Traits of the Greats

Count money, man.

Money, man.

That gritch is fine.

I told him, I'm a beast.

What's up, gang?

Welcome back to another episode of The Grindcast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

We're going to talk about the traits of the greats.

The traits of the greats.

We'll start out with number one being, see, these are just some of the traits, right?

So you can add on some.

These are some of them off to top my head.

Number one, vision.

So some of the traits of the greats is that they have vision.

They have a big vision.

But they keep their eye on their vision even when things don't look great.

So you've got to keep an eye on your vision.

The greats, they have a vision.

And they keep their eye on their vision, even when things don't look spectacular in

the moment.

And the thing about vision is the biggest enemy of vision is sight.

That if you can only believe what you could see right in front of your eyes, then that

doesn't take the vision that we're talking about.

That's sight that we can only believe what's right in front of us.

The vision I'm talking about is leadership vision, explosive growth vision, that you

could see things four or five steps in advance.

You could see them before they come to play by having that type of an outlook.

Next thing is consistency.

The test of greatness.

That's why this is the traits of greats.

The test of greatness in the hallmark of excellence is consistency.

So one of the things, man, this is a huge one.

I watch so many people in our business in Josh, Mark, this down for me to talk about next

Monday in the agency meeting if we can.

Is the, I see so many people that can be great.

They start sniffing good and they peel back.

They fall back.

They slow down.

They take it easy.

They start rewarding themselves too soon.

And they never become great because of it because they lack consistency.

They do it for a month, but they won't do it for a year.

They do it for a week, but they won't do it for a month.

It's consistently showed showing up compounded over years and years is how you're going to

have explosive growth in things.

So the greats, they're consistent.

Ask yourself how consistent are you with your process?

How consistent are you in your business?

How consistent are you in whatever it is that you're trying to get good at?

The next one is relentless work ethic.

The greats, the greats, like the real greats.

They got great work ethic.

Learn about LeBron James.

Learn about Kobe Bryant.

Learn about Michael Jordan.

Learn about Tom Brady.

Learn about Patrick Mahomes.

Learn about the greats.

And learning about the greats, whether it's a coach or a player, learn about Nick Sabin,

learn about Bella check, learn about Tomlin, learn about whoever you want to, when you learn

about the greats, what you're going to dig deep, you're going to find is that they all,

I mean, all is a strong word.

So 99.9%.

I almost go as far as say it has to be all.

They have a relentless work ethic.

When you hear the word relentless, what comes to your mind?

Relentless is like Freddie Krueger, like you can't kill him.

Like every time he thinks he's dead, he just comes back to life.

Relentless.

Can't stop, won't stop, just keeps on grinding.

That type of work ethic of it don't stop.

You got to have discipline.

The traits and the greats, they got discipline.

This is a huge one.

So much of success is discipline.

But what is discipline?

Getting yourself to do stuff you don't want to do.

That's basically discipline.

It's attached to a desired result.

There's something that you want, but then there's a bunch of things that you got to do

in order to get it that you ain't going to feel like doing.

That's discipline.

Doing those things is discipline.

Getting yourself to not do things that are going to hurt your cost.

That takes discipline because those are the things a lot of times you want to do.

So discipline is to me up there with the top keys of life in order to go to the next

level, you got to have levels of discipline.

It's the person that can get themselves to go to bed when they don't want to.

The person that will practice over and over and over again, when they don't feel like

it.

The person that will get up in the morning when the alarm goes off, when they don't feel

like it.

The person that works on the weekend, when they don't feel like it.

The person that practices twice in a day when they don't feel like it.

It's discipline as you got to get over your feelings.

That's so much of it.

It's, man, I feel, I feel or I don't feel your goals and dreams and visions, ain't going

to be about what you feel.

It's about what you do.

And it's about what you do when you give up things.

You got to give up something in order to go up.

And that takes discipline.

Who wants to give up stuff?

Some of the other traits that are great, which is along this line, is that they do the

things that others are not willing to do.

That's what it takes to be great.

Is you got to do the things that others are not willing to do, but you're both going

to not want to do them.

It takes being obsessed.

Man, people would just nail me to the cross if I did this one, Josh.

I think we need to do LeBron James.

They interviewed LeBron James and said, you know, what does it take?

Describe sacrifice.

And he said, you got to give up friends.

You got to give up loved ones.

And he went on to give examples.

There's times where you got to go to bed early.

You got to get up the next day to come home and I eat.

And I go right back to work.

There's times where I got to give up even time with loved ones.

I got to give up a lot of things.

There was so many things that he couldn't do.

Parties he didn't go to trying to make it getting started in the NBA.

He joked and laughed and said, maybe I should have went

through to a few of them.

That tells you, dude, didn't go to none of them.

That's being obsessed.

And that's another thing that stands in the way of people that are trying to be great

because family members and friends are going to jump in front of you, telling you that

you're wrong, you're bad and you're crazy when you're obsessed.

But in my experience, it takes people being obsessed in order to be great.

And I think you can be obsessed and still be a great dad.

I think you can be obsessed and still be a great father in a husband.

But you got to be obsessed and you got to be disciplined about all these things in

order to be great at them.

Resilience is another word that pops up with the traits of the greats.

Eversity can't take you out the game.

Every time you go through adversity, it's an opportunity for you to become

better.

Nobody ever wants it.

When you're going through the adversity, nobody ever wants it.

But when you come out the other side of it, you're changed forever.

It's up to you.

Will you let that change be positive or negative?

But it's up to you.

You could make that change every time you go through something.

