[0:00]Number one reason for success is people focus on things that have high potential consequences. Number one reason for failure is people focus on things that have low or no potential consequences. Exactly what Joe was saying earlier the famous drug quote, very worst use of time is to uh work intently on something that need not be done at all. I've dedicated my life to being a small and medium-sized entrepreneur and I've devoted the second half of my life to helping other people to be successful. small and medium-sized business owners. And uh Carl Schram of the um uh Marian and and cofin foundation, the paramount foundation on entrepreneurship wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal two days ago and what he said was that there have been very few empirical studies into what actually makes an a successful business that most of what is taught in the entrepreneurship faculties of the universities is nonsense. In fact, if you he said that there's something like 1,687 professors of entrepreneurship and their primary focus is drinking their own bath water and telling that entrepreneurs have to start have a business plan. And if you have a business plan you'll be successful and they spend two years in their faculties teaching people how to set business plans and 49 out of 50 businesses are started without a business plan. Including some of the most successful businesses in the world today. So we are now just starting to learn what we really need to do to build successful businesses. And what Joe is doing here is absolutely marvelous because it can save you years of hard work and hundreds even thousands of hours of hard work to um understand how to do it much much faster. to to shortcut. We say there's always a learning curve in anything and what we want to do is we want to jump the learning curve. We don't want to spend years and years learning what we need to learn to reach a certain level of income. And so I've major now in the last few years on doing seminars and talking and books and articles and programs for owners and would be owners of small and medium sized businesses. Now, I've got 45 minutes so I'm going to have to condense what sometimes I share in seminars for days, but I understand you're some of the smartest people in the world, um, so that you can take a lot of information in a short period of time. Is that true? Did anybody not understand the question? So, I'm going to try to um bottom line several of the concepts. Uh, one of the first concepts which I thought was interesting, was uh a little story that was in the papers uh recently. Warren Buffett, who was uh one of the richest men in the world and Bill Gates who is the richest man in the world and Bill Gates senior were at a dinner party and the three of them were good friends and they were talking. And uh uh gentleman came up to them and and said, you know, I was looking at you and you gentleman are very successful. What would you say is the most important quality of success? And all three, according to a bystander, all three broke off their conversation and turned and simultaneously said focus. Focus is the most important requirement for success in our fast moving world today. If you can focus, you can succeed and if you cannot, you cannot. It's almost a black and white thing. Well, I thought that was interesting because the way Joe and I met is I put together a program some years ago called the focal point program which basically brought in business owners like yourselves and taught them to focus and we spent three years going through every single aspect of that get 82 exercises that dealt with family and business and marketing and products and service and competition and positioning and it was focus, focus, focus. And my offer, which is not as good as Joe's, but my offer was that you will double your income and double your time off within 12 months or there'll be no charge for this program. And I never had to give a refund. In fact, many people double and triple their income within 30 days. Just by learning to focus and just by thinking in terms of focus. So it's really, really important. Uh I read an article about uh myself. It was a very successful entrepreneur in New Zealand and the article was sent to me last week. I'm reading this article. He said the turning point in his life was when he went to a Brian Tracy seminar and learned how to focus. He was broke, he was unemployed, he had no money and he walked out of the seminar, a completely different person and he had written goals. He then looked around and as it happens, he saw an article on coffee shops and Starbucks success in the United States. And it said Coffee shops are good business to be in. Because more and more people like the idea of a specialty coffee shop and if it has a Wi-Fi, then they go there, it becomes a social center and so on. He knew nothing about coffee. And before the dust hit settled, he owned 80 coffee shops in Australia and New Zealand. And then he says he got into a divorce and I had to sell it for $50 million to share the proceeds with his wife. But he didn't sell he did not share, he did not sell off the worldwide rights to it, so he's rebuilding. Anyway, his point was at the end of the article, they said, well what would you say to aspiring entrepreneurs who want to be successful? And he said, just two things. He said, focus and fail fast. Focus and fail fast. Learn quickly, try something new. And I thought I'd just pass that on because it's sort of what I have discovered over the years is the faster you fail and learn the faster you succeed. You actually learn to succeed by failing. You know, Thomas J. Watson's famous line, if you want to increase