Why You Need Intentional Focus To Reach Your Goals

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek, with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited for today's podcast because it's full of wisdom. Not the kind of wisdom that you normally would think about from, like, I don't know, maybe a stoic philosopher like Seneca or, you know, Zen Buddhism or, you know, Charlie Munger even. It's going to be a combination of all this successful, let's call it Paper Napkin Wisdom. That's applicable. Right? But before we talk to our guest who's going to fill our brains with all this wisdom, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host. You know him, you love him. Six Sigma Scott Todd from scotttodd.net, landmodo.com and most importantly, not automating your Craigslist postings, posting domination.com the Lange Scott Todd. How are you, Mark? I'm great.

How are you?

I'm ready to become wiser, gentler, cooler, better looking even. I think our podcast guests can provide all of it.

I think so.

All right, should we just mention quickly that today's podcast is sponsored by Lone Geek IO? It's a set it and forget it automated system to manage your notes. It is the best on the market. Lonegeek IO all right, let's talk to Govind Jayaraman. Did I say that right?

Yeah, Govind Jayaraman.

GovindJayaraman. All right, if you don't know, Govind J. Raman is. He's the host of Paper Napkin Wisdom, which is also a podcast. But he's been an entrepreneur his entire life and he's a serial entrepreneur. He started his first business in 1990 while first studying commerce at university. And then he's founded or partnered more than a dozen companies, from contracting the software and healthcare to renewable fuels. He's got tons of experience of what works and what doesn't in a wide variety of businesses. And years ago, he realized that the best lessons that he learned in his life had come from those around him. And he's been fortunate that his whole life that he's never had trouble connecting with his mentors. Even those mentors did not know the influence they had on him before that connection. So he. He's got a lot of wisdom. He's got a lot of wisdom. So he thinks that Paper Napkin Wisdom teaches leadership in the way that he learns best from other great leaders who walk beside us. All right, this has been a long intro, Govind. That's a long intro. That's a long intro, man. Let's just talk about you. Let's just skip the, let's just skip the pleasantries. You start your first business in 1990 and kind of, kind of walk us through the evolution of when you started building companies and then had that sort of epiphany like, hey, let me start sharing all this wisdom with others.

Yeah. So you know, you know, you know how life comes full circle. And Mark, I want to say the name of your podcast is Land Geek.

Right?

So I was the entrepreneur geek. When I was 14 years old, there was this famous entrepreneur in town. He was later on going to be the guy who took over Bloomingdale's and started the junk bond crisis in the United States. His name is Robard Campo, but he was a brilliant businessman and he was always pushing the envelope. And Bob Campo had a company called Campo Corporation. They built houses. And I remember reading an article, I must have been 13 years old around and I, I lost myself and found myself in this article because he talked about his exacting standards for his homes. So to this day, and this is 50 years ago, that he was building houses. 50 years later, people will put that it was a compo built house in their ads for when they're selling properties here locally in Ottawa, Canada. And the reason why his houses were superior, they were built on exacting standards, like they barely shift, you'd barely get a nail pop. Amazingly well built homes. It stood the test of time. And he was asked about his standards, his exacting standards. He was called mercurial and enigmatic and all kinds of terms that I didn't barely understand as a 13 year old. I still am not sure I understand them now. But the thing that was really fascinating to me, Mark, was that he said he was so committed to the quality of what he built because he was responsible for thousands of people. And went on to describe what that meant. He went on to describe that he had hundreds of people working for him. They had families, they had mortgages, they had houses, they had children. And he had to make sure that the name meant something because it meant something to them. Especially compe day. Right. And I was fascinated with this idea that leadership meant taking responsibility for the people around you. It took me years to come back to that idea that as a leader we could impact not just the people who work with us, but the people around us. And I think that's been my journey, a journey of contribution, trying to figure out what that looks like for me. So I always knew That I was going to be an entrepreneur. A lot of people, I guess, dreamt to be firemen or whatever else, astronauts. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted that responsibility. I wanted to make an impact by and with people around me.

I love it. Scott, Todd, what are your thoughts?

You know, it's funny because I think that it's funny to see how we're all built differently, you know, because when I would. When I would try to take on more responsibility in my corporate job, people would say, like, oh, I wouldn't want that responsibility. And I wanted it, you know, like, it's the same, same thing that you're saying. Like, I wanted the responsibility. I wanted all the weight on my shoulders because I felt like I could make a difference. I could move the needle and I could do the things that I wanted to do. Very similar to kind of what you were talking about. I think that there is this level of responsibility that I think some people are willing to take or feel like they should take that on and carry the load.

