Relentless by Tim Grover: How to go from good to great to unstoppable (Summary)
This book is packed with unparalleled insight into the mind-sets of the most successful and accomplished individuals of our time. As a multiple time member of Team USA, these principles have personally helped me reach the highest level of international competition and continue to help me experience success as an entrepreneur.
If you’re a creative business owner with big goals and you know what you need to do but you struggle to make consistent progress, I have a resource for you at the end of the post that will help you pinpoint your roadblocks. The three principles shared within this post will be key in reaching your highest level of potential and blowing your competition out of the water.
The author of this book, Tim Grover, trained Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dwyane Wade. He shares Relentless to reveal how the best get better…and how you can too.
Coolers, Closers, and Cleaners
Grover uses these adjectives to describe the three shades of high performers. He says,
“Coolers are good, Closers are great, Cleaners are unstoppable. You can be whichever you want. If you want to be unstoppable, you’ve got to make the commitment.”
Although he uses examples from his career training high level athletes, he goes to great efforts to point out that these categories are not reserved exclusively for athletes. Grover also emphasizes that the level of success and domination his clients experienced was a result of their mindsets, not their physical skills. He says,
“What they do in competitive sports, you can do in your life if you are relentlessly tough from the neck up.”
What’s the difference between Coolers, Closers, and the unstoppable Cleaners?
Coolers: Grover explains that Coolers are good; they work well with instructions, but when faced with a challenge, they often look to see what everyone else is doing and then follow the leaders. They often fall into passivity, lacking the initiative to take decisive action. This could look like procrastinating on important projects or struggling to commit to a direction – which we all know negatively impacts our self-confidence, value, hope, and pretty much sabotages growth. When new challenges arise, Coolers tend to discount their own abilities and kick the problem over to someone more qualified or project hop to something a little easier. This dependency on external guidance can lead to paralysis in critical moments, causing missed opportunities or even business failure. Coolers can do some great work and occasionally have some big wins, but rarely do they experience a noteworthy level of business success.
Closers: Grover writes that Closers can handle pressure and get the job done– if you tell them exactly what they need to do. They’ll have plans for every contingency and will always be prepared, but a closer is uncomfortable in unexpected situations. So this would look like a business owner who needs to adjust their business model in order to succeed but has a difficult time adapting to the changing market. This rigidity causes business to fail all the time. If you hesitate or procrastinate to learn and implement an important system it could cost you thousands of hard earned dollars. Closers will choose financial security and comfort in the short term over winning big in the long run. If you’re looking to stand above your competitors, you cannot prioritize comfort. This conservatism and lack of vision will most likely limit your growth.
Cleaners: Grover explains that being Relentless means that you are never satisfied, and you continue to create newer and higher goals as soon as you achieve your personal best. The focus is always on improving and raising the standard.
“If you’re good, you don’t stop until you are great. And when you’re great, you don’t stop until you are unstoppable.”
The cleaner is addicted to success and is driven to do whatever it takes to win. Cleaners do an excellent job putting the right people in place in order to win. Although they have extreme standards and would probably do the job better than others, they understand the importance of delegation to make room for scalability. A significant factor that separates cleaners from everyone else is that they do not allow emotions to influence their productivity and have the mental skills to persist through difficult challenges or setbacks. I love the reason behind their name, Grover calls them Cleaners because they take responsibility for everything.
1. They don’t complain.
2. They never blame anyone else for coming up short.
3. They never let anyone tell them what can and cannot be accomplished.
When something goes wrong, they just clean up the mess and move on. They stay calm when things get intense and never allow the pressure to please everyone else to stop them from doing what needs to be done. As Grover puts it,
“Relentless is about achieving the impossible [because] everything is impossible until someone does it. That’s a cleaner.”
Grover dedicates the majority of his book to a list of thirteen attributes he compiled from the Cleaners he’s trained. Below, I will highlight three underlying principles from the book and give specific examples of what each looks like in business. I will also provide actions you can take to apply these principles to your life in order to reach the next level.
1. Take Ownership
“Want to know a true sign of a Cleaner? He feels no pressure when he screws up and has no problem admitting when he’s wrong and shouldering the blame: When a Cooler makes a mistake, he’ll give you a lot of excuses but no solutions. When a Closer makes a mistake, he finds someone else to blame. When a Cleaner makes a mistake, he can look you in the eye and say, ‘I fucked up.’”
The reason this is so important is because success is only achieved through one's resistance to the feeling of failing. I just watched the movie Dungeons and Dragons— I love it, it’s hilarious, and has many life lessons. There’s this one pivotal part where the group hits a wall and the feelings of despair sets in and they just want to quit. They ask Chris Pine, who's the group leader, “aren’t you sick of failing?” he responds emphatically, “No! That’s the whole point, “We must never stop failing because the minute we do, we’ve failed.” Point being, Cleaners don’t make excuses for why they aren’t where they want to be yet. They are devoted to their craft and will make the necessary adjustments and sacrifices in order to experience their ambitions. They aren't interested in protecting their ego by explaining their mistakes. They own it and move on because they are dedicated to the process.
