The Highest Paid Skill In the World (It Can Be Developed But Not Learned)

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week, our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

Hi. Welcome back to a new episode and more importantly to a new year. This is the first episode of 2017. Today's actually January 3rd of 2017. And I know I'm still buzzing from the New Year's and holiday celebration. And most importantly for me is that week in between Christmas and New Year's where we get to do some strategy and planning and, and thinking and resolutions and all that. Well, there's a few thoughts I had I wanted to share with you that I think you'll get a lot out of. But number one is the idea of resolution. So I try not to make a New Year's resolution. I try to make a new day's resolution. Just think about today and tomorrow and the next day. And it's hard to do, but to me it's easier than thinking about an entire year. I'll explain what I do for the whole year in just a second. But every single day, how can I treat it as New Year's Day? It's a little thought, but I think it's easier to think in smaller chunks than big yearly chunks. That's not that profound, but it's something that I do. I don't really believe in resolutions. I believe in making commitments every single day. Now, one of the commitments that I personally made for the month of January, I started in December, was former guest of the show, billionaire New York Times best selling author, Jesse Itzler. I'll put a link to his previous show in the notes, but he was the author of the book Living with a Seal, which is an amazing book and I cannot recommend it highly enough, especially if you're an entrepreneur, if you care about your health and fitness and mental toughness. That being said, he's got the 2000 of everything January Fitlanthropy challenge. So what he challenged everybody to do, and this is just, you know, you can join this group at any time for free, is to do 2017 repetitions of each of the following burpees, which suck push ups, sit ups, chair dips, chair tricep dips, and air squats. Right. So that's not that much. It's a bunch of bodyweight exercises. But to do 2017 reps of each in the month of January is about 65 average repetitions a day. And that's not especially when you add the burpees in. That's not easy. And it depends on how good a shape you're in. I'm honestly not in that great of shape right now, so it's been challenging. But when I first heard him make the announcement, I took on that challenge on December, I think it was 15th or 16th, and I am already two weeks in, even though it only started two days ago. But I've been prepping. I made my New Year's resolution there two weeks ago and I'm really excited because at the end of the month, those of us who have completed it, we get to be part of. Jesse and his other donors, like Blake Mycosky, the founder of TomShoes, and Chris Clothier from Memphis Invest, are collectively donating $100,000 to the special Operations Warriors Fund, which helps to provide scholarships and support to the families of Special Operations soldiers killed in action. So it's an amazing thing, but one of the reasons I'm doing this is because I want to have consistency and commitment to my body and my physical health. And it's a great way to just show up every single day, get myself moving, whether it's in the gym or whether it's in my home, and do these body weight exercises with absolutely no excuses. And I've been doing it for a couple weeks, two days into the official challenge and I'm enjoying it. By the way, you can join us on Facebook. You can join the group. It's a free group whether you're participating or not over@facebook.com groups. Jesseitzler I T Z L E R There'll be a link in the show notes if you want to check that out. And I think you'll like it. Now that's a physical challenge I'm doing and the key to that is consistency every single day. And today I want to talk to you about consistency really briefly because I wrote an article that's getting a lot of shares on the website influenceive.com and the title of the article is the World's Most Successful People have this Invisible Skill in Common. And then the subtitle is 7 Steps to Develop World Class Consistency and why it's the Highest Paid Skill in the World. So if you think about it, the highest paid people in life have one primary and often invisible skill in common. And the reason I call it invisible is because it isn't flashy. You can't flaunt it, you can't learn it. It's a skill that simply must be demonstrated over a long period of time. If you ask someone on the street what they believe the highest pace skilled is, you're bound to hear answers like selling, coding, learning, execution, ability to implement, networking, negotiation, innovation, leadership and all these other things that are absolutely truly highly paid skills. And all of them are desirable and have their place depending on your business or career. But none of these skills are valuable if you only do them once or even now and then, right? So the reason certain actors receive gigantic sums is isn't necessarily because they've had one great breakout performance. It's typically because they've had multiple and can be counted on to have many more. The difference between an athlete with a multi million dollar contract and one who makes the league minimum is also a result of consistency. See, consistency in your results creates confidence in your reliability, which also brings assurance and removes risk for the people who pay you, regardless if they're your employers or customers. And the removal of risk combined with the reliability of results is priceless. Let me repeat that. The removal of risk combined with the reliability of results is priceless. Consistently good actors allow movie producers to remove the risk of a lousy performance and dismal box office results. As a result, they get paid a lot of money. Athletes who can consistently be counted on to get on base, make a catch, or perform under pressure time and again reap the lion's share of rewards. Which of these workout routines, for instance, do you think get you better results? Number one, you go to the gym once a week for two hours, exercising until you puke, and then take a week off. Or two, go to the gym every day for 30 minutes, putting good effort, working up a great sweat, but leaving a little bit of energy in the tank. It's