Transcription
What if everything that you think makes somebody successful is actually wrong? And boring is actually what works.
I built and sold three companies by the age of 29. Not because I was special, but because I did these five very boring things every single day that nobody wants to talk about. These habits do not get likes and engagement. They don't look impressive, but they build real wealth. So, I would like to walk you through these five boring habits that can actually build your wealth so that you can start using them right now.
Number one is stop chasing all these hacks. Why is most self-help [ __ ]? Because they tell you to focus on the wrong thing. I used to love my hacks. I can tell you that. Morning routines from billionaires, productivity apps, biohacking tricks, like every single one I would do and it would work for like 2 weeks and then I wanted a new one. It was like almost an addiction to the dopamine hit you're getting of trying these new things.
What I realized is that a system is just a boring process that you repeat until it creates predictable success and then you keep doing it. Okay, this could be a hiring system, a content creation system. I've been running the same systems in my business for so long and I tweak them as I learn new things and such, but like barely compared to what I used to because half the time you trying the new hack actually costs more in change of energy and time than it gets you return on the system you're trying to improve. So that's the thing is like they're not glamorous systems and having boring ones that I don't change very often are the reason that I'm able to scale my companies, have a life I like, remain healthy while working a fraction of the hours that I used to 10 years ago.
So for example, a system I use every week is essentially planning my week. I get down a piece of paper and I look back at everything that's occurred for the last week and then even sometimes a couple weeks prior. Then I look forward at the next month prior and I write down everything that I need to do. Emails. I look through my project board. I look through my phone. I look through what is unanswered. What do I still need to work on? Who do I need to touch base with? I write it all down in a Google doc. And then I say, who can do this besides me? And I go through and I write the name of everybody that could do something that's not me. I delegate every thing out that I can. And then with everything I have left, I build it into my calendar. A lot of times what we do is we have like calls and commitments, but we put them in our calendar before our priorities. And so instead, I go through and say, "Do I have time for my priorities?" If I don't have time for the priorities, I need to change the calls on my calendar. People will probably say like, "My calls change a lot." And that's because my priorities do shift based on what's happening in the business and I need to adjust. I need to remain flexible. That system works supering well, really reduces overwhelm, allows me to get a lot of done, and it allows me to get my other stuff done, too. Like things that are in my calendar. I keep in there my workouts, when I meditate, when I journal, when I spend time with my husband, when I go on date night. I keep so much stuff in my calendar because I want to make sure the important stuff that also keeps my quality of life high is in there.
Now, is that sexy? No. Do I have a hack for you? No. Hacks feel exciting because they're new. But new is also expensive. Boring works and it's not expensive. And so, every time that you reset by wanting a new hack, you kind of lose the momentum you had and you break that compounding effect that consistency has created for you. And I understand because like systems feel boring, right? You repeat them over and over. There's no novelty. But that's what makes them very powerful. I mean, I knew this when I was a trainer. Getting somebody results in the gym, if I want to get someone the best results, they should do the same workout plan for like 6 months. I did the same exact plan for 6 months at one point in my life. And it was boring as I was so bored in the gym. But guys, I looked sick. I had my legs were the most muscular they'd ever been. My shoulders were capped. Like I was like, damn, I'm in good shape. I like I'm so bored. But I knew I was like, I need to follow the system because if you do something repeatedly, you get those 0.1% increases just by executing it that many times over and over again.
Here's a great way to implement a system. Take the most chaotic area of your business or life right now. Maybe it's hiring, maybe it's making content, maybe it's taking care of your kids, I don't know what it is. Write down just like one simple repeatable system for it. And then just document the steps. So like maybe it's the planning your week like I did. It's like, okay, look at last two weeks. Look at next two weeks. Look at email, Slack, project board, delegate other tasks to other people. Like just write the steps down. That's it. I'm going to go ahead and say like 99% of people aren't going to do this. That's also why 99% of people don't get what they want in life. So like be the 1%. Do the [ __ ] that's boring. I cannot tell you the amount of lists and checklists and systems I have on my phone to make sure that I can just execute the basic things that make my life better. Boring things compound. Exciting things expire.
