by Patrick Precourt July 12, 2017

Getting the Most Around You

Every one of us who is building a business will have to eventually surround ourselves with a team that helps us build it to scale. It’s a great milestone but a difficult one. One of the most important aspects of it is keeping your team enthused and motivated every day they come into work. But that starts with you, the business owner. Today’s Monday Mindset has Pat covering this topic, so be sure you make the time to learn and grow from what he has to share.

If there was no financial reward in what you do, would you do it? Click To Tweet

How does that question make you feel? Do you feel like there’s something wrong with you because you don’t feel as passionate as the question implies you should? No need – you don’t HAVE to say that you would keep doing what you’re doing without the financial reward because everything needs a WHY behind it, and the financial reward is at least an aspect of getting to the “why” in every business. Money shouldn’t be THE thing we’re chasing, but it is quite possibly the tool you use to GET TO your why. Find out more from Pat on this coaching call.

If you pursue any means without a clear end that matters to you, you’ll struggle. Click To Tweet

We’ve all seen people who chase the money (a means) but don’t really have anything larger they are seeking the money FOR. It’s those people who wind up frustrated, unfulfilled, and ultimately unhappy. That’s not a statement of judgment, it’s an observation. You don’t want to be one of those unhappy people, do you? Find out how you can hone in on a clear sense of WHY you do what you do, through Pat’s coaching on this session.

When you start with “why” you do what you do, everything changes. Click To Tweet

Think about this reality: There are many companies that do any given thing – build computers, cars, houses, etc. But the ones that succeed tend to REALLY succeed, far beyond their competition. Why is that? It’s usually because they started with the REASON they are doing what they do – and it’s not to build the best whatever-it-is they build. Pat has some great insights into the power of knowing your motives and how you can leverage them to your advantage, on this coaching call.

Allow the people on your team to use their gifts and talents as THEY determine. Click To Tweet

Outline of this great episode

Do we always operate from a motivated and inspired place? No.
Happiness: A passion for work that goes beyond money or reward.
3 criteria for gaining everything you need in life.
Starting with why you do what you do changes everything.
How you can get your team to show up motivated everyday?
Using KPIs as a way to keep your team on track.
Mastery: a goal we all should be aiming toward.

The Monday Mindset & Wednesday Wisdom calls are group coaching calls included in the REWW Academy. These live calls are hosted bi-weekly by Justin Colby and Pat Precourt and cover a specific topic each session – ending with live Q&A at the end of each call.

These calls are designed to empower students to be effective entrepreneurs, creating business that thrive and make money through real estate investing. Students are encouraged to attend the calls and bring any struggles or questions they have about business or real estate.

The REWW Academy program combines our complete suite of software applications with our personalized coaching and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs to provide you with the most comprehensive real estate investing program available.

If you would like to learn more about the REWW Academy, attending these calls live, or learning fast effective ways to get involved in real estate investing, go to https://reww.com/reww-academy/ and follow the link at the bottom to apply today.

Below is the full transcription of the Getting the Most Around You Monday Mindset call with Pat Precourt.

Pat Precourt:

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome. It’s Patrick Precourt here. I’m ready for this week’s Monday Mindset call. Great to see you guys here. I’ve got some cool stuff to talk about today as always. I appreciate you guys being patient with me last week. Mr. Justin sat in for me. How did Justin do last week, guys? What’s up, Mr. Joe. What’s up, brother. Good to see you. I was with a very high level group of entrepreneurs last week. We were doing some leadership stuff with them. In a comment, discussion came up around driving people, around having … I was going to say having. Around motivated employees. Janice says Justin did good. You guys are all so professional. I appreciate that, Janice. Thank you. Very kind of you. So the discussion’s about getting employees that are motivated so they don’t have to motivate them. Of course, we had to take a … First have a discussion about motivation, what it is and how it differs from inspiration, and then take a little responsibility as business owners as to the role that we play in that.

