This week we revisit the first part of our interview with Gareth Timmins. What does Royal Marines training have to do with selling cars? More than you would think. Gareth Timmins joined up at 20 after a career in professional rugby league, passed out as a commando at 21, and wrote in a diary every day of the process. That diary became his book, Becoming The 0.1%, named after the one in a thousand who get through. In this episode he takes Simon through the parts that surprised him most. The sleep deprivation. The routines that kept him going when the motivation had gone. The strange rules that only make sense years later. And the moment at week 15 when he decided to stop fighting it. Honest, practical, and full of things you can take straight into your own team.
- What the first 15 weeks of commando training are really designed to do
- Ten hours of sleep in two weeks, and what that does to a person
- Why your routines matter far more than your motivation
- The gym rule about touching your face, and the reason behind it
- The night the training team threw everyone’s kit down the stairwell
- Cultural architects, cultural assassins, and how culture gets rebuilt
- The sacrifice to life ratio, and how to use it on a goal that feels overwhelming
- Simon and Gareth on standards, straight lines and why retail is in the detail
Gareth Timmins signed his first professional rugby league contract at 15 and was playing on television by 16. He left the game and joined the Royal Marines at 20, passing out as a commando at 21. His book, Becoming The 0.1%, is the diary he kept through the whole of training, and a second book on building culture inside organisations is due next year.
Whether you run a dealership, a sales team or a service department, there is plenty here to take into your next team meeting.
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.
To find out more visitwww.symcotraining.co.uk
Hi and welcome to another episode of Selling in the Motor Trade. In partnership with Kizana, improve your margins with real-time, data-driven, retail valuations backed by the largest rule of data set in the UK. There are an evidence-based guide valuations for main dealers, car suit markets and independence. Along with sim code training, where we took that training in the real world, what's happening in the market today, not 10 to 15 years ago. Together, we're going to share tips and ideas on how to sell more cars, improve your service and parts operation, and generally put more profit into your department, dealership or dealer group. I'm your host, Simon Boca, or some of you might already know me as Skippy. Firstly, I just want to say thank you for the people who died right from the beginning of this because we're past 250 episodes now and interviewed so many great leaders in the motor trade. Thank you for taking the time. For people who are new to this, please ask and just subscribe. You can't believe what it does to the algorithm and gets this podcast out to as many people in the motor trade as we can. Lots of you guys are saying they really love the stories where we go and speak to people about how they've been successful in their business. So today, it's a bit different. I'm joined by Gareth Timmons and I'm really excited to get Gareth here. We've tried to set this up for the last probably three or four months and I read Gareth's book. He's going to tell you all about his book, but Gareth is actually a Royal Marines commando. And we're going to talk about his time in the forces and how what he's learned there can actually transfer into the business life. And, you know, I start off with a title to this podcast and it's 99.9% of people need not apply. And that'll make more sense in a second because Gareth's company now is 0.1%. And Gareth, you might want to start off by telling us about why 0.1%. Yeah, so I basically wrote the diary during training from leaving my house to get into the end of training. And like captured kind of like a year of kind of transformation and growth really. But it was almost like during when I came to publish the book eventually, which is kind of like a massive fast forward at this point, I needed a title that encapsulated a journey. So I kind of flipped the old formidable narrative, which kind of depicted back in the days statistically that you had a one in a thousand chance of becoming successful, becoming a Romer in commando. So I just kind of flipped the stat really and became up with becoming the 0.1%. But when you say it's 0.1%, it is the best of the best, isn't it? And when you see it as a number like that, I think it's even more powerful than 99.9% of the people that need not to apply. Yeah, sure. One in a thousand get through. So I just really liked the idea of that stat there. Listen, I want to talk lots about your time in the military. I want to talk lots about the book there because I really got a lot from it. It's a great book. But before that, I want to go back to an early Gareth because I understand you were high level in rugby league. And I want to talk a little bit about what you did in your previous life in rugby league. And I suppose I want to really ask the determination that you had to be high level in rugby league. Was it in you to start with? Is it something that you had to work on? Can you tell us a little bit about the young Gareth? Yeah, sure, mate. It's a great question really. It kind of opens up that old nature nature debate really in psychology as to where does where does it get driving in a talent and what that come from. I think I've always been, well, I mean, early doors, my dad was a strength and conditioning coach at a first division club in rugby league, like the Premier League. So from a really young age, from being like three or four years old, I was in dressing rooms with the players in like really elite environments and like kind of feeding and sponging off that kind of stuff. I always used to look at like some of the