Welcome to the Elevated Edit, the weekly reset for ambitious women who are done with chaos and ready to actually follow through.

I'm your host, Blakely Ramsey, strategist, systems.

Girl and execution coach for entrepreneurs who want structure that sells in a business.

That feels like peace.

Here, we don't chase hustle.

We edit what matters.

Let's get into it.

Have you ever felt like you are pulling harder on the rope of your business?

It kind of feels like tug of war.

Harder that you pull.

Like you're working and you're tugging and you're trying so hard, but you're still not moving forward.

I have a speech this morning to a leadership group, and I'm gonna condense it here for you.

Have you ever played tug of war before?

Like, I.

We used to play tug of war in elementary school all the time.

And I'm obviously at a disadvantage when it comes to a game like tug of war because I'm five foot one and I have the upper body strength of, like, a T. Rex with noodle arms.

You know, it's just really not my strength.

But I like to win, and I always wanted to win this game so bad, but I knew that just, like, pure strength alone wasn't actually going to be the thing that was going to help me win this game.

And so I went up to my PE teacher and I was like, listen, girl, I gotta win this game.

Like, what do me and my team have to do in order to win?

Because at the time, it always felt like it was my team against the football players.

I don't know if they intentionally did that, but that's how it always felt.

And she was like, stop trying to do everything and focus on the few things that really matter.

Focus on staggering your stance.

Focus on making sure the anchor is in the back.

Focus on making sure you are all pulling at the same time so that all of your weight is distributed evenly, all of your forces distributed evenly.

And the next time we did this, we applied focusing on just a few things instead of trying to just pull harder and use force, and we won.

Now, I might say that we won simply because they'd beat us 50 times before, and they probably weren't trying very hard.

But I took the win.

I took the win.

Okay?

And I want you to think about this in life in general, because most people think that more effort is the answer.

More effort.

I'm just gonna need to try harder.

If I want more, then I just need to do more.

But what if effort stops working?

Okay, now there's this illusion of, like, you just need to work harder.

But eventually you are going to hit a point of diminishing return.

You're gonna hit a point where you.

Your effort and your work and the.

Just the more that you're putting in, it's actually not going to just plateau, but you're going to start seeing diminishing returns for every output that you get.

So the visual that I gave them this morning was imagine that you are filling a cup of water.

Okay?

You got your bottle of water and you're trying to fill up a cup, okay?

And as you're pouring the water into the cup, at a certain point you're like, okay, cool, we're filling up the water.

We're hitting our goals.

I'm just going to keep pouring water into the cup.

But eventually you're going to hit your point of diminishing return.

You're going to hit the point where the glass is full.

And if you keep pouring water into the cup, you're going to make a mess.

Doing more of the same is not going to just get you the same results.

It's actually going to cause your results to decline.

Now you've got a mess to clean up.

You've wasted water, you've got water everywhere.

You've got to go find a towel.

It took time out of your day.

And the important thing here is that instead of just focusing on doing more, you really want to shift the belief to, like, how can I not do more, but how can I do better?

Now, I've talked about the book 10x is easier than 2x on this podcast before, but we're really going to, like, dive into it on a really deep level, specifically when it comes to not just doing more of the same.

So 2x thinking and 2x goals are.

You know what?

I think I want 10% growth or 20% growth.

So I'm just going to do more of what I'm currently doing.

I'm going to post more on social media, I'm going to send more emails, I'm going to make more calls.

I'm going to hire more people, more and more and more.

But 10x growth is setting 10x goals and cutting down 80% of what you're already doing so you can double down on the 20% that really matters.

Now, when I first heard this concept, 10x is easier than 2x, I resisted it.

I was like, absolutely not.

I'm doing 10.

I'm doing 2x right now, and you expect me to do 10x.

I'm already burnt out at 2x and you expect me to go 10x.

The really cool thing about 10x goals and 10x thinking is that with 2x goals, there's a variety of different ways that you can accomplish that goal.

Like I said, you can send more emails, you can make more sales, you can hire more employees, you can work more hours, you can post more on social media.

You just do what you're doing already, but just more of it.

There's so many different options, so many different varieties.

Now, with 10x goals, you have to approach a 10x goal completely differently.

With 10x goals, there's going to be very few things that are actually going to get you to a 10x goal, and that's why they're so much easier.

It's so much easier to focus on one big thing than to focus on a hundred little things that actually the example that they use in the book is that it's so much easier.

If you're trying to raise a million dollars, say, for a nonprofit, it's so much easier to ask one person, get one person to commit to a million dollars than to get 100 people to commit to $10,000.

Because when you are trying to get 100 people to commit to 10,000 dollars, you're running around ragged.

You're, you know, exhausting your resources.

You're just trying so hard, you're putting in so much effort versus, if you're like, okay, why don't we get one person to donate a million dollars?

You have to really dial in on your Rolodex, on your sphere of influence.

You've got to dial in on your messaging, on the, you know, belief bridge for them.

