Find Your Flow

Welcome to Lesson 02 of The Purposeful Performer!

To perform at your best as a value creator and revenue generator, you need to identify which phase you’re in—Transition, Build Mode, or Steady State—so you can match your rhythm to the right priorities and pace.

The result? Less stress, better outcomes, and clearer focus on what matters most.

It’s only week two, so we’re still purposefully easing into things.

This is what will give you a strong foundation to a.) stick with this program (through the Valley of Despair) and b.) build the right type of deep thinking to unlock hidden treasures as we progress.

We’re exploring three key phases you’ll encounter throughout your career—Transition, Build Mode, and Steady State—and how understanding where you are can shape your strategies and expectations.

Think of it like shifting gears in a car: you can’t cruise on the highway in first gear, and you can’t climb steep hills in fourth gear.

You’re juggling big deals, personal milestones, and a vision of what you ultimately want to do if you could venture out on your own. If you can be clear about what phase you're in, you can get intentional about managing it effectively.

This will have a huge impact on:

The three phases look like this:

We move between these phases multiple times as we progress in our careers and climb the three key levels. How fast we traverse through all three levels is highly unique to the individual.

There are nature and nurture factors that contribute to the pace. Some things we can control. Others we cannot. Zoomed in to the day-do-day, these factors may feel “bad” or “good.” But zoomed out really far, we discover they just “are.” The sooner you realize this, the lighter you can be (and the faster you can move).

Ok, that might be a bit too philosophical and meta, so let’s bring it back down to earth in practical terms.

The Three Levels: This is the framework I use to anchor us to where we are in our careers as value creators and revenue generators. We measure the status of our level using ownership of the most ubiquitous tool we all use to do our job—the calendar.

The Three Phases: Now there is no exact science to the amount of times you may cycle through all three in a given Level, but you will need to work through all of them successfully to progress through each level.

Warning: You’ll want to avoid stagnation, complacency, and boredom, so don’t stick around phase three for too long. The goal is to oscillate back down to phase two and one appropriately, and then ladder back up again with a new set of capabilities.

Find a balance between having enough roles that give you the experience and challenges you seek with enough stability and space to apply that experience and generate leverage.

Here’s a simple way to think about it:

The traditional onboarding sales process employed by most tech companies sucks.

I can attribute winning an MVP award and achieving 177% to target in my first year as a Strategic Account Director at LivePerson by bucking the normal onboarding trend.

I call this "canvassing"—trying out small ideas and experiments based on what you learn while deeply educating yourself about your company's point-of-view (you need to turn it into your own) before you start on the job.

The traditional onboarding process for most enterprise and strategic sellers, however, is one designed around taking it slow out of the gates and immersing yourself in the product only once you start.

The problem with this approach is it lulls sellers into a false sense of security, where you feel you can take it easy and build your point-of-view and territory thoughtfully at your own pace. But the pressure starts mounting as quickly as month four, and your well-meaning strategy gets decimated in favor of an uninspired, high-pressured and activity-driven approach forced down from the top.

The power completely shifts out of your hands, and by that point, it’s tough to gain it back. I’ve witnessed sellers even getting fired within their first six months when they thought they had more time to build their book of business.

The problem in these situations is these sellers aren’t operating in the right phase at the right time.

Let’s unpack a better way so you never find yourself in this vulnerable position.

In Step 5: Build a Transformation Mindset of ​7 Steps to 7 Figures​, I share the story of how I was able to land an exciting deal with Aramark using my existing connections at Apple.

The key was alerting them of my intentions before I even started in my new role (Transition Phase). That allowed the opportunity to come to me (literally on my first day) and give me something tangible to work on immediately (Build Phase).

The other opportunity won in that first year was the ​Delta Air Lines deal​ that leveraged the infamous ​Open Letter approach​. That opportunity materialized because I requested it and solidified my account list before joining.

See a trend emerging here?

A lot of the juicy work that led to making an impact in my first year as a strategic seller happened before I even got my laptop and office badge.

The key driving principle was to move fast when others were slow, so that I could slow down later when everyone else was fast and frantic.

What exactly did that look like?

The first step was knowing I was in the right environment by doing the proper due diligence (I’ll be sharing a mini-course on this in the future) in evaluating this new opportunity on LivePerson’s newly formed Strategic Accounts team against my old Enterprise AE role, where I was relatively comfortable (Steady State… but getting stale).

Doing that careful process made me feel confident that I was making the right decision with this new role and setting myself up for future, upward mobility.

The next step was giving myself ample space between my old role and the new one. Between accepting the new role as a Strategic Account Director and my official start date, I gave myself a month to recharge and refocus.

Note: I call this Recovery. You could argue this is it’s own phase, but I think of Recovery as the “in-between” parts between each phase.

My wife and I spent a week in Napa Valley where I completely decompressed, and then went I got back home, with three weeks still left before my start date, I got to (deep) work analyzing LivePerson’s value proposition, watching the CEO on interviews with CNBC, and studying their largest customer.

​I practiced owning the CEO’s point of view as my own​… until I had a perspective, point-of-view, and talk track that was indeed my own.

The third step was to come in ready to execute at a fast, but purposeful pace out of the gates (Build Mode). The “pre-season” work paid off handsomely (literally).

While my peers were still getting up to speed on how the product worked and fully understanding the value proposition, by the end of February (I started on January 15th), I already had two meetings with Aramark, one with Facebook, one with IBM to pursue Apple, and opened dialogue with Delta.

These real-life business conversations taught me more than any onboarding videos, slides, or mock exercises could ever do.

At the end of that first year, I was the only seller on our team to surpass their number and was awarded MVP. This trust further enabled me to be rewarded with new opportunities that passed the desk of my C-Suite and the performance earned me a promotion as a VP (without having to manage a team).

That first year of purposefully moving fast put me in a position the following year to earn more than I ever had as a corporate seller ($1.2M+ in commissions and $1.5M+ in gross income), then slow down, be more methodical in my approach, and operate on my terms from that point on (Steady State) until I started building my personal brand and transitioning to Level III in 2022.

Ready to dive in? Let’s go.

That’s it for now.

How does that feel? Comment below (web version only).

See you next week!

All missions for Learning Path 1 will be housed here (← worth bookmarking this link).