it's time to start acting like a professional

Summary

either you’re going to be the best in your profession or the best as an entrepreneur. trying to be both at the same time is how you become mediocre at both. pick. then act like a professional in the one you picked.

1. emulate the work ethic of someone who is the best at the thing. for me it was Kobe Bryant’s stories. 4 a.m. shooting practice. extra reps after the team left. that’s the bar. you don’t have to match it but you have to know what real looks like.

2. plan the entire week on Sunday. plan each day the night before. you should never wake up and ask “what should I do today?” the answer should already be on the page.

3. take notes during meetings. write after action reports on big projects. review them. you cannot improve what you don’t measure and you cannot measure what you didn’t write down.

4. protect the body. exercise, hydration, sleep. you cannot perform if the machine is broken.

this is unglamorous. it’s also what separates pros from amateurs. try harder.

Transcript

introduction to professionalism

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Are you a professional at what you do? Simple question, simple answer. Are you a pro? This is the Better Human Business Podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. And I really want you to think about that. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

When I was on my way to pilot training, when I was active duty in the Air Force, you know, as my wife and I, we were driving to Wichita Falls, Shepard Air Force Base. I was about to start pilot training. And I remember telling her that one of the things that I was most excited about is I honestly just wanted to be a professional.

personal story about pilot training and professional aspirations

Growing up in college, high school, you have all these odd jobs, right, where you’re just doing other things. Like you’re doing random things. You’re not really a pro. And then also as you, when you’re younger, I think that people don’t really respect like what you do, like your expertise, your opinion, and maybe they shouldn’t.

Maybe you don’t have enough experience. But when you become a professional, a certain subject or area, you get to gain, you gain some of that respect. And that was something that I was really looking forward to is being a professional. Like I just wanted to have the one thing that I was good at, that I could study and master and be competitive in, and at the time that was going to be flying airplanes.

And another story that highlights that, this is, I’m sure you’ve heard it before, Kobe Bryant. In 2008, there was the lead up to the Beijing Olympics. And it’s a very famous story, but ultimately the team was filled with superstars. And he, Kobe was working out, it was like 4 a.m. and one of his teammates, Chris Bosch, was woken up by the sound of Kobe bouncing the ball in the gym.

learning from kobe bryant’s dedication to practice

And he wanted to go see what was going on. And Kobe was already drenched in sweat. He’d been practicing for probably an hour or two already. And Bosch was like, what are you doing here this early? And he was like, I want to be the best. And if I want to be the best, I have to work harder than everyone else every single day.

And there’s so many different stories like this from Kobe Bryant that really illustrates his work ethic. But I feel like it’s very easy to hear these stories with professional athletes talking about how much they practice, they put in hours per day. But that can get lost in our professional lives. It really can.

I’m not saying that professional athletes don’t do other things. Like I know that they might golf or like whatever. But I feel like what I see happen to a lot of entrepreneurs or just even employees is like they have their job, but they’re most interested in their hobby. And maybe that means there needs to be an alignment, a better alignment there.

the challenge of balancing coaching and entrepreneurship

But like, you’re most interested in your hobby, you’re not as interested in your job. And that’s an unfortunate mismatch. And it’s even harder for better human business entrepreneurs. Take a coach, for example, like I had struggled with this for years is like, when I show up to work every single day, am I here to get better at being a coach by programming workouts, by reading science, by working with athletes?

Is that what I’m here to do and get better at every day? Or am I here to get better at marketing and sales and growing a business and leading a team? And it can become very convoluted in entrepreneurship. But what am I getting pro at? Am I getting pro at the kind of the profession side of this, like the I’m a coach or I’m a physical therapist or I’m a chiropractor?

Like, is that what I’m trying to get best in the world that or am I trying to become the best entrepreneur in the world? And you actually can’t do both. Okay, so you have to decide which one it’s going to be. Are you playing the entrepreneur game or employee game where you’re going to be the best at that thing?

focus on becoming a professional entrepreneur

Or are you going to be the best at the profession, the thing that you’re doing, and then you honestly probably need someone else on your team or business partner to take care of the other stuff. So you have to think about exactly where you want to land in the spectrum. And I think for a number of years, I did focus on I just wanted to be a good coach.

I wanted to be good at programming. I wanted to be good. I wanted to know everything about nutrition. Like I just wanted to know all those things. And I still have a huge interest in those things and I still study them. But that’s honestly become more of my hobby. I realized what I’m becoming a professional at and what I maintain my professionalism in is being a full time entrepreneur because that is a better move for my family.

It’s a better move for me personally. It challenges me more than trying to become a better coach. I think the dynamic nature, the challenge, the risk, the reward of entrepreneurship is that’s the thing. But it took I battled this for years and I’m not saying that you have to do that too. You don’t have to say, hey, I don’t want to be the best X, Y or Z in the world.

the importance of identifying your professional focus

I want to just be the best entrepreneur doing this thing. You don’t have to make the same decision that I’ve made. It took me a long time to make that decision. But now that I’ve made that decision, it becomes very clear what I have to get good at and how I can be a professional and show up every single day as a pro.

