I was nearly $500,000 in the hole. And I only had a month to cover this amount.
I was an account executive at a fortune 100 company with a quota to meet. But no matter how hard I tried, I was falling behind.
We sold complex services. The lead time for these kinds of sales was at least 6 months. Now I had just a month to bring in 500k of revenue. In short, an impossible task (or so I thought).
Since all of my efforts were not working (cold calls, working past leads, etc), I was at my wits end.
I was tired, anxious, and confused about what more I could do.
I found myself spending an inordinate amount of time at the local coffee shop instead of the office (or my territory). I would dress up for work, in my business suit and tie. And I would reply to all emails. But I would spend a good chunk of the day at the coffee shop.
I had a notebook and a pen. I decided to just journal and confront every feeling I had about my fate. About work. About my success and failure through this job and life. About not knowing what to do or having even any remote semblance of an answer.
I spend the next 3 days at the coffee shop mostly. Just writing.
By the end of it, I felt peaceful. Resigned to my fate, and strangely lighter than I had felt in many months.
The next day, I went to visit a client site that was scheduled weeks before.
By a strange hunch, I decided to knock on the door of an office I had passed dozens of times.
I introduced myself to the front desk person who exclaimed:
“This is such perfect timing. You are exactly the person we need to talk to.”
10 minutes later, I was talking with the leadership of that business. By the end of the week, I had a signed contract. 3 weeks later, they had produced close to $500,000 of revenue.
To this day, I have no idea what drove me to knock on that door.
But through this experience and a dozen more such experiences, I have come to realize something important.
We think we get “ahead” by pushing and shoving our way forward. When we grasp at how far behind we are, and make herculean efforts to cross that gap.
Instead, I’ve learned that any great leap for me in my work has happened due to a change in orientation. How I see myself. How I feel about myself. How I see the world and my circumstances.
Magic has happened to me more than once because of this.
Since then, I’ve become curious about what it means to change my orientation. I used to coach lawyers on hard skills about how to sell and market themselves.
What I’ve found to be much more effective though is to change your orientation instead.
And orientation is an inner thing.
I’m running a pilot workshop that is all about this inner orientation. It’s starting next weekend. I’d like to share practices in a group setting to help you shift something subtle or big in your work.
You can learn more about it here: The Inner Playbook.