 Hello, I hope you're having a fantastic day. I wanted to talk today about how to achieve mastery in your life. Have you ever seen those people that consistently perform at a high level? You're like, how do they do it? They just get results on a consistent basis. Well, I am going to tell you today a high level view on how you can get that. My name is Jason Troy. I'm an executive coach. I work with entrepreneurs, executives, leaders and their teams and focusing on performance, leadership, team building and helping them build their career blueprint. So the first thing that you need to understand about mastery is there is a rhyme and reason. And once you can figure out what to do, you can consistently apply it to anything that you do, both personally and professionally. So I want to show you what that is and we're going to go to another application. So now we are here. So here's a little Google drawing application. And so these are the pillars of mastery. And it's important to understand this and I'll show you what 99% of the people do so you'll understand what the problems are and why that you really will never make progress and most people around you won't. It may appear that way, but when you look over their entire lifetime, you won't be seeing that. But here is the gems. I have talked to thousands of people. I've asked them specifically what they're doing, how they're going about doing it. And they are not only working smarter, they are also working harder and they are not doing it alone. That is the key. Where you are trying to go about hiring the right people, they're talking to the people who are experts and getting their blueprint and applying it in their business. And that is the difference because today everything is about specialization. Someone else has the answers you want. So pillar one is really about the right systems, best practices, cutting out methodologies and it may seem obvious, but I bet you're not doing that. And I bet in your business, whether you're an owner, a manager, or just an employee, that is not going on. You're trying to recreate the wheel or you've spoken to one person, do you really haven't leveraged the best processes and therefore you're not getting the right candidates. People are leaving your business. Retentions lower, obviously. Satisfactions lower. People are working less. So that's impacting your bottom line in multiple ways in a significant fashion. The hiring practices. I just spoke to someone I know really well and she was hired the third time this year in her job at a very high level because they mis-hired the other two people. Well, the average person, if you need to rehire them in a position, is somewhere between 100% to 300% of that average salary. So that average salary is $125,000. It will cost you $125,000 to hire that person at least up to $375,000. And that's not including their salary. That's on top of it, right? So you can see how that mistake can really multiply it. I was speaking to some startups in Boston last year and they had a fire 30% of their early team because they were mis-hires. Well, that's also a significant setback in monetary means and everything else. So the second pillar is coaching, mentoring and expert help. And it may seem well self-serving that that's a middle one and I'm a coach, but the reality is I get coaching as well. And without coaching, you just are going to flounder. You need expert help. You need mentors. You need people that have gone down that road, right? All the data on it will tell you that you get somewhere between a five to 10x lift and whatever it is you're doing. So whatever takes you one year to do, you can actually do the same equivalent of five or 10 years if you get help. And I've done it so many times and I've gotten so many coaching that that definitely rings true. And in some instances, it may be that you'd never get that far because people have specializations that you would never have, right? And the last one is support. That's really one of the hidden gems here too, because the problem with support is that most leaders have imposter syndrome because they never talked to anyone, right? And shame, which is a part of imposter syndrome, feeling bad about myself, not about what I'm doing, starts to grow when we have silence, secrets, and it leads to judgments. Well, the problem with imposter syndrome is that if you go home and you're a man or a woman and you try to talk to your spouse or friends or whatever it might be, if they aren't sitting in your equivalent position, career, entrepreneurial pursuit, they don't understand what's going on. So you have to then explain to them the back story, right? And they don't, like, it gets exhausting to have to explain 90% of where you're at and what's going on. All you want to do is get to the problem itself. But you can't do that unless you have the proper support, right? So if you're the CEO of a company, for example, because it's an easy one, you want to be around other CEOs. If you're a director of finance, you don't want to be talking to the director of marketing because they don't understand what it is to be in your position. You want to be around other finance people that are in your position because then you don't have to tell the back story. And after a while telling the back story, you just get sick of it because you don't want to talk about it anymore. And you just get exhausted in general. You just want people to listen. But this is