Successful Owners Are Hardcore About Focus

when you're constantly talking to your friends all the time about business stuff. It feels productive, but if you think about it, you don't need another new idea. You don't need to change the plan you've already made. You just need to go and go faster and execute. And that is an hour you've lost going.

I don't have a huge friend group and I'm not connected to social media. It's like, I don't know what normal looks like. I just know that this is my goal and this is the most important thing to me.

That I worked late for so long Like late as until 2 or 3 in the morning is because I knew after the kids and Tiffany went to bed, I had 5 hours of heads down, nobody's going to bother me work, and I could just move things forward. All

right, I'm all in. And that's when I moved into the office. I worked all the time, 7 days a week.

If you, during the day, you work heads down, a competitor is like doing 90 other things during the day, who wins over 15 years? I'm betting on the dude that's focused.

When you double down, when you go hardcore, you get way more yield. Remove friends, remove services, remove distractions so that when we double down, it's way more impactful.

Hey everyone, welcome back. Hey Mike, what's up?

Not much. Looking forward to it.

Yeah. Yeah. How's Texas going?

It's good. You know, last week we did doom and gloom. This week it's all positive vibes cuz Jonathan put together the docket, so it should be better.

Oh, I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, I think, I think I'm optimistic about this, so. Last week was good though, I thought. I haven't watched— I've responded to some comments, but I haven't, uh, haven't played back the video to hear what we actually said. But I think it, I think it went well.

You always gotta be careful in those podcasts because it's easy to start getting into like, uh, prediction mode, and you're always wrong when it comes to the economy. You're always wrong.

The smartest people are always wrong. So that's what I always remind myself. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. All right, so this week Maybe we are taking a more positive— we are taking a more positive note. So what I want to talk about this week is how do you personally get more done in your business, in life, faster? All right, so we could go through the normal stuff like, hey, if you're still in the field, get off the truck as fast as you can. Like, that's the one of the biggest step forwards. Or we could, in terms of productivity in your business or growing the business, or we could talk about hiring people and delegating and all those things. And that's For sure, part of getting more done and moving forward faster. But I want to focus more on you personally, me personally. Like, what are the things that we do so that we inside our business are more productive and move the ball forward more quickly? And so that's the idea here. What are the tactics, the ideas, the things Mike and I do, the things that Mike and I say we do but don't always do?

I don't know if—

I don't know if Mike does that, but I will. I will right up front, disclaimer, this is all really hard. And I, I tend to be really good for a while and then it's like I fall off the wagon and I gotta get back on the wagon. I don't know if everybody else does that, but I do that. So I just constantly try to show up and do what I'm about, the things we're about to talk about. So I do not live in a world of perfection. I wanna put that out there right, right out front. So—

This is an aspirational podcast.

This is what we would love for you to do. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I'm pretty good and I've been getting better over the years. But, but I, I tend to get distracted. All right, so that's what we're talking about. Uh, we want to help you be more productive. So Mike, I, I've got a whole number of things we can talk about. I bet you do as well. So why don't you kick us off? What stuff did you think about?

I was looking over the docket. I was in the sauna, which is now my, my current favorite place to be here in Texas. Uh, the sauna and the cold plunge.

Okay, so you wait. You don't have one at your place, right? You're going to the gym.

Yeah, exactly. Sweat House.

Okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, they have several locations. They're really good, by the way. Just FYI, this is literally the best part about my trip so far. One time I get to like kind of decompress, um, and then I do all my social media stuff. But anyways, while I was in there, I was working on the docket. And so, uh, my new favorite thing when it comes to any sort of interviews or podcasts is not using AI. So I'm— I did that again on this one, and I just tried to look at your questions around like kind of like I call them vectors, like 3 different angles or, uh, vectors. And that is ultimately most of us want to produce more work, the right work done consistently. So how do I consistently do that? More work, the right work over the course of not a year, not one season, not a week or a month where you get inspired after a podcast, but like years and decades. And I think that's something I respect about you. I respect about a lot of great entrepreneurs, in my opinion, is like, it's not necessarily they do the right things or they do a lot of them. It's It's just they do it over and over and over and over for decades. And they're just so consistent at being productive. It's not like flashes in the pan of productivity. 'Cause like, I always look at like, inspiration is very different than the ability to be able to actually be productive. Uh, 'cause anyone can get inspired and just like work harder for a couple days or do more. Uh, and it, it's very easy to fall into the trap of doing more without first asking, is this the right work? Yeah. And like, can I consistently do this over the course of time? And I think as I've gotten older, maybe it's just, maybe, maybe it is me like getting older.

You're, you are so old. I can only imagine how you're feeling. I bet you're having such a hard time being productive.

You look great for your age. You look great for your

age. Oh, thanks for that. For your, for your freaking old age.

You look so good.

I don't know if that's a compliment or not.

Uh, but like, I, I think. I really do believe like that's when it comes to— I don't believe age is important when it comes to entrepreneurship and coming up with good ideas. But I, I certainly do respect people that have been in the game for 20, 30, 40 years. And what we talked about today has been executed on for decades. Because it is very easy to get inspired, implement something, start something, do it for a year, even 2, even 3, but then The person that just can consistently be productive for years and decades is who gets my respect. So when I kind of looked at it as like, our goal is to produce more work, the right kind of work, and do it consistently, I kind of broke into like 3 words. One is throughput. So basically, how can I get as much done as possible? The second is prioritization, essentially like making sure that whatever I'm doing is actually the right thing and I'm not just like taking a whole bunch of action towards the wrong things. And then Uh, done consistently, I just look at it as longevity. So throughput, prioritization, and longevity is kind of what I bucketed a lot of my different topics into, um, today, because I kind of like believe that's how we do more work, the right work, and then make sure we can do it consistently over the course of time. Did you, did you want to share kind of like more of like your points right from the top? Because I'll— I can sprinkle mine in. I just kind of looked at through that framework of those 3 elements and then kind of put stories, anecdotes, or or things I do specifically for all 3 of those?

I can go any way here, but I think we're gonna have a lot of crossover. So I'll give you an example for the— I got a few things that are just flat out tactical.

Yep, good.

But from the throughput standpoint, the perform— consistent performance over a long period of time, the way I thought about that one was the word energy, consistent energy day in and day out. You see so many people that are roller coasters, Roller coasters in a week, roller coasters over a month, roller coasters over years. And so I always think of like, what are the macro things? I think this again goes back to your throughput. To me, the macro thing, the lever that makes everything else possible is this idea of health also combined with environment. So we've talked about this, so I don't think we have to go that far with it, but it's, it's things that it, it's just intuitive. Like, are you sleeping? Are you eating properly? Are you exercising? That's what gives you the energy, and that's what gives you the energy for the long term to stay in the game. It's also what I don't think you can underestimate gives you the positive mental frame, uh, you know, the positive attitude so that you do press on. There's so much negativity in the world right now around AI and all the thing— economy and everything people worry about, just this bombardment. And if you don't feel good, I think you succumb to that stuff more quickly and that impacts energy. So to your point around throughput, throughput is achieved by being in a really good state day in and day out. It's the example of the, the person that drinks too much alcohol on the weekend and then Monday's blown, Tuesday's mediocre, and they're starting to finally be back in the game on Wednesday and they start the whole cycle over again Friday night. Like, Yeah. we just know that's kind of a bad plan if you wanna be really successful. It's, but it doesn't have to be about alcohol. It could be about so many other things that are going on in your life that take away energy. So I think of it as energy management and what are the things that drive energy and what are the actions that drive consistent energy. And, and then I would piggyback onto that. How do you set up your environment? So this is a little bit more, but this, this would apply to somebody in the field or somebody living a hybrid world between the field and the office, but maybe it applies a little bit more to. An office-type role. But in my world, it's like, okay, what is your environment set up like to allow you to live a healthy lifestyle? What is it set up like so that you can actually focus, so there's not constant distraction? And that's the other side of this energy concept, where if you're constantly being disrupted, if you're constantly bombarded by negativity, If you're constantly unable to focus, then I don't care how good you feel. You've just destroyed all the good you've done there, and it's impacting your ability to be consistent and work at a high level. So I, I think of that as throughput. Yeah.

