Jay Papasan:
A few years ago, at one of our masterminds, my co-author Gary Keller posed this great question, “Are you succeeding so slowly you think you’re failing? Or are you failing so slowly you think you’re actually succeeding?” And I love the second half of that question, because the pace of change and our awareness of it is really, really hard to grasp unless we’re being purposeful.
It’s like that nephew that you haven’t seen in a year and a half and you’re like, “Wow! You’ve grown so much.” We realize it because there’s a giant gap. But if we were hanging out with that nephew every single week, we’d become a lot less aware of how much they’ve grown.
And this idea around this whole podcast is the idea of quality inflation. And we’ll go deep into it. But basically, the bar for even average performance goes up every year. And if you’re seeking extraordinary, like all of the followers of The ONE Thing, right, it’s the surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary success, not average success, that’s on a rocket ship. That goes up even faster every year. The bar for being competitive and for being the very best.
So, I wanna dive in and give you some strategies for understanding it, for being aware of it and actually combat it. And just to make sure I’ve got your complete attention, I’ll share one of my favorite quotes from W. Edward Deming, and it’s around change. And he says, “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” And that’s just a truth, whether you’re battling for resources out in the wild, right? It’s the classic, may the fittest survive.
Now, in business, it’s the same. You could have been the innovator, you could have been the newcomer that knocked the old king off the hill. But when you look up at a certain point, if you don’t continue to adapt to your customers’ needs, if you don’t continue to innovate, someone could be coming for you. So, we have to measure this, we have to be aware of quality inflation, and we have to be tackling it purposely. Let’s dive in and find some great strategies.
I’m Jay Papasan and this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
There was a guy named Leigh Van Valen, and he was an environmental biologist. And back in 1973, he wrote a paper, and it was around the idea that all species have to evolve, proactively evolve, just to keep their spot in the hierarchy of an environment. So if you think about the fox that is hunting on the savanna, if it doesn’t get better and better, it will get out-competed by the other predators. And eventually, it will have to move to a place where it has an advantage or it will fade away.
But this idea that you have to work harder just to stay in the same place and what’s at risk could be the loss of your environment or extinction, basically. So, evolve or perish, that’s the short version of that. So, we owe Leigh Van Valen that idea, and he coined it the Red Queen Hypothesis.
So, if you remember back to your days, right, maybe you read a little Lewis Carroll, his second work, Into the Looking Glass, there’s this great scene in there where Alice is running as fast as they can with the Red Queen, but they’re not getting anywhere. And I’ll just read some of it. It’s all copyright-free these days. “‘Well, in our country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’ ‘A slow sort of country,’ said the Queen. ‘Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.'”
And so that’s the Red Queen basically saying in this world, this alternate universe that they’ve fallen into in the looking glass, everything moves so fast that even if you’re running, you just don’t get anywhere. That’s just to stay in place. You have to run twice as fast. And that’s why he called it this kind of evolve or perish. If we want to keep our place in a world that’s evolving around us, we have to run faster than the world is.
So, when I read it, I thought it was just kind of part of the fantasy. But it’s only later, when you’ve had a few years of business, you know, a few decades of experience in the workplace, that you realize it’s actually a great metaphor for the competitive environment of work or anything that’s truly a competitive environment. The best at anything is a moving target. Every single year, the curve changes. Some years it might be easier, but most years, as the competition evolves, it’s gonna get tougher.
So, the work required to be the best today is not what will be required a few years from now or a few years later. As much as you improve, you have to realize people are improving around you.
Now, I’ll go back to another of those masterminds. I remember when technology was first coming into the real estate industry, Gary asked the question, “Write it down, 10 years from now, what is the company gonna be like that replaces us?” And at that moment in time, everybody believed that technology company was going to be the biggest threat to the industry or the biggest mover in the industry. And then, he just posed the question, “Well, how do we become the company that will put us out of business?”
