Ep 235 - How To Push Past Overwhelm

Hey, everybody. Flip and Danny here, founders of the Freedom Real Estate Group family of companies, and welcome to another episode of our.

Podcast, which is called Freedom through Passive Income.

That's right. And welcome to another episode. And this episode is entitled how to Push Past Overwhelm. Yeah, this is a good one. This one is so good that we've been talking about it for over 12 or 14 years now.

That's true.

It is true.

Yeah. I think it's something that never goes away. I think that especially if you're an entrepreneur, you have kind of an a player type, overachiever mindset mentality. You're always tackling new things, and as you tackle new things, it doesn't mean that your old stuff isn't done right. And so you end up having so much on your plate. You're juggling, and then sometimes you start juggling too many plates and you're spinning and you're dropping balls, and you get overwhelmed. I just think it's. Even though you'll backtrack and then overcome overwhelm, it will come up again, and then it will come up again. And I just think it's something that we have to learn how to handle for the rest of our lives.

Yep. I agree.

So I thought that this would be. This is perfect timing.

Of course, I don't know when it's not perfect. Right.

But specifically right now, because, well, I would say it's not perfect timing. Remember when we hired our assistant, we went on vacation to Cancun. We did our dd.

Oh, yeah.

Like, we had lowered everything, and we had really kind of said not to overcome overwhelm. We said, that's it. We can't take on anymore. We're at the edge of life right now. We need a break, and somebody needs to take over everything. As long as the business doesn't burn down, we don't care what happens.

Exactly.

And so we took off, and when we came back, that really kind of went, hey, the business didn't burn down. A couple mistakes happened. That's what happens. That's fine. They learned from them, and it became a point in time where it was the best life I think I've lived as an entrepreneur. And I don't know about you.

Oh, yeah.

But then a few months after that, I was like, this is amazing. And of course, then we tackled new things, and different things happened in the business that drew us kind of back in. But let's talk about what we do, and let's use the example of the move. So we've got a lot on our plate already. We suddenly decide we're gonna buy this Florida house. We fly down here. Everything has to stop. The team starts taking care of everything for us. Right. We're grateful that we have that. And we just did four episodes about that. So you still had a lot on your plate. So did I. So how did you overcome or prioritize based on everything that you were juggling and then throwing the move on top of it?

Right. Well, I wish that 80% of our lives right now wasn't in boxes and that I could actually find this video. Cause I know I still have the video. And it was probably. Gosh, it's 2022 now, so it was probably 10 to 12 years ago. Danny and I were coaches. We had our own coaching program. And there's a video. And I know exactly what room we were in in our Texas house. And you had not a whiteboard, but you had the. The white piece of paper, the presentation pad or whatever.

Oh, yeah.

And you drew a giant elephant, a big green elephant. And you had. We did an episode called the Big Green Elephant and How to Overcome Overwhelm.

Yeah.

You know, and it was like, when you look at the big elephant as a whole, you can't eat that elephant, but now you can eat the elephant. Not that I condone eating elephants, but one bite at a time, you know, And. And. And over a period of time, just one bite at a time, all of a sudden, next thing you know, the elephant's gone.

Yeah.

And. And so when we got here, like. Like we had said about the house, there wasn't anything huge, but there was a lot of little things. And so when I looked at that, I was just like, oh, my gosh. Just the eyes roll back in the back of my head, and I'm just like, I'm done. Right. And so it was making a list, like, okay, I'm going to work on these today. I'm going to work on these tomorrow. Call the contractors. You're coming out tomorrow. Called the contractor for. You guys are coming out on Wednesday.

Yeah.

You know, and so broke it down. And of course, then one point, I actually had two contractors for the same thing come out at the same time. That was fun. And so, you know, so. But it was taking one bite at a time and scheduling it out. Scheduling it out. So that way I knew that today I didn't have to worry about all of these other things that are going to happen the rest of the week. Today I'm focused just on landscaping.

Yes.

You know, and that's.

It Yep.

And then. And then tomorrow I'm going to focus just on the pool. Once the pool guy comes, then the pool guide handles the pool. I don't need to worry about the pool anymore. Now I can move on to this.

Yes.

You know, and so it was just breaking it down and doing one. One step at a time and slowly checking boxes off of that checkbox. So that's.

Yeah. And literally, as those checks get done, it's ripping off those pieces of paper and starting a new list and adding to it. Right. A list that we didn't have to look at the day prior because we weren't to. That we are working on the top priority items. Now that those are done, we're like, let's take the bottom two that we're now working on. Now let's add three more or whatever the case may be. I've gone through quite a few pieces of paper. And then we'll apply this to how we did the unpacking strategy. Right.

One thing real quick. I want to interject this. You write down those. Those. Those lists of things like, like today's, you know, so. So today's day one. And so I'm going to write down what I need to do on day one then. And then. Oh, I need to make sure that that's happened. But that's on day two. So I write that down on day two. Now it's on day two. Don't worry about it. Yeah, it's not going anywhere.

