Podcasting Made Simple
Podcasting Made Simple is the premier podcast about podcasting! We’re here to help podcast guests and podcast hosts reach more listeners and grow their income so they can change more lives! Join Alex Sanfilippo and other podcasting industry experts as they share how you can level up on either side of the mic! (Show notes and resources: https://PodMatch.com/episodes)
Podcasting Made Simple
Thinking Bigger and Accomplishing More In Podcasting | Jay Papasan
Are you thinking big enough for your podcasting goals? Whether you're a podcast guest or host, you have a goal you want to accomplish through your podcasting efforts. The sad truth is that, on both sides of the mic, most people quit before reaching their goals. Don't let this be you! In this episode, join Alex Sanfilippo and Jay Papasan as they explore how to set bigger/better goals AND how to ensure that you accomplish them. Get ready to achieve extraordinary results in podcasting!
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Takeaways
Prioritize tasks and focus on the most important ones
Ask the right questions to uncover the one thing that will lead to extraordinary results
Avoid multitasking and say no to unnecessary commitments
Think bigger and aim higher to achieve extraordinary success
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:39 Passion for Creating Content
02:06 The Power of Writing and Reading
03:27 The Lies: Everything Matters Equally
07:09 The Truth: The Focusing Question
20:29 Unleashing Extraordinary Results
33:53 Saying No and Thinking Bigger
40:34 Conclusion
MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/275
📊 This month's Independent Podcasters Report is now available! To see podcasting industry insights that matter for indie podcast hosts and podcast guests, please visit https://PodMatch.com/Report!
You're listening to Podcasting Made Simple. I'm your host, Alex Sanfilippo. For this episode's guide and resources, please visit podprose.com slash 275. And now let's get to the episode. Jay Papasan, welcome to Podcasting Made Simple. So excited to have you here with us today. Hey, I'm excited to be back. It's great to see you, Alex. Yeah, man, you too. Hey, before we got started, something I want to mention real quick is that you talked about your one thing, which is we're going to get into today, really ultimately being around this idea of content creation. Yeah. And I just want to hear you riff a little bit here just about your passion for creating content. Because if anyone looks at your resume, what you've accomplished, that might not be the first thing somebody says. that you are, right? But that's still how you identify, and that's still your major one thing. Can you just talk about that real quick? Cause I want this to relate to both podcast guests and hosts really well. Yeah, sure. I mean, I've always been kind of a book nerd, right? That was where I went to escape as a kind of a very small sized seventh grader and nerdy, like playing Dungeons and Dragons. I'd go read my books, cause I wasn't that socially adept. I grew late, late bloomer. That turned into an English major. That turned into being an editor in New York, working on books. And eventually... Like where I kind of think of the two chapters of my life, I had this period where I thought, maybe I'm gonna be an academic, maybe I'm gonna be an editor. Met my wife, we moved to Texas. I could have maybe tried to get a job at the University of Texas, but I kind of was turned off on academics after getting my master's. You think that business is cutthroat, academics can be really political. And I was also naive and young, so I didn't know like maybe everything's that way. But I was leaning more into the writing career by the time I moved here, and I happened to partner with Gary Keller. And the fact that we were able to write our first book in a little over 100 days, that book went on to sell 1.6 million copies to date. Like that act of being someone who knew how to write, knew how to edit, knew how to curate content, who understood how to build an audience, all of those skills, call it the creator skills. That's what got me every opportunity that's come after. You know, I've gotten to partner with Gary. one of the best entrepreneurs alive today on multiple businesses. My wife and I started investing and we used the royalties from the books and the pay. Like we just like, we learned a lot of great lessons from the books. And I just know that that's the tip of the spear for me. So I have a coach, I've had a coach for, I guess going on 14 years, and I've had multiple ones over the years, even though I get to work with Gary. And I have about five metrics and two of them. have not changed at all over that period of time. I have to be reading new books and I have to be writing. So I track how many writing days, which is a certain amount of time I have for just pure creativity. A big block of time where I'm going in to create something or advance creating something. And then like how many books? I try to read about one a week, probably average about 45 a year at this point. And I had a mentor that just said, if you want to be a professional writer will just substitute creator. It's all about creativity and creativity in his mind was connecting the dots. As a professional, you need to be professional about having more dots than the average person to connect. So, read, read and read with purpose. So like I think of those as the two things that help me show up and be able to write regularly. I have a weekly newsletter. I have a monthly personal newsletter, I'm writing books, I'm working on podcasts, I'm doing all those things, but that writing time that I block religiously and the reading of really interesting non-fiction and business books is the fuel that makes everything else happen. