Renegades co-founder and chief strategist, Ian Stewart, explores challenge of achieving more in less time…

Hello fellow Renegades!

My good friend Dave Dean approached me earlier this year. He was planning on convincing me to be a co-founder of Renegade Entrepreneurs with him and his Renegade team. Dave had a vision.

Nowadays for whatever reason, I receive a number of opportunities to join or launch new businesses with other people every year. And now that I’m closing in on fifty laps around the sun in a few months, I’m not normally as eager to jump into new ventures as much as I used to be. I’ve become a little bit picky I guess. And a lot more selective with where I spend my time.

However, this opportunity with Renegade Entrepreneurs was different. It spoke to the heart of who I have been becoming as a human being and businessman over the last few years. Anybody who wants to talk to me about how truly successful business owners think differently to the masses, and therefore act completely differently, will have me fully engaged. Dave knows me well enough, and he started pushing the right buttons. I’ll engage and discuss that topic for hours…

So after a few discussions with Dave… mostly regarding how I prioritise my days on earth and how Renegades fits in, I jumped in with both feet. Renegades is not only much needed for many CEO’s and entrepreneurs, it’s also a cause that I totally believe in. I committed my time to Renegades, promising that I will do everything I can to provide my own business experience to all of you, the Renegade Entrepreneurs, and the Renegade Entrepreneurs business.

Ironically, I’ve probably also made Dave a little frustrated with me already.

As I sit in seat 4A approximately 32,000 feet above the USA heading to the West Coast for a meeting later this afternoon, I was supposed to have this written and delivered to him 24 hours ago.

But living a truly successful life is an efficiency contest. And after over 30 years of being a full-time entrepreneur, that is one of the most important things I have ever learned in business.

And in life.

The Efficiency Contest such a simple concept in theory. To break it down, we all have limited days on this earth. And those who achieve the most, in the time they have, are the most successful. Anyone can understand that, right? Easy stuff.

But what isn’t so easy for almost everyone, is understanding how to actually do it.

How do we learn more, so we can make the appropriate decisions more often, to achieve more in a day? In a Month? In our life?

And even more importantly, how do we do it more efficiently… so we are not only achieving more, but also spending less time doing it than almost anyone else?

The problem with answering those questions is, we simply don’t know what we don’t know. We can’t know how to do certain things without first gaining some perspective on what those things are, yet alone learning or examining how to apply them to our own life. What we do know is based upon our own experiences, surroundings, culture, and influences we have personally interacted with. That is our current knowledge. That is the basis of how we learn as human beings.

Then even when we find information, influence, or experience from others… we have to first determine if it is credible. Yet we have very little or no credible experience of our own in that specific area to measure by and make that credibility determination. Dammit… my newly found “expert” I want to learn from could be full of shit and I wouldn’t even know it. Now what?

So, although understanding that the Efficiency Contest is happening all around us, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy to learn how to be good at playing the Efficiency Contest game.

We can see those who are good at it however. They are winning at business, and winning at life. They are the 1%. Perhaps the 0.001%.

There is some good news. We are all very good at some things, even though we may not be so good, or have the experience we need, in some other areas.

Just like you, I have discovered some things I am very good at. One of my strengths is “seeing” business strategy, the ability to peer into the crystal ball and know what is going to happen next before most others see it themselves.

As the current CEO of three separate and globally trading businesses, that is the foundation and core strength I have built my own entrepreneurial career upon.

And then just like you, there are some things I am not good at. I am an introvert in social settings with strangers, and can be socially awkward to the point of wanting to leave or just sit in the corner and observe. Oddly enough, I am exactly the opposite in business and a very con dent extrovert in those settings.

I am also absolutely terrible with focusing on numeric spreadsheets. Put me in front of a spreadsheet full of numbers and I last about 45 minutes before going completely blind and useless. There are a number of things I am not so good at.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. We all have our perspectives and experiences.

We also all have Renegade Entrepreneurs to help fill in the blanks with the areas we crave to improve on and be better at in the Efficiency Contest game. We have each other. We have surrounded ourselves, by choice, with credible experts in many different disciplines and areas of expertise. Areas in which we want to learn more and be better at, from credible experts, who have real credible entrepreneurial experience and who are really doing it in the real world.

The true power of the Renegade Entrepreneurs Mastermind process is the coming together of these types of people. People just like you and me.

You know by now that as an entrepreneur you are different to 99% of the people around you. You think differently. You assess risk differently. You have bigger goals for yourself than most others. You are a Renegade in life and in business. Renegade Entrepreneurs is yet another tool in how we learn to achieve more success in the Efficiency Contest of life.

The Efficiency Contest game doesn’t mean we have to work more hours, spend more time away from our families, and sell our soul for our businesses – in fact, it means the opposite. The Efficiency Contest is about freedom. Freedom of choice with where you spend your time, how you prioritise the things you do (and don’t do), and freedom of choice regarding how you live your life.

The Efficiency Contest is the yardstick by which I measure all decisions in my life.

It’s also the reason why I am 24 hours late writing this piece. Success is not just measured in business alone, and my little girl’s eighth birthday party with sixteen of her friends won my attention in the previously allotted schedule.

No contest.

The decision to come on board with Dave as a Co-Founder of Renegade Entrepreneurs also had to pass the Efficiency Contest Game in my life. It passed with flying colors.

I look forward to doing my best to serve you all, in any capacity I am able to be of bene t. But really it was an easy decision… because I will also learn from you all, from your own areas of expertise, thinking, and awareness.

That’s the win – win for all of us with the Renegade Entrepreneurs Mastermind process.