The Void #27 – The Simplicity of High Productivity – May 8, 2022

hey everybody and welcome to the void a show dedicated to filling the void between being an employee and becoming

self-employed most people refer to starting your own company as taking the leap as if they’re blindly jumping off a

cliff and into the unknown this show is here to help you understand that it doesn’t have to be that way

as always if you like what you’re hearing on the show please do us a favor and help share the void with someone who

might want might be wanting to start their own company we saw an opportunity to help

others understand that self-employment is well within your reach and just as our businesses have grown organically

and by word of mouth we want this show to grow the same way for that to happen it takes two things we have to keep

giving you guys really good content and you guys have to do us a favor and share

our valuable message with others i’m your host mitch smedley and with me as always is david hilton mitch what’s

up buddy it’s an awesome week it’s been a nice week you know what i don’t like is this weather

yeah i know it’s cold it’s like hot and cold and hot and cold i’m ready for like some heat man yeah you know what i it’s

the first week of may you know what’s ironic come on man heat we don’t do a ton of sewer replacements but literally

every day we record a podcast i’m in a shit-filled ditch it doesn’t make sense were you there

today yes i actually uh went on a plumbing call

this morning just happenstance yeah i do heating and cooling for this guy

so he calls harv and he’s like hey you know i got this uh sump pump i think that’s

flooding this basement it’s his mother-in-law’s house i go over there this guy has put this sump pump in himself yep put it in there with a fern

co com coupling and it had blown that thing off of there oh yeah and literally had been spraying water on the ceiling in every box like

she had all these plastic totes they were all completely full of water i don’t know how long had been doing it

for days it was nasty got to invest in a torque wrench to make sure those clamps are tight first off i never use rubber

it’s all glue i don’t care they say oh you need it’s easy no no glue them up glue them up it was oh dude it was so

gross yeah that’s why i’m not a plumber we’ve had a lot of rain this spring and we’ve done a boatload of sump pumps so

yeah replacements or just putting them in yeah yeah replacements not to get off topic there but no that’s good

um if you are new to the show um we have a couple of different styles of episodes

uh so we’ll crash through those now we’ve got some core episodes which are going to be your first nine episodes

whatever platform you’re listening on scroll all the way back to your first nine episodes those are going to be your

core episodes and what those are are those are nine episodes that go over six

foundational rules that you’ll want to abide by in order to successfully start

your company those steps are personal finance

preparation business finance preparation systems preparation community involvement work

we talk about how to wake up do work and repeat or as the young kids call it nowadays hustle and grind

and then the final step is evaluate performance make adjustments and improve

that step you will do for eternity it is constantly a matter

of evaluating your performance identifying poor performance making adjustments and improving and you’re

literally going to keep doing that over and over and over after you get outside of those first

nine episodes we get into a couple of different other styles of shows we have some guest episodes where we bring on

guests who have either started their own company or have a vested interest in you starting your own company

and they talk about some of their successes and failures and everything we have some just general business topic

shows uh where we’ll talk about general business topics that’s what today’s show is we’ve got some q and a shows where you

can email in questions to ask mitch mitch smedley.com and we will uh answer those questions

for you and and um a lot of times we’ll reply in an email if your questions are good enough we’ll make a show topic

about them real quick i’m going to spell that out because some people don’t know how to spell my name it’s a-s-k-m-i-t-c-h

at m-i-t-c-h-s-m-e-d-l-e-y dot com so uh if you have any questions

for us at all feel free to send us an email and we will get those answers did you just spell ask

is that the problem or is it your name that they’re having well i’m just giving them out usually i’m giving them all the letters it’s usually the last name i’ve

known you forever and i still sometimes will write ea yeah so i don’t know why i just some people want to do smeadly some

people want to do schmidly like s-c-h so yeah it didn’t help me growing up i

had to actu so like anytime you hear me say my name you’ll hear a definite pause between mitch

smedley right because of that i had a i had a small speech impediment growing up and i would my s’s sound like sch so i

was mitch and it took me a couple of years of therapy to get over

that so now it’s like it must have been before i met you yeah yeah this was like first through third grade so

um so those are our styles of show today’s show is a business related show what are

we talking about we are going to talk about the simplicity of high productivity um

what do you mean by simplicity of high productivity most people over complicate

what it takes to be highly productive i will have people so i’ll have listeners of the show message

me and i i get back to them like right away and i give them detailed i’m not just

passing them off i give them detailed information and everything else and and i even tell them like if you

have any other questions don’t hesitate to reach out and some will say like oh my gosh that’s amazing i don’t know how

you keep up with your schedule it’s probably crazy and and it’s it’s an adjustment period is all it

is um i am no busier than you are

no and and you’re no busier than i am and and we are no busier than our

listeners right now um our listeners are no busier than the

younger people in their trades their respective trades or crafts or whatever like the first day the guy the first day

on the job being highly productive is just a matter of becoming

aware of where you can improve in your efficiency and in doing that so

for a guy his first day on the job he’s not getting much done but he’s incredibly busy because he’s trying to

learn all of the processes of how to do the most basic of tasks right yeah three

four years in you know how to do this task pretty quick you know how to do that task

pretty quick so you can do those tasks much faster than a new guy right

you go another three or four years in and you start getting into some management level or even business

ownership and now you realize that you can get a lot more done if you have

people to get that done for you and with you and so with you would be yes yes

sometimes it’s for you sometimes it’s with you it just kind of depends but um um you you can you can have people to do

that right so like a prime example when we started our company i was the only plumber running service calls

and i mean there’s obvi there’s some outliers here and there however like our revenue

could only ever be so much because there was only one guy running

right and so i had to put a whole lot of thought and time and practice and

and and preparation into what it’s going to take to hire somebody

and it’s not just like hire somebody and hopefully they can figure it out it’s like no i want i want to hire somebody

and have them be as equally productive if not more productive than i am right so we made

