001 Joe Calloway –– Keep it Simple!

Welcome to Walking the Walk, the program for people who want to become better leaders and leaders who want to become better people. Start Walking the Walk with your host, renowned leadership speaker and author of The Sensei Leader, Jim Bouchard.

We're addicted to complexity. We live, we live and we lead our lives in a crowded, complicated, really a noisy world. But still, the answers to most of our problems are really simple. Not always easy. And leadership itself is really remarkably simple at its core. It's about building meaningful, productive, and mutually beneficial relationships. It's about treating one another fairly with honesty, sincerity, and genuine compassion. Again, simple, not easy. Well, today's guest is Joe Callaway, and in the spirit of full disclosure, over the past several years, Joe's become a genuine friend and one of my most trusted mentors. And I trust what he says because it works. Joe tours all over the world sharing his ideas on effective leadership and personal and professional excellence. His latest book, Keep It Simple, strikes at the heart of living and leading in our complex, uncertain world. Well, I'll tell you, his advice has changed my life and my business, and it will yours. And I can tell you that Joe practices what he preaches. He is someone who truly is walking the walk. So please welcome my trusted friend and mentor, Joe Callaway.

Well, thank you, my friend, and thanks for having me on the show. And I tell you, I'm excited about it. I wouldn't want to be anywhere anywhere else right now.

I can't tell you how excited I am. This is really an honor to have you here today. So anyway, let's get rolling. I believe we're live. This is our first episode. So hopefully everything, all the electrons are flowing in the right direction and we'll find out in about a half hour when we try to listen to it, right?

Cool.

That's good. Right. You know, Joe, years ago in my martial arts life, I learned a really powerful lesson, but it's one that really needs constant reinforcement, constant care and feeding. And it's just this, this simple idea that getting to black belt or anywhere else we want to go is really simple. All we really need is focus, discipline, and perseverance. But of course, along the way, right, there's a lot of blood, sweat, pain, and tears. So that's why we keep saying in martial arts, simple, not easy, right? Are we singing in harmony or are we in different corners?

No, we're— we are firmly in the same corner. It's not easy. But I tell you, it's a lesson that— and as you said about martial arts, it's a lesson in business and in my life that I keep relearning over and over and over, which is it doesn't have to be as complicated as we usually tend to make it. And as you said in the lead-up, Jim, I mean, my gosh, the life today, the world today is so complicated just by the very nature of things. And so I think it behooves all of us in all parts of our lives to simplify where and when we can. But it does, it takes effort and it takes intention.

It does, right? And as you know, it's just part of the reason that I was so excited to have you in this conversation today. But I know you work with some very, very big organizations. And, you know, one of the things I've learned in doing, because I came from a very small business world, so working with larger organizations now, it's really interesting because, you know, I really do believe that people are addicted to complexity. We have to accept that there's complexity when you're running a big organization, when you're running a big process. But how do you help executives that are doing that, are running a larger firm? How do you help them really simplify and get back to the things that really count?

You know, it's funny, one of the things that I get a kick out of doing is I'll be standing in front of a group of people, and whether it's small business owners or, you know, managers or C-level executives of big giant firms, whatever, whoever it is, I always love to ask this question. I'll say, raise your hand. If you frequently have this thought, you know, I'm making this way more complicated than it needs to be. And of course, Jim, every hand in the room goes up, including mine. And so we all have this natural tendency to overthink and overcomplicate things. And there are a number of ways that I kind of take a run at helping people simplify. But one of them is this, and step number 1 really has to be, and it's not easy, but it has to be, okay, what truly is most important? And you can make that, you can, you know, compartmentalize that any way you want. For example, you might say, what is most important in my business? Or you could say in my job, or you could say for our department. And I love the number 3, absolutely love it because it just works so well. So one thing I have people do is say, what are the 3 things that you have to get right every single day? What are the 3 things that you know in advance are always going to be a priority? And if you can get in, in the habit, in the pattern of always thinking in terms of those 3 things, then it can really simplify your life. And I've got, I've got tons of examples of companies that do that, and it works very well for them. And Jim, I think we can do the same thing in our personal lives, right? What are the 3 things that's truly most important to me in my personal life? And then you prioritize and make choices as far as what you do with your day and what you do with your time accordingly. But you got to start by knowing what matters most.

