Focused - 190: Overdosing on Gratitude, with Karl Staib

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by the one and only Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hey, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Good. I'm really looking forward to the show today. We've got a fun guest. But before we get into that, you've got an announcement. Yeah, I am opening up the second cohort for the life theme cohort. And that is the personal mission statement, my version of the personal mission statement. My wife and I did the first version of this back in May. It was the first thing that I did after I made the decision to go independent. And we had a good group of people, probably about 50 people who joined us for that one. And it was a really amazing experience. And so we are going to be doing that again.

The schedule's lined up. My wife is able to join me again. And so we're going to kick that off on November 13th. And if you want to be a part of this one, you can find all the details at faithbasedproductivity.com slash lifetheme. It's $197 for the six weeks. All the calls are going to be on Mondays at 1 p.m. Central Time. They'll all be recorded. If you can't make one, that's not a big deal.

However, the last one is going to be kind of the big celebration where everybody shares their life theme. If you can't make that one, I would say maybe you want to wait till the next time around. But just want to put it out there if people are looking for some help doing this. This is a lot of fun. And I will also put in a coupon for the Focus listeners. So if you use the code FOCUSED, you can get 50 bucks off at faithbasedproductivity.com slash lifetheme. Yeah, I heard from one of our listeners who did this course with you and told me how much it helped him. So I think that everybody should check it out. Our guest today is Carl Stabe.

And Carl and Mike are friends already. Right, Mike? Yeah, I met Carl through a mutual friend, I guess. Mike Vardy was putting together the house for us at Kraft and Commerce, and Mike was talking to me about who else we could get to stay with us, and he's like, there's this guy, Carl. He's really cool. I think you'll like him. You okay with he stays with us? I'm like, sure. And then, yeah, we met, and we shared lots of fancy coffee and the rest is history. Yeah. I think when you hear each other snore, you're allowed to guest on each

other's podcasts. I feel like that should be a rule. Yeah, exactly. Carl, tell us about yourself though. Ah, man. Um, where do I start? So, you know, I think one of the things that is really important for people to understand who I am is I had cancer when I was 34. So I was, man, 13 years ago now. And that really shifted how I look at my priorities because I think think no matter what happens, um, I'm here on this earth, uh, because, uh, you know, medicine, uh, God, um, and, uh, lots of luck, right? Generational luck. All of us are here because of a lot of luck of our parents not getting eaten by

saber tooth tigers, um, our grandparents and so on yeah but at that age and you know it's just kind of one of those you know what am i what do i really want to do with my life moments and uh when the doctor told me uh it was testicular cancer um i just broke down crying i remember pulling off to the side of the road because it took a while to sink in and just cried. I had a two-year-old at home at the time. Now he's 14. And I think it's that moment that I started making shifts in my mindset, but also what I chose to focus on. And I think we all have those moments in our lives. We all have, you know, when we get laid off from a job, you know, whatever it is, we have these inflection moments that we can use

to find opportunities. And when I did that, I think I went from a fixed mindset to more of a growth mindset, you know, to borrow Carol Dweck, right, from her book. I talk a lot about death in the sense of how enriching it can be, knowledge of your impending doom. You know, the joke I say is none of us are getting out of this alive. And I get emails about it pretty often from people saying, you know, why do you keep bringing this up, you know? And I think it's the awareness of that that allows you to make a rich life. I think if you go through an autopilot because you don't realize that you have an expiration

date, that's the tragedy, you know? And I think for, you know, for some people, I have a good friend who survived cancer and she says it's the best gift she ever had. And I, I know that that sounds very flippant, but if you knew her, you'd get it right. Because it gave her the wake up call that she needed and her life got substantially better because of it. And I do think there's a lot of people like you, Carl, who go through that and come out of it with an awareness that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Yeah, and I think it's,

and we all have these things from small moments to big moments. It's recognizing them. It's noticing them and taking time to absorb them. We often just go on to the next thing right away or we try to stuff it down, but it's becoming aware of that. And I am guilty of not being fully aware of my thoughts and my feelings, but through meditation, through therapy, I've been able to come more alive and be more aware so I can make these decisions much more consciously instead of just trying to avoid certain feelings or the way that I expect things might unfold.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a big point for you and something that you've been through. A lot of us haven't. So good on you for turning it into a positive. And so what are you doing now that you've woken up and you've got past cancer? What are you doing with your time? Yeah. So I'm a little bit thick headed at times. It takes me a while to really figure out what I, it took me a while to figure out what I've done well, how I can help other people.

So what I started really realizing is, you know, I love writing, but it's really not something I'm great at. I'm good at it. And so I can use it to help me. But what I'm really good at is helping people with their processes. And so what I've noticed is as I've been coaching people, it's really helping them create routines, these processes that they can use to get better at email, to understand how to become a better leader. And it's just being able to understand it. And I love the idea of SOPs. They're standard operating procedures that most people know probably from the army or

large organizations. But I try to get individuals to create their own SOPs for their businesses, for their careers. Because when you document these things and when you write down what you're doing, why you're doing it, and how you're doing it, what ends up happening is you get much more clear. You start to see why all these things work together or don't work together. And if they don't, then you can find these patterns and start to fix them. And then you can close these gaps. And then you're more likely to stay focused on the important stuff instead of just letting it fall to the wayside or just letting the moment of the pressing need, you know,

