E19 The Psychology Of Authentic Sales
August 2024
93 minutes
E19 The Psychology Of Authentic Sales
August 2024
93 minutes
Stream on:
Is sales really evil or can it be a catalyst for authentic self-growth? In this episode, we delve into the philosophy and psychology of sales, challenging conventional views that often label it as a purely self-serving or even "evil" practice. We highlight the transformative power of sales, not just as a business practice, but as a path to personal growth, self-acceptance, and meaningful contribution to society. By redefining sales as a service to others and the planet, we propose that it can be a noble and fulfilling pursuit that aligns with one’s higher purpose.
Key topics include:
0:00-06:58 Introduction To Psychology of Sales 06:58-15:42 The Evolution of Sales As Manipulation 15:42-30:32 Processing Emotions In Sales 30:32-34:23 Loving Your Product In Sales 34:23-48:45 Overcoming Self-Doubt and Embracing Self-Love 48:45-53:44 Being In Service Of Others 53:44-56:30 Conviction in Sales 56:30-01:01:24 Fear of Rejection and Conditional Relationships 01:01:24-01:04:50 Reciprocity and Balance 01:04:50-01:08:34 Listening and Understanding As Keys To Sales 01:08:34-01:17:15 Sales As An Education Process and Contribution To Society 01:17:15-01:32:35 Sales As Service To Others With Authenticity and Integrity
is a global, leadership-strategy consulting company. 3Peak creates the roadmap that aligns behaviours, relationships and Functional Human-Systems™ to achieve your business strategy.
Co-Founder holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and did extensive research in Consciousness, Trauma and Physical, Emotional & Mental Health in various Institutes and Research Centers around Europe.
Co-Founder is one of the most sought after therapists in the world, mastering diverse modalities and opening wellness centers in Istanbul, Santiago, New York and Berlin. Her approaches bridges transpersonal psychology, meditation, bioenergetics, family- and business-constellations and more.
Co-Founder has extensive experience advising Fortune 50 and FTSE 100 C-Suite Executives in leadership, strategy, team dynamics, and organizational change. Before coaching, Mino worked in finance, management consulting, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Mino Vlachos: Hello and welcome to the 3Peak master leadership experience. My name is Mino Vlachos and I'm joined by Dr. Mazen Harb, along with our partner Krisana Locke. We are the co founders of 3Peak coaching and solutions, where master leaders build healthy systems. Our company provides coaching and workshops to executive leaders and leadership and well being workshops to employees. Today's topic is all about the psychology of sales. And so we're going to be talking about some of the ways that we go about doing sales within our own company, three p coaching and solutions, but really talking about the kind of inner world of sales, what happens within the human, and how to be successful in sales in an authentic way. So just up front, I'm going to say what today is not. It's not about sales tactics. It's not about the kind of operations of sales. We're not going to tell you how to do sales. We're going to paint a journey of how to go from potentially not doing sales or being against sales, or rejecting sales to what it might look like a possibility that can open up when sales feels like it is authentic and in integrity. And so that's going to be portrayed through our own personal journey. Because Mazen and I, we're not natural sales leaders. We weren't trained to be sales leaders. And yet, because of our company, we found ourselves one day doing sales and learning how to do it. And in our typical fashion, instead of going and reading a thousand books or going to a workshop or a class, we love to do the experiment ourselves. We love to try many things, to fail many times, and to learn why something works and how to do it a bit differently than what's been talked about in the media. And so that journey took us here to today, where we not only successfully do sales in a way that feels authentic and has integrity for us, but we also now support and train other people in how to do the same process for their people. Again, this is not about the technical aspects of sales or the tactical aspects of sales. But if you want to start somewhere and you're thinking to yourself, I'd like to figure out a different way to do this, then this is the episode for you. And so to begin, I'll just talk about my personal relationship with sales before starting three p coaching and solutions. Solutions. And Mazen, I'd love to hear where you are at before this whole journey. But for me, I'll be honest, I really hated sales. I thought it was really icky, like it was this like dirty thing that people imposed on you and I never wanted to do sales, and even though I had sold work before, when I was back working at a corporate consulting company, I did it in a way that was like very, you know, passive. And I almost stumbled upon certain opportunities and I was like, ah, okay. But going into three peak, that was really, my attitude was like, sales sucks, sales is evil if I'm going to just paint it that way. And then I've had this big journey, this big transformation since we started our startup. And now if you talk to me, I might even tell you that sales is the most noble thing a human can endeavor. So there's just like this huge change that I've undergone, and I'm happy to paint that picture across this podcast episode. But let me ask you, my friend, when we started, or let's go, even before three peak, what was your perceptions, attitudes, feelings about sales?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Honestly, it just was purely conditioned. I was super conditioned to that word. I'm gonna go extreme. For me, it's like sales, it's evil in a sense, or like sales that mean I need to convince people to buy things they don't want. I came with super condition. I have lots of belief systems. Yeah. So in a very negative aspect of it, that's how before really jumping into it, so that's a hard time to jump into it.
Mino Vlachos: And so give me just a little now pulse on where you're at now. Where's your, what do you believe sales is now? You said it was evil, and now what is it to you now?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I had to go through my inner journey. For me, going into sales was my best and personal development at this time in my life. Apparently in my life, I was not focusing on business. I was focusing on my services or my like, science, academia, research, healing, work, consultancy, but not in a business perspective. In a sense, people used to come to me for my expertise. So it was easy to give a service so I didn't have to sell it so much. I have to just to be good in my service, and that's enough. Brought people. But when we went the journey of full entrepreneurship, yeah, that brought me where I am right now through, when I went through my personal development of it, I could see myself all the limiting beliefs, and it brought me to now where I'm like, oh my goodness, I had so much judgment, I had so many misunderstanding. Wow. It allowed me to grow as a human being, to go through that. I wouldn't miss it in my life. Actually, my personal growth was to go through my own conditioning with that title and with that department, with that function.
Mino Vlachos: And so one of the kind of mind experiments that I use sometimes, thought experiments, is I always take things back to my ancestors. I think about my grandparents, who are villagers in Greece. And, for instance, my grandfather, when times were tough, he picked and sold lemons. So he was a salesman and he sold lemons. And then most of his actual career was being a blacksmith. I think about my other grandfather, who's an electrician, or my grandmother, who. They came from a village. It's renowned for melons, selling melons. And I think to myself, is selling a lemon a bad thing? Is it evil? Is selling a tomato an evil thing? And for me, I'm like, no. How could I ever say that? Because I want to eat food. I need to eat food. It's good quality food comes from the island that I'm from. So what's inherently bad about selling lemons and melons and tomatoes? People need doors and they need windows and they need fences. So what is bad about selling metalwork, blacksmith work? But somewhere there's a disconnect in our modern world where what we're doing, we consider that badlandhouse. And when I consider what they're doing is good. And so mazen, I'm trying to understand a little bit, what's the difference? You said I'm selling something that people don't want or trying to trick them. That's the perception, the conditioning we have. So maybe tell me, if I think about the grandparents with the melons and the tomatoes and the lemons, awesome. I feel no judgment towards them. And yet, when I see sales today, there's this judgment of, yeah, it's evil. So what's the difference?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Again, evil is a strong word, but I will explain why I said that specific word. It brings me to the times of my own research, because I literally do research on neuroscience, behavioral neuroscience, and literally, memory learning through connection, through association. So it has to do with ads and everything. So I'll go back a little bit in time where before, go back 100 years backwards before and a little bit before, before the industrial revolution, we were trading. We were trading. We were trying the best to sell things, but was trade things we really, really needed, right? And even you go way back, it was all trading. So when you say about your grandparents, yeah, everybody need a lemon. So you don't need skills. You don't need that much skills. You really need to believe in what you're selling, and you need to have a demand for it, right? So it really met. So it was easier. So, but when we start to produce, so many different products, that is not any more necessary. It's just a luxury, right? More from sweet and stuff to beverage. Like people can live with squeezing a lemon, putting some sugar and water and then drinking it. But then, you know, then other brands came and want to convince you, no, don't do it yourself, have a better way. And so we had to go and a lot in the fifties, sixties, the western world had to go more into understanding the mind and then how to trick it. So people associate things to in order to buy things, right? So it's interesting. So it was not any evil way. They were not evil people. They had a product and they really want to sell it. So in order to have a normal livelihood and live, live good with it. So the game was still the same. The only difference that happens is, and this is the interesting part, when I was doing neuroscience research, like when I was deeply in, like 15 years ago, the, I realized that during the sixties, 1960s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, the private companies knew more about the brain than scientists. I was like, but one moment. And then later on I understood the tricks. They understood how to make association so that the brain go, and then who do a memory associate two things together and feels, oh, I really need that. So in a way, is always the private. You know, first of all, most the army is, that's the most technological, then the private, the second, then third comes the rest of the population and the science in it. So in a way, I was really working on addiction and feeding behavior. All right. So really I need to say why I said that word. But I don't believe in that word, just more the understanding. And I realized most of it like the crisis we had or we're having, it was more of obesity crisis, more and more like all the sugary, fat, sugar stuff that has been sold to kids so very, since we're very kids, we know where to put advertisement right? When there's cartoons, when the times. So there's lots of manipulation. But again, I'm using manipulation without judging. I'm saying there were a bunch of people saying how to sell this product. Ah, cool. Kids love those things. We associated this. You put a cartoon, you put something nice so they knew more about the brain. And in that sense, I was loaded with my own research, with my own understanding. And where I missed my grandparents and your grandparents understanding of it was just a normal trade. I tell you what I need, you give me what I need. So this is where sales was, I consider healthy, and this is where it moved to unhealthy or now use better dose word balance, and then imbalance. But what remained in me was the thing that was more imbalanced or unhealthy. And this is where my judgment came from. And even I generalized, and that was my mistake. To generalize it.
