The speaker uses a master-chef cooking metaphor to argue that career and income growth come from learning many skills, organizing yourself, and continuously improving (the "Abi" — Always Be Improving — principle). By studying experts, copying their recipes/checklists, and developing efficient personal "algorithms" and leadership abilities, you expand options, become more valuable, and can scale from small to large operations.
Today, let's talk about you and getting you organized. A master chef has things down to a science. They have their recipes. That's why they go to this cooking school. So in a short, condensed period of time, they can learn how to make your entrees, your first course, your second course, your appetizers, your soups, your desserts, and all of these things. They have 400 different options. See, the thing about being a cook, can you cook? Let's just say, can you cook? Cook anyone? I went and saw Bobby Buissant and spent the night over there. Friday, Saturday morning, we son made breakfast. And he's got a big double condo penthouse thing in Keystone, Colorado. He's got lots of kids, they have lots of friends. And for the last 15 years, they've been going out there every August, every December, every March. And guess who cooks breakfast? Bobby. And you can tell he headed down to Esaias. He had his, his pans, he had his eggs, basically his specialty, eggs and bacon. He had the bowls, he had the utensils. He was like a machine over there. Of course, he's talking a mile a minute the whole time, entertaining the crowd. But they got the coffee going. He's multitasking because he's done it a million times. He doesn't make one egg, he's making eggs for dozens of people. It was a magnificent thing to behold. See, he can cook. He can cook at least that. And he probably is a specialty or two for lunch or dinner. But the way you go, progress. So you say, bobby, can you cook? Yeah, if you want this, I can make that happen. Master Chef can make it all happen. Who would be more valuable from a income standpoint? Well, if you get a situation where you need somebody to make tons of eggs in a military situation, or you got lots of people to feed at practice, a football team or something like that, Bobby's going to be able to get a job, he's going to be able to make money. But this guy, because he has all of this, he can do that. And he's got infinite variations. Let's just say if on the entree, the second course, and you want beef and then you want seafood and this, well, he's probably got 400 beef recipes. And you want beef Wellington. Well, you want beef Wellington with this, with that and the other with beef Wellington. See, he's got more options, he's got more formulas, he has more algorithms. And how did he get that? He went through an intensive training course to get the basics. And then he's been on the abi method ever since, he's always been improving every minute of every day. Because if you are trying to get ahead in life, you're not only cooking today's meal, but you're saying, how can I do it quicker, how can I do it faster and what other variation can I do it next time? And so this guy, he's going to make so much more money because he can do so many more things. So the question for you, this is a picture of you in your career. If you want to be able to make the most money, you've got to be able to do more than one or two things well. You've got to be able to do a lot of things well. And most of these involve leadership. Here it's like sales. You can do the sales approach and you can recruit and train a few people, duplicate yourself a couple of times and do a little recruiting and training and have a nice low bomb and pop operation with three or four people. Or if you want to go big time, you've got to master some other leadership skills. And how do you do that? Well, you do like you become a master chef. You go in and you find somebody who's got it down to a science, who's already operating a big operation. Master some of the basics, find out some of the basics from them, lots of things you can learn there and then you implement it and then you go into the always be improving method. What happens? This is how you transform yourself from little to big. There was no master chef that popped out of his mama at birth with a little hat and a cooking degree. Every master chef was born, came into the world knowing nothing and had to learn it from the ground up, much like you have to learn your business. And so this is how they transform. You can call it loser, winner, nobody to somebody, zero to hero, however you want to do it. But this is a progression they go through from right down here. You could say you start here, you're making $0 because you just can't in this example, cook at all. You learn a few things, you get a few skills and then you skip where you become more and more valuable. There is a principle and it's the Abi principle, the always be improving principle, where you don't have to be perfect overnight. When every master chef started cooking, they didn't have to be a state of the art master of the game. It's impossible. But you start and then you find a great role model to copy and then you go to work. And the more you work, the more you get done. And as you go out there, when good things happen or bad things happen, you start to build what I call your algorithm. You get the basics from other people, but because we're all different, we all think different, act different, process information different, we're set up different physically, that you have to find out what's going to work with you. You got a different experience base. You came up different than other people. And so you've got to get this organized in your mind and get yourself organized. See, these guys have themselves organized. If you look at the TV shows, the cooking shows, have you ever seen those things? I see them when I go see my relatives because they just love them. If you ever go in and you see the. I don't know all their names, you see a Bobby Flay versus another Iron Chef type person. I mean, they're like machines. You know when the clock is going and the judge is over and the tick, tick, tick, and then the host wanders around to interrupt them, asking them questions, and they can just sit and have a conversation with whoever the host is while their hands are flying. They're grabbing here, they're winning. I mean, it's just. You're seeing him. It's like a Ferrari of cooking in front of you down to a science. Because they got their own algorithms, formulas. If you're going to win big, that's the point. You've got to develop your algorithms for winning. You got to be more efficient. Because Bobby, knowing the basics of cooking, he could go to the Internet, get a recipe, run down the store, get the ingredients, painstakingly read the thing, teach himself how to cook some kind of gourmet dish. But he'd probably take 20 times longer than a master chef because they've already been through that process. They've got the checklist. The difference between the master and the other person is they've got the recipes, the checklist, and they know what they like, they've got the variations. They pretty much know how other people do it, but that's how they, like, compete. They found the stuff that works the best for them. Sa.
