I had the privilege of attending a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seminar with the one and only Jean Jacques Machado. If you don’t follow the Jiu Jitsu world, Machado is considered Jiu Jitsu royalty. He’s achieved countless honors and practices at the highest level. Having him teach you Jiu Jitsu is like having Elon Musk or Mark Cuban coach you on business.
Over the couple of days of learning, something became very obvious to me about how Jean Jacques Machado teaches, and overall approaches the subject at hand. I saw it as a reminder of things that work in sales and life, as well as Jiu Jitsu. I’m not going to quote anyone, but I will summarize the top line takeaways you get when you study with someone who’s become a master at their craft.
1 – Believe in the small things.
Henry Ford is often quoted as stating “If you believe you can, or if you believe you can’t, you’re right”. Belief is certainly key to success, that’s nothing new, but the additional distinction I picked up this weekend was WHAT that belief is focused on. “Believe in yourself” is often interpreted to mean big things. Believe you can become President, or believe you can make the olympic team. Nothing wrong with that, but big success comes from a lot of small successes. Focus on your belief on the smaller things. Believe in your product, believe in your process. Believe that when you pick up the phone to make a cold call, you have value to offer. Don’t wait for the big things to believe in. Start with the small ones.
2 – Fundamentals first
We get so focused on learning new things, or fancy techniques, and take away focus and effort from not only learning the fundamentals, but mastering them as well. On the Jiu Jitsu mats, you need not fear the opponent who has practiced 1000 techniques a dozen times, but you do need to worry about the one who has practiced a dozen techniques a 1000 times. The same goes for anything else in life. In the same way that learning proper fundamental hand and foot placement makes even a basic technique difficult to defend. Being maniacally obsessed with even the smallest of details that affect your performance of fundamentals is the path to mastery. Watching one of the world’s foremost experts at Jiu Jitsu execute the same basic armbar I also know, I lost count of the details that he manages that I didn’t even know about. Master the fundamentals. The rest flows from that.
3 – Keep it simple
Again, we tend to overcomplicate things and make too much of tasks and challenges. Somewhat parallel to the fundamentals above, the law of simplicity means that your focus is on the core and important things. It’s not about small, because some small things are simple, yet crucially important. Everything you will ever work on has elements of crucial importance at the heart. Find those things and stay simply focused on them. Sales, for example, is at its simplest core a conversation between two people, to discover the presence of pain. If you keep that simple focus in mind, everything you need to do becomes pretty clear.
4 – Pride
Yes, I know, it’s one of the 7 deadly sins. But that’s selfish pride. Pride in your work, in your craft, is a different thing. A football coach friend of mine would always ask his players, “Do you play football, or are you a football player?” There’s a difference between doing an activity and being a professional. Sales is a profession, or a job. Which one describes you? If it’s your job, that dictates a certain set of behaviors. If it’s your profession, it’s a whole different set of behaviors. If someone watched you work, would they see someone with a job in sales, or someone whose profession is sales?