Ep 299 - Replay - Are You Tired of Being Stagnant and Unprogressive?

0:00 And we're coming in here live five days a week to help you guys master sales, simplify your pricing and create predictable premium service. Really, I'm Clay Neumeier. This is my partner, joseph Lucani. We've got various nicknames on the go. We're going to lock some in here for the future, but today we're going to talk about why it doesn't work, why your old vehicle isn't getting you there, how we see people getting stuck every freaking day. And it's the simplest little barrier. And don't worry, this is not a stitch and bitch. There's extremely valuable information here, but it's coming up daily and that's why I want you guys to tie this into the fact that every episode you watch of us every day of the week, you're going to see us label an action item and an all-star action item, and that's for good reasons.

0:52 That action item is super important. If all you did was take the action item and actually do it, you will see results, I promise, because we don't want to waste your time. We're not going to waste our time, certainly, coming on here talking about shit that doesn't do anything real. Okay, joseph, I'm on a monologue. Help help, go for it. No, you're going to have like the shepherd's hook come off from off the screen, right. But the thing is, is that Clay's a hundred percent right? And there's one particular thing that if I could say, you know what really grinds my gears? It's when someone comes and says what you're doing isn't working, and we naturally would say, okay, well, let's take a look, let's evaluate, let's figure out why.

1:33 And we'll say, okay, well, let me see your process, let me see your self-call diagnostic, let's see the videos that you watch, let's see the classes you've attended. And would you be surprised if I said that some people hadn't even started before they said it wouldn't work? No, Happens every day. Yeah. So the question comes down to you know how some people will say you've got to try new things to achieve new things. The opposite is true as well, in that if you never try anything new, you'll always continue to make the same thing you've always made. It'll be no different. So the biggest problem that I'll see is that someone will come on see the shiny object syndrome and think, ah, this is the silver bullet.

2:17 I could just take 80% of my existing system that isn't working. I'll take the little pieces, maybe 20%, of a system that I know will work, and then, when it doesn't, it's like, ah well, the new process must not work. So is it that the 20% you tried didn't work, or is it the 80% that you didn't change isn't working? What are your thoughts on that, clay? Well, I love that you tied in the Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule, because it seems to be everywhere. We look right, but it's so powerful and I get wound up on this. It's really tough. I want to point out okay, action ability and I'm a big fan of breaking words apart and hyphenating them and looking at okay, what's the root and then what's the verb here Action ability.

3:03 Action ability doesn't actually mean that you took action, but if you take action, you can then have results and having results, measured results, right Data, which is fucking boring Excuse my French, I hate data, but it drives everything we need. We need those results, we need to see and, as we said this morning, right, it's really challenging if someone doesn't do it and just says well, here's a reason why it won't work, here's a reason why that doesn't work, and it's like don't tell me, show me that it doesn't work and I can help you refine that process so that it does. Well, that won't work around here, all the people in our town are too smart for that, and I've heard that in every town and quite often you'll hear it in different justifications.

3:51 I've heard people say, well, over here is some of the most expensive homes in our country and that's in canada. I've heard that in the states, in different cities. But the reality is actually I was on a call with one of our, with one of our frequent viewers, james, last night, and he was saying, as an ex-loans officer, he actually explained to his staff how much income you need as leverage to substantiate your debt-to-income ratio to afford the most expensive home. And when you really look at the incomes that these people must have, you realize, oh, oh, wow, they can actually afford more than the average person. It's not because the homes are expensive, they have less money. It's actually the other way around and it's not about that anyway.

4:34 It's about you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take. Okay, you asked me an opinion and I went on a tangent again. No, it's good, If anything. You know what. I love the fact that you're being authentic and that you always are. But I love the fact that in these podcasts, you and I can kind of just put out what we're thinking and how we think we can help the rest of the industry. So if the fact that you're fired up means that we're touching a nerve, and I love that, thank you for being authentic and real. So the thing that really kind of upsets me and that I really want to address in our industry as a whole is we are all under the influence of shiny object syndrome. We look at it and we say, okay, this is something new and I want different, and therefore the only thing I can do is I have to try something different in order to get something different.

5:25 But different is such a scary word for so many people that they'll recognize that they need it, but they'll delay when they'll take it. Oh well, things are busy now. I can't do it right now because my installer is sick, my team went out with COVID, I am taking vacation next month. Whatever it is, I'm stuck on projects. But whatever it is, if you don't make it a priority enough for you to make time for it. Who's going to make time for you If you're the business owner who has the control of the schedule? Could you theoretically say you know what? I'm going to use the time block tools that Clay and Joe sent me.

