Focused - 186: The Burden of Opportunity, with Shawn Blanc

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

The Focus Course creator and small business owner Shawn Blanc is back to talk about margin, sabbaticals, and focusing like a boss.

Welcome to the Focus Podcast, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by my intrepid co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hey, Mike, how are you? Doing pretty good. Thanks for that marvelous introduction. How about you? You are intrepid, buddy. I've got to know you over the years and nothing can stop Mike Schmitz. And I think our guests would agree. Welcome to the show how's it going sean hey it's going great guys i agree nothing can stop mike schmitz yeah he's a force of nature you know so uh either way sean we've had you on the show i think you get the jacket for being the most frequent guests on focused and before that free agents uh because you're one of our favorite people and i

love talking to you so i love being here thank you do i get like my name on a plaque is there going to be a like a focused wall of fame no we're gonna get you a smoking jacket with the focused logo on the on the left breast i'll take it i'll take it yeah yeah i think you would look rather sharp in it to tell you the truth. For those of you who've only heard Sean's voice, he's a very handsome fellow. I'll tell you. And his, his zoom picture is like very Boca friendly. I mean, Sean has got it all together. In fact, that's one of the questions I'm going to ask Sean today is where does he struggle? Because this guy seems like he never struggles, but we're going to get to that. Before we get into the show, Howard, we got a few announcements. Mike, what's up? Yeah. So by the time this goes live, my Obsidian cohort, which mentioned really briefly in the last

episode, will be starting in just a couple of days. So if you are interested in learning Obsidian live with some other passionate Obsidian nerdss go check out obsidianuniversity.com this is the second round of the cohort and the first one went really well i've incorporated a whole bunch of the feedback that i got and so some of the changes this time around are i've ripped out the really beginner stuff and that's going to be basically its own separate course that you get access to with the cost of the cohort so you can go through that though prior if you want to so you can hit the ground running by the time the cohort starts and then in the cohort we're going to be diving deeper into some of the values based productivity workflows and the creativity stuff but yeah really looking forward to going

through round two and obsidianuniversity.com is the website if you want to learn more and since this is the let's hawk our obsidian related products section of the show i just want to say thank you to everyone who bought the obsidian field guide we announced in the last episode um as this show goes live the introductory uh discount has terminated but i'm leaving it open for for the focused listeners. So if you type in focused Obsidian, one word, you'll get 10% off for about another week. So thanks to everybody who bought it and all the great support. And between Mike and I, we're going to get you hooked up with Obsidian. It's also September, which is time to talk about St. Jude at relay network. As you know,

the network has a very close affiliation with St. Jude. They took care of our pal, Steven Hackett's son when he had a problem several years ago. And since then, we've always been trying to help pay him back a little bit. And the, the relay annual fundraiser with St. Jude is a remarkable thing. I mean, it's kind of funny

because the first year they did it, Stephen and I were talking about it, and St. Jude didn't even know what to think about this. They're like, what do you mean, some podcasts? When podcasting is ironic, right? Podcasts are going to help us raise money. Well, it turns out we have raised a lot of money for them over the years, and we continue to do so. And the thing about St. Jude is you give them money, and they take care of children with cancer. Now, I could do a lot of things with my money. I could go buy an overpriced Starbucks latte. I could get a clicky keyboard, or I could help cure a kid of cancer. So why not do that? So we're going to put a link in the show notes. We'd love you to help

donate. Let's help us prove to St. Jude that these podcasters are for real. The goal this year is $293,000. We really want to get there. Over the years, we've accumulated over a million dollars of raised funds for St. Jude. We want to just keep that up, guys. So go check it out. The link is St. Jude. Let me get it right. Mike, what is the link I don't have in front of me? Stjude.org slash relay. That'll get you to the right place. That's really easy, right? StJude.org slash Relay. We'll put the link in the show notes. But let's all go together. I'll tell you what I'm doing this year. I've decided is I'm not going to buy a new Apple Watch. I bought one last year. I'm good. But I'm going to take the price of an Apple Watch Ultra

and I'm going to give it to St. Jude. That's my way of helping this year, but you don't have to do that. You can give them 10 bucks. It doesn't matter. It adds up, gang. Yeah, it absolutely does. And this is one of my favorite things that we do, honestly, because of the cause. I mean, it's a worthwhile cause, even if you don't know somebody personally who's gone through this stuff. But the fact that we've got a personal story here and really the proof is in the pudding, right? You can give money to things, but what are they actually doing with the money? Well, the results are there for St. Jude. So really, even if you do have just a couple of bucks, like you were saying, David, it really does make a difference. So please, everybody,

if you can, whatever you can, go to stjude.org slash relay and contribute something. go to stjude.org slash relay and contribute something. No donation is too small. I feel like we would rather have many, many people contribute. I'd rather have 100 people contribute a dollar than one person contribute $100. That's our goal for you, King. Sean, how are you doing? I'm doing great.

I'm so happy to be here. I love all the stuff we're already talking about. The obsidian stuff, the St. Jude. I've known Stephen for, I don't know, 15 years maybe. Yeah, Stephen worked with you over at Sweet Setup. Yeah, very first person I ever gave money to to help me in my business. So, amazing. Yeah. So, I love it. Thanks for having me here. Do you use Obsidian? I've never talked to you about that. Have you gone down that rabbit hole? Do you want wrong answers only?

Sure. Then yes, I use Obsidian every day. That's, that's the wrong, I don't. What does that mean? Mike has, I have, so Josh Kaufman originally tried to get me to switch over to it. And then Mike, you know, Mike used to work over with us on the suite setup full-time for quite a while and so he tried to get me to jump in Mike had the the foresight to see that Obsidian was going to become this big player in the the PKM space and so he tried to get me to switch from Ulysses to Obsidian. Well, actually, I tried to get him to get me to switch. And it just never quite clicked for me. And maybe I'm the worst for it, but I'm still kind of Notion and Ulysses.

You know, I really don't see Ulysses. Obsidian is a replacement for Ulysses, you know? I mean, Ulysses really is for writing and obsidian is more of a to me it's like thought collection and organization it's like a thinking tool for me more than it's i mean you can write in it and i know a lot of people do but i'm just as often going to actually write the text in something like drafts or ulysses you know it's interesting total sidebar i don't. You know, it's interesting. Total sidebar.

