Becoming Irreplaceable - I Love Marketing Episode #242

Welcome to I Love Marketing where Joe Polish and Dean Jackson talk about new marketing ideas, direct mail ideas, lead generation, lead conversion, getting referrals, stick strategies, email marketing, psychology, books, people, and even productivity. This episode is a special segment from an industry leader who is a friend of Joe Polish and Dean Jackson that we felt would be great benefit for you here on I Love Marketing. Also, Joe and Dean have put together a free report called Breakthrough DNA 8 Profit Activators you can trigger in your business right now. Visit ilobmarketing.com DNA to get instant access to that report and put the eight profit activators to place in your business today. Now let's get to this week's episode. Enjoy.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish, and.

This is the I Love Marketing podcast. Hello, this is Joe Polish, and I am going to be doing a very special and important interview with a guy by the name of Dave Crenshaw who's on the line with me right now. And I want to give some background before I introduce him. I had read one of his books, the Myth of Multitasking, a couple years ago, and it's the myth of multitasking, how doing it all gets nothing done. And I took a ton of notes, highlighted the heck out of the book, and made a note that I have to do an interview with this guy. And then I ran into him in person at an event for authors and speakers and people in the industry that I'm in. And we actually had a conversation and he has a new book out called Invaluable, which I literally just finished reading. And these are two small but important and in many ways profound books because they contain tremendous wisdom and processes and instructions on how to basically be more productive and create in the marketing world. I call it elf marketing. Easy, lucrative and fun versus half, which is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. And a lot of people just want to have an elf business and an elf life that's more easy, lucrative, and fun. And I think with David's advice, that will certainly help you do that. And so we've arranged an interview with him and I'm going to send this out to all my genius network subscribers. And also I'm going to put this on ilovemarketing.com so that our I love marketing listeners can be more productive. Dave, can you hear me?

I can. Thanks a lot, Joe. And by the way, please always call me Dave. David is what my mom calls me, or telemarketers. Okay. All right.

I'll try not to call you David. And if I do it Just means I don't like you. And that's doc will do. Well, let me read your official short bio so that I don't leave anything out. So for all our listeners, this is me pretending I'm actually talking, but I'm really reading. Okay. Dave Crenshaw has appeared in Time Magazine, Forbes, Sirius XM Radio, and the BBC News. His first book, the Myth of Multitasking How Doing It All Gets Nothing Done, has been published in six languages and is a time management best seller. His latest book, Invaluable the Secret to Becoming Irreplaceable, is also an organizational behavior and motivational best seller. Dave has helped thousands of clients worldwide harness chaos, get focused, and build invaluable businesses. And his website is davecrenshaw C-R-E N-S-H-A-W.com and I think you should run out and read both these books immediately. So, Dave, first off, it's great to have you on the phone and doing this interview across the country. Where are you at right now?

I'm in the Salt Lake City area. Okay.

And here I am in my home in Tempe, Arizona. So let's talk about both these subjects. You know, you have two books here, and I know in the short time frame we have that might be tough to cover them, but I want to just really provide our listeners with some really useful stuff that they can apply to their businesses and their lives and anything else that needs elaboration. If they like what you have to say, they can visit your website, they can go take your assessment tests that are free online, and they can read your books, which are very short and very much filled with useful stuff. Let's start with. Well, let's start with asking, really, what do you actually do? I mean, you write these books and everything, but you seem to be just someone that has a real sense of how to help people be more productive. So, I mean, what do you really do when people ask, what do you want to do when you grow up? What do you tell them?

Well, I like the phrase in that short bio about harnessing chaos. And I kind of view my job as that in particular when it comes to working with small and medium businesses. Because, as you know, Joe, there's no environment that's more chaotic than the one that the entrepreneur creates. Right. Right now, I help people who are managers and employees in these kinds of businesses. But really, where I made my bread and butter, where I started, what my background is, even my upbringing is really all about entrepreneurship, is working with entrepreneurs. I see Myself, as someone who helps entrepreneurs harness chaos, and I use those words very specifically because chaos can actually be a great thing because it creates a lot of energy, it creates disruption, it creates opportunities. But if it's not kept in control and not steered in the right direction, it can go all over the place and it can run all over the business and all over the person. And really what I do is I help people harness that chaos so that they get success, but they keep moving forward with a lot of energy. So, yeah, that's what I do.