And being a professional, there are just a lot of little easy things that you can tick off here. Kobe Bryant, he is practicing the thing he’s he’s practicing, dribbling, shooting different situations. He’s watching film. He’s doing all these things. And I really feel like it’s I don’t want to say easier to be talented at basketball at a high level, but I feel like it’s easier to dissect a sport and get better at it than it can be an entrepreneurship because it’s so vast of what you can do as an entrepreneur.

But just some little things that you could check off on your task list. If you just want to be serious or be a professional in any area and really whatever you choose for that to be, choose to be a professional. Like first, I want to urge you choose to be a professional. Don’t show up every day to your job with like this kind of, yeah, yeah, whatever.

tips for daily and weekly progress reviews

I’m doing this thing, that thing. Act like a pro. Act like your job, either as an entrepreneur or if you are an employee, whatever it is, act like you’re a pro, like you’re there to get better. You’re there to be the best. That mentality can change everything for you. So getting down to some of the things that you can do first.

Take your job seriously and get better at it. First you have to know what you’re going pro in. Is that a specific job if you’re an employee? If you are a chiropractor or PT, is it the profession side? Is it the actual clinical skills that you’ve decided to be a professional that you want to be the best at?

Or is it the entrepreneurship side? So decide on that. Exactly know what you’re going pro in. Take it seriously and get better at it. Actively try to get better at it. Make sure you’re progress. So that’s the next thing. Review your progress daily and weekly. Every single day, what am I doing? What have I done?

the significance of planning and organizing your time

What have I accomplished? How am I moving forward? At getting better at this thing, how am I moving forward at being a professional? You have to actually sit down with pen and paper, review your progress, write things down. Another simple thing that you can do that will get you ahead of everyone else, plan your entire week on Sundays.

Sunday night, sit down, plan out every single thing that’s going to happen. Don’t let weeks happen to you. Don’t let days happen to you. You need to happen to them. You need to plan in advance. This is what professionals do in this field. You plan, not just your goals for the quarter or the month or whatever.

You need to plan every single week, every single day. You plan the night before what’s going to happen, what you’re going to accomplish. Another thing that you can do is simple and take notes. If you’re serious, you write it down. That is lost on me how many people don’t take notes, who don’t write meticulous notes.

continuous learning and improvement strategies

A lot of times, I don’t do this in a meeting. What I do is I will attend a meeting. I won’t write a single thing down in the meeting. I’ll just listen, give feedback, whatever, but then after the meeting, I’ll write down what the tasks were, what everyone said. Just quick notes to jog my memory if I need it and I know what’s happening and it solidifies it.

I’m taking notes. I know how I can look back at things. I’m not having some haphazard meeting and then, like, oh, I think we talked about this last week. Be a professional. Take notes. Write things down. Do briefs about what’s going to happen. Do a debrief after things have happened, after you’ve ran a marketing campaign, after you’ve completed a task.

How did it go? Actually look back and assess yourself. How could you get better the next time? No matter what the task is, if it’s something that you could repeat over and over again, look back at it and see how you could improve. Another thing that you can do with your team are after-action reports.

the role of personal health in professional success

These are official reports that you could submit after the fact. How could we have done better? Other little things. Take care of your life. Do your workouts. Drink enough water. Stretch. All these basic things. Get enough sunlight and vitamin D. All of these things, they might seem like they’re just being healthy, but if you want to be a top-level entrepreneur or a professional in any capacity, you need to make sure you’re getting enough sleep.

You need to make sure that you’re hydrated. You need to make sure that you’re eating good food. You need to make sure that you’re making the right decisions. You need to make sure that you are reading and challenging your brain and doing things that are going to actually make you better. When you realize you’re doing all these things to be a professional, to operate at absolute peak performance, and you start to take yourself a little bit more seriously, other people will start to take you a little bit more seriously.

I know it can be challenging as an entrepreneur, and even employees, if your job description isn’t like super set in stone, it can be a challenge, but you have to make the decision that you are going to be a professional and that you are going to get better each and every single day. If you can take that one small mindset, just do a couple of things that I’ve talked about here.

closing thoughts on professionalism and continuous improvement

Decide that you’re going to get better. Review your progress every single day. How could I get better? How could today have gone better? How could I improve my efforts, my actions, my productivity, my relationships? All these things. How can I improve? Make sure that you’re taking care of yourself.

All these things are you making the choice to be a professional and not just letting life happen to you. And then when you become that professional, you will be so far ahead of every single person else because no one else does the little things. I’m talking about the little things like taking notes and doing after action reports and briefs and debriefs and all these little things.

People don’t do these things. They don’t plan their weeks on Sunday. They don’t plan tomorrow. Tonight. They don’t do those things. But if you do those things, you will be so much further ahead. So if you want to be a professional, try harder.