Timeless Entrepreneur: Recent Episodes

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In every industry there are gurus, coaches, speakers and authors, and the world of entrepreneurs is no different.

If you have a strong sense of ethics, and you care about the people you serve and sell to, you risk getting cynical.

There are a lot of fake gurus and grifters out there selling products and programs by telling people what they want to hear. Appealing to people’s desire for shortcuts, easy paths and zero hard thinking.

You feel like people are being lied to, misled, mistreated, confused and abused.

So I asked my friend Martin Stellar, he’s THE guy on ethical sales.

A real guru in a sea of fake ones.

And he has such a refreshing take that I wanted to share it with you.

Here’s Martin…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timelessentrepreneur.substack.com

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Being an entrepreneur is like stepping onto a wide open playing field where a whole bunch of games are being played.

You can either join someone else’s game or create your own.

Yet most of us find ourselves playing someone else’s game and looking for a slight edge to beat them.

And then we wonder why it's so hard to win?!

That’s why I want to smash the idea that a slight edge is all it takes to win and sharing three uncommon strategies to create your own game and give yourself an unfair advantage in business.

So let’s start with this…

History is littered with examples of businesses that tried to compete with a slight edge.

Just look at Samsung phones.

Samsung tries to compete with Apple by being slightly better.

Processing power, camera, memory, whatever.

But Apple basically created the smartphone category as we know it.

So Apple just kept trucking along and selling a metric crapload of iPhones.

So clearly, a slight edge isn’t enough to WIN.

The idea of the slight edge comes from high-performance athletics.

Where sometimes that slight edge might be the difference between being a champion and being a footnote in the history books.

But athletics isn't really the best analogy for business.

Athletics is a finite game with a defined set of rules.

Business is the opposite. It's an infinite game.

Other than ethical and legal stuff, there are no rules in business.

So a slight edge isn’t enough. You need an unfair advantage.

That means creating your own game.

So here's the first way to create your own game....

Strategy 1) Blend 2 wildly different things into something that’s new and uncopy-able.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams is a great example.

Self-proclaimed mediocre cartoonist AND mediocre comedy writer, yet he somehow managed to put those two things together into Dilbert, and made himself a millionaire, a best-selling author, keynote speaker, entrepreneur and investor in the process.

So the question here is: What 2 elements, attributes or skills could you combine to create something uncopy-able and valuable to others?

Go read Scott Adams book for more on this approach.

Strategy 2) Change the business model

Google did this in search.

Rather than simply taking money to run some ads on their home page, Google create their own game.

They built a self-serve ad platform that put Google at the center and opened a whole new source of revenue from small and medium-sized businesses.

Down in Australia my friend Glenn Twiddle changed the business model of real estate coaching.

He put on high-level events and brought celebrity entrepreneurs like Richard Branson and Gary Vee to his native Australia, which put way more butts in the seat than he could on his own.

He then put himself in the center of the action by running and emcee-ing the event, and followed up with attendees to sell programs and services.

Which means the events didn’t need to be profitable on their own.

Those events created the audience and influence he leveraged to build two different 7 figure businesses.

For more details on that approach, read Glenn's book Punching Above Your Weight.

So the question here is: How can you change the business model and put yourself at the center of the action and open up other sources of revenue?

And finally…

Strategy 3) Radically Simplify

Do the work to take something complex and make it simple.

Amazon is a great example. They made online commerce so radically simple that you can actually order things by accident!

My core business is also based on this strategy.

I took my own wild ride of building a show with millions of views and downloads, took all that chaos and distilled it into a system. Then I built a digital agency that sold that system, completely done-for-you.

In other words, I radically simplified the process of launching and producing a show online, which means the business grew even though I wasn’t a brilliant salesperson.

So the question is, What can you radically simplify to create something new, rare and valuable?

For more on this approach, read Richard Koch's book, Simplify.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of game-changing strategies, but hopefully they get your brain working.

And here’s the Timeless Principle in all this: You don’t have to play someone else’s game. You can create your own game and give yourself an unfair advantage.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timelessentrepreneur.substack.com

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Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, right?

But if you hang around with ultra successful entrepreneurs, you’re going to hear this phrase: “It seems like the less I work, the more I make”

So which statement is more true?

