#ASKGARYVEE

The clouds. And the dirt.

Visionary. And practical.

As we know, we need both.

And, as Gary says, we need to push the edge on both sides.

It’s one of John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Here’s how he puts it: “Great leaders always seem to embody two seemingly disparate qualities. They are both highly visionary and highly practical. Their vision enables them to see beyond the immediate. They can envision what’s coming and what must be done. Leaders possess an understanding of how:"

Mission provides purpose—answering the question, Why?

Vision provides picture—answering the question, What?

Strategy provides a plan—answering the question, How?

As author Hans Finzel observed, ‘Leaders are paid to be dreamers. The higher you go in leadership, the more your work is about the future.’

At the same time, leaders are practical enough to know that vision without action achieves nothing. They make themselves responsible for helping their followers take action.”

What’s your guiding vision? Your ultimate purpose. Get comfie on that cloud up in the sky.

Then build your way up to that cloud with the next-step masonry work.

World-class architects. World-class masons.

That’s how we roll.

P.S. This is basically what I journal every morning—reflecting on the highest level virtues I’m committed to embodying then moving through Purpose + Mission + Strategy all the way down to the nuts and bolts of THE next most important thing I need to do in my AM1 Deep Work slot.

This is, primarily, a business book written for entrepreneurs, leaders and managers.

Gary makes the essential point that cash flow is OXYGEN to your business. Without it, well, you suffocate and die.

(Btw: Did you know that “affluence” literally means “abundant flow”? Yep. Thank you Eric Butterworth via Spiritual Economics: “The word affluence is an overworked word in our time, usually implying cars and houses and baubles of all kinds. Its literal meaning is ‘an abundant flow,’ and not things at all. When we are consciously centered in the universal flow, we experience inner direction and the unfoldment of creative activity. Things come too, but prosperity is not just having things. It is the consciousness that attracts things.”)

Another great body-metaphor I love is the idea that profits are like red blood cells for a business.

Just as a human body can’t live without healthy red blood cells, a business can’t live without healthy profits.

But, here’s the deal.

Although we need red blood cells to live, we don’t live *for* the red blood cells.

Guess what?

Same thing with our business. We need profits to live but we (at least conscious/optimal businesses) don’t live FOR the profits.

We live for a higher purpose and simply use those profits to serve the bigger end.

Oxygen. Blood cells. Important.

Then we have the DNA: Our strengths.

Love what Gary has to say here and every time I read about strengths I think of how Tom Rath brilliantly puts it in Are You Fully Charged? where he tells us: “If you spend most of your life trying to be good at everything, you eliminate your chances of being great at anything. Unless your goal is to be mediocre at a lot of things, starting with what you are naturally good at is a matter of efficiency. Focusing on strengths is in many ways a basic time-allocation issue. Every hour you invest in an area where you have natural talent has a multiplying effect, whereas each hour you spend trying to remedy a weakness is like working against a gravitational force. Yet many people spend years or even decades working on weaknesses in hopes that doing so will make them well-rounded. Do everything you can to avoid falling into this trap. While well-roundedness may be helpful for acquiring the basic tools in any trade—such as reading, writing, and arithmetic—it loses value as you get closer to finding a career. At that point, what’s more important and relevant is what sets you apart. If you want to be great at something in your lifetime, double down on your talents at every turn.”

Let’s get a solid base and then double down!!

P.S. With Optimize, I OBSESSED about creating a healthy, profitable business. I’ve raised over $10m and built and sold two businesses over the course of my entrepreneurial career but neither of my prior two businesses ever made money—they were just great ideas we executed on pretty well before running out of steam and choosing to sell. Thankfully we got away with it in terms of good investor ROI’s but our businesses never actualized their potential because we never figured out the oxygen/red blood cell side of things.

This time around I knew I wanted to dedicate my life to creating something great and that we needed that solid base of oxygen. I’m excited to report that in our first $1m of annual recurring revenue, we’re able to put $250k+ of profits right back into the business.

Now we get to take nice, deep breaths as we climb the mountain peaks we’re after to truly change the world (and add even more affluence to the supplies!).

How about you?

Have you taken care of the most basic fundamental needs of your business/personal life? If that’s still an issue (I definitely know the feeling), what can you do to focus your energies on getting the oxygen supply optimized?!

Hustle.

It’s the secret sauce.

