99% of Beginners Don’t Know the Basics of Leveraging Time to Explode Their Business (Dan Sullivan)

Yeah, well, it's about changing your game. And you know, back in 1974, when I first started coaching, I developed a role model. And the role model was the microchip, which people were just talking about the microchip around 1974. And the microchip basically takes the speed of information and puts it into a smaller space. So the constant evolution of microtechnology over the last going on 50, 60 years now has constantly pumped more and more information to more space. Well, since that was taken care of by the microchip, I decided to focus on another area and take the most actionable wisdom and pack it into the shortest period of time. And so in order, what this does is that as you do this, you actually increase your impact on the planet. And, and so my thing just little quote here from George Bernard Shaw, that progress is impossible without change. We know that the microchip is causing change. The question is, are you changing with it? So it really requires of mind shifts all the time, actually changing your mind. So I'm going to pack 41 years of coaching. Well, my original attempt was to pack 41 years of coaching into 50 minutes. That was my goal. But as I got thinking about it over the last month, I decided to pack it into 30 minutes and then leave some room for your wisdom in response to what I'm showing you. So I've taken my entire coaching career and broken it down into three graphics. One of them is a circle. The the other one is four boxes, and the other one is a curve. So I'm going to go to the circle first and what this circle really represents. And what I want you to do is to actually get your pen out because we're going to actually write here. And the thing I'd like you to do is to consider this circle all of your time and all of your activities as they're presently devoted to your business. So the circle represents just where you are right now. And so in 15 minutes, I'm going to get you to change your mind about where you are right now. And then I have four boxes I'm going to show you. And in 10 minutes, I'm going to show you how you're going to change your mind about what you're going to do during the next 90 days. And then the upward curve that I spoke about. In five minutes, I'm going to show you how you're going to change your mind about what you're going to do for the next 25 years. So this is basically what I'm going to do in the next half hour. So the first thing I want you to do is to imagine this circle, that it actually has three parts. And what this circle really represents is your emotional reaction to different things that you're actually doing right now. Snapshot of where you are right now. And what A stands, what the first outer circle stands for, we call this A, and the second one we call B. And the third one we call C. And A stands for everything in your business right now, all the time that you're spending that really irritates you. So this is the irritating part of your life right now. How many of you can relate to that right away? Okay.

Yeah.

And it's very important to actually tell the truth about what irritates you, because if you don't tell the truth about what irritates you, you can't actually do something else. The second part of what your life is right now is B, and this is the okay part of your business. And usually the okay part of your business is related to cash flow. Okay. How many of you are okay with cash flow? Okay. It's not irritating, but also some of it is not very exciting. Okay. And then the third part, C really represents the part of your business where you're spending your time and your action with. With that is really fascinating and motivating. Okay. So you're very fascinated with this. It's new, it's got a lot of promise, and it's very motivating because it looks like it's going to be really big. It's going to be a lot better. Okay, how many of you have all three of those right now? You have irritating. You have. Okay, good. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to have you actually do a little list of the three most irritating things right now. Okay? And people can be irritating. So how many of you have people who are irritating? Yeah. Situations. How many of you have situations that are irritating? Right. And how many of you just have activities or tasks that are very irritating? You know, maybe obligations? How many of you have obligations that are irritating? Yeah. So anyway, it's just your truth, and I'm just going to give you an example of three of mine. And one of mine is spending any time with entrepreneurs who don't have any ambition. Okay. It seems like a wasted effort to me. How many of you realize that being an entrepreneur is a life sentence? How many of you know you can't go back? How many of you know they won't have you? How many of you wouldn't hire you? Okay. So that's really. So I tell people it's a life sentence. There's no out out. And so don't do your life sentence in an irritating fashion. Actually get rid of the irritations. That's why you became an entrepreneur in the first place. Okay? So the second one for me is meetings that don't have any impact. Okay? So we have a tool in Strategic coach which is called the impact filter. And, and what I require is that before we have a meeting, I want your impact filter the day before. Because I don't want to spend half the meeting trying to figure out what the meeting's about. I want to know what the meeting's about the next day. And I don't ask anyone to meet with me unless they get an impact filter. And then the next one is non strategic days and hours. So I have a time system where I only do three important things a day, okay? So sometimes I get my three important things done by 11 o' clock in the morning and that's my day. The rest of the day is not for work. Okay? And the reason why I figure three hours, three things a day is that in a five day work week, I get 15 important things done. How many of you, if you got 15 important things done in a week, that's a good week, okay? And I work 210 days a year. Babs and I. Babs is she who decides. So anyway, she who decides decided about 25 years ago that we take 155 free days a year. So we have. Which gives me 210 days. And if I do three important things, it's 630 important things. Six important things in a year. How many of you, if you did 630 important things in here, it would be a good year and do that for 25 years and good lifetime for a life sentence. Okay? So that's yours. Now I want you to write down right now where you are this October 26, 2015. It really irritates you now and there's a huge bonus for telling the truth here, okay? Just tell the truth about what irritates you, okay? If you don't tell your brain what irritates you, your brain can't take action. Your brain can't see any solution to it. So just write it down. The moment you write it down, your brain starts finding the solution. Could be big or small. A lot of people won't write what irritates them because they think there is no solution. But the truth is there is no solution until you write it down. So Our brain just wants to know what to work on, and you're the only one that can tell it. That's it. Now I'm going to move on to okay. And for me, okay is is I like intro sales presentations. We started off where I had to travel all over the world actually to do sales presentations. Now they're closer to home and.

They.