The second thing you want to do is saying no to drama. How much time did you spend this week on drama? Be someone venting to you. It could be office gossip. It could be just you emotionally spiraling or fixing problems that weren't even yours to fix. Just add it up in your brain. The people who win, who actually build wealth and have peace of mind, they look boring because they don't engage in drama. Okay? And it's not because they're cold or uncaring. It's because they've learned that every minute of drama is a minute that they're not putting into a life that they actually love and a life that compounds.
I have had so many instances where people will text me. They'll call me and say, "Oh, I want to tell you what happened with this thing." One, I keep my phone on do not disturb because guess what? I do not want to be disturbed. But the second thing is that I don't like getting those random phone calls. When someone wants to talk [ __ ] about somebody, when somebody calls me and they start talking [ __ ] about somebody, even if I don't [ __ ] like the person, I feel gross. And the truth is is that I think a lot of the times they're doing it because they want to connect. I think a lot of the times drama is it's a disguise of people trying to connect with you. You might not even realize that you're doing this. Like you might actually be the person who calls and is like, "Let me tell you this about something, right?" But it tricks you into thinking that you're being helpful, that you're being empathetic, or like you're in the loop of what's going on. But what it actually does is it robs you of your focus, and it's burning out your emotional bandwidth. Not to mention the respect you have for yourself. Cuz I always ask myself this question. I'm just like, do I respect myself more or less from engaging in this conversation? I even feel bad when like somebody will bring somebody up like, "Who what do you think of this person?" Every once in a while, my team knows or my my friends will know, like I'll be like, "Oh, that guy's a piece of [ __ ]." I'll say something like that and I'll be like, "Oh my god, I'm I feel terrible for saying that." And then I realized I was like, "Oh, the same feeling I'll have if somebody calls me to talk to me about this thing."
And so, something I've been very intentional about is that I don't keep around friends who want to do that. If we want to connect, we're going to connect about positive stuff. We're going to connect about supporting each other. We're going to connect about talking about valuable things, talking about productive things. We're not going to connect over talking [ __ ] over talking about things that are negative, over like it's bad energy. And successful people, they protect their energy like it's their most valuable asset because it is.
Here's what I would ask you to do. Write down three of the biggest sources of drama in the last month in your life. You might have a specific friend group that like you feel like connected with and you love, but like they're just drama. Or you might have like a a a co-orker that continues to loop you in with drama. or maybe you have a family member who's constantly talking [ __ ] about other people in your family and you're like, "I don't want to answer the phone." Like, it's drama. Out of those three, pick one and cut your exposure to it. Now, what does that mean? The answer often doesn't lie in the extreme. It lies in setting boundaries. Maybe that means shorter conversations. Maybe it means when they call you, you don't pick up instead of you text and say, "What did you want to talk about?" Maybe it means that you have boundaries. Maybe it means that when you see them, you ask to do a lunch because you know you have an end time rather than a dinner that could go on forever. Then what you do is you watch how much freaking energy comes back to you when you stop letting drama hijack your day. Also not drama that you feel like engaging with, but drama that somebody else brings to your table.
That brings me to number three, which is follow the same daily schedule. You are not overwhelmed because you have too much structure. You're probably overwhelmed because you have none. A lot of people think doing the same thing every day is exhausting. But what is actually more exhausting than that is deciding every day a million little decisions. When do you wake up in the morning? Okay. Negotiating with yourself. When are you going to start work? Debating, do I work out or do I not work out today? Every one of those like little tiny decisions, they drain all your mental energy before you actually even start doing any kind of work.
