The 1% Rule

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. Each week I'll publish a solo cast where I'll share my top high performance habits and methodologies to supercharge your life and career. If you enjoy the show, please take a short moment to subscribe and leave a rating and review. I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

Over the years I've had the pleasure and honor to to work with some incredibly high performing individuals, some incredibly high performing teams and organizations, people who've competed at world level, Olympic level, World cup winning people and teams. And there's always been one thing that connects them and that's discipline, hard work. Right? You know what it means. Look, I'm going to share something with you that I believe will absolutely supercharge your your life, your results. If you're in a team or organization, it's going to deeply impact that team. This is a very simple philosophy, but proven and absolutely can take people from zero to hero. I want to share this whole idea about marginal gains and it came from Sir Dave Brailsford, you may have heard of him, if you haven't, he's just incredible. He's a former performance director for the British cycling team and they went from zero to hero. That's no exaggeration. This whole idea of we're going to get to where we want to get to, but we're going to do it in a very sustainable way and we're going to do it in a way where each day we're just doing a little bit more, we're focusing on one key area and we're doubling down this whole idea of the 1% incremental or marginal gains philosophy. And the British cycling team, they had a really long road ahead, pun intended, and they wanted to really level up who they were and the level that they competed at. So think about that for yourself. For your team, what are you trying to achieve? That's world class, that's industry beating. There's going to be a long road ahead, right? There's no doubt about that. But the British cycling team under Dave Brailsford's direction took this philosophy of the 1% marginal gain. And he firmly believed that making small, minuscule improvements across several areas could accumulate over time to produce significant advancements. And I firmly believe that exquisite habits that are executed on daily and consistently over time produce sublime results. There's just no doubt about that. This cycling team from Britain analyzed every single aspect of their performance, including nutrition, equipment, team culture, strategies for recovering from intense workout and performance. And what they did, which was just next level, was go, okay, how could we optimize each of those elements of our performance, of our culture, of our team ethic, of our review process? Now, I said optimize, right? They didn't say how can we overhaul? How can we absolutely, 180 on everything. No, they simply wanted to optimize. And to be fair, it was very much a scientific approach that they took. And they really identified data for key areas so that they could improve and actually measure things. How many times do people say, we're going to change this, this and this, we're putting in new systems, but, but then they have no way of measuring where current outputs and inputs are. And then they've no way of measuring what things are like as we move towards a better outcome. So they took this approach of if we're going to change anything, it's got to be measured. We've got to be able to always keep this focus on what matters most. And look, they went into uber detail, like massive detail. They left no stone unturned in their pursuit or of excellence. They pay meticulous attention to simple things like the bike saddles, the type of massage gel used. You know, these are the things when we, we dip into the Formula one teams, the, the All Blacks, the NBA teams that are at the top, they geek out on the tiniest of things, like the socks that are used, like the underwear, that is war, like the food that goes in at halftime, the positive psychology that happens right before the game at halftime rather than old school yelling and screaming. So they go into absolute detail. And a big part of this 1% incremental gain is it really involves everyone. So for the alpha male leader, alpha female leader, that's shouting, yelling, it's my idea, this won't work. This has to be full collaboration. People need to have autonomy within the team. People need to have a voice within the team, people need to feel safe, that they can speak up and go, hey, I'm not seeing it here. We're talking about optimizing this, but here's what I'm actually seeing on field or in the office or, you know, with clients. It's so important that people have that space where they're courageous, where they have vulnerability to speak up. And another big factor here for you to consider is if you want to use the 1% rule to help you get better in your hobby, in your life, in your team, in your performance, whatever it might be. Look, you're not going to get there if you don't take a long term focus. It's just essential the person who stays in the game longest.

