Raising The Floor
Level 4: Serious Player
Still trying to do better than your best?
That might be the very reason you have a hard to doing your best. Counterintuitive, sure. In his book, Bumpers1, Nic Peterson presents an interesting concept…raising the floor.
When I first hear it, my dopamine-addicted, impulsive monkey brain refused to accept it. Your monkey mind might not like this journey, either.
We’re taking it anyway.
Buckle up.
“Raising The Floor”
Let me tempt you.
You have two doors before you.
Behind the first door, I will show you how to make $1 million next year.
Behind the second door, I will show you how to take your worst financial month, and make that month 10% better.
Which do you choose?
The answer is boring.
Like our philosophy of valuing the process over the shortcut, this one is subtle.
It is often unseen and dismissed.
Your most likely response to reading about this idea is going to be "yea that makes total sense", but then you'll ignore it, and not apply it to your life.
Again, it's not your fault. This is just a very boring, simple idea. One that takes time and restraint to implement.
But of all the ideas we talk about in The Guardian Academy, this one may very well be the most responsible for the phenomenon: "Slower than you'd like, but faster than you ever thought possible” - Bumpers.
Back to our question.
Most would choose the million dollars. What's 10% more of your worst month going to give you, after all?
This is the difference between having "more" and "getting exactly what you want in life."
Hopefully, by the end of this article, you'll understand.
How many times have you seen someone claim that the key to riches, to getting everything you want in life, is "mindset"?
All you have to do is visualize and believe that you'll make a million dollars next year in order to get what you want.
After all, if you shoot for a million but don't quite get there, you've still made a lot right?
If you shoot for the stars and only reach the moon, you've still reached the moon!
I would wager this fake inspiration has led to the demise of more entrepreneurs than any other advice.
What really happens if you shoot for the stars and don't make it?
If you shoot for the stars before you can regularly, reliably get to the moon, you're gonna blow the hell up on the launchpad.
Which itself is not all that bad.
I want you to see how this shows up in real life and what we call it, but first, there's a force that EVERYONE experiences, no matter what, whether there's change up or down or stagnation.
Whether you're launching rockets, just trying to spend more time with your kids, growing your business, losing weight, investing your money, growing trees2 ...
I'm talking about Volatility.
Whenever you have movement in some direction, let's take weight loss as an example since most people can relate, you will inevitably experience volatility.3
There is no straight line down on your weight loss journey. Some days you are down, some days you are up, but if you are sticking to an effective plan for you, overall your weight will go down.
It looks like this:
Running a business is the same. Your months don't just progressively get larger. You don't make $1k in January, $2k in February, $3k in March and eventually $12k in Dec.
No, it would look more like $1k in January, $7k in February, $3k in March, $4k in April, $6k in May, $2k in June ... etc
Volatility. It always happens.
Spending time with your kids.
Maybe one week you are hitting everything perfectly, you spend minimal hours at work, you come home emotionally feeling great and ready to do all the fun things, you get many hours extra with your kids.
But the next week, shit hits the fan, and you have less time with your kids than you have in a long time.
Feels real bad. Feels like failure.
Like what happens when trying to launch rockets and reach the stars.
Maybe you start getting quite good at getting rockets into orbit, and then one day your rocket blows up on the launch pad again.
"....zzz.. WHa? Oh, charts and volatility?" you mumble
Yes yes. Charts are boring.
Why am I boring you?
Because this is where almost everyone fails.
That Volatility.
Humans are, on a fundamental level, rather basic.
Our basic programming has a VERY hard time accurately projecting what's going to happen because of volatility.
If you've experienced any level of staring at Crypto charts (or regular trading charts), you've almost certainly experienced this phenomenon, even if you are aware of it ...
Chart starts to go up ... aaand all we see is a line continuing on straight up into infinity.
Because of this, when the chart goes DOWN, our human mindset takes over and we think
"OH GOD OH GOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE - THE PROPHECIES HAVE BEEN BROKEN - REALITY IS SPLIT!!!"
And we run away screaming like the basic primordial beings we still are deep down.
(By the way, this is one of the reasons we caution against Frequency of Exposure)4
(oh shit we doomed)
It's THIS very dynamic which we restructure with...
"Raising the Floor"
Let's go back to reaching the stars.