Okay, cool. And, you know, I'm going to bring this up later in the interview, but you mentioned to me that you were diagnosed with off the charts add, adhd. And, you know, I definitely would be of that same group. And therefore, the ability to focus from everything, from reading a book and staying focused on it to jumping around is quite a behavior that if there's a fly on the wall and could analyze me, you could see a person who struggles to stick with one thing. I've done enormous amounts of work on constantly trying to improve it, which is why books like yours and your processes are very valuable. But I do want to speak to that too, because there are a lot of people that are very successful entrepreneurs that are just suffer from the inability to focus and stick with something, and they jump around everywhere. And so therefore, they think that multitasking is just, you know, if I get better at multitasking, as an example, I'm going to be a more productive human being. So I want to bring up the ADD thing later, and I wanted to say that in the very beginning, just so in case we have any ADD people that are listening. They typically don't even stick with reading books or listening to interviews for a long period of time. So I want to let them know that, you know, if you actually stay with us here, you're going to find this to be really useful. So let me ask you a multitasking question. I mean, we live in a world right now where even apps on the iPhone are multitask. They even name computer programs like you can multitask with this sort of thing. And we live in the world of electronics. So many entrepreneurs think they're saving time by doing multiple things. And basically your book says you're not only not saving time, you're completely wasting it. So what is your take on how do you summarize what multitasking is and how it really doesn't work?

Yeah, what I do is I redefine multitasking because it's just a horrible Word, it's not an accurate description of what's taking place. What you're really doing is you're switching rapidly back and forth between different tasks. So it's not that you're doing two things at the time, it's that you're just jumping back and forth really fast between two things or more. And every time you switch, Joe, you incur a little thing called switching cost. And switching cost is the extra time that you need to pay when you transition from one thing to something else. For instance, if I switch from Mac to PC or vice versa, the cost is greater than just a new computer. The cost also includes the amount of time it takes me to learn something. Well, if I'm switching between email and talking on the phone with you, for instance, there's a transition time mentally that takes place every time I do that. I lose time, I increase my stress levels, and I increase the likelihood that I make mistakes. So that's why I call multitasking switch tasking. Gotcha.

Well, you know, now this is not totally relevant to this, but I just thought of it while you saying that you look at today's day and age. One of the things that kind of freaks me out is someone going to plow into me while I'm driving because they're on their phone sending a text message and they're just not paying attention at all. I think driving has become infinitely more dangerous in even the last five years because of stuff like that. And I interviewed my buddy Tim Ferriss about just productivity. And one thing that he talks about is a test that was done in that people that drive high on marijuana are actually less dangerous than people that are texting or talking on their cell phone when they're driving. That that's a more distractible sort of activity. And a lot of people would say, well, hey, while I'm doing that, I'm actually accomplish building and accomplishing more. And you take that to say me and you are on the phone and checking email at the same time. We're both having fractured focus and it just doesn't work at all. But hearing that, I don't think a lot of people totally kind of get it. One of my things that I would love to have happen as a result of this conversation for people listening is that they really leave really getting and understanding that multitasking is not helping them. So I want to do whatever we need to do to address that. Like, some entrepreneurs really think they are awesome multitaskers and they brag about it. I mean, what would you say to Someone like that.

Well, here is what I say when anyone brags about it. I take them through the exercise. And you actually did the exercise at the event where we got to know each other better and I spoke. But someone can do this online for free. They don't even have to opt in. They can go right to the page and there's a video there that will walk them through the exercise. They can download a PDF if they go to davecrinshaw.com exercise, you take that test. And that's unfortunately the one limitation of doing an audio interview like this is I really can't walk you through this. But in two minutes, you're going to experience firsthand in a very simple exercise, the three consequences of multitasking. Things take longer, you make more mistakes, and your stress levels increase. And that is how I silence the argument, because there's no argument that's more convincing than when you experience the result for yourself and you see the numbers for you.

Exactly. And I had done that from reading your book, and then I did it and I actually took my team through it to actually illustrate this point. You've created a very simple way to show people, yeah, here's exactly what happens with your time and your brain and everything. And yeah, it's a couple minutes. So I'd recommend everyone go to that site and do the test. And by the way, by driving people to Dave's site, I don't have an affiliate thing with them or anything. This is simply there to help you. You can do it for free. Talk about. Let me ask you, are there any times when multitasking is a good idea? Are there any applications where really does work?

Yeah. Well, as I mentioned, multitasking is just a bad word in that it doesn't describe what's really going on. So another term that I created in the myth of multitasking is background tasking. And background tasking is when you're doing something mindless or mundane in the background. For instance, let's say I'm jogging on a treadmill and I'm watching TV at the same time.

I love marketing. Would be a good idea, right?

