Episode 132: Success in the Give First Economy with Kirby Hasseman

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew. It's the new year, and by now you've shifted your thinking toward your most ambitious goals. But you live in a deadline-driven business, and it's so easy to get your best New Year's intentions swept away by the tyranny of the urgent. In today's episode, we're chatting about practical tactics and life hacks to achieve your vision for personal and business success. Our guest is Kirby Hosseman, who just released his new book titled The Give First Economy and How to Succeed in It. Kirby is the CEO of Hosseman Marketing and Communications, the author of 5 books, well-known host of the popular weekly web show Deliver Marketing Joy, and co-host of the podcast Unscripted. Kirby's a bright and positive voice in a noisy world. Not only a successful entrepreneur, he's a fierce advocate for education, gives freely of his time and from his experience as a promo kitchen chef And he was recently recognized as the top social media influencer in the industry. No small feat for an industry with somewhere around 300,000 professionals. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. And to help celebrate the launch of Kirby's book, we're giving away 20 copies. You can register to win at go.commons skew.com/giveaway. Enter in your address, and if your name's selected, we'll mail it to you. Again, that address is go.commons skew.com/giveaway. /giveaway. Today's episode is brought to you by Commenscue, the platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To begin your free trial now, visit commenscue.com. Now on to my conversation with our good friend Kirby Haase. Kirby, you and I both read the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. We both love that, that book. Yeah, he wrote this, that each of us has a picture, however vague of what we would like to accomplish before we die. How close we get to attaining this goal becomes the measure for the quality of our lives. If it remains beyond reach, we grow resentful or resigned. If it is at least in part achieved, we experience a sense of happiness and satisfaction.

Yeah, I love that quote.

Yeah, your new book, Success in the Gift First Economy, is sort of split into two parts. Part one consists of both strategy and tactical ideas applicable really for the most part to you and your business.

Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay.

Part 2 consists of strategy and tactics for the individual. I mentioned to you that it seems before we can even think about giving first, giving ourselves in the new economy, we have to ensure that there's enough of us left over to give. It's a great point. Which is why, since we're publishing this at the start of the new year, I'd like to start with Part 2 of your book on the self and your individual goals.

Yeah.

You and I know this business, and the SQCast audience consists of pros that are in a high-demand, deadline-driven business whose constancy is change. Someone say chaos. It's the kind of lifestyle in business that if you're not intentional, it'll sweep away any semblance of yourself, your goals, your ambitions. And Jamie Mayer talked about this a little bit at SKU Camp about being intentional because the business has the ability to pull you away from your intent. So let's start our discussion with what we can do to get our hearts and minds on the right track for 2020 goals. At this list, great list, I'm going to encourage everyone to turn up the gray matter and to bury your skeptic. And particularly, there's this part of us that is always looking for new new information. And some of the greatest success in our lives can be things that we acted on that were things we already knew. So, oh yeah, your first point was get more sleep, and my notes say, oh shit.

Yeah, it's exactly right. So, you know, one of the things, and I say it several times in the book, and I say, I've said it, if people who listen to me have heard me say it before, is that the greatest distance in the world is the distance between I know and I do, right? Right. Because there's so many things we know, but we don't execute on them. And so whenever I talk about getting more done, there are several things I mentioned that are counterintuitive. But what I love about part 2 of the book is that I'm not really giving my opinions, right? Like, yeah, these— everything I'm talking about is based in science. So the reality of it is, if we want to get more done and we want to be more productive and quite frankly more happy, you know, our brain needs to work, right? Like, for the most part, we— we're— you mentioned that we are living in an industry of chaos to a degree, right? So we need to be able to think creatively, we need to deal with stress, we need to quite frankly have a sense humor. And all of that comes from being rested, not only your body but your mind.

Yeah.

And there's a great book called, uh, Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina, and he, he— my favorite stat in this is that he says that, you know, each of us needs a little bit different amount of sleep, but usually most people, and I'm generalizing here, need 7 to 9 hours, right? Yeah, I think most science will tell you that. But when you go one night and, you know, you deprive yourself of good sleep, and let's say you get 4 hours because you're pulling an all-nighter. Let's assume you're doing good things when you're not sleeping, right? You get that 4-hour night's sleep, studies will tell you that your brain function decreases by 40%. Wow, that's a huge number. Like, yeah, yeah. And that same study followed up by a second night, right? You do 2 nights in a row where you're pulling all-nighters, it decreases your brain function by another 40%. Yeah, I always joke that by the third night I'm a talking monkey. I mean, like, I need my sleep. And, and I think so many times in, in America's culture, this is certainly true. We're like, we're going to stay up late and we're going to get up early and we're going to grind. And at the end of the day, that's kind of counterintuitive to getting more done. Yeah, being more rested allows you to function at a higher rate because it's not about doing more stuff, it's doing the right stuff, if that makes sense. And so yeah, getting more sleep is— it's the reason that I think by the last day in Vegas we all look like zombies.

Well, it's You know, the other thing about sleep now, you're talking to an insomniac who this is the first point I need to take very well. Nabokov hated sleep. He called it the most moronic fraternity in the world, but he, he, he too, he had such a genius mind that he had so much ambition. This happens to us in sales and entrepreneurs, especially we have so much ambition that we know we're burning daylight. But what I've actually learned too, is that the subconscious mind and the unconscious works while you're not working. There's this poet, I don't know how to pronounce his name, Saint-Paul Rault, the poet. He used to hang a sign from his door that said, "The poet is working," when he slept, when he slept. Because, and Mary Oliver would talk about this, that it's often this subconscious, unconscious work that's going on in the mind. So for those that maybe are that, the folks that love to grind it out and go, go, go, the good news is your mind is still working on projects. In fact, you'll often find your biggest breakthroughs when you're not directly working on those projects. So there's another vote for sleep right there. Yeah.

Well, again, that's why they say put, put a notepad beside the bed or whatever so you can just get it out of your brain and go back to sleep.

