Serial Winner- Chapter 4: Don’t Just Start, Finish
5 Actions to Create Your Cycle of Success by Larry Weidel
--
“Finishing is how you earn the great things in life — trust, respect, loyalty, opportunity, even money.” — Larry Weidel
Chapter 4 is one of the hardest chapters to put into practice. How many times have you started something only to not finish!?
I’m super guilty of this. It’s a muscle I’ve had to work on for years, and it is by far one of the most powerful metrics of long term success.
After all, you can’t sell an unfinished product.
So stop starting, and start finishing.
Almost Finished Gets you Almost Nothing
“It plays out in front of us almost every day. One person rises to the occasion while another falls.” — Larry Weidel
The author starts of this chapter telling a story about a housing project he managed. It was his job to make sure new homes were finished on time for a new family to show up and arrive.
Nothing was worse than a home being 98% finished and having a family show up to their unfinished home.
That family doesn’t care how many houses you’ve finished that week. They care about whether or not their house is finished.
Almost finishing gets you almost nothing.
The Dangers of Failing to Finish
The world needs more finishers.
Look at this graphic. If you quit when you’re close to the finish line, you waste all that energy required to get you that far. Don’t be that person. I don’t know what project you’re working on right now, but you can finish it. You have to finish it.
Many of us struggle to maintain our energy as it is. If you quit before the finish line you punishing your past, present and future.
All of that energy and focus was put toward this goal, so you need to get your shit together and finish.
What’s worse every time you quit before the finish line your brain gets used to quitting. We are trying to grow into serial winners, not serial quitters. Be conscious of the patterns you are setting for yourself in your mind.
The Benefits of Actually Finishing
Finishing gives you confidence
When I first starting writing my Wise Owl Wednesday newsletter I was nervous about being able to successfully publish it every single week.
I’ve published it on time 26 weeks in a row now. All of that success has built a lot of confidence in my ability to successfully finish the newsletter each week.
Finishing expands your vision
Once I got comfortable with publishing the newsletter, I expanded my vision to include these write-ups on great books. All to provide more value to you, my cherished reader.
I would never have thought I could successfully write this much each week, consistently, but the wins kept adding up and I knew I could do more.
Finishing small things helps you build a pattern
Every week I know there are 5 sections to the newsletter I need to complete
- The intro
- The quote of the week
- The wise, health, and wealth tips
- The book reading
- The book write up
I focus on finishing individual sections first, and those little wins add up to a complete newsletter.
To get paid you have to finish
My newsletter doesn’t pay me, yet, but I am building trust in my readers. I deliver what I promise when I promise. Eventually, this will translate into a book of my own and courses of my own that my readers can purchase.
They know I provide value, and they know I finish.
Mental Toughness and the last 2%
“Winning is like climbing the tallest mountains” — Larry Weidel
The author tells the story of dreaming to climb Mt. Everest. You get started, spend a lot of time and energy planning, training, buying gear, hiring coaches, and purchasing the trips and permits required to scale Everest.
You start with smaller mountains first, acclimating yourself to the physical stresses of mountain climbing. Finally you’re ready. You make the journey. You hike for 7 days just to get to base camp.
Then you start the climb — weeks of hiking, camping, and struggle.
The closer they get to the top, the more dangerous it becomes. The air becomes thinner, the temperatures drop, and the energy requirements on the body skyrocket.
Climbers know the closer they get to the summit the harder it is.
Your projects are the same way. The last 2% of the journey is the hardest.
Serial Winners Don’t Count on Past Accomplishments
When you’re in that final 2% it doesn’t matter how successful you’ve been in the past. None of that matters.
The only thing that matters is what you are doing right now. Congratulations if you’ve won before. That win doesn’t make this challenge easier.
One of the hardest things to do in professional sports is to win the championship two years in a row. It almost never happens.
Why? Because so often winners get complacent. They think because they have won they are somehow entitled to an easier journey this time.
Wrong. Focus on now and forget about the past.
