No matter the field, talent and natural ability are only responsible for so much of our outcomes. What separates a repeat champion like Tom Brady from 31 other starting quarterbacks in the NFL? It’s not his arm strength or quickness, but his mindset, focus and mental strength.

In that spirit, refining the mental game was the subject of this week’s Distributors Helping Distributors webcast, hosted by co-founders of TheSwagCoach.com Michael Mahoney and Josh Frey, the sales columnist for PPB.

Frey and Mahoney, who coach and consult promotional products distributors to help them reach their sales goals, began the discussion with a simple thesis: If you want to reach key revenue milestones in 2022, you need to be in the right headspace, with the right mindset, which starts by silencing your inner critic and elevating your mental and emotional well-being.

“If you’re like me, there are some days when you don’t have your mojo, and some days that you do, and that’s just human,” Mahoney said. “I personally have found that consciously working to put my mind in the right place can make a difference in my attitude and how I’m able to perform at work…. As I’m talking to distributors around the country, I hear that maybe they feel stress or overwhelmed with constant work demands, they’re overbooked, there’s anxiety, fear, not having time for themselves.

“We’re all small-businesspeople, we’re entrepreneurs…. It’s hard to separate the personal from the business, so it’s really important to get our heads in the right place.”

The duo were joined for the webcast by well-being strategist and mindfulness speaker Oksana Esberard, author of the book Next Level You: How I Transformed My Life With Mindfulness and Meditation. Much of the discussion centered around a classic topic and personal and professional development: positive thinking.

“If something didn’t happen, let’s say a sale didn’t go through, I just say that it doesn’t mean for me that something better is not coming,” Esberard said. “Self-worth: I think we get associated so much with all of the losing in sales, in us losing something…. It’s work to stay in the zone, or balance, to not take it personally.”

Aside from rebounding from negative experiences in sales, Frey also pointed out that remaining sharp after wins is important to continued business growth.

“It took me 20 years to enjoy the journey,” Frey said. “I had this moment where I had done more sales than I had ever done in a year, I had a sales team that was crushing it… and it was just such a grind to get there that I couldn’t even enjoy it.

“That’s something I’m really focused on—finding the parts of the work that you enjoy so that the journey becomes so much more enjoyable, and freeing yourself up from the stuff that’s not.”