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does and I so respect that. And man, so the last time I had you on like the show, which was when it was called Creating a Brand, same feed everybody, so you can go back and find that if you're interested, right when I started my business, and I will say the one thing that we're gonna talk about today had a profound impact on my life as an entrepreneur. And the thing is, I was thinking like, how do I bring Jay back and it makes sense for podcast guests and podcast hosts? And I thought about it, I'm like, okay, this goes beyond just being about entrepreneurship and even being in real estate in any sense of the way or any sense of the method of how you do that, right? It can go into this as well. And I wanted you to share a little bit about kind of how you really, first and foremost, are a content creator. I know you also are running managing, if you will, a handful of podcasts within your organization. So like you understand this really well and something interesting. Here's a fun fact. Podcasting has a four times greater failure rate than starting a business. So if you're trying to become an entrepreneur, start a business, you're four times more likely based on a two year timeframe to make it as a business owner than you are as a podcaster, which is very interesting to me. I did this big report on the math and stuff like that. So. Again, I'm excited that we found a way to make this work because I think it's gonna be really valuable. And the best place to start is, can you just give us a brief overview of kind of where we're going today with this concept of the one thing? So, you know, we could have called the book Focus on What Matters, and then nobody would have bought it. Correct. Because people thought, well, what's the one thing, right? It had that intriguing question mark. But Gary's superpower, you know, my co-author, Gary Keller, founded Keller Williams, his superpower has always been, he will work really, really hard to identify what the number one priority is. then work really, really hard to ask, what's the most leveraged activity we can do to make that outcome happen for our number one priority? And then he will dedicate more time, resources, and energy than almost anyone else to making that happen. And that has been the pattern in all of his successes. It's been the pattern in all of my big successes, is you identify the thing that matters absolutely the most. We've all heard of the 80-20 rule. This is just that on steroids. identify the 20% of the 20% of the 20%. You just keep asking, what's the 20% until you get to one? And then that becomes your number one priority. It's ideally the first thing you tackle each day. You block time for it, meaning you make an appointment with yourself to do that, not just with other people, if it's not collaborative, and you stick with it until it's almost automatic. And that's kind of the essence of what we're talking about. And there's all kinds of challenges. There's all kinds of junk the world throws at us that can distract us. It's really hard to say no. It's really hard to tap in and manage the chaos while you're focused on one thing. So it is easy in principle and it is incredibly challenging to live. But when I study the most successful businesses, the most successful authors, creators, business people, individual contributors, it is a theme in their life. If you start looking under the hood and picking it apart, you're like, oh, they really... focused on this, and this is the thing that helped them get to the elbow of the curve and hit extraordinary success. Man, I'm so excited to dive into this today. Can't even tell you. I'm just, I'm excited diving this. We're going to go through the three main topics, if you will, or categories that are covering this. It's the lies, the truths, and unleashing extraordinary results. And again, really thrilled to go into this. We're going to go section by section. So the first section being the lies. This is one that I really want to cover and have you dive into here, that I hear all the time from podcasts, guests, and hosts. And it's when I ask them, okay, like, what are you focused on right now? They're like, well, everything, because everything matters, right? And you even say in the book, everything doesn't matter equally, right? The lie is that everything matters the same. And can you just talk about why this isn't true even for us as content creators? And I'll also add why it's a challenge, right? As a solopreneur, as an entrepreneur, if you've got a job and this is your side gig, there's a huge list of things that simply have to get done. If you're a podcast, you've got to be booking out, you've got to be planning your content, you've got to be recording it, you've got to be editing it, you've got to be posting, you've got to be promoting it, all of the things. And so it can be so easy to just be constantly in triage mode. And so I actually don't think people argue that everything matters equally. That's just how they end up. And when you are just going through your to-do list and trying to cross off as many things as you can, jumping from meeting to meeting, got two screens up the whole thing, You're inherently treating everything like it matters equally. So the trick is just what we talked about a little bit earlier. I want to use Pareto's principle, the 80-20. So I want to take my to-do list and turn it into a success list. So of all the things, I'm going to use week, right? It could be a month, it could be a day. Like when you're looking at what has to be done, I'm going to say for the week. What are all the things that just absolutely have to get done? Because a lot of, I'm assuming a lot of your audience is creating a weekly. That seems to be the most common. So what are all the things that have to get done this