Yeah. Jogging. There you go. While you're listening to us talk. That's a perfect example of background tasking. And background tasking can be efficient. It can be productive. Starting your copy machine running on a large job while you go off and do something else. The problem is when most people say that they're good multitaskers, Joe, what they really mean is that they're trying to switch tasks, that they're trying to jump back and forth between active tasks. And that's always inefficient and always not productive. So to answer that question, I kind of have to answer the question with the question which is are you really background tasking or are you really switch tasking? And that kind of lets you know whether or not what you're doing is indeed productive. Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

And there is quite a difference between that. I have a friend named Mary Ellen Tribbey. She's a marketer, real smart marketer. And she has this great line where she says one thing done equals money. Five things undone equals no money. And my buddy Dean Jackson, who we do I love marketing together with, he has this great illustration where he'll the best way is to actually visually show this on a piece of paper on a computer and hard to do on the phone, but I'll do my best. So if you could imagine you have three things that need to be completed and let's call project A, project B, project C. And you were to break them up into units of time. And let's say it took, you know, if someone was to not driving right now because I would be multitasking and you know, were to take out a piece of paper and were to draw AAA BBBCC. And let's say that each project took, you know, three units of time to complete it. And if you were to just work on AAA and you were to do, you know, one unit per week, and if you did it in a row, you'd get that project done in three weeks. But if you went, you know, you did a week on project A, a week on project B, a week on project C, then you came back to project A and you worked a week, Project B worked another week, project C, and then you come back to A, you would have finally completed it if you're doing three different main projects. But the problem with doing, jumping from A to B to C is it would take you 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 weeks to complete a three week project because you kept jumping back and forth. And I don't know if that translates really well over the phone, if anyone followed me, but it's a, you know, to me that's a version of multitasking and not even sticking with one project. Now you break that down to the smallest little detail. That's what your book does such a great job of explaining. And people can see it in real life, you know, you're doing this all day long. So with my rambling there, that really is kind of a setup to. My next question is to have you talk about the effects of multitasking to the bottom line, basically, how much money is getting wasted as a result of people multitasking? Because most of the people listening to this are entrepreneurs, and they get paid based on results. So I wanted to get some perspective because I know you understand the financial consequences of multitasking.

Right. Well, let's start with a couple of figures that I didn't come up with that come out of a company called Base X Research. The first one is 28%. And 28% is the amount of time the average knowledge worker loses due to interruptions and the recovery time associated with those interruptions. That's the same thing as switches and switching cost that I've been talking about. They estimated that that cost the U.S. economy approximately $900 billion per year. And I'm sure that number has gone up recently, and that's just due to lost labor costs. So that's a staggering number. It's really big. Let's bring it a little closer to home. One week, 28%. Just a little bit more than 25. So just a little more than one week that you worked last month was complete garbage. It was just wasted time. This was not even time where you were enjoying yourself, like you were wasting time on YouTube watching videos of cats laughing or playing fantasy football. This is just completely lost time in the seams due to the switching cost, due to transitioning back and forth between different things.

So to make a distinction, that's like worse than watching completely worthless videos that will do nothing. I mean, this is literally just. That's like less than zero sort of activity.

Right? You're getting no enjoyment out of it. In fact, you're getting stress out of it. Then if you have employees, what that means is that think of the wages that you paid last month to your employees. One quarter of those wages was for nothing. It was for no results whatsoever. And that's why when I talk to people, I say that when I work with you, I help people get back, on average, about 20% of their disposable time. That means that we can't get rid of switches completely. There's always going to be some of that. But we can recover the majority of that. And usually a person will get back somewhere around 10 to 15 hours per week of new time that they didn't even know they had just as a result of reducing the switches.

That's huge. That is huge.

Yeah.

So, okay, well, I'll hold some of the thoughts I initially have right now because my add brain wants to jump in and say, okay, what about this, what about that? So let's talk about one of the more recent inventions in modern life, which is social media, social networking, everything like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Groupon type sites, and a billion other things. As businesses, as entrepreneurs utilize and focus more on technology and social media to market and get their message out, do all those tools like Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook, do they make entrepreneurs multitask more? How do they play into behavior?

