Mo Bunnell goes back through the incredible first season of Real Relationships Real Revenue. He pulls out the timeless truths and nuggets of lasting wisdom from each guest and applies them directly to business development. Listen and discover the transformative advice from the masters of mindset, vision, accountability, and habits.

Interestingly enough, the recap episodes of season 1 of the podcast were more popular than the interviews themselves. During the interviews Mo tried to make them as timeless as possible so that the lessons learned will be as applicable in 2050 as they are right now.
Mo went back and condensed all the nuggets of wisdom and lessons learned throughout the first season into a three page document which you can download at bdhabits.com.
The timeless truths break down into four major themes spread out over two different perspectives. The themes being: mindset, vision, accountability, and habits.
Servant sellers serve first and sell second. By serving first, you have the legitimacy to sell your solution and solve their problems. (Dan Pink episode 9)
Of the 15,000 people that Mo has trained worldwide, Mike Deimler was the best business developer and trusted advisor that he could bring onto the show. According to Mike, if you start with the client’s perspective in mind, you are obligated to move them and encourage them to take action. When you start with the other, selling is a consequence of doing the right thing. (Mike Deimler episode 5)
One of the most important things you can learn about business development is that if you start with the other and put your goals and objectives to the side, and instead focus on helping, you will do the right thing, which will always result in next steps, momentum, and trust.
Business development is a learnable skill. If anyone tells you that you’re just born with it, they’re wrong. Any complex skill is both learned and earned, and that’s backed up by the science involved.
Another way of reshaping your identity, is to reframe your goal into a question. Instead of assuming you’re not good at business development, ask yourself what a good business developer does and then use that to determine your next right action.
Many people think an identity is born from a lofty goal, but it’s really made up by routinely doing things that make up that skill. As you do those things over time, your identity starts to transform.
The external key is to be focused on the other person’s perspective and find ways to follow up with them. The internal key is to realize that anyone can learn the skills to be a world class business development expert.
Business development is awesome. It is creating a different future for other people, and it is something to get better at, and if you do get better at it, it is generally the number one correlation to people having career success, having relationship success, and being able to control their life.
You can move farther, faster, with a clear client vision. Don’t be afraid of disagreement. There will be times where you will have to ask permission to open the door to changing another person’s mind.
Mike Deimler writes down the things that each of his clients should be thinking about to move their business forward. The act of writing those things down and seriously considering what those clients need compels him to share his vision for where they could be. It also forces him to be concise.
Don’t let your expectations dissuade you. Bring it back to the little things you can do right now to get back on track. (Kelley O’Hara episode 1) Just keep doing the next right thing to help create the vision you want to help your client get to. Accept that you will have setbacks and just keep going.
Your vision gives you the courage to say no to trivial distractions. One of Michael Hyatt’s big insights was that your quarterly goals inform your daily priorities, and that by writing down where you want to be in three years and then using that vision to determine the daily actions needed to get there is very powerful.
Michael Hyatt’s framework of Drift, Driven, and Design is a useful way to understand how you are operating and where you are heading.
Write down what you want to be known for in three years, how much business you want to bring in, what your daily habits look like, and what relationships you want to have. Those four things are enough to have a strong internal vision.
You want to measure your outcomes and your results. The trick is not doing it too often. Goals are obviously powerful, but because there are often other external variables involved, it can actually be harmful to review your goals too often. Tracking something important subjectively is better than tracking something unimportant accurately.
If you want to bring in more business, measuring how many Give-to-Gets you think that went well is a solid metric to track, even if it is subjective to your feelings. Having a mix of metrics between your full control and external variables is a good way to stay motivated and assess your effectiveness.
Whatever results you have right now are by definition the byproduct of the system you’ve been running. (James Clear episode 3) You can’t hide from the results of your daily habits. If you love your results, that’s great, but there is always more to learn and improve on. If you don’t love your results, tweak your system.
Measure the efforts you can 100% control often. Focus on the things you can control every single day and don’t outsource it to someone else because you will miss out on insights and immediate feedback that will keep you on track. Accountability happens by tracking the things you can control.
If you lead a team, build out systems and start tracking the results for the whole team transparently. As results begin to change, the identity of the team will begin to change as well.
The one universal thing to track are your Most Important Things (MIT) each week, determined by them being Big Impact, In Your Control, and Growth Oriented (BIG).
Create systems that automate and scale. Automation extends beyond software. Keep templates of questions you get asked often and processes you use. 90% of the benefit of automation is in taking things that require human intervention and creating a process around them. Templates allow you to increase your productivity and get more done each week by adding hours of value in minutes of time.
Write down what you do for business development and then think about which parts of that can be automated. If you view business development as a process, you can create templates that will pay immense dividends on your time.
Create habits that celebrate consistent progress moving forward. There are three main things that impact your outcomes in life. The first is luck, the second is your choices and strategy, and the third is your systems and habits. If you master the last two, you increase the surface area for good luck to come your way. (James Clear episode 3)
Dan Pink used to focus on the big hairy audacious goals, but he realized it always came back to habits. It’s about the small wins everyday. Do the things today that your year-from-now self will be happy you did today, and if you do that over and over again, it has a cumulative effect. (Dan Pink episode 9)
Business development is the learnable skill and project that never ends. If you focus on the things you can control and keep making progress every day, you will find success.

Mentioned in the Episode:

bdhabits.com

bdhabitsforteams.com

Season 1 Summary Poster - sign up at for our free weekly newsletter at growbigplaybook.com and/or at bdhabits.com for our training course, and you will immediately receive this summary poster via email as an instant download

Timeless Truths: What I Learned From Season 1 I’ll Use Forever 54:50 Share

Real Relationships Real Revenue - Video Edition | Invest in Relationships to Build Your Business and Your Career

Shownotes Transcript

Timeless Truths: What I Learned From Season 1 I’ll Use Forever