And you can ask that same question, right? Thinking along the lines of the Red Queen Hypothesis and quality inflation, how do I become the person who eventually might take my job? How do I become the person who eventually will be my boss? How do I become the business that might be trying to take my place in the marketplace? They’re coming at it without any attachment to the past. The things that got you here, awesome, love it, totally valid, but they may not be the things that’ll get you to the next place and they may not even be enough to keep you in place.
Every single day, you have two choices. You can choose to be comfortable where you are or step into discomfort, to step into change, to make sure that you’re evolving so that you can grow with the competition. And at the very least, hold your place if that’s where you want to be. But hopefully, you’re asking the question, how can I outpace, especially in the world of business? Because growing is one of the best recipes for survival. Standing in place is not ideal because you never know what’s gonna happen. But if I continually commit to growth, that is the best chance for long-term, not just success, but also survival.
So, how do I take all this information and put it into a framework? So, I’m gonna give you the big ideas, then we’ll have a quick break. And then, we’ll go through five very, kind of, specific strategies that we coach people towards so that they are battling quality inflation and hopefully not just stay in pace but getting ahead.
So, my first kind of call to action is be aware. If you’re in an industry that publicly measures results, start paying attention to the people that are in the top quartile or at the very top. And then, ask the question, what is the play that they are running? And is it a play that I can aspire to or even start running today?
So, it’s about modeling the competition. That’s what we call it, modeling. And it is absolutely, if you are seeking extraordinary results, one of the things that you will build the habit of doing. If you listen to my interview with Jenny Wood, she’s a master at this, right? Don’t be jealous of the competition. Copy the competition. Ask what is it that they are doing and going, “Wow, my rival is so good in meetings. How are they preparing? How are they showing up differently? And is it something that I also can do?”
And what you want to do is break this down. You want to break it down into a checklist, into an operational playbook. And it doesn’t have to be super complicated. Like a lot of what I learned about public speaking – and I’ve talked about it on various podcasts – was I observed the best of the best. I asked them questions. How do you prepare? And then I started with someone else’s formula before I arrived at mine. I know that if I’m going to be on stage for an hour and I prepare for four hours, I will do really well. And I’ve sometimes prepared a little bit more, sometimes a little less, but generally speaking it’s a four-to-one ratio. That is my success formula for public speaking.
Now, do I need to reevaluate that? It’s been a while since I’ve benchmarked. Benchmarking is when you look around you and you ask the question, who is setting the benchmark for this thing I’m seeking to do? You don’t need to do this for everything. This is The ONE Thing. What is the skillset? What is the talent trait? What is the area that the people in my industry, in my career, my job, seem to be excelling at. Ask the question, what is it they’re doing?
And sometimes you won’t know, but you can ask, you can be curious. A lot of people are intent on sharing, that they’re totally open to it. They might surprise you. But the point here is you’re going to start setting, not just health goals and wealth goals and business goals, you’re gonna set personal and professional development goals. It’s a category that if you don’t have on your goal set, you should. Where is it that I need to grow personally or professionally, so that I’m beating quality inflation and hopefully staying ahead of the rest? We are going to watch for and benchmark the best. And you have to ask, will that work for me?
We recently ran a play in one of my businesses by one of my, I want to say mentors and friends, Amy Porterfield. And I remember talking to our marketing director. I just said, “I love the play. The play is coming from one of the best that does this in the industry.” And one of the things I looked at, there were a lot of moving parts. I said, “How many team members does she have?” And my marketing director goes, “Well, 15, 20, if you look at all of them, It’s like, “Well, we have less than half of that.” So, we can’t currently run the full play that one of the best in our industry is running, but what are the subsets of it that we can?
So, when you break it down, you still have to make it kind of fun-size it to wherever you are in your skill set and in your team, but you can model that success and try to make sure that you’re at least emulating the best. And in the emulation, I bet you’ll find a little bit of innovation as well.
All right. So, with all of that preamble, let’s take a quick break. And when we come back, we’ll get into the five strategies for you to be quality and legit.
