Dan Martell - Episode #8 How to deal with ADHD and still be Productive ⧸ w Jordan Kalev Kalevtech.com

00:00:00.000 So that was a super fun conversation with Jordan. I think you're going to enjoy the, you know, the honesty about dealing with ADHD and how it applies to being an entrepreneur in your business.

00:00:09.500 Also, the discussion around productivity and, you know, my thoughts on what does it actually mean to be productive because I think it's totally different than the way most people think about managing, creating, delegating to-do lists.

00:00:22.020 It's completely different.

00:00:23.660 And then we talk about business models.

00:00:26.340 And I think that one of the most important

00:00:28.720 and powerful decisions you're gonna make

00:00:30.020 in the early days of starting a company

00:00:31.340 is the kind of business you wanna create

00:00:34.660 and having extremely huge dreams

00:00:39.620 and broad aspirations around doing that.

00:00:41.460 And then also the business model

00:00:42.740 that you're gonna adopt to make sure that you build,

00:00:45.160 and I talk about this heavily, the gross margin.

00:00:47.400 If you don't know what that word is,

00:00:48.320 it's essentially the profit from doing the work

00:00:50.540 so that you can reinvest it into the business.

00:00:53.220 And we talk about a few other things.

00:00:54.560 And I think there's moments where Jordan wasn't really jiving with some of the advice I've given him,

00:01:00.760 but I learned a long time ago I'd rather be straight with people so that they understood exactly what I mean

00:01:05.980 than to back away because I just didn't feel like they were ready to hear what it is.

00:01:11.260 And I think if you look between the conversations and the questions and the structure,

00:01:16.280 you'll find some really important lessons to apply to your business.

00:01:19.900 Jordan, I appreciate you making the trip.

00:01:22.320 I actually know very little about why we're meeting today.

00:01:25.780 I guess you must have seen.

00:01:27.480 Can you kind of give me the...

00:01:29.260 I saw your announcement on my stream.

00:01:30.940 On YouTube?

00:01:31.640 Yeah.

00:01:31.980 Okay, cool.

00:01:32.740 Yeah.

00:01:33.420 And then you emailed Stephanie?

00:01:35.580 Yeah.

00:01:35.960 And then you live in Toronto?

00:01:37.440 Yeah.

00:01:37.740 Super cool.

00:01:38.300 All right, cool.

00:01:38.940 Yeah, so she messaged me yesterday.

00:01:41.640 Fast.

00:01:42.620 Normally people fly to me.

00:01:43.980 I just happened to be in the day, had some open spots,

00:01:46.000 and Stephanie, it was kind of fun because I was like,

00:01:48.940 oh, Jordan, who's this guy?

00:01:50.060 All right, it's in my calendar.

00:01:51.000 I guess that's just...

00:01:52.060 So we're actually like running,

00:01:54.120 had to get some green juice.

00:01:55.180 Anyways, what is your business?

00:01:58.680 It's managed IT services.

00:02:00.180 Cool.

00:02:00.560 And what do you...

00:02:02.260 What would make our conversation a 10 out of 10?

00:02:08.280 Well, I brought a couple of questions.

00:02:10.540 Cool.

00:02:10.940 I, you know, one of the things

00:02:13.220 that sort of got my attention with your channel

00:02:17.000 was when you did the video about ADHD.

00:02:19.660 Okay.

00:02:20.440 That's probably one of my most popular, yeah.

00:02:22.560 Yeah, yeah.

00:02:23.080 So I'm in that position,

00:02:25.180 so I have some of those difficulties.

00:02:26.800 Do you take medication?

00:02:27.460 Some of those difficulties, yeah.

00:02:28.680 Okay, what do you take?

00:02:29.440 Ritalin, Adderall?

00:02:30.300 Vyvanse.

00:02:30.920 Vyvanse.

00:02:31.320 I don't even know that one.

00:02:32.340 Yeah, Vyvanse is the sort of thing.

00:02:33.840 Oh, I've heard of Vyvanse.

00:02:34.480 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:02:35.200 It's time-released.

00:02:37.700 It's sort of infinitely adjustable.

00:02:39.660 Does it help?

00:02:40.600 Oh, yeah.

00:02:41.000 Yeah, so if you don't take it, 1.00

00:02:41.940 you're kind of fucked. 1.00

00:02:43.300 Yeah. 1.00

00:02:43.700 Like, productivity-wise.

00:02:44.640 Well, and it depends what I'm doing.

00:02:45.600 I have to take different amounts.

00:02:46.600 Paperwork, taxes.

00:02:47.600 Yeah.

00:02:48.600 I have to take different amounts depending on what kind of work I'm doing.

00:02:50.600 Cool.

