Vacationing, Productivity, and Death of Email? With Roland Frasier and Ryan Deiss

You're listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser.

This is your seat at the table. Hey, everybody, Roland Fraser and Ryan Deiss here with you on the business launch podcast. Really happy to be with you guys here today. Today we're going to talk about three cool things. We both recently took vacations, and so we're going to talk about time off, the importance of doing that. We're also going to talk about. There's a whole lot rumbling right now about the death of email and advertising because of all of the privacy issues that are coming in. Lots of people are just totally freaking out about that. We're gonna talk about what's going on with that and how we're dealing with it and some ideas for how you might be able to as well. And then we'll talk a little bit about what are you guys doing or what could you do to maybe increase your productivity. I'm gonna share some of the things that work for us. So right off the bat, Ryan, you just got back from actually a really cool vacation, right?

It's a cool, nerdy vacation. So if you're into, you know, history like I am, then, yes, you would consider it to be a cool vacation. So my family and I drive through, you know, got all the kids, my wife and I, and we basically cruised up the kind of the Atlantic coast of America to kind of started in colonial Williamsburg, went up to D.C. and Philadelphia and finished in Boston and just kind of did this whole tour of kind of the founding of our country, basically. You know, my son was supposed to go on this D.C. trip with his school, but it got canceled because of COVID So we said, let's do it, but let's do it bigger than ever. So, yeah, a couple weeks on the road and just as nerdy as I'll get out. My kids are so sick of history. They're so sick of seeing monuments. They're so sick of, like, you know, colonial reenactors. They're just over it. But we had fun and they learned a lot. You got back from vacation too, right? I mean, I don't think you were gone quite as long as me, but you took a really nice trip as well. Far more leisurely, I would say, than mine. Mine was.

Mine was a trip educational, kind of bent to it, right? We had four kids, total relaxation. That was our goal. We went down to cabo for about 10 days. So that was really nice. Now, the interesting thing is that we actually both left the business and somehow managed to have it continue on. How the heck are people supposed to do that when people are all tied up saying, I can't possibly get away. And. And then there's some people that are really proud. I have some friends that say we haven't taken a vacation in seven years, and it's like a badge of honor for them. What are your thoughts on all of that?

Well, I think when I think about the people that brag about how they never take vacations, they're some of the same people who also are most likely to quit a business. And so we talk a lot at the scalable company about founder burnout and founders just kind of getting over it and quitting and firing themselves. I think more times than not, when founders are getting burned out, you think that maybe you need to quit. You think you maybe need to throw in the towel. You think that nothing's working. Really, what you probably just need is take like 10 to 14 days. And I would encourage, I'd say try to take a solid two weeks, because I don't know about you, man.

How can you do that when things fall apart when you're wearing all the hats?

Yeah, I think we get to that. But there is something to be said for sometimes you have to stop spinning the plates yourself to then see which ones actually fall. Right? I mean, so the answer is simple, right? It's simple and generally unhelpful. You got to have good people and you got to have good systems. Right? You know, so, okay, so there you go, right? How do you go on vacation? How do you take time off as a founder? Well, you know, you got to systemize your processes and make sure that things can be executed without you, and you need to have people there to run and monitor those processes. Now, that is completely unhelpful because you're like, great, where do I start?

Well, mindset wise, though it's. The very first thing is that you have to actually know that that should be a priority for you and that that will actually make your business perform better and give you a better chance of being successful. So I think it's really, it is helpful first because a lot of people are just driving, driving, driving, and they're not thinking, I actually have to build a business that I can leave, because if I don't, I won't be able to scale and grow it, and I sure as heck I'm not going to ever be able to sell it, and I'm going to burn myself out in the process, and it's going to damage my relationship with my family and friends because I won't have any Time for them. So I think that very first thing that is helpful is to say, guys, you guys all have to be thinking about how can I remove myself from the business because you want and God forbid something could even happen to you so that you're unable to continue and then all of the things that you've built fall apart. So I think that we start with, wouldn't it be nice to take a vacation? And then we go to, you really have to be able to take a vacation because life is going to create one for you sooner or later. And then how do we make that happen? Does that make sense?

Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think switching the mindset is important. Switching it from, this is something I would like to do to making it a mandate, right? It's something that you have to do. And you have to do it for two reasons. You know, one, you're a human and humans need to recharge. And the second is I truly believe that it's one of the best things that you can do for your business to decide what actually needs to be systemized. So there's kind of a process that I would go through. If you're kind of worried about it, I would say like right now, plan 30 days from now a two week vacation, right? So 30 days from now, put on the calendar a two week vacation, right? And go to your team. And if you're, if you're a team of one, then that, then that's you and say, okay, if I'm on vacation, what are the things am I most freaked out about? Because if you don't actually put yourself in the scenario, you're just gonna say like, well, I can't leave because I'm doing everything right. And that's not helpful again because now we're not in a solutions oriented mindset. But if you make the decision, okay, in 30 days, that's it, I'm out, right? I'm gonna be gone. I'm only gone for two weeks, but you know, I'm definitely going to take a solid two weeks off. You're not gonna go bury your phone or anything like that. But you're gonna say, look, I'm not gonna be working. If an emergency happens, I guess call me, but I'm going to go on an actual real off the grid vacation. And so if you do that, then that's kind of what I mean. Mentally stop spinning the plates. Take 30 days to stop spinning the plates and see which ones actually fall and which ones are you okay, falling. You know, we had Somebody on our team, you know, a leader on our team who was very worried. She was taking, you know, a long trip, you know, this summer, and she's like, I just. I'm worried. I don't know that my team is ready. We've got all these things we need to do. And just when we were really looking at it, we realized that a lot of the things that she was most concerned about not getting done in her absence were things that really don't need to happen at all. So I think. I think just the exercise of taking a vacation, in addition to that recharge.

I'm going to chime in on that one also. We also realized that when we looked at what the people were doing, that I think it was three of them were not actually doing their job. She was. And she was covering for them. Not in a bad way, in actually a good way, from a human standpoint, is that she didn't want them to fail, but in a bad way because they needed to fail, because they were actually not doing their job. They weren't qualified or competent to do it. And so we made the decision to let them go. So one of the cool things that comes out of this is when you take that vacation, you'll spot those weak points. And you might find that in that case, was it like 100, $120,000 a year of people that we just absolutely didn't need because she was doing their job.

And I think that point that you made is important. It was the decision that I'm taking this trip, which in her case, it was sort of for it was vacation. But I mean, it was sort of forced upon her because some, like, cool stuff that her kids had going on. But, you know, she would have said all along, I can't. And I don't believe that she ever would have sat there long enough and articulated, well, the reason I can is because I'm covering for my team. It was this kind of realization of like, well, I've got to do this and I've got to do that. And in unpacking it, right, in setting the mindset of, like, I'm going to be gone. In her case, it was like three weeks, right? I'm going to be totally off the grid for two. I'll be available for, you know, for one, but still away. It was in unpacking that the realization of, oh, my gosh, like, wait, why.

