Maximizing Time, Minimizing Effort: Lessons on Discipline and Prioritization | Craig Ballantyne | EP 40

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Learn more at aarp.org slash skills. And so this one guy, his name is Ed O'Keefe.
He said, you're the most productive person I know. Therefore, you must be the most disciplined person I know.
And it's not actually true. I'm actually very lazy, but I'm selectively lazy.
I don't do the middle-class things that hold me down and I also have built systems to protect myself and protect my time and so there are certain systems that anybody can implement into their life that without even spending any money can make them more productive and you know it costs nothing to say no to people. It costs nothing to say no to toxic people.
It costs nothing to say no to people it costs nothing to say no to toxic people it costs nothing to say no to being in bad environments if you just start saying no to that stuff all of a sudden it will free up more of your time to do the right things what is up entrepreneur dna family i have another incredible guest in fact he can be known as the most disciplined man in the world my boy craig ballantyne is here what's brother? Man, this is going to be a lot of fun. Let's rock.
So where are you living, first of all? Because I know you go from Canada to Mexico. You're here in Miami with me.
Where are you living right now in this world? We live in Playa del Carmen right now. We just had our third child in Mexico, so they have Canadian and Mexican passports, but we're moving back to Vancouver very soon.
It's too hot for me. It's like cool here in Miami.
Was there a reason to go to Mexico? Yeah. So my wife got pregnant in 2021 and you know, that's when all the craziness was happening.
And she was like, you know, you might not be allowed into the delivery room in Canada. You might have to wear masks, you know, all this bull crap.
And so, you know, she wants, she, she and I both have a core value. So we moved to Mexico.
One of our friends had a child in Cancun. They had a great experience.
And so we went down. And when you go and it's obviously the private healthcare system in Mexico.
And it's like, you go in there and it's like going into Subway. If you want this, you want this, you want this, you just tell them what you want and you get exactly what you want.
and so we've had all three of our kids down there i love that yeah for you i like i like this idea of freedom and this kind of goes right into business where i want to you and i were just talking about this and people don't understand how to actually move or work or operate in a way that creates the freedom they want but let's talk talk about a saying you just told me, and I freaking love it.

And I don't mean to butcher it, but if you want to be a millionaire,

you need to live like a billionaire.

Yeah.

So you flip it around and you go, because Dave Ramsey's not going to like this, right?

He's going to hate this idea.

Shocker.

Right.

But you got to start with, yeah, you got to live like a billionaire

if you want to be a millionaire.

If you want to get rich, you have to live rich.

And for me, growing up on a farm, I watched my parents work 12 hours a day.

That type of idea to a person with a middle-class upbringing, middle-class mindset, they're not going to understand it.

Neither is Dave Ramsey.

But it is absolutely the way that you have to look at your time in order to invest in getting back your time to be able to go from like doing $10 an hour tasks to $1,000 an hour tasks. And that's the leverage point that allows you to get rich.
Yeah. Yeah.
And you said something, you know, even to the point of if you're going to drive, you'd rather take an Uber so that you can be working while in the Uber at a leverage point that creates more money, creates more opportunity, whatever that case is, where most people would be like, yeah, but I don't want to spend the 60 bucks. Man, I got a client in New Zealand.
And so he's a mortgage broker and finance guy, and he's driving around all these meetings all day long. And I'm like, why are you doing that? You're stuck in traffic 30 or 45 minutes to get to a meeting.
You're like listening to a podcast, which is okay. It's still better than listening to radio.
But you could be sitting in the back of an Uber, taking calls, doing deals, making money, just like a billionaire has a private driver. They don't drive around, sit in traffic.
And I never, ever drive. Even if I'm in California and I have to go from San Diego to LA, it's an Uber.
And it's, yeah, sure. It's an expensive Uber, but I make way more money in the back of the Uber than it costs me to buy the Uber.
I have a slightly, not different take, similar take, but it's a funny thing that I do. I talk a lot about this, about always flying first class.
Absolutely. And, you know, people are like, well, yeah, what about a PJ? Okay.
Well, that's different. The intention about going first class is because the other people in first class create opportunities that can create more income and have more impact on your life and your business than the people in coach typically.
Don't get me wrong. There's times I've had to be in coach, of course.
But for the most part, I'm always doing that. I'm always spending the money to be at the highest, you know, gym, like lifetime gym is like almost $500 a month.
It's insane. Country clubs is kind of the same principle that I lean into about spend the money to be around the people that can help you create opportunity in the same way you're talking about be efficient with the time that you actually have.
Yeah. Don't waste your time.
One of my friends had a good phrase,

give yourself the opportunity to have opportunities.

And so if you don't go and put yourself around these other people who are going to show you opportunities,

well, you'll never have the opportunities.

And it's the same with the work.

Give yourself an opportunity to have opportunities.

