Stop Lying To Yourself - FDDTC #19
Devin Zander talks about the lies entrepreneurs tell themselves about productivity and work ethic. He pushes for measurable goals like OKRs and says growth requires embracing discomfort instead of pretending you're already doing the work.
What's up, guys? This is Devin Zander. And today we'll be talking about how entrepreneurs are lying to themselves and how it is ruining their business. Wasn't that fun? All those movements? This is why you guys need to watch videos so you can see these honestly, like, completely stupid movements. I do. Anyways. This is Devin Zander, your host. This is the From Delivery Driver to CEO podcast where we talk about lessons, stories, tales and adventures from going from a high school dropout in Jimmy John's Delivery Driver to the CEO of an eight figure software education company. Let's get into today's episode. So before we get started, I want to say that on a friend's recommendation, I started reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl series about two weeks ago. I'm already on book five. I cannot put them down. I'm sad. But book six comes out of my birthday, July 2nd. Matt, if you are out there, send me a signed copy for my birthday. I will pay. All right, now listen, let's get into today's episode, which is about how entrepreneurs lie to themselves. And I want to tell you right now, like, do not lie to yourself. And I'll get into all the different ways, all the examples of how entrepreneurs lie to themselves. But don't do this because it's severely you over. It really is. And the biggest lie is just entrepreneurs who say, and we covered this on the last episode, by the way, I'm sorry I missed Wednesday. I was on vacation and I thought I would record, but my wife and I were just so busy. If you were watching video, you would have seen me winking there. And I just never got around to it. And I'm sorry, I try. I really don't want to let that happen again. So I will be on top of it. Now, the biggest way entrepreneurs lie to themselves is they, they just tell themselves they're working hard. Because a lot of the time when someone says they're working hard, and we discussed this on the last episode, what are they really doing? They're working maybe like 12 hours per day actually. And look, if you only want to work one or two hours per day, so totally fine. But you cannot expect outsized, massive, life changing results from it because that's average. Okay, One to two hours a day. That is average. Now if, and the great news about that is to be above average, to get better than normal results than most people get, you only need to work three to four hours a day. Oh my God, that's insane. And then if you want outstanding results, you just work a Fucking normal workday. You work eight hours a day. But here's the thing is like most people, when they say they're at work for two, four, six, eight hours a day, they are doing what I said not to do. They're lying to themselves. They're telling themselves, oh, man, I worked eight hours that day. But how much time do they actually spend, like, fucking around checking social media, checking their email, talking on Slack, doing all these things? It's just busy work. Like, it's not, man, this mike is driving me nuts. It's not actual work that brings a KPI or a key performance indicator forward. And this is why okrs, if you've ever heard of those, are so freaking important. Like, there's a good book. There's two of them. Measure what Matters is the first one. And I actually can't remember the name of the other one. Let me Google it. I my computer in front of me. OKR book Apple. Let's see Apple on cover. So there's Measure what Matters, that's by John Doerr. And that's like a very popular book. But there was a very simple one that I found that was like, really, really, really good. Oh, yeah, it's called Radical Focus by Christina Wadke. And this is a very simple to understand book. But the whole idea behind it is that there is a goal that the company wants to reach. And then you have. It's not quantifiable. Okay, it's not a quantifiable goal. It's a qualitative goal. So that means it's like, you know, I want to be the most badass company on the planet. Right? That's just qualitative. Now quantitative means you can track it with numbers. So you set your qualitative goal, which is like me, we at SCUP want to be the number one e commerce training program on the planet. We want to kick everyone's ass. We want to be the best there ever is, the best there ever was with the happiest customers on the planet. So that is like a qualitative goal. And then what you need to do is you set like three to four quantitative goals, which is like, okay, to do that, we need to generate 5,000 customers, we have to create 600 ads, we have to write one email per day. And we need to do these different things, right? And then your life becomes easy. It's easy to actually get work done and not lie to yourself and make it feel like you're doing work. Because when you're doing something, all you say is, hmm, does this help me reach one of those quantitative goals? If the answer is no, then you stop fucking doing it and you never do it again until, you know. Usually with okrs, you'll change your goals once a quarter. You set goals for a quarter and then revisited in 90 days, right? Like, because your okr will change and then maybe that, that you were doing before will be relevant, but it's not now. So stop fucking