Becoming A Top Leader Series - Part 5A - Systems And Speed

Welcome to part five of the Becoming a Leader series. We're focusing on things people do that cause them to rise to the top and stay at the top. And by the way, don't be your own worst enemy. The common thinking was two years before Orville Wright flew the first airplane. Two years before that, the common thinking was it was going to be at least a thousand years before men flew. And then two years later, men flew. Do not let yourself be controlled by what other people say. Other people think. You're on your own track record. And so success, we know, is a statistical event to a large degree. It comes as a result of how you use 24 hours a day, the decisions you make, where you place yourself, what you decide to do and who you do it with. And great things can happen to you. So let's get into number five. I notice these people in everything they do, they set themselves up for success. Well, you think everybody would automatically do that, but they don't, do they? Let's take a look at what I mean by that. Let's go over here. One thing they do, they leave as little as possible to chance. If it's in your power, you leave nothing to chance. Because what happens to chance? Chance is what you can't control. So you want to put the odds in your favor. That's the idea of setting your yourself up for success. You're not guaranteed success, but what can you do? You can put the odds, you can stack the odds, you can weight the odds in your favor. Here's what big hitters do. They wouldn't just go to Las Vegas and walk in a casino and start playing cards, say blackjack. They're going to read the book about blackjack on the plane out to Las Vegas. So when they get to the table, they know they're not guaranteed they're going to win. But at least they have a little strategy where they won't make all of the obvious rookie, total ignorant mistakes. And at least they can stack the odds in their favor. I know one friend who read one book one time. And since that time, every time he's gone to Las Vegas and played blackjack, 8 out of 10 times, he walks away from the table with more money in his pocket than when he started. Why? Because he took the time to read the book. Another way they set themselves up for success is they are now people. They've made a decision in their life, become now people. In other words, when ideas come, they get a chance for a new project. They come across the name of a new prospect to Recruit or to sell for their business or someone who may know someone who they need to know. What they do is they pounce. They get in the car, they drive over there. They don't waste time, they jump in. See, they know life is fleeting. Things change. Opportunities come and go for all kind of things. And when you see it opening, you've got to pounce. These are the people. This is how they set themselves up for success. They know there's a lot of things in life, people in a frame of mind where they never would have thought they'd do something. But now things have happened. Now for the first day in their life, they're open to a new idea, a new project, a new concept. You find about that. That's where they. You don't write it down in your book. You don't put it in your calendar. You change your schedule and you jump. You find people that are in the same business and they're doing the same things one by one. They have no system. They've never improved. Every day's a new day. They reinvent everything. And in all your business, you'll always have repetitive function. And so these people are not doing things one by one. As soon as they identify something that's going to be repeated, a repetitive function thing, what they do is they turn it into a system. How can we. It's like in your house, you know, you're. For the rest of your life, as long as you have a house, somebody's going to be doing the dishes, sweeping up. You're going to have. Somebody's got to wash and fold towels. Those are just repeated type. And so how can you get those things where when you do it one by one, you waste time. It's like if you make a sandwich, okay, so I'm hungry, it's lunchtime. I'm going to make a sandwich. So I go and I get out the knife and then I go and get out the bread. And then I go and get, let's say peanut butter jelly. I pull it out and I make a sandwich and I get a plate. Now I have to clean up the side now. Oh, stop. I've got to go wash the knife, put up the things. Some people go through their life, it never dawns on them. Hey, while you're there, you know what? You got a refrigerator. If you like peanut butter jelly sandwiches, you'll probably eat them again. Why don't you make 10 of those things and stick them in the refrigerator the same time you make one a little bit more time, you can make 10. Now you've got some options. And you can reach your fat hand inside the refrigerator, grab a sandwich and go about your business. Put them in some kind of airtight container. If it's going to be long, freeze the thing. But it's just a simple thing like that. People have so much wasted time in their lives. You have to wash the knife, sure. You want a clean kitchen. Stick it in the dishwasher. There's a little container there for silverware, right? Here's what these people do. They do it in as much as possible. They do routine things in batches so they don't waste their 24 hours. Routine thing you try and batch up. You try and have a system. You put it on the calendar. It's going to be done automatically. If you get too busy, you can hire somebody to do it, but you hire it on a schedule. You do it exactly