Transcription
What I want to do is show you how to win and impress the only person that really matters, which is future you; not the person next to you, not the person in front of you, not the person on stage, not your mom—future you. The point of this presentation is to give you a different way to think about this process so you can make it easier to win. And the nice thing is is that the process I'm going to show you is how you can win at anything, and it works for winning at health, relationships, advertising, sales, real estate, business, investing, in anything else where you have to do things to get stuff. Cool, awesome, all right. So, with that being said, let's begin. How to win. So I'm going to cover five things: what to do, how to do it, why to do it, who you need to become to do it, then finally, when to start. So let's start with number one.
Said simply, what do you need to do to win? AKA impress the future version of you. And the reason I define winning this way is that for those of you guys who are at the top, and you guys know who you are, you can't compare yourself to everyone that you're already better than. And I say that from a success-like objective measurement perspective, not as a human being—everyone's a wonderful snowflake—but you can't compare yourself to people that you're beating because you'll just get complacent. You know that. For those you guys who are the winners here, for those you guys not at the top or who are on the climb, you can only control what you can control, and you only know what that is. And so there might be advantages or disadvantages that you might have been born with; it also doesn't matter; no one cares. The only people who like excuses are the ones giving them. Right. And so let's start with an activity to prove to you that you already know what not to do.
So this is a process I call verion, and I use this a hilarious amount—probably too much—and so this uh, I think at least I will attribute this to Albert Einstein; Charlie Munger talks about it a lot. Um, invert; always invert when you have a tough problem. And so I use this and we use this as a as a very strong tool because it's easier for our brains to find problems and solutions. So we had to think earlier, just now, like let's think of things for gratitude; did anyone for a split second be like [ __ ]? Right? Anyone? Anyone else do that? Cuz I heard it backstage and I was like, right, you're about to be on stage that you could be grateful for that, right? I was just thinking about that, but like, but if I said, hey, can you think of a problem? I could be like, I can give you 20 right now, right? Right off the top of my head is like my my knee kind of hurts a little bit, right? Like I can start giving you problems really easily, but that's because we're programmed to survive, not thrive, right? Our brains are programmed to find threats to make sure we live to see another day, not so that we enjoy today. And so we actually have much stronger problem-finding skills than solution-finding. And so what I want to do is use our anxiety-driven threat-finding brain for something good. And so here's the activity: I want you to imagine the least successful version of you—loser. What does that person do or not do to guarantee that you won't win? How do they guarantee that you lose? All right, so shout some of these out, just like what does that person do to lose?
Netflix. Okay, I heard that one. Drugs. Drugs. Okay, we're going way deeper and darker than I was thinking. He's like a heroin addiction. I'm like, okay, yes, understood. I thought you guys were going to say something like [Laughter] [Applause]. This: being impatient, show up late, be unprepared, not confident, hair, heroin—we can throw that up there—being transactional rather than relational with your clients and customers, uh, don't follow up. Someone's like, hey, I've been thinking about selling my house, and you're like, awesome, and then you just never call them. I've got a friend who uh might be interested in your services, and you're like, that's a damn shame. Don't advertise, don't ask for referrals. Right? These are probably some things that would guarantee that you won't be successful, right? And there's probably more we could add to this list. And so I would encourage you though, if you really think about this, to really put these things down because this is genuinely the process that I think about when I want to grow a business, when I want to get into a new endeavor. I think, how could I guarantee that I would lose? Like, what would I, in the fewest moves I could possibly make, what are the fewest things I could do to absolutely guarantee that I lose? And actually, the smaller the list you can make, the more potent those things are. Like if there's just one thing that you can do to guarantee that you lose, that usually becomes the north star of how you win.
So how do we use these things that our brains came up with to win? Right? We invert it; we flip it. And so this is what that would look like. So from patient goes to—sorry—impatient goes to patient; showing up late is to always being on time; being unprepared to being always prepared or overprepared; not confident to confident; transactional to relational; doesn't follow up to always follows up; doesn't advertise to advertises constantly; to not asking for referrals to always doing so. Quick story on this: uh, one of our companies had one sales guy who was outperforming the previous top salesperson by 2X. And so I wanted to know what this guy was doing, so I hopped on the phone with him, which he was like, right. And so I was like, what are you doing, man? And uh, he's like, after I sell someone, I just ask if they want to bring somebody else. And I was like, yeah. And then I looked at the sales director; I was, is that not in the [ __ ] script already? He's like, no, no, it is. And I was like, why are we not enforcing it? He was like, we we are now. And so simple [ __ ], right? And so a lot of you guys already know how to win because you know how to lose. So flip it. So after all that, I guess everybody here does know what to do to win, right? But maybe you just don't know how to do it. So let's talk about that.
