The Power of Modelling The People You Admire.

A principle I learned a few years ago is find someone who is doing what you want to do and ‘model’ what they do. With this approach you can condense years of effort and learning into just a few months. And it works.

Take for example investing in the stock market. Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s company, knows a thing a or two about investing profitably. If you want to learn how to invest wisely and profitably, then model how Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway do their investing.

And it’s not difficult to find out how Warren Buffett does it. There are books, documentaries and articles everywhere explaining how Warren Buffett does his research on companies, how he makes his investment decisions and his reasoning why he invests for the long-term and not the short term.

For me, I have long admired how Tony Robbins runs his businesses. I like the way he approaches marketing, how he develops his content and how he is quick to adapt new technologies to bring his philosophy and teaching to the world. When I decided to start my productivity and time management company, I chose his company as the model for how I would operate my business.

Tony Robbins has been in business for over forty years, and he has written books, articles and been interviewed many hundreds of times. It is not difficult to find information on how he built his companies and do research to see how he brands his businesses and uses social media. In essence, I have a blueprint for my business.

And on a personal level we have many thousands of people we can learn from. To become more productive, David Allen (Getting Things Done) has done hundreds of interviews which can be found on YouTube. There are countless articles about how people like Jack Dorsey, Cheryl Sandberg, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama and Tim Cook manage their time and if you want to get super-fit, a quick search online will give you the exercise routines of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Jason Statham and Halle Berry.

The information you need to change the way you live your life and do your work is readily available, but there is one issue you need to be aware of.

Whoever you decide to model, you need to adapt their approach to better work for you.

A few years ago I began following Robin Sharma’s 5 AM Club formula. If you are not aware of this, the 5 AM Club formula is wake up at 5 AM, do 20 minutes sweaty exercise, 20 minutes planning and 20 minutes learning and self-development. It’s a fantastic concept and I followed it for about eighteen months.

But then the nature of my work changed. I began a coaching programme and because of the time zone differences between South Korea and the U.S. I found I needed to be doing calls up to 1 AM most days. This meant waking up at 5 AM was no longer practical. However, it did not mean I had to stop doing the 20/20/20 formula. What it meant was I needed to adapt the time I was doing these activities.

To adapt, I worked out how much sleep I needed — six hours — and worked from that. So if I was getting to bed at 1:30 AM, and I needed six hours sleep, then it meant I should wake up at 7:30 AM. And that is what I do now.

Likewise with my exercise programme. I prefer exercising in the early afternoon. For me, that is the quietest time of the day. I follow Dwayne Johnson’s formula, that is, begin the week with a leg day, do shoulders and back on another and chest and arms on another. Dwayne Johnson does his exercise first thing in the morning — often starting at 3:30 AM! — Which would not work for me, but it does not mean I cannot use his structure to structure my workouts.

And you can bring multiple approaches to your life too. I run my business along the line Tony Robbins runs his companies. I structure my workouts on Dwayne Johnson’s workouts and my time management and productivity systems are built on what I have learned over the years from people like Hyrum Smith, Stephen Covey, David Allen and my first boss (who was an incredibly organised person)

We are so lucky to be living in a world where we have access to unlimited information and resources. We have the tools to model the tactics and behaviours of successful companies and people. To test what works and what does not work in our world. The key is to find a formula that appeals to you and to adapt it so it works for you. Blindly following these models will not necessarily work, but with a little adaption you can make almost any formula work for you and while you make not end up with the physique of Dwayne Johnson or Halle Berry, or the thirty-three companies that Tony Robbins owns, you are likely to find yourself growing and developing and becoming a lot more successful at what you do, without making all the mistakes that other people have made and learned from.

So, whatever it is you want to improve at or become, find someone who is already doing it — there is always someone already doing it — and model what they did and do. Then adapt it so it fits your lifestyle and circumstances and enjoy the process of becoming a better you.

Thank you for reading my stories! 😊.

My purpose is to help 1 million people by 2020 to live the lives they desire. To help people find happiness and become better organised and more productive so they can do more of the important things in life.

If you would like to learn more about the work I do, and how I can help you to become better organised and more productive, you can visit my website or you can say hello on Twitter, YouTube or Facebook and subscribe to my weekly newsletter right here.