Don'T irritate me, they don't excite me, but they're great. I mean, they're great for cash flow. And I'm still in a position where that's important for my company. So I do it, but it's not. I'd like to see a future where I don't have to do this anymore. And that's usually what okay things are for you. You'll do it right now. Another one is coaching the basic concepts. So we've been coaching for 41 years, and I personally coach 6,000 people. And there's basic concepts related to time and money and relationship and purpose. And I don't mind coaching those. I mean, I'm more excited about the new stuff that's being created, but I'll do it. And then the third one is there's new knowledge products that I'm creating and there's parts of the process that's okay for me. Lots of parts of the process are fascinating and motivating, but there's still some things that are okay. Okay. So this is a good area. This is a tremendous area. And what we want to do, as part of the logic of what I'm showing you, this ABC model is you want to always, every 90 days, be eliminating your current irritating. And then you want to systematize and automate the B's. The okay part. So that's kind of a progression. Eliminate the as, systematize and automate the B's. The Four Seasons Hotel has a great line which is systematize the predictable and humanize the exceptional. So the more you can systematize the predictable part of your business, it frees you up to humanize, which means creativity and all sorts of new kinds of innovation. And it's really great. And then the third one, C, is what I love. I've come up with this fabulous new idea. I'm so excited, and it's been about the last six months where I've discovered how you can score mindsets. And basically what I'm really discovering is that the whole world actually runs by mindsets. It doesn't run by products or services. It actually runs by people wanting to graduate in their Lives to a particular type of mindset. And I figured out how to create the mindsets, but not only that, I can teach anyone else how to create a mindset, A scorecard for mindsets that are important to you. So I'm very, very excited about this. Next thing is we have a part of the program which is called the 10 Times Ambition Program. And I really love it because I'm about 90 days ahead of my clients and I have to constantly come up with new stuff. And I'm very excited about that. And my final one is I've got a whole group growing number of my 10 times clients. A lot of them are in the room right here. Joe very much so. I've got Dean graziosi here. I've got Stefan visenbach. I've got lots and lots of people here and they're really changing games for other people. So I really, really love Robin. Robin's over here. Robin's a game changer. So I really, really, really love working with people who are game changers. And my definition of a game changer is that where all of your competitors actually become your customers and promoters. When you have changed the game of the entire industry, then your competitors actually become your biggest customers and your biggest promoters. And you can tell that's one of the telltale signs. How many of you would really like to do that? You would actually. Yeah, that's a huge thing. I really don't like competition. I like everybody else to be competing, but I just really don't like doing it. I'm the fifth child of two fifth children, and we kind of. I wasn't born with a competitive chip, so I was just born with a sneaky chip. Sneaky chip. I know how to bypass trouble. Okay. And I never thought competing was really a good use of time. Okay.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can simply go to join joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So the big thing here now, how many of you. This is clarifying. You know, it's kind of clarifying where you are. And you do this every 90 days. Like this gives you 90 days of work. And you can make a big shift. How many of you, if you eliminated the a's, automated and systematized the Bs, and then focused a lot more time on the Cs. This would be a big deal for you. This would be a big shift. Okay, well how are we going to figure out where we are right now? So what I want you to do, you'll notice the little boxes right under A, B and C. Your activities. What I want you to do is say what percentage out of 100% of your time right now? What percentage are you spending in A? What amount of time are you spending in B and what amount of time are you spending in C? And these are my real numbers for this quarter. And what I want to tell you is no matter how good you get at getting rid of A's next quarter, there will be a new bunch of as that irritates you. Some of the OK's right now will become irritating next quarter. And the reason is because as you get more and more into fascinating and motivating, okay, things become irritating. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Okay, so what I want you to do now is this is where you are right now. And what I want you to do is say what percentage of your time next time in 90 days do you want to be spending on A? And for me it's zero. Okay, Those activities, what percentage of those activities do I want to be spending? And I want to drop it down to 10. So I've gotten rid of 10, I've gotten rid of, I've gotten rid of 10% there. And so next time I want to spend 90, 90% of my time on this. Okay, really good. How many of you can see the shift? That's a big shift. 20% of your time being shifted to fascinating and motivating. That's a big deal. How many of you can get excited right now by the prospect of doing that? Yeah, that's really super. Now I'm just going to have you come down below this and I want you to say how you're actually going to do this. Okay? So one of our things is that the scorecard concept that we have, we've really developed it very well at the 10 times ambition level. And now over the next quarter I wanted to go throughout the program, everybody on a scorecard impact filter only rules. Okay? So sometimes I let people meet with me without an impact filter and I'm getting mad as hell and I'm not going to put up with it anymore. And so the next quarter, no impact filter, no meeting. And the next one is just to reinforce my three things a day. Okay? Three important things. And you know, if you restrict the number of things that you do in a day to a fixed number like 3, you only have one way improving, and that is since you can increase the quantity of things that you're doing, you have to increase the quality. Okay, so I'm an enemy of busyness on the planet. I'm a huge enemy of busyness. I think busyness interferes with people's growth of ambition. And I think busyness interferes with people's sense of courage. Okay. You can fool yourself by being busy that you're actually making progress. But it's a bit of a treadmill. Okay. And then I'm just going to put these in more of this as my information. But I want you to say the three things that you're going to do to automate and systematize B. And then with the 90% that I have here and you have another percentage, what I want you to do is, is to actually say what you're going to really focus on and what these activities are. So we've identified nine possible areas for growth, and we've identified nine activities that would lead to growth. And this is really super. We're really moving very, very nicely here. Okay, so this is cool. And now if you could only do one thing over the next quarter. If you could only do one thing, I'll let you. I know some of you are writing furiously. Okay. 60% of my client base historically have been ADD. And so I found that with ADD people, you got to do it really fast and you got to get them to write in small boxes that you can keep them almost forever and have them only write about themselves. I find the great. The greatest way to engage another human being is have the entire conversation be only about them. How many of you are quite engaged? Engaged when it's about you? Yeah. That comes from being a fifth child. I have a rule. I'm number 21. So when I meet a new person, I automatically assume that they have 20 more important things in their life than meeting me. And then if they are going to move me up into the top 20, it's because I'm creating value for them that actually engages them, but it has to be about them. So that makes life a lot simpler. The worst illusion in life that any of this was created for you. So what I want you to do now is zero in on the one thing that would actually be a game changer. What would be a game changer here? And you can only pick one. You'll do more than one, but I want you to have your focus on one. So for me, it's the. I have three game changers, and I want to get them into a digital platform. So not only do they have a scorecard, but they have a digital platform. And by. By December, January 31st, I want three of my game changers with a scorecard in a digital platform. And I'm working with Stefan here, bright guy from England. Not all of them are, you know, They stick out. All right, that goes for Americans, too. All right, so how many of you. This is revealing. So this is kind of like a really, really fast way of taking a look at your quarter. Now here's a real tip for you. How many of you have teams? Okay, go back. There's an extra blank one of these in your pack. Go back and do this with your team and allow your team the movement now to get rid of the irritating work. And a lot of the irritating work really is what your company used to do, but it's not really necessary. It's kind of like your wardrobe. 80% of it, you haven't worn in a year. So why do you still have those clothes around? Just get rid of it. And how many of you have people in your life that are like clothes? 80% of them. 80% of them, you feel some sort of obligation, but you actually don't act on it. So we get rid of that. Okay, now we got to do another thing. So we're going to go to the four boxes right now. And this is a little thing that I discovered probably over the course of my life. But most people want a change delivered to them so they can always stay in a state of capability and confidence. And that's what perfectionism, by the way. Perfectionism is absolutely the enemy of entrepreneurism. Because perfectionism is the demand that you be guaranteed up front with success before you'll actually commit yourself to it. How many of you have done that where you absolutely. You demand that success be guaranteed to you before you'll actually commit to the project? Okay. And the world doesn't work that way. It needs you to actually commit before the success can actually be created. And what that requires is courage. Okay? So commitment requires courage. So I want you to take the game changer breakthrough from the previous one, and I want you just to write from the bottom of the ABC page, write what you have in the bottom box and put that at the top.

Okay?