I don't know if it's too early in the show for a sidebar. Never. I came in, I read, I subscribed to this guy's name, Justin Welsh. He has a newsletter called the Saturday Solopreneur. And recently I read an article from him that came out about how he manages all of his social media because this whole thing is like, you know, social media. Um, and then he uses his social media to drive his course sales, which are like how to grow on social media. But what was so interesting to me is he talked about his, uh, like the way he manages his own social media calendar, which basically he's like,

I have two years of material at any given time. I was like, what? How do you have two years in the pipeline? And basically what it is is that he has six months of his LinkedIn posts already created. So he has 180. That's like his, I don't know what the term would be, but he's got 180 that have already been written and actually have already been published. And then what he does is every six months, he basically goes back to the top and he just recycles them or reuses them. But as he does it, he like updates them. He revisits the old comments on the post from six months ago and, uh, you know, refines that one with, you know, new material or new stories or,

or edits it to be a little bit better, incorporates some of the feedback that he got from his subscribers and things like that. And then he reposts it. So he's basically got like 180 thoughts that he's constantly going back through and refining. as like being in the creative space for 12 plus years now as, as a full time creator, I've, I've kind of begun to slow down with my viewpoint of, I need to make something new every day. And I've gotten a lot more interested in how can I make the core of like what I have created better and richer and deeper and simpler. And I think when you look at Obsidian versus Ulysses in that kind of a context of like Ulysses is a great place for organizing your writing, but Obsidian is a great place for really like refining and maturing like your core thoughts

and your core ideas that you have, like your core message, so to speak. So anyways, it's interesting that we got on that topic because it's actually been something I've been thinking about. Yeah, I agree. I feel like the thing that the insight I got from first Rome and then I switched over to Ulysses, I'm sorry, to Obsidian, once it got there, just, you know, there's a lot of explanation behind that. But either way, I feel like the idea of writing down your thoughts and your ideas and your concepts, I call it spark EOS. I, my operating system, you know, what are my beliefs on giving, you know, we talked about St. Jude and like, we all have thoughts between our two ears about, well, what am I,

when it comes to being a giving person, what, you know, what do I think about that? What's important? What am I willing to give up to give something to somebody else? And so we have thoughts about it, but at the moment you write it down, and it doesn't have to be in Obsidian, it could be on a piece of paper, it could be in Ulysses or TextEdit or whatever. When you start writing it down, it forces you to confront the edges of those thoughts. And it forces you to decide, well, what would I give up for giving? Where would I make the sacrifice? How much am I willing to write down in writing that I'm going to do every year? And how important

is that? And you just take that to any concept in your mind, spirituality, finance, you know, whatever it is that you're thinking about, uh, writing it down, codifying it suddenly makes it real. And then you own it. I, I, that's the only way I can explain it. And once you write it down, you own it, then it becomes part of you. And then if you change your mind about it, you have to go back in and fix it, right? Like, well, I did a little better. I want to give more. I'm going to figure out how to, you know, whatever it is, there's something about that. And I know it takes time and everybody that listens to me talk about this rolls their eyes, but it is like magic if you write it down there,

there's such a difference between having a thought about what your core systems are, beliefs and values are, and writing them down. And I think that's, for me, what Obsidian has evolved into more than anything else. It's great that you can write down when you took your dog to the vet. It's great that you can capture book notes. And there's lots of stuff you can do with it. capture book notes and there's lots of stuff you can do with it uh but to me it's like codifying who i am that i uh i just i just love it i love that yeah sorry i i preached i have to do less of that preach away mike's taking some sketch notes yeah well the inside joke larger larger principle that you're hitting on there i think david is that thoughts

disentangle themselves through lips and pencil tips right and i've also said clicky keyboards um that's what the life os stuff really is is all about and that's uh really what productivity is in my opinion is following through on your intentions how can you do that if you haven't thought about what's important to me what's's my vision? What's my values? And how does that translate into my actions? Whether those are the projects that I choose to engage with or just the habits and routines that drive 90% of my life by default, right? There's value in thinking about those things and having a place where you can kind of sort through your feelings and what you think about all that stuff is uh very important and honestly your internal understanding of your values is much more clear when after you

do that i mean i just a person came into my life recently and um after i got to know him a little bit i realized uh this person is not consistent with my values. So I need to slowly step away. You know, that little thing where you walk backwards out of the room. But it's because you know yourself that you can make those calls. And anyway. Ah, that's good stuff. That is good stuff, guys. Sean, we didn't even talk about it but so you have the suite setup

you've got the focus course you've got what all and you're doing a lot of business consulting these days too right yeah it's interesting so we yeah we had the suite setup tools and toys and the focus course those are sort of the three three main websites that we've built over the years. And about 18 months ago, we switched the whole business model for the suite setup. And for the focus course, we used to do productivity courses and workflow courses that were kind of on demand. And Mike actually was a huge player in that. He helped us with a lot of the training that we developed over the years. And just phenomenal, like some of the best in class around workflows

for creativity and productivity, especially for Apple users. And we started to like want to connect a little bit more with the people that were going through the material just because on the suite setup side, it was all the productivity stuff and the workflow stuff. And then David, like what you were just talking about right now with the values and like having kind of those core, like what drives me, what motivates me, what are my core values? That's exactly what the focus course teaches. It's,

it's basically like how to get your crap together and identify your life mission and make sure that it overlaps with your schedule. And what we're finding is like so many people that want to do the productivity stuff, they kind of hit this wall and they're like, actually, I need clarity about what matters to me in the first place. So we shifted our business model and we started doing a membership community instead where we offer like a lot of accountability, a lot of community stuff. And then we do kind of like smaller, simpler workshops and training kind of behind the scenes for the members.

And so you ask about the business stuff. We started asking people like, what do you do? You know, hey, welcome to the community. What do you do? We just had a significant chunk of people that were coming into the community that are small business owners or professional creators. So we got this huge just group that's part of that. So we started offering some training specifically for the small business owner to run their business, like a values-based business,

which has been a blast. So we're. So we ran a pilot program about 10 months ago for that and getting ready to open up the doors on a more public level this fall. And it's just been a blast. I love it. So yeah, that's kind of the business side. We're doing business coaching for basically small business owners that are feeling overwhelmed with their schedule, trying to simplify their schedule. Well, I like it because you bring so much thought to it. I feel like a lot of small business advice is just focused on profitability and bottom line stuff. And I feel like knowing you, you're going to bring a degree of thoughtfulness to this. I think a lot of people don't get that they need. Yeah, it's interesting. We call it your business mission map. And it's the same kind of

core idea that we teach with the focus core stuff that you guys have been through of like, you got to start with why, like, why are you in business for yourself? Like why it's, you know, I mean, you guys know, you guys are professional creators. It's so much work and it's, you know, I mean, you guys know you guys are professional creators. It's so much work and it's exhausting. And there are so many opportunities, so many ideas that are in front of you. And we don't have some sort of decision making framework for how to navigate. We call it the burden of opportunity that's constantly before you every day. All the ideas that you've got, all the opportunities for things that you could do or that people want you to do or this or that, whatever.

And so when you've got some clarity around the actual core values of your business, you got the clarity around like your own core values for you as the business owner, then that makes so many of the decisions that you've got to make. It makes delegation easier. It makes running your team easier.

It just simplifies a lot of that. So it's been fun to take that stuff that we've done for years with people on a personal level and then also kind of translate that and make it a version that works as well for running a business and owning and operating your small business. I love that idea of the burden of opportunity, right? Right. Well, I mean, how many people really like figure that out? Like opportunity is great, but it also requires very difficult decisions.

Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that's literally your guys' entire show is about. It's called Focused. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's literally your guys's entire show is about it's called focused and focused literally means you're directing your attention onto something as opposed to trying to juggle everything. Yeah, we had Nathan Berry on the show and he talked about how focus is the elimination of options, different ways of saying what you're you're saying.

