Today I am joined by Dave Ruel, a former competitive physique athletic turned serial entrepreneur, author, international speaker, and leadership mentor. He founded and grew a multi-million dollar string of online companies in the fields of health, fitness, and sports nutrition for nearly a decade. But this is just where his story really began, as he saw the dark side of entrepreneurship gradually rob him of his freedom, leaving him burned out and unfulfilled. A family guy at heart, this has led him to creating sustainable systems for his life and business to reclaim his freedom without sacrificing the growth of his companies. He shares his learnings and insights in refusing to conform to a broken business culture that promotes workaholism and non-stop hustle with his wonderful book, “Done By Noon”.
Many times, entrepreneurs lose control of their time and energy, making burnout inevitable. This often results in many missed opportunities in the business or focusing on the wrong things, and you just come to this point where you realize you’re on a totally different path from the original vision you intended in the first place. Today I am joined by Dave Ruel, a former competitive physique athlete turned serial entrepreneur, author, international speaker, and leadership mentor, to share his learnings and insights in refusing to conform to a broken business culture that promotes workaholism and non-stop hustle with his book, “Done By Noon”. Let’s welcome the CEO of Effic, Dave Ruel, everybody!
4:15 All entrepreneurs are driven by freedom
12:52 Using Stephen Covey’s Rocks analogy when it comes to time management
14:00 Dave talks about applying different sports principles and discipline in entrepreneurship
24:49 Understand where you spend your time on and how much time you spend on them
28:22 Working to your maximum capacity will bring you optimal results
34:13 The two main pain points every entrepreneur has: self-leadership and leading others
36:06 Dave’s book, “Done By Noon” is not about working less. It’s about the power of working properly.
40:53 Work in 90-day cycles to create the right structure
44:15 Don’t have an extensive list of reactive tasks
45:28 Have blocks of time that you can move around.
56:19 Dave’s passionate plea for entrepreneurs
“Work right. Work based on what you want to accomplish and your own ambitions.”
GET IN TOUCH:
MARK LEARY:
www.linkedin.com/in/markhleary
www.leary.cc
DAVE RUEL:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveruel/
https://www.effic.co
March 31, 2021 - Wednesday
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
entrepreneurs, tasks, day, routines, business, people, understanding, big, rocks, discipline, work, types, life, book, noon, mark, week, periodization, structure, understand
SPEAKERS
Mark Leary, Dave, VO, Mark
Mark Leary 00:00
So we're rolling. Cool. We are live. This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson Leary My name is Mark and I have a passion you should feel in control your life. And so what I do is I help you get control of your business. And part of how I do that is by letting you listen in a conversation between two people who have a passion for entrepreneurship. But this time, they're talking about something you already know a little something about, but they're digging in and getting into the details. So you can start to unlock those particular spots where you're stuck and you can break through those ceilings in your business and ultimately in your life. Before we dive in, don't forget, subscribe and share the information because those people who don't get access to this will not get the benefit of it. So please give us your feedback along the way and share with your friends and family and their pets. So let's dive in and get into this topic. I'm excited to talk to Dave Ruel, who is the founder of epic and more importantly to me, the author of this wonderful book Done By Noon, talking about how to achieve more by noon and other entrepreneurs do in a full day. Welcome, Dave.
Dave 01:25
Mark, I love that intro. I love it. I love the energy. Damn, I got you on video, so you might do your way. See you. And I love that. Well, I'm exhausted. So I'm taking COVID everything you blame everything COVID something's doing going right COVID something's going wrong. COVID that's fine.Oh, man. What did you get? It's afternoon, at least what timezone you and actually, I don't what time you're in. I mean, so I'm in the Atlantic timezone, which is Eastern plus one. I'm on the East Coast, Canadian in scope, east coast in New Brunswick. So it's after two for you. It is 313 as we record it, so I'm not done by noon today. Okay, so we all know this will be your so this would be part of your work you would normally expect to be done. The title, the titles always seem to
Mark Leary 01:53
me pod podcasting to me is fun. So, you know, it's what I do after I've done like the hard stuff. So yep. So, so done by noon, you're working a long day today, you know, double ply, double, we call the restaurant business, you're working to double and working out until, you know, 3pm in the afternoon, what do you what do you do by noon?
Dave 02:12
Now you know, it, that's, that's funny, because I tell them like everybody gets excited about the title. It's like the four hour workweek until you realize that it's not really about being done by noon, it's understanding, you know, really like the book talks about productivity, but really how to prioritize what you should be prioritizing in your business. And we're talking mostly with you entrepreneurs that, you know, you know, when you start a business you started as usually a solo endeavor. So, you know, you're a visionary. And, you know, we were gonna use some some EOS lingo here, Mark, but, you know, you're the visionary, you're the integrator, you're a little bit of everything, right. And now you have to become an entrepreneur, you have to actually train do to work out that's going to make you make you become an entrepreneur, because what I feel like is like, nowadays, everybody calls themselves intrapreneurs, before they actually have achieved, you know, anything. And the reality is that, you know, it's not going to the gym once that's gonna make you an athlete, right. So now, the key is that you need to learn how to behave, and how to prioritize and how to, you know, manage your like, exactly like you do at EOS mark, like your vision, what, where you're, where you're going, understanding, you know, how you what you should prioritize in your days, because usually, like when you start and when you face, you know, a big workload, it's just a big pile of cash. So how do you decide how do you decide which which one or which ones are important, which ones are going to move the needle, which ones you're doing too much of that you shouldn't be doing? And you should start, you know, onboarding new people in your business. So
Mark Leary 03:43
how do you do that? Because, you know, in your book, you talk about Stephen Covey's famous example, rocks in us when we're working with a patient team, and the same set of goals for the entire organization. You gotta prioritize with a method, but your system is really targeted the individual. Right, so you're this is this is one person trying to make sense of their day. How does somebody start?