Right.

It's still going to be there tomorrow. Don't in the back your head going, oh, you got to do that tomorrow. You got to do that tomorrow. No, worry about what you're doing just that day. And don't worry about it. Just tackle the things you're doing about that day. Don't think about the things you need to do on day two and day three, because guess what? They're still going to be there.

Yes.

So just leave them be. You wrote it down. Because you wrote it down. That gives you peace of mind. So now you don't have to think about it.

Yes.

Because tomorrow, when you look at your list, you're like, ah, there it is.

Yes. And we are the king and queen of brain dump.

Right.

We've got papers that we have, and particularly for this house, we have a notebook that was specific to this house. And different sections of the notebook are, what do we need to buy? What do we need to do? What is our budget looking like? How much have we spent so that we can go back and we can reference all these things. And when we're, like, doing this or that, whatever, even if we're out, you'll say something. I'll text myself. I'll text myself. And just like the work stuff, I always say when I'm thinking about work, I text myself why I need it out of my brain and in somewhere else where I can look at it later and not worry about it right now. Because if I worry about all of it right now and what's sitting in my brain, then I haven't written down and just get overwhelmed. And so just to kind of wrap this all up, because I know we're running out of time, the unpacking strategy became the priority was, well, what do we need? Yep. Okay. Well, we need polo shirts for recording our podcast.

Polo shirts and podcast equipment.

Yes. We need, you know, the bed to sleep in. We need new sheets. You ran to the store the first night because we didn't have sheets for the bed. So we prioritize based on what we need right now. What's most urgent. Right. And eventually it was like the kitchen. It's like, we are tired of going out. We need the kitchen done and unpacked so we can actually cook something here at home. And then these podcasts, perfect example. They were on the list. Even talking with Joe, our new operations manager. It had been a week that he'd been working and hadn't heard a peep from us because we're in the middle of the move. Well, we prioritized it where I was going to meet with him last Monday. I didn't think about it during our move. Right. It was on the schedule for Monday. And we figured it out. The podcast, we had it scheduled where last week we were going to record something, but we didn't because the move was so crazy. It wasn't urgent. It wasn't the highest priority. There was more things important, but we scheduled them for today. Why? Because tomorrow we ran out.

There's no more podcasts tomorrow.

So a lot of the things that could overwhelm us, we very simply said, what's the highest priority? What needs to happen today before tomorrow? And every single day, we would get what needs to be done by tomorrow. And we wouldn't look at tomorrow's list tomorrow. We would do the exact same thing. And it's tackling that big elephant in a way where you can brain dump and place it so that you're not thinking about it, and then you can just do things one at a time. And I'll do one last thing. This is what I'm getting ready to do once we're all unpacked. And now that we have an operations manager, Joe, the exercise that I'm going to do, because there's many exercises to overcome overwhelm. Many, many, many. We're just giving you an example based on what we've just been through. And it's the easiest one that when you're in chaos, like we literally just showed you how to do it during chaos, just get a notebook and tackle things one at a time and brain dump. But once you get more organized, this is what I'm going to be doing. Once we're all unpacked and everything, I'm going to be taking everything that I do, I'm going to track it and I'm going to say every 15 minutes, what am I doing? And remember we did a coaching thing on this and I actually had a sheet where I gave everybody, I said, here's your spreadsheet. Track everything you do every 15 minutes, just write down what am I doing? What am I doing, what am I doing? And then we had little columns and it ultimately said, is this a money making activity or not? And it allowed people to start delegating things that they didn't need to be doing. Because when you're an entrepreneur or when you're a leader in an organization, then you need to be doing money making activities. You need to be rising the ship, right? And more money has to be coming in. And quite frankly, every single team member should be creating revenue in some way, shape or form. There's articles about what team members should be producing in terms of income into your business. But there's also the joy factor. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to track my time every 15 minutes and go, what am I still doing? Now that Joe is here, what can I pass off to Joe? I'm going to keep the ones that make money or that I know that are in Joe's wheelhouse that where he's going to contribute to the organization in terms of making money. But I'm also going to keep the ones where I put a smiley face. I really like doing this one. Whether it makes money or not, I just like it. And this is also life is about having fun, not just doing the things that make you money. If it's an admin activity that I actually like doing, I'm going to keep it regardless. So that's another way to reduce overwhelm is to track your time, get rid of the things that you don't need to be doing, hire somebody else to do it, or just delegate as you see fit. But yeah, lots of stuff that you can do.

That's right. Yeah. And how many notebooks we have is. That's overwhelming. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you head on over to our website, freedomcapitalinvestments.com to join the investor club. And also while you're on the Internet and Interwebs, check out all the social medias as well. But we like to end all of our episodes with Invest Smart, Live Happy.

Bye everybody.

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