cars that the players had and just how they were really maxing out their potential as an individual. And I always kind of really aspired and wanted to be a part of that and wanted to kind of do that myself. But I've always been like incredibly driven and just really, really focused and I've got an element of, well, quite a large element of OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. So I think that's been a massive kind of fundamental factor in helping me to remain consistent during really kind of adverse times, really. Well, I always think that we become a product of our environment. And is that nature nurtured? But if you're seeing successful people around you all the time from a young age, it can't help but rub off on you, I think. Absolutely, mate. And I am massive, massive on environment and seeking the right kind of environments to kind of nurture the individual and get you to really, really like good and successful places. And in particular, like elite, elite environments like being at the top at Rubilig and then obviously going in the raw Marines, they're just the just environments there where I think any amount of exposure will will will get you better. And that's what I've always kind of been about is getting subjecting myself to these initially uncomfortable places, but knowing that they will kind of, that will shape me as an individual. So what you learned on the field, Rugby League, I'm talking about now and the coaching and the training and the discipline, did that really help you before you went into the military? It did absolutely. I didn't really acknowledge it at the time, Simon. All I, I played rugby from being seven years old and at 15, I signed professionally, 16. I was kind of like playing on Telly and whatnot and things were just going like incredibly, incredibly well. And I came to a bit of an abrupt end, did rugby just because they offered me a contract over a long period of time and I just, the money was just pretty much embarrassing. And I wanted to sign for a shorter amount of time. But they, yeah, I mean, you're about 21 now, were you from memory? Yeah, I were about, when I went in, I went in at 20 into the Marines and I passed out when I were 21, but I think there was so much added and benefit from taking that path in rugby. I mean, it's only through like recent reflection, really, that I've been able to kind of understand just the magnitude of the foundational basis that that gave me in terms of going in the Marines, like being in a kind of an environment with other males and just going through that hardship and being in tough times, the rugby definitely provided a really solid foundation for that. I just asked the question there because being in Australia and Rugby League would be our game out in Australia. We do love it. It seems like we're all union in the UK. But again, if you look at the stats there, 0.1%, again, to get the high level in Rugby League, it's a similar, it's got to be high, it's got to be 0.01%. I would imagine. So they were really, they were incredibly tough. Yeah. I think back in like between 95 and year 2000, I think that was like the golden era of rugby league, really, especially UK rugby league. They were like just such big names and charismatic names in the game. And it was incredibly hard to break through, incredibly hard. OK, so from rugby to the forces, I understand your mum's to blame for you writing this book. Can you tell us a little bit about what she did and why you started writing the book? But also, I want to ask the motivation for keep on going. When did that? Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, so I I applied for the Marines, had undergone various elements of like failure on that journey on psychometric testing and whatnot. Really dedicate myself for about about a good year and a half, really, to like physical and physical conditioning and mental preparation and stuff to go in there to give myself the very best chance. And then obviously the day came for me to travel down from a city up North Cole Wakefield down to Limston and down in the in the in the base of the UK. And just before I got on the train, my mum like just before the door shut, my mum gave me a diary that she just bought in a in a in a train station. Like a WA Smith or something like that. Like a WA Smith or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And she'd give me the diary and just as the train doors are closing, she just just writing it, writing anything. I want to see what you've what you're what you're getting up to if you can if you can write it, but also I can get a lot of you. And I can just remember it just being like, right, it's such a bizarre gift. Because I was just like, I've never really subscribed to school because I had rugby and that we're always going to be a major part. But I took it and then on the way down, it was just like such mixed emotions of like being scared to death coupled with this belief and an element of shock. But then like real real excitement in terms of what I were going down to do. So I just literally opened it a couple of hours in and just wrote down that I felt like on a rollercoaster when you when you feel like you you're you're you almost get you've put up the courage, but you get strapped in. And as it kind of, you know, you're on your way, you want to get up, but you can't. And that's how it felt. So I wrote that in and then I just wrote it every day to the point where I had like maybe a week or two or three weeks content. And at that point, it's like, once you've got that, you want for and once you've got a month, you may as well get another month and before blowing the old, I kind of kept it for a year then. And it captured me from being a a weary, kind of intimidated civilian. So ended up being at the end of being a Romany commando. So it would be just incredible, really. Yeah, I just asked about that. Because another podcast that I love out there