one hire and i spent two weeks solid with them they already had all the plumbing experience

i spent two weeks solid with them making sure they knew how to do the thing in our business that’s more about

culture yeah this is how we do it here this is what we expect yeah this is i want to make sure we’re on the same page

yeah and so and and then even after that two weeks there was another kind of two-week period where they’re on their

own but they’re still kind of leaning on me a lot for questions and everything else well now we get a whole month in

and now we’re actually starting to see like double the revenue that we were before because now he can run calls and

i can run calls and then we get to a point where it’s like let’s hire another one right and so and now we

have uh um four full-time plumbers yeah um and and

so we’re well that’s the natural growth scale that’s not having an investor an investor come in and say hey we’re gonna

start here i’m gonna hi we’re gonna hire this many guys we’re gonna do this that’s natural growth and that that

makes your base uh this the starting out of your company stronger yeah when you when you have the

time and the ability to do that yeah versus i’m just going to buy a company and do this or i’m going to have some

investors and we’re just going to do this yeah yeah if if you had

and it’s good you bring that up it’s a very healthy way to grow that produces a very good culture through the growth

rapidly growing companies typically struggle in the culture department right it’s because they’re so focused on

getting people in and teaching them how to do the task they’re not really teaching those people how to succeed really well in the

business yeah and with each other um and so we’ve got a very very strong culture very strong culture can i go

back just a little bit you said at the very very beginning of that you said you know they message you and then you get right

with them yeah i want to talk about that that is a conscious decision to get right with people so if you’re on

your own and a lot of people struggle with this so you’re busy and you think you know you get that message and you think okay

i’ll get with them after this call or i’ll get with them this evening because i know it’s not important yeah it’s extremely important

to do it right then because what happens is you don’t know how that day is going to go you don’t know if it’s going to be

extremely busy and you forget about that person well like we’ve talked about it before one person can turn into

six people very easily yeah you know what i mean but you have to make the conscious decision of okay

when i get texts or i get calls or i get and i’m talking business related not

personal stupid facebook crap i’m talking about you know real life stuff you need to get with them

as soon as possible yeah it is more beneficial for you to spend five say you’re on a call but

you’re not right in front of the customer it’s better for you to just take the two

minutes get back with them and then get back to work yeah in the long run than it is to try to put that off till even

say it’s even just right after that call right you know if you can do it i mean if it’s possible that you can do it right then you need to do it right then

yeah because you’re gonna get just getting that trap of missing people stuff goes wrong yep and

listen this is this is on customers too some people get real mad when you don’t

get back with them in 10 minutes i don’t agree with that you know because they don’t know that you’re in a sewer

ditch playing in poop well and but some people do so if you can get right after it and we say you could cut that down by

50 percent yeah i mean that’s a big deal and um

in the information day and age people have access to you 24 7 365. that does

not mean you owe them access to you at those times right so

um no but during the working hours well and there’s so there’s some general etiquette there right if somebody texts

you that’s not urgent right that is agreed that is a passive

communicate back to me when you have a minute right yeah if somebody calls you that’s fairly urgent right if somebody

sends you an email that’s probably even a little less than text in my book it is

now maybe slightly more it just kind of depends it used to be the text yeah it was important yeah now it’s like yeah

yeah whatever i mean open eight apps to get to you know that specific email right right um on the all my

notifications are turned off because i have 15 emails you know or you know whatever yeah we talked about it on a

show here recently where i had texted my accountant and and i did i texted him on purpose i

didn’t call him right i texted him and the text literally said i have some questions no rush give me a call when

you have time right and it’s it’s a very pc way to do it a very uh proper

etiquette way to do it of just letting them know i need to hear from you but it’s on your terms like i’m in no rush yeah um you

know i wouldn’t and i made a conscious decision to do that i didn’t call him

and then like leave him a message and leave him a voicemail that he has to listen to and then you know all of this

he could just look at his phone real quick set his phone down and know yeah when i got him in and i’ll do it yeah yeah and and that’s kind of it’s kind of

the interesting day and age you’ll call people and they don’t answer and i’ll literally hang up and text them um i don’t even leave them the voicemail

because i don’t want to have to make them to go through all that stuff although this is important yeah now now if it’s important i’ll leave him a

voicemail and i’ll probably text him as well yeah but um that just kind of and you know that’s kind of an age thing too

yeah it is you know like the younger kids they they only want to text and you know we’ve talked about this on on this show

it drives me insane like i would rather people call me but i understand you know when you text and mitch does it to me

he’ll text me say if it’s important he’ll say hey call me when you get a chance yeah or you know you know he’ll be text me or whatever i just don’t

the problem with texting is and i think it’s made that we’re going to get a little off here it’s made society it’s a

bit of an issue because you cannot um take inflection in someone’s voice

you can’t get their tone of what they’re thinking and what happens when you read that text is you imply you apply your

own tone to that text right you know you may think you know someone may read that and they

may take it the complete opposite of the way you meant it yep and now you’ve made somebody mad and all you were doing was

sending an innocent text yeah that’s why i hate texting so i think it’s better for information but if it’s actually a

conversation that needs to be had call them yeah it makes i think it makes

it you know um it lets people

get away with having more anxiety you know when you’re a kid you have that anxiety of how do i communicate with

someone and if you can’t text and you have to talk to them it lets you break through

those boundaries now you can just text well it doesn’t allow you to grow as an individual we we work with that with our

kids all the time about forcing them to work through difficult conversations

and that’s actually a show that we have coming up about how to handle difficult situations yeah um and we’ll probably

bring this same thing back up yeah yeah it’s it is a very very important way to do it in making sure that you’re

communicating on the right platform whether it’s text or email or whatever so um

the not to pull us off topic no you’re you’re totally fine totally fine

so a lot of people would look at somebody who is highly productive and they have a hard time

connecting with where they are at currently to where that person is at that level

and keep in mind age does not matter here it doesn’t matter if that person is older than you or younger than you i

