Often my home life would run out of groceries the last few days of the month. We were told that we were just gonna have to get by with what was in the cupboard. On the first of the month we would start all over again. It wasn’t because they were bad people, rather it was they didn’t understand the power of the routine. That’s how my grandpa was able to show me how to win. The win was found inside of the routine. The night before he made me go to sleep, he told me what the plan was for the next day.
He planted that little bit of a seed in advance, thus tomorrow he wouldn’t have to convince me. It was a fact, this is what’s going to happen today. Was there downtime? Sure, was it beneficial? Of course, I was a boy. I would go get lost in the woods for a couple of hours almost every weekend. I enjoyed climbing trees, throwing rocks, getting muddy, that’s what boys do, at least that’s what I did. The thing is, I didn’t go do that until the work was done.
I operate that exact same way in my life today. I do wake up at 5:30 A.M. every single day. I am in a gym working out by 6 A.M. I do take time to mindfully think about my yesterday and my today. I do try to do something for the girls that I love. My wife and my two daughters are important to me, so every single day for I do something for each one of them to make them feel loved. Furthermore, I try to do it before 10 A.M.
I go into work with an expectation of certain benchmarks being met. Additionally, the company that I’m building at the time can scale at a rate that’s quicker than most can understand or comprehend. Living inside of a retail environment during the writing of this book, we’re currently scaling a car dealership. There are some outside influences. Sometimes customers requests and demands do pull on my time. As soon as I’m pulled away from my schedule, I address the issue, the problem, the concern, or the customer. Promptly when I’m done with that interruption, I fall right back into the preset strategy that I had for my day. The architecting of my day is essential for my success.
At the end of the day when I’ve completed the lists and I’m done, I shut it off and I go home. Although some nights I might not get home until 7 or 8 o’clock at night, the last few hours of my day are solely 100% focused on my family. As much attention and focus as I put into my business and into my skill, in my routine, that three hour block every single day is undivided attention from me to my family. Do we watch TV? Sometimes. Do we play games? Sometimes. Do we go to dinner? Yes sometimes but inside of that evening they get the best version of me.
At the end of each day I’m preparing for my next day, I begin planning. The very first thing that I do, this is just me personally, I check the website to see what the CrossFit workout for the next day is going to be. I plan what I need to take to the gym with me to best prepare me for that workout. I decide what I need to take as a supplement and a pre-workout.
I set those items out and get them ready for morning. Then I lay down and close my eyes. My last thought every single day is “Thank you God for today and what I accomplished. Now what am I going to accomplish in my world tomorrow?” This is every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Sunday has its own structure, but Sunday has a structured routine as well.
When you surround yourself with people who have accomplished anything in this world that they seek, you will notice routines. If you spend time with people who have any level of success or wealth, you will find that somewhere in their world is a very structured DNA’d approach to growing that vision that rests in their mind. You will also learn that more than likely their approach has been committed to paper as well. Allow that strategic planning to infiltrate your world. Personally, if you’re interested in scaling your world one of the very first and most powerful things you can do is build a routine similar to what the rich build. Build a routine that circles around productivity and accomplishment.
Intrapreneurs, you work for someone else inside of their business, this applies to you as well. Your position is the business of you. You have a set number of job responsibilities, and your responsibility is to do those better than anyone else in your position. To exceed the expectations of your employer is your main objective. By doing that you will ensure that you can reap the greatest rewards. That reward might be advancement, a future partnership, additional pay, flexibility in your hours, whatever growth is important to you. Before you worry about a side hustle, before you worry about scale, before you worry about growing and doing anything extra, build a structure that supports your kingdom today.
Once you’ve got a systematic routine locked down, you are set up for success. Most jobs end somewhere between 4 and 6 o’clock in the afternoon. That leaves so much time for you to build the kingdom of you. Many careers don’t require you to be at the office until 7, 8, 9 o’clock in the morning. That means that you could theoretically go to bed at 9 o’clock, and be up at 4 A.M. tackling your day. That would allow you ample time to accomplish more before you roll in to work than anybody else there.
This is not typically how employees think. More often than not, this is how the rich think. We recognize that when the race is in front of us, we have an opportunity to take off before anybody else in line. We have programmed our minds to execute that. We put our feet in the blocks, and we raise up just like everyone else. We’re preparing for the same run around the track that you’re on, but we recognize that we don’t have to wait for the gun to go off in order to get started.
We get to pick when we start sprinting! When we run, we run like our hair is on fire. You can do the exact same thing. You can get ahead in the race, but it begins with structure. Take your world today and document your actions and intentions. Do a time audit of your day, and do it five days in a row. What time did I wake up? What time did I eat? What did I eat? What did I do prior to eating? Did I work out? If I did, what did I do? How long did I work out? How long did it take me to eat? How long is my commute to work every single day? What do I do with that windshield time that I spend in the car?
