Just a quick note.
An entrepreneur I met told me that he had the goal to read Think and Grow Rich 100 times in the next year.
Now, that’s my favorite book, and I certainly recommend everyone read it over and over again, but I also suggest that you do much more than just read it.
In school you might be well rewarded for being able to regurgitate what someone else thinks, but in life, it’s not what you think that matters.
It’s the business end of the season, how do you plan to play?
A new client said to me, “Post labor day is when I really hit my stride for the year.”
I laughed, but he was serious.
He went on to say that, the beginning of the year he comes out of the gates hard, he takes a breather in the summer, but like a 400 meter runner rounding the last bend, it is now that he finds his best.
In New York you feel this energy, almost like the city itself is winding up to close out the year strong.
Every night one of my clients sends me an email detailing how he used each hour of his day, and laying out how he expects to spend his next day.
It’s an extreme approach (even for my clients who tend to be extreme), but, in his case, it’s the way that he maintains his discipline.
He’s a busy guy with big goals, and that demands he shift as much of his time to productive actions, but there’s also something else going on here…
He’s facing the resistance, or avoidance, that many of us face, when it comes to doing hard things.
Here’s a simple three step process for busting it:
1. Commit: Stop questioning. No matter how you are feeling, commit to the task. In my client’s case, he works to a schedule, and reinforces his commitment by emailing me.
How might you reinforce your commitment?
2. Get moving: You’re lazing around in bed, hitting snooze. What do you do? Stop. Put your feet on the floor. Watch them magically walk you across the room, and get your day going.
Whether it be jumping out of bed, diving into a tough project, or anything else, once you get moving, it’s easier to keep the momentum.
3. Get absorbed: Even if you love running, the first 10 minutes can feel hard, but once you find your rhythm, you just keep stepping. All tasks are the same. The trick is to become absorbed in the task for long enough until you get there. For hard projects, a way to “force” discipline is to set a timer, and keep going until your time is up.
Often, once you’re in the groove, you’ll naturally want to keep going anyways.
A couple of years ago, I was stuck, stuck, stuck.
Having taken a number of years to “try” to finish my first book, I didn’t know how to keep taking steps forward.
Most days, waking up early to sit down and write felt more like Andy Dufresne crawling through the sewer to freedom in Shawshank Redemption, than it felt like doing what I wanted, but, I knew if I kept moving, I would find my way.
Around that time I read a book by Ryan Holiday, titled, The Obstacle is the Way.
I remember one of the stories at the beginning of the book of a King who wanted to test his people by hiding a stash of gold beneath a huge boulder that he left in the middle of a path.
Many of his subjects walked around or got stopped, but one man, seeing the obstacle was the way, found a lever, moved the boulder, and uncovered the gold.
Ryan’s book is full of similar tales that get you to think about your “struggles” differently, and, get you to move those boulders and find your way.
In psychology, there’s a notion that says: What we resist persists, but what we embrace has the power to transform us.
Take for instance, a basic fear, such as the fear that many people face, of public speaking. Their entire life they might go out of their way to avoid this fear, and hence it will persist.
Yet, inevitably, that one day will come when they are “forced” to stand and speak (perhaps at their own wedding), and, perhaps at a time that matters most, they will perform terribly.
Having failed to see that obstacle as a way to grow, and learn, and squash those old self-doubts, they will likely reinforce that old fear and continue to do their best at avoiding those things that are uncomfortable.
Like a river backed up by an enormous boulder blocking the flow, the things you avoid only cause you to stagnate.
Indeed, the obstacle is the way.
A cool thing about blasting out emails is what you get back.
Last week when I emailed my rolodex of many outdated contacts to tell them about my recent book, I got all sorts of interesting replies.
One I really enjoyed was from this man, Donald Huang, who updated me on what he’d been doing since we worked together at Goldman Sachs in Menlo Park in 2002.
After working as an investor for a decade or so, Donald struck out to bet on himself and build a company of his own.
