BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 363: How to Work (Way) Less but Accomplish (Way) More in 2020 with Michael Hyatt

Episode Date: January 2, 2020

Will 2020 be your best year ever? Today’s episode has all the ingredients to make the answer a big, resounding “Yes!” Bestselling author and productivity expert Michael Hyatt is here, and he guides us through how real estate investors should approach the year ahead. You’ll love hearing how Michael’s eliminated virtually everything except his three highest-leverage, revenue-generating activities; how to steer clear of what he calls “drudgery zone” work; and how to find someone who actually enjoys those tasks you can’t stand doing. And if you’re thinking, “Well, I’m not ready for that yet…” Michael has tips for how to get started by delegating just one task. Michael has written extensively about three topics that touch every real estate investor: productivity (Free to Focus), goal-setting (Your Best Year Ever), and delegation (Your World-Class Assistant). Today, we cover them all in-depth. So download this episode, make sure you’re subscribed to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast, and start 2020 right! In This Episode We Cover: How Michael grew his company in a year while taking 162 days off per year How “vague aspirations” set you up for failure Why you’re 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down Why you shouldn’t have more than 3 goals at once The keys to hiring a world-class executive assistant The importance of a detailed, well-thought-out job description The right way to document workflows How to focus on your “Desire Zone” How to offload tasks in the “Drudgery Zone” The difference between goals and projects Why he hired a world-class coach to teach him an obscure hobby And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Podcast 230: Real Estate Investing as a Side Hustle with Grammy-Winning Producer Seth Mosley BiggerPockets Podcast 117: Maximizing Productivity to Get Things Done with David Allen BiggerPockets Podcast 315: How to Read Human Nature to Succeed in Life with Bestselling Author Robert Greene Tucker Max BiggerPockets Podcast 245: Creating Wealth that Lasts Generations with Bestselling Author Ryan Holiday Evernote Loom BiggerPockets Pro BiggerPockets Podcast 125: The Key to Business Success with Bestselling Author of The E-Myth Michael Gerber Masterclass BiggerPockets Podcast 330: How to Ditch Distractions and Get WAY More Done With Cal Newport The Tim Ferriss Show How to Make 2020 Your Best Real Estate Year Ever Webinar Check the full show notes here: http://biggerpockets.com/show363 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 363. I'm not talking about putting all of your eggs in one basket, but I am talking about restricting the number of baskets that you're putting eggs into. Again, all the goal research shows that when you constrain yourself like that and limit your focus, you actually drive achievement. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing,

without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Hey, what's going on, number one? This is Brandon, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, David Green.

What's up, David Green? How are you doing? I'm super good. We just had a really good conversation with a really smart person. That always makes me happy. Yeah. Yeah, here is.

So today's interview, We actually are interviewing a non-real estate investor. So somebody who made their huge success in life, actually, off of, he was first in the publishing world and then has done a lot of other cool stuff since. His name is Michael Hyatt. Michael Hyatt, if you're not familiar with him, you should be because he's written a ton of books. New York Times bestselling author. He's a big deal.

I've been following for years, reading his stuff. Really, really smart guy. And he's really good on things like productivity on having your best life ever. In fact, he has a book called Your Best Year Ever, a five-step plan for achieving your most important goals. He's got another one called Free to Focus and a new book on hiring an assistant. It's called Your World Class Assistant. And it's actually out right now as brand new.

And Michael is terrific. We have a great conversation with him today about all of that stuff. And yes, this applies to real estate investors more than you might think. Even though we're not talking about like, how do you find real estate deals? Like everything here is about how to make your real estate work better so you can work less is really what this is all about today. In fact, that could even be a show title, how to work better so you can work less with Michael Highland. We'll see. And I don't know.

That's all I got for the intro. Should we do a quick tip? All right, your quick tip today is simple. We talk a lot about hiring virtual assistants today and regular assistance and just an assistant in general. So here's what I want to encourage you. I want you, this is your action step. I want you to grab a piece of paper right now or if you're driving, do it later.

