The critical importance of 'Thinking Time'. EP #177 - Shorty

G', day, guys. Dan here, episode 177 this week, Shorty of the how to Scale a Video business podcast.

So had a great, great coaching call today with my VBA masterminders. And we focused on.

The importance of quiet time, of thinking time and of creating space in your day, in your week to have time to think about the decisions you're going to make in your business. Because all too often we don't spend enough time thinking about the decisions we're going to make that affect our business.

So, yeah, great session this morning. I just forgot to put my pop filter on. One sec. Might hear pop as it magnetically sticks on. So, yeah, you know, I've. I'm a big fan of a book called the Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham. And Keith Cunningham is a. Is a serial entrepreneur who has bought and sold many businesses. He's made millions, he's lost millions, he's made millions. And his book the Road Less Stupid talks about if you could reverse three financial decisions in your life, how would your life look today? So I started thinking about my first, my first flat that I bought in Greenwich for I think £100,000 back in 1999.

And if I hadn't sold that flat, it would now be worth £400,000 and, you know, 20 odd years. So quadrupled in value. And at the time I was too busy being a cameraman, enjoying life, partying, that, you know, getting into understanding property and investment wasn't something that I did as a cameraman in London.

So I have to take full responsibility for that, that I didn't spend the time thinking enough about that when it came to sell it, to make an informed decision. I took advice from someone I trusted at the time and that the fact is the simple change in decision would have been had I just refinanced that, taken equity out of the flat and bought a second place, I'd have two places. If I'd done that again with a third place, I would have three places, which means I would have had £1.2 million worth of property. Now instead I sold it all and now we still have a flat in London, it's got a bit of value in it, so it's not all lost. But the point being is that had I spent more time thinking about that decision at the time, I perhaps would have made a different decision. Now if we take that theory of the Road Less Stupid and Keith Cunningham talks about creating thinking time in your day and he actually suggests buying a thinking chair. And in that thinking chair you Sit for half an hour to 45 minutes a day with a pad and pen and you basically write down one question that you want to solve and, and you sit in the chair until you solve it. And so by, by sitting and thinking, you, you solve problems and you give everything a lot of attention. So imagine some of the decisions you make in your video business that are snap decisions that, that ultimately end up costing you. So I want you to think about creating some thinking time in your day. We had a public holiday here in Queensland yesterday, and there's a bunch of things I could have been doing, but in the afternoon I was just sitting in the sun watching a bit of YouTube, you know, doing the old YouTube scroll. And I, I was just like sitting there thinking, okay, I should be doing this and the next thing. But, you know, I'm quite enjoying just lying around and just having a bit of downtime. And during that process, I solved the problem. I solved the problem that had been just in the back of my mind and I solved it. Another example just, there's Sam's computer was a bit slow, so I was running clean my Mac and doing a kind of clean install of some things for her. And while clean, my Mac was grinding away. I was like, oh, I could just rush off now and do something else while I'm waiting, but instead I just sat and sat and I just chatted. And, and as I was sitting there, I said, oh my God, I've just, by sitting here and just being present, I've just come up with a great idea. There's going to be a revenue generator. Solve a problem. And I was like, isn't that crazy? Like, by just sitting and thinking and not rushing and not looking to always be moving and scurrying around to the next thing, I solved a problem that is going to be revenue generating. And so, you know, that idea of stillness, that idea of taking time out is really important. It's something we talk a lot about in the vba, you know, about making good, good decisions based on quietening the mind, based on taking time to think, not always rushing. And I used to be very guilty of, the more I do, the more I make, I can just outwork everyone else. And that whole notion of hustling, well, look, it's, it's, you know, it's not necessarily what you should be doing. And, you know, a number of my clients and I talk about this, you know, you don't need to be hustling, you don't need to be busting a gut. It's much More important that you focus on the right things and put your energy in the right places. So yeah, it was a really, really interesting conversation today because we were talking a lot about systems as well. And one of the things that popped into conversation was a system for yourself to execute better. So one of the conversations we had was around systemizing your business. And by systemizing I mean even the creative parts of your business. So creating, you know, loom videos of everything that you do to enable you to communicate and, and, and share the knowledge that you have with a team member. And you've got to get into a habit of creating systems. I actually have a label on my computer that says do it once, record it and create a system. So that I had to create a system for me to execute. Creating systems and what I'm able to do now, whenever I do any task that I've traditionally done myself, I simply stick loom on and, and I have my work set up in a way that, you know, I literally flick a button, flick a switch and I can record and I record systems and then what happens is I get them to my amazing assistant Milka and she then builds a system. Now we're looking to hire someone else at the minute and expand the team further.

And the way we're gonna do that is by having the new person come in and follow the systems we've already built. And Milka will manage that person so that, you know, I can focus on the higher value activ, the higher revenue generating activities. And Milka looks after all of the admin of the back end. She books my calendar, she interfaces with prospects, she's absolutely fantastic. But we want to expand her role so we need to expand some of the, take the tasks that she no longer is overqualified to do and find someone to fill that role in a junior role and then she can move up to more responsibilities. So in order to do that, I spent time thinking about it. I spent time thinking about in the last week or so I've just been going, how, what is my next move? What is my next move in the business? Where do I go from here? How do I scale this in a way that doesn't mean I have to work harder? I spent two days at an event with Ben Simkin last week and that was surrounded by amazing entrepreneurs. And so I get some perspective from them. But I then like to land, I just like to spend time thinking about it because I don't want to make the mistake I made in 1999 of selling my flat or 2001 selling that flat and then using the money to buy another place rather than refinancing. And that was just down to knowledge. If I take extreme ownership, it was just down to knowledge. So how can I avoid those mistakes again? By spending time thinking. So I want you to think about that. I want you to spend time asking yourself the question, how much time do you spend making critical business decisions? Are they often just in a kind of state of reaction, a state of firefighting? It's like, okay, quick decision, move that on, move on. Or are you spending time thinking about really what you want? You know, one of the things we do in the vba, both the foundation and the mastermind, is a module around, you know, what does success look like to you? Because if you're not clear on what it looks like, then all you're doing is building a business to make money to buy something later on that you think is going to make you happy. Whereas if you get really clear on what you want, you know, for example, I'm putting a whole heap of solar on a roof just now. And it's like, it's a fair, a fair amount. It's like 20 kilowatts of solar, a 10 kilowatt battery. It's a fairly substantial investment.

But I'm doing it because I can and because I want to, because I want to be greener. The benefit is I'm going to get money back every day by feeding back into the grid with green energy. And I spent a long time thinking about that. And now that we've got the house, I'm able to do it. It's really cool. So spend time thinking about what matters to you. What does success look like to you? Because success to me is living in Australia by the beach, generating power from the roof and ultimately powering an electric car and being completely carbon neutral. That's a dream of mine. And so I feel like I'm reaching my success whilst working with amazing clients, helping them achieve amazing things. So what's important to you? Have a think about, Let me know. Talk to you soon. You've been listening to the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast with me, your host, Dan Lenny. If you're a video business owner, it's hit the ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching. Then check out how you can work with me over@denlenny.com. don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review. And don't forget to share if you feel you've gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers, you know, then please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.