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CHAPTER 6: PICKING UP SPEED

BECOME INSANELY PRODUCTIVE WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND.

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. -Paul J. Meyer

To say I am a hardworking guy would be an understatement. The son of an achievement-driven college football coach, I was trained, drilled, and intimidated into working hard and grinding it out. Whatever it took, buckle down, no whining, no crying, no excuses. By the time I was a teenager, I started to realize this was quite an advantage. I was certainly never the smartest or most talented in anything I competed for—grades, sports, or sales. But I could out-hustle and out-work anyone. I wore it like a badge of honor. Applying relentless brute force, I could achieve most any goal I set.

By the time I was thirty-five, I had accomplished quite a bit, but I was killing myself. All I was doing was working. Brute force became brutal. I was sacrificing nights, weekends, friendships, vacations, and well, most everything.

But then I interviewed a few of the greats—I sat down with guys like Richard Branson, Tony Hawk, and Donald Trump—and even though I was working my tail off, by almost any measure of success I used, all three of these guys were kicking my butt! They are wealthier than I am. They’re making a greater impact on the world than I do. And they have more joy, more freedom, and are taking the time to enjoy the fruits of their labor much more often than I am. When I realized this firsthand, I have to admit, it really ticked me off!

There is no doubt that I definitely spend a lot less time frolicking on the beach than Branson does on his private island. I know for a fact I spend less time than Trump does on the golf course. And unquestionably I spend a lot less time with my personal hobbies, my family, and my friends than Tony Hawk does.

Worst of all? I spend a lot more time working than they do!

Here is the epiphany I came to: If busyness, long hours, and hard work equaled success, I’d be wealthier and more successful than Richard Branson, Tony Hawk, and Donald Trump. But I’m not… because busyness, long hours, and hard word do not necessarily equal success.

“That’s it,” I thought after I shook The Donald’s hand and exited one of his many towers after our interview. “I have to figure this out.” How were they doing it? We all started in roughly the same place, with the same 24-hour day, and the same opportunities. Yet I’m getting my butt kicked? While doing more? There’s gotta be something I’m doing wrong.

And there was.

And I bet you’re doing it wrong, too.

YOUR SUCCESS VITALS

Let’s say, heaven forbid, you are in a serious accident and are rushed to the hospital. What’s the first thing that happens? Before they address the gash on your face, before they even think about the bone sticking out of your thigh, even before they contact your loved ones, where do the skilled physicians in the emergency room begin?

They start with your vital signs.

They don’t concern themselves with extremities or facial deformities; they start with your vitals—your heart rate, your respiratory rate, your blood pressure, and body temperature. Why? Because your vitals are just that—vital! These are the key life or death physiological indicators. What is the point of sewing up your leg if your dropping blood pressure is causing the leg tissue to die even as it’s being repaired? Sure, the drama of a protruding bone might be distracting to an untrained eye, but medical personnel know that the discipline of assessing vital signs tells a great deal without asking a single question or performing a single invasive test. It saves precious moments when moments are all you have.

This is also true about your business and your personal productivity. There are vital factors that determine the life or death of your business and performance. It’s easy to get caught up in the drama of extremities, to respond to symptoms all day and end up with a dead business—without even knowing why.

The reason is you lost sight of the vital factors—those few things that mattered the most but weren’t necessarily the loudest, most urgent, or most obvious. But they were the most important.

I have found that most people who read a magazine like SUCCESS or would read a book like this (especially this far—bravo!) don’t need motivation. They don’t lack ambition, goals, or work ethic. They are putting in long hours, sacrificing nights and weekends, and consistently have their nose to the grindstone. Like me, they’ll use brute force and sacrifice whatever they have to… all the while lacking clarity and focus. They are unsure of what to focus on, so they attempt to focus on everything all the time. Thus they end up overworked, overscheduled, overwhelmed, and still underperforming… maybe even failing It’s not that they didn’t work; it’s what they worked on that caused the failure.

I know you have big goals and an important mission to accomplish. To succeed, it is critical that you intensely focus your time, energy, and resources on those things that matter most—your vital factors—without being distracted and derailed by the things that matter least.

In this chapter, I am going to outline the four vital factors critical to managing and leading yourself, your team, and your business. If you can be unrelenting in your focus, accountability, and constant improvement of these four vital factors, you will have your hands on the controls that will allow you to transform one of the most frustrating emotional drops on your roller coaster ride into one of the greatest, most thrilling highs, as your ride becomes a rocket ship that can carry you “to infinity and beyond.” 1. YOUR VITAL FUNCTIONS

I got a diagnosis of my productivity problem from a doctor, no less. Not just any doctor—“America’s Doctor.” Several years ago I interviewed Dr. Mehmet Oz for his (first) cover profile in SUCCESS.

This man is a wizard. Great and powerful.

