 How to manage your time so you manage your growing business a couple ground rules for this talk number one You don't have to be here. So you can get up and leave you need to just feel don't feel trapped is all I'm trying to say Don't feel trapped by the room Number I'm real hard to offend number two You give yourself permission To not have anything required of you for this moment, right? So we're gonna do this talk It's not gonna be that long because I'm not intelligent enough to fill up a whole hour and Thank you for giggling and We're gonna do this talk and but give yourself permission to not be have anything required of you for like a whole 30 minutes Like for 30 minutes, you can exist in the world without having anything required of you I just want to get give you permission from me because I know that matters to you and give yourself permission So also these slides are on my website adamjwarker.com forward slash WCatl because I saw Nathan Ingram do that and I thought that was really clever So I stole his idea did it and actually some components of this talk He also talked about because his talk was about productivity and it was excellent So you might see some other things reflected there though. I did have them in the slides prior to his talk Just so we're all clear All right, so a little bit about me. Oh and I lost you on the slides. I don't know what happened. Oh There we go. Okay. I'm your host for the next 30 minutes or so. I'm a husband and father of five I love to start my bio with that husband and father five and I do that in case there's like a single person in the audience That's looking at me and thinking oh man. I really love middle-aged tired guys So I just want you to know like I'm a husband first. So sorry I'm also the co-founder of sideways eight, which is a digital marketing agency Some of you have seen some of us talked throughout the weekend, which is really fun Some team members are here best team ever and also the co-founder 48 and 48 We're a nonprofit that hosts events to build 48 nonprofit websites in 48 hours. We do events here in Atlanta We also do them in New York Boston. We're probably going to LA shortly. You're gonna be in Dallas this year London Somewhere else. I don't even know if you know a nonprofit that needs a website send me to 48 and 48.org That'd be great I also host three podcasts now one is tech talk y'all It's a tech comedy podcast because I think I'm funny the second one is good people good marketing It's a podcast about digital marketing for nonprofits and the third one is yet to be released but it's real pink by Susan G Coleman and sideways eight has created that and I'm hosting that podcast, which is awesome I also blog at Adam j walker comm about productivity and habit building and I don't know other insane things and I have a Twitter account where I tweet occasionally. So if you want to follow me there, that'd be awesome Actually, just tweeted this morning about 48 and 48 and needing more help getting nonprofits signed up So if you want to help me, you can retweet that that would be amazing You can just do that now and ignore everything else. I say for the next 15 minutes. That'd be fine All right, so we're gonna talk about productivity. So this is my family By the way, we have five kids I mentioned that and this is us in China because we're insane and We went to China because it was awesome really so I'm gonna interlace pictures of my kids throughout this presentation so that you'll stay entertained Because I'm not sure if the presentation is good enough. So I want to I feel like I need to butter you up with pictures of my kids So So this is us in China and I put this for the mindset slide because one of our mindsets as a family is travel over stuff So we don't really do the stuff thing and like the whole toys thing and all that stuff I just don't I don't need more stuff in my house. I got enough stuff in terms of people So I feel good about that So we went we went to China instead. It was great. So that's one of our mindsets We're gonna talk about mindsets for productivity So the first mindset that I want to talk about is never say busy. So people look at me They're like, okay, so you got three podcasts. You got five kids. You're married. You do all these home projects You got two companies you're trying like they kind of go through my whole bio and they first think I'm completely nuts Which is probably true and the next thing they say is you must be so busy And I'm like, no, I'm not I don't use that word. I don't believe in that word I think that word is complete junk. I never use the word busy and here's why right? So busyness is like a goldfish it grows to the size of the bowl that you give it, right? Like so I don't know if you know this but like goldfish can grow like real big like my father-in-law Has a goldfish in his pond and I swear the things like this big It's a goldfish like the little tiny ones that you get your kids over and over again and pretend It's the same one. Oh, yeah, that's Charlie the fish and then the next one like oh, yeah That's Charlie to you know Charlie just went on vacation for a day while we went and got another Charlie It's cool, you know and it's like that like they grow your busyness will grow to the size of the bowl that you give it And that's why you have to have very specific boundaries There's also Parkinson's law Parkinson's law is the adage that work expands to fill the time available for its completion That's the definition on Wikipedia, which we all know is true because it's on the internet Okay And the last thing is it's just listen busy. This isn't real. Let's just be let's just be real honest real talk for just a moment Okay, so how