Planning Your Personal Life Like Your Professional Life, Do's and Don't of Creating a Brand, and Learning to Delegate Effectively ｜ ASK ME ANYTHING
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, we are joined by our good friend and long time co-host of the show, Kip, to talk about being a man of action, how to overcome your fears, and what it takes to be a true entrepreneur.
Transcript
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You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart
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your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.
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You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who
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you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
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you can call yourself a man. Alan, what's up, man? So great to have you on the podcast. I know this
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has been a very long time in the works, and Kip bailed on us, and we were finally able to make
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it happen. So I'm glad you're here. Glad to get the opportunity. Five years, I've been trying to
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be a scab on the show, and it only took Kip jumping out. Yeah. Congrats, man. You made it.
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I think if people knew, I think people sometimes perceive that this is a higher quality production
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than it is, which maybe is a testament to what we're doing, but it's also... I think it's a good
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learning experience because a lot of times people believe they have to have everything dialed in and
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perfect and this production quality and everything has to be professional. And what I tell a lot of
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guys is just get started. You can figure that out along the way. And that's what we've done very,
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very well here with Order of Man, which is why we're still around almost a decade later.
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Yeah. I think it's the content that makes people come back. It doesn't matter what your background
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imagery or editing is like. In the end, if it's serving them, if they're getting what they want,
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then they'll keep coming back for more. Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully that's what we're giving them.
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I mean, we've got questions. I see you post a lot in the Facebook group and of course our exclusive
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Brotherhood, the Iron Council. And I comment and I'm very active in there as well, more lately than I
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have been in the past. And it's, man, so many guys are struggling with business, with interpersonal
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communication, with relationships, every facet of life. And if we can give some guys a few things
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to consider, then I feel like we're doing our job here. That's exactly it. Give them back from what
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we've learned. It's how we grow. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, guys, so Kip can't make it this week.
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As you guys know, if you've been listening to the podcast for any amount of time,
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Kip is our typical co-host. And then we have Sean Villalobos fills in. We've had Drew Kachurik
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fill in and Alan, we're having you fill in. I actually talk about you quite a bit on the podcast.
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I hope you listen because I do. There's a few lessons that I've learned in particular from you
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that have been instrumental in my growth and progress in life, not to mention all of the other
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conversations and discussions that you and I have, but there's a few lessons that really stick out.
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I'm excited for you to impart some of your wisdom on the guys today.
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Thanks. Yeah. I enjoy getting to give back, getting to share some life lessons. I went through a
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really bumpy beginning to my life and have gone through a couple of different phases,
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both in fire and EMS and then in entrepreneurship and business and learn just so much. And
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in the Iron Council, especially, it's such an opportunity to see other men reach past their
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fears, finish failures that they've been having for years in their life and don't even recognize
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that they're still having it. And when you watch somebody grow like that, and it doesn't just grow
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them, it grows their family. And then people around them, what a great, it's just a great thing to see.
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I mean, it's, it's like being up on a pulpit and seeing your parishioners do better. It's,
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it's no different. Yeah, for sure. Well, let's jump into some questions. We don't
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normally take questions from Instagram. We're going to try to get to those questions. I know
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first and foremost, we're going to hit our brothers in the Iron Council. And then if we have time,
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we'll get over to Instagram. And from there, we'll go to our Facebook group. Well, why don't you
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lead us off with the first question from our exclusive brotherhood, the Iron Council?
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Awesome. The guys were good to me. They decided to throw some entrepreneurial questions. Now,
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that's one of my expertise. So first one comes from Craig Keel from Battle Team Romulus. He says,
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what advice do you give to men wanting to start their own business, but not sure what business
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that is yet? What would your recommendation to be for the first steps to taking venturing into
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the world of self-employment? Yeah, I think a lot of people, Alan, I'm really glad we're leading off
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of these entrepreneurial questions. I think a lot of people, and you might have some differing opinions
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on this. I don't know. That's why this is going to be good. I think a lot of guys out there will
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chase the money. So they'll look for opportunities where money is. They'll look for other ventures that
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have been successful and they'll think, well, that's the vein I need to explore.
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I'll give you a very interesting example. I live in Southern Utah in the town of St. George,
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just outside of St. George. And there are so many soda shops in St. George, just popping up left and
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right. And the first one that came in, I can't even remember what it is because I don't give a shit
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about overpriced flavored soda, but apparently people do. So this first one comes in and they blow up.
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Strangely to me, they blow up. I cannot wrap my head around standing or driving through a drive
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through and sitting in this long ass line for overpriced flavored soda. It's weird, but it is,
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I'm telling you, if anybody who's listening, it's crazy. If anybody who's listening to this from
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Southern Utah, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. So you have these overpriced flavored soda
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things popping up and it did really, really well. And then another one pops up and then another one
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pops up and another one and another one and another one and another one. And there's probably
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17 of them, different organizations, companies here in Southern Utah that sell overpriced sugar
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water. I don't care about that, but apparently people do. I'm just telling you, people chase the
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money and it's stupid. It's ridiculous. What I would suggest is find something that you like to do
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first. Stop chasing the money because people are making millions and millions of dollars
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selling sugar water to hundreds of thousands of people in Southern Utah. And they're making a
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boatload off of it when you can just go to the convenience store and pick yourself up a Sprite
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or a Mountain Dew or a Diet Coke, whatever your thing is, but they're doing it. So it tells me two
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things. Number one, don't chase the money, chase the interest. What are you engaged in? What are you
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interested in? What are you excited about? What motivates you? What propels you? What gets you up
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every single morning? And then number two is be just engaged in that thing. Like people are making
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money doing some weird shit. Alan, you do some weird shit. I do. I do. I have a weird business.
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And I see what you do and I'm like, this guy's killing it, doing some crazy stuff. You're on our
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calls in the Iron Council and you're working on, I'm not going to ruin the surprise here,
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but you're working on your, not only your hobby, but your profession while you're on the calls.
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It's weird to me. And I'm not saying that negatively. I'm saying it's, it's unique. It's
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strange. It's interesting, but there's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who are
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interested in exactly what you're interested in, and you're making a great living doing something
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that you're very excited about. So what I would suggest, first and foremost, don't chase the
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money. Don't look for what the market is going to offer. Look for what you're interested in. And
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then we can find different ways to explore those avenues and veins. What do you think on that though,
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Alan? Yeah, I think you definitely have to be interested in what you're doing. Maybe to some
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extent the product itself. To me, the bigger thing has always been chasing the service that you can
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provide. What can you do that people are willing to pay money for? If you've ever had somebody go up
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to you, come up to you and say, Hey, I'll pay you for, to do this for me. You know, if you're good at
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doing taxes and people say, I'll pay you to do my taxes or, you know, you make cupcakes really good.
