I first saw Jon on his podcast appearance on Gary Vaynerchuk’s show:
I remember being mightily impressed by him, and his lesson stuck with me, but beyond that he faded out of my mind. Today I rediscovered it, and went into a rabbit hole trying to learn more from the guy. And I was not disappointed.
The great thing about Jon is that he’s an expert in why people fail, and turning them around. He has seen the depths of human and business failure that most people haven’t, which makes him the kind of guy to listen to for business advice: because a major key to success is simply not doing basic dumb shit.
Recently I watched his amazing talk on YouTube:
Notes from the talk
- If you do the same thing tomorrow as you did today, you’ll get the same thing you got today.
To change your life, change it tomorrow itself. - Your real product is the reaction they have from using your service. The reaction they have (from the packaging to the taste etc) is what decides your whole business. It’s not the product or marketing itself.
- So you have to become a MASTER of managing the other party’s reaction throughout every interaction in their journey. Directing REACTIONS is the only job you really have.
“Your job doesn’t end with the transaction, it ends with their positive reaction.” - Stop setting goals like “20% increase in revenue in 6 months” because it’s bullshit — you can’t get your arms around it! But putting it in terms of, “2% more transactions this week” is something that you can immediately control, and start taking IMMEDIATE action to create reactions.
Goals that you can achieve THIS VERY WEEK (and then every week after that) are way better. - You must do everything you can to hit your week’s numbers. You sleep and wake up with your number.
- Marketing is only 3 things and nothing else: new customer programs, frequency programs, and spend programs.
- You can’t change people’s personalities. You have to hire the right people who fit within your business, and then teach them how to operate within your business.
If they have the right personality profile, everything else (eg: experience) is immaterial. - Create 8 adjectives for every single job in the business. And not a single one has to have anything to do with experience.
When you interview the person, you ask them about all kinds of things about their life in school and college and hobbies etc, and figure out how many of the 8 adjectives they check. If they don’t check at least 6, you will not hire them.
When you’re faced with a 5/8, what you do next will define who you are as an entrepreneur.
“Standards” are measurements of performance that are qualifiable (this is what I want you to do), quantifiable (this is when and how much you’ll do it), and verifiable (I can make sure you do it).
If it doesn’t have all 3 qualities, it’s not a standard, and people won’t be able to uphold it — neither can you. - Always hire winners. Always use the loss of an employee as an opportunity to find a BETTER player, to UPGRADE your team.
- Disney is incredible at customer experience and training — they make sure every single employee is at their absolute best.
I also got his book, “Don’t Bullshit Yourself.” Notes:
- Don’t look at the whole journey ahead of you — it will paralyze you with fear and overwhelm. Just focus on what’s right in front of you.
Takeaway: a full life is made of full decades, and full decades are made of full days and weeks. But to take that further, well-spent days are made of well-spent hours.
So from now on, although I will keep making good daily and weekly plans for myself, in any given moment, I will only focus on how could I make the next HOUR a good one.
If you can juice one HOUR of your life properly, it might add up to one hell of a life. - Post-mortems of your failures. How about post-mortems of every hour?
- Don’t hire people who don’t make the effort of learning about you and your company.
People should know how to prepare.