6:07 I'm going to intentionally block off my day to show the best times that this can work and then I'm going to take action on it. Action ability I love that you did that. I have always interpreted it as the ability to take action. When you have action ability, it's you saying you know what. I'm going to take this information and I now mentally know that I have the ability of executing on it because I was taught the skills that need to be done. Yeah, yeah. So a big piece of that again. I love that you mentioned a shiny object syndrome happens all the time. We are distracted, guys. Here's the unsexy truth but I would love to put out there every day is time management stuff.

6:47 It's the least sexy topic on the planet for entrepreneurs. Here's how unsexy it is. I want to quantify this with my own life, my own self-development journey, because I've been at this for about 14 years now. I'm like non-stop. I know it's 14 years because my daughter's turning 14 and when she was born I said something internally. It was like I gotta fucking fix this. My old vehicle wasn't working. I had to start working towards my goals and stop running from them. And a lot of us, even though we're making progress, we'll find in various decisions that we ourselves are running from those goals. We're acting out of fear and that's not really the place to make those decisions.

7:29 So again back to that unsexy truth. When it came to time management, I shit you not. I waited six years almost half of that time to ever study it, to ever get intentional with my time management. I waited until there was nothing else to cover that could be the problem, and I know that that's fucking ass backwards. I'm swearing a lot today. I'm sorry, but I want you guys to take this and feel my passion for this. Time management is the first thing we have to figure out, because if you'll make an adjustment and be intentional with your time, move away from the emergency that tends to keep on taking us and our available energy because we get stuck there.

8:12 I was quoted saying this the other day. Let's see if I can get this right. My own quote the problems will not end. They don't stop the demands on our time and energy will not stop. If you're an electrician, you should be watching this, right. Electron flow isn't going anywhere. Energy is a necessity and they need us to fix it. So put the stethoscope around your neck and realize that you have endless patience in the waiting room out there. Right, if you're not getting access to all of them, that's on you and only you, because there are endless patients out there. Right, you need the strategies to help you get that piece of cake.

8:52 We can do it for free or we can spend money and make it happen a little quicker, but either way, there are strategies. Strategies aren't the problem. State is, states the problem. What's the state? The state is. I'm in fucking emergency 24 7, so I can't help the people that need me most. I don't even have a policy or a procedure in place to sort through who needs me most. All I know is we're booked three, four weeks out and I can't seem to get anything done that's right in front of me that needs to get done that's the kind of mess we're dealing with every day, and I went through it personally, like I said, six freaking years of running from that main issue, only to realize what ryan holiday said.

9:35 Ryan holiday is an author. Love him. Stoicism all the way, he said, actually wrote a book. This is a book title. The obstacle is the way you got to touch on that more. Give a little more we call it in our program and when we're talking to you guys, we got big goals, big wins, but then there's big rocks, and your big rock actually grows as you keep looking away and denial of it and blaming or or choosing to focus on anything but it. The rock actually grows right and so the impact it has on your life is growing. So the obstacle is the way is really, in essence, just saying let's embrace the fact that, hey, the problem is not what we're making it to be, it's right here in front of us.

10:24 The problem is I don't have enough leverage on my personal time to make efficient use of and grow at the rate I want to grow you know so get the fucking hammer and the pin out and start chipping away at this obstacle. Let's start working on this and taking action today I love that I can tell you literally you got a fire under you, so happy to see. I'm just sitting back. I have to put on the sunshades and be like you're going hot. Yeah, and sometimes I want to be clear guys, just quick, we're not talking about anyone specifically right now. If you're watching this, thinking asshole, he's talking about me. That's 99% of the people I know are thinking that right now.

11:06 If I was watching this, I would be thinking that same thing. This is about the general concept of the problem. We, as people, fail to take organized action consistently and it's really difficult to grow if we don't figure that out. Sorry, joseph, I just wanted to add that quick. No, you're a hundred percent right, man. I've got no arguments whatsoever. If anything, I'm trying to fan the flames, but the thing that we want to take away is can I share something that helped me when it came to the same problem? Please do. Have you ever heard of the concept called eat your big frog first? Absolutely. Okay, for any of you guys who haven't heard of that before, a lot of times we have an idea of what we need to accomplish, whether that's I got to get up early and work out, I've got to contact my customers for follow-up, I've got to order the material we need, I've got to set for financing and I've got to do all these installations.

