A message to you and your organization on: paying off your ignorance debt accelerates your earnings potential 100 fold.
A very beautiful new day, new week and new month to you. Half the year is gone, let’s look to the second half with hope and optimism. I wish you greater freedom and good health.
As we head into the second half, I want to focus on the need to pay off our ignorance debt. Paying off ignorance debt is the key to accelerating earnings potential. To get started, I advise you take a few minutes to do a short self-assessment for yourself and your organization.
I call this assessment the *INVINCIBILITY AUDIT*.
It requires itemizing everything you accomplished in the first half of the year. The list should include only items that positions you to be invincible years down the road.
Write all the thing you did down and rank them on their potential to take you to the next level. By that I mean the next level of invincibility.
Over the years we have been preaching excellence. The sad reality is that excellence alone will not take you to the next level. If you continue doing what you’re currently doing you’ll remain grounded. Even if you are doing them at the highest levels of perfection, you’re going to remain where you are.
You products are going to remain the same. And likely, your price and value proposition will not vary much over time.
The only thing that exponentially changes the game in your favour is *innovation*.
All human progress is driven by innovation. Moon landing, microwave oven, wrist watches, mobile phones, bicycles, cars, and the internet, were all made possible by innovation.
Indeed every mundane thing you take for granted today were groundbreaking innovations in their day.
Gramophone, Radio, telephone, photocopy machines, fax machines, and television were all groundbreaking innovations that set the world on fire.
So, for you and your organization to make any groundbreaking leap, you must focus on a culture of innovation.
As a CEO or self-employed, you may think that you primary job is to do networking and attend high-society events. You may think your primary duty is sourcing funds and strategic planning. Add to that retreats and now and then fighting fires in the name of decision making.
Experts say you should delegate every piece of job to the lowest person in the chain who can do it. Some recommend you completely outsource everything to outsiders while focusing on your “core competence”.
The aim of outsourcing, according to the gurus, is to avoid distractions and eliminate things that don’t add much value. While doing what you do best you keep deepening your organization’s core competence.
The concept of core competencies was stoutly promoted by the duo of C. K. Prahalad (late) and Gary Hamel. Their Competing For The Future, released in 1996, became a worldwide bestseller.
While competencies sound lofty and grand, it’s the mundane things that really matter. Things like sales, marketing, leadership, decision making, time management, etc., that push organizations forward. Innovate these meta-skills and you innovate the organization.
As an organization like Sony found out to its chagrin, once you reach the “inflection point”, everything resets to zero. Yes, everything, including existing knowledge base. Andy Grove, the late co-founder of Intel, explained this lucidly in his book, Only the Paranoid Survive.
Core competencies could not safe Blockbuster and Borders. It could not safe Hitachi, Sony, National, and Panasonic, once household names.
As a self-employed you have to continually audit your skills set on sales, marketing, communication, leadership, etc. These skills are meta-skills or skills within skills. Meta-skills don’t come easy or happen overnight but will set your organization apart. They will enable you to make more money and become more profitable.
Why is Apple such a great company though it’s not by any standard the largest behemoth compared to Samsung?
Because Apple excels in the mundane such as sales and marketing innovation while also excelling in design and tech. That’s why you see people lining up for miles to buy Apple’s new products. Apple has fanatical fans, not customers, thanks to the design, tech, marketing and sales innovation.
As a small course creator the chances of you being in the same class as Apple are zero to nil. But you can learn from Apple.
As mentioned before, audit your skills set on mundane things such as sales, marketing, communication, leadership, time management, etc. The aim is to bring innovation to all the mundane skills in you organization. Think decision making innovation, hiring innovation, time management innovation, etc. You innovate and standardize practices across the business.
By innovating the mundane you create the biggest opportunities for explosive growth. While others engage in exoteric things like strategy, and flash of the month fads, you are innovating the mundane.