letting the moment of the pressing need, you know, decide that you should be doing that next thing instead of really being conscious of choosing the right next action. Wait a second. Carl, are you, do you have a bug in my office? Have you been recording? I literally just, because I'm working on a future thing and I just recorded a video about this morning about, just recorded a video about this morning about, I think something that is drastically underrated is the value of writing it down about your thoughts and your opinions and your values, your goals, your roles, the stuff that's important to you. If you think you've got it figured out in your head, you really don't. I call it the pensive effect, you know, a Harry Potter, right? Um, and Harry Potter, he has a pensive, it's a thing you can pull a memory out of your head and you can put it in a bowl and then you can dive in and you can watch the memory from different

angles. And I think we need, when, when you write down your thoughts, you get a pensive effect on your thoughts because you can't analyze your effect on your thoughts because you can't analyze your thoughts in your brain. You can think them, but you can't analyze and look at them. I feel like the process of writing them down gives you an insight to them that you wouldn't have otherwise. It sounds like you and I are on the same page. Yes. Yeah, they're powerful. It's really one of my favorite things is journaling because it really helps you see things more clearly and it helps you process things. I think from an emotional standpoint, we're emotional beings and we sometimes forget in business or in a career,

we just try to make the data-driven decision. But a lot of our decisions are emotional and we have to realize that and journaling helps. And Mike and I never talk about journaling on this show. Never. I think, uh, we are, uh, we are kindred spirits on that. So, but, so what are you, cause I know you do some consulting and you help people with this. How does that manifest when, when, when someone hires you, what do you help them do? Yeah. So I've been helping this one owner. He has a bunch of hardware stores. I think he has

six locations. And one of the things he struggled with was helping his marketing team really flourish on their own. So as an owner, you have to wear multiple hats and he has a small team of four people and they've come to him for every decision. And so what ends up happening is, you know, he's there and then he's constantly getting distracted or pulled into various decision-making meetings or ask for feedback. And what ends up happening is he's making all the decisions and he's not allowing his own team to thrive. And so what we had to do is we had to step back and we did a process audit of how he interacted with his team, what his expectations were.

And what we did is we rewrote his SOP. And so a standard operating procedure, I like to think of it very simple. Standards is your values. Operating is the skills that you bring. And the procedures is the routines you have. So we're looking at all his routines that he has with his team and the way he built up this team as they always came to him. And instead of rewriting these rules and allowing them to start to think through what's the best way to do this. How should we advertise on Google over the next three months? What should we do from a Facebook standpoint?

They would always come back to him. And so what we did is I helped him rewrite his SOP with his team. So he has now a new operating procedure around how he interacts. Now, like anything, it's this habit change, right? So he has to understand where his pain points are. And if they are great enough, he has to change how he does something. So what we did is we created a roadmap of like where he wants to be in like three months with his team. And so it's a slow progression. And I always like to say it's the turtle versus hare mindset. We always think it's versus like the turtle versus the hare. And I often think it should be the turtle and the hare because we have the turtle and the hare inside of us, right? We often have to be the turtle and SOPs can feel like a turtle

like process because you're actually slowing down, looking at everything, trying to rewrite it so it's better for the future. And then once you do, that's when you can turn in the hair and you can start sprinting because then his team started making decisions on their own. And then what he did is he helped them create processes around reviewing their work. And so what ended up happening is he was able to step back, allow them to fail, happening is he got, he was able to step back, allow them to fail, which is really important, especially for a growing team. And then they had routines to iterate and improve. And then he was able to guide them instead of, you know, being the one that made all the decisions. I like that idea of removing the verses.

In fact, it's like, where else in life can I remove the verses and make it the end? Yeah. Great, great insight there. And how's it going? It's going really well. So one of the things that he texted me, he's like, I feel nervous now because he's built up that habit of people coming to him. So he was very in touch with the marketing team. So then we had to create an SOP around report structure. So how often they got back to him and reported to him and what he expected in those reports.

And that's when he started relaxing. So then it really started kicking in. And within three months, they were probably like 80% self-sufficient versus like, I mean, he was just being pulled into their meetings constantly. This episode of the Focus Podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Save 10% off your first purchase of a website

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RelayFM. You were talking to us as we prep for the show about the idea of small processes for big success. What does that mean to you? Over time, I think we've built up a lot of routines in our life. And as you look at all the different things that you've done and you try to understand how they all fit together, you start to realize that these processes add up, but you've gone on autopilot. right? And you've done these things the way you've always done them. Maybe you've done email a certain way for the last five years, 10 years. And then you don't step back and look at, is this still working for me? You know, when you upload a podcast, you have a process, right? From recording to editing to show notes and on. But we don't often revisit these things and say, okay, what can I do? And I like to think of it as a pie, right? You know, there's many slices of the pie in our business from marketing, sales, you know, to accounting, to operations, all these things are slices. And we should be on a regular basis pulling out slices

and looking at them and then taking a little sliver of that slice and saying, okay, this is important. I don't do enough with my accounting. I don't check it as often as I should, especially small business owners or people who have these small teams. And they're just going, going, going, trying to find that next client. But when you step back and you're like, oh, wait, I'm wasting time doing these things for 20, 30 minutes a week, that's time that you can get back. Or you're not doing enough review. So it's that balance. And then you end up saying, oh man, I'm not doing enough with my accounting and I'm not really knowing where my cash flow is coming from. Well, all these processes add up. And if we don't review them, then we end up

