What Can You Simplify?
I just got back from a trail run on the river, beautiful day. I actually had a client call me and just had a question. I replied to him and I just got off the phone, and I wanted to share with you the conversation, or at least the gist of the conversation. This is a very successful business owner. They run an eight figure business, do very, very well for themselves. But, they had a question. They had a problem around their business and their business finances.
Slay A Dragon
Just a few days ago, I was actually invited to take part in a ceremony using plant medicines. Now, if you’re not familiar with what plant medicines are, they were medicines that were used traditionally by indigenous tribes especially, over thousands of years ago, to evoke a type of experience. Usually used by shamans or religious healers.
Revisit: Built To Sell
This is a topic around business, and a topic I’ve had several times in the last week when I’m talking to business owners about their business model and how they actually want to get out of their business so they can become the authors of their own story. Oftentimes what happens is a business owner’s building the business as a solopreneur and they surround themselves by key people, yet they haven’t been able to take themselves out of the business. In fact, even a worst case scenario, they branded their business around their skill sets and about their name. Now their business is synonymous with them.
Revisit: Which Problems Deserve Your Attention?
This question comes from Victor, and Victor says, “Doug I’ve got a question that might be a great highlight for the Daily Growth Hacks. What problems or questions deserve our attention? I mean, how do we distinguish which aspects of our life we should be paying attention to, and which ones are a waste of time, money and energy?”
Revisit: Visualize Yourself Before Bed
I want to talk to you about something that’s really not a secret, but something that most people aren’t utilizing, or are at least under-utilizing, and that’s the power of visualization, and more important, the power of visualization right before you go to bed.
When you think about it, CEOs, athletes, people from all walks of life that have been successful have utilized visualization as a success tool. One way that they do this is, right before bed, they’re going to visualize themselves being successful at whatever endeavor they’re embarking on right before they go to sleep. Why is this important? Well, this is important because, when you go to sleep, your mind’s subconscious is going to process the last thing that you were thinking about. The last thing that was in your mind is something that you’re going to be thinking about while you’re sleeping.
The Big Lie
I’m running around this river. There’s actually … A couple miles up, there’s a bridge and down the way, there’s another bridge. I’m running this as a loop and it started to remind me of a big lie that I told myself. Not too long ago, in fact, a year ago, we gave birth to our first son, Bodhi. An amazing event. Leading up to that, we had nine months of pregnancy, actually 10 almost, with my wife. During that time, I slowly let myself slip into deconditioning. I played sports at a high level my entire life up until a couple years ago, really. What I started to say is, oh, yeah, yeah. I’ll get back in shape as soon as Bodhi’s born, my son’s born. That’s when I really kick things into high gear. That’s really when things are going to start taking off, because I’ll run with him in the stroller every day and I’ll do this, and I’ll do that. Right now, my wife’s pregnant. She wants to eat this and that and it’s fine. Just a little phase in life.
Imagine How Others Would Do It
Often times for a lot of us we get stuck with problems. We can’t see the forest from the trees. Whether we’re working on a new project, a new business, or maybe we wanna become digital nomads, and we’re just not quite there yet.
One thing that has helped myself and my clients is by role-playing. Now, when I say role-playing, what I mean is just imagining for a moment how others would do what you’re trying to achieve.
Compounding Time
Here I am parked right outside the gym, about to go in for a killer workout, swing some kettlebells, some maces around. I’m really excited and pumped about it. I had a busy day, and busy in the sense that we have people visiting our house. My son just turned one, so all kinds of these activities that are fun stacking on each other. I wasn’t able to fully immerse myself in my daily morning routine. The mindset work that I do and questions I ask myself, and the process that I go through each and every day to get me to my journey. Right? Get me through my journey, I should say, but get me to the endpoint that I’m working on right now.
Paying A Fat Tax
Back in my early 20s, I used to work at a gym. People would come in to cancel their membership, and they’d say, I’ve been a member here for three or four years, and I’ve never shown up. Now, I used to call that a fat tax, a payment that you would make just because you had a certain condition that was going on. In this case, you paid because of your self-conscious about having this gym membership thinking that you might show up and be thinking that you might go, knowing that you really wouldn’t, right? That was a tax. It was a fat tax.
Revisit: Demands On Your Time
So protect your time. One of the things that commonly happens is you get more and more successful, as you become more and more the author of your own story and are actually out there producing results and people are watching this happen, you’re living your life. What happens is people want more of your time. They want more of you. They want more of what you have. These are the demands upon your time are gonna become greater than ever. If you’re a business owner, this is very, very true, because people not only want your lifestyle they always want to know how to do your business. And so your demands are gonna be great, not only from your staff and your team but also the people around you. So, that can be friends but acquaintances, I mean, I get messages all the time and I’m not popular by any means.
Revisit: Doing The Impossible
I just got back from the gym and if you’re watching this on video you can see that I literally just got back and rolled right into my office to record this because while I was there I heard two women talking about how they could never run a 5K. They were talking about it as if it the most impossible thing in the world to them. The truth is…it probably was in their version of reality.
Revisit: Slay A Sacred Cow
When I say ‘slay a sacred cow’, of course, I’m not talking about a sacred cow in Hinduism, what I’m talking about are those things that are policies, procedures, or systems that have worked for you in the past, have helped you get success, but are now holding you back.
What Are Your 3 Biggest Complaints?
Earlier today, I asked my right-hand woman, the woman who helps me run all of my businesses, I said, “What are my three biggest complaints? What are the three things you hear me complain about the most?” Now, I had an idea of what she would answer, and two of the three were spot-on. The third one actually surprised me a little bit, and when I actually looked at it, I started writing it down, and I looked at these three complaints as I journaled, and I thought, “Wow, where am I living within these three complaints? Am I actually living my life like these things?”
What Are You Against?
What is it that you stand against? Now yeah, it’s easy to talk about what we stand for, especially in the realm of personal and business development. That’s the warm and fuzzies but what is it you stand against because often times, I find for most of my clients, that is a better driving force. It’s the things that we actually stand against that separate us.
Investing In Your Identity
So, do you invest in your identity? Do you invest money or time into who you are? Maybe that’s changing who you are, but maybe it’s actually showcasing what you are. So oftentimes whether it was in my career or my early 20s as a personal trainer, or as a coach, or as somebody running digital marketing agencies, or just as anybody, how often do I actually invest in myself at creating my identity and showcasing who that is?
How Can You Make An Impact?
We started this quest for Author of Your Own Story. I actually sat down with my team and asked them, “What is the biggest thing that we can do? Do you think we can impact a hundred, a thousand, 10,000, 100,000, a million people?” We all agreed that our quest was to touch and positively impact over 1 million people.
Be Your Own Coach
We’ve talked about this before on the Daily Growth Hacks, but it bears repeating because it comes up time and time again in conversation. What would you do if you were coaching yourself?
The Power Of Clarity
I sent an email to my team. I said, “Hey, make sure you watch those videos and take copious notes because I want to make sure you apply them to our project.” Now the next day, I came back expecting to see copious notes from my team about exactly what we should be doing with one of our projects only to see jokes coming through. Now I have a great relationship with all of my team. And they said, “Doug, first of all what videos and which projects? We’re running six different companies as a whole team here, and each of those companies has multiple projects going on at any given time.” It was actually really funny. Now what I didn’t do was really be specific about which videos I wanted them to watch and which projects to apply them to. We all got a chuckle out of it, luckily, but what we really lost was a day’s worth of work. I expected to come into the office, when I came in, and have a list of actionable items that I could task out and delegate to my team.
