643: The need more sales myth: Why more revenue will never satisfy

I’m a huge NBA fan… but I was struck by something the coach of the Denver Nuggets said minutes after winning the championship this year. Let’s dive in and talk about it today. Thomas Joyner with Business on Purpose here, thanks so much for listening in today. People who say the NBA is trash are just flat-out wrong. It’s absolutely incredible to watch what the Denver Nuggets were able to do this postseason. Their win percentage for the year actually improved in the playoffs, which is unheard of. They humiliated arguably the hottest playoff team of the past few years in the Miami Heat and Jimmy Butler. Nikola Jokic found about 25 different ways to impact the game whether it was driving the ball, launching threes, getting assists, playing defense, you name it! It was insane to watch the way that team came together to reach the mountain top of professional basketball. But here’s what was fascinating to me. The confetti is falling, everyone is holding their kids, hugging, crying, laughing, dancing… all of it. And in the midst of the trophy presentation, they bring up the coach Michael Malone to interview him. The interviewer does her job and basically just invites him to give his thoughts. He thanks the fans, rightfully so, but then, without flinching, says “I’ve got news for everybody out there, we’re not satisfied with one, WE WANT MORE!!!” And the crowd goes wild. “We want more!” I was up entirely too late, and it just hit me. That’s so sad. Think about the message that sends to everyone. The players, the coaches, everyone. We’re not satisfied with a career-defining moment. We’ve worked our entire lives to reach the mountaintop, only to realize that there’s another mountaintop and another. So sad that you don’t even have time to celebrate before voicing your discontentment and realization that maybe it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.   And if there’s one prevailing thought that would define our culture right now it’s probably that…We’re not satisfied. We set sales goals and hit them, and then without celebrating, we set more that are bigger, and that are the goals that we should have set all along. And then we subconsciously say… WE WANT MORE. We hire a new crew and begin to enter a new corner of our industry and become really good at whatever it is we do…and at the end of the year, we hit our numbers. And what do we do? Ok, that was cool, let’s do it again, but bigger and better next time! Why? Because…WE. WANT. MORE! I felt so sad for the Nuggets coach. He’s worked his way up from an assistant coach in college, to head coach in college, to assistant in the NBA, had multiple stops as a head coach in the NBA and now sits atop the throne and in what would be the crowning achievement for most coaches, he blew right past it to whatever's next. I remember hearing a story about Urban Meyer, head football coach at the University of Florida where they won multiple championships. He said he knew it was time to hang it up for a bit when immediately after he won the National Championship for the 2nd or 3rd time he found himself in a dark room texting recruits, telling them how excited he was to run it back with them. He had lost his way and so have we. So… what do we do with this? I think it starts with two things. We’ve forgotten the ability to celebrate and truly be grateful for the journey! Or… we don’t spend enough time on the front end defining what we want and what truly matters! Let’s start with being grateful and celebrating. What do you do as a business to celebrate? When was the last time you celebrated without feeling the need to drop that motivational minute at the end that quietly tells the team they aren’t doing enough?  I think we’re terrified to celebrate without motivating. We think our team will just stop. And yet, what we see, time after time, is that people just want recognition for their work and effort. Not to have it glossed over and minimized by the thought of…We. Want. More.  We’re terrified because we don’t know what to do with the feeling that we actually got what we said we wanted and it’s still not enough! So… we do what everyone else does. Oh, it must mean we need just a little bit more! So we push and push and push and burn out everyone around us with this endless hamster wheel of success. We need to set up a time regularly just to be grateful and celebrate. Now there may be years or periods where we don’t do this. I’m not saying we just blindly celebrate mediocrity or subpar results, but I am 100% saying we set time aside to celebrate a job well done. The second thing we need to do, and this needs to be done way before this, but we need to spend some serious time contemplating what we truly want out of work and life. There’s nothing more depressing than putting years of work into something to only realize that it wasn’t what you hoped it would be. So what are the things that, if at the end of a chapter in life, are worth the work?  Is it making sure you set aside times for kids' games, date nights, lunches with your teams? Is it making sure you plan in regular times for a weekend away so you don’t “miss it” and look up years later to realize life passed you by? It’s why we spend so much time on Vision. To make sure that if in 2 or 3 or 5 years, if we hit the bullseye, we will be able to smile and enjoy it! And not think… we want more.  That feeling only comes from knowing you prioritized the right things at work and at home. And didn’t get sucked into chasing someone else's vision.  I’ll end here. Last week we spent a full day putting on a done-with you team training day for about 15 businesses. We ended the day giving the owners and employees time to think through their personal vision. After that we had them all stand up, to share one thing from their vision story that they wrote down.  It was honestly one of the most powerful moments of my coaching career as they, one after another, said out loud what they hope for in life and work, and family. It was all about people. The people they loved the most and what they hoped for those relationships. A room full of people just like you opening up in a powerful way.  It was such a refreshing reset…to see people “get it”. To understand and reorient their priorities in a world that just says more more more. So will you do the same?  Will you take the time today to plan some time for deep work and thinking through your vision? So that when you finally hit the bullseye you can celebrate, and be grateful and not immediately push past to that awful thought…We. Want. More. Do it today! If we can be a part of that with you, please let us know. Have a great week!