EP 026: Why You Don't Deserve a Trophy (Relentless-From Good to Great to Unstoppable)

You are waiting around for a trophy right now just because you did exactly what you were supposed to do. You think showing up on time, hitting your macros, or doing your baseline job makes you special. You want a pat on the back for simply doing what is expected.

That is the mindset of a Cooler. If you want to actually win at life, you have to stop looking for validation and start delivering results regardless of the circumstances.

Today on The Short Game Podcast, we are kicking off 'The Untouchable Operator Week' by reading the ultimate manual for becoming completely unstoppable: Relentless by Tim Grover.

Grover trained Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, and he breaks down exactly what separates the average from the absolute killers. At NexYear, we do not pop champagne just because a custom physical asset was delivered in the mail. We are Cleaners. We deliver flawless execution and force the door open, even when the supply chain breaks.

In this episode:

• The Universal Hook: Why expecting praise for the baseline makes you weak.
• The Operator Reality: How to execute at the highest level when nobody is watching.
• The Sovereign Standard: Stop making excuses and become the person who simply delivers the result.

Look at your work output from last week. Are you operating like a Cleaner, or are you just hoping someone notices you doing your job? See you in the deep end.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Short Game Podcast. It is Monday, March 16th. We are kicking off the Untouchable Operator Week. You are waiting around for a trophy right now just because you did exactly what you were supposed to do. You think showing up on time and doing the bare minimum makes you special. You want a pat on the back for doing your job. That is the mindset of a cooler. If you want to actually win at life, you have to stop looking for validation and start delivering results regardless of the circumstances. Today, we are reading the Ultimate Manual for Becoming Completely Unstoppable, Relentless by Tim Grover. He trained MJ and Kobe and he breaks down exactly what separates the average from the absolute killers. When we run high level Vip logistics at Nexye, we do not celebrate just getting a package in the mail. That is the baseline. We deliver flawless execution and force the door open, even when the supply chain breaks. A cleaner does not make excuses. Let's get into it. What's your name? My name is Thomas Shelly. My name is Maximus Desmus Marilius. This is Jums Number. He's kidding in the number. My name is Ace Petra. My name is Petri. My name is Walter Hartwell White. My name is Gustavo, but you can call me us. Welcome to episode 26 of the Untouchable Operator Week. I want to start today by talking about a massive frustration that so many of you are carrying around right now. You are frustrated because nobody is praising you for simply showing up to work. You are incredibly annoyed that no one is throwing you a parade because you managed to hit your fitness macros for three days in a row. Let me hit you with the brutal truth right out of the gate. Doing exactly what you are supposed to do is the absolute baseline of life. Wanting a participation trophy just for existing and doing the bare minimum is a complete clown mentality. If you want to level up your life, you have to stop celebrating the baseline. There is a massive, undeniable difference between someone who just does what is asked of them and an absolute operator who actually delivers the final result no matter the cost. Today, we are going to break down exactly what that difference is and how you can eradicate this weak need for constant validation. To do this, we are going to dive deep into a book called Relentless by Tim S. Grover. Tim Grover is the legendary trainer who engineered the minds and bodies of the greatest athletes to ever walk the earth, including Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Grover understands the psychology of elite performance better than anyone, and he breaks down competitors into three distinct categories. He calls them the coolers, the closers, and the cleaners. Most people will consistently fall into the cooler category. A cooler is someone who is careful. He waits to be told exactly what to do. He watches to see what everyone else is doing, and then he just follows the leader. He is a mediator, not a decision maker, and he is not taking sides unless he is forced to a cooler can handle a certain amount of pressure when things are going well. But the second things get too intense, he kicks the problem over to someone else. He can make a huge play, but he is not ultimately responsible for the outcome. A cooler lets others decide whether he is successful. He does the job and then sits around waiting to see if you approve. This is the exact person waiting for the participation trophy. Then you have the closer. A closer is a step up. This is someone who can handle a lot of pressure and will get the job done if you put him in the right situation and tell him exactly what you need him to do. He studies all sorts of scenarios so he can anticipate what might happen, but he becomes extremely uncomfortable when faced with something unexpected. A closer wants the credit for getting the job done and loves being congratulated for what he did. He seeks attention and credit, and he is very aware of what everyone else is doing and what others think of him. A closer feels successful simply when the job is done. But then there is the third category, the absolute apex predator of the group. This is what Grover calls the cleaner. A cleaner is the most intense and driven competitor imaginable. Cleaners quietly and forcefully do whatever it takes to get what they want. A cleaner does not wait to be asked. He just acts. Cleaners do not wait for validation, they do not seek attention, and they certainly do not need a pat on the