know some people that are significantly younger than me that are substantially more productive than i am

um and so i i’m envious of it a little bit right i wish i would have found that

little bit of secret sauce earlier in my life but it don’t don’t let age play into that just

just look at like where a person is in their productivity and then realize

you can totally get there and you can start getting there today it has nothing to do with

some people write it off and they’ll say like oh i’d like to be that way one day well yeah

last time i looked at a calendar we got like monday tuesday thursday i’ve

never seen a day of the week called one day or someday right like those days are today is that a meme

no have i seen that somewhere i don’t know i don’t know if i have or not but when when i anytime i dream of doing

anything it’s not like oh someday i’d like to do that no like i i literally immediately

gut check myself and say like okay is this legit or not and if it is how do i get there what are we doing to get there

right you have to have a plan to get where you’re going right and that that breaks down

with everything that breaks down with communication with your wife that breaks down with communication with your kids

that breaks down with communication with employees at work that breaks down to how do you it’s so simple how do you mow

your yard are you gonna strive at a time are you gonna do an outside path circle and then do it in lines well guess what it’s

it’s just you break it down a sequence of operations yep i got to have to start here i have to go through these five

steps to get there yeah being productive in a work environment is the exact same thing i’m going to go to work i’m going

to have an extra cup of coffee i’m going to go you know what whatever it is gotta have the mojo i drink a lot of coffee

you know i’ve gotta i gotta have a lot of chemicals in my life to keep me going the uh some legal no they’re all legal

you’re a successful individual there’s a checklist let’s say you work at it at a desk i don’t work at a desk right on

your desk is is a checklist usually yeah you know i got to go through these emails first and i have to check in with

my supervisor about this i had these two employees were supposed to do this yesterday i have to you know you just

have that before anything happens yeah it’s the same thing so one of the interesting things about

being highly productive a lot of people over glamorize high productivity right

it’s actually really freaking boring and really humble um

take take like uh airline pilots for example right you go jump on a plane for

southwest or united or whatever that pilot has tens of thousands of hours of successful

flights under his belt why because he followed a very basic

checklist every day that was able to give him go no-go answers on everything right yeah

it is that simple to result in success right and so now

yeah you look at it on the other end of things and you’re going oh my gosh that pilot’s got you know so many thousand flights with

no issues and all this stuff one day i’d like to be there well guess what one day ain’t on the calendar and you can

literally start doing that today put yourself in some very simple checklists in place and do them um you

know start out with five it’s not a big deal right right if you if it’s over i say that as

if it’s overwhelming for you if it’s overwhelming for you pick five things right what what is what

do they talk about um i did see this on facebook the other day uh some general was we talked about this a little bit

earlier but make your bed yeah what do you do every day to be successful well i get up and i make my bed yeah that’s step one yeah did you put that on there

no i i’ve shared that before it’s been shared over and over and literally i may we’ll probably try to

find a way to put a link to this or something on the show um i think he’s a navy general he’s a

navy seal general that’s what it is something um it is one of the best highly decorated yeah it’s a great

speech it is one of the best speeches ever yeah um and and literally he starts

the speech with the the the key to i can’t remember i’m gonna paraphrase this but basically the

key to success is wake up every day and make your bed yeah like it’s literally that simple and and he summarizes

everything with like when you’ve had an absolutely horrible day and nothing went right at

least you come home to a maid bed yeah like it’s kind of hard

to to not get like i’m getting goosebumps just like thinking about that that speech is amazing it’s very good

you know it’s i don’t make my bed janine makes our bed well yeah i don’t make mine either because i’m the first one

out of it like that’s a great way to piss your wife off is try to make the bed off make the bed first with her in it first off so janine

and i we have different schedules for different days yeah so some days she’s gone before me some days i’m gone she

will make her side of the bed when i’m in it and i’m like what what do you do what the so she’ll make it she’ll

pull it up and then the dog will get up there and lay there and like you know

but even even you can kiss that hour of sleep goodbye yeah even when i get up i don’t make that bad nope i like you know

pull the i just kind of throw the blanket on there and move on but there are other things that i do every day

you know what i’m gonna do you go into my bedroom and my shoes are in a very specific spot yeah like my my cell

phones go in a very specific spot the chords get put away in a very certain way like

like i have a very little that’s a little crazy but i get it i mean i have a structure and an order to everything

right and we’ve talked about like my morning routine before too um we’ve talked about the importance of

morning routine in not just morning routine daily routine yeah and about how

important it is to get off on the right foot every day and that’s that’s an

intentional routine it’s not it’s not you’re doing it because that’s the way you’ve always done it right so and

that’s that’s is is it becomes natural over time but yeah it was intentional

when you started it right so like for me up at 4 30 every day i’m at the gym

by five and we talk about this all the time i say you’re crazy i know i know i get up at 5 15 and i think that’s i’m

like man every literally i’ve been doing it for almost 20 years right i mean there

are obviously on and off periods right where i haven’t but it’s like still to this day i’m like man yeah like looking

out the window i will say like that uh two days ago i was up and leaving and got to see the

sunrise i like those days yeah you know but only after i’ve been up for 45 minutes those first 45 minutes

uh do you remember ocean’s 11 yep when uh brad pitt and who’s the other guy

matt damon are talking and he’s like what are you suicidal and he’s like every morning every morning every morning for 45 minutes i’m literally

thinking i’m like i’m gonna kill myself so that third cup of coffee kicks in yeah but you know what it’s an intentional decision yeah because i know

that if i get up and i do these things i will be successful in my day yeah even

though it’s a struggle and that’s i think that is a lot of what especially this show is about is

you have to be intentional with those decisions to be successful right now now if you’re waking up

again morning like just because it’s what you do every day doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an intentional

morning routine right like if you’re supposed to be on the job by six so you wake up at five

when you you’re kind of pushing it right like let’s say you have to leave by 5 30 to make it up at 6. this is me at 23

years old yeah so like you wake up at five yeah and you kind of him haul around a little bit

now you’re yeah now you’re trying to figure out what you’re gonna do for lunch and i’ll just buy lunch today again right yeah

and then waste that money where’s your car keys where’s your shoes oh let the dog out oh i didn’t get gat like that’s

the number one kiss of death right okay i’ll get gas in the morning oh that is that is the kiss the absolute kiss of

death yeah so so now you’re like you said doing 95 in the shop right that’s that may be a routine that’s not

a intentionally productive routine right so intentionally productive

would be like back that whole thing off a half hour and literally like

in mentally you put a schedule to things i’m up at five instead of 5 30.