When Angela Duckworth describes the elements of Grit (which, as we know, outpredicts everything else for success), she echoes this wisdom—telling us that effort (hustle!) counts twice:

“I have been working on a theory of the psychology of achievement since Marty scolded me for not having one. I have pages and pages of diagrams, filling more than a dozen lab notebooks. After more than a decade of thinking about it, sometimes alone, and sometimes in partnership with close colleagues, I finally published an article in which I lay down two simple equations that explain how you get from talent to achievement.

Here they are:

talent x effort = skill

——————→ skill x effort = achievement

Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Of course, your opportunities—for example, having a great teacher—matter tremendously, too, and maybe more than anything about the individual. My theory doesn’t address these outside forces, nor does it include luck. It’s about the psychology of achievement, but because psychology isn’t all that maters, it’s incomplete.

Still, I think it’s useful. What this theory says is that when you consider individuals in identical circumstances, what each achieves depends on just two things, talent and effort. Talent—how fast we can improve a skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.”

Remember (echo!) Hustle counts twice!!!

The passage also reminds me of Jim Afremow’s wisdom from his great book The Champion’s Comeback where he tells us we need to outperform our contract: “An uncompromising approach in training and continuous hustle in competition is vital to achieving sports-related goals. J.J. Watt is an NFL All-Pro defensive end for the Houston Texans. His willingness to embrace the extra effort required for excellence is one of the main reasons for his success. Here’s what Watt says about working hard and representing yourself well: ‘I think no matter what job you do—I don’t care what job it is—you want to outperform your contract. I feel like that’s how everybody should attack their job, at least. You should want people to think you’re underpaid because of how hard you work, because of how well you do your job, because of how you go about your business.’

Take a moment for honest self-reflection. Are you outperforming your contract? Are you attacking your job on a daily basis? What about in your sport? Are you one of the hardest workers on your team? Put in 100 percent maximum effort toward your goals and bring a passion to the work. Be willing to put in the blue-collar labor rather than wishing you had more talent so that everything would come easily. It never will. The great ones make it look easy, but only after they put in the time and work.”

Lewis Howes is all about the hustle as well.

Here’s how he puts it in The School of Greatness: “Chris was tapping into something that I think 18-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps described best when he talked about his swim training: ‘If you want to be the best, you have to do things that other people aren’t willing to do.’ … He [Chris] was willing to do whatever it took: ‘You have to chase opportunity whether you are an entrepreneur or an artist—especially for me, because I had to make up for so much lost time.’

The irony is, we’re all making up for lost time. That is the essence of hustle in the pursuit of greatness—doing whatever it takes and chasing opportunity with great urgency—like your life depends on it. Because it does. Greatness is really the survival of your vision across an extended timeline, based on your willingness to do whatever it takes in the face of adversity and to adopt the mind-set to seize opportunity wherever it lives.”

Let’s flex the hustle muscle.

Are YOU outperforming your contract with life?

How can you step it up a little more today?

P.S. Gary makes the point that he’s not talking about working all the time. He’s talking about approaching your entire life with a fierce intensity that cherishes your precious time and energy!

“Practice the religion of providing value.”

← That’s a very succinct description of a great (and very fun to execute) sales and marketing strategy. And, of course, it’s what we aspire to do here at Optimize.

As you probably know, one of our favorite words is to astonish—to make you say, “What? I get all this for $10?!” It’s basically one big game for us to see just how much we can do to help you Optimize. Laughing as I type this but just yesterday we got an email from a member saying that our free daily emails are worth more to him than the thousands of dollars he’s spent on other products. (Hah!)

As my coach Steve Chandler would remind me, it’s ALL about serving profoundly.

Let’s be one of the few as we strive to create as much value as we possibly can for the individuals we’re blessed to have the opportunity to serve.

I laughed out loud with joy when I read that passage. That’s some pretty admirable gritty self-awareness for a 4th-grader, eh? :) Gary’s point? “That moment marked the first time I decided to fight what society expected of me and deliver on what made me happy. And you should, too. Bottom line: Stop doing things that make you unhappy.”

Gary still had to struggle through years of poor grades in school. But the clarity delivered through that pain wound up bringing priceless, purpose-driven tranquility a la Ryan Holiday’s great wisdom from Ego Is the Enemy. (See those Notes for more on the Greek idea of euthymia.)

Every morning I write down “Energized Tranquility” to remind myself of the importance of walking my own, authentic path—not comparing myself to others or second-guessing our strategy every 5 seconds.