A friend of mine recently shared what has become my favorite story that can remind us all how to accomplish our dreams. Ben and Roy started working at a car dealership on the same day. Both men were incredibly similar; they had the same education, background, and amount of money in the bank. The only difference between them was that Ben was always thinking about ‘what ifs’ and Roy was only focused on the problems right in front of him – ‘what is.’

On their first day of work, Ben spent the entire day watching other salesman and reading books on selling. He was terrified that he might mess up and wanted to be able to cover any possible situation before ever even talking to a customer.

Roy, on the other hand, realized that he had only one ‘problem’ (and one thing to focus on), which was getting customers to buy cars. Because of this, he spent his whole first day approaching customers and trying to get sales. He quickly realized that he was a below average salesman and that customers did not respond to his sales pitch. He went home that night and spent a few hours on Google trying to figure out what he did wrong and how he could fix it.

Both men sold zero cars on their first day. The next morning, Ben saw something on the news about a car salesman in another town getting sued for selling a defective car. While Ben’s Boss reassured him that there were no defective cars on their lot, Ben was still worried that he might get sued one day for the same issue. He was so focused on this news story that he spent his whole second day learning about defective cars and inspecting every car in his area for defects. On the other side of the lot, Roy kept working at his only problem, selling cars. In his research the night before, he learned a trick to change his sales pitch. This resulted in him selling one car that morning. He almost sold two other cars but lost the customers in negotiation. Roy then realized his new problem was negotiating. After work, he went home, sat on his computer, and focused on learning how to negotiate.

Ben sold zero cars and Roy sold one car on their second day. On the third day, Ben talked to Roy, and Roy mentioned that negotiation gave him trouble. Ben, who at this point had still not talked to a single customer, decided that he needed to learn how to negotiate before taking any action. He spent the whole day walking around the lot asking other salespeople how to negotiate.

Roy, on the other hand, sold four cars because of his great sales pitch and because he learned that people were more likely to buy a car if he gave them a discount on leather seats during negotiation. Ben sold zero cars and Roy sold four cars on their third day.

The next day, a customer who bought a car the previous day came in angry with Roy because Roy had been incorrect about some of the car’s details since he was in such rush to sell cars. Roy apologized and refunded the customer. Ben saw this and was scared that it would happen to him, so he spent all day memorizing all the details for all the cars in the lot.

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