I am in awe of everything this amazing man gets accomplished. He is a professor at Columbia University and directs the Cardiovascular Institute at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He’s authored 400 research papers, several medical books, and six New York Times bestselling books. He runs a thriving nonprofit, is co-founder of another successful company, has a four-time Emmy Award-winning TV show… and at the time of our interview, he was still performing over 200 open heart surgeries a year.

What’s most amazing is that he does it all with grace, poise, and tranquility. When I was with him, he was relaxed, gracious, and adoringly humble. And before you ask, let me tell you: He’s also a devoted husband and father of four. Now you’d have to be a wizard to pull all that off, right? Well, he does have one secret.

Here is the secret I was given by the great wizard called Oz. When I asked the question, “How on earth…?” He said, “I’ve figured out that every endeavor that you do has a few vital functions. All you have to do is figure out what they are and become excellent at them.” He gave the example of open heart surgery. He explained he isn’t involved with all the functions of a successful procedure, just the few vital ones. He isn’t the one to clean the instruments or make up the operating table or get the supplies ready. He doesn’t even do the several dozen procedures happening inside the body cavity that lead up to his vital few. When it comes time for those vital few, he walks in and performs them with excellence and well-developed expertise, removes his mask, washes his hands, and exits, leaving the rest of the procedure to his capable team.

The exact same is true for delivering his high-quality TV show. There are a few vital functions he needs to prepare for, practice, and be ready to deliver with excellence. Everything else is handled by the great team he surrounds himself with. It’s the same for writing his books, the same for running a charity, and the same when it comes to leading a business.

There it is. What’s the big secret of how to get it all done? Don’t. Just do the vital functions (amazingly well) and build a great team of capable players who are excellent at the rest (which you already learned how to do in Chapter 4.

“The big secret of how to get it all done? Don’t. Just do the vital functions (amazingly well) and build a great team who are excellent at the rest.” @DarrenHardy JoinTheRide

What I realized after our interview was this was the same idea I had applied to my real estate business two decades earlier. I had just forgotten to keep applying it when I changed my business focus.

Starting out in real estate, I had quickly discovered there were thousands of things I could get caught up doing—things that felt productive, but were really just a convenient distraction from doing real work (a.k.a. prospecting and making sales). Things like setting up escrow files, taking photos of the property, ordering the property report, setting up the termite inspection, meeting with the appraiser, going to the home inspection, putting on the lockbox, and attending the escrow closing can keep even the hardest-working agent very busy. They all seem like legitimate tasks that should be done, and in fact, yes, they should be done. Just not by the rainmaker!

The rainmaker has one job—make it rain!

I soon realized there were only a few things that I did that mattered. As the leader, when I did them, we got paid. I couldn’t delegate them.

They were my vital functions in the business. They were:

Pitching a listing,

Negotiating a contract,

And prospecting.

That’s it. Those three things. Those were my vital few functions. They were critical to business growth, and I was needed to be (and was) great at them. They were the only things I should spend my time on, so I built a team that did all those other things. When I started spending most of my time doing those vital few functions, the business took off like a rocket!

Though… I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take some practice.

TIME “ON”

In my real estate business, when I got clear about this idea of doing only the vital few functions, I decided I really needed to drive the message home to myself and to my team. So I bought a stopwatch and wore it around my neck all day. I turned it on every time I did one of those vital three functions and turned it off the split second I stopped.

I’ll never forget the first day I put that stopwatch to the test. I wanted to set the bar really, really high. I wanted to put in a ton of vital time so I would have to struggle to match that goal every day thereafter. I arrived at the office with my mind set on doing nothing but vital functions for the next 16 hours.

Immediately, I hit the streets for some door-to-door prospecting. I’d walk up a driveway, knock on the door, and when it opened, I’d hit the watch. When I was done talking, I’d stop it. Repeat. Then I moved to cold calls and did the same thing. If I was pitching a listing? Same thing. Start the watch, stop the watch. Negotiating? Same thing. All the while I wouldn’t look at the stopwatch—I didn’t want to see the number until the day was complete.

At ten o’clock that night I finally stopped cranking and the suspense was killing me! I closed the final file on my tidied desk, let out a sigh, and for the first time since before the sun had risen that morning, I turned the clock over expecting to see at least 14 hours of vital work logged on the screen… Can you guess what that (evil) stopwatch said?

Not 14 hours, that’s for sure.

19:54

Less than 20 minutes out of a 16-hour day.

If you had asked anyone in my office if I was productive all 16 hours, they’d have said, “Oh yeah, he’s a machine.” And I was indeed a constant flurry of activity.

But activity is not productivity.

After my abysmal failure that first day, I became obsessed. Every day it was me against the stopwatch as I tried to drive that number up. Doubling it to forty minutes was a herculean effort. The first time I got it over an hour I threw an office-wide party to celebrate. I think in the four-year career I had in real estate sales, I got the number over four hours maybe a dozen times. Which means what? Yeah, a dozen times in four years, I worked a half-day.

I challenge you to take on the stopwatch. Once you identify what your vital functions are, start tracking how much time you actually spend doing them. You will be shocked at how little time you’re spending on the most important things, the only things, you should be spending your time on. If you make it your mission to increase that number, you’ll change your business and your life.

