I started working full time when I was 13 years old. I was a dishwasher at a big Italian banquet center, where I encountered two kinds of people amongst my peers.
The first group didn’t want to work the front of the dishwasher. That job required you scrape the food off the plates and down the garbage disposal, and spray the dishes before racking them. You left drenched, and the job could be disgusting.
The second group didn’t want to work the back of the machine. The dishes were very hot when they came out of the dishwasher. The banquet center where I worked fed up to 2,000 people a seven-course meal. Dishes needed to be washed quickly so they could be used again. The dishes were so hot that they would burn your hands, unless you knew how to handle them.
I would routinely work the job that the other people on my shift resisted. It was never as bad as they thought it was. I thought they were all soft, and that made a big deal out of what was nothing.
My second job was at a skating rink. On Friday and Saturday nights, thousands of teenagers would come to skate and make such a mess that the President could have easily declared it a national disaster area. Nothing was worse than the bathrooms. They were out of control.
No one wanted to clean the bathroom. They would do anything else before the bathrooms. I volunteered. It ended up that a high-pressure hose with extremely hot water was all that was really necessary, and it was nowhere near as big a deal as my co-workers made it out to be.
Here’s the thing: Successful people do the things that other people refuse to do. They don’t avoid work that is difficult or unpleasant. They don’t complain about that work, nor do they avoid it by seeking out distractions, even the distractions of things that might look and feel like work, but don’t produce any real results.
You might need to prospect more to build the opportunities you need. You might need to have a difficult conversation with a client to retain their business or move them to greater results. You might need to have a difficult conversation with someone on your team, to align your goals and activities. These are the kinds of things that people avoid that prevent them producing the better results they want.
No matter how unpleasant the task, if something needs done, you must do it.
What is it that you avoid doing? What is that other people are willing to do to produce the results that you want that you resist doing?
Comment to send me your thoughts, ideas, and stories. Hit forward to send this newsletter to someone you know who could benefit doing something they are avoiding. Ask them to join us here each Sunday by signing up at www.thesalesblog.com/newsletter.
Do good work this week, and I’ll see you back here next Sunday!
Anthony Iannarino
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Contributor Anthony Lannarino is an entrepreneur, speaker, author, and consultant. He writes daily at www.thesalesblog.com and you can subscribe to his newsletter at www.thesalesblog.com/newsletter.