Turning Setbacks into Comebacks

Turning Setbacks into Comebacks

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 49 of the business development podcast. And today we are chatting about. Bad days. We all have them. How can we make them better? How can we find solutions? How can we turn this day around? Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, Business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 49 of the business development podcast. I sometimes, I don't know, to this day, it still blows my mind that we have been able to put out so much content in such a little time. I know when I started this show, I wasn't really quite sure what level we would be able to deliver at on a consistent basis.

I don't think many podcasters do. It's like, you hope that you can deliver week over week, and in my case, two times a week. And I just never saw episode 49 and pretty soon episode 50 coming up and I'm so thankful to be here. And so I want to start this episode out today just by saying thank you. Thank you to all the Business Development Podcast listeners.

Thank you to all the Business Development Podcast amazing expert guests. And thank you to all of our followers and the people who have reached out to us, you know, week over week. I have, I have some certain followers and you know who you are. And you guys are absolutely amazing. I have people who have been with us from the very beginning, and they always send me encouraging LinkedIn messages, letting me know that I'm doing a great job or giving me updates or in some cases telling me when we've surpassed or made it to the top 1%.

And it's pretty awesome. It's pretty awesome. And you know who you are. And I'm incredibly Thank you for supporting me from the very beginning of this show because episode 50 would not have been possible without the encouragement and support that I've experienced along the way. As a podcaster, you know, it's a, it's, I don't want to say it's lonely, but you don't see the impact, right?

It's very hard for me to see the impact of this show aside from people reaching out and letting me know how it's touched their lives, letting me know how it's affected them and improved their business. or improve their marketing skills or improve their sales skills. And I really, really appreciate the feedback.

So if you do reach out to me and you've sent me messages on LinkedIn, or just giving me a blurb that you love the show, but I want you to know it's incredibly appreciated and it really does allow us to keep coming back week over week and delivering. And yeah, I figured this would be a good time to also give you a show update.

So, we've had some pretty remarkable growth in the past little bit, just to give you guys some ideas. We are sitting today today is July 25th, at 54, 776 downloads. Wow, like that still blows my mind that we have over 50, 000 downloads of this show, and we've been out for not even six months. Yeah, there are, I'm sure there's lots of shows that have done better.

But you know what, I'm incredibly happy with that growth, being a small town business development show in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I got no complaints. I'm incredibly happy about these numbers, and I'm very thankful that you continue to come back and listen to the show pretty consistently. We, we typically get around between, between 150 and 300 downloads per day as our average show downloads for this show, and That's amazing.

Like it really is. It really is amazing and I'm thankful that we are able to provide value that you guys keep coming back and listening to those shows and re listening to shows because I know there's a lot of you that have messaged me and told me you listen to a show once and then you listen to it two more times to take down the notes and you guys are going to be amazing by the way.

I'm very proud of you for doing that. I do think that there's a lot of great information provided in this show and just like most books you don't get it the first time around. So for those of you that are listening over and over again and taking notes. Congratulations, you guys are going to do absolutely amazing business development moving forward, and I wish you the best in the growth of your businesses.

So, 54, 776 downloads. The followers, guys, that's the one that is starting to blow my mind, okay? Just to give you an idea, in the very beginning obviously we had like no followers for the longest time. Probably like the first couple months, we might have had like 11. But in by May, we had 211 followers, right?

So we're in July. So may now 211 followers in May. Okay. Today, July 25th. So what, like two months later, we are sitting at 734 followers. And that's just the ones that I can tell on Apple, Apple podcasts and Spotify. So, wow, that's some pretty impressive follower growth. Thank you so much for telling your friends and family.

For recommending our show and for liking, following, subscribing and rating and reviewing and all that amazing stuff that you guys do, our listeners, to grow this show because this show does not grow without you. It does not. It takes word of mouth. It takes people telling their friends and family. It takes people sharing our posts and sharing our information and subscribing and thank you so much.

If you have done that from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for telling your friends because the level of show growth we've had has been like exponential. And I'm really looking forward to making this, making this call and, you know, hopefully in a month or two months and saying, Hey, we've hit a thousand followers because that is quite the milestone in any podcast.

And I'm very excited and I'm going to be incredibly proud to hit it. So please, if you're listening to the show today, you find value in it. Tell your friends, tell your family, like, subscribe, share, review, rate, do all those things, the things that we all do these days and help us to reach new audiences because really the show grows with you.

All right. So we are nearly at the six month mark. What's another highlight that we've had in this short period of time? We won. The Quill Podcast's Best Business Podcast 2023. We won that back in April. And we'd only been around for like three months at that point. And it was, it was truly an honour to win that award considering that Quill is pretty much the only Canadian podcast company.

So it's pretty rad to be in there and win an award from such a, you know, such a game changer and leader in the Canadian podcast space. So the people listening from Quill, if you are listening, FATIMA. It is amazing and I am honored to win that award and thank you so much and thank you to all of our listeners who nominated us because once again, couldn't have done it without you.

It was all through nominations that got us into that judging and thank you so much for supporting the business development podcast. All right, let's kick into it. I've, I've taken you for too long. Well, so our last episode, okay, our last episode we provided encouragement. When things don't go to plan, right?