00:02:51.600 So that resonated and then what, so that's cool on the show, what can I help with?

00:02:58.600 Well, first thing I was going to ask you about is strategies for productivity, motivation,

00:03:05.600 systems, anything like that that helped you, especially in the earlier phases when you

00:03:09.100 didn't have teams to delegate to to do all the hard stuff.

00:03:12.600 Yeah.

00:03:13.600 Yeah, so the interesting part is that even though I have a team today, I still, and if you ask my team, they will probably cringe because I definitely have thoughts on things, process systems, et cetera.

00:03:28.060 Why don't we deconstruct your day and try to put it back together?

00:03:31.800 What seems to be the challenge right now?

00:03:34.540 Well, I have almost an infinite number of different things that need attention, right?

00:03:39.540 Okay.

00:03:40.700 And what is your business?

00:03:42.140 And what does that mean?

00:03:43.600 It means you take care of managed infrastructure.

00:03:47.220 Cool.

00:03:47.640 What's it called?

00:03:48.040 Computers, networks, security, backup.

00:03:52.900 What is it called?

00:03:53.780 Oh, Caleb Tech.

00:03:54.740 Caleb Tech.

00:03:56.520 How many people?

00:03:58.180 It's three or four.

00:03:59.580 Okay, three to four.

00:04:01.960 Are they contractors or are they full-time?

00:04:03.260 No, but there's a lot of this stuff gets done by other organizations.

00:04:06.940 Okay.

00:04:07.380 So there's big teams.

00:04:09.100 So those three to four work for you?

00:04:10.480 Yeah.

00:04:10.960 Okay, are they full-time or contract?

00:04:12.520 They're contract.

00:04:13.360 They're kind of, like, my business partner runs services for other managed service providers.

00:04:22.180 Okay.

00:04:22.640 Right?

00:04:23.020 So they're not, like, my full-time employees, but they're available as needed.

00:04:26.880 Okay.

00:04:27.260 Are they working on client work for you?

00:04:30.220 Yeah.

00:04:30.460 They're doing work for your company.

00:04:31.920 Yeah, they can do it.

00:04:32.800 You have the client relationship, they do the work.

00:04:35.300 Right.

00:04:35.960 Okay.

00:04:36.260 That's the, like, I'm doing a bunch of the work now.

00:04:38.440 Okay.

00:04:39.080 For certain clients.

00:04:40.440 But still, those people do client work.

00:04:41.880 I mean, the difference is, are they doing work for you internally or are they doing work with clients?

00:04:47.000 Like, are they interacting with clients?

00:04:48.140 Yeah, they're interacting with clients.

00:04:49.080 Perfect.

00:04:49.460 And then you build them out and then...

00:04:51.420 Yeah.

00:04:51.720 Yeah.

00:04:52.000 Okay, cool.

00:04:53.920 So, I get that.

00:04:55.340 So, what's the challenge around that?

00:04:58.340 Like, what are you hoping to...

00:04:59.900 What do you want to get done this year?

00:05:01.700 2018, what do you want to get done at the end of the year?

00:05:03.920 Most of my challenges are sales.

00:05:05.660 Okay, cool.

00:05:06.160 I mean, there's lots of other stuff and that's the thing, right?

00:05:09.440 there's almost an unlimited amount of urgent or semi-urgent problems to solve, things that could

00:05:15.640 be better, and so on. Given that there's so much. It's interesting because urgent to me means no

00:05:22.220 planning. So that's what I think that I find fascinating is when I deconstruct a company,

00:05:31.120 you know, I coach a lot of really high-performing founders. Usually when they're in an urgency

00:05:36.060 responsive mode, it's because there's a lot of stuff they haven't planned for and they don't

00:05:39.640 have a system or they try to do too many things. So let's try to break that down. So it seems like

00:05:45.320 you're smiling to the too many things. Yeah. So what does an average, and we're going to work

00:05:51.480 back to how this applies to productivity, but what does an average client look like for you guys?

00:05:56.200 How big of a deal is it? How many months is it? What's the kind of value of a client?

00:06:00.800 Well, some of the newer clients that I've gotten are in that sort of 10 seat range.

00:06:05.900 Okay.

00:06:06.380 Right?

00:06:06.720 But I'm aiming to continue to.

00:06:07.960 What's that revenue?

00:06:10.880 That's like 500 bucks a month.

00:06:12.640 Okay.

00:06:12.960 So 500 bucks a month per seat or 500 bucks?

00:06:15.400 No, it's 500 to 1,000, let's say.

00:06:17.500 For a customer.

00:06:18.380 Yeah.

00:06:18.660 Okay.

00:06:18.880 And how long are they going to stick around?

00:06:21.040 You mean like the setup?