So most times we don't know; we don't do things because we haven't broken them down to the most basic form. All right, the more skilled you are, the more general a command can be and you can follow it. So someone can go—Shiron can be like, hey, you want to JV on this company with me? And he'd be like, can you grow it? And I would say, sure—very general command, right? Can you grow this business? Sure. If you go to a toddler and say, grow this business, they're going to be like, what does that mean? But the thing is is that we're not so dissimilar from toddlers; it's just that our egos grew up but not our abilities. And so you might say to the CEO, go advertise. The less skilled you are, the more broken down the command must be in order to follow it. So if I were to tell the toddler genuinely how to grow the business, it might start with: hit the button, then wait until the light comes on, then click the blue circle, then type in facebook.com, hit enter. You guys catching this? So what's the difference? The level of detail in the instructions. And this is why two people can go through the same training or event and get wildly different results. Results come down to the number of skills the person has and the number of skills required to understand and execute. This is how learning happens. So skills for winter—coming into this event today—might be they already know how to email market, they already have charisma, uh, they know how to speak, they they know how to follow up, they have these skills. The other person here might have no skills, and they could attend this event and then nothing would happen. Was it the event or was it the person? It's just that there are requisites; just like in college, you've got requisites to do something; you have to have former skills to advance to the next level. And unfortunately, and this really applies to those of you who have teams, and if you are a teammate, you can think about this in reverse; if you have one broken link in the chain of commands or instruction that someone does not understand, they get stuck, and then they do not complete the task, and you're like, why are you so incompetent? And it might just be because they don't understand one step. And so, for example, let's say that you need—you hear, go advertise. Skilled guy says, on it. The less skilled person says, but how? Now compare that to: turn on your computer. Do you think everybody in your team can do that? Right? So that means that everybody here here can be successful if you literally just break it down to a level that you cannot fail, that you understand every step. Does that make sense? That I can do. So you need to break things down to their most basic level so that everyone can learn them. And when you do that, you make it easier for more skilled people and you make it possible for less skilled people. And so, for example, I said earlier, on purpose, be more charismatic, right? Can we agree that if someone's more charismatic, they might do better in this field in general? Yeah, cool. What does that mean? It means: smile when people walk in, change emphasis and tonality when you're talking, remember people's names, ask people about themselves, nod multiple times and then respond when people are talking, keep eye contact, address everyone in the room when you enter and exit. We might then say that person's charismatic, but if someone says to you, be charismatic, you might be like, okay. But if someone said, do these six things, do you think you could do that? Yes. You have to break it down. And so the this is the essence of good teaching and training, and learning how to learn will make you better at teaching yourself and then, by extension, your team.
