Patterns of Limitation: Part 2

Bill and Bryan continue their series on the hidden patterns that quietly cap sales performance. Building on last episode's conversation about "drift," they dig into two more limiting patterns: fear (and why naming it is the first step toward detachment) and the belief that bigger outcomes simply "aren't possible." Along the way, they tackle the either/or trap — the binary thinking that convinces salespeople they have to choose between income and time, ambition and family, more and enough — and make the case for replacing it with "and." Plus, a bizarre drone-rescue story that turns into a surprisingly useful metaphor.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast, podcast history. I'm one of your hosts, Bill Kaske. Host number two, Brian Neal. We are celebrating this year 20 years at the microphone. And we've been doing this since 06, and we want you to be a part of this celebration. So if you haven't already, make sure you send in an audio or a video, but an audio is fine. With what has this podcast done for you, meant for you? Maybe if you if you're now the number one person on the stack rank and you just started listening two years ago and you can attribute 99.9% of your success to the podcast, or 1%, we'd love to hear it. And for everybody who uh gives us that and sends in an audio, we will give you a ticket, punch your ticket, as Brian says, to a live coaching event that we're going to do only for the people who have sent in these audios and videos sometime in September. Be a one hour, one and a half hour. We'll we'll do something that'll be fun and you'll get access to it. You'll be an elite member of uh some kind of club.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

You'll be in a club. You'll be in the celebration, the 20th celebration club. What is 20th? You know, is it like silver and gold? I don't know. I don't even know if I look that up. Yeah, I'll have to find it out. Check it out. Uh yeah, real quick, we're gonna get to our carry-on topic from last time. We're talking about um uh limitations, and we're gonna start with the drift thing, but we're just talking about uh what did you call them, Bill? Something's of limitations. Oh, patterns of limitations. I'm sorry, I couldn't find patterns. Patterns of limitations. We're gonna keep talking about that. Uh, before that, and I'll forward this to Travis. Um, uh, this is a TikTok video. I thought this was interesting. I'm gonna read the caption. And the uh the uh caption says in this video of this like parachute thing falling down from the sky into the woods. And it says, uh, incredible footage shows a drone delivering water and food to two lost hikers near Bear Mountain, Colorado on Thursday. The hikers were reportedly running low on water and phone battery before emergency teams responded. The two were safely rescued and are uninjured. And what I thought was if we can get a drone to the guys to drop a bottle of water, can't we get a helicopter there to come pick them up? Like, why are we why are we flying? Okay, first step, let's get the drone, let's fly it 40 hours over there, get them some water, then we'll take the helicopter and then we'll go get them. I'm like, what are we out of order here? This seems really silly. And are they really lost if we can find them with the drone? They got their cell phones on. I just the whole thing, I'm like, this is just an interesting, it just seemed to me. Yeah, are they really lost? They really lost they were lost. Well, yes, but then the drone found them. They're right over the top of them. I'm like, you're not lost anymore, man. We can see you. You're found, you are here, your eyes have been opened. Anyway, there's a lot of questions around. A lot of questions on this. I'm sure I'm missing something here, but it just thought, well, before we send the helicopter to rescue the guys, why don't you send them a couple buckets of water and an iPhone charger? An iPhone charger of a portable battery, and then we'll talk about when to go get them. Like, why don't we just go get them now?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

I guess the cost of a helicopter rescue is probably a little bit more than the cost of a couple bottles of water delivered to a drone. So I guess they're probably trying to save a little money, their lives are not worth that much.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Oh my gosh. Uh, okay, so let's go to um uh our topic. We're doing patterns of um limitation here. We ended last uh episode talking about drift, and I want to just again, what do they they say something now? They don't say double stamp, but what do the kids say? They say pull a thread or double double down, it's some there's a word they use. Oh man. Anyway, uh drift happens slowly and it is immeasurable until it's huge and massively measurable. Drift happens really slowly over time, and then all of a sudden, yeah, kind of like weight gain. You like gain a little bit of weight over a long period of time, and you're like, How did I get to here? And so I think it's important to recognize drift early and recognize that small drift matters. That's what I wanted to uh add to that, that small drift matters. So an example would be you're used to um you're used to making uh 10 outbound reaches you know a week, and that's served you well, and then all of a sudden at 10 turns into eight a week, and it doesn't seem like a big deal until you do that for a year, and then it becomes a huge deal. And if eight then turns to seven, it's a bigger deal. So notice drift early, and every little bit of drift matters.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Yeah, it's like drift. It is weight, it's a weight thing. If you're not weighing yourself, you know, once a day or once a week or whatever, it's two pounds here, three pounds there, and yep. Uh, and then you wake up and you're a hundred pounds, and yeah, then it's hard. Yes, it's hard to get back. Yes, yes, yes. All right, so we were going through these patterns of failure. Drift was one we ended on. Did you have another one? Do you want me to go? Well, you go one and then I'll think of another one. Okay, all right. Um, one I don't think we I think we get uh blinded by the pattern of limitation that has to do with fear and has to do with how much of our behavior is driven by fear, and is that a good thing? And you know, I know in the in the Catholic Church there's a confession, I presume there's a orientation to confession and that what is that once a week or once at what when do you when do you do confession? You go as much as you want to go. As much as much as you need. You need to be, you know, free to move and free to say, and you gotta be, you can't worry about the outcome. Well, if you're I can't do that if I'm afraid. If I'm afraid of the future, or I'm afraid if I do this, what's going to happen? If I don't do this, what's going to happen? If fear is governing everything around you, then you can't be detached. You just can't because it's the fear is too. And so the question becomes is well, how do I get rid of that fear? And I think you have to, you have to name it, you have to admit it. And uh I've I work with a coach sometimes, and he says the first thing I do when I go into a company is okay, where's the fear? And I'm like, Do they answer? Because, oh, everybody knows exactly where the fear is. Well, I'm afraid that if we don't succeed, the company's gonna fail, or we're gonna profitability, or they're gonna fire me. Or but he says by coming clean with the fear, it just releases the energy of detachment. He didn't call it detachment, but I don't think we spend nearly enough time focusing or or just being mindful of where the fear is. You don't have to obsess on it, but you have to at least name it.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yeah, it's really good. God's funny, my wife was just telling me about this. I don't know if it's the same person or where she's getting her information from, but yeah. Um, yeah, naming the fear. She was we just talked about it yesterday at brunch. Um okay, I have one that goes uh to um the the limiting um pattern around seeing what's possible. And I think a lot of people that sell have a limitation pattern of thinking that things are not possible that are. And you can roll back things in the world, like the first trillionaire, and go to a place where you're like, There'll never be a trillionaire. And now there is, and now there's one, and there's probably gonna be another one coming up here soon. So that's possible. So then you go, well, is it possible to have a quadrillionaire? I'm like, it is because it is, and so notice your your limiting pattern here. If when you're served an idea or a seed from Bill Kaske or Brian Neal or someone, your leader, your boss, and your first reaction is that's not possible in my territory. Yeah, they won't go for that. And watch what your pattern does. Your pattern finds validation to that belief. Well, the last time we did that, well, when we presented that, they were they they they kiboshed it immediately. Well, when was that? Well, that was four years ago. Okay, life's world's a little different. So just notice, and this is one of those things like a FedEx arrow, like the arrow in the FedEx uh logo that a lot of most people have seen, some have not. If you've never seen the FedEx logo arrow, look for it, you'll see it. You never unsee it. Um that until you're seeing these things, you won't see them. So you have to force yourself to see. Boy, every time that we bring that up, I don't think that's possible. I don't think my territory can produce a million dollars. Yeah, it never has. And I I can't see a path to it. You have to look for the path to it and figure out how. Um, and that I think it's a really, really common common limiting pattern.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