00:06:22.700 How long?

00:06:23.400 If I become a client of yours on average, how long are they going to stick with you?

00:06:26.340 Oh, it's pretty long in managed services.

00:06:28.080 Okay.

00:06:28.360 So three plus years.

00:06:29.300 Five years, yeah.

00:06:30.120 Okay, so your deals right now are on an annualized basis, about $6,000.

00:06:35.020 Cool.

00:06:35.920 And how are most of those deals coming to you?

00:06:38.720 Mostly referrals at this point, although I've done walk-ins, I'm starting to do something.

00:06:42.420 How long have you been building your business?

00:06:45.300 It's, I'd say about a year in its current form.

00:06:48.960 Okay, cool.

00:06:49.780 So it sounds like there's iterations.

00:06:51.340 Yeah.

00:06:51.460 What do you want to see revenues end next year, 2018?

00:06:55.040 say say 150k okay 150k total revenues for the business yeah but you're already three or four

00:07:04.480 people yeah but those three or four people are are as needed and are much less expensive than

00:07:10.980 than regular employees would be in Toronto got it so they're not Toronto they're not full-time

00:07:16.400 right and then there's a there's another thing there's another way of outsourcing this stuff

00:07:20.540 yeah to a company in Toronto same thing it's like it's it's it's proportional to the number

00:07:24.680 of seats. Yeah. So it's not like I had a, I don't have any full-time employees that are helping me

00:07:29.180 with like, I guess, I guess the challenge is just like even aiming for 150,000 top line revenue in

00:07:35.420 a 12 month period is really hard. Like, and this, this gives me everything I need for context,

00:07:43.180 right? Is step one, there's always a distribution curve of value on task, right? And if you look at

00:07:51.060 like the 80-20 rule, Prado's law, there's essentially 20% of your activities attribute

00:07:55.800 80% of the value that you create. Essentially, that's the argument is that you could work 80%,

00:08:01.140 you could not work 80% of the year and make the same amount of money if you actually understood

00:08:06.560 where the value is being created and only do those things. The challenge for most businesses

00:08:11.660 is they don't have the time to stop and actually ask themselves, what things do I do on a daily

00:08:16.420 basis that are the highest value returns, right? They think, well, I do client work. I got to do

00:08:21.260 marketing. I got to get customers. I got to hire. I got to manage people. Yes, you do. And no, you

00:08:26.900 don't. Right. So if we, if you just thought of like the highest value stuff that you do today

00:08:32.980 on a daily basis, what would that stuff be? It's got to be sales. Like I need, I need more clients

00:08:38.540 and quickly and it could be sales. A lot of the problems. Agreed. It's, I'm having a hard time

00:08:45.380 trying to correlate sales and 150,000 top line revenue. Because anybody that does sales and

00:08:51.600 manage IT, their quota is, I would say, half a million in quota just for a salesperson.

00:09:01.480 Yeah. Well, I can sort of give you a bit of reasoning behind that. Because in my first,

00:09:08.560 you know, I said there's iterations, you know, in the first iteration, I tried to do everything at

00:09:11.380 once. Yeah. Fast with, you know, raise some money and try to do it all fast. And it was just too

00:09:18.220 much for me. Right. So, so I'm, so I'm doing it at a pace, the fastest pace where I can handle it

00:09:24.240 and feel in control of things. Yeah. Right. And so I don't, you know, that's not the, I want to get

00:09:29.720 to a point where it's, where it's working and then attract essentially, this is, this is onto like

00:09:35.340 one of my other questions, a business partner who can handle a lot of the administrative detail

00:09:39.720 work overhead and so on, so I can start to focus on my strengths.

00:09:42.440 And at that point, dealing with people, networking, I understand the tech stuff, so I'm like

00:09:50.520 sort of the bridge between business and business people and the IT side of things, right?

00:09:57.840 So yeah.

00:09:58.840 Okay, so if you're, okay, so let's just talk about sales.

00:10:03.380 I agree sales could be high leverage, but honestly, like doing high value client work,

00:10:08.460 Like, there could be some work that you're doing that's just worth a lot more, right?

00:10:12.960 It could be the way you're presenting the solution.

00:10:15.800 It could be, like, I don't know how much effort it takes to close a $6,000 contract,

00:10:21.100 but I know that if you put a fully baked marketing and a sales in front of it,

00:10:26.820 $6,000 is not going to allow you to scale the business, right?

00:10:30.260 Now, if you just want to do $150,000 a year, then that's totally cool.

00:10:35.460 It's just my, like, tell me.

00:10:37.040 It's not the ultimate goal.

00:10:37.940 You asked me inside of gear.

00:10:40.520 I think that a business like this should be like in the $3 million range for it to be worthwhile enterprise.