And so we have the create one on one game changer coaching process by December 31st. Okay? So we'll have that in place. And then this is really part of getting them digital. Okay. And then My commitment now, a commitment is the statement to yourself that I am going to commit to this even though I don't have the guarantee of success. And that's what entrepreneurism is, that you commit yourself before you have a guarantee of success. Okay? And I've coached entrepreneurs all over the world from 60, 70 different industries. And one of the things I notice is when entrepreneurs start to die is when they start thinking of having a courage free future. When you start thinking you're going to have a courage free, the universe notices. It's a bit like the Terminator. The light's going out like this and the universe starts wanting the parts back. When you tell the universe, I want a courage free life, the universe wants the parts back, okay? And you start dying, okay? In life. So with mine, by the end of 2015, I used all my experience from individual game changing coaching sessions over the past two and a half years to create a unique process that standardizes everything I know will be working for all existing and new game changer sessions in 2016. Okay? So game changer is the scary part of my life right now, okay? And I'm really. I just have to create it out of courage right now, the moment you start creating stuff. And each of you can analyze the five biggest problem breakthroughs in your life with this card. Okay? Every time you took a big breakthrough in your life is because you committed before there was a guarantee of success which required courage. The difference between courage and confidence is that confidence feels really good. Courage doesn't. How many of you, when you're feeling really shaky and you're feeling really, really scared and you're saying, oh, this is really terrible. Actually, it's courage. It's actually courage. And that's why a lot of people don't like courage, because it feels lousy. Okay? But the more you commit 100%, the shorter the courage that's required. That's really interesting. So I'm into short courage. I've tested long courage, and I like short courage. I like courage that's maybe 24 hour courage. 15 minutes is even better. 15 minutes is better. You know, then there's some people, crazy people like Peter Diamantis, who has a lifetime of courage, lifetime of courage. I'm not that advanced yet. Okay, then the courage is that I hate going back. First of all, I have to go back and do an activity that I actually hate. And I have to collect all my notes over the last two and a half years and I got to organize them because I'm the only one who knows where they are. And I'm the only one who knows how they actually connect with each other. So part of courage is for a while doing a particular type activity that moves you to the next level. But you're going to have to put in the time to actually do that. How many of you have something right now that it requires a very unpleasant activity on your part for a period of time. But if once you get it finished, then you never have to do that again in your life. And it puts you in a position where you can take a jump.

Yeah.

And so everybody thinks about courage, you know, like in a very heroic, medal winning terms. But a lot of courage is just what it is in your life right today that is required to go through to get to the next level. There's 7.3 billion people on the planet right now and each of them got up during this 24 hour period and they're facing something that represents the next jump for them. Okay, so one of my goals, I'll talk to you a little bit later, is that this is an exercise that's going to be online. It'll be an online app by the end of this month, probably by November 1st. And it's for phones, it's for pads, and it's for computers where you can just download this and use it. But what I'd like you to do is distribute it to everybody in your network. Because I have a goal and this is my influence from Peter Diamantis, that by 2039 we have a billion people on the planet using this exercise to basically grow on a daily basis. It'll be one out of nine people. And if you have one out of nine people actually going through courage on a day makes everything better. Just makes it. What they're doing, I have no idea, nor do I care. I just want them moving forward on the thing that gives them courage. That's all I want to do. And then once we get this, you get a capability out of it. So it's the commitment and the courage that actually creates capability. So it's a bit like the commercials. Apply, lather, rinse, reapply. This is the same thing here. So the same thing is you have to. Commitment creates courage. Courage creates capability. Capability creates confidence. So the next one is confidence, okay? And see, this is what people really, really want. But they want confidence given to them. Nobody can give you confidence. You have to create confidence by going through commitment, courage and developing a new capability. And it's the three of those. And once you get the higher level of confidence, then you can commit at a higher level, okay? And as long as you keep doing this for the rest of your life, you'll always be young. No matter what age you are, you'll always be young. People get old when they try to have capability and confidence without commitment and courage, okay? So that's just how the world works and what it means to be truly human.

Okay?

So that's it. So I've. This is what your next 90 days is about. How many of you, if you did this during the next 90 days, that would be a real breakthrough. Yeah, yeah. And I've got a lot of people here. You know, we have 300 in the room. And each of you is working on something else. And it's you working on something else that makes the world go round, okay? Because you influence a lot of other people while you're doing it, okay? It's not big stuff. It's the thing that you have to deal with right now.

Okay?

Now I'm going to take you to the next one. And this is an upward arrow, and this is really important. So I did the 90 days. You've just done the ABC to set this up. And then you did the four Cs. And now I'm going to show you that if you do the ABC and you do the four C's every day or every. At the beginning of every 90 days, that just locks you in just for the next 90 days. So in my program at Strategic Coach, the time period I get everybody to think about is 25 years, okay? So for me, I started a new 25 year period last year, 2014, and. And I'm going to 2039. But for you today, what you're doing, you're doing 25 years from 2015 to 2040, okay? So last year I was 70. So my next growth period, and this will be my biggest growth period is from age 70 to age 95. So when I'm 95, I'm more energized. I'm a lot smarter, I'm a lot more ambitious than I am right now, okay? And the reason I want to do that is because I want to do it. People say, well, why do you need to do that? I say, I do not need to do that. I want to do it. Okay? Most of you in this room are beyond the borderline of need. You're into the world now of want, okay? And want doesn't have anything to do with other people thinking about what you should do. Want is simply, this is what I want to do. And the reason why you want to do it is because you want to do it. How many of you that's actually relieving? There's no justification in the world of wanting. In the world of needing, there's total justification because you're expecting other people to do it in the world of wanting. Strictly your game. So you got the 90 days and then you do 100 quarters like this. So you do the ABC. So this quarter, which goes right up until the beginning of 2016, you do that. Okay. And then you jump to a higher level. And then beginning of the next 90 days, you do that. And you do this for 100 quarters in a row. How many of you think it would really take you somewhere? Yeah. And remember, each One of those 90 days is just 1% of 25 years. So if you blow one, it doesn't really matter. So what I do is every quarter I do five things. This is my number one thing, but I actually do five things, five multiplier projects. And it's like compound interest. See, people really grasp compound interest when it comes to money, but they don't actually understand compound interest when it comes to capability. So every 90 days I want to ratchet up my level, first of all, of operating in the area of fascinating and motivating. And I want to ratchet up being in a continual cycle of commitment, courage, capability and confidence. And do that every quarter. And it's like investing now in something that's going to keep paying over. One of the big problems of living in the microchip age is, is people's reduced time frames. And if you reduce your time frames, time speeds up. If you lengthen your time frame, everything slows down. Okay? Okay. So this is October 26, 2015. I'd like to take you down back to October 26 in 1990. And what I'd like you to do is tell me the three things that were really ticking you off that day. Nobody remembers how many of you though can remember what generally you were really excited about in 1990. How many of you can get a handle on that? So here's a tip. Our brain only remembers excitement. It doesn't remember getting ticked off. That being the case about the future, don't try to remember getting ticked off in the future. Just remember. See, the only memory worthy things that are things that are fascinating and motivating, nothing else is worth reminding. Doesn't last more than a couple days.

What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received and how did it change your business path and your direction?

I Think it was? Well, I received a couple of them. The first one was somebody said, don't spend all your money, kid, because it's really, really hard to make money and it's 10 times harder to keep it. I think that was one of them. And I think the other one was, you know, it's all about the numbers. There's only two ways to do business. Increase sales or decrease cost. That's it. And don't do anything because it's an ego play. Increase sales or decrease cost. That's it. And those things probably have been the ones and everybody else knows all the other ones. Of course, course, do what you love. Of course, do your research and everything else. But the room knows that already.

So Fubu has, it's had 6 billion in global sales. What are the key elements, secrets and requirements of building like a six billion dollar brand that people here can utilize.

