Do More Of What You Love

Something that I started to do a few years ago just to make sure that I'm consistently doing the things that I love and doing things that I'm good at, and figuring out ways not to do the things that I'm not good at, and especially not doing the things that I absolutely don't want to do. I created this little document for myself, and I asked myself a question, like, what are things that I love to do? You could do this, by the way, for people also. Just be careful with that one. But if you invest just a moment of your time, 7 minutes to write in that middle circle. And this is relating to business. Okay? So as it relates to your business, what do you love to do, what are you tolerating doing, and what do you absolutely hate to do or are not good at? That clear. What do you love to do, what are you tolerating that you're doing, and what do you absolutely hate doing or are really, really not good at it? So if you really want to be happy, follow this model. And what you'll find is the things that you love to do are things you're good at and that are easy for you or easier for you. The things that you're tolerating are things that you're doing because they've got to be done. But you really just. It's just your whole heart and soul and mind, isn't it? And the things that you're doing that you hate doing or not really good at, that's like being in quicksand for most of us in business. And so a lot of people ask me, well, but, John, these things have got to get done. I agree. Who says you've got to do them? One of the best lessons I learned when I started to become an entrepreneur was this phrase, hire people who play at things you have to work at. How many of you don't have to work, like, really work at the things you love? I mean, you're putting effort in, but it's not considered work to you, is it? You're playing, you're having fun. It's like being an athlete or a musician. You get to do that. Then we start to tolerate stuff. It's like, okay, now it needs to get done. And I do it because it needs to get done. And it gets worse when you start doing things that you're not good at and that you hate doing, right? And the more you do things you hate doing in your business, you don't do them well to begin with. Sometimes you do, actually, but you're just not trading your life and your life force for what you want to do. So when you hire people who play at the things you have to work at, the things that you're tolerating or aren't good at or are hating is somebody else's love. And when you can get people on your team that you either partner with, barter with, defer payment to or pay, and you focus on your core as much as possible, that's where you have the most fun growing your company. Anytime you're out of your heart, your zone, it's work, it's hard, it's stressful, it may be rewarding, it may be beneficial, but it's not what you're going to do. Great. Never ever, I'll qualify than never. You can do something you hate really, really well. It's just not worth the trade. Yeah, you procrastinate, you excuse, you do all of the stuff. And so the reason I want to take you to this exercise, some of the stuff that we're going to be talking about that needs to get done, you as the CEO of your own company, you just need to make sure it gets done. What I don't want any of you to think or feel is that you're adding 20 more jobs to what you're already doing. But if you can look at this list here and go, okay, I want to do more of that stuff in the middle. Now let's use our intelligence and our thinking to say, okay, great, how do we do the stuff? Or how do I get the stuff done that I'm tolerating right now? How do I get the stuff done that I don't want to do? I hate it. And what I want you to stop thinking about is, well, I can't afford it. I don't know how. There's nobody that I know who can do that. Well, that's your belief. Don't allow your beliefs to get in the way of your progress. Because as soon as you make the decision that you're not going to do things, you tolerate anymore and you're not going to do what you're not good at, magically the right people start to appear. And if the magical people don't start to appear, then you can ask yourself a question. Great, if I don't want to do the stuff I'm tolerating, I look at my financial and non financial ability and what I value and what I want to do and don't want to do, what is a strategy to get that done? How can I versus why I can't thinking, so who can I get to help me? What's the right process? What's the right system? What's the right way to compensate them? If you take your circumstances, throw them out the window as far as giving you excuses, and you come up with a different plan, you could solve every one of these problems. Not everybody works for money. Not everybody. People work for free. There's scores of organizations and people that are willing to lend you their time, their money, their expertise. You just have to make the decisions of what you're willing to do and not do and what you want to trade your time for and do more of that. And if you start to ask better questions, better answers appear. Even if you say, I don't want to do this anymore, can anybody help me figure out how I can get that done by somebody else? See, when somebody else is in their area of love, of what they love and play at, your work is easy for them, hard for you, easy for them. But the key is the thinking, the belief that you can build your business this way. You don't have to be in the possession of the specialized knowledge or process or money or system or anything. You have to be the director to build your business this way. And what happens is you end up doing what you do that that you love better and better and better and better because you get more time to do it. Now all the stuff we're going to be talking about, you need to know as the CEO, you need to know what all these moving pieces are in your 747. If you don't know it, how can you lead it? Ignorance is not an option. So hold on, going to turn on a whole bunch of lights and then we're going to develop some strategies and tactics to take the first step. What's the first step for you? Getting your values aligned. You already have a really good business giving you a good lifestyle. Getting your lifestyle aligned with your business and your values, you'll be a happier person. A happier person. You're going to want to build your business some more. If we don't get your values aligned first, you're going to make 5 million bucks a year. It's going to be miserable. Just find more things that just not working. Just do frickin hard. Get your values in line. Start living the values. Oh my goodness, that son of yours that you have as a highest value, the moment you invest with him will be magical because you won't be worried about your business. Right? Little hinges swing big doors. Just remember that. Little hinges swing big doors. What we want to find out for each one of you is what are your little hinges that will help swing big doors. We can help you find those little hinges and focus on those. That's what I call the critical few versus the trivial many. There's 500 things you could do in your business right now, but they're not equally as important. There's a hundred things you could do in your life right now, but they're not equally as important. There's a few critical ones. When you get those in line, bam, we start to have flow. And the key is to get into flow as often as possible. You're in your element when you're doing that stuff in that middle. You're out of your element when you're doing anything outside of that stuff. And we have, many of us were raised, if you want to do it right, do it yourself. Can't rely on other people, right? Baloney. Bologna. I've got a phenomenal team of individuals that I can rely on, that I count on, that I trust and that I love, that are smart as way smarter than I am in their area that they love. And together we can make things happen a lot faster than if it was me on my own. So who's got some things they want to share of some stuff that they either hate to do or are not good at?