Mino Vlachos: I'm going to give an example. I try not to pick on my parents too much in the podcast, but. Sorry, sorry, guys, I'm going to pick on you a little bit. We went to Istanbul last year, and we went to the bazaar, right? There's the big marketplace. And as we were walking around and looking and shopping, there was somewhere they were selling the turkish delight, the lucum. And as Greeks, we also have lucum. So we love it. It's something that's very, like. And they had like, you know, we have like, one flavor in Greece, right? But in Istanbul, in Turkey, they have like 100 flavors, like the most magnificent lucum I've seen in my life. Like, with Nutella and almonds and different fruits and like, mind blowing stuff. And like. So we wanted to buy lucum, right? So we already had a desire, and there was a lot of vendors, there were a lot of guys there that were selling lucum. So supply and demand was there. I remember we went into a shop, and the prices were all written, right? They were written in lira. And so he told us the price per kilo, and then said, you know, pick out a box and then tell me what you want. He said, very nice tea. So tell me what tea you want. And at every moment, he would give us a sample. We would taste it, then we would tell him how much we wanted. He would weigh it. He said yes. And we said yes. And then he put it in the box. What other flavor do you want? Okay, we'll do a sample. Yes, on and on and on. And we filled the box. And at the end, he told us the price. He added it up, he told us the price. And my parents, they were shocked. Like, it was very expensive, and they went into this, like, shock. And so they did pay for it. We bought it. We took the lucum. And then for the rest of the day, they were basically saying, like, we got taken advantage of. The salesperson took advantage of us. And I couldn't understand why they thought that, because if you just did the math alongside the guy, like, his math added up. Like, everything was transparent. The prices were labeled. We went one by one. Like, if you just added it up in your head, you would get to the same result. We got to, there was no cheating, and we sampled every one, and it was delicious. And we said, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And yet there was still this feeling at the end of, like, this guy took advantage of us. And I've been thinking about that in sales a lot. And so one of the mindset shifts I had in terms of the conditioning I had is that I look at sales as a process of education. It is educating someone about the product or service they're purchasing. And there's something about getting like, a fair value to me. One of the reasons we kind of freak out if a salesperson is talking about us is because they know the price that they want to sell it at, but we don't know the price that we value it at. And so we don't have our own inner direction on what we think the thing is worth. And so then we feel like the other person is pushing and pulling us towards the price that he or she thinks the product is worth. And it's in that gap that I think that people feel the manipulation. But this is where I say the consumer or the buyer has an obligation to go educate themselves and to figure out what they think what they're buying is worth, instead of just being like, I don't know. So I'm going to rely on this one guy to basically dictate the price. So if my parents really thought it was unfair, my invitation to them would have been they should have walked to the other vendors and compared prices to see what is the price of lukum. Is this guy being honest or is he pulling one over on us because his prices are transparent? But we're just assuming that, okay, his prices are the right prices. But beyond that, I don't know what else the guy could have done to educate us because we sampled each one and it was delicious and we got went home and we did enjoy it. We shared it with friends and family. So that's one of the things is like sales is an education process. So with our company, I really am very respectful and honestly even happy when people say, I want to go check other companies because I say, great, go educate yourself. Go figure out what is out there. Don't take my word for it. Or in other bigger companies, they want to do marketing to talk about what is leadership. I think that's amazing because I can't educate everyone on the planet about what is leadership. I don't have the scale that a company of a million does because my company is a startup. So for me it's not a competition. I think it's an education process. Mazen, what would you say to someone that went through a sales process and feels manipulated. Like, what do you feel is potentially going on, on the buyer seller relationship there?
Dr. Mazen Harb: It really has to do with to know yourself, right? It's a big word, but even I will. I would say it. Even I want to say it about our journey of sales, the journey of sales and all my conditioning. It was to know myself and the moment I knew myself. And so that was not true. And I was not seeing reality as it is. When it comes to the buyer, like the buyer, the seller buyer relationship, we are prone to follow our instinct that is connected to our conditioning. So in a way and an understanding is, if it's something, we go with reaction without feeling what is needed. So if we have someone charismatic, hey, with, you know, a nice voice, charismatic, and then really makes us feel good about it, and then we really enjoying the social engagement of it, you know, because people, one of the most instinct that we have is to engage socially with other beings. So in a way, there will be all those basic psychological instinct, which is the motivational drive is in sales. One. It is. One of the main instinct is, you know, hunger and thirst. The other one is fear. But that this, we keep it for. No, we can bring it here. I say we keep it for the political realm and the propaganda, but I will keep it here because also it's played. The third one is to be seen, you know, understood. Right. And then the salesperson understand us. When you mix all of that, right? So. And then you're like, I will be playing on your senses, on your, like, this is an amazing opportunity, and I will tell you how amazing it is. Then you'll be like, oh, my God. You know, so the instinct of I will get, you know, hunger and thirst is like, it's the reward, right? I'll get, oh, oh, I will get something out of it. And then I. If the sales feels like you're not convinced yet, then he will use the instinct of fear. Again, people are not aware as they're using the. They don't know the whole psychology of the body. Like, they're not scientists, necessarily. And then, and I feel they're not convinced. And they might use the, you know, if you don't get it now, tomorrow it's just an offer for you. Tomorrow it will be double the price. And you see, in marketing and everything you have, like, buy it today. Every time I go to a website, buy it today. Today for you, it's €10. Tomorrow it's a hundred. And I'm like, it's funny. I only enter today. And I'm like, I'm sure if I enter the next two, three days, it's still there. And then you have the time clicking. The time clicking. I have twelve minutes to buy it. See? So it's really hitting our reptilian brain. So reptilian brain is the first part of the brain that really evolved before having the other, the limbic, which is all the motions are, and then neocortex. So the upper part, and it really has to do with our instincts. So when we come as kids, the first thing we start to do, instincts, we go on those things like reward searching for food and water and then it reward us so we know we're good. And then avoiding pain, right? And then, so the fear is very important. We are, you know, we belong to the animal kingdom. We are animal beings. We are humans, but also we are animal beings. So that means we have the whole structure of that. So if we don't know ourselves, if we don't know our reactions, if we go, ah, but I've been manipulated. I'm like, but didn't you notice that you've been manipulated the last two, three years to buy things? Check around your home. And here I ask an experiment for everyone listening, please check around your home. How many of the things you have you really still enjoying and you really, it's something that you really need and how much of it you just felt you wanted and you bought it because your neighbor did it, because that phone, somebody tell you it's amazing. And then, but now sitting, you don't feel like, why did I buy that? So again, the difference is, what do I need and what do I want? Say I'm making differentiation. I need is like, it's really necessary for me because it really will help my life. I want is just from the brain desire. What do I want to feel satisfied and fulfilled? I will buy more clothes to feel good. I'll buy more clothes. So I'm fulfilling another need, you know, in my wantings. I hope that answers a little bit. Yeah.
