Hey everyone, Sam Ovens here, and in today's video I want to talk to you about improvement from subtraction. And you'll probably notice I'm sitting by this fire. I'm sitting by this fire because it's pretty damn cold this morning.
And it's quite funny, when I first moved to this new place in LA, it was really hot when we first moved here. And I thought, what the hell are these three fireplaces doing in this house? What purpose do these three fireplaces serve because this place is hot?
and it seemed kind of like a stupid thing. But now that we're in winter, I can see what these things are for because while LA gets, you know, gets quite warm during the day when the sun comes out and all of that, at night and in the morning there's a real cold snap and, you know, we actually, it actually gets quite cold over here which I wasn't even aware of. So that's why I'm sitting by this fireplace today and what I want to talk to you...
about today is improvement from subtraction. And right now we're Jan 2nd 2019 and this is the perfect time to think about what you want to achieve this year and how you're going to achieve it. So it's not just about setting goals but then it's thinking well what actions do I need to take so that I can achieve these goals.
And if what you want to achieve is something that you haven't achieved right then It's quite obvious that it's going to take a change in behavior to get it. Because if you continue behaving the same way you behaved last year, then you'll get what you got last year, right? And so this is a thing that people don't understand about goals.
You know, you don't just set a goal and then it just comes true. You have to set a goal and then change your behavior. You have to change a lot of things. You have to change who you are. You have to change what you do.
You have to change your habits, your routines. You have to change a lot of things. If you want change, it takes change to get it.
And over the past few days, I've taken some time to reflect on the year that's been and pretty much all the years that have been since I started in business, about six or seven years ago. And one thing that fascinates me a lot is that it's often the subtraction and the removal of things that helps me make the biggest leaps and bounds. progress and what I mean by that is you know a lot of people they think if I want to improve my life or if I want to achieve this goal or grow my business or do whatever then I need to do more stuff I need to add more things to the plate right and what I've noticed is that this this isn't the way like it's not about doing more quite often it's about removing things and there's a special type of thing that is so easy to remove and it's it has profound like effects on your results and it could be summarized pretty simply by just saying don't do stupid that's basically that's basically like the best piece of advice i could give you and what i mean by that is i think warren buffett describes it best he said you know i want to know where I'm going to die so that I never go there, right? And what he's trying to say is by avoiding errors that, you know, that avoiding errors, especially avoiding catastrophic errors, that is one of the best strategies for winning, right? And a lot of people don't look at it like this.
A lot of people, they're optimists. And so what they do... is they look at just the upside of things.
They look at, oh, if I go to these events, if I go to these networking events, or if I build more products, start more businesses, then that's more potential upside. But what they never look at is the downside, right? But what's a really important thing in business and in life is to look at both, the upside and the downside.
And really, you should pay more attention to the downside than the up, right? Because what you're really optimizing for, your first, your number one priority is survival. And after that, it's winning, right?
But a lot of people just try to win and don't pay any attention to the downsides or any attention to survival. And they often, you know, I see this everywhere throughout the human race, basically. I'll give you an example in like the fitness, health and fitness industry. So if you want to be healthy and fit, then all you really need to do is sleep eight hours a night, exercise five times a week, and eat healthy food. and stay hydrated.
That's it. That's all there is. But it's made infinitely complex with all of these diet plans, with all of these different supplements, with all of this different, all of these different shoes, this training equipment, and all of these apps, and all of this tracking stuff. Like it gets, it gets very complicated.
And then what you end up with, is you end up with people that have $400 shoes. Like they've got all of these apps and technology and a Fitbit and things and then they're having all of these supplements but then they eat shitty food and they drink alcohol and they don't get enough sleep. And then, you know, that just doesn't make any sense. They're focusing on things with very little upside and they're avoiding the things and just acting like they don't exist to the things that have massive downside. All right, and this is what people do everywhere.
They kind of get obsessed about the small little add-ons, but they forget about removing the massive catastrophic downsides. And this was true with me in business too. When I first got started, I would focus on, you know, doing more things. Like I would try to master funnels or landing pages or ads.
I would try to master copywriting and all of these tactical things. And don't get me wrong, these things helped, but I was just blatantly ignoring some of the big stupid things I was doing. Mainly, the number one thing was going out pretty much every Friday and Saturday and getting drunk. And I was just like, oh, that just doesn't matter, and I'll just focus on learning more tactics, right?
And when I was doing this, you know, if I went out and got drunk... It wasn't just that I wouldn't be productive Saturday or Sunday, I wouldn't be productive Monday, Tuesday or pretty much Wednesday either. And I pretty much, by the time I got back into having like no brain fog and being focused and alert again, it was pretty much Friday. And that's the night that I'd be out drinking again.
So it had very massive like consequences on my productivity, my mindset, on everything. And then when I moved to New York about three years ago, I just stopped drinking completely. And honestly, that is the one thing that I've done that has made the most difference in my business and in my life.