Neil Admin Bookkeeping.

Admin Bookkeeping. Is that a tolerate or a hate? Not good at tolerate.

Marketing reports that hates bookkeeping.

Let me ask you a question. Give me something that you love to do, that when you're doing that, you're earning the highest income you could be earning. What's that? Presenting. So when you're presenting the right message to the right person, what's that worth per hour or per day for you? Come on, spit it out. A day. Give me your best crowd, your best day. Hundreds of thousands. So when you are doing bookkeeping and reporting at 20, 30, 40, $50 an hour instead of figuring out how to get into in front of more those clients, which is what I love to do, I'm good. I can make a hundred or more thousand dollars. Where's the problem?

Why have I never thought that before?

Pardon?

Why have I never thought that before?

Because you weren't in my program.

That is just. Oh, my God. Because I love to do. I love Stone in front of my staff, talking to them, giving them information, telling them what we're going to do, what our strategies are, what our objectives are, making the whole job meaningful for me. But I hate bookkeeping. Like you've never believed in my life yet. I'll put it off and put it off and I'll spend two, three days doing it. And while I'm doing it, I'm not making anything right. I'm not doing anything right.

Anybody else guilty of that type of behavior? Okay, excellent, Neil. So one of your objectives, as soon as you, before you leave here, get your ad ready to get a referral or somebody to help you with bookkeeping. Buy back your $25 an hour time or $50 an hour in Sydney. Who else has got absolute hate or not good at doing that you're doing right now? Technology. Technology.

Great sites and things like that.

Okay, and then what do you love to do?

I love talking to people. I love brainstorming, you know, how to reach them? Maybe marketing. I love finding creative solutions. I like finding people's hot buttons.

Hate technology. But you're doing it. How well are you doing it?

Well, no, I have a family member that kind of helps me with it, but it still is kind of a waste of time because then I have to try to get my ideas over to them so that they can create what they want.

So what's the solution for. For you? If you did know, what would one solution be?

Playing this game up.

It's all a mental game.

I know, I know. The solution is for me to learn more about it so that I can communicate from what's in my head to then. So the.

So learn more about what you hate doing.

I really do have to do that?

Yeah. Why?

Because I don't see any other way to learn how to communicate what I need in terms of they can do what I want, if that makes sense. I don't have to learn a lot about it, but I do have to.

Okay, mastermind time. Where's. Where is she having a challenge in thinking here.

She's got the wrong person she's trying to communicate to. Because I had that same struggle. And the more I had to communicate, they wanted to educate me. I realized they weren't loving and weren't that good at what they did. I'm real simple. I tell someone who's a geek or whatever and they go, this is fun. No family input for family or friends that are helpers. I don't mean family that are expertise.

But no opinions. That's right. No more opinions. Okay. Who else sees some?

Can I?

Of course. Everybody. Yeah.

Before I become a life coach, I was Internet marketing or sometimes I have a client who was over 60 and doesn't know how to send an email. But she had this vision to want to sell. She is a hormone balance specialist. She wrote a book about it. So she is good at what she does. But she didn't know Internet, she didn't know computer. What she did was just hire a student who is good at computers and Internet. And then in six months her vision was to sell her information products PDF over the Internet. So I gave her some consultation. In six months they started making $15,000 out of the information product. She still didn't know how to send the email.

