Hey, my friend, welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell, where we are talking about massive leadership growth, checking into your own conscious levels, and improving your influence as a professional in the home service space.
I cut my teeth in this space.
You’re continuing to cut and sharpen your teeth in this space.
I just want to spend a minute with you here today, sharing a little analogy that I had heard recently.
Because I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback on this and how it’s helping people change their game. If you know me at all, you know I’m all about changing the game and rising to the next level.
Today I wanna talk about how to get rid of mediocrity by shaking it up!
We get rid of mediocrity by shaking up our leadership and business and adding controlled chaos and change. If we’re complacent, we’ll end up defaulting to the easy status quo. Look at where you’re comfortable and make some drastic (planned) changes.
If there’s one thing I can’t stand: it’s mediocrity.
I would rather completely suck at something than to just be average at it.
I mean, I’d rather be great at stuff, but you get the point.
Let’s dig into this and finally be rid of the “average” parts of ourselves in life, business, and leadership that holds us back.
Life Has Built-In Feedback On Your Mediocrity
One of the cool things about life is it gives you immediate feedback when you suck.
And it hurts when you’re bad. It does.
So you may stop trying so. Now mediocrity is completely acceptable, and it’s so widely accepted in the world today.
We have a hard time continuing to strive for greatness sometimes.
Driven leaders like you and me, we are cut from a different cloth.
Obviously, there are tens of thousands of home service businesses all over the United States, Canada, and Australia.
And yet, there are a select few of us.
I say select because we choose to operate at a different level of awareness, a different level of influence, where we kind of get a little more progressive, and we’re not just going to do things the way that they used to be.
What got you here won’t get you there.
We can’t standstill. I look at the things that I was doing effectively in 1994 when I started as a dead-broke drain cleaner.
There weren’t very many things I was doing effectively in ’94 as a dead-broke drain cleaner.
And then I started doing more effective things, but each effective thing I did in ’95 and ’96 and ’98 in 2001 doesn’t work like it used, right?
It might not work at all anymore. The world changes, and we need to as well.
Some core ideas do stick around:
- Communication
- Quality recruiting
- How we treat people
- Training
- Compensation Scales
All of these are important (and we’ll talk about them in other articles), but even so, the way we go about these things looks different over time.
And when we don’t do the best in these areas, if we suck, life kicks back at us. Our team kicks back at us.
What does that mean? Give up. Settle for the OK in life and business.
Heck no. Mediocrity is the enemy of the driven leader.
We Program Our Success
The lovely Christy and I went through about a two-year period where we mixed our own green health drinks. Then, these things went through some health tests, and I believe in these muscle and kinesiology and other tests.
Doctors found it wasn’t bad for you, but it didn’t help you much either. It’s not doing anything for us.
It’s a placebo, and the funny thing is, placebo or not, I feel like I didn’t get sick the whole time, and I still don’t. I kind of just program my mind to the point where I don’t allow it.
It’s the same in business. We program our success with our minds and our actions, and our beliefs.
How we think is what we become, and what we become manifests the results in your business with your team, with motivating people, and all those different types of things.
I want you to think about one of those green drinks and what happens to it after it’s been sitting for quite some time.
It separates, right? The good stuff kind of settles to the bottom.
How To Get Rid Of Mediocrity: Make Sure You Get The “Good Stuff”
It hit me recently that I’d heard a similar analogy as I was coming into the office.
I was going to run a mastermind call with clients and, and I popped into the refrigerator, and there was a green drink in there from the last time I was at the office.
I grabbed it, and I was like:
Holy cow! The top half of this is all water.
I want you to think about the green drink and your life and your results, and your focus.
What do we have?
We have mainly liquid on top.
But on the bottom, we’ve got this deep, rich shade of green.
I want you to realize this green drink is sold, and it’s packed with vitamins and proteins and healthy ingredients and all these different things that we want to feel good and to get good results in our life.
But when it sits there and when it’s stagnant and when it’s not doing anything, it’s separated, and the bottom half is all the good stuff.
It settles to the bottom.
Think about that for a minute.
The stuff that I paid for, the stuff that I invested in, the stuff that I really wanted is all at the bottom.
Your Life Will Separate When Stagnant, Too
Now think about your life.
Think about your leadership skills.
Think about your results.
Where do you need to shake it up?
My friend, where are you getting mediocre results?
That’s where the “good stuff’s” at, my friend.
