 What I learned interviewing all those highly successful people is, I mean, they weren't using a to-do list. I'd ask them about they, what? I'm like, well, what do you mean you don't use a to-do list? I had huge to-do list. And how have you been doing, Kevin? Obviously, we're all concerned. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting times for sure. I mean, thankfully, so I'm outside of Philadelphia. We've been locked down for about a week. I think Philly went into lockdown even before the rest of the state. And fortunately, no friends or family members or employee friends or family members have been affected from the health care-wise way. But it's certainly pretty crazy. And I think that we've been a work-from-home first, work remote first culture. You guys are used to working all over the place, right? So that part hasn't really been it. But I think I'm usually very chill, Mr. Focus, very stoic. But even this is testing me. It's hard not to grab your phone over and over again to be like, hey, what's the stock market? And hey, didn't Trump just come on? Hey, what's so-and-so recommending? What's my state's daily count? What's my county's daily count? Like, it's just hard when there's so much information. It's hard to kind of push it out. And I'm trying, and I'm trying to give tips to my team. But how can we all not be kind of consumed by this, right? For myself, it's not only trying to get that information. It's that need to see if there's anything else there. And that's ingrained in human beings to want to get as much information as possible, because that's how we make decisions. However, there is a lot of information that is not helpful. And then there's also information. If you keep digging, you're going to find a bunch of things that are going to freak you out. And they're just not really relevant. But if you keep digging, you're going to keep finding stuff. And there is so many conspiracy theories. And they're all laid out in a way that you don't really know that you're in one until you get to a certain point and then realize that you've been reading something that has been leading you in that direction for about a half an hour. And then you realize, oh, no, I'm in another conspiracy. And so it is those rabbit holes of information that tend to get a little scary if you're not cautious to where you end up. Yeah. And you guys are both in the LA area. Is that right? Yes. Separate, but in LA, yes. We are separated by a few blocks. But I was talking to a client of ours in Denmark. And he owns a company that has locations in the US and he was actually out in Washington recently and talking to some of his staff members in the state of Washington right before the flare-up. And he was remarking just the difference in tone between his staff members in Denmark where there is a very high confidence in government and government officials versus the level of confidence or lack of confidence in the information we're getting here in the United States. And he was saying that when he was talking to his staff members in the US, they just were so distrusting of everything. And for that reason, he was very concerned at our ability to handle this crisis because you really are not, as Johnny was saying, operating from an even playing field of information right now. And we're all kind of going and exploring and trying to figure out heads or tails in this uncertainty. And of course, it is leading us to a lot of discontent, a lot of anxiety and stress, and also an inability to just come up with solutions that we can all agree on. Yeah, that's right. And I'm not trying to strain myself to push this onto a leadership topic, but there's that old saying about if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go with others. And right now, in times of crisis, you usually want to go fast. But that command and control presence, first of all, in the United States, it's not set up like every state's got a governor and every governor's got all these county commissioners or whatever they are, right? Like in general, it's the best system in the world, right? 200 plus years of success, awesome, it's great. In times of crisis, when you've got that divided command and control, and then when it's a time when one half of the country doesn't trust what the other half is doing, no matter what the heck that thing is, right? It's just an automatic. So you can just, we can all feel literally from coast to coast, this craziness and what do we believe in and the different pieces of information. And there's not confidence that it's taken care of. And I don't see how we're getting confidence in that anytime soon. Look, I'm certainly not a healthcare professional, I'm not an economist. It was a Thursday ago, I did just 24 hours, I flew from Philadelphia Airport to San Francisco Airport, had a one hour meeting at a pharma company. They actually literally shut down in the middle of my one hour meeting. And I went back to the airport and flew home. And in that 24 hours, there were several Uber drivers that said, I'm making one fourth this week, what I made last week. A waitress in the little diner area of the hotel almost teared up saying, I paid $2,000 a month to live in San Francisco and I've got two hotel jobs to pay for that. My other one just laid me off yesterday. And then she looked around, there was six people in the whole restaurant, right? I'll spread out, like how much longer are they gonna keep me around? Now this was before the shutdown in California, before the shutdowns in New York. And so if you think about that economic impact of even a week ago, I mean bartenders, waiters, waiters, my son, I've got 16 year old son, he and I love basketball, go Sixers. And when they shut down, I mean, certainly it hurts as a sports fan, but I said to Owen, like for every one NBA game out there, think about all the people helping to park cars, security, selling beer, cleaning up afterwards. I'm like, they're not getting paid. I mean, it's incredible the economic impact that this is gonna have. And obviously we look to leaders for certainty and leaders are trained to deal with uncertainty. And with a lack of leadership, we all now have this pressure to become our own leaders, to lead our families, to lead our businesses, to lead our communities. And how can we do that in the face of uncertainty? And how can we be better prepared for the uncertainty that's yet to come? Because it feels like it's getting less and less certain by the day. AJ, I wanna just for our collective listeners, like you just said some really smart things there that I wanna make sure everybody heard because I always say leadership is actually not a choice. If leadership is influenced, we're influencing everyone all the time. We're just influencing in a good direction or a bad direction, right? And so just to what you said, leadership isn't about running a big business or being a Fortune 500 CEO. It's certainly many of us are team leaders and all the rest, but we're leaders of our families, no matter who we are in our family, we're leaders in our communities, we're leaders in our friend groups, whatever it is, we're influencing everybody around us. You guys know this. I mean, emotions are contagious. You guys really know this. Confidence is contagious and lack of confidence is contagious, right? So how, what you just said was gold, certainty defeats anxiety, but in times like this, it's hard to know what is still certain. And there's no easy answers. I mean, with my three kids, two are college kids sent home, one's in high school, his high school shut down. They're like day to day, like what's going on? Windsor school opening and is there gonna be graduation? I can't lie and say, oh, sure, all that's gonna be just fine. Yeah, sure, graduation will still be there. Don't worry about that. No, but I can talk about like the longer arc of like, listen, you're gonna get a degree. The classes aren't the same as being a person, but they're gonna be there. You still have friends and it's easier than ever before to hop on and communicate with your friends and