is the diary of a CEO, Stephen Bartlett. And I sent off for his diary. And I thought it was a book, actually, but it was actually a diary to fill out. And I thought, I don't know if I could be asked to write. Yeah, I like. So I just want to know, did you start doing it out of fear that you in trouble with your mother were not doing it? But but also did it help you through the gym? I think it did help me, you know, at the must have been some form of their reputed benefit that I've gone from it. It wasn't at all to keep it. I did actually like an element of taking it back and my family reading it. I liked an element of that. And that probably kept me right into some extent, but it's a strange one. And it's only something that I've learned with age, especially like we've kind of booked to coming out next year, but whenever I get into like adverse situations, I write and that's when I kind of write and I'm the most creative when I'm like writing in adversity. So I don't know whether it would just like this unbelievable perfect storm of that coming together of me getting the diary in terms of the apparatus and maybe being able to just this amazing like coincidental coming together. But yeah, I mean, I suppose it did help. It definitely probably kept me in because I think one thing that I've explored on previous podcasts is is that if you were to leave at like say week 15, week 16, you've got half a diary and that's a terrible representation of failure, a physical representation of failure. And I never acknowledged that, but maybe subconsciously that had an element to play. Yeah, yeah, it could be. It's there's something else you said, whenever you're in an adverse situation, you write, you write, I just want to explore that. Does that help you to get your thoughts in your mind down on paper to visually look at it? Does it, does it stop things going around in your head? I know if I've got a problem in my head, if I write it down before I go to bed, I'd get a good night's sleep. If I don't, I just know it goes around and around around my head all night long and I'll wake up thinking about it. Yeah, do you think that helps when you write things down, when you have a problem or an adverse situation, as you said? Yeah, I mean, I don't write problems down. I write. I don't know, it just seems to be quite articulate in in in kind of those moments. And I don't know if it's because I'm struggling with the perception of the external and the external pressures and the stress and the whatever else and the potential elements of cognitive exhaustion. But it does help. It just seems to focus my mind. I think there's a massive element of distraction there, which is almost always a real fundamental kind of counter measured to to mitigate burnout. So maybe it's kind of this just this all-encompassing therapeutic kind of self-medicating kind of description that I kind of that I fall into. Yeah, OK. And most of us have not been through anything like the training you've gone through. Can you share any specific moments through the wrong Marines commando training that particularly we're challenging, push you to your limits and suppose what we really want to know is, and if it did, how did you overcome it? I think the there's a massive misconception with training. And and and what I mean by that is is that people go in there and they're the prepared, the condition they've gone through selection, they've gone through various other elements to get in there. But you you think that you you fall in love with this, this mystique of it. And it's almost like you think that when you get in there, you're going to be fast for open out of helicopters. You're going to be wearing nitrogen goggles. You're going to be doing all the like the what we call the goochist stuff. We call it the goochist stuff. Goochist stuff. OK, goochist stuff. Yeah, but but you absolutely don't. The first 15 weeks are just completely designed to weed out those that don't possess the aptitude to to continue on. And as a result, how they do that is the main fabric of that is sleep deprivation. So you put on the massive strain of sleep deprivation, self disciplines, absolutely fundamental in those moments and subscribing to teamwork and knowing that although it is your own personal endeavor, you are you you're completely the help of others. And by personal, I mean that you're in your own head, you're the wrong you're the own captain of your own ship kind of thing. But I mean, between that week eight and week 10, which is in diary, we had 10 hours sleep in two weeks, the cat is up for 10 hours, 10 hours, 10 hours sleeping two weeks, they kept us away for four days. And then we had like an hour sleep, a wait for another two days. And it got to the point where lads were literally falling asleep, stood up. Yeah, and you'd like catch your friend before you like it before. And then it had happened to you and it was just absolute carnage. And it's it's I think what sleep deprivation does is it's sabotages your motivation. So what underlies that one study motivation is gone is is how kind of rigid and how successful your your own personal routines are. And if your routines are really, really good, your strategic routines that are geared towards success, I straight after your days finished, you wash your clothes, your iron and you do your bed, you do your evening, that's your success elements in order to set up the next day for success. If you go straight to bed at the end, because you've got no discipline, the next thing that you can get up in the middle of the night and do it all then when everybody's sleeping, you can. It's just not designed that way. So I imagine 10 hours sleep in two weeks, you can't be thinking straight. Have I got that right? So you have to rely on just your your habits, your routines that are already in place. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, you're you're in like you're in like a state of autopilot, but you'll absolutely do become conditioned to a lack of sleep. OK, you do. And you know what? It's all about it's all about acceptance. It's all about like if you think you're not going to get in getting a sleep and you're falling out with yourself about it, like, for instance, if you know that you've got an important day the following day and you can't sleep as a result and every time that you're thinking that you need to go to sleep, you're adding more and more pressure. And then you have adrenaline and then that you can't sleep. If you just accept it that you and whatnot and just think, you know what? I'm even if I don't sleep, I'm still going to just I'll get up. I'll get out of bed and I'll still go and do me day as soon as you arrive at that place where you just like it just becomes part of the challenge. It just becomes part of it of what you need to do. You you you you you're arriving in a much better place. So that's what it would just kind of all about really arriving at exceptions quickly. You kind of shot me. I understand the military has to weed people out who who has got what it takes there. So again, being naive here, I thought it would be running up the hill with a backpack on and doing all that. But but it's the sleep deprivation is something that I've never expected you to say was one of the worst things. But yeah, I mean, I mean, the physical element to it is it is it's horrendous. It's incredibly tough, especially when you've had no sleep, be carrying kit. I mean, they gradually build you up in incrementally in terms of how you handle the kit and stuff and yeah, I mean, towards the end, you're doing like a 26 mile extraction yum pover, daht maw, carrying that hundred pound of kit and you've had no sleep for two or three days and that before that. Yeah, but the thing is with it what you really, really come up with comes to terms with with a with a physical element of it, which is massive, is that all you have to do is move. You just break it. You don't look at what you've got in front of you. Just move your body in the moment. So it's just if you have to run just all you've got to do with simplistic tinnies, but one leg in front of the other. And if you simply simplify that process, just keep doing that and you'll get to wherever you need to get to. So there's there's something else in the book. I'd love you to tell us a story about in the gym and sweating in the gym. And again, I hope I don't offend you when I say this, but I read this. I've got what they don't even let you sweat in the gym. What's that all about there? But until you hear the punchline and the reason, it just stopped me in my tracks. Can you share that story with us? Yeah. So you go into like the the Royal Marines gymnasium, which is like a big massive like scorgiannasium with like apparatus on the sides and whatnot. And you're doing all this kind of functional movements, which is called it's called IMF. It's like a Swedish kind of concept where they you you have to move your body with precision to various positions on command. And then you do rope climbs, you do various of a like camp circuits where you're running bond from meter circuits and you have to be under a lot of time. And obviously what happens is you start transpiring throughout that that period. And the natural reaction is, and you probably get this when you when you wear it is that you you just have a natural reaction to touch your face, it's a natural instant to touch your face to wipe water away from your eyes so you don't become compromised or whatnot or it tickles and you want to reach that because it's tickling. But you just once they say stop or once you're commanded not to move, you cannot flinch or move. You've got to be perfectly still like perfectly still. And any kind of movement of fidgeting or whatever, there's various people always around you that are correct in your body position, making sure that you're in perfect alignment and whatnot. And if you touch your face or whatever you punished, and I were always just thinking like, why is it kind of this so anal? Why is it like so, why is it you touch your face at all, it's just get your hands away from your face. Don't touch your face. Yeah, you'll get that you'll be doing like 20 burpees as a punishment or you'll be you'll be physical repercussion for your fidgeting or touching your face basically showing emotion in a lot in a lot of ways. And this happens, this like really empty degree of like human engineering is happening all the time and it's like a breaking down of larger behavioral kind of physical output manifestations to the to the to the real menu where it kind of where it where the inception comes from. And it wasn't till after really that I kind of learned that like when we're in like OPs on operations, like observation posts, I mean, we did one when I passed when I finished training, we're like up in the eyeless sky and we were there for like four or five days and you literally you can't move and if in like live operations, if you imagine if you're in the jungle or whatever, and you've got a spider crawling over your face or you're there's something that is causing you to to move your body or or make a movement. It can give you position away to the enemy and it can compromise where you are and as a result, you have a you could get killed or it could destroy the mission or you could argue killed. So it's that the teachings in the gym, preparing you every single time no matter what for for life outside of training and in that respect, it's it's so that you are able to self regulate I love it. You're able to manage your emotions. It makes so much sense now that you explain it. Yeah. No one asks, did they give you the reason before the training or is that just completely after it? Yeah, they don't tell you anything before. Yeah. So you're in the middle of it thinking why are they not let me touch my face? This is ridiculous. So is that thought