Grant Leboff: So Nigel, one of the things I’m really interested in is, you meet a lot of people and they tell you what they’re going to do and they’ve got all these ambitions. I meet a lot of people, because I’ve written two books and they say, Oh yeah, I’ve got a book, but of course, they never get around to writing it. So I want to talk to you about taking action, how you make sure it happens.
Nigel Risner: So I worked yesterday with a very large Irish company. One of the thinks that I said very early on was; I don’t care what you write down because if you write it down, and then just put all the shelves, that’s called ‘shelf development’. The idea is to look at what you’ve written down and take some tiny action. Share it with people what you’ve done, take some recognition and some reward and then take the next action. The problem is with this country; we are brilliant at saying what we’re going to do, we don’t ever share with anybody what we are going to do, in case we don’t do it and then people know we’ve failed. So I’m all about MASSIVE rewards, but HUGE consequences. So if I was to say to you, look Grant, I think we’ve got great idea, this is what I suggest we do and you went; Yeah, I’m going to do it. And I said to you, I tell you what, if you do it, I’ll give you a £100 and if you don’t do it, you give £10,000 to charity. What would you instantly say?
Grant Leboff: I’d probably say yes because I’d do it!
Nigel Risner: But you see, that’s the whole point! If you’re going to do it, you might as well say, give me a £1million consequence, but very often the minute I put the consequences quite large, people go… Well I’m not so sure about this. Well if you know it’s important, it’s part of your purpose, it’s part of your plan. It’s going to enhance your family… I could offer you a £50 million consequence and it wouldn’t be up for debate. So let’s use me as an example. I lost a load of weight. I’ve thought about a stone now. So if you said to me, look, unless you lose a stone, it’s going to cost you a million pounds. I may not take up the challenge right now because I don’t know if I want to lose that stone right now. But if I really wanted to lose that stone, you could offer to be any money you wanted because then I’d be committed to the cause. But at least you know if I was committed. So when I work with people and I coach12 people a month, that’s all I do. I coach 12 people a month and I asked the same question every month. Did you do what you said you were going to do last month? Seven of them say, yes, and the five that no, our meeting stops. So I was coaching a chief executive just before Christmas, and one of the big issues came up about weight. So I said to him, I’ll tell you what here’s the goal, over Christmas, you’ve got to lose two pounds from the 20th December to the 20th of January – two pounds. I’m gonna give you £2000 to a charity of your choice and you’re going to give me £20,000 to charity of my choice if you fail. You’ve only got to lose two pounds. Are you up for this? No problem at all. On the 19th January this year, I get a phone call from him. Slight problem. He’s gone to a gym to sit in a sauna for the whole day, to see if he can shed the two pounds. Now I’m excited! Two things – at least he rang up and admitted. He know knows he’s got to do something because there’s a big consequence and strangely enough, guess what happened? He lost 2.1 pounds, because there was a big enough consequence to take the action. I promise you now, 95% of the people watching this program will not take enough action in the next 21 days to reach their goals. The 5% who take enough action will reap massive rewards. If you can’t be arsed to take action, don’t come to see me.