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I'll pay you for some cupcakes. Well, they're actually paying you because you're providing a
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service. And that to me has always in all of my businesses been the way they got rolling was people
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asked me to do stuff for them or make a product for them. Or I just heard people saying in my
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community, man, I wish we had this, I guess, people in Utah are saying I wish we had more soda. So, you know,
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the call is being answered there. It's what service can I provide? I make modification parts for kids
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power wheel cars, the little cars they ride around in the yard on. That's my business. And it's flourished
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into a large company because every product that I make, not just the launching of the business,
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but every single product that I make, I'm not guessing at, let me make this because it'll make
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me money. You know, I'm going to, I'm going to sell this product to people. I never do that. I listen
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to what problems people are having and I make a better motor because the motors are breaking. I hear
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the gears are breaking. I make a better gear. I hear the batteries are dying quick. So I make longer
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runtime batteries. It's always in response to what people want. So that's what you want to do. Everybody
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has a skill. Everybody has something about them that makes them a unique individual. And look,
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it's not always going to be monetizable to make you a million dollars. If you bake the world's best
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cookies, yeah, maybe you'll become, become famous Amos, but you do have to put a, you know, an
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understanding on what that business can be worth. And, and nowadays we do have, especially if you're
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making a product with the worldwide internet, we have so much more capability to ship nationally,
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internationally, even. So what seemed like the small business can be bigger. Um, but we'll get
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into, I think one of the other questions gets a little further. Just make sure the, that what you
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can do as a service is going to provide enough for an income for you or keep it as a side hustle.
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Nothing wrong with that either. Yeah, that's a good point. I wrote down knowing what is marketable
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and what is just good or something you enjoy, right? So if you and your mom enjoy baking cookies
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for the family, they might be delicious. They might be the best cookies that anybody has ever tasted.
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Are you going to make a profitable, excuse me, profitable business out of it? Probably not.
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So just make them for Thanksgiving, make them for Christmas, make them for the family,
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give them to the neighbors. But you know, we also have to look for something that's going to be
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marketable and profitable and people want. And also this is important just because you think
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the cookies are good. Doesn't mean everybody else thinks the cookies are good. And that's the bias
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people have. They're not good. Right. And that's how, you know, is if you try to sell something and
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nobody's buying it, it's not as good as you think it is. People aren't dumb. That's what people say.
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Oh, they're just, they don't know. They don't understand the value. No, they get it. It's not good.
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That's it. So I think to his second part of his question, what do you do to
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learn how to sell or learn how to grow the business? You learn how to sell,
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you got to market it. You got to go out and sell something. And if you can't sell anything,
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there's only one or two things that are happening. Nobody cares or you're not good at it.
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So you got to figure out which one it is. I would lean more towards figuring out why you're not good
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at selling the thing first. Cause I've had some horrible, horrible products that I've been
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very excited to try because the marketing was good. So I would worry about how do I sell this?
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How do I learn marketing? And then you can worry more about like, okay, is this a marketable product?
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I think maybe both go hand in hand, but I think those are two important factors to consider.
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Agreed. Absolutely. All right. Our next one comes from Evan Berwick,
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also from the iron council and council, the brethren. What are the first three things you
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would do if you started a brand new business? And if you couldn't use any of your current funding or
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contacts? I like this question. Cause I've also contemplated like what would happen if you just
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picked me up, plucked me out of Southern Utah today. And you put a blindfold on me, put earmuffs on me.
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Like I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't see anything. And you know, 12 hours later,
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you dropped me, parachuted me down to this random town. Like what would it take me to
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entrench myself into the community? And then what would it take to build myself into a success
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within that community? This is easy. It's really easy guys. Just go where the players are.
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That's it. Just find out where the players are. So who are the players in the community?
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Politicians and entrepreneurs. Those are the two people. Those are the players in the community.
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And I would say maybe as a third clergy. So you have politicians, excuse me, entrepreneurs and
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clergy. So where do the politicians hang out? Well, they hang out at city council. They hang
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out at business ventures. They're trying to get on their soapbox and talk about what it is their
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platform is. Where do the entrepreneurs hang out? Business luncheons, chamber of commerce, rotary,
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charitable organizations. Where do clergy hang out? At church. This is not hard. So you can go to where
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those individuals are. Insert yourself into the conversation. Now, if you're dropped into the
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middle of this town and you don't know anything about what these people are about, you don't have
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anything to offer just yet, then the best thing that you can do is just be curious. I don't need
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to come in and sell you on anything. I just need to figure out what you're about. Hey, tell me about
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what you're about. I just moved here. I'm interested in learning more about the people who move this town in
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the right direction. What's your business? What's your platform? What's your thing? What's this?
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The more you ask questions that way, the more successful you're going to be by inserting yourself
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into the conversation. As a bonus, so we have politicians, entrepreneurs, clergy. As a bonus,
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go where successful people are. Successful people are at the gym. They are. Alan, you're successful.
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You're at the gym. I'm successful. I'm at the gym. That's where successful people hang out.
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It could be the actual gym. It could be jujitsu. It could be CrossFit. It could be any number of
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places, but successful people are at the gym. And guess when they're there? Really, really early
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from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. They're not there at 10. They're not there in the evening. They're there from
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5 a.m. to 7 a.m. When do you go to the gym, Alan? Maybe I'm wrong.
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Well, I'm usually there around 2 p.m. Okay. Well, you're the exception then because I don't
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think most successful people who are out there killing it and getting after it are going to be
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there at 2 p.m. I'm not saying that about you. I'm just saying, generally speaking.
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They're not there when I'm there. Right. The stay-at-home moms are there before they have to
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go pick up their kids from school. So think about where you're going to position yourself,
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where the successful people already are, and then just go ask questions. Just insert yourself
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into the dialogue, the conversations, the events, everything else that's happening.
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If you're at Rotary and somebody says, hey, we need to volunteer to do X, Y, and Z,
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you're the guy. And you can come up with all the reasons. Oh, I don't know people. I don't know
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this. I don't know that. Figure that shit out. That's easy. I don't know anybody. How am I going
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to do sponsorships? You don't need to know anybody. If they need a person to help with sponsorships,
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go do sponsorships. By the way, sponsorships is the right place to go because guess what else you
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get to go do? You get to go to the bank and meet the branch manager. You get to go to all the
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entrepreneurs in town and talk with them, not about you and your business, but introduce yourself
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because you're doing the Rotary fundraiser for the year. That's how you do it. I can't think of a
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better way to do it than that. Yeah, I agree. The answer I was going to say is the cliche of
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who, not how. I never heard that when I started my main business, but that was exactly what I did.
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I reached out to manufacturers of motors, gears, other things to find out. I'm not an engineer by
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trade. So I reached out to them to get those contacts. I had to get the communications. Look,
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if you can, in the question here, you can't use any of your current funding or contacts. So
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if you're leaving a job and you have a non-compete clause that you sign, fine. Call other companies
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that you can use as mentors or the manufacturers if you're in a product line. They're happy to help
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talk you through, teach you things that you don't know, give suggestions. Call other people that do
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the same business that you're looking to do but might be on the other side of the country and they're
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not competition to you. A lot of business owners, they're really happy to share. They want to, you
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know, they want to give back. So that's a big thing. Funding, I think you touched on funding really
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well. Look, again, I started my business with $200. So, but it took a long time to grow because I did
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that. If you can do it that way, great. Otherwise, funding comes from, like you said, meeting other
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business owners, good old-fashioned bank loan, federal loan, investors. There's lots of website
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to gain investors from. You just have to be smart and make a good business plan and then you can put
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yourself out there for it. It's not really too hard. It's the fear of doing it that is stopping
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more people than the actual process. Yeah, I agree. I'm interested, Alan, when you were talking about
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funding and you started with $200, I've bankrolled Order of Man and other businesses as well.