That’s what we’re talking about today, we’re going to have some fun destroying a big misconception about hard work and hopefully save you so me pain in the process, so let’s get into it.

When you hear that phrase, The less I work, the more I make, how does that hit you?

For many people working a job, it feels icky, especially coming from the fat cat boss who just sits around telling them what to do.

If you’re in the States, it really hits you.

The whole idea of work being easy might seem like an assault on the Puritan work ethic.

Americans were raised with the idea that work purifies the soul - hence the phrase “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

And when you start a business, you bring all your misconceptions about work ethic with you.

And if you’re not careful, those misconceptions are going to keep you from the next level.

For any goal you have in life and in business, there are a BUNCH of possible paths to get there.

When you look down those paths and you see one that’s more difficult than the others, it’s tempting to think that the hardest path is the right path.

Simply because it’s hard.

The same thing happens when something in your business isn’t working. Sales are down, your marketing isn’t working, your program or product just isn’t clicking with the market.

Your work ethic can spring up inside and say, “I just need to buckle down and work harder! More calls, more emails, more selfies on Instagram!”

It’s like humans have some weird, pathological need to suffer. But I’ll leave that to the philosophers.

So here’s the big idea for today: Just Because It’s HARD, Doesn't Mean It's the Right Thing To Do.

Microsoft chose the hard work of competing with Apple in MP3 players and smartphones.

Was the hard thing the right thing to do?

Of course not, the Microsoft Zune was a good product that came too late and the Microsoft smartphone was a spectacular failure, a giant, squandering waste of time, energy and capital.

Let’s bring it down to the lifestyle level.

Take two people who got married young and then realized they’ve grown in different directions and are now incompatible at a fundamental level.

Many people would tell them that the virtuous path is to stay together.

Do the “hard work.” After all, it builds character.

There’s even a book I ran across years ago called Sacred Marriage whose central idea is that marriage isn’t designed to make you happy, it’s designed to make you a better person.

One might wonder why the author didn’t just skip to the end and marry a therapist.

Let’s take it into the business realm.

Years ago I talked to a gentleman who was very successful in real estate first as an agent and then as a coach.

He had the same experience as a new agent that most of us did.

We get our license and a broker basically hands us the phone book and tells us to dial for dollars.

He ignored this advice, and instead leveraged his background and relationships in the corporate world to build a referral network and do a ton of relocation deals with corporate executives.

So right away he had higher home prices, which meant he needed fewer transactions.

He ended up building a very niche, relaxed, 7-figure real estate business as a solo agent.

Something similar happened to Aaron Ross at Salesforce.com.

He was tasked with making calls and generating sales opportunities using standard B2B tactics.

It wasn’t working, so he fired off a batch of cold emails and got a great response rate.

Then he took that initial success, broke it down into a system, and that system eventually generated $100 million in sales pipeline for the company.

That led to him writing the book Predictable Revenue, which is amazing by the way, and into a 7-figure consulting business installing his system in other companies.

All what those stories have in common is each of them chose NOT to go down the hard path.

They could have kept banging their heads against brick walls, which is exactly what many people in their world would have preferred.

But instead they took a different path.

One that required a different form of hard - hard thought.

So let’s bring it to you and me.

We all want to get to the next level of influence, impact and income, and do it all with great lifestyle and great integrity.

In my opinion, we should make the best decision for our business.Regardless of which path seems the hardest.

When you’re looking to get to the next level, everyone around you is going to have their opinions on the best path to get there.

And someone is going to challenge your work ethic, your strength of character, your ability to suffer in pursuit of your goal.

And it’s going to be very tempting to choose that hard path just to prove to others that you can take the pain.

That doesn’t mean it’s the right path for you and your business.

Because getting to the next level isn’t about taking the hardest path.

It’s definitely not about building a business around things that drain your energy.

Because if you get to the next level based on doing things you hate, it’s only a matter of time before you fall back down to the level you’re at.

There’s more than one path to success. And just because something is hard, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timelessentrepreneur.substack.com

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Most of us have a very weird combination of beliefs around goal- setting.

Maybe you were encouraged by loved ones around you to be realistic and pragmatic. To always have a Plan B.