So here's the writer Downer: if you can learn it, it is a skill, and if it's a skill, you can teach it, which is why I wholeheartedly reject the concept of people being born a certain way. They might have physical attributes that orient the environment to reinforce certain behaviors, but if they became that way, they were taught to be that way, either formally or informally, but they learned that because it was reinforced at some part in their lives, which means right now, if you're like, I'm not naturally charismatic, neither are children; they learn. And if you can Pock your ego, you can too, which means that these traits everyone says the best are born with are simply buckets of smaller skills that we group together into a single larger term to save time when we're communicating. We we don't say, hey, Johnny's such a good realtor because he smiles when everyone walks in the door, he remembers everyone's name, he changes his tonality when when he speaks, he's you know, he he always addresses everyone inside and out when he enters and exits. We don't say that; we just say he's charismatic. But that shorthand in language is a source of confusion. And remember, at the beginning, I said this is going to be a Mr. Miyagi thing; don't worry, it'll come back. And the thing is is we know how to teach toddlers, but it's also how adults learn; our egos are just too sensitive to allow it. And so what I want you to do is operationalize the list of actions that we figured out together earlier. Right? We had this big list of all the ways that you know you can lose; we flip those into how we can win, and then we take those words—like be patient, be charismatic, always be on time—we say, how do I operationalize that? What do I actually do? Turn on the button, turn the computer on, hit enter. How do we do that? And so if you're like, what does operationalize mean? Explain using actions or behaviors you can see with your eyes. Someone being charismatic—I can't see with my eyes—did they smile when they walked in the door? I can observe that. Did they call someone by their name? I can observe that. Did they whatever the other things on my list were, right? No, it's not feelings, thoughts, intentions, impressions, manifestations, affirmations, or psychology; none of those things belong in instructions, why? Because you have no idea what anyone else is thinking. All we know is that as a group, when people follow this process, more people buy. And here's the cool part: that's all we need to know. We don't need to test the science of the psychology; we just know that when we greet people, we look them in the eyes, we shake them, we remember their hand, and then we and then we follow up on this cadence, it works. That's it; it's all we needed to know. And then do it. And so we know that if we do these things, you get this outcome, and that makes learning and teaching a lot simpler. We deal with only what we can measure and observe. And I promise you, if you can look at the world this way, 90% of the content you in your newsfeed you will just be able to ignore—it's noise. Cuz people are like, it's the manifestation of the internal trauma from childhood—just just smile and shake their [ __ ] hand; like, just stop, stop, stop.
So let me give you another example, and this is one that I actually struggled with. So I I spent a lot of my time trying to operationalize words because it just helps me understand the world better because I don't feel like I understand much at all, and that's and I just share that stuff in my content because I share the stuff as I figure it out, or at least as I figure it out for me. And so I have always been somebody who identified as being an impatient person, and I figured if I was going to be an investor, patience would probably be a very important character trait to have, and I was like, what, how do I do that? If someone's like, be patient, you're like, now what? Right? So what does that mean? So patience means figuring out what to do in the meantime; that's it. AKA doing anything besides doing the thing you're avoiding, including doing nothing at all. This is why some of these dictionary definitions are very difficult to actually do anything with; it's not the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, suffering without getting angry or upset—just figure out what to do in the meantime; that's being patient. So quick question: who here has investments? This isn't like a big flex question. Okay, cool. Now, right now, provided you literally aren't on Robin Hood selling your [ __ ], you are being patient by just being here; like, right now your investments are moving in one direction or another, and you're being patient because you figured out something to do in the meantime. Huh? Not so hard, in other words, right? Yeah, I wrote this; there we go.
Which brings me to my next: how—binaries and continuums. Real quick, if you—it's not that you are patient or not. And the reason I'm emphasizing this is because sometimes it can feel unrealistic to trying to team these traits; it's like, well, it's so hard for me to be charismatic, or you know, not soft-spoken, or patient, right? But it's not about being it or not being it; the question is how patient are you? Which means that it's not a binary; it's a continuum; it's, can I move myself slowly in this direction by taking actions? All right, which makes every skill you work on improvable. And so every do everything that we do to impress our future selves is another proof point that we act more times than not in this way until eventually we begin to describe ourselves as patient or detail-oriented or charismatic. And this allows us to see progress with these quote traits, which are really just buckets of larger skills that we do shorthand with so we can communicate. And so now that we covered that, I can finally define three terms that I think will matter for everyone in this room and cement the how: learning, intelligence, and confidence. So let's start with learning. Learning simply means: same condition, new behavior. So the same thing happens, and then you respond differently; that's learning. So if I show you a red card, and then I slap you—like, wow, that sucked—and I put it back in my pocket, and then I bring out my red card again, and then I slap you, then I bring out my my red card again, you duck; you learned. The phone rings: hello—no script. Phone rings: hi. Phone rings: read the script. You learned. Same condition, new behavior—learning. So please remember this because I'm going to hit on this multiple times throughout: learning means same condition to behavior. If you're presented with the same situation and you do not change how you behave, you have not learned. So that's learning.