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And when I say bankroll, I'm talking about less than $1,000. Not that I came in with $100,000 to
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grow this thing. I'm interested in what your thoughts are about brokering things because I
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don't know if you did this, but sometimes people are concerned they don't have the capital to
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purchase supplies or parts that you want to sell, for example. Or for me, it might've been
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t-shirts. How am I going to buy 1,000 t-shirts? I don't have the capital to do that. I don't have
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the place to do that. And so what you can do is you can broker these products. And so if you're
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selling, let's say, hypothetically, a body kit for a certain kind of RC car, you may not be the one
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that needs to sell it, but you can broker it and take a little bit off the top. And that's a great way
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to create some additional revenue without having to have all the merchandise, without the overhead,
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without the storage, for the place. For t-shirts, for example, when I started, I'd have to go out
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and buy 1,000 t-shirts. I could just go through one of these companies that would sell them
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one at a time. Now, look, I'm not going to make as much money doing that. So inevitably,
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I'm going to move out of that if I want to grow a successful business. But that's a great way to
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generate some revenue, get some product and merchandise out there and start getting your
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feet wet without having the extra cost and burden of overhead, excessive cost, et cetera.
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Yeah. Brokering is good. Yeah. You don't make as much profit, but it gets you rolling.
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GoFundMe is another good way. What I did, this was before GoFundMe existed,
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was I took pre-orders. So my $200 went to build a website and those first orders that came in
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paid for the product that they needed and then a little profit on top. So I could start carrying
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inventory because people buy from you a lot quicker if you keep it in stock.
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So there's lots of different ways. You just have to think about it. And this goes back to the who,
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not how. When you talk to somebody else that started a business, find out how they did it if
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they didn't have any cash. Groups like the Iron Council are fabulous for it because you have specified
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areas to speak to entrepreneurs or finance people. There's so many areas that they're all right there as a
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resource at your fingertips. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. What's next?
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Let's see. John McDermott from The Forge, one of our newer members. What are the key components to
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creating, forging, and fostering your brand? Fostering and creating your brand. Number one,
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know what you stand for, but I would also make sure that it's relevant to the conversations that you want
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to be having because you can have a lot of stances on things and some things really don't matter.
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So for example, if I'm doing laundry, I don't care whether it's Tide or I don't even know what the
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other products are, but I don't care if it's Tide or some other product. I really don't. It doesn't
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bother me at all. It's irrelevant to me. But if we're going to talk about what it means to be a man,
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okay, that's relevant. Like what some people say compared to what other people say
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actually matters to me. And it clearly, it matters to other people because not only have we started
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our movement here with Order of Man, but we've springboarded dozens, if not hundreds of other
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companies and organizations that are doing something similar because they saw what we did.
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So clearly, it's an important message. And I think that's important to recognize. Is this something
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people care about? Because if it's not, then whatever position you take, whatever stance you take,
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and if you talk to your blue in the face, nobody listens in because nobody cares. So make sure
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that it's something that you care about, but also making sure that it's something other people care
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about. Next is making sure that you're communicating it in an interesting way. There's so many people,
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let me give you an example. I get messages every single day, emails typically, from PR organizations
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that are trying to hawk me on who I should have on my podcast for leadership. And they all sound the
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same. They all look the same. They all speak the same. They all have the same boring points that every
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other one of them introduces and puts in front of me. And I'm just not interested. Not because I don't
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think they have something quality to share. They probably do, but they're not sharing it in a unique
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and interesting, relevant way that's going to stand out from the pack. So for us with Order of
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Man, I've taken some very hardline stances on a few topics. And when I take those hardline stances,
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a lot of people get upset about it, but you know what? A lot of people get very excited about it
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because finally, finally, somebody is saying what they've been thinking for years and years and years
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and haven't either had the balls or the platform to share it themselves. That's how you know you're
00:22:39.220
hitting strides when people are like, thank you for saying that. I've been thinking that for years.
00:22:43.320
The more you hear that, the more you know you're on the right track.
00:22:48.000
And the third component is to continue to innovate. I just said, we help dozens, if not hundreds of
00:22:53.720
other organizations springboard into a platform similar to what we're creating here. If I'm not
00:22:59.240
continually innovating and thinking of new ways to attract interesting, unique, and new individuals,
00:23:04.520
then all those people are going to run circles around me. They're going to catch up and they're
00:23:08.200
going to lap me. So I need to be out ahead of the quote unquote competition by continuing to innovate
00:23:13.960
with products, events, communication, whatever it is we're offering, coaching, consulting,
00:23:24.420
et cetera, et cetera. If I can continue to innovate, then I'll always be out ahead of the pack.
00:23:29.000
And that's very important when it comes to creating your own brand.
00:23:33.080
Awesome. I think a lot of people think brand, they think like a logo, especially new business
00:23:39.000
people. They don't understand that there's more behind a brand than just a logo, that Starbucks
00:23:43.600
isn't just the Starbucks logo. And they think, well, coffee, but there's more to a brand than that.
00:23:49.040
It's your mission. And you should have a mission, if not a statement written out, even at least a
00:23:54.300
sentence and know what your company is doing. Other than just being there to sell and make you
00:24:00.160
money. That's how you know you're doing it wrong. If that's all you can think about is, well, my
00:24:04.700
mission is to make money. You're not think about the service that you're providing. My company on the
00:24:10.000
website, it says at the top, something like be your kid's hero, learn to repair things with them or
00:24:17.680
something. I don't even remember what's on the top of my own website. But the point is, that's the
00:24:23.320
mission. That's what you want your brand to be is what does your company represent through its
00:24:29.740
product, through the service that it provides. And then use that branding. The way you get that
00:24:35.660
branding out there is not advertise your logo. I mean, you want your logo out there for recognition,
00:24:40.900
but what's behind it. Talk about in your advertising that you're helping your kids or
00:24:47.600
that you're helping men to be better men. As you get more into that, you'll get, like Ryan was saying,
00:24:54.260
the feedback back that's going to help you tweak your mission and then therefore tweak the business
00:25:00.640
to go with that, to keep changing the service that you provide to be better for the people you
00:25:06.580
provide it for. That's a big component also when we're talking about the brand is not
00:25:12.640
getting hooked on selling just your thing, but always selling the service that you're providing.
00:25:20.380
Ryan, when you started the Order of Man, the Iron Council, you thought people would graduate out of
00:25:24.520
it, that they would go through it like a course and learn to be better sovereign men and leave.
00:25:29.520
But you've evolved it because you saw that what the mission became was to keep growing, that men are
00:25:37.160
always growing better. There is no complete. You're never sovereign and just stay sovereign. There's
00:25:42.380
always other levels to go to. So you've evolved the business to service people better in that end of
00:25:51.740
the brand of the business. The brand itself has changed because of that.
00:25:55.680
Yeah. It should always be evolving. You want to hear a great example of this
00:26:00.360
is Bud Light is a great example of this from a negative standpoint.
00:26:05.460
Yeah. Bud Light forgot. Budweiser forgot because they made a horrible hiring decision.