this way. While they're doing that, they might do some other stuff, but you don't waste a lot of time because what you want to do is squeeze the wasted air out of your schedule. If you get new brake liners for your car, they put those things in before they turn the car loose. What do they do? They bleed the air out of the brake line. Otherwise it'll be spongy. See, that's the thing. It is. You can't have the success you want in life as long as you have all these wasted batches of air in your schedule. Doing stuff one by one that could be done in batches, automatically, repeatedly, systematically. Here's what a system gives you. A system allows you to speed things up. You can do it without thinking. This is where multitasking comes from. Your brain can't really focus on more than one thing at a time. But if it's something that you've done over and over and over again, you don't really have to think about it while you're doing it. You could have your mind on something else and you're getting something other thing that's necessary, that has to be done. But you're getting that done automatically because you got a system for it. You just. Once you get started, you just. You go around and you handle it. While you're handling another conversation, you're talking to someone else. See, what it does is also makes it efficient. If you're going to be successful, you're going to have more and more things to do. You'd have more and more people in your life helping you. And this makes it efficient for you not only to train other people, but Also, to supervise delegation is great, but you also have to supervise. We're going to talk about that down the road, too. But you want to be able to turn things over to other people so they can help you. But you want to be able to do that quickly, and then you want to be able to supervise. If you got a system for doing it, that makes all of that happen so much easier. So that's the fifth thing that I notice about those kind of people. Let's go over to six. What's the thing about six? They don't reinvent the wheel. They don't waste their time experimenting with some harebrained idea on how to do things. They go with proof. They go with what works. These people are students of successful people in their industry. They want to pick the brains, they want to study. They may not use all of it, but they want to know what it is and they want to know why it is. Because they know if great ideas don't care who use them. If these people, if they're getting beat by someone, someone who's risen to the top of their profession doing something, there may be an idea, a concept, a philosophy approach that they're using that you could use. So that's why they study proven success, the alternative. In other words, if you want to make a light bulb, why not see how Thomas Alva Edison, after he did 10,000 experiments, what did he come up with? And then after they've made billions of light bulbs, what process are they using now, today? Because they've refined that process, that's probably the best way to make a light bulb, don't you think? Or do you want to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel? Well, good luck to you. All I can say is good luck to you. But you're probably not going to be a big success in the light bulb industry because your life is going to be too short for you to make that great invention. Assuming you do, and then start building your factories and starting to produce them. Don't reinvent the wheel when you don't have to. See, another way of saying this is don't waste time on lost causes. It's great to be determined and not quit. Not give up, but don't waste time on lost causes. Give things a chance, give it a shot. But if it turns into a lost cause, don't keep pouring good time and energy and effort after that. Give people a chance, but don't waste time continuing because you're stubborn. I believe I'm right. Usually people do that when they have a Theory, they have an idea and it's not worth it, and they just go down with a ship. See, what you want to do is take the smart ones, take the intelligent, let's call it this one, the intelligent investor approach. You want to be the intelligent investor in the way you go through your life. And that is you're going to take, and most of the time you're going to spend 90%, at least 80, but you're going to try and take 90% of your time, energy and efforts and put it behind the proven successful programs. In other words, safe, solid, sound things that have paid off for other people, that can pay off for you. You want to go with what you know is real, but then you want to save 10% to try something new, something with bigger risk, but potentially bigger also reward. Now because it's riskier means it might come out to be a total waste. But if it has a potential for huge reward, it's worth a try. And by doing this, what happens is you learn new things. If even when you try some of these new adventures, if they don't pay off, you're learning new things that you may use in the future or that may get you closer to another 10% effort in the future that would have a higher percentage of winning. So this is what keeps you, this is why people at the top, they're not boring, doing the same thing over and over. They're continually experimenting, implementing new programs, refining, opening up new markets, new products. But that comes from this 10%, because 90% of the time they're working with activities that are going to give them results. They can make the effort to go in here and spend some time on things that can freshen them up, keep the excitement up