Intelligence: how fast you change what you do in the same situation. Intelligence is rate of learning—speed of learning. So dumber: phone rings—no script. Phone rings—no script. Phone rings—no script. Never changes—dumber. Learning how complex this is—smarter: phone rings—no script. Phone rings—read script. Changes faster—smarter. Everyone wants to think they're smart, but many of you will leave this event, go back to the same environment, and not change your behavior. So if that's you, which one of these two are you below? Dumber. Everyone's like, or [Music] smarter. So you may not have ever thought that you were smart, but if you change your behavior, you can beat even the quote smartest person, which is why you need to be delta; you need to be a triangle—change—instead of an L7 weeny, a square, right? That's why triangles win because we change. So that's intelligence, which is simply rate of learning—how quickly you change your behavior under the same conditions. So how can we tie that to confidence? Cuz I think—could we agree that a realtor who's more confident would probably do better in this field than one who isn't? Okay, awesome. The percentage likelihood that something happens in statistics—you have a confidence metric—how confident are we are we that something's going to happen? And confidence is domain-specific. So you can be a confident realtor and a not so confident parent—kind of interesting. So how do you increase your confidence percentage with proof? Well, how do you create proof? You do it a lot of times. And how can you make sure you have a high percentage likelihood that the script comes out the way you want it with a client? You do it in the exact situation a lot of times because confidence is domain-specific. There's some people who practice their speech in the mirror, but when they get on stage, they freeze. They're like, but I practiced this thing—you didn't practice in front of a crowd; it becomes domain-specific. You sound so certain. Here's how you do that: do it enough times that you get bored of it. So like, you can complete the sentences; you can do it while you're driving; you can do it in any situation you want because guess what? That's when you'll be performing the script. So here's a writer Downer: confidence comes from the past, not the present. If your plan requires luck, it's a bad plan. If you need to get lucky in order to win in this game, you will not win. So you can prepare, and you do that in the past before you need the skill; you dig the well before you're thirsty.
So now that we covered the what—you guys all know the big list of things that you should be doing—and you can break it down into an operationalized little basic nugget of I can actually do this—with the how, let's talk about why you should but aren't. So I'm going to talk about two things within my little y category: external conditions and internal conditions. So I'll start here—that's supposed to be like the economy; I I don't know if that the little visual looks economic, but I liked it. Okay. So here's why you might not be doing it. I call this the five stages of opportunity hopping. So you go from step one: uninformed optimism. You're like, man, in this low interest rate environment, my cousin's making a killing in real estate; must be amazing; I could do that too. Then you hop in; you go to step two, which is informed pessimism. Huh, this is not as easy as I originally thought; people aren't just coming to give me their homes to sell. Well, golly. And then you keep going; you keep going, and you reach this third point where you're like, the valley
Of Despair. What is life? Is this really what I want to do? Am I passionate about real estate? You know, I really do love being a family person. You know, I just—and then you start justifying reasons not to do something, right? And this is what most people do: they get to the valley of Despair, and then they jump. Because in the beginning, there you saw your cousin who’s doing well at real estate, and you’re like, “I’m going to jump in.” But you were doing something before that that you were just in the valley of despair of that thing. And so all you do is—or not you, but all many people do—is that they just jump.
Uninformed optimism, informed pessimism, valley of Despair. Uninformed optimism, informed pessimism, valley of Despair. Uninformed optimism. If it sounds repetitive, some of you have lived this thing 10 [__] times. And so many of you guys are here right now. It’s a tougher climate than it was 24 months ago, but here’s what it looks like when it’s right. You go to stage four, which is informed optimism, which is: “You know what? There is a process that when I got into this I didn’t understand, but now I do understand it, and I’ve broken it down into into actions that I can do and perform on a regular basis, and I have a feedback cycle so that I can learn how to get better, and I will measure myself on the progress that I do to the things that I’ve committed to. I know how to win.” And then you do that stuff, and you get to step five, which is: you win. And then you question why life is meaningless to begin with, but you know, whatever, we’ll get to that later. So, so we get more for what we put in when we stick with things. You get compounding returns when you stick with things longer. And so wealth is made during the hard times, because because the largest percentage of the market transfers to the few left standing. That guy works out. The more you do anything, the better you get at it, and the more environments you do it in, the better you get at it in more environments, especially considering a macro environment right now. Right.