If you're stuck doing busy work,

if you're stuck driving yourself around,

if you're stuck doing your own, you know, mowing your own lawn,

if you're stuck doing your own snow clearing, or you're stuck doing your own you know mowing your own lawn if you're stuck doing your own snow clearing or you're stuck doing your own anything that could be like editing videos especially in the day of social media like i get people who have huge followings who i know are making hundreds of thousands of dollars years personally asking me like what's the best editing software for a video you should not know that yeah there's so much stuff you should not know and i said this a lot years ago it's a little less um true now that a lot of people have made money in tech but i used to say when we coached um personal trainers to start an online business though the more you know about technology the less money you're gonna make because if you know how to edit your website what what are you going to do? Edit your website? You're going to go like, okay, it's going to take me 15 minutes. And it's going to take you longer than that.
And it's robbing you of writing the sales letter that goes on the website that makes you a ton of money. And so we would see this all the time, people coming in to the mastermind meetings and be like, I just can't get the thing done.
It's like, what do you actually do? Well, I'm editing my website. I'm editing my videos.
I'm doing this, I'm doing that. And that's that middle-class mindset that holds you down.
So if you're, if you're thinking that I just got to do more work, well, you'll never get ahead. Yeah.
You and I were just talking about the busy work, right? And I deal with this all the time, specifically in the real estate space. Oh, let me go get the website or let me go get the cards or let me go, you know, drive the property and take my own pictures.
None of that generates revenue. It doesn't create another deal.
You're not going to go make more money. You're not going to be efficient with the time you have.
And I wanted to bring up social media because you actually have an event right now. We're doing this episode as you have an event the very same day.
And today's more of a social media day for you on this event. Let's talk about social media and some key points.
Like what is going through your mastermind today that people can take away even from this episode? So it is building your personal brand. And you know, people have talked about building your personal brand for 20 plus years now.
I remember reading my first personal branding book in like 2000. And so yes, you have to have it because everything becomes easier when you build your personal brand.
I have a phrase in my own life. It means it's how I've made my money.
It's how I met my wife is that the more good people, you know, the easier everything will be more good people, you know, the easier everything will be. Because if you know a hundred people and you need a lawyer, you need a plumber, you need a babysitter, you need anything.
If you know a hundred people, you're going to have a hundred different plus recommendations. If you only know 10 people, you're not going to have a lot of recommendations.
So just get to know more good people. By knowing more good people, I was able to ask a girl for introductions that eventually led me to meet my wife on Instagram.
I love that. Yeah.
There's actually a pretty funny story about if we got like 30 seconds for it. go let's go okay so i've had two hair transplants you might be a little late to the i was just gonna say god you have such great hair i know and i got two hair

transplants and so the day after i got my second hair transplant i had messaged my friend vanessa

who runs the ladies business community in toronto where i where i was living at the time i said you

know i really want to meet somebody you know a lot of amazing women entrepreneurs in her group

Thank you. runs the ladies' business community in Toronto, where I was living at the time, I said, you know, I really want to meet somebody.
You know a lot of amazing women entrepreneurs in her group. Can you introduce me to like five people? And so she sends me five Instagram profiles and I went, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
And I'm like, man, I must be the most ungrateful person in the world right now. So what can I do? What can I do? I know.
I'll go and look at who she follows and I'll just scroll through it.

Swear to God.

Okay.

I scrolled 30 people.

I'm looking at circles this big.

Right.

I see this girl and I go, this one.

I'd like an introduction to this woman.

And she goes, okay, but she lives in Vancouver.

You live in Toronto. And I go, I'm still, I don't care.

And so the day after my second hair transplant, when you get a hair transplant, it's like you fought Mike Tyson because you get all this swelling and it just slowly goes over your face. Oh man.
So it looks like you have Botox on day one and then it looks like you have black eyes today too. And so I was making a Botox joke and this girl that I got introduced to through my friend, Vanessa, Michelle, who's now my wife, thought it was a funny joke.
And we just went into DMs for hours and text message for hours. And the next thing you know, I'm on a flight out to Vancouver to meet her.
And four months later, we were living, no, it was a year later, we were living here in Miami for a bit. And we got married about two years after.
I have a similar, but different story. You were very intentional with how you started that relationship and that's what the similar like i did something that i met my wife here in miami um on a sunday fun day by the way and uh but i was very intentional every day after i met her yeah the very next day i facetimed her and that intentionality ended up with me getting her.
She's now my wife. She's the mother of my two kids, the whole thing.
And it goes back to kind of everything we're going to end up talking about in this podcast is being intentional, prioritizing what is the priority, doing the thing that actually moves your needle, not just doing things. So for me and you, you're spending hours DMing each other, spending the intentional time letting her know, I want to get to genuinely know you.
I don't want to just, you know, shoot a DM out there.

And it starts even before that in that we were both very intentional in what we were looking for.

She had a list of the qualities that she was looking for in a man.