That’s what I’m sharing with you guys today. I’m going to share it in the context of getting the most out of those around you, but I want you to look at this also through the eyes of us performing at our highest level each day. I know you know what I’m talking about. I mean, let’s be honest. Do we all always work from a motivated and inspired place? The answer is no. Our emotions and our attitudes impact our decision-making and our outcomes, and therefore, at the end of the freaking day, our success, our pocketbook, our bank account. That’s the relativeness of this discussion here. Like I said, I’m going to go through this in terms of your role as a business owner, a manager, a leader, but I want you to also apply it to as a self-mastery skill, what it takes to get the most out of us. Something to think about, right?

Start with … I’m going to put it on the board here for you … happiness. Now, this isn’t the only definition of happiness, and it’s not all there is to happiness, but it’s certainly a piece to it. A passion for work that goes beyond money or reward. A passion for work that goes beyond money or reward. A fair question you should be asking yourselves right now is if there was not a financial reward in what you do, would you do it? If there was not a financial reward in what you do, would you do it? Not always an easy question to come to terms with. I’m not going to lie.

I don’t know which word to start with. Does everything I do each day make me passionate? No. No. Not going to lie, but I do put in context what I do, meaning that I understand where it stands on the bigger picture of things, understanding that, man, there’s sometimes we’ve got to do things that we don’t like doing in order to get to the things we like to do. As long as in my mind I can rationalize it, I see it’s progressive steps, how it moves the needle towards what I want to do most of the time, then I’m like, “Cool. I can deal with this.” But if it’s a means without an end, then I struggle with it. It’s like, man, I’ve got no out to doing this. It’s just going to keep being the same. Not too cool. Denise says, “No way.” I think you said no way to are you doing every day what you’re passionate in doing. Is that what you’re saying or to the other question? If there was no financial reward in what you do, would you do it?

In an ideal world, we say what’s the shortest path to wealth and abundance attraction, because you don’t chase it. You attract it, right? What’s the shortest path to attracting wealth and abundance into our lives? Simple. Simple to state, difficult to execute. Simple. There’s going to be three criteria. That’s it. You do something that brings tremendous value to the world, to the universe, you do something that you’re super, super really good at, and you do something that you really, really love to do. Love to do it, really good at it, brings tremendous value to the universe. Bam. You’ll attract unlimited wealth and abundance and prosperity and goodness and fulfillment and peace into your lives. So then we’ve got to ask ourselves, “Does what we do meet that formula?” Something for consideration. Now you look at an obvious example, like a Steve Jobs, Apple Computer. Did it meet criteria number one? Did it bring tremendous value to the universe? Hell, yeah. Were they really, really good at it? Yeah. Do they love doing it? Hell, yeah. Met the formula. You can go through that many, many times.

I’ll share another thought with you. Two people could be seemingly doing the same thing, and one could very easily meet all three, and the other one meet none of the above. It’s less about the category or title of what you’re doing. It’s more about how you go about doing it, why you do what you do. That brings in the Simon Sinek why circle. Everybody, the outer ring, knows … I think you guys know what I’m talking about. Hold on. Hold on. Magic. A bucket of pens. Next we’ve got … This circle represents what you do. Everybody knows what you do. They can see it. The Apple Computers, they know that Apple makes a beautiful computer. You can see what they do. Not hard. Next one is how. Everybody knows what you do. Some people know how you do it.

In the case of Apple Computer, they did it by integrating crazy fonts and things like that and shortcuts and using little symbols instead of having to put in code. They made a very user friendly computer. They made a better computer. They did it by making it very user friendly. A few, though, know why. Steve Jobs said he wanted to make computers available to everyone, wanted to make everybody equal? It wasn’t just the affluent or the gifted. The average man could feel right at home with the computer. That’s why they did what they did. How they did it is they made it crazy user friendly through neat fonts and icons and symbols and things like that. Intuitive. What they did is they made a beautiful computer for everyone. Everybody knows what you do. Some people know how you do it. Very few know why. When you start expressing yourself the other way around, when you start with why, that the world first sees why you do what you do, it changes everything.

