Neal Reyes delves into the essence of excellence in this engaging podcast, sharing insights from his extensive experience in leadership and business. At the heart of his discussion is a unique four-point framework designed to help individuals measure their efforts and outcomes effectively. This framework categorizes performance into four levels: Not Enough, Just Enough, Good Enough, and Excellence. Reyes articulates that the goal isn't to chase perfection, which can be an elusive target, but to focus on progress and consistent improvement. He passionately advocates for the idea that true success is rooted in understanding and applying these principles, which can revolutionize both personal growth and organizational culture.

Through compelling personal stories, Reyes illustrates how these concepts have played a pivotal role in his life and the lives of those he mentors. A particularly touching moment involves a lesson he imparted to his daughter, Taylor, using a simple yet profound analogy about measuring her work's quality. This anecdote not only emphasizes the importance of striving for excellence but also showcases how such values can be instilled from a young age. Reyes' reflections on leadership highlight the need for consistency and self-awareness, urging listeners to assess their efforts critically and recognize the areas where they can elevate their performance.

The episode culminates in a call to action, urging listeners to implement this framework in their lives and workplaces. Reyes underscores that this approach transcends specific roles or industries, making it applicable to anyone looking to enhance their effectiveness and achieve their goals. With a warm and authoritative tone, he inspires listeners to adopt a mindset of excellence, reinforcing that the journey toward improvement is continuous and deeply rewarding.

Chapters:

• 00:07 - Applying Life Frameworks
• 04:18 - Measuring Excellence: The Four Levels of Success
• 11:01 - The Importance of Measurement in Leadership
• 18:26 - A Lesson in Excellence and Effort
• 24:13 - Unlocking Your Next Level of Greatness
• 28:16 - The Framework of Excellence
• 34:25 - The Pursuit of Excellence

Takeaways:

• Consistency is crucial to achieving success, as it creates a framework for improvement.
• Measuring excellence can be done through a simple four-point scale for progress.
• Striving for progress over perfection can lead to greater achievements and satisfaction.
• Teaching employees to assess their work using this framework fosters a culture of excellence.
• Recognizing your own level of effort is vital to personal and professional growth.
• Encouraging praise and acknowledgment among teams enhances morale and motivation in the workplace.

Mentioned in this episode:

To inquire about 1:1 coaching with Neal, please visit nealreyes.com/now.

To receive emails and our latest updates, please sign-up at nealreyes.com/email.

Hey, what's up, guys?

This is your host, Neal Reyes.

I want to tell you that today's episode is a banger.

I'm going to be talking to you about something that I learned years ago within my life that you can apply.

It's a framework you can apply to any area in your life.

And if you teach it to your employees, I believe you'll see changes and the most success you've ever had before.

Get ready.

This is your captain speaking.

We want to let you know we've been cleared for takeoff.

We have clear skies today with no winds, so we are expecting a smooth and highly enjoyable flight.

However, should you experience some personal turbulence, don't worry as you've chosen the right airline.

As we are trained in navigating unexpected bumps, our destination today is high performance and success.

Sit back, relax, get hyped, or do whatever you do.

As we too are pumped for today's flight.

We understand you have options when you fly, and we are grateful that you have chosen to fly with us today.

We recognize by choosing to fly, Neil Reyes, you are committed to growing personal development and reaching higher than you ever have before.

Enjoy today's flight.

Be blessed, and remember, the best is yet to come.

What's up?

What's up, champion?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to the Executive Perspective.

For years, I struggled to answer the question, what do you do for a living?

Why?

Because most people who ask only expect to hear one thing.

I'm an executive with a deep level of understanding of business, operations, leadership, and technology.

I'm also the president and founder of a worldwide ministry and CEO of an executive coaching and consulting firm.

My number one passion is people, and I receive significant gratitude in life from sowing into others and encouraging them as they grow to achieve their fullest potential.

If you're a high performance individual like me, or you're simply ready to take your business leadership or inner potential to the next level, then strap in because I'm locked in and all in.

This is the Executive Perspective.

Hey, what's up, champions?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to today's episode.

Today, I'm going to be teaching you about what I consider to be and have learned within my career.

The most effective way to measure excellence.

Again, this is what I refer to and I say the most effective way.

Another way I could say it is, this is the number one way to measure excellence.

