Transcription
Welcome to today's session where I'm going to offer you a valuable learning model that has been so very helpful to my clients. I'm going to get right into it.
The framework is called the GCA Index for A-lister Performance. What is it? What's a GCA? It's a gargantuan competitive advantage. Not a little advantage, it's a gargantuan competitive advantage. And let's go to the screen. The GCA Index for A-lister Performance. It's made up of seven elements that it is my privilege and joy to walk you through right now. How about we just get right into it?
The first GCA, gargantuan competitive advantage, is to always be early. I think it's a gargantuan competitive advantage because so many people are late. So many people, I think they struggle with time management. And I think it's coming from a place of overwhelm. And they're always just so busy because they've filled their days with trivialities. When I look at the highest level performers, especially the billionaires I mentor, they have a lot of free time because they only do a few things really, really well. And they delegate everything else or they say no to the unimportant. You can operate world-class in terms of productivity and have a lot of free time. So the first gargantuan competitive advantage is to remember: it's better to be one hour early than one minute late. Being punctual is incredibly respectful to the other person or to to the other people. Being punctual builds credibility. Being punctual shows you manage your life well. Being punctual shows you are excellent. Being punctual shows you are an A-lister. A lot of times when I meet meet a heavyweight or an industry titan, I'll show up a little bit early. They're already sitting there at the lunch table. They're reading a book, they're making notes in the journal, they're chatting with the server, maybe hearing about their stories. I mean, it is so interesting how the heavyweights operate. And one thing is, they're always early.
Second element of the GCA Index: be a purist. When people talk about minimalism, often it's design, architectural design, interior design, not a lot of furniture, pure spaces. For many years, I've been encouraging leaders and exponential producers to be minimalists. In other words, don't have a lot of friends, have three amazing friends. This year, don't read 50 books, master five books in your life. Focus the rest of your life on your big five. Remember the big five? The big five game: five priorities or five personal Mount Everests that you will dedicate the rest of your life to scaling. Be a minimalist in what you eat. Be a minimalist in what you wear. There's a reason Steve Jobs pretty much just wore the black turtleneck and jeans and a pair of sneakers. He didn't have to expend the cognitive bandwidth to think about what he was going to wear. Rather than taking 50 trips a year, take a few really good trips. Rather than having some people, they want to have 10 houses, why not have one beautiful house and then stay in great hotels in different places? And when you're finished after the trip, give the key back without investing and sinking any capital. Being a minimalist is incredibly important. And part of that is to clear out diversions. Please write this down: mess creates stress. Speaking of Steve Jobs, I remember when I was reading his auto-his biography by Walter Isaacson, which is one of my favorite books. When he left or was thrown out of Apple, he started a company called NeXT. And one of the mandates for the people who were creating the offices was, everything was white, everything was pure. He said, "I want the place so simple and so pristine that we could eat off the floor." And I've never forgotten that because a messy environment creates messy thinking. So as much as possible, I want you to clean out diversions from your workplace. I want you to have a workplace where you walk in and there is nothing. You might have one room that's a total mess, like a lot of great geniuses. But I want you to have one room, call it your dream room, where you go to it and there's nothing in there. Maybe just a whiteboard. Maybe just a a nice table. The thing I love about a table is it makes me feel very creative. And then you go in there and you dream because there are no diversions. There have been studies done, even if your phone is off but visible, it's still attracting some of your attention and cognitive bandwidth. So clear out the versions. I also want you to think about diversions like relationships that need to be mended or forgiven. If you haven't done your will, if your financial life is a mess, if you have friendships that you shouldn't be keeping, what are their, what are the psychic drains and the diversions and drags that are costing you energy and your productivity? Huge gargantuan competitive advantage. You want a very pure life so you can be monomaniacally focused on the few things that matter most.
Number three, big gargantuan competitive advantage: the 10x value obsession. Let me just explain that philosophy that has been so helpful to my clients. Whatever you do, make sure that you deliver 10 times the value that is expected. If you're dealing with a client, they're paying for a product or service, give them 10 times the value of what they are expecting. In a love relationship, give 10 times. With your friends, give 10 times what they're expecting. It is a formula for creating fanatical followers or people who just fall in love with you. We live in a world that operates on so much scarcity. People in relationships, let's say there are so many takers, they want love, they, they, they want someone who's totally committed. A lot of people in personal relationships, they expect things off their partner, but they're not giving what they're expecting. If you really want to cut a massive, gargantuan competitive advantage, be that one person in a million who gives times 10 what they take, especially in business. Could you imagine, you know, you're the person who gives ridiculous amounts of value to people? Well, that's going to create a global base of fanatical followers who trust you and love you and protect you and would not consider doing business with anyone else. The, the real key to this is in everything, under promise and over deliver. We live in a world of talkers. We live in a world of so many businesses. You look at their advertising slogans, and we are the, the best travel company in the world. We are the, we are the airline that does this and loves our customers. And then you go there, you show up at the counter, they don't even look at you, they're playing with their phone, they're grumpy when they talk to all the passengers, they treat everyone like they're a piece of meat. You get on the airplane, even if you're flying in business class, there's no politeness, they don't really like their job, and they're spewing negativity. You've probably seen that. It's a huge. And, you know, I've always wanted to talk about this, but I wish businesses would do heart-set training and trauma healing and not only work on intellectual and mindset beliefs, but go to where the real transformation is and start to help people open up their hearts again. Because if people really opened up their hearts and healed their trauma and reconnected with their love and remembered from an emotional level that we're all connected, then automatically they would treat people well. They would not be rude. They would be loving. They would be generous. They would be giving. What would that do for the company and for the business? But the point I'm just trying to make is, whatever you do, point number three, if the GCA Index for A-lister Performance is, just be someone who has less talk, more do. Be someone who's all about under promising, over delivering. In a world where so many people say, "I'm going to write the next number one bestseller. I'm going to be a billionaire. I'm going to be the next movement maker. I'm going to be a great father or mother or partner." And then they, they just don't deliver. Practice over delivering. I'll put it to you this way: practice being spectacular so often that unspectacular has no part of your personal orbit.