next year will be better. The year after that will be better. On the team, like lead X were, I mean, we're three years old, but we're still a tech startup, very fragile. And I was straight out, like when I flew back on that airplane back to Philadelphia, I saw what I heard. I wrote this long letter and I said, guys, I live through the doc, I'm an old guy. So I managed through the dot com bust in 2000, the 9-11, the 08 financial, I said, this is gonna be worse. I can just tell it's gonna be worse. We need to be ready to not make one new sale in the next 90 days, but here's what we know. We've got this much cash in the bank and that's gonna last us this many months of roadway. We sell one thing that gets even further out. We can scrimp and save a little, that gets extended even further out. We know that in the 25 biggest stock market crashes in history, the following year was up almost an equal amount. There's always been like a trampoline. If you go and look at the 1918 flu pandemic, whatever it is, the market in a 10-year period is always great, you know, 70s weren't so good. But other than that, if you can take your focus off of this day, this quarter, probably the rest of this year, things start to look really bright. And I try to say what's certain is that things will change. And the more we can participate that in the better. You know, out of that World War I, 1918 chaos came the roaring 20s. I mean, it was the invention of jazz and dancing and drinking and cars and radio. You know, out of World War II, hey, women went to work while the men fought and they didn't wanna go home again. It totally changed society for the better. So I mean, this sucks. Like this really sucks right now. I don't lie to anybody about it, but we can be certain that as long as we take that view out to at least a year and certainly 10 years, it's gonna be great. It's absolutely, the long arc of history only goes in one direction. Something that we mentioned there that I wanted our collective listeners to understand is when we're talking about leading an AJ and I, we said on the podcast all the time that you're going to have to lead yourself. And we're influenced by those who are around us and that influences our decisions that we're gonna make. We do know that in order to help this, we've never been asked to do so little to help so many. And that means staying in your home. Now, for myself, I have an apartment that overlooks the common area in my building and the pool. And being stuck in here and by myself, I'm certainly seeing the sunshine and LA as it is right now. And the other day I'd seen somebody go into the common area and lay down on one of the chairs at the lounge chairs at the pool. And I just thought to myself, how nice would that be? Now, I know that I'm not allowed down there and whatever that person was doing, they were breaking the rules in the building. But it wasn't very, it didn't take if maybe if another person or another person decided, oh, that looks good, they're gonna go down there. How many people would it take for me to break what I'm doing to just go ahead and join them? Because, whoa, everyone else seems to think it's okay. But in this moment, it is important for everyone to understand and lead themselves and look at their actions rather than what everyone else is doing. Everyone else is hoarding toilet paper, perhaps that's not such a good idea. Everyone else is putting 30 things of frozen pizzas in their cart, perhaps that's not such a good idea. There needs to be a responsibility of ourselves because we're going to be influencing everyone else who are around us, who are in that store, who are watching from their windows to that common area. And actions speak louder than words, right, Johnny? I mean, to your point, isn't just talking a good game. Hey everybody, be safe, be healthy, whatever. It's don't be the person to go hoard all that tissue paper. I was out at the grocery store this morning coming back and it was like, I am intentionally going to pause and let people cut in front of me in traffic. I'm gonna slow down if we're both reaching that same canned good and let the other person have it. And it's hard to do, right? Because again, we get impacted by all the stuff and we act out of fear. We're humans, humans act out of fear. But now is the time to lead even among strangers. And I like that. Again, one person's at the pool, oh, that's good. I'll just go down to the pool and I'll go on the other side. And then the third person goes down and I'm here in the LA beaches are a little busy today, by the way, boys. I'm glad you guys aren't there yourself. Well, they had to shut down parking for that exact reason because people were going there over the weekend. And listen, it's tough being cooped up at home. No matter where you are, we do want to be able to go out and enjoy ourselves. But as Johnny was saying, that small sacrifice right now could lead to this being the next greatest generation. That's right. Look at the long arc of history and it's all about making those sacrifices and it starts with each of us. Now, before we dive into your amazing book that we both love and the title, Great Leaders Have No Rules, does that still apply in a crisis? Are there rules or amendments or addendums you would like to make now before we unpack the book? Yeah, I guess that's a good place to start. You know, I've written a bunch of books, some indie published, some traditional published and this was a traditional one and they picked, I gave them 10 titles in rank order. They picked the 10th title like this. I do not like the title of this book. More accurately, it should be Great Leaders Make No Rules. Now, I always start to say, look, I'm making a point which we'll get into here about rules versus standards and things like that. But look, if a company has to follow laws, you should follow laws. If there are certain things that are for people's safety, okay, there are probably good rules. Having said that, the premise, the idea is that most people don't like rules. Every time you bump into a rule, especially at work, but it could be at home, it becomes a little bit more like it's their company, not my company. You know, I didn't give myself that rule. I just showed up and there's a rule. Someone else made it. Someone else is in charge and I'm being controlled. This is not my company. This is not my family. And so a better approach is to co-create as much as possible with your family, with your company, with your team, standards of excellence, standards of performance. And can I share the story of how the book even came about when I bumped into a rule? So this was a while ago. Now I've sold, I've started and sold a few different companies. I was 30 years old, sold a company. And it was like an acquisition. So I was on board for like another year or two on an earn-out and I'd be reporting to the CEO and the CEO told me, his name is Rudy and he says, Kevin, you know, don't think of me as your boss because we're both partners. We still own a lot of stock. Like I just have partners. We're gonna figure this out together. You know, it's one vote at that board table on whatever it is. It doesn't matter how many shares we each own. We're equal partners. That sounded pretty damn good, right? Like, oh, this is good. I like this. I like this guy. So I was in the job about a month and I had submitted my expense report first time ever submitting an expense report. And then the check comes back. I noticed it was like short by about $4. Not a big deal, not a lot of money, but I just thought like maybe I filled out the form wrong like something's weird here. Shot off an email to the CFO, Don said, hey, Don, did I do something wrong? I noticed it's short four bucks and change. He responds back and he says, no, we deducted your post-it notes. We don't reimburse for post-it notes. Huh, that's kind of weird. So I email him back. Why? He emails me back. Wasteful expense. So all of a sudden I bumped into my first rule. Supposedly I'm equal with the CEO. Supposedly I'm a partner in this firm. Supposedly I've got a vote