number two. And. And the same holds true in business. You look no further than the reason for the success of major franchises like McDonald's or Starbucks. Do they have the best product on the market? No. But customers can rely on getting a consistent experience every single time. Now, if you combine consistency and quality, then you create legendary companies. Case in point, Apple. One of the biggest reasons cited for using Apple products is it just works. This is another way of saying it's consistent and reliable. When you add Apple's obsession with style and quality components and you end up getting the biggest company in the world with a raving fan base, me included. And they can charge a premium for their product. Now, are their computers better than everybody else's in the market, maybe, but arguably not. A lot of people say that there's much better computers than Apple, and that's probably true. But are the companies who make these computers also better at communicating their consistent results? Well, if they were, I'm sure that Apple would be in trouble. Now these examples are endless, but you can see that it's consistency that is rewarded more than any other real skill. And there are seven steps that I've found to develop world class consistency. And by the way, I am not world class consistent in my life. I'm trying to be. And that's why one of the themes for 2017 for me is is creativity and consistency. But first of all, to get into these steps, you have to show up and do the work even when you don't feel like it. Especially when you don't feel like it. This 2017 of everything challenge with Jesse Itzler is a perfect example. Number one though, stop focusing on short term results. Life is not a microwave, it's a slow cooker. If you've tried a pot roast from both, I think you'll know which one produces a better meal. 2. Have a written plan that you refer to daily. If consistency is to be a priority, then having a written plan with the most important activities will help. You'll create a plan for keeping you on track and focused on critical behaviors. The plan can be simple, but it serves as a reminder of what must be done in order to sustain consistent efforts, which leads to consistent performance. 3. Create rules for yourself as an entrepreneur myself, I've had a problem with authority and being told what to do. I don't like following other people's rules. However, I've had to set rules in place for myself and either hold myself accountable or have my business partners or mentors do that for me. The rules that keep me consistent are simple, such as I work out when I wake up. That's a rule. Another rule I've set is I write something a journal entry or an article every morning before working with my clients or my own business. When it's a rule, you're more likely to follow it. Number four, you want to commit to habits. If achieving a goal was meant to be easy, everyone would have a wall of trophies and a perfect life. But the surest way to achieve your goals isn't to chase them, but it's to create the right habits that automatically move you toward your goals almost effortlessly. The best part about habits is that they don't require willpower. They're automatic behaviors and either work for you or against you. 5. You want to track your progress and that which we measure improves. If you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Even if you get off track and slip up, if you're tracking your progress, it will remind you of how far you've come and it will keep you going even when you feel like quitting. Fall in love with the process, not the progress. Look, since we as humans are wired for instant gratification and results, this can be really difficult. But it's easier when you celebrate small wins and take pride in the path you're on, regardless of where it gets you. The benefit of this mindset is that you'll get much further because you'll get derailed much less often. And it's similar to the story of the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise was slow but consistent and he ended up winning the race. Even though I find myself being the hare in most instances, I'm trying to be a little bit more like that tortoise. Last but not least, number seven. Remember that consistency is a muscle that needs exercise. The most highly paid, in demand skill in life isn't something you can learn in a book or in school. It must be practiced and put into action consistently. It's a never ending pursuit with never ending rewards. As an employee, understand that employers and business owners deal with constant uncertainty. So having a reliable team that they can consistently count on to weather these storms is priceless. As a business owner, customers will reward you with their loyalty and repeat purchases if they can count on a consistently good experience or product. So the next time you're stuck in your business or career and you're feeling stagnant or you're not achieving your goals, simply ask yourself where you're failing to be consistent and how you can change course. Make sense? Cool. So I challenge you to ask yourself where in your life you're not showing up as consistently as you can and work on that. Screw your New Year's resolutions, screw all that other stuff. Look for opportunities to be consistent. That's what I'm working on. That's what I'm doing with my clients. If I can consistently get them high performing campaigns with their marketing funnels and their sales strategies, then I continue to get paid well and they do as well. Speaking of that, if you have an area of your life, of your business that you need help with, if you'd like a second opinion on how you can perform better, if there's an idea that I may have that could help you out, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. You can email me@askbradaconrappedbusiness.com and you can tell me what's going on and I'll give you instructions on how to potentially request a call with me and see if there is a way that I can help you make this year the best year ever. Okay, so if you like this episode, share it on social media, tag me in it, let me know and leave a comment. Or just shoot me an email and let me know that you liked it. Even if you don't have a question once more, that email is askbradaconwrappedbusiness.com I look forward to sharing the next episode with you. I think you are going to love it. Alright, see you next time.