“Success has less to do with what we can get ourselves to do and more with keeping ourselves from doing what we shouldn’t.” @DarrenHardy JoinTheRide

UNDERSTANDING YOUR VALUE

In our July 2010 SUCCESS feature with Kenneth Cole, he said it this way: “Success has less to do with what we can get ourselves to do and more to do with keeping ourselves from doing what we shouldn’t.” Make sense? Sure. But how? If the greatest threat to your productivity is keeping yourself from getting awash in low-value activities, how do you make sure you don’t mistake a low-value activity for a high one? Here’s how I do it: First, you need to know what your time is worth. And I’m not talking in some warm and fuzzy Kumbaya terms. I’m talking cold, hard cash. What does your time need to be worth in order to accomplish the goals you’ve set for yourself?

What’s your income goal for the year? $100,000? $500,000? $1,000,000? Divide that number by 2,000.

The number you get is the hourly rate you have to generate over a 40-hour week in the next year.

Every hour that goes by that you don’t produce that amount, you’re falling behind. Got it? No? Then try this instead: For a goal of $250,000 a year, your hourly rate must be $125. So let’s say on January 1 of the New Year, you wake up with $250,000 deposited into your bank account (Happy New Year indeed!). Now every hour you do less than $125 per hour work, $125 gets taken out of your account (remember this accounting system is based on doing valuable work, not just busywork). Now let’s say it’s December 31 and you look in your account and see there is only $64,375 remaining! You say, “What happened? I worked long, exhaustive hours all year. More than 2,000 hours! I sacrificed nights and weekends. I wrote my $250,000 goal down every morning. What went wrong?” It’s simple… do the math. Every hour you did less than $125 per hour-caliber work, you lost money.

If you’re falling short of your income goals, it’s because you waste time doing low-value work. That’s it. That’s the only reason. You go to a meeting you don’t actually need to attend. You spend ten minutes chit-chatting in the hallway. You take an extra long lunch because you deserve it.

Do you? Do you deserve it? No. You deserve more than this.

When you spend twenty minutes on social media, you are burning time. Burning $100 bills.

Stop doing that. Now.

All you have in life is time. Your job is to maximize it, particularly when it’s “ON” time.

No More Narcissism

You’re probably asking, “Okay, how do I stick to my three vital functions when all these other things still have to get done?” The answer is simple. You need to delegate everything anyone else can do at a lower rate to free up every minute possible for you to do your vital functions. You need to be constantly asking yourself, “Would I pay someone (the hourly rate you just determined above) to do what I’m doing now?” Ask yourself that when you are commenting on Facebook or organizing your files or driving across town to drop off papers or organizing the icons on your computer screen. If your answer is “no,” then stop doing it yourself. It’s costing you money. You can’t afford to do it. You have to delegate.

It’s funny (and kind of sad) because most CEOs will stand in front of their staff meeting, and in an effort to provide hope and inspiration, they’ll say, “I once started out in the mailroom of this company, and now I’m CEO.” But as soon as the meeting is over, they spend the next 45 minutes sorting through their inboxes, processing and responding to their own email… “Your inbox is nothing more than a modern day mailroom. Is that really where you want to be working?” @DarrenHardy JoinTheRide

Do you know what an inbox actually is?

The modern day mailroom!

Congrats, CEO—you have come all that way just to end up back where you started.

You already know you need to delegate more, but you don’t. Why? Because you are an egotistical, arrogant narcissist! It’s true. At least that is what a mentor once told me when I made excuses to him about why it’s just easier, faster, and better for me to do it than to ask someone else to do it.

With patience and a little irritation in his voice, my mentor said, “Darren, delegation requires humility. A recognition that you aren’t the only one who can do something well, quickly, and competently. Stop being a narcissist and let go.” Whoa, that got my attention. Lo and behold, he was right. I found that not only did others get it done as well, but in almost every case they did the work better than I would have. My “letting go” meant they could step up and exercise strengths and abilities I didn’t even know they had. They were allowed to focus on their expertise while I focused on mine. Together we could multiply the productive output of the entire organization.

Now let’s go even deeper…

THE ONE THING

Several years ago now, when I sat with Joel Osteen and his wife in their home in Houston, Texas, I was determined to learn one thing from this man of many talents. The only questions I planned to ask were: “How do you do it all? How do you oversee, manage, and lead this massive enterprise?” His answer revolutionized the way I work—and for those with whom I have shared it, the same is true. Joel’s response detailed a journey all entrepreneurs must take.

“When I first took over from my father, I was trying to do everything,” Joel said. “Weddings, funerals, baptisms, I was trying to do it all. I was editing the brochure, the TV commercials. I was adjusting the lights on the stage. And the organization became stagnant. It could only grow as much as my calendar could stretch. I was burned out, and the organization was stalled. Something had to change.

