Cody walks through a four-box matrix for self-improvement: things you know, things you know you don't know, things you've done a few times but aren't confident in, and things you don't realize you don't know. He uses real estate and sales examples to show how to move from uncertain to confident through practice, study, and mentorship.
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Hey everybody, this is Cody. Welcome back to this week's video. Today we're talking about business strategy and self-development. When you should invest into yourself. The answer is today, but you don't need to invest money in yourself today. That said, I'm going to be sharing a little exercise that I had to go through. This is the self-development project my mentor put me through 2 years ago, and when I did it, it was called the Cody Self-Improvement Project, and now it's going to be yours. All you need to do, you need a piece of paper and you need a pen. You're going to draw out 4 boxes. It's going to be like that game of foursquare you might have played as a kid. 4 boxes. And going across the top, you're going to have the first box reading left to right that says the word "know." Then going right on the second box, it says "don't know." And then the same going from top to bottom, it's going to be "know" and then "don't know." Now the point of this exercise is to establish what you know and what you don't know. Maybe you saw that coming. But in the upper left corner right here, you've got no and no. Now what this means is that you are super certain about what goes in that box. This exercise is designed to illustrate to yourself and just put it in writing the things you feel comfortable with, things you don't feel comfortable with, the things you just flat out don't know, and the things we need to improve upon. And so in the upper left corner, whatever you're working on, now this is self-development. I had to do it for real estate and sales. And so the things that I knew, I knew that real estate was a real asset. I knew that a lot of people borrowed money for it. I knew that rent was paid and due every month. So I put out the things that I knew. Now the goal of this is to improve upon that category and minimize the other categories. That said, if we go back, we've got now the upper right corner. This upper right corner is, you know, you don't know it. That could be on structuring a partnership, could be raising money, it could be syndications. There's a lot of things that we don't know and we have to learn, and you're just going to put that up there. Then in the bottom left, it's things that you don't know that you know. Now, you may have done it once or twice, but that's you're not super comfortable with it. And while you may have lucked into it, you may have done it once, you're not super certain. And so we're going to be working on building that certainty up through this channel so that you can move it up to the things you know, you know. Not only have you done it once, but you can do it again and again and again. And then you got the last corner, which is you don't know what you don't know. Now that's where you got to start spending money or at least a lot of time. This is the information age and there is a lot of information out there. That said, that corner is something that I've had to spend a lot of money personally to develop and meeting new connections. And before you spend any money on yourself, work on developing the other 3. Write out the things that you know you know about a certain subject. This doesn't just have to be about real estate. If you're starting a design company, you're trying to get into a certain field, you're trying to go to school, and you've got this quarter that you've got to study for and you're going into medicine. Put up the things that you know, you know. May not be super big in the beginning. It almost never is. Then you've got the things that you know you don't know. These are the topics that you got to study. It's perfectly fine. We're going to work on that. The bottom left corner is going to be the things that you've maybe done once or twice, but you're not super certain about it. You couldn't execute it again 100% of the time with confidence. Those are things you just got to practice. So we're illustrating things you know, illustrating the things that you know you don't know. That's your work list. You got to practice the bottom left corner, and then you need to get people in your life who have done what you're trying to do so that they can take care of the things and teach you things that you just don't know exist. That said, let me know in the comments below if you thought this was helpful or confusing, and I'm going to keep working on building up the things that I am not super great at yet, my bottom left corner, which is filming great YouTube videos. That said, stay tuned. Let me know if you have comments below, and I'll see you guys next time.
