Business Coach : Build A Foundation
-Here’s another stat that blows my mind. This is from the RichHabitsInstitute.com. It says, “86% of wealthy people love to read, versus 26% percent of poor.” They love to read. There’s a desire to learn, the fire of desire. A business coach will tell you to never stop learning.
So why is it so important that the Thrivers who are watching this learn to love the very act of learning? Why is it so important that we learn to love learning, Tim?
-Learning is the foundation of progress. Learning is the capacity to adapt smartly to situations that demand that you adapt. If competitors are coming in with a better product than you, you’ve got to learn to adapt and outpace them. If you’ve got competitors coming in, and then they’re going outcall you, they’re dialing for dollars–
CLAY CLARK: Not going to happen.
-Yeah. It’s not going to happen with Clay Clark. OK. We all know that. These guys are trying to keep up with this guy.
I’m just saying that your progress and your success is built on the foundation of learning/adapting to your environment. Having a business coach can help you to adapt.
-We’re moving on to step 3, so we’re assuming, now, that you’re taking ownership of your life and that you are now learning. You’re committed to learning. So now we’re moving on. You have to visualize the success you want.
Tim, my brother from another mother, Gary Keller, wrote his book The One Thing. He says, “Economists have long known that although people prefer big rewards over small ones, they have an even stronger preference for present rewards over small ones. Even when the future rewards are much bigger, it’s an ordinary occurrence, oddly named the hyperbolic discounting. The farther away a reward is in the future, the smaller the immediate motivation is.” I guess it’s if I’m going to give you $1 million 10 years from now or 100,000 now, people usually go with the smaller, up-front amount.
Tim, can you share with me a story from throughout your career how you’ve seen this tendency, from people you’ve coached, clients you’ve coached, from entrepreneurs to sacrifice the big, long-term gains for the short-term rewards?
TIM REDMOND: It’s delayed gratification. I’ve got a guy that has 53 red-hot prospects. He spent thousands of dollars to generate them, and I am doing everything but making the phone call myself to get him to do it, because if he’ll dial out and do that work, he’ll have hundreds of thousands of dollars coming in. This whole deferred gratification is the ability not just to give into your feelings– I just don’t feel like selling. Well, OK, your kids feel like eating, so if you don’t feel like selling, they’re not going to be able to eat when they feel like eating. That’s how life works.
I did this experiment based on this book that was done, Emotional Intelligence. Who’s the guy? Emotional Intelligence? A business coach can teach you about emotional intelligence.
-Jeff Bridges? Was it Penelope Cruz? Was it Kyle Petty? Now I’m thoroughly confused, because I’m seeing beautiful women from Spain. Anyway. Emotional intelligence, this whole basis of this, he talked about this study that was done on marshmallows. They would give these little kids a marshmallow and say– listen. This marshmallow, it’s yours. If you eat it now, you don’t get any more. But if you can wait, we’ll give you all the marshmallows you can eat.
There’s three groups. Two of the groups, they chomped it down as quick as they can. They saw as they grew up, they were giving into their feelings so much that they didn’t have any delayed gratification. They just had to do what they felt. And they had all kinds of problems.
The kids that waited where these kids that were just skyrocketing with their success. I did that experiment on my kids, my own kids. They were five and six years of age, Matthew and Robert. Now they’ve graduated from college. They’re both very, very successful. And I know– Matthew’s the stoic. He’s going to go after it. He’s looking at those marshmallows. He put them down and says– OK, I made the decision. We’re just going to do it.
Robert is a portable party. He loves people. He loves parties. He loves having a good time. He’s a very passionate man. Both are very intelligent, very sharp guys. He’s looking at that. I remember in my closet, I felt this presence behind me. He’s this little 5-year-old kid, looking at his marshmallow this close. He says, “Daddy, can I have my marshmallow?”
I said, “You can have your marshmallow. You own that. If you eat it now, you won’t get any later. But if you can hold off on that–”
My kids got sick eating marshmallows. I had to buy another bag. They both held out. What they did here was they were able to delay their gratification.
-I want to do this tonight to see how good a parent I am. Maybe if I did it tonight, I’d find that I’m not a very good parent. I’m raising a bunch of marshmallow eaters! That’s what’s going on here! I’m worried about it.
-We love it. We love it. Get your s’mores going. It’s an awesome family event. But the idea here, Clay, is we’ve got to learn to put off what we want to do to do what we have to do.
-It’s just unbelievable. That idea right there is so uncommon, but it’s something we have to learn.
TIM REDMOND: It’s right in front of us. We know it. Now, these beautiful Thrive people watching this, I’m going to invite you to do it. And that is coming from a business coach.