There's so many things that you have to eliminate in order to dial in on that 20% and get that one person to say yes.

But focusing on that 20% and getting that one person to say yes is so much easier than, like, giving so much effort and getting 100 people to say yes to 10,000 things or to $10,000.

Now, this is not about speed.

This is about focus.

Okay, Now, I gave them a really cool framework.

It's actually a really simple framework this morning so they can remember this as they go back to their leadership roles.

And the framework is lead, level and lock.

Super simple.

Lead level, lock.

The first portion of that is lead.

You have to lead yourself first.

If you're reactive, your team's going to be reactive.

If you are scrambling and chaotic, your team is going to be scrambling and chaotic.

If you are calm and poised, guess what, your team's going to be calm and Poised.

If you have the attitude of you know what, economy is not great, things are a little rough.

But we are going to find a way.

We are going to dial in on our 20% so that we can 10x our goals.

Your team is going to match that energy.

You have to show other people that you can lead yourself first before you can lead them.

Okay, so that is the first portion.

Lead.

Now the second portion is level.

You're going to want to level up your skills and level up your standards.

You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your standards.

An example for like a real estate agent would be an agent who sets the bar.

Their personal standard at my value is in me responding quickly.

That's where my value is.

They are going to fall to the level of that standard.

Now the agent who sets the bar at I'm going to be so prepared that my clients trust me so much.

I've over communicated to them and I've provided so much value that that's where my value is.

That if I'm eating dinner with my family or if I'm spending time with my husband on the weekends, I don't feel compelled to to be the person that text back the fastest because I've given them that value.

My value is in what I provide.

It's not how quickly I respond.

So do you see the difference there between, you know, where you set your standards for yourself?

That's where you're going to rise to.

So you're going to want to make sure that you set the standards really high.

And this isn't about like, this isn't really about money.

It's literally just about the way that you carry yourself and the expectations that you have for your life and for your business.

Standards create safe and predictable safety and predictability in business.

Okay, and then the third portion of this framework is going to be lock.

You're going to want to lock in systems at scale.

If you don't have repeatable systems in your business, even if you get a little bit of growth, that growth is going to collapse over time because you're not going to be able to sustain it.

You're going to want to take all the lessons and all the things that you've learned and you're going to want to apply it in a repeatable process over time.

You know, they used to say that knowledge is power before the Internet.

Knowledge is power.

Well, people have knowledge now and we have learned that that was in fact not the issue right now.

It's applied Knowledge is power.

You can read all the books, you can listen to all the podcasts, you can join all the courses and programs, everything that you want to join.

You have to be able to apply the information and you have to be able to repeat it in a repeatable system.

Okay, now the.

The core message that I want you to walk away with from this podcast episode is that if hard work alone worked, you'd already have the business that you wanted.

If more effort and doing more of the same was what worked, you would already have the business that you want.

Right?

You really need to change your standards, your structure, and your leadership.

Now, if you are a real estate agent and you're like, I think that I've been just doing more of the same and expecting different results, maybe I need to change my structure, my standards and my leadership.

That is exactly why I created the Agent Standard Bootcamp.

To help agents stop playing that tug of war with their business and finally build systems and standards that win business predictably because they're providing so much value for their clients.

We are in a trust recession in the world and AI is only going to elevate that.

And the not just the agents that win, but the entrepreneurs that win are going to be the ones that slow down, build systems, build skills, provide real value and build that credibility with their clients.

Build that trust with their clients.

And if you're a real estate agent, the Agent Standard boot camp is exactly how you're going to be able to do that.

We all know that.

We only learned so much in real estate school and our brokers are amazing.

But when it comes to really like, okay, when you sit down at your desk every day to work, what are you supposed to be working on?

There's so many different options, 2x thinking I'll just send more emails, post more, send more texts, call more people, try harder, work more hours, or you can 10x your business, focus on the 20% that is really going to get you to that 10x goal.

And the agent standard bootcamp is that 10x.

So if you're ready to stop pulling harder on that rope and playing tug of rope, tug of war in your business, start laying with structure.

This bootcamp is for you going to put the link in the show notes and I would really love to see you inside of the program.

It is my baby and my brainchild.

I have worked on a couple of different offers this year and nothing quite clicked.

And I couldn't understand why, but it was because every little offer that I worked on was a bigger piece of the puzzle and that puzzle was the agent standard bootcamp.

I'm sorry.

Incredibly proud of it and I cannot wait to get started with all the agents in there.

We're going to learn so many skills and so many strategies and so many principles that are going to, you know, be evergreen for your business and last a lifetime.

Okay.

I hope you got some value from this episode or in this YouTube video.

If you are watching me on YouTube, hello.

I'm going to start showing up here a lot more regularly.

And yeah, I just hope you have an amazing rest of your day and I will see you in the next episode.

That's it for this edition of the Elevated Edit.

If this episode hit, don't keep it.

To yourself, screenshot it, share it, tag me on Instagram.

And if you're ready to structure your.

Business like the CEO that you are.

You know where to find me.