Why Eterneva is Donating 10% of All Proceeds to Fight Breast Cancer in October

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One in eight women in the US will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. These women will face one of the hardest, and scariest adversities of their life. In this moment, these women are faced with a decision – on what meaning to give their diagnosis, and how they will choose to show up every day after that. And somehow, that’s when many of them burn their brightest.

What all of these women have in common, is that they don’t let this disease define them. They call upon stronger values instead: love, courage, hope, empowerment, humility, and generosity. These women gain remarkable inner strength from their struggles, and often times are fighting their fight not for themselves, but for others.

To the warrior women fighting breast cancer today, to the fallen heroes who fought it yesterday – October is for you. For the world to acknowledge your courage, your light, and your impact.

At Eterneva, we’ve been humbled to serve many of these warrior women by turning their ashes into diamonds. It’s unsurprising that their families want to do something of this level for them – they absolutely earned it. We’ve been so inspired by these families that October has become a month very near and dear to our hearts. We feel it’s our turn to give back to this cause, and also share the stories of remarkable women we’ve lost to breast cancer that deserve not to be forgotten.

The Story of Karen & Stephen Youngerman

Karen Youngerman of Southern California is the embodiment of a warrior women. She fought breast cancer for over a fifth of her life. When she was first diagnosed in 2003, she took that as a call-to-action, to get involved with Susan G. Komen, and fight her fight alongside many other courageous women.

Karen dedicated herself to this cause, walking in SEVEN 60-mile walks for the cure and crewing dozens of others. As her husband Stephen put it, “these events were her ‘happy place,’ and over the 14 years she fought this cancer, her belief and positivity was unwavering, and served as a source of strength for many others.” In 2017, her last walk, she only had the strength to go out and cheer on the walkers, but she did it with everything she had.

After Karen’s passing, her widower Stephen decided to continue to carrying her torch in the fight against breast cancer and walk seven 60-mile Susan G Komen Race for the Cure events in just one year! As Stephen says, “We must never give up. We must keep up the fight. We must do all we can.” We have the great honor of helping Stephen turn Karen’s ashes into a pink diamond, so he can take her with him on his walks to the cure.

Support ‘Race for the Cure’

Like Karen, Stephen is admirably choosing to create meaning from adversity, and he could use our help.

“To prepare for the seven walks I am undertaking this year, I have been training every day since I lost Karen. That’s the easy part frankly. The hard part is raising the money needed to participate in the walks. Each walker is required to raise $2300 per walk. That means I’m personally required to raise $16,100 to participate in the seven walks.”

Inspired by Stephen and Karen both, the Eterneva team put our heads together to figure how we could contribute. First, we decided to walk 60 miles alongside of Stephen, in the Susan B Komen Race for the Cure event in Dallas, November 2nd through the 4th. We figure, if he can do seven events this year, we can at least do one 🙂

Race for the Cure

But our team still wanted to do more. So for the entire month of October, Eterneva will donate 10% of all diamond proceeds to Race for the Cure. If you have lost a remarkable loved one and wish to turn their ashes into a diamond, we will pay it forward.

If you are not looking to have a diamond created but would still like to join us in this fight, we would love to have you join our walking team! Email us at garrett@eterneva.com if you’d like to walk with us 🙂 If you can’t walk, there’s still one more way you can help. You can choose to donate (any amount helps) here.

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Stop pitching, start solving.

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Repeat this to yourself three times before your next “sales presentation.”

“My goal is to make my client 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether, or not, my solution is a good fit.

My goal is to make my client 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether, or not, my solution is a good fit.

My goal is to make my client 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether, or not, my solution is a good fit.”

The moment in time when you stop “pitching” and you start unbiasedly “solving” will be the moment in time where your sales career will change forever. That moment happened to me in December of 2014. There I was, “pitching” client after client to buy my services, and I was pretty good at it. But it wasn’t going to work for complex b2b deals.

Up to that point in time, I had managed a sales team, built another one from the ground up, and thought I knew everything about sales. I was well read, I was crushing my quota, and was on the brink of getting promoted within the first four months of employment. A hired sales consultant, Steve Gonzales, was on property. That was the first and last time I have ever met Steve. We had one 30 minute “1on1.” We immediately jumped into role play scenarios with me “selling” to Steve. Steve stopped the conversation a few times to feed me a few lines that would fit with my style. I liked Steve’s approach. He knew his shit and I respected the information he disseminated to me.

However,

I didn’t realize until months later when I was back into a coaching role, that there would be one line that Steve fed me that would change the way that I approached sales and coaching sales professionals forever.

“My goal is to make you feel 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether, or not, my solution is going to be a good fit for you.”

It wasn’t the delivery of the line, it was the authenticity of it. When you stop trying to convince clients that a certain solution, idea, or product is “going to be the best thing in the world” and start actually trying to identify and effectively communicate strategies, tactics and tools that can increase their ability to make more money, magic will start to happen for you.

FYI, it would be more effective to not deliver the message at all if you are going to say “My goal is to make you confident, or not, in my solution”. This literally has the opposite effect of what it is intended to do.

When you can create a genuine relationship that is based on respect, integrity and expertise, and it is time to deliver your recommended solution, you will have the floor. Your clients will answer your questions, respect your call agendas, and answer your emails quickly and accurately. You will get to no, or yes, faster and more confidently. It’s the concept of working smarter instead of harder. You will have to do less “convincing” when you spend your time truly solving.  Oh, and your clients will respect you…teeing you up for referrals, promotions and job offers, you know things that make you more money.

