125. Implementing Plans. Sound Boring?

Foreign. Hey, my friend. Welcome back to leadership in a nutshell. I'm so super pumped to have you episode 125 today, my friend. Thank you so much for your support and being a fan of this show and just continuing to come back and share some time and energy. Though we're not face to face, I just honor this time together so very much. Episode 125 today is implementation. Implementing plans. Sound boring? Okay, let's jump right into it because I know over the course of the last few months, I've talked about planning in a couple different episodes. And so if you're looking at plans, go back and I did not do the research back to look at exact which episodes. And no, I don't remember all 124 that I've recorded up to this time off the top of my head. So that being said, I just want you to think about plans and I want you to think about you as an entrepreneur or as a leader. What I know is I get bored easy. Can you relate? Give me a head shake. Okay. Don't. Yep. Hey, if you're driving, that's okay. That person next to you, they just think you got a good beat going, right? Shake your head with bounce with me. Bounce. Okay, nevermind. So nonetheless, though, hey, man, you gotta have some fun on here, right? We're spending time. I don't want a boring podcast. I want to connect with you and enjoy and implementing plans. Does it sound boring? I'll speak for myself. I used to despise plans. Why? Because it was boring. It wasn't fun. It wasn't sexy. It wasn't exciting. It was methodical. It was well thought out. It was one thing after another. I want some spice in my life. That's probably why I'm a fan of Tapatio. I like. I like hot food. I like my. I remember my dad and uncle, when I was a kid, having jalapeno eating contests until one of them would have to be taken to the hospital and get their stomach pumped. Like, I only remember that once, but that's pretty, pretty serious. I guess. I get my love of spice naturally. But the point is that if things are boring, it's really hard to get ourselves to do it. And obviously, I believe in your zone of genius. I believe in your unique genius. I believe that you're here to do certain things and set other people free. I recorded a podcast several episodes ago. I don't remember how many again, but where I talked about that. Your trash is somebody else's pleasure. Your pain is somebody else's pleasure. Like the stuff you do not not want to do at the office or in, in work in your career. Other people love that stuff, right? So when it comes to implementing plans, I want you to check yourself. This podcast is about thinking about your thinking, and I want you to check in with yourself when it comes to your thinking and decide, do I need to reframe a little bit? Do I need to think about how plans work? Because the only way to create a very successful, sustainable, predictable, positive results getting business is by planning and then executing plans and then measuring and then adjusting. It's all really business 101. But I know for me, I used to really love ideas and I would sit in my hot tub and I would drink and I might smoke weed and I would sit there and just be like, oh my gosh, think about this. I could do all these things. And that was great from a vision standpoint. And I had a hell of a lot of fun doing it, but I didn't go do anything. I won't say I didn't do anything because I obviously I created companies and built teams and different things long before I got sober, but I'm definitely making a bigger influence and an impact in people's lives now than when I. When I wasn't implementing plans. I'll put it that way. Speaking of, can I get you to just do me a huge favor and either pause now and go do it, or in the. Yeah, just pause now and go. If you're on Apple, I know the rating thing is right there on the show. Just give this a five star, if you don't mind. I would really appreciate that. And if you're down to write a review, I really would appreciate that because I. I'm focused on helping more and more people just like you through this podcast. And Apple doesn't care about us unless we get some ratings and reviews and continue to get those. So please do me a favor and rate this, this episode or this show, however it's got it on your platform. So enough of that's not a commercial, that's just an ask. So that would help me out and I want to keep doing this. So. So nonetheless, when I think about plans used to be boring and the fun part was the hot tub and the excitement and vision. Now to me today, I still, even though I don't drink and smoke, I love vision and I love creating big ideas and I'm. I love starting projects and I love motivating people or creating an environment for them to motivate themselves. I Should say, and I love working with my team and I love when plans are implemented in my businesses. However, I'm not super engaged in the actual implementation other than where I fit in my zone of genius. So there are certain things in this podcast that I am required to do, like with my ass in the seat right now, like I've got to put my, put my butt in the seat and sit down and share some time, love, space, energy with you and create this from there. I have other people that go through and clean up the audio a little bit. I do not edit this show, meaning I don't have cut this out or don't say this or oh, I stumbled. You. What you see is what you get, my friend, and hopefully you resonate with that and there's authenticity here. I'm a one take guy when it comes to this podcast and that's why sometimes I'll repeat myself or stumble. But I do not have my editors take that stuff out. I just