The $10M Growth Blueprint: Routines & Surges

Bottleneck destroys your routine because everything comes to a stop. You got all the water going through that particular hose that you can get, and you know what's going to happen now? You're going to spill water. If you keep trying to push more water through that pipe or that hose, it's just going to spill out all over. Welcome to Big Hitters. I'm Larry Weidel, and this show is for people who are done playing small. Each week we break down what it actually takes to win at a high level. The decisions, the discipline, the adjustments that separate those who almost do it from those who do it. No theory, no fluff, just straight talk from someone who spent 50 years building winners. If you're serious about momentum, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Let's talk about, or keep the conversation going about the difference between a million-dollar operator and a $10 million operator. And so, we talked about last time, we talked about intent. This time I'm gonna take it a step and here's the way the process— let's talk about the process. The process for people that grow and keep on moving, they keep the process going. And like, what, there's 2 things in the process. You have to have your routine and you have to have your surge. Mm-hmm. And so what people will give you bits and pieces of this, get you going, but this is what it is. First of all, and Arnold, they asked Arnold Schwarzenegger, we talked about this on our big hitter Monday morning locker room call this last Monday. And people were thinking, they were asking Arnold, who's obviously a high achiever, and ask him, what will most people miss? Most people will not reach their goals, New Year's resolutions. And why not, Arnold? And what would make the difference? And he said, real quickly. He said routine. He said, you've got— this is game plan, this is whatever. But the idea of a routine, you gotta have a routine and a routine that works for you. And it doesn't matter if your routine makes sense to anybody else, works for anybody else. The thing is, you've got to find out your routine. And here's the best definition that I've come up with for routine. Your routine is Where you set things up. So, I mean, okay, I'll probably get the Nobel Prize for this, but anyway, your routine, your winning routine is something that you set up to where on a daily basis you work, you experiment, you try, and you find out what, what works for you in terms of things you've got to get done. And where you get to where you move into a schedule. To where you can instinctively get done on a daily basis enough of the right things to be successful. So you don't have to think about it. Because the deal is like, it's one thing to have a schedule and have it all written down and everything. But as we know, every day can be different and different things fall out of the sky and you have to think on your feet and you have to adjust. And then you get back on track again, especially if you're the leader of the, the show. And so the deal is you've got to get to where it's internalized, to where you have a feel for it. Like, this is how I get it done. And I know I'm on track. You know, it's like, I know I'm getting enough. This answers the question in a routine, how much is enough? A routine, it's enough if it gets the job done. And you have to get to the point where you're the judge of that. Like, if you go to the gym, it's not just, How many, how much weight and how many sets and how many repetitions. It's like with different days and different things you could be going through. And it just doesn't, it's not the same. And so other days it might be easier for you to kick out certain repetitions. Maybe you were coming off an injury or coming off a sickness, or you're coming, you went in there tired because you didn't get sleep or something. So the thing is you have to adjust. We're always adjusting. And it's the idiots who try and keep this down, you know, rigid, you know, rigid. Uh, you know, you got to do every 5 minutes you do this and every half hour you do this. And we have the principle of 5. We go in there in 5, 1 hour there, and then you take 5 minutes off and then you have 5 hours you do that. It's like, shut up. Nobody does that, especially if you're a leader and you've got a lot of people, a lot of things going on. You can't organize your life that you could do that maybe if you're a professional athlete. And you have a whole staff dedicated towards just prima donna you. But in a business, a company with all the moving parts, and a lot of times you're moving parts during the day with people, moving parts with production and products and services and clients. But also a lot of times the moving parts is you're moving to different parts of the country and then you have different things to do. It could be a trade show you gotta do. You gotta have a big rendezvous, a big training session with all your people. There's all kinds of stuff we deal with. And so you've got to get into it. You still have to have a routine because here's why. As my good friend that I don't get to see as much as I wished, but a wise man, Dr. Jerome Rarucca, says, gentle consistency wins every time. And so the deal is, what is your program? What are you doing Why? What are you doing all the time? What's your