I had a very clear description of what I was looking for. In my mind, in my first book, The Perfect Day Formula, I wrote a chapter about the vision for my future.
In fact, I wrote it in such great description that people actually for years thought I was already married to this person and had kids because chapter, I think it's 21, talks about, you know, I'm living with, you know, TK and, you know, we have two kids and they're named this and this. And so I wrote this entire thing.
I wrote the vision and I wrote that in 2015. And it was five years from when I wrote it that the vision was occurring.
And I met my wife in 2019 and I was probably like a year late on my vision. But this has happened to me multiple times in life where I've written five-year plans and achieved the exact thing that I wanted, plus or minus three to 12 months.
I love that. And it goes back, we're getting a little sidetracked from social media, but I mean, it really does go back like when you put your energy towards something and it's clear, you're going to achieve it.
The thing that I always say, people want to achieve it today. And when it takes a year or two or three, I'll give you the perfect example is this podcast.
Yeah. You were on the first version of this podcast in like 2019.
Yeah. Right.
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I now am ranked. I have two separate podcasts ranked in top 25 it was not always that way but for 11 years i kept podcasting and here we are now people give up yeah and so if you go back to the social media and the intentionality of it it's one thing to say well i'm i need to have an instagram everybody's got an instagram it's another thing to say all right, I need to have an Instagram.
Everybody's got an Instagram. It's another thing to say, all right, I'm going to use my Instagram channel to generate business.
In order to generate business, I need to know my customer avatar and exactly what they want to hear. I need to enter the conversation in the prospect's mind.
And those seven words enter the conversation in the prospect's mind. If those are the only seven words or anything that you knew about marketing, you would know more about marketing than somebody who does an MBA from Harvard because it is like just the most important thing.
Like Monday morning, what is my client thinking in the real estate industry? Well, they're probably thinking about, you know, if there's simply a real estate agent, well, you know, they had open houses on the weekend, maybe things went well or didn't go well. And now they're worried about, you estate commission thing, and they're real worried about this and all that.
It's like, okay, what's the message they need to hear right now? And have that video prepared. You can make that video three weeks in advance because you generally know what's going to be going through their mind.
And then on Friday, when they're super excited for the open houses on the weekend, you got to show up with a video that enters the conversation in their mind. That's right.
And when you do those things and you're intentional about that, that's going to be very business focused. Now, there's another aspect to it that we're talking about today at my event is the, and you're probably very familiar with this, is the personality side of it.
Oh, yeah. Right? So if you only do, I'm entering the conversation in the real estate agent's mind with very

tactical real estate advice, you're going to get only so far.

That's right.

And one of the speakers that we have is a guy named Brandon Carter.

Do you know him?

I do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Brandon's speaking.

And in the last 24 hours, talk about serendipity, I've seen a very famous influencer, this guy,

Mike Cernovich.

I don't know if you know who he is he's a political type influencer he's reposted two of Brandon's videos in the last 48 hours one about why brand and Brandon makes a very good case for why Dubai is a bad place to go because of the slave labor and all that sort of stuff okay you know it. And then Cernovich and Brandon are just like, just make another deal here and pay for the taxes that you're saving by moving to Dubai.
Fair point. And so he's got that video, which has nothing to do with what's Brandon's business.
Well, it started out as fitness and now it's coaching business owners and mostly fitness entrepreneurs. What's a video about Dubai and slave labor have to do anything? That's the video that goes viral, that gets people's attention, that then leads to his Instagram growth and all of his other videos being seen more.
About business and yeah. Yeah.
So you have to, Grant Cardone is the same. I'm not recommending that you go and stuff your kids in the freezer at the grocery store like I saw Grant Cardone do on an Instagram video.

You know, I don't recommend a lot of the stuff he does, but he gets your attention.

Sure.

And he is made probably of all the people.

I mean, Donald Trump is another person who knows that you got to get attention, like from his previous career with Apprentice and all that sort of stuff.

Like if you have people's attention, it's like knowing more good people.

Yep.

Thank you. Donald Trump is another person who knows that you got to get attention, like from his previous career with Apprentice and all that sort of stuff.
Like if you have people's attention, it's like knowing more good people. And then that way you have given yourself an opportunity to have more opportunities.
So you may or may not like the people that we've just discussed, but you can't argue with the fundamental principle there. Well, they know the names.
Yeah. Again, that you have enough attention to them that these people, I don't care if you like the two people you mentioned, you know who they are.

Yeah, exactly. It's attention, right? And they're getting attention.
If you get that much attention,

there's going to be a lot of people who really like you and money's going to come to you. Deals

are going to come to you. It's going to be a great opportunity for you.
So those are the two sides of

being intentional with your social media, the personality side and then the business side,