And you, you mentioned health and the other one that, as you were just talking there, that immediately came to mind when you mentioned things like, uh, your surroundings or like your environment, uh, and even just your energy levels. And being distracted is the people around you. And then even more closely, it's like personally, like your spouse, your partner, the person that's with you all the time. If that person's distracting, if they're pulling you away from your goals, if they are a source in your environment of clutter, disorganization, distraction, that makes it very, very difficult. And that's what sometimes on the turnaround show, it gets very hard. It's like, I don't want you to decide between this person and your business, but on the other hand, it's like. I don't know if these 2 things can mix. It's like oil and water here.

Yeah.

Because, because they're just so distracting. They're keeping you, uh, so preoccupied with other things. They're pulling you away. The environment that they've created is disorganization. There's not order. And so I think, uh, even that's a very difficult one because most people, you have chosen your partner and you almost have to— what can I do to resolve those environmental issues I might see? Uh, but also comes down to choosing. If someone's younger and they're thinking about getting married or getting a partner, it's like extremely important because Because it is so inextricably linked to your distractions and your environment.

Yeah, I, that is a tough conversation to have, and we have mentioned this one before, but it's true. I think the partner you pick to go on this entrepreneurial journey with you is incredibly important, like unbelievably important. They can set you up for success or they can drag you down. Uh, but you know, again, tough, tough conversation right there.

Yeah, it's just very hard, like, when things are not going well at home to even focus. Um, and that was one thing I was trying to wedge into one of these 3 vectors is like focus. Um, because if you're, if you're distracted, to your point, on what you should be doing, no matter how much throughput or prioritization or how long you do it, if you're constantly distracted because of something else, and you could fill in the blank, whether it be alcohol or drinking or eating, uh, whatever vice you might have.

Driver. Whatever.

Bad friend group, whatever it might be, distracting you from that thing, it just makes it 10 times harder.

Yep. You know, this is one I have on my list, and I'll go ahead and mention it now. I think it's kind of appropriate, but it sort of plays on what we were just talking about. And so one of the things I've observed, and I'm not saying this is necessarily bad, but I wanna point out a few things that I've noticed over time. A lot of people that are very serious about the level of success they want to create, they spend an incredible amount of time talking on the phone to their other friends that are business owners. Now, yeah, so I want to be careful on this one, but I do want to make a point.

Okay.

And the point is that there are some great ideas that can come from that, but you only need so many ideas. You mainly need to just execute.

Yeah.

And so the idea that we're talking all the time on the phone is a giant distraction from moving the business forward. It's a version of reading books all the time. I'll probably mention this one again later. We, a lot of us as entrepreneurs are consuming massive amounts of podcasts and books in the name of learning. But I, I don't believe that's actually what's really happening. I think they're basically just glorified entertainment. And this is coming from somebody who loves— has read an incredible amount of books. But I've over time had the realization, it's like, wait a second, I think this is— it's been good on the whole, I've learned things, but reading far fewer books and going deep on those books and trying the things in the books and quickly abandoning the books that I don't need right now is a far better strategy. And so as an example, when it comes to podcasts, I listen to a lot of podcasts, but I know exactly what I'm doing. I listen to podcasts as pure entertain— like entertainment that I might get something out of. They're more like me decompressing cuz I don't wanna work right now. And so

it's our version of TV shows and all the other entertainment. It's just like listening to podcasts and books.

Yeah, it's, it's just exactly, it's like, hey, I'm being productive. I listen to a business podcast. I'm not watching Netflix. Well, it's like kind of similar actually.

It's like the other day I was listening to this, this, this, uh, podcast around e-com. I'm like, I don't ever wanna do e-com. I've never done e-com, but it's super interesting. I just, I love it.

Yeah. Yeah. So I just noticed in myself that I have to be real with myself. Like, what am I— this is— this— I, I can't call this work time. I can't necessarily even call it progress listening into consuming this information. Now, there's certain types of information where I think it is 100% progress and education, but you have to be very intentional about that. I'll, I'll—

Can you dig deeper into that? How do you distinguish between the two?

Yeah. So I have this operating philosophy that, and I don't know where I got it from, Um, I got it from somebody. I think it was a guy named Perry Marshall that I've had known for a long time. And I, I don't even know why I need to give credit, but I, it was, it was really— well, I remember when I heard it, this is a long time ago, I thought, okay, I 100% agree with that. And the idea is that you only follow a couple people. You literally say that this is the person that's where I want to be. And this is the person where I want to be. And that's almost the only content you consume. It's the only books you read. You just go deep, hardcore with their stuff, and you block everybody else out. And probably the reason why I mentioned Perry is I think that's where I heard it. And it just was the moment I heard it, it's like, that's truth. And so it stuck with me where I heard it. I mean, we're talking a long, long time ago. And I, to this day, subscribe to that philosophy. And so the way I think you consume information Is that you? It's fine. Listen to your podcast. Do whatever. I do the same thing. It's like it's a way to decompress, but don't fool yourself into thinking that's work. Work is I'm going to go deep in this book. I'm going to go deep on these YouTube videos. I'm going to go deep on whatever content this person has put out. I'm going to try what they talk about. I'm going to test it, and I'm going to maybe listen to it and read the book and maybe outline the book as I go. Whatever. your learning stylist, that is true application of a topic.

So how do you, how do you determine that person? So like, I've, I've, for me it was Alex 5, 6 years ago. And then I ended up being very close and my coach was being Dr. Kashey, who's his best friend. And then recently I have, um, the ex-CEO of, uh, GymLunch, which is Kale. And so like, I'm very much in that world. It's the only couple people I follow on Instagram is those 4 people and then my wife. Um, and so I, I've always thought this. And I've always basically had that one person and I just go around the ecosystem and I get to know the people around them. I really wanna understand it. Uh, so I've had the same philosophy. I've never really actually pinpointed it as the difference between entertainment and education, but it's, it's a great way of looking at it.

Yeah. So to your question, I do think there's a place where you have to expose yourself to a variety of content to be able to figure out who is doing what I wanna do.

And I, I think if Five for 50 would make more content, we could definitely suggest that channel. On the podcast.