You see, with your perspective of launching a rocket to reach the stars and hope you land somewhere like the moon ...
That's following that upward trajectory and hoping you land up from where you are.
(You'll take anywhere up there, which is not very well thought out, but you see a line straight up and you want more)
You start to launch, and BOOM. Rocket blows up on the launchpad.
You think, "OH GOD OH GOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" because Volatility split your reality and you didn't just get a less than ideal outcome, you got what looks like a terrible one.
What do most people do?
Give up.
Without realizing this is completely normal.
What happens when you keep reaching for higher highs is you inevitably come crashing back down to earth.
The greater the upswing in Volatility, the greater the downswing towards equilibrium.
If you want a deep dive on how this effect works internally with dopamine, check out my article here (The Real Cost of Dopamine)5 - what I talk about there is not about getting more and more dopamine, it's about ...
RAISING THE FLOOR
Because what happens when you raise the floor?
No, you don’t get MORE …
Volatility decreases.
You also have less and less reaction to the volatility because when you focus on raising the floor, you don't care what the highs are, and thus you don't hold to that perspective that "up will keep going up."
That's how it looks in the chart.
The 3rd order consequence of Raising the Floor is ultimately the raising of your ceiling. Because no matter what you do, you WILL have volatility. Yet, when you focus on raising the floor, the excess random volatility tends to be ON THE UPSIDE.
Let's explore this with real life ...
Since we're talking about rockets, let's consider Space X.
Plenty of people like to scoff when their rockets blow up.
Probably because they think when Space X launches a rocket, their goal is to reach the stars (or Mars in this case). So when they blow up, it's proof of their failure, proof of their ineptitude, proof that they have a ridiculous goal.
But these people don't understand why the rocket is being launched.
Their goal isn't to reach Mars every time they launch a rocket. It's not even necessarily to reach space.
Their goal is to figure out how to launch a rocket without blowing up.
For them, when a rocket explodes on the launchpad, it's great data to help them in the future NOT blow up on the launchpad.
They aren't trying to go the furthest they ever have with each launch.
They are trying to figure out how to not fall down. How to not blow up. How to get every rocket landing back with enough reliability to fit their models of expectation.
The greatest success for them is not by reaching Mars tomorrow. It comes when they have close to no launch and landing failures.
Each step, they aren't trying to go further than they ever have before ... they instead raise the floor of failure.
As they raise the floor, the excess volatility to the upside can look like launching and landing a rocket with "sudden success." (It wasn’t sudden, it just felt like it because they were focused on removing failure)
"That's all well and good for a huge company like Space X, but I'm just a parent trying to spend more time with my kids" - you might say
“Great, me too.”
Let's talk about that.
When I see others talk about wanting to spend more time with their kids, I see them say things like "I'm gonna make every weekend count" or "I'm gonna work less and be with my kids more."
To begin with, typically there's a disconnect between what they say they want, and what they actually do. This is the "action - intention" gap, and a concept we'll explore in the future. In short, there's a mismatch between what they say, and what they do.
So, how do you get what you want - spend more time with your kids - in a way that allows you to actually change your behavior and be consistent with it?
What happens if you decide "spending more time with your kids" means you're not going to work at all on the weekend, and then you have something highly pressing come along that you must deal with.
After all, especially if you're an entrepreneur, the wheels must keep turning.
Stuff must happen. Fires must be put out. Deliverables must be delivered.
You might not be in the ideal situation you want ultimately, but you can't just ignore fires and not deliver in order to solve the problem of spending more time with your kids.
(Speaking from experience)
That's reaching for the stars and getting yourself blown up on the launchpad.
What if instead you say "I'm going to end my work day 10 minutes early each day for the next week."
Or
"I'm going to give myself 30 minutes in the middle of each day to spend time with my kids"
Or
"I'm going to put my phone in the other room when I'm done with work so that I have no taps on my attention"
Or
"I'm going to designate 1 hour each day on the weekend to put out fires and assure deliverables" - this way you put a wrapper of expectations and definition to create limitations. You keep yourself from blowing up while preserving your kid time.
All of these get you closer to the ideal that you desire.
They aren't huge changes.
But they add up.
They help you step forward one little bit at a time to having a life where you spend a lot more time and attention with your kids.