Dave 04:05
Yeah, so it's a personal productivity methodology. And I it really ties into EOS, you know, what you do guys do on on the greatest scale, but, you know, so the way you start, I think every every entrepreneur starts, we would read the book is that they come to a place where they like, their day to day life is not what they envisioned, you know, when they got started in the first place. So I think all entrepreneurs are driven by one thing. And that thing is freedom and especially like freedom at large, but this three freedoms that I think all entrepreneurs want, one is time freedom. So time freedom is pretty much like entrepreneurs start a business because they they want to do things when they want. There's financial freedom. So obviously they want to make you know, when they want to be paid doing, what they like, what they love, what they're great at. But the most important one and I think this is when this is what you See most most entrepreneurs that want freedom of creation, they want to create what they want. But eventually, as they get busy as business, you know, business happens and life happens to in parallel, not in reading parallel, you know, within your, your your day to day life, you start doing things that is not near what you should be doing, or you drift away from what you made you create in the first place. And why we want to do is having a system a set of systems, if you want to reconnect you to what you should be doing in your business. So prioritize the right things you should be working on. And and showing you how to plan that and protect that structure as well, on the long term. So, you know, in order to get started, I would say it's, it's you need to feel the first I would say entrepreneurial pain point that you're going to face is that learning to become having the need to learn, you know, an entrepreneur or let's say, behave like an entrepreneur, because you have lost control of your workload, you have lost control of your, your workload, you start, you stop taking care of yourself, because you're working, you know, you just keep on working all the time. And you stop, you become your bit your main bottleneck.
Mark Leary 06:16
Yeah, so I don't really want to step over that. Because I think what you're describing and correct me if I'm wrong, is the people lose sight of their boundary of their best life. When they take the badge of courage, the badge of entrepreneurship, as you're supposed to do that you're supposed to work a million hours, you're supposed to go pretty extreme. And you're there needs to be some degree of suffering in your life as an entrepreneur, otherwise, you're lazy, or something is that you find people stuck there with the lack of willingness to sort of admit it's okay to take care of yourself.
Dave 06:54
Yeah, I think, you know, I think it's part of not knowing how to operate, you know, not knowing what to do when it happens, because no one teaches you that, you know, you know, human being thought at school, you know, how to become an entrepreneur, like, that's that you figure it out as you go. And, and, you know, the entrepreneurial culture, you know, promotes that they promote, it promotes extreme behaviors, you know, the hard work and glorify that, right. And, you know, here's the thing, work hard, like working hard is a given, you will need to work hard, there's no such thing as no shortcuts, you will need to work hard. So then people say, Well, you need to work smart. Well, yes. Obviously, like, it's not smart not to work smart. So you're going to need to work hard and work smart. But the key really is to work, right? So work right, based on first of all, where do you want to go? What kind of output you want? Like, what do you want to produce? Right? What do you want out of your business? And second, it's, it's being responsible with your finite resources, you know, understanding that you have a limited amount of resources, your time, your energy, your attention, if we're not all finite, for entrepreneurs, and that you're going to need to work, right, you're going to need to use the right amount in order to produce the right outcome. But being very clear on the outcome, you know, on if you don't know where you're going, how do you how are you going to gauge you know, the right mix of time, energy and attention to invest into something, you know, if for you, the outcome is just as much as possible? Well, guess what, you're probably going to miss manage these three, finite resources, and you're going to end up burnt out. And, you know, being in burnout zone is never a good place to be. You know, I
Mark Leary 08:34
love that. Because that reminds me of a mentor of mine one time quartermain around this definition of the term discipline. And I've tweaked it a little since he shared it. But he said something he asked me what the definition of discipline was. And I'll paraphrase what he said into kind of what I what I say is discipline is the path through which success is most likely, or the ability to stay on the path through which success is most likely. And so what that has really taught me is that there is no one form of discipline, you can't just like copy, like the navy seals, workout and call that discipline, especially if you're not trying to be a navy seal. It's Yeah, the important part of the equation is just like you said, first figure out where you're going. Because if you don't know what you want, you have no way to define discipline. And discipline isn't just being mean to yourself. It's not just getting up a little earlier, eating a little less fatty food. That doesn't matter. Like if you're trying to be a power lifter, eating less fatty food is actually not discipline that's actually working against you. So you have to have that first work to know a definition, the definition of discipline looks like and then you can start to build a path that says, Well, this is what success looks like this is a path and now my discipline equals my ability to stay on that. How do you get somebody to do that? How do you how do you paint that for somebody?
Dave 09:53
That's you know, that's all right, that what you just said no, it's really discipline to stay on course and understanding what you because the drift will happened, right? We call that to drift. But it's it's that the fact of going off course, little by little gradually, you know, and and until you realize that you're totally lost and you're not on the road anymore, and you're in a wooded area and it's dark and it's cold. And there's wolves who tried to eat you, and you're like, how do I get back on track? Right? to discipline of staying on course, it's not always easy. You know, because it's not easy being an entrepreneur, you know. So, what we do so the our methodology, the epic methodology is, is based on four steps. So the first one is projection. It's a lot like, you know, EOS what you do, as well as establishing clear vision, it's understanding, okay, well, where do I want to go? Ultimately, like, what are my we really identify what are your ambitions? Because it's very important. I think we all I think ambition, appropriation is a big, big problem where we're going to look, we're going to look at someone and we say, Oh, this is what I need to do. Yeah, man. Absolutely.
Mark 10:54
I cornered people on that all the time. And I'll talk to somebody at the beginning of their journey. And I say, all right, what do you want from your business? Man, we got to be bigger. We got to why better and louder. And I Oh, is that right? Is but it's,
Dave 11:08
it's not wrong? If it's if it's right for you.
Mark Leary 11:11
What would you're exactly right. You know what I mean? I can sniff it out, though. Sometimes, like, I think you might be borrowing somebody else's goals. And how I can sense that, by the way is I stop? And I say, Well, you know, when you were in high school, what were your objectives and goals, then? And they'll list them out? And I say, when did you knock them all out? And now, five years ago, so Okay, that's what happened, like you checked off all of your life goals. Now, you're just like, randomly picking them up when they're convenient and nearby. And so you have to take a step back. So what do you do with somebody in that case?