Yeah, it starts, Scott, I think, with a personal responsibility. It starts with this awakening that we can be responsible for where we are in life. We can be responsible for this ship that's our life and where it goes and what harbors it pulls into and out of. And, you know, mark off the top, in that really long intro, you talked about how I've started a dozen companies. The reality is, yeah, I've started a dozen companies. Not all of them worked. Success is an awful teacher, and challenge has built the character and the responsibilities that I crave today. So I think we're forged in the fire. And when that fire burns hot in failure, when the fire burns hot in attempt, and when we're creating things, we're contributing with other people, we take that responsibility and we learn from it, from things that we do well and from things that we don't.

Govind, what do leaders do that drive you absolutely crazy?

Make it all about them. You know, I think when a leader is concerned with control, when a leader is controlled or consumed with what's in it for them, or that I'm leading the people, but it's gotta be my way or the highway. It's all my style. When people forget that the greatest hallmark of great leadership is not anything other than flexibility, like flexibility of behavior defines a leader's success. A leader's greatness, being able to come into things and situations with different approaches, with an approach that suits that moment, and that's what authenticity is. I think people think about authentic leadership is Like, I'm gonna do authentic stuff, right? I'm gonna pretend like I'm listening actively. I'm gonna ask you questions, but I don't give a. I don't care what you're saying to me in return. I don't care about the answer. I don't care what your body language is telling me. I don't care that I'm confused by it. The reality is, I think, that leaders who hold space for their teams that evoke hope and allow them to fill it by providing with the resources and space around them to do that, that's compelling, and that's where they succeed really well. Great leaders create other leaders. That's their job. That's their business.

I love that quote. Great leaders create other leaders. And I know Scott worked for a big Fortune 300 company, and his CEO was Scott. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but he sounded like an egomaniac in a way. But there was something about him you really enjoyed and liked.

Yeah, the one that I worked on for the longest, he.

He.

In a way, he was. But he was really all about building talent, you know? And I've seen too many times where exactly what was just said, like, a manager will focus more on themselves and what their next step is or making themselves look great or protecting that, as opposed to building the talent so that that person can grow in life and be even better. I mean, that was. That was always, like, whenever I did reviews or something, that was always one of the core questions I asked is, okay, well, what's. Where do you want to go next? What job do you want next? And it didn't have to be for me. And I can tell you, like, I was. I proudly, like, saw people get promoted outside of my organization and into other roles, and I was excited for them, because then what happens is you become known as. In a way, that The. The training ground, like, oh, I want to go work in Scott's team, because look at where all these people are going. And people would come to my team to cherry pick off my team. And I think that's, like, the greatest. That's the greatest compliment that you can get from your peers is, I want that guy. He's on your team. And I always knew, like, that didn't bother me. People wondered, like, man, doesn't that concern you? No, because then I can go get the next person, build them. Build them into an even stronger piece. And it's just like building a football team or a sports team.

You get to go pick new talent. Every time.

But when people stay, stay in their stagnant, it's terrible.

No, I mean, dude, that's everything right there. The reality is our role as a leader is to grow leadership, to grow other leaders, to grow them in quality and quantity all the time. And it's, it is the greatest gift that we give to people, that we can build their confidence, that we can build them up to be more than we see. And I think that the world is sort of enamored by coaches right now. I mean, there are so many life coaches and business coaches and all those kinds of things. But if we really think about it at a high level, leaders are coaches. Your role is to coach the team around you to success. Your role is to coach them and see in them the their potential and help them realize it for all of our benefit.

Right.

And contributing to your team. If you're not trying to grow your team in quantity and quality, you're shrinking, you're dying. That's the entrepreneurial journey.

So, Govin, you're in Ottawa. I assume you know how to make poutine.

Well, I know how to buy poutine.

You know how to. Okay, so let's pretend you're buying poutine. You're having three of your favorite CEOs over, or I say CEOs, but favorite leaders today over for dinner. Whom would they be and what question would you ask them?

