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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast, podcast, just the way I finally got that memorized.
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I am one of your hosts, Bill Kasky.
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I m the other host, Brian Neal.
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Brian, I want to ask you, I know you were really looking forward to Halloween.
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How did it work out?
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It s great.
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We got a whole bunch of candy.
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that we have now sorted and organized and cataloged, that we are now limited on the number of pieces that my stepson Davis is allowed to eat.
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So the rest of that will be donated to the troops.
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And I m sure the troops are appreciative of that on one hand, on the other hand, they re like, what are we doing here?
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So how many times did you use your house has been possessed or somebody s been possessed?
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I just love, I went, so my Halloween cat, we talked about doing the podcast thing, but I actually went as a middle-aged man who s doing mandatory fall family pictures.
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Oh, his wife, which is basically a, uh, you know, a pair of dark jeans, a button down and a gap vest.
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Any man who s 45 or 50 years old, that s what you do.
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Like we re getting our photos taken and okay, what should I wear?
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I got you.
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And then the men are always in a button down and a vest and you go out to a park and everyone looks super happy and life is perfect for the pictures.
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I had a surprise, it was a little bit before Halloween, but I was at home on a Friday night and my wife works at the Center for Performing Arts, so they have shows and she goes, hey, I gotta go back to the Palladium tonight, I need to fill in.
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So seven o clock Friday night, she leaves, comes back about nine.
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And I think nothing of it.
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She goes, yeah.
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I said, how was it?
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She goes, oh, it was OK.
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And she went to the bathroom and went in the other room, and the doorbell rang.
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And I m like, 9 o clock on a Friday.
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It s not Halloween yet.
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It s closed.
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So I looked out.
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I couldn t really see.
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I saw the two people, but because of the glass, I couldn t really see.
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I opened it up, and it s Kara.
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Oh, no kidding?
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No kidding.
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No.
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She s pregnant.
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away.
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Yay.
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Holy smokes.
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She and her husband was standing there with a baby onesie.
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Oh my God.
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That is the best.
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I just, I just,
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So it s weird when somebody, you re not even, I mean, she lives in Denver, so she lives thousands of miles away.
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And all of a sudden, she s there.
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And then it all, you snap into focus.
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Oh, no wonder.
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Yeah, there s no show at the Palladium.
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Of course not.
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Anyway, go pick them up at the airport.
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Oh my gosh, that is awesome, Bill.
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That is phenomenal.
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That is just phenomenal.
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And kudos for them for getting you.
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Yeah.
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Surprised you.
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I love that surprise.
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That s really great.
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And they filmed it.
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Awesome.
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And I, I just uttered a expletive and then said, you re pregnant.
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So I can t, can t really play it.
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That s it.
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So then did you take them back to the airport and they flew home then?
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Is that it?
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No, they stayed.
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That s awesome, man.
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And then you have the whole drama about, well, who d you tell?
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Would you tell them not to tell anybody?
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It s like a pecking order.
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Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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No, no.
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Don t put, no.
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So we re doing a Facebook post.
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That s not going up on Instagram.
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Are they doing a gender reveal party?
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They are in December.
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In December.
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OK, good.
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Because I want to know the reports on that.
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Because I m not sure which side of the fence I m on with the old gender reveal party.
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All the kids their age do it.
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All of them do it.
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And there s just something about it.
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I m kind of like, there needs to be more choices.
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There s just, you know what I mean?
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It s either pink or blue.
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I m like, okay.
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Yeah.
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I don t know.
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I don t know.
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It s a, I m sure if she does it, it ll be a, it ll be a small, uh, intimate affair.
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Won t be, you know, fireworks and explosions and fire, you know, houses burning down sometimes.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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My, my kids, we didn t know of any of the forest genders until they came out.
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Oh, really?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I kind of like that big.
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I always say it s the last true surprise on earth.
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You know what I mean?
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Yeah, it is.
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It is that.
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And when you re going to die.
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Okay.
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Let s talk about our topic today.
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You posed it and I like that.
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So.
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Yeah, so we re getting ready.
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It was November the 7th.
