MBA2138 Must Read: Effortless by Greg McKeown

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night not working on my business but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with intuit QuickBooks QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts, so doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey, welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. Your business gets better every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an inhabited software company. I started my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is a must read episode. On our must Read Episodes, I share with you a book that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights and why you should read it too. Today's must read is effortless by Greg McKeown. When I heard Greg McKeown drop the new book, I bought it immediately because his first book Essentialism rocked my world. I absolutely loved that book. It changed my mindset on so many things when it came to work and business and project management and stress and all that kind of stuff. Greg McEwen's new book, Effortless offers actionable advice for making the most essential activities that you do every day the easiest ones so you can achieve the results you want without burning out, without feeling like this is so, so so hard. How do we make those things that really move the needle in our business that really make the most impact Effortless? That's what I found out in the book and that's what I'll share with you in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

ClickUp just solved AI's biggest problem, and it's saving 4 million teams from productivity loss every day. Unlike ChatGPT and other AI tools, ClickUp converges all your work into one platform so your AI super agents have full context to prioritize tasks, execute workflows, and draft documents instantly. Teams using ClickUp finish work 30% faster and cut meetings in half. Try ClickUp for free today and get 15% off AI upgrades@ClickUp.com podcast that's C-L-C-Kashup.com.

Podcast most of the time when I start reading a book that's on my reading list, I just jump right into it and I don't read any reviews. Especially if I read a book from this author before, I'm pretty sure that it's going to be worth reading. But for some reason this time when I was ordering the book, I actually read a few reviews. And some people were really critical of this book, Effortless, saying it's not as good as Essentialism, and some of the ideas are kind of repeated. But in the back of my mind I was saying, you know, Essentialism was such a dynamite book and so many people loved it and it was a hit bestseller. It's kind of hard to follow up from that, but after reading Effortless, I kind of don't know where those critics are coming from. Yeah, there were a few ideas that, you know, he talked about in Essentialism, which is normal because, you know, he wrote that book and he's going to refer to it sometimes. But overall I thought the content was fresh, it was new. And I think what Greg McEwen does best actually is take complex ideas that are very theoretical, but bring them down to earth, break them down, make them practical, show you the practical use of these ideas. So in that regard, I think actually Effortless does a better job at that. Effortless really breaks down the themes, the ideas into practical exercises that you can do. So I want to share with you some of the takeaways that I absolutely loved from this book. Now, before I go through the detailed takeaways, I want to talk about the overall takeaway, what I felt, what I kind of took away after finishing the book. And it's a big one. And it's the idea that effort and greatness, or the greatness of a result don't always have a direct correlation. And that's a difficult thing to wrap your head around, but once you do, it's actually game changing because we grew up with these ideas that like, if you work hard, it'll pay off and you know, this person is successful because they gave their blood, sweat and tears. All these kind of cliches, right? But sometimes people do great things, have great success, and actually it wasn't a lot of hard work, it wasn't a lot of suffering. They actually enjoyed the process. And it's a very confronting idea because it means that all your past hard work could have maybe been avoided in your pursuit of your goals. So let me get into the details of my takeaways. The first one is, if you want to avoid overwhelming your life, if you want to lower the the chances of failure, the best thing you can do is simplify, is to stick to the basics. Don't over complicate things. He shares a story where he is giving a presentation and he over complicated this presentation and he redid it over and over. And then when he actually did the presentation, because it was so complicated, because he changed it a billion times, his presentation flopped. It actually did horribly because he wasn't really sure of the content because it was so complex, it was so much going on. Instead, if he kept it simple, if he just tried to drive home a few simple ideas, it would have been a much more successful presentation and the result would have been far better. Unfortunately, he didn't do that and he actually went over complex, did the presentation and they canceled all the other presentations. The rest of the gigs he had with the client because it went so bad. So he worked hard, he pulled an all nighter and the result was failure. And he said to himself, actually if I did the opposite, if I simplified things and I stick to some simple ideas, and I gave myself some time to rest because I wasn't creating this monster of a presentation, I would have showed up and I would have known my stuff because it's not so hard to remember because it's just very simple. And I would have been confident, I would have been fumbling and I probably would have won over the client. So one of the reasons why we feel like we're working so hard is probably because we've overcomplicated things. And this is kind of a reality check for you. Like, hey, am I complicating things for myself? Can I simplify things to make things easier? And by the way, often the simple version is more effective than the complex one in terms of the customer or the audience or the viewer or whatever it is. Some of the most successful films out