“So I stepped back and I thought, what is the one thing I do that makes the biggest difference to the whole enterprise? And I figured out it was the 22 minutes on Sunday—that broadcast that then gets shot around the world. If it’s great, it propels everything else. So I stopped doing everything else and began to focus only on those 22 minutes.” Wow. Wonder what that kind of focus looks like? Here’s Joel’s actual schedule. (Go ahead, copy it down and tape it to your bathroom mirror—this is good stuff!) Wednesday he spends the whole day thinking and researching and making notes about what he wants to talk about Sunday.

Thursday he writes out his sermon word for word.

Friday he spends the entire day just memorizing it. That’s all.

Saturday he delivers the sermon twice to a private audience in his church.

Sunday? Lights, camera, action, and BAM, he’s magic. It’s magic because he focused all his energy all week in making it so.

Monday he takes off. R & R.

Tuesday he does leadership. He goes in to the office, does his leadership oversight, and inspects what he expects. Those are also the days he does any media. I’ve interviewed him twice, and guess what day it was on? Yep. Tuesday.

Osteen has taken the “three vital functions” a step further. He’s figured out his one vital function.

What’s yours? What’s your one thing that contributes the most to your enterprise?

What is your greatest contribution to making your rocket ship fly?

Figure that out, and then plot, scheme, and strategize about how to spend more, if not all, your time doing that one thing.

Do that, and life will change for you.

1. YOUR VITAL PRIORITIES

If you’ve ever been to an old-style circus or seen one on TV, then you’re almost certainly familiar with the classic image of the lion tamer—a dashing man in a red tuxedo and top hat who steps into a cage with the king of the jungle himself.

The lion dwarfs the lion tamer. He’s faster and more aggressive. He’s 500 pounds of evolutionarily honed killing machine. He’s a predator at the top of the food chain with rippling muscles and razor-sharp fangs and claws.

And the lion tamer?

He’s got a stool.

That’s it. Just a piece of flimsy furniture.

Yet, using nothing but that stool, the tamer is able to not only protect himself from the lion but also actually control the lion.

How is it possible that a lion tamer—a tiny man in a silly suit—can control a lion using nothing more than a barstool and a measly whip?

The answer is that the lion sees each of the legs of the barstool as four separate, simultaneous threats. In the face of those four threats, even the king of the jungle is overwhelmed. His primitive brain is unable to cope or decide, so he simply submits to the overwhelming threat. He becomes docile.

We respond similarly. We, too, suffer from the “lion syndrome.” As an entrepreneur, you’re faced with hundreds of potential priorities in any moment. Do you follow up on a sales call? Check email? Contact a vendor? Deal with the new hire? Work on a new product that’s behind schedule? There are so many choices in each moment, and each one feels important. Everything seems important. But when you have too many priorities, like the lion, you become paralyzed—docile, and easily subdued by… well, furniture. (Ever notice how comfortable the couch feels when you’re overwhelmed?) Choosing and narrowing your priorities mean everything on the entrepreneur roller coaster.

If you find yourself paralyzed at work, it means you have too many priorities. If you think you don’t have enough time, it means you don’t have priorities that are defined clearly enough. In fact, any time you feel overwhelmed, there’s a good chance that the culprit is a lack of clear priorities.

“Any time you feel overwhelmed, there’s a good chance the culprit is a lack of clear priorities.” @DarrenHardy JoinTheRide

Let me make the clear distinction between a Vital Function and a Vital Priority. Vital Functions are your key contributions to the success of the organization or goal. Vital Priorities are the day-to-day or quarter-to-quarter areas of focus and tasks required to accomplish the goal.

For instance, my three Vital Functions at SUCCESS are keynote speaking to large audiences; creating, editing, and curating content; and public media representation. Whereas my Vital Priorities for the week might include preparing a keynote, final sign-off on an issue of SUCCESS going to press, and preparing for a TV appearance. Vital Functions are those few “rain making” roles you have and Vital Priorities are the important tasks you are focused on to fulfill those functions.

IT’S TIME TO DECLINE

I witnessed one of the great achievers of our time using this exact principle. If you’re wondering how to translate the principles of lion taming to your business, here’s a great example.

After our cover feature on Sir Richard Branson, a client company asked us to contact Sir Richard on their behalf to request hiring him to speak at their conference. They had a budget of $100,000 for a one-hour keynote. As a favor, we had someone from our staff inquire. Sir Richard’s office flatly declined the offer. Undeterred, the company upped their offer to $250,000 for a one-hour talk. Again we reached out, but Sir Richard quickly declined.

They once again raised the speaking fee, now to $500,000, including a private jet to pick Sir Richard up. Sir Richard declined. At this point, it was becoming kind of an ego issue, so our client went all in and offered a blank check. “Let him name his number,” they said. Once more we reached out on their behalf. “The client will pay whatever it takes,” we said. “How much would it cost for Sir Richard to attend?” Here’s the response from his office:

“No amount of money would matter. Right now, Richard has three strategic priorities he is focused on, and he will only allow us to allocate his calendar to something that significantly contributes to the accomplishment of one of those three priorities, and speaking for a fee is not one of them.” There it is.

