10 Ways to MAINTAIN High Quality

Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is "Keep Up the Quality." Over to you, Hugh Grant.

You shared the prize of the Venice Film Festival with James Trilby?

Will be, will be for that, for that, uh, for that performance.

Yes.

And that was— wasn't that the up to the next level after that for you?

Yes. And then very quickly down from that level.

What happened?

Well, I was a bit of a slag and just accepted everything that came along, including, um, some quite dodgy miniseries and things like that. And I hadn't learned the lesson that if you, if you've got a reputation for a second of doing quality stuff, you've got to keep the quality up. And so I let the quality sink, and I had to have another boost, you know, with Four Weddings to make everything pick up again.

I love this message because as entrepreneurs, we're always looking for opportunities. We are opportunity seekers. It's what we do. It's such an— entrepreneurs look for opportunities. We see something wrong in some industry, and we're like, I could fix that, that should be better. And that's why you started your business, or about to start your business, or have had some success in your business, is because you saw something that you wanted to make better and you went out and did it. The danger as you continue to build your company is to get distracted. What happens to a lot of entrepreneurs is they get distracted. They start down one path and then they have maybe a little bit of success, and then they see like 10 other offshoots that they can go off and do, and then you start doing all of them. And nothing gets done. Everything is in a really mediocre way, and your to-do list just keeps piling up. I'm sure we all have a file somewhere in Evernote or in a notebook or something, email, of all our ideas, and it just keeps growing, right? I have a ton of ideas. And people often lose focus, and you'll see it quite often where you'll have an entrepreneur have a big hit with their first product, or whatever the first product is that makes it. Maybe it's not quite the first product, but, you know, iteration, iteration, iteration, spend so much love and effort on making that first album, and then the second album falls short. The second album falls short because you're rushing it, you're trying to get the momentum, you're trying to put something out while it's hot, you're trying to rush into the next market, and it's not as good as the first one because you didn't spend as much love, effort, time, energy on it. And so you have to make sure that everything that you create, everything that has your name on it, should have your stamp of approval, should be something that you are insanely proud that you created, should be something that you want to show to your grandkids, that you want to go and show to your mom and say, "Look what I did." If it doesn't meet that standard, then go back and make it better. Improve it. And so I think too many people rush onto more opportunities and more opportunities and more opportunities and never actually get that next thing done because they're not staying focused. If you have a vision, if you have a plan, if you have a dream, you need to stay focused. Yes, you have these tangents that you might go off on, And you may need a team to help you kind of build some of those out, but stay focused on the mission, create products that you're proud of, and keep the quality level up. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what have you done that you didn't really release to its full level, that you weren't really super proud of, that you tried to put out just to keep momentum going? What story do you have to share around that? Leave in the comments below. I'm going to join in the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, guys. I'll see you soon.