11:59 Do you already have lists of things you need to do? But you only have 24 hours of the day. It's really all you have. Whether you're sleeping for six to eight hours, that's eight coins already gone. And the list is not shrinking, by the way, just going to point that out. Yeah, it's not. I was going to say it's not going to get any better. It's like this is what you have. You need either eight or six and do whatever you can do. You can't cut away on the sleep. So now, what do you have? Well, you know that if you don't do certain tasks, they don't actually leave your list right. Like for all of you guys who are like well, I'm a lister, I'm big on lists. Dude, I'm a lister too. I love seeing things and striking them off. But it actually has a negative effect if you never strike them off.

12:41 Because, clay, imagine this. Like imagine you have a list of things you want to get accomplished. Instead of actually removing things every day, the list just gets longer and longer and longer. What would that make your motivation feel like? It's overwhelming. Overwhelm's a place of inaction. So the list gets actually worse. It grows at a faster pace all the time, until you break down and quit. And then eventually you say, yeah, you know what, I didn't really need to do that anyway, and you remove it. I didn't need to do that anyway, and you remove it. I didn't need to do that anyway. And then eventually you're right back in the same spot. So the concept that worked best for me was something called eat your big frog first. What you would do is, when you have that list, you would want to prioritize things one through three.

13:23 One is this burns the house down if it's not done. Three is no one suffers if it's moved to tomorrow. And what you do is the one that you know I have to do, whether that's I'm going to take time and I'm going to get up and work out because I need to get my health in check, or I'm going to make sure that I set ourselves up for financing so that I can make sure that we can offer better service to our clients. Whatever the thing is, the first thing you do in the day is that when you can get your first big rock accomplished in the beginning of the day, it's smooth rolling until the end of it, because the momentum builds. But if you don't do it that way and instead you say you know what?

14:05 I know that I got to do that call, but I'll do my follow-ups at the end of the day. I know that I got to do that call, but you know I'll do my follow-ups. at the end of the day, do we? Ever get it done at the end of the day, nope, and there's a valuable person there too. Yeah, there's always something at the end, right Like there's always another emergency that comes in. There's always another oh, my kid got sick and I need to go. Whatever it is, you know it's going to come up. So the thing is get it done out of the way. When you can intentionally say this is my priority and if something else needs to get moved, it's a lower priority thing that gets moved. It will constantly drain at your mental equity if you don't clear your lists, because as they grow, your patience doesn't.

14:46 You need to make sure that you're capable of handling these things, and if you're not, it's going to come back to bite you. Yeah, totally. Great examples, by the way, absolutely, and you touched on something that's so important. I'm going to add a little bit to this because momentum, that snowball effect, is actually. There's a similar thing in handling your debts and dealing with financial struggles, yep, which some of us deal with. Right, had some messages about that very thing this morning. Even. There are challenges that come up in life, right, we're constantly battling this balance of, like quality of life versus income and earning ability. So in that regard, in that framework, there's something that's taught quite frequently for dealing with debts is it can be and feel intuitive to go.

15:35 Well, I'm going to deal with my highest interest debt first. Here's the reality. You're better off to get flexible and roll that somewhere else, but you're better off to actually deal with your smallest debt first and knock it out. And the reason is entirely that big M word momentum. Just do it. Don't worry about interest rates right now. What you need is something that's going to carry you through and what that takes is a high, upward, positive, uplifting emotion. Because we've all been there. How strong are you at work when you feel like a bag of shit? and it never ends it's just going to be dragging your feet the entire time. You're going to feel like a slug that got salt thrown on it exactly apply that principle now to that to-do list.

16:17 It's not necessarily that, hey, we need to eat the biggest frog monday morning. Right now, it is necessary that that frog you're going to eat the first one fits in that monday morning, that we get it done. We cross it off the list. Damn, that feels good. What's next? And there's one more piece there that's missing the ability to recognize what doesn't need to be freaking done. This is huge, you guys. I don't know if you know this. We're going a bit long on this one, but it's maybe the most important thing we've ever talked about, really. Uh, guys like Mark Zuckeruckerberg, steve jobs you may have heard this before when they get up in the morning, they've already got blue jeans, a stupid white shirt and a sweater vest to throw over top.

16:59 Whatever those nerds are wearing, I don't care. I personally rock service loop electrical gear every day. It's the same thing, though we're reducing what they call decision fatigue the less we fill our schedule with stupid shit to figure out. It's like meal prep on a Sunday instead of I'm going to figure out what I'll eat tomorrow, because if you leave it to tomorrow to figure out what you're going to eat, you're going to end up at McDonald's in the drive-thru again, because you won't have time for that either. Full circle. We have time for what we make time for. Okay, I think we got to jump into action items, unless there's something you want to tag in, or did I complete the thought enough?