your rate successful you must double your rate of failure because success lies on the far side of failure. Well, over the years I've done a good deal of reading and I came across a concept that I want to share with you and we were talking about this a little bit earlier. Uh and the concept is the question is what is the most valuable and highest paid work that you do. It's a really interesting question because when I heard the question I didn't know what the answer was. What do you think the highest paid and most valuable work is that you do. And the answer is think thinking is the most valuable work. Now, I am the best selling author in the world in time management. Also on goals, also on some other subjects, but but I began studying time management about 30 years ago and I came across a word in my studies and the word was consequences. And what it basically said is that something is important if it has big potential consequences. And something is unimportant if it has low or no potential consequences. Number one reason for success is people focus on things that have high potential consequences. Number one reason for failure is people focus on things that have low or no potential consequences. Exactly what Joe was saying earlier, the famous drucker quote, very worst use of time is to uh work intently on something that need not be done at all. And one of the things that is holding back entrepreneurs, business owners, is killing them by the way and it's wiping out an entire generation is this obsession with technology. I've I see people that working with their phone. It's almost like drug addicts are main line. They cannot stop staring at their screen. They cannot stop pushing their buttons. I hate to say there are people in this room that had that problem, but uh the fact is that this obsession with looking at the screen and staying connected is killing people because it it stops them from focusing. You cannot focus if you are distracted like an attention deficit disordered dog. So you're constantly ringing and responding to bells almost like a crazy person in a in a toy factory. Um And so so just as a quick aside, if thinking is the most important thing you do because of the consequences of thinking determine the entire quality of your life, then the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life. And so the more time that you spend thinking and thinking well and thinking clearly, the uh more successful you are. Over the years, I've worked with some very powerful people, billionaires and multibillionaires. people who are on the Forbes 400 list repeatedly over and over. And I've had a chance to be with them during crisis. And what times where something was happening that was serious. It was a it was a major problem. And I noticed that they all had one quality in common is they all went calm. It's just they went calm. People around them were angry and upset and and worried about what happened and who did it and so on. And they would just go calm. Almost like like like a would go calm. And they knew and I learned later, I didn't know why this was. I admired it, but I didn't know why it was. is that when your mind is calm, your your your entire, the thinking and deciding brain functions at the highest level, like turning up all the lights on a dimmer switch. It's functioning like a Christmas tree. But when you get upset and angry, what happens is your thinking reverts to your limp or emotional system and your ability to think clearly, diminishes dramatically and you make a lot of mistakes. That's why you are facing a difficult situation, you have to use every skill, trick, game, whatever it is, stay calm. And that's why they teach you to meditate. And they find that meditators in business are far more successful because they they can automatically trigger their mind into the calm of meditation when they're facing a crisis. It enables them to think with greater clarity. Now a couple of years ago, a man named Danielman, a very fine man from from reading him, uh who would want to Nobel Prize in psychology and neuroscience? Uh wrote a book called thinking fast and slow. And this book was a very esoteric book and I don't recommend that you read it. It's 500 pages of hard sloging. I will give you the essence of I will give you the essence. I do the reading pass it on. I I will give you the essence of the book. He said that there are two types of thinking. There's fast thinking and slow thinking. Fast thinking, it's intuitive, it's intuitive, it's automatic, it's reactionary. It's I think of it very much as how you would drive through busy traffic. You're not giving a lot of thought you're just interacting. He said the other type of thinking is slow thinking and slow thinking is where you just slow down the thinking and take time to think through issues. Now, if an issue has little or no consequences, then you can think quickly. You know, what do you have for lunch? What do you pick up on your plate from the buffet? Uh where do you park your car? These are the the the the consequences of these decisions are uh almost non-existent. But if it's a major issue, then you say wait a minute, this requires slow thinking. Here is this contention that made the book of a bestseller is that the biggest problem that people have is that where they should use slow thinking, they use fast thinking. And entrepreneurs are extremely guilty of that. is we make important decisions that have long potential consequences in including affecting the lives of people and costing money and even leading to the bankruptcy of a business, we make those decisions with fast thinking when in reality we should be making them with slow thinking.