So the question is: who would you trust more to sell your house? The agent who’s been through three recessions and never left the profession—rhyme didn’t mean to do that, but sounds that’s cool—or the agent who juggles three opportunities and hops in and out when it’s convenient? Oh, some of you were like, “That’s me,” right? And you wonder why you don’t win. And so your clients feel that way too. And so even if the people who see you right now aren’t in the market, they’re always deciding who they’re going to go with when they do. And so people, including future you, will be watching what you do and how you you act. And so you need to do three times the work for the same outcome today, but 10 times the eyes are on you. And so if you close deals when times are hard, they’ll know you can close their deal when times are easy. So, TL;DR: down times is when Champions are made. It’s when skills are sharpened. If you can win now, when the economy turn turns around, you will crush. I love this quote: “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” Who here to be [__] great? Then we should [__] wish for storms. Because if you want to be a skilled sailor, then you need—you cannot be great unless you have something to test yourself against. You can’t claim that you were loyal until someone—if you’re married—if until somebody comes up to you and you say, “I’m good.” You can just claim loyalty all day, but until you test it, you don’t have the skill because you have no proof. Today, these times are are opportunities to give ourselves proof of who we really are, and I think that is one of the most motivating things of hard times: is that these are the stories that you will someday tell about yourself.
So here’s the writer downer: what makes you extraordinary isn’t what you do, it’s how long you’re willing to do it for. There’s nothing extraordinary about saying someone’s name and shaking their hand. I mean, it’s great, but is it extraordinary? I don’t know. But if you do it every single time for the rest of your life, is that extraordinary? Something as simple as that? That yes, it is. So it’s not what you do, it’s how long you’re willing to do it for. And so I said I was going to talk about two things: external conditions—did that—now I’m going to talk about this: internal conditions for why you’re not doing something that you should be doing. So where does motivation come from? I don’t know, right? Childhood trauma. I didn’t get hugged enough, whatever, right? Motivation comes from deprivation. Let’s going to get dark for a second, it’ll be fun. This person, for example, is very motivated to breathe. You going to agree on that? Okay. Next point: unmotivated to have sex. They might be—who knows? Some of you guys are wild. All right, I don’t want to breathe. All right, calm down. Okay, so don’t worry, I’m moving on. I know that. Yeah, yeah, I’m moving on. I’m moving on. So let me explain. So when are you more motivated to eat, drink water, sleep? When you’re hungry, thirsty, and tired. That’s when you’re the most motivated. Have you ever finished a big meal and been like, “Man, I could go for another pizza?” Probably not. Have you drank a big gallon of water and been like, “I don’t want any more fluids?” Of course not, because you’re not deprived. And so when you’re full, you don’t want it anymore. After you finish Thanksgiving dessert, you’re stuffed. Are you still hungry? No. Have you drink a bunch of water? Do you want more? No. So what does this have to do with motivation to win and make money? I told you I’ll wrap it—I I’ll move it right. Because by this logic, wouldn’t all poor people be motivated since they’re deprived of money? Right? That would make sense, but we know that’s not the case, because the people who make the most money are the ones who keep wanting to make more. Huh.
So here’s why. You know, when you’re tired, hungry, hry, or thirsty, you perceive a gap, and your motivation is proportional to your deprivation—how much you don’t have, right? Very hung—like this guy is much hungrier than the person who’s just like, “Maybe I’ll have dinner on the way home.” And so here’s why money motivation is more complicated than hunger or thirst or being sleepy. With money, deprivation is not physiological, it’s psychological. You only feel poor if you perceive a large gap between where you are and where you really want to be. So let me show you this visually. So let’s say you’re at $5,000 a month in income, and your desire is to get to $10,000 a month. Fair enough, cool. Now let’s say this guy is doing a million a month in income, but he wants to get to 10 million a month in income. Relative to their goal, one guy is closer—he’s only half of his goal—the other guy’s one tenth of his goal. Who’s more deprived? Huh. Hang around five people with 10 times the net worth that you have, and you’ll feel poorer than you ever did when you were poor around poorer people than you. That’ll be a horos family—uh, tongue twister for my children—um, AKA changing your minimum standard, which I stole from Shon. The number one predictor of wealth is an IQ, gender, race, and this one startled me: it’s the ZIP code you’re born in. Kind of [__] with you a little bit. You’re like, “Huh? It’s not about race. It’s not about gender. It’s not even about IQ. It’s just where you’re born,” which means it’s the things that we compare ourselves to, because your environment sets your standards. If you change the environment, you change your behavior. This is why networks like this are so valuable: like you can basically get someone to do anything if you Orient the en arm in the right way. I can get everyone here to take off their clothes if I make this 150° in this room. I could—you could—if you change the environment, you can change behavior. If I told you to to like, “Hey, everybody get naked,” be like, “I’m good, Alex. Fair enough.” Crank this thing to 150°, people start stripping. I didn’t need to say anything; the environment changed your behavior more than I ever could. This is why the places like this and networks like this are so valuable. And so if you want to feel more motivated, change who you compare yourself to. Our environment stretches the gap, and you experience the deprivation. Rich people are more deprived of money than poor people because they compare themselves to richer people than poor people do. And so consider this extreme example: you’ve got the guy with a bag on his back, nothing else. He needs—I have everything I need. Two—I need everything. Who’s more deprived? So you might be like, “Huh, this seems kind of dark. Is there a clean way to make this comparison without focusing on other people, because that’s what I would be asking?” Yes. Compare yourself to the person you generally want to become. That’s how you can create the gap.