Sure. My perspective is that technology is not the problem. It is the improper use of technology that's the problem. To blame social media and Twitter and that sort of thing is a bit like blaming a knife for causing injury to someone. Well, yes, but a knife actually is a valuable tool and is necessary for cutting and all that stuff. Right. It's the same thing you ask the average person. You say, hold up your phone. Do you know how to do everything that that phone is capable of doing? Do you know how to use that phone to its fullest extent? Who knows that? Very few. Probably a couple out of 100. And that's a perfect example of how technology is evolving at a very, very fast rate. But we as the users are not evolving, not very quickly at least. And so we are using these tools, for instance, social media and Facebook, we're using these things in a very improper way. We are scattering our time that we use them throughout the day. We get distracted by lots of little things, and then at the end of the day, we wonder why we didn't accomplish anything and why we feel so stressed. So that's a perfect example of how changing how you operate, learning a few tools and learning how to use the technology in an appropriate way will still get you great results. And it can be as simple as saying, you know what? I'm only going to spend half an hour every day, and here's the time that I'm going to spend on Facebook and I'm going to use it to be productive. Joe, I just came back from speaking in Ghana at the African Business Leaders Forum as a result of Facebook, and that's a perfect example of how a technology tool like that can be powerful. It can do great things for you, it can do great things for your business. But if you're spending your time playing FarmVille and jumping and Angry Birds and jumping around back and forth between sending dumb little messages to people, it's not going to get you any results. So technology is not the problem. It's the improper use of technology that's the problem. Gotcha.

I like. Well, you know, I like what you're saying, and I agree. And with one caveat about which I'm just curious to ask you this, and I want to kind of discuss this with you. I. Through numerous conversations with my good friend Ned Hallowell, Dr. Edward Hollowell. He is the top ADD ADHD psychiatrist in the world. We've done seminars together. I've interviewed him several times. Just a lot of interesting conversations about how staring at a computer screen actually is mutating the human brain and changing neural pathways. He has a term called screen sucking, where people actually get glopped in front of a screen and they literally can't pull themselves away from it. And in a lot of ways, from an addiction standpoint, which I have a real interest in the field of addiction because of my own thinking, there is an addictive quality of smartphones and, you know, tablet computers, iPads, computers where people just get kind of sucked into them. And for some people, it seems to be more powerful than their ability to pull away from it. And in a lot of ways resembles like, you know, gaming in Vegas where someone will, you know, sit in front of a slot machine and just mindlessly kind of pull the handle. And I think there's a part of it that can become stronger than the human's brain. Not all brains, but certain brains, literally, they can't, you know, like that T shirt play well with animals. Well, you know, there's a side of me, and I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just kind of thinking out loud here. What is your take on that? Since you had, you know, have been diagnosed with add, you know, at what point? How do you actually structure things? Because I know you have a system for this. I mean, if I didn't think you had a solution to this, I wouldn't even be asking you the question. But, you know, for people that are out there, my sense is that there's people that really don't want to spend all this time looking at YouTube videos, but they just get sucked into it, and it just seems to be more powerful than they are. How do they fix that? How do they overcome that?

Sure. Well, I am familiar with Dr. Hallowell's work, and I will be the first to admit that I'm not a doctor, and I can't really speak too authoritatively about what's going on in the brain science of change. But what I can speak about is what works and what works with entrepreneurs and what works with some of the most crazy Busy, out of control, off the charts, ADHD people in the world. I'm an entrepreneur, Joe, so I care about results. What I know is that the majority of people who are having problems with focus, with attention right now have learned that behavior. And because it's a learned behavior, it can be unlearned. And I know enough about brain science to know that when you condition your brain to behave in a certain way, over and over, it becomes easier and easier to do that thing. Now, there's the negative side of that, the addictive side of that, but there's also the positive side of that, that when you condition your mind to respond in an appropriate way, to email to the paperwork that you've got, to the videos and the inputs that are coming at you, then it gets better and better at responding appropriately. So where I come from with this is that my job is to help the clients that I work with get conditioned for productivity because conditioning matters more than discipline. If you saw me now, Joe, the way that I operate in my office, you would think that I am one of the most inherently organized people in the world. But I can tell you that I was word for word, this is what the psychologist said when he diagnosed me. He said, you are freaking off the charts adhd. If there were a fifth standard deviation, you'd be in it. I can say with 99.99% accuracy, you've got it. So I understand exactly the phenomenon that you're talking about. So I don't have good self discipline. I am not someone who is inherently organized, but I have great conditioning. I have conditioned my mind to the point where I do not allow myself to get distracted because I just have an automatic response. For instance, right now, during this interview, I turned off my computer monitor. I didn't even realize I had done that because I've conditioned myself to just behave that way. But if I left my computer monitor on while I'm having this important interview with you, I would get sucked in. I would get pulled into it. But by turning it off, it allows me to focus on you. Then when we're done with the conversation, I can turn it back on and get back to work and get sucked in. This is a small example of a system, but it's applying the principle that by conditioning yourself, your response becomes automatic. And it can become automatic in a very positive way.