But they do it in a way that doesn't make you explode on the launch pad.
That's "raising the floor."
When you "raise the floor" on kid time, your random volatility to the upside can mean (as an example) finding yourself with the ability to take a whole extra day of your time to spend with them. (This happened to me the other day, we went to the waterpark, it was glorious)
"Ok I don't have kids. How about for me, the entrepreneur/business owner who is so deeply obsessed and passionate with my work, it has become completely my life. I want to socialize more but I struggle with the balance."
Cool.
I've been there too.
Let's discuss.
When I was in this situation, I had absolutely no boundaries when it came to my business. I lived and breathed it every day. Having any kind of regular social life was a challenge.
I don't know your situation. But ask yourself this question:
What do I really want?
This is a deep meaningful discussion you must have with yourself that ties into The Solvable Problem6, but philosophically goes much deeper than that.
For myself, I started making the changes when I was honest with myself about a desire to have a family and live a slower life, filled with kids, friends, family, etc.
I didn't try to just make that happen (shoot for the stars). I asked myself, "who would I be, and how would I live, to be having such a life?"
A weird question perhaps. But it led me to small meaningful changes which I believed would bring me closer to the life I desired.
I started putting brackets on my time with work.
I intentionally stepped away for set periods. I forced constraints on the work in order to allow non-work life to live and breath, whatever that might become
I ultimately changed the work I focused on because I realized what I was doing wasn’t going to lead me to the life I wanted. But I did this with small, meaningful steps.
I can't tell you how to do this for yourself.
But if you're in this position, I recommend starting with Bumpers.
When it comes to "Raising the Floor," the idea is to look at your baseline, and make small meaningful change over time that not only doesn't break the system, but contributes to fewer losses.
"Ok I don't have those problems, but I am curious about how raising the floor benefits my business."
Love it.
This is something I'm passionate about, and the concept is woven through all my marketing.
Focus on The Floor, not on Getting More
Let me tell you about my last business where I failed at many of the fundamental philosophies and principles of The Guardian Academy.
Let me tell you about Extracted Magazine7.
I started this magazine (then branded Coffee Lovers Magazine), in 2012. It was hot out of the gate, with people downloading and subscribing on day 1.
I knew very little. Enough to have initial success, but I had much to learn along the way, including email marketing and copywriting (I came into that business with zero knowledge of either).
By the 2nd year, I was able to replace my income (which was a major driving force, I hated my job and working 9-5 in an office). Market forces contributed to stagnation in my business.
I'd seen the writing on the wall and figured out how to build an audience through email. So years 2-5 were a shift in where the business was done, with my stumbling efforts in email slowly replacing the bleeding loss from the App Store.
Around year 5/6, I had "cracked" the code of what I was discovering through email. (More on this in another article). Without fully realizing it, I had created a system of inevitability in my business. Among other things I had created a break even situation on my ad spend to the magazine subscriptions.
And this is where we meet this tale, where I failed.
It wasn't enough.
I had created a situation where I could pay money for subscribers and they would pay for themselves within 6 months. And because I had very long retention (average 4 years at the 6 year mark), I could calculate a solid lifetime value for my subscribers that went well beyond what I spent for them.
But it was too slow.
I needed it faster. I needed more.
I Robbed Peter to Pay Paul. Made a gamble. It didn't work out. And everything came crumbling to the ground.
"OK ... cute story, but you were telling us about 'Raise the Floor?'"
Exactly.
"Raise the Floor" is subtle.
And here, I went for MORE, instead of Raising the Floor.
When you focus on the floor, even when you know you're engaging in the practice, it probably won't feel like anything.
(Which is one of the reasons we tend to then do stupid things like, try to get more)
You might even feel (as I have in the past 2 years), that you're being left behind, that you're missing out, that you should be getting a lot more, doing a lot more ...
Yet after a significant enough time of focusing on "Raise the Floor" you may look back and see that your floor now is actually twice as high as your previous ceiling. But it happened so "slow" (relatively) and naturally that it didn't feel like much at all.
Here's how I failed to "Raise the Floor" with the magazine:
The system of marketing I worked out was the key.
I continue to evolve that system to this day through my work as a marketing consultant/strategist/copywriter/wizard (I'm more like an Architect who builds some of the walls by hand ... more on that in another article).
