Lessons

Lesson Info

Excellence

How you do anything is how you do everything. Can anybody think of a... Business situation, an example of this? Like how you do the small things are also how you do the big things? Maybe the way that I interact with my customers, or potential clients, is also the way that I interact with people that I'm... If I'm ordering a cup of coffee or something like that. Yeah, that's a good one. Think about restaurant bathroom. As you walk into a bathroom, and it's a complete mess, like that's a very good sign of how the kitchen looks probably. (audience laughs) You know? So those little things matter. How developing a habit of doing everything to a certain level of excellence is a pretty powerful thing. And we see it show up that way. Like, you go to a restaurant, the bathrooms spotless, chances are the kitchen looks pretty good too. And excellence attracts excellence. If you're... Living today wanting to work in the space industry, and aspiring to space in general, are you gonna work for N...

ASA or are you gonna work for Space X? You know what I mean? Like, it's... I had a funny story I'll tell you guys. I wrote it out, but I'm gonna tell it anyway. I remember we were partnering with is cable company, and we were doing this ad swap, they're gonna give us TV ads and we're gonna pay them a bounty. It was a big outdoor cable company and they're missing their yearly revenue goal. He was, one of the executives, he was so arrogant, and I said, "Here's the data, "your TV ads just aren't preforming." 'Cause he was expecting us to have to owe him a lot of money. I was like, I think they gave us a couple weeks worth of television ads and it was just nothing compared to what we were doing over the holiday period for our online advertising. And he was just bragging and being so arrogant, and he was talking about how his social media guy, his guru, used to work at NASA. And I was just not impressed. I was like, if you had said Space X, yeah that's okay, I get it. All you said, okay this guys a dinosaur and he doesn't understand social media works. But anyway, the point is, excellence attracts excellence. I would guess that NASA isn't getting the brightest minds in space right now, Space X is probably getting them. Because those guys are doing crazy stuff, right? I interviewed Scott Kelly, the astronaut, for a podcast I do. And he got real with me, he's like, he told me that he thought Elon Musk was crazy for wanting to reland that, whatever that first stage booster rocket. He's like, "There's no way." And this is back to resisting that temptation of certainty, to remain fixed in your ideas. He's like, "There's absolutely no way," because he grew up in this NASA culture where it just takes years and years and years to do anything. He's like, "I stand here today and eat my words. "Like, he did it." So anyway, whether you're building a small team, a large team, the importance of having really good chemistry, and really good people on top performers, it's just going to attract more and more. 'Cause good people wanna be around other people that are good, and pulling their weight. I remember in SEALs training, we had... It's crazy, I don't know why the government does this, but they get these foreign students. And I remember we had this guy, Aslan, from Egypt, in our class. And he's like, "I didn't sign up for this shit." "I don't wanna be a SEAL," he's like, "I thought I was gonna be a diver. "I was going to the US Navy to learn how to dive." Now he's carrying logs on his head. He was miserable, and man he, and he wasn't carrying his load. Finally he worked it out to where he left. And we had to carry his load, but the fact that... We had seven people carrying it, like in a boat crew. And so we have to run around with these boats on our heads and carry these big logs during the first part of training. And it was just harder having him on the log, 'cause he wasn't puling his weight. And we're just like, "Dude, it was easier with six of us "picking up the slack, 'cause we're all highly motivated." And that's an example of anything is business, you just don't, the people that aren't pulling the slack, nobody else wants them around. It's easier just to all of us pick up the rest of the slack and just do the work for him. So it's one of the things I learned in the military, just that excellence, and working in the SEAL teams you are going to get... If you don't have an idea of what SEAL training is, seven months on that selection process. In the first part of training, a typical day you get up at probably 3:45 in the morning to make sure your stuff's ready for inspection. Run two miles to the beach, and get ready for a two hour intense physical training session. Which is gonna be mixed in with, they call surf conditioning, which is what we call water torture. They put you in the water, and they have a chart, they go, "Okay average height, average weight, "we can keep them in," they get a thermometer, it says... 47 degrees, "We can keep them in "right to the point of hypothermia." And you don't wanna be the skinny person in that case, in that scenario. And that's just before breakfast. And then you're gonna go run two miles to eat breakfast, come back, do a two mile ocean swim, maybe an obstacle course, run around with the boats on your head, study for classes, and get up all over and do it all over again. And at the end of that phase of training is a thing called hell week, where they keep you up for five and half days straight, no sleep. But at the end of that, you end up with somebody that's highly motivated, and you know that's never gonna quit. And having worked with those kind of guys, in that team environment, it's such a important lesson. Like, what a small team can accomplish against a much larger team, when you have highly motivated, smart people, who are focused on excellence. I remember, I'm gonna read it out of the book, but at Harvard Business review this reporter that was writing for Harvard Business review magazine, he asked me, he's like, "I wanna do an article "for companies to just train to good enough." (audience laughs) And I was like, "I'm not answering that question." Like, I just can't do it. I'm not gonna teach you how to get to good enough. Now I'm gonna read that little excerpt. I couldn't believe it was Harvard Business review magazine, asking me that question. Like, you guys are Harvard! Oh