Here is an example of feedback I gave to one of my senior reps:
Treat questions (where the answer is no) as an opportunity to build trust. Example:

Prospect: “do you offer trials?” (Think why are they asking this?…maybe they want to be confident this is the right solution and they are not throwing us a hesitation…)

You: “No, we don’t do trials because it doesn’t work with our model. (Pause) Do you feel like you need a trial?”

Prospect: “Well, I want to make sure that this solution actually works.”

You: “I completely understand. Because our model relies on long term partnerships with our clients, we need to ensure that every brand that we partner with is set up for success. (Pause)

Therefore, we have created an onboarding process where our team will work to understand your landscape and what you are trying to accomplish, build your filters to get rid of irrelevant content (like you mentioned earlier), and guide you on how to best leverage this data to implement a best in-class PR strategy. (Pause)

So if this is something you are interested in further evaluating, it is my goal to partner with you to ensure that you are 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether or not my solution will “actually work” for your team.”

At the end of the day, my goal with this post is to make you 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether or not you want to be a trusted advisor that builds real value for your clients.

Rediscovering My Line of Sight

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On an early fall morning in 2003, I arose to a 5:25 am alarm clock. Over 12 years ago and I can still feel the anticipation I had for that series of electronic beeps. The same beeping that 99% of the population absolutely dreads. I remember welcoming it. I could not wait to wake up, throw on my running shoes and head out the door to try to beat my three-mile time from the day before.

Living in a hilly neighborhood and essentially starting at the top, the last mile-and-a-half was all uphill, a factor that might make other runners look for another route. Not me. With each step I took I gained strength, speed, and most importantly, control of my body. The last 100 yards were straight uphill. There was not a single time over a six-year span when I didn’t sprint the last 100 yards to finish my run strong.

Flash forward to today. I found myself mentally and physically miserable on a run by mile two. Prior to starting the run, I planned on sprinting the last leg, like I would have 10 years prior. But by the time I reached that last leg, it is an understatement to say I didn’t feel as strong or in control of my body. To take the pain away from my legs, I reflected on the difference in mindset I had at that moment and compared it to the one that my younger self had. Why was it so hard now to sprint the last 100 yards of my run? Even with the most determination I could muster, I was still significantly slower than I should have been, and transitioned from a half-ass sprint to a jog the last five yards. Fuck.

WHAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE?

It took about 18 months to figure out the missing key ingredient, which I finally stumbled upon while reading the book Relentless by Tim Grover, Michael Jordan’s former trainer. I was listening to the book on my way to work while Tim talked about the difference between “Cleaners” and everyone else.  Michael Jordan lived, breathed, ate, drank, gambled, played and shit excellence. From an early age, he had a clear vision of what he wanted out of life — to be the greatest basketball player of all time. Tim called him a “Cleaner” — someone who dedicates everything they have to a task and stays 100% focused until the job is done. They push as hard as they possibly can towards their goal, and then push that much further past their limits to do what others say is impossible.

BOOM. It hit me. I thought about the intense mindset the best competitors have to have, which forced me to see the difference in mine. I lacked vision. I did not have a clear line of sight to exactly what I wanted. I had goals, but not a vision so powerful that I could close my eyes and picture myself on a big league mound with a ball in my hand. That was the line of sight that used to propel me through all those early morning runs, workouts, bullpens, injuries, the list goes on. 10 years ago, it was more than a run. It was a stepping stone that was necessary for me to play college baseball, and ultimately, prepare for the Major Leagues.

garrett_ozar_baseball

“The work I put in was not something I could possibly replicate without having line of sight.”

I didn’t quite make the MLB, however, I did do okay for myself in college. Being a 5’10” pitcher, I had a lot going against me after battling a reconstructive surgery on my elbow at the age of 19. But none of that really matters. I feel that I did pretty damn well for what my body and mind were capable of. The reason for this? I worked my ass off and nearly everything I did was driven by realizing that the particular action in front of me was required to make the Major Leagues, and therefor, I did it with intent. The work I put in was not something I could possibly replicate without having line of sight.

To be clear, I am not on a mission to replicate my physical capabilities that I had 12 years ago. I am, however, on a mission to replicate the mental strength I was able to once achieve. My mental strength came up short for my standards on that run because it  was not a stepping stone to anything other than keeping my 30-year-old body in decent shape.

What I have realized is I am happier when I put forth a tremendous amount of effort on a daily basis, whether mentally or physically, because each day is a stepping stone to something greater. I am happier because I am able to achieve more out of myself. I am able to experience success. I like success. I am not sure if I could ever be happy without it. The trick to maintaining this level of focus every day is having that clear line of sight into achieving something amazing, like playing in the Major Leagues. My goals have changed, so I, like most people, need to adjust my line of sight instead of losing track of it completely.

The best way I can explain the feeling of having line of sight is by picturing yourself being followed by a series of video cameras at all times that are broadcasting to the world. Would your actions be different? Would you do everything a little better? Focus a little longer? That is a mild version of what it is like to have a clear line of sight at becoming something great. Everything you do, no matter who is looking, is done to your best capacity — and then some.

Moral of the story, people who have line of sight into something specific and fucking awesome work harder, smarter and are more relentless in their pursuits. Even if they don’t become the best in the world, they still achieve greatness.