so that you're using it. You don't got any Joe Polish? Yeah.
Yeah. So Joe had a great phrase.
I like to give credit where credit is due, that use social media, but don't let social media be used on you. And I actually fell into it.
People call me the world's most disciplined man, but I have lots of flaws and faults of my own. And for a while I was addicted to Twitter.
And so I realized that Twitter in this day and age, if you follow the wrong, I mean, you can curate it obviously, but I was following people with a little bit of political stuff and I was getting angry and it was coming through in other areas of my life. And I was like, okay, I and so I haven't gone to Twitter I haven't gone to a news site in months and months since the day I just quit cold turkey yeah because I was letting social media be used on me yeah I was like man as there's some really good stuff here but it's not worth it for the negative sides of it so I was I wasn't being intentional with that use but with, I'm very, very intentional that I'm using it for business purposes.
Follow him on Instagram. Yeah.
Craig Ballantyne. Real Craig Ballantyne.
The real, the? No. Real Craig Ballantyne.
Real Craig Ballantyne. But you'll find them all over my stuff.
Make sure you click it. So you got to be intentional with everything in life.
So let's talk about it because I'm so passionate about social media, right right and by the way i don't even have the biggest following i mean to some extent it frustrates me because i want more and you never know when something's going to go viral when is something going to hit that's the topic i want to talk about is too many people get caught up in these likes and going viral but then they're not intentional with like if someone just went to your page to check out, is there anything that you are clearly defined for? That's a good point. And if you just try to go viral on kiddie, funny video, so you can go gain followers, but everything else is real estate, right? As an example, like it's not congruent.
I mean, I have a real world example that a good friend of mine, he's post funny videos of his kids.

So he'll, he'll find something that has gone viral for somebody else. He'll do his own version.

And he's, I mean, he's got like 50 million views the last six months on funny type videos.

And then he posts business stuff in between that has like no views.

And I read an argument that, um, there there's two different you have two different audiences so there so he's getting his funny videos seen by one audience and he's getting followers from it but then the other stuff that he posts is not being sent out to those people and they're not the right people in the first place so you are you do have to be very careful it's a double-ged sword. If you just chase the personality side of things and you get a lot of followers, great.
But if they don't transfer into dollars, you're just wasting your time. You could be doing a million other things.
A hundred percent. I mean, interestingly enough, the hard thing that I see from people in my space, because I tell everyone, get your personal brand out there, is first question I always say, should I do it with my company or me it's always you the answer is always you people people people right they need to know i'd say it like this i have three they need to know who you are what you do and then what are you looking for the what you're looking for is spread out inside of your stuff but then you know who you are and what you do yeah and then when you ask when you say here's what i'm looking for whatever that may be then they're gonna say okay well this guy is the expert at the thing so i'm gonna give him the thing he wants yeah you do have to be pigeonholed yeah to a certain extent right um and so the other side of what you just said which cracks me up my father is the epitome of someone who would frustrate you.
He will not do social media. I mean, he has Facebook, but he doesn't believe in it in business because he always just says, well, I don't want to look at what people are eating in kitties.
Right. But that's allowing social media to use him because he would then just scroll through.
If you're not intentional about using social media for the purpose of business, then it's a waste of time.

But it's such a platform.

I don't know if you agree with me or not.

I'm finding a lot more business on Facebook again.

As much as Instagram.

Yeah, just organic posts.

And for whatever reason, I feel like people have forgot about Facebook's actually the 800-pound gorilla.

Kind of like, I don't want to be associated with that anymore. Because it's not cool.
The TikToks and the Instagrams and that's what, you know, the videos. There's a lot of business being missed on Facebook.
I mean, we run a lot of ads on Facebook, but I've never. Organic.
I personally have never done a lot of organic on Facebook since I transitioned out of the fitness industry years and years ago. So, you know, we're going to get on that as soon as we get back.
As you should. And do a trial post, whatever you might be looking for.
Do a trial post. It works every time.
The other thing I would even encourage if you aren't, and you probably are, your groups, Facebook groups, killer way to cultivate the messaging in what you're doing. I love that.
Yeah, they'll sound like so old school and archaic,

but yeah, that stuff works.

Yeah.

If you do it with the right intention.

Right, and consistency.