A passion for work that goes beyond money and reward, because we put our why out in front. Why we do what we do. Does that make sense at all to you guys? Hello, Miss Cheryl. Thank you for checking in. Mr. Keith Murphy. Good to see you, bro. Does that make sense to you guys before we go any further? Kind of. Thank you. Yes and yes. It’s easier to just move this right here. Ha. I didn’t think about that. How in the world did I do that?

Then the question to you guys would be … You’ve heard this a thousand times over, but many of us have never dug into it, because it’s too easy to just say, “Oh, it’s my family, it’s my why,” and all that other bullshit. Why do we do what we do? When you think about meeting that criteria, bringing tremendous value to the universe, doing something we really, really, really … We’re really good at and that we really love to do. Two companies could seemingly do the same damn thing. What they do is identical. They both make freaking computers. Dell, Hewlett Packard, Visio. They all make computers. How they do it starts to differ. Why they do it is tremendously different, therefore they are unlike one another.

When you start with why, there is no competition, because your why is your why. Your why determines your how, it determines your what, instead of just doing the what. “Oh, we just flip houses.” So, I’m going to erase one of these. What I want to talk about today … Because it precedes itself … is how to meet that. How to have passion for what we do, not driven by money, not driven by title. Again, do this in the context of you have employees, you have other people around you. You need them performing at a high level. You cannot be the one motivating them. Motivating is an extrinsic driver. It’s no different than caffeine on you. It’s limited in scope, limited in what it can do, and the second it wears off, it’s gone. Its influence is gone. How do you get people to show up motivated? That’s what I’m going to share with you today. Cool?

I want you to apply this for any of us, which is pretty much all of us, who don’t show up motivated every day. I know it’s all of us, because none of us are different. We may think we’re different. We may think that everybody else has got their shit figured out, and I’m the only one who doesn’t have it 100% figured out. That’s just some little BS story that you tell yourself that really, quite honestly, is talking yourself down. Accept that everybody has got shit. It’s just a matter of do they understand how to deal with it each day? That’s the only difference. That person who you think has got everything in order and everything seems perfect in their life, 90% of their life may be perfect. I’ll tell you this right now. If 90% of their life is just outrageously perfect, 10% of their life is outrageously effed up. That’s the truth. Don’t think you’re unique in that department.

The question is how do we find a sustained drive each day? We look to this through the eyes of how do we create environments so that the people around us … Our subordinates, if you will. Our environments are conducive to them thriving, where they’re not just showing up at work. Then we can apply this to us now. There’s only three components. Easy to talk about. A little more difficult in application, but outrageously beneficial. Cool? Cool like ice. You guys are allowed to talk back, you know. I’ll move this over here. You guys are with me on this, right? You still with me? Yes, Pat, we’re with you. Okay. Number one. Make sure I don’t go above my … There. Start with a pen that’s got some ink in it. There we go.

One is autonomy. We have to create an environment in which those around us can operate in a state of autonomy to some degree. What does that mean? It’s that they’ve got to be able to make decisions on their own relative to producing the results and outcomes that are desired. They can’t be told always what to do, how to do, when to do it, where to do it. Thanks for those yesses, guys. Okay. Say, “What’s wrong with that?” I’m going to tell you what’s wrong with that. We are all unique. We know that. We have one off God-given talents and skills unlike anyone else’s formula. We’ve all got our own formula. We thrive. We find fulfillment. We find passion in exploiting that formula, but when somebody else comes in and puts that fire out and says, “Do this my way,” we don’t get to use our own creativity, our own authenticity. That passion, that flame, is crushed.