So here’s the writer downer: if you want to change what you do, change who you compare yourself to. So we covered external conditions that might be stopping you from the doing the what—opportunity hopping and sticking it out, right?—and now we cover the internal conditions that might have preventing been preventing you—who you compare yourself to and your internal levels of motivation and deprivation. So now that we covered the what and we covered the how, we covered the why—internal and external—now let’s talk about who you have to become to do that. So how do we become someone with certain traits? Well, contrary to popular opinion and the Instagram people, I don’t think it has to be do with becoming at all. So when we describe who someone is, what do we do? We describe how they behave and what they do. Being and identities become descriptions of what we do. And so, little Aristotle, little ancient Greek: we are what we repeatedly do. And that’s why I think this whole thing that has been very popularized by the the the the fluff people—hopefully no one else said this earlier on this stage, that would suck—B do have is BS. So let me explain. We describe someone’s identity. We say, “Hey, he’s honest. He’s hardworking. He’s a real estate agent.” That’s how we describe them. So let’s translate those: he’s honest—he states the facts; he’s hardworking—you complete tasks as fast or faster than expectations; you agree to—there a real estate agent—someone who represents buyers and or sellers in real estate transactions. All right, that’s the identity. But everything that we use to describe the identity are things the person does. Note that being has 100% to do with doing. So if you want to be a certain type of person, then you need to do what that certain type of person does. And when you do those certain things, then you get the results of those actions, which means you can summarize the entire thing of B do have to just do. Cuz by doing you be, and by doing you get. Just do. This makes the person that you want to become—the actions you take that we later describe as identity—100% under your control, which I think is very inspiring, which is why one of my favorite sayings of all time is: here’s a writer downer: the work works on you more than you work on it. And so I’ll tell you a little story. So I was at Sephora with my wife—uh, it’s a makeup store—um, it’s where they sell paint for ladies. Anyways. So we’re there, and I’m standing against the wall like this, and Lila’s doing whatever, and I see these two little girls, super excited, and the lady in the smok comes up to them, and she’s like, “Okay, this is eyeliner, and this is lipstick.” I learned those terms—um—and you need to start budgeting for this now, cuz they they’re probably like this height age-wise, and they were so excited, and they’re like, “Because now that you’re grown up and your guys are women, like you have to start budgeting for this every month, because you need to start spending it.” And I thought it was such a cute little story, and the girls were so excited, but she basically said that with a new identity comes new priorities. You’re going to shift how you allocate resources based on the person you want to become. These girls want to become women, and so she said, “Great, you need to change how you behave.” And so for many of you, being number one in winning simply comes down to doing what the number one person does, or would do, or the number one version of yourself. And then if you do those things, people will eventually describe you that way when the evidence catches up. So we talked about—now we’ve talked about who you have to become, which is just a reminder of just doing what future version of you does for a long enough period that you would describe yourself that way. All right. So finally, let’s talk about the when you should start. So when do you start this stuff? Because you might be like, “You know what, Alex, this all sounds great, the little hand thing with the fingers, cool, but I’m busy now. It’s not a good time. Maybe in the future.” So let’s put it up there. I think there’s three things about time that I find