In this blog post, I break down some game-changing insights from productivity gurus Brian Tracy and Perry Marshall. Tracy helps you get crystal clear on your goals, while Marshall shows you how to achieve them by working smarter, not harder. Together, they make an unbeatable team. I'll walk you through a simple three-step process that leverages their teachings to help you focus on the 1% of activities that really drive results. Ready to change your approach and start achieving your goals more efficiently?
Let's dive in.
Links Mentioned:
Timestamp:
00:00 Introduction
00:52 Brian Tracy's Goal Setting Approach
01:03 The Importance of Writing Goals
03:06 Perry Marshall's 80/20 Principle
03:21 The Recursive Nature of 80/20
06:36 Eliminate to Accelerate
10:49 Conclusion
Ash Roy's Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Brian Tracy:
Discipline in yourself to work only on that. Until it's done.
Ash Roy:
That's Brian Tracy.
Perry Marshall:
1% of the people have 50% of the net worth and real estate,
Ash Roy:
and that is Perry Marshall. I've interviewed them both and I've discovered something fascinating. Brian shows you how to get clear on your goals, and Perry shows you how to execute with precision using something I call the 1% rule.
Together they create one of the simplest and most effective goal setting and achievement systems I've ever used. And in this video I'm gonna show you a three-step process that I've created that is gonna help you to achieve your goals in the most efficient way possible. Spoiler alert, it's not about doing everything.
In fact, it's about doing a very small proportion of the things you have on your to-do list. More on this shortly.
Let's start with Brian Tracy's approach to goal setting.
Brian Tracy:
What I'm going to explain to you is a life changer. Something happens between the head and the hand. That is almost a miracle.
Ash Roy:
See, Brian's core teaching is about the power of writing down your goals. Every day on a new piece of paper,
Brian Tracy:
I have people take a page of paper and write down 10 goals.
Yeah, that they'd like to accomplish in the next 12 months, and then select one goal, the goal that can have the greatest impact on all the others. And focus on that one goal.
Ash Roy:
I've implemented this simple technique. I write down my 10 goals every day, and I found that my brain automatically tunes into what matters most.
The most important goals, repeat themselves as I write every day. I think it activates the reticular activation system, which helps all my mental resources. Focus in on achieving those goals that matter most.
Brian Tracy:
Your super conscious mind takes that goal and begins to work on the goal 24 hours a day. In 30 days, your life will have changed forever.
Ash Roy:
I was unclear as to what my core focus was going to be in my business. But as I started to write down my goals every day, I noticed that the most important goals repeated themselves and a trend started to reveal itself. Over time, I made a conscious choice to pivot from generic productivity style content to focusing more on business strategy marketing, and that led me to focus on the productive Insights membership program and community.
Which has been one of the most fulfilling and profitable elements of my business. Writing down my goals also helped me to really internalize them. So, here's my recommended action step for you.
Grab a book, preferably a book that has not been written in before, and start writing down your goals every single morning.
Open the first page, write down at 10 goals and the next day. Open a new page and write down your 10 goals. Now, write these from memory. Don't go back and look at the previous day's goals. Share your top three goals in the comments below, and I promise to respond if you leave a comment within the first 48 hours of this video going live.
Okay, second step, find the 1% lever. Now, Perry Marshall explains in his 80 20 approach that 20% of your effort delivers 80% for your results. This is the Pareto efficiency theory, which has been around for a long time.
Perry Marshall:
20% of the people own 80% of the shoes, and 20% of the people own 80% of the domain names. But see, 80 20 is recursive.
Yes. So not only this, and this is the part that I never understood until it was actually 2003 when I had this epiphany. It's fractal.
Ash Roy:
The 80 20 rule is fractal, which means that 20% or 20%, which is 4% of your effort, delivers 80% of 80%, which is 64% of your results. And if you take that one level further, 20% of the 4%, which is 0.8% of your effort, delivers 80% of that 64%, which is 51.2% of your results.
So you end up with a situation where about 1% of your effort. Delivers about 50% of your results. The question is, what is that 1%? On any given day, I've discovered that I only am truly productive. For about two hours in the day where I do deep strategic work, critical thinking, and have a lot of creative output.
The rest of my day is filled with arranging, planning, set up work, fixing computer issues, and taking well needed breaks, all of which contribute. To those two very productive hours. My real business breakthroughs come from those two golden hours of effort. That's my 80 20. Once I recognized this, I started protecting those two hours because my business depended on it.
Now, this is not to say that the other activities like taking breaks, napping, going for walks, watching TV shows I like aren't important. They're crucial. They help me to refresh my mind and refocus. They're as important as the silence between the notes when playing a musical instrument like a guitar, you need them both.
So your action step here is to figure out which of your goals are the most impactful and which of your activities really move the needle in your life or your business, and do those first. Some questions you might wanna ask yourself to figure out which activities are the most impactful might include which goal, if I completed today, makes other goals.