Then maybe you got the motivational speaker version of goal setting... "Shoot for the stars and maybe you'll hit the moon!"

Either way, our beliefs are a jumbled mishmash of stuff from our childhood and our experience as an entrepreneur, all rolling around in a stew of our insecurities, negative emotions and limiting beliefs.

So today I want share what I believe is the ultimate question in goal setting, and it comes from an amazing yet overlooked book.

When I was in my late teens, a friend of the family gave me a set of seminar tapes by an Australian real estate mogul I’d never heard of named Peter Daniels.

He’s still not well known over here, and he deserves to be.

He started as an illiterate bricklayer and stonemason, rising to become a multi-millionaire real estate developer, speaker, author and counted folks like Paul Meyer and W. Clement Stone as personal friends.

I wore those seminar tapes out and then bought this book, How To Reach Your Life Goals.

So here's the ultimate question: “What proportion of your life are you prepared to give in exchange for accomplishing this goal?”

In other words, do your goals reflect what you’d “like” to happen, or what you’re prepared to sacrifice to make happen?

In this one question, you get the sense that Daniels believes a goal worth setting is one that's hard to reach.

One that will require something more of you. To become something more than you are now.

And I think he's spot on.

After all, as one of my mentors said, if you were worthy of your goal right now in this moment, you’d already have it.

So setting out to accomplish a goal is a serious thing.

In fact, I believe the timeless principle from Peter Daniels book is this:Goal setting is sacrifice.

Goal-setting isn’t just an exercise in our imagination where we form a mental picture of the things we’d like to happen. There’s a place for that, and it’s in the dreaming stage. Its where we start, but it’s not where goals are set.

True goal-setting is an exercise where we sit down and decide, plan and prepare to give up certain things we want in exchange for things we want the most.

True goal setting means giving up who we are now to become someone different - someone who is worthy of our goal.

Here’s a great example: Look at how Phil Jackson handled superstars like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant as an example.

Both MJ and Kobe felt like they could score at will. Both of them loved the spotlight. Both were hard on their teammates and rarely trusted them to take shots in critical moments.

The genius of Phil Jackson is that he got both of them to agree to the same sacrifice:

Give up the spotlight as the high scorer in the average game, to achieve the championships that will put you in the spotlight forever, listed among the best players of all-time.

Both of them sacrificed short term accolades and praise, for the best interest of the team, and in the end they got all the accolades and praise they could ever ask for by achieving the ultimate goal in their field.

To win those 11 championships between them, they had to change. They had to become something more than they were. They had to transform into someone worthy of their goals.

And in the book, Peter Daniels challenges us to do the same thing.

How much of our life are we prepared to give in exchange to accomplish a goal?

Only when we can answer that question, do we really know we’re committed to that goal.

Let’s finish with another line from the book, “Life cannot accept anything other than it’s equivalent.”

In other words, to get more life out of life, we have to give some of our life in exchange.

It’s the ultimate question in goal-setting.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timelessentrepreneur.substack.com

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For many entrepreneurs, more is always better.

More content, in more places, more often.

More leads, more sales, more growth.

More joint ventures, more projects, more partnerships.

Every entrepreneur’s version of this is different, but the trap is the same.

In the pursuit of more, we commit to more and more, and our To Do list gets longer and longer.

I think that setting a To Do list and checking things off is very stable, predictable path to average.

That will not get us to an extraordinary business or extraordinary life.

Why? Because when you read books like the One Thing, Scale, Essentialism, 80/20 Principle, Simplify, Focus, Rework, etc there’s a breakthrough idea that I don’t think is clearly expressed in any of them.

Before I get to the breakthrough idea, let’s start with a timeless principle: Human beings are really bad at estimating what it will take to hit a goal.

Ask anyone who’s ever written a book, launched a podcast, or started a YouTube channel.

Goals always require more time, energy and resources than we expect.

And yet, as entrepreneurs, when we face the choice - Goal A or Goal B - our first impulse is to say, “I can do both!”

Because in our mind, we have enough time, energy and resources to hit both goals.

So here’s the breakthrough idea that I’ve taken away from all these books on focus and productivity and scale:

To truly achieve our most important goals, we must give up the fantasy that we can do it all. That we can pursue all our goals.

