Welcome to episode 135 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two Pre-Sales Technical Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we share part 1 of our discussion with Blake Johnson in which we discuss Blake’s education, early career, how he became obsessed with fitness, and some incremental ways to become more fit.
Original Recording Date: 07-08-2021
Topics – Meet Blake Johnson, The Second Degree and Getting into Sales, Situational Pressures, Strength and Conditioning for Success
4:10 – Meet Blake Johnson

* Blake Johnson (find him on LinkedIn or Twitter) is a simple salesman who is passionate about people and has a background in a number of areas.
* Blake calls himself the perfect millennial who didn’t quite know what he wanted to do but wanted to do everything.

* He got a degree in English Rhetoric while pursing business studies. Blake is a big fan of having to explain your answers.
* Blake considered law school but decided he liked the people better than the profession.
* He played football and really enjoyed strength and conditioning, eventually leading to a Biology degree.
* He describes himself today as someone living the dream.
* Listen to the difference between rhetoric and English rhetoric.

6:07 – The Second Degree and Getting into Sales

* Blake moved to Texas after graduation since he has some family there, ending up at Baylor.
* Biology forced him to keep thinking and expand his comfort zone. He believed sitting in a lab or behind an operating table might not be best for him.

* In a sales role today, he gets to make an impact on people and meet people of all types.

* Blake was a strength and conditioning coach (not really sales). Your product is who you are, and who you are is your product. The focus is on taking care of clients and helping them reach the next level of success.

* Blake told his boss at the time that he wanted to learn the business side of things, seeking to understand it better.
* He later stepped into a General Manager role and understood how to sell strength and conditioning services.

* In the sports performance world he was in charge of books, staff, doing some coaching, and taking the facility from one point to another while ensuring the product and the community was well taken care of (owning profit and loss of a single facility).
* Does moving from someone who practices strength and conditioning coaching to someone who sells it make you removed from the practice of doing it?

* Blake said when he was just a coach he wanted nothing to do with the sales teams, wanting only to focus on his role.
* Once he was able to step back from the role and look at it from an outside perspective, he understood the sales side, making him a better salesman and ultimately a better coach.
* Blake understood the product and the value of it to the consumer (athletes). Putting those two together made things so much better.
* John makes the point that aligning the practice (i.e. what someone does as a practitioner) with the value received by people we are working with or for is a challenge for technology practitioners.
* This was a struggle for John and something he did not learn until moving into Sales Engineering.