there. Look at the films that have made the most money in the box office. They're not complex plots, they're actually quite simple. Simple themes, simple characters, familiar characters, things you've seen before. Nothing novel really. And because of that, it resonates with people. People get it, they understand. And it's successful. Movies that are a little bit confusing, maybe a little bit trying too hard don't do as well. So that was a huge one. I loved it and it got me re evaluating my own work and the amount of effort I'm putting into things when I really don't need to. The next segue was if you want to make something effortless, make it fun. He shares a story of British activist Jane Tuson, who founded Red Nose Day, which has managed to raise over 1 billion pounds for the most disadvantaged people in Africa and in the uk. What Jane understood was nobody loves charity, right? They don't like charity events. They don't like stopping and paying for charity. It's a little bit annoying. These fundraisers are really hard. People pledge but don't actually fulfill their pledges. So she figured out, hey, if I want to make something that's kind of hard, it's a lot of effort to get people to donate money. Let me make it fun. Let me couple it with something that people love, which is comedy. She reaches out to some of the biggest comics in the world so they can perform one day a year called Red Nose Day. So instead of trying to raise money all throughout the year, making it a slog, she makes it this big fun event with comedy. And they raise millions every single year. So ask yourself, what are the things in your life that are making you drag your feet that you don't really enjoy? Maybe it's a task in your business, maybe it's something in life, like exercise, and you've been kind of delaying it because it's kind of boring running on a treadmill, whatever it is. So his advice is, try to make it so fun. I'm talking about over the top fun. What can you do to make it where you can't wait to do this activity? For example, if you have your favorite podcast that you love listening to but just don't have the time to listen to it, Maybe it's long form, maybe it's a comedy podcast. Maybe it's like a little self indulgence. Couple that fun task with the thing you've been putting off, like washing the car. If it's work related, what I like to do is I like the couple things that I've been putting off or maybe I perceive as difficult with things I really enjoy, like a nice cup of coffee, maybe my favorite cookies or biscuits, right? I don't normally do this, but hey, it's coffee and cookie time for me when it's time for me to do this task. The next segue I love talks about start with the first obvious action. If you have to do an overwhelming task and you know it's going to take many steps in a few days, maybe in a few weeks or even months. Sometimes we think we have to go into project management mode and let's plan it out and let's outline all the tasks we have to do and then prioritize them and then timeline them and put them into software. And we think it's gotta be this major thing and all that stuff is boring and it's hard and you don't want to do that. We actually want to do is create. And that's what Greg is talking about in this book. He references another book, the Lean Startup by Eric Ries, which is all about, you know, creating a minimal viable product when you're trying to see if your business is going to fly. So if you have to take on a daunting task, just take the most obvious action. Do the thing that appeals to you most. Maybe that's writing the sales letter, or maybe that's going into Canva and creating a graphic that represents your new product. Or maybe you're a numbers person and you want to start doing some pricing or some packaging models. Whatever gets you excited. You have to remember momentum is important. You don't have to do things in order. You can start with these tasks, the things that kind of pique your interest, and then work in a different order. Like if you're working on the sales page, for example, then you're like, okay, I finished the sales page. Where do they go to buy? Oh, let me get the checkout page and let me integrate that with my payment processor. What happens after they pay? Oh, well, maybe I have to go ahead and give them an automation email. But then you're like, oh, I gotta market this thing. So then you go back to the beginning. I gotta market this thing with some ads or maybe some emails. The point is that you don't have to go in any particular order or make this a huge daunting project with project management software if you don't want to. At least at the start, you could just start with the things that get you excited, get some momentum, even put it out in the world and get Some feedback, and then from there you can start doing all the organization and fill in the gaps and fill in the areas that you missed. The next idea is kind of related, but it talks about starting with the rubbish version of your idea. Like, what is the trash version? The garbage version of the idea that you have. A lot of entrepreneurs, they're perfectionists, right? Want the highest quality. The picture in their head is like version 25, not version 1. So one of the reasons why things are hard and they are overwhelming is because we think we gotta do version 25 now, right? That's what has to go out and that's the first thing people see. No, you could start with the garbage version of this, right? And we're calling it garbage version. It's not absolute garbage, but in your values it's probably gonna be seen as, this is not that great, it's garbage. Doesn't start with that first, okay. And see how it feels and just get some traction. And then you can always progress and improve on garbage version. You have a finished idea, you have a finished product or concept. With the garbage version, you can then improve. But the problem with not doing the garbage version is that you actually never get to the finish line with these grand ideas because it takes so long and you need a lot of motivation, time, effort, funding to make it happen. It's like they say, it's better to have a 100% of a grape than 0% of a watermelon, right? It doesn't matter in your head what this could be. If it doesn't exist, it's zero, right? It's nothing. So start with the rubbish version.