00:26:11.880
They forgot who their base was. And because they forgot who their base was and they weren't listening
00:26:17.060
to their customer base, they made a poor marketing decision. And let's call it for what it is. It was a
00:26:22.260
marketing decision. Bud Light doesn't care about transgenderism. Okay. But get that out of your
00:26:27.540
mind right now. What they care about is selling more beer. I don't give a shit about whether a dude
00:26:33.300
has a dick or not. They don't care. They want to sell more beer. And their play was, we think Dylan
00:26:39.920
Mulvaney can help us sell more beer. They were wrong. How many billions of dollars of market space did
00:26:47.580
they lose because they made a poor branding decision? And that's what that was. That was not a social
00:26:54.080
decision. It was a branding decision. And now you watch them and they're backpedaling. They're UFC.
00:27:01.060
This was the, this is a horrible decision on UFC's part. And Dana White will defend and everything else.
00:27:05.500
He's wrong. I love Dana White from what I see. The guy's incredible. He stands up. He's flat out wrong
00:27:11.620
on Bud Light and Budweiser. He made a horrible, horrible decision, but it's his organization.
00:27:17.460
He can make that decision. I'll probably still watch UFC. It's not that big a deal to me, but
00:27:21.300
that was a bad decision on Budweiser or Bud Light's part. And they're reaping the benefit of that.
00:27:29.220
That's a branding choice. And you can see how horribly it works out when you forget to cater to
00:27:35.260
your customer base and understand who your customer base is. And now they're like, oh shit,
00:27:39.920
we're not marketing to Dylan Mulvaney and the transgenders of the world. We're marketing the
00:27:45.440
guys who watch UFC. So they've made some pivots. I'm not willing, really willing to forgive at this
00:27:50.920
point, you know, but Dana White is, and you know, eventually, you know, maybe they'll crawl their
00:27:55.040
way back to where they were before, but that's a great example of what a brand can and should not do
00:28:00.900
when it comes to their, their marketing and branding. Exactly. Never lose focus on your customers.
00:28:06.400
It's, it's all about them in the end. Always. Hey, can I say one more thing about, um, about
00:28:12.520
the Bud Light thing? Cause I want to, I really want to drive this home. Wow. All right. You want
00:28:17.680
to get sued by Bud Light. All right, go ahead, man. No, I mean, I'm not defaming. I just said it's
00:28:21.680
a horrible decision. Yeah, I agree. Go ahead. So I, when I was in, uh, I went to, this was maybe a
00:28:31.020
month or two ago, right in the midst of all of this thing. I walked, I walked into a convenience
00:28:34.820
store and I saw a guy, he was this like rugged cowboy, like badass looking guy. And he, he went
00:28:45.540
to the beer aisle or the beer cooler or whatever. And he came back out with his 24 pack of Bud Light
00:28:51.100
and he walked to the counter and put it. And I immediately thought, what the hell is wrong with
00:28:55.060
this guy? Now I don't drink, I don't drink anymore. I used to drink a lot. I don't drink
00:28:58.820
anymore, but I thought, what the hell is wrong with this guy? That's how, you know, they missed
00:29:05.720
the mark. It's so widespread now that people see a guy and he looks a certain, I don't know that guy,
00:29:13.960
but he looks a certain way. He carries himself a certain way and he's got a 24 pack of Bud Light.
00:29:19.420
And I think what's wrong with that guy? Yeah. But if he was wearing a tutu, you would be okay
00:29:24.940
with it. A tutu or skinny jeans. I'd be like, yeah, that tracks for me. So I got it. I understand.
00:29:31.740
The amazing thing is there's an image there. A year or two years ago, before that all went down,
00:29:36.720
you would be fine with that image. Yeah. It would make sense. It would track to me
00:29:40.740
and it would be congruent and be like, yeah, that makes sense. That guy drinks Bud Light. Yep. Got it.
00:29:44.680
Check. And look guys, the companies that are the size of Budweiser can, can get away with the
00:29:50.400
mistake like that. We've seen other companies make those marketing errors. We've seen cars,
00:29:54.940
car manufacturers come out with some of the ugliest, most boring looking cars and they don't sell,
00:30:00.920
but they're big enough where they can take those losses. Most of us can't handle a loss like that.
00:30:06.780
So stick to your core competencies always and stick to your, your customers. Yep. All right. What's
00:30:13.840
next? Awesome. Jay Welsh, Battle Team Romulus. Many entrepreneurs struggle to delegate as they grow
00:30:20.380
and in effect become a lid for their business. Their mentality seems to be, if you want it done
00:30:26.460
right, do it yourself. What advice do you have for transitioning from working in the business to
00:30:32.200
working on the business? I want to ensure I'm spending my time and energy on the highest return
00:30:37.520
tasks so that the business will continue to grow. I'm not the guy to talk to on this, Alan. You know
00:30:43.740
this. You and I have had to get Ryan to hire more people for a while now. You and I have had countless
00:30:50.240
conversations. I will say, I think there's a difference and we need to understand this.
00:30:55.560
And I don't want to hear what you have to say here on this, Alan too, but there is a difference between
00:30:59.800
wanting to grow the business into what you're talking about and delegating and bringing the right
00:31:04.740
people and not growing, which is okay too. And I think that in the entrepreneurial space,
00:31:10.420
especially with guys listening to this podcast and the podcast category that sometimes this gets
00:31:15.840
lumped into, you're going to hear a lot of people talk about leverage and scaling and maximizing and
00:31:22.000
all of these things. And that's fine and great, but I want you to know you're not obligated to do that.
00:31:27.820
If you have a business and it's really, really good as a solo type business, and maybe you have
00:31:32.700
a few general contractors, maybe you have one or two people on staff and that's what you want to do,
00:31:39.620
by all means do that. Cause you might make multiple six figures a year. You might be able
00:31:46.120
to coach your sons and daughters sports teams and go to all their games and practices and go
00:31:51.300
on the vacations you want. And if that's what you want, don't think that you have to scale this thing
00:31:57.440
and leverage it to its full capacity, because maybe that's not what you're after. That's the only thing
00:32:02.720
I want to throw in there. And that's not necessarily the case for me, but it is something that I'm
00:32:07.580
constantly weighing. Do I continue to grow and evolve this thing into hiring dozens, if not
00:32:12.840
hundreds of employees and maximize and scale this thing? And how do I balance that with the lifestyle
00:32:19.300
that I've created that I actually quite enjoy at this point? So I'd love to hear what you have to say
00:32:26.080
Yeah. You know, I talk to entrepreneurs a lot about making sure that you're willing to work as hard as
00:32:31.720
it takes to obtain your vision. So that, that exactly is to your point, you know, to become a
00:32:38.720
millionaire, and I don't even know what the, the, the term millionaire, you know, what the, what does
00:32:43.800
that mean now? Do you have a million dollars in your bank account, million dollars in assets,
00:32:47.920
but to become wealthy, it's, it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of
00:32:54.080
headache, heartache, risks, failures. You have to be willing to work that hard to do it. If you're
00:32:59.300
happy making 80 grand a year and it's paying for your lifestyle that you enjoy, do that, enjoy that.
00:33:06.520
But to fully grow your company, you have to have employees. If you want to get to that next level,
00:33:13.780
that's, that's your biggest step, especially for the people that are, um, hands-on people that they
00:33:18.580
provide a service, whether you're an accountant, a, uh, a woodworker, whatever you can only do as much
00:33:25.520
as you can provide in 40 hours or however many hours a week, you're going to work that that's
00:33:30.580
the maximum income you're ever going to make is that you working 40 hours a week or 70, whatever
00:33:36.900
you're willing to put in. So you have to realize an employee is a necessity to make more money so
00:33:43.040
that it can free you up to, as you know, they said work on the business, not in the business.