Dave 11:43
Yeah, you know, it's understanding that I think once you know, when you know that when you know what you want what's right for you, and you decide that that doesn't mean that things will not evolve, things change, perspective will change, you know, there might something of can happen, there might be Oh, well, my ambitions, it unlocks something. And now I want to do this and that, and that's fine. It's just staying true to that. So it's kind of new North Star. So we established that. From there we what we do is we establish what we call an annual guideline. So we establish five things that you want to see become reality within the next five within the next 12 months. It's like what do you want to see become a reality? What are the outcomes that you want to see become reality? They're not necessarily projects per se, they are really outcomes. Okay, so understanding out say, not on the macro level, but on the mezzo level, okay, this year, this is what I want to see become a reality. Based on that, now, we can start building, you know, working on on projects and objectives, because there's four types of tasks that every single entrepreneur will will face in their career, first of all, and that's the same once you, you and I can talk a little bit about that, because there's an interesting story with the rocks. And that's why I was like, sold on EOS just before, actually, even before implementing EOS is when I learned that you guys use the rocks to
Mark 13:05
like, we just took it from Stephen Covey. So it was here,
Dave 13:09
same here, but I played it differently. So the way you use rocks and and Cody said, that's really showing how to prioritize in life, you know, the priorities in life. And but when I saw him, do the video where he was actually demonstrating the big rocks, the small rocks in the sand. In my head, it was like, it's, you know, it's exactly like the way I would structure a workout because I was I was a physique athlete before I actually became an entrepreneur. Like, that's one actually, that was my passion that I transferred into entrepreneurship
Mark Leary 13:39
pointing out, by the way, I regret not mentioning that in the intro for you, because your performance discipline, you know, as a performance athlete, that you that you've got some experience with that you know, how to push yourself hard.
Dave 13:54
Yeah, because that's pretty much how the whole methodology started, you really, I started applying various different sports performance principles to entrepreneurship to MMA, because I needed that, you know, I realized that I was making the same mistakes I was doing in my business that I was doing when I started working out. And it was a process of learning how to do it and you know, obviously you don't go work out and and we're not knowing what you do. You either want to lose weight, you want to build muscle you want to compete in bodybuilding, show you this. There's different outcomes and you need to establish that and based on that say, Okay, well, you know, I want let's say I want to compete in a bodybuilding show. Well, maybe this year, what I want to do is gain 10 pounds of muscle. Alright, so that's going to be your, you know, your goal for the year it's going to be okay. Building 10 pounds of muscle. So from there, it's asking yourself, how do you build 10 pounds of muscle, and now you're going to create a workout program that is, you know, maybe 12 weeks and you're going to have different days you're going to work special specific body parts and then you're going to have exit exercises, and number of sets, the number of reps specific movements to do. And when I saw coviz demonstration of the big rocks of small rocks, and since like, this is exactly the way I would structure a workout, right, so I would have, I would have my my workload, and then I would divide it into days, and I would divide it into, you know, sets and into reps and specific movements, etc, right. And I was like, this is this is exactly like that. It was just like, you know, lightbulb moment was like, when all the pieces fit together, I was like, This is
Mark 15:35
why I'm thinking back to my early days, and you can tell by my massive physique, or obviously, a lot of weights for a long time, you know, 100, and some odd pounds here,
15:45
that shape mark.
Mark Leary 15:47
But I have done it, and I've experienced it, there's even weights in my garage that I use it, you wouldn't, you can't tell by looking, but that I do. And so I, I mean, the early days of maybe 14 years old lifting weights wanting to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger, really, and was that what you do curls, right? You know, like, if that's something that's visually makes sense, you're gonna, you're gonna make your biceps big by doing curls. And then and things like that, and all my calves do calf raises to make my calves bigger. And in Eve, sorry, I pull out the books. And the books are like, no, that's not how this works. But you you big, multi complex muscle workout, you know, you're gonna get your body strong, you're gonna do these big and I'm thinking, Oh, that's like the rocks, right, you got to really, you've got to give them the majority of your body strong, and then you're going to polish from there, you don't start with the little fancy tricks, you don't start with the Polish, you start with a super solid foundation, and you go in from there.
Dave 16:42
That's what I love about that analogy is that you can apply to so many levels in life and in businesses. And for me, I really like the big lightbulb was that it's exactly it applies to load management. So load management really is the ability to control the workload, you know, based on the demand, and based on what you want to achieve. And, and having that structure per se, like that, that's when I started really working with my workload. So my rocks, my projects, with the concept of well, I called buckets. So having buckets that I would feel with big rocks, and with small rocks and with sand in order to understand what my, you know, how to structure my projects. So the big rocks now becomes, you know, your milestones what you want to accomplish, and then you break it down into small bite sized action. So okay, you know, here's exercise, or here's set number one who set number two, here, set number three, and you go through it, right. And, and what I loved about EOS is that it was pretty much the same for, you know, on Team basis where, okay, well, we're gonna break it down, we're gonna take a rock, we're gonna apply things like that's, that's, that's genius, he was just a perfect extension of the way I was met, I was, I was managing my tasks, that's why I really loved about, you know, but that so back to the four types of tasks gonna have the rock, so the rocks are tasks associated with projects with innovation. The second types of tasks are routine. So routines are repetitive tasks that are mandatory for the well for the operational well being of your company. So things that you need to perform in order for your business to perform, you know, properly, okay? And, and every single businesses have that the problem, like often we tend to do that, you know, they become a little bit heavy to carry. And because we're entrepreneurs, and we usually we're the ones, you know, performing these tasks, we have a very hard time delegating, right. So the reality is that routines need to be turned into processes and procedures in order to delegate outsource and automate, you know, a lot better. So we cover we cover that so these two types of tasks are what we call the power moves, these are the two types of tasks that are really going to move the needle in your business, you know, decent rocks and routines, those rocks and routines Exactly. And the two types of tests and we divide them by by impact and effort. So understanding that they have you know, these tests have you know, the power rules have obviously a high impact, then you have the other types of tasks that are the reactive tasks. So those are all the byproducts of your business activities, the tasks that you know, that end up on your lap on your to do list but you didn't you know, even though you were very proactive with your planification does still happen and you're going to end up with a big pile of them. So, we these are this is the third type of task. The fourth type of tasks are the responsive tasks are those are all associated with you know, risk communications re responding and answers to like emails, communications, team communication, meetings, etc, etc. Right? So you're gonna have Can you still hear me well? So, these two types of tasks we call that the drifters meaning like okay, you will have to perform these tasks on a daily basis, like You know, you're gonna have meetings, you're gonna have calls, you're gonna have emails, you're gonna have internal communication, you're gonna have reactive tasks that are byproducts of your business activities. It's how you address them, that's gonna make you either drift, or stay on course, right. But they're the ones like deer, when you think about it, they have to be performed a doobadoo, are these tasks really that impactful? Are these tasks really the ones you should spend most of your day working on? And that's the thing when you know, you go when you become overwhelmed and busy, and you're hitting the ceiling. And I really like that you said that? Is that when you hit the ceiling? Well, guess what? If they keep coming back, you're gonna attend based on, you know, you're going to become reactive to your business. You know, it's like that. That's why in the book, we talked about the Eisenhower matrix, which is not a bad concept, you know, in principle, but the problem is that if basis, the decision making on urgency and importance, the problem is when you're under fire, when your your, your pocket is full. Well guess what, everything becomes an emergency. And it and is important. And I think entrepreneurs are not initially equipped to understand what it is if it's really important.
