Just ONE Thing
Close the Gap Between Knowing and Doing
Episode 269
with Rick White, 180BIZ
Good morning. My name is Rick White from 180BIZ, and this is my Just ONE Thing.
What we're gonna talk about this morning is the GAP.
How many times have you said something like, "I should raise my labor rate. I should hold my team accountable. I should delegate. I should work on my marketing. I should review my numbers." Like, I gotta look at them.
I should, I should, I should. See, if 'SHOULD' created successful businesses, every shop owner would be wildly successful.
But you see, there's a gap between should and do. Okay? Your business, your shop, is either gonna be built or broken in that gap.
See, the problem with should is every time, every time you say, "I should," you're admitting two things.
First, you know what needs to be done. That's the first thing you're admitting. Isn't that cool? You already know what needs to be done.
Most importantly, you're admitting that something is keeping you from doing it.
Now, I love this. Tony Robbins says, "We should all over ourselves." And I think that's really true, because should never changes your business, only a must does.
See, the day that something becomes a must, you stop negotiating with yourself. You stop getting it so that, you're kind of, like, bargaining. That's not what you wanna do.
So let's break down should. See, should is made up of two things.
The first is knowing.
Do you know what to do? Now, sometimes that answer is no, and that is probably the easiest no there is because all you gotta do is learn it. That's all there is to it. But that's rarely the problem. Like, there are shop owners out there that know they should be raising their prices. They know they should be talking to their advisors and coaching them.
They know that they should be learning how to delegate better so they can finally start to be working on the business instead of in the business, putting fires out. Some shop owners, they know they should be marketing better.
Some know they should be holding their people accountable. Knowledge isn't the bottleneck 99 times out of 100.
So the second part of should is believing.
Do you believe it will work? Do you believe you can do it, right? Like, can you pull it off? Because if you truly believe that raising your labor rate would improve your business without destroying it, you'd probably raise it tomorrow.
The issue, in this particular situation isn't knowledge, it's belief, right? Do you believe it will work? Do you believe you can do it? Those are the two big things about this, and I think that's really important to understand. So what's creating the gap? See, once you know what to do, once you believe you can do it and that it'll make a difference, there's something else that's keeping you stuck, and that's what creates the gap, okay?
So what are they? I'm gonna give you a list. What if I fail? It's fear. What if I fail? What if I do this and customers leave? What if I do this and my business closes? Right? That's an issue here How about what people call the comfort zone? See, I don't call it the comfort zone, I call it the familiar zone.
Because a lot of times you guys are doing stuff over and over and over again, and it's not that it's comfortable, it's familiar. See, your current pain is familiar. Your current frustration is familiar. Growth is uncertain. See, there's an old saying that says, "A ship can't find a new continent if it's afraid to leave the shore."
And I think that's really an issue here. How about the next one, which is identity? Your identity is your thermostat. It is what you believe you are capable of. And the reality is you should be working on that every single day. When you're saying to yourself, "I'm not a good leader. I'm just a technician.
I hate leading people," whatever that is, that becomes your identity. I've been joking around about calling myself Fat Boy, and somebody very wisely and kindly came over to me and said, "You're reinforcing the behavior. Stop creating that identity." And I think that's something we do all the time.
Sometimes we do it to avoid, right, judgment. Sometimes we do it, to take the steam out of somebody else's sails. Like, "Hey, man, if I call myself fat, doesn't matter if you do." I mean, so you gotta step back and look at identity. What about overwhelm? Overwhelm is where you say, "I'm gonna get to it after I put out today's fires."
You know something? If your focus is fires, that's all you're gonna get more of. And you know what happens with overwhelm? When you say, "I'm gonna do it tomorrow," tomorrow becomes next week, and next week becomes next year. And guess what? Nothing changes. It doesn't work. Listen, if this is hitting you today, like if you're listening to this and going, "Oh my God, Rick, I swear to God, you're doing this today for me," then I want you to be able to Share this video, please.
That's what I'm asking. Share the video.
So the next is blame. Blame is where you give away your power. You give away the power to make something better. Now, it doesn't mean you're gonna make it great, but if you sit there and you blame the economy, you blame your competition, you blame your techs or your advisors, you're blaming everybody except the person in the mirror.
And the reality is that's where the issue is. And here's what's really cool about blame. If you can stop blaming and accept responsibility, it's an amazing shift. It doesn't mean I'm gonna kick my butt because I'm at where I'm at. I'm gonna identify where I'm at, I'm gonna take responsibility for it, and I am gonna move forward.
See, I have this old Rickism, and the Rickism says if you recognize you're the cause, then you can recognize you're the cure. And that's what's really amazing about this. So stop blaming. Doesn't matter why you're where you are. What matters is what you're going to do about it.
The last one, and I think this is the most dangerous one of all, is the illusion of perfection.
This is where you expect yourself, you set a standard of perfection, which is actually the lowest standard that you can set because we all know that perfection is impossible.
Perfection is an illusion created by the devil to rob men and women of their dreams. This is something you've heard me say, it's a Rickism I've said for years. You expect to be perfect the first time. So when you go through and you're feeling uncomfortable and awkward and out of place and kinda like that just gangly teenager, you don't know what to do with yourself, you assume you're failing, right?
But no, you're learning. You're learning.
You gotta understand that everything new sucks first.
You know, the first time you drove a car, you sucked.
The first estimate you ever wrote, you sucked.
The first time you hired someone, you sucked.
You gotta understand, that isn't failure, that's just learning.
So if you're gonna suck at driving, if you're gonna suck at, hiring and, having conversations with people and holding them accountable, why would leadership be any different?
Listen, if you're waiting until you're confident, you're gonna wait forever.
You need to understand that confidence is on the other side of competence. You don't get confident and then do it. You do it and then you get confident. That's where it comes from. We mix that up all the time. So the next time you hear yourself say, "I should," I don't... I want you to... I don't want you to finish the sentence.
Okay? Here's what I'm gonna tell you. I truly believe that it's familiar that's the enemy, right? I hate it, but I know it, and I can deal with it. The devil I know is better than the devil I don't know. So the next time you start to hear yourself say, "I should," I want you to stop right there, and instead I want you to ask yourself three questions.
You ready? Do I know how? And if the answer is even close to yes, check Do I believe that it's possible and I can do it? Yes, check. If the answer's both, yes, yes to both of those, then what's really creating the gap? Because here's what I need you to understand. Getting to your next level isn't hiding in another book or another seminar or another podcast.
I think those things keep you distracted from digging in to what's really going on, what's creating the gap. Because I truly believe that your achievement is hiding on the other side of things you've known you should do for months, you just haven't. So this week, I don't want you to make another list of things that you should do, because that just makes you feel like a failure.
Instead, I want you to pick one thing, and I want you to turn that one should into one did. Okay? Because that's how your shop is gonna grow. Thank you everybody for being here today. Please share this video. If you would like some help with this, I've created this little one-page worksheet that can help you step back and analyze what's going on, get you used to this thought process.
If you'd like that, just email [email protected] let's go and get better at this.
Listen, get a to-do list, not a should list. That's what's gonna make all the difference in the world, in your shop, in your life, everything. If this really resonated with you and you would like to sit down and talk with me about this, you're really frustrated, you can't seem to find your way out of it, I would love that opportunity.
Brenda put my link in there for my calendar. You will talk with me, and let's just see what's going on. Everybody, thank you so much. God bless. Have a great week, and go make some money. I'll see y'all next week. Take care. Bye-bye.