Mino Vlachos: I'm going to bring in what our third partner, Krisana says many times, which is we cannot not influence each other. So humans, because we are relational animals or social animals, we influence each other. And I would argue that any form of influence is a form of sales. It is, I am existing and my existence affects you. And sometimes if I direct my energy or direct the focus or direct the desire, then I'm in a sales process. So we try to sell things to each other all the time. Hey, you're with friends, I want to go to a restaurant. You're selling the idea of the restaurant. You know, like, oh, I want to buy this thing. Of course, that's more tangible, sales. But I want to go to work, and I want to convince the group that we should go do something. Like, there's, there's at school, we want to do an education and tell certain stories, certain facts, and pick. We're all selling each other ideas, products, services, everything. Everything we're doing constantly is sales. And one of the books that I'll refer to later, which is a wonderful book on the psychology of sales, is called to sell is to be human, because it's something we do with each other every single moment that we're with one another. But if we know ourselves, as Mazan's mentioning. So I know my emotions, I know how to process them. I know how to not instinctively react on them. No one can manipulate us. But I see even, like, I don't know why I'm going in this direction, but I see, like, a lot of young men that are really hateful, resentful, angry towards women because women, just by being themselves or even putting the sex appeal out there and the men can't contain themselves, they cannot process their emotions, and so they're, oh, I got to go follow this thing. I have to. I am powerless to this woman, and then I hate her for it because she's manipulating me. And I'm like, dude, if you can just learn how to be with yourself and be with your emotions and to process and to move your energy, then no woman can force you to do anything on this planet. And vice versa. I'm sure there's some vice versa maybe kind of reciprocation, but I'm a man, so I don't.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah, for sure.
Mino Vlachos: Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Mazen Harb: It exists vice versa to a certain degree, but it expressed differently. It expressed differently.
Mino Vlachos: So we're all again buying and selling different things, and we're all wanting and desiring. And it's the root of it is, can I be above my impulse and not beholden to it? Like, I have this instinct, but can I observe it rather than I need to just act on it? And if you observe it, then there's nothing anyone can do to you to hook you.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I love where you went, actually, because you gave me the last motivational drive, the last instinct, but I did it. I forgot to mention it. But it is one of, that's one of the most successful one that happened in advertisement and in the business world, which is sex, right? Sex cells. We always hear it. Sex cells. And in the past, like hopefully now less and less. You see like those girls, like very, like half naked young girls on cars and things. And again, what we are hitting, again, I said it before, it's the primitive reptilian brain. Again, it's really to reproduce. So then it's sex to feed, then it's joy, reward. So everything has to do with reward. And then to avoid pain and to, you know, and then fear. Right. So you mix those three. It's not like I'm giving the. The mix of those three. It's already known. You mix those three, that's it. You're able to hook people more and more. And this has been known since the fifties, sixties very well and has been used. So it's. And this is what we're talking about, the wanting. Right. I. It's not just the need, it's just the wanting, which is the desire. And when you said like example of genders. Oh, I can. So it's really not only just go above it, because we have to respect our instinct and it's really how to go through it. Yes, there is an instinct. Is it need now? Because there's no, you know, just more of emotion, energy. I'm like, can we process it? Can we understand that, that something is happening? And then so can we regulate ourselves and understand that just. That's a desire. I want it. I wanted, I wanted. And then going and, you know, going, processing. So, yeah, I'm just confirming what you're saying. Know yourself and then go through it. And then one can be never manipulated in that sense, in the negative sense. And please, I really want to share, like the word manipulation is not a wrong manipulation. This word manipulation has been hijacked. Manipulation. I think also, you know, from Greek, money is the. Or Latin, like to really is the hand is how to. So a kid, when it comes to the word, start manipulating the world around them, right? So manipulation is right, just more how to go. So it's not a negative word. We put it so negative because we used it to gain advantage when people probably were not consented. But that's it. So that's only one part of it.
Mino Vlachos: I'll add one last thing on the relating dynamics. Then we're going to move to more like business sales. But again, in that relating dynamic, there's like I'm going to again use the young male as the example just because I can relate to it. But you have a woman who's either just existing or whatever, even showing interest, right? So then the man, the young man has this intense desire, and then he wants something. But in that wanting, he actually loses sight of the actual human in front of him. And that this woman is someone to relate with and to have a kind of amazing opportunity to build a relationship and a rapport and meet each other's desire, desires instead of them. It turns into. Then I take, because this is something I want. This person doesn't want me to have it. It turns into this really interesting, weird game. So if we can just learn how to, again, process some of this and learn how to healthily relate, then none of this becomes so charged and this kind of intense battle that we see. And I'll then paint that into sales. It's the same concept of a seller has something that they want to offer to the world. The buyer might want it or not want it. And so we go into the other humans an object, and we want to buy and sell from each other, and we want to be. It's beyond transactional. It's almost like a dehumanizing thing where the seller is not a human and the buyer is not a human. We're just. Just something to be taken advantage of. And this is where we have a kind of create a different framework for what we consider sales. And so, Mazen, you came up with a bit of a formula. There was three things, right, that if we kind of fall in love with that, sales moves from this dehumanizing taking to something that becomes much more in authenticity, much more in integrity. So can you share with us a little bit of what that is and how you came to realize this discovery?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Thank you. My realization came when I was had. When I was having resistance. I was resisting it. And then, okay, I don't understand. So I'm going there. And then how to tell them about this product. And then I understood how I I wasn't the wrong and not that the world was in the wrong. I wasn't the wrong because I have responsibilities. If you spend your life or your energy building something, right? So if you're building something that somehow you believe in it, if somehow you believe in it, you create a rapport with it that mean actually you're loving your product. Otherwise, it's very difficult to enjoy what you're doing. Again, there are other people who are not enjoying what they're doing, and they don't love the product. So that doesn't apply to them. Probably they should start enjoying certain products. So here I'm talking in an example where you're already enjoying the product you created. And it is your life work. You really, so you create a product. So you love the product by relating to it and enjoying it. And then, then the second one is you love yourself. Because if you do not love yourself, that means you have, you feel yourself unworthy. This will also break this equation, that self doubt. And you feel yourself small. So you, if you seal yourself small, yet you love the product, you don't know how to pass it on. Who am I? You know, you start questioning yourself, then you love yourself, you love the product, and then you have to love the people who you're buying to, again, love in a sense of, out of respect. I really feel the product would be in service for them. That, I mean, the word of love here, loving the people through that service, if you believe what you're giving the people is not in service of them, that also question doesn't work. So again, for the ones who are selling product that they don't enjoy and then giving people service that they don't, they don't think it's less needed for people. And if they had like feel of unworthiness and then actually this doesn't work, then they'll have to use different conditioning techniques, as we said, which is really using a little bit of cunning, a little bit understanding the instant of joy, pleasure, desire, fear, you know, charm. Like one would really need use a lot to create a desire in the other. So the others start buying it, but in a more healthy way. Is that's the equation. Loving the product, loving the self, loving the people I'm serving. So in a way, I'm obliged. I have a responsibility to that creation to bring it out. Then I'm like, so sales is one of the most natural and healthy thing in the chain of creativity. As an artist, as a business person, as anything. Like I see a demand, I try to find a solution for it. I enjoy my creativity. Oh my God, I'm filling that demand. I enjoy myself while doing it. I have, I'm responsible now to move it if I get blocked, actually, I am in the wrong and not the world.
Mino Vlachos: And so we're going to take each one of these one by one, because I think these are very important pillars. And I'm going to start with the first one, which is loving the product. And we'll spend the least time on this because this isn't about product building or building a service. This episode, you can check out some of our other podcasts about startups, which I think we get into stuff like this when it comes to loving the product. This is where I think first the salesperson or in a lot of professional services like doctors, lawyers, consultants, they become the salespeople. So it's not just, you know, a salesperson that you hire off the street. A lot of times these experts need to then at a certain level in their career need to go sell the work themselves to a lot of professional services. Like I came from management consulting. You have to end up doing sales anyways. A lot of jobs. The more senior you get, you end up doing sales anyways. Like again, I'm going to use example of my mother. She's a food scientist, so she works with food, but at some point she had to go do sales because at some point becomes so senior that it's not about, you know, creating the products, it's you have to go sell the product to someone. My dad's in academia. He has to go get grant money and funding, so he has to sell his ideas or he goes to industry and like corporations and says, I have a cool innovation. Would you like to try it? So he has to do sales. So in every corner, in every place, I don't know where you can hide. At some point you need to go share your ideas, products or services with someone else to love your product. You need to understand the product. You need to understand it inside and out. And I think you need to understand what other people are doing. Because if you can't benchmark or compare and not out of judgment, but comparison gives you information. It's what we do naturally as humans is like an apple and an orange. I'm comparing them. That's not a bad thing to compare. It's if I start to judge the comparison or say one's like, you know, one person's better than the other and the other one's inferior, that's where I think comparison starts to then create other issues, but just go out there and figure out in your industry what is possible. So I'll give a personal example. At the company I used to work at, they did leadership coaching. And I'll be honest, I didn't believe in the product, I didn't really believe in the service and I didn't understand it at that time. And one of the reasons was because I was working with these really cool people in Europe that were doing really transformational work and I kept saying, well, see what I'm doing today? And I see the potential of what they're doing. I don't, I can't make sense of like, this isn't good enough. So for me, the solution was I started a company with these two people called three p coaching and solutions where I went and found how to believe in the product. But if you can't start a startup, then figure out where you enjoy the service, the product itself, and if maybe the company you're at doesn't do it that well, go apply and get a job at the company that does do it well so that you can find the place where you really believe. Or if you're stuck, you say I'm stuck, then find a freaking way to improve the product or service at your own company. Then find a way to innovate. So at any given moment, I would say there's some responsibility to be in alignment, to be in integrity. Again, I don't judge people who say I'm going to go to somewhere I don't believe in because I just need to feed my family. Okay, that's fine, but then you're not going to be doing what we're talking about, which is a more authentic sales process. Then you're going to use some of the tactics that Mazen was referring to earlier. So that's my two cent on kind of loving the service, loving the product. Okay, now we shift to loving the self, which is a topic that I have struggled with a lot in my life. And I've had lots of self doubt, self confidence issues, always not thinking I'm not good enough. Imposter syndrome. So before I give kind of my experiential way of kind of moving through that and getting over that, I'd like to ask Mazen, what would you share with someone, like an earlier version of me that might come to you and just say, mazen, I really just, I don't love myself.
