18/02/2024
How to use ‘’The Four Horseman Of Production’’ to 5-30X your income over the next 6-24 months. (Depending on the opportunities in front of you)
Why 5-30x?
Because the top 1% performers in any industry earn on average 5x-30x the average income of that industry.
The same principles apply in going from the top 1% to 0.1%, 0.001% and so on.
This is not accomplished by just working harder or putting in more reps, it happens by becoming better at 4 specific production skills.
This is also how my clients are able to dramatically increase their income in less than 90 days of starting our work together:
“I’ve added $1.2M YRR to my business after only working together for 23 days, so I immediately re-signed for a 12-month commitment, and we went on to have a record-breaking year. Competitors have been texting me to try and figure out what changed.
My focus, ability to think, make good decisions, identify constraints, and optimize the processes inside of my business all reached a new level. My sleep quality, motivation, energy & overall wellbeing also improved. ” - Matt, Trucking Company CEO
“We’ve been getting new customers every day. 8 of them so far with $240k in revenue. I’m feeling less anxious, more focused & have more energy. Priorities are clearer, I am addressing the real constraints of my business, and my performance as the CEO is at an all-time high.” - Grant, Design Firm Co-Owner
“My 5-year-long chronic insomnia disappeared in less than 60 days, and energy levels, memory, and focus are way up. The productivity improvement has been dramatic both in business and in my work. I’ve been hovering around 96% for 9 months, my new baseline is 140% but in 30% less time. My business revenue multiplied by 3x and has now surpassed the income from my job.” - Alex, Lawyer
Before we break down the big 4, let me show you why they matter so much and give you some examples.
The economy rewards the synthesis of these 4 skills into one meta-ability.
And the financial rewards for doing this well are at a rate exponentially higher than anything else.
If certain tasks pay 15/hr, these are the tasks that pay $2000/hr, $10 000/hr, or even $50 000/hr and beyond.
So what is this meta-skill that makes the above possible?
It’s your capacity to focus deeply on cognitively demanding, high-leverage tasks for long periods of time, consistently.
This is because the leverage and profitability of the task often coincide with how complex and difficult it is to do.
And the more people can pull it off, the less valuable the skill and or activity becomes.
If tasks like the ones below were easy, they wouldn’t be valuable, because everyone would do them exceptionally well.
- Building out or enhancing systems and processes in your business
Innovation in marketing, product, sales or operational efficiency.
- Being a better more emotionally intelligent communicator in business or life
- Driving up your personal productivity or driving up the productivity of your employee to attain the minimum ratio of labor efficency of 2:1. (Production/salary)
- Writing a great book, building an audience or standard operating procedures.
- Building a funnel, learning new relevant technology
- Speed of implementation.
- Writing copy that sells or creating good content (Meaning being a better communicator and thinker than the competition)
- Identify constraints and bottlenecks on progress in life and business.
- Having consistent output
- Leading and communicating with others to attain greater performance without negatively draining your leadership capital.
- Formulating an intentional learning plan rather than having social media algorithms dictate your consumption.
- Correct, constraint-based prioritization.
- Impulse & attention control to not getting distracted by vices, irrelevant information or learning things that aren’t your unique constraint.
- Strategic thinking, problem-solving & reflection. (relevant for business, trauma recovery, relationships, health & any behavioral change… or to solve complex problems)
So the ultimate question to ask, is what allows us to excel at the complex but high-leverage task above…?
It’s ‘’The Four Horseman of Production’’:
And if you study all the tasks above, they are all either one of or several of the big 4 skills used at once.
Let's dive deeper into each and use the reflection exercises to identify which one is holding you back the most:
1. Learning: Learn The Right Things… Fast.
Business theorist Arie De Geus evaluated 27 large and long-lived corporations to see what made them excel…
His conclusion?
‘’The ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage’’
Information & opportunities to learn are abundant, but it will be the individuals who can discern the quality of information that come out on top.
It’s no longer good enough to just consume ‘’positive or helpful’’ content.
If your learning and skill-development plan is not based on your unique constraints you will be wasting time consuming feel-good content thinking you are learning without really making progress…
This capacity to learn doesn’t just come into play when you're actively consuming or selecting information, a large part of how learning governs success is how attentive you can be to the feedback your actions provide…
Years of experience does not govern learning, it’s how many adjustments you make in those 10 years does.
Anders Ericsson, one of, if not the most prolific researcher of peak performance discovered that frequency and accuracy of feedback received is the single biggest driver of performance.
And that repetition and years spent doing something doesn’t predict performance.
Reflection exercise:
What new information do you need to acquire to move ahead faster?
What skills are most important to get better at fast right now?
Based on your goals, what do you need to change about your consumption habits?
Where have you stagnated because of lack of feedback?
2. Decision-making: Identifying & Resolving Constraints
Most people think they are great decision-makers, but our ability to think and make decisions is again on an infinite continuum rather than a binary ability where you either have It or not.
The ability to make decisions and use reasoning and rationality will also vary a lot from day to day depending on biological factors like sleep quality, nutrition, hormones…
Emotional & psychological factors like current emotional state, informational context, personality & temperament. (Yes your personality and temperament will have to evolve to reach your goals.) (Maybe you are too risk-averse or too reckless, maybe you are overconfident or underconfident)
Each situation and circumstance will be optimally met by a different personality formulation.
If you remain static and stick to your ‘’natural’’ traits and abilities only, you will suffer the consequences of stubbornness and you will not be as adaptable as you needed to be.
The other factor in great decision-making is the mental models we use to make decisions.