interesting. So you can have a reason not to do something because season-wise, economically, or timing in the season of your life isn’t good. We can think about hour by hour: you’re like, “Literally, I don’t have the time in the day to get this stuff done that would make me number one.” Or you can use something that I like to call the “when-then fallacy.” So let’s break it down. So if you’re busy, that’s actually the best time to change your behavior. Why? Because you guys want this to last, right? If you’re going to change your behavior, you want your behavior change to last, correct? Then if you only wait until you’re not busy, then you assume that you will be not busy again in the future, because if it’s contingent on you being not busy, then the moment you get busy again you’ll stop. So start when you’re the busiest, so that when you get busy again you already know how to do it and that you can stick with it. Does that make sense? Cool. Did anyone get one of their reasons crushed? Great. So if you’re waiting till you’re less busy to start a new habit or program, it assumes that you get busy again you’ll stop. If you want enduring change, the best time to start is when you’re busy. Learn how to make it work in the worst condition, and it’ll stick in the best. Now is the best time. Let’s go. Hour by hour. So I used to say the same thing to my wife of like, “I just don’t have time to do all these things,” and you know what she did? She grabbed my phone, she looked at my time usage, and she was like, “Huh, here’s four hours every day you spend on not work. I guess I found you some time.” Anyone want to look at their phone right now? Probably not. The other way to think about this is like: do you think that there’s someone on Earth who had less—make it happen? Yes, of course. If they can, you can too, right? Everyone is the same 24 hours. It’s about how you allocate them. And the nice thing is is that if you’re doing a lot of stuff right now and you’re not getting to where you want to go, you’re doing the wrong stuff. And so the first thing when you when you course correct is actually elimination, not addition, cuz most of stuff you’re doing right now is not working. So then change what you do, and you’ll have way more time. Smart, busy, broke—can’t be all three. You got to pick two. You can be smart and busy, but you won’t be broke. You can be busy and broke, but you’re not smart. You can be smart and broke, but you’re not busy. Super real talk. If you’re working all the time and you’re not making progress, you’re doing the wrong stuff, right? People who achieve goals faster don’t actually move faster; they achieve more with every step. This is the basis of leverage: they get more for what they put in. If you’re not moving as fast as you want, you’re doing the wrong stuff. Okay. So consider the alternative, because some of you are still like holding on to this, and you’re like, “But I really don’t have time.” It’s like, “Okay, you’re right, and you’ll never achieve the success you want, and it’s not your fault.” Feel better? Right? Didn’t think so. So let’s assume that you’ve got the time, and you’re spending it the wrong way. So that’s number two. Let’s go to the when-then FY—always a fun one. So this one kept me stuck for years. Basically, you think, “When I have more time, I’ll do it.” It’s like saying, “I’ll save money when I have more money,” or like, “I’ll get healthy before I go to the hospital,” or “I’ll I’ll get a—I’ll go to the gym once I have a six-pack.” You invert the sequence; you’re getting this—you’re getting the order wrong, right? You do the stuff now to get the thing later. You do, and then you get. You don’t get in order to do. So that’s number three. So when do you start? Answer: the moment you want to be the future version of yourself. AKA when. So when do you want to become the future you? Or when do you become the future you? When you do what they do. Because if identity is based in action, then the moment you start doing the things that future you does, you are that person. It just takes time for the proof to show up, but you are that person already, and that is enough for you.