many of you when you were in school? Let's just go back a couple years when you were in school you thought you were busy. Just let me raise your hand Man, I was super busy in middle school like I would get home and I'm like I got so much homework I'm so busy. I can only play outside for like four hours You know and then like how many of you like you get in a like you're an adult relationship like not a kid But it like a real relationship like a real one and then you're like you're busy because you got another person now How many of you get in a real really just raise your hand come on be honest and you're like I'm busy now I got married and I was like, I'm I'm now know it's like to be busy. I wasn't busy before What was I doing before? I don't even know and then you have a kid and you're like, oh I wasn't busy when I was married. That was that was not me now I got a kid now. I'm busy. I got all this stuff and then you have two kids You're like, oh one kid was nothing. I could like go to the store I could like like breathe and shower and stuff, you know, and then you have like three in like now I'm at five kids and I look back and I'm like, I'm just not busy like it's just not real It busyness fills the space that you give it. It's not a real thing You don't have to be frantic You don't have to be busy all the time. So never say busy. Don't be busy. You don't have to be busy You can give yourself permission not to do it next mindset do less stuff How many of your daily tasks are truly impacting your business like give me a number somebody give me a number of how many of your daily Like what percentage of your daily tasks are really impacting your business? Anybody? 20% I Hear 40 40% anybody else. I mean just like this be real The reality is we do a ton of stuff every day and there is a lot of stuff in our daily lives and in our business That just does not make a difference It just doesn't And we spend all this time. Oh, we got to do this. I got to do this I mean, I Don't have to the 80 20 rule It's the Pareto principle also known as the 80 20 rule of the law of the vital few or the principle of factor Sparsity which sounds way cooler by the way says that for many events roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes I can look back at my business the growth of sideways 8 and in my role at sideways 8 is kind of like that top funnel sale So I'm the I like people come to me like hey, we need a website like oh, that's awesome You need a website. Let's talk about that for five minutes and let me talk Let me put you with my buddy Brett here Brett's over there and he takes him all the rest of the way. He does all the real work I just like I just you know wave at him like shake some hands and stuff right and If I look at my daily tasks in Reality very little what I do is directly impacting that but that's that's it. That's the thing that I do I bring in business and So one of the things I'm working to do is do less stuff because the reality is so much what I do ends up being fluff Some of the conversations that I do a lot of the meetings that I take. I don't need to take them Don't need or they don't need to be an hour. Oh my gosh How many of you schedule meetings and you just default to an hour anybody? Seriously, you all do it. Oh, we gotta have a phone call us an hour. Why? It doesn't need to be You can do it for 30 minutes So I'm trying to make my in-person meetings 45 minutes because there's no reason to an hour I can gain all kinds of time back and I'm trying to make my calls 15 to 30 minutes Because again doesn't need to be an hour. There's nobody setting these rules. There's all these things that we do We don't have to do them And the last mindset or I think this last one. We'll see it's think first Wait, how many of you okay? Listen, let's just be real. We're all in thought work, right? We all get paid to think is that Can we agree on that? How many of you are getting paid to like dig ditches anybody? Probably not. Okay. He's getting paid to dig ditches. We're all in thought work But we do it without thinking Let's just be real Like you get up in the morning and you sit down at your computer and you immediately start working and most of you start with Email, which is reactive and it's like, okay. Let's do email. Who's yelling at me? Let me fix their stuff first. Why? Because that's just what we do, but we don't stop to think What what impact would it make on your business and your life if you carved out? I don't know a half a day a Week a whole half a day to just think how do I make my business better? What's going well? What's not going well? What am I not seeing? Do you ever ask yourself that like what am I not seeing because there's somebody out there? That's about to swoop in and do something you didn't see and just knock you up I mean, it's my space versus Facebook My space is looking around like hey, I'm king of the world and Facebook sneaks right on in and who has a myspace account now like nobody Does it even exist anymore? Right, what am I not seeing? right So you have to put time to think about that in because somebody else is thinking about your business Somebody else is thinking about how to get that client Somebody else is thinking about how to win at what you're trying to do and if you're not thinking about it You're gonna lose out you're gonna miss Scheduled time to think Next is habits This is me at the Forbidden City and one of my habits is taking hat selfies because I wear hats all the time and I think it's funny That's all that's the only reason people like them. I don't get it like people come under like yeah, I see all your hat post Those are great Okay, I'm glad you like my eyes and hat, but that's