making bad choices. So we just pull stuff out, you know, like your social media, how do you, how do you look at that? Or if you have a team, you know, let's say you're a leader in a large corporation, how often do you meet with your people, your direct reports? Is it once a month? And is it working? You know, do you ask them? And it's just taking that time to review those things and then saying, okay, what's a small thing that I can do to improve this? And it's just like anything, it's being a good scientist, you know, being good at your career, you know, really

understanding what you do well, so you can do more of that, and then eliminating the stuff you don't do as well. And like you said, like from whoever's listening, if you're a secretary, if you're in sales, these are things that you can pull out. You know, like look at your sales process. You know, if you're, you know, looking at your CRM and you're doing it a certain way, you know, there's, you can look, go to another salesperson and say, how are you doing this? And all of a sudden you might find a little nugget to apply. And now that little change that you've added or maybe removed from a certain part and you've added something in its place now gets you an extra five meetings per month. And it's these

little things that we're doing that add up. And then instead of just like, oh, I got an extra five calls per month, what you do is you put your, you try to create, you pour out another little sliver, right? You know, and you say, okay, now I'm going to work on this. And, you know, I know James Clear talks about this, but it's like the 1% rule. And the idea is you try to improve just very incrementally. you try to improve just very incrementally. And before you know it, you're a lot better after just six months than you were prior. And all of a sudden, you're making progress. Now, this comes back to journaling. You've got to notice this progress. Otherwise, you fall back into bad habits. And I think that goes for all of us, whether it's working out, whether it's looking at your sales processes, looking at that stuff, taking a pause and saying, oh much as I should. So I put myself on a gratitude diet. And one of the things I did was, you know, once a week, I would thank people. I would text people. I would

say, okay, for this week, I'm going to text one person a day for a whole week. What I'm doing is I'm training myself to be more grateful. And now it's a strength of mine. And that did not come easy. My wife will attest. I'm the worst gift receiver. I used to be the worst gift receiver that anyone has seen because I'd find faults in gifts or I'd be like, ah, this isn't the one that I wanted. But over time and practice, I've gotten better. And I think the people who are listening, it's this incremental approach that can really make that difference. Man, after a year, approach that can really make that difference. Like, man, after a year, if you just give yourself like once a month, you pull out that tiny little sliver of whatever you're doing in your career, and you want to get a little better at it. Watch what happens when you just do that once a month

and you make that a focus, man, your whole world changes. It's interesting to me, the relationship between process and gratitude. I mean, you're using them interchangeably as you speak, but I'd never really made that connection before, but I'm sorry, I misspoke the process and habit that you're using interchangeably as we speak. But I feel like it is, there's something to that, right? I mean, because they both have some of the same features. Like, you have a process, whether you intentionally made it or not. Just like you have habits, whether you intentionally make them or not. And then it's up to you, really, to take ownership of that and say,

well, maybe I should be more intentional about my processes slash habits and, um, and then see what comes of that. Mike, have you ever thought about that? How close those terms work together? Yeah. Uh, I did a session for the focus course Academy this last week and, uh, it was habits week. And, uh, I made and I made my very pointed argument that goals are stupid because you are where you are because of the habits and the that you've established in the choices that you made previously we get so anchored on these outcomes that we want to achieve and really if we just do what we know to do and pay attention to the process, then the score takes care of itself. But I am kind of curious, you know, if you're trying to change your processes, you want some better outcomes, but you feel overwhelmed because everything is broken.

How do you pick the one to work on? How do you select that? And how do you know where to start? That's a great question. So most of the time, you just look at your priorities. You look at the top five to 10 things. And I think Warren Buffett's famous for this. He'll talk to, you know, what are your top 20 priorities? And Warren Buffett will ask somebody that, and they'll say, oh man, like I got all these things, you know? And then he's like, okay, all I want you to do is eliminate 15 of them. And he's like, how can I do that? And then Warren Buffett's like, okay, now you got your top five. I want you to eliminate two more. So you just have three. And ideally,

you probably one main focus should be kind of that North Star for you. But the idea is taking time, going into turtle mode, slowing down, looking at all the things that you have to do, and then coming back to your North Star of like, okay, where do I really want to go? Where do I want my career to go? Let's say you're a director in IT and you lead a team. IT and you lead a team, what are all the things that make your team flourish? And then you look at all those priorities that you have. Usually, and it comes down to the 80-20 rule, right? Probably have talked about this before, but 20% of your effort get 80% of your results. Well, it's just taking that time to look at all those things that you do and then saying, okay, well, I'm trying this, doing this thing with my team. That's not working. We're doing this. This is working well. And then you start to look at,

okay, what is driving those? Are those things driving the results that we're looking for? what is driving those? Are those things driving the results that we're looking for? And then when you look at that, and then you can say, okay, what's my top priority? And what is the task or the procedure that I have in place to align with that? That's where I would start. Because if you know that you're trying to reach this goal, you're trying to help your team be more efficient, 10% more productive, whatever your goal is, then you have to say, okay, that's most important to me. Well, let's look at the processes that I have around it. And then you can say, this is the one driving the most. Can we improve this one? And then you just kind of go down the lane, those top three things. Usually that first one can always be improved. And then you just start to

dissect it and you start to map out those processes. And then you start to see the gaps and where those gaps are. That's when you can say, yeah, oh, okay. we're not doing a good enough job communicating with our partners, and it's causing delays. So we have to do a better job and then set expectations of when we expect certain information back. And little things like that, you can cut off days a month, especially in a large organization where sometimes you're waiting for a week for a response, right? And so then you can start to create little processes, little SOPs that say from now on, we're going to have it, have our response,

have, you know, this format. And then we're going to send a date of like, and ask, can you get us, get us a response by this date? And then what ends up, usually what ends up happening is you start to, you might not get the result that you want. So then you have to say, okay, why? And then you dig in and then you start to say three months, you really start humming. And then that's when you see that progress and you say, oh, okay, over three months, we made this improvement. And to your point of feeling like you got 100 things to focus on, then you can say, for now, like Warren Buffett, just focus on that one thing. And then you can pull out another slice and say, okay, now we can work on this part.