Yeah, so I'm not very starstruck. So if you're, if we're going to say leaders today, if you're going to say, who are the three people? I'm going to say those are the people that I feel I can be most transparent with. Right. Because I believe as leaders we gain so much not just in being transparent, but also sharing transparency with others who perform at a higher level of personal responsibility and personal discipline and personal transparency than I do. And so in that group would be people that may not be familiar to you, but are very familiar to me. The number of the first name that came to mind is a guy by the name of Warren Rustand. Warren Rustand is one of my longest standing mentors. He wrote the foreword to the book Paper Napkin Wisdom. He is an incredible leader who has accomplished more at everything, at any one thing than I have at everything so far. The guy is a tremendous, patient, kind, collaborative leader. He's not a manager, he's a leader. Right. And I think that that's the transition. You, Scott, you talked about management earlier on. I think we really need to think about leadership. So Warren would be one Another person that I would like to add to that is somebody else that I'm very close to that I don't spend enough time with. His name is Rick Sapio, and he's really influenced me greatly. And Rick runs more than 40 companies and lives the most simple lifestyle you'd ever imagine. Rick is. Is so focused in every moment that when I first started having conversations, deep conversations with Rick, I'd have to actually turn towards the wall and block everything out because he was so clear and so focused. His number one value is simplicity. And to this day, he still walks around with a little flip phone. There's no email on his phones. Runs 40 companies. The guy's brilliant, but so focused, so present in every moment. And the third person would be totally different. And, you know, he. I'm actually surprising myself that I'd include him in this list because I don't spend nearly enough time with him. But his name is Dandapani. He's a former monk and now Hindu priest, but he teaches focus and spirituality from an agnostic point of view, not from a religious point of view. And he. He's given me a great number of gifts when it comes to increasing my own mental focus and energy. And I think everything starts with focus. I mean, I think there's a lot of tips and guidebooks as to what to do in the world, but everything starts with focus.

And today, Govind, would you agree it's really hard to focus. We all have sort of this business add because we're kind of distracted. We're just, you know, we're on our devices. We got social media. It's hard.

Yeah. So how do you focus by practicing it? You know, I mean, I don't think anybody gets good at anything without practice. I mean, Mark, you go back and listen to the first podcast that you and Scott did. I bet you you're like, what was I doing? I don't understand what I was doing, that the audio was wrong and the intro was wrong and my energy was wrong and I didn't prepare myself mentally for this. And, you know, if you're not practiced, you're either practicing in private to get good at something, or you're practicing in public and you're practicing with people.

Right.

But whatever you do, you got to practice. So practicing focus, what does that look like? Well, if you look at some of the highest, most high performing people in the world today, they all have really deliberate morning or daily routines to protect their mindset, Right. To protect where they start in the day. What does that look like? Well, it looks like anything, but it could look like waking up early, starting the day with some physical activity, focusing on something, declaring an intention for the day, declaring gratitude for the day, declaring and restating your goals every single day.

Right.

In writing, and then actually making a decision about one thing that you can do to make that thing happen in that day. And I think that the internal journey of focus is really hard. The external journey of focus is stuff we talk about and I think consultants love to sell you on. They sell you on mission, vision and values. They sell you on all this stuff that's out there saying, hey, write your goals down and, you know, reverse engineer and all those things are great. I'm not saying don't do them. But without the internal journey, those are just things that you're doing.

Right.

If you have the internal focus, then you can actually make things happen that you believe in as opposed to you just think about.

I like it. Scott. Todd.

You know, focus, I mean, focus is so hard to get your brain around, you know, because like you said, Mark, there's all kinds of distractions. And I think that. I think exactly what was just said. You got to practice that piece. You've got to be laser focused and you've got to have those rituals because without it, you're just, you're just, you know, going to flail around, flop around and not getting anything done.

Yeah.

And it comes from having filters.

Right.

Remember, everything that you. Every great yes is defended by a thousand nos. So what do you have to say no to to preserve your focus?

Right.

Right now, I mean, guys, right now, you guys said yes to the fact that we're going to have this scheduled podcast. I said that I was going to schedule it went on your tool. We had this all lined up. But what are the other things that we did in order to be ready?

What was the.

What were the no's that we said? Well, we set my phone up on do not disturb. I turned my cell phone off, I turned my email off, I turned my screens off. Except for the fact that I see your lovely faces. Right. We remove distractions in this moment for just a half an hour.

Right?

Just a half an hour. And if you can do it now, People are listening to it now and doing it now by listening. And maybe they're listening and walking. Maybe they're listening and jogging. Maybe listening and riding a bike. Whatever they're doing, focusing and allowing yourself to focus and not get it right is part of the journey. I think that one of the things that we do is often Judge ourselves too, saying I'm not focused enough so I can't do this and it's a cop out. I think that as leaders we're copping out on this entrepreneur add, bright shiny object thing. We all have that. But we're also capable of great things when we put our minds to it and just think about it. We don't have to focus for days. We to focus for a few hours and starts with a few minutes. So make it happen for 5 minutes or 10 minutes at the beginning of the day and let that grow.