Just stop drinking and going out and getting drunk. I haven't been drunk in three years. And so that is so simple, right?
A lot of people will write that off. They'll think, oh, that's too simple. I want something that's more tactical, something more advanced. like what color, what shade of blue should I have on my call to action button so that I can get an increase in conversion rate, all right? Honestly, most of you guys, you're not going to get much of an upside by split testing a button color.
Where you're going to get most of your upside is by removing the doing of things that are stupid. That is where the biggest gains are. Like if you're somebody that smokes weed all the time.
If you stop that, then you'll get a huge upside. And if you're somebody that drinks alcohol, if you stop that, you'll get a huge upside. And if you're someone that eats a lot of bad food or a lot of sugar, then you'll have a big upside.
If you've got a bad habit with sleep, if you fix that, massive upside. And if you're addicted to things, by removing those, you'll have a huge upside. So it's not just like people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol or things like that. It's also people who are addicted to social media.
You know, if you break that, then you'll have a huge upside. And then if you're addicted to watching TV series, or if you're addicted to like watching Netflix, or if you're addicted to reading some type of news, or addicted to like your smartphone and the apps on it. And another big one is gaming. You know, if you... if you are a professional gamer and what you want to be in life as a professional gamer, then by all means continue to play games because that is what you're trying to do.
But where I see a massive problem is people who want to be like a professional business person start a massive company and be an entrepreneur but they also want to be a professional video game player that's very hard to do you know you you have to really commit people who are really good at gaming they'll just play video games all day that is their life and people who are good at business they'll just do business all day there's their life and so if you are in business and you really want to be an entrepreneur and that's more important to you than gaming then stop playing games go smash your Xbox or PlayStation or uninstall all the games off your computer and just stop doing that. And this is pretty much my point for today's video. It's improvement from subtraction. You know, you don't need to add more things to your plate to get an improvement in your goals and your life and your business or everything. You just need to look at the things that you're doing that are stupid and then remove them.
And I can tell you the big ones I did. There was partying, there was drinking. There was also eating bad food. I didn't used to exercise at all.
I was fat and lazy and my mind was always foggy and my mood was very chaotic and wavy. And by removing sugar, fast food, processed food and by sleeping properly and by exercising properly and through meditation, I was able to really calm. this like turbulent wave pool of emotion to a nice flat like water surface and that was and what I'm talking about here is like my emotions you know if you if you are playing with if you go out and you drink alcohol and you your sleep's all over the place and if you're also um not getting enough sleep or you're not exercising and you're eating bad food your emotions are going to just be all over the place and unpredictable Like, in the middle of the day, for no apparent reason at all, you might just start feeling worried or frightened or anxious or scared or sad for no actual factual reason, right?
So, if that starts happening to you, then you really are kind of screwed. And you should respond to stimuli that your body should respond to, right? Like, if you walk out...
and there is a massive like dog that is that looks like it's going to attack you then you should respond to that you should get anxious you should be scared and your flight or fight response should turn on and you should get the hell out of there that's what it's for but what happens with people that you know that they don't sleep properly they eat poorly or they're drinking alcohol and things like that these without any stimuli from their environment All of these different states get triggered, these different moods get triggered, and they're all over the place for no apparent reason. And when your emotions in your mind are like this big turbulent wave pool, then it's very hard to get things done. And it's very hard to make rational decisions.
And it's very hard to grow a business or do anything meaningful. And so just by the removal of those things, you can get massive upside. And why I'm telling this to you is because It's honestly just so simple.
It's a lot easier than other things. Like I could do a video on some advanced Facebook ads training, or building out marketing automation campaigns, or we could get into, you know, all sorts of different stuff. But really, the biggest gains that you've got to make this year are by just not doing stupid shit. Seriously, make a list of all the stuff you do that's stupid and then stop doing it and then you'll have massive gains. And only once all things you do that are stupid are removed should you even look at doing...
more advanced things because it makes sense to do the simple massive gain things first before getting into the advanced small gain things that if you're working on those advanced things if you're like the if you're like the person trying to lose weight and be healthy that's taking supplements and wearing $400 Nikes and is on the latest diet plan but is going out on the weekend and drinking and getting no sleep, then you're an idiot and you should fix it because it's the big things that have, it's the simple things that have big massive like compounding effects and you want to focus on those ones first and once you you've exhausted all of those ones then you want to look at the more advanced things and that is how you'll make the most improvement so that's it for this video today I just wanted to make this quick a quick one just to show you how to plan for the new year you know when you're making that new year's list of things you're going to achieve and and your new year's resolutions instead of trying to add on more stuff try to take away dumb stuff that is how you'll get the most gains this year in 2019. Now if you like this video just click that like button and also click that subscribe button. I release a video like this once per week and I also release customer interviews, live stream Q&A's and things like that. So thanks for watching this one and I look forward to seeing you in the next video soon.