We could, but the losers over at 5 for 50 aren't very good at making content. So, yeah, no, I agree. Um, so I think it's somebody in the game. I, it doesn't mean you can't learn from somebody that's not still in the game that has incredible wisdom, but I generally want to default to somebody practicing. The reason for that is things are moving so fast and changing so much. That I prefer to learn from somebody that's still testing and trying things and actively doing things. And so that's one. Um, I want somebody that is doing what I— is basically accomplished what I want to accomplish. They, they've gotten to where I want to go. I think that's also important. Um, those are probably 2 of my biggest things. And then I think there are different styles that resonate with me. People. So like different people resonate. So does this person feel like you? I, the first thing that comes to mind is maybe if you were really like— another one, and then I'll come back to that. Another one is what are you trying to solve actively right now? This is a moving target. Like right now, if I'm trying to solve for— I'll use my selling example, getting better at selling, converting, whether it be over the phone or in print. Then I might wanna be learning from experts at selling. Okay? Now, once I feel like we make a lot of progress there, I might wanna shift to the next problem. And it's a problem of leadership inside my company and motivating my team. Then I'm gonna— so you're kind of moving over time. Back to my selling example where I think of style, like selling's a perfect example for this. There is the typical hard closer, hard charger salesperson who I personally find is a turnoff. They're not my cup of tea.

Come on, you don't enjoy those Andy Elliott TikToks? Come on,

bro. How many people you walk in, they're on the social media all day long on their phone, man? I just wish if it was just compliant and our HR would let me, I just walk in, just slap the hell out of some phones, bro. Guy on the phone, wham! You got brain rot, dude.

I was picturing that as I was saying that. Yeah, that's a perfect example.

Yeah, so you gotta get those tighter shorts, Jonathan. Come on.

Never in 100 million years would that be me. So anyway, so you gotta find your person in that area that you resonate with, because then you're more likely to apply what they're talking about versus maybe the Andy Elliott example is maybe he's very motivational in some way to a person, but you would never talk like him. You'd never, you'd never do what he does. Well, then that's not the right person to be listening to. Who could you model? So those are some of the things I think of when you ask me that question.

Now, that stemmed though from you said that people have their friends and they talk too much on the phone. Yeah, that was interesting. That was interesting.

I can keep going on that.

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

I wanted to give you a moment.

Yeah, totally. Well, I think like, well, when you said that, the reason it kind of— I was interested is like, for myself, I have never had that. And that's like, like, it might be because I'm from a smaller town. I don't know. I don't want to give excuses or give reasons. But like, I've never been the type to talk on the phone someone about business stuff. I would almost love that. In a way, I got coaching to be able to do that. But from your perspective, what have you seen when it's like people talking all the time on the phone?

Well, I think this is a category, a broader category of this idea that if you really want something pretty, really significantly, you've got to shift to this mindset of being pretty hardcore. I just really believe in this hardcoreness. And if you look at The people that are wildly successful, this is what they exhibit. Okay, so where this is coming from is that concept. So I, I could pretty much just talk on the phone all day to my— about ideas. I would be perfectly happy, but I don't do it. In fact, I generally kind of feel like a bad friend to a lot of my friends. And because I'm not really good about picking up the phone to just chat about stuff, The reason for that is because I have so trained myself to try to be focused. It's been a long process for me, but I enjoy talking about business ideas. I enjoy doing all that stuff, and I, you know, like hanging out with friends. But what I've observed is a lot of people spend an awful lot of their time ideating, as you'd say, which is what you're doing when you're constantly talking to your friends all the time about business stuff. It feels productive, but if you think about it, you're not really You don't need another new idea. You don't need another— you don't need to change the plan you've already made. You just need to go and go faster and execute. And that is an hour you've lost going. And so—

Part of it too is like we talk about entertainment. I almost feel like sometimes people get so many voices or ideas because like they're just looking for the one that wants to validate what they want to do. That's where like I really like your idea of like you lock on one person. It's not so much even like that that person can give you all the answers. It's sometimes a matter of I find people listen to 20 people. Just looking for the one that's like gives them validation for what they'd actually want to do. Like I don't want to work as much. Okay, I'll find the person that talks about work-life balance. Okay, now or delegation or like buy back your time. Okay, I'll I'll get that person. Well, now I'm talking about marketing. I want to do Facebook ads. I'll find the person that tells says Facebook ads is the best thing in the world. When reality that might not be the thing I need to have in my market, but it's what I want, and so I just seek validation for the thirty different influencers or people that I'm following.

Yeah, that's a great point. I wasn't even thinking about that way, but I think there's a lot of truth in that, that we do that. And so, yeah, my point's not so much that you shouldn't have conversations with your friends about business stuff. It's just, it's another version of listening to podcasts all the time or reading books all the time. We, we tell ourselves we're being productive, but we just lost another hour of our day.

Right.

And it's so, it's this general idea of like, kind of again, being hardcore. I also observe it with team members and other people I work with another way where, again, controversial, I feel like they're talking to their spouse all the time during the day. Like, it's like, again, I want to be kind of careful here, but it's my broader theme is like, we— if you want to move the ball forward fast, you have to get everything you can out of your life. That doesn't mean you destroy your marriage.

Like,

if

people know— Everyone usually gets, gets money, gets old, and it's like, chill out, spend time with family. Joe's like, go hardcore, don't talk to your wife.

No.

Just don't talk to your friends.

Yeah, you have to. And you've probably heard the opposite from me because I like, don't blow up your family, don't blow up your relationship with your kids. I— all that. But there's a balance here on all this stuff. And I'm just— what I see is a lot of people just sort of float through the world letting— they're just constantly— it's like, I'm on this call now, I'm talking to this friend, and my wife's got this, she wants me to do this during the day. And she's like, somebody's calling me an opinion about the kids' things. Like, I could talk to you about that at dinner. Like, there's just a never-ending number of distractions. And I think you have to be kind of hardcore. Like, I, like, again, maybe a little controversial, but you do. If you, like, just think, think about it this way. If you, if you, during the day you work heads down and you work and you, a competitor is like doing 90 other things during the day, who wins over 15 years? I'm betting on the dude that's focused. Yeah. And so that's kind of where this is coming from. It's just like this, uh, uh, analysis of where we're spending our time. You know, my, one of my examples would be one of the ways that I worked late for so long, like late as until 2 or 3 in the morning, is because I knew after the kids and Tiffany went to bed, I had 5 hours, 5 hours of heads down, nobody's gonna bother me work, and I could just move things forward. And that to me is an example of being serious about it. Doesn't mean I wasn't present, that I completely ignored everybody in my family. I didn't, but I did it. I was, I, I wasn't, it wasn't scattered through the whole day. I was working or I was present or I was working, or at least I was trying to be present. Let's be honest. Yeah. Brain still turns, you know, but I just, I don't know. I don't know if my point's coming across right or wrong, but I think it's incredibly important that you—

What does someone, how, how does someone make that judgment call though? 'Cause like, obviously to some people that they, they wanna have the family, they wanna have those things. How do you make that balance? Or is it more of a personal thing? Is there times or seasons where you go deeper on one? It's more of like a focus thing.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I, I don't have all the answers. It just fortunately worked out for me. Um, you know, I, I felt that, you know, that it was, you know, dinner times were incredibly important. After dinner time was very— like, there was a period there, nighttime was family time, but it wasn't constantly throughout the day. Um, and then I felt that we, Tiffany and I, always would have at least one date night every weekend, Friday or Saturdays, but I did not work on the night, at night, on the weekends. Generally almost never worked on Sundays, maybe a little bit here or there, but hardly at all. Like, so you're still carving out time, but you're carving out very specific time when you're present versus what I observe is just, just never— the real theme here is this never-ending distraction throughout the day of a million different little things that are not work. You can't win. Like, you gave the example of going deep with Alex Hormozi. I don't know Alex, but I'm gonna guess that dude's pretty hardcore. I'm pretty, I, well, I know that he like sits in a closet, or at least he used to. I did hear him say that once. I'm pretty sure he's not just bouncing around all day. So if like, if you, if you wanna look at an example of super high level of success, that's an example of extreme focus. I'm guessing, I'm guessing that's who he is. And I think that's generally what it takes. So it doesn't mean you blow up the rest of your life. It's just more that you create structure. Like we were talking about environment early, where early, earlier where you protect parts of your life. You protect this part for moving the ball forward and work on a daily basis. You protect this part for the family, and they do get out of balance. And sometimes you got to be traveling, or sometimes you got to work at night, of course, and things move around. But that, that's what I'm trying to communicate. I just see the never-ending lack of focus. That is what is harming a lot of people. It's constant breaking of concentration.