Application:
One way to apply this principle is to take a look at the major areas of your life and ask yourself,
“Do I take ownership of where I am?”
It is important to realize that our situation is a result of our decisions. If you’ve made choices that have prevented your success, develop the confidence to admit when you’ve messed up.
This is a great leadership skill that will garner respect and cultivate deeper buy-in from the ones you lead.
2. Commit To The Process
Grover speaks to the dedicated commitment of the Cleaner. He says,
“A lot of guys say they’ll do anything for that ring, but there’s a difference between saying it and actually doing it.”
“You cannot commit to greatness until your mind is ready to take you there…No matter what you want for yourself, whether you ambitions take you to the gym or the office or anywhere else you want to be, your ultimate power source will come from the neck up, not the neck down.”
“Anyone can measure weight, height, physical strength, speed… but You can’t measure commitment, persistence or the instinctive power of the muscle in your chest, your heart. That’s where your true work begins: understanding what you want to achieve and knowing what you're willing to endure to get it. That’s commitment.”
Grover gives many examples of cleaners intentionally putting themselves through challenges in order to push their limits. In business this might look like taking on challenges you aren’t yet comfortable with and setting a deadlines to accomplish it to increase urgency. Grover says,
“The key to working through resilience is to crave the result so intensely that the work to get there is irrelevant.”
Something important to note here is that emotion does not play a significant role in the process. In fact Grover warns against it. He says,
“The fastest way to tumble out of the zone is to allow emotions to drive your actions.”
This is why people often distract themselves when facing an important project. They experience an emotional trigger—whether it’s fear, uncertainty, overwhelm, embarrassment, judgment, frustration, or boredom—and their brain tells them to respond to this feeling by avoiding whatever is causing it. As this pattern continues, the negative feelings are reinforced creating the nasty cycle of procrastination.
Grover writes,
“[If you’ve got a deadline] and you don’t do the work today, tomorrow you're going to have two things you don’t want to do, then three and four and then five, and pretty soon, you can’t even get back to the first thing. And then all you can do is beat yourself up for the mess you've created, and now you’ve got a mental barrier along with the physical barriers.”
The first time I competed in the Olympic trials in 2016. I had a weight cut of about 22 lbs to get down to my competition weight. The discomfort and impending fear of having to drop that amount of weight caused me to procrastinate starting my diet. By the time I got to the event I had to cut about 13lbs. I had 24 hours to do it. It was brutal. But that experience forever changed my life because I never wanted to cause myself that amount of pain and frustration again. So I found a nutritionist, changed the way I trained, and I addressed how I was thinking about weight management and the drop was never an issue for me again. It reminds me of the quote that goes something along the lines of, “until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing, nothing will change.”
Application:
If this is something you struggle with, one way to address this issue is to ask yourself,
“What do I feel when I resist (fill in the blank) creating the content, making dinner, folding the laundry, calling my boss, working out, sending the email?” Take note of the feeling and then ask yourself this follow-up question:
“When I feel this, what do I tell myself?”
Lastly, consider how you might change that internal dialog to support positive effort over avoidance of the fear.
3. The Silver Bullet
So what’s the secret? The secret is, there is no secret.
“There are no secrets, only discipline.”
The very best don’t waste time looking for the secret recipe, they recognize taking messy action is the only way to win. You see this a lot when people feel like they need everything perfectly lined up before they take action. It causes paralysis, overwhelm, dread, and lowers self belief. So often we look for that expert piece of advice or process that will make our lives easy and our business an overnight success. The truth is, no one can make you good or great or unstoppable if you’re not going to do the work. Expert coaching gives you insights and a game plan but without action, it’s just words on a piece of paper. Cleaners do the work, everyday. They understand they are on the right path because of the challenges they face.
Application:
One way to implement this principle is with this road map to success:
Ask yourself: Where are you now?
Ask yourself: Where do you want to be instead?
Ask yourself: What are you willing to do to get there?
Make a plan to get there.
Act on it.
“The bottom line if you want success of any kind: you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Every time you think you can’t, you have to do it anyway”
Don’t Wait.
It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that every step you take towards your goal must be perfect. We're often led to believe that to move forward, everything needs to be planned out, flawless, and without mistakes and with a pretty bow on top. But that belief is what holds most people back.
What sets the best apart from the rest? The true difference-maker is their willingness to take messy action. Cleaners, those who consistently outperform their competition, don’t wait for perfect conditions or flawless execution. They don’t allow fear or perfectionism to paralyze them. They know that taking action, even imperfect action, is better than taking none at all.
If you're motivated to take your performance to the next level, check out the 3C’s Business Assessment to discover your strengths and areas of growth.
Stay relentless,
- Sammy