cool, you know, so let's talk about some habits Number one do creative work first Because if you don't you look like that in the afternoon, that's me and my youngest son on the bus By the way, what one great thing about traveling in China with a family of seven is that when? You book a driver because you just don't want to go in taxis there So when you book a driver you get a bus. We didn't get a car We didn't get a van. We got a mini bus for a whole family. It was nuts That's me and my youngest son on our mini bus hanging out sleeping because we were exhausted So do creative work first. So again back to that idea. How many of you you sit down get your laptop out First thing in the morning email response response response response. You get to about noon I'm getting kind of hungry. Let me get some food. You get past your food And then you eat and then you're sleepy and then you think oh man. I gotta write that blog post How am I going to do that? I don't have any brain power left We don't because we forget that creativity Is a limited resource on a daily basis And you've got to do your creative work when you can do your creative work Nathan talked about this so determined and so for you Maybe that's like super late at night when everybody else asleep for me It's first thing in the morning if I'm going to write if I'm going to record if I'm going to create If I'm going to think creatively. It's got to be the first thing I do in the day forget all the other stuff Email can wait people can wait sometimes the kids can't wait, but you know how that goes, right? Everything else can wait I'm going to do the creative stuff first because that's the most important Contribution I can make for that day because there's certain things As business owners or as freelancers that only we can do And when we only give I don't know 80 of ourselves to that creative task later on or 70 of ourselves or 50 of ourselves in the afternoon or God forbid four o'clock when you're just like completely checked out It's not your best self Don't do that do creative work first next The two minute rules and by the way, I try to quote stuff like where books they came from because I didn't create this stuff I'm not that intelligent. I just obsessed about this stuff. Okay, so So two minute rules there's two two minute rules that sort of rule my world right now Okay, one two minute the first two minute rule is create new habits that are two minutes long So great example is the other day. I realized hey, I really want to write a book But to write a book You've got to be a writer And to be a writer You have to write A lot and then I looked at my day and I'm like, but I'm not writing That's stupid Okay So I decided to create the habit based on this book atomic habits Which by the way is amazing and you should get and read But I decided I want to create a habit of writing every day So I'm going to create the habit of writing for two minutes every day So the magic thing about this is you create a habit that's only two minutes long and you say I'm going to do this every day for two minutes and here's the beauty of it number one You can't not do something if you're only committing to do it for two minutes like come on two minutes I can do anything for two minutes. Okay So if I want to write for two minutes every day, I can make myself sit down and write for two minutes every day The other thing is you're always going to do it for more than two minutes Like you're going to start writing and like, oh, I can keep going. This isn't that bad It's just getting over that initial hurdle. So if you create habits that are two minutes long It sort of tricks your brain and say, okay, first of all, I don't have any excuse for not doing it Because it's only two minutes and then when you get into it, you're going to do more because it's only two minutes It's kind of beautiful Right. I love it. So that's my new two minute rule. It's changing my world The next two minute rule is real old school from david allen from the book getting things done If it takes less than two minutes, you better do it now When you get an email and somebody's asking you to do something and you think I don't want to do that But it's only going to take a minute and a half Do it Just be done with it because it takes longer to put it off and remember to do it later Then it doesn't just do it right then like think about it. If it's a two minute task And you got to write it down somewhere in your task management software Okay So you wrote it down. So maybe that's like 30 seconds or 20 seconds or whatever But then later when you look at your task management software in a week and a half because it was some pitly task You didn't want to do anyway Then you got to remember like what was this about and why am I talking? Why am I looking at this task? And then you don't know what it is and you have to remind yourself you have to re-up all that stuff And then it takes longer just do it takes two minutes take a look just get it done Next create routines. So this may be the best thing I'm going to say today. So if you've been just totally zoned out, that's cool This next line right here. You can tweet this. This might be tweetable. I don't know routines are your path to consistent productivity That's the great wall of china and not my family because I just I didn't have a good picture with my but I did take the picture Which is cool. Um, it's a path. See you get it, right? Come on everybody get it. Anyway, uh, so routines are your path to consistent productivity. So routines Deciding every morning. I'm going to do this in this order for this amount of time every evening I'm going to do this because here's the thing if you don't create