back. They take responsibility for everything when something goes wrong. They do not blame others. Because they never really count on anyone else to get the job done in the first place. They just clean up the mess and move on. Think about the custodian who quietly works alone, late at night. He calls no attention to himself. No one sees him work, no one knows what he does, but the job always gets done. Grover describes the cleaner as a predator with a dark side that refuses to be taught to be good. They have a zone they step into where they shut out everything else and control the uncontrollable. When everyone else is hitting the panic button, they are all looking for the cleaner. A cleaner makes decisions, not suggestions. A cleaner knows the answer, while everyone else is still asking questions. This is what we mean when we talk about being an untouchable operator. Grover trained Michael Jordan, the ultimate cleaner. Michael Jordan never cared about achieving mere greatness. He cared about being the best ever. Each time his Chicago Bulls sealed another championship, he would not just hold up the number of fingers for the rings he had already won. He would hold up an extra finger for the next championship. After the first win, he held up two fingers. After the second, he held up three, and after the fifth, he held up six. They would be back in the locker room, champagne dripping down the walls, and he would already be telling Grover what they needed to work on for the next season. A cleaner does not celebrate his achievements because he always wants more. Cleaners never feel as if they have achieved success because there is always more to do. If you want to be a cleaner, you have to understand that the reward for your hard work is just more hard work. You have to be completely addicted to the exquisite rush of success. His lust for it is so powerful, the craving is so intense that he will alter his entire life to get it. It is not that he loves the process, he just loves that end result. Cleaners understand they do not have to love the work to be successful, they just have to be relentless about achieving it. Everything else in between is just a diversion and a distraction from the ultimate prize. Think about how that applies to your own life. Are you sitting around hoping you will suddenly start loving your diet or loving your grueling work schedule? You do not have to love it. You just have to be addicted to the results. Let us talk about pressure. A cooler is never in a situation where he has to be clutch. A closer is clutch in high pressure situations, but a cleaner is always clutch. For cleaners, every single moment is a pressure situation, and everything is always on the line. If you are a true competitor, you intentionally create situations to jack up the pressure even higher, challenging yourself to prove what you are capable of. Grover tells a story about Dwyane Wade during the 2012 NBA championship. Wade had a damaged knee that clearly required surgery. A different player might not have made the call to Grover. They would have tried coping with the pain, hoping the knee would hold out. But when a championship is on the line and you are a cleaner, you do not let others carry the load, and you do not just hope it all works out. You make every possible move to put yourself exactly where you need to be. Wade and Grover worked out until two in the morning in the arena, away from teammates and media doing whatever it took. Wade did not want anyone patting him on the back for playing through pain. He just wanted the ring. A true cleaner never tells you what he is doing or what he is planning. You find out after the job is complete, and by the time you realize what he has accomplished, he has already moved on to the next challenge. This is exactly why a cleaner does not need external praise. He is not seeking your approval because the standards he sets for himself are so much higher than anyone else can possibly set for him. Win or lose, all he thinks about is how he could have done it better, or smoother or faster. So the job gets done, but he is still always thinking about how he could have done more. Grover talks about how athletes spend so much time working on their physical excellence they sometimes forget that respect isn't just about what you can do physically. It is about mental dominance. Physical dominance can make you great, but mental dominance is what ultimately makes you unstoppable. A cleaner trusts his gut to navigate the hard road to the top. He stops overthinking and overanalyzing everything. He doesn't study the competition. He makes the competition study him. A cooler admits defeat. A closer works harder. A cleaner strategizes for a completely different outcome. We must bridge the gap between the theory of Tim Grover's cleaners and our everyday reality. This is core value number two, the operator reality. Let me use my own business next year as the perfect example of this standard. And next year, our core competency is strategic gifting and logistics. We send custom physical assets in the mail. Do you think we pop champagne in the office just because a package successfully arrived at its destination? Do you think we throw a massive party because the tracking number says delivered? Absolutely not. That is the bare minimum of logistics. That is exactly what the client paid us to do. Expecting praise for delivering a package is exactly like expecting praise for showing up to your shift on time. It is what you are supposed to do. At next year, we operate strictly as cleaners. We do not celebrate the baseline. Our goal is to execute the entire strategic gifting sequence flawlessly. We are there to force the VIP door open for our clients. We are there to absolutely secure the relationship. If one of our vendors fails, we do not sit around and complain about it. We do not point fingers or make excuses to the client. We fix it in the dark where nobody can see us sweating, and we deliver the final result anyway.