Yeah. And like, one of the things that I, I wrote down when it came to like doing more, like increasing throughput, is that distraction. I think, feel like a lot of times it's little ideas we have or things that do need to happen in the business that we either A, take action on right away and we now are shifting. There's time cost of switching from sales to operations, operations to admin. Now I'm gonna do this AI thing. I think that constant switching, or we don't organize those thoughts. They're important things. They have to get done. We don't organize them in a way and we just get overwhelmed, stressed out. Um, we want to quit because like there's like 30 things that are pending in our brain that we haven't wrote down. We haven't prioritized. And one of the things I find a lot of times is those are tasks that sometimes take 5 to 20 minutes. Mm-hmm. And it's tasks that people just ruminate on and in their day they feel stressed because there's 10, 15 of them in their back of their brain. And so I found just like very simple, we've talked about this before, is like using lists, whether it be like Google Lists, Todoist is an app, Reminders app on the iPhone, the ability just to keep track of those little things. And then when you have gaps between your large chunks, the big things you're focused on, instead of going to Instagram, Facebook, scrolling, getting distracted with a phone call, you have a list of 10 things that you know you need to get done. It might be, oh, I got to email the CPA. Oh man, I, I need to make sure I turn off the Facebook ads. These are little things That will usually either distract you when you should be focused on your main thing, or just sit pending in the back of your head that causes this overall sort of anxiety about the business because you never get rid of it so that you can focus on the biggest, most important thing. And so one very small thing, but it's just Google Lists being and having multiple lists. Some, some things are like I have a running to-do list that I usually am cycling through a few times a day. There's little random stuff. Then I have one. Hey, this one's gonna be like next month. Okay. These are all to-do lists. Like, oh, I need to talk to Nick about this. Okay. That's under the Nick. He has his own list. And so your direct reports, your managers having a list for them. So it's not like, okay, tomorrow's a meeting. What do I need to talk about so-and-so? I've already thought about those things throughout the week. And when you have all the ideas and you're listening to the podcast and you're listening to the book and like, oh, I need to do that. It goes somewhere so that you're not distracted during the time when either family time or like, okay, I'm focused on marketing for the next 4 hours. Okay. I'm gonna go shoot these ads. I'm gonna. do the marketing calendar this week. I'm not going to be distracted by the 30 other little things that will bop into your head. Uh, and it causes a lot of anxiety, at least for myself, when you're thinking of those things but they never got wrote down or organized.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I— that's the system I follow. I would describe it as a pretty simple system. It's the only system that has worked for me. And we've talked about before, my ideas tend to come in on Notepad Just my little system. Like, everybody's got to find their own. And then everything goes into Trello, the little ideas and the big ideas. That's like, get it out of your brain, get it. And then when I know what I'm going to do, I write it down for what I'm doing for the day, and I just cross them off as I do them. And then the last is I still live in an old-school method, which is, uh, OneNote, which was a Microsoft product. And that's like, collects all my writing, all my thinking, all my stuff. I've tried to move to Uh, whatever the most popular tool— Notion. Notion. And I've canceled it and gone back to— I mean, it's like you tried to live in Google Docs for AI reasons. I've just— I keep ending up back in one. But whatever your system is, is all I'm making the point. Like, whatever your system is, just something simple that you can stick with. Uh, something else you said that I thought was a real— I want to, uh, call this one out. So there was a book a long time ago. I don't know who the guy's name was. He is— I know he lived in Amsterdam, uh, Getting Things Done.

Oh yeah,

yeah. And your little— your— what you said about having a to-do list of all the short 5-minute, 10-minute things, that's exactly a principle that he talked about in that book. I don't necessarily follow his exact plan. I followed it at times over the years, but that right there is one of my biggest memories of his system, is if you have all that stuff done, in your gaps you could just go work those little things real quick. And I think that's a— that's another argument for why you want to have some kind of a system. But I think One of the biggest arguments is to get it outta your brain.

And, and it, it almost reinforces you like speed-wise to get to the next big thing. When, like, say for example, you have a meeting from 3 to 4 and 4:30 is your next one, that 30-minute gap, when you go knock out 5 things that were, was brewing in your head that morning while you were working out, while you were with the family during your last time block, when you, when you knock those out, you go into the next meeting like you are very efficient. You, oh, you just feel that Momentum. And when you stop and go to something that is mind-numbing, like on social media, I feel like that's what slows people down. They don't feel productive. They go to the next meeting, they're less— they're not feeling this momentum or energy moving the ball down the field.

Yep. Yeah. Uh, one little trick for me, but we're all different. Like, back to— I write down from Trello what I'm gonna do for the day in my book. And even writing down the small stuff and just crossing it off. Feels like momentum to my brain, and it make— I feel like it makes me more productive. Whereas if I have one big goal for the day and I'm not marking anything off— this is silly, but I think we all do work a little bit on tricks, like things make it— and so I've just noticed like writing down all the little things I gotta do too and knocking them off just feels like a productive day. It makes me feel better, then it helps me have more momentum. We've all just got to find our system.

I found it a great way too just to start my workday usually, even though I was like, oh, I should work on the one big thing. It's like if I can do 3 or 4, like, okay, you got that off the list. Got that off the list. Got— okay, I was thinking about that last night. I got it written down, knock it off the list. Yeah. And then it just, it, it's almost like a warmup. Okay, now I can sit down. Now I can really focus. And, uh, I, I talk a lot, a lot about this for smaller operators where they're out in the field for 4 or 5 hours, maybe training a technician and there's 10 things in the back. I gotta invoice so-and-so. Oh, that complaint. I gotta— oh man, there were Google reviews. I gotta— and they never write it down and they just feel this overall kind of anxiety building up and it's just this like pressure in their head. Cause from never releasing it. And once you get in the habit of doing the list thing, it's just like you put it there and it's gone. It's done. Like I can just focus on whatever is in front of me.

Parallel to that, there used to be, I don't know, you might've heard of this before, but it's kind of a long time ago. There was a guy named Brian Tracy. He was a popular, uh, speaker and he had this concept called Eat That Frog. In fact, I think he might've wrote a book called Eat That Frog, but it's, it's a little bit similar to what you just said. You apply it a different way. Like, there's this thing that we've got to do today that until that thing is done, it's just going to nag in the back of our mind. It's going to mess up every other project and every other thing we have to do. It's going to just be constant interference. And so first thing you do every day is do— eat the— eat a frog. Like, get the worst thing off your to-do list. Now, maybe you do like whatever works for you, but maybe you knock out a few really simple things to get warmed up as you used as an example, but then you try to get that biggest thing out of the way because it'll make you more productive in every other area. Again, not something I always do, but I will— I've probably known that concept for 2 decades, and I do think that, you know, when you live that way, it does make your days better and more productive.