Are you worried about that?

Why do you have to do that? Somebody in your team is doing that. And truly, it was this breakthrough and that happened for her, the same thing is gonna happen for you. So apart from the recharge and the reset, which is so important, right? It is so important. The exercise of taking a vacation, of taking time off, is the first step to solving kind of that people and systems issues. Because what I said before, somebody's like, okay, yeah, you got to have the right people and you got to have the right systems. It's the right answer. But it's also unhelpful because where do I start? Well, the way that you start is to first decide you're going to take a vacation, mentally stop spinning the plates and then see which plates fall and which ones, as a result of them falling, are really damaging. You know, which one do you realize, wait, I shouldn't be spinning that plate anyway, that's their job to do that. That's not my job. And so you're going to figure out the gaps in your team, whether it's a gap in a person that should be there or, or a gap in somebody who is there, but they're not doing the whole role. You're also gonna find the gaps in your systems. And just the act of taking a vacation is actually the forcing function to systemizing your business. So you kind of get the best of all worlds.

So how does this fit in? Cause I know we have a system that we use to operate these businesses called the Scalable operating System. How would you say, number one, let's tell people where they can go to find out about that, if you'd like to find out about it. And I know we have a newsletter and things like that, but also maybe just kind of a summary of how using a system like we've developed at Scalable can work for you. How does that work?

Yeah, I mean, so in any business, there's going to be, and even within different teams, there's going to be a kind of core value creation processes. Right. And so, you know, on the marketing team, for example, there's going to be growth engines that that marketing team executes that is uniquely responsible for getting more leads and customers. Your product team, your ops team, there's going to be innovation engines that they do that helps to create, roll out new products to improve the products that you have to fulfill on the products that have been sold. So I think the first step is always to identify what are our core value creation engines. What are these things that we do that actually move the needle, that actually aid in the creation and the development of new products and services that actually ensure that we're fulfilling on it that actually, you know, get new customers. That's kind of the first step. And again, that's like, what are the plates that we actually need to keep spinning? That's the question that we're asking. We say, what are our core value creation processes? Now once you've identified those, you say, okay, what are the different steps that go into this process? Right. So if you think about, you know, you got like a mental flowchart, right. Of all the different things that go into place of making this particular value creation process happen, well, that's gonna be made up of a lot of kind of, you know, micro steps, micro stages, micro processes. And so once you identify and in any business, by the way, there's like two or three, there's really not that many truly critical plates that you need to keep spinning. Right. Maybe in really big businesses with lots and lots of teams, in orgs, you might have a half a dozen. But I mean we're not talking about I've got to go and document each and every thing that my business does. That's, that's where people get hung up when they get into process documentation and systemization. They think they need to document everything. You don't first, what are the plates that you need to keep spinning? Then say, what are the stages within this process that we really need to document? And who is uniquely responsible for these? Right. Let's make sure that everybody's clear on that. If you make sure that you have those taken care of, then that then really you got 80 to 90% of the way there. There's points of optimization, but you can figure all that out. I mean, for us, when we walk, you know, our students through the scalable operating system creation process, you know, we do this in, you know, about a month or so, you can absolutely accelerate it and accomplish, you know, basically the first two weeks is what I just described. After that, it's kind of just playing around the edges and really optimizing. So if you decide I want to take a vacation in 30 days, you Absolutely, from scratch can be ready to do that. The first step though, you have to decide, I will say shameless plug. We do have a brand new cohort for the scalable operating system accelerator that's going to be kicking up. So if you got a scalable.

Scalable.

Co, you'll be able to find that if you click on the accelerators. And we should also have a link at the top. So scalable co get you that newsletter.

You can sign up for there too. Or.

Yeah, yeah, the memo. So if you're subscribed to the memo, which you'll see that when you go there as well, then that's how you can find out about these. But the nice thing about these accelerators that we run is they're, they're live, they're cohort based. And so we're actually working with you to get these things built. It's not just some, you know, course that you go through and you're sort of left to your own. But that is the basic process, right? You've got to decide, you got to figure out what are the plates we need to keep spinning, what do we need to do to keep them spinning, and then who's uniquely responsible for each and every one of them. And the way that you get that done is decide right now ahead of time. I'm going to take a vacation in 30 days and then go and take the vacation. And I think you're going to be so proud, frankly. I think when you go through this process, you're going to be proud when you come back and you're re energized, you know, stuff actually got done. Frankly, your team was probably happy to get some work done without your meddling. I know they like it when I go on vacation because I'm not there meddling and everything, but do it for that. I don't want to miss though, the part about how you need it too, right? Man, I know I did. I was getting. This has been a tough stretch that we've been on. I needed a break. I know you did too, right? That was the first time you'd gone anywhere. We've been busting our tails. I had a conversation with a buddy of mine this a couple months ago and this guy is, I'm not going to say his name, but it's a name that many people would recognize. Running one of the fastest growing startups. This company will likely go public in the next 12 to 18 months. And I was just talking to him and I said, man, you know, how you doing? How are you able to, you know, to keep all this stuff going and still balancing stuff with, you know, with the wife and with the kids and you know, I could. He got real quiet and we were talking on the phone. It's not like I could see his face. He got real quiet and he said, honestly man, I'm ashamed to admit this, but I'm, I'm actually going through a divorce right now. And it was because he's, you know, he said, I. And he said, he said, he's like, it's my fault, he said, I just, the past few years, the only thing I focused on is the business. The business got all my attention. You know, my family didn't and my wife didn't. And I'm now paying the price for that. And so I know for me, my wife was my first reason why the whole reason I started this business back in the day was to buy her engagement ring. And so that was at this point almost 20 years ago. You don't want to, in pursuit of just gain and growth and what you think is your prize, lose the very thing that motivated you and the very reason that you say that you're doing something. So, you know, we gave two reasons for taking time off. The second one I think is going to be very practical and proactive. Do it because it's how you figure out your systems and processes that need to get done. But you also got to do it for you because you know, you don't want to sacrifice, you don't want to sacrifice your soul and your family just for the sake of scale.

Amen. Yeah. So that's our challenge for you guys this week is that we would like for you within the next 30 days to schedule a two week block of time that you're going to take off for yourself to recharge. And if you are a solopreneur or someone who doesn't feel that this is even within the realm of possibility, challenge yourself to make it happen. And one thing that you could do is if you absolutely said, just like my whole business is going to fall apart and then I'll have nothing, then take two weeks, take a week off and work the second week remotely. Block some time, say four hours a day. If you need that many, you'll probably find you can do it in two. But just the change of scenery and pace and getting out and having blocked time for yourself and or your family, it makes all the difference in the world. And there's study after study after study that shows that we're all much more effective when we take breaks and go into a different type of space in our minds than just working. So do that for yourself. That's our challenge to you for this week. Speaking of challenges, a lot of folks are absolutely freaking out about the challenges that they see coming from all of the new privacy stuff that's coming out with Apple, who is positioning themselves as this champion of privacy and it's kind of self serving while also being the right thing to do. But and then you have Google who's saying, you know, cookies are going to be gone. It was going to be next year. Now I think it's been extended to 2023.