We talked about it. Things just don't always go to plan. My last week episode didn't go to plan, right? You know, we talked about it and. I wanted to touch on that. I wanted to kind of keep on that subject because, you know, we all need a little bit of encouragement because things just aren't always kicking the right way.

You know, we have bad days, okay? So today, I wanted to sit down and chat with you guys about bad days. In business development and entrepreneurship and anything where we are having to grow our business, show up and give our 150% to the world. It's really hard to do when we're having bad days, right? So we're going to talk about that today, right?

We're going to talk about that today. I've been in business development a very long time. I've been a business owner for the last three years, and I have had plenty of bad days in this time. And I just thought, you know what? What do I do when I have a challenging day? Because I always try to flip it around.

So I'm hoping today we can go over some, some bad days, right? What are some of the situations that can come up that cause us trouble and see if we can't work our way through it and find a better solution. Okay. Because you know, the reality is when we are in business development, we are so forward facing, we are the.

Face of our companies to most, most people. Right. And you know, that's a great thing and it's a horrible thing because the flip side is, you know, when you're on, you're on, when you're firing on all cylinders, you're a total rockstar, you're killing it. You're saying all the right things, but you know, we have off days.

We have sick days. We have days where life has kicked us in the butt. We have, you know, family issues. We have issues with our kids. We have, you know, unfortunately we have deaths. We have sadness. We have human. Emotion to contend with, and you know, I talked about this with Tash Jefferies. There's a lot of situations where these things have come up and I've compartmentalized the crap out of them, and that has worked for me.

Has it necessarily worked to deal with my personal issue? No, but it got me through the workday. And I'm hoping today that that's the way that we can inspire you. Is that, you know, when we're, when we're the forward face of the company. And we have meetings scheduled sometimes weeks and months in advance that are most of the time uncancellable like, you know, in my world, I don't cancel a meeting unless I'm dying like that is the level of uncancellation that I live under and that might mean that I'm showing up and I'm, you know, I might be in some pretty rough shape, you know, internally, I might be dealing with some stuff, you know, I've, I've, I've had some pretty serious challenges to contend with in my life.

And I've had to do them sometimes. under a mask, right? And I'm not saying that that's the best way to do things. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that that is the way that I have been able to deal with it and get through some of the harder days. But we'll talk about some of the options available to you.

We'll talk about some of the scenarios and maybe what I did and what you might be able to do. Okay? With this show, I'm always trying to reveal the humanity in all of us, right? You know, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, you know, we look like we wear, we wear a big S. on our capes, right? Like we're, we're the super men, super women of the world.

We're out there trying to do our best 150% all the time. But we don't talk about the reality that all of these men and women, all of us rock stars are still just people. This is, we put on a brave face for the world a lot of the time, but we're still very much people. And we might be really great at business development or entrepreneurship or, you know, running a business.

But the reality is, is that we have to wear. I don't want to say a mask, but you know, we show a different version of ourself to the world when we go to work. Like, that is just the truth, right? We have to show bravery. We have to show strength. We have to show that we're on. Like, we got this. Even when we don't got this.

And I'm not going to be, you know, I'm going to be the first to say that, like, there's a lot of situations where... I've had to like sit down and be like, Holy crap. Okay. Put on the face. Cause I have to have this because this is incredibly important. This is incredibly important for my client. This is incredibly important for me and my business, or this is a meeting that I have to ace even when I haven't been feeling that inside.

And it's been really tough sometimes it's been really tough. I've been in some pretty challenging meetings where. You know, on the outside, I probably look like I had my shit together. But believe me, I really didn't have my shit together inside. And I know that I'm not alone in this. I know I'm speaking to a lot of you that have been in that very same situation.

And you know, I'm hoping today to just normalize that a little bit and let you know that. You're not alone. You're not alone if you've been in that situation. I've been in that situation plenty. Plenty of times. And I know how challenging it is. And I know how hard it can be to put on a brave face for the world when you aren't feeling that inside.

So, if that's you, if I'm getting you today, if that's you today, I want you to know that I'm very sorry for whatever you're going through. I, I, I don't know what you're going through, but I've been through some stuff, and I've been through some stuff on a workday when I had some really bloody important meetings that I had to ace.

And I totally get how challenging that can be, and if you today are getting out there, and you are doing your best, Good for you. Good for you. I want you to know that I'm incredibly proud of you. And if this is you today and you have decided to take a day off, once again, good for you. Good for you for having the, the mind to say, you know what, today I can't do it.

And before we get into this episode today you know, we're gonna talk a little bit more about this stuff, but you know, we're obviously delving into some challenging topics. So I just want to give a little disclaimer. If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or need to talk to someone, the crisis hotline in Canada is 1 833 456 4566.

I want you all to remember that life gets better. And suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, okay? So, I just wanted to say that if I'm talking to anybody and you're having really like the worst day of your life, and this is, this is the, this is the show you got, I hope that... We, we changed things around for you today, and I hope that you please make that call, get some help, and recognize once again that suicide is a permanent problem to a, or a permanent solution to a very temporary problem, okay?

