Mental Toughness in Sales and Sports: Eric Konovalov on Athlete Mindsets and Performance

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When you're getting somebody as a salesperson on your team, or if you are that salesperson, you're not just getting somebody who's a seller. What you're getting with that is everything that that person has been through in their life. That time in fourth grade where a teacher might have called them stupid, or when somebody called them ugly or fat when they were growing up, or their parents who didn't believe with them, or the trauma that they went through. You're getting all of that, and that's what's showing up. And so the way we've got to work through that is

we need to first understand what is in their subconscious programming. Who is this person? What do they believe? How do they see the world? For example, many salespeople out there believe deep down inside, they believe that salespeople are liars and cheaters and they're not ethical. And so the way that that's their core belief, the way that manifests itself is they sabotage themselves when it's time to make a call or deliver a proposal or anything that revolves.

that involves a sales type of activity, they will self-sabotage.

Welcome to Charge Forward Coaching, the podcast for committed athletes and individuals who want to achieve more on and off the field. Hosted by Blasco, certified mental toughness and resilience coach. You'll gain insights and inspiration from elite athletes, coaches and others who know what it takes to excel. Are you ready to go to the next level? Then tune in, get inspired and let's Charge Forward. Now here's your host, James Blasco.

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Hello and welcome to the Charge Forward Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, James Blasko. Well, you know, I've spent a good chunk of my life around professional salespeople, professional sales leaders, but I've also spent a good chunk of my life around athletes, elite athletes, professional athletes. And I'm going to go on a record as saying there's no other profession on planet Earth that ties or matches or is as similar to sports and athletes.

as is sales. And so today I wanted to bring on somebody who not only is a great sales coach, but and a great coach of leaders in very large corporations and companies. He also has a great perspective of having a champions mindset. He's the founder of the goal guide. We're going to talk about that in a little bit, but I'd like to welcome Eric to the podcast.

Hey James, thanks so much for having me my friend. Really good to be here.

And nope. Yeah, glad to have you. Glad this could work out. So before we dive in, we got a bunch of things I want to talk about. Why don't you give us a little bit of your your background story? I find it very, very interesting.

Yeah man, how far back should I go? I don't want to bore the audience. I'm kind of a boring guy these days.

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we'll skip like the first say, say 10 years. about that?

nd so that brings us to about: 2006

little bit. And then in about: 2014

I leaned into a lot of leadership development training, especially in the, from John, John Maxwell. don't know if the, have you heard of John Maxwell? Yep. Yeah. So I, I went and got certified through his world just to become a better leader. And they have kind of these two lanes you can take one is start your leadership training and coaching company. Another one has become a better leader. Well, I was intrigued. was, I was intrigued because I was surrounded by people who were starting their

Yeah, absolutely.

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leadership training and coaching companies. And when I saw what the, when I began to apply what I was learning to my team, we began to grow quite a bit. That got me to want to go and open up my own leadership training and coaching company as well back in 2015. since then I've been training multiple teams and executives on anything related to sales, communications, leaderships, mindset, and now we're here.

Yeah, and we're glad to have you. It's a great story. We're going to dive a little bit deeper into some things that you learned in that journey. But I want to start with this basic question. When it comes to elite professional salespeople, sales leaders, and elite athletes, what do you see as maybe one or two or three of the key similarities?

The mindset, I mean the mindset has to be there. They create what they want first in their mind. And if you think about it, that's kind of how the whole universe works, right? Like every single thing that we see here in the physical plane was first created in somebody's imagination. It was created in their mind. And they don't, they make a decision and all they have to do is manage that decision. And I think the elites do it better than

anybody else. So for example, if if I'm training for a marathon, I just make a decision that, I'm going to run the marathon. I put it on the calendar and then no matter what, that's the date that I'm running my marathon. No matter what, I'm coming up with the training plan. I'm sticking to that plan. Elite salespeople, they make a decision on how much they want to sell. They make a decision that they're going to be in President's Club or how much money they want to earn. They make that decision first. And it's not all about money. It's just

money is the easiest way to measure it. It could be their goals. They might want to take a vacation with their family, send their kids to school, whatever the goal is, they make that decision first and then no matter what, they do everything to get to it. I think in my experience, that's what separates the two.

