Our discussion with Gareth Timmins, former Royal Marine and author, continues this episode.
We delve into goal setting, if visualisation works and how to cope with the post completion lull!
So much here that can be applied to your everyday life, at home at work, with your finances or even in the gym.
Here are the highlights:
{01:03} Visualisation
{01:48} Process Goals
{03:20} Focus on Failure
{13:37} Consistency
{14:01} Post Completion Lull
{21:22} Muhammad Ali
About Symco Training:
Symco Training was founded in 2000 by Simon Bowkett and it was his belief that the business had to offer its clients something different. That difference was clear to Simon from his days in the dealership when he experienced many sales trainers who had all the answers, but were unable, unwilling or both to actually show the delegate how they could be implemented. It remains the ethos of the business today. You see, Symco only employ trainers that are committed to delivering not only in spiring and insightful training, but are equally as happy to demonstrate these skills and techniques with real customers in your own showroom. We believe in order for sales training to be effective and in Simon’s words ‘real world’, it needs to be tried and tested in the only place it matters the showroom floor. There is no room for theory when your goals are for your team to sell more cars, hours or parts and retain more profit. In dealerships around the world the focus applied by many of the sales executives is to try and sell a deal. Symco specialise in getting your teams to focus on selling themselves, the product and then supporting this with the deal.
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Welcome to the Selling and the Motor Trade Podcast, an association with Symco Training. This is the weekly podcast where we share best practice tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service department and generally put more profit into your dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Bowkett. Some of you probably already know me as Skipping. I would start by saying thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Listen, you're world now because lots of people listen to this and think, how do I take all of this military training, the self-discipline into their personal life, like personal fitness, their personal finances or business. So I want to explore this and your life now, you took lots about goal setting and getting people to focus on what they want. I want to open this up now about visualization. You visualize the goal setting and the goal should be smart, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timed. The reason why I say that is I wrote a book myself and that book in our family was called that fucking book because it took three and a half years, maybe four years of my life and I just couldn't get it written. I couldn't get it finished. I had no self-discipline. There's a lovely lady called Deb Jenkins working for the publisher who said, oh love, you need some goals. I went, hold on, I teach goal training for a living. I understand goals. And she said something to me. She said, ah, do you have an outcome goal, not a process goal. I said, what? She said, you see it finished, don't you? Because I've done all the visualization stuff. I've seen it. I've seen the title. I've seen it on the bookshelf. I've seen it sold there. She said, you've got an outcome goal, not a process goal. What do you mean? She said, well, how many thousands of words this book can be? I said, ah, no, that's sick. She said, that's 60,000 words. She said, right, you got to do this in six months. That's 10,000 words you need to give me every month. That's two and a half thousand words you need to give me every week. That's 500 words a day you need to do. So you need to get to me every Monday morning. You need to give me two and a half thousand words if you don't. And by the way, I love it a bit. But I said, bloody hell, I've got to get at least bloody words if I don't. She's going to beat me up. So I want to explore this because I wouldn't have got that written and it transformed our business if wasn't for her beat me up and get me to go into a process goal, not an outcome goal. So then I started thinking, well, hold on, just visualization work. I've seen someone like in Sporting Worlds, a Lewis Hamilton, turned around and said, well, I think visualization is a lot of shy, actually. He doesn't believe that when you get a vessel believer, but you talked about something I've never heard about before. You didn't focus on the visualization, the outcome goal. You focused on something else. Thalia. And I want to get your tape on it because I loved it. I hadn't seen it this way. And can you give me your tape of goal setting? Yeah. So I, and again, I've done lots of research on this, which is kind of going to book two, which I've called like inverted thinking, which is like obviously looking back through time from where you currently are. I think that all like contemporary understanding and research tells you to load value onto your end goal because that is ultimately, you know, during that process why you want to know why you're doing it and whatnot. The problem with that is, is that when you become fatigued or burnt out because you're chasing down this particular endeavor, you lose your motivation. I lost my motivation so many times throughout Romerine's training. And I wanted that more than anybody. And there were times in that where I just didn't want to be there anymore. And I wanted to come home. Even at like week 26, we're like six weeks left. That far isn't really good. That far into your