Okay, second one. What was your second point? Was get more— uh, I can't even say the word.

You can't even say it.

You're a runner, right?

I, I do, I do run. I mean, like, Mark Graham and David Schultz and those guys, those are runners, right? I run so that I can drink beer, right? Like, it's my kind of— yeah, exactly. But again, it comes back to the same science. And, you know, one of the things that we talk about is it's not— you don't have to run a marathon, you don't have to do a million push-ups or any of that stuff. It's just about getting your blood flowing. Uh, actually, really, the reality of it is most of the time people see me on the treadmill or out doing whatever, I'm just going for a walk, 20-25 minutes to get brain function going. Yeah. And you know this, we've all had the moment where you're like, you're out on a walk, your subconscious mind is engaged like you just said, but there's blood flowing to your brain. And essentially, uh, that same book, Brain Rules, talks about how when you are exercising, blood is flowing to your brain at a higher rate and creating new blood vessels in your brain, which essentially makes you smarter. Uh, and so it's, we've all had that moment where we've been out on the walk or out on the jog or whatever, and you come up with that idea on the problem you've been vexed by for weeks, and all of a sudden it comes to you. And that, that's because exercise makes you more productive and it makes you smarter. Again, this is two in a row that like you can get more done by taking extra time. Like I said, it's counterintuitive, but It, again, it comes back to, it's not the number of hours per se. It's the number, you know, the amount you get done in those hours.

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So the third one you had, start being intentional.

Yeah. You, you mentioned it that Jamie mentioned it at SCUCon. I use the word intentional a lot, right? Because I think that so many times people get the end of a week, month, year, life. And then they wonder what happened to their life. It's because they've been living someone else's goals and, and being intentional really does come down to being somewhat goal-oriented. I think everybody has a different level of interest in goals and some people are afraid of them. Some people like them. I, I, I'm super interested in the exercise of goal setting. Yeah. But if you know what, what's the quote? If, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

Right.

You know, so many times we, we go, hell, we go to trade shows and you talk to a supplier as a distributor and people are like, what are you, what are you working on? I don't know. How do you go there and not know? Like you're not being intentional. And so, you know, for me it's about spending the time, you know, I think this, the statistic I mentioned in the book is that 3% of the population, right? Yeah. Have goals and have them written down.

That's a great, yeah.

And that's crazy.

Right?

Like, similar studies will tell you that you're 80% more likely to achieve a goal if you've written it down, and that is completely in your control.

Yeah, you have 5 Fs for goal setting. Can you, can you demonstrate that by sharing what your goals are? And, and I also want to know, I also want to know, in the book you say you hate SMART goals. I want to know about that.

Yeah, so, so one of the things I— the 5 Fs of goal setting. I think most of us, when you think of goal settings, you think of 2 of the Fs, right? It's either finance or fitness. You either want to make more money or you want to lose some weight, and that's fine. That's, that's great. That's a great place to start. But I always think if I want to have a well-rounded life, I should have well-rounded goals. So my 5 Fs are finance, fitness, family, faith, and fun, right? And so what I try to do is have one goal at least from each of those areas. One of the things I'm doing right now is I've decided to create what I like to call a 12-week year goal. There's a great book called The 12-Week Year where you boil it down into essentially a 3-month 3-month window.

So it narrows the focus, which actually should be a good tactic, a really easy tactic for us to grasp because those that are in sales or in business are used to looking at their business by quarter.

Yeah, totally. And again, for me, you know, I'm a little ADD anyway, as you might expect. So it gives me a light at the end of the tunnel really quickly. But so right now I can— mine are up on my wall because I think it's important to be able to see them on a regular basis. Number 1 is be a good, a better husband and father. That's always my number 1. Uh, number 2 is to train for a half marathon, to run or walk 180 miles, which sounds like a lot, but over 90 days, that's not that many. I have a sales goal, personal, and then a company goal, you know, sales goal. Then I've got one that I'm still working on, candidly. I have till January 1st, we're recording this, right, uh, is to create a monthly giving goal for the company. And that falls under my faith. I decide— I kind I want to sell a number, I want to publish the book and sell a number of copies and schedule a cool trip with my wife. So, if you look under those, there's fun, there's family, there's faith, fitness, and finance in all of that. And I don't know that I hate SMART goals. If I said that, I need to— I'm not as enamored with them as everybody else because— so, let's see, it's specific, measurable, attainable. What's the R? And timely and Either way, the R was—

R was relevant.

Relevant. Great. Okay, so I actually like that, like some of that, because when you're first starting out goals, that it gives you some guidance. Because if you're like, if your goal is, hey, I want to be more fit, well, that's hard to hit, right? I, I get why they need to be somewhat specific and whatever, but one of the things I struggle with is my number one goal all the time is to be a better father and a better husband. I have no idea how to measure that. I truly don't. But one of the things I find is if it is written down and if it is up there on my wall and I see it every day, it affects my behavior. And then the other thing is when they say something that is attainable or whatever, as judged by who?

Yeah.

Like, I think goals are deeply personal and you need to be somewhat self-aware about them. I think that's one of the things that shy people away. It's one of the reasons I think only 3% write them down is because they think they're doing it wrong. If you are setting goals for yourself, you're not doing it wrong. You're not. Yeah, because they're your goals.

Yeah. Yeah, and if you view it as an exercise and not that you're etching, you know, the Ten Commandments in stone, it's, it's far better. It just makes— it's a living, breathing document that you should be able to edit at any given time.

100%. And like, for me, I'm a, I'm a person who being self-aware is important because like I'm good with swinging for the fences and not getting there. Like if, if I say I want to double sales for our company and we grow— like, for the— just in the interest of transparency, I quote unquote failed this past year, okay? Because my goal was to double sales. We had 24% growth as a company. So if you look at it as— I think it's great. Did I meet my goal? No. But I'm self-aware enough to know, okay, that's not going to frustrate me because I know that we did well. There's another guy in my organization who would hate that. Like, he wants to set super manageable goals that he can surpass, and neither of us are right. Like, you know what I mean? Like, there's, uh, whatever works for you and motivates you is how you should do it.