Yeah, they went ahead and gave themselves an extra couple years perhaps about self serving.

And maybe they're like, maybe we say that and this blows over after that period of time. And Facebook as well, everybody's kind of hopping on the bandwagon. There's lots of fines that are being levied by the authorities in different jurisdictions. So privacy is definitely something that we're all going to have to be concerned about. And as business owners, not just compliance with GDPR and California rules and all the things that have come out there that create potential liabilities for, but also in terms of how we communicate, get our offers seen and heard and how we target, because a lot of that really specific targeting is going away. And Ryan, what do you find about all of this? That do you see it as the death of advertising, we're all screwed, or do you see that maybe there's some good things that can come out of this for businesses, not just for individuals?

Yeah, I mean I definitely don't think it's the death of advertising. We need to remember that advertising was alive and well pre cookie. The idea of being able to track every little thing that your audience does is a fairly new and novel thing. Right? I mean, and frankly, I want to hear your take on this because you've been doing this pesky thing called direct mail for decade plus, still effectively running.

Direct mail for about 30 years now.

For 30 years. Okay.

Yeah.

So you've been doing direct mail for 30 years which has only never had the opportunity to do cookie tracking. So I mean I definitely have some ideas, thoughts, especially with respect to email. But I'm more interested in hearing what's your take?

Yeah, exactly what you said is that to me it's much ado about nothing because really what's happened is marketers have gotten lazy and they've kind of said, well in fairness, they've been led to be lazy by people who will financially benefit from that, namely the big firms that are the platforms that offer you all these targeting opportunities. So the nice thing about it is that we had more relevant ads, which I am all for. The not nice thing is that it's kind of cringy because everything you go look at then you see for the next because marketers do it wrong. Most of them you see for the next month or 90 days or geez, some of them it seems like forever. I went to our friend John Assaraf, went down to Cabo before We did. And he's like, four Seasons is where I stayed. It's great. It's new. You should check it out. And so I went and checked it out. I am still getting Four Seasons retargeting ads for Cabo, having already been to Cabo and come back now for a week. And also in everything all the time. It's like, I. I'm sick of it. Right. So I'm annoyed at Four Seasons marketing people because they've got their frequency cap set way, way, way too high. They're letting me see. I think it's set at a billion or infinity.

Yeah. Annoyed yet sympathetic, because I know we've done that, too.

Yeah, yeah.

It's awful, right?

So here's what's cool that I think is having come from not having that, because we did infomercials and television spots and radio and direct mail before the Internet existed and did just fine. Remember, many, many fortunes were made in direct response without all of this stuff, as you said. So the way I look at it is that we're simply going to change the KPIs, so we might not. And for email, we might not be able to see open rates anymore.

Yeah, yeah. Speak to why email has changed. I think a lot of people, they maybe have heard about, you know, cookies and not being able to track, you know, not being able to do Facebook retargeting on iOS devices because Apple blocked that. Right. And they may have heard that, you know, Google is going to be doing away with cookies. It was going to be this year. And they push it out to 2023. Can you speak to, like, why is this impacting email? I mean, I can see a lot of people saying, like, what's wrong with you? Like, what happened? So can you speak to that a little bit?

Yeah. So one of the things that we do is we target lists and maintain the hygiene of our email lists by tracking how many people are opening. And when we see that an open rate is high, well, we might even do a test where we say we're going to test three things in this email campaign based on how many people open the email. We're going to test a couple of different subject lines to every nth person on the list. So Maybe we take 20% of the list and we take 10% and we send subject line one to. And then 10% send subject line two to. Whichever one gets the most opens tells us that was the sexiest subject line. And now then the 80% that we haven't mailed yet, we're going to Mail, the subject line that got the most opens. So that's cool. I think that. And so.

But all that gets tracked through pixels though. Just again, just so everybody understands the concept, the way that open rate is tracked is through a little pixel in there that fires. That tells the email service provider, hey, this person opened this. And then that rather tells their email client that then gets passed on to the email service provider so that you as the user knows whether you're using keep or activecampaign or mailchimp or whatever, you can go in and see who opened and who didn't. Well, I think currently Apple Mail is blocking that. So they're no longer sending that. They're saying like who opened? Who didn't? Screw you. We're not telling you. Right. But that's currently only in Apple. I think that's the other thing. Now the question you have to ask is if Apple did it or you know, could we expect, you know, Gmail to follow suit and Outlook to follow suit? Yeah, I think you got to look at the trend line. But for now at least it's only an Apple where we can't see open rates. So I just want to set that.

Fast coming to make that mandatory. Not you got it.

You got to look at where I've heard people say like, oh, it's only an Apple, it's not a big deal. These other companies aren't going to do it. They will. I mean you got to look at where consumer. Like there's not a consumer out there who's saying like, no, no, I want more of my, you know, personally identifiable information out there. Like the trend is all against that.

Like so this take rate on app tracking. So since the little thing has popped up, I think it's like 96% or something of the people are saying on apps now that says allow this app to track all of your information and share your information across other apps at all times. And you're like, oh, hell no. Right. So that's happening with email. So all I see there is that what's going to happen is that we have a different KPI. It's going to be click through. Right. It's going to be who's clicking on the links that we put in the emails and we'll use that. If somebody doesn't click on a link, then we'll know that it's a good chance that either they didn't like our message or they never even opened it in the first place. And that's how we start measuring. And then we have to Build more interactivity into our emails to encourage people to click, which can be as simple as click here if you would like to continue receiving these periodically to help you with hygiene on your email list so you continue to have good deliverability. Or it might be, how are we doing? Can you rate us on a scale of 1 to 10? Maybe throw an NPS, a Net promoter score kind of thing out there once in a while or here's a free offer for some valuable thing. Right.

So there's a lot of ways we do the quiz. Have you seen the thing where it's like, you know, so you ask a question and it's just a, B, A, B, C or D. And so, you know, for us it's like I can't remember an example off the top of my head, but it's basically like, you know, we did this with the first back, we owned the survival company. So it was like what, you know, what is the most valuable tool to have in your survival, you know, in your survival bag? Right. A, you know, knife, B, a fire starter, C, a water purifier, D, you know, a comic book. Right. It's something stupid. Right. And no matter, you know, vote and you'll get the answer on the other side. And then, you know, you click on one of those links and we can actually tally the votes based on each one of those being a unique tracker, it goes to the same page. The page says, you know, the answer is this and that would flow into, you know, a sales merge. Well, that's something that's always worked well for engagement and conversion rates. It's also really good for what you said in terms of just figuring out who's active. So yeah, more engaging, interactive style emails are going to be important.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's just thinking about how are you going to change your key performance indicators around things so that you can not be dependent on these drill downs. Now here's the other thing that's interesting though is we've tested and several people that we know have as well, as opposed to these laser targeted pixeled audiences, just doing broad advertising frequently generates better results than the targeted at lower CPAs or cost per acquisition.