Or if you use Evernote or one note on your phone and start keeping track of everything you do for a week that is real estate related. Like I analyzed a deal today. or I went and looked at a property, or I made this phone call for a contractor. Start writing all those things down because once you have a list after a week or so, you have a massive list of all the things that you do,

then you can start prioritizing and say, okay, what could I hire somebody to take some of this off my plate? Even if it was only a couple hours a week, even if it was overseas, whatever, but that's a good kind of foundational step to take. So that's my quick tip for today. Great job. You like it, David?

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You can even automate transfers and move money around without paying wire fees. It's just cleaner. Sign up at baselane.com slash BP and get a $100 bonus. Baselane is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank. Member FDIC. And now it's time to get to this interview. Like I said, today's guest is Michael Hyatt. You can find him at Michael Hyatt.com. He's written a bunch of really great brooks. You should probably get them all because they're really good. And we will put links to that, all of that stuff in show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 363. And without further delay, I do.

Ooh, we delay, not a dude. Actually, there is a slight more delay. I was going to say, this show is primarily, like Michael's not a real estate investor, like I said. And so we don't talk a lot of detail about the real estate side of things. We do a little bit. So afterwards, during our outro, like after we're done interviewing with Michael, an hour in or so, David and I actually spend a quite a bit of time talking about how to apply this to your business.

Make sure you listen through. If you don't usually listen to the outro, listen to this one because we're going to talk more about how to use this in your real estate investing. And with that, now without further, I do. Michael, Hi. All right, Michael, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast.

This is a huge honor for me today. So thank you for being here. Thank you so much, Brandon. Great to be with you. Yeah. So I want to jump right in because, you know, we're here and we just got a new year. If you're listening to this, you know, when the show comes out.

And I want to start with, getting into like how people can maximize this year, some of the tools and tips and tricks that you use to really like just for explosive growth the last few years and really your whole career. But before we get in there, people might not know who you are. So can you give a quick, you know, idea of who are you?

And, you know, in that, what's something that you're most proud of in your career that you've done so far? Okay. So I'm a New York Times bestselling author. I've written a number of books, about nine books total. Wow.

I spent most of my time in the book publishing world, most recently as the CEO of Thomas Nelson publishers. We sold that company to Harper Collins in 2011. I used that as an opportunity to make my exit and do what I'd always dream to doing, which is to write and to speak full time. So today, on the CEO of Michael Hyatt & Company, we have about 35 people in our company.

We've been named to the Inc. 5,000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America the last three years in a row. We grew 62% last year. But, and this is maybe something that I'm proud of, last year I took 162 days off. Really? Where I didn't work.

I didn't check in on work. I didn't have any connection with work. I was just, it was time off. And I've done that actually every year for the last several years. But it kind of speaks to my central thesis that I really want to be about achieving more by doing less. You don't need to do everything.

You just need to do the right things. I love that you say that. And I also, I love the fact that you tracked how many days you didn't work. Like, I've never thought about doing that before, but I'm going to start that starting today because I have no idea, but I'm guessing I probably took like five days off where I didn't do anything last year. Yeah.

Well, you know, once it becomes a metric and you start measuring it. And particularly when you realize the importance of it, what else it allows you to do. Like I've been married for 41 years. I've got a great marriage. I've got five adult children, nine grandchildren. And they're really important to me. And spending time with them, you know, when I can take that much time off, I can really make them a priority. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, I'm expecting a baby here any day now.

