Structure Doesn't Slow You Down. It Lets You Fly.

Good morning. All right, this one is going to be a doozy. We got a double spread in my journal and I remember looking back here. This is in early 1997 in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

And the late Jerry Ballinger was sharing a process that he called the Ferrari mind tuneup. And as I look at this, what I realize is it's really about laying a foundation for going fast in exactly the direction that you want to go. And I look at it and I see that I've really been doing this process here over the last well for this year. Well, I just turned 60 in May and I started, you know, early in the year.

I started just looking back at my journals and realizing, wow, there's so much uh stuff in here and that's when that's what inspired me to kind of get to the point where I would share some of these things in here. But again, this is a um story board progression, the way that we uh go through things. And by the way, just as a side note, I was doing a lot of like storyboarding and then mind mapping. And I realized that for me, I don't like mind maps.

Mind maps are are out. Uh it's too I it's convoluted for the way I think. I think logically and sequentially. And I think that there's probably two different types of people, you know, uh mindm map people or or process uh people.

And so the first step in this process that Jerry talks about is fuel. And the fuel that he's talking about is taking an assessment of the what you know, your wisdom, the understandings that you have, the knowledge that you have, the information that you have, and what you're bringing in. Like what do you naturally pursue? What are you naturally curious about?

What are you reading? Who are you listening to? What are you spending your time pursuing to um to grow yourself? Those are all clues as to what the best direction um for you is.

So, fueling helping yourself go through a process of gathering all the that's the raw material for your thinking. Remember the three process the collect and combine and create. This is about collecting is all the things that you are collecting by paying attention. Then the next step in the process is your 24-hour franchise prototype, Jerry called it, and really getting your your day right.

We've spent a lot of time in talking about how to get your day the way that you want it. And as I look through this, you know, I was amazed that I still 30 years later, my favorite thing is I want to go to bed at 11:00. I want to get up at 7:00. We're out the door at 8.

I'm here with you at 9. I've got from 10:00 to 12:00 where I'm in my journal writing, hatching evil schemes. In the afternoons, I'm working and sharing with people. In in the evenings, I'm doing whatever I want.

We're just uh living life and getting your rituals and your uh undergirling schedule of regardless of what you're going to do with your time is what's the shape of that going to be. Then the next step that Jerry has here is to stabilize, systemize, standardize, and optimize. And there's a very interesting thing. I think that this stabilizing that goes back to Deming that goes back to the things that we talked about with W.

Edwards Demming of you can only observe and make predictable change in a stable system. So if everything about your life and your schedule and your pursuits is random and fractal and you're you don't know what it uh what it's about, then it's impossible to have any kind of sustainable improvement. So we've I've spent the last little while and by the way this period of time in my life right now has really been about exactly this of of systemizing and standardizing the things that we do. 0 know he's world's leading uh um psychiatrist on most cited psychiatrist on on ADHD.

He also talked about having this Ferrari mind. But one of the things that he said to me one time is that when you look at your day and you're stabilizing your your schedule that the ideal is to think of it like a bob sled run where you get in at the top and you slide through and you've got the rails to keep you on the course and on the track. And that compared to what a natural tendency for an ADHD brain is to go through your day, as Ned says, like a toddler at a picnic. And you can imagine that visual, a toddler just roaming through the day.

Oh, look, a butterfly. Whatever uh gets your attention. Well, I've reached a compromise in this. And what I see, the thing that's really helping me like right now today is treating my days like a slalom ski race where you have freedom to go where you want to go in between, but you've got to hit these gates.

You've got to go around this gate. You got to go around this gate. So for me, those things when I'm firing on all cylinders, it starts the night before 10:00, phone in the lock box, 11:00, lights out, 8:00, out the door. And it's funny how your gamified brain gets there, 10:00, pencils up in my journal doing the things.

We're got to where we call it, you know, uh 12:30. We have a schedule of lunch and I do the uh post up my video on uh on Facebook and then my afternoon appointments start at 1:00 6:30. We've come to call Meat 30 where we have dinner of of steak right at uh 6:30. And that is the great slalom run of the day.

And the more of those runs that we can get, you get better at going faster and getting more out of the periods between those gates. That's how I look at it. And so everything we're doing is now I've got that systemized. Now we're looking to optimize it, right?

What what's the best thing that I can do in those periods of time? Then next is to focus on your unique ability. And what I'm seeing through here, I mentioned this was my intro to uh strategic coach and Jerry Ballinger was one of the people that um you know I introduced to um strategic coach. It really it's amazing how strategic coach has spread from being um exposed to it.

But what Dan says is if you look at all the activities that you're doing, there are certain things that energize you, that are the things you love to do more than anything else, the things you're the best at, the things you have unending energy and attention for. Those are unique ability. Then there's a whole another level of things that you are excellent at which are not quite your unique ability, but they're they're okay. The next layer are things that you're competent at, and then there's things that you're incompetent at.

And that really jives with what Tom Peters was talking about in the, you know, that joy scale is looking at your tasks, looking at the things that you're doing every day and seeing what are the things that you can remove and what are the things you can do more of. And we talked about a lot of those in some of these uh uh videos here. Then the final thing is what service do you want to render? So now you've got all of these things in place.

Now the level is if this is what you want to do, what's the best outlet for you? What service do you want to render to help other people get a result that they're going to get faster, better, less expensively by engaging and collaborating with you? And that's a very interesting thing. When I go through this, I've really simplified what I look at is that the thing that I'm an organization we're really set up to do is to help build prospect vending machines, helping people get leads and convert those leads in their business.

That's the that's one of the um most valuable things that we can do. And you know, luckily it's not going out of style. Every 30 years ago, it was a valid thing. People need new ways to get new clients.

And I think that's going to be true for 30 years. This is a great direction to head with my Ferrari tuned up mind. I got a funny email the other day from Rick. It says, Dean, question.

are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you? And I laughed to myself because I was thinking, you know, yes, I I can do that. That's what I do. is the funny thing.

What I really realized is that every idea that I've had, every dollar that I've made over the last 30 years has gone through my brain, through my pen onto a piece of paper in my journal before it went out into the real world. And if I can turn people on to that activity as a driver for what to do, what to think about, what to ask yourself to draw out, what the next most valuable action is for you, and how to find the most profitable things that you can install in your business. I'm all for it. So this Friday at 100 pm I'm going to do for the first time a 50inute profitfinder workshop and you're going to join me live on Zoom and we're going to go through a 50inute exercise.

Bring your pen. Bring a notebook or piece of paper. And I'm going to guide you through a thinking process that will help you identify where the lowest hanging fruit is in your business and maybe some fruit that you didn't even know was there. But I'm going to show you where to look for it.

So, it's free. It's for you. m. this Friday.

Just watch. Go to What did we call the website, Josh? >> 50inut profitfinder.