But that's so powerful because scientists have long recognized, psychologists have long recognized that the human mind operates, the human brain processes information in bits. I think they actually call it bits or bytes, I don't remember, just like we talk about with computers. But yeah, packages of 3 to 5 and anything more than that we really can't handle at any given time. And yet, you know, you see, and I'm sure executives you've worked with, just as I have, you know, I look at their wish list or their to-do list or their goals for the year. And the list is 3 pages long.

You and I have both heard at meetings an executive or a leader will get up in front of a group and say, "Okay, we've got 16 priorities for this next year." And what that means is they have no priorities because you can't have 16 priorities. It doesn't work. You can't do it.

Mm-hmm. You know, it's fun to be a Patriots fan this time of the year, especially this year. And one of the themes— they've always got a theme when they get this far— and their theme this year has been "one more." And I just put up a blog post about that. I thought that was such a powerful theme. You know, what's in front of you? What's, what's the most important thing you have to deal with right now? And it's just one more. It's whatever is right in front of you, right?

You know, you can make so many analogies with sports on this. One, one coach, and he's a Belichick comrade in arms, is Nick Saban, of course, coaching the University of Alabama. He and Belichick have a long, longstanding relationship. But Saban's approach is we, we win, win every play. We win one play at a time. And that the way you do that is each member of the team The players, the coaches, the nutritionist, the trainer, everybody, everybody has a process that they have to follow. And if everybody executes correctly on their process, we don't even have to look at the scoreboard. Just execute on that little handful of things, right, that make up your process. And see, this, the same thing applies to me in my work, in my business. I talk to people that say, "Oh, this is so complicated. I've got 1,000 things to do." And I say, "Man, I can't imagine that because my business is incredibly simple and I've really only got 3 things to do." You can't have 1,000, right? It's a matter of mindset. It's a matter of mindset. It really is.

No, I couldn't agree more. And see if we're— I believe we'll be singing in harmony on this as well. Isn't it really one of the primary functions of a leader to sort through all that? Because like you said, you can't have 1,000 things to do, right? Not here and now, right? So is it really the role of the leader to sift through that and help people to focus on the 3 or so things that are important here and now?

I think it's an absolute core responsibility of a leader to simplify the complicated, to create clarity, and to bring focus and bring a shared focus among among, you know, the team members so that everybody completely, totally gets it. We all know what's important. We all know what we're here to do. There is absolutely no confusion about our purpose and how to go about doing that. And yeah, I completely agree with you. I think it's one of the leader's core responsibilities.

Why do they have such a hard time with it? I can't tell you how many times people say, you know, It's again, maybe, I don't know, is the enemy of what you're talking about urgency, or do we allow too many things to become emergencies? What do you think the deal is?

I don't know. I think it's just so tempting to go the easy route, and this is going to sound maybe counterintuitive, but absolutely, I mean, all evidence points to this. It's really pretty easy to make things complicated. And it takes a tremendous— it takes a tremendous amount of work and effort to simplify. One of my favorite quotes, one of my favorite quotes about this, Jim, is from the guy that I consider was the Jedi master of simplifying things. And it's— oh, good grief. Apple.

Jobs.

Steve Jobs. Yeah. How do you blank on Steve Jobs? It was Steve Jobs. But listen to this. Jobs said one time, a few years before his death, he said, my mantra has become simplicity and focus. It takes a lot of really, really hard work to get your thinking clean enough to make things simple. But it's worth all the work because if you can make things simple, you can move mountains. And I absolutely agree with that idea.