[13:07]Now, I'm a great drucker fan as as many people are. And Mike was saying uh something about hiring the right people and hiring the right people to work with you is very important. And the biggest mistakes you make is hiring fast. You hire people quickly. Uh the best the best decisions you make are you really take your time to hire slowly. And Peter Drucker said that fast people decisions are invariably wrong people decisions. Hiring an important person for an important job has tremendous potential consequences. So therefore, you need to take a long time. One of the things I teach which is in my book how to hire and keep the best people is a simple rule that will increase your hiring accuracy to 90%. And I've taught it to Fortune 500 companies and they make it a rule within their companies to use Brian's rule is to this is the you cannot hire except by doing this. And I didn't invent it. I just studied the hiring practices of the companies that hire the best people and keep them the longest and they all at the beginning have a certain process that they follow and they follow it religiously no exceptions. And so their accuracy in hiring goes up to 90% or better because they think more. And interesting professor at the University of San Diego last year wrote a book on sort of not sort of thinking fast and slow but it was on decision making. What he said is the longer that you take to make an important decision, the better the decision will be. The higher quality decision. And Lord Acton once said, when it is necessary um when it is not necessary to decide, it is necessary not to decide. In other words, he the professor said, buy as much time as you can for a decision, put it off. If you can put it off for a day, uh a weekend, uh a week, a month, put it off. Some of the best decisions that you make will be decisions that you will allow to steep for a while like water in tea. So thinking is the most important important thing you do. We call it thinking fast and slow. So, remember anything that is important that has long-term consequences is a candidate for slow thinking, discussing it with other people, sitting quietly, going for a walk, letting it radiate in your mind, sleeping on it, you know, they say, if it's a big deal, sleep on it.
[16:16]So there's three thinking tools I want to give you and then seven ideas. So the three ways of thinking, which I start off, the first way I start off every seminar is what I call zero-based thinking. And everybody who knows me for any period of time knows that I harp on this. Zero-based thinking is comes from zero-based accounting where you instead of increasing an expense in the next accounting period, you ask, should we be engaging in this expense at all? Now with zero-based thinking, you look at your entire world and you ask this question, knowing what I now know, is there anything that I am doing that I would not start up again today if I had to do it over. This is one of the greatest thinking tools I've ever learned because in a time of turbulence, you always have an answer for this question. Each person has an answer. Some people have multiple answers. There's lots of things that they're doing today that knowing what they now know, they wouldn't get into today. They wouldn't start them up. Products they wouldn't offer, people they wouldn't hire, investments they wouldn't make. And these are the greatest drugs in life. These are sort of like a sea anchor. You know that you drop it and it drags it slows down the boat. Well, how do you tell if you have a zero-based thinking situation? And many of you were asked to write your problems, challenges, opportunities. The answer is stress. Is whenever you experience chronic stress. It's something that buzzes around. When Joe's talking or somebody else is talking, you're busy thinking about that. You drive around and you think about it, keeps you awake at night. It's something that pisses you off. It's something that irritates you and angers you and frustrates you. Whenever you have chronic, which means ongoing continuous, this is a candidate for zero-based thinking. So you ask yourself the question, if I was not not in this situation, knowing what I now know, would I get into it again today? If the answer is no, the next question is, how do I get out and how fast? How do I get out and how fast? If ever the answer comes back that I would not get into this again today, it's too late to resolve it. It's over. The only question now is how long do you suffer? How much how much emotional suffering, how much financial suffering do you make before you walk? And so the most important requirement for practicing zero base thing which a lot of people don't like to practice is courage. I call it the sea word. You need the sea word. You need to have the courage to look at every part of your life and say, is there anything that I'm doing that knowing what I now know I wouldn't get into. Now the starting point of zero-based thinking is always with your relationships and those are both personal and business. Whenever you given this talk by the way, within a short period of time, divorce takes place all over that city. People go home and say, jeez, if I hadn't married this person, I would never marry again today. Uh and that's what's making me miserable. And many people are working their heads off on the outside to achieve success, but inside they're frustrated and unhappy because they're in a