00:33:48.840
And, and that means you're out there marketing your business and then you have to let go. That's
00:33:56.060
always a hard thing is, you know, once you train that employee, an employee will never work as hard
00:34:02.400
as you do. It's not their business. Why should they be okay with that? They're going to do that job,
00:34:08.560
maybe 80% as good as you would do that job. Know that when you're hiring for that and you give them
00:34:14.900
the things to do that either you're not good at, so they'll do it at a higher percentage or that you
00:34:20.120
just don't enjoy doing so that you can do the parts of the business you do enjoy. And then keep
00:34:26.240
adding more employees. Don't, once you do one, it's actually easier to add more, but don't be afraid
00:34:32.460
to take that step. It's another fear factor issue, Ryan. It's, it's what do I need to do to grow bigger?
00:34:40.200
Well, I know I need to hire an employee. I've never met a single, singlepreneur. I think they call
00:34:44.780
them that didn't know that hiring an employee was the next step they needed to do, but since
00:34:49.740
they've never done it before, they're afraid to do it. And that's the only time we're ever afraid.
00:34:55.480
You're never afraid to hire your second employee. It's only the first one, everything you're doing
00:34:59.880
in your business. It's only the first time you do it. You'll be afraid of it.
00:35:03.260
So I've got a couple of thoughts, Alan. Number one, I, I'm going to take a little bit of issue. I don't
00:35:08.460
disagree with you, but I'm going to take a little bit of issue with one thing you said. You said,
00:35:12.640
they'll never work as hard as you. I don't disagree. I don't think they will because
00:35:16.540
they're not as invested as you, as you are rightfully. So that makes sense to me. I don't
00:35:20.940
take, I don't disagree. I think we need to be very careful of that narrative because that narrative
00:35:27.540
will keep us trapped. Cause you're going to say, well, they'll never work as hard as I do. So why
00:35:31.480
should I even like, that's the follow-up. Well, they'll never work as hard as me. And you know,
00:35:36.460
this is going to be a cost and a headache. That's the follow-up to that thought.
00:35:39.960
Um, here's what I'm thinking as you're saying this, they may not work as hard as you,
00:35:44.020
but they're 80% might be better than your, than your a hundred percent. Like for example, taxes,
00:35:49.420
I'm going to work as hard as I can on my business, but an accountant, a trained certified public
00:35:55.320
accountant, his 60% is going to be better than my a hundred. I'm okay with that. The other thing I
00:36:01.380
wrote down here is that I think this is very important from a tactical standpoint. Like if we're
00:36:06.780
struggling to hire and bring people in, cause I do have people contracted. I don't have,
00:36:11.620
I don't have a full-time employee currently, but I have people contracted and the, where it started
00:36:19.680
to make sense for me was, was this question. And I'll ask you guys, if I said to you, I want you to
00:36:26.640
give me $20 of your money, you give me $20 and in return, I'll give you 200. You give me 20 and
00:36:34.860
I'll exchange it for 200. How often would you make that trade with me? As often as you possibly
00:36:39.780
could. You do it an infinite number of times. And I think that's where you can start to look
00:36:45.660
at your business for bringing people on is if I could take somebody and I can pay them 20 or 30 or
00:36:51.160
$50 an hour. And in return, I'm going to recoup an hour and that's going to yield for me 500 or a
00:36:57.980
thousand or 5,000. I'm going to make that trade all day long. I think where a lot of entrepreneurs,
00:37:03.660
entrepreneurs get into trouble is when they don't have anything else to do. And so they're like,
00:37:10.160
well, I got to hire this person for $40 an hour. And so I'm going to pay them X amount of dollars a
00:37:15.200
week, but I don't really have anything else to do. Well, okay. That's probably the issue you need to
00:37:19.440
address. How would you spend your time if you weren't doing taxes? If you weren't doing bookkeeping,
00:37:24.760
if you weren't following up on invoices that needed to be paid, all this clerical administrative duty,
00:37:30.740
what would you be doing? And is it worth more of your time than what you would pay $30 an hour to
00:37:36.440
somebody else to do? Yeah, absolutely. You should always have more to do for your business. You should
00:37:45.020
always have something marketing that you can do to reach more people. Again, that's the
00:37:49.300
beauty of the global economy that we have nowadays. If you hire somebody to do work and they can
00:37:56.080
handle 60% of your work, you now have 60% more time to go bring in more clients so that hopefully
00:38:02.620
you need to hire a second person to do that work. And a CEO of a large corporation never sees the day
00:38:10.500
to day of a business. He just deals with new marketing, new products, new outreach. So that's
00:38:18.800
where you want to get to if you really want to scale your business. And you may enjoy the day-to-day
00:38:24.120
hands-on. So you go into the business every now and then and help out. That's what I do. I stop in
00:38:30.600
my shop maybe once a week and help the guys build and assemble. For the most part, I'm working outward
00:38:36.700
on the business, but I miss it. I miss doing the hands-on because I created it all. Yeah. And that
00:38:42.560
was my passion. Build it, you know, make it so you can do it on your terms. E-Myth is a really great
00:38:48.220
book for this. So a lot of times people think that just because they're good at a thing, they're going
00:38:53.880
to be good at the business side of it. And those are two different things that we need to understand
00:38:58.120
as entrepreneurs. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Zach Zanuck from Battle Team Gamma. What are your
00:39:06.240
favorite ways or things you're currently doing to get more comfortable being uncomfortable? Do you
00:39:12.060
have any recommendations for how we can recognize and create those controlled environments for
00:39:16.880
ourselves? He's talking about fear of rejection and how do you not deal with, you know, how do you
00:39:26.360
get comfortable with dealing with the fear on things? Well, you don't get to repetitively do
00:39:34.260
an uncomfortable thing. As I said earlier, once you do it once, you're comfortable with it. Nobody's
00:39:39.620
ever that excited for you that you jumped out of an airplane for the second time. Only the first time.
00:39:48.260
To keep myself trained with doing uncomfortable things, when I order food or go to a restaurant,
00:39:54.960
restaurant, I most of the time will look for something I've never heard of and order it and
00:40:01.420
try it. Worst case, I don't eat a whole lot. And maybe that's better for my diet. There's lots of
00:40:06.920
opportunities out there. Take a different path home. Just try, you know, drive when you're driving
00:40:11.900
home, try driving a different direction home. Watch a different type of TV show that, you know,
00:40:18.660
put on an old black and white show. Whether or not you enjoy the show doesn't matter. You're
00:40:25.120
becoming comfortable with doing uncomfortable things. Talk to somebody at the grocery store.
00:40:30.760
How dare we? You know, the guy buying the Bud Light, call him out. No, don't do that. Sounds
00:40:40.840
Drinking. Yeah, but he's drinking Bud Light. So he's probably left his gun at home. He forgot his
00:40:47.880
Yeah. So, so literally look, opportunities for everything. You know, we're talking a lot of
00:40:53.200
business on this call today. So in, in the business and entrepreneur world, the opportunities are
00:40:59.940
always, always out there. You just have to open your mind to them and see them. You have to listen
00:41:06.140
for people saying, Hey, I wish this would be better. Or even in your own life, say, I wish
00:41:11.780
this would be better. That do the uncomfortable, take that next uncomfortable step and say, all
00:41:17.520
right, well, let me see how I can bring that product to fruition. I actually have a list
00:41:21.740
of products that are not even related to my business that people have said to me, man,
00:41:27.580
this would be a great thing. And I keep that list written down. So if I ever want to venture
00:41:32.700
out and do another business, I've got these product ideas ready to go because it'll serve
00:41:42.460
Yeah. I like what you said about even just something as simple and you said it in passing,
00:41:47.180
but I think it's crucial starting a conversation with somebody at the grocery store.