on the board and I can't buy post-it notes. So how much did I really feel like I was there equal and everything else? That disengaged me. What are you talking about? I can't buy post-it notes. So it turns out I go to the CEO, Rudy, and I say, WTF, what's going on here? And I explained to him, I didn't really understand employee engagement leadership that I do now, but I explained to him, hey listen, this does not feel good when your employees can't get reimbursed for something like post-it notes. This tells them it's your company, Rudy, not theirs. You made this rule, it's not theirs. And to Rudy's credit, he said, Kevin, I had no idea people were bummed out about this rule. He says, fine, the rule's gone, don't worry about it, go ahead, buy all the post-it notes you want. But let me explain where it came from. He says, one of our official values is growth and profit. Now it sounds like a weird corporate value to have, but he had a whole thing about it. He's like, look, the purpose of life is not to breathe, but you need to breathe in order to live and profits are what cash, profits is what helps us to pursue our mission. It's about just being frugal. And he said, I would walk through the office, see everybody's post-it notes, they'd be doodling on them, just little designs, they'd be writing phone messages on them. He says, you wanna know what I use? And he reaches over and he had a stack of paper, like scrap paper that he had ripped twice. So these little ragged pieces of paper. That's what I doodle on, that's what I write little notes on, they're free. And so his point was that he was trying to use no post-it notes as a symbol of frugality, as an example of living up to corporate values. But nobody sat me down to tell me this, no one explained it in that way. It was just like, there's this rule, no post-it notes. So we ain't giving you your $4 back. And so once I, so I knew I could buy post-it notes, right, he changed that rule. I never did in the five years that I stayed there. I would buy them, but I wouldn't reimburse them. I wouldn't ask for reimbursement. Because look, I wanna be a good corporate citizen. I wanna be a representative of being frugal and all that. But the difference is, imagine if on my first day, instead of Rudy giving me the BS speech about, we're equals and blah, blah, blah, what if he said, hey, listen, we've got some standards here that most of us have adopted. And it starts with our values. So see this value about growth and profit. One of the ways we remind ourselves about frugality is, we try not to buy things like post-it notes because you could just use a paper. We try not to, I don't know, stay in a hotel when we travel above $100 a night. We try not to, but see, this is a very different thing than a rule. Not to mention that rules tend to backfire anyway, right? So if there was a rule that we can't spend more than $100 a night on a hotel, well, if the hotel closest to our client was $110, we'll spend $70 on the rental car to stay at the cheaper hotel 10 miles away. Well, is that what the purpose was? No, but we're following the rules. So that was the birth of this idea is around, rules, when you don't create them, then it's like, hey, this is disengaging, easy to misuse it or to violate it anyway. And you go from being a leader, leadership is hard, but it's easy to be a rule enforcer. Hey, AJ, you got too many buttons unbuttoned on your shirt there, that's not professional, I don't like your shirt. Or Johnny, you came in at 9.08 today, you know, nine o'clock is the starting time. Well, that's just a rule enforcer, that's not leadership, right? So that's why I really, I was 30 years old when I bumped into that and it kinda sparked this journey about rules versus standards in which rules are usually just stupid out there. Like these principles of management, open door policies and all these things that we just take for granted as, oh, that's just the truth. And it really isn't that way at all. Something you mentioned there, and AJ and I have talked a lot about rules or values over rules that we've talked about living through our values and how it's important that it plays a role in allowing us to engage in the things that allow us to be happy. But at the same time, also, when engaging in values rather than rules, I think it also does wonders to help your staff guide themselves rather than trying to figure out how to make that role. It's easier decision making on them. And as a company that has employees, I've seen them be so tentative on making decisions or just not making decisions because they were afraid to make the wrong one because of a rule rather than focused on a value. That's right. I love that. Yeah, and I was gonna add, you say in the book, rules take away possibility. And look at where we are now. You hear this phrase all the time. Don't let a good crisis go to waste. And what's the first thing that's happening in this crisis? All rules are out the window. We have to take them off the table for there to be possibilities to band together to solve a crisis. But yet so many of us get blinded by the rules in our daily lives and we get attached to them that removes our ability to see possibilities. Can you imagine this day, what we're living through right now and the old school managers that are out there that were the rule managers who looked at their watch or when their team members walked through the door, never wants anyone to work from home because my God, how do I know they're working if I don't see them sitting in a cubicle? Dress code, police, like all these buttoned up, horrible bosses that now have no choice but to figure out how to get work done with every freaking rule they ever thought of out the window. It's insane. Now you brought up the open door policy and I myself have been guilty of this and Johnny actually called me out on this after reading the book because I as a manager want to keep a pulse on my team. I want to know what's going on so that I can make great decisions, so that I can guide everyone. But at the same time, it's easy to get a little bogged down with an open door policy. And I think for a lot of our listeners, they're going, well, wait a second here, why are we throwing out that rule? I like that rule. How did that come about? Well, it's, and again, like all of these rules that I talk about in the book, they come from a good place. They always start with a good intent. And so the idea of an open book, open door policy rather, is, hey, let's facilitate communication. Let's cut through red tape. And not only can I go in and bug my boss anytime, I can leapfrog and go to any leader in a company and flatten the organization. All this sounds great. And the reality is, especially this day and age, that rule's been around a while, right? It makes it, especially in these, when everybody works in an office, of course, right? Makes it impossible to get any serious work done, the deep work, because every, you're just interrupted nonstop. And it still applies, even if you're sitting in a cube and not an office, like, well, I don't have a door. No, but you're getting tapped on the shoulder. That's even worse. Or I'm at home, but the Slack channel is buzzing every two seconds. And I, John is like, yeah, that's happening. And then you feel compelled to answer it. And so this idea is like, hey, we, the way communication is now and the way that policy has evolved, it's becoming really difficult to get any serious work done. No, if you have an important thing, you really got to do at work. Nobody says, okay, I got to really focus on this. I'm going to go to work between nine to five to get it done. No, they're either going to get there at six in the morning before anyone shows up. They're not going to go to work, right? They're going to go to the cove shop, or they're going to stay home. And what's worse, and this is Marshall Goldsmith wrote about this a while ago. He says, hey, if you've got your team members running into your office, asking you a question or whatever all the time interrupting you, something's wrong. Like, did you hire the wrong person that can't actually do their job without checking in? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they're the right person. Well, did you give them the training? Do they have the tools they need, the frameworks, the values, et cetera, so that they can go solve problems on their own? And if that's like, oh no, I gave them all the training. Well, then have you created the psychological safety on your team for them to work independently and try something? I can't remember someone, one of my readers said, yeah, a bad habit of letting my people delegate things back onto me. You delegate it out, they want to delegate it back on you. And so I say, it's time to close the open door policy, but it's not an either or. I'm not saying don't be accessible to your team members. Let's start thinking about banding it. And so one idea is like, hey, there's gonna be days like for me at LeadX, Mondays are for meetings. So my Mondays, they stink, but it's like all my one-on-ones are on Monday, the team huddle is on Monday, any outside meetings I try to stack on Mondays. But then a lot of it's deep focused work. So I kind of do like solo time in the middle of the week and then the interruptible social time on Monday and Friday. A lot of people will do deep work in the morning. So my office doors closed, I'm not gonna log into Slack, I'm gonna keep my email off from like nine to noon or nine to 10. So just give me some focused time and then I'll pop up and you can interrupt me whenever you want. Other people will do office hours. Hey, we don't have an open door policy around here because we value serious work, deep work, strategic thinking, creative thinking, but 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Hey, open door policy, walk anywhere you want, do anything you want. So to each of their own, right? Like, you know, depends on your company, your culture, your team, but the idea is to have this discussion and to co-create the standards. As I've been talking to teams about this, it's probably the issue that it's very controversial, but it's the one I also get the most positive feedback. Like, you know what? We didn't have a rule about it. We just had a conversation about it and suddenly people stopped knocking on my door before noon. People stopped trying to schedule meetings before noon. Like, hey, there's some deep work time and there's some collaboration time and let's just sort of be mindful of ideal times to do those things. When you're talking about the collaborative time, this brings up one of the parts in the book that changed my whole day. And not only did it change my whole day, it changed the way I attacked the day and it changed how excited I was for the day, which was dividing your day up into the three C's. And for myself, the way you laid it out worked perfectly for me. Now everyone can lay it out, however it works for them, but the create, collaborate and connect. So could you go over this for our audience because this was a game changer for me? Yeah, I'm glad you got some value out of it. And that's something I started, years ago I wrote a different book, 15 Secret Successful People Know About Time Management, interviewed a ton of people, self-made billionaires, entrepreneurs, all kinds of people. And that was one of the things that I can't remember now where I heard it, like this idea of structuring your day. And Johnny, I'm glad you brought it up now because when we're all suddenly being forced to work from home and most of us haven't done that yet, we have, most of the world hasn't done it, it's more important to get that structure than ever before, otherwise we're gonna go into that dune loop of endless checking on social media. So the first C is create. And that's where, again, psychologists, it's really clear for most of us, we are cognitively at our best early in the morning, like give us an hour to wake up, maybe have that cup of coffee, but our brain has the most glucose and we're charged up ready to go. We start to get decision fatigue and everything else kicks in as we work harder and harder throughout the day. So our morning hours, for myself, I always try to do at least one hour of my most important task, your one thing, your MIT. And so that's the creative time. And again, we're not all literally like artists creative, but that's your creative time, whether you're a coder or a writer or whatever it is, that's your solo time. Collaboration, that is for me, that's how I usually use my afternoons. So it will be collaborating with people, whether it's on an interview or on my team, quote unquote sales calls in my mind is a collaboration where we're just educating and trying to help. So anything with other people tends to be in the afternoon. And sometimes people say, oh, you don't need to be as mentally sharp when you're collaborating with people. Probably don't actually, but collaborating sort of recharges you. So you wake up, you do your hard work, your focused work, getting kind of tired, but now in the afternoon, you're with other people, your work and you're talking, you're laughing, you're socializing. And that connection in my mind, it's still with other people, but to me, that's the person. It's connecting with friends, it's connecting with family and whether that's over a sit down at the table meal with your kids, I try to do that as often as possible or connecting with friends through a text message. That's a great day to me. Create in the morning, collaborate in the afternoon, connect with those you care about and love in the evenings. And also had to go along with that, which is you could take it as one step further, which then to actually schedule your tasks at a time. So you're like, oh, well, I got till noon to get it done. No, no, no, no. Get acquitted to do this and schedule it. Between those two things, not only did I free up more time, I was more productive and I was more excited about getting after every day because I was doing the things that I wanted to do when I wanted to do them with time allotted to those where I could schedule other things outside of that and didn't have to worry about them or even think about them until that allotted time. Yeah, and Johnny, this is where, again, I get hate mail for this one, like where the time management system getting things done gets it wrong, in my opinion, it's like, hey, here's your to-do list and you're gonna prioritize, do all that kind of stuff. And then your calendar is for your meetings and your phone calls. What I learned interviewing all those highly successful people is, I mean, they weren't using a to-do list. I'd ask them about, they'd, what? I'm like, well, what do you mean you don't use a to-do list? I had huge to-do lists. They said, we work from, we live from our calendars and a calendar, if you want to do something, if you really wanna do it, pick a day, pick a time, pick a duration and put it on there. It's not good enough to just say, oh yeah, I need to go to the doctor for whatever, I'll put it on the bottom of my to-do list. Oh yeah, I wanna write that great novel, I'm gonna put it on my to-do list. If you really care about it, schedule time for it and it goes back Johnny to, I love how much you're talking about values because this is really the secret to productivity, success, life, love, everything. Like, get clear on your values and what great looks like for you. So no judging, like most people would say, hey, my family, my family's a high value or my health is a big value. And you say, oh, you really care about health? Yeah, yeah, life's all gotta be healthy, be happy. Great, so how many minutes last week did you spend at the gym? How many minutes did you spend meditating or whatever for mental health? And it's like, well last week was kinda busy. Yeah, how was this week? If you really care about your health, you'll be like, I value it, therefore I'm gonna schedule time for that value. If I value my relationship with my spouse, you can see I do get a lot of hate mail because I get up on this one too. Scheduled date night. Who cares if it's slightly less