situation that knowing what they now know they would never get into. So I call this a Quink analysis and I'm going to ask you to do this for the rest of your life and do help other people do it. KKW knowing what I now know. Do a quick analysis on everything. Do a quick analysis in my company what they we say is we look at every single person and on a regular basis and we say, if we had not hired this person and they walked into today to apply for their current job, knowing what we now know would we hire them. If the answer is no, they're gone that day. There's a little rule by the way that in one of my books, it says the first the best time to fire a person is the first time it crosses your mind. And because after that it's only pain and suffering. And if the longer you keep them in place, the more likely they are to sue you. And they the longer they sue you, the more it's going to cost. So therefore, if you if you find that you've made a mistake, belly up to the bar, have the courage to admit I made a mistake and cut your losses. There was a great book by um an author called the Zecum. Some years ago, and it was principles of success. And anybody who's in finance is probably read the book because a very successful New York finance here. And he was talking about the nomes of Zec, Zec, uh whoever they are and the rules that they go by. And he said the number one rule for success in in business, personal lives cut your losses. When you realize you made a mistake, bad investment, bad hire, bad relationship, cut your losses quickly. And what do they say in Las Vegas? You know, cut your losses, let's your win's ride.
[22:27]So in life that's what we do and the faster you cut your losses, fail fast, the uh faster you can start doing things that are much more productive. The other the second area has to do with every part of your business. Joe and I were talking about what I think is a revolutionary new field. It's not revolutionary and it's not new, but it's business model innovation. And it's based on the concept that whatever business model you're using today is probably obsolete. Uh if you're in any kind of a business that uses technology to market it, especially in information-based business, knowledge-based business, consulting, services, training, anything else. Chances are your business is obsolete. Uh the way that you and and and and the business model is your method, your step-by-step process of generating profitability. Now, there are some companies that struggle along, struggle along, struggle along, then find a new business model and the next year they're business is up five or 10 times. Profits are just overwhelming. They're living in big houses on the hill, driving caduceks and flying private jets and you say, what on earth did they do? They change the business model. And if you don't change your business model, if it's the wrong business model, two things are going to happen. Your competitors are going to come up with a new business model and each your lunch and or you're going to go broke. So, it doesn't mean that your business model is wrong. it just means that you must be open to the possibility that your business model is obsolete and that just means that there is a better business model. There's a superior business model and your job is to find it. And uh again, there's no fixed answer to it, but I think that this is a great area of thought. I think this is a great area and it's sort of like a tool for you to have. I wonder if I need to change my business model, which is is your way of generating sales, producing and delivering products and services getting payments. and achieving profitability. Well, so coming back to the second is look at anything in your business. Look at your products, look at your services, look at your people, look at the way that you advertise market and ask, is there anything that you're doing today that knowing what you're now know, you wouldn't start up again today? And the only question that you ever ask is, does it work? Does it work? Does it work? If it's not working and and you and you can tweak it then that's fine. If it's not working, have the courage to admit this isn't working and abandon it. Now the third area has to do with investments in zero-based thinking, investments of time which people hate to lose. Someone said earlier that people hate to lose. It's one of the greatest emotions. We hate to lose time if we've invested a lot of time in a course of action, a project, a business, a relationship. The second is is emotion. If we put a lot of emotion into a course of action, a product, a course of study, a relationship or money. We hate to admit that we made a mistake and that would seem like a good idea at the time has turned out not to be a good idea and knowing what I now know, I wouldn't get into it and have the courage to cut your losses and run. The reason I teach this first is because you can't make any progress unless you clear the decks. Unless you get this 800 pound gorilla that's holding you back out of your life. And then many companies that I've worked with literally transformed became multi-million dollar companies When everybody said, all right, we're going to go through and do a quick analysis on this whole company and realize that half the things they're doing and half the people working here, um are not the right people for us at this time. And half the products that we're offering aren't selling and