Let's kind of get back to, you know,

maybe talking a little bit more of what levels

or what piece of advice,

and maybe there's like a five problem system

that people can go into today, the next week, the remainder of this year, next year with some discipline in their business. Yeah, absolutely.
First of all, we need to, what we start people with is the ADE formula. Automate, delegate, and eliminate.
And most people in their business, they are working a lot. They're working very hard.
But they're doing a lot of stuff that is not their job. So the first thing that we do is we help them delegate what is not their job.
What are you doing all day long? So we take people through a time journal. We identify the tasks.
We help them find their effective hourly worth. So if somebody's making $200,000 a year, their hourly worth is about $100 because generally you work 50 weeks in a year, 40 hours a week, that's 2,000 hours.
You take 200,000 divided by 2,000, you get 100. So your $100 an hour is your effective hourly worth in that situation.
Well, what are you doing with your time? If you're editing videos, that's a $10 an hour task that you can find people to do, which means that there must be, because you're probably spending a lot of time on those low value activities, there must be some activities in your business, the leverage points that are giving you $250, $500, even $1,000 or more dollars per hour. And you're not doing that.
We just did this with a gym owner up the street in Delray Beach, and she was doing a lot of admin stuff and not spending any time in consultations where she sells a $3,000 coaching package. And last month she had a 90% close rate, but she only made time for eight consultations.
So we said this month, we're going to help you automate, delegate, and eliminate the stuff you shouldn't be doing and open up time for a minimum of 21 consults that even if you are at 80% there, you're going to dramatically increase the revenue of your business. And so the number one thing I tell people to do is to wake up in the morning and GSD on their MIT RGA ASAP because that's when you have the greatest DWI.
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So, you're going to get stuff done on your most important task in revenue generating activities. This is where, you know, most people are like, oh, you know, I do my to-do list the day before and I get up in the morning and I'm very productive.
But you're productive at the wrong things. And you might be creating content or you might be, you know, writing a book or something, but it's not making you money.
That's right. So GSD on your MIT, RGA, ASAP, because we all know that as the day goes on, everybody's going to bring you their emergencies.
Kids are going to get sick at school. This is going to happen.
That's going to happen. Internet's going to go out.
And if you don't do it first thing in the morning, it's not going to get done. That's right.
And Daniel Pink has a book called When, The Scientifically Perfect Time. It is a great book.
Yeah. Great book.
And you have the greatest discipline, willpower, and intention first thing in the morning. And then it decreases over the course of the day.
No doubt. I like to say that God played this little trick on us that he gave us the greatest discipline in the morning.
He gave us chocolate cake at night. Right.
And so, you know, most people aren't, I mean, you can go and get a donut, but most people aren't, you know, interested in chocolate cake first thing in the morning and they have lots of discipline. So it's like, it's a mismatch.
And when they go home at night, it's, oh, it's a long day. They got no discipline left.
And it's like the chocolate cake's in front of them. And that's when, you know, everything goes wrong.
But you do have the greatest discipline, willpower, and intention earlier in the day. It doesn't matter what time you get up.
Yep. But you have the fewest distractions, the greatest discipline, go after the most important revenue-generating activity.
you do that in the day. It doesn't matter what time you get up, but you have the fewest distractions, the greatest discipline, go after the most important revenue generating activity.
You do that in the first hour or two of your day. And if you did nothing else all day long, you'd be further ahead than most business owners.
So you have to start with that aspect of it. One of the things that we teach people is that they have a time of day when they're five times more productive than any other time of the day.
We call this magic time. So for me, it's six o'clock in the morning and it's usually a range of about two to three hours.
I know some people who are night owls, it might be from 9 p.m. till midnight.
Great. Whatever time of the day, you have to go through and just have some self-reflection and introspection on this.
So you identify it and then you have to protect it because most people will go, you know, man, you know, Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock, I was in the flow, but you know, I just had a meeting at 1030. And so I only got half an hour work done.
Well, you have to identify it and then not schedule any meetings. Don't do any emails.
Don't take any calls and protect it. Ruthlessly protect your magic time because you will be more productive in that time.
Yeah. Like, you know, everybody knows that they can probably get something done better at nine o'clock in the morning than after they went to Burger King at lunch and had a, you know, a giant Whopper and a soda.
No doubt. You're tired.
No doubt. Like, obviously, there's a big difference in that productivity.
So by doing a little bit of self-reflection and introspection, it doesn't mean working more hours. It just means doing the harder work in that time.
In the latter time. Right.
Like, you got a three-year-old kid. So you probably got one of those toys where it's like take the square block and put it in the square hole, right? Most people, they're taking the round peg and trying to jam it in the square hole.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's not going to fit.
So you take your hardest task and you do that when you have the greatest mental energy. And if you simply make that shift, you also get further ahead because now you're more productive.
Yeah, I think a lot of people, but the other part of what you just said, which is so brilliant, is people allow other people to steal that magic time. And that is very hard for people to say the word no.
Yeah. And that's where I've seen so much lift in productivity is saying no, right?

Like literally turning the phone over.

Do not have email open.

Whatever the thing is in that magic time, don't answer your buddy's call, your wife's call, your husband's call.

Like, sure, there's cases that it could be emergency.

I get the point.

But if you need to get something done, saying the word no allows you to be a lot more productive. Absolutely.
So I have this little phrase, if you want to do great things, you have to do fewer things. If you want to do great things, you have to do fewer things.
And you have to say no to other people's problems. Totally.
Because you have your own, if you have intention, you know what you have to do in order to be successful. So saying no becomes a superpower.
In one of my other books, I talk about you need to become the no-pra of your life. So think about Oprah.
Oprah has billions of people who would love a minute of her time. And if she's a nice lady, she'd probably want to help everybody for a couple minutes.
But if she helps everybody for a couple of minutes, she can never do the big thing that, first of all, helps her and her business, but also has a huge impact on buildings and people. So think about if Oprah was running your business, what would she be doing? I have an event going on right now.
Did I negotiate with the hotel? No. Am I making sure that the AV is set up? No.
I'm not doing any of that stuff. Somebody else on our team is doing it.
That's their zone of genius. It's not mine.
My zone of genius is to get the people, sell at the event and bring an amazing experience to people. And if I'm thinking about all those other things, it's like death by a thousand cuts.
That's right. And we see that in a couple of ways in people's businesses.
They're doing all the little things, but then also in your daily schedule, a lot of people are task switching. So they'll go and they'll do a podcast and think, oh, you know, it's only a 40 minute podcast, but it's not 40 minutes.
It's really twice the amount of time. Because if your podcast is at 1030, about 10 o'clock in the morning, you start thinking about the podcast at 1030 you start maybe I should wind down I got to get the lighting right I got to get the microphone out and all that sort of stuff and so you waste half an hour preparing for the 10 30 podcast and then you do the 40 minute podcast or whatever and you might chit chat with somebody at the end and then you have to transition back into the next thing and it's like oh man I got 30 minutes of work and then I got another podcast or another call or another meeting.
And if you are transitioning,