look for them to pull up. Oh, there's a horn blowing outside. If that can be pulled out, fine, take it out, whatever you know that is. But it goes to other team to get those types of things squared away. Because there's a plan to drop a new podcast every week, and I have my responsibility. And then it goes to another level in the plan. And that excites me and I love that because that gives me a way to get this to you each and every week in a methodical fashion. In 125 episodes. We drop every week on time as promised. And that's the plan. And so we built a structure around what that looks like now. You might go, kenny, a podcast is easy. I'm running a sewer cleaning business. I get it, that's fine. I understand you might be in the manufacture world and there's a lot of complexity. I understand that. But all complexity is, are simple things that are put on top of each other and combined until they become complex. And so even I think even last week I mentioned simplifying to multiply. And I would encourage you to take a plan and think about how can I simplify this plan? Where do I need to kind of break, pull things back a little bit? If you think about building a new home, you get your plans. Most of us are from the blue collar space. If you're listening to this show and we're, we're about blue collar. So I take a look at a set of plans and I know what needs to happen and what trades, doing what, when. And there's different layers to, let's say a blueprint for, say it's building a new home. I know many of you aren't in new construction. I was never in new. Well, I take that back. You'll love this. I bought a plumbing company one time as a tuck in that was doing about like 25 service calls a day. And they had three single family homes going just like track homes going at the time that we acquired them. And my friend, those 30 calls a day or whatever it was that we were doing was so easy. And those three homes nearly killed us because we had a mantra in my business, if it's got plans, we don't touch it. Because when you bring in plans in our world at that time, you're just inviting low bidder wars. You're inviting comparison based on commodity, not on value, and so on and so forth. And so I have an interesting relationship with plans all the way back then, I guess, because I couldn't stand those three houses that we did and they nearly killed us. And we, as soon as we wrapped them up, got out of there. We never did another new construction project while I owned that business. But nonetheless, the point is that in a set of blueprints or house plans, you've got, well, here's what the electricians are going to do. Here's what the site plan is going to look like. Here's the dirt work. Okay, now here's the foundation, here's the con, here's the concrete. Guys, here's what that's going to look like. Oh, okay. Then here's what's how the framing crew is going to come in and what the walls are going to look like. And here's where the plumbing is going to go and the electrical, so on and so forth. And the same is true in your business. You have different plans for different things. And it doesn't have to be boring. It doesn't have to suck the life out of you like I thought it did for many. And I've talked about it before. When I met Keith Cunningham and he told me implement plans, not ideas. I record an entire episode here on leadership in a nutshell about that. And when Keith blew my mind with that concept and changed my life forever. And I want to just share some energy with you because here we are and we're heading into, maybe some of you are in shoulder season as we're in September and depending on when you're listening to this, at the time we're recording this, it's in September and it's right around Labor Day, I Don't know my dates on by looking at them on the calendar, but here we are and it's like, oh, my gosh, what are we gonna do? It's gonna slow down or it's gonna this or that. Stick to your plans and think about. Yes, I know you've got. You've got a quick driven mind or you wouldn't be enjoying this podcast. Let's be clear. You don't join a podcast for 15, 20 minute shot a week. If you don't want that, jump on Joe Rogan and listen for three or four hours. I'm not gonna sit here and smoke dope and talk to five other people. That might sound fun back in a different time in my life, but, you know, I'll probably have guests on and I like interviewing people. I like to be interviewed. But this podcast, to this point and to the foreseeable future, is going to be me just downloading my brain and sharing with you. Because we both have quick driven minds, all of us on the line. There's a lot of us don't like details as big picture thinkers. A lot of times, details kind of, they can be demotivating, if you will, or unmotivating. I don't know, maybe I just made up a couple words about motivation, but they're not motivating to me. I'll put it that way. Right. What? The cliche statements that come to mind. The devil is in the details. I mean, as. As powerful as wording is. A matter of fact, I think next week I'm going to talk to you about the power of words again and in a different way. But so make sure you come back next week because I want you to not miss this episode. That's kind of marinating in my head as I think about it. But the reason I say that is like, oh, devil's in the details. Well, of course I'm not going to want to be a detail guy growing up. If I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian home by my mom's side and dad's an outlaw biker on the other side. Hell no. I don't want details. I don't want to go meet the devil that's in the details. Oh, my