The most productive people that I know, they appear unassuming because they've eliminated all the negotiation. They wake up at the same time. They work at the same blocks. They follow the same shutdown routine. They don't do that because they lack spontaneity. They do it because they figured out something a lot of people have not figured out, which is constraints create freedom. Okay? So for me, I follow a specific routine. Now, do I always follow it? No. But most of the time, I do. Why? Because it guarantees me the highest likelihood of having success the next day. I know that if I'm well fed, I've slept well, I've worked out, I've take care of myself, my relationships, my business, that I'm going to operate well the next day, I'm going to get through everything and do it at 100% rather than like 50 or 70 or 40.
You know, some of the things I do is like I go to bed at the same time. Sometimes I wake up a little earlier, sometimes I don't, but like at the same time every morning, I will meditate and then I will journal and then at the same time every morning I'll usually do like prepping for the day and then I'll also work out. That's most days of my week. Now, what happens in the meaty middle, as I like to call it, I have different meetings every day, but it's the same time block pretty much every day I have the meeting. Now, does that mean if I go on vacation, I'm going to follow that? Like, no. There's times where I'm like, "Fuck it. I'm staying up late. I'm going to be [ __ ] tired tomorrow." That's not my everyday. If you're doing that every day, you're stealing so much energy from yourself that you could have because you're just changing things up so much. And our bodies like to have a rhythm. Every time you change your routine, you kind of tax your brain. You get decision fatigue that builds up. And it's one of the biggest reasons people can't be consistent because they're just constantly making these decisions. Sometimes for me even I catch it with myself where I'm like, "Ugh, that feels wrong or I should change that a little." And then I'm like, "Is it that wrong that it's worth the cost of change or the cost of decision fatigue for you, [ __ ]?" Then I'm like, "No, I would rather use my brain to think about something else."
When your structure is fixed your brain is free to focus on things that actually move the needle for you. And that's because freedom is not about having endless options. It's about making the right ones easy to do on a daily basis. So, here is my challenge for you over the next, let's just say, let's just say seven days. Wake up at the same time, work at the same time, go to bed at the same time. Literally, like that's all those three things. Move the other stuff around if you want to, but like try doing those three things at the same time. There's a lot of studies that show that like going to bed at the same time every day is like one of the best things you can do for your like entire life.
The next action to repeat is the same boring inputs over and over and over again. Breakthroughs are not found in the next big thing. They're often found in the last rep of the set that you didn't want to do. And you know, if you're in the gym, you know what I'm talking about. I used to spend years chasing new marketing tactics, new sales tactics, new productivity systems, like new anything. What actually grew my business was making the same sales call over and over again, writing the same types of content over and over and over again, running the same weekly meeting over and over and over again, 0.1% better every week.
There are so many times where people look at something and they think, "It didn't work those three times. I need to change it." Or, "It's been working, but now it stopped working. It hasn't worked the last two times. I should change it." We're not being patient enough. I can't tell you how many businesses, even recently, I had one I I was talking with them. They were like, "I really think that we need completely new marketing department, blah, blah, blah." All these things. And I was like, "Oh, why?" And they were like, "Well, the cost of ads is just like insane. It's just like, you know, doubled in the last month." And I was like, "Have we tried seeing if there's something broken in the funnel?" No. Have we tried making more ads? Uh, well, when was the last time you made new ads? Well, normally we make them every two weeks, but we haven't made them in like 6 weeks. Okay, so maybe we should just make some new ads to put into the system that we know works rather than building a completely new system. See what I'm saying? And that is most business problems and most how you solve most things is like just doing more reps and you will make progress.
I remember when I was losing the 100 pounds and there was three weeks where I didn't lose a single pound. And I remember I I messaged my coach and I was like, "Change something. Change something, please." He was like, "I'm not going to change anything." And I was like, "You should change something. Like, let's change something." And he was like, "You'll lose weight in the next couple weeks. I promise." And I was like, "And dude, like clockwork on week five all a sudden just started dropping. I didn't change anything." Like sometimes the results come on a delay, but people aren't comfortable waiting in the middle. They're not comfortable waiting for the delay. They get too bored and then they change something and then they never get to see what could have happened, which sucks. It's like everybody wants a shortcut, but the new strategy that promises the faster results, that's like what people go for, but what actually works is the same boring thing a thousand times over and over again.