and i i start the coffee at 5 10. right or or i’ve got a coffee pot that’s going

to brew it at 5 and that way it’s ready for me to make and drink at 5 10 right

and that gets to i don’t want to interrupt you but i’m going to yeah so if that’s a struggle for you do a lot of

those things the night before because you that is also intentional yeah you’re doing that stuff in preparation for the

next day and listen this sounds like stupid 10th grade crap but people still struggle doing it dude

i’m telling you as basic as it is for a pilot to follow a freaking checklist that he’s followed every day for the

last 20 years still does it it results in high productivity it results in success yeah so

it’s you gotta you gotta get over your your fear of like being a baby or being whatever and you just gotta do it well

and people just don’t wanna be people feel tied down by discipline but it is actually freeing yes you know what

and this gets into raising kids you know people think oh you know when i was a kid i had to do this and i hated it and

this and that and blah blah blah but you know what look in the mirror maybe you’re successful and now you want to let your kids just kind of do whatever

well guess what that means they may not be successful right they don’t have the discipline they need or the structure

they need to grow up your job as a parent is to put them in the best situation

that you think is possible right you know right and it’s the same thing as you get older we all think you know

everyone thinks in their 20s man when i get older i’m going to do whatever i want no you’re not no you’re going to get older and you’re going to do what

you need to do to be successful and if you don’t do that you’re going to be a freaking failure right and then you’re going to be bitching that the government

needs to pay you more money or taxes need to be less well i shouldn’t say that because i think tax should be less

but you know you’re going to you’re going to use all these excuses when all it comes down to is you did not put

yourself in the best situation to make the most out of your situation

right personal accountability personal accountability and personal discipline yeah it’s just insane so um as we’ve

talked about on the show before a little over a year ago i started working out every morning i did not envision at all

that it would turn into what it’s turning into before i did it because i was out of

shape and i was fat and i needed to like lose weight and everything else and i wanted to challenge myself

old begging it’s evolved into like this is

part of my recipe for success um and i’ve said it before i use my

morning routine as a barometer for the day i’m up for three hours before i ever

talk to another human and if i’m up for those three hours you don’t talk to anybody i guess i talk to

people at the gym that’s a little bit different we’re not humans at the gym we’re not awake you’re animals yeah you mean you mean you don’t talk to

anyone about business or about regular business or family yeah right life of what’s going on right and so i can use

that three hour time to get a gut check on myself of where am i at for the day

and if i’m not in the greatest of moods or the greatest of positions or whatever

it gives me time to prepare for the day that guy that’s waking up at 5 30 and

has to be on the job at six he’s not productive till nine he’s not productive till nine but also

if he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and he’s in a foul mood guess what

he’s gonna lip off to his boss and he might get fired right first off everything he’s saying that’s that was

me right all the time i’ve been there too i’ve never got fire i got fired one time but not because of stuff like that

right oh maybe i’ll someday i’ll tell that story but i was that guy right you know and but

the only reasons i never got fired is because i was just

partly by the grace of god other times because i was just really great at my job yeah and so i could

slide on stuff like that and there are guys like that yeah but that doesn’t even now when i look back at that that

is not an excuse i should have been doing better yeah i’m talking about a lot of times like when we live together

i should have been doing better yeah you know i mean who knows where i could have been

if i would have realized those things at that early age and that’s a that’s a

huge problem i wish i would have it wasn’t me a problem right right 100 there’s nobody that could have convinced

you to like that’s all self-accountability that’s all you right that’s internal 100 there’s nobody

i i don’t think i ever tried but if i had tried it would have been a royal failure because that’s that’s just

something a person has to make that decision for themselves it’s so that is just like an addict yeah an addict is

you can you can tell an addict or a drunk or a smoker or whoever

a hundred million times that you shouldn’t be doing that but until they decide for themselves yeah and decide

personally inside hey i’m gonna do this yep it it’s not gonna happen right i know guy i know a guy um

that quit smoking literally cold turkey because he just decided he had been smoking literally for like 35 years and

was like i have to quit and i’m going to quit smoking cold turkey just like that because he had made the personal decision to do it

wow you know i mean and that’s just that you can break that down to everything

yeah that is in everything that’s your daily life that’s your spiritual life that’s everything yeah it’s it’s your

personal decision to do those things the the other thing that i want to hit on too now that we’re talking about

personal decisions and personal accountability don’t get yourself into the trap of allowing

other people to dictate how you will perform

there are people every day in life that will try to tell you

how you will perform and they don’t necessarily tell you directly either

these are people like doctors managers attorneys

co-workers spouses all of these people right and they do it

sometimes it’s like in your face sometimes it’s kind of passive aggressive and sometimes they mean harm

by it and sometimes they don’t but they will they will backhandedly tell you

like like what if i told you like hey i’m gonna go on a diet and i’m gonna get down to eight percent body fat right you

might joke around and say like yeah whatever like that’s going to be impossible you know in a way you’re telling me

what might happen right you’re telling me how i will perform

you’ve got to understand that if you make a commitment to do something you have to own that you have to be in

charge of it and you have to be ready for nobody to believe in you right let’s talk about that for a second so say i

said that right so what whether i meant that as a dig or literally like mitch and i are