Well in the days that we built it, I think that there are a couple of things. First of all, you know, in business, it's purely about distribution. I think that you can have the greatest idea in company or whatever the case, cases, but you don't have a way to distribute it. It's a pipeline, it's a challenge. I think that to understand then don't fall in love with your product where you think that you're creating something new. Because we will never create anything new. It will only be a new position or a new angle on it, a new price. I would say Twitter was, as I shared with you before, it was a note on a pigeon's leg a million years ago. And I didn't put three sleeves on a T shirt. I just created a movement around it. So it's always a different positioning. And I think those are the ways. And then after you get to a certain level where you have brand equity, I think it's creating a large amount of really amazing strategic partners. You know, licensing, whether it's a territory or licensing a different angle of your product is important. I'm not going to understand what they necessarily want in Japan, even though they want food in Japan. It's a different culture as well as I can do my men's business. But you and I were two guys. If you wear a 32 and I wear 32, there's two sizes, 32, there's 32 long, 32 short. If I sell a pair of seven or a pair of eight jeans to a female, there's 17 sizes because the thighs are too big, the butt's too big, gaps over here. So I would license that business to an expert in that area, because I don't have a lifetime to learn the ladies business as well. So I think that strategic partners are very valuable.

What is the road less stupid? How would you describe it?

If I gave you the opportunity to unwind any three financial decisions you've ever made in your whole life, how much money would you have? And there's not a person in this room that if I gave them the ability to unwind any one of three financial decisions wouldn't have more money. It turns out that the key to making more money is to doing fewer stupid things. That's true. I don't need more good ideas. I need fewer ideas that I think are good that I've executed on. And so I've had the experience over the last 47, 48 years of being in business of having done some smart things where actually it wasn't that smart. But in reality, I was lucky. I happened to catch a big wave, and I mistook catching a big wave with being a good swimmer. And it's what Warren Buffett is very famous for saying. Most of you have heard it. You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out. And so the key is not can I make it? The key is can I make it and keep it? Those are two entirely different skill sets. And in fact, they are almost diametrically opposed. What it takes to make money is very different than what it takes to keep it. And most people are so obsessed with making it that as they become more successful, they do stupid things, which winds up sabotaging their overall success. And I know this story firsthand because this is one of the reasons I appreciated you so much, Paul, and your presentation is because I've had the experience of losing a lot of money. $100 million of my money that I made. I didn't inherit it, I made it. You were better off than me because you cut the bleeding at plus 600,000. I didn't cut the bleeding until I was minus 50 million. So I went from plus 100 million to minus 50 million in a matter of 24 months. And when you do that, it takes your breath away. I mean, that's a major, major event. Not only because of the size of the money, but also because the loss is so devastating. And I had so much of my net worth. I had my self worth entwined with my net worth, which is a deadly combination.

How old were you during that time time?

40.

40. And that was during the. For real. In real estate.

Real estate, yeah. A lot of and what led to the loss. Look at your losses. It's not necessarily pleasant to think back on, but everybody's had some kind of loss that they've sustained as a result of a bad decision or excessive optimism. Unexamined assumptions, unexamined assumptions, faulty expectations, excessive optimism are killers. Arrogance is killers. Hubris is a killer for creating and sustaining wealth. So the goal to me is not to get it. The goal is to get it and keep it. You can get lucky and make it. And I know lots of people who got lucky, but the problem is they weren't able to keep it because they didn't have skills that would allow them to sustain. So the truth is, to me, sustainability of wealth is the holy grail. Making it. I can catch a big wave. I can get lucky. I can happen to hit a crease in the market at exactly the right point, and, you know, we can wind up being, you know, affiliate associated with you or Tony Robbins or any number of other people. And there's a degree of luck in all that, and there's a skill set.

In all of that.

And so I'm very much about, let's make sure that if we're going to all this effort in order to create the success, and people do stupid things in the creation mode as well. People oftentimes think that if I just improve my product, that that would somehow allow me to create business or financial success. And yet the truth is it doesn't require great product in order to make a lot of money. If I ask you to think about your favorite restaurant, the place you would go to have a huge celebration, you're thinking about it, you know where it would be. There's not one person in this room that's thinking about McDonald's. Not one. And yet nobody has made more money in the history of mankind in the restaurant business than McDonald's. How did it happen? Is it because their cheeseburgers are so good? No, their cheeseburgers are horrible, right? They are. Their French fries, on the other hand, are really good, but the cheeseburgers are horrible. What allowed McDonald's to. To make a lot of money was not an obsession with the product. It's never, write this down. This will be a takeaway. It's never what you do. It's how you do it. It's never what you do. It's how you do it. Southwest Airlines, their whole business model is put butts in seats and fly those butts from point A to point B safely. No mention of your luggage, Right? Your luggage is immaterial. To the airlines, whether it makes it or not, we don't care. Let's just make sure the person gets from point A to point B. Doesn't even have to be on time. Southwest Airlines has made more money in the last 10 years in the airline business than the rest of the airline industry cumulatively since Orville and Wilbur Wright. Now you think about that. One airline has made more money than everybody else since Orville and Wilbur. How'd that happen? Is it because their planes are so good? Is it because their first class section is so roomy? Is it because the food is so outstanding? Is it because the hostesses and stewards and stewardesses. Is it because they're so good looking?

No.

I can't tell which is older, the stewardesses or the airplanes. Right. It's never what you. Southwest Airlines success is not based on what they did, it's how they did it. You name me any product or service. I don't care what it is. Give me one week. You could say chewing gum, shoelaces, seminars, pins, socks, Name me any product or Service. Give me one week, and in one week I'll come back and name you one person who's made millions and 100 people that have gone broke with the exact same idea. The problem is, as entrepreneurs, we become obsessed with the product. We become obsessed with the either the quality and I'm not opposed to great products. That's not the message. The message is, what is it as a businessperson, what is it that we're focused on? The artist side of me wants to focus on the product and making it better and longer lasting and prettier and more robust. And I'm good with that. We need artists. The operator side of me wants to get busy and get a bunch of stuff done. I just, I got so much to do and holy cow, if it's going to get done, I'm going to have to do it myself because I don't know how to hire a team or keep a team or have a players or create a culture. I don't know any of that. I just got a lot to do. That's the operator side. The business person side says, wait a minute. The job is not to react to the problem du jour. What I need to do is leverage and structure. Write those two words down. That's the difference between a solopreneur and one person army. A solopreneur and a business owner. A business owner has mastered two things, structure and leverage. And without structure and leverage, there is not a way to create a sustainably successful business. I'm going to say the structure part a different way before I talk about leverage.

Yeah.