For your team, the focus must be on those things that make the individual a better version of herself. : Things such as the type of person they want to become or be. You’re seeking kinder, more generous, selfless, bold, wiser, deep, humanity centered, impact focused, *wealthy*, and *debt free* individuals.
Let’s talk about wealth. Building wealth is critically important. It enables the individual to take care of his basic needs. Otherwise he will struggle. He will be unhappy. He will be unhealthy.
Talking about debt, the majority of people carry huge amount of debt around their neck. Curiously they do not even know about these debt and blame others as the source of their woes. Some even commit suicide.
Alex Hormozi calls this debt that hangs around every man and woman’s neck as the sword of Damocles, “ignorance debt”. Everyone carries this ignorance debt and until you pay, you will remain grounded in penury.
Let’s say you are a newbie course creator trying to make N5m. However, right now you only have skills that can make you only N1.5m. Your ignorance debt in this instance is N3.5m.
To offset your ignorance debt, you have to take steps to learn new skills on how to make extra N3.5m.
You can never move to a higher level or earning unless you pay off all your ignorance debt.
Some people steal but it doesn’t last. Stealing is not a way to pay off ignorance debt. Stealing psyche infects the entire society and leaves it poorer.
The key is to continually invest in new skills to be able to command the amount you want at will.
If you are making N1.5m but would like to make N5m, the ignorance debt is N3.5m. You have to pay it off the leap to the next level. Every time you reach an earnings plateau, you must pay your ignorance debt before you can move forward.
To pay off an ignorance debt requires mindset shift, and titanic effort, not miracle. As a young graduate, you can search for organizations that offer internships. In extreme cases, be willing to work for free for a mentor or coach, to gain new skills. This is counter intuitive. Working for someone for free when you are unemployed can set you up for an eye-popping offer down the road.
The people that excel in every field put in titanic effort to become #1. The effort sometimes is in the order of magnitude of 10 more than the person in 2ndposition
Sometimes you don’t ever hear again about the person that came in 2nd. Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote about this phenomenon in their “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. The subtitle is Violate Them at Your Own Risk!”. It was first published in 1994.
Marie Curie, Helen Keller, Kobe Bryant, Pele, Jesse Owens, Roger Bannister, Alexander Fleming, Charles Lindbergh, Wright Brothers, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Ibn Battuta, Tom Peters, Steve Jobs, etc. are global household names. How did they become #1 in their respective fields? You find the greatest of the greats in every field of human endeavour.
Not too long ago gurus said you should work smart, not hard. That’s bunkum. Peter Drucker once said the word charlatan was too difficult to pronounce so someone invented the word guru. Beware of gurus.
Yes, to become #1 will be extremely hard at first. But you must persevere and never, never give up. Soon, it becomes easier.
So, invest in yourself day and night. If you’re the founder of a startup, invest in your people day and night. Push them to also invest in themselves and work harder than everyone else if they want to emerge #1. It will be a matter of time before they emerge #1.
As a founder or CEO, constantly preach the message of following *the road less traveled*. The majority go where everyone else goes and give up at the first sign of trouble.
Some, like Bernie Madoff, cheat. And, some cut corners. That’s why they never make it. That’s why they are the majority. Avoid being in the majority.
Get coaches for yourself. As CEO, get coaches for your top performers too to help them rapidly shave months off their learning curve.
You need Olympian-level performance to become #1. An organization needs all its people to be “A Players” to massively turn its fortunes around.
You can’t cut corners when it comes to grooming “A Players”. Coach your people, train them and train some more.
Many organizations poach “A Players” from other organizations. This is a bad idea because cultures differ. That’s why such outsiders fizzle out before the ink of their contract dries.
Grow your “A Players” from within and coach them the best you can, not minding some will leave. Even if they do, they will always remain your ambassadors.
Unless you pay your ignorance debt, you will never move to the next level of earning. And unless you build a strong team mediocrity will prevail in your organization. Strong teams expects everyone else to perform at Olympian level.
Why not start paying off you ignorance debt today by clicking this link?
I have to go now.
A beautiful July to you.