romantic that you have to remember it by scheduling it? Nobody's your spouse or your partner won't care. Like, okay, if I truly value my marriage, I can schedule two, three, four hours on Thursday night or I can dump the kids with the in-laws and go out. But like if you don't schedule it, it gets lost. Like our values get lost in the busy, in the little fires that we think are important that really aren't that important. Yeah, and you have to then opt out of not doing that thing. If it's on your calendar, you have to consciously not do it. That's right. And that alone is powerful enough to make you productive. Yeah, that's right. And look, hey, I make mistakes all the time and things come up, life comes up. So I'm always sliding like a thing that was on my Thursday at noon to now Friday at 2 p.m. or whatever. Like, life happens, but it's far more effective to put it on your calendar and to live that way. Now, the three of us, I would say, are relative pros when it comes to working from home. But this is on everyone's mind right now and I have multiple friends who've reached out to me saying, how in the world do you do this? I can't seem to do it. And now I'm in a situation where I'm working from home with my fiance. She's usually on the road, so we're having to find different rooms to be on phone calls and trying to work through that. So what advice do you have for those of us who are struggling with this new work from home, quarantine, lifestyle, and are there any tips or tricks that you've developed over the years to make you more productive while you're working from home? Yeah, and I just did a webinar which it's up at the Lidex site for free. There's no emails or whatever about this because it's working from home, being productive at home and leading teams and working collaboratively from home which is a challenge for so many. And the first thing I always tell people is, I talk about the three agreements. And so, whether you're the official leader of your team or your team member, you can still use this tool, it's really important for teams new to working from home to understand like, what's normal working hours? And it doesn't have to mean like, well, it's nine to five and so we will all start at 9.00 and five and then we quit. But it's sort of like, in general, we're gonna all agree that it's nine to five or look, start and stop when you want but we need these four hours of overlap so that we can all sort of collaborate and message. The second agreement is to get, and again, these are like standard, like what are we just agreeing to do to support each other? The second one is, how long will it take for us to get back to each other? So is the expectation that you send me an email, I reply in five minutes and if you don't, I'm like mad, like, well, you're supposed to be at home, how can we not email you back? You know, so is it that, you know, we expect to get back to each other within one hour, one day, five minutes, like what is that? And is it different by channel? So again, at LeadX, so we use Basecamp, we have messages and all that stuff. And so, you know, we'll ping each other, but there's no assumption that it's an immediate reply. So if you get back to me like the same day, that's fine. We don't actually use emails, that's not a big deal, but I never call or text people. I very rarely call them, I occasionally will text with the phone. So people know that if my phone's ringing and it's Kevin, something's going on, like I gotta answer that. I gotta get back to them quickly. And so I think, you know, the second agreement is just, how long is it gonna take to get back to each other? The third agreement is just, how will we communicate when we can't do number one and two? Hey, I gotta take my daughter to the dentist this morning, I'm not gonna be back till 11 o'clock, so I won't be around. Well, that's fine, but like, is it just that the boss knows? Is it that we're gonna have a shared calendar? Is it that that goes in the group chat, you know, for that? That's it. I mean, if you can even just start with like, what are the overlap working hours? How long is it gonna take to get back to each other? How are we gonna communicate when we're not around? That helps the team function a lot. I think when it comes to personal productivity at home, a lot of it is about that structure. So it's like, okay, I'm gonna calendar my exercise so that all these snacks I'm eating and weird DoorDash stuff I've been consuming isn't gonna pack the pounds on. So, you know, I'm gonna calendar my workout. I'm gonna calendar a work sprint. And if, you know, especially now like Johnny, like I can't go that long without checking in on the world. So I'm not doing like nine to noon sprints like I probably should, but I can still do a 50 minute sprint, put my phone on airplane mode, grab a clock I'm seeing the time timer over my shoulder right here where you set it and it actually spins down. So you can put your phone away and not be, you know, pulled by your phone. And it's like, you know what? The world's not gonna change that much in 50 minutes. So I'm gonna block it out. I'm gonna shut down my Slack and my emails and my pings. And I'm just gonna solo focus. I'm gonna write that report, make that forecast, build that PowerPoint, read that book, whatever it is. And then, bing, when that 50 minute timer goes off, teach their own on the time. For me, it's 50. Then I pop up, I walk around, I breathe, I drink some water, I hydrate. Sure, I shouldn't do it, but I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna look at, you know, my favorite news. I'm gonna take a look at Twitter, whatever that might be, check in with the team, they need me. And then top of the hour, boom, another 50 minute work sprint. So whether it's 30 minute work sprints, three hour work sprints, the point though is like schedule your day. When you doing that group work, when you doing that collaboration, and then just solo focus, you know, while you're working on each task. I definitely agree. And I feel that for me, the routine part of it is so crucial. I feel that many of us now who are in this work from home situation have been a little lax on waking up on time, hitting the snooze more, a little lax on actually getting dressed and showered. We just sort of roll in our PJs and think we're gonna be productive. And then the day goes by and we go, man, I didn't get anything done. How do you do this? And you shouldn't treat work from home any different than you would treat work from the office. Keeping that routine is obviously allowed you to be productive at work. It's going to do the same thing mentally to put you in that headspace of, you know what? I'm getting my workout in 6 a.m. regardless of if I'm working from home or if I'm going into the office. I'm getting dressed as if I'm going into the office. I'm not allowing myself to be in PJs all day, because I know that that leads to Netflix, that leads to snacking, and that leads to just mindlessly shuffling on Instagram. And what I like about that is, and it's funny because again, like we know this stuff, but we have to always be reminded. And last week, as I was starting to do business zooms, I was noticing like, especially guys, like how many guys had not been shaving, right? And I realized I haven't shaved in like a week, was looking a little scruffy. And so this weekend, I'm like, all right, wait a minute, like, I know better than this, like why am I acting any differently now? So I started like, I'm gonna shave every day. And it's one of those little things, like I forget, I think, I forget which Admiral wrote the book, Make Your Bed, like he says, you know, first thing in the morning, you might not control anything else in your day, but you can make your bed in the morning. And that's a sign of like control, discipline, you know, positive habit, and it signals your brain, this is how my day is gonna go. I am gonna take charge. Now, I don't always make my bed in the morning, but I can at least shave every morning and be like, okay, for now I'm gonna shave, I'll put on my, it's