that is death by a thousand cuts and you never get any quality work done in the day, especially

if you didn't GSD on your MIT ASAP in the morning. Amen.
There's so much good takeaway here. And a

lot of this has to do with what I would, I reframe it to my audience and I just say, it's not about

time management, it's about priority management. So I say there's six different things or there's

Thank you. has to do with what I would, I reframe it to my audience and I just say, it's not about time management, it's about priority management.
So I say there's six different things or there's six, every night you go to, there's the big six. You have the non-negotiable three and you have the most important three.
Okay. You're non-negotiable or exactly, you don't negotiate, they have to get done that very next day, non-negotiable.
And then you have the most important. And those are most important.
But if you have to kick the can because of time or whatever, then the most important get kicked in the next day. They come become a non-negotiable.
The people always want to talk about time management. I don't necessarily believe in it.
We all have the same amount of time. It's the priorities that you have to manage your priorities.
And it's the creation of systems because at the start you said, oh, world's most disciplined men. And so I'm not David Goggins.
I'm not the world's most disciplined men. The reason why people call me that is because years ago I had two businesses.
I had this early to rise business and I had a fitness business called Turbulence Training, which I started out everything. And so I was running those two businesses at the same time and creating a lot of content.
And so this one guy, his name is Ed O'Keefe. He said, you're the most productive person I know.
Therefore you must be the most disciplined person I know. And it's not actually true.
I'm actually very lazy and, but I'm selectively lazy. I don't do the middle-class things that hold me down.
And I also have built systems to protect myself and protect my time. And so there are certain systems that anybody can implement into their life that without even spending any money can make them more productive.
And it costs nothing to say no to people. It costs nothing to say no to toxic people.
It costs nothing to say no to being in bad environments. If you just start saying no to that stuff, all of a sudden it will free up more of your time to do the right things.
But over the years, probably the two most important things that I've discovered that an entrepreneur, real estate investor, anybody can use and are very, very common to very successful people is one, and they're so boring. So like people are going to listen to this and they're going to forget them because they're so boring.
This one, get to bed on time. Because if you don't get to bed on time, you're very tempted to hit snooze in the morning.
If you hit snooze in the morning, you get up late, 10, 20 minutes late. You're rushing around.
You don't have time to think. You over-caffeinate.
You eat something poor. You get stuck in traffic.
You're late to where you want to go. Now you're in a bad mood.
That bad mood affects you over the course of the day. And it's like that meme, if you've ever seen it on Instagram, of the tiny little domino knocking over a big domino, big domino.
Next thing you know, it knocks down a giant 200 slab because of that one bad decision, which was getting up late, which all could have been overcome, not by hardcore discipline, but just by a better system of getting to bed on time. And we just tell people an hour before bed, set an alarm.
We call this the reverse alarm. And an hour before bed, if you want to get to bed at 11 o'clock at night, the alarm goes off at 10 and you stop all electronics, no TV, no social media, no phone, nothing.
Because it's always that last message or posts that you read, it gets you fired up. And so you stop that.
Now you're left with an hour before bed. You can have a bath, you can meditate, you can read, you can talk to your family, you can prepare your lunch, like all those things only take a couple minutes and they all make you tired.
And the next thing you know, you're on to bed, you're in bed and asleep on time, which means a lot for getting up the next day. And the second habit, which is also very boring, but very effective is better planning and preparation.
So planning and preparing, like you have your, your six things. We have a slightly different approach.
We have people do a brain dump, which get all the stuff out of their head. Cause a lot of people are like, Oh man, I lie in bed and everything.
I'm tossing and turning. Cause all these things are running through my head.
Well, if you do a brain dump in the late afternoon, you get all those things out of your head and it might be like 18 things. Like I got to get milk tomorrow.
I got to pick the kids up, but I also have to do this real estate deal and I have to create five social media videos. Like if you go to bed with all that in your head and you don't have it dumped out, it really will keep you up.
So we do that. And then from those 18 things, we do a priority to-do list.
So you got 18 things you want to do tomorrow, but only one of them can be- I might steal that because that is the reality is you're allowing yourself to really, and this is something I'm going to steal for myself, but even give you credit for is because there are times where I like will wake up because I didn't get the thoughts, the things, oh man, I know tomorrow I have to do this thing. And it's two in the morning.
I didn't have a five monthold baby that I know is going to wake me up again at 4. And I'm like, no.
Right? That's brilliant. I mean, I think people need to really do that brain dump.
Late afternoon, what, 4-ish, 5-ish, something like that? Yeah, and listen, if you have to do it at noon, better that you do it early than not at all. Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, it's incomplete. But the earlier you do it, the better.