00:10:46.760 Okay, so do you want to build a $3 million-year business?

00:10:49.520 Okay, then step one, next year cannot be a $150 goal.

00:10:53.900 Like, just can't.

00:10:55.940 The forcing function of the top-line revenue being $150 is not great enough to force you to make the decisions you're going to need to make to build that kind of organization.

00:11:06.160 I wouldn't want you to learn the habits of a 150 revenue business

00:11:09.920 because they won't serve you to get to $3 million.

00:11:12.260 You know what I mean?

00:11:13.040 Yeah.

00:11:13.540 Cool.

00:11:14.040 So let's pretend we're going to set at least the goal for a quarter million.

00:11:17.720 Okay.

00:11:17.960 Okay?

00:11:18.580 Because if you're, like, you're clearly talented and you could probably go making,

00:11:23.280 if you were to go to the market and get paid in a company,

00:11:25.980 what do you think you could get as a salary?

00:11:27.540 I'd say starting, like, $70,000, $80,000.

00:11:30.180 Yeah, if not more.

00:11:31.720 Like, it sounds like you're pretty smart.

00:11:33.120 Yeah, I could probably become important

00:11:35.240 and make more eventually.

00:11:36.460 Yeah, exactly.

00:11:37.160 So let's call it 100K.

00:11:39.020 Okay.

00:11:39.380 So if all you did next year was got a job,

00:11:42.020 you'd be at 100K.

00:11:43.560 So to me, that's the beginning.

00:11:46.020 If you're actually going to then spend time

00:11:47.880 working on the business,

00:11:49.340 then I would say you'd want to figure out

00:11:52.080 how the side hustle creates another $150,000 in value.

00:11:56.140 So the primary thing is it sounds like

00:11:57.600 you're still doing a lot of client work.

00:11:59.420 Yeah, for a bit, yeah.

00:12:00.900 Because most people don't analyze it.

00:12:02.260 If you actually extracted the amount of hours

00:12:04.240 you put into your business

00:12:05.060 and took the revenue, most people are working minimum job, like minimum salary jobs, right?

00:12:09.760 Yeah.

00:12:10.760 Okay, so that's step one.

00:12:13.820 How does your week look in regards to where you spend your time and energy?

00:12:17.400 It varies a lot because if I get a new client like I did a couple weeks ago, then that's

00:12:22.620 my next week or two is a lot of setup there and getting it sorted out.

00:12:26.620 But a lot of the stuff is automated or delegated after that.

00:12:31.500 So then it's back to a whole bunch of administrative stuff and sales, right?

00:12:39.440 And try to get out there and talk to people, go to a lot of it's networking, a lot of it's talking to people.

00:12:45.620 So what is it about the onboarding a new client that requires you to do it?

00:12:51.320 Mostly it's just a money thing at the moment, right?

00:12:54.020 So essentially the economics of a new customer doesn't allow you to actually pay somebody else to do the work.

00:12:58.800 It would eventually, right?

00:13:00.220 Would eventually?

00:13:00.960 Actually, lifetime value, maybe, but today it wouldn't.

00:13:04.440 So right off the bat, that tells me that there could be something wrong with your business model.

00:13:10.740 Managed services is a pretty well-

00:13:12.800 I'm not saying it's a good business to be in.

00:13:14.780 I'm not saying, I don't know.

00:13:15.820 All I'm saying is-

00:13:17.500 It's at an early stage.

00:13:18.760 I'd say that it's at an early stage.

00:13:20.780 I don't have a lot of money to move around with, right?

00:13:22.700 So I'm growing it, getting new clients, and then I'll have the money to-

00:13:29.920 I had a full-time assistant for a while but I just couldn't sustain it.

00:13:33.080 So I'll get to that point where they can do most of that onboarding stuff and I can delegate

00:13:37.960 most of that so that I can spend more time building it.

00:13:42.640 That's where I'm at with it.

00:13:43.640 I know that it's slower than perhaps optimal but I'm prone to overwhelm and when I was

00:13:51.440 trying to do everything fast, it ended up not being sustainable for me.

00:13:58.540 Got it.

00:13:59.540 I think the challenge is if you don't build the model right,

00:14:05.880 that it'll be hard for you to scale.

00:14:10.360 And so like most consulting type businesses,

00:14:13.680 the contractor, the person doing the work,

00:14:16.040 at minimum wants to build themselves out

00:14:18.080 or create enough value to justify 60 an hour or 75 an hour, right?

00:14:22.420 And then typically, and if you look at like

00:14:24.800 kind of the four buckets of type of work,

00:14:26.420 there's admin, there's doing the work,

00:14:27.860 there's management, and there's strategic.