00:41:51.380
I wrote down a list here of, I think three or four things that people are most afraid of.
00:41:56.880
And here's what I wrote. Correct me if you think I'm wrong. Number one, having a conversation
00:42:01.900
with somebody. Number two, speaking in public. For a lot. Yeah. Number three, asking for something
00:42:11.180
like a discount, for example, asking for something you want or a date would be another one. Number
00:42:17.720
four, trying something new, just doing something new and willing to risk looking foolish. Those are
00:42:25.460
four things I think that people are very, very afraid of. And so how do you get comfortable with
00:42:30.840
those? Well, for talking with somebody, the best thing you can do is start a conversation.
00:42:34.980
Yesterday, I was, you talked about starting a conversation at the grocery store. I think
00:42:38.840
that's a great place to do it. It's low risk, right? If they think you're an idiot or don't
00:42:43.660
want to talk, they just leave. You're never going to see that person again. So low risk.
00:42:47.000
But I was skiing in Brian Head here in Southern Utah yesterday. And this woman was skiing down
00:42:53.120
and she was on this ski bike. I'd never seen one in like right there. I was like, oh, that's
00:42:59.740
interesting. I was very curious about it. So I just asked her a couple of questions and we had a
00:43:03.960
really good, I don't know, 30 second conversation about what it's about and if she likes it or doesn't
00:43:08.640
like it. And she was just trying it for the first time and her husband has done it for a while and
00:43:12.260
he's good at it and she's not. And we just had a good conversation. If you're scared of talking with
00:43:16.880
people, the way that you overcome talking with people is you talk with people. If we're talking
00:43:23.040
about speaking in public, I'm so afraid to speak in public. Look guys, do you have an opportunity
00:43:28.880
to present some new strategy or idea at work to five of your coworkers? Do that. If there's something
00:43:34.920
that you want to share about work or a family dynamic, do it over dinner with your five or six
00:43:40.940
family members. If you're in Rotary or one that really helped me become a better public speaker was
00:43:46.460
Business Network International, BNI. I went to the president and I would say, hey, if anybody ever
00:43:52.760
bails on doing it, because every week there was an opportunity for one or maybe two people to speak
00:43:58.060
and to share about their business. And I wasn't really comfortable doing this at the time, but I
00:44:02.660
went to the president and I said, hey, if anybody ever bails, like they get sick or they can't make it
00:44:08.400
or they forget or whatever, if anybody ever forgets or can't do their presentation, I just need a 60
00:44:14.780
second warning and I'll fill in. And they're like, really? I'm like, yep, anytime. And there was
00:44:20.720
probably five or six times where the speaker didn't show up or wasn't prepared or whatever.
00:44:28.520
And they said, hey, Ryan, will you present? Yep. I said, all I need is 60 seconds. And I would pick
00:44:34.060
one element of my business and I'd go share it. And sometimes I did really well. And sometimes I did
00:44:38.380
really poorly, but I had the balls to do it. The other one asking for a discount or asking for
00:44:42.800
something you want. Guys, if you want to get good at this, just go ask for a discount for the next
00:44:46.940
30 days, even a week, do it for a week. Wherever you go, wherever you go to spend money, just ask for
00:44:53.300
a discount. If you go to Starbucks, it's because we were talking about Starbucks this morning,
00:44:56.840
go in and say, hey, is there, you guys have any promotions or discounts running right now?
00:44:59.920
Or, hey, I'm a regular here. Is there any discount for a regular? Or, hey, I'm 60 years old. Do you
00:45:04.960
have a senior citizen discount? I don't care. Just ask for a discount wherever you go.
00:45:11.060
And by the way, as a business owner, I hate it that you make people do that.
00:45:16.540
I hate it that you ask people to do that. It's good for them. It's not good for the business owner.
00:45:21.140
Yeah, I know. But I'm not really too concerned with the business owner. I'm
00:45:24.320
concerned with the person because the business owner can always say no. People ask me for discounts
00:45:28.300
sometimes. I'm like, no. Yeah. And as a business owner, that's an uncomfortable conversation
00:45:32.440
to teach them to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
00:45:36.040
Totally. And then the last one, trying something new. Just go try something new.
00:45:39.640
Go to the gym. Go do jujitsu. Go take a firearms class. Go take an art class. Go take a cooking
00:45:44.580
class. Go whatever. Just do something new that you've never done before. Or if a buddy calls
00:45:51.820
you up and says, hey, we're going dirt biking this weekend. Do you want to go? Yes.
00:45:56.980
Well, but I've never been. I know. That's why you're going. So you can say that you've done
00:46:01.480
it and you can learn something. And who knows? Maybe you're going to find the hobby that you just
00:46:06.080
love. Don't just say yes enough with I'm busy. You can do this with it. No, just say yes.
00:46:12.060
I think if you incorporate those things, you'll have a lot of success in not really worrying about
00:46:17.180
doing something outside of your comfort zone. There's two catchphrases. You just mentioned
00:46:22.040
both of them, actually, that I've used as a trigger for myself personally. And the listeners
00:46:26.300
can do this, too. When you say I've never done that, that for me, when I say that, that's a trigger.
00:46:33.140
Oh, OK, let me try it. You know, if it takes an afternoon or an hour or whatever, I get to try
00:46:38.580
something different and experience something new on the planet. How awesome is that? That's what life
00:46:43.300
is about. And then if I say I don't like something, I have to catch myself and say, well, you know,
00:46:51.980
did I do that a couple of weeks ago and I didn't like doing that? Did I try? You know, have I eaten
00:46:56.280
that food recently? Or when I was a little kid, did I not like beans? So I'm, you know, 53 years
00:47:02.900
old now and saying I don't like beans. Well, maybe it's time to try them again. So when I say I don't
00:47:07.460
like that, I have to catch myself and think, have I actually ever tried it? Or am I just saying I don't
00:47:13.300
like that? And there is a I'm not interested in. That's OK. And sometimes you even do the I'm not
00:47:19.580
interested in because it doesn't take a lot of vesting of your time to do. I'm not interested in
00:47:25.300
running a marathon. And so I'm not going to go through all the training it takes to run a
00:47:31.260
marathon. But, you know, if somebody says, hey, we're, you know, doing a hundred yard dash
00:47:37.400
competition. Sure. I'll try that. Why not? Do uncomfortable. I'm writing down because you had
00:47:45.300
said I'm not interested in doing a marathon. That was the example that you used. We have to be honest
00:47:50.300
with ourselves. Are you not interested in doing a marathon? Like, is that really what you're not
00:47:55.160
interested in? Or are you not interested in being uncomfortable, pushing outside of your
00:48:00.080
comfort zone, willing to look foolish? I don't know the answer. Only ourselves individually
00:48:05.780
can answer that. I'm not interested, meaning you're not interested in the thing or is, are
00:48:11.620
you not interested in the risk associated with it? The fear of doing something new? Be honest
00:48:18.140
with yourself about what you're really not interested in.