So yeah, my mentor Roy Williams, I mean, wrote the book the wizard of Ads. He said for years and years and years and years and years, you know, Internet marketers, digital marketers, they all got this wrong. The most valuable target is the untargeted target, like target through messaging, you know, send out a broad, you know, basically market mass, send out a broad message and Then, but only basically fish in a really big ocean. But use bait that only your audience is going to bite on, which is good if you're a good copywriter. If you're a good copywriter, your day has come. That is now, you know, it's no longer about who can just do the best targeting and who's the best quant and the best at spreadsheeting. Marketing is kind of going back to where it all began.

And keep in mind that this works across all things. I know our friend Neil Patel speaks to large groups, and he said, I might be speaking to an audience of a thousand people, but I only care about two of them receiving my message. Because those two, because his engagements, I think, are a couple hundred thousand dollars to start and go up from there. He's like, if I can address those two people, I can provide value to everybody. But those two people hear my message, then I'm good. Right. So you don't have to have huge quantities to have a really great business. You can speak to a small audience, even out of the mass that you speak to. Hopefully you're given something of interest or value to all those people, but something to think about, I think, as we go forward.

So, yeah, I would just add, like, just a couple of things on this real quick. Remember that it's happening to everyone. Right. It's not like these laws, these changes are only impacting you. And in most cases, it's impacting our ability to track and to target. It's not actually impacting our ability to sell. Right. And so it just means that the message is going to become even more powerful than it already was. So I think now. Now's a really great time. If you're not. If you're not a solid copywriter, now's the time to double down on your copywriting skills. Right. Now's the time head over to digitalmarketer.com, plug, our sister company, sign up for our copywriting cert or one of the other things we have, because copy is going to be the thing. Like that is going to be the answer to solving the cookie crisis. But just remember, it's not like they just did this to you. It's happening to everybody. So your competitors are having to deal with it as well.

Yeah. And brush up on your copywriting with some of those great old classics as well, like Claude Hopkins Book, Scientific Advertising, and David Ogilvy's and Robert Collier's letter book and Eugene Schwartz. All those folks that have brilliant copywriting books are worth checking out again. I think what's, what's old is new.

And they did it pre Internet, they did it pre cookie. And so that's where things are headed. I mean really, we've got to acknowledge that what we had as a benefit for the past, you know, really about 10 years or so was just that it was, it was only 10 years. It was 10 years of the way that marketing worked. And if it goes away, you know, it won't go away completely. We'll still have targeting. The other thing that I'll say, copywriting is going to be a biggie. So is first party dash. Right. So building your own email lists and after somebody subscribes, you know, asking them some questions, hey, you know, tell me a little bit more about which best describes you, you know. And what we found is that if we have a compelling enough value proposition, like if we have a compelling enough lead magnet, we can ask two or three things without as long as it's done in steps. You don't want to have like a massive form. But if you just have an email opt in form and then the next one asks, you know, one very simple question, the next one asks another, you can ask two or three without having, I think we average a 4 to 6% fall off rate, you know, from beginning to end of people who sign up and who go through and fill it out. And that data is going to be really, really important for you to use for your own kind of tracking purposes.

Yeah. So, and as you mentioned, so owned media is a big deal for us and you're going to want that's first party data. Right. A fancy way of saying it is media that you actually own because then you can control it and you've already received permission to market to people and you can segment all of the things that retargeting and those sorts of things allow you to do, you can do within your own media that you own. Nothing's going to change about that. It's really all third party stuff. So the ability to build your own list, the ability to build your own newsletters, your own blogs, your own social media that you control and also you can acquire those things. So if you're thinking about acquiring, acquiring media, you can do that also. And you could go to get epic challenge and find out how. We use no money basically to acquire these types of assets as well. One of the other things I want to talk about, Ryan, is productivity because when you're gone you tend to, when you're going on vacation like we just were, you tend to think about how can I do things better. And how can I get more of this? Because I'm really enjoying having this time away and time off. One of the ways to do that is to be more productive. And it's also a way to allow yourself to have more time to think, which is much more valuable than doing once you get to a certain level in your business. So Keith Cunningham, I know talks in the road less stupid about time that he just spends sitting in his chair thinking. Steve Jobs, famous for taking walks as was Nikolai Tesla for thinking. And I, I believe that one of the least, one of the least observed important functions that business founders, leaders, entrepreneurs should be focused on that they're not, is thinking about things. So one way to do that is to become more productive to give yourself more time to do that. Do you do anything? I was looking what one of the things that triggered me remembering this from thinking about on vacation was we were just doing some scheduling in one of our groups and I saw that you had a three hour focus time set out on Friday, I think yesterday. And then I looked on the calendar because it was shared with our head of marketing, Matt Swan. And Matt also had a three hour time that I think it was productivity time or something like that. How do you get that more productive? What do you do to be more productive? And then how do you capture that time that's so important to think about things?

Yeah. So for me, what I found and I've tried everything, you know, all, every productivity thing in the world, whether it's like getting things done or you know, whatever, and they're all good. I think it's a bit like personality tests where they're all helpful but none of them are kind of the end all be all. The thing that I do that have done for years and years and years that's made all the difference in the world really it comes down to two things. Number one, at the beginning of the week I establish what are the big three, you know, max three things that I want to get done. That when I look at it at the start of the week, I can say if I get all these, if I get these three things done, then it will have been a good week. And then I essentially that becomes fractal on the daily basis. And so what I. So I'll say, okay, what are my big three for the day? And I make sure, you know, maybe my big three is something that's not one of my weekly three. Maybe it's just an obligation. It's part of the whirlwind that's Fine. But I want to make sure that I leave time every single morning for working on one of those big three tasks. So I just went into my calendar and I have a time. It's Monday, you know, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I just put in a focus block and it is a three hour time from nine to noon. And my assistant knows don't schedule, you know, meetings there. I may have a meeting if it's related to one of my big three. So it's not that I, it's not like this is just independent time. But I found that if I give myself that, that three hour block, kind of whatever else happens is fine. Like I don't have to really schedule the rest of the day. I can now go into the afternoon and if something pops up, it's fine. My day isn't ruined because I know that I got that thing done. There's been times where I've tried to have an entire day that was super productive. I can't do it. So for me it's that, what's the big three for the week? I then narrow down to the big three for the day based on that big three for the week. I have time blocked out Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And really the Friday is optional. You see, if I get everything that done by Wednesday, Tuesday and Thursday are kind of unscheduled thinking time. And so that's for me to learn, that's for me to go in and process some of the things. I mean, if I want to build in some more focus blocks because I'm working on something, I can, but I generally those are blocked off. I don't take meetings on those days. So what that now means is Wednesday afternoon and Monday afternoon they're open. And so my assistant can schedule, she doesn't have to ask, hey, is it okay if I put this meeting on your thing? You can, like it is open and it's up to me to make sure that I'm productive, you know, on those Monday and Wednesday mornings. So that's what I do. The other thing that I do is I document my days. So I go through, you know, we talked a lot about this and you being a recovering attorney, you know this. Like attorneys have to track all their time. I document through the day. I keep track of what did I do from like, you know, I document in 30 minute blocks. So from 9 to 9:30, you know, I'll go through and just document how did I spend that day. And so if I didn't get stuff done, usually I can go back and look and say, well, There was this massive block here. When I said I was going to work on this, and I didn't, I got distracted by an email that came through. You know, somebody you know really needed to meet. An urgent fire came up, but it's documented, and that's how I hold myself accountable. And so as long as I'm documenting, if I pick my weekly big three, if I have my daily big three, if I give myself focus blocks on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, if I document my days, then I've got Tuesdays and Thursdays for thinking. Now, those days work for me. Yours may be different, but that's what I found works.