Yeah, one Going back to that quote that we started with, with flow, you know, if it's at least in part achieved, you experience this sense of elation and, and the fact that you move toward that goal. Absolutely. So, so many of us, um, to your next point, this is another, uh-oh. First of most, for me, it wasn't as bad. This is the only one I was like, oh, okay, maybe there's one out of Kirby's list that I'm doing right. Morning routine. What's yours?

Oh, okay. So, and, and I have spent the time, um, and where this came into play actually was exercise for me. I I enjoy exercise, but when I'm ready for it. See, it seems like every book I read that said, man, do it first thing, you roll out of bed, you throw your shoes on, and if you have all your stuff laid out, you'll love it. And I hated it. Like, I would do whatever exercise routine for a week, and then I'd say, screw this, I want to sleep in. And so I created this morning routine where I did all the stuff I wanted to do, but I did it in a way I would do it. And so I hop out of bed, I make coffee. I just like— I can do that with my eyes still still half closed. I get the pups up and let them out and all that sort of thing. Then, I sit down and I read and write. So, as I'm having my cups of coffee, I read things that inspire me, whether it's something you've written or Seth Godin or a video from Gary Vaynerchuk or whatever, something that I'm pushing some good into my brain first thing. And then, on the best mornings, I usually write something, whether it's a blog that gets posted or just something that I put internally. That's my kind of way of pushing things out. Usually at that point, I'm awake, I've had 2 cups of coffee, and I actually want to go do something. So I go get on the treadmill for 20 to 25 minutes each morning, usually walking, you know, just something where I can get the blood flowing. Then I come up, cool down, shower. The, the thing that makes people laugh is I go to our local hospital, and, uh, they have a little cafeteria there. Yeah, I get the same exact thing every single day. It's scrambled eggs and bacon. I get some protein, and I, you know, it's fairly good for me, and And literally, I don't order. I go in there so much that they say hi, they start making my breakfast. I go over before it's done and pay for it. It's $1.86, by the way. And, uh, by the time it's done, they hand it to me and I go to work. And so that's, that is my sort of morning routine.

Yeah. Todd Patebaum with QRG shared with us, you know, his daily reading habit is like a ritual that sets in motion sort of this readiness. And what you're really talking about is a ritual. It's— some of it is the language that we run away from. Morning routine or morning— or you hear people say it all the time, I need to get up earlier in the morning. I need to get up earlier in the morning. And they're starting with the hardest part. Often it's the rituals. We're a human species that loves rituals, and rituals are baked into our lives. One of my favorite stories about this was the dancer Twyla Tharp. She talked— she had a very disciplined lifestyle naturally because she was this dancer. But she said, I wake up at 5:30 AM, put on my warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the gym where I work out for 2 hours. This is the key, she said. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym. The ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go, I've completed the ritual. And so her body, everything else sort of takes over as this reflex action because it's a ritual now as a part of our life. Part of my ritual has been reading poetry in the morning. It's, it's a ritual that sort of sets my mind right. Helps me fall in love with language before I go work with the stubborn tools of words and all the things that I have to deal with. The rituals in our life are linchpin to many of our other goals.

Well, it's so funny that you say that because I always joke that the hardest part is just walking down the stairs to the basement.

Yes, right.

Like, once I've walked down, I'm, I'm, I'm in motion, I'm going to work out. But it's— it was the act of getting my lazy rear end to just open up the door and walk down into the basement. Once I'm there, I'm there, right? It goes back to what Twyla said, right? It's It's like once I'm in the cab and tell them where to go, I'm in motion. And so that's certainly been the case for me is that if I didn't do all the other stuff, I wouldn't walk down the stairs. Yeah.

Let's, uh, the next point was headspace. What do you mean?

So this is one I really struggle with. If I'm being transparent, it's meditation, prayer, being, we've mentioned earlier that I'm a little bit ADD. Um, I'm kind of always on the go. And to be honest, when people had mentioned meditation in the past, just in the interest of transparency, I've always kind of thought, oh, I don't know that I understand that, and I kind of dismissed it. And what was funny is like every time I was reading a book or an article or just something about someone I admired, it seemed like they would say, well, yes, then I'll go through my meditative practice. And I'm like, huh, so everybody smart I know is doing this. Maybe it's me. And so that's actually one of the pieces that I didn't mention in my morning routine is I have to have it as part of my morning routine or I wouldn't do it. And so I've created space in the shower. It probably isn't spend as much time as, as I should. But, and it's, it's game, same thing. Once I get started, I'm fine, right? But what it tells you is, you know, this is the third counterintuitive thing, by the way, is it takes time. And so when you think you want to get more done, but the reality of it is it comes back to brain health. The science is catching up what we've known as a species for 2,000 years, essentially, is that this is good for your brain. And we're living in a time It's more distracted. You know, there's more things fighting for our attention. There's more depression and anxiety. Meditation helps with all of that. And I'll tell you, you know, I read several books on the topic, Bobby, and, you know, for a long time it's like I'm doing it wrong. I don't know what I'm doing and I'm doing it wrong. There's a great book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics written by Dan Harris.

His story is great too. I encourage people to check out his story.

Yeah, because again, when you understand what he went through and how how that's affected him. Essentially, it just talks about, look, you're not doing it wrong. A lot of the times when we think we're doing it wrong, that's actually part of the exercise.

That's—

we're stretching the muscle. And in his book, he talks about— he's like, 1 minute, you know, obviously the longer you do it, the more impact you're going to see. But 1 minute is not like— that's not a failure. Getting started is, is the, the key. And that's why usually, you know, probably 3 to 5 minutes in the shower I go through a basic exercise where I kind of clear— I don't clear my mind, that's not the point of the exercise, but just sort of go through my sort of thought process. And that really does set me up for success during the day.