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Yeah, I agree. And the one thing I talk to my athletes about is, you know, they compete, the typical athlete maybe competes once a week, twice a week, maybe three times a week, depending on your sport. Salespeople are competing every single day. And that's why I find it really interesting and important to better understand the mindset of really good salespeople because they can grind it out.

I mean, they're going through the ups and downs just like athletes. How do you coach or how do you see elite salespeople prepare their mind and also be able to just grind it out every day, have that grit and resilience to do their job and reach their goals?

Well, it comes down to one understanding what it is that they want. That's to me, when I talk to entrepreneurs who are hitting their goals and who are not hitting their goals, the ones that are hitting their goals are they know exactly what they want. So it starts right there. What do you want? And when you ask 10 people, what do you want? Most people don't really know what they want. And when we don't know what we want, it's it's kind of like showing up to the airport and buying the airplane ticket, but not really knowing where.

Right, so it has to start, it absolutely has to start with the destination. The most successful ones absolutely know what they want, but then they back into it by building the right habits. They understand that it's about the process, not necessarily the destination. So I know for a fact that if I'm gonna make my hundred calls every single week, so every single day, I have to reach out to 20 new people that I've never spoken to before. That's just the rule. No matter what, I'm gonna do that.

Am I perfect every single day? Are there days where I just get swamped and don't do it? Yes. Do I try to catch up on those calls later? Absolutely. And I think elite athletes do that. Sales, elite salespeople do that as well. They, they work their plan that they created, but the plan is it has to be leading them to their ideal desired result. When, when you say, how do they grind it out? Right.

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He who has a will to live will conquer anyhow, right? That's a Viktor Frankl quote from A Man's Search for Meaning. When we have a big enough reason for why we're doing whatever it is that we're doing, it doesn't feel like a grind. It's just something you gotta do. Like I gotta wake up and make a sandwich for my kid every day. Just so he can put it in his lunchbox. Do I like doing that? No. But do I have to do it? Yeah, absolutely. It's just something we gotta do.

You know, Tommy Fleetwood recently won his first PGA golf event. think the whole world knows that by now. And I listened to his press conference afterwards and I found it completely fascinating. I wasn't surprised by anything he said, but he said a couple of really important things. He said, number one, when you're working towards a goal, just like you described,

You simply don't give up. You always look to the future. You learn from your mistakes and you continue to move forward because you like you said that goal is there. It's what you want to do. It's the pathway. Right. And then he said, you got to be good to yourself. Be careful what you say to yourself, what you say to others, how you project, you know, what your beliefs are and things and keep that positive mindset. How do you work with salespeople or when you're in training or coaching sessions?

to help them understand how to better manage and control their emotions.

Yeah, well, that's a really good question. Thanks, James. I look at the person as a whole, right? When you're getting somebody as a salesperson on your team, or if you are that salesperson, you're not just getting somebody who's a seller. What you're getting with that is everything that that person has been through in their life. That time in fourth grade where a teacher might have called them stupid or when somebody called them ugly or fat when they were growing up or their parents who didn't believe with them or the trauma that they went through. You're getting all of that.

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And that's what's showing up. And so the way we've got to work through that is we need to first understand what is in their subconscious programming. Who is this person? What do they believe? How do they see the world? For example, many salespeople out there believe deep down inside, they believe that salespeople are liars and cheaters and they're not ethical. And so the way that that's their core belief, the way that manifests itself is they sabotage themselves when it's time to

make a call or deliver a proposal or anything that involves a sales type of activity, they will self-sabotage. So the first thing we've got to understand is what is it that you believe? What is the program that's running this individual? And there's ways I have of doing that through certain questioning methodology. And then once we figure that out, we have to figure out, who is it that you want to be? Because I'll give you an example.