That's awesome. One thing that you mentioned in one word, that has, I think, helped you to be tremendously productive that you didn't talk about in any depth is you have an assistant, you have a va. So I know that a lot of people think maybe that's something they should have but don't know how to do it. So how did you find it? And. Or they think that, gosh, it's going to take so much time to train that person up that I just don't. I just don't have the time to do that training. Or they think I can just do everything myself. What are your thoughts on those three things?

Yeah, I mean, for me, it is. It has truly been life changing for a couple of reasons. One, having somebody else, that is a filter where. Because I'm bad, like, I am not. I'm not protective of my own time. I'm too nice. If somebody's like, hey, can I, you know, can I meet with you here? Yep, sure. I will always kind of push what I need to do my own priorities, even during a focus block. Right.

I.

That's where I lack that discipline. I will not honor that time and the commitments that I make with myself. I'm just bad about that. And, you know, you could say, like, well, Ryan, get better. But I found that that was just challenging for me. Right. At the end of the day, I'm gonna put others ahead of, ahead of my commitments. But where that is really, really bad. Going back to what we said at the outset, what I'm really doing is I'm putting other people ahead of my own family. Because when I don't have that time, where, you know, where do I do it? Well, I do it nights and weekends, which is. Which is family time. And I realized that I rationalized all that, but I still failed. And so rather than just continue to fail and continue to say, like, oh, I need to just have More willpower and honor the commitments I make to myself over the commitments I would make to others. I now just have a person there who says, Ryan is busy, he can't meet with you then. And you know what happens? It just works out. People go, okay, I understand. Because people are totally rational and the ones that aren't, well, that's a great filter. That person's crazy and selfish and I don't want to work with them anyway. So for me that's where it's most helpful is having. Apart from just the time savings somebody did to the back and forth when you're trying to get a meeting scheduled. That's freaking exhausting. You know you get. Does this time work? No. What about this one? Like just to get rid of those back and forths is good. Having somebody when I'm on vacation keeping an eye on my inbox so that I don't have to, so I don't get sucked in. So I told her like, I'm not going to check email. You go in there, check email twice a day. If something pops up, let me know, bring it to my attention. Yeah. So for me it's, it's huge. I wish I would have done it sooner. In terms of how do you train this person? I mean there's a lot of great books out there. Your World Class Assistant is a book that was written by Michael Hyatt that I would recommend if you want to go that route. And where I found my assistant was through Belay Solutions.

So Belay Solutions A L A Y.

It's not B E L A Y. It's like if you've ever done climbing, it's like on Belay, that's the person who's, who's kind of holding the rope so you don't fall. And so yeah, Belay Solutions B E L A Y solutions dot com. Give a, give a buddy a plug. And that's where I found and what's great and what I like about them is that they will also work with you to train your assistant. And if they don't work out, you're like, hey, me and this person aren't really working out. Can you find me a new one? I think that's a great way. I haven't had a lot of luck with overseas vas. I know a lot of people who have. For me, I needed somebody who was in my time zone. Well, close enough, like at least kind of within a couple hours difference. But yeah, I mean I've had my assistant for I guess three plus years now.

Hey, Roland Frazier here, and I want to talk to you about an ad card. This card, created by Funnel Dash, was designed for companies that spend a lot of money on ads and want to scale ad cards. Not only really simple to use for your ad spend, but it gets you a whopping 3% cash back on every ad dollar you spend. Go to funneledash.com adcard and schedule a call. Make sure to mention business launch so you get that three times on your cash back. Potential.

Ryan Deiss here. Now, if you've ever run paid ads, you know it is not easy. You've got to create the ads, track the ads, optimize campaigns, and scale the winners while killing off the losers.

Look, it is a lot of work.

Which is why time and time again we turn to an agency called GrowRev to help us with our paid media campaigns. They run paid traffic for some of the biggest names in the industry, from Tony Robbins to Dean Graziosi, ClickFunnels and many, many others. And Rohan Seth, the owner of GrowRev, well, he's a great friend of ours here at Business Lunch, and because of that, he's offering Business Lunch listeners a huge freebie. Rohan's team is giving out 25 free account audits. It's no charge, no fee, and no obligation to buy anything. What they're going to do is they're going to go into your account, they're going to audit everything, and they're going to show you what you can tweak to lower your acquisition costs, increase your conversion rates and boost your average order values. Now, this is a $500 value, and the first 25 Business Lunch listeners get it totally for free. So here's what you need to do. Go to getmyfreeaudit.com audit again, that is getmyfreeaudit.com Audit and grab your free audit today. And it's great.

One thing that can be a challenge is that, and this is something that I've talked with a lot of people about, I don't think I've talked with you about it, but for high value contacts, how do you deal with that? Because I know that and I think I know how you deal with it and I know what I would suggest. But if I was reaching out to you and you said, schedule it with my assistant, I would never talk to you again. Not like I'd be mad and huff off. I'd be like, I'm not talking to your assistant. And that's not an ego thing. I think maybe it is, but it's a respect Thing. So if you don't respect me enough for us to have a conversation about, let's set a time to do this, then I just, I'm not going to continue to do that because I'm going to take my time to do it and it's so fast and I don't use a va. I'll talk about how I do my stuff in a minute. But so how do you deal with that though? Have you found that to be a challenge? Do you find that there are a lot of crazy, egoistical people like me that are like, the heck if I'm going to talk to your assistant? Or do you deal with high value contacts differently?

