.... to President's Club

I've touched on the 'from butcher' part of the newsletter's title but wanted to focus more on the "...to President's Club' part, seeing as I've been back a week from my first club trip.

Mark Magnacca (President and co-founder of Allego) and I were talking one afternoon about my journey and he told me the story of Joseph Grundfeld, the son of a holocaust survivor who watched his father work in his butcher's shop and decided it wasn't a road he wanted to travel as well. He's now a highly respected financial advisor for Merrill Lynch.

The question I asked myself recently is "How did I make this happen?" - it wasn't THAT long ago that I was waking up before dawn to spend hours slicing and dicing beef to make mince for restaurants and weighing 100s KG of chicken breast one by one to vacuum pack them in x5 or x10 bags, and having chicken juice run down my arm and up my sleeve.

For not much more than minimum wage.

Quite the contrast to being on the Caribbean coast wondering which of my three personal butlers will be on shift today!

So how did I go from making mince and sausages to making the flight across the Atlantic?

I'm putting my change in trajectory down to two things.

1. Realising it was possible for me to attend.
2. Consciously deciding that I was already going and doing the work that was needed for me to get there.

When I joined Allego eighteen months ago, I didn't even consider that club would be something I could do. As in, I didn't even think I would be eligible - it's for the high-performing, slick closing executives - right? Well thankfully here several roles are eligible to go, the SDR role being one of them. I had to fight off some fairly big imposter syndrome baddies to get my head around that idea.

I'm not going to break down the specific metrics (as this isn't the place to do so - some people have to book more meetings than I do, others less). The number is arbitrary - club is about recognition of performance. I was tracking well in my KPIs but just hadn't considered it a realistic achievement that I could reach.

It was only when I heard Richard Smith , my then-VP, give me a shout-out for being SDR of the Quarter in Q2 and said "he's on track for being the first person in Allego history to go to President's Club in their first year". As soon as I heard that, I realised it was in my grasp and from then on, everything changed. I was booking a seat on that plane.

The crucial mindset shift came in August. It was a poor month for me (and the team overall) and the first time I'd not hit target in a while, which killed my momentum and put a dent in my plan to hit the target I'd been set. So what did I do differently? I didn't know it by that name at the time, but I invoked the Laws of Attraction.

I was already going on the trip. I just had to do what was necessary for it to happen.

Crucial to this was the tracker I had made in my first few weeks that helped me keep an eye on where I needed to be for the club trip.

From September I adopted two distinct ways of thinking - help others without expecting reciprocation, and what I later learned is actually the main element of manifestation - act like you already have it, and you'll get it.

Now the second point here is a fine balance - don't get cocky, as you'll fall hard and fast, but from then on I imagined myself on the plane, I spoke about club in the present tense(?) "when we go to Mexico", "when I hit my target", "when I'm on the plane". These weren't words of arrogance (as I myself would have called them in the not-too-distant past) but of confidence in myself, and of manifestation.

This is the part where you think "Wow, Chris - I didn't know you were into the woo-woo stuff!". I'm not. I've avoided a lot of it in the past as it doesn't gel with me, but here's the thing..... it works. It really does.

The mind is a powerful thing - and utilising it in certain ways can change your perspectives. I've used vision boards in the past, dabbled with meditation and yoga in an attempt to bring some focus into my life but the way I've found the most success is by learning to adopt a servant attitude. "How can I assist you?" - the more I've helped people (and not expected things in return) the more I've had back. We're not talking crazy things here - commenting on someone's post, offering a share or an intro, sending a link to an article or talk that you found useful for example.

You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want. - Zig Ziglar

As if by magic (attraction) - around the time of my trip, Justin Michael shared the preview of his third book "Attraction Selling". This is the first time someone has intricately woven the Laws of Attraction with the art of sales. It's a timely read for me as it underlined everything I've been doing the past year, as well as added several new avenues to explore, such as visualisation techniques, 'musifestation' (the use of music at different Hz, binaural, and more), affirmations etc. Can't recommend the book enough - hit Justin up for some extra resources, too!

The key takeaway for me was the line "The profit motive is a mind-killer" - semi-obscure Dune references aside, it's perfect. Not just fear, but the search for profit.

If you enter a situation thinking, 'how can I make money from this?' then you're entering in a taking mindset. Enter thinking 'how can I help you?' then you open up the doors of reciprocity and you'll be repaid (over time).

While I might not be swapping my punk band t-shirts for tie-dye just yet, I'm certainly opening myself to the world of mindset changes, laws of attraction, and paying it forward.

Try giving without any expectation of return and see how you get on.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some work to do so I can catch a plane next year.