Life, life has its ups and downs, and if you're at the bottom, that really means that you only got up to go, okay? So, there is hope, and I want you to know that I care about you, and I wish you the best. Okay, so let's get into it. What are some of the, what are some of the challenges that we run into in BD?

Yeah, I have, I have about five that I just wanted to touch on today as we hopped into it. So there's no specific order to this. None are more important than the other. These are just some of the challenges that I have experienced in my BD career with some of the tasks regarding BD and Maybe we can get into some of the ways to handle this.

Okay, so number one that I have here is the meeting goes south. Okay, if you've been in BD any length of time, you've had a meeting that really did not go to plan or you get somebody who's incredibly introverted and it's very hard to carry a conversation or you get somebody who has preconceived notions and you know, they're there to tell you how to do your job or that they know what you do and they don't want it or something like that.

Right? We've been there. If a meeting is going south, two things, you don't need to take any abuse, but you also don't need to dish any abuse. It's okay to end the meeting, okay? It's okay to end the meeting at any time for any reason. If you're finding that the meeting is going incredibly south, you're being abused, you're being yelled at just excuse yourself.

Say, you know what I appreciate your time today, I'm sorry this didn't go to plan, I wish you the best. And then honestly, you just end it because you don't need that level of abuse in your life. Most of the time you're out there marketing for a business or another person's business. Or your own business.

And you know what? You don't need people bringing that kind of negativity to yourself. You don't deserve it. You don't deserve abuse. If you are being abused and you know what, I know this happens to a lot of you guys through, through meetings, through phone calls, whatever it be, don't be afraid to just end the conversation.

You don't need to stay for it. You don't need to stay and be abused. I don't think there's an employer on earth. Who's going to make you sit through that. Okay. All right. So let's say you're getting that, that, that side, or, once again, if a meeting is going south, once again depending on the type of personality you're speaking with, okay?

Meetings can go south in business development because business development people tend to be conversational people, right? We're trying to build a connection. Sometimes, you get a person across from you that just is not interested in building a personable connection, okay? These are like introverted people not to like stereotype anyone, but like analytical minds, some engineering people.

Sometimes they like to just stick to the point, right? They don't, they don't need the personal mumbo jumbo. They just want you to get in and get out. Tell them what you do and, and, and, and get out. Okay. If that is the case, if you've got somebody across from you and they are all business, they don't want to touch, they're not really hitting on those like personal connection points.

Don't be afraid to just keep it business for this meeting. Once again, is it going to be fruitful? Maybe not. Maybe hard to say. All they care about is the dollar value and the value of your service. So if your service is absolutely rockstar, it's, you know, it's exactly what they need. They may still move forward, but you know.

Don't be afraid. If you're getting those really introverted people, you don't always have to work for the connection. Obviously, we talk on the show all the time about trying to build the best connection possible with our customers, which is what we want to do. But maybe that that that connection is not always possible and you need to read the room.

And if you are in that situation, you're really struggling with building a connection. You're in a meeting and there's just nothing going on. The conversation isn't happening. Just take it straight to business. Yes. get it done, get it over with and get out of there because the faster you can get through that situation, the better.

And they're all they care about is, is whatever the product or service is, or maybe they don't even want to be there. That's the other option. Your customer might not even want to be there. They were told to be there. And you know, they're not interested in building a personable connection or really learning more about your product or service.

If that is the case, once again, read the room, make your pitch, get out. You don't, you don't need to waste any more time there than you need to. Okay. All right. No shows. Okay. We talked about this on yesterday's episode, right? Where I had a, well, I guess I, I kind of miss miss spoke it on the last episode.

What I was talking about in that case was I had, I had a client who had, who had a customer. I said client a lot in that episode. And I was actually referring to two different companies. So bit of a mistake, but I had a client who had a customer. They really, really want it. Okay. And, yeah. I showed up for a meeting with this customer, booked, approved everything, accepted.

They were going to be there three times. They no showed me five minutes to the meeting. I'd driven an hour to see them each time. So three hours wasted three meetings where I showed up and they canceled, but I stayed positive. And what I did is I, I apologize. I said, look, I'm sorry for, I'm sorry if there was like a miscommunication or if something went wrong here, still really want to meet with you.

Can we schedule this up on the fourth meeting? We met, had a great meeting. My client met with this customer. They made a great connection. All was well. But I could have let that day really, really crush me. Cause by the time yeah, like, you know, obviously if you look at it, by the time somebody no shows for you three times.

You might be the idiot to rebook, but that's me, I did it, I went for it, and on the fourth time, worked, okay, and I did not let that day crush me, you know, was I feeling discouraged? Of course, was I feeling like, what the hell, man? Yeah, of course, right? But, I didn't let it discourage me, and instead of getting upset, I just I move forward.

I said, you know what? I still want this meeting. I'm hoping I'm going to try to rebook. I'm going to apologize. I'm going to ask for the meeting again. I'm going to reschedule this thing as soon as I can. And I did that. And on the fourth time it works. So when you have no shows, don't immediately write this customer off.