Yeah, I mean, so if it's somebody that is at high, I mean, I'm generally having the conversation initially, and when it gets to a point of scheduling a meeting, yeah, if it's like, what time works for you? I'll just say, I've got these times available, let me know. And if that works, then great, I'll just schedule it. I'm not like, I'm not going to do it, but, but there have been times where I've said, is there anybody on your team who. I've said, like, I have somebody on my team who manages my calendar. Do you have anybody on your team who does that? And I found that whether the person does or does not, if you just give them the opportunity to pass it off, then they're fine. And I've had, you know, very, you know, influential high value folks saying, like, say, no, I don't. I manage my own thing. But, but definitely loop in your assistant. Right. And so, and then what I'll do is I will CC in my assistant. So I'm not out of the conversation. Right. I'm still there as well, chiming in. They're just there doing it. So I think there's a difference between I'm looping my assistant in and I'm handing you off.

Exactly, exactly.

Those are two fundamentally different things. Now, there are plenty of times where I do handoff, where I do say, you know, hey, yep, I would love to get something on the calendar. I don't know when my next thing is, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring in my, you know, my assistant and she'll, she'll take it from there. Feel free to loop somebody in on your side if you need to. And that's if I kind of tell. And at this point, you know, siree and I, we've worked together long enough where she can tell when I'M like, I kind of need to back off of this. And she'll be like, great, Ryan, I'm going to move you to bcc. I got this. And then I'm kind of out. And there's been times even when that's happened and moved to bcc, and I'll jump back in and be like, no, no, I'm. I'm still here. Right. If it's a high enough value person. So it's that. I mean, I think there's a way to loop in without it, without it being a handoff and knowing when to do that is just going to be. How important is that relationship to you?

Yeah. And also, if it's an existing relationship, I say high value. But don't. Guys, you know, everybody that's listening, don't think that that means that if you hear only from Ryan's assistant, you're not high value because you might be. It's just he doesn't know it yet or he doesn't have the relationship yet. So when you're reaching out, you're probably going to go through that level first. Unless you have a direct connection to.

Someone or it might be that I'm super busy that day. I mean, so there might be things where it's like, hey, I'm going to be in meetings for the next. Not having. Yeah, not having access to this. I don't want, I don't want to wait until. I don't want this to wait and lose momentum. So do you mind if I loop in my assistant to get this thing scheduled? Because I'm going to be in meetings or I'm going to be filming or I'm at an event or I'm whatever for the next couple of days, providing the why so that it's not. People are always going to tell the worst possible version of the story. And so if you don't provide a why for why you're looping this person in in a way that's beneficial to them, they're going to assume that they're unimportant. But yeah, for sure. If I don't know somebody very well and I think it's interesting, I will loop them in and say, like, yep, I'd love to, love to chat. I'm going to loop in my assistant now so we can get something on the calendar. If it's something that isn't super important, I will then send an email directly to her and I'll say, hey, by the way, this is not something super urgent. Try to find some time. If it's available, but if it's not, then, you know, and this needs to wait a couple weeks. That's fine. Right. So I'll communicate. There's other times where I'll say in the email, you know, I'm going to loop in my assistant, hey, Serena, this is super important. Please do whatever we need to do to get this scheduled, you know, in the next couple of days. Right. And to provide that sense of urgency. So that's just some kind of some tips there. What is. What is your thing? Because, yeah, you don't. You do a lot of stuff yourself that I. That I don't do, and obviously that works for you. So kind of what's your. What are some of your productivity tips? You also just don't do that much, I think. No, I do think that one thing that I've always respected about you is you're very careful about the things that you say yes to, whereas I am way too quick to say yes to things. And so I've gotten better. So when I say you don't do much, I meant that as a compliment. So I want to hear about that aspect of it. But also. Yeah. What is your take first? Like, what's your take on working with an assistant or not? Because you don't have one.

Yeah, I don't have one, but I do have gatekeepers. So the thing that's interesting is I do manage my own comments on social media and messages and things like that because I think it's important to stay connected to those audiences, and those audiences generate a lot of deals and a lot of money for me. So there's something that I pay a lot of attention to. But in all of the businesses that I've got, there are gatekeepers for everyone that I don't meet as a primary contact. So with the exception of social, social is the hack to get to be able to connect with me. But I'll talk about how I deal with that here in a second. So I do have gatekeepers. Even though I don't have a personal assistant, I actually enjoy planning, travel, and I want to be able to prioritize without having to go back and forth with somebody else how I'm going to do things. That is probably not the most efficient way, but it's something that actually gives me pleasure. So I think there are things that might be guilty pleasures, like maybe you enjoy balancing your checkbook. If you enjoy balancing.

I know rich people who mow their own lawns.

Yeah.

And if you enjoy that and they just think it's fun it's like, that's great. Yeah. You do derive a sick and twisted pleasure out of booking travel. And you're so good at it. I love traveling with you because it's like, man, we. Yeah.

But I don't do. But almost everything else I do or even around our house, we have a staff of people, as I think you do. Right. That handle everything so I don't have to deal with any of that stuff. So most of my life is spent showing up to do the things that are going to be the most productive to start with. So identifying all the things that you don't like and then figuring out how do you outsource those to other people that probably do enjoy it or that will do it to be paid. That's thing number one. So the other thing is you mentioned your three things. I use a thing called but it's called Commit to three. It's an app on the iPhone and it's something that you can use for yourself or for your whole team so that you can manage a team of people that are also committing to three things. So that I find to be very helpful for me because every day you do need to prioritize the three things that you're going to get done in the day or the day will just take over. And so that's thing number one as far as being productive.

It's commit to three and you can do it for teams. That's awesome. Because you know, we do this, I mean this is a part of our operating system is we've got the big three for the quarter and then those big three is going to break down. I mean, this is the most fractal thing that we do because there's like the company wide big three teams have their big threes, then those team wide big three goals for the quarter break down into your weekly big threes and your daily big threes and then each person has a daily big three. And we're reporting on all this stuff in Slack and it organizes everything.

You get to see who's doing what, who's not. It's super cool and it's not expensive at all either.

Let's check that out.

So I use that. I also am, I am very protective of my time, like really, really militantly protective about it. So Mondays and Fridays are the days that I take off and I try to pack everything into the 24 hour period of an 8 hour day on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And the reason that I pick those days is that if I am going to take a long weekend or It's a holiday. Or I just need four days. I can get those four days by having Friday and Monday not scheduled. And so I'm very, very protective of that time. Also, I am very good about saying not now. Now. I used to not be, because I wanted to do everything, and I had this fomo, this fear of missing out if I said no to someone or I felt like I would hurt their feelings. And what I realized was that I could simply say, right now I'm fully committed. And so I can't do it right now. So I'll say, not now. Follow up with me. And this is magic. This is really magic. Most people are. Their lives are run by external events. They are reactive, not proactive. So if you tell somebody to follow up with you for that podcast that they want to do with you or that meeting they want to have or that thing they want to talk with you about, and you say, I'm fully committed for the next two months or the next quarter, reach out to me. And let's say it's right now as we record this, it's June. I'd say reach out to me in September and I'll look at talking with you about it. Almost always. Those people are never going to reach out again.