Like, it could be, if I suddenly run out of the room, it's because my wife is running to the hospital when we're going. But yeah, by the time to show air, it should be, you know, should be well over by that point. But yeah, it's increasingly becoming more of a point of my life is how can I take less, spend less time on work, but to do more important work. You know, like I like work. Like, you know, at bigger pockets, we talk a lot about financial freedom and early retirement and all that. But one of my beliefs is that nobody who can retire early, ever does retire early. You just can't. You just dry up. So that's why I'm so passionate about this just idea of working on more important things. You can work fewer hours and choose what you do and when

you do it. So with that, let's jump into some questions. I'm going to fire a bunch of stuff at you. And I'm sure David will as well. Okay. I want to know, first of all, what do people get wrong? You know, we're going to get into assistance stuff, by the way, because I know you have a book on assistance and stuff. I want to get to that. But first I want to know, what do people get wrong about like New years? Like, I mean, the resolutions and planning and here right at the beginning of the year, what do people get wrong that you notice most? Well, I think they let their vague aspirations around this time of the year. You know, they want to improve their marriage. They want to improve their health. They want to grow their business. They let that be a vaguest aspiration and they never write it down. And all the

goal research shows that when you write something down, you dramatically increase the likelihood of you achieving it. In fact, there was a study done at Dominican University in Southern California where they took a whole group of people in a blind test, and they found out that the people that wrote down their goals were 42% more likely to achieve them by the very act or the simple act of writing them down. And I think it's because, like somebody once said, thoughts disentangle themselves,

passing over the lips and through pencil tips. It helps you to give clarity. And when you get clarity about something, it accelerates your movement toward that destination. So I say that's one of the big things. But another thing also, Brandon, that people get wrong is if you get, you know, all excited about goal setting, the temptation is to try to attempt too many goals. And so our research shows that in general, people should not attempt more than seven to 10

goals per year and no more than two to three per quarter. So that kind of focus accelerates also your movement towards achieving the goal. Yeah. Yeah, that's so true. Now, how do you handle that as an entrepreneur? I mean, like I know, I like to use the analogy of like a bridge. Like you're, you're on like reality island and there's like, you know, freedom island or wealth island or success island, right?

And you've got to build a bridge over there. But so many entrepreneurs are building 20 bridges at once, 30 bridges at once. So then nothing ever gets built. How do you combat that? Because I know you're a creative guy and you probably have a million ideas. Well, I try to really focus in on, you know, what are the highest leverage goals? What are the goals that are going to create the greatest goal, growth, the greatest amount of results in my business that are really measurable results?

and just say no to everything else, or at least most of everything else. And the truth is, during the course of the year, you're probably going to have hundreds of projects, but you need to have just a few goals. Projects, and I distinguish between the two, every goal is a project, but not every project is a goal. And here's what I mean by that. I manage a goal as though it were a project. You know, it has action steps and milestones, and I track it the same way that I would for a project. But a goal by definition is something that you're trying to,

achieve this outside the whirlwind of business as usual. Projects are inside the world of business as usual. They represent, you know, slight improvements, new projects, things that you're doing inside the whirlwind of your activity that don't make huge strides, but goals are a new initiative, a new launch, a new challenge, something that's going to represent significant movement towards your goals or towards your overall vision. So you've got to really constrain yourself if you're to achieve those. That's really good. David, do you want to jump in at all? I don't want to just hog the mic the whole time because I'm, hey, David. Hey, what's going on? Michael. It's nice to meet you. Thanks for letting me in here. Very time. Just kidding. So what I'm thinking about is how we apply

this to real estate investing, right? What would the difference between a goal and a project be when it specifically comes to your real estate investing portfolio? Yeah, well, here's where I don't have a lot of experience. So you guys may have to help me on this. But I would think that did anything that would represent business that you're not currently doing, you know, maybe, you know, something you have to do with the management of that portfolio,

maybe a project, you know, incremental improvement on the portfolio, maybe a project, but like a new acquisition or a new strategic direction or a new kind of property or something. I would think that would be more of a goal. That's really good.