What about personally? You mentioned that you used to be bad at gratitude. Now you're good at gratitude. How did you identify that gratitude was a thing that you were going to try and consistently get better at? I'm guessing there was probably like an inciting incident, or maybe you did start with a list of 20 things that you wanted to change about yourself and you whittled it down. I don't know. No, it's a great question because it did. I've done a lot of study on happiness and gratitude is usually a foundational part of happiness. If you can

be grateful in the moment, for example, my car broke down in Edmond, Oklahoma, 12 hours from our house on our way to a Thanksgiving vacation at a Harry Potter house in Missouri. And instead of allowing the moment to overwhelm us, I was grateful. I was grateful that the family was okay. I was grateful that I could afford to have the car fixed. We actually had it shipped back to San Antonio and fixed in San Antonio. So we didn't have to fly back up and get the car. But that took a lot of practice, right? And coming back to your point of where this come from, my dad passed away seven years ago, and I flew up to see him. And, and he was in the ICU unit. And I remember just walking into the room and seeing my tough German father used to

swat bees with his hands and his hands would puff up, you know, like balloons. And I'm like, this dude's crazy. But he was, and you could, I was, I was shocked. You know, you probably, But he was, and you could, I was, I was shocked. You know, you probably, he could probably see on my face, the shock of like, you know, where he was this, you know, he was an electrician, so he had big forearms and he was super strong. But he was just, he kind of turned to jello almost, just very bloated, very weak. And, and I remember him, he was complaining about something. And I saw myself kind of that fast forward, like 30 years into the future. And I was like, I could see myself complaining in that moment too. But it's almost that talk about inflection moments. Like when I had cancer, there was just that moment of like, how do I want to be in that

situation? Well, if I want to be somebody who is grateful to have been alive, to have done the things that I've done, I have to start now working on this gratitude. I have to start being more grateful for the opportunities that I do have. And that was the catalyst for me really deep diving into gratitude and really trying to create processes that allow me to build up those habits. I love that idea that you did with having gratitude week where you thank the car and everything. That's the exact kind of hippie nonsense that I could get into. But I'm

sure a lot of people would be like, that's nuts. But I can see how it would affect you in a positive way. How did you stumble on that? I kept a gratitude journal before my father was passing and it never stuck. And what I realized is I needed like that immersion therapy, you know, like I, you know, people are scared of spiders. Well, go and be around spiders for days and days and days until it doesn't affect you. So I was kind of that positive immersion of gratitude where I was like, to really get myself to shift into a more grateful mindset. I just had to immerse myself in it. And I was like, how could I do that? And I wrote ideas down, you know, all kinds of things. You know, I remember, so I wrote a book called Bring Gratitude because it was me focusing my mindset after, while, when I flew back, my dad, I would call my dad every day. And it was those moments when I would call my dad every day. And it was those moments when I would call him in the morning before work.

And I read him a joke. And he'd usually laugh. And I remember one time he didn't laugh. He just didn't have the strength. That to me was like, oh, I'm starting to feel more grateful that I had the dad that I did. Because my dad was a tough German man that didn't really allow his kids to speak up when spoken to. He didn't really ask for your opinion. He was terrible at thanking you if you helped him. But I realized he also taught me so many things. And I could focus on the negatives, but I wanted to focus on the positives. And I realized when I called him that morning that I was starting to shift my mindset

and coming back to realizing that what I was doing was working. And then that's when everything clicked over because I was like, oh, this is working. And then I went deeper and just started doing little things like the seven days of gratitude. I would text people. I just tried to do as much as I could as often as I could. So my brain then, I think you've heard the old adage, synapses that fire together, wire together. That's what I was going for. And I just, I overdid it. I overdosed on gratitude, but it allowed me to tip the pendulum far enough where I began to change and improve in that area. And did you have any sort of way of tracking your progress with this? Or was it just one day you realized I'm reacting very differently than I would have previously?

That's another good question. Because I think what I did is I actually tracked my mood. At the end of each day, I'd rate my day. So I think I ended up tracking it for almost a year. And I remember I was steadily around like five, five and a half. And then slowly I started increasing that through these practices. So I was up a six, I was at a seven. And I was then, I was at an eight. And then I started asking my kids, I was like, how would you rate your day on a scale of one to 10? And my, my sons would be like, it was a seven or eight. And I was like, ah, it's like a 9.2 for me. And they're like, dad, it's always a nine something with you. Like, don't you ever have a bad day? I'm like, I'm lucky to be here, you know? And so just trying to teach them, you know, those values as well. platform where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place. So instead of spending hours on multiple job sites searching for that perfect candidate with all the right skills, you can use Indeed's powerful hiring platform and it can help you do it all. Indeed streamlines