Yeah, I like that. And there's a really important point with that. If anyone is listening, thinking, well, that doesn't apply to me. One thing as an example, because I ask a lot of entrepreneurs Lots of questions, like, how many people go to bed with their cell phone next to them? I'm like, well, I never have my cell phone anywhere near me before I go to bed. Someone will say, well, you don't have any children, so if there's an affair, emergency, you kind of got to, well, I do.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you do. And like, I would say, well, I do have a home phone, and if there is an emergency and someone literally needs to call me, you know, and very few people at my home phone, however, if there, you know, truly is an emergency, you know, I can be contacted. Rarely does it ever happen. But the point is, I know myself. And just like you know yourself, that if you don't turn that computer monitor off, there is that draw. And so part of this, I think in the beginning is, you know, even if you have to, you know, tricks on yourself, it is learning that behavior. Because I absolutely agree with you. Things that are. I don't believe in good habits or bad habits. I just believe even the worst consequence habits, some people are really good at. If you have a bad habit of waking, or call it a bad habit of waking up and yelling at your husband, your wife, your children, yourself, you guzzle two cups of coffee, smoke cigarettes, don't exercise, eat junk food, you've developed a really good habit of doing those things, and you can unlearn many of those things and develop rituals that work. So I think that's your main point. And I know you outline this in the book. I mean, a lot of my questions are for people that have never heard of you before. And I play devil's advocate as much as possible because I think that's one of the greatest ways for people to. Oh, I kind of get what this person is saying. Because my goal is to have people, you know, overcome any things that are preventing their effectiveness and productivity and help them be better. So.

Right. Well, I would say, I would add to that that you need external accountability to make that kind of conditioning take place. It's just like playing an instrument, just like trying to be an athlete. You need someone outside of you who's going to help you do things that are initially uncomfortable, repetitively, until they become second nature. And that's part of the reason why, Joe, I had my business coach take me through my own program, and I report to him weekly, the same way that my clients report to me weekly about how they're doing on the productivity. Because I know that no one is above accountability, even the person who's teaching the program.

Yeah, yeah, I totally Agree with that too. And one of the hardest things to get through to people that are at an amateur level of thinking, not that they don't work hard, not that they're not smart people, but I think it's a mindset is that they can do all this stuff on their own. They can figure it out all on their own. And there's a great book called Change or Die that, you know, for anyone that disagrees with that, you know, people can change without help. I mean, it pretty much shows in most cases human beings don't change without external assistance, what you just called external accountability. And it proves, you know, there's empirical evidence that people simply don't change without help. And that's why I believe getting a coach to assist you is critical. I mean, there's not. But I don't think there's probably a single case of a long term professional athlete that always performs at the highest level without some sort of assistance or coach.

I agree.

Okay, so any final things on overcoming multitasking? And then I'm going to switch over to talking about your book. Invaluable. Anything else you would have to say about multitasking?

Yeah, one thing that we didn't discuss I'll just mention right here, because I do think it's important, is it's really easy when you're talking about multitasking to focus on the productivity side of things. Right. I've mentioned several times the three effects of multitasking are that things take longer, you increase your stress levels, and you make more mistakes. But there really is a fourth consequence of multitasking, and that's the effect that it has on relationships. One of the best testimonials that I have ever received, Joe and I can't use your name or face for reasons that will be obvious in a second. She came to me one time with tears in her eyes. She's the wife of an entrepreneur that I worked with one on one. And she came to me and she said, I don't know what you did to my husband, but thank you. Because he was someone that was multitasking on her. He was multitasking on his children, his co workers. He could not focus at all. And when you do that to a human being, you convey to them that they are not important, that they're unimportant. And none of us would wake up and turn to our spouse or loved ones and say, hi, honey, you're unimportant. What are you going to do today? Or we pick up the phone and we say, thank you for calling XYZ company. You're unimportant. How can I help you? We would never do that. But when we multitask on someone, that's exactly what we're doing. And people know when they're being multitasked on. Even on the phone, you can hear it, and it immediately damages the relationship. And if you continue to do that over a long period of time, it becomes really costly. So on the positive side of that, because that is so commonplace now, unfortunately, I did a test recently. I was speaking, I said, how did this make you feel when we did this little exercise where someone multitasked on you? And someone said, normal, right? Because this is so normal right now. When you can be the abnormal person, when you can focus 100% on someone and look them in the eye and give them your full attention, you become. That's part of becoming invaluable. And you differentiate yourself and your company if it behaves that way when it's dealing with customers, differentiates itself because it's respecting the human being.