routine? And that's what Arnold was getting at. If you want to get— obviously you want to be a bodybuilder, develop big muscles. It happens because the thing is, in all growth, it's a biblical principle, by the way, that I didn't know I was going to get into this, but it's the biblical principle. When God saw the Israelites went into the promised land, he said, I'll give you victories little by little. You'll take over the land. He'd given them the land. But he said, I'll give you progress little by little. And the reason why, he said, so that you can absorb the growth, handle it, and then you're ready to take on more territory. And so that's the way it is in a war. You capture a city, but you've got to set things up in place where you don't— you're not going to be losing the city to the enemy again tomorrow and have to go, well, win it back. That's the up and down approach to business. You wanna secure your gains when you make these breakthroughs. And so the growth, if you don't have a routine, you're not steadily growing. Now in nature, let me show you the routine. 24 hours in the day, you have night and you have day. And what happens during the day? The sun comes up. And you get sunlight on the green grass and all the plants and the trees, and they grow a little bit. The roots go down a little bit, the leaves grow a little bit, and then night comes. It's this process as a routine for maintaining the earth. In the oceans, there's the tides go in and go out. There's a routine that God has set up that governs the universe. And so plant life, the way plants grow is obviously That the pattern and the example for all of us that, and the things that grow fast, like what are those weeds? They don't last, or squash. They have no root system. They're fragile. But if you're gonna build stability, you're gonna build an oak tree, or you're gonna grow an oak tree, is it gonna take some time? And for the stability, the structure to form, and the same thing in your life and in your business, it takes a while to develop the structure. The, the strength, the knowledge, the experience base. And it'll take same time as you're building your staff. It takes a while for them to grow and develop that toughness and that stability and that resilience, that flexibility where they know how to handle different things. So it takes time. And that time is not just, you can't just put in time. You gotta put in time. With your routine. You gotta give time for that routine to work. So you've gotta develop the routine that works for you and your company, and it'll change depending on your experience level, your age, your staffing thing, your success up to this point, your requirements with your staff. It's up for you to keep. That's one of the things, the challenges for a leader. You're always having to change things to kind of keep the routine going. To keep The, the capacity where you're able to do the capacity of activity, where you can store the, the, if you're making things where you can have the warehouses to be able to have inventory on hand. So you're always working with your decisions to keep the routine going to where you don't, you know what the end of it is? Bottleneck. Bottleneck destroys your routine because everything comes to a stop. You can't get it. You got all the water going through that particular hose that you can get. And you know what's going to happen now? You're going to spill water. If you keep trying to push more water through that pipe or that hose, it's just going to spill out all over. It won't go through it. It can only go through a 1-inch pipe so much water. And if you want to get more water through, you got to get a bigger pipe. And so you could try and yell at the pipe. You could yell at the water and you could jump up and down and say, this doesn't happen to me. Yeah. All of these realities of life we have to deal with. And so that's what the leader's doing. You're adjusting so you can have your routine. So part of the routine is the water's gotta flow through here and this, that, and the other. We wanna do more. We gotta get a bigger pipe so we can keep our routine, our water flowing. On a regular basis and we can have the growth and we can continue to get, take advantage of the opportunities and get bigger. So routine. And you find that by a lot of, you know, the best way to do that is to see what the best people in your industry have done. And then find models to copy, successful models that where you could, you're not gonna copy, be able to find You know, very rarely can you luck up and find somebody that's a perfect model to copy because they're exactly doing what you want to do and got exactly your situation, your personality. But you can pick up ideas. You can get hints, you can get clues, you can get tricks of the trade from how they go and you can figure out how, what they outsource, what they do insource, what they do inside their organization or where they, what they do when they're small, what they do when they're medium, what they do when they're big. There's things that, that You could— ideas that you could pull in at different times. But the best way to get it is from people who have already done the experimenting and found and adopted as routines for themselves things that are successful, things that work. And so that's the best source of ideas for