create routines You are going to shoot yourself in the foot. Has anybody seen Seinfeld's latest Netflix show and he talks about like you can't trust night guys anybody seen that It's brilliant Like it's just straight and because basically what he's talking about is like look there's night guy that's like Hey, I'm going to go out. I'm going to party. I'm going to have fun I'm going to binge watch netflix till 3 a.m. And because it's all about me It's all about fun It's night guy and then morning guy is the guy that has to pick up the pieces of night guy that wakes up You know hung over and needs like 15 cups of coffee to like survive the day And just get by and so my point is you have to create a routine because you cannot trust night guy Night guy does not have your best interest in mind. Night guy is all about like immediate fun Not about getting work done, right? You can't trust night guy So you have to have routines that will allow you to overcome night guy to go to bed at a decent hour Whatever that looks like for you to get the rest that you need so you can wake up the next day and crush the day And daily habits so a couple daily habits that are big for me. Number one. I love this At the start of each day just write down three things you will do that day Absolutely. No matter what nothing fancy here. Take out a piece of paper and a pen Write it down. What are you going to do that day that's going to make your business better? What what are you going to complete that day that's going to move the ball for what three things only three What three things are you going to complete that day? Next habit clear out your email and what I'm you can do inbox zero if you want I like inbox zero some people can't handle inbox zero But the point is you got to make sure all the communication is complete every day Because if you're leaving stuff out there if you're leaving people out there they've communicated to you You haven't communicated back it gets weird Right it just does So so set expectations around your inbox make sure that communications circle is complete But as a part of that look set email limits, okay Like for me my team knows all clients have always known I do not check email after 5 p.m. I don't work after 5 p.m. By the way I do not check email after 5 p.m. I do not check email on the weekends I do not work on the weekends period ever into story. That's it except for maybe like a word camp I just don't do it I will not do it because work also is like the goldfish It'll fill up the time that you give it a step that Pareto principle I just won't do it And you know what happens that means that I have to focus on the tasks that are the most important And everything else just goes by the wayside all the stuff that I would have done that I probably didn't need to do All of it's just gone Because I only got a certain amount of time because I'm going to be at dinner with my family at 5 15 because we Eat stupid early because I go to bed stupid early because my kids go to bed stupid early Because I have to have sanity. Okay. That's just this would be real. You got to put into bed So I have some sanity in my life, right? So set email limits whatever those are for you Like this idea that you have to respond to an email like 10 minutes after you get it 5 minutes after you get it No, no, no, no. No, I check my email two or three times a day. That's it You will hear a response from me the same day. That's all you're going to get It may be hours. It's all you're going to get Set email limits make sure people know what they are I even have a tagline at the bottom of my emails that says like hey, I'm only checking this a couple times a day You'll hear from me shortly. I'll get back to you today Also get everything out of your head. So this idea like I'll remember to do that tomorrow. You will not You won't and then you'll tomorrow you'll spend 15 minutes trying to remember what you were supposed to remember Just get it out of your head write it down put it somewhere have a system for it somewhere We're going to talk about that more in a minute and then set your stop time and stop This is a big one for me Again, I set my stop time at five o'clock If the clock hits five, I'm done. I don't care what else is going on. I don't care what's happening Now if there's some like major event, there's some website down or a server's down like I'll okay I'll jump in I'll hop out where I can there like this. Let's be real But if I'm an email or I'm working on a personal project that can wait or I'm working on or whatever like It hits five o'clock. We're done And what's great about that is it forces me to prioritize So when I hit three o'clock in the afternoon, it's like, all right, I got two hours What am I going to get done with that two hours? And then I know What I can get done. I know what to accomplish, right? So set a stop time because you people that are working like till nine o'clock like with this Unlimited stop time. It means you work unlimitedly I don't think that's a word It's not good All right tactics. By the way, this was my tactic for the bullet train Going from Taiyuan back to Beijing and our tactic was tablets We don't really like screens for our kids But you got to do something with a three-year-old when you're in China and everybody's super jet lag. So That's our tactic So Nathan talked about this. This is a big one block scheduling Just block it out on your calendar If you know you have a big task to do then go, okay, so I've got this big task It's going to take me an hour when next week. Can I commit to doing that? No matter what? Put it on the calendar And I'm for me like I put like task Dash and what the task is so I know like I got a call. I