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Dec. 19, 2021

Is The Lead Worth The Lag? | Practicing 1% Improvement Every Day

Is The Lead Worth The Lag? | Practicing 1% Improvement Every Day

What does it mean to get 1% better every day? I believe in the idea, but do I just show up and "do a little better?" Today, I'll show you how to take the idea of 1% daily improvement and put it into practice using the Lead/Lag Method. 

Lead is the effort. 
Lag is the result. 

How often have you given up, because you haven't seen the results? I've got you covered on this one :)

Thanks for listening. Show your support by sharing this episode with someone else. 

Where in the world are you listening today? Text me 337-565-0906 or go to www.marshbuice.com. One place to explore the many ways to connect and learn more. 

Thank you to James Clear's "Atomic Habits" for sparking the idea for today's episode. 

The greatest sale you will ever make is to sell you on you. You're more than enough. Never settle. Keep Selling. 

Transcript

What does it mean to get 1% better every day? We're all familiar with the idea, but how do you specifically do it? Today. I'm going to help you take it from an idea and put it into practice. You're listening to one of the top 5% podcasts in the world. This is the sales life, and I'm your host marsh buice and the sales life is just not for those in the sales profession, because selling is a life skill. Everything that you've achieved in life is because you sold your way there. And everything that you haven't accomplished in life is because you settled and you stop selling, whether by profession or life skill selling requires communication, curiosity, creativity, continuous learning, and confrontation, but productive. So that way, no matter what comes your way, you'll be able to figure it out and you're never settle and keep selling. So if you want to have more, do more, be more. We'll say no more. Let's get on with today's episode. Massive outcomes. Come from small daily improvements. I want to talk today about leads and lags and I'll loosely reference James Clear's book, atomic habits in order to do so. See, when you talk about 1% improvement every day I buy off on that. I believe in that, but many times a 1% improvement is more of an idea and you really don't know how to put it into practice. I mean, is it 1% improvement? I just show up and give a little bit more. or are there some specific steps that I can take in order to incrementally notch up my success? , if you improve 1% every single day, over the course of a year, it'll be a 37 X improvement. I mean, what return on investment would you not take to get a 37 X return? Everybody would take that investment. Conversely, if I get worse 1% every single day, then by the end of the first year, I'll be close to zero. And if you do that repeatedly year over year, oh, you got a bad situation on your hands, because think about it like. I get to the goal. I lose the weight, but then as the next year goes on, I don't do quite as much. I'm not quite as urgent. And every day I just give a little less. Do that over the course of the year? Not only did I give the 30 pound weight loss back, but if I roll that year after year, I ended up gaining 40 pounds on top of that. So I lost 30. I got 1% worse. Every single day I gave the 30 pounds back. Uh, role that year over year, and now I'm 40 pounds heavier than I've ever. That's a 70 pounds swing or say, for instance, you got out of debt and out of celebration for getting out of debt. I began to swipe my credit card a little bit. I don't owe anybody anything. Let me just swipe. Doesn't seem like much, 1% swipe here and there by the end of the year and back in debt, roll that year over year. I've got no choice, but to declare bankruptcy, man, you can play this out all kinds of different ways. So let's talk about the leads and the lags. Okay. Here's how to break it down the leads or the effort, the lag is a result. And see the lag is an indicator of your lead. Your lag. Your result is an indicator of your lead. The effort and what's crazy is when you're looking to improve 1% every day, it doesn't seem like much so small, in fact that you don't see an improvement. And also, so. That it seems like it bears no consequence, But this is where the wheels start getting wobbly, man, because there's an accumulation that's going on behind the scenes that you're not aware of, the lags, the results are cumulative in the moment it looks like nothing over time. It's everything. Remember 1% daily is 37 X over the course of the year. Roll that year over year. Massive. Massive benefits 1% worse end of the year and back at zero role that year after year utter destruction. And that's where it seems like, oh my God, what happened? All of a sudden, like a blind side. If you cease to improve 1% every day. This is where it gets deceiving. If you're successful, then you give it all back. And if you're trying to become successful, if you trying to change you give up because you're only looking at the results and not the path. If I save a hundred bucks every single month after 12 months, it's what 1200 bucks. And that's a far cry away from my goal of being a millionaire or say, for instance, if I go to the gym for a solid month. Yet the scale doesn't move. I mean, it works for everybody else, but it's not moving for me and this is why I say it gets deceiving. . When the lag AK, the result looks too far, you always revert back. You go back to your old life. You're always doing things and you just feel like a victim. It's not for me. Woa is me? I have all these hardships. You tell me all the reasons why you can't accomplish something. This is important. Most people make decisions based on the lag, their current results, and they let the lag determine. The lead, they let the lag, their current result determined their next effort. So the lag is no weight loss. The lead your next effort . Because you're frustrated you're disheartened it's working for everybody else. Your lead, your next effort will be, well, I'm just gonna take a day off a week, a month. I'm going to hit it hard next year. Let me put it a different way for you and sales leads are opportunities. A customer submits a lead that is interested in my product and gives me their contact information. But as a salesperson, I worked the lead based on the lag. If I have a great month going, I see the lead is an opportunity, very opportunistic, right? Just keep the good times going. But if I have a bad month then, because my lag, my current result is a terrible month. How am I going to work the lead? That's a Roach. They're not buying anything. They're FOS wasting my time. Here's what I like about leads being