Habits, Frameworks, and "Outliers": Your Path to Repeat Purchases

Hello and welcome to the show. It's a wonderful Tuesday morning and it's one of these one of those car wash episodes, so expect to hear a noise in the background today. I'd like us to start a book review, and that's because you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time. You know that we just moved house recently. And part of the process of moving involves, you know, packing stuff away when moving them to the new house.

And during that process, I discovered that I have lots of books that I haven't read in a very long time. So I figured it might be a good idea to take one of those books every once in a while and then do a book review just to expose you guys to some of the stuff that some of the stuff that I read every once in a while and let you know what my own take is, my own perspective on some of these things. Now, of course, since my area of speciality is sales, especially personal sales, I'm going to be looking at whatever material that we discuss on these books.

I'll be looking at it from a sales and business development perspective. And now the first book that we're going to run through is an old one. It's by Malcolm Gladwell, the journalist, and the name of the book is Outliers. The subtitle is The Story of Success and it was Penguin Books, Yes, published by Penguin Books in 2009. And looking at the cover and looking at the back and looking at the blurbs and everything, it looks as if the book is preoccupied with figuring out what is the secret of success.

So I'm sure that lots of you listening to this podcast, you know, you guys will find that sort of thing really interesting. But the angle that he's coming from, he seems to be coming from. And part of the reason why I like this book is that the angle that he's coming from is that success is a three fold thing. Now, success is about who we are. It's about what we do and where we're from. So let me repeat, success is about who we are, what we do and where we are from, all those things taken together.

And I think that's a good perspective because we have too many people running around saying that success is because of where we're from or who we are. You know, because there's some people who say downward is successful because his pops he was successful or Trump is successful because his pops he was successful. And you know, it's not necessarily the case because there's some people who are born with Sirius bar as in some people are born with Sirius do,

but then they end up misbehaving and they just squander the whole money like they lose everything. So it's not a guarantee that because you are from America or your family, wealthy family or you're from, you know, XYZ, that is a guarantee that you're going to be successful because there are other components as well. In fact, I remember watching a sorry, not watching listening to a documentary because it was an audio documentary that was exploring these sorts of things from an entrepreneurship angle.

And I think doing an experiment with twins. Yes, with twins. What do you call them? The twins will look alike. Is it identical twins? Are we so you the IT was the affair was about identical to ensure and they're trying to see if they could find a genetic component for entrepreneurship and the results of the research. This was a long time ago, so I can't remember what their research methodology was like because I'm sure that those of you who studied statistics, you guys would like to know all those kinds of things when what they found was that entrepreneurship that is genetic component to it, but they narrowed it down to about 30%.

Of course, you know, it's curious, you know, interesting to see, you know, how did you guys arrive at that? But that was a result anyway, that entrepreneurship has a genetic component. But that's just 30%. The remaining 60% is, you know, other factors, but pretty much what it is that you do. So yeah, these are sorts of ideas that I'm kind of partial to. That is not just who we are, where we're from, or, you know, it's not any of these things in isolation, but it's everything together.

So you can't be from the right part of the country. You can't be from the right family. You can have the right genes, you can have the right everything, but if you do absolutely nothing, then nothing is going to happen. Well, then you can come from the poorest, you know, you can come from the wrong background, like Oprah Winfrey for instance. You know everything stacked against you. But then if you do the right things, you know you can't make it work for most people.

You find out the truth is somewhere in between. But either way, we're trying to balance everything. Who are we? What do we do and where are we from? And that is one of the reasons why I have this podcast. You know, it's part of the focus of the podcast that what we do is an important part of our success journey and is an important part about how we are going to build and grow sustainable business. What we do, which is why I focus on learnable skills and I also focus on habituation, that is doing things today, tomorrow,

next, tomorrow, getting into the groove, getting into the habit. Because the more you habituate yourself towards good ends, you know, the greater the chances that you have of good ends occurring. So I mean, in other words, I mean, roughly speaking, average because some of you say, no, that's not the case. But remember, I'm just speaking average now. So roughly speaking, if you're a young man, you take good care of your body, you eat right, you exercise well, you know all of that, then you know, the chances of you having a nice, healthy,

long lifestyle, you know, lifestyle, you know, goes up. But yes, we are speaking in terms of averages because some of you are going to point out that no, that's not the case. I had an uncle. The uncle was obese and the uncle smoked until the day he died and he womanized and he was smoking a cigar and he was an armed robber and he was a drug dealer and but he lived with the ripe old age of 120. Yes. So these things happen.

But I'm just saying, on average, if you try and take advantage of habituation, trying to create good habits, trying to arrange your life towards certain things, then the chances of you achieving those things go up. Which is not to say that, you know, there are people who buckle the trend. Yes, there are people who buckle the trend. Well, like I say, you know, people who beat the trend don't model your life after them.