week? Well, now prioritize it. So go through the list, it's usually really long, and circle the ones that are mission critical. Like these are the things that actually matter, right? Did I prepare the guest? Did I actually record the content? You know, like what are the handful of things that if you don't do them, you're not just kind of failing your face planning. Now go to that shorter list, and I've done this with thousands and thousands of people. Most people can fill up an entire page about 25 to-dos in about five minutes. Entrepreneurs, like there is no shortage of tasks awaiting their attention. Right. Once we just do this initial, what are the things on that list that actually really matter? They're not just urgent and have to be done, like check my inbox. These are the big things. There's usually only about four to six. Let's call it five. Now you take that list and say, if I could only do one thing, this week, what would that be to hit my bigger goal? That becomes your number one. And then you subtly change the question and say, after I do my number one, nail it, and I still have time and resources, what would be my number two? And with it, asking that question is just a handful of times. Now they've gone from this giant list of stuff, and inherently when we have the giant list, we don't look for the most important. We look for the thing that we can cross off the fastest. And I'm guilty of that. Like, I just want to stop thinking about this thing, right? I want it off my plate. I want it out of my mind. And so you're looking for psychological relief. The flip of that is now you've got a very short list of the really mission critical and you've identified your number one. Well, when you look at your calendar, the first thing that goes on that week is that number one. You make sure that you've got probably 200% as much time as you think you'll need, because we all know it always takes longer than you think. You show up to be creative and you don't have a thought in your head. You got in a fight with your partner that morning. Your dog peed on the carpet, right? Whatever that happened, and you're distracted and you're not really in the mode. So you definitely over-dedicate time to your number one, and then you work your way through the list. And I'll tell you, when I get up and I knock out my number one thing, I walk through the rest of the day lighter. Like I feel liberated. So there's nothing, if we only talk about one lie, it's that one, it is the essence of the book. And how you treat it is you take your list of things that you know you gotta do, and you turn it into a success list. And that is simply identifying the things that truly matter and prioritizing them, and then attacking them in that order. Man, I've heard you say that doing the most important thing is always the most important thing. And I found that to be so true. I was probably quoting Stephen Covey, because I do think that was his originally. It's misquoting him. Is it okay? Yeah. I love that guy. So maybe I got it from there as well. I don't know. I thought I heard you say that, but somebody said it. But hey, you're on that same tier. How good is that, right? Can't beat that. Well, I'll say this, just because there, you've got listeners, probably a new audience to the book. I do think there's some original ideas in there, but a lot of it is taking timeless truths about how to achieve more. But what we did is we put them in a framework that I believe, that's why we sold three million copies today, is that people found it accessible, right? All we've done is given them a fresh perspective and approach to things they kind of always knew they should have been doing, but we put it in a framework that people, I believe, can follow. I love hearing that. I got two things that I think were both pretty original in here that I want to dive into on this section before we move on. Sure. Because I think they're important. They might be a little bit more rapid fire for everybody, so take notes, please. First off, you kind of already touched on a little bit about the podcaster. or the guest or host that likes to check things off a list. For a host that tends to be just getting through all the administrative stuff. For the guest that tends to be booking up as many shows as humanly possible as fast as they can. I'm asking that one for a friend. I don't struggle with inbox zero. I don't know why you're asking that. But what do you say to somebody, like can we just go a little bit more on this because I see that happen just so much that we're too busy to focus on that success list because we have the to-do list that just has to be done in our minds. I've got a whole soapbox about inbox zero. Is that where you want me to go? Because I can, I've written about it multiple times. I think the only reason to do inbox zero is if you're in customer service and your inbox is full of customer service requests. Or if it just psychologically, you can't function without it. But I do not see perfect meeting attendance, timely email correspondence, inbox zero. I've never seen those correlate to extraordinary success. And if you're like a really polite person, I wanna be punctual, it can be a real struggle. But that's part of the chaos that you have to let lie fallow while you're working on your one thing. So my whole approach to things like that, like email, kind of repetitive task where important things can be buried and that's part of the anxiety, I batch it, right? Hopefully you've heard of batching. It could be a Pomodoro method, In the morning, after I've looked at my goals and looked at my calendar, I've hung out with my wife, like one of the last things I do before I hop in the car to go to my office is I quickly go through my emails. And what I'm doing is trying to find out, does something show up overnight that