In an interview between Joe Rogan and Jimmy Donaldson (aka, MrBeast), Donaldson masterfully illustrated the importance of focusing on getting better vs getting bigger. In his experience, when he focuses on making one of his videos 10% better, it doesn’t result in a 10% increase in views, rather a 300% increase in views. Put another way, if he was going for 1,000,000 views, by making the video 10% better, it doesn’t get him 1,100,000 views, rather 4,000,000 views (a 300% increase). Therefore, Donaldson advocates for hyper-obsessing over each video because this is the key to exponential growth.
Having illustrated the importance of focusing on getting better, Donaldson goes on to explain, practically speaking how to do this. He basically shared how early on he was doing five different jobs, and was only able to give 20% of himself to each job. As his channel grew he began hiring others to handle the parts of his job he wasn’t exceptionally gifted at. For example, instead of him doing the video editing at 20% he hired a gifted videographer who could give 100% to editing his videos. This naturally resulted in his videos getting better on two fronts: 1) It made him able to spend 20% more time thinking up even better ideas for new videos, and 2) it improved the quality of the videos because now instead of someone spending only 20% of their time on the editing, someone was now spending 100% of their time doing it. And with every improvement, they saw a return that was 300% greater than their investment. Well, seeing how beneficial it this was related to the editing of the videos, Donaldson began making other hires, which resulted in even greater growth.
I loved listening to this story because I have personally lived what he’s talking about. When we first started New Day, I was doing so many different jobs. But I raised up one volunteer after another to handle different areas of responsibilities to free me up to work more on my sermons and on New Day. In time, the volunteers turned into PT staff, and in time the PT staff turned into FT staff. But whether paid or not, every time I delegated responsibilities to someone else, it allowed others to spend 100% of their time on what I had been spending only 20% of my time on – which resulted in things getting better. And when I was able to take that 20% time savings and apply it to my sermons and to working on New Day, these things got better too. And the result of getting better was that we got bigger. While I don’t know that I can say, like Donaldson, it resulted in 300% growth, I can confidently say that the return was exponential in proportion to the investment.
Right now some of you have five jobs, and you’re only giving 20% to each one. While this is often needed and necessary in certain seasons, the goal is always to 1) identify where you add the most value, and then 2) work yourself out of all the other jobs, delegating them to others. When you do, 1) that responsibility will begin getting 100% attention vs 20% attention, and 2) you will be able to take that 20% of your time that’s been freed up and apply it to whatever it is that you’re best at, with the net result of us getting better on both fronts. And when we get better, we get bigger.
So by way of application, let’s take to heart what pastor Rick Warren once said, “Don’t focus on getting bigger, focus on getting better because when you get better, you’ll get bigger.”
DISCUSSION QUESTION: Towards that end, here’s today’s discussion question: What’s one job you have on your plate right now that you could delegate to a volunteer or staff member, which would both give that job the attention it deserves while simultaneously freeing you up to spend more time doing what you’re uniquely best at?
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