never will. They've been replaced by better, cheaper, faster products in the marketplace. So cut your losses. What happens when a big big company gets into trouble? They bring in a quick analysis man and he comes in with a chain saw and he shuts down all the factories and all the stores that are not profitable and the company goes from profits to losses in one year. Anyway, the second thinking tool that I teach people is uh WPO thinking, which is worst possible outcome. In everything that you're doing, always ask yourself, what is the worst possible outcome of this course of action? And what and can I survive it if if it were to occur and uh if not, what could I do to make sure it doesn't happen? One of the number one reasons that we worry about anything in life is because of fear. And when you ask yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen in this particular situation? And then if you can say, all right, if that happens, I'll live with it. Then your worry goes away and your mind goes clear and calm. And now you say, no, what can I make do to make sure that the worst does not happen? And then you become proactive and you take charge of your life. The third thinking tool, I hope I'm not going too fast for it. The third thinking tool is called the principle of constraints. And it's one of the most important thinking tools ever discovered. It says between you and anything that you want to accomplish, there is always a constraint, a limiting factor or a choke point that sets the speed at which you accomplish your goal.
[29:22]So I was just talking doing a teleconference and and a few minutes ago. So the question I said is, let's always set the goal of double in our income. Want to double your income? Okay, want to double your income, then why isn't your income already twice as high? Now in business, we don't think of doubling our income, we think of doubling our profitability. What we're concerned with is net cash flow. We're concerned with the amount that we take home to our family at the end of the day. Not the gross, but the triple net. So we say, if I want to earn twice as much and everybody in here can and can and will earn two, three, four, five times as much, sometime in the future. If I want to earn twice as much, why aren't I already earning twice as much? And the number one reason for for most people is distraction. So, uh they're so distracted, they're doing things of low or no consequences. But we found the 8020 rule applies to constraints. 80% of the constraints that are holding you back from achieving your financial goals are within yourself and within your business. They are not on the outside. They are not the competition. They are not the market. They are not the people in Washington or the taxes or regulation. 80% of within yourself. So the mark of the superior person is whenever they have a problem, they say what is it in me that's causing this problem?
[31:47]Mike and I know this very, very clearly. What is it in me that's causing this problem? Uh in in illness by the way, 85% of illness is psychosomatic. As Dennis Waley said, it's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you. It's causing the problem. Uh and so the starting point and the first thing a doctor will tell you or a psychologist is what is it that you're not dealing with? And you can go back to zero-based thinking. What is it that you have in your life that that you if you that if you had to do over you wouldn't do it. So ask yourself what's holding you back and usually it's the quality of self-discipline or it's a skill. Now one of the things that changed my life forever was when I learned that all business skills are learnable. You don't have to be a genius to learn any business skill. You can learn any form of technology as Mike has proven that with with his products. You can take a person who's basically shoveling shoe polish and and and teach them how to be technologically sufficient superior enough to earn a living from it. Every business skill is learnable. And so I say what one skill if you are absolutely excellent at it in your business, would help you the most to double your income? What one business skill? If you could wave a magic wand and wake up tomorrow morning, superb in this area, what skill would it be? And you know, when you ask that question, everybody knows the answer. They know what it is. But here's the challenge, you don't like the skill because it involves it, rejection, embarrassment, ego, potential failure, loss, uh you've tried it in the past, you haven't been good at it. But nobody asked you what would be an easy skill to learn. They just ask you what skill would help you the most to double your income. And here's what we have found is that most of us are only one skill away from doubling our income. And all business skills are learnable. And if you study the people who go from the top to the bottom in the Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000, they found in 25 years of research, these people learn one skill at a time. Like climbing the ladder of success and the ladder of income, like sniper, one shot, one kill, they don't try to learn 50 skills, they learn the one skill, focus, the most important skill and they get their company focusing on the one skill that can help you the most to generate sales and profitability.
[35:56]Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now. Come on.
[36:39]Thank you. Watch him.