So like, yes, it's possible that your uncle who was an armed robber and a womanizer who drank and smoked and who was obese and, you know, yes, it's possible that he lived to 1:20. But that doesn't mean that if you do exactly everything that your uncle did that you will live to be 120 as well. So that's why we're here to focus on learnable skills. We focus on habituation. And then we also focus on frameworks because lots of times in the sales space, you know,

one of the reasons why people are struggling really is because they don't know what to do, Especially like in the office space, you know, I noticed that, you know, Olga will just get together a book of people and then so I'll go and sell. I'm like, go and sell how? But you didn't tell them what they're supposed to do. So they go out and they don't know which way is left or right. They don't know who they're supposed to be talking to.

You don't know how you introduce yourself. You don't know how you state the value proposition. You don't know how you do needs analysis. You don't know how to figure out what it is that the person wants. You don't know how to negotiate. When you're done negotiating, you don't know how to close. When you close, you don't know how to follow up with the customer. You don't know how to run customer service. Customer service moves to be sure that everybody's happy.

After that, you don't know how to try and get a referral from them to bring in repeat business, you know, so that lots of things that people don't know. But then for those of you who run businesses, you just say, you know, help wanted. You just hire, you know, the most attractive girls or the guys who sound the most confident and then also go and sell and they expect that business to move like how you didn't train them.

And then for those of you who are self-employed, it's the same thing. You know, like in my own case, I was good at taking pictures. Somebody say you should be a photographer. I was like, OK, cool. And then that's how I began. Somebody says, oh, you're good at making dresses. You should be a fashion designer. Like, OK, maybe, but there's more to the story. Yeah, you're good at making dresses and coming up with designs and everything.

But at the end of the day, we still have to sell the damn thing. And do you know how to sell? So that's the reason why on this podcast, we focus on these sorts of things. So it's not just who we are, the skill set, the background, the family, the whatever, but it's also about what we do. So what learnable skills are we going to go out and acquire, Sorry, acquire. What kind of frameworks are we going to learn? And then how are we going to execute them on the daily,

consistently daily, weekly, monthly, whatever your cadence. Oh, by the way, I think monthly is too much too, too big. I don't think you can do something consistently on the monthly schedule and then expect to see some progress. So when it comes to sales and business development, typically we're talking about daily or weekly cadences. So you're going to be prospecting. That means you're going to be prospecting every day or maybe on a weekly, whatever.

Maybe you have some set days aside, so they do prospecting on Monday and Friday or something like that and they repeat it every week. But either way, you see that as the habituation element coming in here. So that's the reason why we focus on these sorts of things over here on the pod. So this is going to be the first true book review because for the last book review, I didn't really read it. I just looked at the main things in it.

But for Malcolm Gladwell, you know, I'll take my time and I'll go through it, you know, one page after another. And then after that we'll have some interesting conversations. But so far, looking at the cover, looking at the BLOB, looking at the intro, looking at, you know, all that intro intro part of the book, Michael. Sorry, Malcolm. Malcolm Gladwell's thesis is that success is not just about who we are and where we're from.

It also matters what it is that we do. And I hope you guys are going to be along with me for the ride as well for this book review. Speaking of book reviews, I actually had someone record a book review, Emmanuel. So I can't remember his full name, but I have it on my phone. But I haven't done the editing and stitching together because, you know, most of the, in fact, not even most all the broadcasts I've done have been live, OK,

apart from one where the communication specialist in Canada, Nene, well, she recorded that one and then edited, edited it. So that was my first and so far the only interview broadcasts that I've done. So since editing is not my Forte, to be honest, Emmanuel, I will get to it. But the file is on my phone. I just need to figure out how to edit it and also how for me to record an intro and then an outro and then stitch your 3

together and then put it over here on the show. So I'll figure that out. And after I'm done with this Malcolm Gladwell review, your own review will be next. So yeah, if you guys join me on this book review, let's see what we can learn from Malcolm Gladwell's outliers. Again, the sub text, I'll be the subtitle or whatever is the story of success, Penguin Books 2009. But in typical Niger fashion, if you go to the nearest, for those of you living in Lagos, if you go to the nearest garage, you know, go to or just a new garage, go to, what should you go to all those places, you would definitely see boys who are Hawking these books and just ask them, you know, they'll,

they'll hook you up. So I'm not condoning piracy, you know. But anyway, let me stop there before I say something that will get me in trouble. So if you'd love to connect for a strategy session, a business audit, or you have questions you'd like for me to answer, the number is 08064662140. The country code is +234. That's my WhatsApp number. Then connect with me on LinkedIn, the name to look for Establishima IED. Then on YouTube, my YouTube channel, same name Tabishima IED

or just search sales for the Nigerian business person and you see the podcast. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys tomorrow and hopefully, yeah, we'll continue with this journey on Malcolm Gladwell Outliers, the story of success. So I'll catch you guys later.