The Invisible Clues of Success
And the obvious ones that get overlooked
I woke up 10 minutes before my first call. Jet lagged from Bali, I only had time to comb my hair and brew a cup of coffee. Then it was on.
I spoke for an hour to a group of high level entrepreneurs and somehow nailed it even though my brain felt like mush.
I had a half an hour break, then the next call - a tough one on one session that I was able to work through and get a good result on.
Then a half hour break before my next call - another presentation to another high level entrepreneur audience where I just crushed it. This went for 1 hour and 47 minutes, leaving me with just 13 minutes for lunch because I had one more call… a podcast interview that went 1 hour.
That was my Friday. Two different presentations, one podcast and one consult all done on little sleep yet done well and met with positive praise and a lot of potential business generated as a result.
This is not atypical.
If you follow around successful people, it’s not that shocking as to their success - look at all they do!
The byproduct of activity is it gives you a lot to talk about. You do a cool thing, not only does it makes you better, it provides evidence.
Just a few comments from just one of the calls:
"Jason, you delivered us an early Christmas gift. Thank you so very much."
"Jason you are magical. You have inspired me and I am so grateful to know you and your great mind and heart exist. Lou, thank you for making this possible. I am so happy."
"Basically it feels like I won the lottery. Thank you Jason and THANK YOU Jason!!!! ❤ "
"HUGE thanks to Jason & to Lou for arranging this 'gold' for us."
Success is in the refinement
The presentations were a refinement of a refinement of a refinement of ideas that I first started working on in 2009.
During one of the calls I could sense some pushback to the ideas I shared because of how intimidatingly good I was with how I showcased those ideas.
The goal wasn’t to try to get the audience to do it like me - but to give the audience the clearest vision of how to do it better than they currently were.
When you’ve done it a few thousand times like I have, then it seems effortless. But even just doing it at 10% of what I was sharing would increase current capabilities.
Then you repeat it. And each time you get a bit better.
Compounding = Magic
There’s a saying that compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world - he who understands it benefits from it and he doesn’t pay it. Compounding goes beyond finances.
Even more than compounding your money is compounding your skills.
Some portions of my presentations I’ve delivered hundreds of times. Not only does that make it easy to do those parts… but it allows me to find the micro-improvements from those parts. And it allows me to pull parts out from here and put them there.
Often the presentations I do that get the standing applause and the high conversion rates are a combination of many existing elements and resources I’ve created over the last 16 years, just connected together in new and existing ways.
That’s the compounding - (1) creating more assets allows you to create even more assets and (2) repeatedly using the assets gets you better at leveraging those assets.
It looks like magic to the outside observer though.
The Invisible Value
The audience doesn’t see the 16 years of dedication to the craft. Therefore they can’t separate the insights from the person presenting them.
Which is fine - it gives me more to do. Next step is refining the presentation even to more to address this friction.
You only need one amazing presentation - and you can live off it for years. Because most people hear average or good presentations but rarely do they hear that one which expands their consciousness in a way that it can never go back to normal again.
So you pursue that.
And if it takes you years of slightly improving what you do along the way so be it. Because when you arrive - then you’ll be undeniable.
Your worst problem is you’ll be in such demand that sometimes you’ll have a Friday like mine. Better to in demand though than not.
The dreariness from working too hard is better than the apathy of not working hard enough.