gosh, no. Get me away from that. Let's go on a motorcycle ride instead. That sounds like a lot more fun. Right? So. So think about where your mind goes when it comes to plans and write this down. Plans are the path. That's all it is. It's just a path. The lovely Christy and I do a ton of hiking I love hiking. And I'll pull up. I use an app called Alltrails. Maybe you're familiar. If not, I'm sure there's a zillion of them out there, but that's the one that I use. No, this isn't an endorsement. No, I'm not getting paid. Hey, unless Alltrails, you want to send me a check, I'm okay with that. But I'm just playing. But it's like, pull it up. Okay, well, where's our checkpoints? And guess what? Sometimes the map isn't right. Why? Because it's put in by users and it's tracked by different gps. The same is true for you. You're going to start out, you're going to start your plan. You're going to get on the path and go, oh, crap, this is not even paved. Or, this is rated as moderate and this damn hard. And sometimes you're going to be cruising along like, man, this was rated as a difficult trail. This is pretty darn easy. Or am I in better shape than I thought I was? Like, whatever the case is with the business. But here's the thing. The idea is the beginning. I don't want you to think negatively about ideas either, because with my own evolution as an entrepreneur and as a driven thought leader, I would think like, oh, man, after I met with Keith Cunningham, and it's like, well, implement plans, not ideas. But there's nowhere that it says, don't have ideas in the code of success. And when I wrote the success laws, when I talk about law number one being authentic abundance, there's an abundance of ideas that I have that you have. Not very many of them get implemented, but they all lead to the next thing. That's why I'm big on journaling. So journaling is now where I'm able to get out a lot of my ideas before they ever see the light of day. And the way sometimes it'll work is I journal first thing in the morning myself. And so I'll journal, I'll write. I physically write. I do it in electronic format on my iPad. But I, hey, Apple want to send me an endorsement, I realize I should be getting paid for a lot of things I say on this show. Right? Okay. On my notebook tablet that has a frame of an apple on it. Right, Whatever. So I do these things and I write manually, though, in electronic format. I just like to write. Which is hilarious that I even say that. As much as I spent trying to get out of high school and didn't want to write ever Anything like that. And now there's all these technologies, and I like the written form, and I'll journal in the morning and I'll write and. And if I've got ideas that hit the paper, sometimes I'll bounce those off the lovely Christy, who is the strategic advisor at the Blue Collar Success Group. And she'll kind of keeps me sane as an entrepreneur, whatever that means, or keeps me unsane so I can continue creating and leading this incredible organization that we're blessed with, meaning incredible team that we have as we continue to grow very quickly and influence more and more lives. So I have a lot of ideas, and then I'll bounce some off of her and then they'll get squashed or they'll die there. And sometimes she'll physically squash them and go, nope, not going to happen. Not a good idea right now. Or I'll just know by talking through it. Now I've written it down, I've let it marinate, then I've read it, Then I go, oh, maybe I want to share it with her. And then as I'm sharing it with her, I'm like, as I'm talking through this, I don't think this is a good idea. I can't tell you how many times that happens. Most of them never even make it to her. And then if they make it to her and she's like, yeah, maybe go bounce it off your leadership team. So I go to my executive leadership team and go, hey, here's what I'm kind of thinking. And sometimes by the time I get there, do different. Maybe I'll journal about it for a few days in a row. So do not squash your ideas. That's not what this is about. Ideas are a blast. Ideas are fun. And if you're still. If you're a drinker or a smoker, that's fine. Have a cocktail, have a hit, and sit back and think about it. Or Mike Dose, if you're doing psilocybin, whatever do you do you. Whatever your thing is, but capture your ideas and don't live in LA Land, so to speak, of like they're just going to automatically manifest. Sure, I'm a fan of certain things in the Law of Attraction and the Secret, but the fact is you got to get off your ass and do something, and so don't kid yourself with that. And the reason you got to get off your ass and do something is the universe does have it for you, and it's ready to serve you. What you're asking for and what you're willing to take action for. But you've got to do things in order to have different experiences to know is this really what I want? And the universe will pay attention to that. Ideas are the beginning. So here's five things to think about. I'm going to get you out of here. Five things to think about. Number one Slow down and take inventory. So slow down and what what are the plans that you currently have in place and what are some plans that you would like to have when you think about what this looks like? I like to think in in quarterly plans for myself. I think in annual plans and five year plans and even ten year visions for the business itself. But I break things down and kind of take inventory of where are we? I've got a half a dozen pretty big programs and plans that I have not launched this year and won't see the light of day this year as we're creeping