Think about environments you’ve been in where you could not create. All you could do is follow orders, and how inspiring that was. I say that with an extreme high level of sarcasm. We’re designed to grow, to create in our unique authenticity. That’s one level of fulfillment. That’s like that little flame in our belly getting turned up when we get to create. You’re talking about employees. You say, “Well, Pat. What about the outcomes? What if they create something that don’t work?” Well, that’s the thing. Our job as managers, as leaders, is to hold them accountable to the agreed upon outcomes but to give them the autonomy to work towards them in their own way.

Use our gym as an example. Now, mind you, our gym has got a lot of moving parts. 25 or 28 trainers and people. 700 and something members in our gym. 360-plus classes a month. We do a lot of classes. A lot of moving parts. You think I micromanage that crap? Hell, no. We’ve got 100s and 100s and 100s of human interactions. I can’t manage that. What I can do is hold accountable to one KPI. It happened to be our mission statement. I say to my team all the time. “You’ve got one mission, one result. I don’t care how you get there. I’ll let you figure that out, because you’re all unique, special people.” Some of them are really special, believe me.

Our mission is to provide an outstanding experience for every single client every single time they walk through our doors. After all, we do that, we give them the one thing they want, the one thing all people want. The one thing you and I want always, simply to feel better. That’s it. Now, if every single time they have an outstanding experience in our gym, every single time they will feel better. Now they will associate our gym to feeling better subconsciously. When they hear about the gym, they will then feel better again without even being there, because there’s a connection to feeling better. Then they’ll tell their friends about our gym, and they’ll naturally come out in such a way they’ll be describing it from a place of awesomeness, because it makes them feel better.

Now, I could approach it differently. I could say, “Screw the autonomy. It’s exactly what to do, how to do, when to do it, what to say, what to wear, how to train your classes, how to shake their hand.” I could tell them all of that. Exactly how to do it, and it would kill this, and it would kill their purpose for showing up. I teach them ways to reach that outcome but let them do it in a way that works for them. Harvey, KPI, key performance indicator. Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up, Harvey. A KPI is simply something that you feel in your business is a good way to measure results. Marketing would have KPIs. It could be leads. It could be cost per leads. It could be percent ratio conversions. Those would all be considered KPIs. Cool?

The one that I use to manage our business from … One is the experience. I know if I get that right, everything else falls in line. There’s others we use, of course, but that’s at the top of the pile. Does that example make sense to you guys? Can you imagine the difference between a 23-year-old trainer that’s just energetic, fun, creative … They come in. They have all these great ideas, and I say, “No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Those are all right. All those ideas are cute and all, but they’re not for us. You just do it our way exactly. Now pick up your paycheck and leave,” versus, “Listen. Love it. Freaking awesome. Go to town, just don’t miss our mark. Do it in a way that provides an outstanding experience for every single one of our clients every single time they’re in our gym, in our home with us at the dinner table here because they are like family, and we’re good to go.” Makes sense?

Think about that in your own business and for you personally, because here’s what happens to us oftentimes. We get sucked in to trying to copy how somebody else does something. It takes away all of our own authenticity, our genuineness, our creativity. We’re trying to be like them instead of being us. See, that’s one of the key failure points in competing. I want to be like them, just like them, just a little better than them. In order for me to be like you, I have to conform to you. I have to comply. I have to compromise to be you, when in fact, I should not try to be the best at what I do. I should be the only one that does what I do. That would then mean working within my own uniqueness. Nobody else can do what I do as good as I do, because they don’t have my DNA formula, God-given, unique, special to me. Only I have that. The second we go there, nobody else can ever compete with you. How cool is that?