Okay? You know? Yeah, it's a dick move. We know this, but you don't know the situations that led up to those no shows. You don't know the person. You don't know what's going on in their life. In that time, there's too many unknowns. So you have to assume until they tell you to get lost, you have to assume that they still want to meet with you.

It just did not work. Okay? It just didn't work in this occasion. So don't let a no show wreck your day. Don't let a no show wreck your day. Rebook. Try to rebook. I think you will find that in most cases, that customer will likely still rebook with you. It's about how you approach it, right? What I like to do in that situation is just say, Sorry, I missed you.

You know, it may have been my mistake. I'm sorry if that is the case. I still really want to meet with you. I would love to reschedule this meeting. Can you let me know what your next availability is? Boom, rebook the meeting, move forward with your life. And you know what? Instead of that, letting that day, letting that situation wreck your day, you've turned around, took control of the situation, took action, and now you can move forward with the rest of your day.

And that is, that is the solution here. Okay? Okay. Yeah. You know, you get yelled at that's another one. That's really tough. Yeah, I've been there. I've been there where and you know what? It's not you they're yelling at. That's the funny thing, right? They're usually upset if you're getting yelled at as a business development rep entrepreneur or something like that in a meeting.

That person was pissed off before you even showed up that day. Believe me, there's other things going on. And it's really easy to take it personal because they are criticizing potentially you. They're criticizing potentially your customer or your company. They might be criticizing your product or service.

And yeah, maybe, maybe there was an issue with your product or service, okay? But most likely that customer is dealing with other things. that have nothing to do with you. They have nothing to do with you. They have nothing to do with your product service. You just happen to be the punching bag for that day.

Once again, in that situation, you do not need to take it. However, you also do not retaliate. Okay? So the solution here, someone's yelling at you. Just excuse yourself. Say, you know what? I'm really sorry for what has happened. I, I do want to resolve this situation, but I, you know, I, you can't talk to me this way.

And so let's talk when you've cooled down. And honestly, excuse yourself from the table. Like, you don't have to be there to be a punching bag for anybody. You're your own person. You have your own feelings. You deserve respect. And you deserve to be treated with respect. And if you aren't being treated with respect, you don't have to stay, you don't have to sit through it.

And so I encourage you to Push, push that conversation. That doesn't necessarily mean that that's the end of the conversation with that customer. What I'm saying is, let's, let's take a step back. Let's let them cool down. Let's us cool down because now we're pissed off or we're in a bad, we're in a bad headspace.

And what's best is instead of getting into a shouting match with this customer, because, you know, I mean, we're human. The reality is when we're being yelled at in that way, it's very hard to respond calm and cool. We both need to take a step back. So don't be afraid to take a step back. Excuse yourself from the meeting.

Excuse yourself from the table. You know, you can apologize and say, look, I'm really sorry that this has affected you in this way. I do want to deal with this, but I can't deal with this in this situation right now, the way that it's being handled. Excuse yourself, move on, and, and, and try again, okay?

There's going to be other days, there's going to be other situations. You don't need to sit there and take abuse or be yelled at. You, you... deserve the respect, right? You deserve care and respect just like they do, and sometimes the best thing to do is to take a break and walk away for a minute, okay? All right, let's talk about sick days, okay?

Sick days. This is something that I, myself, have struggled with because I find that I get sick at like the worst time. Like, at one time, I kid you not, like, I barely get sick, but When I get sick, I get really sick. And I had just started on with a new client. This is going to be like my first big meeting. I was supposed to fly down to Vancouver for this like gigantic meeting with a huge engineering company.

And I kid you not the one day of the year that I could not stop throwing up. Was this day, I kid you not the night before I got so sick and I don't know whether I was just like incredibly stressed or what the situation was, but my gosh, I got mad sick and I literally had to, had to cancel this meeting and I felt horrible about it, but I was just I was in really rough shape.

And, you know, that's really hard. That's hard as a business development rep or entrepreneur, especially when you got a really big meeting coming up, right? I totally feel for you. We we go through hell and high water to attend these meetings. We really care, right? We care a lot about about the success of our clients or about the success of our own businesses.

And canceling meetings is usually just completely off the table. But Understand when you are that sick. Okay, I guess that's like the moral of this story. I was that sick. I was genuinely that sick. And there was no chance. I was literally in my mind still thinking, okay, how I'm throwing up. But how can I get on this plane?

How can I, how can I get through a plane ride without puking? Like that was my mindset. And so I understand your mindset. But yeah, this was the day. This was like the only day last year that I took off work was this day. And I was just too sick. I was too sick. And I knew it. And I tapped out. And so know your limits, know when you're too sick and don't be afraid to tap out.

If that's truly where you're at, if you're really that sick. Take the day, take the day. I know, I know, I'm right there with you. I am that like high performance entrepreneur. I'm that high performance business development rep. I am that guy. But even, even we, we get tapped out. We, we have the day that we have to tap out.

And so understand that. One of the other challenges that we face in business development is that we talk, right? Like we're talking right now. We're doing lots of great talking. We talk a lot. We make phone calls. We laugh. We joke. We make connections because that's what we do. We have meetings, right? Well, what do you do when you are too sick to do that, but you're not necessarily too sick to not work?

