Slow Is Smooth And Smooth Is Fast

[00:00:01] Welcome to Business, Finance and Soul. My name is Shaun Enders and I'm a curious entrepreneur. I love exploring business, personal finance and consciousness. I'll jump around topics, offer my opinions and occasionally interview interesting people. Looking forward to going on this journey. Let's be curious together.

[00:00:26] Welcome back to Business, Finance and Soul. Thank you so much for joining me. Today I am digging into a quote that comes from the Navy SEALs. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

[00:00:38] I heard about this a few years ago and it always stuck with me because this idea of faster, faster, more, more in our personal life, in our professional lives, finding ways for growth hacks. Everything is about going fast. And that's the world we live in, right?

[00:01:03] For high performance teams, that's where people tend to be attracted is quick and growth. And this saying really stuck out because it's counterintuitive. You know, how can going slower actually make you faster?

[00:01:20] But the principle was really a game changer for me. And I'm going to talk about how we implemented this last year during what was a turbulent year because of some of the changes that we had to make internally. So, of course, there was some market conditions that aided that turbulence. But at the same time, we had things that we had to fix.

[00:01:45] And whether or not you're in your professional life and getting a snapshot of where you're at or if you're in your personal life and you're like, man, there's so much more here for me.

[00:01:56] I think there are times where we have to just take stock in where we're at and say, okay, what am I going to do in terms of navigating life or building a business that is going to allow me to move with precision and reduce mistakes?

[00:02:15] And that's really the core of the philosophy of slow is smooth and smooth is fast because it really is about deliberate execution. It's about moving with precision, reducing mistakes, and then creating momentum that leads to sustained success. It's really about resisting the urge to rush and instead committing to a process that ultimately gets you further and then faster.

[00:02:43] So for us, we really, we're kind of a victim of our own history. We've been around for many years. And in fact, this is 20 years for us. It was really, really exciting. We'll get into that in another episode.

[00:03:03] But 19 years in, things were going pretty well and we had been doing and delivering our services in the same manner. But we started to actually see some areas where we were losing efficiency. In our business, our fulfillment ratio was falling and we could see that.

[00:03:28] We're trying to identify what we're trying to do. We're trying to identify what is going on. So instead of having that anxiety and ultimately really just trying to do this same exact thing, we slowed everything down. We said, okay, let's look at what we're doing and let's reimagine how we're doing it.

[00:03:48] And we built a model internally in terms of how we deliver a customer experience and how we create accountability that ultimately led us to an amazing fourth quarter after what was basically three terrible quarters.

[00:04:07] First quarter was down. First quarter was down more. Third quarter was down even more than that. And all the while, we're conducting business, working with our customers and retooling everything. And that led to a really great fourth quarter and something where we said, okay, we've got something here. But that was the idea. We had to really slow things down to get it smooth.

[00:04:32] And we figured once we get this smooth, once we can prove out what's happening here and give us a full hoarder of evidence, we need the data. In life and in business, you need data. And you can't get data in small chunks. You can't use small sample sizes. It can't be 10 or 20 or 30 customers.

[00:04:59] It can't be one month. Even three months is a little early, but it gives us a quarter to be able to say, okay, we know. All right? So now we're smooth. And now we can use accelerant to the process. We can add accelerant to that process. And now we believe what we found and what we've smoothed out will be fast.

[00:05:23] And we're in the middle of that right now. And so, you know, we know why rushing leads to mistakes. Because if you're going to move fast, if you're going to look for faster growth, faster results, faster returns in any investment, there's going to be things that happen either on poor execution, right? Because you've rushed decisions and it's led to sloppy work, missing details.

[00:05:52] And that really ends up increasing stress for you and your team. And there ends up being a lot more rework, things that you have to go back and do it again because you rushed through something. And this happens all the time on whether or not it's critical projects or if it's a hiring decision. You know, we're in the staffing industry. Of course, you would think that we would say, you know, to our customers, oh, yeah, make decisions quickly.

[00:06:18] But truth of the matter is, it's not about going slow and staying slow. It's about slow and deliberate and strategic to get smooth and then speed up.

[00:06:34] And so, yeah, if you're going fast, you want to be like a mag train in Japan, right? You want to be fast and efficient and smooth. And that's what's really, really exciting when you look at, you know, recruiting and hiring, when you look at scaling a company.

[00:06:59] And you've seen a lot of companies that have gone through rapid expansion. But without a strong foundation, it creates a lot of inefficiencies. And companies and leaders that know that, that they understand how to scale a company, that they have actually had experience doing it, you know, really create sustainable systems. They have that experience. They've made the mistakes. They're not born that way, by the way. None of us are. We learn through mistakes. We learn through trial and error. That's the human condition.

[00:07:28] And so that's kind of why we want to step up to the plate and take on these types of tasks. This is why we want to identify where we have potential for problems to really, you know, inevitably take us back to that rework that we want to avoid. You know, this also extends to sales and client relationships.

[00:07:56] Because I think we all know the best deals, they're not forced. You know, you really want to take the time to understand the needs of clients, building trust. I call it, you know, trust equity. That's something that we aim for in our business, a transition staffing group. And it's something that I actually have, you know, really in my mind with my own personal friends. I'm always looking at building trust equity. So where people know, hey, I can count on Sean for this. I know that he is this type of person.

