297. RMG Agent Podcast Interview with Brian Gubernick Part 2 — No Days Off with Brian Gubernick

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Welcome back, No Days Off Nation. This is Kaitlyn with the No Days Off Podcast, and we are so glad you are tuning in today. If you tuned in to yesterday's episode, you heard us doing something a little bit different. We shared part of an interview that Brian recently did on the RMG Agent Podcast. And today we're gonna share part 2 of the interview and we really think you're gonna love it. So let's roll the clip and we hope you enjoy.

As far as superpower, I don't know if it would be superpower, but when I look back over my career, there's a few themes. Mm-hmm. Number 1, this is not like the most amazing topic, but I'll tell you what, man, there is really no substitute for hard work. And I start there, it's so elementary, but it's not as exciting a topic as so many others. Like we could talk about personal growth and development. I can't speak for everybody. I know you, right? I know you'll outwork anybody when the time calls for it. Me too. When I go back and hit like my history, I wasn't smartest. I didn't have the greatest relate. I'm not the greatest salesperson, none of that. But early in my career especially, you were not gonna put more hours in than me. Right. And I'm very prideful about that and I really believe that there isn't a substitute for hard work. Yes, over the course of time, Reed, we all have to learn how to work a little smarter. Mm-hmm, sure. But early in your career, I don't know, I mean, I would ask you, when you come into the office in the morning—

Yeah.

Are there others there before you? Are you staying later? Time on task was a superpower for me. I was blessed to have been raised in an environment, you know, by parents that just modeled that sort of thing. I was just very fortunate, right? So maybe some of you are from that background that are listening. Maybe some of you aren't. But I'll tell you, man, I don't think there's a lot of things that trump hard work, especially early in the career.

Man, I think that's, it's so powerful because it, you know, at least 3 times a year I hear somebody and they like, they come to me and it's like the light, they're ready for the light bulb to go off and they're like, Work smarter, not harder. Number one, totally unactionable. Number two, you're not smart. Anytime you're pushing the envelope of what you're doing next, you are stepping into an area that you're fundamentally not smart.

I totally, I mean, that's really well said. I think about, as we're discussing this, I think about, I'm a big Ed Mylett fan.

Oh yeah.

I really love Ed's message. I love how he interviews. And you know, Ed wrote a book recently. It was called what? "The Power of One More." "Power of One More," yep. And the entire concept is one more rep, one more step, one more phone call. And that's code for outwork your competition.

It is.

Do things differently than everybody else. Like I just am a firm believer, I'm a broken record on this, that if you're listening to this podcast, odds are you want different results. Than most everybody else. So the status quo average has a certain level of production. You want more than that. In order to get there, you've gotta be what I would call weird, right? Like it's not what I call, I mean, it's not even what I would call it by definition, right? Like what does it mean to be weird? It means to be doing things differently or being perceived by, you know, everybody else as different. As quite different than the status quo. And so I would say if you desire different results than everybody else around you, you probably gotta be doing things different than everybody else around you. So I'd ask like, what time are you getting up in the morning? What's your morning routine look like? Who are you hanging out with? What are you reading? What's the environment you put yourself into? What kind of accountability do you have? Like, these are things that the vast majority of people do not actively think about. And I would challenge everyone listening here today to look in the mirror and say, how am I different? How am I weird? And if the answer is I'm not different or weird, then I'd say you better go get weird if you want different results. Study those that have had success. You study everybody that, you know, you study lots of people that had success. Yeah. Business, we talk about like the, the, the Bezos or the, or the Gates or these guys are weird. How about Elon?

Oh yeah, super weird.

Super weird. Let's be clear on this. The guy wakes up every morning thinking about how he can colonize Mars. Right. Like, tell me someone that thinks that big.

Right.

That's pretty damn weird.

It is.

But even when you think about like those that have had success with relationships, right? Let's say relationship with your kids. Yeah. If you look at the way they're interacting with their kids, there's something different or many things different that they're doing that have led to the success that they have in those relationships.

What was it? It's weird.

Is it date night regularly? Do they have different rituals? Is it the framework of the conversation they're having? An outsider looks at that and goes, oh man, that's a weird conversation between a father and a son or a daughter. Yeah.

Yeah.

Heck yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah. Because they want different results.

Yeah.

So I— Man, that's so good. I think everyone should be thinking about that. You should be looking at your career right now and saying, am I different than everybody? And if I'm not, then maybe I need to figure it out. And for you and for me, I can at least speak for me, I realize I could be different by the amount of time I was willing to put on task early in my career.

Yeah. It's, you know, when I think about work, work is how we add value to the world. Like, it's, work is not something, I think our culture has kind of decided like the ultimate goal is to not have to work. I go to a beach and I'm, my plan is to sit on a beach chair for 2 weeks. I'm a pretty good vacationer.

Reed, I vacation with you. You are a professional vacationer. Let's be super clear.

I, I love it. I love it. But I get, I get antsy real quick because when I'm on vacation, I'm not actually creating value in the world. Mm-hmm. Right? That's, that's what work looks like.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that there's this, there's this incredible pressure towards mediocrity that we all, that we all face because anything that's not mediocre is gonna be weird. It's gonna be outside, it's gonna be outside the curve.

right?