Priorities clear, protected, and steadfast.

No one is taming the lion that is Sir Richard Branson.

Not for any fee.

THE BUFFETT METHOD OF PRIORITIZATION

Perhaps the greatest “mystery” of the many achievers we feature in SUCCESS is how they manage to do it all. From the outside, they seem almost superhuman, accomplishing in a year what some of us only dream of in a lifetime.

“How do the superachievers do it all? The secret is they DON’T. What’s your ONE priority?”

@DarrenHardy JoinTheRide

The answer to how they do it all, of course, is that they don’t.

Branson’s strict focus on where to spend his time is a perfect example of a recurring theme in superachievers: having three (or fewer) strategic priorities.

Here is Warren Buffett’s three-step method for prioritization.

1. Write down all your priorities.

2. Narrow it down to the top three.

So far so good, right? Seems simple. No problem. You’ve done that before. It’s the next step where most people don’t have the courage to do what it takes to stay focused. And it’s this final step that separates the simple-achievers from the superachievers.

1. Throw the rest of the list away.

There’s no minor project list. There’s no maybe we’ll get to this list. There’s no side project list. There are only three priorities, and everything else is thrown out so all mental, financial, and spiritual resources can be fully invested into those three, and only those three, priorities.

“If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.”

@DarrenHardy JoinTheRide

As Jim Collins said in our April 2010 SUCCESS feature, “If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.” How many do you have? Do you have the chutzpah to use the Buffett method?

THE MASTER SKILL OF SUCCESS

I can sense your doubt. I can hear you mumbling under your breath—as if throwing the rest of the list away is not a luxury you have. Of course, throwing the list away doesn’t mean the distractions and attention-stealing interruptions go away, too, but that’s because you still have to learn the single success skill that all superachievers have mastered… Saying “no.”

The only way for the attention-stealing interruptions to go away is for them not to be there in the first place! The mastery skill that separates the common man from superachiever status is learning to say “no.” For an entrepreneur, to whom every opportunity looks shiny and every idea sounds awesome, these two letters will become the most important in the entire alphabet.

When Warren Buffett was asked what he thought the single greatest key to his success was, I was expecting an economic theory lesson in high finance or insider tips on shrewd business negotiations from the “Oracle of Omaha.” Instead this was his answer, “For every hundred great opportunities that are brought to me, I say ‘no’ ninety-nine times.” That’s it. That’s the $58.5 billion answer.

Warren Buffett’s key to success is saying “no” ninety-nine times out of every hundred solicitations of his time or attention.

Buffett’s not alone. When Steve Jobs was asked of all that he and Apple had created which he was most proud, his answer was, “I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.” All those amazing, breakthrough, change-the-way-we-experience-the-world-as-we-know-it products, and that’s what he’s proud of… the things they said “no” to.

Why? Why would anyone, especially Steve Jobs, be proud of that? Because saying “no” is hard. It’s the master skill of success.

Steve went on to say, “People think focus means saying ‘yes’ to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying ‘no’ to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. [Success] is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.” I’ve seen this same principle at work in every superachiever I’ve met. They all know how to say “no.” You see, saying “yes” is easy.

Yes, I have a minute.

Yes, I’ll take the call.

Yes, I’ll take on that project.

Yes, I’ll come out for happy hour.

Yes, I’ll have another drink.

Yes, I’ll have dessert, too.

There’s no resistance in “yes.” There’s no struggle or conflict. No one’s feelings are at stake when you say “yes.” However saying “no” is much harder. That is why the master skill of superachievers is how they stay focused on what matters most. It’s one of the great keys to their success—and yours. Learn the master skill. Master “no.” “What’s the master skill of productivity? Learning to say No.”

@DarrenHardy JoinTheRide

Finally, one last word of warning. Every time you say “yes” to something, you’re actually saying “no” to something else. Perhaps it’s a bigger opportunity that now you have to turn down, or maybe it’s simply precious time spent with your children. Whatever the stakes, make sure that the next time you consider saying “yes” (when you really should be saying “no”), it’s a “Hell Yeah!” or don’t even consider it.

1. YOUR VITAL METRICS

Not long ago, I was catching up with a friend over dinner when the discussion turned to my work and in particular, my financial goals for the SUCCESS media business. I described in detail my plan for growing the multimillion-dollar business—how I’d get to one revenue point, and then the strategy I’d use to double that figure, and then double it again.

After a long period when I did all the talking and he just listened, there was a pause. And he asked, (as only a real friend knows how to do), “Why?” “Whaddya mean why?” I puffed back. “Because I can. Because I should. Because I want to.”

“I know,” he responded. “But why? Is it about the money?”

It wasn’t about the money. It’s never been about the money. Yes, when it comes to my business, I know all the victory metrics. But when it comes to the actual dollars and cents, my personal finances are handled almost entirely by my wife. For me, achieving metrics is achieving victory, not collecting money.