Yeah, I think we make meditation too hard. We think of it as some Eastern thing that we can't grasp unless we're sitting on a pillow and in the right position. And really, it's a technique of awareness. It's about living in the moment. You know, Daniel Kahneman has this great study out about how the present moment is really only about 3 seconds long, and we either live in the past or in the future in our heads. And so it's really about giving yourself the space and the gift of savoring the moment. Kirby, I don't know if I've ever shared this story in the industry. I don't know if I'm going to publish this, to be quite honest, but I'll tell you my journey toward trying to be more present and to be concerned about mental wellness and well-being. The moment for me occurred when I was in Seattle, Washington, making a presentation to a very high-end prospect. This is how I and the prospect— product that we shipped for this customer ended up on the head of Obama. It was a cap that we did, and it was a high-profile customer. It was a lot of risk involved, and they were a very, very difficult client to work with. And just like Dan Harris's story, I was in the presentation with a colleague of mine, and there was about 6 people in this boardroom. We've all been through presentations like this, and I'm talking about our industry, and I'm making a presentation about what we do. And I had a panic attack right there in the middle of the meeting, which for most folks, they might— for folks that don't know what a panic attack is, you might think that's something that's visible. It's not visible at You just kind of look like you've stepped out of your body for half an hour or so. And I wanted to, I wanted to throw myself out the window. I got in my car, rented a car, and I was in Seattle traffic. And if anyone knows Seattle traffic, it's, it's abhorrent, it's terrible. And I got stuck in traffic and I wanted to hop out of the car and run into oncoming traffic on the freeway that was flowing freely on the other side. That's how bad the panic was. That's when I realized that the pressure of living in a deadline-driven business had finally gotten to me because I was not investing in myself. So really, It's about, particularly in this business, giving you the gift of yourself back, even in small moments, whether, like you said, like shower, laying in bed. It's so important for us to savor the moments. Yeah.

And I tell you, it's just the basic understanding of how you go through that process. Cause I am like, I say, I struggle with it. I really do, but it's given me tools for those moments when I wake up in the middle of the night night and I can't get back to sleep because I've got so many things running through my head, is there are basic exercises that I can bring— as you said, essentially, great book called Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, but he talks about nearly all of our negative emotions, all of them, are rooted either in the past or in the future. Unless you are physically in pain, the present is fine. And part of the solve-for-happy sort of equation is to bring yourself back to the present. And that is one of the exercises I do, is like, it's 3 in the morning and I know I've got these bills and I've got this and I've got that, and okay, what— where am I right now? And there is power in that.

There's so much power in that. You and I are just going to throw book recommendations at each other, and that led me to think of the book The Happiness Hypothesis which talks about actually something like 90, 95% of the way we're wired, whether we think positively or negatively, is in our DNA. So for folks that know me, some might know me as this peaceful, private person that knows that know me best know I'm quite a neurotic and high-stressed and high-strung and worry and, you know, those kinds of things. So I do these things, you know, to save that part of myself, that 5 to 10% of myself that I know I can save. Yeah. But onto the next one, which is tied very much to Headspace, is gratitude.

You know, I think gratitude is, is one of the most powerful sort of gifts we can give ourselves. I talk a little bit about this in the book, and again, sorry, but another book back to you is Happiness Equation. And so he talks about that in this book, but it's truly the formula we have that's all wrong, right? The formula that we know, or that we think we know as a culture, is that if we work hard and we have success, then, then we'll be happy. And if we can just flip that and say, okay, if we are happy, then we work hard, we're more likely to succeed. That's sort of the, the thing we've got backwards. The study after study will show you that people who are happy, or have at least put happiness into their brain, tend to perform better on tests. They tend to perform better in presentations. They, you know, so many places in life, they just tend to do better. And sometimes that's as simple as just putting a positive thought in your brain before you do it, right? And so when I, when I I give, you know, presentations about this, I look around the room and you can just see the skeptics and the pessimists in the room who are like, oh great, so I'm just screwed. Great. And, and the reality of it is the way to make yourself more happy is to go through a gratitude exercise because pretty much all of us, even if we don't feel it, have so much to be grateful for every day. And, uh, by spending some time, and I talk about this a lot where it's like, let's go on a 30-day journey where every day you write a thank write a thank you note to someone in your life. And what I always say is the first 3 to 5 days are easy, right? There's a bunch of low-hanging fruit in your life who, you know, whether it's a spouse, whether it's a mother, whether it's a friend, whatever, they've had an impact. But after that, you have to start looking. And a funny thing happens when you have to— when you spend each day looking for something to be thankful for, you start to find it, right? And, and what's really cool is then you've told your subconscious brain that it's important. And so I always call it the red Toyota effect is that, you know, when you buy a red Toyota, like in the days and weeks afterwards, all of a sudden you see that red Toyota everywhere. You'd never seen this make and model of car until you bought it. And now it's everywhere. And it's because you've told your brain that it's important. And the same thing happens when you start looking for reasons to be happy and grateful. And it's, it is truly a gift you can give yourself. And one of the things that we talk about is that you can't hold two thoughts in your brain at the same time, which means you can't be negative and grateful at the same time. And so it really does have an effect on your overall life.

The next one, God, we could do an entire 2-hour episode on this. The next one, start taking action. What do you mean by that?

So I think that, you know, I think most of us who have been in sales and that are entrepreneurs, we've heard the saying where it's like nothing happens until someone sells something, right? The reality of it is the way that I've done these in order is that if you wanna have any success or any progress in your life, is you have to take action. We all talk a big game, and back to that same quote, the greatest distance in the world is the distance between I know and I do. Especially once we've set our goals, we know what we need to do, but most of us don't do it. And I always said the, uh, the reason I know this is that I know for sure, without a doubt, how to have six-pack abs, and I do not have six-pack abs. Um, and so taking action is just the key. And there is an incredible book by Mel Robbins called The 5 Second The Rule, where it talks about how essentially whenever you get an urging to chase something, like, you know, you want to write a book and you're like, all right, I'm going to schedule some time. You know what? I'm going to go do that. Your brain will start manufacturing reasons why now is not the right time, right? Right. Or to make that sales call, like, okay, I'm going to call that prospect that I've been meaning to work with. Oh, well, you know what? It's too early or it's too late or my script's not tight or, you know what, I need another cup of coffee. And what happens is you have about 5 seconds to take action before your brain talks you out of it. Right. And we've all been there, right?