thinking of I've had enough. I just thought I don't want to fucking do this anymore. I don't want to be here. They were only temporary, but it would have been enough. I don't have other kind of cognitive tools. People make decisions on the future in the moment when they're fatigued, when they're tired, when they're at mid to sleep, when they're cold, when they're wet and the leaves. But I've kind of encountered out before I went in. And as a result, I really, really depressed as to like what the options were on the table. I lived in a little mining village up north and whatnot. And there were no opportunity whatsoever. You went to work, you weren't a very, very small amount of money. You predominantly lived in a really like a bog standard house and the rest of your money went on being in the pub. And that life just depressed me massively. So I didn't want to re inherit that. So I just absolutely focused on failure and just thought I do not want to re inherit that. I also don't want to validate negative opinion. So all these people that said, Oh, we'll see you. We'll see you in a month. You'll be back in a couple of weeks. You've got no chance of making it. When my motivation went as a kind of a backstop really, I landed there and I were like, well, what's your option? And it will like, well, I could go on. And every time I got, I arrived at, I could go home. I would quickly remember what I was due to inherit because I've been there and ruminated in that for some time. So that was still raw. But also I knew that if I went home, these people would be validated and they'd have the last life. And I absolutely couldn't have had that. So for me, it provided such a rigid anchor of stability at the final stage of me like not wanting to be there anymore. And it's a consequence, mate. I kind of there were times when I were like doing it and I thought I don't even want to fucking do this anymore. But I thought, well, what's the alternative? And quickly over time, I mean motivation came back and I thought, well, I love this. I'm going to do this. And then I'd kind of ride back there. But every time I arrived back there, I visualized what failure looked like. And every single time I visualized what failure looked like, I didn't want to. And that kept me in. Yeah, it's just I've not really heard that concept before. It's one of those things that I think, have I done that in my life? I started Simcoe training 23 years ago. I remember distinctively my manager at the time saying, you can't run your own sales running company. And I can remember saying, yeah, I'll bloody show you. And I think in my life, maybe that now again, I've swallowed all the books and visualization and focus on the training company built and what it looks like. And I suppose is it both, Gareth? I think you've got to you've got to use a mixture of both. It comes down to like jewelists thinking, like parallel thinking, where you have to hold in your mind to kind of irrational beliefs, one where you've got 100% belief in yourself, but another element of it where you you fully acknowledge and believe and you fully acknowledge and come to terms of the fact that there's a lot of elements that are out of your control that could sabotage your journey. And it's whether at that point you want to kind of fall victim to that and subscribe to abject failure, which is you kind of doing your own legs, or whether you're going to persevere and get around it. But ultimately, the people that found success and that were the most successful, they had jewelist or parallel thinking. Yeah. Where we were able to hold two contrasting beliefs at the same time. In your business life now, do you write your goals down? Do you know where you're going to be in 12 months, five years time? Do you still do that? Do you look at that visualization stuff? I do. It's only recently, probably this last 18 months really, that I've not wrote down some like short, medium, long term goals that I want to achieve only because like becoming the number one percent came out in 2021. And then almost when that came out, I wrote down a model in the back of a taxi for a cycle of mindset that I felt that you encountered by being outside of your comfort zone and having a growth mindset. So I've been working on that for the past nearly three years and that's coming out next year, but that's kind of all consumed me. So I've been like kind of on this journey of getting a publishing offer, getting a deal, writing the damn thing and then getting it out. So I think once that's probably done, which is due to the final drafts during December, I'll start writing down some goals that I want to kind of take down again next year and the years to come. Yeah, but again, I just love the concept on focus on the failure because I suppose when it's cold and wet and people have to get up and train for that marathon, it's the failure of not doing the training. And I'll just add this as well. It's so easy to look back at the past, we're rilced into glasses if you don't invest in that. You can quite easily go into something really difficult and think, you know what, I'm quite happy to retake on that life, that previous life. And it always kind of like in talks, I like in this to like a bit like it's a bit like a faulty relationship, you split up with a partner and you have a period of, I don't know, single explanation or you get into another relationship. And all of a sudden you think, you know what, that wasn't really that bad, that relationship. I might have probably got back to my ex. And it's not until you get with the ex that you realize why you left and you can fall victim to that. So