stripped of emotion and independent of the lag. If I focus solely on 1% improvement every single day, the lead, then the lag is going to take care of itself. This is what's going to free you up. I'm just working the lead. I'll lay the brick next and the results are going to come when the results need to come. How many times have you let your emotions override your effort? You're mad. You're overwhelmed. You're stressed. You got more month than you got money. You're running out of month. You don't even work your lead. You don't even work the opportunity. The 1% improvement every single day. Because you let your lag your current results, determine your lead, what you're going to do next. So you say the hell with it. You chalk it up. This is why you gotta be macro patient micro effort, macro patient spread out micro effort, 1% improvement every single day. So say for instance, I want to read more 1% improvement every day. in reading, read a page a day and then. You find the gaps to incrementally add to that 1%. So the gap may be in the audio book so I can read while I'm driving down the road, I can read while I'm working out. I fill in the gaps where I can, where I'm standing in line at the grocery store opened up my Kindle app and I read. One section three sentences. And if I'm focused on 1% improvement, every single day, I'm looking for those gaps to incrementally improve. If I'm seeking 1% improvement at the gym every day, that's just one extra rep. It's just a new movement. A new exercise. It's doing body weight exercises, just dropping down and doing a quick 30 second plank. It's getting to the top of the stairs at work and banging out 10 pushups or 15 air squats. When all you're doing is, is how can I improve incrementally? Alone by itself. It doesn't seem like much compounded over time. All the difference in the world. Here's what I want you to do. Work the lead and only the lead. That's the effort in the moment and let the lag be. It's going to be whatever it's going to be. It's like bowling a ball. And once you release the ball, you can lean, you can shout, you can, you can wave your hands left and right. That ball's going to go the way that it needs. But if my lead the effort, set it up, then I can heavily influence the result. You only focus on the trajectory, the path that you're heading on. So here's a very easy gut check for you. Ask in the moment. Is the lead worth. The lag meaning. Is what I'm doing or what I'm about to do, is it in the direction toward the result that I want to see? So let's go back to that. A hundred bucks, a hundred bucks saved every single month. Will I become a millionaire in a year? No. Can I become a millionaire? Maybe see I'm on the path. It may be a long path when you draw that out. The way that it looks now. But I improve 1% every day. I'm gaining in the discipline. I'm getting some financial literacy and what looks like just a hundred dollars today because I'm gaining that expertise along the way. And I'm filling in the gaps and improving. I'm not scared of the money. I've got a structure here, then I'm on the path to becoming a millionaire. Versus the other way around, see, this is where people get it twisted. They say, oh, a hundred bucks every single day at the end of 12 months is $1,200. That's not even enough to pay my rent. Right. And so they say, well, what's the use. I'm not going to do anything. Well, that's the biggest fallacy there is because what's your, what's the flip side I could rack up a bunch of debt. Is that the path that I want to be on is that the result that I want? No, that's not the lag that I won't. So why do the leads, why focus the effort toward a result that I don't want, even if it's so small, remember this is the deceiving it's 1%. If you do it, there's no result. If you don't do it seems like no consequence. But if you do it over time, you'll get an outcome. And you're in control of that. What about weight loss. If I go outside and walk a lap for 10 minutes. Am I going to lose 50 pounds maybe. And along the way, I'm learning new exercises and pushing the envelope a little bit further. When I get tired, I go just a few more steps. See I'm on the path is the trajectory that I want to be. & the lead. The effort is worth the lag. I want to lose weight. That's what I want. I'm on that path. Yes or no. Versus the other way I could eat every appetizer. There is I could stay up late and eat Bluebell ice cream. That's the lag. If the lag, do I want to gain 30 more pounds? Do I want that lag? No. Well then why are you doing the lead? Why are you emotionally eating? Just because it seems like the 10 minutes that I put in is of no use. Just work your lead, push off, lay the brick and build on better. Now here's, what's interesting. As this plays out, the leads equal, the lag, the lag become new leads to become bigger, better lags. So let me use the sales life podcast. As an example, if thelag the result that I want is a podcast episode. What are my lead measures? Watch CNN all day that won't produce a podcast, no, I got to read. I got to write and I got to record my lead becomes the lag, a podcast episode. Over time. They become leads. The lead, write read and record become the lag of a podcast episode 668. Podcasts episodes now become leads. Toward the lag of me being an independent contractor of my success. See all that builds and taken alone solely just reading a book, reading a page doesn't seem like much so simple to skip. Doesn't seem like much improvement, but you got to zoom out. It's a long game. You're playing here. These are what I call Satoshi moments and my love for Bitcoin. There's a hundred million Satoshis in every Bitcoin. And in much the same way, these Satoshi moments for you are your millions of micro effort. 1% improvements every single day. And those become an incredibly valuable currency. Call it success. You're guaranteed of success. If you work the lead independent of the lag I'm pulling for you, let me know how your progress is going. You can DM me, text me 3 3 7 5 6 5 0 9 0 6. Or you can go to marshbuice.com and the bottom right. Is a mic from you to me. And you can leave me a message directly there. And while you're there, you can find all the links of the socials where I hang out. As well as the YouTube channel, if you're in the videos and the hundreds of podcasts episodes, you can just walk the aisles and find the one that best reaches the season that you're in. And you can check out the blog as well. If you're into reading. I'd love to hear from you and let me know how it can help. I'm no hair, but I'm all ears. Remember the greatest sale that you will ever make is the sale you on you because you're more than enough. Stay amazing. Stay in the sales life.