I had created inevitability. I had created a system through that business where I was certain of a particular outcome, and where I could over time modify and optimize to get closer to the results that I desired.
Raising the Floor for Extracted would have been doing nothing different.
"Excuse me ... Doing nothing is Raising the Floor?"
I told you, it can be subtle.
All I had to do to grow that business was just keep it going. Keep doing the boring thing. I needed to play it like an infinite game, not a finite game.8
If all I did was keep running my ads, keep sending my emails, and keep publishing my content ... over time the floor of that business would have naturally risen.
"Ok ok ... But, what does Raising the Floor look like for MY Business for MEEE" - you interject
Get ready for it ...
IT DEPENDS.
(Bet you didn't see that coming. Right? RIGHT?)
Ok in Extracted, the core of that business as I'd been running it was subscriptions to the magazine. All I had to do was keep current people engaged and excited, and bring new people in, engaged and excited. Keep that relationship going for years. And inevitably more and more people would subscribe, stay subscribed, buy coffee, and buy anything else I made.
The floor rises every year.
I had to wait for that to happen though.
Why didn't I see it?
Why didn't that actually happen?
Let's cover Our TGA Fundamentals:
I did not have a solvable problem. More accurately, the solvable problem I was working toward was not what I thought I wanted (I was trying to solve the problem of inevitable growth in my business, but didn't know why ultimately I was doing it).
I didn't understand WHY I was doing what I was doing. I explore this in depth in my capstone. So I was never actually able to head in one specific direction, and I was never going to arrive at a destination, and I had no ability to adjust my heading because I wasn't headed towards anything in particular.
I did not understand the process, I was seeking a shortcut.
I was not comfortable with Open Loops. I didn't have a conscious knowledge of them, but I definitely exhibited the behavior of someone who rapidly sought closure on loops, which is a dangerous position to be in. This leads to shortcut thinking, to seeking dopamine without effort, to trying to launch a rocket to the stars before you can reliably even get off the pad.
I was focused on making better decisions, not making decisions better.
I robbed Peter to pay Paul. ((Article coming later))
In short, I did not have helpful frameworks and perspective to make decisions better, and certainly could NOT see how focusing on the floor was going to benefit me.
"Ok ok, so you screwed up. How does that help me?"
I think it behooves you to recognize how all the different foundational philosophies of TGA interplay with each other.
Raising the Floor connects with "The Process is The Shortcut," and "The Solvable Problem," at the very core, and clearly has interplay with pretty much every other philosophy and principle we follow.
Raising the Floor is the action, the contact with reality9 that you can make in terms of executing upon the Philosophies and Principles we teach in TGA.
What "Raising the Floor" looks like in your business will depend on all those factors. On what they mean to you, as well as what they mean to your business.
That's why I share examples from my own life and business, because the context matters. Your solvable problem, your process, your game ... they all dictate how you Raise the Floor.
To give you one more example, and a little bit of guidance. If you are a freelancer (I've worked many of the past several years as a freelance copywriter), instead of trying to hit the mythical number you think you need (it's probably $10k/mo), do this ...
Consider where you are right now. What work you have. What clients you have. What prospects you might work with. Look at your lowest invoiced month. Over the next 12 months, don't focus on getting MORE each month. Don't focus on trying to hit $10k.
And for heaven's sake, don't take that ridiculous advice of trying to project and claim you'll make $1m next year.
Instead ask yourself, "what can I do to not make less? What can I do to raise my lowest month, even by 10%?"
Does that sound boring?
Good.
That's your path. That's how you work The Process. By Raising the Floor.
To bring it all back to your path through The Guardian Academy …
You started (hopefully) with The Process is The Shortcut. That guiding philosophy leads naturally into this one, Raising the Floor. Because Raising the Floor is a key part of The Process.
And in order to follow your process, and raise your floor, you must know yourself and your game.
You must also understand “What Is Enough?” [Bonus: this one has a lot of memes]
That’s what we’re all about here.
Don’t try to have it all NOW.
Just work the process. Raise the Floor. One step at a time.
Live to learn. Give to earn.
Guardian Academy
“Raising The Floor” Key Resources:
What Is Enough? Guardian Academy Article with a strong meme game
Bumpers Book Book on Amazon
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