00:14:29.540 on the low end, the admin work, these are like $10 tasks. And then the work of the work is $100

00:14:35.200 task. If your business model doesn't support you to pay somebody to do your work, at some point,

00:14:39.980 like there's some logical direction that says like, I can pay somebody enough to be able to

00:14:44.980 charge the customer so that I can make enough gross margin to be able to reinvest in the business.

00:14:48.960 I would reevaluate that, right? So I'm feeling like a lot of the, whatever you did before

00:14:58.640 stressed you out?

00:14:59.640 Oh yeah.

00:15:00.640 Okay.

00:15:01.640 But I learned a lot.

00:15:02.640 Okay, so what did you learn and how is that not going to happen again?

00:15:06.140 I learned a lot about the business model, like what works and who's doing what and

00:15:11.520 who the players are in the city and so on and so forth.

00:15:13.520 How did you go about learning that?

00:15:16.460 A lot of it was research, there's a great section of Reddit where it's actually owners

00:15:21.580 of this sort of company all over the place, like all over North America mostly but also

00:15:25.120 in Europe, who have a lot of conversations sort of there about every little aspect of

00:15:31.560 it.

00:15:32.560 There's some books that have been published that are by people who started and scaled

00:15:36.180 successful ones, so on and so forth.

00:15:39.040 When it was brought to me at the beginning by the person that I'm working with, or my

00:15:44.000 partner, it seemed like he had it all figured out and it wasn't the case, so there was

00:15:49.800 a lot more learning.

00:15:50.800 Got it.

00:15:51.800 How can I help the most?

00:15:55.000 Because I just feel like a lot of the stuff I could...

00:15:56.900 Well, I know, look, the biggest thing that needs to happen is I need to make it work

00:16:01.320 so that it's proven, so that I can attract a business partner, get them on board who's

00:16:05.740 like able to handle a lot of the workload that's like not in my strengths.

00:16:09.160 Okay.

00:16:09.560 So that I can just go out there and make deals and try and get bigger clients and so on and

00:16:15.700 so forth.

00:16:16.220 Okay.

00:16:16.520 So that's my thinking.

00:16:17.940 I'm not saying I agree with that.

00:16:19.560 Yeah.

00:16:19.740 But I hear what you're saying.

00:16:21.080 Yeah.

00:16:21.200 that's my thinking on it okay how can i help uh first of all i was asking about time management

00:16:29.200 the other thing is uh is is getting a partner right a partner who's got opposite strengths

00:16:33.920 let's talk about time management real quick because one if i was spending two weeks of my

00:16:40.380 time onboarding clients yeah that would be the first thing i would get rid of and off my plate

00:16:46.240 right off the bat it's kind of like if you look at a distribution of where you spend your time

00:16:52.020 the thing you spend your most time on that doesn't actually like create a lot of value

00:16:56.300 onboarding clients is the first thing you should get off your plate so that because it's like

00:17:02.400 yeah i mean like that's that's a huge time suck yeah yeah right yeah so like it's kind of one

00:17:09.880 of those things it's like how do you be more productive you evaluate where you spend your

00:17:13.220 time and then say, how do I spend time doing more high value stuff?

00:17:17.580 Onboarding clients to me is not high value, right?

00:17:20.100 High value is marketing, sales, recruiting, creating a strategy, all that stuff.

00:17:26.900 And then people are like, well, how do I do that if I can't afford to pay people to do

00:17:32.260 that work?

00:17:32.760 It's like, well, you start piece by piece.

00:17:35.000 Yeah.

00:17:35.160 You know what I mean?

00:17:36.000 Yeah.

00:17:36.180 And I guess one of the other things is approaching larger clients, like getting into that and

00:17:41.780 being confident going after larger clients.

00:17:44.280 I have a way of dealing with those clients.

00:17:47.320 I have a good, solid supplier to actually,

00:17:51.160 if I got a 100-seat client or something like that,

00:17:54.000 it's actually in many ways simpler.

00:17:56.340 Yeah, that's the thing.

00:17:57.600 The bigger the client, the easier it is

00:17:59.480 because the revenue and the gross margin is there.

00:18:01.620 Right now, it sounds like your competitive advantage

00:18:04.320 is doing smaller-type stuff.

00:18:08.240 Those are the ones that...

00:18:10.740 Yeah, some of that's comfort zone, right?

00:18:13.100 Like those are the kind of clients I dealt with historically as a sort of freelancer.

00:18:16.800 Yeah.

00:18:17.140 So I go into those and I know exactly what to do.

00:18:20.200 And that's what's funny, and this is why I appreciate you asking that question, Jordan,

00:18:23.820 is people want to talk about productivity, they want to talk about hustle,

00:18:27.000 they want to talk about time,

00:18:28.720 and the biggest opportunity is for them to actually question

00:18:32.640 if what they're doing is the right stuff.