I love it. Yeah, and you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. I mean, you know, being the type of person that other people want to answer the phone for, you can completely undermine that by, you know, and people know it. I mean, you know, Ned Halliwell calls it email voice emv, where you're talking to someone on the phone and they're checking their email at the same time, and you just know that they're not hearing anything that you're saying. And, yeah, I'm sure every single person listening is either doing this on some degree themselves or they know other people that do it, and it completely undermines relationships. So I'm very glad that you made that point. And the bottom line is this. You've done a fantastic job of defining and explaining the consequences here in a very short period of time. And I would highly encourage everyone to get a copy of the book the Myth of Multitasking, and also get a copy for anyone that, you know, suffers from this, because improving this, you know, even by 5% would, you know, if everyone thought of, you know, what if I just improved this 5%, what would it do in my life? It would do a tremendous amount. It would make you more money, it would give you more focus. And that's, you know, that's the main reason I'm interviewing here, is I wanted to share this with my listeners. So get a copy of Dave Crenshaw's book, the Myth of Multitasking. So having said that, your next book Invaluable. The secret to becoming irreplaceable. So why did you write this book, and who are you trying to help with it?

I wrote Invaluable with the employees and the managers of the clients that I work with in mind, because I've been coaching for a very long time. Well, relatively long time, since 98, back before people really even started calling themselves business coaches. And in working with small businesses, I saw a pattern of employees coming to me and saying, fix my boss. And I would go to their bosses and they would say, fix my employees. And so I wrote with that in mind how to solve that problem and really how to help employees start to begin to think more entrepreneurially about themselves, not necessarily to become entrepreneurs, because I don't think everyone should be an entrepreneur. And in fact, I'm glad they are. And it's insane to be one, frankly, but because the businesses need employees who can think a little more proactively and take a little bit more control of their own destiny. So if Myth of Multitasking was written to help people get more time, Invaluable was written to help people get more value from their time, be worth more for the time that they spend working. Gotcha. That's great.

And I think that's exactly the way that I perceive it from just having finished reading Invaluable. So what is your definition of invaluable?

Invaluable means that you are someone that. First, let's talk about it from the employee perspective, because there are really two perspectives, the employee and a business. From the employee perspective, invaluable means that you are someone that the business absolutely does not want to live without. It doesn't mean irreplaceable. And the subtitle can be a little misleading because to a degree, everyone is replaceable, but it means that they'd be insane to replace that employee. They're so valuable that they don't ever want to have to do that. From the business perspective, it means that you are someone that your customers don't ever want to live without, that they absolutely must have you in their life, and your employees want you in their life, that you have incredible employee loyalty. Joe, I'm sure you can think about some business, some product that you can't live without in your day. Right. Anything comes to mind, something that you go, oh, I have to have this every day.

Yeah. For me, I mean, it's. You know, there's a company that I've worked with, one of my very best friends, Dan Sullivan, at Strategic Coach. I Rely on tools and thinking processes that on a daily basis that I've given what Dan calls a value creation monopol. I mean, I can choose not to do it, but I would never want to. As long as they're available, I would always use them because it creates so much value in my life. So to me, that's invaluable. That would be a specific example. And there are stores where I buy food and various other things that are in a couple of individuals that I work with within companies that are instrumental in my success. The guy that is recording this, doing the editing of this recording would be in that category. So things like that. So, yeah, several people and organizations come to mind.

Right. So that's a perfect example from you. And I'm sure, as people were listening to this, that they think of those examples. That's exactly what I'm talking about when I'm talking about invaluable. Yeah. Okay.

So having said that, I think one of the things that some people, if they really. If they don't read the book as an example and think of how to become irreplaceable, how to set up your organization. And let me make sure I say this correctly. One of the most annoying things to me as an entrepreneur where I have someone that works for me or comes into my organization that tends to have the attitude that I'm going to hoard everything to myself. I'm going to set it up so that the company, it's really hard for them to function without me. Not willingly, but like, I'm going to set it up so no one else knows my job. And I'm going to create things within the organization where. And they may perceive that as invaluable, but in a lot of ways, it's like setting someone up to where they're kind of screwed without them, versus the way that your distinction is you make yourself extraordinarily valuable. So the value creation is so strong that someone grants you that willingly. It's not that you're invaluable because to try to replace is so extraordinarily difficult, but doing it to where you're not holding someone hostage. Did I say that correctly? You could probably more eloquently explain what I'm saying.