Dr. Mazen Harb: The first question I would ask, how are you able to sell so honestly? The first thing, what I would do is ask you and you tell me, no, I'm selling very well. Then if you don't love yourself and you're selling very well, then I'll ask about the integrity. So then I'll be, I'll be curious. I'll be asking you, so what are you using as techniques? Yeah, I studied this, I studied that. So using your charm, are you tricking people? Do you believe that? Do you care about giving the service to people? So that that's the thing in order. If you're succeeding and you don't love yourself, that means you're doing something that's. And yeah, so this is the first thing that comes to mind. But when you don't love yourself and you're selling thing. You'll always feel inferior. You always feel like I'm an imposter. You need to, you start to be pretending, you know, you'll be smiling without. So it's not you if you already don't love yourself. And in that it will separate you even further from who you are because your job dictate and your livelihood. So to eat is to sell, but you really don't love yourself. Then you go there, you're going to be pretending. So buy it, buy and buy with time. You will go further and further, further away of who you are. Or you use that opportunity that in your sales and then bring awareness. And you're like, go through that, what comes. And then the sales itself become the school for personal development. While you're anyhow doing your sales, see how you can improve on your relationship to yourself, your relationship to the product, your relationship to the people. And then probably you start, yeah, I don't believe in that or believe this. And how much you can bring awareness and start changing things. So again, the things where we are, the jobs where we are, it's not that, oh, I have to change my life. No. While you are in those jobs, while you're in the sales position, how to bring awareness. Because that position will help me understand my belief system. We will have to understand my limiting beliefs, help me understand how I'm stuck in my life instead of like, hmm, I will leave my life and start something else. You know what happens? You will, you will let the job of sales, you will let go of it. But when you go somewhere else and then enjoy a holiday or enjoy another job, what will remain with you is that you're not loving yourself. So you're back to the same issue. So here I say more, work through it and not getting rid of it. Don't separate from it necessarily.
Mino Vlachos: I'll share then a bit of my own journey in this. I don't know how to even talk about this because it's taken so many years where I finally do feel a bit solid in myself and really not questioning or doubting myself. But there's been a lot of steps on that journey, the first of which was really getting into my body. So it's the most critical step for me was to understand that I'm not just a head, I'm not just a mind that's floating above nothing, but there's all this physicality to what I'm feeling and that the more I'm in my body, the more I'm not overthinking. And then I'm not self doubting myself. So even now, when I do sales, the more I can feel the physicality of my body, I don't overthink. And so even those self doubting thoughts don't come up for me. So a lot of the tools that I did with Kristana and Mazen when I was doing personal development with work with them, intensely supported me to do that. From Osho active meditations, to breath work, to sound healings, meditation like, they have so many incredible techniques, bioenergetics, that really supported me to form a relationship with my body and to understand what I'm feeling and processing that emotion. There was a lot of stuck fear that I had that I needed to reveal to myself and the world and to process. So going through the layers of fear and conditioning that I had within me, there was a bit of understanding, this whole equation of an imposter syndrome. And I made a post a few months ago where I kind of, I was like, there's a formula to this. And I don't even remember the formula. I have to look it up. But basically what I realized is that if I am creating expectations of myself that are above either what I've experienced in life or the expertise I've accrued, that I'm always setting myself up for failure because I'm demanding more of myself than I'm capable of. So I need to be very honest with myself around, like, what have I experienced in my life and what am I good at and what am I able to share with the world and not going beyond that. I don't go an inch beyond that. Of course, I push myself to learn beyond that and experience more. So each day that bar goes up, up, up. But I can't tell you what it's like to be a billionaire because I've never been a billionaire. I can't tell you what it's like to be 80 years old and what that feels like in the body because I've never been 80 years old. So I'm not going to pro, I'm not going to try to do that. I'm going to tell you what it's like to live a life that either I've lived, what I've learned along the way, or what I've studied and experienced from a more expertise level. And then again, the more that I kind of really just teased out, like, what is this assumption or this belief system about why I'm inferior? Like, really tackling that and really getting to the roots of, like, my own perceived inferiority. And for me, what again and again supports me is to see myself in the constellation of life, which is that all humans are part of this fabric called universe, and we're all one in the same. There is no better or worse, greater or less than. We just have different roles, and different people can occupy that role. It doesn't make them better than the other. Like, if you go up to the president of the United States, if you up to a prime minister of Germany, there's still a person with the same things that me and you have. We're no different, which occupy different roles in society. The billionaire and the poor person are no different different. They just occupy different roles. I mean, I'll go even beyond that. We're not different than the tree or the dog or the cat or the star or the planet or the moon. Like, we're all one thing. We've just created these distinctions in our mind because it helps us categorize the world. That's how our brain operates. So that's been some of the process of evolution. But many times when I'm working with people who are in professional services, consultants, lawyers, doctors, they have a lot of self doubt, a lot of inferiority complex, that when it comes to not being able to sell, it's usually this is the pillar that they're missing. And yeah, sometimes because I just like to shortcut and provoke people, I ask people if they're struggling, they come to me for advice, like, why don't you love yourself? And of course, it hits them, like, really strong, because, you know, sometimes I'm just short. Cutting to the chase. Cutting to the chase. But that's why one of the reasons, I think very well meaning but very heady people struggle with sales is truly they might believe in the product, they might believe in serving others, but they don't believe in themselves.
Dr. Mazen Harb: It's really a big insight. I'm gonna just, you know, my scientific. I like to dissect words. If you were struggling in this podcast, understanding the word loving yourself, I'm gonna use the word I. Am I able to accept myself? Right the words, and am I able to accept myself as I am with my flaws? So that's what we mean by loving the self. That's 1 second is we need to know that most human on this planet, that's our personal development when we kid, and then we evolve. This is what we grow through, is how to accept ourselves. So I understand that most people, we don't have the self acceptance, which is a self compassion to ourselves. So what does that mean if when we do a mistake. We start really judging and feeling guilty about it and guilty. And this is where we let go of the inner self. Love. This is love, right? So to understand what is loving yourself is to understand our reaction when we do a mistake, supposedly a mistake, and how we self talk. This is where the scientific understanding what is, how not to love yourself. I really judge myself, I really hate myself for what I did and that we let go. Okay, so that's the first understanding. Second, you know, I'm gonna give a word, a sentence of hope, because here you mentioned, like, either loving the self or it's not possible, knowing that loving the self is journey for life. So here I'm gonna add it, okay? You can bring awareness to it, but there's a way where you can be fulfilled in your job without reaching a full self compassion and self loving, accepting who you are, how you are. Like, that's. Which is when we are deeply, deeply, I'm talking here deeply convinced about the product, the service, and deeply convinced that service will really aid and help others, and it's beneficial regardless the amount of doubt I have, that power of conviction within us can make us go through walls. Funnily enough, we know it very much with fanatic, with religion, with politics. See, and this is where it then something, because something is charged in us. So not everyone has to see, okay? Like, it's not, if I don't love myself, then it's not possible to do the job. No, but at least you have to be fully convinced about benefit for society, for this product, then. That's amazing. And then you can evolve in accepting yourself for how you are. Because, mino, if back then, if you really, really believed so much in the benefit of that product, and then you see that really humanity needs it and they're ready to receive it, it will spark a fire within you, you will have yourself down, but it will give you at least a buffer for you to have a little bit motivation to go to work. But for some reason, probably you didn't believe as much, you didn't see as much the benefit. Then what happened is the self doubt was way stronger the voice of the self. So it's a question, is what is stronger the voice of our self doubt? Or like, ah. Or the voice of the. I'm so convinced about the service and it's really benefiting everyone. So it's this, it's this dilemma within us.
