942 Work Like An Elite Athlete

This is Five Minute Friday. Welcome everyone to this very special episode with my dear friend, Mr. Than Merrill, who is not only a stud on the football field, but also a stud in the boardroom. And quick note about Than, he is one of the foremost real estate investors and educators in the country, a nationally recognized expert in real estate investing, real estate education and entrepreneurship and a sought after speaker.

I think it's vitally important that you as the business owner embrace a healthy lifestyle. I think first of all, if you, you know, your diet and nutrition, I mean, energy levels differ greatly. If you're not eating well, you'll probably be two-thirds as productive as you could be just by changing your diet. And the, as far as working out, you know, I work out six days a week, so I go, and I, I prefer CrossFit because they're very short 30 minute workouts most of the time. So most of the time when I work out four days a week, I'm doing that two days I'll do just a run because it's all I could get in that day from the beach.

Yeah.

If I'm local right down at the beach or if I'm traveling or wherever, then I'll, I'll try to get in some sort of physical activity because it's It's very important. It's also important, I think, as a leader of your company, if you embrace that lifestyle, your team members and employees will do the same thing and they'll.

Follow suit and they'll be more productive.

Absolutely. And it's a cult, you know, you create a culture in the culture, really, the founder and the CEO, CFO, the heads of whoever created the organization, whoever the founders are, create the culture. And so that's something we've tried to do, you know, once a quarter we get together, our company and we do what we call an Inspire event. So everybody in the company gets together. If people work virtually, we'll have somebody come in and just share for, you know, 90 minutes to 3 hours, depending on the topic. And the, you know, the last on in January, we had somebody come in and talk about nutrition and different types of. So the whole company's on a water, a salad, a no sugar, a no bread challenge. I can't say the whole company, but the majority of people sign up for it. Yeah. And so things like that. Are you doing that right now? Yeah, so I'm on the no bread. I'm on the no bread, no sugar is next week. No sugar is next week.

No gluten or bread or is it just no gluten?

It's just no bread. It's one thing at a time. It's a simple challenge, right? Actually a really good idea by one of the team members who works with us. He started off with a water challenge because everyone can have success drinking a certain amount of water each day. And then you go, you kind of progress up to the salad challenge. But I think it all starts with whoever's running the company. I think that's important. And so, you know, our one of the local gyms, there's probably 40, 50 individuals at our company that all go to the same gym.

CrossFit gym?

Yeah. Yeah.

So it's, yeah. That's cool.

Yeah.

How many are local?

How many employees local?

Probably about 120.

Wow.

You guys have grown a lot.

I think a couple years ago you only had like 30 or 40.

Yeah, it was just a couple of us in the office stacked up on top of each other.

Did you guys take another floor now or something?

We have a couple buildings all right around here.

Yeah, so it's not just the one down in the street.

Yeah, where we live is right near the beach, so there's not a lot of office space. So we, we picked up a couple office buildings that are right across street from each other.

So what are some of the other rituals besides working at, like, what's your morning look like? both physically, you know, going through the motions, but also the mental preparation you have for each day.

Yeah. Well, one thing, now that I'm married and have a young son, my, I definitely had to transition some of my hours to morning time before they woke up because I do work from the house. So I, one of the things that I, that I like to do right off the bat is, is every morning I get to, I walk down to my office and for about five minutes, I just organize my day and I prioritize my day. And I think a lot of people don't do this, and it's so small, but sometimes the most productive things are simple. And so I look at, you know, the 15 activities that I have to do for that day, and I put them in order, and I say, okay, what's the hardest one that I've been putting off? I'm gonna get that one done first. And then I just prioritize my time, and I time it. So I put down, okay, I'm gonna spend 15 minutes on this. I'm gonna spend an hour on this. And I'm not gonna spend more time because a lot of times we end up spending three hours when we were supposed to write. Maybe we're designing a presentation that we're.

Gonna give to whoever.

We spend forever on it.

Yeah.

So you you spend four hours.

I give myself a limit.

Yeah, I give myself a limit.

And you put a time measurement against each one of these priorities first.

Yeah.

Really?

So I always say done is better than perfect.

Of course.

Because you can.

Good and done is better than perfect and never done.

Yeah. Cause that's, and that's the way I've always been, cause there's always gonna be things that interrupt your day, you know, as a business owner. And so I always, you know, make sure there's a little bit of time allocated for that and then just put a limit on how long I'm gonna work on that. And so I actually plan out the, the however long I'm spending working that day into those blocks. And it's very, been very effective for me because it keeps me on track. And, you know, it also keeps a mind that can sometimes get really excited about, you know, I get very excited about new ideas and new things. It's helped me say no to a lot of opportunities that, that would really would have been more distraction than actually a good opportunity for the company.

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