Principles of Improvement

All right, associates, we're back and we're just rounding the corner on these modules about financial independence. And I want to share a story of something that impacted me when I first heard about it with you because it's made me consider a lot the way that I view my energy and in my own relationship to my long term goals. And I think it might help do the same for you as well. So let's talk about the principles of improvement and success in this module and I want to do it with the story. In 2003, the British Cycling team called Team sky hired a new performance coach and his name was David Brailsford. Up to this point, the British cycling team had never won anything meaningful. In 110 years, they had not won an Olympic medal, they had never won the Tour de France. And so it was a very sort of ordinary set of athletes, even subordinary perhaps relative to the competition that was out there. David Brailsford was given the mandate to change that. And so he came in and he had this belief system. And this belief system was that he could turn ordinary people, in this case ordinary athletes, into world class athletes by Simply improving by 1% various areas in their program. So he started off, of course, with the stuff you would expect. He sort of redesigned the seat so it was more comfortable. He would put some sort of some rubbing alcohol on tires to make it stick a little bit better. So he'd focus on the tires and he would focus on their workout routines and measuring their recovery periods and all of that. But every coach is going to do that. He went to a different level and he looked at areas that were often under recognized. For example, he would make sure that when they were traveling that they had the right type of pillow. They didn't go with the hotel pillows, they would bring the right pillow so that they got a better night's rest. He had a surgeon come in and show them specifically how to wash your hands, how long, what to use it for, to avoid getting a cold or getting sick. And he would have them do a lot of these small things which we wouldn't even think about. But he had them do that because he knew even though by themselves they really didn't mean much, but as you aggregated them all together, it actually meant a significant had, it had a large effect on their performance.

And so, so after doing that just a few Years later, in 2008, they won the Olympic Games in Beijing. In fact, they won 60% of the gold medals in that period. Fast forward another four years and the Olympic Games took place in England and they broke world records. I think they broke seven world records at that time. That same year, one of their bikers won the Tour de France for the first time ever. And then one of his colleagues, his teammates, won the next three years in a row, the Tour de France. So how does this happen? How does a team of previously ordinary athletes transform into becoming these incredible world class winners? And this is the principle that.

David Brailsforth had. It was called the aggregation of marginal gains, which is that if you focus on improving in many areas, that 1% in the aggregate, it really mattered that these small and that these continual improvements.

They are what converted into that success. And that we have to avoid marginal thinking, which is the belief that it's okay to neglect small but important decisions because the effect of that neglect feels harmless. It's okay if today I skip it just this one time. It's okay if I just eat this this one time. And that's probably true, but those one times add up and marginal thinking is one of the greatest cripplers of progress in all areas of our lives, including in business. What we tend to do as people, as humans, is we tend to overemphasize the importance of a single defining event, a single moment that we're always sort of shooting for that moment. And then we underestimate the value, the importance of the events that aren't even notable. In fact, they might not even be noticeable by anybody. And so we tend to neglect those when those in the long run and as they add up with all the other ones, end up being what matters the most.

So what I want you to think about, wherever you are right now in your career, young dentist, right out of school, maybe you're even in dental school still, or you own your practice, or you're a little bit later on in your career, is to go through those aspects of your life and think, what can I improve by just 1%? What are some small things I can do? If it's 5 minutes here or 10 minutes here, or setting some new goals there and doing planning around my practice, whatever those are, make those happen. Because in the aggregate, those 1% are going to change your ability to become financially independent at an earlier time.