Mino Vlachos: Yeah. I'll share an example where all three pillars for me were absent, where it was like, I felt like I was living in hell. But one of the first jobs I had, I was working on Wall street, and I was working with wealth managers who would manage wealthy people's money. So people are worth, like, millions or billions of dollars. And so they would convince these people that, like, you don't know how to handle your money. Give it to us. We'll invest it. You'll get a return from the stock market. Your money will grow. But when I actually got in there, what I realized what they were doing is they were gambling with the money. So they would, yeah, put a bunch of money in these very expensive funds where they would basically get a kickback percentage. They would take a percentage kickback, and they'd take percentages off the top for being a manager. Then they put some in a fund where they would literally just gamble. Like, I'd watch it every day where it was like playing the lottery every day. And then they'd use tricks. So they'd say, okay, like, it was an older woman I remember came in and they were like, well, what's your favorite company? And she'd be like, oh, like Apple or Nike. He's like, okay, so we're going to get you some stocks and apple and Nike because you're so smart and you're such a good investor. So it was a time where I really had no self love or acceptance for myself. I hated myself. I saw what they were doing, and I didn't believe that we were in service of the person at all. Like, it was really just like, let's take their money and let's get rich while we keep them, like, kind of deluded that things are going okay. And my job was to make cold calls and to convince people to give us their money. And it was absolutely excruciating. Like, I. Every day, we just, like, had to force myself. And my mental health was really poor because across all of these three, I didn't believe in myself, in the product or service, and I didn't believe that we were helping anyone. Now, by contrast, like, it's the opposite, where now I'm like, hey, you know, like, I'm a human with my strengths and flaws, but I'm no better or worse than anyone else. Like, I believe I'm good at what I do. I'm one of the best at certain aspects of what I do. What we do with three peak is transformational. And I believe we do really support people. And I have evidence and proof that I've seen from supporting people. So now it's, like, lined up. So now when I go to do a cold email. I'm like, I'm actually adding value to this person. I'm helping them solve a problem they might not even know they have or helping solve a problem that they do have and don't understand how to solve. So it's a very different relationship that I have now than when we first, when I first started my career. And so we started talking about, like, loving the product, right? In service, we talked about loving the self. Now we're talking about the third pillar, which is being in service of other, like, loving the other. And the way I'll kind of bridge into this conversation is there are quite a few salespeople, and actually, you've been called into clients there. They come in, the salespeople, and the account already exists, and they get a commission for just sitting on the account and not really doing anything. They don't reach out to people. There's no motivation. They don't really, really care that much about the people that they're servicing. So there's something missing about. They're not. And so they're actually not that good at sales.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Right.
Mino Vlachos: So a new sales leader comes in, is like, the sales team is not operating, it's not performing. And my diagnosis is they actually don't really care about the end user. They don't care about being in service to others. So, Mazen, can you tell me a little bit about that phenomenon where it's like, if that pillar is missing, where you're not really in service to the other?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I wrote it down before because I really wanted to show it as a triangle. So I drew in front of me, on top of the pyramid, there is the self doubt, unworthiness. This can be in both either convinced or not convinced, but this is, you know, that's crucial. But there is one way to get out of the self doubt and unworthiness of your sales if you're convinced. There's two ways of conviction here. There's no morality. We're just describing them. I have lots of self doubt. I feel unworthy, but I'm in sales. There's two ways to be convinced. One is service to others. What does that mean? I'm so convinced about this product, and I am so convinced it's in service of others, that regardless my self doubt and unworthiness, I will go out and actually portray it and give it. See, even it gives that power. So. And the other one is the opposite of it. It's not good or bad here, just the opposite of it. Because everything in duality and polarity has to have its complete opposite is I'm not convinced at all about the product. Right? And you have lots of people yet those people are amazing sales people. They have self doubt and unworthiness, yet not convinced at all. You like how it's even possible they have a conviction again. So the power here is conviction. All right, so we explained self doubt and unworthiness. What makes it difficult, but the moment, the antidote is conviction. One conviction is about our product. It's amazing and benefit everyone. Service to others. The other one, the conviction is this will help me get my next paycheck. This will help me feed my family. This will help me pay my credits. This. So the conviction is serving to self. Because when service, self conviction means just, I don't absolutely care about the product, but actually I have to survive. So those are the two form of conviction. It's not good or bad. I repeat it again, you can use whatever you want. We're just portraying what is. But in the next form of conviction, it just really is for me to feed my fan. It's for me to get the best car. It's for me to get my 10 million. The purpose of it is to gather wealth, money, and then to use any possible tricks and techniques to sell it. So actually it has nothing to do with the product. And so this is. I really need to explain it clearly to conviction. It's for you to decide which one. First of all, where in your circumstances, where in your life you ended up. Either you ended up in you this or in that. There's. There's no, there's not a third one. Either this or that. And then you decide. If that fulfills your desire, that fulfills you, then you're okay. If you start to feel doesn't fulfill you, then you need to go, whatever feel fulfills you. But again, it's coming to knowing yourself. Just, you need to know what's your conviction, what you're doing. And then later on, if you're struggling in sales and you get like, it's getting difficult, I'm not able to get good sales leads and everything. Then you can question what was my first conviction? Yeah, my first conviction is to serve myself. I don't care about the products, get money, and then, or the opposite. My conviction is really the other, the other people. And then here's the question. When you feel stuck, so then when you feel really being stuck, then we go back to what we spoke about, self doubt and unworthiness. So probably the conviction is not enough anymore for you. And then you know, what happened when you even, you're not convinced about the product, and actually, yes, it's for me, but I'm not able to sell it, then your self doubt and unworthiness will come to the surface. The moment the self doubt, unworthiness comes to the surface, you start to struggle, because your main conviction and motivator is you're waking up to what you're doing and it's reduced.
Mino Vlachos: What about this phenomenon? And again, I'm thinking of people I know in professional services, lawyers, doctors, consultants, that they want. They are in that kind of camp of service to others. But then when they do get near someone, they basically, they're not able to really understand the full scope of what that person needs. And so they can't really be in service of the other because there's something blocking. There's like, do you get. I'm saying, like, they don't really detect how to be in service of this person. Truly.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Actually, I'm gonna go back to really explaining a little bit. Service to others. The best way to be service to others, it's not to be a professional. Once you understand how non professional can be service to others and how it's benefiting you because you're not separate, then it starts to happen. The best way to be service to others and then as a feedback for this to yourself because of that, is to be able to listen. The people you mentioned or those professional, are we able to listen? It's not because I'm so over educated that I know what the people need. And this is where it comes into sales. Are we capable of listening? This is the superpower of sales. If that superpower is missed, it doesn't matter. You're the best in your expertise. I'm, you know, someone is the best therapist. He's the best lawyer. Wonderful people come to him. But if he doesn't have that superpower of really listening and understanding what they need, he won't be successful. She won't be successful. So the superpowers we're talking about here are very simple, yet they dictate our life, yet we don't notice they're there. And that's the thing. It's. I want to speak, but I don't want to listen. You come to me, I'm a doctor. I want to tell you. And I'm like, but one moment, you tell me one thing. I remember the book, what I learned. I tell you what's the problem you have. I. That's the first superpower. If this is missed, rest is miss.