friends so he was right you know dave’s just you know busting with chops here right right you know which is fine but

how mitch takes that say we weren’t great friends how he takes that that’s on him still is

that is it bad faux pas on me of course it is not really i mean i mean

it’s not your job to worry about me getting offended by what you say no but say say i say say i mean it as a

dig and we don’t know each other that well that’s on me i should first off people shouldn’t be that way right but people are okay but

just because people say that stuff to you do not let that affect the outcome of your life right okay i know that

sounds like a whole bunch of life coach speak but it’s true it is very very true you’re in control of your situation all

the time no matter what and it’s now listen it’s hard for people to

separate their brain and say okay no i’m not gonna let that bother me because things bother you okay they do we we let

marinate in our heads way too long yes but if you can recognize it right out of

the gate and say i’m responsible for myself yeah these are my actions i’m gonna do it i don’t

care what anyone else says and we talk about this on the show all the time i told grant that your son that one day i

told him you know what the number one thing in life is don’t let what anyone thinks bother you yeah that’s the nice

way yeah yeah don’t care what other people think be yourself yeah be true to yourself and just

you know just live your own life without the influence of others right as as best you can obviously when kids are a little

different but so so one of the guys i work out with and we may have him as a guest on the show sometime um he has a

concrete lifting and leveling business we work out with at tyler’s yep tyler doing good oh yeah yeah i’m doing real

good good um uh so one of the guys that i work out with um his name is jeremiah

last year his dad got covered okay his dad’s like in his 70s

um his dad’s always been fairly fit but like for the last 10 or 15 years he’s

had quite a bit of like health issues come in so you get to be 70 yeah you get some

bypass stuff going on and some other you know things like that well anyway he got

covered real bad right doctors told him he will die

doctors told him like after he didn’t die doctors told him that he will never have

the life he used to and then once he started making a little progress doctors told him that his lung

function will never be what it used to and so he went and bought a couple of

like cardio machines listen this isn’t about covid okay no no no no you all get crazy oh crazy because it has nothing to

do with copenhagen yeah just relax everybody relax these are these are these are people who have a career in as

a medical expert and they are telling this man what he will do right

he took the personal accountability and the personal responsibility to give him the proverbial you you aren’t in

control of my life or the best chance to say the odds were 80 percent but he he

gave himself the best chance to overcome those odds right right and that’s what we’re talking about he invested in some

cardio equipment he literally spends an hour and a half a day working on these cardio machines and literally just last

week doctors are telling him they have never seen as much of a miraculous recovery

from the lung condition that he was at to where he’s at now yeah do you think that’s anything by chance

or do you think that’s because somebody took ownership of their situation and said yeah i’m going to change this right

and you know what hopefully those doctors say okay what did you do and they write it down yes i doubt they will

because they’re a whole bunch of no of course and you know and they should say hey okay look i did have this customer do this

customer i like how you said customer it is a customer because that’s literally doctors are the biggest salesman ever i

did that on purpose i was hoping you wouldn’t spot it no nailed it but you know i mean that’s

hopefully they will say that and you know say it inspires one person that it saves their life maybe but but the

key there is it has to be the customer slash patient they have to be the ones

to take control of it right now he didn’t just jump right out on these three pieces of cardio equipment a year

ago right he started making slow and progressive steps he gave himself a list

of a couple of things to do every time every day to get a little better and a

little better and a little better and here nine months later he’s buying these cardio equipment pieces

and and doing that and now he literally has three objectives every day and it’s to spend 30 minutes on the row machine

30 minutes on the treadmill and 30 minutes on the bike yeah and that’s all he wants to do every day and i guarantee

you next week or next month’s goals have more minutes included in that or faster

paces included in that and it’s because he’s telling the doctors you don’t get

to control how my life will work you don’t get to tell me

what i will become right yeah um and that is an exact parable for life in

general your boss doesn’t get to tell you what you’re gonna do in life your

spouse doesn’t get to tell you what you’re gonna do in life you tell

you what you’re going to do in life and you get your boss or your spouse or your coworker on board with it yeah i that

inspired me i know this guy his name i’m he listens to our podcast i’m going to say what his name is his

name’s ray raymond parsons okay he’s a good friend of mine he works with my wife every monday

for the longest time i thought it was really stupid until i i really got to not stupid i shouldn’t say stupid i just

thought uh you know this guy’s out there but then we started even literally even

before this show i didn’t realize how important some of this stuff i was doing it but didn’t realize the importance of

it right so on facebook he puts on every monday he puts thank god it’s monday

and then he lists you know a few things that he did uh on the weekend and you know it like

so i’ll just read off he wrote you know you make each day better after he put thank god it’s monday and

then you know he just says you know i had fun times at draft day for the chiefs and then he’s you know loves

spending time with um i’m not going to say his name but his new grandson yep you know and just and then you know he

says you know god bless each of you i pray that each of you wake up with love you know he just starts his week

with that every week and he puts that on there but an intentional recognition of what he’s thankful for right yeah

exactly and you know i always thought it was kind of um a little weird but then when we started doing the show i thought man you

know what he just intentionally says at the beginning of each monday and i mean he posts this he’s like you he posts his

stuff at like 4am yeah you know so i see it you know every monday morning but he just it’s just intentional hey i’m gonna

do this yeah this starts out my week you know i’m i’m gonna start it out good no matter

what with this right and and i know that his weeks are shitty he works at a hospital and he has a important job and

you know he sees a lot of crap but every monday he starts that week out the way he should yeah

yeah that’s i mean being able to to recognize that is huge being able to

recognize the things that you’re thankful for are huge i one of the things that i do in our company is i i

have a conversation with every single employee that we’re bringing on board and i tell them flat out

i get that there’s going to be some outliers but for the most part if you aren’t equally as excited for monday as

you are for friday you need to let me know because you might not be in the right company