I got a story about that. Can I tell you a story about that? You're so right. You're so. I've got a story about that. Okay, so going into, you remember, the end of 2020 was just insane because we had virtual TNC. The holidays are crazy. We had the challenge. I mean, it was just nuts. And so it was clear going into November that the end of the year was just going to be. Forget about it. And so. And I had the usual, like, podcast speaking, like, meeting. Can we talk about this? So I told, I told my assistant, tell everybody, look, there's no way Ryan is fully booked because of all these things, you know, through the end of the year, and then is on vacation the first couple weeks in January. So can you please follow up at the end, end of January? And she was telling me, she's like, you're going to get slammed into January. I've, I've, I've. I must have said this. I've said this to, like, 20, 30 people. You're going to get slammed, and all these people are going to want it. You know, meetings. Your February is going to be, like, awful. I think like two.

And that's a lot too, like, two.

Out of, like, you know, she. And she was like, 20 or 30, and she wasn't exaggerating, right? I mean, because I just know how many come through too. So you are so right. There's something magical about that saying, like, yeah, we can get to it here, we can get to it at this time. And the reality is if it's really that, if it's that big an opportunity, it'll still be there.

Yeah. So another hack that I started only about, I guess it's close to two years now ago, was that because I had so much activity and so many people that are saying, can I pick your brain? Can I give you equity in this deal? Will you look at this deal? Can I get some advice, etc. Is that I had been trying to do that for years and years and years, and I always was very proud of myself because I could say I don't do consulting because I don't ever want to trade dollars for hours. But at the end of 2019, I was looking at my productivity for the, for the preceding year, setting my goals for 2020, and said I'm wasting too much time with people that I talk with who don't take any action and nothing. It doesn't turn into anything for either of us. Not only do they not do anything that involves me, but if they ask for my advice and I give it to them, they don't take it. So even though it's good advice, they just don't. They just don't listen. So what I decided to do was I decided that I would create a investment that they had to make to have a conversation with me. And so I said, I will spend four hours. I'll do a half day consult with you. It's the only way I do it. Because if it's not four hours that we're going to spend together, then you're just asking me for free advice. And that's not really fair. But if I do have spare time, I'm happy to answer. But the chances that I'm going to have spare time, you know, I don't have a lot of spare time because of how I run my life. So I said, I'll do this half day consulting. The way it works. It's 18,000 is what I started out. I've since raised it to 25. 4. Four hours of my time. And I was surprised at how effective it was because there were people who said, and my response is, to anybody that says any of those things, can I pick your brain? Can I get your vice, etc. As I say, the way I do that is if I have free time, I Don't have much of it, but if I have free time, I'm happy to help. But I don't have any free time right now. The way I do it is I do a four hour consult. It's $25,000 for four hours and you can spend it any way you want. Most people do two hours to start with and then additional blocks of 30 to 60 minutes. During that time. We'll work on whatever you want to work on. You set the priority and agenda. I'm not going to look at anything, any documents or any deal or anything else before the meeting. It's four hours in the meeting, but we will accomplish great things, I promise you that. I'm committed to giving you at least 10 times the value of your investment. The investment's $25,000. If this is something that sounds like a fit, let me know and I'll send you the one page consulting agreement and the wiring instructions. And if not, no problem. And I wish you the best of luck. So that's it. I haven't gotten anything back from anybody that's pissed off at that response because I think it says very clearly, I'm happy to help you if I've got time. I just don't have any right now. I'm fully calendared out with paying customers and my deals that I'm doing. And it also generated, I think it was a million. I did 42 of them in 20. I've done about the same pacing, about that same number. Now I actually wanted to do fewer, but then those. That investment changed everything because the people that I meet with and talk with now, number one, my time. And I'm getting a return on my time, which is really important to me. And number two is I'm seeing them do things and so they're coming back now people that want to get together again saying, it changed my life. I was pandemic. I was completely shut down. I didn't know what to do. You helped me actually double or triple my business and now I would like to give you part of it, or I would like to have you be involved in it, or I'd like for you to buy into it. And I'm willing to do it because I've seen them take my advice and go in it. And so it's generated several deals, not only for me, but for us, for our business too. We've got a few that are going, including a webinar company that we just acquired a third interest in, a golf company that we have acquired an interest in, like it's really cool. So everyone benefits from it. And now I'm getting paid for it. And it sends all of the people that would have just wasted time. I mean, and I want to say this really carefully because I respect everyone who reaches out. The challenge is that most people are not people who follow through. So you learned that from saying, let's talk in February. I've learned it from saying, reach out to me next quarter and from this. So what it does is it just filters all those people out because it would be both a waste of their time and my time. I'm helping those people to not come, take time for both of us and then do nothing with what we talked about. So that's been really, really effective for me. And then the way that I think about how I'm going to communicate with the devices in my life is very important. So I spend zero time on social media that is not intentional for generating business. I'm not on social to look at cat videos and all those things. And I think if you find that to be entertaining, it's awesome. It's just like choosing to travel or watch TV or whatever else you might do. But it's very easy. The companies that create the things that show up as apps on our phone are really designing stickiness and addiction and they're building that into all of these things that we have. And so this is most people's boss. If you think you are your own boss, you're probably wrong. Your boss is right here. Your boss.

Look at your screen time, look at your screen time metrics on your phone and you'll see who your boss is.

Exactly. So the other thing that I do is all notifications, including phone calls, are turned off on here. I have no notifications. I don't get notified about anything. Everything is off. Go to your notifications, turn everything off so that you can time block, which is something that you're talking about doing. So now, when I set my time, which is Mondays and Fridays, to not work or to think, then I have the ability to not get interrupted throughout my day, not get interrupted during that time. I'm only doing all of my messages, all of my emails, and all of my social in focused time blocks. So if I find myself waiting for something, like I'm waiting in line or I just have, I'm sitting in a car going from point A to point B or an airplane or whatever, then I have the opportunity to in bulk quickly deal with all of my social, all my email, all my messages that need to be done in a Very focused block of time. And then I don't look at it again. I don't look at it again until the next time that I'm going to focus on that I'm not checking and there's no one telling me how I'm going to respond in what priority, including text messages and phone calls, which is a big deal. So that's really cool. And then all of my frequently retyped answers like my address and my phone number and my email address and a lot of comments that are common for me to reply in social media are done as text replacement, automated text replacement. So I type two letters and then it automatically fills that information in. How many times have you filled out a form and you're like, oh, my city is Rancho Santa Fe. It's very frickin long. My email address is, is my full name. You know, like it's, it's a lot of typing so I don't have to type all that stuff. I just go through and I can knock out literally hundreds of messages in 20 minutes. And that's really, really effective. The other thing is that I follow a messy and search organizational structure versus a highly organized, hierarchical, alphabetized or anything else. So I don't delete any of my emails. Inbox zero. To me, that's a really inefficient way to manage things. I scan through, I open the things that are important to me based on my priorities. When I'm going through the email or social time, I respond to those things and everything else I simply ignore. So if I was to have badging turned on, which by the way, turn off badging on your phone, that's those little red circles that, that nag at you and create anxiety because you have 36,000 unread emails. All of that stuff is off. So I'm not worried about it. And then I search. So I have abandoned Apple mail in favor of Gmail as my primary email app because Google turns out knows how to do search. Apple sucks at search. And so all of that stuff like, like that's a big deal, claiming back your life and not letting this little thing tell you everything you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it just dramatically increases productivity. Those are some of them.