Redundant. Which goals, if incomplete would bring my business to a grinding halt? Which goals help me leverage my strengths most effectively and give me the best return on investment of time? Now, the next action, which is almost as important, is to schedule regular breaks. And take downtime so that your focused effort can be that much more impactful.
In episode 142, I spoke to Dr. Srini Pill assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School about the power of the Unfocused Mind. I'll link to that conversation in the description. I highly recommend checking it out. My point here is. You don't have to be hustling all day, every day to achieve your goals.
You need to create a certain spaciousness in your life and in your mental world. If you want to be truly effective, you'll be amazed at the clarity you achieve and the quality of life improvements.
Perry Marshall:
Half the money you made last year came in three days.
Ash Roy:
That is Perry Marshall. Author of the book 80 20 Sales and Marketing, linked to my conversation with him and that book in the description below.
Okay, step number three, eliminate to Accelerate. Now, most productivity advice gets it completely wrong, in my opinion. You see, the term productivity was born back in the industrial age when people like Frederick Taylor, who came up with time in motion studies, was looking for the highest output. For a given input in terms of machinery on a factory floor.
If you are watching this, chances are you're not working in a factory. Chances are you're a knowledge worker, and today, productivity is actually about doing less the right things in the right sequence and not doing some things at all. It's about figuring out what that 1% of your effort. Should be, that delivers 50% of your results.
Both Brian Tracy and Perry Marshall agree on this one point. The secret to effectiveness and achieving your goals is doing less.
Perry Marshall:
80 20 is mostly about what you don't do.
Brian Tracy:
Disciplining yourself should work only on that until it's done. Yeah. And refusing. Refusing to do anything else.
Ash Roy:
That's Brian Tracy, one of the world's leading productivity experts and author of the book Gold.
Linked to my conversation with Brian and the book in the description below, one of the hardest decisions I made was letting go of the high maintenance clients that were draining my energy and impacting my ability to serve my dream clients. Because I was so drained from overservicing these high maintenance clients, I.
My profit per hour had plummeted, and it was impacting my ability to serve my dream clients who weren't making unreasonable demands and who were actually doing the work. To help them get the results that they needed to get as a mentor and a coach, all I could do and can ever do is give them the advice, but then it's up to them to actually implement the advice I give them.
When you are a coach, your dream client is someone who executes relentlessly on the advice you give them. A high maintenance or nightmare client is somebody. Who expects you to do the heavy lifting for them, even though it's pretty much impossible. So when I made the very scary but difficult choice of letting these high maintenance clients go, my world changed.
My profit per hour started to improve. Almost overnight. And if you'd like to know more about what I mean when I talk by profit per hour, check out my nine step business growth framework, which I will link to in the description. You can get access to the free email course just by going to productive insights.com/subscribe.
But essentially, your profit per hour is the profit you make every week, month, or year, divided by the number of hours you put in to make that profit. This is not your billable rate, but it's the actual profit that you make in your business. And the number of hours you are giving to your business to make that profit as a business owner.
So saying goodbye to those high maintenance clients felt counterintuitive. But man, it was one of the best things I ever did. It helped me to create the space to focus on what mattered most on the clients that were really getting results and that were going toing from the rooftops about the results I was able to deliver to them because they were focused on executing on the advice that I gave them.
Today, my membership community is filled with members who don't make demands of me that are unreasonable. It also allows me to give 150%. To those few members who really focus on execution, and because I can get them better results, I'm able to increase my prices. So here are my suggested action steps for you.
Make a list of all the things you do or all the clients you have, and identify the clients that are the most draining or the tasks that are the most draining. Find out that 80% of the tasks or clients that are delivering 20% of your results or your profit, and either delegate or eliminate those tasks or clients do whatever it takes to make those.
Redundant. Focus on what energizes you and delivers great return on your energy, your time, and your financial investment. See, the thing is, if you don't make a conscious effort to prioritize what energizes you and what gives you the best return on your time and energy investment. You'll become a slave to your business and to your calendar.
So there you have it, the 1% system that helps you achieve the most important goals and really move the needle in your life and or your business. Get crystal clear on your goals. As Brian Tracy teaches, identify your highest leverage, 1% activities that deliver at least 50% a year Results. And ruthlessly eliminate what drains your time and your energy and focus only on what helps you move the needle and build a better quality of life for yourself.
This system isn't about working more, it's about working less. It's about getting clear on what gets your results consistently. Let me know in the comments what your one goal is this month that would help you to change everything. What's that 1% of your. Activities that would help you to change 50% of your business, drop your thoughts in the comments, and I promise I'll respond within the first 48 hours of this video going live.
If you found this video useful, please hit the like and subscribe button and maybe share it with somebody else you think might benefit from it. Thanks for watching, and Roy and X Banker. With a CPA and an MBA turned entrepreneur. And I love creating content for business owners who are looking to be more effective using marketing and strategic approaches that actually work.
Ciao for now. I'll see you in the next video.