100%. Do you have any other, other hacks?

Um, I got a lot of other stuff, but I would say I mentioned the simple system. Oh, another one that I think is really valuable, but again, I probably, I'll just quit saying it after I say this. You know, I kind of do this and then I don't do it, uh, kind of depending on what's happening in my life. I'm sure everybody does that, but the more I can theme things, the better. Hmm. Uh, the problem is for me that I theme things and then I'm making so much progress, I just keep going tomorrow. I'm gonna keep working on the next day. That's how I usually blow things up. And so, but the more I can theme things. So for example, today is completely focused on marketing. So this next day is completely focused on content comes to mind for me. I do not spend a whole day focused on content. You can see that by looking at my Five for 50 channel. Um, and you know, this day is focused on meetings, one-on-one meetings. Like the more you can do that, or even half a day. Have the themes where there's back to what I was saying earlier. There's less switching cost. There's more focus. There's like today I'm in this mindset working on this thing, and I'm staying on this thing. I think that is how you get things done way faster. That would be another one that I just thoroughly believe in. Another one we've kind of talked about before, at least I have a recollection of us talking about, is this idea that good is good enough at first. And what I mean by that is. For some of us, we just want to, like, we wanna make everything, especially process people tend to do this. We wanna make everything perfect. And the ROI is actually generally higher on getting it good and getting it out into the market and testing it, seeing if it lives up to what, how you thought it would perform. So an example would be a marketing piece instead of just refine, refine, refine. Can I get it really close? Get it out there, test it, get feedback, refine it further. An SOP or a checklist or something the team's going to follow. Can we get it close, get it out into the world, and then find the issues and refine it? There's lots of stuff like that that doesn't— the majority of stuff does not actually have to be perfect. We can get it out faster and get it implemented, and then we can make it better. And so, I tend to think that's a really important way to think about things.

Yeah, I think that's the hard part even too, when it comes to lists. I think sometimes in themes, some people will say, I need to work on my marketing. But like, okay, which channel? When are you going to be done? Like, what do you need, a certain cost per lead? So sometimes defining a finish line is helpful. If you can be like, hey, once we have X amount of leads, or we've spent this amount of budget, I'm turning— like, I'm not going to be focused on that as much. Because if you have this infinite especially if you're the type that likes to zero in on things and just get super, super, super in the weeds.

Yep.

It is an unending perfection for a lot of larger tasks, especially once you get out of the field and operations are handled. Like, things can just go infinitely because you get more and more ideas how you can make it better. And it's just so hard. We've talked about this before. Like, do— is it the extra work that gets it to the last 1% that makes it world-class, or as a matter of, okay, I can do 3 tasks at 95% in the same time I would have tried to perfect one.

Yep, yep. What's, uh, what is a typical day like for you? Is there any— given how things are going right now, is it a lot of reaction? Do you feel like— because you've got so many things going in multiple businesses— or is it a lot of bouncing around, like a little of this, and like trying to— you're basically where you're supporting people, and so that has you moving a lot, or What, what's your world look like?

Yeah, so I use a few things. Obviously it's changed a bunch now that we're moving here for Texas for the next 6 months. But, um, generally, so when I think about time blocking, I almost always talk to home service business owners. And if you're doing, you know, under $5 million or so, this usually holds pretty true. And that's like, I'm either doing sales, operations, or admin. And, and you're going to be more up towards sales the bigger you get. Operations kind of in that middle ground. And then admin is like, you're just getting started. You're usually 1 or 2 employees. You're going to still be involved in some way, shape, or form. And trying to time block that throughout the week is okay. I'm going to focus on sales from 7:00 AM till 12:00. And then I'll make sure I go from 12:00 to 3:00. I'll do my interviews, train my crew, uh, do the next round of job ads on Indeed, like operations. And then I'll do my bookkeeping or my payroll in the evening, for example.

Yeah.

Generally, that's how I think about it. How I do it though is what's nice is with the whole co now I have basically a franchise, software, and media. And now I kind of have changed my time blocking to revolve around those 3 things. So it's like I'm either doing media, I'm doing franchise-related stuff, or I'm doing the software because there's like, it's very clear as to what, what I'm working on. Um, and then for me, I've always, I, I use this from Alex and there's like all my meetings in one day. So like typically Fridays. Is just bombarded, like meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting. And I try to keep every— all the other 4 days completely free in terms of those 3 other pillars. But meetings, like, you have to do them. There's one of the things, one of those things, and I like meetings. I actually enjoy communicating with the team, especially as we have had more and more remote people, especially on the software side, like, and I actually, I enjoy meetings. But they usually don't move towards the objective. They're mostly coordination and decision making. But the execution part, I've tried to clear the other 4 days as much as possible. Um, but obviously being here, there's a lot more media time. So that's how I look at it. Like, I have a percentage thing of how much time am I spending on the franchise, how much am I spending on software, how much am I spending on media. And to your point, there's seasons of time where that will shift based upon objectives and time of year. So.

What do you think the single, the, the single best attribute you have or the practice you follow, what's the best one that leads to the highest level of productivity for you?

Probably that I'm always— I never think of things happening to me or the business. It's like immediately my mind just immediately jumps to what can I do about it? And—

You don't ruminate on it?

No. Like I'm a chronic overthinker, so I have to do that. Otherwise I will lose sleep, like all that sort of stuff. And so, um, like what can I do about this? And then how can I shift my time blocks to accommodate this stress? So it's like, oh, like there's a problem with this part of the department or this business. Okay, I need to move my time blocks to focus more time on that. But just by doing that, sometimes I get a release of like, okay, now I have made room to make sure I solve that problem. But I think the biggest thing for everyone is like whether it be sales, operation, admin, or for me it's like franchise media software, trying to time block it. And then being able to know that there will inevitably be ebbs and flows of where you need to focus your time and not judging yourself for moving it. Like everyone sometimes like get in this locked calendar thing. It's like, I gotta do it this way. It's like, there's gonna be certain times of your life where like sales is the only thing that matters. Getting more leads. Right. Right now we moved to Texas, right? So like we're, uh, what, day 16 or 17? And the only thing starting next week I will think about is getting leads. 'Cause like we don't have any customers. We've finally got everything else done. We have technicians ready to go. We have the general manager, we have vans ready to go, all the equipment, like Now it's leads. And so that's why the 4L framework has always helped me so much is like, am I struggling with liquidity? Am I struggling with leads? Am I struggling with labor or am I struggling with leadership? And then just deploying everything on my calendar towards that. And like a few years ago, as leadership, when it came to the software side, we didn't have executives or people have done this before. And I was out wandering in the wilderness of trying to figure out product and engineering and all this stuff. It's like, okay, the constraint is leadership. I need to clear my calendar and interview people like left and right. And that 4L framework was really a solve for myself that now I just talk about all the time on the, on the show, like for the turnarounds. But it's a clarifying function as to what should I be focused on the most, and then my calendar should reflect those priorities.

Yeah. And that's a theme that I think we keep talking about, this idea of focus or this idea of finding your number one constraint or bottleneck and like knocking it out. Did you just naturally know to do that or did you learn that?

Like literally probably 80% of the way I think has at some point been shaped by Alex, just from listening to stuff back in the day.

Okay.

