I’ve finished 200-mile gravel races. Eighteen-hour mountain bike events. A 24-hour adventure race, much of it on a tandem, where you cannot go faster than the slowest teammate no matter how badly you want to.
Here’s what every one of those races taught me: you don’t win by sprinting mile one. The riders who blow up early are gone by hour six. The ones who finish are pacing, conserving, thinking in the scale of the whole event, not the first ten minutes.
The same pattern in sales
A sales career works exactly the same way. The agents who burn brightest in year one — closing everything, working every hour, chasing every lead — are so often the ones who are gone by year three. The ones who actually last are pacing for decades, not quarters. They protect their energy. They build sustainable habits instead of heroic ones.
What pacing looks like day to day
It looks like saying no to some of the hustle-culture advice that treats burnout as a badge of honor. It looks like building systems so your business doesn’t depend entirely on your personal adrenaline. It looks like recovery being part of the plan, not an afterthought you get to if there’s time.
If you’re exhausted right now, that might not mean you’re not working hard enough. It might mean you’re sprinting a race that was always going to be an endurance event.
My keynote Habits, Not Hacks digs into this — thirty years of competitive endurance athletics and what it teaches high performers about lasting without burning out. Bring it to your team.
Leave a Reply