The watery stuff is where the average lives; that’s where the “safe” resides.
That’s where the status quo is controlling.
It’s all just right there on the surface.
If we don’t want that, if we don’t really truly want the status quo, we don’t truly want mediocrity.
We’ve got to shake it up.
When I want that good stuff at the bottom of my green drink, I shake it up, and it all mixes together.
As we see that stagnation, the separation, the mediocrity, we need to shake up our leadership and our business too.
When I shake it up, everything’s changed. I’ve got:
- More energy
- More understanding
- Better communication
- A clearer plan
Everyone Says It, But Only Some Take Action
Everybody says that they don’t want mediocrity.
But we spend way too much time and energy defending our current situation, making excuses for why things are the way they are or why we can’t push forward.
How much time do you live defending your situation?
Think about it for a minute.
There are always reasons not to shake it up. There are always reasons for mediocrity.
You know, In the home service trades, we were super blessed by COVID.
I’m not saying it was great for everyone, or it wasn’t dangerous; it was horrible, and I hope we never go through anything like it again.
But from a business standpoint, after the first six, eight weeks, it was easy for home service companies.
People were spending money like never before.
And it’s still hanging over into 2021, right?
So I want you to really kind of just be mindful that a lot of people say that they don’t want the status quo.
They say that they don’t want average.
They say they want to be better leaders.
Maybe they say they want better training.
They say they want to connect and have better communication.
But they defend all the reasons that they can’t.
They defend all the reasons why they’re stuck.
They defend all the reasons that are in the way.
And at the end of the day, it’s a choice, and you’ve got the green drink, and that’s your life.
It’s sitting on the shelf in the refrigerator, and you can take it out every day and just sip a little bit off the top and keep on sipping.
But we don’t want that. We want the good stuff.
Let’s Add Some Chaos To Get Rid Of Mediocrity
How do we get rid of mediocrity?
We add on chaos and complexity.
We have defense mechanisms in our subconscious that we don’t dive into.
To shake it up takes effort.
It takes a lot of effort.
We were often taught not to “stir the pot,” and I get where that comes from. People don’t want others to cause problems just to cause them.
I get it, but this isn’t the philosophy you want to follow in your business. We do want to stir the pot.
Now, don’t just stir it for the sake of causing drama or creating tension; do it with a purpose and a plan.
But don’t feel bad about busting up where we feel most comfortable.
Our minds hate pain. No one loves pain, duh.
But this fear of pain will keep us from pushing ahead where we need to sometimes.
So let’s add some chaos and get uncomfortable and challenge ourselves and our subconscious minds.
#1 Reflect
The first we need to do is take some honest reflection and ask ourselves where we’re mediocre.
I don’t even want you to focus on where you’re failing. This means you’re trying.
I want you to focus on where things are OK.
I don’t want you to be OK; you need to be awesome. And you can be!
I’m a huge advocate for journaling, but if you don’t do this, maybe it’s time to start. Look at and list every aspect of your business and leadership.
Next to each item, give yourself a score. Ask yourself how well you’re doing in this area.
Be honest and clear.
You’ll start to notice some areas are great, some are OK, and some are just flat-out bad.
Ignore the bad, and look at the OK, the mediocre.
Ask yourself why it’s only doing alright and not amazing.
Chances are you’ll start to come up with excuses like:
It’s not a problem or a priority right now.
We just don’t have the time/funds/training/people to take this on right now.
I’m worried about adding or changing this in case it gets worse.
Do you feel me? Have you said these before? I know I have.
These are our targets and our greatest opportunities if we can take action.
#2 Shake
Take one item and dig into it. Throw everything you’ve done with it out the window.
Think outside the box. Ask yourself how it could be better, and then shake the system to see what happens.
Use your team and other people’s primary purpose to help you set this up for success, but every time you sense, say, or think an excuse, write it down and toss it out.
Leaders don’t cave to excuses.
Communicate why you’re changing it up and what you hope to accomplish with the others involved and dive in.
#3 Drink The Awesome
Not everything about shaking it up will work, but you’ll be surprised how much of the good stuff mixes in with the rest of the experience.
Work with your team to highlight the things that you did work that you never had before and keep going. You may need to shake some more, or you may have done enough to refine your systems and training to realize where the “good stuff” lies.
This takes more reflection and shaking on repeat, but that’s what driven leadership is, my friends.
No one said this was easy, but I know it’s worth it.
Now go, shake it up, and make it a better-than-fantastic day!