Like it was so during COVID like obviously, uh, I lived in Washington, so like we couldn't go out to eat, we couldn't go to church, we couldn't get together. Like they were literally, it was, it was crazy. Um, and so I just locked in, like that was my season of like, all right, I'm all in. And that's when I moved into the office. I worked all the time, 7 days a week, um, and just locked in. And, and during that time, I was, I was just changing my world philosophy in a lot of things. And like, what I wanted was clear. And I'd say a lot of times when it came to even, even coming to being productive or efficient, it's like, if you don't have a clear finish line for yourself, like, what am I going for? Then you, you will inevitably feel more burnt out because you feel like you're spinning your wheels and not going anywhere at times. Whereas if you have at least a direction or a vivid vision as to what you, why this business needs to get bigger, like, Okay, I'm trying to solve sales, but like, why do I want to grow the business? Like, why do I want to keep hiring? Why do I need to— why is it worth figuring out Facebook ads? Why is it worth figuring out how to hire an executive? Uh, why is it worth doing hundreds of interviews to find a good person? And if you can't answer that, that's usually when the longevity aspect of productivity falls apart because you just grind, grind, grind, grind. But if you don't know why— and that was the part that got really clear for me in 2020, 2021. Um, and I, I would say like so much of what I say nowadays is probably filtered through my, my, what I'm working on in home services, but probably stems back to something I heard from Alex or something in his content.

Makes a lot of sense. Something that we didn't mention that I just think is like one of those top-level things that'll make people more productive, like we were talking at the beginning around health, is you've alluded to it, uh, social media. So in your case Your example is you went really focused with Alex, probably watching YouTube videos. And I think that has the potential obviously to be a good use of time if you're very intentional about, about what you're doing. But if you think about how most of people are using social media, it's Instagram and Facebook and X, and it's not intentional. And this would be one place that I really encourage people to do a test. And just delete this stuff off their phone. And again, you can pick, like this podcast, keep listening to it, but stop everything else.

Like, subscribe, and share, but everything else—

Not necessary. And every 3 weeks, take a look at Five for 50, there might be something on

it,

but otherwise not necessary. No, but it's— but whatever, whoever that is that's going to help you get to where you need to go, okay, fine. That's, that's, I would call acceptable. But everything else, like run a test of getting that out of your life for 2 weeks. And I just—

One thing I'll add to this, I'll put asterisks next to this.

Yeah.

Is that I've seen is really useful right now is you can set up Claude or ChatGPT to do the digest for you and just give you the links. And so if you get distracted or you're like, well, I want to see this Facebook group, or I want, I am trying to learn from this person, but I get distracted every single time with 500 other things and the ads and this other thing. Okay, great. Use your agent to just give you the links to the things you actually want to see and then delete the apps, because the apps are there to draw you in, but you can still get the content in a much more digestible form.

That's a good idea. I think this is one of the single biggest places people could claw back a lot of time. And when I think about one of the reasons why I think I'm generally more productive than most people, this is not an issue for me, almost to the— my detriment, in the sense that It would be good for me if I was actually active on face— on social media, but I'm not because I literally never ever look at it because I have trained such a behavior in my life that I feel like I'm underperforming. Like, it creates a bad feeling in my body to waste my time.

It's like eating junk food.

It is. I just feel terrible mentally. I'm not— I don't like myself. And so I've trained— I just— I literally have— this is one area where I literally have no issue. Only because of, you know, I, but I even was this, got this way when I was younger. I wouldn't let myself play video games. I saw them as a giant waste of time. And so I've kind of trained this behavior over time. And again, that's not me preaching. I'm just like, most of the other stuff I like, I struggle with them. This one I actually don't struggle. And I, I just, and I am very thankful for that because when I look around, I think that this is where people lose at 10 hours a week. Or more, I don't know. And so this is one I would really encourage people to run a test on. I would— you might be worried that you're like, I'm gonna miss out on this idea, or I'm gonna miss out on this learning. I don't think it'll have any impact on your business because you can be intentional about what you need to solve for, and you can still be exposed to a few things.

And it's the reason I, I find for myself, like, I couldn't follow any of my friends Because that's the part that I feel is like where it's like, well, I want to stay connected. And like there's this element of like social pressure to make sure you know what's kind of going on with your family, your friends, whatever. I have just found it's like whether it be news or that sort of stuff, you find out about the big stuff. Like if someone's getting engaged, you find out, you know. If someone, if someone's is getting, having cancer, you will find out. Uh, it's like the news is like, if someone else gets elected, I'll find out. If there's a war, I will find out. I don't need to see the other 99% of things that really aren't going to move the needle. Um, but there's almost sometimes a social pressure I feel for some people where like, I need to do this to stay engaged with friends or family. But it's like, you, you were with them in high school. You're 40 years old now and you haven't seen them or talked to them and you don't go see their stories on Instagram because you don't want them to see that you saw the story. So anyways, that probably went over your head. Sorry, John.

No, no, no, no. I get it. I, uh, I'm thankful that I don't feel any of that pressure. I just wanted to be successful and I felt like doing those things didn't make me successful. So I have an allergic reaction to them, but you made me think of another tip, man. And I probably mentioned it. I think one of the greatest apps ever made for me at least is a product called Freedom.

I've heard of this.

And so I have it running. I don't have to, I don't really have a problem with my phone. I, I read, yeah, I don't have podcasts. That's what I listen to, but I don't really have a problem. I don't have a problem otherwise. But I know what I'm doing with my podcasts. I am, I'm not, you know, they're entertainment. So, but on my computer, I run Freedom permanently. It blocks all my news, blocks all the stuff that I shouldn't be doing. And it literally runs almost permanently. It only unblocks on Sundays. And I have used this product since the beginning of that product. It's, I, it's gotta be over a decade or more. I have no idea. And I really recommend that if you struggle with, like, if I have Freedom off, I will just notice that I'm in the middle of working on something. Next thing I know, I'm looking at the news. Like, how did I get here looking at the news? You know, it's like your brain's trying to find that easy way out. And so Freedom, the application, really, you could block your social media, you could block your email at certain times of the day. That's always been a problem of mine that I look at email. It's like I need my email dopamine hit, but I'm probably not going to actually respond. I'm just going to look and see like, oh, that's some new messages. Close it. Like, I don't really actually want to respond to those now. And I go back. Like, We all have our crazy quirks. Like, that's a quirk where I check my email too often. So I've at times had it blocked where I can only check my email certain times of the day, or I have it blocked permanently on my computer. I can only respond to email on my lap, on my iPad, things like that. So everybody's just gotta find out their thing. But freedom for a lot of entrepreneurs, I think, would probably be a really helpful little tip.

Yeah. Uh, look, if you have an iPhone, delete the stinking widget that says it has news. Like, oh, it's default on every single iPhone now, which is the widget that just shows the top 4 headlines. That will suck you in so fast because it knows what you're clicking on. So if you click on sports, it'll show you more sports. If you click on, uh, politics, it'll show you more politics. And it knows— they know the headline game. So like, delete that. Delete every app in terms of news specifically. And then if you're seeing stuff on your feed that you don't want to see, just click not interested. And you can just kind of hone your feed in to the point where now I don't follow anyone and I have always clicked not interested anytime it goes on like the weird, like it doesn't know what I like because it basically knows that I want to, I want to be healthy and I want to make money. And so I get tons of ads and then occasionally you'll get this random, like it'll go like celebrities or it'll go like politics or it'll go like sports. And so you have to like click not interested and confuse the algorithm. You want to, you want to have, you know, be stealthy on social. It doesn't even know what you like. It's great. You're showing some random things like this should be for like a teenage girl. So

What do you— do you— does anything come to mind when I say, like, what do you— if we were talking to the audience, what questions would they ask? Does anything come to mind when I say that?