Seeing the obvious need back in his homeland of China, in 2014 Donald founded a company that today is the third largest provider of second-hand auto loans in the country, providing some $1 billion of loans a year.
I love to hear stories like his. I love people betting on themselves, and I especially love people building businesses that fill a great need.
In China, where only some 13% of the population owns a car, Donald’s company unlocks for many people what we consider to be a basic human freedom.
At its worst, capitalism is a system of exploitation, yet, at it’s best, capitalism is the engine that drives a higher standard of living for each and every human.
The difference is leaders who build businesses that serve a greater good.
Here is Donald at the Beijing Auto Show.
In preparation for releasing my next book, a few weeks ago we launched a new website.
This got me reflecting on the steps I have taken and the many, many mistakes I have made along the way.
Let us count some of them together.
When I left Wall Street to share the ideas that had transformed my own career and life, I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I couldn’t write. I didn’t know how to share my ideas, and more generally I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Not only was I in over my head, I was far from ready. My mindset was weak relative to what it takes to do what I do and I was a shadow of the man I needed to be.
I’ve never wanted to be a public figure and I was uncomfortable just having up a website, let alone sharing my ideas publicly. It took me four months just to email my own network to tell them what I had left Wall Street to do, and another four years to write consistently.
My first foray into sharing my work was a bunch of videos that likely hurt my cause more than helped it. And with only a small number of people watching, my weak mindset was beaten down even more.
After I painstakingly spent five years writing my first book (on top of the ten it took me to research it…), I wasn’t ready to share it. Rather than make a book I could stand behind I make a low-grade version that I pushed out the back door.
Even after I spent a bunch of time and money making a beautiful book, I still wasn’t ready to promote it and stand for my ideas.
These are just some of my big mistakes and along the way I have made many, many more, but one.
I never let anything stop me from doing what I am here to do.
I got started.
I kept moving.
And all I do is get better and better.
As one of my teachers puts it, “Take massive imperfect action and improve as you move.”
This week I attended the book launch for Charles Duhigg’s new book, Smarter Faster Better.
You might know Charles as a Pulitzer prize winning journalist at the New York Times and as the author of The Power of Habit which spent a whopping 60+ weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.
I admire the depth of Charles’ research, and his new book is full of many stories and ideas on being more productive and getting things done.
One topic he discussed in his presentation fits a broader theme that I have written about before—morning rituals. That is, how do you get yourself going in the morning?
If you have read my favorite book on time management, Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy, you will have come across a crucial obstacle that holds many of us back.
When we are faced with over-whelming days—which nearly everyone I know is nearly every day!—our brain can avoid or resist the things that we want to get done.
The solution, as Tracy puts it, is to ask yourself, if you had to eat a frog every day, when would you do it? Would you wait until 5:00pm, ruing it your entire day and losing valuable productivity, or instead, wouldn’t you just wake up and eat that frog?
How we start sets the tone for our day and in his presentation Charles discussed three powerful steps for getting cranking in the morning:
1. Visualize your day: Our lives are determined by the stories we tell ourselves, and Charles suggests starting your day visualizing what you want to get done.
2. At the top of your to-do list, write your stretch goal for the day. That is, in your best scenario, how much will you get done?
3. Use SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely. Get clear on what you want to get done and specific to how you will do it.
As an example, here’s the process Charles described for himself:
On the subway heading to work he begins visualizing his day, seeing exactly how he wants it to play out.
Then, when he hits his desk, he completes steps 2 & 3 in all of about 45 seconds. The trick is to spend as little time as you need to get organized and focused.
Then, tear into your day!
People keep asking me if I think we are headed for another credit crisis and recession.
Of course it is impossible to know, but the fact people are asking the question tells you something.
Famously, Joseph Kennedy is said to have gotten out of the stock market right ahead of the 1929 market crash, after receiving stock tips from a shoe-shine boy…
Today, with the obvious setup of easy credit that led to the last credit crisis, we might be in an equally precarious position…
Or we might not be…
Again, while most everyone on Wall Street likes to take an educated guess, it is unknowable.