Now, some people might say, well, excellence, what are you talking about?

You know, I'm talking about excellence.

In anything you place your hand to excellence in any single thing you do.

This is something that the year showed me many, many, many years ago.

It's something that I've applied of as a level of measurement within my own life.

I've done it with my kids, I've ingrained it and shown it to them.

I show it to all my staff, any department or organization I ever run, I show it to them.

This is for me, if you get this deep down inside of you, it can help you be successful.

You know, I really believe that one of the fundamentals of success is consistency.

Consistency is the key to success.

And these principles that I'm going to show you today, I believe will place you on a pathway to be able to measure excellence within your life.

It'll help you, it'll help your staff, it'll help your employees, anybody you deal with, your family, no matter who it is.

In fact, I'm going to share some personal experiences with, with you as well of how I applied this even within my own life with one of my children.

This is what I consider.

There's four levels is what I'll start off with.

And this is what I consider to be the most effective way to measure your progress or to measure whatever it is that you're doing.

Now, I want us take a moment here to explain to you that when I'm teaching this to people, the number one thing to understand is that no matter what you do in life, whether if it's something with business, whether it fits with something a company you work in or a company you own, if it's you're going back to school, no matter what it is, the goal is never to strive for perfection.

The goal is to have progress over perfection.

One of the things I teach, the teams that I run and when I'm consulting, when I'm coaching with clients, no matter what it is, I tell them that anything that we do, anything that we decide is worth doing or needs done within life, we should be able to measure it so that we know if we're being successful.

Especially, and I'm going to say it again, especially when it comes to the business world.

If you're in business and you're an owner or you're an employee, you know, in previous videos we talked about the differences between an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur.

If you're an intrapreneur and you're working inside someone else's business and you're helping them to be successful, no matter what you place your hand to or do, you should Always be able to have a rule, or I say a rule, but a grading stick, so to speak, where you're able to measure your success.

Now, something we may talk about in the future, you know the difference between things like sometimes you'll hear phrases like KPIs or OKRs.

We're not going to get into that today.

But this is a measuring tool or measuring system I'm about to show you that you can use in any area of your life.

So the four areas that we're going to talk about today, these are the four steps we have from the bottom to the top.

It's a four point system and it's so simple to follow.

The very lowest would be not enough.

You then have the next level.

Number two is just enough, number three is good enough.

And number four, the highest is excellence.

Anything you're doing in life, and I'm telling you it doesn't matter what it is, I've used this in my personal life when I'm working in the backyard building something.

I've used this in organizations when we're trying to scale our business and make more money.

I've used this when I'm helping clients and coaching them or consulting them or in my own efforts in my own business.

Basically, it's a grading scale that you're able to use against yourself to measure your level of output or the desired outcome.

You know, anytime we have goals in life and we're striving to accomplish something, we should always be able to have a way to measure if it's successful or not.

And this four point system that I'm getting ready to teach you about can be the key to your most successful year yet.

I'm telling you, I learned this years ago.

It was something that the Lord showed me deep within my own personal life.

And then I showed it to my oldest, which is my daughter Taylor.

Now, Taylor's 23.

Now.

She was nine years old when I showed her how to do this and it changed the course of her life.

And then her brothers followed in her footsteps.

I have three other sons, I have four children total.

And her three brothers followed in her same footsteps.

This is something I've ingrained in my life and something my wife Katie has ingrained in hers.

We do it throughout the Reyes household and in every business I touch and every meeting I'm in and every decision I got to make for business and every task we pick up, every project we do, we.

They always go back and measure it based along this four point scale.

In fact, I taught this to My team so much within work that one year for my birthday, they blessed me with this beautiful canvas.

And on this canvas that they blessed me with, it has my four levels that I'm teaching you today.

It's this beautiful picture, and in front of it there's these words in a fancy font, and at the bottom it says, not enough.

Next one up, number two, just enough.

Third one, good enough.

And the fourth one at the very top, excellence.

And so many times when we're in meetings, in my conference room that I use, I sit at the head of the table on one end, and right behind me, there's a Vibe board that I use.

It used to be a whiteboard, but now it's a Vibe board that I use.

And then off to the side of the my vibe board is this canvas.

And so many times, friend, for years I've done this with them.