Yeah, like, I think in general with this topic, it's one of those things where anyone you look up to, you know, they're doing something different. And it's sometimes hard to quantify what that is. Because now, like, I remember being on the other side listening as a viewer and being like, okay, I know they're different. I know they're operating at a different level, and I get in the room with them, they just completely different level. But it's sometimes hard to quantify, like, because we both live our lives, and sometimes hard to actually know what you're doing differently than everyone else because you only have your perspective. And if you're not connected to social media and what the norms are, it is sometimes difficult to actually put your finger— because this was the hard part for me, it's like, hey, what do I do differently? Well, it's normal to me, and I don't have a huge friend group, and I'm not connected to social media. It's like, I don't know what normal looks like. I just know that this is my goal and this is the most important thing to me. And like when I met with Brianna, like second date was like, just so you know, we're not compromising on the goal and this is my goals. And I've— we've talked about it and it's like the most unselfish thing you can do besides giving your life for someone is supporting their goals, especially when it doesn't— you don't have anything in it for yourself. And so we've always like set that as like the benchmark of supporting each other's goals. Uh, and I am very, very thankful for that. And that's why I was like, hey, that's where my spouse, health, like that's obviously a huge part for me is like, I work out 7 days a week. I now have a nutrition coach. That's crazy. But like, it takes off my mind of like, what am I gonna eat tonight? And like, should we go out for dinner? Or like, when am I going to eat? It's like, no, you're gonna have these 5 meals the same every single day. And it's like, okay, that makes it a little easier for me to get some bandwidth back in terms of where my mental energy goes for the businesses and making other decisions instead Instead of, should I have a David bar? Should I have a protein bar? Should I have protein today? Should I have a meat? Like, these are the 5 things you're eating, and if you do this, you will be healthy. And, uh, so it's sometimes so hard. It's all the little things. It's all the 1% of things. So I think sometimes these are good because we just kind of spitball ideas of things that we do. Um, because I remember these are the type of podcasts that when I was listening to Alex on like random little shows, he'd say 1 or 2 things. I'm like, ah, that works. I, I, that makes sense to me. I will pick it up and I'll plug that in. Uh, and I think that's one of the things that I have not prided myself in, but I try to focus on is like execute as fast as possible. Like if you hear something, you just go do it. Like you mentioned the other day about the blood testing. So we went and we got our blood test for the first time. I never got a sample done. So I was a little low on vitamin D3, but that's changed now that we're moving to Texas. We got more sun.

So, yeah. Okay.

But I think like timed execution is so important. And I do. I think when I have looked at the people I, I respect the most and have achieved the most, they shrink the time between, between I need to do this and doing it. And those are specifically for the tasks they see as the highest priority. And they're constantly very good at prioritizing what is that thing they should be sinking their teeth into and what other, other things they just let go, let it go.

And when I say hardcore, when earlier we were talking about being hardcore, that's exactly what I'm talking about. That's my observation after multiple decades doing this, the people that I'm like, oh well, that's the life I want, like, you know, at least the work side of it, um, or they've accomplished some of the things I want to accomplish, they are almost always that. Not always, but, you know, very common you see the same thing. They're hardcore. Like, they're getting the stuff out of their life, and they're— it's everything you just articulated. They're very focused.

And I think for anyone listening that is like, That appeal, what we've talked about appeals to you, and in the back of your head you're like, but everyone talks about people that have money or have built a business and they're bad, or they're they're they are greedy, or they have all these negative connotations with people. Like this was a huge shift for my mind in 2020, 2021 is like reaching my goals is not bad, and getting to know people like you, people other people have been successful and they do good. They don't— aren't probably— they aren't using money incorrectly, their family life isn't wrecked. Um, yeah, that means that's what makes the news. You're probably looking on social media too much. You're probably watching too many TV shows. But like, in reality, there are a lot of really good people that have made it. They have been hardcore, and they can still have a great family, have a great relationship, have a balanced diet, and do everything outside of business very well.

Yeah. Yeah. I always like that saying, if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. Like, just because you have a lot of work going on and you're really focused and you're being hardcore does not mean you can't have great things going on in areas, other areas of your life. You can just as easily look at somebody who is highly unproductive, doesn't have a schedule, doesn't take care of themselves, and has essentially infinite time, and they have blown up every other part of their life just as easily, or maybe more often.

Yeah, yeah.

I was like, so This idea that you're gonna— if you— that you have to make a decision to be highly successful to the detriment of everything else is utter nonsense. You can, you can do a lot of stuff, but I just— back to the beginning of my argument, you have to be very focused when you're doing the different things. You're, you're in business mode now, you're in family mode, like you're really focused on You're in health mode, workout mode. Like, if you're working out at the gym and you're on the treadmill and every 45 seconds you're stopping to respond on a text message, I'm guessing your heart rate's at like 92. You know, it's like, you know, it's like, so we need to be in when we're doing that. We need to be in when we're doing— that's what I'm advocating for. It's like this, it's the focus is maybe one of the single most important words we can say across our life. Like, we talk about focus in business, but focus when you're Dealing with the other aspects of your life applies just the same. Back to my workout example, that's how I think about it.

And it's almost like focus through subtraction because like even when Elon always talks about like his algorithm, like the 5 steps and the very first one is subtraction before you accelerate. So before someone hears this and like, I'm gonna do more, I'm gonna work harder, I'm gonna lock in the, the first thing he does in any process. And I have like, I have these, I have a, one of my Google lists is called scripts and I have like about 8 or 9 scripts that I've, I used to use all the time. Um, And one of them is the five steps of the algorithm, and the very first one is subtraction. It's like get rid of everything else so that when you double down, when you focus, you're doing the right things. Yep. And you know, I'm gonna grow this business. Well, maybe two of your services that produce eighty percent of your revenue. Let's cut everything else out. So when you double down, when you go hardcore, you get way more yield. And I think that's that sometimes subtraction is just as hard as like I gotta add more to my plate. I gotta do more more tasks. Oh, I gotta do to-do lists. I gotta do saunas. I gotta do So like, why don't we remove things? Remove friends, remove services, remove distractions so that when we double down, it's way more impactful.

Yeah, I agree. Anything else you'd add to this?

Oh, I could talk about this all day. Eating. There's, there's diet, there's exercise. I can just talk all night.

Top level. Top level. I mean, I just so believe that to my core.

100%.

That's how you— it's one of the great things about— I always think of sports and business. Like, one of the greatest things about doing business and actually liking it, being somebody that enjoys doing the business thing, you get to play that game for the rest of your life. Like, but sports has a very limited shelf life because of the physical nature of it. So if, but in business, if you take care of yourself, you can play this game for a really long time at a very high level. And that's really cool. Like that, it's just cool to me that in life, There's not some age where you're gonna hit. It's like, well, it's over. Like, I can't do that anymore. You can stay in the game. And, uh, and so, but it, but it's most people can't though. Like most people get taken out of the business game at some point because they're not taking care of themselves. They're not operating at a high level personally from a health and exercise standpoint. And that's why—

I ran into someone the other day and, and he was like, hey, if there's one thing that you could change about any business to like basically guarantee its success? It was really offhand. Like, it's not necessarily the perfect answer. And I just said, be in business for 20 years. Like, it's very rare that someone in business for 20 years has not figured some things out. It's just that longevity. And the question for, for a lot of people is like, will you make it 20 years? Right? Or, you know, you can have a heart attack. You get burned out.