Opportunity without structure is chaos. The Achilles tendon of most entrepreneurs is structure. They hate it. That's why they started their own business, is because they hate the idea of having structure. And yet structure is critical for scaling. I hear a lot of people in here talking about scaling, or scaling is just a Silicon Valley word for growth. That's all it is. How do I grow this thing? Okay, well, if I'm going to grow this thing, I need structure in order to be able to do it. Otherwise I got kind of a fire drill working with a bunch of people doing a bunch of stuff, and it's not necessarily the most productive thing that needs to happen. Leverage, one of the highest forms. When I talk about leverage, most people think, oh, he's talking about debt. In reality, I'm not. I mean, debt is a financial instrument, it's leverage. But, but the more powerful form of leverage is who's on your team. So I'm going to ask you a question. If I gave you an opportunity to build a world class team of A players and the only people on your team were A players, I mean, seven footers, these are the Kevin Durants, they can do it all. If you only had a team of A players, how many of your existing problems that you have right now would go away, disappear? It turns out the problems that most of us are dealing with are not even really the problem. Unison where I need a little whiteboard, if I can get one right here. Joe just handed you a piece of paper a second ago and said thank you and said write down one of your biggest problems. So I'm going to ask you right now to write down on your piece of paper one of your three biggest problems. Maybe you just did that. Maybe you can refer back to that piece of paper. Maybe you're not going to have to share this, we're not going to talk about it. It's not going to be anything. So you may want to write really, really small so that nobody else can see. Write it really small and just write down or revisit one of your three biggest problems that you think you have with your business. Let me give you a thought. The exercise is over. You don't have to complete writing it down. The exercise is over. Every person here has an is line. This is reality. This is the way it looks. This is point A, point A. And the problem that most people have, in my experience, I know I have this problem, is that I'm not particularly honest with myself about the reality of my situation. I sugarcoat it. When I was at the University of Texas, every day I'd walk past a little message etched in granite over the the doors of a building. And the message was, you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So you know this, right? And every day for four or five years, I walked past this saying, and I went, I don't know what this means. What does that mean? You should know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Well, the reality, it dawned on me later, is that as long as I'm lying to myself or not telling the truth, I have no opportunity to make a change. So it's why addicts don't stop using is because they say, well, I don't really have a problem. I can stop anytime I want. Yeah, I know it's a little. I know it's a little bit. But, you know, the reality is it's. I'm functioning right. It's why alcoholics or poor people pick a topic. People don't tend to tell themselves the truth. This is point A. We also have point B. Point B is ought. This is the way I'd like for it to look. This is point B. And it turns out that most of us are experts on point B. We have massive clarity on the way we would like for it to look because we've done all this visualization, we've done all this goal setting where you make a goal and then you make it vibrant, and then you turn it into black and white, then you bring it closer and farther away, and then you put music around it. And so we're really good at visualizing what ought. We tend to suck at what is. And when asked what our problem is, we describe the gap. The gap between where you are and what you want is what you typically describe as the problem when in reality. This gap is not the problem. This gap is the symptom. I just ask you, Joe just asked you the last exercise you did, write down one of your three biggest problems, and everybody got busy real quick. We knew what the problem was because we were visualizing the gap between where we are and what we want, when in reality. That's not the problem. That's the symptom. The gap sits right here. This is. Sorry, the problem sits right here. This is the problem. This is the obstacle that I need to overcome in order to move the needle on my is line. In order to move the needle on my is line, I need to get clarity on what it Is that's truly blocking my forward progress. What's blocking my forward progress has nothing to do with where I am versus what I want. What's blocking my forward progress is the obstacle that sits right here. And it turns out, Joe, that the hardest part of thinking time is getting clarity on the problem. That is, if you don't have clarity on the problem, that is, you'll be tactical instead of strategic. So I say 10 pounds overweight.

What do I want to do about it?

Well, as long as I view the problem as being 10 pounds overweight, which is not the problem, that's the symptom. Hello. Hello. Are you with me that? Being 10 pounds overweight is not the problem, that's the symptom. But as long as I identify being 10 pounds overweight as being the problem, then what I will lurch to. Okay, should I buy a jump rope or should I join a gym? Should I buy Oprah's latest diet book, or should I get a personal train? Oh, I know what I'll do. I'll get a piece of home exercise equipment. That's what I'll do. If I just had a peloton bike in my house, then I would get in shape, which is why most home exercise equipment and most diet books don't work, because it's a tactical response to a tactical question. As long as I'm dealing with the symptom, I'm going to be dealing in tactical. And once I say it's not a tactical issue, I need to be strategic and think strategic and identify the problem that is. So here it is. And then I'll stop, Joe, if I don't have clarity on the problem that is, I'll build a machine for the problem that isn't, which is what we do 99% of the time. We identify the gap, call it the problem, when in reality it's a symptom. And we're highly tactical in our response because we have a tactical question that we've asked which winds up sabotaging our results. If you tell me your sales aren't high enough, I'm going to say that's a symptom, not a problem. If you tell me you don't have enough profits, if you tell me you have a crummy culture, if you tell me you have weak employees, if you tell me your balance sheet is screwed up, I'm going to look at you and say, all those are symptoms. What's the problem? So if I gave you an opportunity to rethink the problem that you identified, A minute ago. Is that really the problem? Really? Is that the problem? Is that the core root underlying problem that's blocking your forward progress? Or is there something below that, something buried where you got to get busy and figure out what in the world is going on? So business, to me, is an intellectual sport. It's chess. Money and business does not respond well to emotions. Warren Buffett said it. Optimism is the enemy of the rational investor. It turns out in business, optimism is your enemy, which is why one of the pieces of advice that you gave is so good, Paul, which was, we all need a board, we need advisors, we need people that we will listen to.

The higher you go or the higher.

You want to go, the greater the requirement to have somebody around you who will tell you the truth. Because I can't smell my own breath. I can smell your breath, but I can't smell mine. I can't see my own swing. I can see the shot. I can't see the swing. I need people around me, watching me swing who will give me advice. And then I gotta be willing to hear that advice. As long as I'm arrogant, right? Unwilling to listen, it does no good to ask. So business is an intellectual sport, and the people that win the game sustainably have got skills and tools, which is why I wrote the book Let the Road Less Stupid.

What is your business model and model for living as successful of a life that you can? And what's the most critical single element you focus on within it?

Having fun, by far. And I've gotten to that place in my life where it is. And many people in this room may say, well, you know, you have enough money to have to. To have fun what you're doing. But I really look back to the days and even when I started fubu, when I started fubu, even due to the frustration of the fact that we felt nobody wanted to support this community. Most of my friends where I grew up were drug dealers and things of that nature. And at that time, to be a designer, in 1989, 1990, the perception of a designer was they either Italian, older, white, Caucasian individuals, or they were gay. And I have no issue with anybody's sexual preference. But I decided that I love to dress and I wanted to do it and I had fun doing it. So now, even when I'm at this stage of my life of having fun, I'm excited about people I work with and people I have fun with. It's not because I have the wealth, because once I stop chasing my friends and hanging out and wanting to Be cool and make the money and get the girls. And I just stopped and told some. Tell a bunch of rough guys, hey, I want to make a couple of little hats. It wasn't easy, but when I did that, when I did that, I found success and I found peace. And then, you know, and that's just why I operate business. And hopefully that answered it. And I'm sure everybody up here has said the same thing.

What are the biggest dark sides of success and fame? I mean, you have people that write success scathing things about you if you become famous. You know that criticism.

I think the darkest side of success and fame is number one, you don't change. But the people around you say that you've changed. And they, you know, they. Certain people around you have said you change and you can't be yourself no longer with your friends and some of your family. I think that the. The challenge of knowing that you haven't watched your daughters grow or your, you know, you weren't there for your wife when something happened, and you weren't physically there due to the lack of time. You never know what that costs you. Now, I do know individuals who are making minimum wage who still are not home. Like, I'm not home. So it all is the balance of I'm not there, but I can. I can afford the finest doctors in the things for you in life. I think also the other challenge of success and fame is if you're a true entrepreneur and you're a business person, when you get home, can you cut it off no matter what? Are you talking to your husband or wife like they are somebody who's employed by you and your children? And can you. Can you. Can you get that soft side of you back? And I think that those. And again, that becomes a time management situation. Time's the only thing that we can't change.

So who has something that they would like to share? Because I would like to use the time we're spending together to help you get to where you want to go. Yes, sir. And say your name. And.

Michael.