Mark 21:16
So you talk about the matrix that you're talking about, not the movie, you're talking about, like the Stephen Covey's quadrants know, the Eisenhower matrix. Okay, so what is that? I don't know.
Dave 21:25
So I don't know, like so basically, like, it's understanding what's urgent, and what's important. So it's equator quadrant where, you know, all the tasks are. And we pull that up into books that are classified between, you know, importance and urgency. And pretty much when it's urgent and important, the quadrant says, do it. Now, the problem is that entrepreneurs by default, put all the task to the doctor now. That's right task, right. And that's a problem, I think, I think, you know, because we don't really know what to prioritize, it's like, Okay, well, it just becomes that because I feel like, I feel like it's important. But is it really that important? Right? Is it really so that's why we look, we have the impact matrix that really classifies the four types of tasks. So you can see actually, okay, well, these are important, but these are, what types of tasks you take more energy are going to need more effort, and which ones you know, don't, right, the reactive tasks, by default are going to be more, you're going to require more effort, right? Because you're dealing with the unknown most of the time, right? versus when you look at Communications at responsive tests, you can easily create processes in order to improve that, right. So these are the, the smartest first thing that you shouldn't be doing is looking at reactive tasks and turn them into routines, right? So becoming so that these these types of tasks become actually impactful tasks, and become become routines. And you see that with meetings, for example, I think EOS you do that with what's it was a framework you use for meetings.
Mark 23:00
Well, so we have the meeting pulse, which involves the two day annual,
Dave 23:04
but the weekly once the weekly, that's the weekly level 10 level 10. There you go. So for example, say, I couldn't have multiple meetings for the week. But I can condense that into one meeting a week, for example, with the right structure and then the right system after that in order to take care of the tasks. Right. So that's, that's a that's for those that super well, on the on the greater scale is that how do you take a series of small of small meetings or communication that could be highly disruptive and, and take you away from from growth into something that is standardized, and something that can be optimized? Right?
Mark Leary 23:45
So I like what you're saying so because I think what happens and and even your terminology tells a story. If you do good work with rocks and routines, your something's gonna happen, right? I'm gonna call my customers cool. I left like 10 voicemails, well, someone we're going to call back, right? So then what? And then if you do good work and outbound and your new hires, and I'm gonna place an ad that's my guess my rock, I gotta get in person. Hi, well, I now I've got 100 applications. So when you do things, things happen in response to that. And if you don't, if you're not ready for that, and if you don't have a process, and you're already you know, routines for like, Oh my gosh, what am I going to do with all those resumes? What am I going to do with that? It's going to flip you lopsided, lopsided back over again, the pendulum swings the other way. I did all the stuff that Stephen Covey said it was important. I'm supposed to do it. And now everything seems super urgent again. And now I just got to go back to the putting the fires out. So yeah, how do you help sighs that there's a process or routine in and of itself, so sort of to make sense of that.
Dave 24:47
Yeah. But first of all, it's understanding like, you know, what, your, what's your situation right now? So understanding where do you spend your time, right. So what we always say spend a week and document you know, your week Understand what you're spending your time on. From there, once you understand the four types of tasks, understanding how much time do I spend, on, you know, this type of task and this, so what do you so here's what's going to happen is that you're going to realize that first of all, one, you're spending a lot of time at the bottom of the quadrant, where you just spent a lot of time drifting, because you, just like your meetings or not optimize your communications are not optimized. But also you're reacting to your business, you know, you're not proactive, because you're just reacting through business activities, then you're going to spend quite a bit of time if you go into the power moves, you're going to spend a lot of time in more time in routines, because these are mandatory for the well being operational wellbeing of the company. So you're going to still, you know, do these things, right, you're going to perform these tasks, or you're going to realize that you're going to stop innovating, you're going to stop working, or you're not going to work as much on what you should be working on, you know, the rocks, the big things that are really going to move the needle that require, you know, obviously, a little bit more, I would say, effort, because when you're building something it takes, it takes a bit more effort. But that's the thing that we that's a type of test, I would neglect, when we get too busy, because we're just too busy taking care of something else. So the other tasks, so what you have to do is understanding that there needs to be a plan in place, and there needs to be some mandatory tasks that take place every day. So curving, carving out, you know, blocks of time every day to work on rocks, work on what's going to make you, you know, successful in the long term, the things that really gonna move the needle, and it's part of being consistent with that it's not just batching 100%, and just focusing savagely on just, you know, one day a week on your projects, I think the key is like to understand that you're going to have these types of tasks to perform on a daily basis. And, and build building consistency, you know, and based on that, when you do that, it's looking at, okay, my routines, how much time do I spend on that? Can they be optimized? You know, do I have processes in place? Do I have procedures, you know, to back these processes and grab the right people? You know, or the right help? You know, some things can be automated. I mean, we live in, in an era now, where there's automation tools popping up every day, you know, where you could actually benefit from that? Do you have the opportunity to outsource to very competent people, you know, we venture too far, from our really, you know, our superpower of our power zone, you know, our zone of genius, because we're just telling, like, Hey, I'm just gonna do it. I don't have time to hide how much time how many times you hear that mark? I mean, I don't have time to hire, I don't have time to do that. I don't have time to build processes. Guess what, you're never gonna have time to do anything else and your business is not going to grow into computers are going to come and you're not going to have innovated and they will and you're going to be gone my friend.
Mark 28:01
That doesn't that head trash fuel. Big Idea. I gotta work harder. I'm gonna die. I can't I don't have time to optimize. I don't have time. I gotta I just gotta work harder right now. I got to earn my way getting some more money in the bank. I gotta just, I just got to finish this one last thing.