got a podcast I got a task and I'm going to crush that task right then and when it gets when it comes time for that task It's like an appointment with your most important client, which is you. Thank you, Nathan Schedule it and do it next If you need to oh, yeah, that's it. Yeah, if you need something that's the whole thing. Sorry. There's not a next That's it blocking on your calendar Also group everything. This is my group. That's all I got So that's our that's us really happy before we took the 12 hour flight Are the two flights to Beijing? We're all happy in atlanta parts on our national airport so So group everything group types of tasks together So like when are you gonna do the same if you have the same types of recurring tasks group them all together Also group meeting locations. This was a huge win for me I don't know if any of you have done this But like I used to do a ton of meetings and I just bounce all over town. It's like I'm in midtown I'm in buckhead. I'm downtown. I'm everywhere and it would take forever to get there and then I thought this is stupid So now it's like, all right. I've got a I've got a midtown day I've got a buckhead day And then like maybe I'll I'll set up like a once a month, you know downtown day or something like that In every meeting I have I schedule in those slots and say, all right, so where's your office? Oh, you're in midtown. I gotta come to you. Okay. Well my next midtown day is this thursday Do you have any time that day? I got these times. Oh, you don't have those times? No problem My next midtown day is like the next month. Can we now obviously if it's a client and you're trying to land a deal Okay, like you got to go and you got to go. I get that I do the same thing. If it's a big client I'll show up wherever wherever you're at. We'll go there I even went down to Orlando recently just to land like listen, I'll be there They still turn me down. I'm a little bitter. It's okay But the group it all together right put it all and then calls like put your calls together Just just bounce them together back to back to back to back And also just a word of the wise if you are doing a bunch of calls I recommend at least 10 minutes in between to make some notes and like breathe Like make notes breathe, you know bio breaks coffee more coffee. Those are good things So calls are great grouping everything together And then lastly have a system Not lastly have a system process for everything. So this is all of our backpacks So when we did take all of our kids to china, you know five kids and the seven of us We only took backpacks, which people thought we were totally nuts because we're in china for a week You can only do one backpack per person and that's what we did. It was great You have to have a system for everything. So I created a whole system for our backpacks, right? This is how we're gonna do it. So you have to have a task system. What's your system for this? What's your process? How do you think about it? So for me, it's a combination of calendar To do this I love to do this anybody else use to do this to do this is a great app Yeah, really good. Okay to do this. It's kind of to do this and What really just those two things for me for tasks for meetings again, it's locations I also set aside times for phone calls during the week So I have specific times that I do phone calls specific times that I do meetings specific locations that I do meetings work Have a system for how you're going to get work done Like like nathan talked about when are the times that are going to be dedicated only to projects One of the times that are going to be dedicated only to sales One of the times they're going to be dedicated only to marketing for yourself Can we be honest like we don't do that, right? We don't dedicate marketing time for ourselves very much Like let's just be real like it gets chef to the back But how great would it be if we did it? right You also need systems you need to automate or systematize As much as you possibly can great example that I've got a podcast good people good marketing by the way As a side note podcasts are a really great tool for business lead generation I wrote a blog post about it on sideways eight dot com if you want to check it out You can I told you how to do everything I gave away my entire system So if you want to check it out have at it But I've got a whole system for that so basically my role In the podcast process is record with the guests And then I've got several things automated where the guests schedule themselves And then I've also got team members that have specific tasks that they take care of along the way So that I can keep moving forward. So I've got I've got virtual assistants looped in And automations through like Calendly and things like that So I've got a whole process in place that just makes the podcast run really really smoothly really quick So I can record, you know five six episodes in one day no big deal And then everything sort of gets taken care of on the back end All right, lastly, this is a method that I honestly just totally made up So it may be good or maybe not Nathan's method may be very maybe better But this is we do a 555 method for sideways eight So the idea is lay out five goals each year that are going to move your business towards your ultimate goal Okay, five goals. So that's the criteria for the goals right move your business toward the ultimate goal five goals each year Five goals for each month and then five goals for each week And then we break those down into three things you absolutely will do that week no matter what And then if one of our team members doesn't do it We ask why because there's got to be accountability and then