changes my day, right? A cancellation, a new priority that I have to account for, and I try to send out the emails or Slack messages, same thing, that put my priorities out in the world. Most of what's on Slack and in email is somebody else's priority. Let's just be really clear. So I send it out, usually around lunch. I usually have a 30 minute time block at lunch. I meal prep so I can have at least one really consistently healthy meal every day. I eat my meal and I try to triage my email again. I have an EA. I have such a volume that my executive assistant usually has to assist me. And then I try to do it at the end of the day. And because I've built the habits of checking in regularly, I know that there's no ticking time bomb that's gonna sit for more than about three or four business hours. And when I get in there, I'm just playing a game. How much can I knock out in the 20 minutes that I have? So things that are still have to be done, but are lower priority in general, I try to do really small time blocks and batch it. But if you just open up your inbox with no hard stop, it's like a time machine. Right? You can catch up and you're playing the game of, I want no notifications on my Slack board. Like I want to take everything that's bold and turn it gray. No, no, don't do that. Right? I think you do that in tiny bits, but that's not what will make you extraordinarily successful. That's so helpful. I feel like I need to hear this all the time. So thank you. That was a bit for me. And hopefully for others as well, got something out of that. And that goes beyond just our inbox, beyond our Slack channels, that goes into all the tasks that we have to do as we've been talking about. Last thing in this section, just real fast here. Multitasking. Again, on both sides of the mic, I always hear people saying that they're good at multitasking, but the science says that that's not true. I mean, we can unpack this in a really long way, or they can just read the chapter, but I would say that it has been categorically proven that no one is a good multitasker. There is a, I think, less than 2% of the population that they categorize as supertaskers, and really, it's not saying that they're good at it, they're just not horrible at it. In most cases, when you're multitasking, you're gonna lose about 10 IQ points. And 10 IQ points is the difference between genius and just kind of smart, right? Between kind of smart and not smart at all. And you look up and you're like, oh, that's a big difference. You also create a lot more loose ends. If you look up and you got 150 tabs open, that's a product of multitasking, right? Whenever you're starting multiple things, you're less likely to finish any of them. I don't know, I go on and on. So here's the thing, I've got a phone, you've got a phone. I've got, I mean, all the devices that I've got two screens. The world is definitely programmed to try to encourage us to be checking in on things constantly. That's how a lot of these platforms win, right? As a podcaster, nobody just sits silently at their desk and takes notes, right? They're walking the dog or driving the car, right? It is a background activity while they're doing something else, that's normal. So whatever your number one was, my encouragement is, can you try to not multitask while you're doing that? Your number one thing for work. If your number one thing as a parent is like book time or bath time, leave your phone downstairs when you go up to the kid's bedroom. Give that your full attention, even for 30 minutes. And what you'll find is you get a hell of a lot more done. The people you're with, if it's with other people, recognize how much more present you are. Listening is one of the... ultimate gifts you can give someone. And so just try not to multitask when you're doing your number one. Like if you're a podcast host, for God's sakes, don't multitask while you're recording a podcast. Right? Hit record and just trust that everything's going to work. You know, don't be monitoring all the levels the entire time. Well, I just shut down my inbox, Jay. I've been maintaining zero since we've been here together, and now I just shut it down. So thank you. I'm just kidding. By the way, the tab thing, that's gonna start a cord with somebody. Grab the book if you wanna dive more into this side of it, right? But I'm a one tab type of guy. Other people in my life, they're like, hey, I have six different windows open with 35 tabs on each, right? So I digress. I use a thing called Workona, and it's a Chrome plugin where you can create different workspaces. So my podcast is, I only have one tab, it's this, Riverside. I can't see anything else. My writing tab, I've got like the Hemingway app. I've got a thing that'll tell me, that's for helping me edit. I've got one that'll tell me how long of a read it is. I've got different of my power thesaurus. I have the tools I use there. I have a quotes repository, a story idea repository, but that's all I've got. So I curate my workspaces to optimize. the work time. So I'm not, kudos to you if you only have one tab. I probably, if you look across all my workspaces, have a hundred. But when I'm in a work zone, I try to limit it to just those things. So I'm not tempted to go look on Twitter. I'm not tempted to go look on social media to see how that last post is doing. That's a different tab group. And I go there when that's my focus. I like that, that's smart. The way I do it, I didn't realize there was tools that could help, but I'm gonna go check that out. Workona. Work on a, the way I've done is I just have a calendar. I follow my calendar every day. Like that's where I block out my time and my calendar inside of it, the notes, it has all the links I'm allowed to open at that time. So I'll open those up and it's typically two to three and I'll just