it's really important to really dissect and introspect and visualize just and get really accurate gauge of what you stand to inherit when you go on an acquisition of to attain a goal because when it gets tough, it's so easy to go back. Yeah, it is. And that goal is working out going back to relationship or writing book number two, because you went through the pain of writing book number one, trying to get publishing deals and so forth. It's difficult. Lots of rejection, I imagine, lots of no. And they're going in and doing it again. But you don't have that failure that you can draw back on to motivate you to do book two because book runs are success. Book runs go very, very well there. Do you have any other tips for, I suppose I'm drama, let's take someone who, I don't know, they are trained for a bathroom. Let's talk about that. They are building a business and they go to speak to that next client and they don't want to. And it's easier just to go, you know what, it's Friday afternoon, it's five past five. I just want to go to the pub. Okay. Any tips to keep people up and on that you've go through to get. Yeah. I just gained comfort and an element of kind of motivation and desire really from knowing that the vast majority are going to the pub. And I'm not. I'm staying disciplined to what I need to do. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not a complete disciplinarian and lived this really rigid. I'm absolutely not. I, I make sure throughout the day I've got maybe four or five wins within the day where I know the positive success behaviors. And if I've hit them, then I can, I'm quite happy and I can kind of deviate off slightly for a couple of hours. But I'm always kind of, I am always looking at how you can prepare my current day to set me up for success the following day. Okay. You know what I mean? That's how I always work. I kind of just, I'm just always remained very consistent and just try to be, try to do better every day. It's kind of where I'm currently at. So Gary, is there some sort of post completion love? Maybe that's what I'm looking at because you've gone through this 34 weeks. I'm trying, you've, you've got there. Okay. And you must want to relax. The reason why I say that in the business world, I see so often where I deal a group of manager that they've had there the best month they ever had. They've had the best year they ever had. Okay. And then they almost go into, ah, we've made it. Now, I want to ask you that because you clearly not done that with the success of your first book, you're straight into the book too. And did you find any sort of post completion law when you finish your training? Yeah. I did retraining, mate. I had a finished that and I was just like, I've made it, I've done it now. Is it almost like that? Yeah. Like kind of, I've made it, I've done it. And I mean, that lasted probably two weeks. And then I just started thinking, right, what am I going to do now? The problem I had with that was, is like, once you've done that, what can you do to basically top that really? So I had a period of being like quite lost in terms of what I wanted to do and challenged myself on for a number of years, probably. And I were like, you know, probably in a bit of a comfort zone where I were riding up the back of it. And that world potentially like quite dangerous. But I will say this, like whatever I've achieved in my life, it's always been a massive thanks to climax. I've always been massively underwhelmed by everything that I've ever done. And I've come to learn only recently that it's the journey that I enjoy. It's the journey that I love. I love the journey because that's where you've got the growth, you're becoming something, you're adding something to your bow. And it's almost like when you get to the very end of it, you naturally, I mean, I can become quite depressed. And I've done some research on it, of which I've added into book two. And what I've kind of found is that I call like high achievers. And I'm not by any means put myself into this category, being modest here. But all I all I achieve is you over the over forward project into the future. And they rationally misjudge or add too much weight on to what the feeling, what winning is going to do for in terms of fulfillment, happiness, emotional regulation, whatever. And what you find is that because your mindset's so engaged and you're optimized on that journey over a period of time with behavioral adjustment and whatnot and your habits is that when you do reach the end of something, the only place to go is down. You can't maintain that euphoric high. You can't maintain that mindset, optimization or that prescription of thinking. Once you get to the tip of the mountain, once you've summited the mountain, the only place to go is down. And that obviously means going into kind of some form of mental illness. Yeah. It's a got a very good friend who will be listening to this podcast. And you know who you are. So he's business for multiple millions, a lot. And I said to this person, you must be over the moon. And you know what? He was. He loved it. But two, you got 12 months down the track. He said, skip that. Sorry, they call me Skippy Gareth because of Australian accent. He said, I said, this sounds stupid, but I feel half depressed now. I don't know what to do. He's got like millions of the bank. He's got everything he knows what to do with. And it's like, see, he's start again. He said, I'm going again because it's what you said there. It's the journey that he loved. Yeah. We need a purpose, right? All human beings need a purpose. And I think once you remove that purpose, once