At the end of 2018, I earned just under $200K as an enterprise SaaS seller and was on the brink of burnout.

The following year, I earned over $1.5M (with $1.2M coming from commissions alone), all while working less and vacationing more than the previous year. The difference-maker was in my intentionality and focus.

Unfortunately, most performance-based knowledge workers, like SaaS sellers, confuse activity with impact.

Slow down in order to speed up

Here are the top four inhibitors of strong performance while maintaining high satisfaction and good health:

• Reason #1: Hustle culture

• Reason #2: Comparison syndrome

• Reason #3: Success is defined by someone else

• Reason #4: Not having a good personal operating system

The good news is you don't have to constantly grind and sacrifice your wellbeing to earn life-changing income.

Here's how, step by step:

Step 1: Learn the power of "No"

Hustlers aren't top earners.

The best thing I did was to shift from constantly saying yes to everything (like every account that came my way), to being much more thoughtful about where I invested my TEA (Time, Energy, and Attention). I applied a filter of 5 criteria that was meaningful to me on which accounts to pursue. This gave me focus and accelerated my deals.

Step 2: Ditch the goals and adopt a theme instead

My earnings target for 2019 was $500,000.

I was able to break through this barrier by 3x because I didn't operate from specific goals but by a theme (in this case, "slow down in order to speed up"). Then, I created a list of operating principles to support that theme.

Step 3: Break up the year into smaller components

Managing an annual goal is too nebulous.

Breaking up the year into 12 week cycles made managing the chaos much more manageable. I could hone in on a smaller subset of accounts and key priorities with a very clear focus on weekly and daily activities. This skyrocketed my performance and protected my health!

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