00:48:20.920
Right. Exactly. Know yourself deeper and continue the conversation with yourself.
00:48:26.900
When you say I'm not interested or I don't like, or I've never done it, that that's not the end of
00:48:32.340
a conversation. That's the start of a conversation with yourself.
00:48:35.520
Yeah. All right. What's next? Let's take a couple more, Alan.
00:48:38.960
All right. We're going to move into Instagram now.
00:48:40.800
Oh, pay old school ass. How masterize my job when I work in home with two little kids.
00:48:52.020
What was the first part? How what I did? I just didn't catch it.
00:48:54.940
There's a little language barrier here. It's basically how to master masterize my job when
00:49:01.160
I work in home with two little kids. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, getting asked a lot since
00:49:08.300
COVID. Go ahead. Find that one. Yeah, I do this. Yeah. This can be a challenge. And I've done this
00:49:16.680
for nine years now, actually a little longer than nine years. I was doing my financial planning
00:49:21.120
practice as well. It's a challenge. It really is. The thing that got me the most, Alan, was
00:49:27.280
the guilt. I had guilt coming at me from both sides. So when I was working on my business,
00:49:33.100
I had guilt feeling like I wasn't there and present with my family. I could literally hear
00:49:37.360
them outside doing their thing. And I was guilty that I wasn't out there with them.
00:49:41.200
And then when I would go out there and I'd spend time with my kids or have lunch or do whatever that
00:49:45.260
I was doing, I could hear all my emails and all the things going on over here in my office.
00:49:49.600
And I was guilty that I wasn't there. So I had guilt coming from both sides because I wasn't
00:49:55.440
paying enough attention to one or the other. A couple of things. In Maine, it was a little bit
00:50:00.360
more simple because I was in a different part of the house. So that helped. And what I would say to
00:50:07.120
you is regardless of the size of your house, you have to have a dedicated space. If your office is in
00:50:15.180
the kitchen at the little table by the counter, failure. It's not going to work. I promise you it's
00:50:21.480
not going to work. If it's in the bedroom, you know, where, you know, the bed and the bathroom
00:50:26.360
and kids are coming in, your wife's coming in, it's not going to work. You have to have a dedicated
00:50:31.280
space. I would choose the basement in the back corner and I would get away from as far as you can,
00:50:36.280
the family and everything else that's going on. Second to that is making sure that you're
00:50:42.860
communicating effectively with your family because your kids want to be with you. Like you're there,
00:50:47.520
dad's home. I want to be with dad. That's awesome. There's nothing wrong with that.
00:50:52.540
That's beautiful. They want to spend time with you. They want to be with you. They care about you.
00:50:55.920
They love you. They're excited about your time together, but you have to be able to have
00:51:01.480
conversations with them about when is work time and when is family time. So if you're going to work,
00:51:07.020
for example, from nine to noon, then that time is dedicated to work time. If your wife comes in
00:51:14.460
and she says, Hey hon, will you take out the trash at 10 30? The answer is no.
00:51:20.280
If your kids come in and say, Hey dad, jump on the trampoline for 15 minutes. The answer has to be
00:51:24.580
no. And the way that you give that a better, softer delivery is you say, Hey hon, I can't take
00:51:32.060
out the trash right now, but I take lunch from noon to one. I'll come up there. You and I let's have
00:51:37.000
lunch together and I'll take the trash out before I go to work, go back to work at one. Or if the kids
00:51:42.340
are like, Hey dad, we want to jump on the trampoline. Hey guys, as you know, I'm working
00:51:46.420
from nine to noon during lunch. Mom and I are going to have lunch together for about 30, 40 minutes.
00:51:51.940
And I'll spend about 10 minutes with you jumping on the trampoline before I go back to work at one.
00:51:56.720
You have to treat this as a separate space and you have to communicate with them because they won't
00:52:01.960
understand if you're not communicating. They're like, well, what the hell dad's home. Like, why is he
00:52:06.340
playing with us? He hates us. He doesn't want to be with us. No, that's not the case, but you're failing
00:52:10.160
to communicate it effectively with them. And then the third component is you actually have to honor
00:52:16.440
the schedule. So if you tell your wife, Hey hon, I can't take the trash out. We agreed I'm working
00:52:22.860
from nine to one. And then from one to five, like we agreed on that. I can't take the trash out right
00:52:27.120
now, but I'll tell you what I'll do it. When I get done with work at five o'clock, you have to be done
00:52:32.340
at five o'clock. You have to not five 15, not, Hey hon, I got a few more emails and then I'll come
00:52:38.460
up. Nope. You have to be done at five o'clock. If it's going to be a few more emails, then tell her
00:52:43.140
five 30, but you have to be honest about it. And you have to make sure that you're adhering to the
00:52:49.040
system because now your words have weight. When you say, Hey hon, at five o'clock, I'll come to take
00:52:55.820
the trash out. And then I'm all yours for the evening. That means the phone goes away. The trash goes out
00:53:00.580
and everything gets taken care of that way tomorrow. And she says, Hey hon, will you load
00:53:04.060
the dishwasher at one 30 in the afternoon? And you say, no, she's not been out of shape
00:53:09.520
about it. She's like, Oh yeah, he'll do it this afternoon. Cause I know he will, because
00:53:12.660
this is what he does. So create a separate space. Point number one, point number two, communicate
00:53:18.580
the boundaries point number three, honor the boundaries. Yeah. You, you killed that really
00:53:23.200
well. Um, one of the things I've seen, uh, one of the other men in the iron council do
00:53:28.640
is he, he got a hang tag to put on the door that says I'm working right now. You know,
00:53:33.320
this is not a good time, especially when he was on calls. Uh, for me, my wife moved into
00:53:38.660
my home office after COVID and has never left. And she does a lot of phone calls with her
00:53:43.740
work. So we, again, boundaries and the communication will every day in the morning, go over what time
00:53:51.980
she has calls scheduled for. I'll go over what time that I may have calls scheduled for.
00:53:56.260
So we try not even to be in this, in the office at the same time. If, if she's on the phone,
00:54:00.920
I don't even want to be in there. Uh, and that lunchtime, it gets re-communicated. Sometimes
00:54:06.280
if someone posts it notes, whatever it takes to make it clear, she seems to hate it when I come
00:54:10.580
in the door singing and she's on a work call. So surprise, surprise. Yeah. I sing happy songs.
00:54:19.360
So yeah, communication and boundaries, two biggest things for that. And it can be done very
00:54:24.680
successfully and happily when you reciprocating kind of coming out of your, your workspace in a
00:54:31.960
happy mood and ready to deliver to your wife or kids so that they're like, all right, don't bother
00:54:37.340
dad when he's in there. Cause you get grumpy dad, but when he comes out, he'll be happy dad. If you
00:54:41.320
didn't bother him. So, you know, reward the good behavior with those boundaries.
00:54:46.300
I had a friend who would come home from work and he had this tree outside of his front yard
00:54:50.920
and it had this big limb that was probably, I don't know, six and a half feet off the ground.
00:54:55.580
And he would quite literally get home, pull into his driveway, go out, hang on the limb for, you
00:55:02.720
know, 10, 20, 30 seconds, and then go back inside. And he was telling me about this. I asked why he did
00:55:07.360
it. He says, because I'm leaving my, excuse me, I'm hanging my troubles at the door.