I'll be speaking with them, and they'll be talking to me about either at some a task that they're working on, a project, an initiative, something they're doing within the organization.

And so many times they're talking to me.

And as they do, I help them to be able to grade their level of effort, but also the level of effort of their employees.

And as they're explaining that to me, no matter how good that thing might be or how I won't say bad, but maybe level of room for improvement we could do, you'll see me raise my hand over my shoulder and I point, and what am I pointing at?

Well, you can't see it in this video or on this podcast, but right behind me is my canvas.

And I ask them, what level of effort is that based on our board?

And they'll tell me, and they sometimes when I first started doing this, they'd have to take a minute to think about and they think for a second and they'd be like, good enough and I'm back, okay.

Or other times they'd say, that was excellence, boss.

And I bet that sounds good.

And what I'm doing is I'm not being hard on them, but I'm teaching them how to grade themselves and their people.

And the more I ingrain this within their thought process, within their mindset.

It's like a framework that's with them at all times.

The more I ingrain it within their thinking, the more they'll repeat and ingrain it within their employees thinking.

And then we have a culmination of effort where all of us are thinking on the same level of how to measure our efforts.

And when I'm not in that conference room and these people are holding their meetings for their teams.

They sit at the head of the table where I sit and they're doing the same things with their employees.

We have glass windows on our conference room.

And sometimes when I'm walking by and I look in there, I see them reaching over their shoulder, pointing up, and I know what they're pointing at.

They're pointing to my board and they're asking their people, what level of effort is that?

Was that not enough, just enough, good enough or excellence?

What I'm going to tell you is what I've come to learn and my time and management, just everything.

Executive leadership, just everything.

Most people.

I'm going to say this again.

Most people within this world, on an average basis, they'll hover between not enough and just enough effort.

And I'm telling you that's across the board.

Remember I told you earlier that I'm a firm believer that consistency is the key to success.

Well, this I'm telling you, as with all the businesses I've ran with, the teams I've led, with the consulting I've done, the coaching, I mean, just going through and through and through it.

I'm going to tell you most people in life fall in between the effort zone of not enough to just enough.

They do just enough to get by.

They do just enough to get to work.

They do just enough during their workday, they do just enough within their marriage, they do just enough within their relationship, they do just enough with their children.

They do just enough and just about every area of their life.

And usually what I find is people consistently are between the not enough zone and the just enough zone, meaning that there's many times in there they're really hovering at or just above not enough.

And I will tell you that sometimes in life people operate below not enough.

Now, I don't have a category for below that.

If it's not enough for me, it's not enough.

You might think of one, but for me it's a simple four point scale.

And when I'm reviewing our people and we're doing annual reviews, I have them use this same scale to communicate with our people.

You know, we may have a scale from HR that we use like a five point system, but within our environment, I have them reiterate this to these people.

What were their efforts throughout the year?

Was it not enough?

Was it just enough?

Was it good enough or was it excellence?

This matters.

I'm telling you.

This is a very important set of measurement that you can use.

And some people might say, well, that kind of sounds harsh if you tell someone they're doing just enough.

And maybe sobering, but I wouldn't call it harsh.

But as with anything within leadership, it's all based on your tone, how you deliver it as well.

I mean, is there a way to deliver that and make it sound harsh?

Certainly there is.

But there's also a way to do it in love and with respect and honor, where you can help that person become better.

You know, when we're using these measuring sticks within or this measuring system within our environment, it's never meant to berate somebody.

It's never meant to belittle them.

In fact, I'm huge, huge on giving praise to our employees.

I believe praise should come frequently.

It should be genuine, and it should be often.

And it should also be public.

And that might be the most important one.

You know, it's important to acknowledge your people in front of others, acknowledging them in front of their peers, acknowledging them in front of other teams or departments.

It's so important.

And if you ever, ever get the chance to see one of your employees out in public and you happen to see them and they're with their spouse or their children or their girlfriend or their boyfriend or whatever, you should always acknowledge them in front of their family.

Now, you don't do it if it's not genuine, because they'll see through it or they'll know that, hey, he's puffing me up in front of my family.

But when I'm at work, it's like, that guy, don't even talk to me.

But if it's genuine and it's who you are, it's important to honor those people.

I want to go ahead and share with you a story now of when I first explained this to my daughter Taylor, when she was nine years old.