Michael Wanstan. About to launch a new company.

I'd like it to work.

Like it to work.

Do you have a company right now?

Yeah.

Okay. Is that company working? Oh, you work for a company. You gonna quit or you gonna stay at your current company?

Yes.

Okay. Does the company. Current company you work for know you're going to quit?

No.

Okay. Do you want us to send this video to them just to give them a heads up? No, I'm kidding. I'm totally kidding.

There's a transition period.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, look, everyone that's gonna start a company works somewhere, you would hope. I guess the other options are leeching off the government or something in time, but no. So when are you gonna. Is the company already started or when are you gonna do this?

Would start it now, except it's Christmas.

So we're gonna wait till what kind.

Of company it provides the business to.

Business.

Chat product and some other stuff.

Chat products.

Okay. Okay. All right, awesome. Thanks. Who else? Someone raised their hand over here.

Yes, I'd like to systematize my business and launch it online and have actually have a following of 10,000 or more.

A following of 10,000 or more. Okay. What are they going to be? Are they going to pay you? The 10,000 people are going to pay, or are they going to be free? Is it going to be a blog, a podcast, a video series, YouTube channel? What is it?

It will be a training and development which will be a combination. It'll be basically a blog style, but it'll be a training and it will go out over 12 months and it will integrate various styles. Styles of training from video to written to interactive lesson plans.

Okay. And currently you coach people? I think one on one.

I do.

I coach people one on one and in small groups currently. And I'd also like that to be an access to much larger groups that they can come in once a month and do a live training with me.

Okay. And is it over the phone, Skype, in person, or all the above currently.

But the live training, I'd like to offer it monthly via some sort of Skype or video offering. And then maybe once or twice a year allow people to come in and.

Do.

Tony Robbins stuff.

Right, right.

Big groups.

Yeah. Okay.

Who's your ideal target? Market?

Innovative.

Spirit, aligned leaders. So in other words, people that are more likely to follow their heart in their mind, they're not just chasing the money, they're chasing a mission. And they're innovative. They have something that they see is a gap in the market. And they don't need gigantic audiences. They need those markets that they see an opportunity that will better a lot of people just by serving that one market.

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, you can definitely narrow it down to women, to specific industry, to religious belief system, to sexual preference. I mean, there's a million different ways that you can narrow.

Clientele's currently really diverse. But I'm totally willing to like hone in on entrepreneurs if that's a good place to hone into.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cool.

Is there anyone here that's in the professional cleaning or restoration industry, which is where I started. One, two. Anyone else? Three. Okay, awesome. What are your guys goals? What do you want to do in the next year?

Just starting up a business.

I want it to within a year to be turning $100,000 in profits.

Okay, cool, awesome. Thanks. Yes.

What about you?

And if you guys, if you really don't like being called on, just say I pass. We can act like it's a 12 step group or whatever if you don't want to talk. But I'll, I might call. I have primarily a janitorial business. From that we've spun off some carpet cleaning, air duct cleaning and tiling grout. And we're looking to double our janitorial business and bring on a truck mount system for our carpet cleaning site. Okay, cool. So when you say double, would you care, is it doubling the revenue or doubling the clientele? Doubling the revenue. Okay. Yeah. Okay, awesome. You double your prices or you can just work twice as much as you're currently working right now. One of the best ways to double your business is just whatever you're working right now, just double it. I'm listening to your 10x podcast and it says if you have a goal of going by 10x, you ought to hit 2x. Yeah. Growing 10 times is easier than growing two times because there's more juice, there's more enthusiasm, there's more motivation. And if you think at that level, not just give yourself bullshit affirmations about it, but truly say okay, what is the setup that I need to have in order to have the conditions of growing 10 times your. There's probably much more likelihood that you will do that. You want to share?

Yeah, I'm in my second month of business.

I just started a professional carpet towel.

How many? Three. Okay. How many have now?

One.

Okay. How many employees?

Two part time guys.

Okay. Any of you done this before?

I ran another company for about a year.

Okay. I like female owned cleaning businesses because they just have a different and it's funny about carpet cleaners, most of them are male. And those of you that don't know, I started my marketing business after being a dead broke carpet cleaner. A lot of you know my story. I was living off credit cards. I was paying money to actually stay in business. It was costing me more money to have my business than I was actually bringing in. Have any of you been in that situation before where you're actually paying to to have your company? It's a really dumb way to work because people will hire you and pay you minimum wage, which is better than paying to go to work. But of course I was unemployable. I didn't really want to work for anybody. And I had the entrepreneurial desire to have my own company and all of the things that seem like the benefits of that. And I read a Gary Halbert newsletter. So I started learning about the power of words and the power of copy. And so that's how I applied it to this small carpet cleaning company. And I went from $2,100 a month in average gross sales back in 1992, within a six month period, I was doing over 12,000amonth in revenue simply by changing the words and the campaigns and the promotions. But I learned how to successfully sell something nobody wants to buy. The interesting thing about being in the cleaning industry is that it really helps you learn how to be a better marketer when you're selling things that nobody really wants, when they're kind of resistant to buying it. And it allows you to understand the psychology of influence, because selling is influence and marketing is storytelling. So if you want to make more money, tell a better story, if you want to get different clientele, you need to tell a different story story. And your marketing is totally contingent upon what you say and who you say it to. On I love marketing. Some of you are here for the I Love marketing. Well, all of you are here for the I Love Marketing meetup group. But it started out of a podcast that me and Dean Jackson, who is just a brilliant guy who I've known For damn near 20 years, he started in the real estate industry and he very similar story to me. He was just a struggling real estate agent and he learned marketing because he needed to make his business work. And we studied the same stuff, read Gary Halbert. Dan Kennedy started applying it because a lot of people read stuff, but very few people actually apply it. And my strategies that my company has shared and sold and offered to people has generated over our ads and promotions and campaigns and processes that we can track, has generated over $2 billion in revenue for our clients. I've sold tens of millions of dollars worth of marketing programs over the years and have the highest level mastermind group in the world for marketers. We have 156 people that pay 25 grand a year. Whenever I speak, my typical gross revenue that I'll bring in when I speak right now, based on the way we're running, is about 150,000, 175,000 a day. So I don't do a lot of spending Speaking because most people aren't going to pay me that and I have to fly somewhere. Whereas I can do this stuff in this office, in this room with people that are running multimillion dollar companies. So the benefit is we get to hear just some of the best marketing strategies. Brendan Burchard's a paying client. Mike Koenigs, Jeff Walker, Dr. Daniel Amen, David Bock, Dan Sullivan, Peter Diamandis. I mean, just a whole slew of just JJ Virgin, a lot of health people. So, so we get the benefit of hearing all of that. However, it all started from just needing to figure out marketing so that I could survive. And so marketing was the single most valuable skill that I ever learned. And I think marketing is everything. Peter Drucker, the late Peter Drucker said, how many of you do not know who Peter Drucker is? How many of you know who Peter Drucker's just trying to see who's lying. That won't raise their hand whatsoever. No, it's fine. I mean, a lot of young people would have no idea who Peter Drucker is. But Peter Drucker's considered probably one of the greatest management minds ever. And he wrote the Effective executive in the 1950s. And I highly recommend you all read that book. It's a fantastic book called the Effective Executive. He was all about creating results and being, being effective. One of my favorite Drucker quotes is there's nothing more useless than doing really well that which need not be done at all. So a lot of you probably do things really well that don't produce any results for you that you're really damn good at and are completely irrelevant to helping you multiply and grow and build your business. And there's other stuff that probably makes all the difference in the world. And are you aware of it? He said, primary purpose of business. The primary purpose of, of business is to create and keep customers. Marketing and innovation produce results. All other business functions are costs. And if you break that down, the primary purpose of business is to create and keep customers. How do you create and keep customers?