You can do it right before bed, but it might fire you up a little bit too much. So probably a couple hours before bed and you do that.
And then you, like I said, you have 18 things on there. Only one of them can be number one.
So great. Here's the number one thing I have to do tomorrow.
And that's the thing that you should probably be doing in that magic time that you have. And then everything else, you get through it as much as you can.
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yeah I really want to do something but I don't know what to do right if you're doing your to-do list in the morning when you have the greatest discipline willpower and intention you're too late yeah you're too late you got to do that the day before because everything that you love in life what you know if you love football you think those guys are making stuff up as they go along you know they script every play they practice it over and over again if you like movies like they're not making the stuff up when like okay action, action. And then people just mix it out.
It's a script. Everything good is following a script.
And so if you want your life to be good, it should follow a script. I like that.
Yeah. I, in, in people overcomplicate it and it's as simple as what you just said.
I'm going to reiterate it because I thought it was so brilliant. Hey, go to sleep at a decent time, right? On time.
Yeah. On time.
In reverse alarms, a great strategy. Because I get up early in the morning and a lot of people think, oh, well, you got to get up early in the morning to be successful.
And chances are you're going to be more successful if you get up a little bit earlier than you are right now. Because just the way the world works, right? We're a long way from nine to five, but we're still kind of in the nine to five mindset.
And so if you get up too late, it's not going to be good for you. But I also have friends who are night owls who have made a lot of money working in weird hours.
So it's the fundamental principles of planning and preparation of knowing yourself and when you're most productive and removing distractions that allows you to be successful at any time of the day. So I'm not a 5 a.m.
club type person. I think that's actually really bad for a lot of people, especially if you're doing 7 a.m.
right now and you think, oh, next week I'm going to go 5 a.m. That's going to last for like a day and a half and you're going to crash and say, oh, early mornings are stupid.
But they're not. I had anxiety attacks back in 2006 and I was getting up at 7.30 in the morning and I know I'm a morning person and I get up at 7.30 in the morning and there was a million things I wanted to do, which was like a small contributor to the anxiety.
And I was like, you know what? I got to get up earlier. And so for the next seven days, I got up at 7.25.
And then for the seven days after that, I got up at 7.20. And then I got up at 715.
And, and at the same time, I was also checking my phone five minutes later. So I started creating this, this big gap in between when I got up and when I checked my phone and I use that time to be productive.
And so about six months later, I was getting up at 530 in the morning and not checking my phone till 930. And that's when my business went like that it was it was five minutes at a time and so it's not about the time you get up it's not about the hour that you get up it's about what you do with the hours that you are up i say something similar and i use 15 minute increments 15 minute increments every week so to go from seven to five if you really wanted to do it it's going to take you what eight weeks but it's because it's 15 minute increments right right and it's manageable that's manageable it is the person that goes oh I'm going to 5 a.m because Justin said so it's like you'll do it for four or five days you're gonna be exhausted.
And and what's probably worse than that is that you will then have some negative self-talk yeah because if you go five minutes at a time people man that's so man, that's so easy. But you know what? I was confident.
After seven days in a row, I was like, man, I can do this. I can do this.
And then the next week, man, I can really do this. But if I go from seven to five, and then I'm like, I can't do this, what have I done to myself? I can't, I can't.
I've set myself up for failure. And well, if I can't do that, I can't do this.
I can't do this. And the next thing thing you know i think there's a great subject that unfortunately we're not going to have enough time to speak about but like this idea of the um negative self-talk based around goals or achievement or whatever it may be i think there's a lot of people that set this idea of like i need to go achieve this pretty big thing in our example we're we're going from seven to five, right? Big jump.
And then they break and can't fulfill it. And then this negative self-talk and now it's a trickle down effect.
Oh, I can't do this. Oh, that's too big.
I don't want to attempt that. Oh, it didn't really work last time.
So I'm not going to. And then they're always wondering, why can't I get bigger, grow bigger, make more more money and it actually is is they're not looking at the moderation in the slower step down or the slower step up versus trying to swallow the elephant yeah and so when you get in that position then they hit the panic button all the time and that's common like you know i have a little presentation planned for friday you know, what's the difference between a good entrepreneur and a great entrepreneur and a good entrepreneur

hits the panic button every time. Like when something bad happens, oh my gosh, everything's

over. And listen, we're all on that entrepreneur rollercoaster.
But if you're putting yourself

through the ringer at the same time, your highs get higher. Like, oh yeah, I made a sale.
It's

amazing. It's like, okay, you made a sale.
It's all right. And then it's like, oh, you know,