But irrespective of where the market is headed there is one thing you can know with absolute certainty.
You cannot control the economy and the markets, but you can always control how prepared you are to respond to change.
When the Internet bubble burst when I was based in Silicon Valley in 2000, of the many people who lost their jobs, it was those who were thinking ahead that got back to work quickly.
Many others remained unemployed for months, if not years.
The same was true after the last credit bubble burst.
By the time almost all of my former Goldman leveraged finance colleagues were being laid-off I was well-positioned in a distressed investing seat at Carlyle, taking advantage of the market collapse…
That was only possible because I had been thinking ahead and left Goldman some two years earlier.
I wasn’t able to do that because I knew the direction of the market, but because I had taken control of the direction of my career.
In the next downturn, what will you do?
At the least, are you prepared to respond to change? Or even better, are you positioned to take advantage of opportunity?
Either way, you want a plan.
Vince Lombardi’s Power Sweep is famous in football.
John Madden said when he watched Lombardi teach the sweep, he spent four hours straight covering this one play before breaking for lunch.
Then, after lunch, he came back and spent another four hours on it.
By the time he was done Madden realized that before learning from Lombardi he knew nothing about the sweep.
That’s not because it was complicated.
As Lombardi put it, “You think there’s anything special about this sweep? Well, there isn’t. It’s as basic a play as there can be in football.”
What made Lombardi’s sweep special was that he played to a higher standard.
As he said, “We simply do it over and over and over. There can never be enough emphasis on repetition. I want my players to be able to run this sweep in their sleep. If we call the sweep twenty times, I’ll expect it to work twenty times…not eighteen, not nineteen.”
That mentality made Lombardi legendary at winning and it will do the same for you.
Often when I’m ranting about what it takes to get what you want, people say to me, “I already know that.”
I respond, “Of course you do, but are you doing it?”
We all know Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, but how many of us are following it?
It doesn’t matter what you know. It doesn’t matter if you are certain of what it takes to keep winning.
All that matters is, are you practicing over and over and over until you can do it in your sleep?
Personal development experts lament that few people have goals, whereas I find everyone has goals. Most merely lack a process to use them DAILY.
The not-so-secret to crushing big goals is to every day crush small goals.
A big business starts as a small business. You lose 30lbs by first losing 1lb. A book gets written one word at a time. All goals are the same way.
The problem is, if you focus too much on the big picture you lose sight of the steps you must be taking, but if you focus too much on the minutia, you lose sight of the vision.
You want an approach that enables you to move fluidly between your big picture vision and the actions that are every day moving you forward.
Here’s a four-step process for doing this every day:
1. Step into the vision. Put on your dreaming cap and think big. You don’t need to get specific, just imagine the vision for what you want. It might be ten years out or at the end of the month, just a get vision for where you are headed.
2. Ask “Why?” Powerful motivation comes through a powerful why. You would find the strength to lift a Ford F-150 if your kid was trapped underneath and all goals are driven the same way. Really feel why your goal matters to you.
3. Define today’s goal. A book on writing tells you to forget about writing a book and write for five hours today. Whatever your vision, define the goal that today is moving you forward. My client says “One great meeting builds to one great business.”
4. Make it real. Close your eyes for a few moments and get a picture of your vision. Now see how today’s goal is moving you forward and feel what it is like to have achieved today’s goal. Then tomorrow’s and the day after, and after that, all the way to feeling yourself looking back having achieved your vision.
How does it feel? Really, how does it feel to have achieved this goal that matters so much to you? Really feel it. I mean it. Really feel it. No, really celebrate it!
Now forget about it, and simply become absorbed in what you are doing today knowing you are on your way.
Last Wednesday after the Dow had rallied 619.07 points over dinner a trader said to me, “I knew it was going to bounce. I shoulda bought.”