If you die in five years and your competitors keep going for 20, 30 years, of course they're going to win, of course they're going to be the greatest of all time. Of course they're going to be the high performers. The British cycling team understood that significant gains require a long game mindset. Are you here to play the short game or are you here with me to play long game? Let's play long game. One thing I don't like doing is selling. I don't like jumping on a phone, cold calling or buy this or buy, I don't like that at all. That's not my thing. I really don't enjoy that. When I have to do that for whatever reason, I'm like, ah, can we just get together and have a conversation? Then we can get together again and maybe have a couple more hours of connecting and you know, as we build trust and respect and we truly get to know each other, hey, if you've got something that can, you can sell to me that's going to improve my performance or my life, great. And vice versa, great. I'm in a game of relationships, long game, long play relationships, not short term. I don't believe in that transactional stuff. It's fast paced, you burn through things. Not my approach. And the British cycling team for this, you know, idea of marginal gains to work and get into world class, they all bought into this long term vision. They set really massive goals, highly ambitious goals, but they all committed to a sustained effort to achieve them. So that short term, instant gratification wasn't a thing for them. They focused on steady incremental progress over time. And when you think about it, most products that slowly build and iterate over time and stay in the game, they become world class. The iPhone that first came out is if it stayed the way it was and hadn't improved, none of us would be using iPhones anymore. But they put a pretty good product out, and then they just stayed in the game and they kept iterating, kept improving. No different. With.

A goal. Let's say it's a financial goal. We want to hit 100 million, 10 million, whatever your goal is, great. You're going to move towards that incrementally. You're going to give yourself enough years, enough Runway to actually achieve it. If you say, hey, we're going to make 10 million in the first six months of a new business, hey, well, it's possible, but it's highly unlikely. So, you know, be really thoughtful around setting goals that have a long enough Runway to achieve them. And with the British cycling team, they did just that. This 1% incremental gains philosophy has totally been credited to the remarkable success of that team. And they've done phenomenally at the Olympic Games and definitely at the Tour de France as well. So I'd love you just to think about where you could apply that 1% rule, what in your life right now, or your leadership could do with a little bit of improving. I want you to pick three to five things. Three to five things that drive you or three to five things that drive your performance. Whether you're a salesperson, whether you're a leader, whether you're an athlete, whether you're a parent, whatever area you want to pick right now. What are three to five areas or actions or behaviors that drive your performance, that make you what you are? You know, so if you're in sales, that'll be calling people, that'll be preparing for calls, that'll be managing your mindset, that'll be having a CRM system. Right. Ask yourself, okay, how could I optimize each of those things? How could I make each of those 1% better day in, day out, week in, week out? Oh, I might seek some mentorship, or I might go and figure out all the different platforms I could be using, or, you know, I might get a voice coach or a negotiation coach. You know, what are the things for you in your specific areas to be optimizing and really focusing on incremental marginal gains? If you can do that, that will help you identify your current state and your desired future outcome and guess what's in the middle. That's right, the gap. I talk about it all the time. It helps you to define your gap, and you're going to close that gap 1% at a time. Not 10, not 15. Not 45, 1% at a time, slowly trudging forward. It reminds me of the great Roald Amundsen. Roald and Captain Scott were in a race to the South Pole. Both men reached the South Pole with their teams. However, when Captain Scott got there, there was a Norwegian flag already flying. The rest of his team after that, all perished on the ice, including himself. But Roald Amundsen, one of his strokes of genius was this. He said, whether the weather's good, bad or ugly, we are going to do a 15 mile march every single day. Captain Scott took a very different philosophy of when the weather was bad, we'd protect ourselves, hunker down, weather was good, we'd really push ourselves. Didn't work out too well with fuel consumption and injuries. But Roald Amundsen knew that this 1% mentality of we'll do a little bit every day, every day will not stop, will keep on rolling. Very similar to the flywheel concept. You know Jim Collins, good to great flywheel concept. It's 1%. Push it round, push it round. As we build that momentum on the flywheel, guess what? It starts to build momentum. We build up speed and velocity. So I hope that today's episode has really landed with you and challenged you to think about what's your 1% gains that you want to make, just like the incredible British cycling team did. So if this was a valuable episode, please share it with one friend. That's all I ask. That's all I share it with one friend that might find it interesting. But for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose.

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