That's a great example too, because part of the way that he renovated Apple again was that when they fired him in the first place, part of the push and pull was the fact that he wanted to stay focused on a narrow product line, right? And the company wanted to diversify. That seemed to be the sexy thing to do at the time. That's what most of the tech companies are doing. They're getting into everything, right? And he kept coming back to the simplicity. And I like the fact that you used him as an example for another reason. Wasn't the whole culture of Apple built on the premise that, you know, you're going to take something and you're going to take something that's a very complicated piece of machinery and you're going to simplify, make it simple for the user, right? That we can just pick up this phone, look at a bunch of pictures, push buttons and make miracles happen instead of having to be a computer programmer.

Absolutely. And he used to be famous for— I read the big giant, like 800-page biography about him. And one of the things that came up over and over is people would come in and say, okay, we've gotten it down to the 7 most important things. And he'd say, come back when you've got it down to 3.

Good.

And then they'd come back and say, we got it down to 3. He'd say, come back when you've got it down to 1. And he was also famous for stripping features away from the product. It's interesting. He wanted the product to do as much as possible, but he wanted it to be incredibly simple and easy to use. And I advise my clients all the time. I say, look, if you can make something easier for your customer, oh my gosh, in today's world, in today's marketplace, that's solid gold.

Right. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, the idea— I think what we're really talking about, it's always fun, and I know you've helped me so much through the years with this idea. You know, I always had a hard time. People don't know me yet. You know, I built this, this, this ideology, if you will, this philosophy from my martial arts experience and tried to translate it into business. But you know, you, you were a believer from early on and you were so much so encouraging, so much help because you said, you know, people need these ideas. I struggled with that. And one of the big ones though that, you know, it's very validating because one of the big ones that people talk about all the time now is focus. And of course that's one of, one of the great gifts that a martial arts life gives us, right?

Absolutely.

Now in martial arts though, we talk about focus like this and I'd love to hear your thoughts thoughts on it. I learned long ago that we can't force focus, right? That it's a process of letting go. And I think again, we're— it's similar to what I'm seeing in Keep It Simple, right? That we really have to let go of a lot of things in order to simplify, right? In order to let the sediment settle down so that we have that clarity that people are calling focus.

No, I absolutely love it. And when I work with my clients, about, okay, what, what's our action plan going forward? What do we need to do? I say, well, let's start with the most important thing. What do you need to let go of? What do you need to stop doing? Oh, here's one about— here's my current favorite quote, Jim. It's from Warren Buffett, of course, the financial guru of our age.

A good source.

I'm telling you, I absolutely love this. And it takes a lot of people by surprise until you really think about it. He said, he said the difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything. Hmm. Which for a lot of people seems very counterintuitive. They'd say, well, gosh, if you're going to create opportunity, don't you say yes to as many things as possible? No, you don't.

How could you?

Because what you end up saying yes to is a lot of things that distract you from what could be creating maximum opportunity. So I absolutely agree with you that the pathway to focus isn't in packing in as much as you can. It's in stripping away so you get down to what is truly essential, what is truly important. Let me master that. Let me be the best at those things that matter most. And I'm fine. I'll be better than fine. That's the key to success, I think.

No, right. Trying to force focus or concentration is fast. It's a fast, fast trip to the psychiatrist couch as far as I'm concerned. But, you know, it really can be. Um, let's mention it. We're about halfway through, so I want to make sure people understand how to find you. Uh, joecallaway.com. Make sure you visit Joe's, Joe's website. Uh, access him. Uh, he's— he would be a huge addition to your next event or conference. All his books are there. He's got lots of videos, audio programs, everything that you need to, to understand his ideas. Now, getting back to what You know, what are the top things that you run into that folks, especially again focusing on the idea of, you know, leaders that we're talking to, what do they tell you are the hardest things to let go of?

I think that, boy, this is—

this is a challenging question.