Every single time you could come out better on the other side if you choose to.

That's called growth.

That's called experience.

But you got to have resilience.

What happens is life will beat you down and make you want to start tapping out and saying,

man, I don't need this shit.

I don't need to go through this.

I don't need to go through that for this youth program.

I don't need to go through that for this business.

I don't need to deal with these people.

I could just do something else.

It's that subtle voice that's calling you away from your destiny, settling, which

is an enemy to your potential.

Your potential in calling on your life, you may feel huge is huge.

When you think about the truth that you feel, it brings you enthusiasm.

But then life beats you down and it puts your fire out and puts your flame out and

smothers you.

Until most people just give up and they say, I don't want to go through that.

I just want to breathe and live my life.

But really what they really were called to do and what they really want to live in

their life is about taking it to the outside.

Think about if you got a gift and you got it in your blessed with some things.

What did they say about the parable or the talents?

We were supposed to multiply them.

Not keep it to ourselves.

Don't let that voice, don't let people, don't let things happen.

That take away from your inspiration and motivation.

That's where you plug in resilience.

We got to be resilient, which means we got to overcome obstacles.

We got to overcome adversity.

You got to change your relationship with adversity.

When you see obstacles that arise, you got to understand that that is a huge growth opportunity

for you.

Some of the traits of the greats that some of the more that come to my mind is that they're

constantly learning, they're students.

The traits of the greats, they're always looking at how can I get better, how can I evolve,

how can I learn from this person, how can I learn from that person, how can I get better

at my craft.

They're constantly learning and growing in their student.

They're still coachable to how they can grow and how they can get better.

They're adaptable.

Greats, they adapt to the game.

This makes me think of Jordan for the basketball fans.

The great Michael Jordan, his athleticism was off the charts.

He used to take it to the hole.

Drawed a file, bang on people, just take it into paint.

All the time, as he aged, he didn't have some of those same traits anymore, but he still

had a bunch of great traits.

He had to be adaptable.

That's when he created that fade away because he might have lost a step, but how do I adapt

and still be great?

Things are going to change.

Life is going to change.

COVID happened.

So many jobs had to go and be put on virtual, including the company I work with now, our

company.

We had to go virtual.

We used to meet with people in their homes.

Now we meet with people over a computer screen.

In that transition, I could think of people that quit the company, left our company, left

the industry because we went from a company that did business in person only to a company

that did business virtually mostly.

They quit because they couldn't deal with that.

They couldn't adapt.

They couldn't deal with that transition.

And now when you come out the other side, years later and everybody's used to it, these

folks wouldn't rather have it any other way.

You couldn't get them to go back out and do that, but those people quit because we stopped

doing those things and we went virtual.

It's called adaptation and being adaptable.

You got to have adaptability.

You got to evolve over time and be ready to roll with the punches.

One of the last traits of the greats I'm going to touch on is being what John Maxwell calls

a 360 degree leader.

360 degree leader means that you could lead up.

You could lead people above you even though you don't have the title.

You can help lead those people and get along with those people and lift those people.

You could lead your peers.

The people are on the side of you.

The people that have the same position and title, you could still lead in function there and

then you could lead down.

People that you coach and provide leadership to.

A lot of people can only lead down, but leaders, real leaders, they lead everything around

them.

They make everybody around them better.

Are you asking the people above you how can I make your job easier?

How can I lift your load?

What can I do to help you?

Are you a breath of fresh air to those people?

Are you a hot flaming fire?

Ask yourself.

The people that you lead or the people that lead you, your coaches, what they describe you

as, man, this is somebody that carries the load.

This is someone that brings me energy.

Gets me excited because they're so coachable and they're always helpful and they're willing

to help everybody around them or use someone that drains and sucks the energy out of your

coaches.

As a 360 degree, 360 degree leader, you got to be able to influence up, lift the people

up by asking them, how can I help you?

What can I do better?

Being coachable, caring about the people is how you can start to influence people from

above.

What can you do for everybody's benefit, not just for yourself?

than leading on the side, your peers.

These, you're not the boss of them, right?

The kids say, you're not the boss of me,

but the people on the side of you,

how can you lead those people?

While we're on this subject,

remember if you have anything negative to say or do,

you wanna complain up, never laterally and never down,

should always complain up in leadership,

complain to people that could do something about it.

Leading laterally as just people are watching your example,

they're watching what you do, how you operate,

when you get even more results than people are definitely,

you can influence people that are around you,

that are looking up to you,

but they have the same position as you.

You gotta care about them, you gotta serve them,

but my goal for you, and you look at all the greats,

you look at Jordan, you look at Brady,

you look at my homes, I'm mentioning athletes.

But the traits of the greats that a lot of people miss

is they made their teammates better,

they made the people that they coached better,

but they made their coach better,

they made the person that coached them better,

they made the league better,

they made their team better, they made their coach better.

Try to go out there and make everyone around you better

and be a 360 degree leader.

Look at some of these traits and ask yourself,

rank yourself one to 10,

where can you improve, where are you strong?

As me, you, all of us, we all have room for improvement,

the key is taking ownership and taking action.

Speaking of taking ownership and taking action,

that's what all of you did today,

that you took time out of your day to invest it into yourself,

to invest it into spending time with us,

thinking that we could add value to one another

and we could add value to other people,

that's the goal we wanna add value

to other people if you know anybody

that could benefit from this message

that we can help take a moment out and share it with them.

All right, let's be great this week.

Thanks for your time.

Thanks for joining us on another episode

of the Grand Cascade, get ready as a new day.