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All right, welcome back folks. Let’s dive into the five strategies. So, the first one is gonna be read for what you need. And I love the name. It comes from one of our coaches at The ONE Thing, Chris Dixon. It’s something that I’ve been doing and he kind of gave it a label. And it’s a short process that we ask people to do. We’ve done it in our group coaching and in our one-on-one coaching, but you identify your number one goal. Like it might be a five-year goal, it might be a one-year goal, but I am seeking to do this personally or professionally.
Now you have to ask the question, what are the building blocks? What are the 20%? And when we say 20%, the minority of the things that we do, the action we take, actually give us the majority of our results. Everything doesn’t matter equally. So, when you look at your number one goal, what are the 20% things that people do to be really successful there that you may already be doing?
And then, ask the question of that, maybe two or three ideas, right, the two or three things between you and extraordinary success – because it’s never a long list, folks. A lot of it is boring repetition and getting better and better at a handful of things – which of those do I have the biggest opportunity for growth? And so, you’ve done three steps, starting with your number one objective, your number one goal, kind of breaking it down, like what are the buckets of skills or abilities that make that kind of attainment possible? And based on that, where do I have the biggest opportunity?
And some of us don’t always have the best ability to self-assess. I work with and live with some extreme optimists, and I also work with and live with some people that are a little bit more skeptical and pessimistic about their performance. They might be a little harder on themselves. So, this might also be a good idea to bounce it off a coworker, to bounce it off your boss, to bounce it off a mentor, right? All of those can still be done for free. “Hey, this is what I’m seeking to do. I think these are the ingredients. I think this is the one that had the biggest opportunity. Do you agree? Right?”
Now, very easy to do, go get on the internet. Go look for some authorities around that and have they written books? Like what would be the four or five most impactful books that people who are accomplished in that area say that they’ve read? With a little bit of internet sleuthing, almost everything can be found today. Heck, AI might be able to get you there even faster. But the point is, can you identify a short reading list? And now, for free, go to the library and get those books. I know our library also allows us to check out audio books, if audio books is your thing. Now, I can go and begin this process of self-learning.
So, if you want to start there, you’re going to make a goal to read just one book a quarter around this idea that you have an opportunity to grow. Maybe it’s in your marketing skills. Maybe it’s around public speaking and presentations. Whatever it is that you need to kind of sharpen the saw, you’re going to build a plan and that starts with learning.
Now, reading books or listening to them, it’s good to have the knowledge in your head, but change starts with action. Curiosity is where we go and it gets us to knowledge. Knowledge has to be turned into action to get results and progress. Okay? Don’t forget that part. So, you have to commit at the end of that book to implementing at least one of the ideas. It might be an idea of the book or the book gave you the idea, “Ah, I should,” right? You hear those words in your head, “Wow, I should.”
I like to create a parking lot at the back of every book I’m reading or on a journal. And I write down the ideas that I think might be worth implementing. And then, you can identify the number one and go do something about it. But if you’re doing that four times a year around an area you have opportunity, you’re identifying from someone who’s a proven performer in that area, and you’re getting a great idea or a great strategy, and then you’re putting it into use, you will start propelling yourself forward.
And I guarantee you, maybe 1% of the world is that purposeful. Maybe 1% of the world. And you immediately will be on a better trajectory. It may take you a while to realize it, right? It doesn’t show up overnight, it’s exponential. The dominoes may feel a little small, but they’re growing and you have to trust the process.
Now, if that all seems too small, four books a year, because you’re already a reader, realize I’ve done the math, I wrote about it in my newsletter, The Twenty Percenter, and you can read 36 books a year. I try to read more just reading 30 minutes a day. If you break down the average length of a book and the average speed of someone reading, if you can just set aside 30 minutes a day, maybe in the morning time, you’ll not only have time to read those four books, but you could be also reading around other areas that you want to either be entertained or just seek to escape. I love a little book reading for escape and also just for personal growth and knowledge.