It's a very challenging question. And I'm going to give you a real general answer. But here's, here's what popped into my head, which is, I think, a real key is that people confuse— and I'm guilty of this too— people confuse activity with productivity. And they think that just having the wheels all spinning means that they're making progress. And it could be that all your wheels are spinning and you're actually losing ground because you're, you're doing things with a minimal, if any, return on that activity. And so one of the things that I have to constantly do is sift through the things that I'm tempted to do. You know, one that I think is a very common activity for everybody these days is social media, which I'm, I'm a fan of it. I do it. I recently— I'm, I'm on a current hiatus. I'm taking a break from Facebook. I'm just not going there because I thought, you know, this is taking too much time and the return I get from it really is personal more than business because I like to— I like to know, you know, heck, that's part of the way I keep up with you and Alex and what's going on with you guys. But in terms of productivity, I felt the need to spend a few weeks really just honing in on those few things that are most important. And so I cut— I started saying no to things. And I think a place for people to look is at that computer screen that's right in front of them. What are you doing on that computer that is not getting you a good return for the time that you're putting into it? If nothing else, just start there and peel away some of that, some of that excess excess activity that's not really creating any constructive payoff for you.

Yeah, you're right. And you know, that's challenging though, because sometimes I think one of the reasons we're addicted to these things is because somehow, you know, we get off on the feeling that we're doing something, we're checking boxes, right? Even though it's not, like you said, it's not producing results. And that's how we have to analyze it. You know, at the end of the year and the beginning of the year, I always like to guide people through the idea of reflection. And I get a lot of pushback in that area, especially people that are busy running big companies now. You know, they say, "Geez, I just can't take the time." And I've been, you know, I've— well, no nice way to say it— I've been a real jerk about it lately. I say, "You've got to take the time. You've got to take a day or two off. You've got to turn off the noise." Like you said, get disconnected from the social media, disconnect from the world, and really sit down and reflect. But a lot of people have a hard time with that because, like I said, it doesn't feel busy, it doesn't feel productive. Although I think that's one of the most productive things anyone could do.

Well, see, that's the thing, though. They hook those two together. They say it doesn't feel busy. It doesn't feel productive. Well, busy and productive are not the same thing.

Right.

They don't mean the same thing. And I think that's the big, big, big trap is that we think I've got to be busy. No, stop it. You don't have to be busy. You have to be productive. And sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop and take stock of where you are, what you're doing, where you want to go, and then say, let me make the smartest choices that can take me in the direction that I truly want to go. And I'm a big fan of reflection, not just at the end of the year, which I love to do.

Right.

I do it. I do it every morning. Mm-hmm. And I think, all right, how can, how can I make this day as productive as possible? And by doing that, I sift through all the busy choices and get down to the truly constructive, effective, productive choices.

I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, I'll put a shameless self-promotion plug in here for— it's a free book. I don't make any money on this, but I wrote a little guide for skeptics and busy people. It's probably the only one that you'll need on meditation. It's called Sit Still, Shut Up and Breathe. And that's what we're talking about, just taking 5 minutes in a day and turning off the noise. I don't want to lose sight— one of the things I admire the most about you, and this is one of the nice things about social media, is I get to see all the time what you're doing with your family, you know, with your wonderful wife and your daughters. And even though this program leans a bit heavily towards the ideas that people want to put in application at work, we can't lose sight of the idea that family is the reason that you're doing the work, right, whatever shape that takes for you.

And yeah, it's, it's, it's a no-brainer for me. There's no contest. People say, what's most important? What's the priority in your life? For me, it's my family. It's, it's Annette and my daughters, and it's my friends. It is relationships, pure and simple. And I don't even have any— I don't have any inner conflict about that. I've absolutely got clarity and It's, it's really liberating. You know, it's funny. Commitment is a liberating thing because some people say, well, doesn't commitment tie you down? No, commitment liberates you and frees you from the things that are not important and from the things that, that you don't truly want to invest your time in. I've gotten so good at saying no to stuff. I mean, I'm mind-boggling at the things I can say no to.

You're getting a lot of practice now, right? That's good.

I am.

Yeah.

Well, how did— how, what would you say are the top couple of things from Keep It Simple that you'd apply to the family to make sure— because we do the same thing in family, right? Especially when there's conflict, when there's conflict in the family and it's inevitable when we're living with people in close proximity. But, uh, you know, we'll tend to blow that up, we'll complicate it. Weave different, you know, and when you're extended family, there's all kinds of intrigue that's weaved in and out, right? If you let it go, how do you simplify all that?