i want you equally as excited on monday as you are on friday i’d lie but you

know that’s just me we i mean we have a lot of fun yeah and you guys do you take them all i mean we

you guys seem pretty happy yeah so like today’s tuesday tomorrow’s wednesday every wednesday morning take all my guys

out to breakfast at one of those restaurants here in town and i’ve never missed 20 more than 20 years he’s never invited me to breakfast

on wednesdays well you got to be an employee there you see i’m still like getting an invite for tomorrow

but uh um yeah we do breakfast often we go out to the bars and have fun often

we’re not rowdy we’re not obnoxious we’re not you guys just get together after work one day a week and have some beer yeah and and the spouses come and

like like it’s it’s literally like let’s just go enjoy each other’s company and

if you can’t enjoy each other’s company in a private setting it’s going to be really hard to work together in a in a

workplace setting yeah and now listen and that’s harder when you have a hundred guys you need to do those

you just do it in levels right when they do outings or one main like if if one manager has 20 guys and one has 20 you

know those 20 guys yeah you know you try to get those 20 guys together to do a golf outing or you know once a month or

um go to the shooting range or you know top golf whatever yep yeah but you can do it you can do it you

can totally do it so one of the keys to high productivity is a book we’ve referenced it a bunch on

the show and i’ll keep referencing it forever because it is awesome it’s called the e myth e hyphen

m-y-t-h e-myth um and if you want to look for it on amazon it’s uh just look up the e-myth

revisited because they’ve had a couple of renditions since then they also make spin-off books of this

and they’re not fake they’re not spam or anything else but they make like the e-myth for hair stylists the e-myth for

automotive yeah they make a bunch of different versions for a bunch of different trades

but you can get the idea just by e by reading the e-myth revisited and one of

the things that it talks about is picturing your business

at its final uh its final classification or its final

level or its final size right and so you may picture your business at its

final size where you’ve got like seven locations and seven different location managers and 14 or 15 people at each

location and all of that and that’s perfectly fine right so now you work the problem backwards

and you start putting things in place that get you to that level yeah and and the

e-myth does a really good job about showing you how to put that framework in

place shows you how to do that right tell you how to get there yeah and and so that’s the philosophy that i’m

following in my business i have a plan for my business that i want to to come to fruition and so literally every

single day i’ve got tasks on my to-do lists that

are putting me a fraction of a step closer to that decision is that going to

happen overnight no and it should i get discouraged because it didn’t happen next week

no right like multiple let’s just take for example multiple locations

you will never be successful having multiple locations unless you can take your one location that you have now and

be really really efficient at it right so if your dream is to have multiple locations

your steps need to be around what can i do to make my one location run autonomously and really efficiently and

then once you have that process down well now you can lay that into another location

maybe your step is maybe your big dream vision is to go from one guy to five guys perfectly fine one location just

five guys that’s totally fine yeah you don’t have to dream over the rainbow no you gosh no

you i know tons of guys that have three guys four guys and make a ton of money and they love it extremely happy and

they’re extremely successful you know we’ve talked about this before um as far as

um what people think success is what their vision of success is you know oh man i

only made 300 000 last year i didn’t make a million what you’re you’re in the top five percent

right you know or 10 or i think it was 10. yeah you’re you’re there you’re successful you’re

happy so don’t think you know because mitch is saying oh i’m going to have this location this location this location don’t think that your dream is

not big right and i’m not saying that’s not for me i’m just saying no like if your dream has multiple locations focus

on the one first and then you can replicate that right yeah if your dream is to have multiple people working for

you we’ll focus on literally like like writing down a framework for how

you do your job really really well so that way when you add person number two

they have some kind of rule book to fall within some kind of guidelines so to speak and not some

corporate handbook type thing yeah but just

like really examine what it is you do that makes you successful so that you can now tell other people to do the same

thing and then like step six evaluate performance make

adjustments and improve right so you hire that first guy and let’s say

60 or 70 percent of everything you worked with him on works really well but

30 percent he’s struggling with well that’s a problem with your process right so okay that 30 i didn’t teach him very

well how i do this i didn’t train him very well on how i do that so the next guy i hire i need to make sure that i

also incorporate that yeah and you slowly get better every time and every time and that makes your employee that

makes your your business better that makes your procedure better but that gives the employees you’re bringing in

a greater head start well and especially if they’re on a any kind of sales commission or any

you’re automatically putting them in a better situation also yeah so you’re it’s almost like you’re

when you’re humble and can say i screwed this up i need to be better here you’re

paying it forward for the next person yeah employees love black and white scenarios they hate gray

area scenarios where they have to kind of figure it out on their own right

yeah so the more that you can kind of spell out how exactly how you’d like them to operate in all these different

scenarios the more successful they’re gonna be the happier you’re gonna be

with their performance because now they’re doing exactly what you ask them to do

and and that doesn’t mean micromanage it just means giving them some very clear boundaries

right but also putting a very clear boundary on the area that’s for them to figure out

putting a very clear boundary on the area where they have room to roam and you’re okay

with them using their artistic creativity to do whatever they want to do with that area yeah so but the more

you can box that out for them the easier it is to bring on more people and have

them do the same thing the same way as the other people in your organization

and that gets back to the topic of the show you know being highly productive yeah it allows them to be highly productive

because you put a system in place yeah and that gets to um you know one of the notes i had was

you know to be highly efficient highly uh productive you have to be organized yep you know

what i mean you and i’m not just talking about business-wise i’m talking about per job-wise yeah you have to be able to go

to a job site say you’re roughing a new house on hvac the way i

do it is you know i go into the house obviously all the metal has already been

delivered whether i made the metal whether i ordered it from somewhere i have to verify that everything matches

my job seat sheet then i have to go upstairs and i have to mark out everything if it’s not marked out i have

to verify i have the things to do that right if i don’t have everything to complete the job right then

i have to make a phone call i need x y and z if i can’t get them i have to just okay i’m gonna have to