two pie in the sky task Okay, it'd be great if I could get to this and then you never do because come on, right It's a pie nobody gets a pie in the sky task. Everybody's got stuff going on So I did write a blog post about that by the way if you want to take a look that explains the whole thing We do it all in a google sheet. It's super simple easy to keep up with it's great And that is my whole talk. I told you it would take about 30 minutes and I think I'm at about 28 So now we got some time for q&a also just quick. Oh, thank you There you go Couple quick notes again my slides are at adamjewalker.com.com slash wcatl Also, you can I like this you can check out our sense of humor at sideways eight calm If you want to see our agency website We do have you can read the agency website in business english or sarcastic english if you prefer everybody prefers sarcastic english So let's just be real Also, if you know a non-profit that needs a free website, send them to 48 and 48.org Please please please I beg of you tweet about it today Please we're doing a non-profit drive right now and we really desperately need nonprofits to sign up So uh, and now it's time for some questions. So did you have a question? Sign up there you go one more non-profit. Here we go. All right. Yes, sir Excuse me when or what drove you to do all of this organization and really really streamlined as the way you have Share necessity and In frailness of my mind No, I mean honestly, like it's been something I've obsessed about ever since I read david allen's book getting things done probably 10 years ago And it's always spiraling in the back of my mind and then as I I have a bad habit of adding more things to my plate. Um It becomes even more necessary, which actually is kind of great on to be honest like I I love adding things to my plate because it makes me focus that much more intensely on the things That only I can do in every other area, which is which is kind of great. All right What else we got? Are we doing mics or Yeah, just shout it out. That's fine. So my next question right here. Hello. Thank you. Okay. My question was about your 5 5 5 Do you guys set those as a team or do you assign them? And then I wanted to hear a little bit more about the accountability with the yeah So we do it in a google sheet each person sets their own and there is the assumption that if Your sucks that we can challenge you on it and tell you it sucks and then honestly the accountability is Is if you don't get it done for the week we highlighted in bright red so that everybody knows that you didn't get it done And it's public shaming. Uh, so actually I highlighted one of mine in red for last week to be quite honest But then you had them in green if you did get it done and then you feel really good about yourself So but public shaming works really well. Honestly. Yeah What are some of your favorite productivity apps or tools and how do you also deal with it if you're one of those people who Hypothetically uh thrives on being busy and having a full to-do list and gets almost more anxious relaxing Yeah, that's a great question. Uh, so tools to-do list is a big one also our teams use teamwork Which is great and then trello is is pretty amazing as well. We use that for 48 and 48 quite a bit and and for those that thrive on business, so I forget if it hurts if I heard Nathan say or somebody else, but I Business is not a badge of honor So I think you have to be careful about identifying with business as success And I think that's the problem with our culture is we identify Business as success so when somebody says like hey, how are you you say I'm busy in that way they think that you're successful And in reality, I don't think that's true at all and so I but I think for those of you that just need your stuff You don't like downtime like that's fine. You don't have to have downtime. You can have you can have organized You know productive downtime, right? But it's just it's this idea of frantic busy-ness that I think we have to get past if that makes sense Because I'm the same way like I I want to know what I'm doing like I want to keep going But I don't want to be busy That makes sense. Yeah. Hey Um, so you said use teamwork and trello And those are good ways to do like the task management What do you do about getting your processes documented and your roles and responsibilities and kind of the The higher level of business process mapping We're getting better at that Um, we use honestly a lot of google docs. So we have a we have a we have a defined process for creating processes that Fortunately, I did not even create somebody else on our team created it and it's fantastic I think julie might have created it actually julie's right here. Uh, so you can maybe ask julie later But uh, but I mean we we have a process for creating processes and we walk through that and like here's how this works So that everything is legitimately mapped out in a way that is scalable because if we're all honest We want to grow our businesses and the reality is you cannot grow your business unless you have processes in place You just can't do it. It's not it's just not possible Okay, what else who who's next somebody else from mic. Yep Hi What do you do? How did you get so that you could do calendar blocking and like follow your calendar because I hate calendar blocking and everybody says calendar blocking and it makes me Crazy because I'm defiant and my calendar will not tell me what to do So I honestly The best thing you do in my mind is accountability So I try to be accountable both to my team and also to mentors And so like so there's certain things in my life that are super important to me That I hate one of