So Govind, walk us through your morning ritual, if you would.

Yeah, yeah. So I wake up early. I used to say crazy early, but yesterday I spoke with a CEO who wakes up between 2:30 and 4:30 in the morning every day. So he just made me look like a chump. So I don't wake up crazy early. I only wake up at five o' clock in the morning and the first thing that I do and I also want to make you make it very clear I have certain rules around how I wake up, right? I wake up before my alarm. I don't want to wake up with my alarm. I want to wake up before my alarm. So in my mind I'm setting an alarm but I got to be out of bed before that alarm goes off at 5:05. And the reason why my alarm goes off at 5:05 and it's across the room for me is because my wife will get pretty upset if the alarm goes off at 5:05 in the morning. She doesn't wake up as early as I do. Then after that, no electronics. I don't look at my phone beyond making sure the alarm is off. And I am deliberate about moving my body along with an intention for the day. So yesterday my intention was it's not about me, it's all about them. And today my intention is you are unstoppable. There are some things that are on my goal list that I haven't crossed off and I darn it, I'm going to get them done today. And I've already gotten them done. And it's, you know, here it's just after one o' clock and I'm done. My biggest goals that were holding me back, I'm done because I set my intention that I was going to get them done. I was going to make sure that they were the first thing that I got done. So that was the intention that I set first thing in the morning. Then I have about 20 minutes, 30 minutes of light exercise, not heavy, heavy Stuff, but light exercise, moving my body in accordance with that intention. Then I sit down and I actually write down my intention for the day. I have something called a simple planner that I develop for myself. But now I share through paper napkin wisdom. And it's just a free resource. So I set my intention for the day, which I already told you, I'm unstoppable. The next thing that I do is say what I'm grateful for. And my gratitude this morning was, I think I was just grateful for waking up in the house with my family all around me. And then I restated my goals, my quarterly objectives, reverse engineered what I was going to get done today, made sure there were three people that I was going to call that are important to me, and also three notes that I was going to write. And then I made a list of the top five things, the most important things that I need to move forward on today to move me closer, closer to my goals. That's all I want to do. Then I spent some time with my family. I have three little kids, so I spent some time with my family. And then off we went into the day.

I love it. Scott, you know, when he's talking about his morning ritual, it's all focused. There's no thinking about it, really. I mean, there's thinking about it, but there's a tremendous laser, like, focus about how Govind intentionally goes through his day intentionally, what he wants to get done. And there's no way he's gonna get necessarily distracted now. I could imagine maybe he gets an emergency phone call. There's probably built in flexibility in there, but for the most part, if things go as planned, it'll get done. I love it. I love it.

You know, it's funny because, you know, like, Mark, you've been, you've been like, checking your email twice a day for weeks now, you know, countless weeks. And, you know, I try to do the same thing, but it's funny because then you get these, you get these. You get people who, their. Their, you know, issue, they feel like it's important to them, right? It's important to them. So then they'll use every means possible to try to communicate with you. So, like, I've got someone who works with me. They'll send an email. They'll send, they'll send, you know, a text. If I don't respond within 15 minutes, I'll get a. What's this box?

No.

A box.

Yeah.

You know, what's the. What's the slack. I'll get a slack notification. Right? Slack and then if I don't respond to Slack, I'll get another email, I'll get a phone call and it's like, for the love of Pete, let's just stop for a minute. There's nothing that, that's, it's that urgent. And so like it's really, really hard for me to. And I've communicated like, listen, I'm not like, I'll deal with things when they come and if it's absolutely emergency, like the place is burning down, then use all hands on deck, right? But unless that I will respond, like if it needs to be responded to, if it doesn't need to be responded to, I'm not going to respond.

But we don't necessarily have to respond.

To everything right now. And that's a hard thing to like one, to control yourself. Like one, like not everything's important right this second. And then two, getting the people around you to understand, like it's not that important.

It's okay. Well, you know, I mean, the thing is, I think that what's interesting is a lot of us feel like it's important to compel other people to behave like we do. But the only person who has to behave and do what we, what we want to do is us, right? It doesn't matter that they've called 15 times. It doesn't matter that they've texted you. It doesn't matter that they've emailed you. What matters is our response to it. So notice the response. And part of the pathway is. So, you know, for me, my phone, the ringer has been off for more than a year. My ringer has been off on my phone for more than one whole year. All my calls are scheduled or calendared or I've said, okay, I'll wait for your call or I'll call you. That's it. You know, the only exception to that is my wife. But even then it's still off. So I have to know that she's calling me. So what ends up happening is she'll actually call the office and ask somebody else. Hey, can you go get Govan for me? Trying to get a hold of them.