“Really?” I asked him, “You knew it was going to bounce?
“So you weren’t like the majority of Wall Streeters who were hiding under their desks waiting for the entire shoe store to collapse? You weren’t one of those guys who had known all along that China’s cards would fold?” I asked.
I’ve heard it all before. Everyone knew Yahoo was over-valued in 2000, just not in ’99.
By the time the credit bubble burst in 2008 I was uncomfortably sitting in a distressed investing seat listening to the many people tell me it was obvious all along.
Obvious, right. That’s why John Paulson was turned away by hundreds of the “smartest” investors and he was among a small number of naysayers who bet with conviction.
In Winning Jack Welch wrote, “We’ve all been guilty at one point or another in our careers of boasting of perfect hindsight. It’s a terrible sin. If you don’t make sure your questions and concerns are acted upon, it doesn’t count.”
The same is true in life.
That job that you didn’t take that would have made you a fortune.
That bet you didn’t make on yourself that would have transformed your life.
That time you just knew you should do something, but you didn’t take the action.
None of that counts.
You might one day be sitting around the kitchen table telling your grandkids how you could have done this or that or been so and so.
You might think that sounds impressive but like you would look at your pop’s they will be looking at you thinking—But you didn’t do it, did you?
It’s not just about being in physical shape.
Being fit to be a Navy SEAL has far more to do with mental toughness than it does with being able to do a 500m run, 40 squats, 30 sit ups, 20 push ups, and 10 pull-ups over and over and over and over and over again.
Pick up former Navy SEAL Mark Divine’s book 8 Weeks to SEALFIT and WODs like that will quickly kick you into shape, but that’s not what it’s about.
Mental toughness. Spiritual practices. Embracing the suck. The willingness to keep going knowing you can do 20X what you think you can.
That’s what his book is about. That’s what being a SEAL is about. It is the grit and mental discipline to stay in the fight and do whatever it takes to keep going.
In his world that’s the difference between you and your buddy being carried out in a body bag.
In my world it’s the difference between the many living lives of not-so-quiet desperation and those who get what they want.
Everyone wants more success. Everyone wants to do what they want, but few people are willing to do what it takes.
I have worked with a CEO for five years. Every week we meet I push and prod him the same ways.
What hard things have you done this week?
How are you charging forward towards your goals?
Where have you been wimping out and not following through?
Where are you losing the mental game?
What skills are you working on?
What more can you do to get what you want?
It’s not touchy-feely rah-rah therapy. I’m not a shoulder to cry on. I’m not here to compassionately listen to how hard life can be.
I’m about increasing his capacity to do the hard things and become the man he is destined to be. I’m about helping him HTFU, obliterating boundaries, and driving him further into new discomfort zones.
He doesn’t strive this way because it is necessary to building a thriving business. He does it because he loves becoming the best he can be.
He may not be able to kill a man with a tomahawk, but every day he kills it in business because he conditions himself the same way.
Sitting on the deck overlooking the Pacific I wonder why I ever left.
In the seven years I lived here I rarely came down to the beach, but my life was different then. I was different then.
Driving through Brentwood on Tuesday I saw a graffiti sign that said, “You can change the world.”
An hour later walking past La Scala in Beverly Hills, a man passed me in a t-shirt that read, “Everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change.”
Both statements are of course true enough, and it is only those of us who are willing to change that are able to effect change for others.
Back when I lived here I couldn’t just chill at the beach.
I wasn’t built that way.
Go, go, go was coded into me when I punched out of the womb six weeks early and it wasn’t until recently I learned how to run the slow, slow, slow program.
And even though I spent most of my adult life confused about where I was headed, like a soldier training SERE, I knew to keep moving.
Even when I blew out of LA with twin-turbos screaming towards the mountains of Vail Colorado I had no idea where I would go when the snow melted.
I didn’t know if I would come back to Cali or keep moving east, but I did know one thing—I would be changing.