I love that. Yeah, exactly. exactly exactly that i want to offer a interesting perspective here having worked for sean and seeing him as a boss trying to dial in this focus stuff uh i feel like there is i'm gonna give you a public testimonial here for a second i feel like i watched you evolve this thing from the individual thing to the business thing. And I think there is nobody better to help guide someone through that process. I feel like you've done a really great job of taking the concepts and expanding them where needing to, but also maintaining the core simplistic message of focus, right? And then rallying a team around a singular goal that's a whole another thing which i mean nobody's perfect at it but i saw you kind of go through it and i think you did a pretty great job so i'll put my ringing endorsement behind this uh small business

thing whenever it's available hopefully we got a link we can share in the show notes for this, but Spoken from someone who has been behind the scenes and saw all my dorky, you know, crappy management skills and bad leadership skills, but I feel like I walked through figuring out the burden of opportunity on a business level with you. I walked through figuring out the burden of opportunity on a business level with you. Right. So we saw all the good, all the bad that comes from all of that stuff. And maybe let's talk about that a little bit more because it's scary to eliminate options, especially when you are a business owner and these options might be more profitable.

And as a small business specifically, you don't have a whole lot of margin. You don't have probably a huge war chest to keep the thing running for three years if everything dried up tomorrow. So how do you navigate that? Oh man, it is hard. And it's funny, like, because we're all familiar with the cliches, you know, like the, this is the wrong way to pronounce it, but it's still the right way to pronounce the cliche. Like the riches are in the niches. Right. Or like if you know, you can focus on something or else you're focusing on nothing like all these the cliches around there. And it's one thing to hear them and to know them, but it's another thing entirely to say like, no, that's the right way to do it. That's the path to go forward.

And I think for us, like we, you know, we kind back and we, we pulled back and we had an offsite and Mike, you were there, this is a couple of years ago. And, uh, the team and I, we rented a, uh, the big Airbnb cabin and we spent a few days as a team and we just kind of pulled back and we're like, what is our core focus as a business? And we came up with this phrase, like we exist to help people get clear and to take action. And once you kind of settle, like, okay, this is, this is what we're here for. This is what we're here to do. And it's always fun to have like a noble mission that you can relate to and get behind, but it also has to be economic. Like, you know, we're, we're in business. It's not a nonprofit is a for-profit

business. And my goal is to make as much money as possible with this business and provide as much value as possible to our customers. And so it's like, once you sort of get clear of like, all right, this is our economic goal. And this is also our business mission. Like we want to help people get clear, take action or whatever it is, like whatever your business is, as you think about like, what's, what is the goal? What's that core focus behind your business? Then it's like all the decisions you begin to make start to kind of filter through this lens of like, what is this core focus and what are we going to do about it? And so when we began to realize that the greatest opportunity for change from our customers was actually in the context of community, Like, well, that just,

there you go. Like, not only does this like the greatest possible value that we can add, but it also then shifts over and goes, oh, well, and community is a delightful, I mean, all business models are good and bad in their own ways. But we like the idea of community because it's like, well, now we just have to provide value to the same core group of people on an ongoing basis instead of always trying to find new people. So it has reduced the stress of the business significantly as we've kind of shifted towards focusing on see from folks around just the real drastic change that is made for them related to their family life, their personal life, their health, their business, things like that. It's just been so rewarding. I was thinking about when you talked about niching down or making the decision to take your business even further focus. I, when I gave up being a lawyer, I had that same resistance. I think anybody who goes,

everybody goes through this in their life at some point where you need to, you need to make a choice. Right. And, you know, for me, I had over 30, I think 35 years of between education and experience. And I had a client base that I spent all these years building that I was going to throw overboard and that income. And I equated it in my brain to Indiana Jones. You guys seen the Indiana Jones Last Crusade movie? You know where they go into the cave and they need to find the cup of christ and he gets to a point and he walks through a door and uh and he has to take a leap of faith you know there's a big chasm in front of him

and there's no way across it and uh and he just sticks out his foot and he goes forward and it turns out there was something there to catch him. And that's true for almost everybody that does this, but you still have to make the leap. And it's so hard. I feel like that's what we do as creators, at least the type of creation we do. We try to help people understand that, no, it's okay.

Something's going to catch you if you do it right. Yeah, David, I know in context, what you're talking about, like the big shift of like taking the leap to go out and get started. But then also like over the years, it's like how many other leaps have you had? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Guess what?

When you get across that chasm, there's another leap waiting for you. Yeah, exactly. Like you kind of never, you never stop taking the risks and just figure, Oh, like this. Okay, here we go again. And I think over time you start to recognize that when you're standing in front of that chasm and you've got to take the leap, you're like, Oh, this is actually, I've been here before. I kind of know what to do, even though, even though I don't want to do it. And we just both watched our intrepid friend mike schmitz do a similar leap you know it happens to all of us still waiting

for the ground to materialize underneath i feel i think you're gonna be fine oh we all are right like we all are you just it's the same feelings it's the same decisions it's just uh you know just different stages with you know different stages with, you know, different amounts of people or not, or different amounts of money or not, but it's the same. It's the same core skill of like being able to tolerate the risk and navigate it well and make decisions in the midst of it and like genuinely work to like serve other people. So those skills never go away. work to like serve other people. So those skills never go away. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com slash focused and save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code focused.

There's a warm spot in my heart for Squarespace because it came to me at a time in my life when I really needed it. As I was building out Max Sparky, I needed a website that I could rely upon, something that was easy to build, that wasn't going to break the bank, but could also grow with me. And Squarespace was there for me. Anybody that wants to get a presence on the internet should check out Squarespace. With it, you get a beautiful website. You can engage with your audience. You can sell anything, your products, services, and even your content. And it's all in one place. All of the friction that comes with running a website is managed. They've got this cool feature called Asset Library, where you can upload and organize all your content in one place and then access it on your website wherever you need it. They just built this new Fluid Engine,

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It is remarkably powerful what you get with your Squarespace account. That's why I use it. That's why I've recommended it to a bunch of friends, whether they're doing something for church or building a new restaurant or getting married. Whatever, Squarespace is my go-to recommendation. or getting married, whatever, Squarespace is my go-to recommendation. It's shocking to me how someone that has no knowledge of the internet can spend an hour with Squarespace and build a really nice looking website. You can too. Just go to squarespace.com slash focused. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash focused and use theUSED to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash FOCUSED.

And enter code FOCUSED when you decide to sign up to get that 10% off your first purchase and to show your support for the Focus podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. Focus Podcast, and all of RelayFM. All right, so Sean, you do this thing where you take every eighth week off. And I know sabbaticals are a very polarizing topic, but I would be remiss in my focus duties if we did not check in and see

how your sabbaticals are going. Oh man, sabbaticals. So this year, this is 2023, this year will have taken nine weeks worth of sabbatical this year. And that's probably, that's probably the max. Like we, it used to be eight weeks just from holidays plus the sabbatical schedule. But then this year I was like, you know, summertime, like what if we just did a two week sabbatical, um, in June? And so we just shut down the whole office for two weeks. Nobody complained about that. No one pushed back. Yeah. Surprisingly. So it's something that I picked up from years ago, Jason freed. I was in Chicago and, uh, I was actually with Nathan Berry in Chicago. We went to a conference out there with Basecamp.