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We re heading into the, you know, everyone s like, Oh, we re going to finish strong.
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It s almost too late guys.
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Like, you know, this is where we re energy.
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Our energy needs to start to turn toward 2023 now here shortly, at least in a parallel track with finishing strong.
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And so we talked about doing a planning session and Bill s like, you know, it s a little too soon.
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They re going to do that insider, all the insider people, by the way, if you re not an insider, you need to be because we re doing business planning for you.
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But what goes before the plan?
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What happens before?
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What needs to be tended to?
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And we talked about this idea, this topic of thinking about your thinking, thinking about your thinking for 2023 to get your head square before you go put pen to paper on an actual plan.
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So that s what we re going to talk about today, thinking about your thinking for 2023.
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So what is, how would you define
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You defined why we need to do it, but how would you define the thinking about that whole concept of that?
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Because that might be unique for some people.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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The way I think about it is a self-awareness and examination of my own thought exercise.
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That can be really hard to do.
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And it really takes some, it s really just reflecting and reflection of where is my head, heart and soul right now, as I sit here today on November the 7th, 2022, I m in sales.
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I ve got things in my life that, you know, whether I ve got a mortgage or a family or kids in school or whatever,
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And I ve got my results from my past, and I ve got the future to look forward to.
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And how does all that show up in my head, heart, and soul?
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Not how does that show up in my call logs, my closing percentage.
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Right.
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This is bigger than that.
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Bigger than that.
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That stuff s down the road.
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This is the more foundational layer.
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And just examining, where is my thinking?
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And is it in its best place?
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Should it change or modify?
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Should it tweak?
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Should I let go of some old ideas I have?
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Should I enhance some good ones that I ve got?
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Just that, just thinking about your thinking, just self-reflection.
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Because when I think of that, I ve heard people talk about that before.
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I know you subscribe or ascribe to Dan Sullivan.
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And he talks a lot about that in Strategic Coach.
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And I ve read some of his books about the topic where he gets into that a little bit.
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And it always feels to me like I love the idea, but it seems to me that
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Step one is really to assess, what are we thinking?
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Yeah, right.
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What is our, like when I think about my future, what goes through my mind?
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What are my thoughts about that?
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And that, to me, is kind of step one here is, how do we burrow inside our own thinking?
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Which is not easy to do, because sometimes other people can do that for us better than we can do it ourselves.
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But how do we do that?
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so that we are mindful of what we re thinking about.
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Love that.
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And this does get into the tactics of how to do this, because I think what you said, people don t know how to do this.
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This to me is a writing exercise to take these thoughts and commit them to paper so you can process them and see them and read them.
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And I loved what you just said as a first step to say, what is my thinking right now?
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So those of you listening to this, now you ve got a to-do for me and Bill.
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It s like, hey, go to a coffee shop or something and sit and just take out a piece of paper or a notebook
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What am I?
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What am I?
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What do I truly believe?
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Yeah, here is talk about truly believe the world s an abundant place.
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Or do you pretend to believe that the world s an abundant place?
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And when you examine it by yourself, when it s just you and you sitting there together, you know, with a truth, the truth is in front of you.
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Is that your real truth?
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God, that s so good, because how many times have someone asked you, what s your opinion on whatever?
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And you give it, but that s not really your opinion.
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That s just the orthodoxy of the culture saying, well, this should be your opinion.
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So this is a really good topic, because even if you can sit and really
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become rigorously honest with yourself about what you believe about business, or life, or income, or potential, or 2023, or whatever those things are.
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It could be a lot of different categories.
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Until you re honest with yourself, you re just buying into the narrative of culture.
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And we all do that from time to time.
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Yeah.
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And until we really sit down and say, what do I believe about x?
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And allow it to come.
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You don t have to go announce to the world that you believe that, but we need to know it for ourselves.
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Yes.
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That s what that is for me.
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This exercise is really.
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ourselves within ourselves.
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It doesn t, it doesn t, it s not what our boss thinks, wants, not what our company culture is, any of that stuff.
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It s literally getting with you with you.
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And that s it.