Dave 28:16
Yeah, it but that's the thing. I think once it's thinking that keeping working just to your max capacity will bring you the optimum results. Right. Versus here's the thing when you work out. So I will tell you mark, like you would go to gym seven times a week. And you will work out for four hours a day. Would you optimize your results? I can
Mark 28:38
tell you from personal experience that No,
28:41
no. You will not.
Mark 28:43
It does not work.
Dave 28:44
No. You will actually get smaller.
Mark Leary 28:46
Yeah, yeah. Even in even in my late teens and early 20s even six days of working and when it was not and I learned that lesson lesson the hard way that you know you now in my 40s I get my best gains oftentimes working out like three days a week max. Now understanding
Dave 29:02
how much recovery I need. You need recovery is one thing but on resending understanding, you know, proper periodization understanding how to form load management, you know, rest and recovery periodization there are three basic sports performance principles that we base that our methodology is based on because what if you don't sequence you think you know, properly, like, you will not get the results like a collection of friends say, you know, Scott evil used to say that all the time is like, a collection of exercise doesn't make a program. That means you if you go to the gym and work like what, like I'm going to do calves and I'm going to do biceps. Oh, okay. Well, now I feel like I'm gonna do, I don't know, I'm going to turn back. Well, if you don't have a specific sequence, if you don't have a specific order things and you're consistent, you know, with them performing these tasks on on daily basis, and there's things you might have to Work every other day excetera like, you will not get the results you want. But when you work on that, it's not going to be perfect at first. But when you start to learn about yourself, learn about how you operate, learn how you know how much weight you can lift to know this is how you're going to become a better, you know, bodybuilder or better, you know better shape, right?
Mark Leary 30:19
I'm gonna maybe take this analogy too far. So tell me if this isn't fit. Because having having done many different workout things through the years, what I've discovered is, as a beginner, or somebody who's coming back after a long break, or going into a new workout discipline that I haven't done in many years, so I've done something different, like, you know, going back to the gym and lifting weights, as opposed to cycling more commonly for the last couple years hitting the gym for the first time, you know, doing something pretty simple, you know, squats, deadlifts, pull ups, that kind of isn't a word that that kind of is the whole program. At first, after a while though, you the refinement, the periodization, the optimization, the game, the game changes, so understanding that like on day one, like anything is good. On day 20, something specific is better. On year three, a very finely tuned program must be in place.
Dave 31:12
Because you get better, you know, it's periodization. But first of all, when you adapt, so you adapt to you know, to your load, you can increase the workload, you know, it's not about work. See, that's the thing, I think a lot of people confuse activity for productivity, if you like, if I'm just doing as much as possible. That's why we said, you know, if I'm doing as much as possible, I'm going to get better results. And the thing is that it's not it is not activity, that's the main, you know, driver of growth, it is really understanding how you operate and understanding that it's a journey that every you're going to improve over time, your capacity will improve over time. And as you get better, and as you understand, you know, first of all, well, you understand what your strong points are, and you understand your weaknesses are, it's going to be a lot better to understand what needs to be improved, and what needs what you need to focus on.
Mark Leary 32:09
So I love that because I think that when you say 40 hours a week, that's too much, let's get everything that's important done in 20 hours, like the back of your book says, and a lot of people, you know, prescribe this idea. I mean, Tim Ferriss, you know, the four hour workweek, I think people can perceive that a little bit as frivolous, or nice to have on another day. And what I've observed, and you're telling the story of I believe, is that, if you want to change the outcome, you're going to have to know what to change. And for you to know what to change, you're going to have to have a break in your routines, because your routines are automatic, and you're going to have to have some space to observe. And that's a big thing. In the EOS system, we talked about clarity breaks, and that you got to have that whitespace. And the whitespace, to me is so critical. Because once your ad capacity, it's on autopilot, and whatever you've been getting, you're gonna keep getting. And so if you don't want to change, if the trajectory is right, and your life, your life is perfect, don't change, because you're gonna keep getting that. And I mean, truly, if it's working, don't mess with it. But if you want a different trajectory, and you want something different, you have an obligation you must observe. And you're going to have to create space in those routines and those habits and find out what's going on. And even just the routines of your thinking, if you take like a 10 minute break, the thoughts you're about to think are probably pre programmed in the same thoughts you thought like hundreds of times before. So you're really going to have to create some real space and challenge your own thinking and ask that hard question, which is, I love this, my first favorite first question is, what am I actually doing? And then you can say, Well, is it working? And is it where is it going the direction I want it to go? And those questions as simple as they are. They require some space and some observations, some honesty
Dave 34:04
100%, I think it's gonna happen in two, you know, there's two major pain points that every single entrepreneur is going to have, right? The first one is going to be when they, you know, grow, go from building to growing. So meaning like they go from, let's say, you see that a lot of them like, you know, building a business where, you know, from five to six figures, for example, were like, Okay, well, what I've been doing is I've led mice, I'm kept, you know, I've led the business there. But what I'm what I've how I've done, that is not going to get me to the next level. And then there's that big stretch to six figure stretch that you see like from, you know, most entrepreneurs going in this to case scenarios there. If you don't address the first pain point, you're going to go into what I call the burnout zone. Right, which is, the problem is that you're going to keep stay busy, but it's going to get worse and worse and worse and worse and you're never going to get you know to a place where you can actually scale the business up. Or you can become into a nicer you know, I would say lifestyle, lifestyle, type of zone, which actually is a lot more, you know, livable, where you can have that space as you said, you can have that time to understand what you really want. And when you reach that second pain point that you will have no matter what, whether you're into burnout zone or lifestyle zone, you're going to have that pinpoint where that prescale you know, pain point where you go, let's say from six to seven figures, where you're going to need to now become a better team leader. It's not about being a good self leader, it's being a big need to become a better team leader and implementing like systems like EOS, for example, in your business, in different, you know, other upgrade your skill set. But this pain point can be extremely pain painful, if First of all, one, it's not aligned with what you want. And second, if you haven't got the first pain point, you know, dial, which is your self leadership, right? You need to become a good responsible entrepreneur, and understanding how to, you know, to manage yourself. And I think that's why your title and you know, of the book appeals to a lot of people just like the four hour workweek, for example. It's not about working less. It's not about working less. It's about understanding the power of working of working properly, you know, for work leads and book of systems. It's leverage Sivak for leverage, you know, it's not about working for hours, it's about actually achieving real leverage in your business. Right? It's the same thing we've done by noon, the sun is set to be done by noon, it's being done. It's if I would tell you, you would need to be done by noon, how would you structure your day? You know, what decisions will you have to make in order to make this happen? So nine changes to know it changes the game, because there's things that you will have to stop doing. And there are things that you will need to start start, you know, putting attention on, you know,
Mark Leary 36:55