Well, I think you're an example of this principle, Joe, that if you were the person who just did the marketing and you didn't tell anyone else about it, yes, you would have some job security. But it's really the fact that you can teach it to others because you know the path that Makes you invaluable. And someone who becomes really valuable inside of a business. I compare them sometimes to a sherpa. A Sherpa is someone who has been on the path before and they can show other people the path. They are valuable because they know that path and because they are willing to share it with others. So it's a bit of a paradox. But in fact, the more you share your knowledge with other people, the more you systemize what it is that you know how to do well and you teach other people, you actually become harder to replace because a business will view you as someone who can teach others. Does that explain it?

Yes, yes, much better. And that's exactly the point that I want people to kind of get. Because I know like for instance, everyone on my team going to have listened to this and read your book. And one of the things that I really want people out there to kind of get is in my experience and watching some of the most successful, happy, well connected people on the planet, they are more givers than takers. They are constantly creating value on the spot. And they are teachers. They don't set it up so that no one else knows how to do the work. But then they actually are very open about teaching other people how they do it. And that actually makes you that much more valuable and that much more likable and that much more of an asset versus locking a customer or a client or the boss into having to work with you because you just simply have created something that no one else understands. I think that's just a bad way to position yourself long term. And that's why I see a lot of that taking place in companies where people literally feel like they're held hostage because no one else knows how to do that job. And those people, not only like you explain in the book, actually did a great job of doing that, but documented it and taught others how to do it. It just moves them up that much more. And I would, I always promote and pay more money to individuals that operate that way. And you know, it's just a great way for you to become worth more. So you have a formula that outlines what someone is worth to the company. Can you explain that over the phone?

Yeah, a little bit. Basically it comes down to I call them six invaluable factors. And in fact, over time these have been refined a little bit. So what I'm going to share with you right now may be slightly different than might be on our website at the time that you see it. We're in the process of making that change. But there are really six factors that determine someone's worth. And I don't even really talk about that in the book. Invaluable, because I wanted to keep it a short book. But the six factors are, number one, savvy, meaning that they have knowledge and understanding about the industry, the customers and the company that they're in. Number two, ability. That's pretty obvious, right? That they're excellent at doing what they should be doing. Number three, irreplaceability. And that comes down to being able to focus or have a clear understanding of what their most valuable activities are. Number four is focus. So after they understand what their most valuable activities are, they focus their time on those most valuable activities. Number five is connection, which you just mentioned. People who are givers that create networks and connections with other people. And then last six, which is authority. They are recognized in the marketplace and in their company as the leading thought leader of whatever it is they do best. And so we put together a little test. We have like a light version of the assessment, which is kind of quick and dirty assessment that gives you a general idea, a ballpark of how valuable you are. And then we have a much more exhaustive test with 360 degree feedback that you can get from people that you work with, where you really find out which of the six factors you are strongest in and where you can improve.

Okay, very cool. So let's say that someone that works for an entrepreneur, works for a company, wants to increase their pay, they want to make more money. What do they have to consider in order to do that? I mean, you have a person in the book named Jason, who his boss is Tracy, and he kind of goes through this whole process as an employee who starts out being not feeling respected or appreciated at all, but really has a conversation with someone and decides to become responsible for their position and seeing if they can improve it. And you kind of walk through the whole story of how that's actually done. So for someone that's out there, although I think this applies to entrepreneurs, if someone works for somebody and they want to make more money, what do they have to do?

Well, they need to understand what their most valuable activities are. That's probably ground zero for this progress is you say, of all the different things that I'm doing in my day, which of these activities are worth the most? And this applies to everyone, but especially entrepreneurs, because you have so many different activities that you could be doing with your time. Now the question is, of all those activities, which two are worth the most? And I have a pretty specific definition of value and worth in this. These are the two things that would cost you the most per hour to pay someone else to do as well as you're doing. So if you said, I'm going to stop doing one of these things, let's say number one is closing large sales deals for my company, which is a common one for entrepreneurs. If you had to pay someone else to do that for you, and they had to be as good as you are at it, what would the value per hour be then? Once you identify those two things, then you want to look at all the different things that you're doing, how you're spending your time in a week and say in an average week, how much time am I spending in just those two most valuable activities? And on average, I found that the average entrepreneur spends about 20% or less of their time in those most valuable activities. That means that 80% of their time they are doing lvas less valuable activity. Things that are worse, $15 an hour, $10 an hour, minimum wage. And that becomes the bottleneck to growth in a business. And if I'm talking about an employee, that becomes the bottleneck to their value creation and increasing their value in the workplace, okay, that's pretty huge.