So on this house that my wife and I used to have, it's a woodside, a home that we still live in previously, is what I should say.

My wife had decided that she wanted to have a little water feature in our backyard.

And on this water feature, she wanted me to build, like, a little pond for her with some stones that water would trickle down.

Real pretty.

She had a pretty design for it.

And then she told me she wanted me to.

She wanted to be able to grow some climbing rose bushes.

Behind it is a backdrop.

And so I said okay, and asked her what she wanted.

I had built her trellises and things like that before in our backyard to grow things of that nature.

But this time she had a design of a picket fence.

I'm not sure where she saw it on probably Pinterest.

When Pinterest first came out, it gave me so much work.

I'm just joking, but, but sort of serious.

But anyways, when so she had this design and I said, all right.

And so I bought the stuff I need to for the pond, put the rocks the right way, ran all the tubing, the water pumps, all that kind of stuff.

And then I went and picked up this picket fence.

Now, this picket fence, it was like a six or eight foot section of picket fence.

And what I did, when it stands off the ground, it's not the kind that's like a six foot tall fence.

It only comes up a little above waist height.

And so I go ahead and take the backyard.

I do my measurements, I go ahead, I stain the picket fence, I do all, everything I needed to.

And then I turn around and with the post hole digger, I dig two holes so I can drop the picket fence in it.

Once I got the picket fence to exactly the height I wanted, I mixed up some concrete and poured it in in each of both of the holes.

And then at that point as it started to set, I'm adjusting the fence so that it's level.

And around this time, it's almost sunset, and my daughter Taylor comes out.

She's nine years old at the time Taylor comes out and she says, dad, what are you working on?

And so I explained to her what I was working on.

But what her real question was is she saw that I had a level in one of my hands.

Now, I wasn't using a big level, but the level I have, it's maybe about 10 to 12 inches.

It's a smaller level.

And she saw me putting it against the picket fence to make sure it was level.

And so she inquired, she said, dad, what does that do?

And I said, well, Miha, this is a level and what a level is designed to do.

And I showed her how it worked.

I said, you see this little air bubble?

And well, when that little air bubble is between those two little lines, that tells you it's level.

And that means it's even.

Because the last thing I want to do is build a fence for your mom and it be crooked and her staring at it every day.

And I like it.

And so she understood and she goes, can I help?

And I said, sure.

And I said, but here's what we got to do.

You got to measure it on both sides of the fence to make sure that it's even.

You Then have to measure it from front to back, so to speak, so that it's not tilted forward, it's not tilted backwards.

Then you got to measure it across the top.

That ways it's even.

So, you know, I gave her like, maybe four or five different points of access for her to level.

And I hand it to her, man, little Taylor goes to work.

She puts it on there.

Pop, pop, pop.

I mean, she was done, I think, like in like 10 seconds, maybe not on that.

Probably like seven seconds.

She said, okay, it's done.

And I said, it's done.

And I mean, she.

She had spent any time on this.

I knew this thing wasn't.

This wasn't ready.

And so I look at her, said, baby, what do you mean it's done?

And she goes, yeah, it's done.

And I said, miha, would you say that you did your very best on this?

And she looked at it and thought.

She goes, well, it's good enough.

When I heard that, I knew it was time for my Miha, my little daughter, to learn a lesson.

I said, baby, I want to explain something to you.

After we go to bed tonight and the sun goes down.

If the Maker almighty himself, if God almighty, decided to come to our backyard because he desired to go for a stroll during the cool of the night, because he knew what you were working on today and he decided he wanted to walk in our backyard, this is the maker himself, and he walked by your fence.

What?

He turned around and look at it and be man.

Now, that is excellence.

Or would he look at it and go, taylor, Taylor, Taylor.

Because he knew it was only good enough.

I said, baby, how we do things matters, and how you do some things is a reflection on how you do all things.

If God almighty comes down to our house tonight and he looks at that, is he going to acknowledge that as your best?

Now, Miha, if that's your best, then I'm pleased with that.

But I want you to search down inside and you tell me, is that your best?

Now, I want you to understand that as a parent, I wasn't asking her for my best.

I was asking her for her best.

Now, her best may exceed my best at some point in life, and maybe it already has.

And maybe in different areas it is.