And is that gonna be the fact that you show up as obsessive in your work? Is that gonna be— and work gets a bad rap because somebody is a workaholic. That's not work's fault, that's you, right? What does it look like to go all in and not set fire to everything else important in your life?

Yeah, you know, that's a difficult one, right? Because we've all been like, again, if you've been at this game long enough, you've certainly maybe had a few too many days when you're in the office longer than you should. Sure. Or maybe the opposite, you've had some days is when maybe you've been out of, disconnected from business for too long. You know, I think a great place to start with that, you know, there's a book that many of us are probably familiar with called The One Thing. Sure. Right? Written by a couple mentors of ours.

Yeah.

And one of my favorite parts of that book is just talking about this idea of balance, right? And I do think about this probably to an unhealthy level around balance because I wanna be, I wanna be, you know, an amazing businessperson and business leader, but I also wanna be an amazing husband and a great father. Right. And many think, well, God, you gotta give up one to have the other. And I know you've done a fantastic job with this too. I think you can relate to what I'm about to say. Within that book, when they start talking about balance, you know, this whole thing that balance is actually a myth. And the idea here is success is had at the extreme. So if you draw a line straight down the page, that would be your balance. But then, you know, on the left side is maybe work and on the right side is life. You are swaying back and forth like you are swinging to the extremes of each one of those respective areas.

Yeah.

You stay in the middle, you're balanced, and you're having really no success in, in either. You go hard at work when you have to go hard at work. You go hard at life when you have to go hard at life. The— I think the, the key here is to never stay in the red for too long in either one of those respective areas.

Yeah.

So when I think about, let's say I go all in on work. I can go all in on work right now. If I called my wife and said, listen, honey, there's some things going on. I've got a chance to really do something big here. I'm gonna go the next 5 days. Love you and the girls. I'm going all in on work. She would probably say, go get it.

Yes, yeah.

If I said, "Hey, I need 2 more days," she'd say, "Cool, go get after it." And if I called her out there and said, "Hey, I need 3 more days in the red, I'll come back home soon," she'd say, "Hey, you're starting to push it a little bit." And if I did this for a few weeks in the red, I would really have trouble at home because now I've completely disconnected from my family. I've missed my girls' events. I've missed many conversations with my wife. Things would get weird. My point here is, you get out in the red in work, and there's a period of time in which that is fine. You just can't go overboard. Now, same can be said on the other side of the coin. I could go on vacation for a week or 2 weeks or 3 weeks. For me personally, if I start getting into that 4th week, my work world, my business world will suffer. Point being, I can go out in the red because the extremes are gonna be had in the red. I'm gonna have the greatest relationship with my family during vacation. Mm-hmm. But if I run too long, things suffer. So when you talk about what does it look like, I do really think about getting out in those extreme points because that's where success is had, but not staying there for too long of a period of time. And if in fact I am there, I better swing it back the other way. I'll give you a great example, Reed. We're sitting here at this real estate conference right now. I am all in on work, right? Right. I will get back home on Wednesday night. I will work Thursday, Friday. My wife and I will go away just for Friday night. It is extreme time with my wife because I just spent 5, 6 days away from her. So I will swing the pendulum by design. And again, I know you're a master of this. Like you really get it at a high level. I think that's an art. I think you learn early in my career, and I know a lot of the listeners, you're like, man, how are you? How are you doing that? It's really hard for me to do. This is a learned behavior.

Right.

Like, we had to screw this up a lot before we got, and don't get me wrong, I still screw it up a bit today. I run in the red for a little too long in both of those areas, but I had to develop that muscle. Yeah. I think though, it starts with learning more than anything else actually how to say no.

You know, one of the things that really stood out to me about all of that was, Your wife is just a wonderful, wonderful person. She is, she's, I like vacationing with her more than you.

Everybody says that.

One of the things that you said is if I call my wife and I said, I got 5 days and I just gotta go head down and go to work. And she says, go get it. That didn't just happen. Like that's, that's years and years of personal growth showing up in a moment where her and the kids both say high five, dad. Like, not like, oh, we never see you, right?

How did—

was that a transition that you made in your life, or have you always been pretty good at that?

I think I've probably earned some of that credibility or right with my family, specifically my wife. I think over— I think early in my life, like, a lot of that stuff started to blend together in that I definitely— I'm guilty of it. I mean, I certainly was early in my career you know, especially when my first daughter was born, missed, you know, certain bedtimes and things like that. And, and I would, you know, I put up, put the picture of her in my office and I, I would, this is where it kind of started for me. I put the picture of her in the office as an infant and I would look at that picture every night and I had to make a decision.

Mm-hmm.

Am I going to stay and work on these emails or send out that project, whatever it is, or am I going to stop these emails, neglect that, to go home and put her to bed. And I'll be candid, there were days where I looked at that picture and I said, I love you, I love my daughter, but I got some stuff I gotta accomplish here.

Yeah.

Yeah. And there was other days I said, I'm going home to her. Yeah. My point here is that, that again was just the developed skill. I think going back to the original question, if you can, I would honor that sort of system consistently to where it earned me that, dare I say, flexibility and support. Yeah. If I constantly said I would be home at 6 and didn't show up till 8, I would probably have a different relationship with my wife today. In other words, she wouldn't, she wouldn't trust me. Yeah. She wouldn't trust I wouldn't be honoring my word.