My friend then said something that rocked my world a bit. He said, “Then you are tracking the wrong metric.” I let that sink in before responding. I was tracking the wrong metric? It was true. I had just finished telling him about doubling revenue numbers when I really didn’t care much about the revenue at all.

While I pondered, he continued, “Why do you do what you do?”

I was quick to respond, “Impact. To positively impact people’s lives and futures.” No need for contemplation there.

My friend replied, “Then measure that.”

Huh. Whaddaya know! He was right. For me it was about growing impact, not growing money. Once I realized that, it changed everything.

I looked at our customer base more closely, and I isolated a smaller group with whom I knew I had the biggest impact. I began to offer them opportunities to go deeper. Ways in which I could have a greater impact on their work, their health, their finances and their relationships. Impact became the thing I measured to discover when I was on course and when I was off. It would tell me when I was getting closer to my goals—my real goals—and when I was moving further away.

Impact became my vital metric.

Measurement plays a key role on the entrepreneur roller coaster. First of all, it lets you know when you’re off track. When was the last time you saw a roller coaster with a straight track? From beginning to end, there are unexpected twists and turns. Surprise dead-ends, reversals, and hairpin turns. Each time the track deviates, you need to readjust your course to head back toward your goal. Otherwise you could end up somewhere completely different from where you planned. But to do that, you need to know that you’re off track to begin with.

Second, measurement helps you correct your course. When the ride takes you off course—and you will be taken off course—you’ll need to know in which direction to head. Sometimes you’ll have to go off course on purpose to avoid an obstacle, and measurement will bring you back.

Last, when you hit a low point in the ride and things seem darkest, measurement proves to you that you’re making progress. Sure, you may not have arrived at your final destination, but you’ve covered a lot of ground. Imagine driving across the country and not knowing where you are. Ever. Measurement is your GPS and your odometer.

Just like a doctor measures your vital signs of health—things like your heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels—you need to determine and keep a close eye on the vital metrics for you, your team, and your business. It is critical, as in life or death, that you know what these metrics are and that you keep a constant watchful eye on them—as in, daily, if not hourly.

You should find about half a dozen metrics that summarize the critical data you need to monitor your business’s progress and make effective decisions. You’ll need to decide exactly what they are for your business, but they can be metrics like: New sales transactions

Cancellations

Cash on hand total

Receivables total

Payables total

From there, I always break it down to the few measurements that drive the above metrics. For instance: New database opt-ins

Face-to-face sales appointments

Store/website visits

There are always a few metrics that will ultimately make the ones you are pursuing downstream possible.

Then, I take it one more step, much like Joel Osteen, and see if I can find just one economic denominator. The single most telling and determining metric that, if increased and improved, will be the factor contributing the most to all the other numbers being bolstered downstream. Now all I have to do is watch and plot, scheme, brainstorm, and focus on all we can do to drive that one metric. An example, depending on your business might be: New database opt-ins.

Your historical data tells you that for every new database opt-in you get you are able to schedule X percent new sales appointments. Now, based on your percentage of appointments to transactions, you can now predict your sales figures. Based on your average order value, you now can predict your revenue. Based on your average cost of goods and general administrative expenses, you can now predict your profit. Now you have the numbers you need to project cash flow, cash in the bank, and other key metrics. All those metrics are a “downstream” result of the single economic denominator of database opt-ins. Control, measure, monitor, and drive that single economic denominator, and you can control and drive all the key metrics in your business.

All of this can be monitored and measured on a single-view dashboard or piece of paper, no matter how big the enterprise.

THE MASSIVE TRANSFORMATION FORMULA

Okay. Ready to put some of this to work? I thought so. Grab a piece of paper, and let me show you how in a few metrics you can massively transform your business—or any area of your life. I call it my Massive Transformation Formula. It has three components: MTF COMPONENT NUMBER ONE: YOUR BIG 3 GOALS

I don’t care if you have a bucket list of 50 things or a thousand places you want to see before you die or a list of 25 goals. As Jim Collins says about priorities, I say about goals—If you have more than three goals, you don’t have any. I’m not talking just any three goals. These are the three goals that if you achieved them, would make this year, undeniably, the best year of your life.

“You are only one or two key habits away from a massive transformation in any area of your life.” @DarrenHardy JoinTheRide

Yeah, those kind of goals. Your big, hairy, and audacious goals. Decide what those BIG 3 goals are, and then tear a page out of the Buffett method and throw the rest of the list away. You’ve already decided what would make this the best year of your life. Everything else will only distract your focus and drain your capacity for making the BIG 3 possible.

MTF COMPONENT NUMBER TWO: KEY HABITS

Once you know where you’re headed, what do you need to do to get there?