Marketing.

Marketing, Exactly. And everything else is a cost. Innovation and marketing, that's pretty much how you will build and grow your company. So the whole key is to whatever degree we can answer questions, we can share strategies. I'll share one methodology, a process that we're doing that we've only shared with our 25k members. It's still in the development stages. So I'll just kind of give you guys an idea of how to think about it. Dan Oversees a lot of campaigns. I mean, we spent 363,000 on full page ads and Forbes, Fortune Inc. Success Entrepreneur in US Airways magazine last year. And I think we've developed a methodology where we can produce probably 10 times the result for 10% of what we spent last year. And no one's doing it. And you'll be the first group of people that I've ever shared this with, outside of people that pay 25 grand to hear this shit. But we'll share that later. And then Dan's running Facebook campaigns and putting together all kinds of stuff that I'm completely oblivious to because I'm sort of an oblivious person and I'm sort of just riding on fumes. I did a few smart things a few years ago. Now I just kind of coast. Just kind of.

Yeah.

What are all of the things that scaling up teaches and what are all the things that gazelles does that helps? I mean, because I want you to actually talk about the resources that you have. Because it's one thing for someone to hear this. What I hope is that when someone watches one of my interviews or listens to it and I'm talking to a bright person and the person actually can help solve problems, help them get to their bigger future where they want to go, that they have some pain. Because usually if they don't feel some pain and some hurt, they're not going to do shit about it. I mean, there has to be either some great inspiration or there has to be some frustration and annoyance. And you're like, I'm kind of sick of it. You know, Dan Sullivan has this line where he says, irritated oysters make pearls. And, you know, I want people to be in a pissed off state, but also not just letting them know, what do you do with it? Okay, yeah, I don't know what to do. But you have literally created just so much solutions for entrepreneurs. So what are some of the things that people will get out of scaling up? And also what does gazelles really offer people?

Yeah, well, and what we wanted to focus on, what Geoffrey Moore says is provide 100% solution. There's so many parts and pieces out there that's frustrating for business owners to kind of pull it all together. So we thought, look, let's give business owners a hundred percent solution. Let's get him the coaching support, let's get him the education, let's get them the technology tools, literally tools we've got in the cloud that you can run on your mobile devices so that we can help them kind of automate These components that are necessary to manage the chaos that comes with trying to scale up the business. Now we do that in how we started the interview in these four areas. And let me give you the test. First thing, why would you look at the people side of the business? Well, there it's purely your gut feel about are you happy? Because our happiness is really tied to the people we work with. I can tell you when you're not happy because you're having an issue with your partner. You've got a salesperson who's mucking up the attitudes of the rest of the salespeople. You've got. You got a customer who's got too big a piece of. You got a supplier that has you constrained. You've got a bank that is in your way of being able to scale up. You've got issues at home, you got a sick child and challenges with your spouse. If you don't get or you just can't hire enough talent to keep up with the growth that you're able to handle. If you got one of those, you'd better focus your energy on getting that fixed. And we built tools, whether it's your personal plan, your face tool, the processes in the organization, we help you source employees, how do you manage them, how do you retain them. These are all the nitty gritty things around people. Now, generally you're happy with the relationships in the business. Then we look at strategy. Strategy is very simple. Are you growing top line and gross revenue dollars as fast as you would like? And by the way, you can grow too fast. As Andy Grove said, more companies die from indigestion than starvation. But for a lot of companies, that's not a problem. You're not growing fast enough. That tells me your strategy is wrong. You don't have enough of what people want that they literally are beating your door down and standing 10 million in line on a Monday to want to buy your phone. So then we have tools to help you really figure out this industry dominating, competition crushing strategy that allows you to have a monopoly because that's what businesses want. Government doesn't want you to have it, businesses want it. And there's the essential tension of capitalism. So we help you figure that out. Now, if revenue's growing as fast as you'd like, then we look at your profitability and how much just raw time you're having to put in the business. Let me tell you what's sad, Joe. I've had so many friends double, triple the size of their company over 2, 3, 4, 5 years. Yet the bottom line didn't come with it. They're actually making less money, absolute money, let alone a percentage, and working more hours. And at some point you wake up and say, what am I doing all of this for? And most of them, rightfully so fire everybody, get rid of their fancy offices and go back when it was them and assistant working out of a spare bedroom and they were having more fun and making more money. And that usually is because they're sloppy in execution. And I gotta say, most entrepreneur companies are sloppy. And by the way, we know one simple metric, revenue per employee. It's crazy predictive, but I ask people today, how many employees do you have? Multiply it times 100,000 and you pretty well have guessed the revenue. Large companies, these big, big bloated bureaucratic machines that we make fun of, generate two and a half times more revenue per employee than most of us mere mortals do. And that's simply because we have sloppy process within the organization. And if you come back, then to what frustrates people you hire is they join your company and they have to both work with idiots. You didn't hire the other people, right? Or I got stuck. Stupid process. Things are frustrating. We can't even get an invoice out the door. We can't even get our product or service out the door without us having to work 18 hours, days, eight days a week to make up for this slop that's around here. And so we really help companies tighten up that execution. And then, look, you can get by with decent people, decent strategy, decent execution, but not a day without cash. And we're not talking about making payroll. That's important. But do you have the kind of financial muscle necessary to do some of the stuff we talked about today? You need to lock up that constraint. You need to get, you know, you need to buy one of your key suppliers. There are a couple of key acquisitions you need to make. You've got the cash to bring on that chief marketing officer. That's necessary if you're constrained by those cash resources to do what you absolutely need to do. Man, you age so much faster. And so we look at those four areas, we got tools in every one of those areas to minimize the pain that entrepreneurs feel when they're trying to scale up.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Well, I remember the first time I interviewed you, which I don't know how many years ago it was, it might have been a decade ago, I asked you about deadlines and you said that there's this misnomer that entrepreneurs work well under pressure but under pressure, they just work. Do you still believe that to be the case? I mean, do you have any thoughts? Because a lot of entrepreneurs put themselves on the firing line way more than they need to because they don't prepare in their just, you know, and look, I'm speaking from a guy who has gone through enormous amounts of, you know, add distractible shiny object pursuits taking on. I've become better than I ever have been. I think meditation has done more to help me than many things. But what are your thoughts about the behavior of these crazed entrepreneurs that are driven like crazy, but their drivenness is causing them enormous pain, broken relationships, poor health, all that sort of stuff?

You know, my thoughts are just what you said. And it's recognizing that this is both the source of our strength and the thing that gets in our way that the entrepreneur has to sort out. And Joe, we don't have enough time in this interview to unpack all of that kind of stuff that we just described. But I want to come back to this thing on the deadline. Let's take this big, hairy, audacious goal, this 10 year goal. Jim never meant for that to have a deadline. You don't have to get it done in 10 years. It's just like a North star that you've put out there that you head towards. And a lot of entrepreneurs beat the deadline and others take longer. It's just the fact that you know what the finish line is and some folks run the 100 meter, you know, sub 9 seconds and some take a little bit longer. But hey, we got at least get across the finish line and that's why you got to set those finish lines.