still casual, but my normal work attire and run my day. I'm not gonna let the day run me, I'm gonna run my day. And you start with those first few minutes. And I think the other thing that you pointed out that is also key. So a lot of us understandably have collaboration with our teams and we have standards that we've agreed on. Now is the time to agree on some standards with your spouse, your significant other who's also working from home. So that they know, hey, you know what? After lunch, I'm in my collaborative space. So I'm totally cool to have that conversation about what we're gonna eat for dinner. But in the morning, I need to jam through my creative time. I need to block it out. I can't have you coming in the office and saying, hey, I was wondering what should we do? I need this space. And setting those standards for both of you is gonna be very important for that productivity because it's so easy now that all of our routines have gone out the window for us to get laxadaisical and then be so frustrated with ourselves that we're not as productive as we were when we were going into the office. Yeah, and I think what's so, this goes back to that point of, we're leaders everywhere we are, including home. And back to like that close your open door policy. I say close the door on your family members when you're in work mode at home. And it's harder when the kids are really little, mine are a little bit older, but I worked from home a lot when they were little. And like, I have friends who are like, oh, I can't, the kids just keep running in and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, you know what? I got an office with a door that closes and locks. And once they realize I'm not answering, like it only takes one or two days of them trying to open the door and knock on the door. Then they're like, oh, it ain't working and dad ain't coming out. And they leave you alone. And to me, I always tell, like, again, they're older now, but I have the same conversation. I'm like, hey guys, I'm gonna be on this podcast and then I've gotta hit this other deadline. And so you guys are on your own for the next three hours unless the house is burning down, like leave me alone. And I look forward to dinner and a movie tonight. You know, but it's a, it's that kind of a conversation. Absolutely. Now this is a Q&A episode as well. We got some very timely questions here from our listeners. So let's open up our mail bag. If you wanna get your question answered by us on the show, go to thearticharm.com slash questions. And you could also email us questions at the articharm. Our first question here is from David. He says, hey AJ and Jody, my resolution for 2020 was to take your lessons to heart. And as you say, build the network before I need it. Well, guess what happened? The conferences that I lined up for the next couple of weeks are all canceled. And if that wasn't enough, now is really the time that I need that network. Do you have any tips for building a network effectively while being stuck from home? Stay safe, David. I'll go ahead and start with this. Through this week, and well, the last two weeks, our self quarantine certainly happened. I think the day once I saw basketball was canceled, I knew we were in trouble because America loves its sports. And we gotta run that no matter what. Now, since then, I've probably have spoken to more people and building a network in the last few weeks that I have in the past. Reason being is everybody is in that spot. Everybody wants to talk. Everyone wants to see what's going on in other parts of the world. I've had more people reach out to me. And because of that, I just been more accommodating to reach out, to set up a Zoom. As AJ mentioned at the top of the show, speaking to a friend in Italy. This friend in Italy, he's now a friend, was just somebody who followed me on Twitter who has started giving me updates. And then we started promoting each other's tweets and stuff, and he started doing a seven minute news from La Bardia, which is the hardest hit area. And he had been given it a bit of a humorous twist just to keep himself occupied. I was promoting that out for him, got some new, some followers. And today was our first time zooming and chatting just to get more of a breakdown of what was going on over there as they're a little bit in the future and what I need to prepare for here. But also with this, no one's going to be stopping and connecting. In fact, I think more people now are going to be reaching out or open to speaking and reaching out because hearing a nice, warm, comforting voice on the other side and wanting to have some normalcy and work is only going to help everyone's nerves in this moment. Yeah, I know the question wasn't directed to me, but I was just gonna build on that and say that, like I'm a big believer in even this digital world and the power of face to face. And so my networking and everything else, yeah, it's all off table, but there's a lot of people who are now not on airplanes, not at those events that are spending more time. And I think they're easier to get in touch with remotely and Twitter was one angle. I noticed there's a whole lot more activity. I'm getting a whole lot more invitations on LinkedIn these days. And so even if it's something mild, fairly passive, like the LinkedIn stuff, social media, that's one way. For anyone who really wants to hustle out there, and this is good advice even in better times, but can work now, which is like, hey, you reach out to people in your area of occupation expertise, whatever it is, and say, hey, I'm gonna write an article. I'm gonna write a series of blog posts on this topic. I would love to talk to you for 30 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever it is, and pick your brain and put you into that article. People wanna help other people. If they think it's gonna help their personal brand at all, that's kind of a win. And they're gonna be around and a little bit more receptive now than during normal time. So I think just be aggressive digitally and remotely. And you might get surprised at some of the high level connections you can make. I completely agree. And I would take it even a step further and I would reach out to them saying, I'm so bummed this event was canceled. I was looking forward to meeting you and invite them to a quick Zoom. Have a cup of coffee over Zoom and you will still be able to use technology to connect with people right now and guess what? We're all thirsty for that connection because we are stuck working from home, shelter at home. So I think we can still leverage those opportunities even if the conferences have been canceled. It's great. To go along with that, I think, well, certainly there is a lot of people whose lives have been so turned upside down because their jobs weren't from home. And now they are. And now they're seeing more so of what Gary Vee and guys like him have been saying of, do something online for the last, how long has Gary been doing anything for 20 years now? So it's like, there's a lot of people who have to deal with that reality and going, well, I'm stuck here. No time like the butter. How do I get started? And for you guys, reach out, write to every content creator that you enjoy in the formats that you're looking to do something in and let them know how much you've enjoyed their work and how much it has meant to you. And now that you have this extra time that perhaps they could lend you an ear or send you some resources to get you started. And if they're not extremely large, I know that AJ and I, we reply to everybody. And a lot of people think when I write them, they're like, I can't believe you responded to me. I have news for a lot of people out there. We're not nearly as busy as you all think we are. And a lot of people have this idea that we must get flooded with emails and messages all day. Well, to an extent we do, there are a lot, but a lot of people just write, say, thank you. I write them, we, and I say it all the time, I have time for everybody. It's just a matter of finding when that time