00:18:35.520 And yes, I agree, it's comfort zone,

00:18:37.640 and as long as you don't force yourself out that comfort zone

00:18:41.700 and don't set goals bigger than $150,000 a year,

00:18:46.100 yeah, the probability of you actually building

00:18:49.580 a $3 million business is very low.

00:18:52.400 I've done it, I've helped people do it

00:18:54.860 and the conversations I have with them is not around

00:18:58.480 do I feel comfortable to go close the right deals?

00:19:01.400 It's can you help me design the right business model

00:19:03.540 to be able to support the business

00:19:05.080 and I feel like that's gonna be your ultimate challenge

00:19:07.960 and what I'm feeling and I may be wrong

00:19:09.780 is that in the past you were burned

00:19:11.820 and it hurt and it was frustrating

00:19:14.260 and it probably created anxiety

00:19:15.500 and that's still present today

00:19:17.580 and it may be the thing that continues to hold you back, right?

00:19:22.120 And it sounds like you're really adamant

00:19:23.580 about finding a business partner

00:19:24.740 to maybe be the thing that's gonna unlock that thing for you

00:19:30.200 and I wouldn't be too quick to say

00:19:32.460 that's the right answer, right?

00:19:34.160 because how you find a business partner,

00:19:37.220 how you bring them on, how you,

00:19:40.980 I mean, geez, I can't tell you the amount of times

00:19:43.080 I get a call from a person

00:19:44.140 that brought on a business partner,

00:19:45.160 gave them 50% of their business 0.99

00:19:46.400 and the person totally shits the bag, 0.95

00:19:47.780 like all the time. 0.73

00:19:49.300 And then it's like, well, what happened?

00:19:50.520 It's like, well, I just needed somebody

00:19:51.560 because I couldn't do it.

00:19:52.380 It's like, okay,

00:19:53.060 why didn't you become the person that could do it?

00:19:55.560 Yeah.

00:19:56.060 Right?

00:19:56.460 Like, why do you need a business partner?

00:19:58.400 What are they going to do?

00:19:59.180 You can hire somebody that can do the work.

00:20:01.860 If you had a business model

00:20:03.220 that would support her, you know what I mean?

00:20:04.960 Yeah, if I do a whole bunch of the, that's, yeah,

00:20:07.700 that's sort of what I've, what I, was my change in strategy

00:20:10.740 was to instead of try to do everything fast and messy,

00:20:17.280 to go and like do it.

00:20:18.620 But it's not about fast, and I don't understand this fast and messy language.

00:20:20.520 I don't understand what that means.

00:20:21.860 Why is it fast and messy?

00:20:23.240 What's fast and messy?

00:20:26.620 I think that the first year where I was trying to,

00:20:29.720 where, you know, I was like, okay, this is a good idea.

00:20:31.280 We should get into this thing.

00:20:32.200 and there was a lot of mistakes that were made

00:20:35.280 because I was under pressure

00:20:37.740 to make everything happen very quickly.

00:20:40.000 Okay, what were you trying to make?

00:20:41.200 There was a lot of failures

00:20:42.960 like of just sort of caving into overwhelm

00:20:47.760 and so on and so forth, right?

00:20:48.620 That's why ADHD was a thing

00:20:52.300 that I was interested to get your feedback on.

00:20:55.160 Like, you know, early stage company.

00:20:57.140 Like, I know how it looks later on, right?

00:20:59.180 When you can go and specialize in your strengths,

00:21:01.360 things are no the beauty about me is that i've every company i've started i started from scratch 0.85

00:21:06.540 yeah every company maritime vacation fuck i forget nb host flow town clarity what i'm doing now 0.89

00:21:15.680 all the investments i made there were zero so i know what it looks like successfully when there 0.95

00:21:21.780 are no resources when you don't have funding people think oh it's like dan it's easy that

00:21:25.280 you have capital. I don't throw money at a problem. I just don't. I know too many people

00:21:31.660 that made a lot of money and then gave it all back. One of the funny things about wealth is

00:21:35.440 people create a lot of wealth and they give it all back. They make a ton of money and the next

00:21:38.600 year they give it all back. Have you ever seen that in your life where you made money and then

00:21:41.560 the next year for some reason it seems like... Oh, you don't make money?