And they talked about the work cycles that they have of how they'll have this time of deep focused work. And then they'll reach a stopping point in a project. And then they'll take a break and kind of revisit. And so I kind of thought, man, what if I injected a sabbatical into that, which was a concept that I had from another friend. And so we started this in 2017. We just started like, well, let's do eight weeks as like the total kind of work cycle structure. And then it'll be six weeks of focused, you know, focused work time. We have a very clear goal, a very clear outcome that we want. And we're going to work towards that. We're going to define it and we're going to have it, you know, within this time constraint. So there's six weeks of that.

And then we take one week, which we call a buffer. And that's sort of just the chance to revisit what we just did sort of do the after action review, so to speak, and kind of review the work that we did, and then also plan and prepare for what's next and clarify the next work cycle that we're going to have. And then after that, the eighth week, we take it off and it's like we shut down the whole office and we call it a sabbatical. And the idea is that it's sort of like a different way to look at the four day work week. And I actually find that it's hard to compress five days worth of work into four days. It's doable, but it's not quite as easy, but it is a lot easier to compress eight weeks worth of work into six or seven. So when you've

got a little bit of a larger time horizon, then you can kind of stack up those efficiency gains and you can stack up that focused attention easier. And then you're able to compress that time. So then we take that eighth week, we'd have it as sabbatical. Um, and we just repeat that all through the year and adds up including holiday time off at the end of the year and stuff like that. It adds up to eight weeks of time off that the whole team takes. And we've been doing it now for like seven years now. I think this will be our seventh full year to do it. And a lot of people think about like, wow, that must be awesome to take all the time off.

But for me as a business owner, what I love is the efficiency and like the clarity that it creates. It's this forcing function that requires you to get clear about what actually matters in the business and what are we going to do about it. And it is so easy to gloss over those things. And just, I mean, we know this on a personal level, like so often individually we'll replace busy work and consider that I'm being productive, right? Like, but you're not, you're just doing busy work. And imagine how much more so when your entire team and organization is just doing busy work because you as the leader haven't done the hard work to clarify what matters and what are we going to do about it?

So for us, I love our sabbatical cycle because it forces those decisions to be made and they have to be communicated to the team. And so it's just an incredible tool as well for running a clear focused business and then celebrating time off and having a break as well. So it's kind of, you get the best of both worlds. Sean, after doing it seven years, do you still feel like you and your team have that sense of urgency that, Hey, we got to like make this stuff happen so we can get to the sabbatical week.

At some point, does it, do you lose that urgency? I guess would be the question or how do you keep it? Yes and no. A lot of the urgency that we've been able to maintain is related to those, those time constraints. And we'll say, all right, because everyone's basically has one or two or three projects that they're in charge of during the six week time. And so some of those projects, we get to work right away because they're large projects. We know they're going to take six weeks to get to the milestone that we want to get for them. Some of them are smaller. And so they usually like just human nature, they'll get kicked down the road. And then it's like, oh, week five. Oh, I got to like wrap this up real quick. So there is like definitely just a natural sense of just the urgency related to the time bound stuff that we do. But in some ways that we've removed some of

the urgency on a negative level is that we don't, um, we no longer just reinvent the wheel and start over from scratch every six weeks. We're like, all right, what are we going to do this cycle to grow the business? We have a much broader picture now, especially now that we've moved to the community and the membership model for our staff with the coaching. It's like, instead of what's new, what new product are we going to create and ship and sell and launch in the next six weeks, which was, that was Mike's tenure when he was with us, in the next six weeks, which was, that was Mike's tenure when he was with us. We were doing that constantly and it was profitable, but it was also exhausting. And we were, it was a lot of work to like create and ship something on a continual basis. So moving our business model is something that's a lot more sustainable for us. What we've done this year is we took the summer months where we weren't launching anything and

we spent our focused work time preparing for all of our big products and all of our big training classes that are going to be happening starting in the fall and into the new year. Cause that's like the productivity Superbowl, right? Like September, October, November, December, like that's just the playoffs for all the productivity nerds. And so we are super duper busy the last quarter of the year. So we took the summertime where it was slower for us and we prepared and got everything teed up. So we did a ton of work in advance for all of the courses and the cohorts and the product stuff that we're doing, which is crazy. Michael appreciate this. Like our biggest product that we come out with every year in terms of like the number of people that sign up for it is called plan your year.

It's just an annual planner goal setting. And then we have a physical planner, sorry, a digital planner that goes with it, like a day planner. And like more people buy this than just about anything else. And usually it's like we're done with it like a couple of days before we announce it. Just in time. Yeah. a couple of days before we announce it just in time yeah it's so we're recording this in august and we've been done with it now for a couple of weeks actually and so almost the entire product itself is ready to sell like 60 days in advance which is just unheard of uh for us so that's sort

of one that some of the regarding the urgency stuff some of the ways that we've been able to balance that so i don't know if that fully answers your question, but. No, it does. I mean, Mike's giving me a thumbs up. Thanks, Mike. I do think that like when people hear you talking about that, cause you, you know, we talk about sabbaticals quite often on a personal basis, you know, like giving yourself time to catch up and collect your thoughts. And, and I really, I believe in them too, because I think that you get so many great ideas when you give yourself some space, but you've taken it to the next level where you've made it something that's a company policy, that not just you, it's not just the boss going off into the woods,

it's the whole team getting a week off every seven weeks. And I think that a lot of people are like, wow, he's so generous, but I'm not sure that's really the truth. I think you're actually doing what's best for the company. And you've got seven years of experience behind it. I think people who run a small business out there should really think about it, not as a gift to your employees, but as a gift to yourself. Absolutely. And that is 100%. I will say there is a selfish version. I do it for my team so that I can also have the time off without feeling guilty about it as a business owner.

But really, it's like, well, if this works for me and if this helps me run my business better and it helps me be a better husband and a better dad at home and it helps me have better emotional and mental health. Like if this makes my career more sustainable over the next 20 and 30 years, well then of course it's going to have the same effects on everyone on my team. So there actually is a little bit of that selfish component of well going. I want everyone on my team to be at peak performance mentally, emotionally, physically, like creatively. And I want them to be engaged in the work that we do. And if allowing them regular extended times

of break to rest and to recover and to recharge, like, yeah, it's best for them, which I love that. But it also is, like you said, David, it's better for the company because then we create this sustainable pace of work which reduces turnover it reduces frustration at work and it increases the productivity and the creativity elements you mentioned earlier the off-site stuff and i feel like that's there's a whole topic there for sure and i think that that is overlooked by a lot of people because they're just so caught up in the day-to-day of the business. This is obviously what we do. So we just show up every day and we do it without thinking about why or what are the

right things to be doing. I love that you're doing the off-sites. I love the clarity and the vision that can come from that. And obviously getting everybody bought into the vision. This is where we're going. And I feel like there's a whole bunch of tangential stuff around that where people just kind of know what's important because as a leader, you've communicated this is where we're trying to get to.