up on the fourth quarter and I we have a lot of plans in play that were already part of the budget, part of the plan and some are taking a little longer, some have gone quicker. We've added a lot of new team this year like so we're going to continue to work the plans that make sense as well. And as a driven entrepreneur that doesn't work in the day to day operation, I can't get involved in like or get in the way. I should say I'm very involved, but I can't go jump in the way because I'm bored or I need something to do or I need my ego strokes. So check yourself those of you that aren't in the driven day to day. And if you are, then make sure that you're not the one running around like crazy and squirreling yourself. Right? So notice that squirrel in yourself. Like running around like a squirrel but maybe screwing yourself in your ideas. So let's slow down, take inventory. 2. Evaluate the why like why do you really want to do this? One of the last things that I put on pause was around a new coaching program that I'm going to do around my new book and why was I wanting to do it when I wanted to do it was more about me than it was necessarily the clients or the business. And so once I got clear about my why, I said okay, hang on, let's push that until 2023. It's not going away, it's just it's a yes, but not now. And that's where I think you ought to get comfortable with a lot of your plans. Because implementing plans does it Sound boring. It can sound boring, but not when you're enjoying the process. And so number three, enjoy the future fruit now. Meaning I can place that particular situation. I can envision what that group is going to look like when I'm able to lay down the content that I'm working on, that I'm building, that I'm excited about. I know the lives that are going to change. I know the energy shifts, I know the behavior patterns, I know the habits that I'm going to impact. The improved lives are just. Excites the hell out of me. You can. You can probably hear it, but I'm not ready to launch it. So I'm enjoying that emotionally now, though, why not enjoy it ahead of time as I expect the unexpected between now and then. And I enjoy the process. So, one, slow down, take some inventory. Two, evaluate your. Why do you want to do these things or this thing? Three, enjoy the future fruit now. You're going there. So get emotionally engaged now with your expectation of getting there and having it. Number four, look back for proof. What do I mean by that? Look back behind you. Look at where you've come from. Where have you proven to what, Man, I implemented a plan here and look at what took place. I remember back in 95 when I wrote a first vision statement and I look back at that now and I just smashed that thing. It's like, damn, that really worked. Where else do we need to do that? Look back for proof for yourself because it's really about your own thinking about your thinking and your own confidence level to keep you going, Right? So look back for your own proof. And then five, remember this, everyone has goals. Choose wisely. Everybody's got goals and everybody's got ideas and everybody's got plans. Now just choose wisely and you might go, no, Kenny, I got a buddy that he doesn't have any goals. Yeah, he does or she does. It's just that I had buddies that I, when I got in trouble back years ago and went to. Went to jail in Lake Havasu and had my challenges. We had goals then and we had goals to move our product, I'll say at that time. And I had a goal to stay out of jail. And then I did not keep that goal when I got arrested and that changed my life. So then I had another goal, and that was to stay out of jail. And so one of the best way for me to do that was to join the United States army and remove myself from the situation. And so then I had a goal to stay alive when I went to the first Gulf War and fortunately I was able to to do that. So the point is that you don't have to have these goals of I'm going to be a DECA millionaire, I'm going to be financially free by the time I'm 40 or whatever. That sure, those are cool and that's fine and there's a whole bunch of social media that you can go find that on. But realize that you've got goals, even if it's to get through till Friday. I. Oh man, I don't drink during the week, so I did that for a while before I got sober here and there. Oh, I'm not going to drink during the week. Maybe I kid myself that I don't have a problem that way personally. I'm just saying. So okay, well I won't drink during the week then. My goal was to get to frickin Friday as quick as possible because now I get to have a drink. Right. So you have different goals. What are your goals? Choose them wisely. Everybody's got them. We just don't think we do. From the person that has the least amount of consciousness to the person that has the most amount of consciousness, we all have goals. They're just based on our level of consciousness. Which is why one of my goals is, is to continue to elevate consciousness within the blue collar trades and landscape through this podcast, through the companies that we own, through the coaching that we do. That's what we're here for. To help impact you, my friend. Episode125 Implementing Plans sound boring? It's not. It's an absolute blast. Just like me being here with you. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. Thank you so much for being here. Do me a favor, give us a rating, a review. Just take a moment. It doesn't take long. Even just the rating, just click the five stars. It's not that hard. Thank you so much. Until we talk, make it a better than fantastic week. I'll see you next episode.