Harvey, our gym is here in Connecticut, in a little town called Rocky Hill, Connecticut. Does that all make sense to you guys? Think of these in terms of how you apply them to you personally as an individual. Also, as you apply them to those around you, those that you … Whether they be employees. Whether they be independent contractors, whether they be realtors or other investors that you work with. It doesn’t matter. Now, some of us get hung up on micromanagement. Guys, just be fair. This is no judgment. How many of you find that you’re hung up in that space? That you find that you micromanage? You have a hard time handing over the torch, letting someone else fail on their own terms. Ooh, there’s a big one. You know one of the greatest gifts that you as a parent, me as a parent, could ever give to our child is to let them fail on their own terms? Not easy. Massively beneficial to them. Not easy for us. Massively beneficial for them. It’s no different in our workplace. It’s through failure that we grow the fastest.

Last week I said I was down working with a bunch of entrepreneurs, mostly in the space of leadership, and we had one company who were expressing how disappointed they were with the growth of their employees. What it came down to was the employees were never allowed to think. They were allowed to do nothing more than plug in exactly what they were told to do, therefore, there was no failure, and there was no learning. There’s no thinking. There was just doing without purpose, without passion, without desire. Just doing. Cool.

Next. What we call mastery. For an entrepreneur, we screw this one up a lot. Mastery is the always getting better, the constant state of improvement. The challenge is that requires feedback. It requires some sort of recognition or us being able to recognize what’s working, what’s not. Where we’ve been and where we’re going. As entrepreneurs, we oftentimes do not have … Harvey used the word … KPIs that we measure our own performance off of. How do we know if we did better this week than we did the week before? How do we know if we’ve grown over the past six months? The answer is we generally don’t because we don’t track our own personal KPIs, key performance indicators. What would they be for you personally? They could be a million different things. How about how many books you read, because with every book, you grow, as an example. How about any other type of other education or teaching you do? How about how often you take on something that scares the living crap out of you? For that to happen means you’d have to be doing something with an unknown outcome, something you’ve never done before. As a result of that, it will force growth. It’s a measuring stick. It’s a barometer.

See, the challenge with not having feedback … Which, like I said, for the entrepreneur is fairly common … is we lose the driver of mastery. We are driven to constantly improve, to constantly be better. When we don’t have feedback on that, we lose that drive. It’s like having an employee that is told they can never make more money. That immediately will cease their inner drive to push. It’s not money that’s the driver. It’s the steady improvement that is the driver, and that’s something we’ve got to be crystal clear on. It’s not the money, the raise, that is the driver. That’s the result. It’s the steady improvement that we seek and feedback of such to validate that we are getting better at something that matters. That’s part two here in mastery. Part one is we have to get better, and two, it’s got to be something that matters. If we feel either one of those are missing, then in fact, we’re going to lose that driver.

Curtis says, “It sounds like you’re referring to John Maxwell’s book Become a Person of Influence.” I’ve not read it, but I’m sure these things are shared, Curtis, amongst many authors. I’m not the curator of it. Like I said, if I had to point to any one study, it would be probably the work done by Daniel Pink, who did a lot in personal behavior that I found. I like him as an author, but I’m sure he’s not the original curator, either. Interesting part here, none of this stuff is really like that, “Duh, that’s just freaking outrageously intelligent.” No. Some of this stuff is just not that hard in thought. More difficult to apply.

Again, look at the two different ways we’re looking at this. One with employees and people around us. How can we create environments so that they constantly have a level of feedback and know that day to day, they’re growing towards something that matters? The matters part should be fairly easy to express the reason why your team, your company, exists. The why behind what it does. The feedback is simply creating the ways you’re going to measure their performance. And yes, people want to be measured. No doubt. Agree up front. This is how we’re going to measure you week by week, and we’ll report back to you week by week. We’ll have conversations about getting better week by week. People love that. It’s part of our DNA to constantly want to strive towards something through daily, weekly, whatever improvement and know that what we’re doing matters. That’s where self-mastery comes from.