bypass that and not waste time on it i have to move on to other aspects of the

job right you know and then like say it’s just a regular you know ranch house you do the first

four you start up high you stay organized and you move in a pattern where you’re not jumping back and forth

and that gets back to organized you know if you’re organized you don’t have to jump back and forth i don’t have to i

don’t have to go get extra tools out of the truck i’ve already laid all my tools out i already know where everything’s going to be at

that seems really common sense but that’s what it takes to be successful in that scenario

yeah and it’s i’m sure there’s a good example of say you’re gonna put a sump pump in yeah

and you go downstairs when you go downstairs to put the sump pump in you need to have all your tools with you

you’re gonna yeah never never move in a direction empty-handed right exactly you’re not always take something with

you yeah if you’re going to go downstairs you might as well go with a couple of things in your hands that you’re going to need downstairs and if

you’re going to go back out to the truck you might as well survey the area and make sure that

if i’m going back out to the truck i may as well grab everything that i’m done with and it can go back to the truck

right makes your movements more efficient same thing happens on the bigger scale yeah you know it’s the same exact thing

and you’re you know you people you know you get a house done so like when i was in my 20s

um even in my 30s i’m only 40. so not that long ago i could do an entire house

a small house like a three-ton house by myself in one day and there were guys that couldn’t do it with two guys in two

days right well it was about the process that i had set up yeah

personally for me that allowed me to work efficiently to get and they’d be like oh dude how do

you get it done how do you do this how do you well it starts with that first step yeah you know we’ve talked about it already

and this episode it starts with the first step of you have to do these things first i have

to unload the truck i have to go to do this i have to it’s all about the steps right and the efficient steps to get

there and that that’s not just heating cooling that’s not just plumbing that’s we’ve said it on this episode

three times it’s not about business it’s about the preparation and the organization to be productive yeah

that’s i mean that that carries on all the way through the organization as you’re as you’re training new guys

you’re going to teach them some efficiency stuff as you’re a manager you’re going to teach your trainers some

efficiency stuff as you’re a company owner you’re going to teach your man or manager some efficiency stuff

um and being able to do that in literally every aspect in your life is a key

to being highly productive and that gets back to you have to have the intent

to do that yeah you have to say i’m gonna you know we’ve talked about um when

you’re working out you have to have the intent same thing i have to have the intent to do this with the guys yeah to do this

with the job i’m gonna do this this is what’s gonna happen and that’s how we’re gonna be successful yeah it’s

just i mean it it sounds so simple and so stupid but it is that is what it takes and and those guys that you

mentioned you know you could rough in a house in one day i could you know as a new guy like if i were to

try to go do it me and another guy may take two or three days to do it right well the guys that have been in it for a

while and are still needing a two-man crew to and a day or more to do what

you’re doing in one day by yourself those guys spend more time worrying

about how much you’re getting done in a day than they are worrying about how they

can improve their performance you get far enough down that road and

now all of a sudden those guys start looking at you like and i hate this word they’ll say oh you’re gifted

oh you’re just born at a higher level or or you’re lucky right no i’m just it has

working hard absolutely nothing to do with being gifted or working at a higher level or lucky you’re just literally

spending more time focusing on what i can do to be more efficient i i remember

i was this was back when i was doing new construction plumbing for homes doing new home plumbing

and i i started working for uh rex down the road oh yeah and

um he’s still in business yeah he’s an older guy now that’s why lesser capacity but yeah

so one i was first working for him and it was my first couple of weeks there

and there was a contractor there that was here to do some other things right and and so i’m talking about a new house

yeah okay yeah and so we were kind of working with them i think it was an hvac contractor and we had like a conflict

where plumbing and hvac needed to be in the same area so we had to talk about like how we’re gonna get it done

and so we needed something from the truck well i run to the truck and go grab it like physically run yeah we’ve

talked to the truck right and go grab it and come back and and the guy’s like your boss know you like run everywhere

and i’m like well yeah i got a lot of to do and if i can make that trip faster it’s i get more stuff done

he’s like man you must love working right and that’s just the

the the personality differences between a guy that’s just going to work to work and a

guy that’s like trying to want to get better a person that has intent to get better right i mean i would i’m

killing this horse on this show today just beating that horse to death well that’s what it is you have to have intent

to be greater and it’s not fake intent either it’s not saying i want to get better without actually putting

forth the work to do it yeah and you didn’t run to the truck and then come back and say hey guys you see how fast i

did that no no you just did it because that’s what you’re doing to try to be better yeah yeah it’s we had a lot to

get done that day and if i can run to the truck and cut that trip in half the time yeah might as well do it okay i’m

here we got it let’s go let’s go i got stuff to do today and on a new construction job site if you run into the truck 15 times or 20 times

you know that that comes down to multiple minutes a day where you have more work to do everything else you know and i i wasn’t going to bring this up

until later but you we talked about this the other night and you said the ultimate excuse for all this stuff is

um all work no play you you had brought that up yeah and i

bring that up here because people use that in that scenario like yeah say that guy said that

you can use that both ways well you know what if i work that hard and i get it done well now i have more play time yeah

yeah that uh you know i mean you work with life balance yeah work-life balance

is the bull most excuse ever for poor performance

people will people will they know they shouldn’t be

off or they know they shouldn’t be taking the three-day weekend and going somewhere

they know that they shouldn’t be spending the money that they’re spending to go on a trip that they really can’t

afford and they give themselves the freaking excuse of balance

or whatever hot social word you know me time or

whatever the words are that they want to use for for

the excuse of i’m not actually working hard i’m off and listen i have two things

to say about that one the harder you work at work whether you work for somebody or

not means you’re making more money means you’re getting the jobs done sooner which means you have more time for your

personal right okay so if you’re say you’re on a job where it’s paid by

pay by the job you rough in we’re with new construction we’ll say yeah yeah well say you know i knock out two houses in four

days instead of five i got paid the same right i get a third day right okay that’s how i pay my guys i