I got a refund. You're way down here.
you're just using up your brain computer operating system like if i used to have this old laptop you know back in 2000 and all the time you know if there was seven tabs open it would say cpu usage at 100 and the computer couldn't do anything yeah and it's the same with the beginner entrepreneur who has that negative mindset of, I can't do stuff. That's filling your brain with negativity and you can't fit in creativity when your brain is full of negativity.
And it's the same with, oh, everything's going wrong and they're often fatalistic and the end of the world here. And if you are filling your brain with that stuff, then you never are going to be able to be creative and if you want to get ahead you have to be committed to being creative you know confidence plays a big role here that i think people undervalue and when you go incremental like what we're talking about in the example of sleep it also builds a self-confidence that you're not even probably aware of oh i, I did it.
Oh, I did it again. I did it again and again and again.
Oh, I did it this too. And look at this.
I got to 5 a.m. and that may have taken however many days or weeks, but the ability to say, I did the thing I went out to set to do and I achieved it builds an internal confidence, whether you're knowing it or not.
And a lot of people don't even recognize that's what's happening. It's that identity shift from, you know, the best thing that I got at James Clear's Atomic Habits book was the identity shift.
Because yeah, you can build systems and all that sort of stuff, but sometimes the system will break. But if you have built the confidence in yourself that, like, let's just say around alcohol or something, like I quit cold November, 2021.
And, you know, I was a binge drinker when I was younger, then I was moderate drinker. And then I just decided, no, none.
And now I'm, I'm a non drinker. Therefore that's my identity.
And, you know, at first it was challenging. Sure.
But I just built the confidence. I can go to restaurants.
No problem. I can go to social outings and you just stack those wins and that builds the confidence, but it all comes like at first it had to start with, I am a non-drinker.
And when we were able to do that, it leads to the confidence. And so it is so important to stack the wins.
Tiny Habits is another book, Atomic Habits. You build the systems, you get the confidence, but also it's making sure that you start with the identity, the intentionality.
That's right. It is really the intentionality.
That word is probably like the fundamental of this podcast. When you have the intentionality about who you want to become, who you are, what you do in certain circumstances, you can really make a huge shift in your life and with consistency.
Yeah. When people are not identifying.
So I have a five laws of success for all entrepreneurs. And the first one is decide what you want and who you need to be to get it.
That's one. What do you want? And who do you need to be the identity part? Right.
So I use the example. If you want to have a six pack, you need to not eat donuts and drink Coca-Cola.
I mean, it's just like, but people don't go there and they don't decide what they want. Back to your perfect day example.
I mean, everything we're talking about kind of fits in these five laws. So decide what you want and who you need to be at it and then commit to it.
So don't eat the damn donut, right? Eat a salad or eat, you know, whatever it is. And then you got to take the actions required, right? To achieve the thing that you want.
And then you need to be able to remove your ability to be uncomfortable. You have to be uncomfortable, right? It's uncomfortable, learn how to walk, crawl, swim, ride bikes.
We all did it. And then remove your time expectation on the result.
Yeah, that's a good one. The fifth one, and I don't want to say it is kind of like number one but that's what everyone has trouble with whatever the thing they're trying to achieve they want it yesterday they want it in 30 days they want in a year and it ruins psychologically actually ruins people because then their confidence waivers i can't get there i won't be able to get there it's taking too long i'm not going the right route man they don't hit it is tough with social media because that's the that's an example of social media being used on that's right and you know you see you know whether it's you or whether it's uh many of the successful people on social media and i'm like man i really want what that person has and a week later you haven't gotten too far on it and you're like um that just makes you feel bad yeah that's the confidence thing and then but if you just remove that and say i'm going to achieve it no matter what hell or high water because i'm committed to who i am and all the other four then who cares go achieve it that's exactly i was talking about some of the mindsets of my most successful clients recently and it was and the number one what uh was they were going to be successful yeah and i actually use like come hell or high water as an example of this woman who's at her event today i knew from the first call i had a call with her in 2009 she's been a client of mine that long and she was a broke nutritionist at the time yeah she had her fiance i was selling dvds of an event and her husband or her fiance at the time had to pay for the dvds of the event but i could just tell the confidence that she had on the call because she had a big why yeah her mother had passed away from type 2 diabetes and she didn't want other people to experience that and she was just you know hell-bent on success and she had everything that you had listed out she just didn't know it yet and just needed you know someone to come and pick her up and show her the ropes and sort of think.
But that is so common among the people that are successful. And whether they have a university degree or whether they're super intelligent or not, that stuff is not that important.
What's important is that intentionality and that mindset and true belief in yourself. Guys, this has been

real Craig Ballantyne. Everywhere you can find him.
Find him everywhere. Dude, this has been incredible.
We don't have enough time to go on to even more. But find him because he does his own masterminds.
He has his own coaching business. He can help all of you entrepreneurs get to this next level.
So real Craig Ballantyne all over Instagram. Any last words for the people? I would just say that

what really makes a good life

is not about money and stuff. Money and stuff is good, but it's about people and experiences.
And so the more people and experiences that you get, that will make for a great life. And that comes through being intentional with what you want, who you need to become, and how you spend your time getting it.

I like this.

This has been great.

If this made any impact on you at all,

and we know it did,

make sure you share this with at least two people,

and I will see you on the next Entrepreneur DNA

with another special guest.

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