Why Speed Matters in Business

Summary

If you're a small business owner competing against larger teams, learning how to work as fast as possible without compromising the quality of your work is a surefire way of having a chance of winning in the marketplace. In this video, I want to show you why this is important. And more importantly, how to become faster every day so you can win.

Transcript

If you're a small business owner competing against larger teams, learning how to work as fast as possible without compromising the quality of your work is a surefire way of having a chance of winning in the marketplace. In this video, I want to show you why this is important. And more importantly, how to actually become faster, or what do you do? Let's get to it.

[INTRO] Hey, I'm Leon Castillo, founder of Selfmastered high performance training company that helps entrepreneurs scale their businesses by solving their solid bottleneck their own performance, which was formed the unproductive, overwhelming focus entrepreneurs into laser focus business athletes that can achieve in one day, what they previously achieved in one week.

Today's video is about speed how to be faster than your competitor. Because speed is one of the ultimate competitive advantage. If you're able to do the same amount of work of someone else in half the time you will have results much faster. And therefore, you will iterate and eventually gain market share at a faster rate, which is what everybody wants. And that's because of the five following reasons. So please keep this front and center in your mind every time that you are executing on your goals.

Reason number one, why speed is so important. One speed breeds depth, it forces you to prioritize. If you're trying to go fast, you cannot do it on too many fronts. If you're willing to go deep into whatever it is that you're trying to do, you cannot do too many things so will naturally help you gravitate towards the highest level thing that you have available. Instead of trying to run ads on four different platforms, you will be forced to run ads on the best platform instead of being on 100 social media channels you will only prioritize and go deep and fast in the highest leverage and the channel that provides more yield and this is a constant across your company.

Reason number two, it removes friction and deadweight because when you are forcing yourself to go very fast, you do not have time literally to entertain thoughts and motions plans that do not align with your goals because you are focused on getting to your goals as fast as possible. So everything and anything that is not aligned with those goals has to go and this is very good because it also forces you to focus on your pre selected course of action.

Three it starves doubt this is very important. One of my mentors used to say that the devil awaits on an empty calendar on an empty agenda. If you are constantly working very fast on getting to your goals. You don't have time to doubt it. You don't have time to doubt yourself or second guess your goals or entertain again back to this idea negative emotions that can derail you.

So being speedy, being fast in your work is a very good way of not doubting and second guessing yourself for and this is massive, not only it helps you prioritize, so focus on the macro. But it also helps you focus on the macro because it hacks your brain hacking your brain is a sentence that I created to essentially shine a light on the phenomena that happens when you have very tight internal deadlines. And you have to honor them.

One of the key differences between low and high performance is how they honor their deadlines. Top performers can set ambitious internal deadlines internal it's a deadline that you set for yourself. And actually honor the low performers can only honor external deadlines. So a boss or someone else that gives them a deadline. And that's when they can summon their best self and actually focus. If you're forced to go fast, you need to set aggressive internal deadlines. And that helps your brain focus because you're focused on that internal deadlines. So that's massive.

And finally number five, it prevents politics See, most politics and big or small teams come from a lack of alignment comes from not pursuing the same goals with the same intensity. If you have design your company for speed, you're chasing the fewest number of goals that actually make sense at the highest speed that it is possible.

So there's no room for a lack of alignment and therefore there's no room for politics, which creates a feedback loop that helps your team deliver and execute at a highest level. If this is resonating with you remember to subscribe and like the video so you never miss out on any juicy videos.

And quick question for you though. Have you ever thought about speed as that fundamental business competitive advantage? What do you normally do to be faster than those you're competing against? So we've covered why now let's go over to how can you become faster in your work? Well, step number one work in quarterly cycles with a clear scoreboard You need to know exactly what it is that you're chasing the next three months. Most entrepreneurs do not have a three month long plan with the fewest number of objective that actually makes sense for the business. And some do but don't have a scoreboard so they don't know how well they're progressing week on week.

So you need to have one a goal and then a scoreboard that tells you if you're getting closer, or you're not a step number two is to design goals that actually sit outside of your current circle of competence you need to overreach by 10%. You cannot set SMART goals because SMART goals invite underperformance you need to set stretch goals, things that actually push yourself to the limit of your ability, because that's when you're going to marshal all your current different sources to deliver at elite level.

If you are not ambitious enough, you will naturally gravitate towards low performance three, honor internal deadlines, right. So you have stretch goals, and you have a scoreboard, you're very clear on what you need to do. Well, you need to get that into your calendar and create internal deadlines in your days and in your week, and actually honor them, you cannot let them fly over your head, you need to execute on them so that you're constantly creating upward momentum, which will eventually become self sustaining. When you have been executing at a high level for long enough, you tend to gravitate towards that high speed level of function for architect you're live and work for speed, right.

So you need to remove friction and deadweight at each step of the way. You need to do as few things as possible so that all your cognitive energy is devoted to moving fast in your business. That means hiring, cool guiding driver, whatever it is that you need on your day day today, you need to find ways of not devoting your attention to doing it because that naturally invites entropy into your system five of your standards weekly, right. So last week's performance should be the minimum standard that you're allowed to do this week, and so on and so far, so by the end of the third month of the quarter, you're a totally different person operating at a much higher speed than you ever thought possible.

That's how you architect your work life for speed one having clear goals that sit outside of current level of your abilities so you're actually submitting your best self that actually have a scoreboard so you can track your progress that you bring that down to your calendar and you create internal deadlines that you're able to honor them for you architect your life and work for speed so you do not entertain mindless stuff that does not help your goals and finally five you up your standards weakly so that over time due to create so much momentum towards your goal, that speed becomes the natural operating system.