First published 1 April 2019 on Your Best Year Starts Here with Nigel Risner.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Nigel finished the last episode by saying hope is not a strategy. So I opened this one with my own version. HOPE. Hearing other people's experience. He liked it, then went straight to the word listen and pointed out that the last three letters spell ten. Some of us are listening and some of us are just waiting for our turn to talk.
I see that one in business meetings all the time. Someone says something, you think of your reply, and from then on you're willing them to hurry up so you don't forget it. Meanwhile you've missed everything else they said. My fix is simple. Write one word down to remind you and carry on listening. Nigel then picked me up on "pay attention". It costs nothing, he said, so it should be give attention. He followed that by telling me he only makes good points (so modest).
Most of the episode is about learning from people who've already done the thing. I quoted Eleanor Roosevelt on learning from other people's mistakes because you haven't got time to make them all yourself, and recommended Carol Dweck's book Mindset, which splits people into fixed and growth. Nigel talked about modelling the best, which is what his book The Impact Code is built on, using Netflix, Amazon, Apple and the old BT as examples. I chipped in with a line Russell Brunson uses, that you can spot the pioneers because they're face down in the dirt with arrows in their back. Find what's working, copy it, make it better. Just don't listen to so many opinions that you end up building a Ford Edsel.
Then we got onto failure. Nigel says he's a "result-er", someone who got a result he didn't want. I prefer calling it research. He tried to quote my book back at me and got as far as "done is better than perfect" (close enough). He also dragged up my first trip to the cinema with a girlfriend, which I shut down fast, and asked about my first driving lesson. I'd already had a motorbike, so the main thing I got told was slow down.
What I'd pass on
- HOPE is hearing other people's experience. It only works if you actually listen.
- In a meeting, jot down one word for your reply and keep listening.
- Find what already works, copy it and improve it. The pioneers are the ones with arrows in their back.
- If you get it right first time, the goal probably wasn't big enough.
It costs nothing to be in the room, but we think there's a cost to it, which is why we use the phrase pay attention. It should just be give attention.
Nigel Risner
Write down one word and keep paying attention.
Neil Martin