You know I've had lots of days where my voice, my voice was just a mess. Like, you know what I mean? I'm dealing with a, with a throat infection or my throat's swollen or whatever, name it, you name it. I got a bad cold and I can't talk. Okay. So these are there. You need to have a backup plan, right? The reality is when we're in business development, there's lots of things.

Obviously, our main job is always to make those calls to make the cold calls to make the digital introductions to make the emails to do all that stuff. But remember, there are going to be days where your voice ain't working. It's just not working. Okay, been there done that thousand times. What do we do?

So don't be afraid that day. To push, you know, push your meetings. If you got meetings going on, just say, look, you know, my, my voice isn't working today. Would it be okay if we can reschedule? Obviously, if not, maybe you got to push through it, but if most customers are willing to do a quick reschedule, so don't be afraid to reschedule your meetings for that day.

And don't be afraid to just do some computer work, right? Do some research, do some client research, create some new target lists, you know, do your digital introductions. Maybe create some new great brochure material or create, you know, some great social posts, you know, find some cool images, make something.

There's some productive things you can do even when you're really sick. So I want you to think about that this way. You know, if you're like me and you really don't like taking sick days and I'm one of those people unless I'm really sick, I'm not taking a sick day. But that doesn't mean that I'm still doing my normal days routine.

I'm finding other things that I can do to either support my business development team, support my clients. Support my business, whether that be my own digital introductions, whether that be creating social content, whether that be creating target lists, you know, identifying new industries that we can work with, maybe identifying some customers to reach out to as soon as I'm feeling better.

There's a lot of work that can be done. So don't, don't think, okay, I'm sick today. I, you know, I'm out, I'm out. I don't need to make calls. I don't need to do, you know, I can't make calls. There are other things that you can do. So think about it that way, you know, plan your life or give yourself opportunity where even if, you know, you're not speaking that day, don't force yourself to make those calls, find the other solutions.

You know, find the other solutions that you can handle that aren't going to impact your system worse, that aren't going to make you worse, that aren't going to hurt or impede your healing. Okay, look for the other solutions, but there are, they are there. There's lots of kind of behind the scenes things that you can do on that day.

And I would encourage you that if you are too sick to be making phone calls, but maybe you're feeling like I still need to do something, look at those backend items that you can do. Look at your social posts, look at your target list, look at your LinkedIn introductions and email introductions. Maybe you refine the pitch.

Maybe you refine the script and make something that's even better, right? Like these are things that in a regular day, we might not even have time to do. So think about it that way. A sick day is sometimes time to do the things that you've been neglecting behind the scenes, right? Where if we're making calls all day, if we're doing emails, we're like, we're not really doing that backend stuff.

We're reusing items. We're doing all sorts of stuff. So. Feel free to use your sick day to do the back end stuff that you've been neglecting and it will benefit you in the future. There's always ways to turn, to turn it, to turn a day around. And I think that when you're feeling a little bit under the weather, you can't really make the calls.

It's just not, it's not in the cards. Look at the other items that you can do. Look at the other items. and turn a bad day into one that's actually incredibly productive, okay? Once again, like I said, don't be afraid to reschedule your meetings. If you are really too sick to attend them, if you are feeling under the weather, you don't think you can, you know, give your best impression, don't be afraid to reschedule those meetings to a day where you can put your best foot forward.

And most of the time customers are not only willing to do this, they're thankful you didn't show up and make them sick, which is Fair. I agree. I want I want my meetings to do that for me. So think about it that way and do that for them. Okay. All right. Let's talk about personal life challenges. Okay. Obviously, personal life challenges are really hard.

I've been through a lot of them. Been through some tough, tough times, you know you know, a little story. My mom got cancer in 2017. She has recovered. We're good. She's out of the, out of the, out of the, out of the dark, I guess you want to call it. Thank goodness. But it was an incredibly challenging year.

The prognosis originally was pretty bad. And That was a really, really tough year mentally for me is really hard to stay in the game when I'm thinking about, well, is this the last year that I'm going to get to spend with my mom, right? So there's, there's been a lot of situations like that. I lost, you know, I talked about this in the last episode.

I lost some friends quite young. You know, I was, I was 18 when I lost my first close friend and I was 26 when I lost my second. And these were like close friends, like they were family, you know, so I. I, I understand that level of hurt and that level of pain and what that can do to your life and especially your work life as far as like just throwing things, throwing your life upside down, you know, and I imagine, thank goodness, I haven't lost a parent yet, but I imagine that that is what that is like and I want you to understand that if this is you, and that's something you're going through, and you can't work right now, you just can't do it, you just can't do it, and I don't want you to hammer yourself for it, there's certain things in our life that are just too hard, and I agree, and personal, personal items, personal items, deaths things that are just turning our life upside down, and I'm sorry.

They're really, really hard to put on a brave face and just get out into the world. And I, you know, I know as a business development person, as an entrepreneur, as somebody who's selling items and trying to build rapport and you know, what I say all the time, right? We're trying to take it on with a positive attitude.