Right.

So I think it's all about again, what are you saying yes to? And how do you defend that yes with no's? What are you creating around you as filters? We like, do I want to work out at 5:05 in the morning? Heck no. The bed is warm, it's cozy. We have a great bed. I love lying there. I love being in that environment with my wife. I love it when our kids roll in, it's very intimate and beautiful as a family time, it's the hardest thing in the world to pull myself out of it. I don't want to do it, but I have to do it because it gives me the focus to go through what I need to get done in the day. I love what it gives me. And so I'm saying that I have to go. I'm not giving myself that daily option to opt out. I'm doing it. So that's why I'm saying there's an internal journey to focus. And that internal journey is my personal commitment to the routine that I want to set for myself. The external journey is my goals, my vision, my mission, all that kind of stuff as a company that I can articulate to other people. But if I'm not believing it internally, if I'm not setting that internal vision first, none of that matters.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. One of my favorite quotes is discipline equals freedom. And you create more freedom for yourself the more discipline that you have.

Yeah, structure sets you free. Yeah.

So, Govind, we're at that point now on the podcast. I'm put you on the spot. I'm gonna ask you for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

Yeah, so the best resource, and I use this resource almost every month and it's called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I think. So here's what's everybody right now is saying, oh, yeah, I've heard that book. And more than half of you are saying, yeah, I've listened to that book or I've read the book, or one time you've gone through the book, you thumbed through it, you stopped reading it. I'm going to tell you, read that book several times a year. Do what's in that book. There are no other books that are necessary. And I'm just going to leave this with you. He created that book. In the preamble of that book, he tells this beautiful story about when he wrote it, that he wrote it because Dale Carnegie introduced him to all these amazing people and oh, wow, these are the success secrets that they have. That's not when he wrote it. He wrote it when he was making a dollar a year working for FDR in the White House. FDR didn't have any budget to pay him. Wanted Napoleon in the White House, said, if you could come here, I can pay you. A dollar a year. He said, sure, I'll do it, but I'm allowed to bring my typewriter. I can do anything I want. He wrote three manuscripts that year, came back some years later, read them all, had one. He gave it to a publisher. And they remember there was no such thing as self help. There was no such thing as personal development back there. It's a book. It was all, you know, stories and biographies. He wrote that book. And the publisher said, this is beautiful, but what do I do with it? Publisher gave it to 200 people who worked for him. And they asked him, you know, Napoleon suggested, give it to your employees, then ask them what we should do with it. They all came back and said, we should publish this book. In a year, they'd sold four and a half million copies, Right?

So that's crazy.

Read that book. And read it often. Master it. Don't just read it. Master that book.

Fantastic. Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Mark, you know how much I have a love hate relationship with Imacros. And here is Chrome extension that I think our audience would love is called Wildfire. Yes, it's Chrome only Wildfire. You seen this thing, Mark?

I have seen this, yes.

And you go through and you record your screen clicks, and then what it does is it will then go and automate your screen clicks whatever way you want. So for all of you that are screen scraping the heck out of websites to build a list, a Frankenstein list, go right now, check out Wildfire, the chrome extension. And if you feel compelled, you can, I don't know, send me a dollar or two. Just mail it to me.

It's a great tip. I knew you're gonna. I saw this yesterday and I'm like, oh, Scott's gonna be all over this. Here it comes. Scott and Bart Simpson are all over this.

It's the greatest.

So I hope Bart's listening, sending him some love. All right, my tip of the week is gonna just trump all of your tips. Sorry, guys, but my tip of the week is learn more and become wiser at Paper Napkin wisdom dot com. He's got the blog, he's got the podcast, he's got the book, he's got.

Workshops.

And just the mentorship in the next half hour. Can you imagine what that's gonna be like once you get onto the site? Paper napkin wisdom.com. it's wisdom on steroids. I love it. I just want to remind all the listeners, look, the only way we're going to get the quality of guests like Govind is if you do us three small little favors. You got to subscribe, you got a rate, and you got to review the podcast. Please do so. And we're going to send you. Send us a screenshot of the review. We're going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit. Govin, are we good?

A lot of fun, guys.

Scott, we good?

Mark, we're great.

All right, thanks, everybody. Let freedom ring. Thanks, guys. It's always bad. All right, I got to run.