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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 the support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. One of the things that you talk about when you consult with people is looking through patterns and opportunities. And I think so much of what you talk about is observing oneself or observing your company. Explain to me how you do that. Yeah. I think when people start to step back and really look at the processes that they have in place, you can't help but see patterns, can't help but really notice how certain things are working and

certain things aren't. And the key part of all this is consistency, right? Like you have to have processes in place that allow you to step back. A good example of that, I coached a client and he taught me because one of the things he says is every day he'd write down things that he appreciated about his employees. So at the end of the day, I think it was like 4.15, he had a block of time. I think it was just like 15 minutes from 4.15 to 4.30, he would write down the things that he appreciated about his employees. And he did that every day, Monday through Thursday. And then on Thursday, what he would do is he would send out appreciation to all his employees. And what that did for him was allowed him to show how much he appreciated his people. But he also was really in touch with his employees. So it wasn't in

nothing really caught him by surprise, because he focused on what they were doing and how they were doing it. And by doing that, or having that process in place, his teams were always at the top of, you know, productivity, you know, of being able to meet goals again and again, and it helped him get promoted often. And so what was really interesting is because of all of that, he could see the patterns in people. He could notice when they had dips in their productivity, when they were a little off track. And so he was able to have these conversations instead of these regular meetings that you had to meet or end of the year reviews. He would do them on a regular basis because he was noticing these things

that these people were doing. He was, you know, of course noticing the things that were, they were doing well, but as a boss, you have to notice what's not going so well as well. And so when he did that, he started to, um, you know, have these conversations and he could coach people very quickly. It wasn't like they'd have to sit down for an hour and say, these are the things that you're doing wrong and this is what you need to improve. It'd be little quick conversations. He'd say like, hey, in this last email, I noticed you didn't have the breakdown of the work that we were doing.

Can you be a little more detailed? And this is why we need you to do that. And people would be able to correct very quickly. And it's these patterns that we can do. And even in our own career, if we notice the things that we're doing well, how can we do more of them? At the beginning, I talked about how I've come to help people with processes. This didn't come right away. Like I said, I had dreams of being the next Dr. Seuss, right? I had dreams of being the next Dr. Seuss, right?

I thought, okay, if I could write the next J.K. Rowling, but it didn't fit my skill set. And eventually, I noticed these things. I'd made submissions. I wrote things. I went to writing clubs, and I didn't get the feedback that I wanted. And I started to see these patterns. And so slowly, I started to see these patterns. And so slowly I started going into more design, but I'm not a good visual designer, but I'm really good at service design, process design. And because of that, I've been able to slowly tweak my career in that direction.

And now, you know, the client list that I have, the people that I've been able to work with, client list that I have, the people that I've been able to work with, it lights me up. But this has taken time. It's taken me 20 years to figure these things out. But it's because I journal. It's because I'm creating SOPs for myself like a nerd, right? I'm writing SOPs. I have a VA that I have. It's only like 10 hours a week, but I have SOPs that I give her on a regular basis. And then I make tweaks to them. And then I ask her, what does she like and what doesn't she like about her work? And just a side note, I think people who have, if you're listening to this and you make over 100K a year, you should have some sort of assistant. Even if it's just part-time, 10 hours a week, you're paying 15 hours, you're paying them

$15 an hour. Let's say they're over in the Philippines or even here, if you're paying them 20, 25, just to help you with email, help you with scheduling, those little things to allow us to focus back on the things that we really do well. But to me, that's where SOPs are so important because you're helping people do the job to the standard that you expect. And that is where you really start to save a lot of time. I never really thought about the process as a form of design, but I like that.

I feel like that's kind of me too. My previous role was as an integrator, so it was all about process and operations and stuff like that. And I always just kind of viewed it as like experimenting or maybe like a scientist, you know, but I never made the connection to, uh, to design, but you really are designing the way that the company or the organization works. And, uh, I think that mindset is helpful even on a personal level. Obviously with like a family or a significant other, it can apply, but it probably applies individually too. And the same skills of being able to spot the opportunities and the patterns and figure out the tweaks and the experiments and the things, the little fixes to add up to the 1% results.

It's a pretty fascinating idea. I'm kind of curious, do you have any tips for people who um are trying to delegate something to someone else you mentioned everyone over making over 100k should get an assistant for at least 10 to 15 hours a week and delegate some of this stuff but i've seen people try to do this and um sometimes they get in their own way you know they it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. They feel like they can do it better than anybody else, so they don't delegate effectively. And then of course, when it fails, they say, see, I told you so. Yeah. I think what often say, okay, you know, I have an assistant and they, you know, find potential clients for me and what I'm looking for. And she'll come back with,

usually lists about 15 to 20 people. And I have to then kind of filter through it and give her that feedback. But what I've learned is if I write an SOP and I write what it is that I need, the steps that I've done to accomplish this goal and why I'm doing it, right? So they understand the vision behind it because I think this is what a lot of people, you know, it's like, oh, here's your checklist. Now do these things. Go find these people. This is what, here's the parameters, and then put them in Excel file and then send it back

to me, which is fine. But to really get good at delegating, that requires understanding that person on the other end and how they're perceiving this work. A lot of times, they're confused, and they're maybe afraid to ask questions. So what you do is you write this thing, and then the SOP, and then you say, I expect you to improve this process. I don't want this just to be the same way all the time. I want us to work together. And what you're doing is you're setting the expectations of where you want the work to go as well. Because right now, it might be okay. But what happens if she has an idea or he has an idea that's even better?

