James and KLEQ's John Lint talk standards and why you should aim to set a new one every day.
James: James Schramko here with my friend John Lint from 10XPRO.io. Hey, John.
John: Hello.
James: John, I got you on the call because I wanted to share with you this time when I used to be in the motor trade. We used to be provided a company vehicle. And when I was at BMW at the time, my first sales job before Mercedes-Benz – and I know most people know me from Mercedes-Benz – but I had a holiday coming up, a family holiday. And I booked a week off. Now, instead of letting me take the BMW away, because this company was pretty stingy, they’re notoriously stingy. Even my son worked for them years later, I said, don’t work for these people. They’re very stingy. And he came back to me and he goes, These people are so stingy. And he left very quickly. And I was like, I told you so.
But anyway, on my holiday, they gave me a customer’s trade-in. They traded in that day. And it was this old Ford Falcon. Now if you’re overseas watching this, and it doesn’t mean anything to you, just imagine an old Ford, alright? It’s like 15 years old. I’m like, Thanks, guys. And I packed my family into this, you know, a little bit of a sunk pride because now, I’m this high-flying BMW sales rep. I’m like number one in the country. And my company thinks so much of me, they want to give me this old Ford to take the family on a camping trip.
So we drove down the coast, it’s like a four-hour drive. And we got down there and during the week, we sort of drove to the shops here and there and to the various places. But something really interesting happened. By the time I got back to Sydney after a week in the old Ford, I actually normalized. And this car, it started to grow on me. It was a bit bigger than the BMW and it was very comfortable in the seat and the stereo was easy to operate. And it was kind of cool. You can just park it anywhere. And don’t worry if someone opens the door on it, and the boot was enormous. So like it swallowed everything we took. And by the end of the week, I’m like, I don’t mind this car. So my point really is, we normalize.
Now I just had a coaching student today on the calls, announce that it was their very first year of making seven figures, which means they’ve crossed the million-dollar mark. And I said, normalize. That is the new normal. That is now the everyday standard.
Now just to prove a point, I normalized on the seven figures about 11 years ago, and never dipped below it. And that’s the norm. If I were to start dipping and I get reportings every day, if we were to start dragging the chain a bit, I’ll quickly correct. So a couple of things here. If you’ve normalized a substandard situation, you’re gonna have to pry yourself out of it. Be honest about your situation. Like, look in the mirror, look at your numbers and say, am I happy with being comfortable with what I have now?
Now if you’ve normalized in a high performing situation, good. And ask yourself, is that where you want to be? And I can honestly say, and I posted this in SuperFastBusiness the other day, I’m actually living my dream. I really feel like my normal is quite sustainable for me. I’m happy with where I’m at with family, recreation, friends, business, surfing. I’m happy that it’s in a way better groove than it was when I had a job.
So I just want to hear from you. What sort of things have you experienced around normalization? And how does that affect you as you’re growing your business, 10XPRO.io, as you’ve sort of added users like the stuff we’ve been doing, it’s been adding and adding users. Your new normal keeps pushing higher, right? Every month, there’s another X number of users and the platform’s actually becoming quite a snowball. So you’re on the growth phase, but I imagine you never want it to slip back.
John: Yeah, exactly. This is something that we all need to look at. I think it’s fantastic what you just said in becoming that new normal, right? You might get excited at the beginning, but then bring it down and say, You know what? It’s normal. Not like, I don’t deserve this or I got lucky.
No. It’s normal. It’s normal that we are here because we work hard. We got to that result. Let’s keep it up. And let’s make it normal. Right? So I think that’s beautiful. Of course, yeah, with our business we are growing and growing, more people are switching from all these other platforms out there and coming back to us. So that’s awesome. I think that even in the other areas of your life, whether it’s like, fitness or surfing for us, or there’s the surf trips that we’ve done.
Like the first time we go to Maldives like, hey, it’s scary and the waves, we don’t know the waves, but now it’s going to be our fourth year, and we know the spot. Okay, we know the waves are hard, but it’s kind of like, okay, we know what to expect. We know that is normal, and we know how we’re going to take it. So I think it applies to a lot of areas in your life and it’s extremely important. That’s how actually you know whenever you work out. You break something, you’re growing, it fixes itself. And that becomes the new normal, right? So your muscles are growing that way. Because you’re increasing, it becomes normal, increase again becomes normal, right? Unless you stop doing anything and then you revert.
Same thing in your business, stop doing anything, stop caring about your customers, stop doing the things that you should be doing. Of course, your business is going to go down. So finding that right balance between, do I want to do more and more and more to go even higher and higher?
For me, I would say why? Like, you need to ask yourself that question. Why do you want to do that? Maybe it’s because you want to and that’s cool, or you want to find that you have that goal. And then you want to normalize it and say, This is the life I want, depending on the type of entrepreneur that you are, and it’s totally fine. Either way is fine. But normalizing, yeah I think it’s beautiful.
James: That’s the thing. Basically, you’re either content with what you have or you’re not. If you set goals and it’s high, that’s really the normal mark you’re looking to achieve. Don’t be satisfied with a substandard outcome.
Always love having chats, John. And thank you so much for sharing your insights on this topic. See you soon.
See our products HERE
Check out the all-in-one paid membership features of KLEQ
Leave a Reply