As you know I had my first black belt month last October, 125 days after setting out on my white-belt-to-black-belt-in-365-days journey. A black belt month is a great achievement, but what we are looking for is sustainable revenue in our practice. This week I passed another significant milestone – a black belt year. Over $720k in revenue over the last 12 months (which coincidentally ties in with the financial year).
And what a way to get there. Debbie Roberts and I set off Sunday night for the Gold Coast where we had our first distribution keynote for the week on Monday morning. The plan was four states, five cities and six seminars over four days with a target of 25 sales.
Monday went pretty smoothly and we hit our targets for Gold Coast and Brisbane. Tuesday morning Debbie was waiting outside her room at 6:10am as arranged for me to pick her up. At 6:12 she thought “that’s odd, Pete’s not normally late,” and sent me a text. At 6:14 she gave me a call. At 6:17 she knocked on my door, waking me up (a good time to learn that the alarm on my phone doesn’t work if the phone is on silent).
At 6:24 we went screeching out of the car park to the airport. Got to Brisbane airport 45 minutes before the plane left, feeling comfortable again. Parked the hire car and walked into the airport – I looked at the departures list. Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris, Soule, London … with a sinking feeling I realised we were in the Brisbane international airport. Sprinted to the train, got to the domestic airport 20 minutes before take off resigned to trying to find another flight, but thankfully we were flying Virgin, not Jetstar, and they got us on the plane … and we got into Sydney a couple of hours before they closed the airport due to the ash.
We picked up our hire car when we landed – a tinny little 2 door Hyundai Getz. I asked if they had anything bigger, and the woman said it would take another 20 minutes. In words that came back to haunt me later I said we wouldn’t wait, and we were on our way.
We ran our seminar in West Sydney on Tuesday afternoon, then checked into our hotel in North Sydney to the news that the airport was closed. We weren’t going to be able to fly to Adelaide the next morning. So after our Seminar finished that evening. At 10:30 pm we got in our little red Hyundai and drove to Adelaide. As my good friend PK Menon says, whatever it takes. Arrived in Adelaide at 1pm the following day and had a couple of hours to freshen up in the hotel before heading to the venue. And that night on two hours sleep for the first time ever we closed 50% of the room – in other words half the prospects in the room signed up for our system at the end of the night.
Thursday my alarm worked, up at 4:45am, and the airports were open again so it was off to Perth. We ran our last seminar, and flew out Thursday night triumphant.
And in the wash-up I was tired, happy and closed out a black belt year.
Love to hear your reflections or tales of “whatever it takes” on the White Belt to Black Belt Discussion Forum.