As motivational as I'd love to be and say that anyone could learn this and do this sort of stuff, I mean, can, can everyone become better? I mean, are there certain, like the. I don't know where I first originally heard this. You can't turn ducks into eagles. I mean, what percentage of the workforce is just not all that effective or in spite of training, in spite of. I mean, what's your experience with like for instance, Brad Smart, author of Top Grading, who gave you a great testimonial for your book. Invaluable as have a lot of very well known people from Tony Hsieh at Zappos and Keith Ferrazi. All these are friends of mine. Daniel Pink. I mean, you've got a lot of glowing praise for your message here. Brad Smart has a term called a players. And if someone's not an a player, is this process totally reliant on people that are just stars? Or what about people that maybe are not a players? What do you do with those sorts of individuals if you have them in your organization?

Well, I might have to have a discussion with Brad about this sometime, but my philosophy is that what makes a person an a player or not, a lot of time has to do with just the kind of job that they're trying to fit themselves into a big part of a most valuable activity is that it's something that you're inherently talented at doing and you're passionate about doing. And a lot of times I've found that employees are pushing themselves into positions that aren't a fit, or entrepreneurs are pushing employees into or they're making bad hires. And pushing employees into positions that are not a fit and valuable is really saying, look, you need to discover what it is that you do best and then work yourself into a position that allows you to do what you do best. And my experience is that when someone is doing something that they do best, they have better job satisfaction and they get paid more. It just sort of naturally follows. I don't necessarily think that if you do what you love, the money follows, but if you do what you love and you're talented at it, the money follows. So I think that there is a place for anyone to do this and to increase their value. The question is, are they willing to go through the process? Are they willing to examine themselves and make the changes necessary? If not, then yes, you're right. They're going to continue to drag their feet and be at the bottom of the pay scale.

Gotcha. Well, you know, I think I have a great team of people that work for me. And there's a couple of individuals that I wish will were more, let's say, proactive and more drivers and accountable to a certain degree. And I also can be at times, I have high expectations. I mean, I want people to really perform and be effective. And as I was reading your book, not even completely done with it, I actually sent an email to my team and this was earlier this week because I actually finished reading Invaluable this week. And basically I said, I'm reading this book Invaluable. I would recommend you all get a copy of it. And if you do read it and have a one page summary of insights from it sent to me within two weeks, I'll not only reimburse you for the book, but I'll give $50 to your favorite charity. And I just threw that out there. Sort of vague, but that's pretty much the gist of my message to my team via email. And usually in a situation like this, I actually would just buy everyone a copy of the book and say, hey, read this. But part of it is I'm playing a game here to kind of test who actually takes initiative on something like that on my team and who doesn't. So it's kind of like a little game that I'm playing now. My question to you is I'm not even sure that's a great way to address this. I think that if, if anyone that works for a company was to read this or any entrepreneur was to read this, I think it would just be enormously helpful if they really embraced the message in the book and really pulled out what was beneficial. And the whole thing you just said about be a go getter, I love that. And I think it's because without drivers, nothing else matters. And the great thing about the book invaluable is the person Jason, he actually initiates and he's one of those people that's really wanting to improve.

Can I make one comment here?

Ok, please.

You said something that I'm so passionate about it and it comes from working with entrepreneurs and their teams. And this is that entrepreneurs a lot of times bring people into their business and expect them to think like they do. If they thought like you did, they'd be out starting their own business. They wouldn't be working for you. So the question that I think, and I'm directing this more to the people who are listening because Joe, I know you're somebody who is actively involved in educating your employees and teaching them. For everyone listening to this, I want you to understand that the employees that you have working for you are not like you. They are not regularly, generally speaking, they are not like you. They are not regularly reading self help material. They are not engaging in listening to broadcasts like this. They don't go out and they get, they don't go to seminars on their own. But that is what entrepreneurs do. So my question to my clients and my question to the audience is if your employees aren't getting that information on their own, where are they going to get that information from? And they need it. And the answer is you. That's your responsibility to be that educator and that leader. And really valuable is just to kind of begin that process and help them get involved in starting to think a little bit more like you.

Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. And I am a huge proponent, always have been, of training your team on anything. I mean, if you use a particular type of computer software, getting your team knowing how to use it better and sending them to an event or hiring a consultant or training, it just pays dividends. I spend at least 50 to $100,000 every year just on educational opportunities for my team. And it comes back many fold. Always have so very much believed, I bet great consultants, great education, never really if it's good and if it's applicable to your organization to yourself really never costs anything. I mean, it always pays for itself in either time, money, opportunity, etc. Etc.

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