is. And when you implement the three Cs, there is a scheduled time that you have in your day where you're able to reply to everybody. All right, Mario asks us, hey, AJ and Johnny, I've been a big fan of the show for a while. Thank you for all the great stuff you're sharing. I've never had a question to send in really, but now is the time when I could use your input. I don't want to jinx it, but with all that's happening at the moment, work is not going too well. This might be the time for me to start my own online business. I guess that's what everyone is saying at the moment though, and I might not be the only one having this idea right now. Do you think the online market is too crowded and will it only get worse? And if you think there's still room for one more online business, how should I start with this? Especially since I don't even have an idea of what that could be. I'd love your input on this. Thank you both, Mario. Definitely, I feel like of course, everyone is now thinking about ways that they can make money and online is the easiest when we're all stuck at home, but I don't think the market is ever too crowded if you focus on helping others. We're all having issues right now. Whether we talked about teaching people how to work from home and be more productive, there are new issues that are arising out of this crisis that we had no idea existed before because the landscape has completely changed. So I think the most important thing that we always say is are you actually solving a problem of value to other people? If you are, the marketplace will reward you handsomely. If you are not, then yes, you are going to struggle. So I don't think that we are at all at a place of saturation in online business. I think everyone now with all of this free time should throw yourself into learning about how to launch something. Even if you fail, I can't stress this enough. We have had so many failures over the last 14 years and all of those lessons have allowed us to evolve the brand, to change the way we deliver the content or even evolving as we speak with our online platform because you have to be nimble and agile and you have to be able to learn to be a good businessman. Business is constantly changing, shifting and moving and now is the best time for you to be learning this, taking all of that opportunity of time you have to try to figure out some ways that you can leverage your experience, your knowledge or find some services or products that are deeply in need in today's market and you will be rewarded. You're shaking your head, Kevin. What are your thoughts on this? No, you said it perfectly. I think like just about every one of my companies I've started in a recession, like it's always gonna be hard and it's always gonna be worth it regardless of what happens at the end because it's a journey and I love what you're saying. Like there's never a better time to learn than now and that long arc, there's never been a easier time to be an entrepreneur now. I mean, it's so cheap to communicate, to sell, to market, et cetera. And I like the way you framed it. It's never about like that question about, well, okay, I'm gonna do an online business. What should I sell? I would say it's not about the what and certainly don't pick something because, oh, I got this email and everybody's making a million dollars on this product or this thing. Cause that changes, right? Everybody jumps on or somebody hypes it. What is the problem you're trying to solve and who are you trying to solve it for? And so like, even if you think about like, there's a lot of personal trainers out there, right? A lot of people, a lot of good personal trainers out there. Many of them now offering online stuff. Very competitive, very crowded space. Yet there's room for the first of all, the market for people who should be in better shape is huge. There's always room for good trainers. But imagine now if I, I certainly am not a personal trainer, but if I was thinking about it, I'd be like, okay, how do I niche this down so I can be number one in my niche? And to start with, it might be, okay, I'm the best trainer for guys over 50 in Philadelphia that can only work out for one hour a week. Like that's my market and that's what I'm gonna go after and that's my message. Now, maybe when I've got enough of those and I've got more time then I need to expand it to something else. But it's like, what problem are you gonna solve? Where do you want to add value and who do you wanna offer it to and jump in and go for the ride and learn? It's, being on offer is always hard. I mean, it's just up and down, up and down, but just staying on that course. Now's a great time. Absolutely, and I think when it comes to this time that we now have, you can look at it for the positive or you could look at it for the negative. That's not to downplay any of the negative that's going on and I know there are serious concerns and serious issues, but we've talked so much on the show of trying to find the positive in any situation, trying to find those opportunities and if that means learning how to leverage your skills online and how to make some side money right now while the economy is shifting under our feet and opportunities may be moving away from us, there is no better time than now. And you hit the nail on the head. It is easier than ever to market, sell yourself online. There's never been a time like this. I know Gary V talks about it constantly. When we started 14 years ago to get a website up and running that actually looked halfway decent, you're talking thousands of dollars, a team of developers or teaching yourself how to code. I remember learning HTML and PHP. Who's actually doing that now? You can go online and there are places where you can turn on a website in a matter of minutes. So why not throw a couple hundred bucks into it, hours of your time, since we can't go out and socialize with our friends and learn how this online marketplace works. This is something I wanna add to that really quickly. With being at home, throw an hour or two a day to research, to developing and learning whatever it is that you wanna jump into. By the end of this, you'll be an expert in whatever that is. All right, last one here from Chris. Hey, I'm a total introvert and this is the first time I don't feel bad for staying at home. Actually, I'm being asked to stay at home. It's a bit like an introvert's dream come true if this entire situation also weren't so scary. Anyways, here's the weird thing that I need your advice on. Now that I get to stay home without feeling bad about it, I actually feel like I have the energy to engage with people. Yeah, I see the irony in that. Do you have any suggestions on how I could work on growing my social circle without leaving the house? Best, Chris. Well, obviously for us, I feel like we've been using Zoom since it first launched. But many of us now are encountering the world of teleconferencing, video Zoom conferencing for the first time. And whether it's FaceTime or whether it's Instagram, it feels like every app now has video chat capabilities. And I know the three of us are huge fans of the in-person. There's no substitute for that. We can absolutely agree on that. But when you can't meet with people in person, now is the time to use that phone of yours for actual communication, not for social media, not for games and apps, but to actually reach out and talk to people. And I've been sharing this with the clients that I've been coaching. Go through your phone, go to your text messages, swipe three, four times, and see who's been buried in there that you haven't got back to, that you haven't had time for. They're in your phone. Obviously they matter to you to some degree. Reach out to them. I feel like everyone feels a little isolated, feels a little alone right now. And I've enjoyed the text messages, check-ins, the phone calls that I've been getting, and Johnny knows I'm allergic to the phone just as much as the next guy. We can use this time to reconnect with our phone and to reach out, as Johnny was saying earlier, to the