But how does having that vision change the actual sabbatical process? You talked about how the sabbaticals are the places where you get the ideas and things like that. So practically for yourself and maybe even others in the organization, what's the difference in the sabbaticals prior to having that carved in stone and having those offsites and the clear vision for the company versus now? That's a great question. Honestly, I think I did it. We did it okay for the first few years, the breaks. And I'm sure if you ask me this question again in five years, I'll tell you all the things I'm doing wrong now that I don't see. But I think before and after, now that I don't see. But I think before and after, like in the earlier days, like we would just, the eight weeks just kind of existed in a vacuum of themselves. And then we would just come back and start it over. And it was definitely like you're getting the reps in and whatnot.

So like we were doing it and it created that sense of just urgency and some clarity around the stuff, but there wasn't like a bigger overarching direction for the whole business. And, um, you know, several years ago, 2019, 2018, um, we were having conversations, you know, Mike, I think you were part of these conversations and some of the guys that were writing and working with us on the suite setup, like Marius and, uh, Josh and some of these guys like we're getting feedback. It's like, why does the suite setup exist? Like, what are we trying to do here? And I just didn't have clarity about it. I was like, well, we exist to like write about stuff and then make money when we do it and like grow our audience. But it wasn't like there was like there wasn't a clear direction. And so when we

really pulled back and got this clear direction of like, we're here to help people to get clear and take action, which ironically, right? Like here we are, like we're the focused life company and we're not helping. Like we don't even have the focus, right? Like there's a joke in there somewhere. Like Dr. Hill itself. To be fair, I mean, you had a clear vision and then the affiliate program went away. So you had to reinvent yourself. There's that too. Well, we had a clear vision and then the affiliate program went away. So you had to reinvent yourself. There's that too.

Well, we had a business model. We had a clear business model, but we didn't necessarily have like a decision-making framework for why the company exists and then how to navigate change. And, um, oh my gosh, like now, you know, I will say the difference between running a business without a clear decision making framework for navigating change is versus when you do have it and when you don't like having it makes everything easier because when you hit these hard walls of like, what are we going to do here? You have like a core principle that you can come back to and you can filter it through.

And so that has been for us, Mike, with you, with your question of like the difference between how to sabbaticals fit in context, when you're clear on where you're going, it allowed us to then like start looking at a much bigger time horizon for the business around like, okay, what do we want six months from now, 12 months from now, two, three, five, 10, and 20 years from now, what are some things that we see as being true? And of course, like the further down the road you look, the more fuzzy things are, but you can still sort of see glimpses and you can see like little like shadows of what you think would be valuable or what you would hope to be true of your business and true of the customers that you're serving and

true of their lives and how that interactions work and things like that. So you can begin to start to make decisions with that, that clear direction, a little bit more of what you want to do. And then that just makes everything. So then the sabbatical rhythms and the focused work cycles all begin to kind of line in with that. And instead of like making a decision based on, okay, what is the urgent need in front of me right now of like, I need to go hunt this thing and kill it and feed my family tonight, we can start to think, okay, well, yes, there's an urgency right now for the business today. But I also have got to be true in a year from now. got better assets, you've got better systems within the business that you've created for yourself that you're able to lean on and your business is actually growing instead of surviving. It's amazing how we all seem to be able to delude ourselves to forget about the important stuff. Once in a while, I stop and look at what I'm spending my time on and compare that versus what really matters.

And I'm ashamed. I mean, but you know, it's only because I take some time off to look that I notice. And that's, that's normal, right? Like this is one of the reasons why I like the six week structure. As I mentioned, it's this forcing function for focus. There's a lot of F words in that sentence is that at the end, like we revisit, where are we going and where are we at? Did we accomplish our goals that we do what we set out to do? Um, and some stuff like that. Todd Henry has some fantastic questions around this with some of his questions around hurting tigers and things like that. And like you, like just naturally, right. We all just kind of naturally veer a little bit to the side and go off on a ditch or we

go off on a tangent or we try something or whatever. And so like kind of going off in a different direction is normal. And all you got to do is just like, okay, wait, pause. Let's revisit where we at. Let's adjust course and kind of come back. So it's never like that. I went off course because we all do. And that's just normal.

It's do I have a structure in place to make sure that on a personal level and on a professional level, I'm able to kind of get myself back on track or go sometimes it's like, oh, man, this random bunny trail is actually there's something there. Let's like, let's dig into this for a minute and kind of go there. But with intention. This episode of the focus podcast is brought to you by Indeed. When you're faced with what might be considered aggressive hiring goals, you don't have to be worried because you know, you don't need a miracle. What you need is Indeed. Indeed is the hiring platform where you can attract interview and hire all in one place.

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Start hiring right now with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at indeed.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. This offer is good only for a limited time, so claim your $75 credit now at Indeed.com slash Focused, that's I-N-D-E-E-D.com slash Focused, to support the show by saying that you heard about it here on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. Sean, something I think that kind of grows out of a sabbatical, that when you give yourself some time is this concept of margin. And you've written a lot about it. You guys have, I think you even

have a product on it, if I'm clear. But you have been a big advocate for margin over the years. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah. Margin is breathing room. So you think about your calendar. And there are some people, if you look at their calendar, it's literally, it's just block on top of block on top of block on top of block. And it's meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. I have my wife's two brothers. We just got back from a backpacking trip in Colorado. We were just kind of talking about our schedules. us, one of them will have to schedule a meeting on his calendar so that he can go to the bathroom because he is literally in meetings all day long. And a lot of it's virtual that it's,

there's like six hours of back to back to back to back to back to back to back with zero to me. Right. It was zero breaks. So that, that is like, right. That's zero margin. Right. And, uh, versus the other side where you've got breathing room in your calendar, where you have time to not only like be fully present and fully engaged with the stuff that you're doing, but then you have a little bit space left over so that if a meeting is running longer than it was intended to, that doesn't instantly mean now everything else for your day is now a wreck because one meeting went five minutes over. You have buffer, you have some breathing room. And this goes for lots of areas of your life, not just for your schedule. It goes for your finances.

It goes for your physical health. It goes for your emotions and also goes for your creative space, like just having mental margin and kind of some mental bandwidth there as well. So you have these different areas that you need margin in your life so that if something goes a little bit over or more than you expected, it doesn't create a catastrophe. It doesn't suddenly create a massive emergency, but rather you have margin. You have additional capacity there to handle that moment of extra. So that's what margin is.

Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan of time blocking, because it allows you to see whether you have or don't have margin. Right. whether you have or don't have margin, right? It's like when you put up your time blocks and you fall behind with the first appointment all day and the rest of the day is you feel like you're under the gun. Well, that's a alarm bell should be going off. You're not giving yourself enough time. Yeah, exactly. And one of the related things there, Sean, you used the phrase moments of extra, right? So even with this margin, you're not eliminating the times when things are going to require a little bit more than you thought. The problem, going back to what you were talking about, David, with time blocking

and ultimately time tracking because you have your intentions and then how well did you stick to them? If you don't have those feedback loops, you're never able to estimate correctly and you're living a life of extra, not a moment of extra. And that's when, you know, at first you, you don't realize that it's impairing your decision-making and it's leading you down a dangerous path, but eventually you end up in a place where you're like, how in the world did I get here? Do you track time, Sean? I do track my time. Yeah. I like, I not like constantly. I feel like I'll, I, so what I do is I revisit my schedule usually like twice a year or so, or if like, I just realized, Oh, I gotta, I gotta revisit some stuff. And so I'll track my time for usually about a week or so and just pay attention. Like, Hey, where am I going? What's, what's, what's sucking up some of my time and wasting it.