go through them real fast. So it works for me. Everyone's different, but that works for me. No, that's beautiful and elegant, right? I love the thing that you said that I salute is that you're letting your calendar be your boss. Right. If you've looked at your priorities and your calendar reflects your priorities, then just follow your calendar. Yeah. Right. It's a, it takes 30 minutes for me at the beginning of the week to line up my calendar with my priorities. Now, because I have multiple organizations asking for my time, I do have a VA and an EA helping me out, but everybody here can probably afford a VA at the very least if, if that's your challenge. I need you to move this time block. Most people are relieved when you cancel. I'm sorry. Maybe not all podcast toasts because that was the content they needed that week. True, true. But most people are thankful. So yeah, work from your calendar, but make your calendar reflect your priorities. That is like as simple as you can put it, Alex. It's great. I love that. All right, we gotta move on to section two here. We're gonna go long today, everybody. So enjoy this extended episode. I was like telling Jay for so much- We're making two. Let's go for 25 minutes. Now we're gonna go a little longer than that probably, but section two here, getting into it, the truth. And this is where you introduce the focusing question of the one thing. If you haven't memorized, say it. If not, I'm gonna read it and I might mess it up because it can be a little bit here. So you got it, you ready? Yeah, what's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary. So I'll unpack that. It's a long question, but you ask a powerful question, you can get a powerful answer. So we really took time to work on the question and it came from Gary's coaching clients. There is a history behind it that's not in the book. but what's the one thing I can do? So the first thing you're asking your brain is for the one thing. And if you've taught it what that means, the most leveraged activity, then your brain is pretty good at guessing what the answer should be. Most of us know the answer, we just aren't doing it. The can do is different from would do, should do, right? All of those things, could do, because you need whatever you can currently take action on. What's the one thing that could save me time when I'm doing business travel, I could get my pilot's license. I could get my pilot's license. That's a multi-year journey. So that's not going to solve it this year. It doesn't mean you don't pursue it, right? Such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or necessary is the ultimate leverage clause, right? You're, you're trying to look for that thing. It's the biggest lever in your current arsenal. So much so that it could make a lot of the other task. either diminish so much in importance that they don't really have to take up much of your time, you can delegate them, or they just go away altogether. I look at someone like James Clear, one of the most successful business authors of all time. For 12 years maybe, his one thing was building his blog and his email list. And then he wrote a great book. But it's just a handful of things that he is very, very focused on. that have given him truly extraordinary success. So this is a great example here that I think we can dive into a little bit further. You talk about how James Clear is a great example. 12 years of, yes, building a great blog, building a great email list. Obviously that really propelled him and the book itself was incredible. But so many of us in the creator economy, we see the success of someone like James Clear and say, how do I get there fast? And I always give the example of, I always go to football as my example. I'm not like, I can't name any players or anything like that. But I hope you use the example because people get it. And here's the thing. The most amazing football players that ever lived, I'll say one's name, Jerry Rice. Really well-known football player, one of the greatest NFL receivers all time. No one knew who he was for the first 18 years of him playing football. No one had any clue. But if he didn't do that 18 years, he would have never had the name that he had. James Clear, same thing. If he didn't do those 12 years of hard work, that could have been still the same exact book. But no one would have, the right people wouldn't have seen it. Let's put it that way, right? Yeah. What do you say to somebody who's saying, I get the one thing, but why does it take so much time? Because that's the nature of compounding, right? I would love for my stock portfolio to compound faster, but the number one lever is time. Like if I am talking to a kid who's 21 years old and wants to be a millionaire, that's a really easy recipe if he can wait till he's 55. It's really easy to be a millionaire if you've got that much time. If you're 50 and you need to be a millionaire by 55, now like, That's a lot of activity to get there. So I don't ever want to say things aren't possible. When you shorten the timeframe, a lot of things become improbable. And the number one thing that becomes improbable is extraordinary success. Some people get it because they're lucky, but that's not something you can count on for you. James Clear was not lucky. He wasn't. I was reading his blog while we were writing the book. That's how far back it went. I got to hang out with them before the book came out, like, cause I was a fan, but that was like, what? a few hundred thousand people that were cult followers of his blog. But when his book launched, he was selling like 2000 copies a week, which is where the one thing was at that time. Though luck he got, like I think it would have sold millions no matter what. I think he's up to 10 million now or something crazy. When COVID hit, timing found him. Here