doing it and stop lying to yourself telling you that you're productive. I have friends who say that they're super highly productive, but they just don't do, do shit all day long. And then I hear them telling conversations with people and they're like, yeah, I mean, I got so much work done, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, who are you trying to fool, man? Because when you tell lies like this, I want you to understand something. It doesn't hurt anybody else. No, these lies are really just damaging to yourself because by lying to yourself, the only person that's hurt is fucking you. Like, you saying that you're a badass motherfucker and you work super hard to other people, it really doesn't affect them at all. But by giving yourself that false belief that you actually are kicking ass and you're doing all these things even though deep inside you know you're not you, you're really only damaging yourself because you're limiting your income. You're also probably going to cause some weird mental health issues because you have this weird disconnect going on where you say you're one thing, but you're not, and then you feel inauthentic and then you feel like, unfulfilled and all these terrible different things, right? So that's like step number one, okay, is just when you're working, just don't lie to yourself. You have to be honest. And it's okay if you're only working like two hours a day. I mean, really, it's not you going to want to change that. And like I said, thank God that that's like average. Because, like, be honest, what do you normally do in a workday? How often do you just like, I have something I should do, right? And then you're just like, oh, I'll get to in just a second. And then you spend 10 minutes on your phone, you put it down, like five minutes go by, maybe you get like a fraction of work done. You probably only checked your email or you checked social media or something. You didn't actually do any work. And then you go back, okay, now you're back on your phone again, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, okay. And then you're back to it. And then you just, like, repeat this over and over and over and over. And then by the end of the day, you've only gotten an hour of actual work done. But you lie to yourself, and you're like, yes, got a whole day of work, baby. Let's go. Right, but who does that hurt? Like I said, there's only one person that hurts. It's you. And if you're, like, married or you have a partner or you want to have a partner or you have kids or something like that, those lies hurt them, too, because you're holding yourself back from your true potential. And by doing that, it means you'll make less money, you'll probably be less happy, because I'll get to this in a second, but. And then you just cannot provide the best life that you want to do or you want to provide for your kids, yourself and your family because you've given yourself a false sense of happiness because you're lying to yourself about how productive and how good you. You are at something where if you were honest and you just allowed yourself to feel a little bit of discomfort, you know, like, I'm not working as hard as I want to. It's okay, because it opens up the door for improvement. And it opens up, like, discomfort is, like, not a bad thing. And people need to realize that it's okay to be uncomfortable. In fact, you need to be uncomfortable if you want to grow. So whenever someone tells you that you shouldn't be uncomfortable, you should just look for happiness. I need you to understand that that is not a growth mindset. It's okay to be happy, but a lot of the times, the best forms of happiness come from pushing yourself from being uncomfortable and from achieving things that others told you that you couldn't or didn't believe that you could achieve. Now, that is a level of happiness that no one can take away from you. And you fucking went out there and you proved other people wr. You showed yourself that you are capable. You are badass. You can grow. You can do amazing things, right? But to do that, you have to be honest with yourself, or you can't grow because you're buying your own lies about who you are, what you've done, and what you've accomplished, which is just. It's not good. You know what I'm saying? So I hope that made sense. And I want you to sit and think about this. Let's. Let's get some homework for this episode. We covered the business aspect of it, but what about other areas of your life? Like, where are you lying to yourself in your relationships, in your fitness, in your diet, in your health? You know, like, where are you lying to yourself that damages you? Let me know in the comments. You don't have to, but do it if you want to. Other than that, just write it down. Start letting yourself feel uncomfortable so you can confront these things and take them head on and come out the other side like stronger, better, faster. Just like Daft Punk and improved. So this is Devin Zander, your host. This is the From Delivery Driver to CEO podcast. I publish episodes every Wednesdays and Saturday mornings, except for this most recent Wednesday because I was on vacation and I didn't make time for it because I'm an asshole. Sorry about that. But make sure you, like, comment, subscribe. And we're on YouTube, Apple, Podcast, Spotify, all those good things. So I'll see you guys this upcoming Wednesday and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Peace.