We're trying to be in the, you know, always leaving a great impression everywhere we go. And sometimes that just isn't possible. And if that isn't possible, don't be afraid to take a little bit of time. Don't be afraid to take a little bit of time, you know, take a, take a breather. You know, I have days sometimes where, you know, if something really bad happens, like I have a really shitty meeting or, you know, I get some bad news or like something just changes my frame of mind, sometimes what I'll do is I'll just, I'll go for a quick little walk.

You know, whether that just be like a quick little rollerblade or take the dog for a walk or just, you know maybe I'll go like put on a show real quick, or maybe I'll have a bath and relax for a minute, but it's just something to take your mind off of the thing that just happened and try to get a little reset in, give yourself a little reward, a little break in between that challenging item and the next thing.

And yeah, it doesn't have to be long. It can be like 20 minutes. Just give yourself a quick reset. Allow your body to come back. And hopefully be able to change that frame of mind back to the frame of mind you were in before. But find a way to, to blow off that steam. Find a way to turn that day around.

Because it's very easy to sit and dwell about something bad that's happened, right? You know, we, that happens a lot in our lives. But you know that while we're sitting and dwelling about it, we're not really fixing anything. We're not really turning the day around. We're not being the successful people that we want to be inside.

And, you know, I talk about it all the time on this show. We need to always think about what's the next step. What's the next step? How do we get back on track? How do we turn this day around? How do we, how do we make the best of a bad situation? And typically the way that we make the best of a bad situation is by finding a way to move forward, take action, take a next step, you know, make the call, make the call.

If you just had a really bad call and it went horrible, give yourself that 10 minute reset, do the thing, go for a little run, you know, do something to feel better quickly, hop back in, make that call, get two or three good calls under your belt. And what you'll notice is now you're back. You're back. You're back.

You just had to, you had to reset your brain. Okay. You had to reset your brain. Maybe that was blowing off a little bit of steam real quick. And then it was having a few quick wins and then you're back in the game. Okay. So find a way to get back in the game. Don't let a bad thing. Don't let a bad meeting.

Don't let a bad phone call wreck your day. You know, take action, turn it around. And I think you're gonna find really great success. All right we talked about it quickly, right? Bad phone calls, you know? Let's say, you know, we talked about earlier, you get yelled at, maybe you stumbled through a pitch, and you're like, shit, you know, like, that happens to me today!

That happens to me now! I've been making pitches for... 15 years at this point, maybe longer, right? And I still have days where I have a really bad pitch. I like, I jumble my words or whatever, you know, it happens. It happens. It happens more often than you'd like. That's the truth. And you know what?

Sometimes I'll just laugh, apologize and keep going. Right. But don't let it wreck your day. Don't let a bad phone call wreck your day. Like I said, hop back in, hop back in. And get right back to it because you'll find that you'll find that the sooner that you reset, reset that bad pitch or like you give yourself that quick break, but not too, not too long.

Just make it quick. Make it like I said, 10, 20 minutes and give yourself a quick reset, blow off the steam, come back, have a few quick wins, make two or three more calls, get a few quick wins under your belt. You know, if it's a case of a bad meeting, get back and, you know, maybe make some phone calls, do something, do something to get you back into that productive flow where your day's moving forward.

And, you know, We all have em man, you know, we all have bad days. We all have bad meetings. We all have bad phone calls. We all jumbled up our words. Sometimes we're human. You are human. I'm human. The billionaires are human, right? We're all human. We all make mistakes. We all have bad days. We all have emotions to deal with.

And once you understand that, give yourself a break, give yourself a break. You know, we all have the day. And you know what? Like me and Cole have had plenty of conversations. It was like, ah, that didn't go as I hoped. And I said, you know what? Like, Don't worry about it, dude. Like you're killing it. The reality is the rest of the stuff you're doing.

The other 99. 9% of the things you're doing are going absolutely amazing. Don't let the 0. 1 wreck your day. Don't let the bad call wreck your day. Don't let this one bad feeling in this moment wreck your day. Because the reality is you have a whole rest of your day and you get to choose how it goes. You do, you get to choose, you get to choose how you respond to any situation and you can choose to dwell on it and feel bad about it and beat yourself up or you can choose to turn it around, pat yourself on the back, pick yourself up and kick butt and I choose that as much as possible and yeah, there are days where maybe I do sulk a little bit, but most of the time I try to turn it around and I try to kick butt and I know that you can do that too.

All right. Okay, so yeah. Thank you. Let's close. Let's close this one off. Okay, so I got one more that I want to chat about. And that's obviously work challenges. Okay, you know, we all deal with work challenges, especially in business development, where we have other people setting our quotas, we have other people, you know, deciding what is good and what is bad and maybe they're changing things around or maybe we're losing the organization, the structure of our organization is changing.

There's a lot of things that are outside of our control, especially when we work as business development reps. It's not our company. You know, you work as a sales, marketing, business development person, and you're working for another company. You don't control where that company goes or the choices that it makes.

Okay. You might have some input, but the reality is. Is that you need to focus on what you can control. And while that sucks, and sometimes that literally means that the people that you need in an organization or let go, or, you know, suddenly, you know, your company's doing something completely different than what you were marketing two weeks ago.