you as you put together your routine. And so you copy winners, basically. And you see what the results are and then you go from there. You'll see what suits you and you'll be changing that all the time. That's why businesses, I do believe in evolution as related to a business. And businesses, everybody's trying to get better. It's like the iPhone that they first came up with, it's much better now. It's evolved. It's, they iterate is the word, iterate the small changes and you're making, seeing what you can make better. And more efficient. And that's what gives you the highly sophisticated routine. Like in languages right now, you have language apps and programs that are using things from so outdated, you take you forever. I studied the standard way Spanish 800 different times. I did it at Georgia Tech. I did it at I've did it. I've taken the things you listen in your ear and you memorize. And I've done all this. I still can't speak Spanish, but JumpSpeak comes along and they say immersive. They've got another approach to where you could do it, learn language quicker, faster, better by speaking the way we kid, you know, babies learn how to talk. Like they copy the adults. And that's my next way of learning. Going out there and attacking Spanish and then Italian and then French. But there are faster ways in everything being developed all the time. And so you, you look to the people that are fastest growing, that are successful now for ideas to add into your routine. But that's not gonna be enough. Arnold only told you part of the story, but again, in Arnold's defense, it was like a 5-minute interview. So you can't expect any more than that from— Arnold, he put you on the right track when he said routine. But here's the other thing, surge. Routines and surges. We said, well, your process, your game plan's got to have your routine and it's got to have a sur— you've got to have surges. A quick way of looking at surges is Black Friday. Why do they have Black Friday? Why do companies have specials? Why do they have promotions? Because companies have learned just opening the door, having good prices and all of that stuff. No, that's not— that's good enough. You gotta have that routine. You got to have where you put out your items are on 10% off this week, and you gotta put out coupons. That's part of the routine. But when you wanna surge, you gotta do some— a Black Friday thing. You've got to have a summer special. You've got to have some kind of promotion, President's Day. And that's why you see restaurants or car dealerships. They'll have these special things where they'll bring in on a Saturday and they've got a band and they've got balloons and they've got the Dallas cheerleaders flying in or the equivalent and something to create a fanfare. And a special thing. How does that relate to buying a new car? You're gonna get more people looking. And once they get over there looking, they'll probably— there's a chance that somebody's gonna find something they would like and wind up buying a car. But if there wasn't all the other fanfare, the special promotion going, they wouldn't have been over there. So you have the surges that create a thing to kind of change things up. This is where you hear in business, The idea of disruptive. We want a disruptor. These are things in your marketing campaign, in your blitz, that kind of disrupt the normal stuff in terms of creating the potential to have a growth surge. And then if your routine is in place, you can go in and have a 10, 20% growth surge and maybe absorb that, and maybe that becomes your new normal. Because now you've broken into other markets and now, you know, but added new salesmen, whatever, depends on your industry. But after that surge, you may up your average sales and volume and be able to maintain that if you've got the right kind of routine already going. And so the routine, you gotta have a process because growth comes slow. I don't care if you like that. I don't like it. I wish everything was overnight. Add water and you're a multimillion-dollar earner living in your own island in the Pacific. It doesn't happen that way, folks. It happens by degrees. You gotta fight for it. You gotta stay with your, in your rhythm. And you go through endless days where it's like, why am I working so hard? Nothing ever seems good to happen to me. Well, keep working because the good days come. And they only come if you keep working and keep improving. But then once you get in that pattern, pretty soon you're going to find a certain steady rate of return. And then you look for the surges. How can I add a surge into this thing? And we were at the gym this morning with my son Adam, and he's a big-time bodybuilder, strongman competition winner guy. And it's always fun to train with Adam because he's got these He's got the routine down, but he'll do surges in there. Like when we lifted this today, we were doing like chest and arms and triceps. But then when we got to the end, we were doing some heavy weights. And so when we got to the end, before we left the gym, we went over to this, these other 2 machines and we did the surge. And the surge is you take lighter weight. And you go for higher reps. And so maybe you do 4 sets of 50 with super light weights just to pump blood into those muscles that you've already fatigued. And that surge of blood in there creates massive growth that you wouldn't have otherwise if you didn't assist. So that's, that's one of the tricks of the trade that, that I've learned from him. And in the bodybuilding thing is you don't just go in there and you're lifting. 