Now you're not just utilizing them to do the task, you're utilizing them to help you make the task better. And I think that's where good leadership comes in, right? It's not just here, do the thing. It's here's how we do the thing. This is why we're doing the thing. And this is the mission behind it. But then I want you to own it. I want you to do this job, but do it even better, you know, from month to month. And let's see if we can really level up together. And you're teaching them skills as well as them teaching you and giving you better output. Now it's harder. This is the upfront work. This is the turtle type of work, right? You have to write these SOPs. You've got to really think of why this work matters and what are the steps that you think

that they should go through or that you've gone through and now you're just writing them down and now that you can pass it off to them. And then eventually what you do is you have an SOP library. You have all these different SOPs and they stack up. So if she's doing something and then she comes back and delivers, and then she has an idea, and you can say, oh, great. Can you update the SOP library or update that SOP? And I like that idea. Let's improve it. And what you're also doing is you're showing them appreciation. You're saying, wow, great job. You found a new way to do this. This is fantastic. And you're noticing that. And that makes people,

people really can't distinguish, the brain can't distinguish between a raise and a compliment. If you show somebody appreciation, it is like getting a raise. And that appreciation, that dopamine hit can last for weeks. And so if you figure out how to do that and get them on board, and they might never do the job as good as you, but if they're 90% there, you've saved yourself hours a week. You might be able to spend more time with your family. You might be able to focus on higher leverage activities. The list goes on and on, but it's really just doing that upfront work. And this is where I think a lot of people get tripped up. I think you made this point earlier. You try these things and they don't work.

And then we often either blame the other person or we blame ourselves. But either way, we're blaming instead of figuring out what's that step we can take? Where can we find that next experiment to really help us grow? And that's when you can really create this really cool synergetic relationship. Is that even a word? Relationship where you grow together. I am a violator here, Carl. For some reason, I am totally sold on the idea of a virtual assistant. I've tried like three times and my failure is always me and upfront. I just, I can't figure out what they're going to do. And then when I figure out what they're going to do, I don't give them good instructions and it's just never worked for

me. And one of these days I'm going to, maybe I'll call you and hire you. I, I, someday I've got to figure this out because I do think that you're right. A lot of us, it is affordable to get a virtual assistant at this point, even for a small amount of time. And that can give you more time to focus. That's why we're here, right? We want to be more focused. Well,

one of the ways you become more focused is you spend less time on nonsense that you can give to somebody else. But for some reason I cannot get over that hurdle. I would love to help you. Yeah. I, this is one of my, um, I think it's one of my favorite parts of the work that I do because it does free up so much time, but you're right. It's that upfront work. It's that I've got to dig into this stuff, figure out the best way to explain it, and then figure out who to hire. So there is a lot. And it's common. A lot of people that I work with say that same thing. But it's creating that SOP. Let's say you do one a month, right? And now you have a library.

After six months, you say, I'm going to create one a month for six? And now you have a library after six months, you say, I'm going to create one a month for six months. Now you have six SOPs that you can hand off to somebody. So you're building up, you're building up that, that muscle of creating these SOPs. And then you're setting a deadline of, I'm going to hire somebody on February 1st, because now I have this library of SOPs that I can hand off to them. And then what's cool is they start to find ways to improve too. That's when it becomes magical because it's not just you saying, here, do this, do these things. It becomes a relationship and they start to find ways to make things even better for you. I'd never thought of that, making the procedures without having anybody hired. That's actually not a bad idea because then you can see, well, here's something that I don't really like doing. Is it

something I can cut off? And how would I document that? And then when they show up, you don't have to do the mad scramble to figure it out. You already have a list of tasks. Nice. Nice idea. Yeah. What do you think are the key components of an SOP? Because an SOP sounds like a very business-y, formal term. And I think the picture people get in their heads is that this is a really complicated

document and it's just more work than it's worth to even put it together. But it really doesn't have to be that bad, does it? Yeah, it doesn't. So it's actually the army started SOPs and they started it because they needed to be more efficient. And probably one of the most efficient and most communicative organizations in the world is the Army. Maybe they're the largest organization in the world because their budget is so large. But the idea is creating an SOP in very small chunks. You don't want the SOP to be any more than maybe 10, 20 minutes long and task wise. You want it to be short because what you're trying to do is say, here's what I want. And so

what you do is you title it and you understand where this fits into the larger vision of your company, of course. So why does you say, why does this matter? And this is important. I think a lot of people write SOPs, they don't put why. And what I mean by why is like, if it's a sales SOP, you know, a certain way that you reach out to potential new clients. Why does it matter? Well, if we are able to close more accounts, we can grow the business and we can all make more money. Let's say that that might be the why,

right? But the idea is whoever's getting it understands how their work fits into the larger mission and vision of the company, which is really important because it's not just some abstract idea of like, do this task. They understand why and how it fits in. And then what you do is you start to look at what the overall list of things that this document needs. And you would want just a step-by-step. And this is what's really important. So let's say SOP for editing the podcast, right? And you send it off.

And usually, the person that does it, does it a certain way. But have, and this is what's nice. So if you have somebody edit it, or if you edit it, have them document it. And then once you see all these steps, you can start to look for efficiencies. Like, oh, like we can remove that. Or, oh, we should really also be doing this.

You start to see little things that you can improve. But the idea is try to do present moment, how things are working. And as you do that and you can see the step by step process that everything is, like I said, don't say everything about the podcast, like from recording it all the way to promoting it. The idea is small chunks. And then, because you could probably write this, you know, SOP in, you know, I don't know, maybe 20, 30 minutes, right?

