Hello, my friends. Scott Harris, your Ultimate Coach stopping by to chat today about how to get better at almost anything you want in your life. And to be honest, I kind of want to call this video I don’t understand why everybody doesn’t get this. If you think about your life in kind of two categories, you got personal stuff going on, and you got professional or business stuff going on. Most of us who are watching this video right now, me included if I was watching it, we want to get better at stuff. And there’s a very simple, easy, and effective way, a way that you’ve been doing your whole life to get better at things, that I just wanted to remind you of, and it kind of looks like this.

You know, if you want to get better at something… Like years ago, years ago, a friend of mine said, “I want to get better at golf.” Now, I don’t play golf, but the first thing he did was said, “I want to get better at golf,” so he went out and practiced and practiced and practiced. And in the beginning, he got a little bit better, but after a while, his practice could only take him so far. He realised, “I don’t need to practice anymore. What I need is I need some lessons. What I need is an expert or a mentor standing next to me seeing some things that I can’t see, noticing some things that I can’t notice about my swing, and my stance, and my follow-through, and my head movement, and so forth. So he needed some lessons to get better at golf. And so he got a great coach, and got a great professional at the club, and he had some great lessons, and no surprise, his golf game improved markedly.

For myself, I remember years and years and years ago, I wanted to be a great runner. I liked to run sub three-hour marathons. Not now, but a long, long time ago. I used to run quick! But I know that there was a certain time where there was only so many kilometres or miles I could run each week and each month, and eventually, what I needed to do to get quicker, what I needed to do to get faster in my times, what I needed to do to move further along the track, was I needed to get a great running coach. So I went and hired one. Went and hired a guy who was a world-class triathlete champion and a great coach, and he taught me some skills and tools and drills that, to this day, 30 years later, I still use when I go for a run. And no surprise, because I got a great running coach, I got better at running. Like, seems pretty obvious to me.

Think about anything you want to get better at. I got a friend of mine who wanted to be a great dancer, wanted to get better at dancing. And so what did he do? Yeah. He got inspired by some movies, and thought he might be able to pick up a few ladies by being a better dancer, but what he did was he went out and got a world-class instructor. And he went to some lessons, and he paid for them, and he went week after week after week, and after not very long, he got so good at dancing, he actually became an instructor. But the way that he got better at dancing was by having a great instructor, and having someone teach him, and show him, and guide him along the way how to get better at that.

In anything in your life, if you want to get better at history, or philosophy, or science, or geography, or any of those things, what do you do? You go out and you get a world-class tutor, or a world-class professor, or a world-class teacher, and you have them help you get better at it. And I think about all the personal things in your life you want to get better at, and for our whole lives, from the time we’re in primary school and kindergarten and preschool, the time we’re in high school playing soccer and football and golf and tennis and netball and swimming, we have tutors and teachers and experts and mentors and role models around us for our whole life. And as you keep moving forward, the single best way to keep getting better is to have somebody who’s cleverer than you at that thing, or has got some experience with that thing, or even just has got an outside perspective. They can help you move forward.

Now, that’s your personal stuff. In my professional life, in my business life, in your professional life, in your business life, there’s probably some things you want to get better at. There’s probably some things that you want to move forward on. And one of those may or may not be a thing called understanding the joy and delight of technology. And whether that’s internet or Facebook or marketing or computers or cameras or whatever it is, you can fumble your way through technology. You could certainly go and ask YouTube and Google how to, and how to, and how to, but ultimately, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, the quickest, fastest, best way to get better at technology is to pay someone who’s an expert to come and teach you how to do it. Someone’s who learned stuff for 20 years, and they can teach you what they know in five minutes or two days or five weeks.

You got to get an expert, and they help you solve your technology problems. That just seems obvious to me. The alternative is to just keep bumbling along and working it out for yourself. That just seems so stupid to me. The other thing you might want to learn is you might want to get better at marketing. Now, in my business, in your business, you might want to get better at marketing. And again, you can do this thing called trial and error. It’s not very intelligent, and not very effective, but what you want to do is you want to go out and find somebody who’s either a consultant, or maybe you want to get some high-class education. Go to a seminar or so forth. Maybe you want to get an advisor, or get in touch with somebody who’s extremely incredible, whether that’s somebody who I’ve worked with and been in Gary’s videos, a guy called Gary Vaynerchuk, or whether it’s somebody else.

A good friend of mine, Jay Abraham, who’s the world’s leading expert on traditional marketing… But you want to go get a teacher or coach or consultant, an educator, to help you get better at marketing, and then go put it to work. In your business, you may want to get better at a thing called understanding the numbers. The numbers are important, whether that’s your monthly, your quarterly cash flows, your spreadsheets, your P&Ls, your balance sheets. All of those important things which most small to medium business owners are not excited about. But my good friend, Keith Cunningham, who is the rich dad from Rich Dad Poor Dad says “If you don’t understand the numbers, you got nothing”.

When you want to understand the numbers, again, you can fumble your way through understanding Xero. You can bumble your way through understanding how to use your accounting software or your spreadsheets and create your own reports. Or you can go get a planner, a financial planner, or a CFO, or join a board, or have someone come on to your board, or do something to get an external wizard, an external wise person, to come on board and show you the way, and give you some clarity, and help you see what you’re not able to see.

When I look at the patterns in these linkages from golf lessons to being better at golf, to having a running coach to getting better at running, to having a great dance instructor to getting better at dancing, to having a great tutor or teacher or professor to getting better at a particular subject, when I think about getting great experts to help with my technology, when I think about getting a consultant or education or access to world leaders to get better at marketing, when I think about getting some financial wisdom and advice to get better at my numbers, I think one simple thing, and I think this! Holy smokes! If I want to have a better life… If you’re watching this right now, and you say, “I want to have a better life. Right. Me too!” Or, “Yes, please!”

In the dialogue box, if you want a better life, I’m telling you right now, there is a pattern going on here, and that is, I’ll tell you what. If you want a better life, my very best coaching for you is this. Go get yourself an extraordinary coach. Go get a great coach, and have them support you, encourage you, push you, cajole you, hold you to high standards, help you see things that you’re not able to see. And I’m telling you, if you want a better life, having a great coach, a life coach… And I know that’s a phrase that is not often always understood or appreciated or respected, but having a great coach from a great team of coaches support you is absolutely the single best way I know to make everything in your life better.

Again, this is a strategy you’ve been using your whole life, from the time you’re in kindergarten to primary school to high school to an apprentice to your first business. It’s how you learned to drive, and how you learned to do almost everything in your life. So my coaching, my wish for you is this. If you want to get better at your life, go find yourself a great coach. Now, we can help you do that, and if you find somebody else, that’s awesome as well. But my wish for you is that you’re living your life very, very deliberately every single day. That’s my message today. If you loved this video, you know what to do. Until we get to meet you in person, this is Scott Harris, your ultimate coach saying live very deliberately, and bye for now.