he had launched with a lot of momentum, a very accessible book about how to build habits and then change, improve your life. Very accessible book. And he launched it at a time where he could have never predicted it. Just five months later, the world would shut down. People would not have their hour commute. And they had all this time to go work on themselves. And that became the book. He went from 2,000 copies a week at the beginning of that, to 2020, to 35,000 copies a week. Now, let me just be really clear. If you're 2,000 and you're growing, you're going to sell a million copy, which is the height of success as a book publisher. He got to compound that because he did all the things, and luck found him. So like he's a great example. I've studied hundreds of businesses. There aren't overnight successes. Somebody was working in a garage for a decade before, tinkering with the prototype. But we see them in the media, and we assume that it happened fast because the elbow of the curve, right? When things start growing really, really fast about that eight to 12 year mark, it looks like it's exploding. Like our brains can't understand compounding math. Like I do this exercise with my investor classes. I'll be like, all right, we're gonna invest this much at every month or this much a year at 8% interest rate. How much do you think that'll be in 10 years? How much do you think it'll be in 20? How much do you think that'll be in 40? And it just always blows people's mind because they just like, our brains aren't equipped for that level of growth. And that's what we see. And we go, I want that. Well, guess what? You've got to do the groundwork first. Yeah, man, that's well said. I wanted to ask you about course correcting. And the reason I bring that up is there's the old talk about if you launch a rocket and you're trying to hit the moon, if you don't aim exactly right, you could be hundreds of miles off easily, if it's not exactly right. And I find that so many content creators, podcasters, on either side of the mic, they decided to do what I call course correcting, which is like, oh, I was doing this by stopped, and now I'm going to do this because it didn't seem to be getting the traction. And maybe that's why. but it can't always be wise. Do you have any thoughts of how long you should stay the course and when to know if you're heading the right direction or not? So great question. I love this question. And I don't know that anybody's ever asked me in this context. So thank you for that. That's a gift. Here at rocket to the moon, fact, when NASA, I mean, please, I hope everybody believes that we actually landed on the moon. But I actually bumped into someone who's like, I don't buy that. I'm like, I can't convince you, I'm sorry. But the engineers, That rocket was only actually on course about 2% of the time. But what they did is they did lots of micro-corrections. So when I am goal setting, we have a tool called the 411 where you have your annual goals. Each month you say, what do I have to do this month to be on track for my annual goals? And each week you say, what do I have to do this week to be on track for my month? Which by the way, would make you on track for your year. Keep it with me everywhere I go. If you're checking in every week, you're just like the moonshot. You're making micro-corrections. So I think that you always are adjusting. You always have to meet the market where it is. There's always little opportunities to tweak. The other end of that is like the overall strategy I'm pursuing just isn't working. And that's a hard decision. One of my early co-founders in a business, after about two years of grinding, the progress was happening slowly. and he wanted to switch. And at that point I bought in, the cost of that strategy wasn't what I wanted to pay. And I thought that we could very quickly move to a new strategy. We were moving from course sales to a community. And I was like, I just like that better. And then about 12 months later, he wanted to switch from that. And I just said, do you remember when we switched from course sales to community? We had over a year gotten about a 10th grade education in that strategy. the day we switched, we're back in kindergarten. So you have to be very, very careful of switching all the time, because all you've done is made yourself really, really dumb really fast. Like all of the things you didn't know about the strategy that wasn't working, like you were course correcting that whole time. Like you were fixing lots of little problems. Now you've got that whole journey ahead of you as well. So I am very cautious about the big shift because I understand how much momentum you lose when you do it. But I also know that companies that don't reinvent themselves every seven to 10 years, like the great musicians that are just reinventing themselves, coming out with new kinds of music, new kinds of stuff, if you're not evolving, you will die. So it's just, the tension is there, right? The tension is there. Listen to the market, watch your numbers and ask like, how are we doing? and how much change is required. But don't be a fad surfer. That is the thing that you wanna get on my bad side fast. It's that person that just jumps from fad to fad to fad. They get all the novelty and excitement of doing the new thing and telling, oh, look, I'm doing a cold plunge. Oh, look, I got a sauna. Oh, look, I got this, right? I'm jumping on whatever the trend is. But you also look up and you're like, but you never stick to anything, right? So you have to be very wary of novelty. You know, I personally do want a sauna. So I don't know what you're gonna think of me after that. I wouldn't like that. They're very helpful. I do tease all the cold plunge people. Do you? Okay, I've never done that. That doesn't seem interesting to me, but. I