If you want a very clean house, try and write a novel or write a book like you just did.

Yes, that's exactly right. It is amazing how many YouTube wormholes you go down when you're like, I just have to finish one more chapter.

Yes, yes.

But yeah, she just says, look, it's 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Do it. Take action immediately. That was a book that I forced people in my life to listen to because I'm like, oh my gosh, you— we all know we've got that where we're like, okay, we know what we need to do, we just aren't taking action on it. But we all have friends and family who struggle with that as well. Yeah. And so, you know, once you've been intentional and you've written them down, you start to get urges in your life. And what I mean by that is you walk by a gym, if one of your goals is to get more fit or lose 10 pounds, you get an urge to go there, right? You get an urge that you should go in the gym., but your body and your brain, your brain will talk you out of it. And so nothing happens until you take action, regardless of what this is, regardless of what book you read, regardless of what, uh, podcast you listen to. If you don't put the ideas into action, nothing happens.

The next one on your list is probably one of my personal favorites from the standpoint of this is something that I have to work on a lot. And I've had, I've actually had to put a lot of energy and thought into, and I've had to, had to, to read about it cuz I, it was something that I was is not accustomed to, and it probably plagues most people in this particular business because there are thousands and thousands of products. There are products, there are hundreds and thousands of manufacturers, there are hundreds of clients, dozens of projects, and you're managing these all at the same time. This one, if there is one discipline I think that is for the professional in this industry, it's your next one.

Stop multitasking. Yeah, and it's the one that everyone argues with. Yeah, no, no, no, I'm— I, I have to work on the task. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think where it— where people struggle with this is that they think, well, yeah, I can do two things at once. You know, you can walk and chew gum, you can drive and listen to the radio. But the reality of it is, and the funny thing is, is there's more science on this one than there is any of the— I know, I know, right?

Those are low cognitive tasks, right? I mean, that's, that's part of the challenge. Like, go ahead, I'll let you finish.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's the part that like people will, um, really struggle with believing me, but there's more science to back this one up. It's just not the way our brain works. And it's not, again, not my opinion.

Okay.

Like this is not Kirby's, you know, honestly, it's not even brand new. The reality is you can't focus on two things at the same time. I always joke that you've ever been in traffic, you know, you're, you're kind of lost and you're like, where do I need to go? And all of a sudden you find yourself turning the radio down. It's like, oh, come on, be quiet, Taylor Swift. I need to concentrate. It's because you, you can only focus deep work focus on one thing at a time. That's just, it's just the way the brain works. And so, you know, study will, studies will tell you that it takes longer to do a task, all that sort of thing. At the end of the day, it's just a matter of doing deep work when you can do deep work. And, and yes, there are gonna be times where you're interrupted and yes, there are times where you have to manage multiple things in the, and an important client calls and you have to stop. But if you want to be more productive, if you want to get more done, doing one thing at a time, single-tasking, is the way to do it. And, and my favorite, Bobby, and you'll appreciate this, is the studies will tell you that people who think they're good at multitasking are actually worse. All right, because they— because their confidence actually overwhelms them a little bit. They think, oh yeah, yeah, I got this.

That book we both read, Deep Work by Cal Newport, is fantastic.

He—

I think in that book, maybe it was another book I'd read, where he talked about context switching and what— how much we lose from one project to another by context We think we're productive because we set this project aside and we're working on the next one, or that we're working on two at the same time. But this whole idea of moving that context and then getting back and forth and back and forth, we lose so much cognitive power. And he defines deep work as this. I think it's interesting because he said the ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.

Economy.

As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill and then make it the core of their working life will thrive. All right, so we're working on more things for us to, to think about for 2020. I've got questions for this one. Okay, so maybe you can clarify. Stop part-timing. What do you mean by that?

Well, I wanted to call it half-assing, and I felt like part-timing was a little nicer. This is actually probably my favorite of all the things. Because the reality of it is, there are things in, you know, your life and my life that we're really excited about, right? But so many times, because we think the goal is busy, our calendar is full, but our calendar is full of stuff we really don't care that much about. And we— it's full of stuff we don't care that much about, because we don't want to say no, right? The busier and more successful you get— you talked about this at the top of the podcast, right? The people who are listening to this are busy. They are, they are pulled in different directions. They're successful. The more successful you are, the more people want you to be on their team. They've got a committee, they've got a PTO, they've got whatever. They know you're good, so they want you to be on it. And because you're like, A, you don't want to say no to them, and B, you're like, eh, I'm not against it, right? Like, I'm not— nothing wrong with the PTO. So you say yes, and all of a sudden your calendar is full of stuff you're like, meh, about. You're not passionate about any of it. And so you part-time it, right? Like, you kind of want to go to the meetings, but you kind of don't. And so there's a great, great quote from Derek Sivers. I think it's Sivers. He said this, and I've tried to implement it, but it's hard. When someone asks you to do something, the answer is either hell yes or no, right? Because if it's hell yes, you're happy to move some stuff around, right? But if it's, yeah, okay, I guess, no. Because we are, we are putting off things we are actually passionate about because we have stuff we don't care about on our calendar.

Yeah, we think we got away from peer pressure in high school, but actually professional peer pressure is just more sophisticated and it's far more persuasive.

Yes. Yeah. Well, and again, one of the things that I say is that the people who are asking you are hell yes about their project. That's why it's hard to say no to them, right?