This question is trickier than it looks. Most people think there are a thousand things they have to do to accomplish their big goals. The reality is that you are only one or two key habits away from a massive transformation in any area of your life. Think about it. Take sales, for instance. There are one or two key habits that if repeated, day in and day out, relentlessly and consistently over a long period of time, would massively transform your results. The same is true about health and fitness, your marriage, your parenting, and your leadership. The key is to identify the one or two key habits that are most important to the achievement of each of your BIG 3 goals.

Once you have those one, two, or three key habits critical to the achievement of each of your BIG 3, you have everything you need to be successful. Now you just need to do them, over and over again, without fail. That’s where number three comes in.

MTF COMPONENT NUMBER THREE: TRACK

You engage in your habits, good and bad, without even knowing it—that’s why we call them habits. They happen whether you think about them or not.

Do you remember when you were first learning to drive a car? You were told to keep your hands at ten and two o’clock. Be sure to check the rearview mirror regularly. Check the left mirror, but put the turn indicator on first. Check the right mirror. Use your right foot for the gas and the brake… oh and if you had a stick shift, then your left foot has to do this, along with your right foot and right hand simultaneously. All the while, scan everything you see out the front window and avoid oncoming traffic.

It seemed impossible, right? How can you possibly think of all these things and do all these things simultaneously?

Well, how about now?

Now you can drive down the road while having a conversation with passengers, eating, applying your makeup, shaving, or talking on your cell phone. You don’t have to think about driving at all. Why? Because it became automatic. It became a learned habit.

You’ve probably had the experience I have where you’ve been driving down the freeway, then looked up and suddenly realized you missed your exit several miles ago. This means you’ve been hurling your car down the freeway at 70 miles an hour completely brain dead… or at least completely unconscious.

To avoid missing the “exits” on the freeway of success (and that means missed opportunities), we need to turn off autopilot and come back online. We need to bring awareness to our unconscious behaviors, and only tracking will make that happen. When it comes to tracking our BIG 3 goals, every night we need to borrow an idea from the restaurant business and “cash out.” CASH OUT EVERY DAY

From ages thirteen to eighteen, I was a waiter. During a typical shift I’d punch in food and drink orders, serve the customers, and then take payments in the form of credit cards and cash at the end of the meal, plus tips (hopefully!).

At the end of the night, I always had to sit down with the store manager and “cash out.” All the credit card receipts plus the collected cash had to match up with the total order amount logged into the computer. Any overage was mine to take home as tips, and if the numbers didn’t match up and I came up short, I had to make up the difference myself.

Shouldn’t we all have to cash out at the end of the day? These are the behaviors and habits you said you were going to do today. Did you do them? Does your plan match your action? Do your numbers add up? If not, put yourself in trouble!

It takes less than thirty seconds to review your BIG 3 and the half dozen key habits you planned to execute each day. Check off each one: Check! Check! Uh-oh, Check! Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Now you’ll know if you are on track or off track.

Tracking your habits prevents drift. You need to know if you’re on track. If you don’t know, you can drift. You can wake up overweight, broke, divorced, and wonder how you got there.

You see, we don’t fall off course, we drift off course. We don’t fall off our workout schedule, our diet, our resolutions, our goals—we drift. We drift ever so slightly and slowly without realizing it. Then a while down the road, we finally regain consciousness, only to realize we are completely off course. To prevent this drift you have to be strict about tracking your progress (or lack thereof) every day, all along the way. This is why the essential component of my Living Your Best Year Ever program is the Weekly Rhythm Register—a one-page weekly tracking system. That single page is responsible for an untold fortune in income, good health, satisfying relationships, and many other goals and behaviors I’ve achieved using it.

Believe it or not, you really are just three steps away from massive transformation. Do what other superachievers do and narrow your list down to three big goals that, if reached, would make this the best year of your life. Then identify the key behaviors you need to do each and every day to support those goals, and track your progress each and every day to prevent drift.

1. YOUR VITAL IMPROVEMENTS

Because impact is my vital metric, I do enjoy engaging in conversation with SUCCESS fans on my Facebook page. And one day, someone posted this comment: “You’ve inspired me to read more. This year I’ve set a goal to read 32 books.”

Of course, I was pleased to have helped someone and clearly they were pleased with their chosen goal…. But something about the comment just didn’t sit well with me. I quickly responded: “I think it’d be better if you read one great book 32 times.”

Reading 32 books means you’re reading a lot, which is better than watching a lot of TV or other alternatives, but does it mean you’re applying it? My guess is no. If you’re looking to improve, as all of us should, just reading a bunch of books about improvement isn’t enough. It takes time, persistence, and deliberate practice in a narrow range of activity to truly improve.

The comment left by a well-meaning would-be achiever revealed something critical about the entrepreneur roller coaster: You don’t succeed just by learning. You have to study, then do. We need to learn less and do more.

“It’s not what you learn or what you know; it’s what you do with what you know and learn.”

@DarrenHardy JoinTheRide

Do you really need to read another book on how to lose weight? You already know how. Do you need another seminar? Another audio program? Knowledge is not power. That’s a myth. It is the potential for power, but it is not power itself. It’s not what you learn or what you know; it’s what you do with what you know and learn. There is a significant difference between learning and improving, and the difference is taking action and producing measureable results.