If your team isn't using ClickUp, you're wasting time and data proves it. 61% of knowledge workers manage work more than doing it. Switching apps a thousand times a day, that's work sprawl and costs millions. ClickUp replaces 20 apps with convergence, uniting projects, docs and chats while AI super agents handle the busy work. Join 4 million teams using ClickUp to finish work 30% faster, try it free and get 15% off AI upgrades@ClickUp.com podcast. That's C-L-C-Kashup.com podcast.

All right, I got one more takeaway I want to share with you when it comes to today's must read. Effortless by Greg McKeown. And this one I really loved. And it was all about effortless playing by your own rules. He shares a story of Southwest Airlines when they realized that they need to go digital when it comes to their tickets Prior to this, it was costing way too much money to print actual old school, you know, tickets. Those long, you know, cards. People would either pick them up from the travel agent or they would have to pick it up when they checked in. And they would have their boarding passes and all that kind of stuff. And they wanted to simplify things and they want to go digital. And they saw other airlines like Delta and American Airlines do this in a certain way. They had a huge amount of investment they had to make to build out the software and the system and the kiosks at the actual airport that, you know, print out these digital tickets. And when they sat down to me and said, hey, this is going to cost us, you know, 20, $30 million just to get this going, this is really going to affect our bottom line. And, you know, Southwest Airlines is all about being profitable. They're a low cost airline and they're like, well, we don't have a choice, because this is the system that the airlines use for creating a valid ticket. And then somebody in the room said, why do we care about what other people are doing? What do we care about? What's important to us? And this goes back to, you know, what Elon Musk talks about all the time. First principles, what do we know? What are the facts? The facts are we need a way to tell the customer that this is a ticket. We want to make it affordable for them and affordable for us to be able to do this. We can go the expensive route and do like the other airlines do, or we can just simply send them an email with a PDF that they can just print out, and on the top it says, this is a ticket. And in that moment they realize, oh, we don't need to build all these kiosks or invest in software, anything like that. We just need to create a PDF, a unique PDF that people can use, make a few adjustments in our software in terms of validating, you know, the barcode and all that kind of stuff. But they just say 20 to 30 million dollars. By just realizing we don't have to do things the way everybody else does them, you can do them differently as long as it solves the problem. You have. Pretty cool. And there's more epiphany moments like that in this book. I highly recommend you check out effortless by Greg McKeown. He's a great author. I actually got this book on Audible. Really enjoyed it. He does his own narration. It's really one that's thought provoking. It's one of those that he shares a lot of great stories that you then share at the dinner table. Great Convers is built upon these ideas, so I really recommend you pick up the book. If you haven't picked up his first book, Essentialism also a fantastic read. It's on my bookshelf. It's why both of these books are must reads on the $100 NBA Show. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA Show. If you love what you hear, leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. And while you're at it, make sure you subscribe or follow. We're on every app, Apple Podcast, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, whatever you like using just hit subscribe or follow so you get our next episodes automatically and you have access to over 2100 episodes in our archives. Before I go, I want to leave you with this Something changed in my brain when I read this book. It made me it forced me to start thinking differently about solving problems and making it a little more effortless for me. Stop pushing the boulder uphill and think of a way to do it differently or find a totally different hill. I love books that challenge your way of thinking and it actually has a lot of impact because now I see things in a different lens. I'm making decisions differently because of it, and I've seen its effects already. Pretty positive. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication, and you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.