know a lot of people I love and respect that do it and they love it, but I'm also like not a cross fitter. I don't have to rebuild my body every day, right? I do exercises like an old man that I am. I lift and all that, but like, you know, my little massage gun and a heating pad is enough for me. I don't have to torture myself. I do a lot of hard things on my own. I love it, man. This is a great transition, not that part, but before that was a great transition to section three here because this whole course correcting idea, you can talk about this from the sense of living by priority, goal setting to the now as you call it in the book. Can you talk about how we can start implementing this? Because this is how we really unleash these extraordinary results. So I think the mistake everybody makes is each year they come up and they say, what are my goals? And they look at where they are and they look at where they think they can get. And that is how most people and most companies set their goals. And the challenge of that is that you have all of these options and you don't really know which ones are taking you ultimately where you want to go. So goal setting to the now is just backwards planning, right? The military uses it. Lots of different places have used it. You go way out in the future. Like we teach people, say, someday, what do you want your life to look? And that's really challenging, right? Because you're now way beyond the range of any crystal ball. You're just like life by design. What do I want my life to look like? Now? Based on that, what your finances are, what your job day looks like, what your health looks like, what would you have to achieve in five years to feel like you were absolutely on track for that? Great, you write those five-year targets down. I'm gonna call them goals targets because they could change. But right now, that's your best guess of that goal that feels approachable for five years that is directly in route for where you wanna go. Then you move backwards and say, based on my five-year goal, not the someday, What would I have to achieve in one year to feel like I was on track for that? You write that down. Then you say, what would I have to do this month to be on track for my year, this week to be on track for my month, today to be on track for my week? You're working backwards. That's how we know. Like I wanna be a bestselling author, but I've never written a day in my life. You can create a plan based on that, that at least lets you know this week, you're behaving in a manner that might get you there. Otherwise, you could be chasing some low-hanging fruit a way to make a lot of money in the next few months that's taking you in the opposite direction of where your life ultimately needs to go. So when you set goals for the year, let them be milestones on a bigger journey. And like, where do I have to get this year to feel like I'm on track for where I ultimately want to go? And like, you don't always get to have a great year. Like this year sucked for real estate, but when we're talking this conversation, it might suck when this podcast comes out in the next year. Right? Bad markets come and go. It's very predictable. That's what's called a cycle. So you can't always have your best year, but you can design a great career. And I think that's the difference. Work backwards from a big goal is the essence of so much in the book. And I mean, I wish I'd learned this in high school. Like I didn't know how to break down giant goals so that each day I knew I was actually making some sort of tangible progress. Man, you know, to throw out a Covey quote, I'm gonna go ahead and give Covey some credit here, but begin with the end in mind. Yeah, right? Like the end in mind doesn't just mean like the little project you're in or the year that you're in, or even the decade that you're in, right? Like think about like, where do you want your life to go? And what in podcasting, we'll go ahead and relate it down to who we're talking to today, right? What in podcasting is gonna help you get there? And how does that really flow? Man, this is just such a powerful point. One more thing on this before we close out here today, what you don't do matters as much as what you do when you're looking at... wanting to unleash extraordinary results. But saying no, I find, is just so tough for people, especially people in content creation for whatever reason. We feel like we're, I think this is why, and I'm unpacking this as I'm saying it, but it's because we signed up to serve people. We signed up because we want to help. And saying no feels like the opposite of doing what we say we signed up to do. This might be a little bit out of place with extraordinary results, but I really wanted, I think it's just so important we'll talk about. Sure. Do you have any thoughts on that, and can you make that fit with what I just shared? Well, I mean, what comes later in the book, are the thieves of productivity. And the very first one is the inability to say no. If you make too many commitments, you will be spread thin and nothing will be extraordinary. And I think we quoted Steve Jobs, every yes has to be protected by a thousand nos. And so, I usually ask people, when you're talking about your one thing, think about getting married. When you said, I do, hopefully you inherently knew that saying yes to this person meant saying no to everybody else. I think we all get that, yeah. I hope so. So, like, how can we have more yeses like that in our life? Because we're so committed, it actually becomes easy to say no, right? Or we're really driven to say no even when it's not easy. But the skill of saying no is just something that you also have to develop. I wrote an article, I have a little weekly newsletter called The 20 Percenter, and I think the title was called 11 Ways to Say No