process going through your mind at the time? Well it is. Going to go like this really like sharp and upward curve of like this new kind of life and that cultural expectation and you very, very quickly stumble across what's expected and you don't really question it. You just know that that's what you need to be doing in this in this instance and it's everything. But you know at some point there is a reason for everything. They're not just doing. Yeah. There's a reason for everything. It's like, yeah, just there's not been able to touch your face. There's just everything is kind of broken down. Every part of human behavior is broken down and they retrain it. I hear this about this breakdown and then you retrain it and rebuilding the building box of steps. Did you feel at some point there's a significant mindset changes and attitude changes halfway through or is it just a gradual thing that you get to the end of it and realize what's happened? Yeah. So I can remember like having quite an awakening in terms of a change in how I kind of looked at the process and it were about week 15, week 16 where I just thought the training team would keep coming in. The cold cultural assassins, I've wrote about it in book two, it's about how you factor and build cultural DNA to create a successful environment. And you have cultural architects that basically they're in charge of upholding this particular culture that you want within your organization or you think and you have cultural assassins that were sometimes prescribed or sometimes they're naturally occurring and they kind of act or destroy the culture so that you've got to keep rebuilding it. And the training team basically were all to some degree cultural assassins and they would just come in and say like, right, get all your stuff and just throw it out at window at one o'clock in the morning or just do other things that were just like just destroyed your morale basically. And I got to a place at week 15 where I thought, I'm not going anywhere, I'm here till the end. So whatever they say, I'm just going to do it straight away because I've got nothing else to do and I'm just going to accept it. Just accept it and move on. Accept it instantly. There's no putting me kind of like going against it and like muttering to the others and being in this internal conflict inside because it's very similar to like, if you imagine like in sport and I've done some stuff with England will believe women where the girls were really, really bad at answering back to the referee and I said to him like, when have you ever gone to a referee and said, you know what, I don't believe in that, sir. And he's gone, you know what, you're right and changed his decision, it never happens. So true. Yeah, you've just got to get on with it. So there's no point going and wasting your energy. You're distracted in that moment, you're living in the past reality, you need to get back into where we are now, which is we're in a defensive position. So that's what I just arrived at, I just thought, I'm just going to accept it. As a result, when they did something, I were able to bypass the anguish and the denial of it and the anger and just throw Mr. Fout the window first, get it all first, wash it iron it and get ready before anybody else did. And I'm not saying that we're only the only person that arrived at that kind of this methodology. But there were others that really, really didn't arrive there. As a result, a lot of them didn't make the training, yeah, that some of them dead, but they had a worse time than me. Yeah. And that would be it. You must have seen people around you, it's human nature, someone's throwing all your stuff out the window saying, what the fuck's that all about? What are you doing? It must be that, is it a victim mentality that we naturally have as humans? I don't know if that's the right way to describe that, but it must be so difficult to overcome that natural human reaction. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that the ones did was they came, we lived in blocks. There were like five-story high blocks and on each kind of level, you had a troop and down the middle was like the stairway, but the shaft down the middle, if you look over each balcony, you can see the bottom, if you know what I mean. And we were on the top and they came in one night about two o'clock and said, right, everybody, get all your stuff and throw it down the middle. So we threw everything down the middle and there were like this massive mountain pile of clothing, but there's like, it was 10 for I, this mountain of clothing, but everybody got the same stuff, the same colored stuff. So we had to literally wade through that and the only way that you knew what it was is because you had to read the name out in the back of the t-shirt and they did it because of how many people would have been there. So how big is this pile? Yes. So there were like between probably 30 and 40 people's clothing there, but all look the same. Yeah. And they did it because they wanted to see who I don't put the name in the clothing. Wow. Yeah. So it was a massive lesson in attention to detail. It's that same thing again, Gareth. It's the reason why after though, it comes through all the time there. And it's, I'm just, I'm just thinking about sales measures in the car dealership because there's podcast, there's lots of people in the motor trade, obviously listen to it. And it's, we say, do straight lines, sell cars. And you get people start up and say, what is that all about straight line, sell cars? You know what? Like I said, they do, because when someone turns up, the place just feels right is retail in the detail. I was with Johnny Carnell yesterday. And we're talking about that exact thing that it's such a minor thing, and you get brand new people turn up and say, really, does it have to be a straight line on the car's displayed there? But something a customer doesn't even notice. And