And, um, what do I think I'm like needing a lot of time on it's, it's amazing. Like all the insights that you get and you're like, Oh my gosh, I am like the world's biggest dork. When you track your time, you're like, Oh, I thought it was awesome. And like superhero. And actually I'm just a giant ball of distractions and so it is shocking i mean i because i on sundays that's part of my kind of rituals just to look at and and i track time in hours not minutes if that makes sense but just even with that gross measure it's just shocking you're like man i spent a lot of time on this one thing this week, and you spent four hours on it. It's just, I don't know what it is.

Maybe there's a brain scientist that could let me know, but what our perception is of what we do with our time versus what we actually do with it, they couldn't be further apart. Yeah. And I feel like it's not just time that that applies to either. I mean, probably if you're getting into like budgeting and if you don't have a budget and you think I spent this much on something, you know, the $5 latte that you were talking about earlier, David, well, I do that a couple of times a week. Oh, actually you do it

every day and you've bought 20 of them this month. Right. So it's whatever you pay attention to. That's what gets gets managed. And that's the takeaway from this, I think, for people is not that you want to have six years of comprehensive time tracking data, but you want something that will help you make better decisions and do a little bit better for next time. We have something that we teach in our business leadership training stuff. It's the ownership matrix. And basically what we have people do is we'll like a couple of different examples. And so anyone listening could even do this with just a piece of paper is we'll start by just listing out like everything that's that you do on a regular basis. Like just think about your week and think about all the commitments that you have and all of the things that you're doing. Right. And it's like your commute and the responsibilities

that you have with your job and meetings that you're part of and family time. And are you coaching soccer or whatever? Right. Like all these things that you're doing. And then like you kind of have that, that, you know, and then we'll encourage people, Hey, track your time for a week, especially as a business owner. And as you track your time and going through and like just listing out everything that you're spending your time on every decision that you have to make every meeting that you go to, uh, the time that you spend responding to emails, the time that you spend creating and designing what's next for your business, all these different areas that you would, you, uh, are spending your time on and then just making note of like, okay, now with all of this that I think I'm doing, plus all this,

I tracked that I'm doing, then we have them put it in a two by two grid. And so I'll just kind of explain what the grid is. It's like, basically you've got the, the whole left-hand side is the top square and top left square, bottom left square, these are the things that you do not actually have to do yourself, especially in business. It's like, these are the things that you could delegate to someone else. Other people can do these. Other people can do it. Then on the right-hand side, the top right and the bottom right, these are the things that actually only you can do as an individual, as a contributor in your house, as well as just the business owner or whatever your job is, only you can do these things. And then across the top, those are the things that you love to do and the bottom things that you hate to do.

And so you end up with like, now you take everything that you're actually doing in business and in your week and you map it out onto this grid. What are the things that you love to do, but other people could do them for you? What are the things that you love to do, but other people could do them for you? What are the things that you hate to do, but you've got to do it like exercise. Everyone always puts exercise in that one and like eating healthy, right? Like I hate to eat healthy, but I'm the only one who can do it and you got to take ownership. And so then what you'd be in to discover is the stuff that's over in the left-hand side that other people could do like certain meetings or certain decisions, um, or things like this, ways that you're spending your time, like, oh, other people could

do this. And then as the business owner, you're able to now begin to delegate those to your team, or oftentimes you'll look and you'll say, well, actually, this doesn't even line up with our goals. Like, why am I even doing this in the first place? And you're able to oftentimes just get rid of that stuff altogether. What are the other benefits of doing this from a business perspective, other than maybe a little bit more freedom or, or margin? The huge one is, uh, basically then when you begin to identify the things that only you can do, and then when you look at your business and kind of when you get all this stuff laid out, so you've got, okay, what is my clear, the vision that we have for the

company right now? And what is the goal that we're focused on? And then when you go, what are the things that only I can do? When you look at these things just out in front of you, it begins to become very clear what your critical action as the business owner should be. And you begin to say, oh, here's like the one thing that I'm the only one who can do it. And this is going to be the biggest leverage possible towards moving the business forward to accomplishing the goals that we have both short-term and long-term. And so once you know what that is, it is liberating because it then removes so many other decisions for you. And you're like, okay, this is it. This is the one thing that if I can't do anything else, I got to do this. And then you can begin to protect it at

all costs. And that's where the time blocking comes in. You can begin to track, well, how much time am I actually spending on this one thing that I say is the most critical action for me as the business owner? And oftentimes we're not spending any time on it. And we're usually like almost everybody I work with, we find out, oh, they're spending most of their time on stuff that other people could be doing. And the reason is, this is crazy. This total sidebar. The reason is, is most business owners feel guilty spending their time on the thing that

they love to do and that only they can do. And I don't know why this is, but we have this like guilt that says, well, gosh, like I love this job. I love this task and I hate, I love task A and I hate task B. Well, I feel bad for asking my team to do task B. So I'll do it. I'll kind of, you know, like be the martyr and I'll do it. It's like, are you kidding? Your team hates task A and they love task B. So we're all like upside down. We're living in bizarro business world.

And so actually identifying like, no, I need to have my team do this stuff that I don't want to do. That's literally why you hired them. And that's why you're paying them. And you usually, like, truth is, you find people that actually love that stuff. There are other people that love to do this stuff and they're like, don't, I don't want

to make the decisions. I don't want to be at risk. Oh, please. I would love to deal with the customers. Like we have people that love to deal with our customers and love to do the admin stuff. Like that's what they were born to do. So, um, that's the other thing, Mike. It gives you some clarity around what you actually need to be protecting for yourself and then making sure that you're actually doing it. Well, even if you don't love to do those things, I feel like if you've done the other things that you've talked about and you've charted the path forward and you have cast a vision that people have bought into, they kind of inherently know what are the things that you

shouldn't be doing. So even if you don't love it and they don't love it, I would imagine your team is willing to jump in and do it if they know that they're the right person to do this task anyways, because it's going to help the team move forward. But yeah, the kind of the underlying principle I think you're talking about is leverage, right? And I get this picture of leverage, like I've got this seesaw, right? I've got this simple machine, I've got a fulcrum in the middle, and I'm trying to move this big boulder. lot more meaningful than simply just going into my own little world and keeping as many plates spinning as I can just because, well, plates can't let them drop. Absolutely. When you have the clarity behind that, like you were saying, it makes it so much easier to delegate because everyone knows like, oh, here's where we're going. And here's what we're trying to do about it. It allows, you know, so many small business owners, when they begin to hire, they really suck at delegation and they actually get frustrated with their team because they're

like, man, I asked you guys, I hired these people to do these tasks for me, but they just are always coming to me with decisions. And that's because, well, dude, you haven't given your team any clarity. They have no idea where you're going. And the hard job of the business owner is to get clear on where you're going and what you're going to do about it. And so when you actually are able to do that, you know, Mike, like you said, like everyone can rally behind that. And then the team, your team can begin to make decisions and because they understand where you're going and they get, they know where we're going and they can like follow through with some of that stuff on their own. They can have more autonomy.