what people do, right? This is what they go out and how they build it. And again, you know, the right systems, someone else there has it, right? And it's essentially sort of taking someone else's work product that they've done and implemented in your business, right? And they've tested it out. And the coaching is getting expert advice on maybe what system or process to use or other things, right? And the support is to help you manage the ups and downs. Because as you'll see here, right, this is what most people do in their lifetime. And again, this is over long periods of time. So what you'll see is people will go up to a peak. And then what happens is they fall. And everyone does. And so what happens is when you start falling, if you don't have anything in place, you eventually hit the ground. And then you hit a rock bottom moment, right? And then you're willing to do anything. So then you get back on your feet. And then you start to climb up again. And these hills and valleys are what people do their entire life. So really, you don't see that much growth in what people are doing, right? Maybe you'll see financial growth because that's experience, but they're not really growing personally or professionally. So they basically, most people are staying stuck. And possibly they go slightly higher, but not really that much. So that becomes a huge problem for people, right? They go through these ups and downs. And the problem is when you go up and you go right here, if you talk to sports psychologist, I love this podcast called Finding Mastery with Michael Gervais. And he talks about how that once you start falling off the side of the cliff, it's really challenging to pull yourself up again unless you have a people process and a complete system to catch yourself when you're falling. And what happens with most people is that it's really hard to start working on mastery here and this part of the curve. Because this is essentially saying, I'm doing great. I know I can do better. And I want to figure out how. And as he said on his podcast, that's a trillion dollar industry that no one has figured out in the history of mankind. And no one will because there's really no incentive right here, right? The ego gets in the way and you're like, well, I'm figuring it out. You don't have any urgency to do that. So what happens is here it's too late. You're already going to fall. The question is how far are you going to fall? Those people with mastery fall and they catch themselves around here, maybe even slightly down here, but they don't need to go all the way down to rock bottom. And that is where you have been. You will be. It's 100% guaranteed. You can write that down and email me and tell me that I'm not right or you've never hit that or it never will be. And we can have a discussion about that. And I will prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that that's not how it goes. So what happens to other people, right? And why that goes on and what all happens is that an average person on the growth phase of what's going on in their life, right? So whatever they're doing. So I don't care if it's learning how to do accounting, IT, being a great leader, being a great manager. They start off and they will go and they will make some progress, right? And then they will hit a plateau. And the key is that what do you do in this plateau? And the pillars of mastery have to be set up once you start to plateau because eventually what happens is your skills and abilities tap out. You can no longer get any higher with your current knowledge base and expertise. And that is why you slow down. That is why you're not as motivated. That is why you put off things. That's why you don't do all the necessary steps that you need to do. Why you procrastinate is because you're in a plateau stage. Because if you were in a growth stage, you'd be excited, pumped, and you'd be motivated to do it because you've been there before in your life. And that is what goes on with every single person. So that's a great way. If you're not motivated right now, if you're not determined, if you're not super excited, when you get out a better day, you are in a plateau stage. And that means you are not making any progress. And the people around you are moving past you. And that is a significant problem. And so what you do in this phase, what 99% of people do is they'll be like, oh, let me listen to a podcast. Oh, let me listen to read some book. Oh, let me try to do this. Let me try to do that. Let me do all these things. They don't have the pillars of mastery. So they get really tired, and then they figure it out. They read something, or they get it. And then what happens? They make some progress. But you notice this is only incremental progress. Then what happens? They plateau again. And why do they plateau here? It's not because of the skills and ability. They're tired. Because right back here, look at all what happened. They spent a lot of energy. It's a lot of mental, physical, emotional energy to get there. And now we're here, and we're tired, and we plateau. And then what happens is you plateau for a longer period of time, and then you flail around again, and you figure it out, and then you make a little bit more progress. But if you notice it's just incremental, and it's very slow. That's not how people achieve mastery. It's not at all, right? And if you want to figure out how the people are doing it over their entire lifetime, both