they didn’t know the risks. They knew the risk, but that didn’t make me feel any better. So I just had this moral dilemma with my own business and my experience was, I hate this. I hate this. And so I made a decision to get out before I even knew what I was going to get into. So this comes with Back to your point of, you know, what is you know, how do you find this purpose? And is it even worthwhile that I was so miserable then and I did I wrote about this in the preface to the book, actually, I was living in San Francisco at the time, I was walking around downtown, I was still in the commodities business, and I was so miserable. And I knew two things with equal clarity. I knew there was something that I was supposed to be doing on this planet and knew it. But the other thing that I knew with equal crystal clarity was that I had no frickin idea what it was no idea. And then what happened was, it seemed like a random circumstance, but I don’t think it was because my antenna was really out. And I was really paying attention. I was in a conversation one day with a friend who said something about the mutual friend of ours teaching some kind of workshops for corporations. And I’m telling you that that was all the information that I had. That’s it. Yeah. And all my lights went on. So that’s it. That’s what I was supposed to be doing. I don’t know what that is exactly right. But it was a very intuitive kind of a hit. So then I started doing research on it, and I discovered this whole kind of training and development industry. And that led me on a path that actually started in 1988. Now, and and led me to the kind of work that I do now. So yeah, it is worthwhile to discover your purpose and to be able to apply that to your work. I think I’m a living breathing example of that. But it can also be, it can be quite a challenge along the way. in discovering what that is.

 

Andy Paul  

Yeah, and I think if you’ve read David Epstein’s book range, which has been a bestseller recently, why generalists triumph in a specialized world is as he talks about how people that reach high levels of accomplishment in a specific field typically go through the sampling phase of their careers or of their chosen pursuit. And if it’s sports or whatever, we’re more so than people that specialize early and you do one thing forever, is people gonna try different things. And yeah, sales is oftentimes, though I have talked to hundreds, hundreds of people on this show alone, is sales oftentimes second or third choice, or second or third career, let’s say. And that’s perfectly fine. Yeah, sure. I’ve tried all the things

 

Steve Farber  

You said, sir. And it would seem to me that sales is a good way to do that kind of sampling, right? Because you develop that sales skill and you can apply it in virtually every industry.

 

Andy Paul  

Well, you also get exposure, lots of different types of businesses and different types of people. I mean, yeah, I think it’s, it’s a great basis from which to sample Absolutely.

 

Steve Farber  

But I think you know, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. Then I come along with a book that says love is just damn good business and you should do it. You love in the service of people who love what you do. Doesn’t that sound easy? Just plug that in and see what happens. But it’s not, it’s not easy. It’s a discipline. And it involves trial and error. And you know, then you hope you just, you know, you keep yours you keep yours, you keep your wits about you, you pay attention and you challenge yourself to try new things. And who knows what the timeline is. Who knows? I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you a story that I have not shared publicly before. I’ve been telling friends and family about it. My son Jeremy is really a really good example of this. So Jeremy is now 31 years old. Just to give you a little backstory, he graduated when he graduated high school way back when he graduated with a 2.2 grade point average. I’m sure it’s not a great student. Although he is quick to point out that he started his senior year with a 1.1 grade point average. And, you know, he just wasn’t in school and then he traveled for a couple years and finally decided, Okay, I should go to school, I should go to college and he didn’t want to, but he felt he should. And he went to San Francisco State for a couple of years and basically bombed out. And, and we kept telling him the whole time. Look, dude, school is not for everybody. You don’t have to go to school. So don’t put that pressure on yourself, find something else. So and he left he left school, and you know, and he had a good time. He was living in San Diego. He’s working at a couple of clubs, you know, it’s just a good experience. But then he just decided, after a few things, you know, personal challenges of his own. He decided he wanted to go to school. So now, the motivation became intrinsic, it was internal, right. So he went to community college. He basically had to start over. And you know, the idea is you go to community For a couple years, fulfill your requirements, fulfill your requirements, then you can transfer into a four year school do your junior and senior year anybody? Great. So he killed two years at at college and Moran up in the Bay Area. Children started applying to four year schools. The punchline is last week. He started class at Columbia. Very cool. Yeah. So he called me up when he got accepted to Columbia. And he said ma quote, how’s that for a turnaround?

 

Andy Paul  

Which is a great story because my brother’s son followed a similar path and ended up at Columbia to finish his degree as well as, as a young 28 or 29 year old student.

 

Steve Farber  

So he’s probably in the same same school. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so Jeremy is an econ major at Columbia, which means that his path is into the finance world, you know, private equity and that kind of thing. If you would ask him that three, four years ago, he had no idea. Absolutely no idea. So now he’s 31 years old, he’s on this amazing path. And he went through a lot of he went through a lot of banks in his in his early 20s. You know, so what the hell am I supposed to? What am I supposed to be doing? And we were always confident, I was always confident that he would find it. And it just, it is an amazing thing to see. So I think we all need to give ourselves, we need to do two things simultaneously, that I think are can feel like they’re at odds with each other. We have to be really attentive, and turn over all those proverbial rocks in looking for what it is we really love to do. And we have to be really patient. Yeah. So it’s that persistence and that patience mixed together that I think is kind of an advanced maneuver for some people.

 

Andy Paul  

It’s a great story appreciate your sharing it i mean it’s it’s yeah said reminisce so my my nephew a little bit two of my my son who’s my partner here on the sales house who 31 but yeah had a has had an interesting journey to this point but you know sponsor playing is passionate about with our digital marketing or doing and it just takes time, right? Yeah, you never know. Yeah, I feel even though I was in sales in my 20s and sales manager I I sampled lots of different things. Actually stepped out of sales for a while and did program management then got back into sales. Yeah, just yeah, just the path that took me so. Well, good. Well, Steve, I really appreciate you joining me. We learnt a lot today, not the least of which is that unbeknownst to us, we live about 200 feet apart from each other in San Diego.

 

Remarkable just across the street. Yeah, across the street literally across the street. So we’ll definitely make sure we get together in person sometime.

 

Steve Farber  

If only they were If only there were restaurants and coffee shops to choose from.

 

Andy Paul

In that area. Right.

 

Steve Farber  

There were a few.

 

Andy Paul  

That’s right. All right. So thanks again for joining to tell people how they can find out more about what you’re doing and get in touch with you.

 

Steve Farber  

Yeah, yeah, thank you. So the new book love is just damn good business. You should be able to find it wherever fine books are sold.

 

Andy Paul  

And I recommend that it’s a book well worth reading.

 

Steve Farber  

Thank you so much. And then Steve farber.com is where I live online. You can find my blog there is lots of videos, audios, all kinds of content, that and in a way to reach out to stay connected, which I would love to do.

 

Andy Paul  

All right. Great. Well, thank you, and we’ll look forward to talking in person soon.

 

Steve Farber  

Thanks so much, Andy. it was a pleasure. Thanks.