So, if four seems too small, 30 minutes a day will get you up to 36. If you just follow the averages, your average and the book sizes are average. War and Peace may set you back a little bit, right? Ray Dalio’s Principles may set you back, these big books, but the idea is the same. A small dose of reading every day, and then a little bit of implementation on the other side will get you ahead. So, that’s strategy number one, read for what you need.
Number two, courses. This kind of blew up during COVID, like it was already happening. We’ve been tracking it for eight or nine years. All of the platforms out there where just about anybody who has really interesting knowledge can record a course and you can buy it online and you take it on your own time. So, the world is full of it. You can go into giant platforms. I won’t name them because I don’t want to recommend them necessarily. That’s up to you and your learning style. But there are lots of free and very low-cost courses out there that can be very effective for getting you where you want to go. They can speed you up.
Like I tend to be an introvert, but my first question is who? Who knows the most about this subject? Because they’re gonna give you the best answers for almost any topic. I guarantee you, if you look long enough, there is someone who has nerded out on it and they’ve devoted their life to that thing. They’ve read every book in that section of the library. They’ve gone to every course. They’ve already done all of the research for you. And most of them these days are leaving clues on their podcast, on their blog, or they’ve written about it somewhere else. But they will make those recommendations happen fast for you.
Do a little Googling, look at what your peers have done, and maybe look for something that’s just on the edge of your industry or in a parallel industry and go learn from them. That’s where a lot of the giant leaps, I would say for $1,000 or less, as even once a year investment in yourself, you can probably make a great leap forward and some set of skills that will serve you going forward. That becomes your new floor, right? The skills we acquire, if we continue to use them, don’t tend to move backwards that rapidly, but they do kind of become our new floor.
So, that’s strategy number two, go out, find a course. It could be free, it could be in person, it could be online. Generally, you can find something truly exceptional for $1,000 or less.
Back to the free category. Number three, find a mentor. Mentors are all around you. But a lot of people aren’t doing, is one, being aware that people who are successful tend to want to share. They want to pour into people, especially people who are striving. I’ve written about this idea of like, game sees game. Like I look up and you see people that are striving for mastery in whatever it is they do. They’re curious, they’re hungry, they’re taking action, they’re the kid on the side of the road. Instead of calling AAA, they’re actually starting to push their car into the gas station.
And I remember telling my son once, I was like, “You see that? Like if someone’s sitting in the car and they’re on their phone, and they have a flat, I’m a lot less likely to stop. But if they’re out working on it, they’ve already taken steps to help themselves. I am really eager to turn and do a Huey and go back and help.” And I’ve done it lots of times. I’ve helped people push their cars into gas stations. But the thing that usually triggers me is to see that they’re investing in themselves.
That’s why this is three, even though it’s free, and not number two. If a mentor sees that you are striving, you’re reading books, maybe taking courses, you’re investing in your own success, they’re a lot more likely to invest their time in you. But then you have to ask. There’s this great quote, and I’ll just read it. “‘Asking for help is a superpower anyone can have, but only some use. It is brave to ask for help. Asking for help is the first step towards finding a mentor. Mentors can help us change our lives if we let them.” That’s from someone named Alexi Pappas. Don’t remember where I read it, but it’s one of those things I just collected along the way as a reminder to myself.
If I’m hitting a wall, if I’m hitting a ceiling of achievement, I may just have to look up at someone who’s made it to the other side and ask for a leg up, Hey, how did you get around this? How did you circumvent this challenge? How did you get over it, under it, around it, break through it? There are mentors out there if you ask and you demonstrate that you are willing to invest in yourself, that will invest their time in you.
Here’s the key to a mentor. Ask them, tell them where you are and then ask the question, what would you do if you were me? Ask the question, who do you know that I should know? Those are easy things for a mentor to give. But if they say, “I want you to read this book,” if they say, “I want you to do this thing,” even if you don’t think it’s right for you, the last thing you need to do with your mentor, especially early in the relationship, is argue with them. Go try it.
