By John Barrows | Updated June 2026
Guiding principles are the rules you decide to live and work by before someone else decides for you. A few years ago I did an exercise at Vayner Media’s 4D workshop that brought this back into focus for me. We were asked to define our Pillars of Behavior, our core values. It reminded me of a similar exercise I had done earlier in my career after reading books on success like Think and Grow Rich, which makes the case that clarity of purpose is what separates people who achieve their goals from people who stay busy but stuck.
That earlier exercise is where I developed my Guiding Principles of Success. I have gone back to this list dozens of times over the years. It has helped me make hard decisions faster and stay grounded when things got chaotic. After a few iterations, I landed on these 12.
The 12 Guiding Principles
1. Work smart AND hard. A lot of people pick one or the other and use it as an excuse not to do the other. The best performers I have seen do both. They put in the hours and they do the prep work to make those hours count. Effort without strategy is just exhaustion. Strategy without effort is just planning.
2. Always ask for feedback. Feedback is the fastest path to improvement. Most people avoid asking for it because they are afraid of what they will hear. That avoidance is exactly what keeps them stuck. The reps who get better fastest are the ones who actively seek out criticism and use it.
3. Continuously set S.M.A.R.T. goals. Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound. Without a clear target you are just staying busy. Goals give you something to measure against and tell you when you are off course before it is too late to correct.
4. Earn everything. Nothing is owed. The people who expect recognition before they have earned it are the ones who do not last. The ones who act like they have to earn every opportunity, even after they have proven themselves, are the ones who keep growing.
5. Be open and honest with everyone, especially yourself. The hardest person to be honest with is yourself. Whether it is a relationship that is not working, a deal that is not real, or a role that is not a fit, the longer you avoid the truth the more expensive the eventual reckoning gets.
6. Don’t think you’re better than anyone else, but know no one is better than you. This is the balance between humility and confidence. You can learn from anyone at any level. And you can compete with anyone at any level. Hold both of those things at the same time.
7. Confidence overcomes most shortcomings except an ego. Confidence is believing you can figure it out even when you do not have all the answers. Ego is refusing to acknowledge you do not have all the answers. One accelerates growth. The other stops it cold.
8. Find your passion, or find something else to do. Mediocrity is almost always the result of people doing work they do not actually care about. The market rewards people who genuinely love what they do because they outwork and out-learn everyone else by default. If you are going through the motions, the people who are not will eventually pass you.
9. What goes around comes around. How you treat people on the way up determines who is there when you need help later. Sales is a small world. Burn bridges and you will eventually run out of road.
10. You can learn something new from everyone and every situation. The best reps treat every conversation as a chance to get smarter. They listen more than they talk, even with prospects who seem less sophisticated. Every person has context you do not have.
11. Be okay with the worst case scenario. Most fear comes from not being willing to look at what actually happens if things go wrong. When you can sit with the worst case and decide you can handle it, the anxiety loses its grip on your decisions. The ask you are afraid to make is almost never as risky as you think.
12. Get at least 1% better every day. Compound improvement. Small, consistent gains in skill, knowledge, and habit add up faster than any single breakthrough. The rep who reads one article, makes one extra call, and asks one better question every day will outperform everyone else within a year. You do not need a breakthrough. You need consistency.
These principles have helped me stay focused and make decisions I could defend, even when things got hard. They have also helped the people I work with understand where I am coming from.
No matter where you are in your career, it is worth doing this exercise. Write down the rules you actually live by. Not the ones that sound good. The ones that are true. You will always know when you are off course, and you will get back on faster.
Make It Happen.
John Barrows helps sales leaders decide whether to replace or rebuild their teams for the AI era. For 25+ years he has worked with the world’s most demanding sales organizations, including Salesforce, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, and Okta, building the frameworks that became Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close. He is the host of Make It Happen Mondays, author of I Want to Be in Sales When I Grow Up, and an LP at GTMfund. His training programs are available at learn.jbarrows.com.