yeah, I read about that many times and experienced it in tactical ways. But the, the time that it brought it home, for me most clearly was after I had sold the business, I sold the business. And in the trees, six months after I sold the business, I had a job in the business that had bought mine. But they weren't asking a lot of me, which was good, because I was going through a lot of difficult things in, in my personal life. And so what I discovered is that I had like dis disposing assets in the previous company and running around and doing things in my personal life, I had just like a tiny fraction of my day to get specific things done. And so I have a traditional habit at that time of just sort of like the six priorities for the next day or so. And I would just start knocking them out the next day. And what I would discover is that like, my, my time window of thinking I hated eight hours would suddenly become well, it's closer to six, and well, it's probably like four, and I would take this list and I would just be like, okay, there's a lot more, I'm gonna get four things done well, okay, maybe two. Okay, what is the one thing I need to get done today. And that became a routine. And I just didn't think a lot about it. But what I discovered was, like 10 weeks down the line, I could not believe how much important stuff had gotten done, you have this very simple, alright, what's the one thing I got to do to everything else is going to be kind of chaos. But I'm going to do the one thing that moves the needle. Yeah. And it really brought the message home that like he choose well. And this is a big contrast to what I call the infinite elasticity of time model, which is how I had been before which was, it's two o'clock, I'm supposed to have done three things by now. But it's still two o'clock, I can all I was gonna leave at six, but I'll just leave at seven. And I'll get those other three things done. Well, then now it's four o'clock, and I still haven't done those other things. And well, I'm okay, I was gonna leave at seven, but I'll get it at 730 Well, now it's eight o'clock. And I've not done any of those things. Now, I was busy the whole time. But I don't know on what the finite Yes,
38:49
it's like,
Mark 38:50
I've only got till noon. What does that do to my prioritization is the exactly like the entrepreneurs like I got more time I'll work this weekend, I'll just stay love it later, that just fuels the drift,
Dave 39:01
that's a hard percent. So you can get a lot done. But that doesn't mean mean that you have done the right things, you know, in your business, right. So understanding that going from a place where I have to, you know, understand, if I want to make this happen, I have to understand how to use, you know, my finite resources. And when you understand that, and you Oh, and you also understand that the four types of tasks, you can't escape them, you will have them at all times in your business, right, you know, going, thinking that you only going to be working on just fun projects, and then it's going to be done. I mean, it's utopian. I mean, it's not it's not real life, it's not what entrepreneurs usually you know, it's now your reality as an entrepreneur, you will have to deal with the four types of tasks is just how you would attend them. It's how you organize them. It's how you plan them, you know, how you structure you scheduled accordingly, and then and accordingly in a According to what you want to see become a reality to your desired outcome. You know, it's not about checking things as fast as possible and as many things as possible. It's understanding, first of all, what you want to achieve.
Mark Leary 40:14
Yeah, and seeing how it connects into that. So you mentioned a couple times about like, your day getting structured. What is it? How do you advise an entrepreneurial leader to structure their day? Is it is it a per day? Is it? Is it like, each day of the week? Is it you know, a morning routine and lunch routines? And you know, what are the types of structures? Because I I've struggled to have any kind of sense of the daily routine. After my morning starts. Yeah, I, to me, my week is very, it's different based on the week, I have a couple of weeks, weeks, weeks days that are very consistent, and some that are kind of like not consistent. my morning routine is very consistent, my evening routine is very, very consistent. But during the weekday can depending on the day, it can be very different. What do you recommend?
Dave 40:53
Yeah, so first of all, I recommend working with in 90 day cycles. So first of all, when you try something, try it for 90 days, it's like a workout program,
Mark 41:01
do you get your money back, 90 days might not even a money back guarantee,
41:06
you That sounded like nobody you
Mark 41:08
for 90 days, risk free will get your money back, if you don't like it, you don't have your best night's sleep on this pillow. 90 days money back,
Dave 41:14
there you go. But But honestly, like, it takes some time to understand, like how to evolve, you know, and that means like, you're going to work 90 days, you're going to look back and say, okay, that worked. That didn't work, it just creating the right structure for you. The key is like, first of all, one, understand the four types of costs and understand how to, you know, address them today for for me, I'm a typical done by noon type of guy where all my so all the four types of tasks are addressed before noon. So my rocks my project of 90 day and 90 minutes, block of time, you know, for that for my, my, my, my projects every single day. So and that's my main priority. I work on my projects consistently. So I know that my business moves forward, I have a set of routines. So usually. So there's two types of routines that I have, which take about 30 minutes each depending sometimes it's going to change as well, because sometimes I'm going to change routines, I say I'm going to do one routine for 90 days, let's say social media, I'm going to do X thing on social media for 90 days every day. But then I might, you know, optimize that and might hand that handed off to someone else if it's optimized, right. So I can do that. But I have usually 60 minutes bit for routine. So things that are mandatory for the well being operational well being of the company that I'm going to do, then I have times for reactive tasks. So all that are tasks that are reactive based on first of all the week, like I just started week, we have our meeting, team meeting and we understand, okay, what are the things that you know, that were reactive last week that we have put in that pot? We call that Fiona's desk. So it's so it's a it's a fictional desk, and pretty much It's a place where you're going to put your tasks so all the things that you know, you might have reactive that your team might say, Okay, well, let's do it now. Right. And for example, your assistant would come to you mark saying, oh, America, we have decent debt, but it's not necessarily that important. And that can wait until our meaning. We put that onto a fish fictional desk called Fiona's desk and we picture Fiona as an old mean woman. And when you put your file, you know, your tasks on Fiona's desk, she will not allow you to touch this task until the next weekly meeting. And when we have a weekly meeting she does she leaves her desk and you can take that test and what we do and Fiona is an acronym for figured out a next action meaning that Okay, well let's look at it and what was the task? Can you be self real, you know, quickly or who will need to take ownership of that, right and we then we move that to our to do list our team to do list and we just, we just move you know, the the task forward so I have that but there's also tasks that you know, I'm going to have that are going to appear on Wednesday and then again I need to do for you know, Thursday because they have been trying to ship this box to you know our client because he's that urgently Okay, fine, you know, that's okay. But as the key is like not to have an extensive list of reactive tasks right so you there's a limited number of tasks are limited by the number but also limited by the time allotted to them. And this types of communication so emails, so meetings and different calls and everything so that's my day when I start so that's my done by noon structure typical. That doesn't mean that I'm actually done working by noon I could if I wanted to, because all all the things technically are tend to, but you know, I love speed in my business. I love to innovate in my business. I love to actually move forward in my business doing different things I love for example, I've gone on interviews with you know, great podcast hosts like you know, Marketing isn't nearly so in the afternoons, for example, you look at Tuesday afternoons, this is my time to record, you know, podcast interviews, right? So I take that time because I know that's going to move the needle. Know, forwards is another type of routine that I have, you know, but it's different all the time. Right? But so I do that, and I block my time accordingly. And, and there you go, any changes, buddy law allows me to have space, it allows me to move things around, you know, it's not a standard rigid environment, I can move these blocks of time, you know, like, where I'm, for me, like, it works for me. Like the done by noon type, like typical, I would say, done by noon framework works. But that doesn't mean that I would take, you know, my routines, and I would perform them in the afternoon. They're, they're just blocks that you can, that you can move around, let's have doctor's appointment on Wednesday morning, I guess what I'm gonna move these blocks and put them somewhere else, you know that that's the key, right? So it's being too rigid is actually a big mistake. You know, it's understanding that things can move at the end of the week, what matters is that the things that needed to be done, are done and are done right.