Numerous people frequently think I’ve got a 20 minute drive to work, and I just really love listening to music. Cool, I know a lot of really successful people that spend a lot of time listening to audiobooks rather than music. The successful people that I know have the same 20 minute drive to work. However, they use that time to develop their minds. Listening to an audio book or a pod case while drive is an excellent way to download knowledge without taking up any more of your precious time.
When I get to work, what do I do you ask? Do I take 15 minutes and high-five everybody? Do I walk around telling everyone good morning and play grab ass by the water cooler like everyone else? Or do I go in and sit down and start grinding? Do I show up before my managers arrive? Do they wonder, man, what would I have to do to beat that guy to work? Does the ownership of the business or senior management recognize you as a leader inside of your position?
Do the employees that already work for you, if you’re an entrepreneur, do they see you as the leader? Do they wonder how you get such big things done week after week, month after month, year after year? Maybe you are struggling and you drag yourself into the process that you worked your butt off to build early on in your business. Now are you at a point where you don’t worry about improving? You just exist without any new effort.
Do your employees secretly hate that you make money without ever evolving the business, without ever challenging them or pushing them? In this time audit, the purpose is to evaluate where you are, and what you do with the one equally distributed commodity that we all have in this world. Time is so commonly misused and blamed in the world of business. It is your choice to reorganize the 24 hours that you are given each day to build success. Accept where you are currently. Then structure that commodity of time to put you in supreme power, and execute your ass off. Savvy?
Your Gifting
I hope you have had an opportunity to listen to my podcast by the time you are reading this. My podcast is called Bulletproof Mafia. Often on my show, I will reference something that I’m extremely good at. I will call
that gift, whatever it is, my super power. It would be easy to think, wow this guy is really proud of himself. In all actuality, I am just extremely self aware. It doesn’t do any good to tell you all of the things that don’t create power in my life. Therefore, I continue to focus on the super powers in my lift that elevate me to the next level.
For me, I have a couple of what I would consider my super powers. One of those is the ability to communicate strategically. I recognize that a good conversation or negotiation is like a dance. Inside of that skill set, not to toot my own horn, I’m a beautiful dancer. I recognize where I want to be at the end of the dance, and I lead the conversation to that point 99 times out of 100. Time and time again conversations happen exactly the way that I thought that the conversation would go in my mind. While our hands are locked at the initial greeting I am already anticipating the different directions my partner might try to take the conversation. I am mentally navigating at least three different potential outcomes all while seeking a universal path that leads to MY destination.
Another super power that I would say that I have is the ability to see potential in companies. In several instances I’ve bought companies that were dwindling, failing, or just not having a lot of success. I have went in and realized their potential. I have restructured processes, moved to different locations, scaled the companies, and then sold the business while it was producing.
Inside of my own businesses that I start from scratch and grow, I would say that the power to implement initial processes and building strong teams that circle around a very specific culture would be another super power of mine. I enjoy empowering teams to embrace routines and processes. Creating team culture, vision, and specific routines are what lead a company from the very early stages.
Similar to any superhero, I also didn’t wake up with those skills. You know, one of the things that’s really fascinating is that most all superheroes had some sort of tragedy or life event that bestowed the power upon them. Just beyond the turmoil in the superheroes life was the super power. Pushing through daily routines and processes that are effective will eventually prove to be successful.
One of the things that you’re going to have to do for all of this to make any sense and be applicable to your world, is have a willingness to go through the motions and trust the process that I’m mapping out for you. Inside of the chapters that we’ve already covered and the future chapters that are unread, I’ll map out for you an action plan. I will help you plan what to do, how to think, and how to communicate in a way that will ultimately stack the deck in your favor. This preplanning will prepare you to be able to scale to wealth, wealth creation, or at least just abundance, if that’s your hunt.
If you’re not interested in being super rich, but you don’t want to worry about how your next bills are going to be paid, then keep reading. You will be required to obtain the willingness to trust the process that I’ve mapped out for you. You will have to have the capacity to follow through and do those processes day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, year, over year, over year, because it’s not an overnight success. Daily commitment to following a plan is essential.
However, this chapter is a little bit different, because we’re not talking about the structure or the mindset. This chapter is focused on super powers. This will challenge you to do an assessment of your gifts and skillsets. You’re going to have to figure out what is it that you are good at. What is it that you are passionate about? What is it in your world that you can do better than most around you, no matter how obscure it might be? What can you do that adds value to the marketplace?
There is a video that I love, and I’m going to put a link to it here in the text. Also, I’m going to go ahead and just drop the entire script below, right here. So, this context was Steve Harvey at the end of one of his shows. Steve has talked about all these different gifts that people have. I love this, because I couldn’t have said that any better. Steve’s fire and passion for the success of people here is so brilliant!
Jump
“I’m going to share something with you. I’m going to tell you something that every successful person has to do, including you.