the stimulus has been removed, it's like what next? Like what is this it? And I've always been like that. I've always been like, what is this? Alexander Volkonoski, your Aussie UFC champion, he did an interview recently. He lost to the Russian guy for a second time. He did an interview after him. There'd been massive criticism on him for him taking the fight against him at two weeks notice. And why did you take the fight? It was careless. Like he was saying, yeah, maybe he said, I've got to be honest, I took the fight because I can't keep still. And it's almost like for my own mental health, I've got to be either in a fight camp or I've got to be engaged in the process of the fight. And I found it just absolutely fascinating that you think that these people have got it all kind of worked out and by default of some of the taboo jobs that they do or some of the things that they've achieved that the resilient victim we've stunned the day to day stresses and pulls when really there's a lot going on there. There is fascinating actually, fascinating that people have it all but it's the strive. That's what really motivates us. Listen, with your book, I can't wait to get book number two and I hope I can get a copy of that soon there. Next year you said it's coming out? Yes, in July. July next year, cool. Okay, but listen, in book one, mastering the basics was a theme that I picked up throughout it. Okay, get the basics right and look after everything else. Can I ask, is there any examples in your post-military career that your mindset and get the basics right has really helped you? And maybe in your training or organization, your keynote speaking that you're doing, the clothing line, is there any examples that you have there that has really set you up in good stead? Absolutely. I set up a point one up on the back of the book really because people like in demand for T-shirts, they ask me if I were doing T-shirts, like a peril to deal with the book and whatnot. And I set up a point one and it's kind of we've teamed up only recently looking towards next year with a really like a prominent business where company, manufacturer. But I just added attention to detail, attention to detail into everything. I think it sounds quite flippant and everybody knows what attention to detail is, but when you look at what props it up, it's like self-discipline, it's making sure that everything is kind of on point and process driven and everything is right and no stones left on turns, you're not quitting corners. And I think when you inject that into everything that you do across your marketing strategy, how the brand looks, your brand connectivity and all stuff like that, you're going to be successful, it's going to be a success. It's going to be a success and that goes for like anything, anything that you do, just do it to the best of your ability, thorough to the best of your ability and the E.L. T-dividends. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about how do you get your inspiration from on whatever. People who are listening, most people listen to this podcast going for a run or driving to work or something like that, they won't go to see this. But I can see there's a tattoo on your arm, it looks like Muhammad Ali, I think. It is. It is. I wanted to ask some of your heroes in your life, who have you looked up to, it's got to be Muhammad Ali, I'm guessing to start with there. Why him to start with and anyone else specifically? Yeah, I mean, Muhammad Ali, nothing to do with boxing really, it would just is, I just loved how he believed in something. And he wasn't willing to like be anything other than what he believed in. And he stuck so strongly to that that he lost everything and got put in jail. And I just really loved that like that example of just being yourself and sticking to what you believe in and just knowing that having that confidence in knowing that this is me, you know what I mean? And I'm going to be me. And regardless of what anybody else is saying, I'm not going to fall victim to social pressures and stuff like that. So I really loved that. And that's why I got the tattoo because I just thought that it's just to remind me sometimes that when you do get a bit of negative kind of opinion, which sometimes the book does draw on stuff. And when you stick your head above the parapet, basically, and you step outside of your comfort zone, you open yourself up to various opinions and whatnot. And it's just for me to say that, look, it's cool. It's all right. This is exactly where you should be. I'm glad you said that. I look at the Amazon reviews on our book out there. I'm sure you do something. And it's like there's so many lovely comments everywhere. And it's like five stars everywhere. But you're home in on that one of them. And they said, well, I'm a chapter eight when he said he did that. And I didn't like that because I did that with a customer. And I said, that's not feasible. Half-lakes a month. It didn't work for me. And why do we focus on that one thing? Do you do the same thing? Yeah, I did do, mate. I've become really looking to sensitize to it now. Although I did get one. I did get one. I'd look the other day and they were one star review. And it said, Gareth's monotone voice killed the audio. But also is haphazard and lame psychology, which is echoed from the other reviews in here, which nobody had said that. And the psychology got sent to the Open University. And it was checked off by a professor and a doctor. So I don't know what you've been reading. But I thought I'm going to own it. So I copied and pasted it. You owned it. And my star is on Instagram. And I just