those is getting up at 5 a.m. Every day like I am Like people think like oh you get up at 5 a.m. Every day. You're a morning person. No, I'm not a morning person I hate mornings mornings are the worst. I'll kill you Okay, uh, but I yeah, there you go But I have a mentor and friend and I text him every single day that I get up And if I don't get up at 5 a.m. He busts my chops and because I know that's what's best for me Right. So same thing. I would I would get a mentor and a heartbeat a friend accountability partner somebody like that Yep Hey, Adam. I was in the Session that you did the 48 and 48 a couple of years ago when you had just kicked it off. Sure. And so I'm glad that it carried on What criteria are you do the charities need to reach a certain or have specific criteria simple Real simple criteria. So every charity for 48 and 48 three things Uh 501 c3. So, you know non-profit 501. It's actually a non-profit Two under three million dollar revenue per year because over three million Their tights tend to be too complex and they should probably just have a budget and three Let's see. Oh, uh, generally non-religious non-political. What I mean by that is So like if there's a soup kitchen that means out of a church basement, that's fine But we're not going to do a website for like a place of worship because we don't want to end up in that awkward situation Where we have somebody of one religion building a website to promote a different religion. That's weird So we're not going to put somebody in that position. So that's that's pretty much it All right. Who else we got? Yep Um, so you talked about doing the creative work first But I've noticed when I do my creative stuff first like I like doing in the morning. I kind of forget I still have to actually work if that makes So how do you how do you manage that like um doing your creative tasks first But then being able to actually work on the stuff you do actually need to finish I find it really helpful To to take to do things that'll reset my day a little bit So like hop up Do like so for me like I'll actually do a lot of creative works sometimes like six in the morning Because that's when my kids are still sleeping in the house is actually quiet for once and like I can like think Um, and so like I'll do that, but then I'll I'll have my breakfast like after that So it's sort of almost like resets my day So I can sort of get started or like same thing in the afternoon Like I've gotten a bunch of stuff done in the morning. I've eaten lunch I'm getting to that sluggishness like go take a 10 minute walk get out in the sunshine like reset my mind a little bit And then I can come back and start doing some actual work Yep Yeah, I'm quick question. Um, one of the things I'm kind of running into is planning and making sure that I'm planning my time accordingly for each day, especially for each week so I can make sure I'm getting the tasks accomplished um Two I guess a two-part question One is it one of those things for me? Is it better to kind of plan in the morning or at night right before you go to bed and two how long should you plan? yes, I think I think it depends right so first of all, uh, so I think Every week you should plan for the next week generally, right? So every month like so I have a mentor that said Uh, once a day plan your perfect day once a week plan your perfect week once a month plan your perfect month And every once in a while plan your perfect lifetime He's pretty brilliant. So that's that's really what I try to adhere to So as far as time goes, I mean so planning your week probably takes a little longer I'd like give yourself a good hour to plan your week, but for planning like your day planning tomorrow I mean a lot of times if you plan your week well planning tomorrow's five minutes ten minutes You know really really short as far as when you should do it for me. I do not When five o'clock comes I'm off. I'm done. I do not want to think about work. I am dad mode full out I am not I don't want to come back to work. I'm just not going to do it So I would never plan a night personally some people they can't go to sleep unless they plan tomorrow And that's fine. Like if that's how you're wired you can do that. I just for me. I'm not going to do that That makes sense. All right Over here same spot. This is like the popular table for questions We all kind of figured out what we wanted to ask you. Um quick question and like a follow-up question So, uh, five o'clock during the week you're done. Do you work on the weekends at all? No, no Okay, so when do you find time for that like intense extreme focus to really drive the needle forward? Are you just booking that throughout the day? Yep. I try to do it on mondays my goal is that So we typically will do some like team kickoff meetings early in the mornings on mondays And then I try to lock down from there and all monday morning up and up until just after lunch Or just at lunch is like my time to like really plan think Okay, kind of last thing there with that Do you actually block that time out in your team knows not to bother you during that time? Is that how that how you've done that well that and I just ignore them I mean, I mean just I mean just be honest like I mean like like slack is great Listen slack is awesome But you got to have dark times like we've started doing this with our teams Like like you got to have times where you know you can go dark and nobody's going to scream at you And in whatever those times happen to be and so my team knows like I'm going to go dark sometimes and it's okay Yeah, absolutely How do you manage your creative time because I find myself Sometimes doing my creative work and I get so caught up