Serial Winners Limit Negative Stress Whenever Possible
All stress drains your energy, but negative stress is ruinous. All serial winners limit or avoid negative stress as much as possible to conserve the energy needed to focus on what is most important.
They bust their ass on tasks that get results, not on bullshit that will distract them.
Focus on what you can control, and let the rest take care of itself.
Serial Winners Stay on High Alert
This is a section about thinking ahead, about planning for things to go wrong. When you are in the last 2% an obstacle can be a major setback.
If you’ve thought ahead, you don’t have to spend energy problem solving because you already have a solution mapped out.
Navy Seals have multiple backup plans when they go out on a mission because they know that when the bullets start flying, chaos reigns. Plans go awry and all of them need to know what the backup plans are before lives are at stake.
You are most vulnerable to new problems cropping up in the last 2%, so do your best to plan for them.
Ability x Effort x Talent x Fight
“The quicker we accept the fact that winning isn’t easy, the better” — Larry Weidel
Ability and Talent x Effort and Fight = Winning Combination
This is one of my favorite parts of the entire book.
This section showcases how hard work and consistency can win out every time.
Your success is just as much about your work ethic as it is about your natural talent or skill.
The author breaks down an example formula.
Talent * Effort = Success Power:
Team A:
8 in skill * 60% effort → 8 * 0.6 = 4.8
Team B:
6 in skill * 90% effort → 6 * 0.9 = 5.4
Team B wins with less skill but more effort.
Prepare for Luck
Winners make their own luck through hard work and preparation — Larry Weidel
Let me tell you a personal story about how lucky I almost was.
In 2012 right after my 22nd birthday, a close friend of mine told me about a new digital currency called Bitcoin. At the time each Bitcoin was about $10.
I thought this was cool and interesting, but the one problem was, I was literally 100% broke at the time. I wasn’t prepared for any kind of financial opportunity.
I remember thinking to myself “If I had $1,000 I would definitely buy 100 bitcoins and hold onto them until I’m 30.” That arbitrary time came from the fact that I had told that friend I planned to be a millionaire by the time I turned 30.
If I had bought those 100 Bitcoin in 2012 I would have become a millionaire in late 2017.
A literal million-dollar opportunity passed me by because I was terrible with money and not prepared for an opportunity to arrive.
Focus, Focus, Focus
“Maintaining focus is never more important than when you can see the summit” — Larry Weidel
Do the most important things
Winners win by focusing on the right things until the job gets done.
There is a concept in project management called the critical path. This is the sequence of tasks that must be completed before the next can be started. if there is a hold up anywhere on the critical path, the project cannot continue.
Do you know your critical path to success? And if you do, do you know how to stop yourself from losing focus?
One of my favorite tools for prioritizing work is the Eisenhower Matrix shown below.
It breaks down new work into 4 categories and tells you what to do with said work.
Kick out the clutter
By clutter, I mean decision fatigue, mundane distractions, etc.
Nick Saban is famous for being one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. He is not famous for eating the exact same thing for breakfast and lunch every day. However, this choice to no longer have to think about what he is going to eat gives him more mental energy to focus on coaching.
Do everything you can to free yourself from non-important tasks so you can focus on your priority.
This could include:
- Doing all of your shopping and chores on a single day
- Hiring an assistant to help with non-urgent tasks
- Turning off your phone while you’re working
- Only checking email once or twice a day
Take the no-parachute approach
The no-parachute approach is a concept that basically means “when you get to a certain point in a project or goal, you can’t quit.
You don’t give yourself a backup plan at that point because you’ve already put in 98% of the effort.
Once you’re that close to finishing, anything that will keep you from finishing is just an excuse.
The author gives an example of an entrepreneur on Shark Tank. The lady had a great product but hadn’t made many sales. Why? She was too shy, she said.
Mark Cuban told her he couldn’t invest in her company because if she didn’t believe in her product, he couldn’t either. It was up to her to overcome her shyness and get out their and sell that great product she had struggled so hard to create.
At some point — you have to burn the boats and bridges behind you because turning back can’t be an option any longer.
