Like most of you reading this newsletter, I’ve binge-watched The Last Dance documentary, which followed around Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls during their dynasty and final championship season in 1998. The team allowed a camera crew to film their final season together and most of the footage has been unreleased for the past 22 years.As an athlete and competitor, I couldn’t get enough of it. Watching the clips and seeing how they battled on a daily basis fired me up. Seeing Jordan’s intensity to compete made me want to run through a wall.With all of the great Jordan content, one underrated characteristic of the team stood out to me. Even with all of the alpha males that made up that team - some of the most talented, complicated and competitive people on planet Earth - the heartbeat of the team was coach Phil Jackson.Jackson led so well that you could create a separate documentary series on his teaching philosophies. [His books were some of the first I read when I got interested in leadership by the way, and I can’t recommend them enough.] He got ego-centric athletes to play as a team. He got them united on a common goal and theme each year. He even got Dennis Rodman into yoga, meditation, and Native American philosophy.There was one quote from Phil that has been swirling around my brain for the past few weeks. After the Bulls won the first of their six championships in 1991-1992, Jackson had to get the team focused to do it again. They had just climbed a seemingly unconquerable mountain that left the players physically and mentally exhausted.But Jackson knew that this was just the start. He knew that after the team celebrated, they had to get focused to do it all over again.He looked directly at the camera and said “You’re only a success at the moment you perform a successful act. You have to do it again.” Now tell me that doesn’t ring true for those of us trying to hit sales goals every month and quarter!How many people do you know that are stuck in their glory days? They start sentences with “Back when I was [in sales, in college, leading a team, etc.]. They’re living in the past. They’re trying to teach others how to do something they haven’t done for 20 years.Steven Pressfield says that the best time to start writing your second book is the same day you finish your first book. [I failed this test. My first book came out in 2017 and I’m midway through book #2.] He believes that the longer you wait in between books will make it exceedingly more difficult when it’s time to write. [This is proving to be very true for me.] Don’t give Resistance a chance to creep in.Similarly, the most successful people I know are able to push themselves to the next goal right after they attain the prior goal. They can reinvent their craft between years and even decades. They’re constantly evolving. You’re either growing or you’re dying, as the saying goes.Let me take the hot seat for a moment. You may have been noticing my face over the internet a lot more in recent months. I made a conscious decision to go all-in on adding value to my community during the pandemic.I’m joining every panel, podcast, and webinar that I can right now. I teamed up with Justin Welsh and Amy Volas to create Thursday Night Sales, which is a live forum for real sales talk with no filters. Ricard Harris and I are dropping a half dozen Surf and Sales podcast episodes per week. I took a jump and created my own Patreon page this week, offering the most exclusive content I’ve ever done. I’m working through my second book as I mentioned before. I started doing private sales and leadership coaching. I’m pushing myself.I’m proud as hell of what I’ve accomplished: my sales career, my list of successful start-up experiences, and the clients I’m working with at Scott Leese Consulting LLC. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to rest on my laurels. In fact, I’m as hungry now as I’ve ever been. Maybe more so. The goals I set for myself now are massive.Like Phil Jackson in ‘92, I know that I need to keep pushing myself. I need to keep reinventing. If I want to be successful (which I do) I have to perform another successful act. You think winning is hard? Try repeating that victory. Now do it a third time. Now do that 3-peat again. Next level thinking combined with next level action, creates next level results.How about you?Maybe you-re doing everything you need to do right now. Maybe it’s a season of rest and relaxation. Perhaps you’re deep in innovative work up to your eyeballs. Then this post isn’t for you.But maybe. Just maybe I struck a nerve with you. As you’re reading this, you’re thinking about that project you’ve wanted to launch. You’re thinking about the book or entrepreneurial venture that’s been dancing in your mind for months or even years.Don’t take it from me. Take it from Phil Jackson, quite possibly the best coach to ever step foot on a professional basketball court. Take the chance. Try something new. Keep pushing forward. Make another successful act today.---

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