that like time goes by and I forget to even eat lunch sometimes So how do you manage that? Yeah, the worst is when you're doing that and then you go Oh, I had a call 30 minutes ago Man, so I actually set timers like I said like all day long like I'm like I look at my calendar And I'm like, oh, okay. All right. I've got a podcast interview in 30 minutes And like even in those 30 minutes, like I'll just completely lose track of time So I'll set a timer for 25 minutes. So when that timer goes off, I know, oh crap. I gotta actually do something now What is it? And so I just I'm always setting timers like all day long. Siri loves me, you know So, all right. Yeah What systems do you have in place for food and exercise? So what system that plays food and exercise so Right now I'm doing something a little bit new. My wife is a new Fitness coach with a program called faster way to fat loss Not that I necessarily have fat to lose but I have muscle to gain because I've been a stick my whole life and so I'm so actually there's like an eating program with that And then a workout program. So I try to work out. I actually train for go ruck tough events. Anybody do go ruck events Anybody in here anybody nobody nobody else is insane. Okay Go ruck tough events are basically like it's like being in like marine boot camp for 12 hours Like you're an idiot for doing it basically So, you know, I read a whole blog post about it on my blog if you want to read it But um, so I do train for it. So you end up working with like 40 50 pounds on your back for like 20 miles and stuff like that So I train for those so I try I try to train 30 minutes to an hour a day if I can most of the time Oh, yeah, so yeah, five five my me and my training buddy meet up at 5 15 a.m There's no other time. I got like if it doesn't happen It didn't happen at 5 15 this morning and happened today. I got that kind of time. Yeah So you talked about a lot of your organizations What are your some of your favorite organizational tools that you use? Uh, I mean really like like I said Trello teamwork is great. Um, google docs. Honestly, we use google docs like crazy Uh, to do this is awesome. Um Those are the big ones for me. Yeah, I can't think of any other ones that are big I'm a big audible listener by the way. I'm trying to listen to 35 books this year I listen to or read 35 books this year some all about audible like listening while in the car, which is great I'll let the atomic canvas one anybody else Is that it? Yes There's a lot of them. Uh atomic habits is amazing. Uh, never split the difference. Have you heard that about negotiation? Oh my gosh, so great So so good. Uh, there's like 15 others that are not immediately coming to the top of my head now Charles do Higgs stuff is really good. Yeah, I do blog about the books that I've read Yeah, I often blog about those that'd be a good place to check them out. Uh as well What's that? I would see those I have to read those Okay, nice. I'm all about that I love it Plans tomorrow. It's I've ever read that one either Yep Sure That's tough, um And I think honestly it's going to depend on how aggressive you want to be right So client work is always going to get client work and it's and it's going to be a slow grow, right? And that and that's just how it happens like a business is momentum And business growth is momentum and if you if it's if it's if you're a hundred percent client work It probably will grow but it's going to be slow if it's 80 percent client work and 20 percent like go get them sales It's going to grow faster And so you've got to figure out like so I don't I don't know there's a magic number for that It's just a question of like what can you do And like and how can you like I mean so I would ask you the question like How much client work can you afford to to only do so like for example? If you're compact if you say I need X amount of dollars per month That means I've got to do client work for 70 percent of the time per month Then there's your number 70 percent and the other 30 percent is growth growth growth growth But but it's going to be different for every person Does somebody else over there have a question Yep, sure Go work tough. Yeah g o r u c k tough. It's crazy. You should do it. It's awesome. And then um Could you explain the do less thing again? Like I kind of got it, but I didn't get it like well So the do less thing is this like so so we're marketers or we're we're business people And we get distracted by shiny objects a lot, right and in new ideas But the reality of that is like we spend all this time on these shiny objects or new ideas That we could spend doing something that's much more effective for our business, right? So a great example of that is like, okay. Well, I know that I need to run google ads for my business I've already got the targeted audience built and it's going to affect my business Like that's going to directly impact my business I know I need to do that But I don't really want to do that because that's not fun So I'm going to go over here and do something else I want to write a blog post or do our podcast that's fun, which is also important But that's a slow grow model, right? That's it's going to take more time for that to have effect than for this direct thing over here to have effect And so we spend a lot of our time doing things that don't necessarily Have the most impact for our business And so my point is drop the stuff that you're doing That's not having a direct and effective impact on your business and pick it up later You know put it on pause for a month and if it if you miss it come back to it. Otherwise don't You know Anybody else? All right, then I guess we're done I'll be around