These things have happened to me personally. So totally have experience in this. It sucks. Take your minute. Take your breath and and take action. You know, adjust, adjust to the changes and move forward the way that you respond doesn't have to change the tasks that you do. You know, the way that you do things, you may have to adapt, but the reality is you can you can adapt.

You can adapt. Don't let. Don't let outside organizational challenges take you down, right? You don't have to. You don't have to. You get to choose how you respond to these things. You can look at it as a positive, as a new challenge. You can look at it as something that's going to destroy your life. And I encourage you to look at it as a new challenge.

Find the positive interaction and kick butt. Because I know you can do it. I know you can do it. You can adjust to any organizational change. And you can make the best of it. And a positive attitude is the secret, right? Things that have always helped me in my life, especially when it regards to like anything in the business world, I am incredibly positive.

And I am incredibly optimistic. I am looking for the good in every situation. And you know what? That is truly how I've been built. This happened before I was in business. This happened a long time ago. I've always looked at it as I'm lucky. Good things happen to me. Great things, you know, great things tend to happen over time.

Yeah, there's bad hiccups in our life. There's things that suck. I've had plenty. But, I'll tell you what, I've never lost sight of the good things that have also happened. I've never lost sight for the things that I'm grateful for. And it doesn't hurt to have a little bit of gratitude. Especially when you, when you, when you need gratitude is when you're feeling the worst.

That's really the truth. It's kind of a weird, weird situation. The irony is, is that even when we're in the worst place in our life, we still have things to be grateful for. We have people to be grateful for. We have things that have happened to us to be grateful for. We don't have to always look at the negative and you have to almost train your brain to look for those grateful things.

But thank goodness, you know, young Kelly did that. I don't know how, I don't know when, I don't know why, but my brain defaults to how do we fix this? How do we make the situation better? Look at the things that are good here, find the positive. And I'll tell you what, that has served me so incredibly well and I sure hope that it serves you well as well.

I hope that you find a way to find the positives even in bad situations because it really will improve your life. Staying optimistic, you know, staying optimistic can sometimes I think be the differentiator because When you get into that negative headspace, I feel like it just brings more negativity, or you start to see more negativity.

I think maybe that's what it is. I'm not sure. I'm not, I'm definitely not a philosopher. Definitely not, but like, I feel like when you're optimistic, you always see the optimistic thing. You see the good thing. And if you sit and you dwell about bad things, those tend to be when more bad things show up. And it's not that they weren't there.

I think that's what it is. It's not that the bad things weren't there. It's that you weren't seeing them. You weren't noticing them. You weren't in that headspace. And I think when you're optimistic and positive, you see the good, you see the good, and you don't see the bad. Even if the bad is there, you don't see it.

I think that's the secret. I think that really is the secret to programming your brain. When, when you think in positivity, you see positivity. When you think in optimism, you see optimistic outcomes. And I think that when you are the other way around, you have to find a way to change it because it's, it's, it's what you're seeing, right?

You know, they talk about it. They talk about you know, you know, you want to meditate and think about positive things to bring positive things into your life. But I think that's what it is. I think you just see them. I think they were always there, but you see them. You see the positive things when you are trying to see the positive and be positive, right?

I think eventually it just becomes automatic. All right. Things that have helped me taking a breather. Okay. Taking a breather. When things have been really, really tough. Yeah, I, I've needed to take a little bit of time to myself and think and figure out, is this the path that Kelly Kennedy wants to go down?

Or is this the outcome? What are my options here? You know, I think what I find is a drive, you know, and maybe this is just me in business development, been in business development a long time. When I'm really struggling, I go for a drive, you know, or I go for a motorbike ride. I love riding motorbikes. For those of you who know what they are, I have a Super Duke 1290R. Absolutely love it. Barely get to ride it. You know, it's tough as a parent to get away and do those, do those things you used to do. But yeah, when I do get to, it's, it's a thrill. It's a really great time. It's a really great time to think.

And so for me one of the things that has kind of helped me is to think through my challenges or think through my problems. And I tend to do that really well while I'm driving. So potentially going for a drive might help you as well. I'm always looking for the next step. Okay. You know, We all get presented with problems, right?

Every one of us run into problems. And sometimes the ticket out of the worst problems you're in is asking yourself, what now? What can I do? What is the action that I can take? That's the secret. What is the Action that you can take to improve your situation. Okay. Action is the great differentiator between people who succeed and people who do not.

People who do not, they have problems and they do nothing about them. People who succeed have problems all the time. Just the same. But instead of sitting and doing nothing about it. They look at what are the, what are the things that I can do to either resolve this problem or find a better situation and action is the great differentiator.

The next time you're having a really big struggle and it feels overwhelming, like I said, take a breather, go for a drive, try and think about the optimistic outcome and try to think what is the action. I can take. What is the next logical action that will help fix this situation or help turn this situation around?

Or what are the possible actions that I can take? And I think you'll find that once you start thinking about actions, you're going to find one that works and you're going to take action, but you have to be deliberate about it. And we need to get back up as soon as possible. Right? We talked about this.

Like I said, take your, take your beating, take your whips. You know, if you had a bad moment, bad call, whatever, take, take five, cool down, get back on that horse, get back on, make another call, schedule another meeting, right? Do something. But do something as quick as possible. Don't sit and dwell in that bad situation.

