I was listening to a skill-set video by a gentleman named Jerry Clark this morning who had a wonderful insight on life actually and how to “arrive” at whatever it is you want to accomplish in life.
Jerry Clark first spoke about how you, because no one can do it for you, but you have to first attract your million dollar moment. Jerry spoke about how he was born in a garage, and grew up very poor, and he remembers asking his mother for new shoes, pants and things of that nature, and his mother’s reply was always “We don’t have enough money…” But it wasn’t until Jerry wanted to take Karate lessons that hearing his mother’s excuse was just the last straw for Jerry and so he decided to take matters into his own hands, and got himself a paper route. Just so that he could pay for the Karate classes he so desperately wanted to do at $40/month.
That’s what we must do with ourselves. At some point we have to say, you know what, the same ole excuse of not having enough money or whatever it is that you are hindering yourself from, you have to kind of get upset with yourself, and say hey, I’m a take action on this thing and just get it done.
So at a young age of 11 years old, that was Jerry’s first “monumental moment.” And from there it can only grow. From there Jerry saw the Mercedes Benz car, homes with movie theatres inside them, and it drove his hunger. Jerry realized at 19 that trading time for dollars, like what most of us do in a job setting is not what’s happening. Entrepreneurs get paid for trading results for dollars. So there is a shift that needs to take place there in order to understand that key concept. Because in a job setting, you can have the crappiest day and not be as effective as you could, and still get paid, but in the entrepreneur world, that’s not the case.
So you must surround yourself with successful people, other entrepreneurs, people who have already produced results.
Jerry describes what is called a Success Triangle. Now picture a triangle, having the three points, and now lets look at the base on the left, Jerry calls that Internal Communication.
Internal Communication is how you communicate with yourself. Your expectation. Your beliefs, philosophies. We must master this.
The next base to the right is the External Communication. This is how you communicate with others. The direct marketing, copy-writing skills. However and whenever possible, you want to study influence. This will help you understand about what makes people tick.
Jerry describes how there are four things that you are going to go through when mastering anything.
One, is time, just like it took and takes time to learn that “thing” on the job, this is going to take time as well. Something like a year or so.
The second is energy, and energy is nothing more than action. You must, must, must take action. Confuscion the greek philospoher once said “To know and not do is yet not to know.” Meaning you might think you know something, but you really don’t know cuz you’re not doing it. So we must take action.
The third is Frustration. No matter how calm or relaxed of a person you are, you will get frustrated, but its important to stay in your lane. That’s my own personal philosophy of frustration. I have lived and have visited several cities, and because I like to drive I find myself in tons and tons of traffic. Now I like to think of myself as a pretty calm and relaxed person, but sitting traffic is the most infuriating thing to me. But my motto is to just stay in your lane, Steer the course, because slow motion is better than no motion, and although its frustrating, you still want to get there. I have seen where cars will pull over and take a break on the shoulder, pull off all together and get a bite to eat, and that’s cool for them. But for me, unless I was already planning to pull over for a bite, or to check my vehicles coolant levels and so forth, I’m not gonna let anything veer me from my course. And my thinking is because you never know how far you have to go before you break through. You could only have ten more yards to go ’til traffic is going to break and you will be right where you want be, smooth sailing. You can’t find that out on the shoulder. There’s an old proverb that says “The darkest hour of the night comes just before dawn.” So we must not give up!
The fourth concept to mastering anything is change. You must always be changing and growing. Its sounds so simple, but its oh so true, but if nothing changes, nothing changes.
So lets get back to the triangle, and the last piece of the triangle at the top is Technical Knowledge. This is the know how, the coaching. The piece that will actually make you money. Sometimes people skip the other two parts and get straight to this piece, the money aspect. Which can work, but without the internal knowledge, what will keep you motivated, how will you react when you become frustrated. You need those internal skills. How will you be able to create a good copywritten sales letter, or how will your conduct be when you are speaking with folks in seminars, meetings, webinars, you need those external communication skills. It all fits together.
The last thing Jerry spoke about and ended the call with was what he called The Slight Edge Concept. Which simply stated that “Everyday in every way you are either performing simple disciplines or simple errors of judgement.”
See discipline is the key. Excellence is not achieved overnight. It is a lifelong journey that we should be working on daily. And we are always working on something whether we know it or not. Just like the saying if you aren’t planning your work, you’re planning to fail. By you not taking interest in your work, you are ensuring your own failure. So The Slight Edge Concept is pretty much saying that everyday we are either making good choices or bad. The disciplines we create in our lives are the determining factor. Just repeat simple disciplines in our lives daily and over time you will see tremendous results.