Yeah. So maybe different ways to look for a property could be one, right? Like maybe seven different things a year. Okay, I'm going to try this new strategy to get a property under contract. If you tried 40 different strategies in a year, you wouldn't make progress with any of them. But if you limited it to one every two months or so,

that would give yourself the time to actually figure out, is this going to work for me? Can I make it work? Totally because a lot of them take experimentation, you know, so you're going to just have to stay with it long enough to see if it works or not. And develop the skill set that you need to make that thing work. I think that's something a lot of people fail to realize when they start something new. I just assume I'm going to suck at anything new that I do for quite some time.

So why started if I'm never going to get out of the suck phase? You know, would you ever go to the gym and say, I'll give this a month? And if I don't see results, I'm going to stop. It takes a month just to get your body used to what you're trying to ask it to do. And, you know, when you start a new goal, you have different muscles you haven't used. You have mistakes you got to make to figure it out. And I really like what you're saying that you've got to give yourself time to build up that skill set. Well, and all of us have a limited amount of attention, a limited amount of other resources, whether it's our time or our capital or whatever. And,

one of the things that will cut our legs out from under us if we're spread too thin. So if you maximize your focus, maximize your capital. I'm not talking about putting all of your eggs in one basket, but I am talking about restricting the number of baskets that you're putting eggs into. I think that's a huge, again, all the goal research shows that when you constrain yourself like that and limit your focus, you actually drive achievement. That's really good. You know, there's a book out there.

One of my favorites I've read recently called The Four Disciplines of Execution. I love that book, right? There's like the mess you live in from day to day. And they don't say don't do it. And I think this is where a lot of like online gurus, for lack of a better term, like they'll say things like, you know, you just got to focus, you know, put all your eggs in one huge bag. And I'm like, I can't.

I still have to manage my portfolio. I still have to do podcasting. I still have to do this stuff. But it's like, let's just take one or two things out a quarter and say that is what, that's wildly important. And I love that idea. Yeah. And for some people that, you know, just insist on having more goals, I say, okay, do this. Set up a goal cue. In other words, when you get these three goals for this quarter done,

then you have my permission. You know, you've got my permission to go ahead and pursue other goals, but don't have any more than three at one time, three for a quarter at one time. So, you know, if you can knock those out in the first week or the first month, you know, great. You know, now you've earned the right to have some more goals. But you want to limit, you know, sort of the scope of your attention and the scope of of your investment so that you've got, so you better ensure that you get a positive outcome on those things you've chosen to do.

That is, you're speaking the language of Brandon Turner right now. I bet his heart rate just increased like 30% in the minute he said, accomplish these goals and now you've earned the right to do whatever. I mean, his brain does that with everything. Like, hey, Brandon, do you want to, you want to bite? Do you want to try this chip?

I haven't earned it yet. Let me go up and down the stairs four times and then, then I can do it because he knows what motivates himself. I think that's really important part. And you have to understand yourself if you want to be a high performer. And Brandon's done that. He knows. I didn't know, Brian, this is funny.

I didn't tell you this. I was just talking to Seth Mosley yesterday. He came up to Sacramento and I went to meet him for lunch. We were talking about you. It started off where we were talking about like your insane fear of commitment. You just won't commit to anything. Brandon loves to like talk about what he will do with a bunch of stuff but never actually commit to doing it. And it ended where I was saying, yeah, but that's because he knows himself.

Like if Brandon commits to something, he goes all. all out to a level I very rarely seen any human being do. He accomplished it was an iron man with like eight weeks of prep. And I mean, not an insult, but Brandon is not an athlete. He is not the guy who brides himself on athletic endeavors. This podcast feels a little strange to me today.

David, okay, keep going. I'm trying to compliment you in the most horrible way that I possibly can. That's great. Brandon knows if he commits to something, he will do it. Like it will drive him to death and he'll accomplish it.

