“When you’re up to nothing, nothing is usually next.”
There is a difference between passive business people versus active business people. You know, what’s so cool about door to door? When I consult a lot of companies, they don’t have a door to door program, you know, they’re, they’re like, oh, we just do leads or we buy leads, or we have online sales or we get referrals and I’m like, that’s so passive. The gritty are the active, the proactive that say, I don’t have anything on the calendar I make things happen. “When you’re up to nothing, nothing is usually next.” -Matthew McConaughey, from the book green lights.
They Have The Grit to Not Quit
I want to dive into this treadmill principle. Will Smith, he said, if we get on a treadmill together, there’s two things you get off first, or I’m gonna die. It’s really simple. I love this principle. Harvard business study, George Valiant, he said put treadmill steep and fast for five minutes. And he took 130 sophomores in college and had them run on it. So, they said, okay, put it super steep and go five minutes, go fast, and see what happens. These sophomores, some quit within a minute, some lasted the five minutes, but the average lasted about four minutes. He said, then they followed them for every two years, for 60 years. And this is cool. I love studies where they literally took sample sizes for years and they said, we’re going to play the long game on these studies. So, those that lasted longer, had more success in all life categories, which is crazy. Angela Duckworth, in the book, “Grit”, she says, “What if they could have opened up the option for people to come back the next day, try it again and see how many actually came back? Then let them try it over and over again.” There’s a lot of people that maybe quit in 60 seconds and you’re like, Hey, do you wanna give it another shot? There’s an element of grit that would’ve been a true measure of grit because when you don’t come back the next day, you permanently turn your back on a commitment, your effort plummets to zero. As a consequence, your skills stop to improve. At the same time you stop producing anything with whatever skill you have and it’s that anxiously engaged in a good cause. The willingness to say, I’m going to do it again. Despite getting knocked down.
They Know Momentum Begets Momentum
I watch and train and I work with a lot of business owners and down to the first year sales reps. Just to watch their defeat at the doors, when I go shadow them, or to see business owners kind of be like, oh, this didn’t work, so, nothing’s ever going to work. It’s getting in that trap. I’m like, dude, where’s the grit man? Like that’s like the whole struggle, the process, you need that. Then you get into what we call momentum. Momentum begets momentum. The best ways to start, is to start. So, momentum begets momentum and the best ways to start is start. It’s not about speed, it’s about momentum. If you think back and reframe your big days, think of like a huge selling day, you’re like, oh I got six today. But then the next three days you don’t sell. For me, I’m like, that’s when you’re just racing to go get a six spot where you’re like, oh, it’s all due to luck the area. Now you’re blaming external factors of why you’re successful. I’m like, no, no, no, can you get in a rhythm to create momentum? Then are you able to say no to all the poles and all the distractions of people that are going to take you out of this momentum. You have the discipline to say I’m in flow state, don’t mess with me, I’m grinding. Oftentimes there are so many things that pull us and distract us out of flow state. We’ve all heard the easiest time to get a sale is right after a sale. All too often people get in the mindset of “I get one sale and I go home”. I’m a one and done kind of guy. I challenge you to be, I get a sale. I go to another sale and I go to another sale and I leapfrog my sales because I’m using the momentum of my attitude and my positivity and my success to then carry into the energy of my next transaction.
They Make a Commitment
So if we are always jumping and jump into different opportunities, I promise you’re not going to be successful. Think about like, I have a friend named Ralphie and he’s been struggling for years to find financial success in his late twenties. The problem is, it’s like I look at him, he’s lived in five different states over the last six years, he’s gone to six different companies, tried out all these different MLMs, door to door companies, side hustles, eCommerce. And I’m just like, whoa, settle in, make a commitment and just put your head down and grind. It’s almost like the fear of picking a skill and running with it. They’re like, I wanna have all these skills. I want to be good at e-commerce and I want to be good at this and I want to be good at that. I’m like, no, the gritty is the willingness to do the boring thing over and over and over again, to develop a skill. That’s going to pay dividends. That’s what grit is. How many times do they do professional athletes, squat? It’s like, okay, is there any more creative ways to work out? No, it’s just a simple exercise called squatting. Nobody likes leg day, but we do it because that’s what we do. I think, too often, we just think we can replace the true principle called, The 10,000 Hour Rule, by Malcolm Gladwell. That is a fact. If you only put 1,000 hours in here and 2,000 hours in there and 500 hours in here and 50 hours in there, you’re not going to be successful. You didn’t gain any real life skills. So, to become a master and to get real paid real big bucks, stay in the farm in the soil in which you started.
Meaning I go to a farm, I get a big plot. I till the ground, I plant the seeds and then I bounce and I go start farming somewhere else. It’s like, well, that was dumb. You never even saw the harvest. Or you’re like, okay, I got a great crop of corn this year. Then the next year you’re like, well, let’s just try potatoes. You’re like, no, it takes time to master the crop of corn and, and you’ve gotta develop, okay, how do you do it? How do you plan it? And how do you, you know, and you’re fixing the, the fertilization and the, the timing of when you plant it and you get, be, get really good at creating the corn. You aren’t just like, all right, let’s try out something else now. You’re just like, no. Don’t get stuck in this exploratory phase.
They Choose to Develop a Skill Set
What’s the skillset you develop that people pay you gladly for? Developing these skill will then make you always marketable. In door to door sales, for example, if you never really got good at it, then I’m like, okay, what is the pattern that you are training yourself? Is it to just get okay at things and always can make okay money? Instead of saying, I’m gonna commit to being really good at this, so I can use these life skills in other things, if I were to move on. I think that too often, we fail to grasp that concept. So, I’d invite you to practice grit.
These are just a few key principles of saying, okay, grit is the, the ability to endure and come back, even though things are tough. I’m reading this book anti-fragile right now. It’s so good. Humans are meant to be anti-fragile. The opposite of fragile, most people would say is robust, strong, things like that. But it’s like, that would be the equivalent of saying the opposite of positive is neutral. I’m like, no, the opposite of positive isn’t neutral. It’s negative. It’s a minus, there’s a plus and a minus. So, the opposite of fragile would be minus fragility, anti-fragile, which then would be when we break things, so that they’re easily broken. So anti-fragile would be when you break things, they actually get stronger. It actually goes in reverse. There’s a negative effect that will cause you to be better. Humans are meant to be challenged and put under stressed and really have struggle.
I’d invite you to ask, am I embracing the suck? Am I comfortable with the uncomfortable? And am I willing to play the game of grit? Or do I give up way too easy? So I know that things are tough. It’s like mid summer and some of you guys are headed for the last stretch. This is where you will see the difference between the boys and the men. It’s the 30 seconds on the treadmill versus the five minutes on a treadmill. If you’re like, well, I don’t want to every do doors again. I’m done. I’m just trying to coast it out. My advice to you would simply be, how else will that show up in the rest of your life? If you just coast it out, if you committed to a full summer, then finish out the full summer, do the real work. Because, whether you do this again or not, you’re never going to regret putting a hundred percent in. If you are just being like, this isn’t for me, I hate this, I’m done, that is a reflection of how you probably show up in the rest of your life. Whether that’s in your relationships, whether that’s in other business ventures, whether that’s in finance. This is the opportunity to break that pattern and really practice grit and be good at it in its deliberate practice.