00:21:45.420 Yeah, like you essentially give it all back. There's just this ebb and flow. So what I do is

00:21:50.560 I always start my businesses the way I start every business. It's like the fundamental core

00:21:54.120 the business you have to figure that out so how do i deal with adhd i don't do too many things

00:22:01.520 i guess i'm just good at deciding what do i do today versus what do i do tomorrow you know what

00:22:05.940 i mean like i know what to say no to the way to fast track that is get people that have been there

00:22:10.800 and done it before it sounds like you had a reddit thread but the whole section of reddit it's really

00:22:14.580 good i don't doubt it is but it's it's like the same thing as like trying to learn how to surf

00:22:18.720 reading a book right it's like how do you how so like i met people in town that run similar

00:22:25.980 companies like cool did you pattern match what they were doing versus how you were doing it

00:22:31.020 yeah like it's easy for my for me to conceive how it looks when it's a little further along

00:22:37.080 and and functioning but right now since i'm juggling a bunch of hats some of them which

00:22:42.580 are i'm pretty bad at yeah like what are they what are the bad ones just administrative stuff

00:22:47.880 There's a lot of systems, integration, design, and setup to make something like this run smoothly, right?

00:22:54.320 Which takes a lot of energy and time.

00:22:56.300 I know exactly how it should be, but doing it myself is tedious and difficult.

00:23:00.100 Where do you think you're wasting a lot of your time?

00:23:04.200 Well, I know I wasted a lot of time trying to make everything more perfect than it needed to be.

00:23:09.300 Perfect.

00:23:09.760 So that's probably the challenge.

00:23:14.040 Interesting.

00:23:16.840 Yeah.

00:23:17.880 Cool. And going after the wrong kind of clients. Like I actually went sort of went on a whole

00:23:22.460 little tangent of trying to make a new kind of like a sort of new business model servicing

00:23:28.880 individual professionals like real estate agents and all that. And it was a mistake. It was like,

00:23:32.940 yeah, it was like a comfort zone thing. I was like, I can do this. And it's a reasonably good

00:23:36.880 idea, but it was like, it wasn't the right thing to do. I should be going after bigger clients.

00:23:40.280 Bigger clients. So if anything you got out of this conversation is working on high value clients,

00:23:45.300 High value means that they're going to have the income to support gross margin.

00:23:50.560 At the end of the day, if what you're getting paid from a client and what it costs you to do the work doesn't have a gross margin involved, it's a bad business to be in.

00:24:00.860 The margins are good because after you do the initial setup, then there's a few problems.

00:24:05.340 Yeah, if they're so good, then you shouldn't have to do the work.

00:24:09.600 I know they could be good.

00:24:11.280 I know in the future they'll be good.

00:24:12.620 I know bigger clients will be good.

00:24:13.960 but that's a decision today right so if anything like i've i mean there's so many recently a luxury

00:24:22.160 e-commerce conversion rate optimization client right called me they're like here's what i'm

00:24:27.120 doing how do i make this grow work with bigger clients because the small ones doesn't like a

00:24:32.260 five thousand dollar contract just the amount of time to set up you're probably experiencing

00:24:35.580 the setup cost of doing those contracts doesn't allow you to make any profit if there's no profit

00:24:40.440 How are you supposed to reinvest in the business by building a team, hiring an assistant, delegating, implementing software?

00:24:47.480 You know, like, there's just no, I mean, at the end of the day.

00:24:51.280 It's building up recurring revenue, right?

00:24:52.860 Like, the setups, I get paid for the setup.

00:24:56.120 Like, the setups are build extra.

00:24:58.220 Yeah.

00:24:58.560 So, that's not a bad way to spend time.

00:25:01.080 Like, maybe I shouldn't be doing it myself, but it's not like I'm losing money.

00:25:04.440 Maybe you shouldn't be doing it yourself.

00:25:05.980 If you want to get to the revenue levels you want to, it has to not be you.

00:25:12.320 So what that means is your offering needs to not, like it has to be, A, it has to be unique in the market,

00:25:19.020 has to be high value, has to be, what else would I say, consistent.

00:25:29.660 Because that's the other problem with a lot of consultants is everything they do is unique, right?

00:25:33.680 And they can't pay or design a system to make it unique.

00:25:37.340 If every time you do a project, every infrastructure is unique,

00:25:41.560 and you're the only person that has that breadth of experience,

00:25:44.360 then it's hard for you to hire and onboard clients because they all look different.

00:25:48.620 Does that make sense?

00:25:48.900 Yeah, they all look different, and then you kind of like,

00:25:50.920 that's what the onboarding process is in this business, right?

00:25:53.060 It's like taking a completely big mess and then putting it all into a system

00:25:57.860 where everything works and is documented properly.

00:26:00.580 So you're telling me there's no clients that all look the same?

00:26:03.320 Yeah, I'd say that if you go into bigger ones, then you're often taking a contract

00:26:10.760 away from another provider, right?