When we're first growing, you know, when we're growing up, we're taught stranger danger, right? Like most of the listeners here, you've probably heard it. I've heard it. Stranger danger. Don't talk to strangers. Well, that happened since we were four or five years old. And now we're in our twenties, thirties, forties, and we have to go and talk to every single stranger that there is if we want to sell, right? And it's not comfortable. It's not comfortable to cold call. It's not comfortable to walk into a

business that you don't know anybody in. So why isn't it not comfortable? Well, the reason it's not comfortable is because we've been conditioned and programmed stranger danger. But the question is, yeah, that served us when we were five. How is that serving us now that we're 25? And when did we unlearn it? When did somebody sit down with us and say, OK, son, daughter, you're now out of college. Stranger danger no longer applies. Everything we've taught you.

Forget about it. You're good now. Go talk to strangers. As a matter of fact, the best thing you can do is go build relationships. That never happened to anybody. So that programming shows up in the workplace and we have to deprogram. We have to unlearn that and we have to come at it from a place of, I'm truly adding value. It's working with people's belief systems. So the belief is, you know, I'm going to be bothering people when I call them. Nobody wants to speak with salespeople.

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It's going to be a really hard time for you to call somebody. But if your belief system is, I have this amazing product and service that helps my clients, that's going to help them grow, going to help them hire new people, going to help them operate more efficiently. They can't, it's a disservice to them to go without my product another day. You're going to show up differently to those calls. Did I answer that question?

You, you, you, you nailed it. Okay. Nailed it. And is an interesting dynamic, how we are brought up and then what the expectations are once we begin our profession, especially in sales. You know, when we look at the top athletes, the people who succeed, one thing I always talk about the four C's of mental toughness, control commitment, challenge and confidence and confidence is probably the most important of the four C's and there's, there's two, two parts to it.

There's confidence in your abilities. There's also interpersonal confidence in how you can be a leader and persuade in a positive, constructive way. Is that something you find most people have within them, the ones that can do that, or is that something you feel could be coached and learned, that interpersonal confidence?

I think, well, not I think, in my experience, all confidence comes from experience. It comes from building confidence along the way. So there's no way you were confident the first time you did a podcast episode, James. I'm pretty confident.

watched it the other day. I actually watched it the other day because it's the one year anniversary and I was like, oh my gosh, what the heck was I doing? But you're right. I was a little nervous.

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Yeah, dude, happy one year anniversary. Do you know that there are millions of podcasts that don't go beyond one episode? And here you are a year later. so I'm not sure. You know, that's how confidence is built. But it just takes a little bit of logic to sit down and understand that anything that we're confident in today, there was a period of time that we were not as confident in that same thing.

So even walking, riding a bike, like the simple things that, you know, we don't think about on a regular basis, but that's how the universe has brought us to this point that we are now. And once again, it's our perception of the thing. So if I know that in order for me to get confident, I have to go through just crap, perceived embarrassment, failure, hard times, not knowing, being willing to look stupid.

I need to be okay with those things before I ever get to the point to a place of confidence. And there a lot of people that don't allow themselves to do that. So the ones who do, they build confidence. The ones who don't, they get stuck.

Yeah, that's so true. And it's a hard thing. It's a hard thing to keep going when you're still learning and you're still failing and you don't always see the light at the end of the tunnel. that's what really, think Tommy Fleet would not to go there again, but I think that's why people like kind of fell in love with him. It's like, man, is this guy ever going to quit? I mean, he's just had the worst kind of things happen to him, but he didn't. He employed all the things you just talked about.

and finally pulled it off. So the one thing when I talk about athletes and salespeople that also says, there's a huge connection there is teamwork and team. I look at all the years I was in sales and working with a number of people to accomplish a specific goal with say just one client. And then of course in sports, you got football and baseball and all these teammates and coaches and trainers.

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How should people work within a team? How do you A, be a good teammate, and then B, be a leader of that team?