Did you understand? Did everybody hear? Kaz? She had a client who was over 60 years old, didn't know how to use the Internet. She had a product that she wanted to sell online. She hooked up with a student, right? The student who knew how to work the technology, was getting some consulting with Kaz. She was able to convert her information into a PDF and she made $15,000 online. Oh, $15,000 in a month.

I mean every month. And then she only paid $10 an hour or something to the students.

She paid $10 an hour.

Just a real quick connect with that is. I tried to record a CD for about two years, three years. I hired people come into my little homemade studio and they were kind of good at what they did and tried to educate me. And every time I'd go on them, they weren't there. It was frustrating. I couldn't do anything. Met a guy, he lived in New York. All I did was record Simple Tracks. I email it to this guy in New York. We talk on the phone in five minutes. He made me feel like a king. He didn't try to educate me on anything. And we had a cd.

So. So just a point for everybody. You don't want to get better at anything you hate, okay? You want to get better at what you love, You don't want to get better at it. There are people who are so damn good at things we hate. We want to get better at what we're really good at, what we love.

Hang on a minute. What if, you know, we're all business owners. I'm crap at numbers, right?

I'm useless with spreadsheets and excels and budgets and performers.

It's nothing to me, you know, I was rubbish at maths and I guess I will never, ever be good at math. But I have to.

You what? A little bit. What would you say? You will what? And you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be good at it. So let me ask you a question. If you had to learn some fundamental bookkeeping and budgets versus actuals and reading spreadsheets or you couldn't ever, ever, ever open up why you're doing this in the first place. Could you get good at math?

I'd have to try and get to grips with it. That's what I'm trying to do.

What is it you're resisting and fighting against? Do you know that math is the same as learning how to cook? And do you know that math is the same as learning how to play a musical instrument? It's a pattern. It's just recognizing patterns. And every single human being has got math skills or you wouldn't be alive. But I would imagine that at some point in your past, yet some negative experiences with math, as I did when I was a kid, and that set up this belief that you're not good at math and set up an expectation that you're not good at math. What's two plus two? You're good at math, so. But I want you to finish. I just want you. I wanted you to catch an affirmation that you have about yourself. I'll never, ever, ever be able to do it, Melee. Okay. Well, what if you had to?

Well, I'm having to. It still doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Okay. There's ways to look at business numbers. That makes a total. If I showed you our financials, it's so easy. Here's how much is coming in, here's how much is going out. Here's your payables, here's your receivables. What else do you need to know? Here's how much cash is in the bank. Here's how much cash you're going to have next week. Here's how much cash is going to be the week after. Here's some assumptions we made based on, you know, our statistics for the last week or two or three or four. Can you understand that? Yeah. Good. You just need a good bookkeeper to give you one sheet every day or every week to give you the key performance indicators for your business.

I have a wrong spreadsheet you can send it to.

You just put in your.

Your seals for the week, what your wages were, what the cost of product was, and it'll do it all for you. The problem will tell you whether you were profitable or not. Because I used to hit that as well.

Wow.

And then I decided, right, all I need is something very simple here to tell me, yes, exactly how we're doing. I have written tongues.

People who play at this stuff. And it's certainly a skill, certain type of person that plays at that stuff. But the only purpose of reports is to be able to utilize them to make decisions. Every business is a mathematical equation. Every marketing campaign, every sales campaign, every business is math. So. And it's simple to. The key with bookkeeping and reports is it has to make sense for you to be able to make decisions. Think of yourself as the captain of a ship that's getting coordinates. Information about the wind speed, the direction, how fast you're moving forward, how fast you move back, just so you can make decisions to go left, to go right, right, to go faster or slower. That's all the numbers are. Do I go left, right, faster, slower, or do I stay still? That's all you need. It's just. It's just information that allows you to make decisions. If you're marketing, it's just information. Did this work? Didn't it? If I tweak this or tweak that, will I get better results? Like, I've got. Just hired three new salespeople on our board. We have how many leads we gave them, how many calls they made, how many appointments they made, how many sales they've made. And I could tell just with those. Just watching those numbers, I could tell ratios. So for every 10 people that Mary calls, we sell one. For every 10 people that Shivel calls, we sell three. For every 10 people that Jeff calls, we sell this. And for every 10 people, here's how many appointments that set. It's a mathematical equation. Business is numbers. And so it's just a matter of understanding what numbers you need in order to make decisions. All right, but the first thing you've got to do is not be afraid of numbers. And you've got to change your belief that you're not good with numbers and change it to the way that I was taught in the past. The experience I had in the past made me feel uncomfortable. Therefore, I have this belief right now that I'm about to change. Right? Yes. Flip it around.