put, you know what? This is what I killed me two years ago. But don't let me stop you from stepping outside your comfort zone and going for it. Because if that's going to stop you, you can forget it. Yeah, I spoke at the Australian Automotive Dealers Association Conference. I don't know, it must be 3,000 people. Patrick Tessier invited me down to speak there many times. And I remember I had a glowing reviews from everyone. There's one guy said, I come and page good money for this. And I didn't learn anything from that. And it was a one star review. I didn't sleep that night. I thought, what's this all about? OK? And it was, I even phoned the guy. And I said, I might, you didn't get value of what we did. When, oh, well, no, it wasn't that. It was just, and when you dig into it, the guy had a bad day. It wasn't about me. It was, he couldn't park to get to the conference center. Yeah, yeah. It was all of that. And all you do there lose the sleep over one guy. And who's had a bad day. Yeah. That's what there's a brilliant kind of, I think it's like a seven-stage post that this mindset account posted on Instagram. And it's about a professor that worked at school. I think it's in America. And he put some sums up on the first, on the board. And he'd made a real simple error on purpose, on one of the sums. Yeah, OK. And all the kids, majority of the kids, jumped on it and started laughing at him and saying he'd got that wrong. And they were all kind of tearing it down. And then he goes into why he did it in the lessons. And basically, in a nutshell, what he's saying is that people will always jump on you when you've got something wrong. The law was the first to highlight it. Nobody highlighted that out of eight ones that he'd got right, he'd only got one wrong. Nobody said, yeah, but you've got another seven or eight right. All the wanted to highlight were what he'd got wrong. And he said that that's just a massive part of the human condition that we only want to jump on and tell somebody when they've done something wrong, not when they've done it right. I wonder, does it make the person who jumps on it make them feel better that they could identify whether they've got it wrong? I don't know. Possibly so. Possibly so. Whether it's just this inner kind of validation that we need, that we got it right and they didn't. OK, we both believe that we're a product of that environment. And I listen to lots of podcasts. I read books on good friends of both of us, Jason Granwick, from the company Great Guy. We're talking about doing a book club. When we interviewed him, we talked about some of the same books that we'd all read. And we all get this information. So based on that product environment, what books have you read that you love that's really maybe changed your life? So Rich Dad Porda changed my life. I remember I've never really read a book from Covid's cover. Well, I hadn't until I read that. And I read that when was I? 25 years old, believe it or not. I've not been very well at school. And as a result, I were like a reading, like a special reading unit. Anyway, but yeah, I read Rich Dad Porda whilst in Somalia. And I read it in about two and a half weeks. And it completely changed my life in terms of disawakening that that kind of literature out there. And you could kind of absorb that and whatnot. And I read that and then I read The Sligh Edge, which really stands out and outliers by Mark and Gladwell. I think that's probably one of the best books I've read. I absolutely love that one. I don't know that out. Yeah, it's an amazing bookmate. It's about it's about success and where it comes from. It answers or it gives a lot of kind of credence to the nature, to nurture debate. And so it all kind of hinged basically on time in, on age, and exposure to environment, but also that basically practice, dedicated practice and deliberate practice trumps in A-telling. And it looks like Bill Gates and people like that. And it's just absolutely fascinating. Yeah, I love stuff like that. Listen, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I can't wait for your next book to come through. Okay, so July next year, I'm going to look for that. But listen, how do people get you to come and be a keynote speaker at their conference or their event? What's the best way for people to get hold of you? And also, how do they get your current book? What's the easiest way to get that? Yeah, so you can get older me at 0.1.co.uk. Just get into which they are. I'm on Instagram, Gareth Timmins author, Facebook, Gareth Timmins books. The books available, book one and book two will be available. They're on Amazon, Waterstones, WHMiffs, but also on Kindle and various other kind of means. But audio book as well, it's on there. So anywhere really, just kind of hit me up. So, Gareth, listen, that just leaves me to say, thank you so much for this time. I really, really appreciate it. And I can't wait for July for the next book to come out there. It's one of the books that I've got there and I'll highlight through when the different bits on it. Just so little gems there, like focus on the failure. I'm definitely going to put that into my life. So I just want to say, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me. Appreciate it. That just leaves me to say that all details of this episode and other episodes on the selling in the motor trade can be found on our website, simcotraining.co.uk. Go there to get a copy of our book, Words That Sell Cars. Go there to sign up to a free trial of our sales fitness online sales training program. Easiest way to get hold of me is Simon Bowkett, who linked in. Thank you.