Yeah, that's a really, really good question. Know your players first. you're never going to put... Like, Tom Brady was not a greatest athlete, but he was a really amazing quarterback because they've surrounded him with the right team and the right environment. I look at everybody... I look at it kind of like seeds, right? You got to put the seed in the right soil first. Like, you can be the best player, but if you're...

put on if you're that seed if I'm using that same metaphor if you're a seed and I put you on concrete no matter how much water I pour on you no matter how much sunshine that shines on you you're not gonna grow why because the environment is wrong so number one we're gonna make sure the environment is right as leaders we can create that environment that's conducive to growth number two you got to understand who the players are you got to really know what the seed is we help

actually companies do that through our different disc training like the birds behind us. They're different behavioral styles that you're gonna experience on a team and the way you communicate with one is completely different from the way you're gonna communicate with another. The way they make decisions is completely different. So for example, me looking at those birds, I'm a hybrid of a high D, high I, which is an eagle and a parrot, right? My wife, who's also my business partner,

She's a high S, high C, which is the Al Dove combination. Now, it took me a while to figure this out, but I make decisions very quickly, which means I make bad decisions very quickly. I can't tell you how many times I've bought things we don't need. I've had buyer's remorse because it was an impulsive buy. I saw something, I got it. Money's going out the door. Didn't think through things. I'm the guy that will send the email and then proofread it to find mistakes, right?

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That's me. My wife is completely opposite. where everything shifted for us was when I realized that, and I made a rule in the house that, okay, anytime we need to make a big decision, I'm going to tell you what it is that I want. And she's a natural researcher. She enjoys that for her to make a decision. She has to have a lot of information and data and know that it's the right decision. She's going to read all the reviews and whatever she says.

to do, that's what I'm going with. I can't tell you how many good decisions we started making once I started patting the decision making along to my wife. When I was leading a sales team for that tech company, I had one of my sales reps in there. She was just an amazing, amazing relationship builder. When she was such an empathetic listener, it was truly a gift. When people spoke, they felt like,

She would listen to them with all her heart. And she genuinely would. It wasn't a ploy. This is just her natural strength. She was not the best prospector. So what do we do? As a company, we needed to get her in front of more people, so we brought in somebody that was just dedicated at prospecting for her to set appointments. So it's...

Understanding your team strengths and then positioning them in such a way that they can use those strengths is the best way to lead and in my opinion, the best way to kind of have teamwork.

And I think your household and my household is run in a very similar fashion. I think so from what I'm hearing.

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What was one of the decisions you made that just like looking back at it was kind of stupid?

Eric, there's so many, we're going to need another podcast. and I totally relate to the email thing too. It's like ready, shoot aim. I'm ready to go. Let's go. Yeah. the one thing in, in working with athletes who are serious about their goal, and, and salespeople is that I believe you, what you put in your mind.

Is what's going to come out and I think things like self-talk? visualization affirmations while they're they're not like the most important things you have to routinely do those is that something you talk to salespeople about as well?

Yeah, 100%. So there's a really good book. It's by a gentleman, name is Shad Helmstetter, and it's called What to Say When You Talk to Yourself. And in that book, he makes a parallel that our mind, so the conscious mind, if you take a look at a computer, the conscious mind is kind of like the hardware, and the subconscious mind, and there's all the programming and the software behind it. So for you to be able to...

pull up a PDF or pull up a Microsoft Word document, you have to have that program running, otherwise it would not, you wouldn't be able to pull it up on your computer. So what he says is that every single thing that we say to ourself is programming our subconscious mind. So anytime we say something like, I'm so stupid, I never get things done, I'm always late, I'm bad with names, I can never remember, I have a terrible memory.

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I'm not good with time, right? Like when we say these things, they just seem so normal. They seem like every single day, every single day things, know, I'm stuck in traffic again. I'm always stuck in traffic. I always lose my phone. And what do you notice is that that tends to come to fruition. Why? Because you're programming your subconscious mind to be that is the program that runs you. When you say I always lose my phone.

The subconscious mind receives that programming that says, okay, we are that we always lose our phone. We gotta make sure he's losing his phone. It just, we're programming ourself. So we have the ability to program ourself with anything that we want. Now, you can't just say, I'm the best salesperson in the world, I'm the best salesperson in the world, I'm the best salesperson in the world. If you don't truly believe that deep inside, if you constantly sabotage your sales and you're constantly losing deals,

saying I'm the best salesperson in the world is not gonna make it happen. But instead, you could tell yourself that you love people, that every client is the greatest opportunity, every meeting I'm in could be potentially the biggest sale I will make. When I say that before sales meetings, and I really do, like I don't know how the sales meeting is gonna go half the time.

