rockefeller's $20m secret: one drop changed everything

Summary

Jerred shares the story of John D. Rockefeller’s discovery that reducing the amount of solder used to seal kerosene barrels from 40 to 39 drops saved his company millions, illustrating the power of small efficiencies. He uses this story to highlight the importance of focusing on seemingly minor aspects of personal and business life that can lead to significant improvements. Jerred emphasizes that while many people seek big changes through books, courses, or mentors, often the most impactful changes come from optimizing everyday actions like thoughts, steps, and breaths. By becoming more intentional with these daily activities, individuals can enhance their personal development and, consequently, their business success.

Key takeaways:

• Rockefeller’s reduction from 40 to 39 drops of solder saved his company millions, demonstrating the impact of small efficiencies.
• Personal improvement often comes from optimizing daily actions like thoughts, steps, and breaths rather than seeking major changes.
• Intentional control over your 70,000 daily thoughts can fundamentally change who you are and improve your life.
• In business, addressing minor inefficiencies, such as redundant expenses or small leadership corrections, can significantly enhance performance.
• The concept of “Better Humanness Reporting” involves paying attention to and improving the small, everyday actions that shape our lives.

Transcript

the 40-drops story

Let me tell you how John D. Rockefeller made $20 million with one drop of solder. All right. So, if we go back to the 1870s, uh John D. Rockefeller is touring one of his refineries and he notices a process, you know, he just business as usual is not business as usual for John D. Rockefeller. He’s always asking questions. How could this be better? Why do we do things this way?

and he noticed that they when they were sealing the uh barrels of kerosene, they were using 40 drops of solder. And he asked the guy, he’s like, “Hey, have you ever tried using 38?” And being the boss, they immediately went to try it. And when they did 38 drops of solder, it didn’t work. The barrels would not seal. They would not keep the kerosene in without leaking. And so then they did some other experiments and they found out 39 was the magic number.

So 39 drops of solder per barrel and it would keep its seal and they wouldn’t have to add that 40th. And it sounds like nothing. It doesn’t matter, right? But when you’re running a company like John D. Rockefeller and you’re shipping 20,000 barrels a day, a week, a month, whatever, those kind of cost savings really add up.

why this isn’t about your business inefficiencies

So when I tell people this story, I don’t say, “Hey, look for the massive inefficiencies in your business.” I actually like to use this more as a personal example for something that you need to pay attention to because we aren’t the people who listen to this podcast, watching this, listening to this, myself included, are not the types of people who are shipping 20,000 of anything any given day. That’s a very large massive corporation where they need to pay attention to those efficiencies.

But we are human beings. And the big premise of this entire podcast is the fact that you need to get better. You need to improve yourself. And if you improve yourself, your business will improve. I promise you it will happen. And then when you’re thinking about improving yourself, a lot of people are looking at the really big things. They’re looking at what book can I read? What course can I take? What mentor or coach could I hire?

the small things you actually control: thoughts, steps, breaths

And I’m telling you, all those things are great, but sometimes you are overlooking the smallest stuff that’s right in front of you. So, what are things that you do in the tens of thousands, 20 of 20 of thousands, 30 of thousands that you do each and every single day? Well, things that come to mind for me are your breaths, your steps, and your thoughts. So, you’re going to think over 70,000 thoughts today. on average steps.

Depending on how active you are, you’re going to take anywhere between 7 8 10 15 20,000 steps any given day. You’re going to take tens of thousands of breaths and you’re going to drink a good amount of water if you’re if you’re being healthy.

And these are the things that we tend to ignore because if you have thoughts about anxiety or scarcity or anything like that and you’re thinking that 70,000 day a day or say it’s 10% of your thoughts, 7,000 thoughts, it starts to shape who you are and you actually can control your thoughts. Whenever you have that thought of being anxious or anything like that, you can redirect those thoughts and start to make them more positive, make them different.

applying 39 drops in your business and leadership

And this will actually start to change fundamentally who you are when you start controlling your thoughts. These 70,000 thoughts that you’re going to have each and every single day. Same with the steps. Making your steps intentional, making your breaths intentional. I keep, you know, we all know the importance of breath and breath work and focusing on your breath. It’s very, very important. How much water you drink, all of these little things that are on autopilot for us.

We need to start to pay attention to and become more efficient at those things and not just let them happen because we are going to take steps every day. We are going to think every day. We’re going to drink water every day. We’re going to breathe every day. But can we make [clears throat] those things more intentional? Can we make them more efficient? And the answer is absolutely yes.

And if you just do those little things, you’ll start to improve yourself, who you are, and then your business will improve. You absolutely can take this idea of 39 drops to your business as well. It’s not a complicated thing.

If you’re talking about on the leadership side, if you’re just letting small correction, you’re missing those small corrections with your team, like someone rubbed you the wrong way or they said something that was a little bit off to a customer or another employee and you have that little bit of a gut feeling like I should say something. That’s the 40th to 39th drop.

That’s the thing that’s the inefficiency, the little tiny thing that you’re missing that you’re not executing on as a leader that is shaping your culture in a negative direction. You know, you could have tiny expenses. I see this happen in businesses all the time when they’re on a growth tra trajectory. They kind of get fat, dumb, and happy, right? They’re like, they don’t care that they’re paying for three subscriptions that all basically are solving the same problem.

They don’t care that the payroll gets a little bit bloated and people aren’t pulling their weight. When you need to look at all those tiny expenses and make sure that those things are efficient because when we look at these things that Rockefeller did, some people were like, “Oh, he was a penny pincher.” He wasn’t. He just was someone who would take into account every single thing that happened and he would ultimately have a ledger of everything that was done.

And so any of those gut feelings, KPIs that you feel like you might be ignoring, they’re all very important. So my question for you today is to ask, what is what do you have going on right now that is 40 drops when it could be 39? It could be more intentional. [music] It could be more on purpose and it could move you in a direction becoming a better human being. Try harder.