So it's liberating for them and for you. In addition to the clarity, what role do values play in that process? This is awesome. I feel like the values oftentimes will drive the, like the goal setting stuff in some ways. Obviously, your values aren't going to be economic drivers. Your goals should always be economic drivers. You're not going to have a business goal that's not going to drive the economic health of your business. But there's a million ways that you can do it. There are so many types of like donut stores that you can open and so many ways that you can market to your customers and serve your customers and create moments of delight. Like there's a million ways that you can do it. And so for the business owner,

it's like, man, this is my other child. Like for those of us that are professional creators that are running this thing, it's like, I spend actually more time with my business than I do with my kids. And I spend about as much time thinking about my business and being woken up in the middle of the night of my business as I do being woken up in the middle of the night with my kids and thinking about my kids. Like it really is like a part of my life. And I mean that in a wonderful way. Like it's, it's, it's phenomenal. And so the core values of your business, like you want them to line up with what you care about, because this thing is all consuming. And I mean, not all consuming us. That's a, that's an exaggeration, but this thing is a huge part of our lives. And so have values in place for your business that you care about,

that then as you reach like these moments of decision, or you meet reach these moments of opportunity, or things like that within your business, you can then align it up with your values and go, okay, like, does this decision match who we are as a business? Does this line up with what we care about and some of our core values? And then you can communicate those to your team. And then when your team is in these moments of autonomy, where they need to make a decision about something and it's like left or right, well, they can go, oh, well, does which decision most serves the values that we have as a company and kind of the core of who we are and like what we do. And it allows for your team then to also begin to make decisions.

And then what happens is you begin to build a culture that is built on these, these values that like you love and these values that you enjoy. And it kind of matches with like what makes the most sense for you. And so it creates more delight. It creates more enjoyment. It creates just a better work experience that you as a business owner, then can really thrive in and enjoy as opposed to like, you know. So if you're someone who is wanting to live in alignment with both your personal values, like getting your work to be in alignment with your personal values, where do you start with that? be in alignment with your personal values. Where do you start with that? Because I imagine it can be difficult if you haven't thought about this before and now all of a sudden you've seen the

light, right? And you're going to try to move in that direction. But if you've got an established business and a team, it probably is going to feel a little bit like whiplash or the rugs being pulled out from under them if you just show up the next day and be like okay guys this is who we are and what we do yeah and i think i think there is whiplash and that's fine right like i would rather um i'd rather cause a little bit of whiplash and like get some clarity about a direction than not But the truth is actually like most business owners, they are the manifestation of the burden of opportunity for their team, right? They are creating these burdens of opportunity because every day on their way to the office, the business owner, the boss is like, oh, I had a new idea. Oh, like here's the thing. Oh, I like listened to this one podcast

where they said this one little thing and like, let's change everything and do that now. Right. And so they're actually creating whiplash constantly because they're, Oh, this, Oh, now we're going that. Oh, now over here. Okay. You keep doing that. I also do this. Oh, now keep doing and do this as well. Right. So there is all like, there's no, there's no focus, right? There's no clear direction. clear direction. And so bringing your team into this and go, Hey, you know what? We want to, we want to get clear on where we're going as a business. We're going to get clear on why. And then I want to help everybody on the team know their own critical actions, right? Like we do the ownership matrix, not just for the boss, but actually for every person on the team as well. Like what is the one thing that that person on your team can do that nobody else can be doing? So that it's clear, you've got clear boundaries of like, who's in charge of what, and it can definitely like, it creates some shifting and some changing, but people like love that people flock. They, it like vision is a magnet

and clarity is a magnet that just attracts people. And it attracts, um, it moves you towards your goals and people want to win. Like they're at business, they're there to win. They're there to, obviously like, you know, you've got some people that might just be clocking and clocking out, whatever, but your top team, like your executives, your most important people, they're there to win and they can't win

if they don't even know what game they're playing or which direction to go or which ball we're supposed to be using. Like, are we playing soccer? Are we playing football? Are we playing baseball? Like what's going on here? So when you take that mic and you actually give the vision and the value stuff, um, it can be like a little jarring, but if you do it slowly and allow your team to be part of that process, it will rally them and it will boost morale, uh, significantly. Yeah. That's the thing I was thinking about is just the importance of the team being involved in the process and allowing them to take ownership in it, right? Then it's not a mandate that's being

communicated from the top down and, okay, this is what you're going to do. But I don't know, it just feels totally different. And I can see how that creates a lot of buy-in and a lot of motivation and a lot of reason and purpose behind the daily actions. I don't have the statistics in front of me, but I was reading a book recently called The Good Life, and just one chapter of it is devoted to the work stuff. But it's a shocking percentage of people who don't see any reason why they do what they do. And when you can have that, it changes everything. And as a leader and a boss, I feel like it's your responsibility to do what you can. You can't force people obviously to buy into it, but give them the opportunity to align with the vision and, and buy into it.

to align with the vision and buy into it. It's huge. And it removes, my last little soapbox on this, it removes having to make the same decision over and over and over and over again as the business owner. And Mike, I feel like you posted something on social media a while ago of, I think it was a Shane Parrish quote of like,

the person who plans and schedules their day is far ahead of the person who like starts over from scratch every day or something like that. Like, you know, the other version was way more poetic, but that's the gist of it. And it's the exact same with your business. Like why, why would you want to start over from scratch every day or every week or every month or every quarter, like, and make the same decisions over and over and like, like have zero traction, zero flywheel, zero, uh, you know, forward momentum. And when you have that clarity of like, here's where we're going and here's why we're doing it, it makes your business so much more enjoyable. It removes so many, like just decisions that you don't have to make anymore because you

made the one that like clarified everything. And that's one of the fastest ways to actually like even simplify your own hours as the business owner is just like, oh, let's just get clear and cut out all the stupid stuff I was doing that didn't add up anyways and had zero momentum and wasn't compounding and just do these few things that actually are going to move things forward. compounding and just do these few things that actually are going to move things forward. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by ZocDoc. Find the right doctor right now with ZocDoc. Go to ZocDoc.com slash focused. You know that feeling you get when you finally find the thing you've been searching for on the internet, the exact piece of hardware you were looking for, the one all the great reviews told you about, and it's available in your country

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That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash focused. ZocDoc.com slash focused. And our thanks to ZocDoc for their support of the Focus Podcast and all of RelayFM. Sean, so I want to ask you an uncomfortable question. You are one of the people I look up to because I feel like you've got this stuff together so much, but I've never asked you, when is it hard for you? When do you struggle with all of this stuff? Oh, man, there's a lot of elements to that. I know kind of what we've been talking about, too, just around the importance of having clarity so that you're not making the same decisions over and over and over again. That was definitely a struggle for me for a long time of just, you know, like I mentioned, we would have these six week work cycles, but oftentimes we were kind of starting

over. Okay. What are we going to do next? And so we were always kind of in this myopic only ever seeing like six to eight weeks in front of us. And so every decision was this. And so oftentimes I would wake up, um, you know, for years, I would just wake up in the morning with just this feeling of dread of like, Oh, this is the day that everyone who's on our, um, email list decides that they want to unsubscribe. And everyone who's ever bought from us decides that they want to unsubscribe. And everyone who's ever bought from us is going to ask for a refund. And everyone's going to decide they're gone. And we're going to drop to zero revenue.

