Jan

3

As a kid growing up, I was taught that in order to be successful you had to work twice as hard as the next guy. Even as a child, I did not see that as being totally undoable. Most of the people around me simply settled for being average and ordinary, rather than working twice as hard as they already had in order to be successful. They were just unwilling to work that hard and make the perceived sacrifices associated with working twice as hard.

As a kid I recognized that there were a lot of people that were quite successful, and I couldn’t have imagined them working any harder than my friends and family were already working. I knew there had to be a better way. I also realized that there had to be an error of logic occurring in the thought process of my family and friends. As time progressed, I figured that the way they thought about things was poisoning their minds.

So I embarked upon a journey and tried to figure out what the answer was. Here are a few things that I learned along the way.

I had the privilege of being mentored by some very successful people early in my business career. One of them taught me something that I would never forget.

I heard him say it in meetings, and he personally told me on several occasions….. He said, “Scott, the difference between the guy who makes $50,000 and the guy who makes $500,000 is not that much. The guy who makes $500,000 does everything that the guy who makes $50,000 does, and then just a little bit more!” (he would hold his index finger and thumb about an inch apart to dramatize this point).

Inherently, I understood what he meant. I didn’t have to work twice as hard. I simply had to work “just a little harder”. I didn’t have to be much smarter, I just had to work “a little harder” “or study a little bit harder” to get a “little more” out of my intellect than I possessed. That little difference in my mind was like compound interest over time. We all know the story about how over a couple of years the difference between getting a 9% return and a 10% return isn’t that big of a deal, but over 40 years it’s an absolutely huge differential. That “little bit more” (1% in this case) made a huge difference over 40 years…..and over a lifetime, the difference becomes staggering!

So I vowed that I would work “just a little bit harder” than the next guy. I would study “just a bit harder”. That desire to study has given me the privilege to become part of this wonderful community called the spec list. It’s something that I wouldn’t be a part of if I hadn’t been willing to study….since studying led me to it.

With that privilege, I have been exposed to a whole new way of thinking, and thus I believe that I have “compounded” my abilities further.

Let me end by telling the story of Peter Vidmar.

Pete won a gold medal in the 1984 Olympics in Gymnastics. I had the privilege of having dinner with Pete one night around 5 years ago. I asked him to tell me the story of how he and the US team were able to finally beat the Chinese in gymnastics (the Chinese were almost always the winners of the Gold medal in gymnastics….it was almost a foregone conclusion that they would win).

Pete said that in gymnastics there is a saying. Whenever someone is asked if they are ready, the pat response is, “I wish I had just one more month to train” (it’s kind of like what actors always say, “break a leg”).

Pete and the other co-captain of the team decided that they were going to beat the Chinese and that getting in an extra month of training may actually be the key. But the Olympics were just 2 years away. How were they going to get an extra month of training in? That seemed to be an insurmountable task until they broke it down to its essence.

You see, they practiced 8 hours a day, 6 days a week (it was just like a job for them). Thus they figured they would practice 208 hours a month. They did the math and here’s what they found. In order to get in an extra month of practice over the next 24 months, all they needed to do was practice an additional 20 minutes a day!

They didn’t need to practice twice as hard, or twice as long. 8 hours a day was already quite a bit of practice, and the thought of practicing for 16 hours (twice as much) was daunting. So rather than doing an undoable task (and thus going into a mental shutdown like the people I grew up with) by practicing, working, or studying twice as hard as everyone else, they realized that in order to be successful, maybe 10 times as successful (like the guy making $500,000 instead of $50,000) or to be a world champion (like Peter Vidmar), you only need to do what everyone else is doing, and then a little bit more…

And maybe it’s as simple as 20 minutes a day!

So one of my New Years resolutions is to work “just a little bit harder” and to study “just a little bit harder”!

(My other resolution is to “live up to the standards of Joe”…..but that’s a whole different story for another post)


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