The only place it works to pursue a bunch of different goals is in our mind.

We have this vision of hitting all these different goals, how it’s going to look, how great our life is going to be, and how we’re going to feel.

So we start strong and everything looks great at first.

Then reality pushes back.

We start to miss some milestones along the way.

We start to realize that one of our goals is going to need a much bigger investment of time or energy or resources than we thought.

And again, we’re faced with the choice. Goal A or Goal B.

But now we’ve started on both. We have sunk cost into both. So the decision is even harder.

This leaves us in this position where we hesitate. We’re not sure where to throw all of our time, energy and resources.

That hesitation, that indecision, that lack of aggressive, massive action toward one of those goals means we never really build momentum.

We putter along, ticking things off our To Do list, making a little progress in a bunch of different directions.

Deep down, we know something is wrong. We’re not going to hit all these goals.

Yet we keep up a good face to the outside world, telling everyone things are going great.

That’s a very sucky place to be in, and I’ve been there.

Back in the day when I was chasing the dream as a musician, I joined 4 different bands.

Most of them failed, two of them we played one gig and broke up.

I had the most success with just one project, and that success came in part because I got out of everything else so I could focus.

With that focus I was able to write the best music I’d written up to that point, and we recorded and released an album I’m still proud of, where I played multiple instruments and handled the production of the album.

I repeated that same exact cycle as an entrepreneur.

Got into 4 different ventures while also producing podcasts.

And each one needed more time, energy and resources than I expected - even with partners involved to split the work, still more was required.

I was scattered and unfocused and unhappy. I walked away from every meeting with an ever growing To Do list.

I didn’t really make progress and build momentum as an entrepreneur till I got out of all those other ventures.

I focused on my agency, building better systems, delivering better service and results to clients, and the business tripled in one year. I finally knew what it felt like to hit real momentum. Where progress gets easier, you start to get carried along rather than feeling like you’re pushing everything up hill.

In order to drop those other ventures, I had to give up the fantasy that I could pursue and achieve a bunch of different goals at the same time.

That’s the breakthrough idea I’ve pulled from all these books.

In the abstract, we all love the idea of being focused.

But when it comes to making the hard choices, Goal A or Goal B, most of us still give into the fantasy. “I can do both!”

The ability to step back, recognize that for the fantasy it is, and make a different choice - that’s the key to making the content in all those amazing books work for us.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timelessentrepreneur.substack.com

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Successful entrepreneurs are masters of detail, right?

Not necessarily.

Dan Kennedy said that he’s worked with millionaires who forget their keys on a regular basis, have to get their spouse to buy clothes that look presentable, and one client was so absent minded they walked right through his screen door.

I have a millionaire friend who has to be told not to wear the same basketball shorts and flip flops for days in a row.

The most shocking thing I’ve discovered is that as you move up in the world of entrepreneurship, your main limitation isn’t your time, it’s your mental capacity and energy.

So we’re sharing a beautiful idea that was passed on to me, that will free you from guilt over your capacity and allow you to focus on the things that will get you to the next level as an entrepreneur.

One of my clients was raised by stepfather who was a serial entrepreneur.

And he gave her a powerful little metaphor for entrepreneurs.

He told her, Some people are “Go West” people - Just like the early pioneers in America, they declare that they’re going to lead their group west, and their eyes are on the horizon. They can’t be the same people responsible for making sure there are enough beans and flour and meat going into the wagon train. If you count on them for those kinds of details, the group would starve on the way.”

So the timeless principle here is that entrepreneurs are “Go West” people.

I love that idea because it explains WHY our energy and mental capacity are limited - our minds are occupied with big goals and big challenges.

Our subconscious is working away at those things in the background, so we’re probably less observant than we used to be. And we may not have the energy to do all that high level thinking and decision making AND do a bunch of routine, detail tasks in our business.

When I worked for someone else, I was a master of details.

I had great observation skills and great recall. I could not only follow a detailed process to get things done, but I could spot opportunities to improve on the process. And I could do it day in and day out.

But it’s not the same way today.

When you’re the person with 100% responsibility for the success of the business and the livelihood of your team, it changes everything.