So he knows I cannot commit to very, many things. And naturally, he understands what you're talking about, Michael. And that's kind of the point I'm trying to make here is that mindset will get you where you want to go. But in order to accomplish that, you have to understand, I have to say no to a lot of things in order to be good at the stuff I want to do. David, I'm so glad you brought that up. I talk about this in my book, free to focus, about exercise in your no muscle. You know, no, as Oprah once said, is a complete sentence. And it's such an important sentence. Because, look, you know, a lot of of people tell you that the whole goal of productivity is to get more stuff done. No, that's not

the goal of productivity. The goal of productivity is get the right stuff done, which means you have to say no to a ton of stuff. And by the way, I don't know if any of your listeners are familiar with the getting things done methodology. A lot of people use it. GTD. We had David out. We had him on the show like six years ago. But yeah, David Allen. Anyway, keep going. But yeah, yeah. I love that guy. David's an amazing guy. He's a friend of mine. But he wrote that book in 2000 before the proliferation of the inboxes and all the stuff. that's coming out as like it is today. So what that system is missing is a filter,

a means by which you can say no. And I do talk about this at length of my book, Free to Focus, about this idea of the freedom compass. You know, your natural path to achievement, the place where you're going to get the highest leverage in terms of least amount of work and biggest results is when you focus on your desire zone. And that's the term I use in the book

where I talk about that area where you're the most passionate, it, the things you love to do, but you're also the most proficient, the things that you're naturally good at. Now, the opposite of the desire zone is the drudgery zone, the things you suck at, the things that you don't enjoy doing. And those ought to be the first things that you either eliminate, automate, or delegate. But when you start functioning in that desire zone and start pursuing those few activities where you really love and what you're really good at, that's when you start seeing the real leverage and start seeing the real progress and get rid of the rest of the stuff or at least those have got to be candidates that you're going to say no to. You're going to

either eliminate those or if you could automate them great, but if you can delegate him, that's awesome too. But you just got to get rid of that stuff so you can focus on where you had the most value. So good. So good. So here's a way to translate that to the real estate investors out there. One of the very first things I ever did, I looked at my life, real estate as I was building my portfolio, I had a bunch of little rentals that are obnoxious to have to manage. And I was like, it's drudgery for me to answer phone calls. I just hated it. Like, And the tenant calls because I was weak also. Like they'd be like, can I have a pet?

I'm like, sure. And they're like, can I smoke meth in your property? Sure, whatever. Like, it's fine. And so like, I was just so nice to everybody that it hurt my business. So the first thing I was like, that's drudger. I didn't know that term then in terms of like this. It's exactly what it was.

I was like, this feels so heavy and awful. So I was like, well, how can I, I can't afford a full-time employee. I can't even afford an assistant. What do I do? And so then I found somebody actually my mother-in-law who had just retired. And I was like, would you want to just answer phone calls? Like just answer phone calls and do nothing but take a message and call me and ask me what to say. And like just be that buffer in between.

And like my investing like went through the roof in terms of like how much I enjoyed it. Because I just took the thing that I hated and found for a couple hundred bucks a month, I no longer had to do that anymore. It was life changing. I love that. And what's really cool about that is that other people, their desire zone activities may be the exact things that are in your drudgery zone. Yeah.

And when you really start getting smart about hiring people, and really kind of building out your team is when you think of it like a symphony conductor and you try to get people that are not the exact clone of you that's the worst hiring mistake you can make. So you want people that are complimentary. So I have an executive assistant. His name is Jim.

Jim loves all the things that I hate. And so he's great at managing my calendar, booking travel, filing expense reports. That stuff, you know, just shoot me. I hate that stuff. But we're a terrific team because we're comfortable. That's so key. I think of a lot of the bad hires I've had in my life and they've been people who were just like me. And I for a long time, I used to think also I had to decide between, this has been a big lesson I've learned less here.

I had to decide when I hired somebody between competent, like really good at what they do, but not really like a friend, like, not somebody I would like working with or somebody I really like working with and not competent. And I don't mean they weren't smart, just not in that skill that I needed him for. And I chose between the two for a decade. And it wasn't until like the last like year and a half where all of a sudden I'm like, you could have both. Like, you could have an amazing person that's fun to work with and also really competent. So when I did that and I found people who had opposite skills of my own, like, yeah, I mean, I went from, yeah, having one assistant and then let him go, another assistant didn't work out to now I have five like full-time people now working on me. And it's like, and it's fantastic.

