Tackling Tough Things First | Ray Zinn

Now, Ray, after you sold the company and you've retired, you've written a book that I think actually we have a copy of for everyone here today. Can you talk a little bit about the key takeaways that you'd like to— for the readers of your book and kind of your life's philosophy that you try to impart in the book?

Sure. So the title of the book is Tough Things First. And so early on in my life when I was even, you know, a teenager growing up on my father's cattle ranch, I learned to do the things I don't like doing. And that was the key to me to be successful is being able to focus on the things you don't like doing and getting them out of the way. It's kind of, That story about eating the ugly toad first and getting that, getting those tough tasks. So every morning when I, after I've exercised and get ready for work, I think, okay, now what is it that I have on my plate that I don't want to do that is really difficult? And I go after those first, get those out of the way because the rest of the day goes smooth. And I've increased my efficiency by 30% by just doing that practice of doing the tough things first. It's called loving the things you hate, as you would. And, and so if you think about it, as you're sitting here listening to us, think about the things you don't want to do, things you hate to do, not just today, but things you really don't like doing. And then if you keep doing them over and over, You know, as that saying goes, you know, it's not that the nature of the task becomes easier, but your ability to perform becomes easier. That's how you get better at what you do. And if you can learn to do well with the things you hate to do, I tell you, the things you love to do will just go, they'll just, you'll have tremendous success.

Right, right. I mean, I think that's very good advice. And one of the things personally I find hard is just consistency. How have you been able to, you know, I'm sure we all have our ups and downs in our life and our business, but how have you been able to keep that discipline even in tougher times to do those tough things first?

Well, that's when you want to do them, is when things, as the saying goes, When the going gets tough— The tough get going. The tough get going. And that's key. So, you know, some of us when we go pray at night, we say, you know, please bless me that this whole day will go smoothly and everything's wonderful. I don't do that. I say, give me some problems. Give me some challenges that I can go fix. That's how you grow. You don't grow through things going smoothly. You only grow if things are tough. Adversity is like manure. It stinks, but it helps us grow. So you want challenges. Don't be afraid of challenges. You want challenges. That's how you're going to develop. And so you don't want things to go smoothly or wonderfully. And, you know, that's why I continued on instead of just bailing and going sit on a rock in Hawaii. Is that I just really loved what I did. I loved those challenges. And we went through like 5 different cycles in the last 30-plus years. And we— and I learned from having those challenges, from those different cycles that we went through. I learned how to better run the company. So when I left, the company was actually better off, much better off than when I started because I learned to overcome all those obstacles.

Right. And being a CEO of a publicly listed company, I'm sure you had so many things to worry about, but how did you prioritize the tasks ahead of you? I mean, I'm sure there's just many things that you needed to tackle, but what was— what is your advice for maybe some of the students here in terms of prioritizing your different tasks?

I said in In the very beginning, go after those tough tasks. Get those out of the way. That's how I prioritized it. Maybe they weren't the most important thing, but they were the most difficult thing. When you prioritize, don't necessarily look at the most important things. Look at the ones that are the more difficult because that's where you're going to learn. You're going to learn from getting those tasks done and done right. Discipline is doing what you don't like doing and doing it well. So, you know, whatever that task is, keep at it until you, until you do it right.