I mean, if it's in the area of like, drawing, oh, she probably exceeded me far before, a long time ago.

Or singing, she probably exceeded me long time ago.

But in that particular area now, my level of excellence was higher than hers because I had more experience with it.

I was more experienced with the tools I was using and the craft I was doing.

But I wasn't asking for my level of excellence out of her.

Pay attention because this is speaks, this is heavy.

When you're asking for excellence out of your people, you're not asking for your level of excellence out of them.

You're asking for their level of excellence.

And so when I asked Taylor and if she would have told me that it was her excellence, I'd have been fine with that.

But I knew in my heart it wasn't.

And she came to that same realization.

She thought about that thing for a minute and she grabbed that level out of my hand so fast and she goes and starts working on the fence and she's measuring, measuring, measuring.

And now this thing that she took like 7 to 10 seconds to before.

We're out there for a while now she's measuring things and I'm watching her and I mean it looks like she's not even making adjustments anymore.

Right when I'm getting ready to tell her like, how's that look?

I mean she, she moves to another section and she's measuring, measure, measuring enough to where?

Remember I said we started this thing when she came out the measuring of it when it was about to sunset.

Well, it's getting dark on us now and she, and we need something to see.

So she goes, dad, can do you have a flashlight?

And back then, and that's like I said, this had been a while I had a BlackBerry back then.

You know, iPhones are just coming out and androids around, but I had a BlackBerry and it was fancy spancy man, that thing had a flashlight on it.

And so I turned the flashlight on and she's using my little flashlight for my BlackBerry.

And she goes, she steps back from it and she looks and examines it and I'm getting ready to ask her, hey, is, are you good?

And she goes back one more time, makes few more adjustments and she steps back, dad, that is my very, very, very best.

And I said, okay sweetie, that sounds good to me.

She hands me back the level, she hands me back my BlackBerry and we went inside.

I will tell you with everything in me.

With everything in me.

I know.

With everything in me.

I know that, I know that.

I know that God almighty, the maker himself decided to walk through my backyard in the cool of the evening for a stroll.

And I believe that when he walked through my yard that night, when he saw that fence, he came to examine the handiwork of a nine year old little girl who for the first time in her life understood the difference between not enough, just enough, good enough, and excellence.

You see, I didn't share the full story with you, but I took her through the same thing I've already shared in this video or this podcast, where I told her about those four different levels that most people operate.

Some of the context I gave her, though, that I'm going to give you now is that most people who are the high achievers in life, I'm talking the high performers.

These are the high performers, the achievers, what some people call the ballers of life.

These are the people that when they're working on something, they're consistently in the good enough category.

And they'll have little sparks or flashes of excellence, but they're good enough people.

And those are the people who are often seen as the overachievers.

They're seen as the people who they place in the top levels of management.

They made me grow into senior management or executive management because these are the ballers of life.

These are the high performers.

But even these people.

And understand, I'm not judging you because I don't know who you are, but you tuned into this podcast for a reason.

And even if you just stumbled upon it, I believe God is bringing this like a spoken word to you because he's helping you to unlock your next level of greatness.

Man, I feel that when I say that he's helping you connect to something new in this podcast so that you can connect with your next level of greatness.

And what I explained to my daughter is that most of those people, they operate, remember, most people, average people, average between not enough and just enough.

But your high performers, your overachievers, your ballers in life, those guys are the good enough people with flashes of excellence.

But then there's a different breed of people out there, and there's not many of them, but there's a different breed of people that everything they set their hand to, they endeavor to make it their very, very, very best, their excellence.

You see, when I looked at that fence that Taylor helped me level that day, it was beautiful.

But if we went back today and now she's 23, she might be able to do it even better today.

Now, some people might say, well, the ground might have settled down.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm just talking about just in general, her level of excellence has increased.

You know, if you followed me for any period of time and if you're just connecting with me, well, then I'm excited you're here.

But, you know, I started speaking on Camera many years ago.

And I remember what my first studio I was recording in looked like.

And I was so grateful to be able to have a place that I could turn on the camera, turn on some lights and do a recording.

But when I look at where I'm at now and the TV studio I'm at now, I'm in a TV studio where I'm recording this podcast now.

This is my fifth TV studio that I've had.

When you're looking at me through the camera, if you're watching this on video, most of you are probably watching a pot or listening podcast.