literally pay my guys per the task and so if they can take a five hour task and get it done in three hours guess what

those two hours are for them yeah if they can take a two hour task and get it done in one hour

well guess what that extra hour is theirs to do whatever they want with yeah right and i’m not and i’m not

against um you know on this show i think it sometimes sounds like

you know we’re all this oh macho we work and we don’t play and we oh god no when

i play i play hard but i and i’m not against people that don’t want to work hard and want to have a more

laid-back lifestyle but just don’t give me the of must be nice of

either must be nice or i don’t work that hard because i’m just you know i’m this or you know i’m that

just own it say no i’m comfortable being more laid back and not being successful

but then don’t whine when you don’t have freaking money to be a baller and yeah do great things

yeah okay i mean i’m not i’m not driving around a ferrari but i’m also not giving excuses like oh man oh i don’t i don’t

work hard enough to have a ferrari i don’t no i’m you’re also not calling into your boss because your car broke down for the

third time this week because you can’t afford to fix it no or if i couldn’t afford to fix it what would i do what would i let’s that’s a weird example say

say i couldn’t go to work this week because my truck broke down say monday i called my boss

and my truck broke down would i call him and say i’m not going to be in for the week no i’d find a way i’d either rent a

freaking car or i’d call mitch and say hey can you give me a ride or could i

borrow something or you just call your boss and say can you come pick me up yeah exactly i don’t use it as

an excuse not to work i need some help right and bosses will pick you up yeah they absolutely lutely will but

that’s funny that you bring that up because you know where we used to work that was a deal yeah there were a lot of

guys that didn’t weren’t successful the young guys you know and they’d have a car in it but the guys that that needed to get to work to pay for that car that

wanted that had drive they got to work anyway yeah like they’d be 10 minutes late and they’d walk right up i’ll just

they’d walk right at the bottom be like hey man car broke down and bobby like yeah you know i see you yeah you know i

see you driving off and you need to ride but you’re still here yeah you’re here and everyone was like

oh man dude that sucks you need a ride right you know what so i got to plan on taking you home got it yeah like

mitch drove me to work and brought me home for like yeah i remember that yeah your camaro broke down yeah

you know what though in mitch’s in my own not mitch’s defense a good character on mitch is like if i

wasn’t up and ready to go dave didn’t get a ride to work nope i left because mitch was going to be there

on time yeah you know what he should have been and that’s back when you were struggling in your early 19s early uh 20s i mean same with me 20 21 yeah yeah

yeah but but that’s good on mitch right because he shouldn’t have been waiting for me he should have been at work on time right you know that’s just that’s

how it should be that’s just how it was possible right so there’s a lot of people that will use

a small inconvenience as an excuse to throw away productivity for the entire day yeah and and you can’t do that like

i have a saying i tell my guys all the time because they do work on a task-based schedule so

a tab like they’ll they’ll sell a job that calls for four task hours and and they so basically they have four hours

to get it done right and if it takes longer than that well they’re still only getting paid for four hours if it takes

less than that they’re still getting paid for four hours right so i tell them all the time that occasionally we have

to work a little harder for our money it’s just the way that life works and that’s the law of averages that we’ve

talked about before yeah exactly there’s over a year span it’s going to be pretty close to 50 50

that some took longer and some took less yeah and if you are intentional with your product productivity

you’re going to be beating that average by a lot yeah you could be but you know don’t

this gets to planning too you know don’t don’t automatically plan for the year that i’m gonna be

um above this right plan for this and then if you are above it because you’re

working hard right that’s that bonus yep you know that’s that bonus we talk about um guys i think that’s probably about

wrapping up our show we’re trying to keep these to an hour and this one timed out about perfectly there

so if you uh if this show brought you value if this show made you think about something

in a little bit different aspect if this show if you think that if you think you have

a friend that would love to hear this show please do us a favor and send this show to somebody who might need it share

it with us um also if you are on any social media groups facebook groups or anything and you hear guys talking

about wanting to start their own company and that they might need some of this stuff

feel free to drop a link to our show i’ve even seen guys ask on their various

facebook groups where they’re saying hey what podcast do you listen to i’m looking for some new ones

do us a favor and drop a link to the show literally it is our mission of the show

to help as many people as possible cross the void from employee to self-employed

we don’t make a dime for this show we don’t run ads on the show yet no i could be it might be nice first

off it costs me money because i could be working right now right you could be working i could be working you know i had somebody i it’s kind of fun i’m not

gonna lie yeah i had somebody trying to throw me shade the other day talking about how um i should just focus on these shapes

yeah talking about how i should just focus on like a plumbing company instead of like trying to do this whole podcast

thing and i’m like hey what i do with my time is my own choice and and i feel it’s my life’s mission to

uh improve the lives of those around me and so uh you and that gives you know and

that’s that’s the giving back to the community that we talk about yeah you know you talk about it’s equally as

important to give back to your community this show is a great way to do that yeah you know what i mean this is us giving

back to the community in a way to help empower people not just our community here you know we have listeners that are nationals all over the country yeah i

mean we’re giving back to our country yeah we have a we have a surprising number of canadian listeners if you would believe

that it’s kind of interesting hey i just i mean some syrup some bacon let’s do some hockey my cousin uh she moved her

husband was from canada and uh they got married man they got like seven or eight kids i don’t remember but they

she lives up there now yeah i think they actually just moved back yeah they lived up there for a long time it’s too cold i

like canada it’s too cold though dude i love the midwest i love kansas city we get all four seasons and just about the

time you’re tired of one here comes another it’s like awesome sometimes you get all four seasons in a week you mean from monday to thursday yeah oh man i’m

tired of being hot oh it’s 35 today yeah i mean it’s crazy that’s that’s just the way

the the cookie crumbles here so um guys that’s about it for this week so um

uh again do us a favor help share the show and uh we will catch up with you next

time [Music] you