Say, “You know what? I didn’t think this was gonna work. I gave it my all. I tried it for three weeks in a row. And I’m telling you, I just feel like maybe it’s not the right strategy for me. Either I’m doing it wrong or maybe I need a different strategy. What do you think?” Go back to them, maybe a little bit humbler, but they’re not gonna see that as failure. They might see, “Oh, man. I’m sorry, I gave you the wrong advice. I should have asked more questions.” You might find them apologizing, but it’s important that you try the strategy. If your car’s out of gas, get out, start the pushing process. They will, then, jump in and help you out.
Number four, again, kind of in the free category, is get an accountability partner. This can be a group. You can join a group that’s committed to this thing, right? You can join a club or you can find an individual. Again, there’s lots of options and mastermind groups and things like that, they can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
So, I don’t know if this is gonna be free for you, right? It’s the chess club that’s a part of your church or your community or your synagogue, whatever that is. Or if it’s a group that is a mastermind that actually has a real value proposition, it takes a lot of money to run, and they’re actually asking for you to make an investment. That’s up to you but they exist. It could be an individual or it could be a group.
I remember when I was first trying to build the habit of working out after we had our kids, we had two kids less than 14 months apart, and you look up, and you’re like, “Wow, how did my body change so much in the last four years?” It’s because you didn’t get any sleep and you’re probably eating crap food while you’re feeding baby food to your kids. That was me.
And when we committed to get back in shape, before I could get a trainer, before I could do any of those things, I got a workout buddy. And you know how this works. We both agreed, this guy named Penley, said, “Great, let’s agree on these days, we will meet at this gym at 6 a.m.” And because I expected Penly to be waiting on me, I got my butt out of bed no matter how tired I was and drug myself to the gym. Because when you’re with an accountability partner or part of an accountability group, one of the wonderful things that pulls you forward is you don’t wanna let people down.
And that is the key to that kind of success strategy. You find someone or a group, you’re transparent enough to let them know you’re on that journey. And guess what? They will notice when you don’t show up. “Hey, I missed you yesterday. Hey, you weren’t in the group meeting last week. What’s going on?” And there’s all kinds of evidence out there that people want not only to be long to a group, a group of two or a group of many, but they mostly feel it when they’re missed.
When someone says, “I missed you yesterday, the workout was harder without you.” One, it makes us feel connected to the world and more committed to being a part of that group. So, find a group, find an individual that is a part of the journey of excellence, beating quality inflation that you want to be a part of. That’s your strategy number four, accountability partner/partners.
Number five. This is probably the best and most proven. You may have experienced it earlier in your life, or if you’re one of the few, you’ve got one today, is having a coach. I’ve had lots of them over the years. My first coach was Glenn. If you’re out there listening, hey, Glenn changed my life. But I went into it with very specific needs, how to navigate a corporate environment. And I, frankly, was weak – I’m an English French major – on reading P&Ls and balance sheets and I wanted help. And he had a reputation for being great at that.
So, it was kind of like, read for what you need. You also wanna coach for what you need. I was going in, seeking a coaching relationship around very specific areas that I knew I had challenges in and wanted to grow. That way, it allowed me to interview the coach. It wasn’t a generic interview, I’d be like, what experience do you have in these? Do you have any success stories? And we were able to match.
From Glenn, I’ve sought out higher and higher quality coaches, and they were growing as well. My next coach is gonna be a fellow named Barrett, who was way ahead of me at one time, had built a very, very large media company, and I’m hoping that he can give me insights at my stage of the journey that will get me there faster. And even though this next coach will be on a dollar for dollar, the most expensive investment I’ve made in my personal development, because I’ve been following and implementing the advice of the other coaches, it’s also the smallest percentage of my average income. That’s actually what happens when you make that investment and act on the insights that you get.
So, coaching is huge. That’s all I will say to you. I remember hearing Steven Pressfield, one of my favorite authors, talking about this idea in the Jewish tradition that over every blade of grass, there’s an angel that is whispering, grow, grow, grow. And I remember I just had to almost pull the car off the road when I heard him say that. I was like, “Oh, that is so significant. That’s a coach. That’s what a coach is doing.” You’re meeting with them regularly and their encouragement to you is to grow, to grow, to grow. And it’s like a prayer. It is like some sort of spiritual thing that happens when someone is in your corner, helping you navigate the lonely times, the tough times, and come out the other side.
