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so why do some people realize more of
their potential than other people I mean
this question is bugging me for years
like like why is that like why did what
if some people achieve success at this
it's really high level you know and then
other people who have accessed the same
information the same resources and
they're just as smart and yet they don't
like what's going on here for example
Bill Gates is a pretty smart guy I know
that because it says I know that because
it says so on the screen now but he's
got an IQ of 160 which by the way is the
same that Stephen Hawking so I know it's
a pretty smart guy but I can go on
google and I can find a long list of
people with IQs just as high as Bill
Gates some way higher actually than Bill
Gates none of whom built anything like
Microsoft and most of whom actually
lived pretty ordinary lives considering
how incredibly brilliant they are so
what's going on like what's going on
here well I can tell you after 40 plus
years and I don't look like I'm old
enough for that to even be possible but
for 40 thank you for saying so but for
40 plus years I've been studying and
I've been working with and coaching both
athletes and entrepreneurs and I can
tell you with some degree of certainty
at least that there is a formula that
leads to success you know people that
are successful don't just have similar
attributes or qualities not all just
smart and I'll just create them and
they're not all just necessarily
hard-working folks they have experiences
that are similar there is a pattern to
experiences that successful people go
through and that's good news that's cool
because it means that we can reproduce
those things right I mean if there's
people we love and care about including
possibly ourselves
we can leverage that information to
actually do something about it that's
the good news the bad news is I'm not
gonna tell you what it is so he's not
yet
first I wanna tell you the story about
how I uncovered all this in the first
place so thirty years ago I was a
gymnastics coach that's me I had more
hair
okay that's Gabby Douglas the 2012
Olympic champion but I was a gymnastics
coach and I was a pretty good one at
least I thought I was a pretty good one
anyway I loved the sport really really
still do and I you know I guess I won
more than I lost and then one day I went
to a gymnastics conference I was really
excited about this conference because
there was a guy there that had been to
Russia and at the time Russia was the
top country in the world for gymnastics
right so I was really excited and he had
been there and he had filmed a coach
teaching this girl how to do a catch if
that is what yabbies doing up on the
screen there she's doing gonna catch it
and a catch it is a really cool move I
love that you swing come out of a giant
swing you know what that is just
swinging up in the air you let go just
fly up in the air you swing backwards
over the bar you catch the bar on your
way down your swing through so it's a
big fun dynamic cool move so I was
really stoked to go there and and and
and and watch this this film so you know
it's a time in Canada the way that we
would learn skills at least certainly
among my peer group was to practice it
over and over and over again until you
get it right all right so let's skill
like a catch up that's a pretty
high-level move would take us years to
learn how to do so I sat there in this
audience and you can imagine my surprise
when I'm watching this film and this
girl appears to learn the skill he and
about ten minutes I don't know much
thing was perfect or anything but she
kind of went from not knowing how to do
a catch up to kind of knowing how to do
a catch up in about ten minutes this
blew me away you gotta understand this
blew me away if I did it blew me away so
much that I wondered if what I was
seeing was 100 cent legit you know like
am I see is it actually proper and the
funny thing is the guy with the camera I
guess he felt the same way because he
asked the question the coach said this
she goes how is it possible for this
girl to learn a catch of in about ten
minutes now have you ever had something
happen in your life that hit you smack
between the eyes and really shook your
belief system and probably you have it
certainly for me this was that moment
because this coach looked back at this
guy he looked back at the camera and
really from my perspective I'm sitting
there and I feel like he's looking back
right at me
I feel like he's looking straight at my
soul I think because he looked at any of
me and he said you said ten minutes to
learn the catch if he said ten years to
prepare to learn the catch of and I
thought whoa wait a minute ten years to
prepare to learn something that you then
and learned in ten minutes I sort of
understood what he was saying not a
hundred percent but I knew one thing for
sure at that moment I wasn't actually
that good at gymnastics cause my ego got
crushed that day for sure I realized
that something fundamentally that I have
been doing all this time was was wrong
it was not right and what I did do was
vow to figure it out I'm gonna fear what