'Cause standard bodybuilding things is you go in there and they're The way you extend a routine is you get whatever the weight is and you try and do 10 reps, and then you keep doing it 3 or 4 or 5, 3 or 4 times a week. And then you get a little stronger, then you add another plate on, another 10 pounds, and keep doing that until— well, what you do is you keep trying to— you start with 10 reps and you get up to 15 reps, then you add 10 pounds on, then you start at 10 reps and go up to 15 reps, and 3 sets of each set. But that's just boring. That's, but that's a routine. But then he'll take those routines and mix it up with surges. It's like at the end, you go down to like 25% of the weight and you do a massive amount of repetitions to kind of flood it with blood into the cells, challenge the muscle in different ways. And that's what you're doing with a surge. You're challenging your sales force. You're challenging yourself. You're challenging your market. You're making noise in the marketplace. You're challenging your clients. It's like, it's like rattling the pans and you're doing something disruptive to kind of plow the ground to create some growth that you wouldn't have otherwise. So what you see with people that go on to the huge numbers, it's like if they're building or if they're doing, building big businesses, They have a routine. They're working at it all the time. They got a routine, an effective routine that works for them, that they've discovered by trial and error. A lot of it over the years by trial and error, adjusting other proven models, success models, and refined it to fit them like a tailored suit. If you go get a tailored suit, they measure you, they make the suit, but then you go in for your first fitting, your second fitting. If that doesn't work, you go in for a third fitting, but eventually They get you fitted up and now you got a suit that fits you. And see, that's what you wanna do with your routine. But then you wanna have the surges. You wanna have a special tie, a special scarf. You go in here or whatever, or a special shirt that kind of adds a pop to that suit. And you don't use it all the time, but in holidays or something, you pull out the red tie and, uh, the special, uh, Christmas scarf or something. So. Get the thing is, if you want to be special, if you want to build something special, we don't go really big. You got to have, it's just a process. You got to get the routine, but then you got to have surges. And so you guys want to give me the Nobel Prize for that? That'll be great. Call my office, DM me, and we will give you the address to send it to me. Just kidding. But you find your— Routine by getting to the point where you, you know, you got a routine when you're on a daily basis, you do enough of the right kind of things to grow. That's the key for the routine. And then that's how you judge it. And then the surges come in and you just can't see what other people do. That's where your creativity comes in. And you can, and it's funny that some of the least knowledgeable people about your business, if you ask them, it's like, what can I do to create a surge here? Sometimes the people who are least knowledgeable will say, well, I've heard this, that, the other. I've heard this, that you might try this. Sometimes you can get those surge ideas from some of the most unlikely places, but good luck. Thank you. Go big. Keep that intent up. Get yourself a winning routine and then power it with surges and move on up. See how high you can go. All right. That's what I've got to say at this point about the difference between, uh, $1 million and differences for you to think about. I'm sure I want to get Adam on and bring up the subject again so we can talk about it because we, you can't talk enough about this stuff. Because that's what you should be thinking about all the time. How can I get to a million? How can I go from a million to $10 million? How do I go $10 million to $100 million? That's what you should be focusing on. And there's lots of answers, but this is kind of an overview. All right. That's been fun. And, uh, I'll look, look forward to, uh, seeing in the comments what you think about that and see if I got anything right or if I got it all wrong. And then maybe I'll do it next time and get it all right. So feel free to follow, thumbs up, thumbs down, and you can come and subscribe to our newsletter. You can join our community. We have a lot of fun. We focus on the wonderful world of winning, but do it big regardless. Do it big, folks. World needs more big hitters. That's it for this episode. If this resonated with you, Do me a favor. Share it with someone who's ready to level up. Winners find winners, and the right conversation at the right time can change everything. Want to go deeper? Join us inside the Big Hitter community at joinbighitters.com. That's where the real work happens. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss the next one. Remember that you're either growing or dying, and there's no. No standing still. Keep winning, and I'll see you next week.