So we talk a lot in these meetings about unique ability scaling 10xing, working on your business, not in your business. But how do you actually do that? You need good processes. And we all come from different backgrounds, different industries and businesses, but one thing we all have in common is we all have processes. Whether you realize it or not, most likely somewhere between 100 and 1000 processes. Who here hires? That's a process. Firing is a process. Payroll is a process. If you have books to ship, that's a process. There's literally hundreds and hundreds of processes that it takes to run your personal or your business life. If you start well documenting your processes, you're going to find three major benefits immediately. So the first is risk. Now risk can be interpreted different ways depending on your business. So risk could be.

An error.

Like if you fuck up payroll, that could be an error. That could be a risk. So if that were a well documented defined process, you reduce the risk of messing up payroll. Another risk could be losing a key team member who here, if they lost one of their key team members, would really be in a bad situation right now. So that's a huge risk that you guys are having. You have bottlenecks in your company and you want to be able to remove those bottlenecks as much as possible. I just read a good book called the Checklist Manifesto. And in that book it's written by a surgeon and risk in surgery is death. So the main point of this book was by creating checklists for surgery, you can greatly reduce the amount of death or errors in surgery. And it was something staggering like 20 something percent or even higher just by having a stupid checklist. The second benefit that you'll see by having process is you allow for breakthrough and innovation in your company. So Howard gets in. Yesterday's talking about quant traders. I used to be a quant trader and as a quant trader, the bank used to force me to take a two week vacation every year. And the purpose of this vacation is to make sure I'm not hiding trades. But what always happened was when you have someone else looking at your book, even if I'm a thousand times smarter than this person at math, having fresh eyes on a process, when I came back from that vacation, I always had some improvement to what I was doing. Because it doesn't matter how smart you are, if you're looking at the same thing every single day, you're not going to see something that someone even less good as you will see. So it's going to spark innovation in our company. We're implementing a rule where we're rotating everyone every month onto different roles. People that were doing payroll are hiring. People that are hiring are now firing. There's monthly rotations. And this has been super critical for us to improve all of our processes in the company. And the third is you save a lot of time and money if you have a well documented process. Hiring people and getting people up to speed is way faster. And also you can then automate various things and have a robot do it. So we literally have hundreds of processes at leverage. But I thought that today I would share with you how we hire because for us as a business, we're a virtual assistant business. We have a lot of applicants. That's the core of our business is delivering high quality freelancers to people. So hiring the right people is critical to our business. And I figured that everyone here has to hire. So I'd show you guys how we do it. Now, this is probably iteration number like 200 of this process and it's probably going to be changed by the next time I give this presentation. But I'll show you guys where we're at right now for how we hire. So this is really the hiring process. If you go to workforleverage.com this is how people apply. So when you do that, you go to a WUFOO form. And in this form we ask some basic questions. Name, email, we show a little video so people get a sense of our culture. And then we do a few things that are a bit different. So, you know, resume is normal, we ask some questions. But the main thing that we do a bit differently is we found that it's a waste of time to schedule phone calls and interviews with people. So we have people do a two minute pitch and put it up on YouTube. So asynchronously we can basically interview them. So they fill this out, they select what kind of role they're applying for, whether it's a generalist, designer or developer. And when that happens, automatically a checklist is created in this tool, Process Street. I'll go through. You'll see the value of Process street.

As we go through.

I get no kickback from Process Street. I'm just sharing this with you guys because I find this tool really cool. There's a bunch of other tools that do similar process st. There's others, there's Pipify. It really doesn't matter which one you use. It's really the message here is you have to whatever you choose, it's important to, well, document and define your processes. So you fill out an application. It just so happens we got an application in today from Joe. So I thought that we would walk through and decide together if we want to hire Joe or not. So Joe's applied to work for Leverage. He filled out the WUFOO form. I got all the information here. And the very first step that whoever's in charge of hiring has to do is they have to watch the YouTube video. So let's see what Joe's YouTube video is.

Hello, Nick and Ari. My name is Joe Polish and I'm applying for the role of virtual assistant at Leverage. And I just wanted to let you guys know I've been a huge fan of the podcast and the book and I know I can bring a ton of value to the team. A little bit about me, I'm super duper tech savvy, opposite of whatever add. You know, people refer to that as I'm super detail oriented. I can type about 10 words a minute. Definitely the smartest person in the room. Granted, I like small rooms. I very much love details and I am super focused and my hobbies include, you know, juggling and riding unicycles and hiking. And I would really be honored if you guys would, you know, let me, you know, have this role.

So.

All right, so what do you guys think?

Should we move him through?

Oh, yeah, yeah, he's pretty perfect.

All right, great.

So we check off that we like the YouTube. Then we look at his answer to a question. We ask a question about usps. He answers, who goes to post office anymore anyways? That looks great. A few more questions. His resume we take a look at. We then send him an email congratulating him on moving to the next step. And then the next phase of the interview process is to test him and give him live tasks internally that we want to test him on. So we click this and now it kicks him off into stage two of the hiring process. So this is a little risky doing a live demo, but I think that it's not going to mess up. All right, so if you guys recall, he moved from the initial interview part. Now he's in sandbox testing. So this is cascading. He's moved from step one to step two. Now in step two, there's a different set of requirements that we're looking for. It doesn't need to be the same person that did step one that's doing step two. Now in this there's a bunch of requirements. We have to add him to various things. We have to put him on a phone call. I'm not going to bore you with these things. But then after that, let's say he does a really good job on his testing. Now we're ready to bring him on board. So that entails doing a background check for him and having him sign contractor agreement. Are you going to show us Joe's background check?

Totally past that.

All right, so in the background check it's really simple. We submit a background check. Here's some steps that it takes to submit the background check. So I'd have to log into on Fighter. This is not automated yet. This is one step where we still have to automate this. But then after this we are ready to send him a contractor agreement. And all I need to do is check that off. And he gets an email from hellosign automatically to sign a contractor agreement. And it pre populates it with the date, his name. All Joe has to do is fill out his address. It even populates the rate that we put in. So we figured he was worth 22 bucks an hour. And then all he has to do is click, sign, continue, agree, and then we automatically are notified that he's just signed the contractor agreement. And you can see here.

That now.

He'S automatically moved from the background check. I didn't click the right button, but he's automatically in the add to production list now because of signing that hello sign. So this process used to take about 30 minutes, and now as you can see, it takes around five minutes and it's still improving. So that's the. I mean, there's much more to show, but in a short period of time. That's really what I wanted to show you guys. So again, this tool you can use, this tool you can even document in Evernote. It doesn't matter. The purpose here is it's so critical for you to be able to scale your company by having well documented and defined processes. The automation part is kind of like the sprinkle on the cupcake. It's really the benefit is that you can have someone else sit there and follow a well defined, documented process and not have risk for your company. So my takeaway for you is on Monday, when you go to work, think about your processes and follow just three simple steps. Literally, just identify your processes, try to document them. You can even do it on a piece of paper and then hand that paper over to someone else and have them test it to see if they can actually execute what you've given them. And that is a quick way to test if you have a well defined process.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead, you're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.