Self-actualization would be the epitome of that, being all that you can be, the Army catch phrase there. Reaching your potential. There’s something paradoxal around that concept in that reaching your potential would be self-actualization. That would be the highest level of performance, of fulfillment, and therefore the most fulfilling. The challenge with that is the paradox or the irony that it’s impossible. I guess it falls in that state of infinitesimal, I guess is the word I’m looking for. As you move closer to reaching your potential, you’re constantly enhancing your potential, but exponentially. If you move one inch closer, you’re enhancing it by two. Two inches closer, enhancing it by four, meaning that your potential is getting greater the closer you get to it, and therefore that the end target is getting further and further away. You say, “Well, Pat, that kind of screws with your mind, and where does that leave us?” It brings you back to exactly where you’ve been told a thousand times over. You’ve heard it again and again and again. Simple, simple, simple. It’s not about the destination. It’s not about reaching your potential. It’s not about there. It’s about the journey.

Our fulfillment comes in the journey, in the progress, the feedback, the results, the autonomy we have in playing the game. That’s where we find fulfillment. The beauty of this … I didn’t know we were going to get to this today, but the beauty in this, the magical part that so many people miss out on is the fact that because the magic is in the journey, we can choose to enjoy the hell out of it right now. We don’t have to wait to get there to be happy as crap. That’s the truth. That’s the ultimate secret. Think about that one. We can be happy now, yet the vast majority of humans are anything but happy.

That sense we want to belong, man. We want to be part of something bigger … Turn this thing on … bigger than ourselves. Does that make sense? We want to know that we matter. We want to know that once we’re off this earth, which when you think about it, the time we spend on this earth is really just a blip on the radar of how long our energy’s been here and will be here. Just a small little speck in the whole scope of time. We want to know when we’re done here, man, we ain’t done. It’s not over. We matter. What we do matters. We contribute. When somebody is working for you, and you want them to perform and be motivated on their own, they’ve got to know that their voice matters. Their input matters. Their insight matters. That there’s something bigger than them that they’re contributing to. Does that make sense?

You and I, when we wake up, we’re just not inspired, we’re not motivated. It’s time to turn around and say, “Man, what am I missing here?” Maybe it’s here. Maybe we never stop to think to see how what we do plugs in to the bigger picture. If we don’t understand this, then our day-to-day chores get really, really long. They get difficult. Things are hard at times. When we’re motivated, we can deal with hard. When we’re lacking motivation and we’re down in the dumps, hard will roll us over. Totally agree with this.

I’m going to ask you to look at this between two sets of goggles. One, with those that we influence, those around us, those that are subordinate to us, and then the second one, for ourselves, man. I don’t know about you, but when I wake up in the morning, I don’t have a go button. I don’t wake up always on the right side of the bed. This is a tool that allows me to change that, because I’m not going to settle for mediocrity. I’m not going to settle for this little battle that goes on in our head letting it dictate my quality of life. Like I said at the beginning of the show, the battle exists for everyone. The more perfect that 90% of their life is, the more freaking messed up that other 10% is. I know you guys know what I’m talking about. The secret, that we can be happy now. Easy to talk about. A little hard to implement, but if you own this stuff, man, life is good. It really is.

Harvey says, “Where did you get your insight from?” A lot of life. A lot of reading. A lot of self-practice, Harvey. I’ve been at this probably close to 20 years now. All of the above. Mr. Joe says, “Pat, I have something very personal I need your help with. Can I talk to you on a private one-on-one?” You can, Joe. Just yeah. Just reach out to me. That’s for any of you. My email is simple. It’s pat@patrickprecourt.com. Pat@patrickprecourt.com. Super easy to get a hold of. This is Kevin Murphy. “Very good session, Pat. Thank you.” Thank you guys. It’s been a pleasure. I’ll let you rock and roll, man. You guys freaking rock, and I’ll share this with you one more time. You guys are part of the tribe here, right? If you need shit, ask for it. Amongst some good people. Kent and I talk about this all the time, that we’re amazed at the quality of people that we attract in around us. Just keep that in mind, because you’re all one of them. Good stuff. Peace, guys. We’ll see you, Cheryl.