Mino Vlachos: And so I'm thinking about, like, I had someone I used to mentor come to me and say they're a leadership coach, and say, I'm really bad at this sales thing, but my company is forcing me to start doing sales. I don't know where to begin, but I just. I know I'm really bad at it. And so I started asking some questions. I was like, okay, can you take something that you do and give it away for free? Like, do you believe that if you gave it away for free that it would add value to someone else? And he said, yeah, I think if I gave this, like, framework I made for free, people would find it valuable. I said, okay, so you believe in the product and the service. Okay, that's good. And then we went through. I was like, what about the other person? Like, do you listen to them? Do you figure out what they need? Or are you just talking over them because you're nervous and you're. You want to know what they think about you? And, no, I am listening. Like, I'm a good coach. Like, I listen to them. And I said, okay, so then what's left in the triangle is, what do you feel about yourself? And then it started to come out. Well, I'm afraid to get rejected. I'm afraid that I'm going to break the relationship. I'm afraid that this. I'm afraid that. So there was really all about the self, right? Which I really empathize with. And it's something that. The beauty is you can work on these things. Like, there's personal development, as Mazen mentioned, is the beautiful journey of our lifetime. Why do you feel like mazen? Some people, and I have this too, so I'm not exempt. But there's this feeling of, like, if I am selling to someone, I'm gonna harm my relationship. I'm gonna break something in this relationship. Like, what is that not that Gordian knot all about?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I really love this question because it's really present a lot. I see it a lot, a lot, a lot in our company, a lot in our. A lot. It is relational. It is conditioning of a collective. It is. I want to feel it. Start with your parents and your upbringing. It is the conditional way. How we gave and asked. We live in a more conditional society. We learn very early on, some with love, with acceptance within our family, within our parents, conditional. So your father will tell you, if you do this, I will love you. If you do this, I will give you that. So it's always this conditional, so you will never get the love or what you want without giving something back again. I went to the deep root of some of the issues and then it helped. And then everything becomes conditional. So we're. It changes our relating to others. Then you want to contact a friend, then this, what you suffered from comes from your own subconscious. I need to ask that person something. I don't know how, because everything about asking support is conditional. It's never unconditional. So there is the fear, they want to be accepted and because you suffered from it. But the truth of the matter is, when we live in a society, when love is given unconditionally, when acceptance is given unconditionally, when love is not being trade off, and then when we call friend, I generally tell him, hey, man, I need assistance. It's not like, oh, what? What should I give you back? Can I receive support? That's the first question. Do I allow myself to receive support of help? Probably ask really all the listeners. One of the biggest, biggest, biggest issue, we cannot accept support. We cannot. We're too proud to ask for help or too afraid to ask for help. Both of them is the root of it. Also it's rejection. Rejection from the outside or rejection ourselves. I'm too proud. So there is a mix of subconscious thing of. Since our upbringing really comes together.
Mino Vlachos: What I'll add to this is that when we start to look at relationships, all relationships to some extent are a give and take. And the healthiest relationships exist in reciprocity. What sales and networking, I think have started to reveal to me is the actual bank accounts, if I put it that way, that we've created with co created with friends I have, or family that I have, where some of those laws of reciprocity mutually were not respected. And we created an operating environment where one person was giving more than the other. And that became the basis of a friendship. And that was never looked at, that was never respected. And in the moment that, like, I tend to be someone who gives a lot, I believe, to friends. That's one of the belief systems I had. At least I have now come to see something different. But I give, I give, I give, I give, right? And then when I want something back, no one answers my text. And that, like, devastated me because I was like, wow, what? What the fuck? Like, I've spent my whole life giving, why won't they answer a text when I need something? And what we started to look at is I created an operating rhythm where I chose to create a dynamic where they, we could only coast, cohabitate this relationship in this dynamic and the moment I tried to rewrite the rules, the relationship itself didn't want to form into something new. And so I've started to really learn and respect that, actually, from the get go, all relationships need to be a give and take. And it's not even I'm talking about money or favors. Love giving, love, giving acts of service, giving physical touch, giving affirmation. Everything exists in a balance. And so if you set something up from the beginning that's imbalanced, then when you try to shift it, like, yes, it's going to resist that shift. And then that gets even more, I think, pronounced when it starts to become more like favors or make a sale, or make a connection or referral, it kind of reveals the game you've chosen to set up with your people already. Whereas if you're already in a balance, then I think these things tend to go much better. But yeah, as Mazen said, like, it's also about asking for help, for support, and being open and honest about that. So that's actually, again, one of the beauties of the game is sales for me revealed how I was imbalancing my own relationships and allowed me to understand that reciprocity is not bad. So I don't know where that conditioned belief came from, but reciprocity is the balance of human relationships.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Thank you. It's what came up with your explanation. Very accurate explanation is we have forgotten the golden rule of a humanity. It's time to remember it and reclaim it. The golden rule is we thrive together. We believed so much in the illusion of we separate. We're separate from our body, we're separate from our planet, we're separate from each other. Then we started to think that whatever I do doesn't affect the other, whatever I pollute doesn't affect earth. And then we forgot that if you pollute earth, earth will have a rebalance itself. And then it comes in form of climate change, or climate disasters or whatnot. So we really, deeply inside of us, believed in the illusion of separation over millennia. And then within our family. As a kid, again, I gave this example multiple time. You come to the world, you're connecting to everyone you wanna, and then your parents tell you, no, no, no, he's. We don't know him. Don't say hi. You're like, you see the kids at the beginning, first years, they say hi to everyone with this tremendous amount of love. They don't see separation. Why would not say hi? This person, this person is nice. I feel his energy, and that's the idea. And then we learn that actually this is the other family, and then we're not connected. When humans, indigenous people, were living in tribes, we're still few living in tribes, they don't come to this world imaginator. And they say, oh, in one tribe, this is one. No, it belongs to the tribe. They know that they belong to the tribe. The tribe belong to this mountain. This mountain belongs to this planet. So they live in respect of themselves, the tribe, the mountain, and then the planet. So this chain has been forgotten. And actually it's really an act of remembering. And you're gonna say, oh, but I'm like the simple motivation why we would need to remember, because it gives us motivation. Because if we start to let go of the illusion of separation, understand that every act we do, it's really affecting the fabric of the systems around us. We start to be responsible. And if we know, if we are so interconnected, we start thriving together. So all the struggles, everyone struggling within their job, within their system, within their governments, within their countries, within the planet, it's root of it is the illusion of separation. Its solution of it is to thrive together. And then, but how would I do it? I'm like, understand that we need each other and to start to reciprocate. If Earth is giving you, you have to reciprocate back. If your body is giving you to have you to reciprocate back. So it starts with simple act. To be good in sales is to understand also the fabric, how to reciprocate with your body. If your body keep you in house all the time, why you're abusing it. And then later on asking, why am I sick? I'm like, how you're abusing it with substance, whatever. There's so many ways to abuse with self talk with outer substances. You're abusing the planet or you're abusing something. And understanding reciprocity, understanding that we really need to keep. We're part of the system. And then sales, it's not something outside of it. Sales is to keep the balance. If I create something that's beneficial, I go there and then share it. And then if I have a question and the request to ask a friend, why would I go afraid. I'm going afraid only if I feel myself as trickster, only if I feel now I'm tricking. I'm extrapolating something out of my friend. That's the reason we're afraid. But are you? And that's the question. Are you really extrapolating something out of a friend? That's one two. The other thing, you come to your friend while you already lived, you gave so much and you have resentment. Oh, they still believe that nobody gives me as much as they give. So when you go to your friend, you're expecting your friend to give you everything because you gave them a lot. So both are in belief system. Oh, I feel resent. And then it really applies. And then the friend doesn't give you exactly what you want. So you're full of expectation and you start to be resent. You start to have resentment against this person.
Mino Vlachos: And that's exactly what I did. So I'll tell you when I mentioned earlier. So I had this concept in my head that, like, I'm an amazing friend and I, I'm such a good friend because when I'm with you, I open my heart fully. You open your heart fully with me. We go as deep as the universe, you know, I will host you, I will take care of you. I will buy your food, I will buy your coffee. Like, you know, that's my kind of greek conditioning of like, I'm going to make sure that everything's taken care of to the best possible extent. And what I realized. So then I had all these expectations when I finally was like, hey, I reached out to these people and I've invested whatever, 30 years and being the best friend they could have, why don't they respond to me when I need something? And one of the realizations I had is that different people value different forms of friendship. So some people, they really value going deep. Some people, they value connecting with people often. And one of the things I wasn't doing is I wasn't connecting with people often. So I'm the kind of friend where we see each other once every four years before those hours were together. It is magic. But then I don't talk to you for four years, five years, so we can drop into being best friends for that moment in time. And I realized there's some people that might think I don't care about them because I don't talk to them for five years. And it clicked for me. I'm like, actually, from that perspective, I'm a really bad friend because in what is meaningful to them, which is often connection, knowing what's going on in their life, staying in their life, knowing more of the day to day, they don't necessarily want to go that deep or it's not that important to them, then actually, I'm a terrible friend. And I started to see myself more honestly. Or for some friends, there are languages to like let's help improve each other or do something together. Like, there's all kinds of different forms of give and take. And so for anyone listening, this is my painful lesson, is if you do have that resentment, if you do have that expectation, and it's easy to go blame the other, and it's easy to say they're egotistical and they're selfish and they're bastards. Like, take the pause. It took me like almost a year to sort through this. It was a lot of disappointment, a lot of grieving, ultimately, to realize that I'm the problem. I'm the one who's not in contact with my friends. I'm not doing it often enough. So I've switched. Now I'm making an effort to really reach out to people a little bit more frequently and to actually be in their fucking life, in their day to day, to understand what they're going through day to day, and not just show up once like Santa Claus and be like, I'm going to open the magic bag and give you all the gifts of the universe for an hour and then disappear for a year, I've realized it's a different form of friendship. And so, yeah, ask yourself a little bit is like, am I actually giving in the right ways? It's not about giving enough, it's about giving in the right ways for the friendship to give back to you.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I will tie it here. Right? So here I would really take it exactly from that thread you left me. Am I giving the right way? But that's where it comes. Unconditionality instead of conditionality. It's not because I'm giving in the right way. I would need accept anything in return. See, that's conditionality. Friendship is loving ourselves, loving, loving the friend, loving. In a way, it's unconditional to step out from that conditionality of love. So here what I want to bring, I will add, point where, yes, I completely agree with you. And there's something more. There's something more that remains is we are by nature, by nature, by conditioning, sorry, by conditioning, we are self absorbed. We are so self absorbed in our reality, we believe that our perception, which is years of conditioning, is what reality is. So first, we don't see reality as it is.