One of my teachers likes to say, “All we are is change.”
And the irony of personal change is that although us humans are changing all day every day of our lives, it is often hard to make the changes we want to make.
There is of course only one way to do it—do as Nike says and Just Do It.
Here’s how.
Look at you and your life and identify just one thing that you would like to change. Now ask yourself these three questions:
1. How have you been held back by not having made this change?
2. If you had made this change already, how would you already be benefiting?
3. What is just one thing you can do today to either make this change, or make a smaller change that naturally leads to this changing over time?
Now, just do it.
A few months ago, a new investment banking client tried to tell me about some “great meetings” he had.
I laughed, and then I told him why.
At Goldman one of my bosses used to say, “Don’t tell me about your sweaty handshakes. Tell me when you bring home the bacon.”
He wasn’t kidding!
He could obviously see that a great meeting was a crucial step to driving revenues, but he didn’t care.
Don’t bark. Bite.
“If you had some great meetings, then show me how said great meetings are getting you more of what you want,” I asked my client.
Thomas Edison said, “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration.”
I encouraged him to see that we have a limited number of productive hours each day, and you must be focused on shifting your time to its highest value use.
It might be true that he had some great meetings, but how much business was in that busyness?
“Less than 1% at best,” he said.
This is common in my experience working with even the best executives—most can cut out 1-2 hours of low-value activities every day. Seriously!
But many don’t because, truth is, it is easier to just do what is in front of you than to constantly step back and ask yourself—What is the highest value use of my time?
With my client we went deep into his client list and began building a simple but thorough spreadsheet to amp up his intelligence for driving business.
Every day he comes back to this spreadsheet and every week we go through name-by-name designing specific strategies for hypnotizing his clients.
As you know, the most successful people aren’t those who work the hardest. They are masters of doing the hard things that drive the most value.
Do you want to be happier? Better?
More engaged? More focused? More alive?
Do you want to get done the things that matter to you?
In Podcast 2.0: THE HOUSE OF FLOW, I share with you powerful ideas on becoming fully absorbed in what you are doing, and I take you deep inside my HOUSE OF FLOW.
Step inside. Get absorbed. Come more alive!!
P.S. This is an old podcast, and my later and greater version of the House of Flow you can listen to here.
There is no limit to how far I will go to get what I want.
I’ve worked seven days a week since high school, and I imagine I will until the day they carry me out in a box.
It’s not work to me. Doing the things that matter to me. Driving my life. Making my life what I want it to be. This is living, to me.
The other day my buddy Paulo—an expert at Do What You Want!—said to me, “The absolute worst thing I can imagine is sitting on a beach!
“Rather than being bored, give me a board and a kite, and see how far the wind carries me.”
There’s a reason I get him and he gets me!
Skiing 101 days this year, while blasting through bumps, trees, and powder, I got through 80+ audio programs and recorded most of my next book.
I don’t work this way under the illusion of “getting somewhere.” This is living, to me.
If every single day I am not creating the most amazing life I can imagine, then what the fuck am I doing, is a mantra that has fueled me.
I work with my clients the same way.
My commitment to them is absolute. Their goals become my goals and I do everything I can to get them what they want, including, sometimes hurting them and me.
Last week I pushed one of my clients beyond her limit, and it might have ended us.
Sometimes when I fight, on the inside, I am cussing out my trainer. Pushing me harder and further than is comfortable, that feeling inside of me, that rage, that force, I direct at the person in front of me.
I know it’s not about him, but when he is the one pushing me through pain, I can’t help but put it onto him.
For my clients, I will push, and I am happy to take the force of their pain.
Every day of the week, every fucking minute, I will risk my fee and relationship to keep my client moving forward.
As fifteenth century Italian author, Pietro Aretino, said, “I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.”
Walking on tenth avenue, outside Star on 18 I ran into Peter Dinklage.
I rarely approach public figures I don’t know but this time I felt compelled.