They are passionate about it. This ties back to your original comment about goals. If you don't have goals for yourself, other people are going to set them for you. So this is where this happens, where you see before you know it, you've swept away a year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, and you still have not done that thing for you because you haven't been willing to say no.

Yeah. Well, yeah, it's a, it's a great point, Bobby, because, you know, goals think, oh, you know, this will teach me what to say yes to. Goals also teach you what to say no to.

Yeah. Let me ask, let me add one more thing to your list here. And you've kind of covered it through everything, but one of the things that I think that we should do more of is give yourself the gift of yourself. Just be, you know, in this crazy chaotic world, do we give ourselves permission to loiter with the intent of only loitering? You know, do we plan purposeful pauses in our day? Do we even flâneur or hang out in our own town? I mean, can we be alone by ourselves with no noise and no distractions? Can we even enjoy a cup of coffee at a café without a device, without a book, without a notepad? I mean, we don't give ourselves the mental bandwidth to think, and therefore all our thoughts are someone else's, particularly this day and age. Some of our greatest breakthroughs will occur when we're not obsessing over problem or thinking of an idea, but when we're doing something mundane and boring. So we've left that discipline behind, the discipline of doing nothing at all. Joan Didion wrote this amazing essay about Howard Hughes, who among many other things practically built the city of Las Vegas, and she called him the last private man, the dream we no longer admit. And although he was this eccentric, bizarre person, there's something to, not to like lift him up up as the exemplar for mindfulness. But there's something to us giving us the gift of ourselves.

Yeah, I think that's brilliant, Bobby. It's actually— it's funny you say that because a couple years ago I started with a goal where I wanted to read 50 books a year. Yeah. And by reading 50 books a year, there was somewhere I was listening to them, some that I was physically reading, some, you know, I, I had to give myself plenty of space to do that. One of the things that I said to, to my wife and a few of my friends is one of the challenges when I'm reading a book week is I don't leave enough space for my own thoughts. Yeah. Because I'm so quick to try and move to the next book because I'm trying to hit a number, right? And, uh, that is exactly right. And it's one of the reasons when I do go running, sometimes I listen to a book or something like that, but often I'm one of the weirdos who is just out in, you know, shirt, shorts, and shoes and running.

All right, let's wrap this up with, with this list that you have for personal personal goal setting. Give us some tactics. Like, what kind of tactics can you give us for getting more shit done?

So one of the— and probably the biggest— and there's several in there, but— and it was— I always say it's one of those first lessons you get taught by your father. So we were getting ready to move some furniture around in my house, and I was just large enough that my dad was like, yeah, you can actually help me. And I probably wasn't, but he was being kind. Mind. My mom wanted to move furniture around the house, and he walked immediately over to this really heavy couch. It was the biggest thing in the room. And I was like, really, we're going to do this first? And he said, yeah, always lift the heavy stuff first because everything else will seem light in comparison. And I will tell you, that has been a lesson in life that I've never forgot, because this is true in our day. The stuff that we are most dreading, the stuff that we are most putting off, is usually the thing if we got it done first, our entire day would shift. Whether that's prospect calls, whether that's writing, whether it's, you know, putting together a proposal— doing that in the first part of your day can make the biggest difference. And so that was one that it's just like, I don't know how to put a chapter around that, but that's one where it's like, okay, lift the heavy stuff first. The other one that pops into my head is at one point— you know this— we had a brewery, we had the real estate company, we had the, the, the marketing company, and I was really distracted here at Host marketing. And you could tell, you could sense it in my team. Everybody's on my team is very kind and very nice, but they were getting frustrated with me. And so we had a meeting and I said to them, I mean, look, what is, what do I do that brings the most value to the company? And so they were like, okay, sales, seeing people. Okay, cool. What else? And then it became content. Okay. What else? And then it was okay, coaching up the rest of the team. And so those were the 3 that we landed on that were the most important. Right. And so I looked at my assistant and said, Everything that isn't one of those 3, take them off my calendar. By focusing on those high-impact activities, that's where you can— again, it's back to the hell yes, right? And the place where you can move the most with one. And it was so funny because there are so many things in my day that I go to because I think I should go to. So later that day, I had a chamber function where there was going to be 60 people at it. Those are things I begrudgingly go to. After my meeting with my team, I'm like, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is number 1, right? Seeing the people. I went to the meeting in a better mood. I left with like 2 sales. I didn't mean to, but I think it's because I went with a whole different sort of mindset because I'm like, this is, this is where I bring the most valuable value to the team.

What, what else, uh, what other tactics do you have here? There's a couple— I'm sorry, let me, let me, let me set it up this way. A couple of other tactics you have are your batch activities, put it— but also, and I think we get that, but I love the, uh, put it on the calendar, then figure it out.

Yeah, yeah. And that— yeah, well, it was funny because this one occurred to me as we were putting the book together, is that I, I was talking to my assistant and I'm like, what I find is when I'm in front of clients face to face especially, but certainly phone, whatever, but face to face is the most valuable, then good things happen, right? I'm either sending presentations afterwards, I'm just strengthening the relationship, whatever. So I, so I said to Emily and I gave her a list of 5 people, I'm like, let's get with these people and let's get on the calendar. She's smart. She's like, okay, what are you planning on talking to them about? And I'm like, I have no idea. Just get me on their calendar. I will come up with what I need to, and I'll make sure I don't embarrass myself. Because I think what happens is you wait until the perfect time. You're like, oh, I'll have all my ideas after this next trade show. Put it on the calendar now, then go to the trade show looking for those ideas. Get it on the calendar first. Don't wait for the perfect time. You'll figure it out. So that's, that's sort of my— and again, I think that same thing is true with like this book, right? Set a deadline. It'll get done in the deadline if you set it. Yeah.

One other practical tactic you had that I love is create a support team. But wait, I want to share, like, normally people would hear that and there's a lot of lone wolf types. There's no such thing as a lone wolf, but there are a lot of solo entrepreneurs, people who have done it themselves, but they— nobody can do it alone. A friend of mine a few weeks ago did something I thought was ingenious. She gathered a personal board of, I think it was from 6 to 10 people.