Yeah, I think that the way to— well, one way to— and one way that certainly works for us is we are— we find things are much simpler if everybody understands everybody else to the greatest extent possible. And the way to facilitate that is you communicate, you talk to them. And we do a lot, a lot of talking in our family. And it's the greatest investment of my time that I think I can make, which is you don't have to second-guess what's going on when you're in pretty, pretty constant communication with people. But when, when you barely say hello to each other, you know, passing each other at the breakfast table a few times a week, then of course you don't know what's going on. And you think, well, I didn't even know there was a problem here. Yeah, that's because you haven't talked to anybody in your house for the last month. And so I do think it comes down to simple things like communication and mutual respect and caring from the heart. A lot of the same things that apply to leadership.

No, that's powerful. And because, too, you know, even within your family, you know, we see a lot of a lot of diversity of thought, and it was such a pleasure to have dinner with you and Annette down in Nashville a while ago. And it was funny because we recognized that there were a lot of things— Alex and I, my wife, you know, there's things that we see differently, there's things that you and your wife see differently, and then we saw parallels across, you know. And that's— isn't it fun when you sit at the table with 4 people and the conversation goes diagonally?

I know, it is fun.

But one of the cool things about that, like I said, realizing that I'm so supportive of what you just said, because it's the communication that allows people that have different thoughts or different feelings at any given time to sit down, respect one another, and to move forward as a unit, as an organization, as a community. And that's something that we've really lost. And again, we're back to that theme of complexity and simplicity. How complex are we making the most simple freaking things, especially political issues, instead of communicating and sitting down and getting to the root, which is usually simple. Not easy to fix, right?

It usually is simple. And, you know, politically, I'm one of those believers that 80% of us agree on a fundamental level on probably 75 or 80% of the issues. Yeah, we really do. And yet we are so obsessed with making the other guy wrong. And just, ah, that can get complicated, right? That can get very complicated. And I tell you what, not listening, whether it's business, whether it's with friends, whether it's with family, not truly listening and not making an effort to understand the other point of view, the other motivations, the other, the other person's challenges, it really gets in the way and makes things so much more complicated than they need to be.

You know, and I know you said this, there's a few, I know there's a few folks that are interested in listening to this program in particular because they wanted to hear you that are in the speaking business. And again, you helped me with this long ago. It resonated with me because again, martial arts gave me such a foundation for trying to embrace simplicity. Understanding, people understand, have to understand this, that it's an ongoing process, right? Perfection is not a destination, it's a process. And I struggle with it as much as anybody, but I've learned how to constantly return, right? Get myself back in the right direction. If I'm constantly moving towards simplicity, then I'm doing okay, and it helps me weather the complexity. You've said it many, many times. You just said it before we got on the call today. This is a simple business. I would probably say most businesses are when we get down to it. I think you'd agree. Yep. Specifically for the speakers, why are so many speakers making it complicated, and how can they simplify that?

I think one thing that a lot of people in the speaking business are really guilty of is looking over their shoulder and seeing what everybody else is doing. All right. And saying, oh, well, I better do that too. I've got to do that too. And people saying, oh, well, I've got, I've got a coaching program, I've got online video, I've got downloadable, audible audio. I do consulting. I've got— you've got to have 26 income streams. And I love at the National Speakers Association a few years ago, a brilliant, incredibly successful speaker named Peter Sheehan got up in front of everybody and said, there's infinitely more power in a blue tip flame from an acetylene torch than there is from the 6-foot-wide flame of a flamethrower. And he said, you can pick one thing. You can say workshops. Or you can say keynotes, or you can do coaching, and you can be incredibly successful by putting all of your focus in one area or two areas, whatever it may be. And I think that speakers are guilty of thinking they have to do everything, and it's just silly. No, you don't.

Mm, I think, yeah, and that transcends a lot of different businesses. Part of it, I believe, is because we're constantly assaulted with sales pitches from all these people that tell us we should be doing this or that or buying their programs, right? And, uh, I think that's, that's something we all have to work on sorting through. It's— that's another one of the downsides of the social media marketing and whatnot, right?