Number four: play in rare air. It's a big GCA, gargantuan competitive advantage to protect absolute world-class standards. Play in rare air. Eat the best food you could possibly eat. Have the best quality friends to be your friends. Use the best tools. Drive the finest car that you could possibly drive. Read the best books. Do the best work. Work out at world-class. Take world-class supplements. Try to aspire towards a world-class financial life. When you go on a trip, go to world-class monuments. When you read, read the great classics. When you think, when you feel, when you sleep, do it at world-class standards. In a world suffering from the collective mediocratization of the way they operate.
Number five: there's a lot of superficiality in this world right now. And too many people, I think of the majority, are just caught up in superficiality. They're just watching these videos, watching these TV shows designed to numb them out, help them escape pain of their pain of potential unexpressed. They're in overwhelm, so they just check out. Rather than being any form of superficiality, I encourage you as a major GCA to be someone who is deep. Be a heavyweight. And as you can see in the model, it's pursue granularity versus superficiality. Know more, for example, know more about your work than anyone who's ever done your work in the history of the world. When it comes to your fitness, don't be superficial, go granular. Get really deep into the supplementation, get deep into the calibration of your workouts. I remember reading an article by the CEO of Montclair, the luxury brand, and he said, "Oh, my favorite food is spaghetti pomodoro. It's so simple. It's just pasta, tomato sauce, basil. I think there's olive oil in there too. I might be wrong. But it's so simple. But to put it together so it tastes perfect requires calibration." Like number five, pursue granularity versus superficiality. Makes me think of that great Ironman triathlete, I think I think his name was Dave Smith. And he was he was all about um rinsing the cottage cheese. When he'd eat cottage cheese as part of his nutrition plan, he'd rinse it so he wouldn't gain any, I guess it was water weight. If you look at the Greek, if you look at Charles Darwin, he studied barnacles for seven years, and that was central to him forming his theories.
Number six: a big advantage for you GCA, show aliveness. How, how often do you see someone, maybe to walk into a coffee shop and they've checked out? They're on a Caribbean vacation, but they're at work in front of you, or they're thinking, or they're playing with their phones, or they're not present. Presence is priceless. Presence with your family, presence with your team, fully present. There are so many people. There's a, there's a fantastic concept to go deep into, and it's called attention residue. Every time we are working and pick up a phone and look at a message, we have given a bit of our attention and left the residue on that phone. Every time we are reading a book and there's news in the background, our limited amount of cognitive bandwidth and attention, some of that goes to the news. When we are checking our phones 50 times a day, we are giving pieces of our attention. And get this, we're leaving that residue on the phone, social media, video. And we put the phone down, or the technology down, and we're in front of a teammate or a customer or a child, and we're not fully there. And people know it. One of the most powerful ways to connect with another human being is to listen well and be fully present. So element number six of the GCA Index is to show aliveness. Show you are human. When you're in front of, I remember being in South Africa. The gentleman who was driving us to the events, I noticed every time he'd see another human being, he would come alive. He'd laugh, he'd go, "Hello." Later on, he was driving me back to the hotel. I said, "You know, you you really seem to love human beings." He said, "Robin, I've seen a lot of dead people in my life." He lived in a, in a place where there'd been a lot of upheaval. He said, "Robin, I've seen a lot of dead people in my life. So when I see someone who is alive, it makes me feel very, very happy."
And then the final element of the GCA Index for A-lister Performance is: be a warrior. Come to play. When you show up at work, talk about exponential productivity. So many people get to work and then they start checking their phones and going through email and chatting. You are strongest in the morning. When you show up at work, you are on stage. It is showtime. Calibrate it. Lock yourself away. Do your best work. Manage your hydration. Keep protect your focus. Armor plate your greatness. Don't mail it in. So use your morning hours incredibly well because the first part of your day is the most valuable part of your day. And the way you start off your work day dramatically sets up the way the rest of your day unfolds.
Hope this lesson has been valuable. I'll see you in the next one.