Mino Vlachos: That's first.
Dr. Mazen Harb: And then second, because we are self absorbed. So how to get out of that? You go ask a friend and then they give you something back or not. You should not be affected because any moment you're affected that you live in that conditionality, you're really self absorbed and you really don't see reality as it is. And you only perceiving through your own past, you're gonna say, okay, what am I speaking about? The understanding of? We need to start to do the task. Bringing awareness to what, Mazda? What are you talking about? Bringing awareness that the person we're speaking with, we have no idea where they are within themselves. And instead of having expectation or thinking, oh, they didn't do this, or they didn't do that, are we able to take their perspective? Are we able to ask them their perspective? So here we're coming back to the main superpower. Are we able to listen? And this is what I learned. My brothers, my friends, nobody, you say, it's not like everybody wish me this, all the success there is. And if I start to judge them, they didn't help me or they didn't give me back. They're giving me, they're giving me love, acceptance. They're giving me all of that unconditionally. They cannot save me. You know why? Because they don't know how. Because they have their own things. So. And this is when I start to change seriality as it is. Oh, my goodness. It's not about me. It's not that they don't want to help. They're super busy. They're super worried. I come on top, tell them, oh, I really need support. I really need someone that brings them way more stress. They get really worried about me. And actually, most of the people get handicapped, get crippled by it. So if we start to be less self absorbed and see reality as it is and understand that what we see is not reality as it is, it's only reality. Through our conditioning, through our perception, when we start to see the perspective seen by the other, by asking the other, we start more and more, get to see reality as it is. That means we're less and less disappointed. We start to understand. We're like, oh, my God, all my family, nobody helped. But when you start to ask them, you understand why. It's not because they don't want to help. It's just they didn't know how. And they get stressed and they get worried. So what we believe it is around us, it's not what's really around us.
Mino Vlachos: And we're starting with, we're talking about, like, family and friends because it's the. It's the most intense relationships in terms of the emotions they evoke. But as we move to the outer rings of acquaintances and then strangers, they all, the way we relate with people is kind of the same. But it gets easier in a way, because the expectations we have, the conditioning we have, the emotional bonding we have becomes less and less and less. And so if you can master it with this close ring of individuals, family, and friends, and you can send a text without expectations, without an outcome orientation, my God, when you do it with a stranger, you'll have zero expectations and zero emotional hooks into what's going to come back to you. So one of the things that people struggle with a lot with sales is I'm afraid of being rejected, which to me is kind of, I had that at some point, too. It's not. Again, I'm not different. I've just learned is, I've learned even to let go of my family and friends giving me what I want in the exact way I want it. If I don't ask in the right way. So I've let go of. And even if I do ask in the exact right way, they still might not answer me or support me. And that's okay, too. I've really learned to kind of not take it personally. So now when a stranger comes to me, I'm like, why would I expect a stranger to do me something when even the friends and family, I don't expect it of them? Rejection to me is like, it's all about expectations. You're all, I'm wanting, I'm wanting, I'm wanting. And this person needs to, needs to, needs to. And I started to like, again, we're gonna. I could keep bringing up the dating thing. It's the same concept of, like, I need this from this woman, so I'm gonna get it from her. And it's like, you don't know if you're a good fit. You just want something. You just desire something, you want it. You have this mental fantasy in your head, but have you met this individual? Have you talked to them? Do you bond? Do you relate? How many dates do you go on where you have, okay, they're pretty, but you talk to them and you're like, I don't feel it. Like, there's no chemistry. There's just no vibing. Like, there's something about it. It's not a good fit for me, so I move on. So I don't take that personally. Like, some things just, they're not good fits for us. In this moment in time, and maybe ten years from now, you meet that same person. It is a good fit. But in this moment in time, when you stepped into the river, it wasn't a good fit. And it's the same thing. With sales. So you reach out to someone and maybe it's not a good fit for them, right? Maybe it's. Again, it could be like they don't have the money, they don't have the time, they don't believe in the product. It could be like, they don't have a product. You know, there's all these things that it's just not a fit. And then you reach out six months later and they're like, oh, my God, thank you so much for reaching out. And we had that same thing with a former client of ours where we did all the work. We completed it, we put the bow on it, we finished, they thanked us, we thanked them. A year later, they reach out and they're like, we're in total crisis. We need you. So, like, it's all about timing and it's all about fit. So if it's not a good fit, I'm not going to take it personally. So letting go of this thing, of like, they're doing it to me, or it's about. It's a feedback loop, right? Rejections of feedback loop that I use to beat myself up. My product sucks. I suck because they didn't respond to me. Or it's a no. And I'm like, again, it's the self absorbed thing. I think you mentioned Mazen, where it's like, maybe they just legitimately are fine in this moment in time, or maybe you're not the right vendor for them, and that's okay. You're not the right business for them, you're not the right product for them. It's. It's to detach from the neediness, I kind of put it that we need to make an outcome happen. I also would say that, like, no for me has become the biggest gift because I'm even better with this now. But for me, the no response was more painful than just saying no. If you just tell me no, then I can go about my day. I stop, you know, worrying about it, I stop organizing it, I stop reaching out. It's a very clear, okay, I'll talk to you in a year and see if a situation has changed. The ambiguity of it's just open. Like someone's very interested, oh, I really want to do that. And then you email them and email them and email them and it's like. But they told me they were so interested that to me, took me a longer time to process. But it made me very grateful for the no's, made me very grateful for people that were going to close the loop with me. And so that's when I say, like, learn to love the no. It's not like I become numb to the no. It's. I genuinely am so grateful that this person took the time to communicate with clear, clear clarity that like, yeah, actually it's not for me. I'm like, thank you so much. Thank you so much for telling me. And now we close it.
Dr. Mazen Harb: One of the most important rules in sales, and this is where we're the most conditioned, is, and I really ask the few of you who are listening, really to bring awareness that this is when it happened to you. And if it's happening to you, when we go to sales, we're trying to have a commission, we're trying to sell something. So by the nature of how we are conditioned to things, we start sale. The selling process, what all we all, what we are trying to do is to take, make sense. You're selling, so you want to take. Every salesperson want to take, because if they take more, they have a better commission by selling. But something has been forgotten. This profession or this position or this role has to do with giving, only take. No, it's not even take. The first you are here to do. You're a salesperson because you give, you provide. What do you want? I give you the moment you're given, then you will receive. So the word take disappears and gets out of the window. So it's not about taking how much and how fast can I take? It's how much and how fast can I show the people what I do and what we have and how much and fast can I offer them that service? How much can I give them that service? And then just by just normal reciprocity of it, you will receive. You will definitely. So first of all, am I ready to receive? If yes, I'm ready to receive. Am I good then are you ready to assist? Are you ready to show and give? Then that's good. It's very difficult to fail in business if you have those balance. But if you're there only to take and you have a lot who took? Look at the economical crisis in 2008 and many others. This is the root of it. Again, it's the same human principle. People took way too much and they forgot the golden rule of selling. Selling was about I give you something you need and I receive money or I receive something. All economic crisis. The root of it is the amount of take was bigger than the amount had been given. See, even in system brings imbalances like to that much. And if we're gonna hit another economical crisis. Instead of questioning the banks, questioning this, questioning that, let us question ourselves how much we took instead how much we gave and received money. I'm not saying to cancel money. Money is needed, but many need to be received and not taken. As simple as that.