17:40 I think you really hit it home. I have a feeling that this is going to be more episodes in the future, because there's just so much that goes into it, whether it's financial management, whether it's time management, whether much that goes into it, whether it's financial management whether it's time management, whether it's personal accountability. The list goes on. But I'd love to tackle the action items. If you're down, let me say this first I got an immediate action. Guys, if you're watching live or if you're seeing the replay in the Facebook group, go ahead and tell us how much you hate time management and how much it pisses you off to deal with this stuff, because I know I'm not alone. We don't have to pretend like we like it, but go ahead and let us know so we can talk about it and get to the bottom of it and start chipping away at that obstacle that is in the way that rock. All right, you got an action item for us, joseph.

18:21 That I do. So, as always, there's going to be two levels. There's one is saying what is the basic action, and one what is the all-star action? The basic action is literally more of just saying you know what I'm going to be in the mindset that's going to allow me to recognize that I could be in the way of my own success. That's really where the ball starts. It's not I'm going to do anything different, it's simply I am willing to recognize that I am the problem in this equation and saying you know what? I have all these things, I've got all these things that are on my list and I'm the reason why they're not getting done. Not someone else, not some other problem, not some customer, not some project.

19:03 You yourself are not making the priority to prioritize yourself, your lives, your family, your business anything. I'd say that'd be the first action is to say can you look at yourself in the mirror and say I am willing to acknowledge that I have even some responsibility to this problem? Can I add a bit to that? Go for it. A valuable tool we use is something we call the time block, and the first piece of that exercise is evaluating what we're spending our time on now, and I think it ties in perfectly. So acknowledging that you're out of balance and evaluating. So all that takes is grab a notepad it could be any notepad and write down every hour that you're awake today and beside each hour.

19:45 Just record what you did in that hour and you look back at the end and tell me how you did performance-wise, if there was stuff missing. If this needs tweaking, all right, do you have all-star in mind? An all-star action would probably be a little bit harder, because the first thought is to say you have to be in the mindset that says I am willing to accept that I have some accountability or responsibility to this problem. Right, there was a saying that I heard that really kind of kicked, which is if it's meant to be, it's up to me. Which means if you want something to happen, you are the only one that can move the needle in your own life.

20:25 You can't ask anyone else to do it for you. There is no one that will raise your kids for you. There's no one that's going to grow your business for you. There's no one that's going to make you healthier and work out for you. So my first thought is I want you to physically write down the top five things that you feel are personally the most important to you. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be family time, it could be kids time, it could be growing your business, it could be getting healthier, it could be not having to see your mother-in-law. I don't care what it is, it could be anything you have. I need you to list it one through five, just five things. Then, once you look at the time management tool. Say, out of those five things, what would make me explode if I didn't get this done today?

21:08 You have 24 hours in every single day. Are you saying that if you wanted to get healthy and you're so busy that you couldn't do anything, is there anything stopping you from getting up a little bit earlier An hour, half hour, 15 minutes is there anything stopping you from doing it? The all-star action isn't just looking at it, it's taking action on it. It's recognizing you have the ability to take action. Write your five most important things and say where in my day am I willing to make half an hour to get this accomplished? What are your thoughts on that, clay? Yeah, I love that. I love the quote you dropped. I want to add something else to it. What's easy to do is easy not to it.

21:49 What's easy to do is easy not to do. What's easy to do is easy not to do. And most of the things that we have on our list are easy to do. Definition of easy to do you can do them. You can do them. That's easy to do. Hard would be something you literally can't do. But I have a feeling 99% of the things on your to-do list are easy to do because they're already in a framework of oh, I need help with that, or I can do this, but I'm the only one that can do it. And that brings me to the last point, and I'm going to add to the all-star action, because I feel like it could go a bit deeper. Okay.

22:30 No offense, by the way. No offense taken. If you want to give better. If you're able to give better content, I'm totally down with it. Listen, if someone's going to put an all-star badge on. I want them to earn it. That's all. You guys, take this all-star action, or any all-star action. Please send us a message. By the way, we'll want to pat you on the back. We'll want to give you special mentions in the next show. List everything. I'm going to go by something called the law of open cycles. Having too many open cycles is the vampire of your livelihood, meaning the longer that list is. Don't pretend like you don't know. It's there. You know everything on that list. You just haven't maybe sat out and actually listed the whole thing.