the heck was going on so I started
studying I started researching I
traveled across the u.s. I visited lots
of the different gymnastics clubs in the
US and slowly but surely the way I
thought about gymnastics started to
change my eye started shifting my
thinking a little bit and I started
thinking I realize the gymnastics is not
a whole bunch of these moves a whole
bunch of these skills that you do
gymnastics is like a like a system with
a bunch of subsystems that all come
together and the best way I can describe
it really is it's like Lego because if
you if you know how to build Lego got a
bunch of you know big pile of Lego you
think you can build a little house right
or you can take it apart and you can use
the same pieces of Lego and you can
rebuild it like a car or whatever you
want out of Lego if you've got good
pieces of Lego and you know how to build
and gymnastics was just like that it's a
bunch of pieces that you can
assemble together to make all those
amazing things that you see every four
years on TV at the Olympics and so this
totally changed my perspective and I
went back to the drawing board spent the
whole summer revamping our program built
it from rebuilding from scratch
I broke gymnastics down all into these
little sub components we call them
specific body actions in sports science
but broke it down to all these little
sub components little pieces of Lego and
then on top of each one of these pieces
of Lego I built a whole program a 20
late 20 levels program for each one of
these so it's like a big giant grid and
then I tested my athletes against this
grid and now I could see where they were
strong and where they were weak more
importantly they could now see where
they were strong and they could not see
what they were they were weak and they
knew what to do about it and I had to
move from level two to level 3 or level
3 to level 4 I mean they understood what
they had to do I started to actually
empower them in a way they've never been
empowered before from coaching because
it changed in fact the whole way that I
coached because before I would gather my
gymnast together and I would tell them
what to do and then I would send them
off to do it and then I would follow
them around and fix fix fix or whatever
and then I pull them together and I'd
tell them what to do something off to do
that and then that's how I coached but
now was totally different now I stood
back on the sidelines now I was watching
I was a more like a conducting a
symphony that's me up there now you can
see actually did have hair see I really
did but I was on the sidelines I was
conducting like an orchestra and the
movement everybody knew what they what
to do and how to do it and believe it or
not every single person in this audience
not forever but for a day could replace
me as a coach if I give you 20 minute
lesson in how to coach gymnastics and
you stood there and said point your toes
straighten your legs you could have you
could have you could have got through
they wouldn't have known any different
you know nobody would have figured it
out eventually but you know so because
the whole thing was working and guess
what they got better they got better and
better and better and better until one
day they didn't get better you know they
can lick up they stuck and I they got
and I was like I thought I had to figure
it out you know I was like oh right so I
thought about it I thought what is going
on like why are we Plateau
why are we not still progressing and
pushing them and I mean I know they love
the sport I know they're passionate I
knew they why they wanted to be there
they had all that going for them they
wanted to work hard they wanted to be
there but it was just hard and that's
that that was what they finally figured
it out yeah it's just hard gymnastics is
hard chin-ups are hard and to stay
motivated to work at that level all the
time consistently is hard alright so
motivation needs fuel I realized you
can't just always operate at 100 miles
an hour you need fuel to support
yourself to be at that level so got out
a calendar
I started plugging in all these events
to start to change the atmosphere to
support the high level of work we were
trying to achieve so we went swimming we
went to the beach we went rock climbing
together we had parties we created a fun
quirky kind of culture in the gym you
know and we had a good time and but the
thing that really worked the thing that
really made the difference was when we
took that culture and we pulled it
together and put it right inside the
training program itself so for example
when they moved up one of these levels
that I'm talking about
they went over and they could we had a
cowbell and finally we did and they ring
the cowbell ding-a-ling-a-ling and then
I would hoist them up on my shoulders
and I would run them around the gym and
everybody would cheer and then they
would go back to where they were
everybody would gather around and watch
them do their new thing their new scale
and high-fives all around and back to
work so we brought the culture right
into the process of excellence we tied
the culture to excellence we built what
I call a culture of excellence and then