Perhaps fearful of some clown about to ask him for a selfie, pulling out his earbuds he scowled at me as if to say, WTF?
But as I began talking he got smiling and we had a good chat.
I apologized for interrupting and told him that I only did because just yesterday I saw this quote from him that rocked me.
You often hear the notion that you make your own luck.
As far as I can tell this means being willing to do hard things long enough until other people label your success as “luck.”
The hardest thing I have done is write my first book.
I’ve done some hard things in my day but it all seems easy relative to writing The Guide.
Of course it would have been easier if I could actually write! But even then writing is notoriously hard.
There are many quotes from writers, such as Dorothy Parker’s, “I hate writing, I love having written.”
And in perhaps the best book on this subject, The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield writes:
“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”
Over time it got fun for me as I learned to stop thinking too much.
So rather than sitting down to write, and thinking about writing, and thinking about what I just wrote, and analyzing words, and sentences, and paragraphs, instead you learn to get in the flow and keep moving.
Writer of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming, said, “Never look back, if you look back you are sunk, just keep writing, the story is everything.”
Like a fat kid on skis, once you have momentum it is easy to keep going.
And if you keep going, you will keep making progress.
And if you keep making progress, you will inevitably finish.
Whether it be improving your career, changing your job, transforming your life, or any other project, sitting down and getting started is the most important and often the hardest part.
Like writing a book and thinking about the thousands of pages of mess in front of you, you can become over-whelmed and fail to take any steps.
Yet a book comes together by working at it consistently day by day and getting what you want happens the same way.
Just f’n get going!
As an analyst at Goldman I was fortunate to work with two top associates.
Goldman Australia was a small office at the time, a dozen or so crack troops who absurdly thought of ourselves like SEAL Team Six.
We were the elite of the elite, we had to be.
To get the only job Goldman offered in Australia in my year, I had the best grades— likely of anyone in the country.
Joining Goldman I thought I was the bees knees. Little did I know I had only been playing baby bee.
I was lucky to work with two leaders (both went on to run big businesses) who day and night showed me that to keep playing on this team I had to keep raising the bar.
In school I thought I had worked around the clock, but watching the sunrise from my seat on the 48th floor of the Governor Phillip Tower overlooking Sydney Harbour, at Goldman I learned this was literal. I had another 20 to 30 hours a week in me.
I thought I had strong attention to detail and I set for myself incredibly high standards, but they showed me there was a higher level.
Although I was regularly working 100+ hour weeks, I absolutely loved that first year at Goldman, testing and pushing my limits.
A new standard had been set for me and I was 100% engaged in meeting it.
While this led me to great results, being promoted early to associate after just two years, the greater benefit was learning I could keep pushing my limits.
This is the power of setting for yourself higher and higher standards.
Often people tell me that they are doing everything they can to get what they want, but it only takes them about three minutes with me to realize they have been playing JV.
My job is to develop processes and tools that drive top human performance and help others reach this standard.
Unlike my Goldman days, however, I show them how to work less to get there…
I wonder if I am catching you in the same trap that once trapped me.
Reading thousands of books I found myself overwhelmed with ideas but without much more clarity on what I needed to do.
I resolved to leave Wall Street and make this easy, yet as I read back through my newsletters I wonder if I am making this more complicated for you.
Really, it is so damn simple:
1. Decide what you want: Stop wavering, get over your smallness, fire up your beliefs, decide what you want and commit yourself to getting it.
2. Establish a process: No matter what you want, getting it is merely a series of steps that you take every day. What are those steps?
3. Take action: Every day do the things that you decided to do.
4. Grow: Read, learn new skills, and change the way you think to keep you growing and moving towards what you want.
And, perhaps most importantly, HAVE FUN!
Really, have fun, enjoy taking your life to a new level!
Enjoy challenging yourself, doing new and exciting things, becoming more, and getting more of what you want!
Tell me, if it is this simple, where might you be trapped?