I think it's. Yeah, I love what you said there about Inbox Zero because we're using the term productive. I think maybe a better way to think about it would be effective. I know a lot of highly productive people which, and I know the way that we're defining productive is different than the way that they might define productive. They would define, like, look at all of these things that I got done. But they've got an endless to do list that is a whole lot of meaningless things.

Tom on his board.

I know.

It's been there for 10 years, right?

Same freaking to do list. And it is just an endless to do list. I don't know anybody who's truly effective who talks about achieving Inbox Zero. Like, everybody I know who's effective. It doesn't matter. They're not a slave to that. Like, the inbox is just another place. It's a thing. I mean, it's like, why are we trying to move this stuff around and get organized, get your stuff done, get clear on what are the things I need to get done. And if getting to Inbox Zero is one of the things that's high up on your to do list, we absolve you of that.

All right.

You don't have to, because I promise you this, there is not going to be a check waiting for you at the end when you hit Inbox Zero. I've done it. There's a nice picture. It's like, congratulations. As though we've actually achieved anything. Right? And here's.

And then immediately, five more come in.

Immediately, immediately, immediately, five more come in. So to the extent that you achieved anything, it's fleeting, right? So, look, be clear on, like, what are those priorities that actually move the needle? And don't. Don't pursue, like, phantom and vanity productivity.

That's why you turn the badging off. The badging is designed to nag you into creating anxiety that causes you to open the app, which is good for the owner of the app and bad for you.

Yep. Yeah, let it go.

Let it all go.

Every now and then, declare email bankruptcy, too. I do that every. Every year. So I'll go in and just do, you know, archival. And it's amazing. The world just keeps on spinning.

It does. It does. But that. That messy thing is. Has been a really, really big efficiency booster for me. So I want to talk about effective versus efficient. Effective is the ability to get something done. Efficient is the ability to get it done in the least amount of time. So we're talking about really both effectiveness and efficiency. When we're looking here, it's important to be effective and get the things done. You need to be done, but you need to be selective in choosing the things to get done then and to rank them in their order of importance. Then you need to be efficient, as efficient as possible in getting the things done, you need to get done, which then frees you up to have time to think, to grow your business, and to go on vacation. So the messy organizational structure versus the hierarchical or the organized has been a big one for me because I used to go through and then I would put everything in a folder that was new on my computer, and then I'd spend hours and hours dragging the things to the right folder so I could find them quickly. Well, it turns out as long as you're good at searching, you can find anything you want. So when I'm looking for a file on my computer, everything to me stays in one folder. Now, it's not organized because I can organize it by type if I needed to go through and do a manual search. But the truth is I just click the search feature. I can pull up anything that I want, any template, anything I need. Gmail allows me to find things on the phone. Right. I'm good. So think about that. Be comfortable with messy, because messy might be the most efficient and effective thing that you can do to organize yourself.

Yeah. The goal is not. This is, you know, we're running a business here. This isn't like some Marie Kondo. This does not bring me joy, kind of. So I'm going to get rid of it. Like, you know, that might be okay in your house and your environment, your surroundings, but we're running a business. Right. Sometimes it's a little bit messy. Right. This is a manufacturing floor. You know, we're cutting up chunks of meat. Right. I mean, it's going to get messy and that's okay. It's a part of the process.

It is, yeah. I want to look at the time for this one because we might make this the productivity issue, because I think this stuff was really, really fun to talk about and I think it could be very helpful to folks. I agree.

I thought this was good. Cool. Well, good work. And I guess we'll see everybody again. Any last kind of parting words? Anything going on that we need to tell people about? I know we've got the. The new cohort of the Scalable Operating System Accelerator. We help you build the operating system in your business. Coming up, go to scalable co or getscalable.com, scalable co, though. We'll make sure that there's a banner or something there, I think. I'm sure there's a direct link. I just don't know what it is. I'm a. I'm a jackass.

Definitely subscribe to this podcast so that you can get more Good stuff like we've talked about today and we would always appreciate a review if you enjoyed it. And we'll be back.

And bud Roland, by the way, if you want what you, what you talked about there with that whole consultant was brilliant. I mean that was, that's. And I started doing the same thing. I remember when you told me about it, I was like, man, no way. People are gonna pay that the right people will. And it's a service to them because then they actually take action. I think we should do a special intensive or training or something just on that process because you've got the worksheets, you've got all the stuff. I know we talked about it with our founders board mastermind folks and our warrior members, but price should be its own thing. So if you think that should be the case, bug Roland on social media, hit him up on Facebook and Twitter and all those other fun places and maybe we can coerce him into doing that.

Sounds good. Awesome. Ryan. Thanks for today everybody. Thank you for listening or watching and we will see you next time. You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser.

If you're enjoying the show, let us.

Know know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information go to businesslunchpodcast.com Ever wondered how some people build real wealth through acquisitions while others just sit on the sidelines? Well, I'm here to tell you it's not about luck. It's about having the right system, the right deals and the right guidance. And that's exactly what we give you in the EPIC Deal Fast Track. If you've been thinking about buying a business, but you keep getting stuck. Whether it's finding the right deal, structuring the financing, or negotiating with sellers, you are not alone. Too many people waste months, even years just thinking about acquiring a business while the real opportunities pass them by. The EPIC Deal Fast track is not another course. It's actually an implementation program and it's designed to get you from the idea to the acquisition in just 16 weeks or less. We work with you one on one to help you find, fund and close your first or next deal. And once you do, we're going to plug you into our elite EPIC board community so that you can keep scaling through acquisitions. We install three powerful systems in your business. The first is the Deal flow engine.

So you always have high quality off.

Market deals coming to you. Number two, we give you our offer and funding system so that you can structure offers that get accepted and fund them creatively many times with no money out of your own pocket. And number three are closing and integration systems so that you don't just buy a business, you actually successfully run and scale it once you have acquired it. Plus you'll have direct one on one support from an Epic Deal Advisor every step of the way. And that's people that have actually come up through this system and done these deals themselves. That's the only way to become an Epic Deal Advisor. And if you're serious about acquiring a business this year, don't just sit on the sidelines. Just text I'm in to 334-458-9034 and we'll get you in. So text I'm in to 334-458-9034 will get you in. No fluff, no wasted time, just real deal making from people that are actually out there doing deals right now.

I'll see you there.