00:26:12.280 So they're going to be set up a little bit more similar to each other, so yeah.

00:26:17.280 But there's still going to be a lot of that initial work.

00:26:20.080 You can build that initial work.

00:26:21.200 It's not like you, you know, then once they're set up, it's recurring revenue for a long

00:26:25.160 time.

00:26:26.160 I know.

00:26:27.160 I guess, unless I ask you for your P&L and look at your economics, it's going to be hard

00:26:29.660 for me to just show you, this is not working.

00:26:32.320 And I feel like that's going to be your sticking point.

00:26:36.900 So I don't know if you realize this,

00:26:38.620 but the business today is not really a business.

00:26:40.920 It's essentially, if I took the amount of hours you're working

00:26:43.640 and the team that you've got and the clients you're making

00:26:46.840 and the revenue I can just estimate that you're doing

00:26:49.000 based on your projections for 2018,

00:26:50.680 you're probably getting paid minimum wage-ish.

00:26:54.900 Yes, because it's at the beginning of a process.

00:26:57.140 It doesn't have to be.

00:26:58.120 I think that's a belief somewhere that you assume that's not true.

00:27:00.820 yeah it doesn't have to be that way so i think if you if you believe it to be true then great

00:27:07.340 if you say no there's got to be a better way you'll go on the search for the solution

00:27:10.980 in regards to productivity it's it's literally every week is looking at your previous week

00:27:16.620 asking yourself where did you make wins and tweaking your calendar and for me i put everything

00:27:21.740 in my calendar yeah like well i i got that part cool but then i i you know i i also have uh sort

00:27:30.000 of a, somewhat of a system for all the tasks that are pending, and it becomes a lot very

00:27:35.460 quickly, right? It's a lot. And then there's, there's like, it's very hard to decide where

00:27:41.640 to, where to put the energy when there's a lot of stuff to do, right?

00:27:50.980 Maybe, I don't know. I just, I think it's, I think you know that I, if I was starting

00:27:58.160 today and had no

00:28:00.060 resources, okay? What I would

00:28:02.160 do is first ask myself, what value can I

00:28:04.180 create in the world to get compensated the

00:28:06.120 most for it?

00:28:09.840 Like, day zero, no 0.70

00:28:12.180 fucking Dan Martell, no resources, 0.99

00:28:14.380 no friendships, no nothing. 0.99

00:28:15.980 Where could I get paid the most per hour

00:28:17.820 for my value I create?

00:28:20.660 And then I would start from there,

00:28:22.040 and I would say, out of that

00:28:23.480 income, that could be 40 bucks an hour,

00:28:26.060 that could be 50 bucks an hour. I'm pretty sure I could sell

00:28:28.060 because it is about selling, at least 100 an hour.

00:28:31.280 If I can get 100 an hour, I can live off of 20

00:28:34.500 and I can use the rest for arbitrage,

00:28:37.520 meaning that I could probably pay somebody else 30 to do most of the work

00:28:40.640 and then have an admin to kind of take care of the operational infrastructure

00:28:44.080 like invoicing, billing, scheduling, et cetera,

00:28:47.200 use automation to do a ton of other stuff.

00:28:50.340 And then most of my time is going to be spent

00:28:52.380 on building a marketing program and sales.

00:28:55.700 Yeah, makes sense.

00:28:57.280 But this is, like, day zero.

00:28:59.380 So, like, I'm telling you, that's my formula.

00:29:01.700 It's not a productivity thing.

00:29:02.980 It's just a decision on where you spend your time.

00:29:05.320 And I think that, you know, it's, if, and look, if you want to do 150 next year, then great.

00:29:12.480 Do it the way you're doing it, and you may hit that.

00:29:14.800 But I also know that if you don't set big enough goals, it doesn't force you to make different decisions.

00:29:19.460 So, my biggest suggestion to you is dream a little bigger.

00:29:25.020 Yeah.

00:29:25.500 You know what I mean?

00:29:26.000 I get it, yeah.

00:29:27.280 cool hopefully that was helpful yeah I've been watching the channel I I felt

00:29:34.820 like you might have some some understanding of the like sort of unique

00:29:38.620 difficulties and like my situation and and yeah it just came up I didn't think

00:29:43.660 very much about it when I saw the live stream I just I just sent the message

00:29:46.840 because I yeah I've been watching I've been paying attention to the channel it

00:29:49.540 seemed like a like a good idea if you're thinking about coming to get advice from

00:29:53.360 And then think through the questions and make sure that they're the ones that, you know,

00:29:58.240 and be prepared to hear answers that you may not want to hear.

Dan Martell - January 25, 2018

Episode #8 How to deal with ADHD and still be Productive ⧸ w Jordan Kalev Kalevtech.com

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