So we talked about what, how, when, who, and when you should start. So you’re like, “Now what?” Well, [__] I don’t know. So the name of the presentation was “How to Win,” remember the whole intelligence and learning thing? The longer it takes you to start doing the things you know what to do and how to do, the less intelligent you are. And whenever you get stuck, break things down that you need to do into continually smaller chunks until you understand how to do them. So whenever you get stuck, just think, “Oh, there are terms or words here that I don’t understand. I just need to break it down more.” Don’t let your ego get involved. If you’re like—someone says you need to advertise more—you got to be like, “Okay, what does that mean?” And you break it down: “Okay, it just means post this many. Okay, I get that. Okay, it means you have to do 100 DMs. Okay, I got that.” So the reminder is: you guys know how to win better than I could ever tell you. So take the inverted list from earlier, write out the things that would guarantee that you lose, flip them to what you would do to win, and then break down those terms into the action steps of what it takes to be that trait or have that skill. Traits are just skills. And then practice it until it becomes second nature. And then chunk up. So in the beginning, you just have to talk about doing 100 DMs. Once you know how to do that, you know how to do cold calls and outreach and door knocking and and ads and all this stuff, then you can just say “advertise.” You can chunk it up because you have more skills. And then you measure your success by whether you completed the actions that would make it unreasonable that you will not fail, and then you succeed by default. So what would I have to do to make it unreasonable that I don’t become number one? List those, do those, and you will get there. But you measure yourself on whether you did the thing. That’s it. Yes or no. Very simple. And so all the greatest games in life that I found—marriage, health, business—you never actually win. You don’t win at marriage; the point is to stay married. You don’t win at health; the point is to stay healthy. You don’t win at business; the point is to stay in business. And so it shifts the game from winning to outlasting, and that means winning comes down to making a decision that you can 100% control, which I think is cool. And so I’ll tell you a little story. Back in the day, I pledged the fraternity, and two weeks in, my whole pledge class revolted. We were like, “This sucks. This is what we signed up for? This is not fun. In parties and girls?” It’s like, “Yeah, no [__].” But it wasn’t what our expectations were. So they sat us down, they gave us a pep talk, and we got over it. And then…
When I was on the other side, I actually found out that every single pledge class, every single year, would revolt between day 10 and day 16, every year. And so I ended up becoming president of that fraternity, and it was my turn to give that talk. And so I go into this, this freshman dorm room; there's 20 of these guys, they're outnumbering me, right? They're like, "We don't like you anymore," like, and so I said, "I get it, guys." I said, "Who here thought that this would be easy?" No one raised their hand. Like, "Who here thought it would be hard?" They raised their hands. I was like, "This right now, I was like, 'This is what hard feels like. You just didn't know what hard felt like. This is what it feels like.'" Make sense? We just, just reset reality. This is what hard feels like. You said you expected it to be hard; this is hard. They all came back.
And so right now, you may be at that point in your career, and the "hard" can be different for different people. It might be stuck at a certain level of income; it might be just getting started; it might be being number two and wanting to be number one. Everyone's hard's different, but this is what it feels like. There's a level of uncertainty, of not knowing whether your actions are going to yield the results that you want, but doing them anyways; not knowing if you're going to get credit from the market or on your, on your, on your check at the end of the month; and whether this is really the thing that you want to do for the rest of your life. Everyone thinks these questions, but the people who win just continue to do the actions regardless, which is why I say focus on the activities, not on the, not on the inside your ears. You can feel terrible and still win. So that's what hard feels like.
So this is one of my favorite Chinese Proverbs: "Everything must be hard before it can be easy." What makes things hard is in complexity; it's consistent, consy, as boring as it gets. Sometimes you just have to keep doing it before you get anything back. Hard times are opportunities to give yourself proof that even this couldn't stop you. You're going to lose sleep; you'll doubt whether it'll work; you'll stress to make ends meet; you won't finish your to-do list; you'll wonder if you made the right call; and you'll have no way to know for years. But this is what hard feels like, and this is what you signed up for, and that's what makes it worth it, and that is okay.
So, in closing, said a little Mr. Miyagi, everyone here knows what to do to win. Do all those things that you wrote down; make them positive, cool; figure out those ways to lose and do the opposite. You know how to do it. Remember, you take those things, chunk them down, break it down so small that anyone could do it, even a child. You know why you should be doing it. You have these opportunities that keep presenting themselves; you keep looking at shiny objects, but we get more for what we put in when we stick with things. Wealth is made during the hard times; the few people left standing get the most of it. You create motivation by changing your environment and who you compare yourself to. So you know why you should be doing it, because you get outsized returns for sticking to things, and you already know how to become the person you can win. How do we do that? By doing. Do. Who means do. It's the easiest thing. Who do I want to become? What does that person do? I'll do that. And you know when you should start, which is if it's not, not you're really busy right now in this season; it's the best time to start. If you don't have time, you're spending it on the wrong stuff, and if you think you need to get in order to do, you have it backwards. So when do you start? The moment you want to be the first future version of you.
So here's my final reminder: If you take one thing from this presentation, if you do not change, you did not learn. And everyone here has things that they've written down from many of the talks, of things that you want to do or want to think about or whatever. I would encourage you to make that a list of things that you will do, and then when you go back to the same condition, your same home, your same house, your same market, your same whatever, you change your behavior, and then that will show that you learned and you took one step to becoming the person that you ultimately want to be. Thank you.