But if you're watching this on video, and just real quick, if you want to see it on video, go to my website, Neil Reyes.com NeilRayes.com and on there, there's a section where you can watch our videos.

But if you're watching me on this, the background that's behind you, everything that's here, oh, we've grown, we've come up a little bit.

We've had our come up in this area.

This is something that we did.

But here's what I'm going to tell you.

If I were still recording videos the way when I first started, when I first started, I had bought this little Sony camera and I put it on this little tripod and I'd have to balance it just right because the tripod, fully extended, was like 8 inches.

But the Handycam that I was holding was so heavy.

It was a bit.

A little one, but it was heavy enough that if I set it on there wrong, it would tip over and fall.

So I had to balance it just right with two legs extended on the tripod, one leg down so it balanced just right.

I turn on my lights and at that point I had went to like Home Depot or Lowe's and bought those little aluminum shop lights you'd use on your car to check your oil at night.

I turn those on and I get in front of start teaching.

And I could only teach for a few minutes because those things were pumping so much heat.

Man, I look like I just ran a marathon.

After about 15 minutes, I had to turn those things off and cool back down.

And you'd hear my dog in the other room walking.

You hear his nails on the, on the, on the laminate floors we had, or his collar.

And you may still hear dogs on small because we're dog people.

And when I'm here in the studio, I have my dogs with me.

And so sometimes they come in.

But what I'm saying is, at that time When I was recording, when God looked at what I was doing, he didn't see mediocre.

He saw my very, very, very best.

That was my very, very, very best at that time, with the resources that I had and that I believe for it was my very best.

But if I were still doing videos that same way today and recording the same way today, what was once my excellence wouldn't be excellence anymore.

It might have slipped to adjust enough.

Or for me, probably not enough.

You see, there's different levels in life that we grow at our excellence and as we grow in our excellence, it's so important, I'm going to say it again.

It's so important to grow what I refer to from glory to glory to glory.

In other words, it's your come up, it's how you grow as you develop, it's a development process for your teams.

It'll be the same way.

It's how you grow and it's how you develop.

And once you've developed in this area and if you can train this to the people closest to you, and I'm going to tell you that the reason why this measuring system is so effective is because it's really no respecter of age and it's no respecter of title or position.

This level of measurement works for everybody.

You know, earlier I touched real briefly on terms like KPIs and OKRs and those are good.

But the thing about a KPI or an OKR in business as their position specific, I'm going to say that again, KPIs and OKRs are almost always position specific.

But this framework that I'm talking about today, this framework of excellence, this can be used across the board, regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of title.

And something that you can use to measure your own efforts.

And it's also something you can use to measure the effort of others.

And where true success comes in within this framework is when you learn how to do it within your own life, live by it like it's second nature, and then you begin to train it to others almost like a train the trainer.

And I will tell you that everyone I've taught this to has embraced it.

Everyone I've talked to, they've appreciated it and they've grown towards it and they've liked it because it's something they can use in every area of their life.

And it's something that makes doing their job or their responsibilities just a little bit easier.

Because what they shift from or they shift to is they're now measuring the quality of Outcomes, you know, whatever they set out to do, whether if it's a directive that's given to them or an initiative, or if it's something they're just doing on their own.

And by being an initiator on their own, they.

This system gives them the ability to measure the quality of what they set their hand out to accomplish whatever outcome they were hoping for, whatever goal they were hoping for.

This allows them to measure the quality of that outcome.

You know, sometimes in life, people set a goal and they look back and the only measurement of success they have is, did we accomplish the goal?

Yes or no.

Or they'll turn around and say, hey, maybe the goal is a certain amount of sales you have to hit.

And then they turn around, they look back, they said, hey, we needed to hit this many sales within this time frame.

Did we hit it?

Yes or no.

Or maybe it's a project they're working on.

Maybe they're working on building a new website, or maybe they're whirling out new benefits to the company.

You know, maybe they switch companies that they're using for benefits and now they're rolling out new, you know, medical and vision and dental and that kind of stuff.

And as they're rolling that out, or maybe it's, you know, annual reviews and they're giving compensation increases or whatever it is.

This framework that I'm teaching you, it can be used to measure anything, I mean, anything.

And remember your four basic things.

Or I say four basic, but your four levels of measurement.