Yep, I think it is. I think it is.

There you go. We're almost out of time for today. Obviously, we've got to continue this conversation, and I'll just, I'll just put this out there that You are always welcome anytime you want. Anything you'd like to talk about relating to leadership, just give us a shout and we'll make room for you. And right at any time.

Love to.

But we have to, you know, what do you think you want to leave folks with? Just a couple of thoughts about, you know, how they can just sit down, reevaluate their life or their business. And like we've been talking about, let go of some of these distractions or detractions as well, right? And get down to the simplicity?

Okay, let me, let me go with something that's so simple that people may roll their eyes, and that's fine. I don't blame them. But what, what came into my head when you asked that was to ask yourself the question, what makes me happy? What, what is fulfilling to me? For me, it's, it's my kids and my family and my wife. Therefore, that makes a lot of decision-making really easy. I've stopped doing for the for the most part, overseas speaking engagements because I just don't want— I don't want that length of a trip away from home. But I do think that— and I'm not saying, you know, you may be just the opposite. You may— what may fill you up is more travel, and that's great, too. But to get clarity on what truly is most important and then let that drive what you say yes to and what you say no to.

That's powerful. That's power. I hope people understand what you're saying there. And I want to just revisit one thing before we leave. You know, I was taking some notes as you were talking, and you said— tell me if I'm quoting you wrong, I'd love to make a t-shirt out of this— commitment is a liberating thing.

Yeah, it's an incredibly liberating thing. That's when you truly commit to something, man, clarity just falls all around you. And it's almost like having a weight lifted off of your shoulders to get the clarity that comes from true commitment. I'm a huge believer.

You, sir, are a black belt Jedi master. But you know, I thought that—

High praise coming from you, my friend.

You've got it. You got it. Really quickly, let's go ahead and tell people how you'd like them to get in touch with you and what's what. Resources you want to point them to right now?

Listen, everything's at the website, which is just my name, JoeCallaway.com, and it's Callaway, C-A-L-L-O-W-A-Y. Listen, if they go to the videos page and go all the way to the bottom, they can get— I think it's 21 free short videos that you can stream for free. Years ago, we used to sell these things, the whole set of them, for $499 or something. Then we looked at each other and said, Why don't we start giving these away?

Right. Everybody else is now. We have to, right?

Yeah, we do. It's kind of— it's— and it's fun and people get a kick out of it. And it's a killer good blog on there. And I can say that because I'm not the only one that, uh, that jumps in on that blog. I have some, some compadres that help me with that every now and then. So yeah, come to the website. Everything's there. You can get the books there, whatever you want to do.

Well, I can say it. I'm going to— I'm going to repeat what I said before the the conversation started is, like I said, your advice has changed my life. It changed my business. And for everybody listening, it, you know, it'll change yours as well. Put what Joe Callaway talks about, what he writes about, put it to work. And, you know, I don't make this claim very lightly. Those, you know, who know me know that I attack the false gurus, even though that's cost me a lot in my life. But, uh, Joe Callaway is a guy you should be listening to. He is, he is the real deal. And what he, what he talks about will work for you and it'll, it'll really help your life. So I can say that from the heart. I use your advice and I appreciate it and other people will appreciate it too.

Well, you're a good man, Mr. Bouchard. Thank you very much.

Well, I appreciate it, Joe. We'll talk to you very soon and thank you so much for being part of the program today.

Take care, my friend.

Thanks for listening to Walking the Walk. Please share this episode. We encourage you to download and share the program with both experienced and aspiring leaders in your network. We also encourage you to suggest guests for future episodes. Complete information at walkingthewalkpodcast.com. Jim Bouchard is in high demand presenting keynotes and workshops for conference, corporate, and community audiences all over the world. To book Jim for your next event, meeting, or retreat, visit thatblackbelt.com. Www.beltguide.com or call Alexandra Armstrong at 207-751-4317.