These mental models are also learning-dependent. But can can simply consist of information we have been exposed to rather than information we have purposefully sought out. (This is why your consumption & learning systems are so critical)
The quality and informational accuracy of the information we are acting on can get infinitely better.
And even a hyper-rational individual acting on the wrong or incomplete information will make mistakes. (This is hyper-relevant in business but we also see this a lot in nutrition and health, or changing oneself, it applies everywhere.)
The better your understanding of the particular topic, and the more data points you have, the more likely you can make good decisions about how to allocate limited resources of time, money, attention, energy, manpower, capital, etc.
Decision-making gives tremendous leverage because you can spend the same amount of effort, time, money, attention, manpower, capital, or other resources but in a different direction and get 1000x the return.
A large aspect of good decision-making hinges on our system for learning and continually arriving at greater informational accuracy.
If you aren’t producing the results you want in any area of life, your informational accuracy in that specific area of life is likely lacking. (Health, business, personal life, self-change)
Reflection exercise:
Based on your decision-making history, and your current goals, what do you need to change about your approach to decision-making? Do you need to make quicker decisions? Take more risk? Less risk? Be more bold or more calculated?
Where in your life do you need to upgrade your decision-making skills the most? Where are you lacking results? This is a hint to lacking in informational accuracy.
3. Ex*****on: Ex*****on Capacity: The Gap Between Intention & Reality
The person who executes with higher quality & greater volume will win. (on the right projects)
The capacity to execute complex projects and solve complex problems is regulated by the rules and laws of cognitive function, biology, psychology & human performance.
This is why you want to abandon oversimplified solutions to this complex ability.
Anytime you say:
‘’I just need to….x, you have an ex*****on problem.
Focus
Stop procrastinating
Stop getting distracted
Get more done
Post more
Build X
The ‘’Just do it’’ motto is for amateurs.
You need to commit to a process and a system for continually improving your capacity for ex*****on both in terms of quality and volume.
And if you’ve been dealing with some of the most common ex*****on-related problems like:
Procrastination
Inconsistency
Difficulty focusing
Plummeted Motivation
Burnout
Overwhelm
Getting distracted
Over-consuming content
Or simply not being able to summon the cognitive power to make progress on the key projects that matter...
All of the above problems, which over 95% of people I speak with struggle with more than 5 of them at one time… have the same cause…
A dysfunctional Dopaminergic System.
The dopamine system is made up of two subsystems.
1. The Ventrmodial Dopamine System. This is responsible for motivation, energy, desire, subconscious interest in improving the future, making progress, and general goal-oriented behavior.
If this does not sound like you, this system has likely been down-regulated or hi-jacked away from your vision either by vices, distractions, serotonin depletion, or being biologically suboptimal (Hormones, sleep, airways, digestive health).
2. The Lateral Dopamine System. This is responsible for goal-directed attention control, cognitive function, impulse control, emotional regulation, formulation of plans, sequencing out steps & strategic thinking.
If you are generally motivated and energetic (Ventromedial dopamine system) but are messing up your performance by either getting distracted, struggling with clarity, or structure, having brain fog, and having a difficult time identifying, naming, and clarifying problems as well as deploying the correct strategy and then following through and controlling your attention appropriately…
The lateral dopamine system is likely your issue.
The lateral dopamine system is where most of your executive functions are situated and play a key role in every advanced cognitive function from decision-making, prioritization, self-awareness, and self-change to emotional intelligence.
Reflection exercise:
Which dopamine system is your current weakness?
4. Communication: The Weapon of Mass Influence
Communication is the ultimate weapon in a hyper-connected world.
And like any ability, it's not binary, meaning that one is either a good or bad communicator.
It's about how good you are. And one can always get infinity better…
Communication can be broken down into 4 types of situations/contexts/relationships:
1. Communication with prospects. this is your marketing & sales communication. (Copywriting)
2. Communication with clients
3. Communication in leadership situations with your Team/Partners/Employees
4. Communication in your personal life.
This can be further divided into intimate relationships, and communication with mentors, peers, friends, children, infants, etc…
All of these include verbal & non-verbal communication, it's both how you say it, and what you choose to say, and even what you feel (since that always is communicated whether you want it or not)(This phenomenon is called emotional contagion).
All of this is affected by your emotional & social intelligence, as well as body language, psychology, emotions, tonality & much more.
How well you communicate and your ability to be articulate and well-spoken will also be affected by:
Biological factors like cognitive function, verbal fluency, memory, and working memory
Psychological & emotional factors like emotional states, emotional intelligence skills, beliefs about people, previous traumas, how you move your body/postures you have habitually adapted and even by your facial movements & childhood,
And by your social cognition in charge of emotional recognition or lack of it & sociopolitical facilitation skills & ability to swap between the 6 leadership styles in a dynamic way that is optimal for the specific circumstance & situation…
And even by your own levels of self-awareness (which the cognitive sciences can now measure by the size and interconnects of the ‘’Insula’’ which regulates the type of cognition that allows us to be self-aware.) (the right, well-formulated 360 feedback tests can also provide unique insights here., keep in mind that most of these tests aren’t well formulated.)
Reflection exercise:
What area of your life do you need to upgrade your communication in? And based on the results you are getting in that area, what do you think you need to do a better job at?
Hope you found this helpful and worthwhile topic to reflect, learn and think about.
If you want to take things to another level here are the next steps:
The path to greater performance isn’t easy but If you would like to see the systematic step-by-step process you would have to follow to multiply your current income over the next 6-12 months.
And take your performance, health & wellbeing to new heights.
DM me ‘’Performance’’ and I will help you analyze your unique constraints and formulate an individualized strategy for resolving them.