And it's over. Today's the last day. And I would just feel that. In the mornings, I would just wake up with this just sense of, oh, it's all over. And that's really hard to start your day with that. It's all over. And that's really hard to like start your day with that. And so obviously like I went through just, you know, learning how to handle that and navigate that better and not make decisions based on that or give into that.

So there's definitely like moments of running a business that just feel stressful and it's hard and whatnot. I know right now, like we're getting ready to come into, like I mentioned to you guys before the show, like our transition to a membership model and as well as like really beginning to create specific material that helps other small business owners for me has been so enjoyable and so rewarding, both on an emotional side at like in a mental side as the business owner, because there's like that a little bit more clarity there. And then plus, as we now have like a growing community, um, we have a recurring revenue

stream, which is so valuable and that removes an inordinate, like so much stress that, that removes, uh, from the picture, but also just as we have clarity of what we're doing, uh, for the community and our clarity around how we're growing the community that has helped a lot. But like I also mentioned, we're going into, you know, productivity Superbowl season for us. And so there are a lot of projects like literally this week as we're recording, um, we have a lot of projects happening. I've got our big public training. We call it focus Academy.

I know you guys have been part of that. You guys have actually helped us with some of the workshops for, so that kicks off the first week of October. Um, but then I'm doing like a quote unquote VIP version of Academy that is just for business owners and just for the professional creators, uh, to join. And so I've got my team who's going to run Academy, which I'll be helping with some of the sessions for that. But then also at the same time, I'm really leading an entirely separate group through, we call it focus like a boss and I'm taking people through that. And then we've got, uh, when I was trying to, we've got our plan your year stuff. So we got a lot of products that

are like all coming down the pipe. And I don't mean this to harp on myself. I just mean it like right now I am definitely feeling the stress of preparing for all the material, preparing for all the stuff. Um, I'm doing like a different approach for selling that I've never done before, where I'm doing like personal outreach and, and working with individual business owners and finding out like what their needs are and then making sure they're a fit for these programs. So there's just like a lot that's all convening like right now, like this week and next week for me. And on the flip side, then, um, the, the whole promise behind my focus, like a boss program is that you can run your full-time business working part-time hours. And I was

talking to my wife about this last night. And I was like, I sort of feel like I am, I was like, I'm stressed out because we're really busy right now. And it's like, I'm really busy this week and I'm busy next week. And I'm not working a part-time I'm working full- busy right now. I was like, I'm really busy this week and I'm busy next week. And I'm not working a part time. I'm working full time right now. I'm putting in my 40 hours this week. And I felt a little bit like, well, does that mean I'm a fraud? Does that mean I don't have it all together? Does that mean I'm actually not, um, you know, I'm, I'm joking. I don't actually have the, uh, we know what I say I do. It's an imposter. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Exactly. And, um, so it's real right now. I've just like, wow, like it's hard. So it's a little bit stressful and there's some other stuff going

on. That's just adding a little bit to the stress. My kids start soccer this week and I'm coaching. And so it's just all converging like right at once, which is sometimes happens. That's kind of how life goes. And it's not that like things should never converge and you should never have like a sudden influx of work and commitments, but it's like being able to deal with it

and being able to manage it and recognize it and being able to manage it, um, and recognize it. And then having, um, the support systems and the, the like personal actual systems in your life around like diet and exercise and sleep, but also the support systems of community and like other business owners and family and friends that you can talk to and share with and dialogue and process this stuff with so that you can stay healthy. And so you can stay mentally healthy and physically healthy and emotionally healthy through it. But I think it's those exceptions, Sean, those exceptions that make it possible for you to teach this stuff, right? Because if you were the man on the mountain, you would be inaccessible, right?

Have you ever heard of the Werner Herzog rules of filmmaking? No. I put them in the show notes. They are gold. They are pure gold. He made 24 rules of filmmaking. He's a famous documentary filmmaker, and they include things like carry bolt, cut everywhere ask for forgiveness not permission but the 24th the most important last one is something that i uh i want etched in my retina it says get used to the bear behind you and i think that's true for all of us right we wake up and whatever you do whatever wherever you are in life, there is always a bear chasing you.

And learn to appreciate the bear. And that's why the systems are important, is not to avoid the bear entirely. But when the bear is chasing you, there are these ebbs and flows. So when you end up working extra, it is a moment of extra and not a month or a year or a lifetime of, of extra. Everyone's got to, got to, it has those times when they have to go into the red line for a little bit, but you can't stay there. You're going to burn out. I know we talked about that last time that you were on the show. So I know you mentioned you feel like an imposter. You feel like a fraud. i don't do you

that way i think david's saying that the the same thing and everyone uh could benefit from the people who teach this stuff being a little bit more authentic and sharing the struggles yeah honestly the frauds are the people who never admit to the problems i mean because you know you're not a human if this isn't hard once in a while. No, it's true. And as I was sharing with my wife last night, I was like, this is what I'm feeling. I think it's causing some of just the pressure and a little bit of the stress, but that doesn't mean it's true. And I think just even being able to acknowledge, okay, here's where things are at, and then here's what I'm going to do about it in terms of physical health and emotional health and mental and having those systems to fall

back on is so important. Doesn't mean it gets easy though. By the way, everybody, you have to read these Werner Herzog rules. They're so great. Day one is the point of no return. so great. Day one is the point of no return. Sean, I am so happy to hear about the evolution of your business and what you're doing. I know it's been stressful for you, but I think you're doing good in the world. And like all of us, I get the impression you are once again, you have your foot over the chasm and you're about to drop if you're not in the process of it. And I feel like that you are going to find solid earth yet again. If you own a small business and you want to check it out, where should people go, Sean, to learn more? They can go, I don't have like a big page or anything like that, but they can go to the

focuscourse.com slash boss. And there uh, there'll be a spot there. They can sign up to get some info and reach out. We're just doing like a small, small group this October for the business owner stuff. Um, that'd be awesome. Love to have some folks join us. Yeah. Well, I think you would be an excellent mentor for people. And I, I wish, uh, wish you luck with this. And I, I have no doubt it's going to be a big success. Thank you. We are The Focus Podcast. You can find us over at relay.fm.

Thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Indeed, and ZocDoc. For those of you that are Deep Focus members, that's the ad for the extended version of our show. We've got a little bit more for you, but otherwise, we'll see you next time.