they started getting better and better
and better and better and better and
then something amazing happened three
things actually first skill started
coming faster than I'd ever seen before
which took a year off from training I
mean I mean competing sorta took a year
off from competing plus training
and then we went back and we started
pulling these things together like these
pieces of Lego assembled and man for the
first time I started to see how you can
learn a catch of in ten minutes it was
incredible kind of a bonus the injury
rate almost entirely disappeared because
they were fit they were strong they were
healthy they could handle a little
follower a little mistake their bodies
were conditioned properly we had done it
right and the part that I loved the most
of them kind of a competitive guy in
case you're wondering is well we won
lots of reven lip ribbons lots of medals
I mean actually they crushed it was
pretty cool and what I didn't exactly
know at the time was that I discovered a
formula for success
I discovered a formula for success ten
years later which is 20 years back now
when I started my consulting firm I kind
of codified it and I call it the value
pyramid and here's how it worked for
gymnastics so it's four levels and as
you climb the value pyramid you start to
realize more and more and more of your
potential the potential is not just this
thing that you need to be afraid of or
need to be frustrated by there is a
process that you can go through to get
there if you understand you're willing
to walk down the path so at level one I
was a coach I love the sport attracted
my athletes in taught the athletes level
to some live athletes said hey I like
gymnastics I'm going to do gymnastics
so they started participating and what
and then that's right where I was before
I went to the conference I was telling
them what to do but they liked the sport
the next level whoops the next level we
developed a training program but a
training program in particular that they
could have me be part of not just the
training program where I told them what
to do but a training program that they
had some control over that they were
part of and then finally we built
culture the drove excellence neck and
trade created a continuous improvement
loop right driving of excellence onto a
system created a continuous improvement
loop where you went better and better
and better and better but this works for
everything everything let's say you're a
teacher let's say you love
science and you're a science teacher and
you teach some students about science
and some of them say hey I like science
so you teach them some study habits so
they can understand how to study and how
to recover how to continuously make
themselves better and then you create
maybe a study group and so they have
motivation to try to keep working with
each other and they get better and
eventually some of them become
scientists even Bill Gates had his
computer labs right with others that
helped me to do the same thing and now I
work with business owners and the
concept is exactly the same as the
gymnast you start a business you're
excited about your business eventually
you hire some people and hopefully they
get motivated to help you with your
business but you're telling them what to
do and that's what most businesses stay
by the way they're right at that spot
where they're working with people they
tell people what to do or maybe those
people have their own ideas but they're
doing their own thing then it's not a
cohesive group focused in some direction
but once you start putting systems in
place systems that help you to hire the
right people systems that help you to
train the right people systems that give
you quality assurance and quality
control systems in structure and goals
and job descriptions and all that stuff
that we often think of as a boring but
it actually brings life to the business
it makes the business alive right just
like a gymnast comes like the business
itself comes alive just like your build
a gymnast and eventually you build a
culture of excellence on top of that and
you create that continuous improvement
loop that I was talking about this works
for every single situation just don't
take my word for it think of some of the
biggest companies in the world just for
fun let's say Toyota let's say Apple
let's say Walmart
Toto's the largest manufacturing company
in the world Walmart became the largest
retail company in the world Apple you
know most valuable company in the world
all of these companies and more you
could name 100 I guarantee any business
that you can think of that you really
admire has what these three businesses
has which is almost a fanatical culture
a culture of excellence that drives on
top of the systems that drives the
continuous improvement loop that grows
that company it's pretty cool stuff and
what I love is it can put you in control
of your destiny
Thomas Edison said opportunity is missed
by most people with its dressed in
overalls and it looks like hard work but
what kind of hard work will climb your
own value pyramid and find out thanks
very much
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you