Boredom is freedom in your business. It's freedom in your life. It means that you have moved past the learning curve and entered a zone of growth. It's just that growth often when it's that incremental, it starts to feel boring. It's like people who master something get bored, but that's when you need to stay at it because that's when you become a [ __ ] sant at whatever it is you're doing. How do you put this into practice? Pick one skill that directly impacts your goals. Maybe it's sales calls, making content, outreach, going on dates. Commit to just doing a 100 reps before you judge yourself. Not 10, not 50, 100. And track them. I personally right now have three different behaviors I'm trying to change. And I have a Excel sheet that I mark every morning how many reps I've done out of the reps I have. I am not telling you guys this because I think that it sounds cool for a YouTube video. It is how you actually change yourself.
Number five is focus on one lever. While everybody else is going to pull 17 levers, pull one. One lever pulled at 100% beats 17 pulled at 10%. Now, what does this actually mean in business? I know that math didn't add up. It means what kills most businesses is trying to do everything at once. Same with like trying to look good. For example, if you're trying to get in shape, try and do everything at once. That ain't going to work. New product, new marketing channel, new audience, new offer. If you pull 17 different levers at once, you're not gonna give yourself 100% effort on either one and then nothing's going to move forward.
Like for example, when I would get a client in that one to lose weight and they were like, I have to lose like 150 lbs. I need to change everything. And I was like, let's just get working out down. Now, why is that? Because you only have so much attention and your brain can't subtract. It can only add. So, when you start a new goal or you have a goal, you're ambitious about something, you have to add that into your current life. And then if you try to add too many things at once, you compress the amount of time and attention you have for other things in your life.
So for example, for me, you know, one lever in my business at one point in my phase of growth was just understanding recruiting. It was like the only reason anything wasn't growing in my business was recruiting. And so I dove in. I studied recruiting and I just said, you know what? We're just going to master the first call, the intake call. And I just hammered the intake call and the script for the intake call for every single person I talked to. And that alone, that one call was responsible for hiring like 25 people that quarter. Find that one lever for you. And when you focus on one lever, you're not thinking smaller. You are thinking deeper and much more intelligently because every major breakthrough, whether it is business or personal growth, it comes from doubling down on the one constraint until it becomes effortless and then you can do the same with the next thing. If you try to do it all at once, it is a waste of time. People are like, I don't know why I keep sabotaging myself. It's because you try to change too many things at once.
Here's how you pull one lever at full force. Write down every project and initiative that you have on your plate right now and then just ask yourself this. Which one if I nailed it, if I [ __ ] sent it home would make the rest of them easier or even irrelevant? So, I'll give you an example, right? Most people when they come to me and they wanted to lose weight, they would be like, I'm going to start working out with you and I'm going to focus on Nope. Let's just focus on diet. I don't want you to focus on your workouts. They're like, why? I'm like, well, if you are eating the same food, you won't see results with the working out, so we might as well start with diet because that's more important. That's going to be the domino. If we get that right, everything else is cake.
Now, here's the hard part on this. Deprioritize everything else until that one's done. We're not going to try and balance it or like do a little bit of each. We're just going to focus on one thing first. That's the hardest part. It's not This is not easy for anybody. It's still not easy for me. Success doesn't come from doing everything. It comes from doing the right thing with full focus. Everyone on YouTube wants to sell you on how exciting these things are. Excitement keeps you broke. Boring will set you free. So, just pick one of these five habits. Not all of them. Just pick one. Like I just said in the last point, let's pick one thing and go all in and see for yourself.