Mark Leary 46:11
At the end of the week. Yeah, so that's interesting. I think, Stephen Covey pointed out, this idea of the week is a very human logical timeframe, like a day is too many variables. Like, if you're expecting everything to get done on a certain day, that's, it's too too rigid, you can't wait a month. But if you put a pile of significant initiatives in the to do category in a weak size bucket, that allows a little bit of flexibility, a little bit of dynamic, a little bit of things to go wrong, and you can pretty much knock them all out by a week, and which works really well in the EOS world, a little 10 to do as being a week. And so the week is kind of that logical block of progress at the smallest granular level,
Dave 46:51
it is, you know, it's, you know, when you look at at periodization, there's three cycles, there's the macro, the mezzo, and the micro cycle. And when you look at the macro, which would be, let's say, your year, you know, what you want to see become a reality within your year, and you go with the mezzo cycle, which is, you know, your quarter, you know, the key projects that you're going to need to do this quarter is what you're going to do, and then you go micro, your week, your days, sometimes the micro improvements are not noticeable, they're only going to be noticeable at a mezzo level, and then at the macro level, so that's why I always work into 90 day cycles that I can then look back and say, Okay, well, that work, or that did not work, or I need to change this, I need to change that, for example, when you have kids, things change, you know, you're not able to manage your schedule, like I do, you know what I mean, Mark, so it's, for example, for me, I like, when I wrote down by noon, for example, one of the habits that I got into was waking up earlier to actually perform, you know, my, my, my, my writing, and that was part of my bucket. So most of my buckets, were actually finishing writing the book. So all the milestones were actually broken down into actions. And then, but I was doing that early in the morning, before the kids were actually awake. And that allowed me to work, you know, write my book without being I needed that, that, that space before the world started, right? That doesn't mean that I need to wake up at five in the morning, every single day forever. It was convenient, because serve the purpose of what I wanted to achieve. And after that, you know, it was done. And now I'm pretty much I think, you know, seven inch now, you know, pretty much with the kids. And now my first task is actually after the kids are sent to school and prepared and you know, I can start and that's fine. You know, it's just a matter of context. And I read just based on context, and on the grand scheme of things, I look at the macro level, and hey, we wrote the book, and we did this and we did that, you know, and we saw progress, but just understanding the context.
Mark Leary 48:57
But yeah, the seasons of life. I think I learned that from Rory vaden Rory stuff, but he's got a couple good things on there. But he talks about this idea of seasons of life as the antidote to this concept of balance. He's most entrepreneurs kind of viscerally react to the concept of balance, balances some sort of social criticism of working too hard. And I think there's some truth to that. And the idea of balances is not really realistic. But he or he calls it seasons of life. And I think it's a good example to me, I love the example of a recipe, you know, if you if you put the right speed together, and it's that there's sugar and flour and butter and you come up with a noun cake, that's great. And if you taste the sugar, go, you know, it's sugar tastes great. Let's put some more in there and keep increasing the sugar. Eventually, it's no longer a cake and it's a it's close to a hard candy yet, which is fine. If you want a hard candy. You just got to know what you want. So that concept of discipline having to start with what do you want, and your point of 90 days is you need to reassess what you want and what's appropriate right now time at all the time 90 days, at least
Dave 49:58
we asked you to actually look at your annual guideline and redo it every 90 days. Because guess what, 90 days have passed, now you have a new 12 month period in front of you. So technically, things might have changed, right? And your perspective on things might have to you don't know. But the thing is that 90 days is long enough for you to make adjustments, but long enough for you to actually see progress. And and because the problem is that when you try to switch quickly, like oh, that's not working, or whatever, like, like, for example, you you go and you do, I don't know, benchpress, and then oh, my shoulders hurt, I'm going to switch completely my whole workout, but you realize that it's not because of the benchpress is because you're doing your biceps curls wrong. And that causes inflammation in your shoulders. And you're like, you know what, like, don't change it, like really understand, okay, it's like, Okay, I'm going to need to rest that temporarily, but I'm going to stick on plan, you know, and, and, and as long as you do that, and you stay consistent and disciplined. It's a compound effect, you know, it's a, it's a success is a series of small things done, done well, and done over time. And, you know, after 90 days, a year and 20 years later, you look back and be like, wow, you know, I actually accomplished things I'm really proud of, and I'm, where I want to go, it's different from where I envisioned 20 years ago, right? I'm where I want to go. Because, you know, it's like going to vacation, like you go to a vacation spot, and you imagine it in your head, how it's gonna look like. And you get there. It's different, but still
Mark 51:30
nice. Yeah, yeah, that's really good.
Dave 51:32
But it's different. Right? It's always like that.
Mark Leary 51:35
Yeah. So we're gonna be out of time in a minute. But I want to hit one last point before we in anything else you want to kind of cram in. But how do you leverage assistance? Like any assistant and executive assistants, you know, that kind of how does that fit into your system?