it's, there is a reason why we have a great client, the Smive organizations, Mr. Smive. He hates the idea of coats on the back of the chairs in his car dealerships. And you get brand new people turn up and say, what's that? What's that all about? But when you listen to the reason, it's all about the standards. And it's so many similar things that are coming out there. I love the idea of that. Listen, something else I want to talk about now is this, you talk about a life sacrifice ratio. So you've got a training course, which is 32 weeks, I know you're there for 34 weeks there, and you talk lots about that, hold on, this is for 34 weeks of my life. If I can get through this, it's going to set me up for the rest of my life. I'd love you to share a bit about your thoughts about the life sacrifice ratio in other industries. But then also, do you have any advice for the line manager in the, in the motor trade that says, well, that might be great for you, Gareth, but what I do when next month it starts again, next month, it starts again. Can you tell us a little bit about the life sacrifice ratio? Yeah. So I, it's all to do with my mental preparation, but the very, very start of training, I just like kind of thought, it's going to be horrendous. And I don't want to kind of sugarcoat it and try and say anything over because ultimately I'm setting myself up with failure if I do that. So I just thought, I'd kind of got to this place where I thought it's only 10 months in my life. Do you know what I mean? It's a year in my life. Just call it a year. But it's, it's, it's a year where I lose all my autonomy, I lose all my freedom, I'll go through hell, but it's only one year. And it's, it's one year of sacrifice that I've got to give in order to live the rest of my life with that title and benefit from everything that will come after that. The opportunity is the earning potential and everything else. So I just, in the book, I just called it the sacrifice to life ratio. And I just felt that it was just really important to when we have got like big or small goals that are quite overwhelming and we don't know whether we should invest, it's from a personal development perspective, you've just got to look at like the sacrifice to life ratio and just think, you know what, it's, it's worth the sacrifice. I thought if I, if I as a human being, as a young lad can't sacrifice a year in my life to reap the rewards of that for years to come, for me, that's, that's not a difficult trade off. I just didn't say it was a difficult trade off, but what it did was when I went into training, it just absolutely prepared me mentally because I'd got down there and I knew it was going to be shit. Yeah. So I were already in a good mental place for it. And as a result, I kind of were able to like gain and maintain momentum. How much did you know before you went in? Had you spoke to other people about how shit it was going to be? Was it just watching things like, who dares wins on TV? I don't know if that would have been out back then. Yeah. What did you know beforehand? Yes, my dad, my dad and my mum were in the Navy, but I've never, they'd never really they just, I would just brought up knowing that it was incredibly, incredibly tough, right of passage. I just, I just kind of, I kind of just knew that. And then I looked at the training, there were a couple of documentaries that were really old school documentaries that were around in the 90s, one were on a, on a mountain leaders course, which is the Addis course in the world, Romerins, mountain leaders course. And I just loved it. It just like really appealing. I loved the fact that these guys were like, they'd done it. And I just really wanted to be like, in a sense, a part of that club really. But there were a local guy that had done it. And I were talking to women, it's, no matter, if you talk to anybody that's done it, the world always sits housing in the world, because the want to, do you know what I mean, the want to, and it is, it is rightfully so, it is, but it's not impossible. Do you know what I mean? It's not impossible with the right application and strategy, you can kind of get through it. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, in terms of the line manager and stuff like that, what advice I'd give him is, is just, is compartmentalization really and looking at the, I suppose, I don't know if this is applicable, but the short, the short lead times and just, you break them, you break them down and then you, you just add in as much attention to detail as possible. For me, attention to detail, it is, is everything. It's the mundane that we all, we always look over and we struggle with the mundane, it's been, it's been human beings, we struggle with the mundane, because we don't think the small things matter, but the small things are the ripple effect that the small things are where the elite edges, that's where the, that's where the true brilliance is in the small things, but people just overlook it, they don't think it matters. Yeah. It is the, the little things they all add up, marginal gains. That's it. If you'll give us a sky, a cycling team. It's massive in sport, mate. It is. In sport, they're called the 1% as, it's like what, that's how like elite teams get, the edge over elite teams is how well you can subscribe with self-discipline to the 1% behaviors, and ultimately, one's investment in that, or the collective teams investment in that will determine success at that elite level, but it's, when we use it in the Marines, it's like when we're going out on operations against the Taliban and whatnot, we just better at the 1% as, we're just more disciplined at it. Interesting. They get the basics, right? The basics, yeah, the, it's like the foundations, right? You can't build anything on faulty foundations, and that's just, that's just how we work. 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 Bokett through LinkedIn.