Mino Vlachos: Yes, absolutely. And the way I, again, I return to, I look at sales and the way I do sales, I'll decode it now. I'll give the code. The formula is I really feel it is a process of educating the other person about a topic they do not know. And so when I come to consult someone and the first meeting I have with them, I am not only fully listening, but I'm fully feeling. I'm sensing, so I open up almost this field of sensing where I'm really just tuned in and I really just ask questions to create a map of what this person and this organization is going through and experiencing. And so I let them just run and talk and talk and talk. And they cover all these different things. I start to understand, okay, this individual has these things going on with them, this team that they operate within, this organization, they operate within, this is what's happening with it right now. This is where they would like to go. This is where they've been in the past, create this whole kind of like visual map that I feel out and then I help to basically clarify to them what I'm seeing. And so I say, this is what I'm observing based on what you just told me in the last, even 30 minutes. And they'll talk for 25, 27 minutes in the last moment, I'll say, so what I'm seeing is point a, point b, point c. So these are the main points of like what you're experiencing, the good and the bad, and how it affects where you want to go. Is that accurate? And they say, wow. Yes. I've never heard someone like, put it that accurately of like, what's happening with me right now, actually. And some people say, you know, because you've told me what is actually happening, you gave me the diagnosis, I now know how to solve it on my own, so I don't need you. Thank you, goodbye. And I say, you know, when I first started, you know, sales, I got resentful because like, oh, what the fuck? But now I'm like, actually I'm glad I told them how to solve their problem. They're self sufficient, they know how to do it themselves. That's incredible. So they don't, it's not a fit. They don't need me to go implement all they need was a 30 minutes chat to clarify what they're experiencing. So I really am grateful. I wish them well, and then I send them on their way, and then I follow up in six months, a year to see if they did it well or nothing. But some people, it's all they need is the map. Then most people I interact with, they say, thank you for this map. I actually don't know how to, now that it's so clear what the problem is. I don't know how to solve this myself. I don't have the tools, the resources, expertise. I say, wonderful, we can support you, because I know for a fact we have a lot of things that we can offer you, and we've done it with other people. And I know that we, if you're on board and you give us 100% that we will make this happen for you, because I believe it. I've seen it. I've done it, and I want you to succeed. And that's it. That's sales. And they say, cool, let's try and. Let's just work out that the money works out mutually, and that's it. I'm not trying to take the most money from them possible. We worked with giant corporations, and we also work with, like, nonprofits and startups. Especially with nonprofits and startups. If they're like, listen, I don't have a budget. I say, great. I'm not here to get rich off you. And it's true. So I'm like, what can you genuinely give in exchange for this money? And if they say, like, I can only give this, and I'm like, okay, you know, usually we charge two or three times that. Like, if we want to do the project, let's do it. But what would really also support is, can you also introduce us to someone else as part of the exchange? Like, there's ways to make it work where I'm still giving and they're giving, and it still feels like it's reciprocal. So that's how I kind of really view sales, is. It's the education process. I want them to walk away knowing, what is a leadership development company do, what is their problem and how can we support? And if they want to go check what other companies can do, too. Amazing. It's an education process, and then at the end, there's a mutual exchange. There's nothing. I like, I not only used to, like I said, I started my journey with, I felt it was evil, and now I'm like, this is amazing. Like, I helped solve their problem. I actually did it for free, because I gave them free consulting for 30 minutes to an hour. You know, if I send a cold email, the way I do cold email is I go, I look up the company, I research the company, I research the dynamics, I look on Glassdoor for reviews. Like, I look at what's happening, and if there's something I see that's, like, off, I email them and say, hey, I noticed something is off. And like, this is how I would solve it. So that cold email is an education process for them because the CEO is busy, maybe he doesn't know and she doesn't know that there is a problem in the company and the employees are burnt out. So I'm doing them a favor by spending my time analyzing their company. Giving them a solution, I feel is very genuinely. And so for me, there's no issue of authenticity and integrity. I have come to realize sales is one of my missions on this planet because it's me really supporting other people. And if I didn't do that, I don't know what I would be doing, honestly. I would probably be self absorbed and trying to figure out something about myself and selfish, because, like, at some point, I worked through everything with myself, more or less the big blocks. And I came to this moment in my own therapeutic healing journey where I was like, all right, I'm done with me. I'm tired of me. What's next? And what's next was the other. And that's the. I think one of the steps that I playfully suggest for some people who are in the more spiritual, healing, therapeutic community is like, if it's always just about you and your shit and you're, and you're, and you're, and you're, it's like, man, at some point, like, your life is so self absorbed. Like, at some point, let's move beyond that. Like, what about the other? And so we're gonna, I'll do a little summary and then I'm gonna bring it to our final kind of thoughts. So today we really talked about some of the underpinnings, the psychology of sales, ranging from a lot of conditioning that many of us have that sales is an evil thing all the way to sales, actually, is truly can be in service of one's own self development and also in service of other people and also in service of the planet. To sell is to be human. We're always influencing each other and we're always in relationship with each other. So all we're talking about here is the process of reciprocity of how we give and take between ourselves, our own self and our body, with each other as humans and even as the planet. And we're just trying to find a way where these things come into balance. And that to us is authentic sales that's full of integrity, is exchanging with that balance principle in mind. When we look at that, what we've realized is that if we love ourself, accept ourself, love the product and love the other, there's this natural flow of creative energy where we want to be working on things and serving the other. That actually it is one of our higher callings to be in support of each other and the planet. And that comes through sales, it comes through influencing. So whether you're going out to get a grant for more research money, whether you're telling a patient about a new medical procedure, whether you're at work selling an actual like product or service for a corporation, everything we're doing right, whether you're going for dinner and you want to say, I want to go to this restaurant, and I want the group to go in this direction. If you're a leader and you want people to follow a vision, everything is sales. Everything is a give and take. Everything is moving in a direction. So everything, in a way is sales. And so that's my recap of where we've been today. So, with that mazen, any final thoughts from you?
Dr. Mazen Harb: When we start categorizing things with good, bad, evil, not evil, we're really separating. And then at the beginning of our lives, it really helped us understand things. But we later start to understand nothing is by nature fully evil, and nothing by nature fully amazing. Everything is based on how we see reality and how we are, not how things are. So in a sense of when it comes to the business world, academic world, humanitarian world, healing world, spiritual world, we still in a stage where each, those of those worlds criticize each other and see the evil in the other. And that's not good enough. So I do this, I do believe and I know by fact, to be living healthy and holistically on this planet, to be the best stewards and stewardess hosted by this planet, is for us to start working together beyond separation, beyond categorization of evil and harm, and then good. And I'm better beyond superiority and inferiority. Because in everything we're seeking, the person in front of us also seeking something similar in that sense, to all live really in a more peaceful way. So sales, marketing, it's time to bring consciousness to it. It's start to bring really, are we really serving our neighbor are we serving ourselves? Are we serving this planet? And then the more we're going holistically, the more all of those things be very, very, very enjoyable ride. So the world is better with business, the world is better with healing and spirituality, the world is better with academia. And it's really start to join forces so we can thrive too together.
Mino Vlachos: So to conclude, I leave with two parts. The first is, as I've kind of mentioned, different moments, that sales is an education process. And one of my biggest learnings is that people speak different languages and they have different needs. So if I'm truly in service of the other, I will find out what they really need to feel served. Some people, they want to just connect human to human, heart to heart. And that's really beautiful. Some people, they want to know that you're working with other people, that you're part of a network, that you're doing something that others have experienced, and that's beautiful. And I can share that. Some people want to know why your thing works, and that's also beautiful. So let us figure out in which way people would like to be educated. So it's not just I force my education upon you, it is listening and understanding what the other really needs to hear the message. And then to me, as Mazen mentioned, like that's not manipulation, that's me, just better serving the other. I'm not going to go to someone that speaks French and try to speak German like I want to speak their language. That's one. It's just when it comes to education, I just wanted to clarify that, because I've talked about educating the other. So I'm not going to force information upon the other. It's about listening and allowing myself to give what really would support them to know more, whether it's for me and my company, or a different company if they so need a service. The second thing is I started the podcast by saying I went from thinking sales was something evil to almost one of the most noble things that I've ever done in my life. And I say that because when I look at what mazen shared about accepting the self, loving the product, and servicing the other, my greatest transformation, some of my greatest healing, has been by attending to those three things. Starting three peak is one of the greatest things I've done in my life. I did it because I believed in the service that we give to other people. When I learned how to really tackle my own self doubt and love myself and accept myself, it only happened because I was doing sales and had to kept confronting my own limiting beliefs and perceive smallness in this world. And finally, when it comes to servicing others, we all exist in a system, a human system. We almost contribute to the tribe. We contribute to different extents because we each have different capacities and capabilities. But to be in the tribe, you must contribute. That is part of the reciprocity. And so we each have a role on this planet. It is for us to figure out what our role is. And to then contribute to society, to contribute to each other and to the planet. So work is very noble, contribution is very noble. Service is noble. To be able to do those things, I must sell and sell. Selling itself then becomes noble. Because it is the act of me contributing and playing my role in this human system. This beautiful, beautiful planet with 8 billion people on it. And so sales, yes, it can be something where if we don't bring awareness, it can bring up all those past conditionings. But it's also a journey and a path to something very beautiful. And so with that, we'll end this episode. And thank you for listening.