Ep. 44 – Counting
5 Minute Rants by THE a.m.
A podcast predicated on the journey of business and life.
Ep. 44 – Counting
What we count matters.
Counting = measurement.
Counting the wrong thing leads to disappointment.
Measurement by fruit / manifestation is broken.
True Measurement is based on my controllables.
Controllables that produce or provide value are what should be measured.
If I measure my ability to play football by winning the Super Bowl, it’s broken.
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What we count matters. Counting = measurement. Counting the wrong thing leads to disappointment. Measurement by fruit / […]
July 27, 2023
Episode Transcript
What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m. guys. Welcome back to 5 Minute Rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. And welcome back to the show predicated on the journey of life and business. Really appreciate y’all tuning in. Thank you guys so much for the support, really appreciate it.
Well, real quick, guys, for today, I really wanted to talk about counting. Like counting, as in 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. And don’t hate on me for talking about this, right yet, stick around for a second because I really want to talk about counting, predicated on winning and measurement of progress in life.
So to me, life is very much like a walk in a journey to where you take one step at a time. And oftentimes, we miss out on life, and we get discouraged, and we get disappointed, because instead of actually looking and counting our steps in measuring our progress in things that matter our controllables, we measure progress based on perspective. And so what I’m saying is, we actually look at the wrong thing, and we measure the wrong thing. And as a result, it normally leads to disappointment, it normally leads to confusion, it normally leads to us quitting and giving up on something that if we just stuck with it, it would have been something so profoundly impactful in our lives.
So, to summarize what I’m saying, in a different way, is what we count matters. In counting really comes back to measurement, if we’re counting something that is outside of our control, like I can’t control on that walk, on that journey where the trees are planted. I can’t control if I’m stuck in traffic or things like that. But what if I’m counting the things that I am in control of, like how I spend my time in the car, while stuck in traffic, how I’m actually walking up the slope on the journey that actually leads to success and victory. And so a good way to think about this is, I’ve played a bunch of tennis, and one of the mindsets is, winning is just getting it over the net consistently and measuring that, not actually winning the set. And if you look at a lot of great tennis players, or even a lot of great athletes, they’re they’re not just looking at winning as the game they look at how consistent are my shots? What is the measurement of how often I’m actually scoring in producing points or rebounds. And I’m thinking basketball right now, rebounds, blocks, steals, what is my percentage of doing that, versus the next guy’s. So the point is, is instead of focusing and saying, hey, I want to win the Super Bowl, we’re focusing on, what makes teams more successful in the Super Bowl. Well, they fumble 25% less, they run on average 50% more yards, right? They are less likely to throw an interception, things like that. And those are what you should be counting.
And I’m saying this because we were working with some buddies of ours, really helping them build processes for success. They’ve got a media company, and we are really helping them build processes. And one of the things was actually coming back to count what matters and coming back to measure what matters versus not. So how do we measure improvement? How do we measure our controllables? And what is within our control? So early on in my journey in business, and in Andrew’s journey in business, one of the things that really came up was we would say, “hey, we want this many customers, we want this many signed contracts, we want this many close deals, and we would set goals like that.” But we are counting the wrong thing. Because we’re not in charge of making the decision of who’s going to sign who’s gonna hire us. We’re not in charge of any of those decisions. What we are in charge of is how often am I networking? Who am I networking with? Am I in the right group? I am in charge of that on measuring how often or not I’m doing those things. Hey, what about emails and recaps? What about actually caring about people? How many conversations do I have about caring versus trying to sell somebody something? How many conversations I have based on discovery versus selling. And so as a result, we started really changing and focusing on what we could control versus What we couldn’t. And it was world changing. We started counting the small moments that matter, right? Like I count, if I count making my bed every day, I count drinking my 30 to 32 ounces of water in the morning. I’m counting those things, why they’re within my control. And over time, each little step leads me to the top of the mountain going back to that journey and going back to that path.
Anyways guys, I hope you have a great day. It should be Friday if you’re listening to this and I hope it is if my math is correct and happy Friday guys, I will catch you on the flip side. Peace!