Without Saying No. And a lot of times when an opportunity shows up... It's not that we need to say no, we need to say no now. Like right now I have a different priority. Man, I would love to do that, but I need to do that at a time that doesn't conflict. So what are all the ways I can push it into the future? I can put conditions on my yes, right? So that when I do say yes, it's in alignment with where I'm going. And like the easiest way, like when someone comes by and gives you an assignment, if you're in a cubicle somewhere, Like, the instinct is to ask, when do you need this? And if it's your boss, what are they gonna say? Yesterday. As soon as possible. Right. That's just the nature of people in charge. They want it sooner than later. So I usually teach my team, I just said, why don't you just say, great, I've got this. You can trust me. Can I circle back next Tuesday and give you my answer? You've automatically bought some arbitrary amount of time between seven and one day. And you're like, Most of the time they're gonna say yes because it's not urgent. They just urgently need to get it off their plate and onto yours. So like a few simple tactics can go a long, long way. I let my calendar say no because I've blocked it from my priorities. I mean, you've experienced this. You had to get on my calendar with my assistants. I bet we moved this meeting multiple times because I'm very clear about how my time gets used and I try to be polite and apologetic about it. But like people say, hey, can you do it at that time? And I'll say, I'm sorry, I've already got another commitment. I don't say, hey, I'm writing at that time because they're gonna say, well, could you write earlier or later? Most people assume that is a commitment to another person and it is a 1% person that thinks so much of themselves, they're gonna ask you to move that. So like just a few tactics can help you say no without actually feeling bad about it or feeling FOMO like you're losing out on opportunities. It's really about moving it into the future or into a time where you can really give it thoughtful consideration. Here's a rule, never say yes in social media, never say yes in text messages. You don't have enough context. Move it to your inbox, move it to another thing, say, I will get back to you next Tuesday, whatever it is, so that you can actually look and make sure like, am I saying yes to something? Because I'm afraid that text message, I'll lose it, right? how do I get it out of this very ephemeral zone into something where I can actually think about it? That's like a skill, it's all just skills. And then as an entrepreneur, a solo entrepreneur, a podcast host, a podcast guest, whatever, if you can master that, you're gonna go a lot farther than your competitors. Love that, man. Something that DHH said, who I interviewed recently, he said, move from FOMO to JOMO, joy of missing out instead of fear of missing out. And I think there's some wisdom there for sure. I'm an introvert, so that comes from me naturally. Nice. Man, Jay, I've enjoyed this time so much, man. Before we end here, just want to get a quick final thought from you on this idea that I've heard you talk about of thinking bigger, because I think that kind of holistically brings this whole thing together. So for your final thought for us today, just talk about thinking bigger for a moment. I think we all need someone to help us think bigger for our lives. It's hard to read the label from inside the box. That's why I have coaches. And I need someone in my life that's asking, is that's all that's possible for you? So thinking big is a gift. especially if you can get over failure. Because if you set a goal to do 100 widgets, you might do it, but most of the time, you're gonna fall short. So you might as well think big and aim higher. And when you aim higher, well, you know what? I'm gonna try to build a thousand widgets this year. Awesome. Yeah, that means you're gonna have to have different relationships with people, different tools, different systems, different models. What you're doing is you're upgrading your foundation to be appropriate for the goal. Like if I'm going to run a 5K, I could probably use my old tennis shoes. If I'm going to run an ultra marathon, I'm going to have to go get a running coach. I'm going to have to get the best equipment because I know if I'm running 50 kilometers or whatever that is, like I'm going to do damage to myself if I'm running in converse. I need like the best shoes. So you immediately upgrade your models because the goal is bigger. And Even if you fall short, a lot of times you're farther along than you will ever get by thinking safe and only dealing with what you believe is possible today. You wanna think possibilities, what could be possible for me and aim really high. It'll upgrade your life in a short amount of time. My gift is Gary. Gary always pushed me and my wife Wendy to think bigger for our lives. And he didn't say like, he wasn't condescending, is that all you can do? He would actually be very encouraging. It's like, I think you can shoot for more. I think we can go for more than that. And he modeled it every day. So that's a gift to think bigger. And a lot of us don't get the gift of that person in our life. We have to do that for ourselves. So just make it a rule. Every time you set a goal, just triple it. I love that, Jay, I feel like you just gave us all that gift today. So let's all get out of here and think bigger for our lives and for what we wanna do. Jay, man, thank you so, so much for the time today. Dude, I had a blast with you. Thank you. Always fun, Alex. Thank you for having me. If you enjoyed this episode, please visit podprose.com slash 275. Then share the link with one person that you believe it would add value to. Until next time, thank you for listening.