okay. So... Not long ago I was interviewed, not long ago I was interviewed for a piece in the Harvard Business review about how SEALs train for leadership excellence. As we got talking about my management experience as a course master for the SEAL sniper program, the interviewer asked me what advice I might have for organizations that wanted to train for just good enough. And I said "Sorry, I can't answer that question. "I'm not willing to answer it." "I just can't even go there, it's not in my DNA," is what I told the guy. "Why would I wanna be part of an organization "that aimed for just good enough? "Who gives a shit about competent?" What's what I told him, in my book so... One of the things I learned... When I was at the sniper program and we were bringing all these consultants to redo our course, was that when you look at the highest levels of performance, whether it's in the Olympics or business... If you maintain above average performance, it becomes your new average. We used to train, we used to say to the students that, when they come and learn how to be marksman, they may be down here, like this is the normal, we're gonna get them to here. And so when they're not even practiced, they're gonna be up here still. We're gonna give them all the skills and tools to maintain such a high level of competency, that even unpracticed they're still gonna be way above the norm. And I see that. I remember... I took a young sales guy of mine. He's in his 20s. He's like doing this crossfit stuff, and he's like, "Let's go work out." I took him to the gym, and I mean I keep in shape, I do yoga, but I'm not like what I used to be on the SEAL teams. But we did a workout and then took him swimming, and he was done, he was like, "Never again and I gonna do that." And it was just normal to me, but my normal was way way above what his, in this, you know, somebody that played sports in college even. And it just dawned on me, I was like, "Oh he just, "that's not, he's just not used to that." And I see that all the time in life too. People are just going through that SEAL experience. Like, who would think that you could go almost six days with no sleep and still function and do stuff? Like, it's totally possible, that's what I learned. And people just don't realize their full potential. And when you look at companies that out preform the marketplace, and have cultures of excellence, like, who can tell me a company that comes to mind like that? Anybody think of a company or brand that they just like, wow, these guys are killing it? Amazon. What's that? Amazon. Amazon, yeah, great. I mean what they do for fulfillment is crazy. Yeah? Tesla, it's a big number. Yeah, Tesla. Again, at one point everyone thought Tesla was crazy, and then they got, I think, Car of the Year, and now they've set the standard, everybody is going electric. Nike. Yeah? Epic. Epic? What does Epic do? Epic Systems is health systems. Okay. Yeah, but they're killing it. I don't know that one. Yeah, my husband's in that industry, hospital IT, so... Yeah so Epic, Nike, Apple. And when you think about how they think about at do things compared to the rest of business world, they're always playing catch up. I remember... We had all of a sudden, on our subscription site people can leave reviews, like one to five stars. All of a sudden it just happened... We got all these bad reviews. I'm like, "What's going on guys? "Everything should be turning the opposite way." And what we realized was our competitors leaving bad reviews. And it made me so happy, 'cause I was like, "If that's where you're focused on, I've got you beat. "Like, if that's the best you can do, "is not focus on how to do better yourself, "and deliver a better product, "but you're trying to like leave crap reviews on our site, "like, I've got you beat, like, you've lost." Because we're focused on, there's a term... Called, does anyone know the term in Japanese, for this continual process of excellence? You're close. He's lean training in the hospital, my husband, there is a term I'm trying to... That's the word. Kaizen. Kaizen. Yes, kaizen. Yeah, I live me life like that, from a personal development point of view. Our core values in our business... Nothing is going to be perfect all the time, but when you're in that habit of always chasing excellence in whatever you do, it becomes a really powerful habit. Yes? Not just 'cause we're here, but I would say CreativeLive. I mean, from the design aesthetic, to the content, to the instructors. I don't really watch anything else anymore that's doing what CreativeLive does, just because of the standard of excellence. And what they're doing is the little things that are just consistently great. Yeah, it's a great example. And I'm not... I'm not getting paid to say this, but I've been through the whole process. Like, we've been working on this, and prepping for months, and I showed up and my name's on the door, I have a bag, everyone's taking care of me. I can tell CreativeLive has it together, they know what they're doing. And that shows up not only in the little things right? Right. It's like those tiny things add up and it's a sign of how the organization is preforming to a certain level. I've seen what's out there on content, on the content side too, there's so much, so in order to compete against that you have to deliver the best. So I would agree with you, CreativeLive is, that's why I'm here. We'll get into the goal setting soon, but when that offer came through my publisher, I said, "Yeah, that's like right in line "with what I wanna do for my writing and my personal brand." I just knew right away. I was like, yeah we'll do that. Okay, that's my book. (audience laughs) You know it's, The Red Circle, it has this... You'll look at the cover and you're like, ah it's a really scary cover, but it really has my life from childhood into the military. And good lessons in leadership, bad lessons in leadership. I mean, I've had some excellent leaders in my military experience, I've also had some of the worst. But when you look at those situations, you're like, I am gonna, I know... There's no way I'm gonna do that when I get in charge. So there is also a lot of good lessons to learn if you're unfortunate enough to be in a situation where you have bad leadership. 'Cause you can just take notes, and be like, I know this is not how to treat people, and I'm gonna do things differently.