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The special effects team built “Bruce” the mechanical great white shark for a freshwater tank in Hollywood. Unfortunately, Jaws would be the first major motion picture filmed in the Atlantic Ocean. The moment fresh-water Bruce dove into the salt, all his circuits got fried. Steven Spielberg now faced the daunting task of making a shark movie without a shark. In fact, Bruce wouldn’t appear on screen until the 81st minute of the 2-hour film.

Our son, Gus, recently joined my wife, Wendy, and me at Brandon Turner’s BetterLife REI Summit in Hawaii. He was shadowing us to complete a high school apprenticeship. And we brought him as an early celebration of his upcoming high school graduation.

Russell H. Conwell delivered one lecture 6,152 times. The former Union soldier was promoted to captain at age 19 after recruiting an entire regiment of volunteers. He later became a Baptist minister and lectured around the world. His most famous speech was “Acres of Diamonds,” a fable about how our biggest opportunity may be in our very own backyard.

In college, I read Jean-Paul Sartre's celebrated play, No Exit. It’s the story of three people consigned to hell. But instead of flames or torture, they find themselves locked in a room together for eternity. This play is where Sartre famously wrote, L'enfer, c'est les autres... “Hell, is other people.” As a committed introvert, I thought Sartre summed up things nicely.

At a recent mastermind, Jason Abrams shared that more and more top teams are bogged down by bloated workflows. It’s tough enough to navigate this high-interest rate, low-inventory market, why are we letting our workflows make it even harder? Some workflows have more steps than the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Unless you’re playing the Rocky theme song while preparing your listing packet, 72 steps is overkill.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, Twenty Percenters. You deserve a margarita after weathering all the “May the 4th be with you” Facebook posts yesterday. 

According to a 2019 CampaignMonitor report, the average office worker receives 121 emails a day. McKinsey reported in 2012 that business professionals spend 28% of their time managing email. If you work 50 weeks a year, that’s 14 weeks dedicated to email alone. We all know it’s only gotten worse. What would you do if you could reclaim even half that lost time? Reinvest it in quality lead generation? Go on a vacation? Spend more time with friends and family? It’s up to you. But you have to reclaim it first.

Possibly the greatest investment you can make is in people. When you invest right, talent can amplify your impact and profit. When you get it wrong and there is not much that can make you poor and miserable faster. Just like financial leverage, people leverage cuts both ways.

Last week we celebrated the inaugural “411 Day” appropriately on April 11th. We hosted a webinar for over 1,400 and shared ahas on a decade of lessons we’ve learned since The ONE Thing was published. We also discussed a podcast I recorded with Gary Keller on the same subject. My favorite part of both conversations was the idea that “game sees game.”* 

The tale goes like this. A new bride is preparing a pot roast for dinner. She carefully crops a few inches from each end before putting the roast in the pan to brown. Her husband asks why she is trimming away so much. “It’s grandma’s famous recipe,” she replies. “I don’t really know why.”

When something you want is within your control, you must act. When something you want is controlled by someone else, you must ask. Sometimes, the difference between a “no” and a “yes” is what you’re willing and able to do. To find out which, you have to be willing to ask.