Because my mind is on the big picture of getting to the next level of influence, impact and income.

So I have to take my energy and mental capacity into account when I plan my week, when I take on new commitments, and even in how I’ve structured my business.

I hire detail-oriented people, give them great systems and great training, so I can keep my eyes on the horizon.

I don’t expect myself to do a bunch of routine, detail-oriented tasks in the business while also keeping my eye on the horizon.

And if you’re an entrepreneur looking to get to the next level, you need as much free energy and mental capacity as possible. That’s what allows you to focus obsessively on your goal.

So as you move up in the world of entrepreneurship, your relationship to detail has to change, your schedule has to change, your focus has to change.

And you can’t allow yourself to feel guilty for not being as detail-oriented as you used to be.

It’s not a sign of weakness, it’s a function of having your mind on bigger things.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timelessentrepreneur.substack.com

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As entrepreneurs, we're basically hit with two completely different messages:

1) Hustle 24/7

OR….

2) Law of Attraction

Both mindsets can get you to a certain level of success in your business.

But both of these mindsets can also hurt you. And might even prevent you from getting to the next level.

So today I want to share what I’ve found to be the most useful mindset for getting to the next level. Buckle up and let’s piss some people off:)

Let’s start what I consider a timeless principle:

Success demands two very different types of action from us:

a foundation of methodical, relentless and even boring activities...

...with occasional short bursts of all out effort.

Look at what’s required to successfully climb a mountain.

You have boring fundamentals you have to execute and prepare for.

Hiking, climbing, physical conditioning so you can handle the strain, learning your gear so you can use it in stressful situations.

Then you have the bursts of all out effort it takes to reach each milestone on time, like getting to base camps on schedule, let alone reach the summit and make it back to camp safely.

You can extend this into athletics, where you have the boring fundamentals of practice and film study and workouts, mixed with bursts of all out effort in the 4th quarter to win close games.

All success requires both a foundation of methodical, even boring activities, with occasional bursts of all out effort.

Most entrepreneurs want to lean into just one of those two types.

Some are good at being the tortoise. They are methodical and plodding, masters of the boring fundamentals in their business.

But when one of their goals requires a burst of all out effort, they shrink from the challenge and give up on their goals.

They can’t handle the all out bursts required to get to the next level.

Then you have the opposite of the tortoise, the hare - the driven, impatient entrepreneur who’s all about the short bursts, but doesn’t care much for the methodical kind of action.

So they move in flurries of activity, creating a lot of friction and generating a lot of heat. They seem to leap ahead of the rest of the pack, but they don’t have staying power.

They can’t handle the methodical action required to get to the next level.

Bottom line, you don’t get success without the combination of both types of action.

Understanding this helps us have a more accurate, realistic mindset.

The hustle mindset gets a lot of flack right now, so I don’t need to rip it apart, but I will piss all the hustlers off and say something about WHY it’s so appealing.

The Hustle mindset puts your body in a semi-permanent fight-or-flight mode. You’re on a constant, low-level drip of stress hormones that prepares your body for action.

Our body is not meant to stay in fight-or-flight mode for hours a day, 5, 6, 7 days a week.

So the hustle mindset is a fast track to burnout. If you’re hustling and you haven’t burned out yet, you just haven’t been doing it long enough.

Now let’s tackle the Law of Attraction and piss those people off.

Despite what Napoleon Hill and Neville Goddard and all the New Thought leaders believed, I see no evidence that the universe conspires to help us in achieving our goals.

I see no evidence that we can manifest our way to success.

And I think the success stories you hear about the Law of Attraction tactics come down to human nature and how these beliefs give people confidence to simply step out and take action of some kind.

Regardless of what your spiritual or religious beliefs are, I believe we’re all better off looking at the universe as basically indifferent to our goals.

The universe isn’t for us or against us. It just IS.

And it’s our responsibility to make our goals happen, without expecting help from an outside force like God or the universe.

You can’t manifest your way to the next level, and you can’t hustle your way there either.

Dig into any story of success and you’ll find both methodical boring action AND bursts of all out effort.

Both types of action are there every time.

So embrace it. Consider it good news.