“Believe it or not, every successful person in this world has jumped. I’m going to tell you what I mean by that.
“You eventually, you are going to have to jump. You cannot just exist in this life. You have got to try to live. If you are waking up thinking that there has got to be more to life than it is, man, believe that it is. Believe in your heart of hearts that it is, but to get to that life, you are going to have to jump.
“Now, I’ll tell you why I call it jumping. See God, when He created all of us, He gave every last one of us a gift at birth. He never created a soul without endowing them with a gift.
“You just got to quit looking at gifts as running, jumping, singing, dance. It’s more than that. It’s if you know how to network, if you can connect dots, if you draw, you teach – some of you all fry chicken better than anyone else – bake pie. Some of you cut hair, color hair. Some people do grass trimming.
“I’ve got a partner, man, never wanted to go out with us because we stayed out too late. ‘Come on man, go out with us. Nah, I got to get up early tomorrow. I’m cutting Ms. Johnson’s grass.’ We kept laughing at this dude. ‘Cutting grass, how much do they pay you?’ He got a landscaping company in Cleveland worth $4 million because all he do is cut grass, but he was gifted at it.
“I got a partner who owns a detail shop who makes $800,000 a year detailing cars. He got six mobile trucks running around. $800,000 a year, and all he do is detail cars. That’s his gift. That’s what he loves to do.
“You’ve got to identify that gift.
“Now, listen to me. When you see people in life, when you are standing on the cliff of life, and you see people soaring by and you see people soaring – going to exotic places, you hear about them doing wonderful things, maybe you look up the street and your neighbor just gets a car every year or every two years, you know how is he doing that?
“Have you ever thought, maybe this person right here has identified their gift and is living in their gift because your Bible says – this is your Bible – your gift will make room for you. Your gift. Not your education. You can go and get an education, and that’s nice. But if you don’t use your gift, that education is only going to take you so far. I know a lot of people that got degrees, man, they ain’t even using. It’s your gift.
“But the only way for you to soar is you got to jump. You got to take that gift that is packed away on your back. You got to jump off that cliff and pull that cord. That gift opens up and provides the soar.
“If you don’t ever use it, you’re going to just go to work. And if you getting up going to work on the job every day that you hate going to, that ain’t living man. You just existing. At one point in time, you ought to see what living’s like. But the only way to see what living’s like, you got to jump.
“Now, here the problem. Let me just be real with you. When you first jump, let me tell you something, your parachute will not open right away. I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you that it did, but it don’t. When you jump. It’s not going to open right away.
“You going to hit them rocks. You going to get some skin torn off on them cliffs. You going to get all of your clothes torn off. You going to get some cuts on you. You going to be bleeding pretty bad, but eventually, eventually the parachute has to open. That is a promise of God. That ain’t a theory. That’s a promise.
“His promise is true because, listen to me, you cannot name one single thing God has not gotten you through. Name it. And if He ain’t got you through it, He currently pulling you through it right now. And the living proof of it is, you sitting in here. If he hadn’t of got you through it you wouldn’t even be here.
“So, if He ain’t never not got you through it, why would He not let your parachute open?
“It has to open, man. But … you got to jump though.
&
nbsp; “Now, here’s another thing. You can play it safe and deal without the cuts and the tears and you can stand on that cliff of life forever safe, but if you don’t jump – I’ve got another promise I can make you – your parachute will never open. You will never know. You will never know what God really had for you.
“You see, your God has a wonderful life for you. Once again, I’m going to refer to your Bible. Now, you go down there. You memorize these Scriptures. You don’t apply them to yourself. Your Bible says that He comes to give you life, and give you life more abundantly.
“If I were you, I would jump because that’s the only way to get to that abundant life. You got to jump, man. You got to take a chance.
“Now, when I get through talking, there are those of you that will discuss this in the car, ‘Well, I got bills, and I got bills.” Whether you stay on the cliff or you jump, you are going to have bills. ‘Well, if I quit my job I’m going to ruin my credit.’ If you got a job, you living check to check. Even if you got A-1 credit, you can’t buy nothing else no damn way.
“At one point in time, man, do yourself a favor. Go see what God really do. God hold you up, man. He ain’t going to let you fall. He didn’t bring you this far to let you fall.
“Do yourself a favor man, before you leave this world, before you die, jump. Just jump one time. Just jump. Thank you very much.”
Steve talks about one thing specifically here that I think is overlooked when you watch the video. He speaks to the fact that every person has a “God given gift.” You see here is the mistake that I think that most people make. Nearly all gurus, most coaches, many life advisors, they encourage you to follow in their footsteps. I’m going to show you how to make money in real estate. Look how rich I am. I’m going to show you how to make money through investing in cryptocurrencies. Look how rich I am. I’m going to show you how to get rich in the forex market. Look how rich I am. Don’t be fooled.
Savvy Page 9