People.

I think she invited something like 10 to 12 and ended up with 6 to 8 people on a Sunday over beers and food that she served them and literally reinvented her next couple of years, the next chapter of her life along with this team. That was the most ingenious things because she was obviously very selective about who she chose, but these were also folks who loved her and wanted to see her, her succeed. And that took a whole lot of vulnerability. It also just honestly took a lot of smart to think that my life is that important, that I need my own personal board to help determine where I'm going to go next. It's easy to write a check for a coach. It's easy to write a check for— but those people that know you best will end up being your best support team.

Yeah, I love that. And again, that was one of the things I struggled with because when I put that together, I'm like, this doesn't mean you have to hire people, right? There are times in our lives where everybody needs someone, and I always call them the mom, right? The one who's going to tell you that you are awesome no matter No matter what, like you, and sometimes we need that, right? We need that person who is, you know, that you're good enough, you're smart enough and doggone it, people like you. And that, that person is an important member of the team, but it shouldn't be your only member of the team. I always say that I need someone who's the ass kicker, right? The person who in a loving way, like you just said, right? In a loving way, we'll go, you know what? You said you wanted to do this and you're not putting in the work, right? You said you wanted to run a marathon. Do you have it on your calendar? Better yet because otherwise, it's just bullshit.

Your book, Success in the Give First Economy. I wanted us to go over these personal goals first as I said at the beginning of the podcast because I think it's essential for us before we even begin to think about giving first, we have to sort of give the gift of ourselves to ourselves back to us. So now that we've established this, let's say we're 6 months down the road, we can better handle if there were so many things, 3 months, whatever, 2 weeks, we can better handle giving back because we are investing ourselves. So part 1 of your book is really how to do this, how to give back. By the title alone, you're going to see skeptics rise up. So let me be the voice of the skeptic in the room and ask right at the outset, all that energy, all that effort, all that give, give, give— why not just go out and sell, make my contacts, use my traditional tactics? First of all, would you explain what you mean by success in the first— in the give-first economy? And then maybe you can immediately address the skeptic in the room.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you brought it up. So number 1, all I mean by, uh, the give-first economy is I believe that we are in a world where people, entrepreneurs, salespeople, organizations, whatever, who provide value upfront before they necessarily go for the sale are the ones who are going to win. Okay. It doesn't mean the good old boys network. It doesn't mean the people that you have to buy from, people you golf with. It's if you show up in a genuine and giving way, you show up differently. Right. And whenever anybody's like, well, you know, I need to sell something today. I'm like, yeah, who said you had to throw away all the things that work. You shouldn't, you know what I mean? You should continue to go to market. And, and it's about intent. It's about a mindset. And, you know, for me, you know, you, you see those people and God, actually I was just talking about this the other day, Bobby. I, I like LinkedIn a lot, but I'm noticing people who are not living this way. You get a connection request and maybe even there's a couple people on that, you know, oh, okay, they're, they're connected with a couple people I know. And you, you hit accept and less than 2 seconds minutes later, you have a full-ass sales pitch in your inbox. Yeah, right, right. Like, that's all I'm saying. Don't do that, right? And because the, the idea is, hey man, take me to dinner, get to know me a little bit here, uh, massage this relationship a little bit and provide me some value. Because if you don't, the thing that has changed is that the, the purchaser, the person you're trying— the prospect, the customer— they have all power. Just like in LinkedIn, they can delete you. So by providing value first, you essentially elongate that relationship. You build integrity, you build trust. So when there is a mistake— and we all know there will be mistakes— they trust you more. They're going to be a little bit more giving, right? And so, so I don't think you should throw away all the stuff you know that works. You should just do it in a more giving way.

One of the comments in your book, you said simple is not the same as easy. Can you elaborate elaborate?

Oh yeah, absolutely.

I love that statement, but love to hear you talk about that.

Yeah. You know, it's one of those things where it's a little bit back to the, you know, I know and I do, right? There are so many things in our lives that are simple, but they're not easy to execute. And sort of the example I have in my head is it's the reason that you can always pick out other people's problems and you can solve them for them, right? Like, right, because you have no emotion lined up in it. You have no history. On the street, you just look at them and you're like, so don't be an asshat, get up earlier. Like, it's, it's easy. Like, but it's simple. It's not easy. The reason they— like, they know they should be getting up earlier, they know they should be going to the gym, they know they should be making more sales calls, right? It's simple, but it's not always easy to execute. And so to your point, that's why I love the idea that we started with part 2, is that that's where you execute, take action on those those things, it's amazing how things fall into place.

Yeah, give out joy. Yeah, how can we— how can we do this? I think I, you know, I get what you're saying. You, Kirby, as a personality, you exude this. And how do we do this in a way that's sort of authentic to who we are?

Yeah, and that's actually one of the things I struggle with sometimes, because you're right, I am a glass is half full guy. Okay, I recognize that completely. It goes back to that word intent. So I think 90% of what we see in the world today is negative. Studies will show you this. And gosh, we're getting ready to go into another election cycle. My guess is we're all going to feel like 90% is low, right? I've just spent the last month hiding people on Facebook. And so, you know, in the sort of eyes of our customer, we're always trying to be better, but better isn't always better. Different is better. So one of the ways to stand out in that crowded marketplace is just to not be a negative Nelly all the time, right? So that's sort of what I mean by that. And there, there's tons of ways that you can do that, whether it's sharing inspirational stuff, whether it's creating inspirational content on your own, just calling out people who are doing good in the world. Those are all things that you're pushing out joy. Yeah. But I think of people who are not glasses half full people, right? That's fine actually, as long as you're intentional about it, because I think so many people are just automatically doing things. They're, they're hitting the share button without considering any ramifications. They're putting out things that are, can be construed as negative. Negative. And if you ask them if they're negative, they would never think that. And so for me, I think pushing out joy is a good strategy since we talked about earlier being happy makes you perform better. But if you're not, at least do whatever you're going to do, do it on purpose. Yeah.