At the lowest, just not enough.

I'm sorry, at the lowest, number one, not enough.

Number two, just enough.

Number three, good enough.

And number four, at the highest, excellence.

And I want you to understand something.

If you adopt this for your own framework, you're probably not going to hit excellence all the time.

I don't want to paint an erroneous picture to you, but you at least have to understand where the mark is, you know, in closing, there was a time a while back, I remember I was doing, cranking out videos every night.

And I remember I was recording, I would record them, but after my family would go to bed.

And then I still in some cases had to go and edit it, produce it, or edit it, render it, load it, get it online so people could watch it the next day, because that was my level of effort.

There's better systems out there to do it in.

I've learned them since then, praise God.

I've learned them since then, but at that time, that was my best I was able to do.

And I remember sitting there one night, it was about 1:30 in the morning.

I just got done editing it.

I'm looking at it.

I caught something that I made a little bit of a mistake on.

To be fair, others who are watching it probably wouldn't have noticed it at all.

But sometimes when you're watching it, you could critique yourself a little harder.

And I saw this, and I knew it was something I should fix.

And I just.

I'm like, all right, I'm gonna rate myself real quick.

I guess that's okay.

And then these words came out of my mouth.

That's good enough.

Oh, man.

The moment I heard that word, those phrase, it's good enough, I knew in my heart I wasn't ready to go to bed yet.

I wasn't ready to hit the render button and go to bed and set my alarm to wake up a couple hours later so then I could load it online.

No, I knew.

And that moment, I still had at least about another 40 minutes to an hour of work ahead of me because I had to go back and fix what I had caught.

I made a mistake on.

Why?

Because it was my level of excellence.

When the words came out of my mouth, it was good enough.

I don't endeavor to be a good enough person.

I don't endeavor to live by good enough standards.

Me, Neil Reyes, I endeavor to live by excellence.

And when I set my hand to something or I say I'm gonna do something, I endeavor to do it with excellence.

Because just like this story I shared with you about Taylor, where I was new in my heart, and I asked her if God Almighty, the maker himself, comes down to our backyard tonight after we go in and he decides to go for a little stroll in the cool of the night in our backyard, and he comes across your fence, is he gonna marvel at it or is he just gonna be like, baby, you could have done more?

And I'm not trying to paint a picture of God, that he's harsh to people.

Good.

He's not.

And while this is not a Bible study, there are.

There are stories after stories within the Bible where he talks about where someone exhibited a different kind of faith.

And he marveled at it.

He said, faith like this, I've not seen.

Well, when I have him see the work of my hands that he sent me to do here on Earth, I want him to see a level of excellence he didn't see from others.

It was an uncommon type of excellence.

And so when I'm working on that project and the words come out of my mouth, that's good enough.

I knew in a moment I was gonna have to stay up longer.

And you know what?

I even said a prayer.

Lord, please help me get this done.

I'm so tired.

I want to go to bed.

But he helped me.

He sustained me.

It still took me a little over 40 minutes to get done, but he helped me.

He sustained me.

He gave me a second wind.

And I know the reason why he did so was because he knew that it mattered to me.

Because even though others, when they looked at that, might have not known the difference, I knew what the difference was going to be.

It was a standard of excellence.

It was an integrity of my heart that I would know the difference.

And while I wasn't after perfection, I was after progress.

And I had already progressed to the place within making videos at that time that that video had I rendered in and published it in that moment and wouldn't had met the mark of excellence I had come to expect of myself.

The standards I built, but also what I believe, this level of excellence that both God and others saw in my work.

Guys, I hope that this podcast has ministered to you today.

I want to invite you to swing by our website where you can connect with all of our resources.

You can go to our website@neil Reyes.com and on that website there are links to our ministry, there's links to our leadership, there's links to our coaching.

But one of the most valuable links that's on there is the links to all of our media.

We have our podcast and we have our videos.

And while we post those on social media and places like YouTube and others, the number one place to find out about everything Neil Ray is is@neil Reyes.com in fact, I'm going to tell you that even on our site, we post content that we don't even produce or post in other places.

You can only find it on our website.

I want to invite you to check it out.

I believe that there's something there that can help you tremendously, just like this podcast.

I'm so grateful you stopped by and I want to thank you for taking time to grow with us.

Be blessed.