You have a massive advantage over competitors who are stuck in one of these two mindsets.

The competitors who are going to Law of Attraction workshops and meditating and visualizing without taking action are wasting their time.

The competitors who are moving from one flurry of activity to another without the foundation of methodical, boring activities are just wasting their energy on the way to burning out.

That leaves you, with the most useful mindset for success. And it’s only a matter of time till you break through to the next level of influence, impact and income.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timelessentrepreneur.substack.com

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There are a few challenges that entrepreneurs at EVERY level deal with.

The challenge we’re covering today afflicts everyone from the freelancer starting out, to the business guru you see on stage.

And if you don’t rise to this challenge, you’ll never break through to a new level of growth, prosperity and freedom.

So the stakes are pretty high, now what’s the challenge?

Here’s Herjavic…

"Narrow your field of focus. Don’t try to do 20 things. If you want to build a great business, be great at one thing."

So if this is his BEST tip, why do most entrepreneurs ignore it and go screaming off in the other direction, trying to do 20 things at once?

I believe it comes down to 3 core fears, which we’ll explore today, and we’ll finish by sharing how you can capitalize on other’s lack of focus to take your business to the next level.

Fear drives us way more than we want to admit.

In fact, David Hawkins believes that thoughts are basically just our mind trying to justify and rationalize our feelings and fears.

So I want to dive into the fear of choosing ONE thing, so that we can release and overcome that fear.

Fear 1) Fear of Being Mislabeled or Misunderstood

If you’ve ever caught yourself saying, “I don’t want to pigeon-hole myself,” you know this fear.

It’s all about our identity.

We’re afraid to focus on one thing because we want to be understood and accepted for the totality of who we are. I don’t believe that’s possible.

Only the closest people to us will EVER know the totality of who we are.

Everyone else will get an image - a facade - that we present to the world.

Think about Richard Branson.

Do you think he wants to be RICHARD BRANSON - the IMAGE - every second of every day?

Of course not. But that’s the image he’s presented to the world, and anything that doesn’t fit that image would seem odd and out of place.

So if most of the world will only ever see an image, why not embrace it and choose what kind of image we present to the world…. and leverage it in our business?

Fear 2) Fear of Failure

If you’ve ever said, “If I only sell one thing, I’m leaving a lot of money on the table,” you know this fear.

Here’s a question to ask yourself.

If you knew you could just be great at ONE thing and have the influence, impact and income you want, would you do it?

I know I would. It sounds a hell of a lot better than spinning our wheels and staying stuck at the same level.

Now there are some who wouldn’t focus even if it got them everything they wanted, because they’re missing something and I’ll come back to that in a second…

But for you… if you KNOW you’d focus on one thing if you knew it would work, then being unfocused isn’t really your problem. Fear of failure is the problem and you’re compensating for it by doing 20 different things.

It’s the same reason as a young entrepreneur I ended up in 4 coaching/consulting ventures on top of my agency. Huge mistake, and I had to extricate myself from almost all of those. So I’ve been there.

Now, for all of us creatives in the entrepreneur space, here’s…

Fear 3) Fear of Boredom

Boredom is a kind of mental discomfort. So this really just fear of discomfort.

If you’ve ever said to yourself, “I can do both,” then you know this fear.

I know it too because I have a bunch of interests in my personal life.

But in my agency, we sell one thing to one type of person.

I built the entire business around solving one problem.

Because that business is the foundation and funds my lifestyle, I don’t play around in the agency.

It’s fundamentally a boring business at this point.

So boring that I’ve been able to systematize it down to 4 hours a week of my time to manage. I’ll put a link to a video that explains that.

So I laser focus in my core business…and scratch my creative itch OUTSIDE my business.

That would have been impossible if I kept telling myself, “I can do both. I can build a great business AND express my creativity through my business.”

That rarely works out.

But that’s how most creatives handle the fear of boredom.

So here’s the timeless principle in all this.

Find ONE problem to solve, and focus obsessively on solving that ONE problem at a high level.

The good news is that most entrepreneurs will refuse to do this, and that’s why this is such good news.

You can capitalize on their lack of focus and all their fears.

When you focus on being great at solving one problem…things fall into place.