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The other thing that I think is important to exercise, that s also I think very hard,
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is to try to remove the external demands that the world and the economy and the roles put on us.
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For instance, someone s like, well, sales, you re supposed to be, I believe in motivation.
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I believe in massive action, whatever.
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And you re like, I don t.
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And that s OK.
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And you can be a really, really great, high-performing salesperson and not have that kind of engine, that drive, that competitiveness.
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I think about that.
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I m not competitive.
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I just am not.
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You have an engine, though.
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I do have an engine.
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You have ambition.
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I have ambition.
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Without competitiveness, which is kind of rare, because a lot of times people with ambition look at everything as a contest in the world, and you don t.
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You have ambition to be bigger and better and help more people, but it doesn t come with trying to put somebody else down to do it, which I ve always admired and respected about you.
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I think you have that.
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But that comes from being perfectly honest with yourself about that.
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Yeah.
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Which takes time, yeah.
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Which takes time.
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And can be uncomfortable for all of us if the role we re in, or the society, or the company says, no, you have to be this way, or you re supposed to be this way.
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I think I ve mentioned on this podcast, but it s been years, that
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Mark Twain, what was Mark Twain s real name?
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Samuel?
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Samuel Clemens.
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Clemens.
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Samuel Clemens.
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He wrote an article for the Atlantic, you know, I don t know, a hundred years.
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I don t know what era he lived in, but it was for the Atlantic.
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And basically it said the only time you really can tell the truth is when you re dead.
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It s truth from the grave.
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And that was 100 years ago.
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But the point there is, I think, that his point was, hey, we need a little bit more truth while we re living.
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We can t accept that the only time we can tell it is when our memoirs are introduced after we re gone, because that s not helpful.
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And so the whole idea of what is the truth about what you believe to be true about your thinking, I think that s a really good thing.
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So I had one to follow up with, and that is,
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What do we want our thinking to be?
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How do we want to think?
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So if you have big goals for 2023 and you want to double your income, let s just say as an example, well, your thinking is going to have to change.
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You can t think, I don t believe you can think, this is maybe not true, but I don t think you can think the same things you think today that you do a year from now if you want to double your income or increase your
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income in life or space, I think there s thinking change that has to occur.
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And so I think it s also good to say, well, what should my thinking be?
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What s my vision for my thinking?
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What am I going to need to think differently about if I m going to accomplish these big goals for next year?
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Yeah.
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See, that s so, that s so interesting.
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And I think the,
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where one of the harder things to do is to, so it s one, we tend to go to the upside of that and say, well, I need to think bigger, or I need to think about being more disciplined and go to the upside, versus the downside of what thinking do I need to let go of?
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What do I need to jettison that could be holding me back?
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That sort of thing.
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That s hard, hard for people to examine and to see, I think, sometimes.
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But isn t that, I mean, I think that even is step one or step two or step we re on is because it s hard to just pile another opinion or way of thinking onto it to something that doesn t work and that s flawed in some way.
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Yeah.
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So I like, I mean, even there s a, you know, there s like little things that are, that are just, you know, unique that people, they say like thoughts of like, well, I, I need to, um,
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I want to stay very orderly and I want to have control over my life.
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So I need to zero out my email inbox every day.
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And yet that time and attention and energy is time and attention energy that may not be growing you on the other side.
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And but people can t do it.
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They can t let go.
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Like I ve got a zero in my inbox.
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We just spent two hours doing that when you could have been two hours of prospecting and doing a connector call or making a podcast or something.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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They just can t let that thing go.
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And that s the hard part.
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I think for people with this drill, thinking about their thinking.
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This is really hard.
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Yeah, this is a good topic.
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So I wrote down on the board as we were prepping for this, and we just wanted to riff on this like we re doing.
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But the one word, and I m kind of doing the exercise while we re talking here on the podcast, is the idea of acceptance.
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The idea of acceptance of where we are in all circumstances that are what they are.
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And that s something that I know that I need to continue to evolve at, is accepting it for where things are.
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Whether they re good or they re bad, or they re up or they re down, or whatever.
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Versus fighting through.
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I feel like my thinking sometimes is wired to fight through.
