Erik Fisher: Beyond The To-Do List | The Business Blast Podcast #606

Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite makes the process of becoming a published bestselling author as simple as sipping your morning cup of coffee. You can learn more about Authors Unite at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.

All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Eric Fisher with us. He is the host and producer for the last 6 years of the Beyond the To-Do List Podcast where he talks with real people who practically implement productivity strategies in their professional and personal lives. So welcome to the show, man.

Thanks for having me.

Of course, man. Pumped to have you here. We'll get started with the first question. The first one I have for you is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

Yeah, so let me set the stage here. So for a long time, I was working in basically in sales for a certain business, and everybody, you know, there was no commission or anything like that. It was all— we were all paid the same. and I hacked it to where I was able to, uh, I basically made 330-something sales in a year for this particular, uh, item. And it is a high-ticket item. And so, and then the person below me, the next person, second place, was at about 150, so about half. And so you can imagine how I'm feeling, where I'm like, oh, every, you know, that person's getting paid the same as me, and then everybody below me And below this person, the second place person, you know, it was like $120,000, $110,000, $90,000, $80,000, even $30,000. And everyone's been getting paid the same. So I'm like, well, then it really matter how hard I work. I just need to make sure I get done everything that I need to get done. So I start hacking that. And I literally would do, you know, in this 40-hour-a-day— sorry, 40-hour-a-week position, I would get all my work done in about 2 hours each day. And so the lesson here is I squandered the time that I did, that I had freed up. Instead of— there was no incentive. I wasn't going to get paid anymore, so it didn't really matter for me to work harder. So I got real smart and worked smarter. But then I freed up all that time while I was sitting in my cubicle, and instead of reading or writing or connecting with people online through social networks and things like that, I just, I kind of squandered it. I'd play video games on my phone or even on my computer because I had a certain place, you know, I had a certain cube where like you couldn't come to see me without me knowing you were coming and I could switch over to something else. So not proud of that, but that's my, that's my lesson there is you can work hard and you can work smart, but like if you free up all this time, like make sure you're using your time to the best of its ability.

Dude, I love that. I love just like try like with tools like Zapier and stuff. I'm sure you're familiar with that tool. Just trying to figure out ways to like maximize your time. So dude, that's awesome. 2 hours a day. So the next one I have for you is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

So I'll go with the productivity side of things with this one and say that really The most valuable piece of information is that you have so much more time than you think you do. You just aren't aware of it. And so the best thing you can do is do a time audit and see where is it you're actually spending your time. Because once you know that, you can actually make an educated decision on eliminating things and/or adding things in that are gonna have a much higher impact for you.

Yeah, man, I think that's huge, auditing your time. I actually, I wish I didn't know this, but I just found out 2 days ago that I spend about 90 minutes a day on YouTube. That's my average. And I was like, dude, that is, I thought I was on there for like 20 minutes, but it was, I guess, an hour and a half. So the next one I have for you is what's your best piece of overall business advice, not necessarily industry specific?

Yeah, so this one, this one I think is interesting. As far as business advice goes, a lot of people ask me that when they're, you know, thinking about starting a podcast. And my thought here is like, look, you may not out of the gate make anything off it. Make sure that you, if you're getting into something business-wise, that you are entering into something that— and we've all heard this saying, you know, find something you love that you would, and then figure out a way to, you know, get people to pay you to do it. Like, forget that, forget that last part. Like, just focus in on like, look, what do you want to do? If you could do just what you want to do, and it's not just about like figuring out your passion or whatever, but like literally figure yourself out, have some self-awareness. I know that sounds very non-business-like, but like if you're going to start something, like do it and enjoy it, you know? It's, it's kind of simple.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And take your mind, you know, obviously you do gotta, you gotta make money in the beginning to, to get by, if you will, but But from my personal experience, if you do start with something that you enjoy, it does end up becoming profitable over time. So, you just got to— you have to have some patience with it. Like, you've been doing your podcast for like 6 years, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

So, the next one I have for you is, if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Well, you know, so part of me would go back to that kid, so to speak, sitting in that cubicle not using the time wisely. And I would say, dude, you could be blogging right now. You could be reading right now and taking notes and then creating podcast episodes to then record later. You could be watching certain tutorial videos. You could be reaching out and discovering the right people to connect with. I mean, why are you sitting here playing, you know, Lord of the Rings on the computer or something stupid on your, you know, your phone wasting the time. Like, you know, it just really— I mean, there was a huge amount of time waste there. So I would say, hey, younger self, there's seriously so much more you could be doing and you're not. Even if you just do a little bit more and be strategic about it, you could, you could really double, triple your ROI.

And kind of going a little bit down a different path, but in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?

Honestly, I think it's just that whatever the expectation is that either other people have for you or that you have for you or ultimately both those things at the same time, that that's being met. So, and what kind of, what it takes to get to that is honestly communication. Clear communication with others and yourself about what those expectations are and what it's gonna take.

And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

The, the best book I think that I've ever read, honestly, it's called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It's written by Donald Miller, and it's all about how he had written a book previously and it was getting made into a movie. So he was then working with the screenwriter to kind of fictionalize a version of his life for the movie screen, and he started picking up all these tips about how to craft a good story for a movie and then started retroactively pulling those lessons back into his life. So in other words, he's like, well, hey, here's the principles of story that make a good movie. What are the principles of a good story? And what are the principles of story that would make sense for me to make a good life? And so it was this idea of being able to have more agency or ownership over your own life, and that there are things in your life that you can do to create a more compelling, quote, story of your life.

And what is your favorite quote and why?

So it might sound arrogant, but this quote is actually mine. I created it and I stick with it. I stand by it. It's, "Good ideas come from many ideas." And ultimately what it means is you can't have any good ideas unless you're constantly trying to have many ideas, even bad ones. So generate lots of ideas. This gives you permission to like, you know, consume lots of things, content, reading, writing, listening, all that kind of stuff. Have lots of ideas because then you can start to piece them together into great ideas.

I agree, man. And dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where is the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?

The best place is beyondthetodolist.com. That's the site for my show and it's got the links to all the socials. Especially Twitter. That's probably the best place to reach out after the site.

Perfect, man. Thanks again for jumping on.

You're welcome.

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