Now we've switched to this business for the business from, from the personal development to business development. And this is tied to giving praise. I think giving out joy and giving praise, both of those are really tied well together. How can we do that more as a business?

Again, simple, simple, not easy. You know, one of the things I think the irony is, it is actually easier now than it has ever been, right? When you and I got into sales, how did you do this? You wrote a thank you card, right? And PS, those still are amazingly powerful. But you can, you can send a Facebook message, you can send a Snapchat, you can send an email, whatever, that you are intentionally giving out, giving out praise and joy. I actually love the idea that you go to people when you're not asking them for money. Yes. So like, it is funny to me how people will look at you weird when you schedule a meeting just to say thank you. No, I just— and again, I think it's one of those things where when you do that, you, you as a person and you as an organization stand out. If you just said, hey, I see what you're doing, great job, thanks a lot. Yeah.

You wrote that, um, 69% of customers who leave you will do so out of indifference. This is the power of the thank you. And I wonder how many people have a thank you program in this business?

Or do you—

and I hate to even use the word program because it can become a reflex, but if it's— I say that, but the business is so busy and chaotic that if you don't make it purposeful and intentional, I guess that's the point of your book, is that it's going to get swept away. Because everything about this business is a very reactive business, and before you know it, your whole day was reactive. And this is a very proactive activity, to give out joy, to give, give, give, is very proactive. Maybe that's why you get so much friction in this industry with a give-first mentality is because of the high demand of, of this business. But I mean, think about how many— do you realize how many times a supplier saves your ass, or a long-time customer goes unregarded and leaves you because of indifference? Yeah. I mean, what other practical ways can we do this?

Yeah, so number one, this statistic is the most scary and exciting statistic, right? It's scary because you think 70% of people almost would leave, leave that they don't even think I care.

Yeah, but you can do something about it.

That's what's great. You can do something about it. Yes, exactly. So, so number one, and again, it comes back to that whole just like, seriously, set a number, right? Okay, anybody who writes an, you know, order with our company that's over X number, send them a damn thank you note. Yes, simple, not easy. The other one that, um, that we have implemented inconsistently— now I will say that one of the things that we do is I try to have a monthly self-promo. So every single month we've something, right? But what I will recommend to clients is a quarterly thank you program where you say, okay, my top 20%, these are the people that you really don't want to leave you. These are the ones that have the biggest impact on your business. 80/20 rule, right? Is set a budget.

Okay.

This much per quarter, per person, right? If it's $10, if it's $20 that you are able to spend to say thank you to your most high-profile customers, order them all at once and have them shipped. Right? Have them shipped, you know, March 18th, June 17th, September 23rd, and December 16th, whatever. So every quarter you have a reason to go to them and say thank you. Yeah, you can say it's a program, but in reality, you just mentioned it, we— it's all chaotic. It gets really busy. We can be really reactive. When that box rolls into your office and you get that little piece of marketing joy, it's like, oh, that's a great reminder. I need to go out and say thank you. And hey, you can always drop ship them too. You know, I, I know a couple suppliers who will do that for us. But the reality of it is, if you can get in, shake their hand, and just say, all I wanted was to say thank you, it's amazing the impact something like that can have. Yeah.

And to this 69% of customers who leave you out of indifference, one of the concepts I loved in your book is the concept of glue. Can you unwrap real quick?

Yeah. And I want to give credit to Stan Phelps. This is a Stan Phelps Purple Goldfish idea, and I got his permission to put it in. Glue is giving little unexpected Extras. And I love it because as you dig into it, you're like, giving, okay, that, that fits, right? That fits with our book is that you're providing something of value to the customer, not to you, which is super important, right? Little, which means it doesn't have to be anything expensive. Like a, like a phone call that is just saying something nice to somebody. That's, you know, it can be something small. Unexpected to me is the key, right? If you create a program where every single time you give an extra thing when they buy something, then, then that's not an extra anymore. It's an entitlement, right? So creating it in a way that it's unexpected, where you can do it in that way. And then extra, just something a little bit above and beyond, you know, it's the baker's dozen. It's— you, since, since we've been in this business, Bobby, you've heard of people saying, hey, they ordered 1,000 golf shirts, let's throw in a jacket in the size of our buyer, right? In the scope. Now that might seem big, but in the scope of the order, that's not that big, right? But giving some little unexpected extras.

Kirby, congratulations on the book. Thanks, man. Where can we pick book up. Did I hear it right? You're in true fashion of giving first, you're giving this away?

Yeah. So we'll do, we'll do the standard thing. You can buy a physical book through Amazon. We've got an Audible version of it, but one of the things that I really want to do is spread the idea, right? I want to, um, not make cost, you know, a, an inhibitor. So if you go to our website, we're going to have a deal where it's, I think it's hospitamarketing.com/give/givefirstbook. And so you can actually download a digital copy of the book for free, share share it, spread the word. When we do that, you know, we may send you a coupon code to buy the actual book if you want, but only— it's not going to be a spam thing. It's— there's no catch. So, uh, but then, you know, Amazon, Audible, those kind of places as well.

Awesome. Kirby, you know, I, I— we didn't have you on because you're a high-profile personality. We had you on because you care. And I know that is going to seem trite and sentimental to a lot of folks, but it's true. I think that when I see the entire Renvoi of your output of what you've done through the years, you see this evolution in, in who you've become, and you can see the transformation from I'm doing this because I want to be out there to this transformation of no, I'm doing this because I actually really want to be helpful. And I don't know if that's been a purposeful pivot in your life, or maybe it's just me that's had a deeper appreciation of what you've done lately, but I want to say thanks for constantly constantly sort of having your heart and hand out to help folks in the business. And, uh, it's been a pleasure having you on.

Wow, man, that means a lot to me.

Thank you so much. Till next time. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SkuCast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SkuCast on iTunes or to our blog at community.comandsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.