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The Simple Fix That Makes Context Switching Way Easier · GTM Made Simple

• 0:00
  Sangam. Yeah, just doing day two on, just recording a whole bunch of musings if you will, around go to
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  market, entertain and laugh over KL. And one of the things that I've been thinking about quite a bit
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  is this idea of context switching every single leader, but definitely as a CEO
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  or the greatest challenge that people face is context switching. How do you go from a sales call
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  in a second to a customer call, who's about to turn to another call where some customer is very,
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  very happy, and then again, someone who's turning and then back to the sales call. And then every
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  single time you have to keep your energy up. If it goes down, the people can see it. And if you don't
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  believe in yourself, then nobody will, right? So you have to keep it. And sometimes it feels like
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  you're faking it. Sometimes it feels like others might be thinking that you're just making it up,
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  but you actually, deep down, believe in it. But still, sometimes it becomes challenging. And as I'm
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  going back from at least six calls today where we had a mastermind where several people signed up
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  to join that. I had a great sales call where we were explaining them how to go to market and
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  another advisory call in in all in all. What came back to me as I'm driving back home is go to
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  market is the business. And if you absolutely do not believe in what you do, nobody else is going
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  to believe in you. And so it doesn't really matter if you have to fake it as they call it. You really
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  have to believe in it until several people in several days will go by where you're just okay.
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  And I learned is that at terminus, you know, my last company where we went from 1 million to 5 to
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  to 15 and then, you know, close to 50 million plus and private equity exit is I remember me and my
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  co-founder, we had a tough week. We were trying to raise money and we had an issue over there. We had
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  hiring snafus. We have some churn issues. And so we both walked into a meeting and we were kind of
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  down. We were we were literally not feeling it. And I remember that meeting where we walked in with a
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  little bit of a, you know, down phase, and it was just a standard meetings that we were not overly
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  prepared around it. And as we got to it, we saw that the momentum in the meeting just went
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  sideways. There was nothing happening. Everybody was also feeling like we were almost making
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  everybody feel low because we were low. And at that day we walked out and I remember telling
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  Eric, my co-founder, that never again, never again will I ever walk in thinking about my own
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  problems when I'm here to serve, to support, to to build all those things. Right. So from there on, I
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  just made this commitment and this is the little framework I use. I literally before I walk in, I
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  just thank God. Number one, I love him before meetings and map all my meetings as green, yellow
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  and red. So green meetings are the meetings I absolutely want to have. They're exciting. They're
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  typically their sales or partnership or customer calls and we're super excited about it. Then there
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  are yellow where I'm on podcast, I'm on conversations, I'm on team meetings that are okay
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  meetings, but they're not the thing that that I look forward to every single day. And then there
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  are red meetings, and the red meetings are the meetings where I'm trying to look for I shouldn't
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  have more than 2 or 3 meetings a week. If my calendar shows a lot of green, several yellows, and
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  1 or 2 red. It's a great week. If my calendar is a whole bunch of reds, I got a problem. But here's
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  the best part. The red meetings makes me aware of it. What that meaning is. So throughout the week,
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  let's say I'm on Monday. I'm meeting red meetings on Thursday. I'm thinking about that meeting every
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  time I look at my calendar. We all look at our calendars like what, 50 times a day? So I'm looking
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  at it. It's in my mind at that meeting. So I'm trying to do two things. One, I'm trying to figure
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  out how do I get out of that meeting. So either I'm trying to to figure out how do I solve a
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  problem that that particular meeting has. And even before I get on the meeting, how do I solve for
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  that? So that's number one. And number two, I'm prepared for that meeting. I'm not going from
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  meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting with no absolute thinking around or thought around this
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  thing. This is why context switching could be hard, but this is the way. The strategy to make sure
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  that no matter what it is, if your calendar is marked green, yellow or red, you're going to be
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  just fine. And you just have to figure out, well, maybe in the beginning you have a lot of reds and
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  then some yellows and maybe 1 or 2 greens. And the goal in business and in life is to just have a
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  whole bunch of greens and yellow and then be prepared for the red. And when you are, you'll be
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  just a better leader, a better CEO, a better executive and a better, hopefully a husband, a
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  father or a wife or a daughter. Whoever you are, whatever your role is, if you know if you're green,
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  yellow or red before you walk into a conversation, you're going to be just way more prepared. Green.
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  I'm excited. I already know I'm naturally am yellow. All right, I need to put on a couple of
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  extra thoughts around in red. I gotta be prepared for this conversation, and I'm gonna not let
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  anything in the world stop me from being productive in that. So the start of the day, let me
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  know what you think. And if you're ready, let's get moving.