Dave 51:51
Oh, my God, it's, it's actually one of the things that we teach you how to do in this system. Because the problem is actually the lack of system, the lack of systems or lack of structure, prevents you from actually doing a good job when an assistant and more often what you see the big mistake, we see a rookie mistake when you first hire someone is that you're going to dump a lot of tasks on someone's plate, you're going to agree on that.
Mark 52:18
I know you're talking. It didn't sound anything like I'm so glad you're finally here. Yeah, but you can. And then they're like, you're like, this is about to be bad. You got three months, or three weeks, or three years of pent up pent up tasks and broken stuff that like this person is expected to fix.
Dave 52:36
But yeah, because you're you're you're not improving anything you're just dumping. So while we teach you is actually to start building routines. So just the way you would build, you know, personal routines, like, you know, okay, I'm going to eat, I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to eat right, I'm going to get, you know, proper hydration. And we teach that in a methodology to it's part of like, yeah, you need to do that for yourself. But you're going to need to do that when your work as well. And showing actually how to, when you you optimize your routines, this is how you can build, you know, procedures that someone can, you know, can perform for you. So, obviously, there's a big learning curve, and it's not native to entrepreneurs, it's not something like most entrepreneurs are going to be like, Oh, yeah, I'm naturally great at delegating tasks or outsourcing tasks. Right. So we, so first of all, yeah, we ask you to document your, your week. So understanding, okay, where do you spend most of your time, but then, from there, it's understanding which ones should be either delegated, outsource or automated. And there's a process to do that. So there's a we have to do a map in, in the book where we show actually the mental process that we use to do that. And, and yeah, you can you can do, I think, you know, done properly, I think most entrepreneurs can do really, really well with just like, one assistant, you know, one, beginner integrate that. That's because here's the thing, this is training grounds for when you're going to be working with an integrator. later down the road, if you implement EOS, the same thing, you're gonna work on his system the same way, like, you know, kind of that's going to be a good training ground for that.
Mark Leary 54:16
Yes, I love that. Because I think that we all have to have these skills to as visionaries to make it easy for other people to help. They have to be able to be enrolled in the vision. And if they get caught up in what we think is amazing, it's no good if they if they can't participate, consume or help contribute to making it possible. And as visionaries who get sort of tight and possessive of the process and the vision. We just exclude people and when we're working against ourselves and the ability to create a bigger team and a bigger tribe of people who are participating and making it real. So starting at any level, to make it easier for people to do their part is so so Important
55:00
harps?
Mark 55:02
Well look, man, we're about out of time. But is there anything else we you wanted to add to the conversation?
Dave 55:08
Mark, I think we can win in great, great lengths about about everything, obviously, you know, it's like, it's like everything else, I cannot just lay down the whole, you know, strategy and methodology in front of you verbally like that, you would have to read it and understanding we have different tools to for intrapreneurs. Like we have the ethic planner, I think you have a copy today. So it's the reverse leather,
Mark 55:30
light leather, like mining is really nice. I love the planners. Very cool. Thank you, they need to get the companion for the book to awesome.
Dave 55:37
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Right. So once you understand it, and the Buddha, the planner becomes the extension of it, the goal is really to understand how to operate as you know, as a, as a lead self leader, as an entrepreneur, and, and yeah, and from there, you know, you can go to mark and implement EOS and B actually make his life a lot easier, because it doesn't have to deal with your bad ways of, you know, leading yourself.
Mark 56:07
Well, Dave, I appreciate all you shared and So, given all you've experienced, especially over the last year, it's been an interesting year for everybody, what is your passionate plea for entrepreneurs right now?
Dave 56:20
work, right. Work rights, you know, work based on what you want to accomplish your own ambitions don't fall into, you know, ambition, appropriating yourself, you know, ambitions of other people, you have to do what's right for you, whether it's growing $100 million business or running $100,000 business a year, there's no right or wrong. There's only right for you and and reconnect with that. You know, I think we we just venture in in we venture on paths. We are not we don't have to drive on, you know what I mean? It's not because you have these times and it goes both ways. You know, it's not because you are you want a small business that you are you lack ambitions. It's not because you want to build a huge business that you just think about yourself. It You know, there's so many ways to look at it, just do what's right for you. And, yeah, there's no right or wrong just for you.
Mark Leary 57:20
Yeah, I mean, I I hesitate from giving advice. But I definitely early stage entrepreneurs have asked me for advice. And the one piece of true advice I'd give them say, look, this is your ship, like you think I'm smart, or you think I'm stupid, that doesn't matter which one but you got to live with the outcome. And if you've got somebody else who's giving good advice, and you're trying to wait because that's usually I'm getting this advice, I mean that if I said look, it's you are going to be the one who's named at the bottom is you're going to be your life, when it's over. It needs to be true for you right or wrong, if it's a fail needs to be on your terms of success, it needs to be on your terms. And so whatever you you have to own it, and get comfortable with making those decisions for yourself. And so
Dave 57:56
this is how you're going to create your best work, you know, and it all comes back to creating your best work. And once you do that, whether you you impact 10 people you impact your 10,000 people. The key is that your work is so good that it impacts people in the best way possible. So this will have a snowball effect in the future. You know, don't see it as quantity see it as quality and the quality of your work and what you create will dictate how good of an entrepreneur you are regardless of your financial results.
Mark 58:31
Well Dave, I'm grateful for everything you've shared all your wisdom, how does somebody continue the conversation with you? How do they find the book The where do they find the stuff? You know, where do we go from here
Dave 58:40
done by noon book.com to grab the book, we're handing out free copies right now. So you can go take a look. fx co e FF IC co to to see what we do at FX and Dave rockwell.com. So d a v e r e l.com to connect with me and you can talk to me on Instagram On Facebook. I'm a pretty reachable guy. So
Mark Leary 59:04
awesome. Awesome. Well, Dave, I'm grateful such good stuff. We'll talk very soon. In the meantime, that's it for today. Please do remember to subscribe and share with your friends who can use this everybody can use a little more control of their life and their business. Make sure you give us feedback good and bad. Everything we love every piece of feedback you can give us it's all awesome press. We will see you next time on you're doing wrong with me mark Anderson Leary.
VO 59:29
This is you're doing it wrong with Mark Henderson Leary for more episodes and to subscribe, go to lyric.cc