there, keep the new ideas flowing. See, because that's what you want. You want to keep people stimulated. But where does that come from? You don't want to be doing that with a bulkier business. You want to be running the bulkier business on a thing that you know will guarantee you results. But then take 10% and have a little fun, take a little risk. That's what the people on top do and they try and stay in. We're in the marketing business, sales business, so we use terms like warm market and cold market. Cold market is someone you don't know. Warm market is someone you do know. And we have much higher success. This is where you win the friend to friend to friend market. And this is where you lose because the odds are so low, you have so much rejection there, so much lower percentage Percentage of success that usually so depressing, people wind up quitting the business if they stay in here. And the success is getting in and staying in warm market. But in all industries, the progress is made in coming up with new projects, opening up new markets. When these companies are always solving problems, always on the move. It's a dynamic situation. And so what is the sphere? Where do they go for these resources, their advice and everything? They stay in warm market. We're still on number six. Why? Because it's proven success. And the principle is I know a guy who knows a guy. That's the principle. That's how the world revolves. At the top, who does the President of the United States appoint for his cabinet? Either someone he knows and has known all his life, or someone that he knows, one of his close friends recommends as the best person for the job. That's who gets the tryouts, gets the vetting, gets through the nomination for these jobs. Even at the top in big corporations, occasionally they'll use the headhunter firm to go out and find someone outside the company. But the success rates on that are not necessarily always a high percentage. But when you go from someone who's come up through the ranks, you know who you're dealing with, or if you someone is recommended by someone who's inside the company as being a perfect fit, your odds are much higher. Let's just say you're looking for an accountant. You use this all in your life. If you want a mechanic, you want a dentist, a doctor, you ask your friends, I know a guy who knows a guy. If they don't know a good dentist, they know someone who's excited about their dentist, dermatologist, whatever you need. And it goes down to simple things like restaurant. What's a good restaurant you're going to take a recommendation from, you're going to feel a lot more confident and probably have higher chances of success. If you get a recommendation or referral from someone you know and you know what they like. And so people, this is, I guess, number six. People at the top stay for everything. Even in the biggest business moves, hiring personnel, coming up with wherever they need advice, they stay inside the areas of people that they know because that's the winning area. That's where you have the highest odds of success and the most control over the result. So here's seven. You've heard this before. One characteristic of these people is, and this is an offshoot of number one, their hard work is different than you. They don't work. What these people do is they race, they're in a hurry. That makes a big difference in your life. When you realize only 24 hours in a day, the people at the top, they know if they're racing, it's easier to stay focused. Just like if you're driving through town. I got a ticket in Glenwood Springs last week, first ticket in I don't know how many years, because I was going 65 and a 25. Well, who knew that this town, they didn't give you any kind of warning. How do you bring it down? You just go from 65 down to 25. They gave me a break, a 45 and a 25. Well, when you're going 25 miles an hour, it's hard to keep your attention. Your mind is wandering. You're going 65, it's easier to stay focused. That's the way it is in life. When you're going for something big, fast, you've got a target, you want to get a promotion, you got a project, you want to get done, you're in a competition. If you're racing, not only can you stay focused, you can keep the people focused around you. And these are people. Their vision is not of work. See, because what you do, your activity, comes as a result of the picture you have in your head about what you're doing. Most people have a picture of work. I've got to do this, I've got to do that, then I've got to do this. What the people who go to the top, what they have is not work. They've got a picture of scoring points. Okay, what can I get done today? How can I. I can knock that out. I can knock that out. I knock that out. I can knock that out. I can get ahead. If I get this done by 3 o', clock, then I can get that done by 4 o'. Clock. And I didn't think I was going to be able to get that done this week, but I could knock that out and then next week I could start working on that other thing. See, it's a whole different approach. It's not like going through the motions of just doing stuff. Here's what it is. Here's as clear as I can tell you. What's in their mind is working at speed. They get things done again as fast as possible because they're racing. They know in life you get paid for doing stuff, for accomplishing stuff. And the quicker you can get things done, the more you can get things done in 24 hours. So wanting to get ahead in life causes them to naturally move into a racing approach to life rather than a working approach. What's your approach?