And that's kind of like the question of what do you want? Like I start all my coaching uh was well, what do you want? What do you want for your from your business? What do you want your income to be? What do you want your lifestyle? What's the want here? And a lot of times, well, probably 80% of the time, people can't really tell you. Uh-uh. They can't really tell you what's what they really want. Well, I want more. Well, I want more free time with my kids. That's not enough. I gotta I gotta be a little more vivid with that. And that comes as a it's a cousin to your possibilities. It's like, what well, what's possible? Because if I'm only wanting what's possible for me in my current state, then I may not be wanting enough. Because once I realize, well, what's possible? Is it possible for you to go from $500,000 to a million dollars of income? I don't know. And I'll show you how it is, and then you're like, well, that's my new goal, right? But if there's if there's no felt possibility there, what you want will always be less than what you could have. And I I I don't, this is not about money all you know, all the time. Uh it's about what do you what do you want your life to look like, really?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Yeah. And it's very common in that setting to you do the either or birth both and game. This is a limiting pattern, either or both and, which means we tend to, when we're in a a pattern of limitation, think, well, it's either this or that. I either will never see my kids or I can't make a million dollars. It's either make a million dollars, not see my kids. It's a it's a binary choice. You don't have to pick one. You put the and in there and say, How can I make a million dollars in sales and still take you know six weeks of vacation? Now we're uh solving for something that's really cool and fun. Yeah, but your limiting pattern will tell you that you can't do that, yeah, instantly.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Yeah, I I I'm already working 40 hours a week, Brian. I you know get to a million dollars. I mean, I don't have any more time. Who's saying anything about time? Right, totally. They right, right, exactly. Your 40 hours may not be spent properly. Maybe your 40 hours are spent for the 500 or whatever, the whatever the income is. Yeah, your 40 hours are very different when it comes to a million dollars, but they're still 40 hours, it's not a hundred hours, but you might have to admit that the 40 hours is not gonna get you to where you want to go. That's spent the same way, I mean.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

And I want to call out when Bill is coaching this, any coach or a manager or me, anybody, when they say that to you, and your instant reaction is what you just heard Bill say, Well, I don't have time, you know, that's a limiting pattern. Yeah, you've got to notice that, and you're like, that's where your answer is because you got to get rid of that pattern, you'll you'll never be free of it. You just won't until you figure that out.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk has about the same number of hours per day as we do, and he's worth a trillion, and we're not. And so was he lucky? Was he smart? Maybe, maybe. Was he a great salesperson and a really good marketer? Yeah. Um, but he used his time differently, yeah. So it's not and and I've seen some of his videos that he's done where people have asked him how he spends his time, and it's it's always in the service of problems. Uh, like what's the problem here? Well, how do we fix that problem? It's never, hey, let's just talk about, you know, let's it's it's always problem-focused. And I guess that's a do you have one more before we end? I don't go ahead. You got one? No, throw one in there. We're good. Uh, I don't want to, I don't want to belabor the fact because we've given you enough now that you need to go through these two or three today that we did. And uh I think we can sometimes be guilty of giving too much and then your head's spinning at a too high a rate. So just take these two or three and ask yourself the question or am I limited by some of these patterns of thought? I love it.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Okay, go to the website, chime in, yeah. 20th anniversary uh celebration, please send us a video of what the podcast has meant to you, uh, what you've learned from listening to the podcast, any personal anecdote you want to share with us that will buy you a ticket to our September celebration coaching event in uh September of 2026. Awesome. That's it. We'll see you next time.