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versus just accepting.
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I have a colleague who s in a fellowship I m a part of, and he says, we re taught when you get knocked down to get back up.
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That s what we re taught, right?
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Get knocked down the American way, get back up.
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He said, sometimes you get knocked down and you need to stay down for a few minutes and just be there.
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I m like, that s really good.
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I need to learn that to accept being down.
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That s a thing.
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Yeah, and can we learn something when we get knocked down?
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Maybe there s a lesson in there for us.
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Always.
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Yeah, I agree.
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And when we get knocked down, maybe there is a, because I was writing something down as you were talking, that one way to approach this whole thinking about your thinking is to look at the part of our lives that aren t working as well as we d like them to.
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And it could be partner relationships at home.
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It could be business.
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It could be you re not marketing enough, whatever.
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What s not working?
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And then dig deeper into that and say, well, how am I thinking about that area that s not working?
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Is my thinking way off on that?
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And I ll bet it is.
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And I ve done this a couple of times in the past few months as I m preparing for next year is, well, here s some things that aren t working.
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Well, I m probably thinking about those things in the wrong way.
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And once you admit that, then you can go down that rabbit hole and say, well, how should I be thinking about that?
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And I think that, and I m pretty sure this is where you re headed with this, Bill, so the listeners here, it s not like thinking intellectually, like, well, I think I want a bigger audience, so I think I should do two more podcasts.
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That s tactical.
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It s what is inhibiting me from putting myself out there more, or does that make, see, it s deeper.
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This is a deeper exercise than the surface-y, you know, like one of mine is I think I m a bad writer.
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you know, but there s something beneath that.
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Or I just say, why don t you read blog?
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Or everyone s like, you got to write a book, Brian.
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I m like, I hate to write it.
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I don t like writing.
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That s very intellectual.
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There s something way deeper than that.
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That s an excuse.
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That s an excuse.
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Exactly.
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Thank you.
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Thanks for coaching me, Bill.
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Somewhere I send the bill.
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Seriously though, but that s what I need.
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But I have a hang up.
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There s a thinking problem there that s way deeper than just like, I don t like the, I don t need a book.
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No, I don t like to write.
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My fingers don t work on the keyboard very well.
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Totally.
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What a waste of time.
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No, I d much rather do a podcast.
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It s almost like denial.
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I just flip to something else.
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I don t want to write a book because I ve got these podcasts.
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I m going to start a new podcast, and then I just go to this other safe place.
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Versus why don t?
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What is the writing thing about?
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What are you afraid of there?
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What are your inhibitions?
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You re right.
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It s how do you dig into that yourself?
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Right.
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We can t be our own therapist sometimes.
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It s hard for us to coach ourselves because we re too invested in our belief set, and it s hard to break free when it s just us doing the probing.
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So that might require a professional.
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A coach.
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But we all, I mean, it s hard to coach ourselves.
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Do we subscribe or subscribe to a professional?
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I don t know, but I m going to be looking that up, too.
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So I think the lesson here is we ve given you a couple of things to think about your thinking as we think about our thinking.
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And just I think the mindfulness of it, and sometimes just ask yourself, you know, I m getting ready to go in, and I m feeling a little anxious in this moment.
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Well, what is my thinking that s leading to that?
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If you just ask yourself that question, I think you ll say, oh, well, my thinking is that if I don t get this deal, someone s going to think less of me.
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And then you say, no, they re not.
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That s not true.
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So you kind of answer your own question sometimes.
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But you have to stop and go a little deeper when you re feeling those feelings of anxiety or frustration or whatever.
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No doubt.
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No doubt.
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Good stuff.
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That s a very good topic.
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Very good.
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So you got it.
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You got it to do.
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You people listening to this, you got it to do.
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This is a quiet exercise.
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Go by yourself.
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Start writing.
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There ll be something there.
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there ll be some benefit to do this exercise.
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I expect a book next time we meet, Brian.
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Okay.
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I got to get my thinking first.
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Maybe what you can expect is for me to have a better answer than I just don t like.
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You got to do better than that.
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Thank you.
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All right.
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See you next time.
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Bye.