[00:08:26] That's my personal brand. And speaking of branding, you know, marketing and branding is also one of those things where it really falls into a slow, smooth, smooth, as fast mentality. Because a haphazard approach to marketing, it's typically just wasted dollars. You know, you have to be consistent with your messaging, which will build a brand, which will ultimately stand the test of time. One thing I find is very interesting. In business, it makes sense.

[00:08:55] It's very straightforward. You look at it and you go, yeah, yep, this makes sense. We want to run a fast company. We want to run something that feels lean, that feels efficient. As I mentioned, a mag train is a perfect example of something that just is a beautiful design. And it feels and looks effortless. In business, that's a no-brainer. But what about your own personal life, right?

[00:09:24] What about beyond business? And this is the mindset that I think in three major areas of your life, health and fitness, your personal finances, and then just general decision making. This is absolutely imperative that we get this right. Because health and fitness, it's like, you know, quick diets, ozempic, right? Extreme workout routines.

[00:09:51] That might seem like the fastest result, but it's the consistency and steady progress that creates more of the long-term success. When we're just trying to get there fast, get the results as quick as possible, there's no way we sustain it. Nobody does. The truth is, it's, you know, step by step. I say in our business, brick by brick. It just, there's nothing fancy about it. I want sustained success.

[00:10:21] I don't want to just, you know, build something up to lose momentum. I want something that feels good. In your personal finances, we know get rich quick. It leads to bad investments. And it's something where people are just trying to swing for home runs. And believe me, in a portfolio of investments, yes, you can allocate 3% to 5% of your portfolio for home runs.

[00:10:48] But that other 95% should be smart, methodical, financial planning. Because that's where true wealth is built over time. You want to get excited about, you know, hitting home runs and going after, you know, a big crypto squirrel on a shit coin. Um, awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Go after it. Uh, even, even Bitcoin.

[00:11:16] But that should be a small percentage of your portfolio of where you're actually saying that's going to be the exciting point. Maybe I, I, you know, get a 5 or 10 bagger here in terms of what my ROI is. But you don't want to do that with your entire lot. And that is where people find themselves going into ruin because they've got to gamble bigger and bigger each time to make up for the losses from bad decisions previously. Slow and steady.

[00:11:46] The, the, the tortoise and hare. Slow and steady. Wins the race. In decision making, when you're looking at like big decisions, it's, of course, it's, it seems like common sense. Like I shouldn't even have to say it, but I do have to put it out there because I think stepping back and assessing what the situation is, it's going to give you better clarity, fewer regrets. You're going to make a decision that just feels good.

[00:12:13] You have that opportunity to kind of sit and let this big decision sink in. It might be frustrating. And if you're an impatient person, you might be used to making quick decisions on the regular. And that works. In business, I'm always in a decision making mode of where it's, you know, I've got time allocated for decisions that need to move us forward.

[00:12:35] I'm not sitting on those trying to slow down a process or a team, but I do understand what decisions are not mission critical and that are just clearly small decisions that need to be made and move us forward.

[00:12:54] And I don't want to get stuck in indecision, but for my big decisions, either big asset allocations, moving, you know, physically could be in business, absolutely hiring.

[00:13:10] But, you know, ultimately what I'm looking for in those moments is just take a breath, step back, feel, you know, where my best interest is. And of course, map out, use the analysis, as I say, to come to a conclusion. Obviously, I've got an intuition. I need to take that step back.

[00:13:37] But that's the slow is smooth and smooth is fast mentality. And I think that we live in a world where things are glorified for hustle and urgency. And I think that's great. I think that's cool. We should hustle. We should have a sense of urgency. But this, I just want to kind of double click on this for a moment. Where this saying comes from is Navy SEALs.

[00:14:05] I mean, the best, some of the best of the best within armed forces. And you would think when you look at them, decisive and precise. And you would be right. But you wouldn't say haphazard or chaotic. But they move so quick. You know, they clear rooms. They clear buildings. They clear houses so quickly.

[00:14:33] They seem like, you know, they're just going so fast. And that's because of their routine. That's because of their training. That's because they've gone super slow and practiced over and over and over. So they are not trying to just get there all of a sudden. You know, they're not trying to just move fast and immediately make an impact. They're saying, hey, let's practice this.

[00:15:01] Let's really, really focus on getting this right. And then let's go ahead and speed it up. You see a lot of that in sport, too. If you watch basketball teams practice or football, you know, you can walk a play and really, really get everybody used to what that is and then speed it up.

[00:15:22] And you see that with training camps and football to where then eventually they move towards game time speed, which is so much faster. But you've got to let quarterbacks get used to the cadence before you just go, you know, straight shotgun style. So whether or not you're growing a business, whether or not you're making some career moves right now and you're thinking about, you know, what's next? How what's that next step look like for you?

[00:15:50] Or you're just simply navigating everyday life challenges. Deliberate action over frantic motion. That's it. So that when that time comes, you're moving, you know, that would that you really need to move fast. You're moving fast. You're ready. You feel good. You don't feel pressured to rush because, you know, you can pause.

[00:16:12] You can move with purpose and then you can watch how smooth execution actually makes you so much faster in the end. So. That's what I've got for you today. Appreciate you tuning in with me and until next time, stay curious.