00:55:16.340
That's what he would do. He would, that was his, his mechanism. That was his cue. I'm going to go
00:55:21.020
hang, release all this stuff. This is separate. This is compartmentalized to work. And now I'm
00:55:26.820
going to come home, engage with my family. And it was a pretty cool lesson, you know, and I think we
00:55:31.040
can do a better job, whether we're quite literally hanging from a limb or we just mentally prepare
00:55:35.200
ourselves. That's why I tell a lot of guys who have a commute. Let's say you have a, uh, an hour long
00:55:40.780
commute from work. If you're like me, I want to listen to a podcast or maybe the radio. I want to
00:55:46.260
catch up on what I might miss, or I'm super efficient when it comes to learning about any
00:55:51.120
self-development type stuff. But one thing that's helped me when I did have a commute is I would
00:55:56.480
listen for maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes. And then the last half hour, no music, no podcast,
00:56:03.280
no noise. It was just me transitioning. Okay. I finished all these things at work. Oh, you know
00:56:10.200
what? I need to do that thing. Okay. Noted. Yep. I'm going to do that tomorrow. Clear it out. Okay.
00:56:15.320
Now switch into dad mode. Okay. Here's a question that I would ask myself, what can I do? And how
00:56:22.880
can I show up tonight to be the best dad that I can be or the best husband that I can be?
00:56:29.220
Cause we'll do it when we go to work, right? We're like, man, if I get this done and this done
00:56:32.460
and this done, that'll be a productive day. And I got this deadline and this task. And I got to talk
00:56:36.140
to my boss about this and I got to give this presentation and we plan out our day at work,
00:56:40.120
but we don't do it at home, man. I'm going to show up and I'm going to, I'm going to hug my kids.
00:56:46.000
First thing I'm going to give my, my wife, you know, the best welcome home kiss I've ever given
00:56:52.100
her. I'm going to grab her ass when I walk by and like embrace her fully. Um, then, then I'm going
00:56:56.580
to put all my stuff down. I'm going to wrestle with the kids and then I'm going to help my wife cook
00:57:00.880
dinner. And then we're all going to sit together as a family. And these are the questions I'm going to
00:57:04.060
ask while we're at dinner. Cause I want to hear about what they had to say. And then after dinner,
00:57:07.860
we're all going to go on a walk together. We're going to jump on the trampoline or we're going
00:57:10.940
to read a book or we're going to wrestle. And then when I'm done with that, I'm going to put
00:57:14.600
the kids down. And then when I put the kids down, then my wife and I are going to have a
00:57:18.640
conversation about our day. And then ideally I'd like to take her to the bedroom and have sex with
00:57:23.840
her. Uh, and like, but we don't plan it out that way. We do it with work, but we don't do it with
00:57:29.080
home, man. What if we did it with home laser specific on your vision, the, the more clarity you can bring
00:57:35.180
to a vision, but we, you're, you're right. We don't think about our vision throughout our day.
00:57:40.240
We think about it more globally, but the reality is like for me at the end of every task I'm doing,
00:57:46.800
when I'm done with an email, what I'm done with this podcast, I'll do the AAR. You talk about the
00:57:52.940
AARs all the time. Then I'll take a quick pause, a couple of seconds for breathing is all it takes.
00:57:58.240
Usually if the thing goes well, and what that does is that lets that end, that event end for me
00:58:03.880
by just blanking my mind out. Then I consciously think about what it is I've got to do next. If
00:58:09.940
you're driving home from work, or if you're finishing up in your home office, all right,
00:58:12.880
what's the next thing I have to do? What that does is that brings focus to what you're going to do next.
00:58:18.340
It, it helps you clear you of everything else that you might be on your mind. If you're thinking
00:58:22.760
about the next task, then I think about what's the outcome that I want. How do I want that task to go?
00:58:29.600
If it's especially in communications with other people, I want to think about what do I want
00:58:35.400
that interaction to be? And then the third part is, how do I need to show up to get that result?
00:58:43.320
Three things like, and look, this takes five seconds when you train yourself to do it constantly.
00:58:48.760
What do I want? Or how do I need to show up? That's actually on my keyboard on my main computer,
00:58:53.380
because probably the hardest part to do is to frame yourself the right way. Most of the time it's
00:59:01.320
polite, it's courteous, you know, in the business world, it's professional. Sometimes you got to get
00:59:05.920
a little angry. Sometimes you got to speak a little sterner, but select it, choose your emotion and
00:59:12.460
choose your action that you're going to take to get the vision that you want to happen. So you've got
00:59:19.640
focus, you've got a vision, and you've got a plan. That's what we talk about all the time. Do it on a,
00:59:26.500
not even just on a daily, on a between task level. And it's amazing. Once you turn that into a habit,
00:59:34.260
how much more you'll accomplish in your life, how much better life will go, because it's on your terms.
00:59:40.700
Yep, exactly. Awesome. Well, Alan, let's wrap this up today. We've been about an hour.
00:59:46.380
I'll wrap this up for us. Alan, since this is your first visit, I'm sure we'll do
00:59:49.460
more of having you on the Ask Me Anything. But guys, I hope that this has served you. I hope we've
00:59:55.120
given you some things to consider and some answers to chew on a little bit. Not that they are the
00:59:59.460
answers, but hopefully they'll give you something to think about as you try to solve your own problems.
01:00:05.540
And that's what you need to do. You know, solve your own issues. And hopefully we can give you
01:00:09.820
some things to consider as you do. Guys, a couple of things, announcements. Number one
01:00:14.780
is we have our uprising event. We have five spots available. That's May 2nd through the 5th. That's
01:00:21.220
a three and a half day experience here in Southern Utah. I'm going to be there. Alan's going to be
01:00:24.980
there. And we're going to have about three or four other cadre members who are going to be there.
01:00:29.040
We'd love to see you there. So please do that. Also, if you want to make sure that when we open up
01:00:35.300
our exclusive brotherhood, which we talked about a couple of times throughout this podcast,
01:00:39.120
we're going to open up in March, mid-March. So a little over a month. If you want to be ready for
01:00:44.280
that, I would encourage you to go check out the Battle Ready program. That's a 30-day email series.
01:00:49.980
So you're going to get 17 emails over a span of 30 days. And it's going to help you talk about the
01:00:55.600
focus and the planning and everything that Alan just shared and come up with a vision and something
01:00:59.920
very specific, including tactics that you can employ on a daily basis in order to accomplish
01:01:05.300
your most pressing objectives. So you can check that out at orderaman.com slash battle ready.
01:01:11.340
So it's orderaman.com slash battle ready and orderaman.com slash uprising. Alan, anything else
01:01:17.480
before we close it out today? It's grateful that you had me here. Guys, reach out. I'm on the
01:01:22.160
Order of Man Facebook page. So I'm happy to answer questions there. I constantly do. So look,
01:01:29.300
the more you communicate, and that's even what this call is about, is who not how. It's
01:01:35.120
knowing who to talk to, who to listen to, to further your life. So thank you for having
01:01:41.240
me, Ryan. Awesome. Thanks, brother. All right, guys, go out there, take action, and become
01:01:45.520
the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. If you're ready
01:01:51.320
to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be, we invite you