YOUR message will be the one that cuts through the noise and grabs attention.

YOUR product or service will be the one that sells easier, because the benefits and stakes are clear.

YOUR business will be the one that’s easier to streamline because you’re not asking your team to do a million different things.

And YOUR business will be the one that becomes KNOWN.

You’ll escape obscurity and break into a new level of growth, prosperity and freedom.

If you want to get to the next level as an entrepreneur, doing 20 different things won’t get you there. Leave that for the entrepreneurs who will struggle and spin their wheels.

Do what they refuse to do. Put Herjavic’s tip into action.

Focus on being great at ONE thing, solving ONE problem.

If you enjoyed this episode and you’re curious about my real 4 Hour Work Week, check out the episode on What Tim Ferriss Got Wrong

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timelessentrepreneur.substack.com

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When you’re a new entrepreneur, by all means, hustle 24/7 and say Yes to everything.

But once you’ve hit a level of success as an entrepreneur, the same things won’t get you to the next level of influence, impact and income.

A few years ago I was at a Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting and I picked up this quirky book with a ridiculous title.

It gave me an inside peek into Buffet and his partner Charlier Munger based on decades of their own quotes and conversations.

So today we’ll share the keys to living a Warren Buffet day, smash the misconception that it’s reserved just for wealthy investors, and share one practical step to get started.

To live the Warren Buffet day, you can’t be reactive. You must proactively control your day, your obligations and commitments. You must build white space into your calendar.

The good news is that we know from the 80/20 Principle that 80% of our results come from 20% of our actions.

Which means we’ve got a bunch of stuff on our calendar right now that isn’t producing results.

So let’s get to pruning that stuff away.

Buffet says, “You’ve got to keep control of your time. Anyone who is too busy has no time to think, so we keep our calendar open and we’re very reluctant to add new commitments.”

The average Buffet day is a lot of reading, research, phone calls, and a LOT of white space for thinking.

Here’s what Buffet says about how they run Berkshire: “We don’t have meetings or committees, and I can think of no better way to become more intelligent than to sit down and read. In fact, it’s what we mostly do.”

Now most entrepreneurs will throw up all kinds of objections…

“I could never do that, because my team, my clients, my responsibilities…blah blah blah”

But remember, Buffet was operating this way before he was wealthy, and he had plenty of clients who gave him lots of money to invest. He didn’t start out a billionaire.

Plus, as an entrepreneur, thinking and making decisions can be the most valuable minutes of your day.

The time you spend making a great decision on where to put your time and energy is worth thousands of dollars an hour. Far more than squeezing in a few extra emails or meetings.

Third, deep thought plants the seeds of creative breakthroughs.

Buffet and Munger didn’t just invest a little bit smarter.

Berkshire was a creative breakthrough in business models. They did something completely different from other legendary investors like Ben Graham, George Soros, Paul Tudor Jones or Jesse Livermore.

Creativity doesn’t come when we’re constantly busy.

When we rush from call to call, meeting to meeting, taking selfies in between and feeling behind, we cannot think things through deeply.

It’s not how our subconscious minds work.

So we rarely get the kind of creative insights that lead to big leaps forward.

When you find yourself busy and rushing, look at your calendar and build in some white space.

Ok so you’re thinking this all sounds great, and maybe you even agree with me and you’d like to live the Warren Buffet day every day.

But how do you get from where you’re at to where you have all this space to think, make decisions and get creative?

The first step is simply this…Say No to Almost Everything

Buffet says, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is the very successful people say No to almost everything.”

When you’ve reached a level of success where you have more opportunities than you can handle, more potential partners than you need, more ideas than you could ever pursue…

It’s time to start saying No.

———

Now if you’re like me and you want to get to the next level of influence, impact and income, but you have limits to your energy level.

Whether it’s autoimmune or fatigue disorders, or you have kids, or you’re an introvert, so you just don’t have unlimited energy to pour into your business, I might be able to help.

I've opened up a couple slots a week to share the systems I’ve created for myself to focus and protect my own energy.

If you think you might want to steal some of those systems for yourself, let’s have a chat

So email or message me on Facebook and we can talk through that and see if I can be helpful.

Thanks again for listening and we'll see on the next episode!

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