If you do it right now, if somebody else does it, but at least the steps, you know, how does this work? And then what you do is you have a FAQ at the bottom, frequently asked questions, because as you hand off this work, you're going to notice people have questions. They hand it off. Well, if I edit it like this, like, what do I do here? Then you can capture all those. And then if you can, link it to a file structure. So if there's another step that they need to do, then you keep it in sequence.

So then at the bottom, the next SOP, they would then say, now the next step is this. And that would be a whole separate document. And the reason for that is if you keep it short and small and you keep it easy to understand, then you can pull that one thing down, look at it, review it. And depending on the SOP, but I say at least once a year, you should be reviewing your SOPs to really make sure it still makes sense. Because, you know, let's say IA, artificial intelligence, takes over. And now you can just say, hey, computer, do this. You don't really need the same level of SOP.

You don't need them to edit it. Now this AI can do it for you. So that is something that you can then say, oh, this completely changed. We can update it or we can say, okay, here's how we send it to the AI machine to edit the podcast. Here's how we send it to the AI machine to edit the podcast. But the idea is to keep it short, keep it small, keep it focused. And then you start, and this is just like anything, you start to see like, oh, I'm learning from this. I'm able to see these little gaps. And that's when you start to reward.

It's like that mental reward, right? Because you're like, oh, I'm making progress. And back to doing these in advance, you just create a few and then you create forward momentum. And then that's when you start to realize this is not that hard. It's just that I've made a mountain out of a molehill. This is not that hard. It's just that I made a mountain out of a molehill. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business Review is the leading destination for smart management thinking. And I'm thrilled to have Harvard Business Review as a sponsor because I've been a subscriber to Harvard Business Review for quite a while. I bought a subscription in my previous gig as

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code FOCUSED to learn more about this great opportunity to help manage your career and business today. If you're looking to develop your leadership or business skills, this is a great opportunity to invest in yourself. Our thanks to Harvard Business Review for their support of this show and all of Relay FM. Carl, what does focus mean to you? Good question. Focus to me is doing the essential things well. And what I mean by that is really honing in on your strengths and kind of coming back to delegating, right? You know, if I'm really good at, you know, working with clients, helping them with processes and not so good at editing my podcast or, you know, working in my CRM or sales, I need to figure out how I can do more of that

high leverage activities. So I can really focus on getting the results that I would like. And the same thing, even if you have a day job, you know, you might, if you notice a lot of people get hired in the director roles and they don't like leading people. It gets harder, it gets messier. Some tough choices need to be made. You might say, well, I want a principal role. I want a lead role. I might take a small pay cut or I might take a pay cut, but I'm much happier and I'm doing the things I'm focusing

on what matters and what I'm good at and not just doing what I think I should be doing and living life from other people's expectations. That's like a problem in Silicon Valley. A lot of these tech companies have people who are very good programmers and engineers. And because they're so good, eventually they get to a point where they've maxed and the next step for them is to become a supervisor of people. So what are they doing is they're managing people, something that they've no experience with, and they're not programming the thing that they love and they're good at. And that was causing all sorts of problems. So the companies are now building tiers where you go up the pay scale and you go up the level without becoming a manager.

And if you want to become a manager, then you go through a different track where you get a different set of training and skills. But it's very easy to, in most of the world to, to not have that option. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things you said during the show that I didn't follow up on that I really enjoyed was the manager who was writing notes to the employees of gratitude. And I feel like that's something that everybody should pay attention to and kind of audit your relationships. I noticed like with some people in my family, for instance, a few years ago that I only talked to them when there was a problem, you know, and it doesn't have to be a serious problem, but like, there's something I need your help with or something you need my help with,

whether it just be planning to meet for a holiday or somebody died or whatever. But we only talk because there's a purpose. And I realized that was a mistake. So I made a list of those people. And now I have a list where I call them routinely. I'm not a pest, but I call them routinely. And it was funny because the first few times I'd do it, I'd call them. They'd say, hey, what's up?

What do you need? And I'd say, oh, nothing. I just wanted to see how you are. And you could tell that would take them aback because for years I'd been abusing the relationship by only calling them when I needed something. And now when I call them, they, they, you can tell that they don't expect me. It's not going to be a transaction.

It's going to be a conversation. And I think in both work and personal life, that, that can be a very nice way to improve your relationships and improve yourself along the way. Yeah, that's a great routine. And I think that's basically like a little mini SOP, right? Like you have this list and you maybe every Sunday you pick a person from that list and then you rotate it, right? And it could be every Sunday you block out at 10 a.m. to make a call or 1 p.m., whatever it is. And then you try as best you can to stick to that routine.

It's not always easy. And Jerry Seinfeld always gives advice to young comics. He's like, just write a joke a day. That's it. Write a joke a day. Every day you write a joke, mark it off on your calendar. And what that does is you just start to build that habit and then like you is like you at first it feels weird it feels a little awkward and then over time it starts to add up and now you have a relationship with that person that's built around much more of a loving, caring, mutual love for each other instead of, hey, I need something

from you. I love that. I just want to follow you around, Carl, for a day and just peek at all your SOPs. I feel like it would be fascinating. Yeah, I'd be happy to share some with you. Where does focus get hard for you? share some with you. Where does focus get hard for you? One of the things I struggle with is if I hit something hard, my ego will start to shut me down. That negative inner voice might be like, you know, this is too hard. You shouldn't do this right now, you know? And that might mean just me, you know, going to the bathroom three times in an hour because I'm just like not able to work through this difficulty. Or I wonder if, you know, maybe I need a cookie.