Get back up, get back up. You can do it. And you're going to find that once you do that, once you do that, and if you get back to it and you do that thing that was really hard or that really hurt you a minute ago and you have success, it's going to help you. And you know, one success leads to another success.

So when you've had something bad happen. Get back up as soon as possible. That's going to help you. You know, I talked about this on yesterday's show, that some of the best advice that my dad ever gave me, or I guess it's not yesterday's show, it's Sunday's show, my apologies. Some of the best advice that my dad ever gave me was essentially fake it till you make it, but it was more in a context to, like, I lost some really close friends, I was struggling internally, inside, with, like, how to continue with my life.

And how to feel good. And obviously I felt like shit, I felt horrible. And I, you know, anybody who's lost people close to them, they feel this way. And it can put you in, in a depressive state, right? And if you're in a depressive state, it's some, sometimes you just don't want to do anything. You just want to sit in your room or watch TV or not get up that day.

Like that is what depression looks like. Depression looks like you just don't want to do anything and nothing feels fun, nothing feels good. And the advice that my dad gave me in this situation was even though it doesn't feel fun. Even though it doesn't feel good, get up and do something you would have done before.

You know, in my case, it was like, go see a movie, go see a friend, you know, that you can see you know, get out, go for a walk go for a roller blade, you know, just do something that you would have done. Get back into some type of resemblance of a regular life. And one day you wake up and it hurts a little less.

And the next day it hurts a little less. And next thing you know, You are living a normal life again, and life doesn't feel so crippling, okay? The secret, sometimes in this case, is fake it till you make it, right? Fake it till you make it. And this, this is the same with like any type of imposter syndrome or things like that too, right?

What's the best way out? It's to do the thing that makes you feel like an imposter until one day your brain can't tell you you're an imposter anymore because, well, you've done that thing a hundred times, right? It's that's the secret. The secret to overcoming any fear for the most part is to challenge yourself in that fear.

To do the thing you're afraid of until it's no longer scary, right? Well, you know, sometimes in life, that's what you have to do is that even though you don't want to get up today, even though you don't want to make those 15 phone calls, even though you don't, you know, you're struggling, get up. Just do the thing you were gonna do before, even if it doesn't feel right, even if it feels weird, like the weirdest thing you've ever done.

But one day, and one day real soon, you're gonna wake up. It's not gonna feel so weird. It's not gonna feel so messed up. It's not gonna feel so bad. And you are going to feel better about it, okay? Alright, and you know what? The last thing, the last thing here, we've talked about it, if you were really, really struggling, and you know, I'm speaking to my people that maybe, maybe you were the person that at the beginning of this show we gave we gave the, the, the suicide hotline or the help hotline, right?

If you were mentally struggling and you were really at the end of your rope, and today's the day that I got you on the show, and I hope so. I hope I got you today, and I hope you make that call if that is where you're at. Bye. I want you to know that it's okay to take a break, you know, as high performing individuals.

And heck, I, I would be, I would be the first one there saying like, my gosh, what am I doing? Why am I taking this break? Cause I am really that high performance. I genuinely love business development. I work very hard and I have a ton of responsibility between my personal life, my business life, and just everything else.

And I, I struggle with this, but I'll tell you what. I know that if I hit a point where I was just burnt out that I would find a way to take the break and I hope that you do too and there's nothing wrong with this. This isn't quitting. This isn't giving up. This is giving yourself the time that you need to recover, to get back to some resemblance of normal life, to help yourself, right?

Put on your air mask before you, before you put on anyone else's. You need to look after yourself before you can look after anyone else. And so if that's you today and you need some time to look after yourself, Take the time, put on your mask, don't feel bad about it. Alright! That is the end of episode 49.

My gosh, once again, thank you so much for joining me. If you've been with us since the beginning, thank you. Seriously, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you so much for listening to all of our episodes and continuing to stick with us week over week. I sure hope you've liked, subscribed. It's left us a rating, followed us.

And I wanted to also just say we have a community questions segment now. I want to do this. I want to do this a lot. So please shoot us your community questions to podcast@capitalbd.ca, that's podcast@capitalbd.ca, subject line, community questions. Shoot me your business development questions, shoot me your entrepreneurship questions, and I will answer them to the best of my ability.

 Shout outs this week, Colin Harms. You know, Colin, I'm going to give you a special moment. Dude, you've been with me since the very beginning on this show. And I want to say that every message you have sent me, I have been grateful for. Every post of mine that you've reposted, I am grateful for. Thank you so much for supporting me from the very beginning, from the bottom of my heart.

The Business Development Podcast thanks you, and I thank you, Colin Harms. Lauren Cromey, Kathryn Nolan, Justin Deonarine , Aaron Haberman Belen DeLoera and Jason Dean. Thank you guys so much. Each one of you sent me really kind messages, supported the show, sent us community questions, which I appreciate.

Thank you so much for all that you do. Until next time, this is episode 49 of the Business Development Podcast. We will see you at 50, catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry.

And founded his own business development firm in 2020, his passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists. For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the business development podcast.