It’s a really powerful thing. I hope that if you haven’t done it, you will put it on your future goals as something to explore. We obviously do it here. I wouldn’t be a part of a coaching company if I didn’t believe in it fundamentally. Hopefully, you’re hearing that in the emotion in my voice when I talk about these people who’ve changed my life.
So, whatever your approach, I gave you five, read for what you need, take courses, find a mentor, find an accountability partner or group, or get an actual coach, seek coaching accountability. You need to, then, take what you’re learning, turn those insights into a model for success, and then act on it.
That is kind of where the rubber hits the road. You can be the smartest person in the world, but if you’re not acting on those insights and knowledge, you’re not going to be beating quality inflation. Do you have a system for capturing those ideas, the 20% action, the quintessence of that thing, putting it in a place where you can look it up. It’s like, “Ah, I know I’ve written some notes around negotiating.”
Like if I’m going into an environment, whether it’s with an attorney, on a sales, whatever that is where we have to negotiate, I would love to go back and refresh myself on what are the five or six things that I believe to be true, my approach to negotiating. So, I created a little document and I just titled it My Mental Models. And when I felt something was a truth that I didn’t want to have to relearn the hard way, I would go in and write just two or three lines. And it was my truth about that thing, my approach about that thing, and periodically, maybe annually, at most quarterly, I’m gonna update that, and that becomes my manual for success, professionally and personally.
So, all of this, hopefully, is a recipe for you, five strategies for how you get the answers, you get the solutions that you can then implement to beat quality inflation. Because going all the way back to the beginning of this episode, you have to look up and realize you may be failing so slowly you actually think you’re succeeding right now.
That’s what quality inflation does. The competition will sneak up on you, and you’ll look up and go, “Wow, how did I go from first to the middle of the pack?” And it can feel like it happened overnight. But if we’re building habits, we’re building systems around constant professional and personal growth, we have an ability to kind of stay ahead of quality inflation and maybe ahead of our competitors out there.
So, at the end of the day, I’m gonna kind of close this up. I once heard Gary, in an environment that was really chaotic, like he has this ability to just nail things. He just said, “You need to see change as a strategy, not a threat.” Change is a strategy, not a threat. That’s the Red Queen hypothesis. If we aren’t evolving, if we aren’t changing, we could lose our place and at worst become extinct in the sense that our business is no longer competitive, and it may just be out of business. So, we have to see change as a strategy. We have to see personal growth as something that we’re focused on and professional growth as well.
So, my challenge for you this week, we always give a challenge, I want you to identify your biggest opportunity to grow, the area where you know, maybe you’ve been avoiding it because it’s painful, it’s not easy, it hurts your ego, what is your biggest opportunity for personal or professional growth around your big goal?
And I want you to take the first step towards improving it. It might be going out and identifying the books that you’re going to read. It might be going out and resourcing the course that you can invest in. It might be that you’re going out and asking, is there a mentor hiding in plain sight if I could just ask for help? Maybe you’re looking for a group or an accountability partner or even a coach. I want you to take the first step, which is to choose between those and then start the process of researching your answer so that you can then implement it. That’s the challenge for the week. I hope you’ve enjoyed the show on quality inflation.
Next week, I’m bringing in my friend Tyler Elstrom. He runs a huge ADHD community. He has documented and coached many, many folks around success and productivity. And he’s going to give you a handful of strategies, really concrete things you can do to improve your performance on a daily basis. Frankly, I think it’s good for everyone, even if you don’t have ADHD. But if you’re a parent of some like I am, then definitely listen to it. It’ll give you great strategies for helping those kids with homework and college work, whatever it is they need to do. That’s it for this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Remember, identify that thing and take the first step, and we’ll see you next week.
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