creators, the people online that have made a difference in our lives. And since we're all in front of the computer now more than ever, we'll probably actually get through. We'll probably actually reach these people that we thought were unreachable previously. Just a tweet that I set out this morning was that empathy and gratitude are certainly the things that are gonna get us through this. And everyone is commenting and liking people's tweets and retweeting or on Facebook or sharing and all that kind of stuff. But none of that adds up to the amount of fulfillment you get when you hear a voice on the other end and you see that picture and you're actually having a real conversation. Don't think, oh, listen, I just commented on Jim's meme, so he knows I'm good. No, he doesn't. In fact, Jim would probably feel 100% different if you reached out and said, hey man, I'd really like to talk to you right now. I would love to hear how your day has been and what you're up to and what you're gonna do during all this to keep yourself occupied. Those conversations mean more now than ever. Yeah, I was just gonna jump in to do a shout out to the introverts because I am a massive introvert and people are often surprised by that. I mean, on the extroversion introversion, I'm like the hermit side of the scale. And I was in my teens and early 20s. I mean, I was introverted and painfully shy and I so wish that Art of Charm boot camps existed 30 years ago instead of 14 years ago because my college years and 20s would have been a very different thing. And I was talking to a friend of mine, he's the CEO coach just this morning and he said one of the things that's gonna come out of this, it's like introverts are gonna now have their day and whether it's right or not, the extroverts are the ones that really are, they get promoted into leadership and they get noticed and they walk in a room and they're charismatic and they own the room. Well, there's no room for the extrovert to walk into right now. And so what people are gonna value are good listeners, people who think things through and write what written communication is very, very strong. So I mean, I think like shout out to the introverts now is a time to really get some new success. And AJ again, we're just like mind melding on this stuff. I felt kind of weird that I did it but I went through my texts and my notes and I just on Notepad I put down a long list of people, friends, family members, et cetera. And I just started like, okay, I'm gonna just send him a text. Hey, how are you doing? What's it like? Blah, blah, blah. And it started on text. Yesterday, my friend Roy, I knew him when I was like 10 years old. He's now in Napa. He texted me back. He's like, you wanna jump on the phone right now? I'm like, oh yeah, sure, we're both home. We talked for over an hour. And so this is an incredible time to use these supercomputers in our hands to reach out maybe first on text or voice or video. It's great to build these relationships. It's easier than ever before. It's so funny that you say that I myself have a massive introvert and I have had no real issues with shelter at home. I've quite enjoyed my time spent alone and my fiance now realizes how much of an extrovert she truly is. She used to always say, oh, I'm an introvert too, AJ and she's climbing up the walls right now because she's just stuck with me and Puppers. And I'm not, although I have a fun podcast, I'm not always the most amazing conversationalist because I do like to get focused on my work, drill in and stay zoomed in on that. But to your point, this is that great opportunity to reconnect. We've never had more time available on our schedules. We're not taking our kids to school. We're not zipping around running a hundred miles an hour. We can actually stop, collect ourselves and figure out what are our values? What matters to us? And with this time spent rebuilding that community that we may have disconnected from for whatever reason that life got in the way. The chase to your success has gotten in the way of you reconnecting with the people that have supported you. And if they're in your phone, reach out. If they're on social media, follow them now, reach out. We're getting direct messages all the time on social media. And as Johnny said, we're responding. I feel like the world is now more responsive than ever. So now's the time to start reaching out. One thing that I had noticed there was, I believe it's Nietzsche's gay science and he's speaking about how even in today's world, and this is in the late 1800s, he's saying that men can't even have a meal without having a watch in their hand and a paper in the other, wondering, looking at the stock markets, hoping they don't miss something. That is in the late 1800s. So obviously these things have not de-escalated at all. In fact, they've only escalated and with all the technology that we have, we're not only, do we not have a paper, a watch? It's all right here in our film with a million more things that we have. And I posted that in a tweet in my, and the one that came after that was, stop. Use this time for some reflection. The whole world has stopped. You're not missing anything right now. And if we've been in that pace, and if Nietzsche was writing about it, I'm sure it was long before then, it's probably been a disease of humanity, of thinking that there's always something missing or that we're constantly running from something, usually ourselves, but this is the time to get settled. This is the time to get right and you're only gonna be able to do that by sitting in it and giving it yourself some thought and the decisions that you're making and where you are right now. I think FOMO is at its all-time lowest right now. Now, Kevin, obviously we would be remiss without talking about online learning and lead-ex and what you're working on there. What are you doing at lead-ex and how can our audience find out more about the great things? Yeah, thanks, AJ. The businesses that I've started and failed were almost always a failure of leadership. The ones that have done well is when I learned how to focus on talent and powering others and I learned through some hard lessons in my personal life, we have to lead at home as well. So I was retired for a few years was writing books and things, but I have this crazy idea. How can we spark the next 100 million leaders around the world? I can't reach 100 million people through a podcast, a book, speeches, et cetera. And we know that a lot of leadership is behaviors. You guys know it can be hard to change behaviors. You guys do it better than most, but it's not something that you can just show up at a class and not do or practice. You need coaches, right? You need interaction. And so we had the crazy idea three years ago of let's take IBM Watson, artificial intelligence and create an executive leadership coach. We call her Coach Amanda. And so instead of having to hire a $500 an hour human executive coach, which only the C level or VP's can afford to do, how do we put this coach experience into an app for 20 bucks a month or less and release her into the world so that anybody can start to develop their coaching experience? And so that's what we did and Amanda's getting smarter month by month, year by year. And we have, if people are interested, they can just go to leadex.org, L-E-A-D-X dot O-R-G. You just go to the app store, Apple or Android, download the app, try it for free for seven days, but it's got a really cool personality assessment, behavioral nudges to give you advice through your phone along the way. Thousands of micro learning videos and podcasts and webinars and blah, blah, blah. But it's fun to talk to Coach Amanda. So I hope people check it out. Well, we got to make sure Amanda's recommending the Art of Charm podcast. Yeah. Thank you for joining us, Kevin. Hey, thanks for all you guys are doing, really making a difference in a lot of people's lives and I'm honored to have met you guys now in person here. This is the new in person, I guess, right? Exactly. Thank you so much, Kevin. Thanks. Thanks.