Before I go in, I will say this is the most important client in the world. I love people. I'm great with people. I am the best listener. I'm going to give them all of my time today. And then I might say a prayer, God, please give me the strength and the patience to listen empathetically to this person and give me the questions that I need to ask. I'm a really good question asker. Right. So when I show up, if I see that person as a potentially best client that I'm ever going to have in my life.

I'm gonna show up differently. I'm gonna treat them differently. I'm gonna have a different energy about me than if I show up wondering they'll never buy from me. Yeah.

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I think it's kind of paramount to start your day with that self talk and end your day with a lot of gratitude and thankful for what took place that day. I just think it clears all that and all that subconscious stuff clears that right up. Just a couple more questions here and I'll let you go. What about routines? I think routines are so, so, so important because

You only have, you can have a lot of will and determination, all these things, but that uses up a lot of energy and it doesn't necessarily get you over the finish line when you're chasing a goal. But routines and rituals, man, they're like fuel in the tank. What do you think about routines? How important are they?

Yeah, super important. I routines and disciplines, they are the most important thing to achieving your goal. mean, well, number one is knowing what it is that you want, right? Because just establishing routines without a end destination in mind really doesn't make any sense because you could be doing some routines and you find out that you've climbed the ladder and it's attached to the wrong building, right? you end up somewhere you don't want to be. So first we got to understand what it is that we want. So let's take a look at, you know,

weight loss for example. So I wanted to drop 20 pounds. I found out my cholesterol was high, I wanted to drop 20 pounds. First thing you gotta do is one, set that goal. Okay, now I wanna get to 190 pounds, that's my goal. Well, what are all the routines that need to happen? Number one, I'm gonna start fasting, right? From seven to 1 p.m., I don't eat. So I stop eating by seven, no matter what. I don't start eating until 1 p.m., no matter what. That's number one.

Number two, I'm gonna cut out my breads. Number three, I'm gonna go to the gym every single day. Those are just three simple things. The beauty of establishing routines is that you make the decision one time, and then all you have to do is just manage that decision daily. Instead of waking up every day and figuring out, what do need to do today to not lose weight? You've already established that. In sales, it's make 20 calls every single day to people that I don't know. Been doing that for years. Every single day,

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20 people that have never heard from you or that I've never spoken to are getting a message from Eric. What does that do to my pipeline? It's gonna increase the pipeline. So that's another routine every single day. Every day I'm gonna journal. This is right here. And every single morning I wake up and we write in this journal. It's not gonna be blank. It's what do I want from this day? It's what are my goals? I'm just getting thoughts out. All of these are routines that are gonna get me to

where I want to go. Routines are super important.

Yeah, absolutely. one last question for say the young athletes out there talk about high school, maybe going into college. If there was one piece of mindset advice that you could give them, what, what might that be?

There's so many different pieces of mindset, but just remember that you are a creator. If I had to pick one, I would say take full ownership of everything in your life. You might not be responsible for what happened. It might not be your fault, but the second you become a victim, you lose. The second you relinquish control of the situation, you lose. So no matter what the situation is,

You broke your leg. What else can you do right now? Take full control of it. It might not have been your fault. Take full control. Train what you can train. Control the controllables. Continue to move forward any possible way that you can. Too many people fail because they become a victim of their circumstance. And I think that's the most detrimental thing for salespeople or young athletes.

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Yeah, true. Thank you so much, Eric. That was a great conversation. Definitely going to have you back on again if you're open to that. Yeah, that's good. For those of you out there. Yeah. If you want to learn more about Eric and the Goal Guide, go to thegoalguide.com and learn a lot more there. We'll put some information in our notes when we publish this.

And for the rest of you, don't forget to like and share and subscribe and all that good stuff. Go to chargeforwardcoaching.com. Learn more about me, mental toughness. Love to do that. But most of all, keep charging forward. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Charge Forward Coaching. Remember the journey to greatness is built on mental toughness and consistent effort. So head on over to chargeforwardcoaching.com and book a free discovery call to take the next step in your journey.

Stay focused, stay determined, and keep charging forward.

Until next time.