I'll go to the pantry and find something. Maybe I need a cookie. I'll go to the pantry and find something. And what I found is, you know, that awareness, that ability to sit in my uncomfortableness and not put that self-induced pressure on myself to be something that I'm really not in that moment, right? So, you know, coming back to slowing down and really being a little bit more methodical has then allowed me not to feel that pressure of like, I've got to get this done in the next hour. It's really about focusing on my priorities and saying, I need to do this thing. And sometimes it requires me consciously taking my dogs for a walk, or it requires me saying, I'm going to do 20 minutes of meditation. I'm stepping back. Instead of just doing that

automatic, oh, I have to go to the bathroom or go to the pantry or open up YouTube and distract myself, I'm trying to be conscious and say, should I be sitting here right now? Should I be sitting in this uncomfortableness? I'm trying to write another book and it's very common for me to just all of a sudden I'm out of my chair, heading out the door of my office. And I'm like, oh, you know, my ego's, you know, getting a little fearful right now. And then I'll stop and I'll be like, what do I need right now? That question is a powerful one. It might just be me saying, it's okay, Carl. It's okay not to be able to know what to write next, but just sit back down. Try a little bit more. I'm trying to be that parent that I wished I had as a kid and just allowing myself to, you know,

encourage myself and understand this is a self-awareness game. And if I want to do the things that I want to do in this life and I want to make an impact, you know, I've got to be uncomfortable. I've got to try these things that are probably going to flop. But if I don't do them, I'm going to regret it. And that allows me to kind of sit back down and get back to work. And if I do that twice or three times and nothing happens, that's when I'll take the dog for a walk or meditate because I'm like, okay, I need a break. My brain needs a break. And then I'll come back to it after that. I mean, how much better would the world be if we could all convincingly tell

ourselves once in a while, it's okay. It's just, I don't know what it is, but I feel like that is that there is some magic in that phrase. If you believe it, when you tell it to yourself, it also works on other people, by the way way but you probably need to tell it to yourself more than anybody else yeah that's for sure carl we're starting a new thing on the show where we like to finish up just kind of sharing what we're reading uh we just sprung this on you i do you have something you're reading you'd like to share um what are you reading these days um so uh the 24--hour rule by Adrian, I have it right here on my shelf, Bella Humor. And what's the 24-hour rule is basically within 24 hours, you should document your findings, your learnings. And so if you're in a meeting, write down what you've learned. It might be just the top three things that you've learned in that meeting.

If you're trying to reach out to some clients or doing it a certain way, write down what you've learned and do it within 24 hours. And this is important because you're much more likely to remember it. And then you have it documented so you can always go back to it. But I found since I've been doing that, I don't need to go back to it because I wrote it down and it helps commit it to memory. And it just makes it easier to remember things. So it's a great book. It's not a sexy book. It's not life-changing, but if you go through it, you realize how important writing things down can be if you do it within 24 hours. Pensive effect.

Yeah, exactly. What about you, Mike? I hate to ask Mike this question because he reads like three books for every book I read. But all right, Mike, what book are you reading now? Well, this one may be interesting to Carl because we were at a ConvertKit conference. Brendan Dunn has a new book out called This is Personal,

which is about email marketing. And that will be very exciting for a small group of nerds. But it's really, really good. And the whole gist of it is that people actually don't mind when you email them as long as you are emailing them about things that are relevant to them. So it's not trying to collect all this data and figure out who are the people who fall into this bucket for me, but it's just treating people like people and showing them things that they may be interested in.

It's a very human approach to email marketing, shall we say. And I like Brendan Dunn's approach to this kind of stuff a lot. Okay. So every time Mike and I have a telephone conversation and he tells me a book that I buy, I ring the bell. So I'm sharing it with the podcast audience. I bought that one. All right.

My book is more of a pamphlet. It's only 10 pages long. It's called On the Tranquility of the Mind by Seneca. It's a recording of a conversation he had. I love reading ancients. The thing that's fascinating to me is how they struggled with the same problems we do now, and they came up with a lot of the same solutions. And it just reminds me that we're all on this treadmill together. And it's just fun. It's a short this treadmill together and it's, it's just fun. It's a short read. I think it's free on Amazon if you read it on a Kindle, but I just went back and reread it. It was fun. Cause I had read it like three years ago and looking at my highlights and

then reading it again, I'm getting different insights from it on the second read. And it's a good short one. All right, gang. We are the Focus Podcast. You can find us at relay.fm. Carl, where can folks find you? Yeah. So I have a podcast called Dig to Fly. And we dig

into these stuff. You know me with processes. We dig into their struggles and then they explain the frameworks they use to overcome it. So Dig to Fly is the podcast. And then the website is sopguy.com, standard operating procedures guy.com. So sopguy.com. And then if they want, I have a quick start guide there that they can download. So I can send you that link so you can put in the show notes. We will do that.

And thank you to our sponsors, Squarespace, Electric, and Indeed. For those of you that are deep focus subscribers, that's the extended ad-free version of the show, the three of us are going to dig a little deeper on journaling that came up several times during the show. I want to know the SOP guys journaling SOPs. So we're going to be asking him about that. Otherwise we'll see you next time.