Just because you feel terrible. Yeah,

family, like all sorts of things. And so I think just making sure that you prime the engine, you do change the oil, you change the brakes so that, that you can go for so long, um, is imperative.

Anything else you'd add since you can talk about this forever? Anything else important that you think we didn't say?

I think we got the major stuff. I, I, I geek out about all the little optimizations and, you know, even like screen windows on your screen. You

know, like monitors, is that what we're talking about?

Monitors. Uh, I don't really want to show this one, but like even just focusing on like on your phone, why not put your goals, right? Like whether it be relationship goals or your business goals, you can do kind of a vision board. AI is great for this. Tell it all your goals. Like, what am I trying to hit this year? Whether it be metrics or you could do pictures of things. So like I have one right now on my phone that is like the metrics that I'm trying to do here in Texas, like the whole objective. And like all the sacrifice in moving here is like, what are we trying to hit? And every time they open up the phone, I gotta see it.

Okay.

Another little thing is like, uh, can I show this one? Like just changing the background of your apps to be black.

Oh yeah.

It's easier on your eyes at night if you have to open up your phone. It's less distracting. You're able to see the apps much faster. All those little things I can nerd out for days.

Hmm. Are you gonna get the new iPhone Duo since you're— I know you got your goals on the left and you can have your Action items on the right.

Oh, it's so funny because like being here, I got another phone just so I had a Texas number.

Okay.

Uh, and so for the very first time the other day, I had my both my phones. I was like, you know, I can see, I can see how this could work, but I don't think I can ever bring myself to pay $2,000 for one phone.

Oh, so it's about the— if it wasn't about the money, would you get that phone?

I can't see that thing surviving a drop.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Like the hinges and everything. Um, it's also— it's not— I don't know. I'm, I'm passing the Duo. Uh, it'd be interesting to see if it takes off. What's your prediction on that?

Oh, I think it's gonna do— I'm, I'm not— I think it's gonna do good.

Okay.

I, I won't personally buy it because I try not to be on my phone too much and I don't need a big— I want a mini. I used minis, like remember the iPhone mini?

Yeah, yeah.

They were made, there was a 12 and 13. Yeah. When they had quit making those, I just kept buying used ones on Amazon as long as I could. Then I finally, yeah. Oh yeah. It's like, that is my form factor. That's my phone.

Yeah. Like if you're getting, if you're not getting the Max right now, you're probably not getting the Flip, the Duo. The Max being the largest screen.

I don't know though. No? Okay. No, because the Max is like this big form factor in your pocket. Whereas now you can get something more like the Max in a smaller form factor. That's why I think it's compelling. I just don't want to be more tempted to look at my phone.

Yeah.

And so that's why I wouldn't get it. But I actually am quite intrigued by this thing. I'm curious about it.

See, everyone that I've talked to has the same response, like, very cool. I think it'll do well, but I'm not buying one.

Okay. Well, that's, you know, that's interesting. I think people are going to start, we'll see. These foldable phones have been around forever. So who knows? But I think if you said, you know, make a decision, I'd say I'm optimistic on it.

Okay. All

right. I'm optimistic, but, but it's not for me. So who knows?

Before we close it out, someone asked me the other day, like, hey, we love the segment where you guys just talked about what you're working on for something like 30 to 45 seconds, maybe to share what you're currently working on. So I know some people are like, hey, we'd like to stay following up with like what Jonathan's working on, what you're working on. So maybe just share as a wrap-up what you're working on right now. Um, I know you were going deep on pest control.

Uh, yeah, I had shifted. Uh, so pest control is a pretty Big project. I had shifted away and done all the Christmas light stuff, so I just finished up Christmas lights last week. That's probably the last thing I finished up for City Turf. I was this is my example of getting distracted—not really distracted because this is a big, big thing. I have been working on a variety of things for Riley for Every Chat from a design standpoint for the on the marketing side. So I've spent quite a bit of time on that recently. That's taken up in fact today. I've spent a good bit of time on that. So those, those are probably the 2 big ones. Um, we were working— I was working on the, uh, office for the new Google Business Profile. We talked about that a while back. Oh, very good. So I've come back. I'd put that on the list. I got our DBA. I think I already had it when we talked about it, but then, uh, so I was working on that. Those are probably 3, like, that are top of mind right now, but I've got a whole number of other things I'm working on as well.

Very cool. What about you? Yeah, Dispatch Board at Helm Works. Yeah. Um, we are moving into Blue Collar— there we go. Jonathan's coming to Blue Collar Summit. Riley's gonna be at Blue Collar Summit. We have a whole bunch of speakers coming to Blue Collar Summit. So we're starting to think about that, just overall direction where that's going. And then we're going to KopeXpo here in a couple weeks. So that's—

Oh yeah, we were talking about that right before we got on here. That's cool. I, I haven't thought about that event in a long time, and that was my favorite event That we went to, uh, because I'd see so many Service Autopilot clients there. So yeah, that'll be good.

Do you know if they have a booth this year?

I have no idea.

I, I have like on my agenda, I'm like, I'm just gonna go talk to every single one of the software companies that are there.

You would, you would think so. I, I mean, you would think so. I mean,

yeah.

Um,

hey, Riley will have to, Riley will have to do a big launch at Blue Collar Summit. I know he got big things brewing at EveryJet.

He does. I'm excited. I mean, I'm really excited about his, uh, thing. I, he's, I think I've told you, he's just focused on growth and the customer service side. Like it's, you know, my brain always thinks about scheduling stuff. Like that's the number one thing I always think about. And he's not going down that road at all. Like he's doing all the other stuff. Mm-hmm. And so the more I, now that I'm back involved in City Turfing, the more I start to think about that product. It's like the more I get excited about what he's working on, like, hey, I got an idea. Can I help you with this? Can I do that? And he's becoming way more accepting.

Really? Yeah.

Yeah. Before, I don't think he wanted me to help him too. This is how I felt. Yeah. We have great relationship. Like there was no negative here, but I, I don't think he wanted me to be— I, he didn't want it to feel like I was like in too involved where I was Like, he, he doesn't want to feel like he had any level of success because I— it was my— like, he did it. And I totally respect that and get that. But I— and so I feel like there's been a little shift later where he's becoming more and more open to some of my, like, hey, yeah, if you want to work on that, work on that, that would be great. That's more what I'm starting to get from him. He'll say stuff like this, like, I'll give him an idea, he's like, hey, if you want to build that, that would be great, you go do that. And so that's kind of what's happening right now. So As I think about the product, I'm super excited. Like, what could you do in this new future from a growth standpoint, a customer services standpoint, where that product runs, uh, more of your business for you? But I still miss— I mean, it's not— it's— I'm done with it. I've told you this privately. I was like, but I can't stop thinking about scheduling. So I'm banking on you to solve this problem really, really well.

Uh, well, in a few weeks, I'll give you both access to an account. See, see if, uh, See if you can beat it.

Yeah, I've never seen Homeworks. I'd be curious to see it someday. I have no idea what it looks like. So

yeah,

anyway.

All right everyone, well, we'll see you all next week. Yes, thank you so much for tuning in, and let us know down below if you want us to talk about any other productivity hacks. But I feel like we got a good foundation here today.

Yeah, exactly. All right, see you next week. Bye.