23:10 This is the exercise where I want you to do that List everything you need to do in your business on your honey-do list. Everything that anyone has expectations on, including yourself, needs to be on this list. It's hard. I told you it's an all-star action. Here's the next step. You're going to categorize them in one of three categories. One of them is going to be the things I need to do those frogs Joseph mentioned and you're going to call those number ones, number twos, the things I need to delegate or learn to delegate. You're going to put a two beside those, because the reality is you don't have enough time to do everything and it's dragging you down. So put a number two beside the shit you need to delegate and let's focus on getting the right people to do that stuff so you can start focusing on the ones.

23:57 And number three is I mentioned it a bit earlier the stuff that doesn't need to be done at all. I brought up decision fatigue. You know what else fits in number three? Relationships that aren't serving you anymore. Don't go to lunch with your friend because it's the right thing to do, even though you know you guys aren't aligned anymore. You don't have time for that. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, I've found myself doing this and at the end of the lunch I actually said to my good friend, who I care deeply for you and I are on different paths right now, don't you think? And he agreed and I said you know what? I'm so busy and you're so busy. What do you say? We just check in and not do this for a while until we're aligned better again.

24:39 That was actually doing him and me a service. It made no sense to keep alive the things that are now expired or not suiting us right now. So what on your list can be just crossed off, whether it's a relationship or things you said you would do that you can't do. We call this eating crow, so eat crow. So what you should have now is what I need to do, what I need to delegate and what I need to cross off. If you've made that list, then you've already heard what Joseph said earlier about eating the frogs. Book it in your calendar. One each day of the week in the morning Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday a frog every morning. And he touched on one more thing, and this is going to be a record for the longest live yet what you leave for frogs to the afternoon does not get done.

25:29 In fact, one of our clients, we had this chat with him. He said look, I'm a lot better at serving other people than I am myself. If you'd agree with that, go ahead, throw one in the box, let us know. I agree with that. It's the shit I need to do for me. That doesn't get done. When other people are depending on me, I tend to show up every time. How about you, joseph? I have that problem as well, because I look at myself as, in a way, almost disposable, but in other ways I look at people and I see them as irreplacable. Exactly so, you have that internal motivation to want to be better for someone else. Exactly so, to finish that thought, thank you. Dustin, exactly so. You have that internal motivation to want to be better for someone else. Exactly so. To finish that thought, thank you, dustin. Exactly To finish that thought, then, we need to prioritize our schedule in a way that honors that.

26:17 That isn't in conflict with that, wouldn't you say I? would agree with that completely. So when me, being a morning person, I know that that's when the frogs need to go. I know that I need to get up early enough in the day to allow me frog time. I know that I need that time to do the stuff that I don't want to do so that it gets done. And then when I fill my afternoon with his people, other people's shit, that I will just show up for no offense but like prospects and clients. Guys, I will not let you down. That's my promise to you. We'll keep showing up here. That's why the mornings are for me and you guys get my afternoons on. That's as transparent as I can be and as all-star in action as I can come up with.

26:59 On top of what Joseph said, guys, I think this honestly is going to help a lot of people. This honestly is going to help a lot of people. It's so important that you know that the only reason we're doing Electropreneur Secrets, the electric podcast, this entire thing that we're doing to help you master sales, simplify your pricing and deliver a premium level service, that effort means nothing if you guys don't do something with it. That effort means nothing if you guys don't do something with it, right. So bruce lee principle take what works, block what doesn't, make it your own, but, most importantly, do something, because even bruce lee would have got punched in the head a time or two more if he just sat there.

27:40 With that knowledge I can't drop my mic because it's actually on a arm. But anything to add, joseph, before we lock this thing down. No, I think we've been spitting fire on this one. So, hey, I'm really grateful to be in a place where we get to serve on a higher level. I'm really grateful for everyone who's been listening and I want you all to know that we're here because we truly care and we want to be. We want to be the place that you guys can turn to when you're stuck and you're struggling and you want to grow, because we've been in your shoes and we don't want you suffering. We want to provide a path so you don't have to go down the same one we went down. Absolutely. I promise you we're going to give away more than other people charge for.

28:21 I'm going to keep saying that because it's true. Again, it's not strategies. You guys go on Google right now how to increase sales in my small business. You get three and a half billion results in half a second and they all work Right. So what's your excuse? Cheers to your success. We'll see you again tomorrow, guys. Have a great day. Bye for now. Take care, gents.