Have you ever been to a seminar, listened to an audio program, or read a book that promised life-transforming results in 90 days or less… and it didn’t happen? Yeah, I know. Me, too. We have a tendency to say, oh, that book, that CD, that program, that seminar didn’t work. Noooooo, it wasn’t the material that didn’t work. You didn’t do the work.

When it comes to improving yourself, you need to be as focused and deliberate as you have been throughout this entire chapter. Here is the basic framework for significant improvement that will last: STEP 1: IDENTIFY

You can’t be “Jack of all improvement” or you’ll be the master of nothing. You have to narrow your areas of focused improvement. What’s the best way to do that? Focus on improving those skills that are the most vital to the achievement of your BIG 3 goals.

As my BIG 3 goals have changed over the years, so have the skills I have focused on improving. When I was in real estate, I studied the art of face-to-face sales. When I started speaking to audiences on a regular basis, I focused entirely on strengthening my presentation skills. Leadership, persuasive writing, time management skills—each quarter I figure out what skill is most needed to advance my BIG 3 goals, and I then attack it. I buy the top five books on the topic, the top three audio or video programs on the topic, and sign up for (at least) one seminar focused on that skill. Then I spend the quarter studying, practicing, and tracking my improvement on that vital skill.

STEP 2: INVEST

At eighteen years old I was told by Brian Tracy that every dollar you invest in your personal development adds thirty to your bottom line.

I was inspired by that idea. I made $150,000 that year, and I took $15,000 and reinvested it in my personal development. The following year, I grew tremendously, and I’ve followed his advice ever since. And I’m not the only one. The greatest athletes in the world hire the most expensive coaches, consultants, and advisors. The greatest companies do the same. CEOs and celebrities, too. Why? Because they know that investing in themselves is what got them to where they are, and they know they need to keep doing it to grow and stay at the top of their game. As my mentor Jim Rohn would continually remind me, “If you want to have more, you have to become more. You have to grow into your goals.” Before you fund your 401K, before you invest in a startup, before you invest in that stock, invest in yourself. Where else are you going to get that 3,000 percent return that Brian Tracy is talking about? Not in the stock market. Bet on yourself—it always yields the highest returns.

STEP 3: RINSE AND REPEAT

I’m a big believer in finding someone or something that works for you and going deep with it. I call it the “rinse and repeat” practice. I feel it’s better to find a training and development source, resource, or leader that resonates with you. Someone you like and align with philosophically. Then “rinse and repeat” with them over and over.

For instance I went to Jim Rohn’s Leadership Weekend six times. People thought I was crazy (for more than just this, admittedly). They would say, “But you already went. You’ve heard it all before. Whaddaya, slow?” And it’s true (not the slow part). Jim did the exact same lecture, told the same stories and the same jokes (I laughed every time!) each of the six times. But mysteriously, I got something totally different each and every time. Certainly it was because I was different—I was dealing with different issues and challenges each time, and I was at different levels of my personal growth each time.

Attending the same workshop that I already knew was great, led by someone I already respected and aligned with philosophically, was far better for me than attending six different seminars. Those new events would have done more to perplex my mind than they would have done to deepen my understanding of the existing principles of success I already knew to work.

I see people dig too many shallow holes and wonder why they never strike oil. Instead, once you dig a hole that has oil in it (find someone or something you like), keep drilling—go deeper. Mine that well for all it’s got. Then rinse and repeat.

In the end, the fundamentals of success are simple and easy—getting yourself to stick to them is the difficult part. Don’t make it even more difficult by confusing yourself with too many arbitrary opinions and conflicting ideas.

A SUCCESS VITALS SUMMARY

Your success vitals boil down to one simple concept: Decide on a few critical things, do them more often, then get better at them.

That’s it. That’s the fundamental secret of extraordinary success. Of greatness. Simpler than you thought? Probably. But not always easy.

The fundamentals of your life and your business can be deceptively simple. We know that some of the legendary achievers constantly return to fundamentals over and over again. In part, to make sure they master them, but also to develop the discipline required to stick to them.

“Productivity isn’t magic. It’s discipline.”

@DarrenHardy JoinTheRide

Productivity isn’t magic. It’s discipline. It’s the discipline that separates the superachievers from everyone else. It’s the discipline that delivers the results that compound over time and allow you to control the ride.

As legendary coach Vince Lombardi said, “The key to winning is to be brilliant at the basics.” SO WHAT’S STOPPING YOU?

Many people step on to the entrepreneurial roller coaster so that they can finally, after years of working for someone else, not have a boss.

Well guess what? It turns out you do still have a boss. It’s you.

How good is that boss?

Is your “boss” letting you get away with lack of accountability? With being distracted? With slacking, using lame excuses, and dodging responsibility for the important things?

Maybe you need to boss yourself around a little more.

Are you taking control of yourself? Focusing on what’s vital? Because that’s how you take control of the ride.