And don't let people give you numbers and tell you this is how you should understand it.

Correct.

I have a sheet like you do with four squares. Money in, money out, loans, bank accounts. That's the way I wanted. They said, well, finances are like this. Well, I don't like those long financial reports. They don't help me make a decision. You get it the way you want, and a good person can give that to you.

Somebody who knows what to look for can let you know, these are the things you have to. These are your. We call them KPIs, key performance indicators. So for example, in my business, I need to know how many leads came in today. I can predict based on the leads that come in today, how much money I make 30 days from now, 60 days from now, 90 days from now. I know no leads, no money. So I just, I know every day, every day how much money came in, how much money went out, how many leads came in, how many, how many calls do we make, how many sales do we made? I could tell. I don't. It's not rocket science. It's just, you know, inflow equals output. And once you know the things to look for and measure, it makes everything in business in escape velocity is about making decisions so that you have predictable outputs. All right, what else? Hate and love.

I hate to organize all the folders.

I have on my computer. You hate to organize all the folders on your computer and you love to.

I love to presentation to talk about.

All day long. So when we talked over here about where to put focus and energy, okay, what we're always looking for as being the CEOs is answering this questions, what are my meaning you highest. A income producing activities? What are my highest income producing activities? Based on what do I love, what am I really great at? And B, what are my highest impact producing activities? So what's the difference? Highest income producing activities for Neil, if he or when he's in front of an audience and he gets to do his magic, he can make 100, $200,000. How many people get to do that? What? Neil, I wouldn't be freaking doing anything else. Okay, Eamon, all right, Based on his love and what I know about the restaurant business, when he empowers his employees, when he motivates him, when he energizes them, inspires them, teaches them, guides them, and they go out. And our little demons, evil demons, little evils, right? His highest impact activity produces high income. So we talk about where do I put my focus and the energy. What's your highest income producing activity? What's your highest impact when you do that? The ripple effect of it or the return on energy and return on investment is the highest. If you don't know where your highest income is or impact is, you will trade your time for all the trivial stuff that you could be paying 8, 10, 12, 20, $30 an hour for. And when you look at the end of the day, the end of the week, go, God, I worked 80 hours. Of course you did. You're doing all this stuff that you shouldn't be doing. Spend more time at your genius and the Stuff that you love, your income and productivity goes through the roof. But we have these beliefs that hold us back. I don't have the money to hire them. I don't know who to hire. I don't know how to train them. I'll have to manage them. Okay, live with those excuses. You want to be rich or do you want to be right? You don't want to learn technology. You want to find somebody who can sit with you and just talk to you. What do you want to do?

I got the message of communicating with the wrong people.

Bingo, there we go. And remember, the first thing we start off this morning, you're responsible, right? You're not just responsible, but when you are building your business, the decisions you make or decisions you don't make, you're responsible. This is not a blame game. If you, if you're into the blame game, might as well pack up your bags now. The only place to look in the mirror is at you. I'm either making the right decisions or I'm not. I either know what to do or I don't. Do I want to fix it? Do I want to make it better? I look at, I have a sheet that you're all going to get called the daily results planner that we're going to show you tomorrow. We talk about daily rituals on how to start every day. Answering this question first, what's my highest income producing activity today? Everything else is irrelevant. Or my highest impact activity today. And when you start to develop that as a habit of I'm not going to freaking do that other stuff. It's easy. I know how to do it, I'm tolerating it. Or I hate it. And you start focusing on highest income producing activities. More money from my existing customers, more money per sale, more customers. High income activity, impact. Hiring the right people, training them, managing them, creating the right processes, creating the right systems for leveraging high impact, Working on my business to understand this, my marketing message, my hook, the process, the channel, understanding my number so I could tweak it. High impact, that's when you start to go from wherever you are to that next level. You think I'm passionate about this? It's true. But this again is your thinking. Then you've got to follow it up with your behaviors.

Yes, Neil, presenting is the highest income producing. Then high impact would be what? Like having articles, website, anything that channels people towards an event.

Well, that may not be your highest impact activity and maybe a highest impact for your company. Absolutely, yeah. The key is what's my highest income producing activity. What are the other high impact activities that my company has to do?