personally and professionally, I'm just going to show you. So what they do completely differently than what you're doing is they grow, and they're probably growing at a faster rate initially to begin with. But when they plateau, they have this pillars of mastery, right? So what happens is they then actually take a step downwards because they're implementing new systems, practices, and getting coaching that they don't understand how to really implement. So there's a lot of mistakes, they have to pit it. They have to try to figure out how to make sense of this in their own head, right? And what's all going on. But then what happens is they take a step down, right? They aren't expending the energy that you're doing when you're flingling all around. And then what happens, they have a ha moment, right? They connect all of it. They have everything in place. They're leveraging high-performing systems, high-performing services, high-performing expertise. They have the right people around them. And then what do they do? They make a hockey stick up and make exponential growth. And they make it a lot longer than you made your incremental growth as well. Then what happens? Well, they slow down here because the skills and abilities tap out, right? And this could be years or decades even if that's the case for some people, right? And then what happens is they plateau again and the same thing happens and then they figure it out and they immediately make massive progress. And as you can tell, this person's way up here, and before, if you saw my other one, the other person was down around here. That's a huge spread, right? And that's the problem. So the key is you have to have a pillar of mastery in doing this stuff, right? I mean, an easy example I'll share with you is I started running in November. I never had run before in my entire life, anything over the five miles. In five miles, it'd probably been a while before straight, right? So what did I do? The first thing I just, and I set a goal to run several marathons, which I'm all scheduled up for and my goal is to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon within a year, within 2019. So, which is pretty incredible. There's very few, very low single digit percentage of people that would start running and be able to do that. So what did I do? I had the right systems, practices, and stuff. I got all the right information. I joined a group, the best runners I could here in Dallas, and I got a coach. I got other mentoring help from the people who are great runners. I emailed them and contacted them all with a list of questions. So it's helped me in every way, from injuries and nutrition to the right shoes to ever doing everything I need. I also support, because the running group, right? People know the tough times, what's going on. They're there to support you and be helpful. And so, when you look at that, you know, I've run three half marathons so far. My best one has been at a 747 pace. And remember, I never ran over five miles before. I'm running 40 miles a week, and I'm on pace. And the summer in Texas, it's super hot. So you need a group to run super early because you can't run later because it's 100 degrees. So that makes it even tougher, right? So mentally, it'd be really difficult to do this all by yourself. And I know that, and I've asked people. And so therefore, I'm not going through the problem of having to motivate myself or having to figure it out. I've got people are doing it. And any time I have a question, I just ask people in my group. I have coaches and people that I contact. So I'm figuring that out. And granted, that's a personal thing, but it really doesn't matter what it is. It's the same application no matter what you do once you apply it. And you can make massive progress like I have. Not many people who run their second half marathon. And my second half marathon was in January 29th. And I started running outside. My first outside run was right around Thanksgiving. So it's two months later. And I'm not a gifted athlete, right? I had never run anything before. So I had to get the endurance and figured this all out. So within two months, I ran a 747 marathon. And that means that you could be doing great things in your life really quickly. The reason you're not is because you tell yourself it takes a long time, but that's all story that you're making up. Because all stories are basically fairy tales unless they are factual, meaning one plus one equals two. So that is the lesson for today in mastery, right? So follow it, use it, do it, and get it done. If you have any questions, you can contact me at JasonTroy.com. And that's J-A-S-O-N-T-R-E-U.com. And you can also get my free team building game here that a couple thousand people, actually 3,000 people played. I just was at Amazon, Google, Oracle, Public Relations Society of America. I mean, so many different organizations overall had been using this and getting great results out of this, right? Here's a testimonial right there from the person from Google. So you can get that for free and it can create a great team. And I'm gonna have a video on that shortly because that's working exceptionally well. And it's a total misnomer on how to build a great team, right? The information you have is not right and you can do it much quicker, much faster and it's not about training and it's not about development. So have a fantastic day and I will be speaking with you again soon.