It's like the coolest thing ever right now. And it's all because like I found people who were good at those things I was not good at. So for people listening today, one of the most important things I hire is that they can have, I believe is an executive assistant or is an assistant. for them. And being the fact that you just wrote a book on that, like, I think we should spend some time talking about it because there's a lot of things that one we don't like doing that's in the drudgery zone, but also just isn't a good dollar per hour task for us. And so like why, you know, mowing my lawn, like I don't mow my lawn anymore because I can pay somebody else $12 an hour.

And ironically, they're going to be here any minute. So if you guys hear a lot and more, that's why. But they are, they take care of that because I have other dollar per hour tasks I can do. So on that note, let's talk executive assistants or just assisting in general. A lot of people are listening going, well, this doesn't concern me right now. I don't need a full-time assistant. I don't have enough work. I still have a full-time job. Is that true?

Does it not concern them or could they also utilize this information? Well, here's the good news. I think in the past, I used to think I either had to hire a full-time executive assistant or not, and I didn't have enough to keep people busy full-time. So it was just like I opted out of it. And I pushed it for longer than I should have. And so I left the big corporate environment in 2011 where I was the CEO of, you know, I had 750 people. I had two full-time assistants.

Suddenly, I was a solopreneur. And, oh my gosh, I'm doing all this stuff like trying to find the FedEx box, which I'd never had to do before, trying to manage my calendar. I'm making a mess of it. Trying to book travel. I'm paying way too much for flights. I'm ending up on the wrong flights. It was just a disaster. But I kept thinking, well, I got to hire for somebody full time.

Well, then a friend of mine who owned a virtual assistant. company reached out to me and said, dude, 10 hours a week, you could get somebody for 10 hours a week, and then you could grow from there. And I said, wow, okay, let's give it a try. Oh, my gosh, it was unbelievable. That took all that drudgery kind of work off my plate. And to your point, Brandon, you know, like you, I make more than $12 an hour. And so if I could redeploy that same time, in time that I was taking me twice as long as somebody competent would take, something that I hated doing, if I could take that and give it to somebody else and allow me to focus on the revenue producing kinds of activities,

that was my theory at least, then that would be a win. Well, that first, that's what that lasted for two weeks. So I had this person for two weeks, and it was 10 hours a week, and I gained so much time, and it was making so much more money doing so much more billable kinds of things, that I said, okay, let's go to 15 hours a week, and that lasted a couple weeks and 20 hours a week. And of course, now I have a full-time, you know, assistant. And I can't think of functioning without one. That's so good.

That's so good. Yeah, I, like, started with my mother-in-law answering phones, you know, like, it was just a small thing that then I, now she works a lot more and she makes a lot more than $200 a month. But, like, that's where it started. And I was able to also test out that it does this work. And yeah, just freeing up my time from, like, not wanting to do things, just made a huge impact on my life.

I mean, every time I hire somebody else to, do a task. Like if I can make, if they do a good job anyway, I'll make way more money than it cost them. So it's really, it's more of an investment, right, than it is an expense. Totally. And I think people get confused there a little bit. And it really allows you to get more narrowly focused on your desire zone activities where you add the most value. So today, for example, you know, I'm working about 95% of my desire zone, again, where that's where I have passion and where I have proficiency. And, you know,

there's only like three things that I do. I mean, they're creating content. I'm delivering content like I'm doing right now, or I'm casting vision for the team. If it's something else, that's out of my lane and I give it to somebody else to do, which gives me enormous job satisfaction. It means that, frankly, I don't work that many hours. Like, I never work more than eight hours a day, sometimes six hours a day. But I'm able to do the high leverage things that add value to the team that create revenue for the company that drive our business forward.

And that's exactly how I want to live. Yeah. Well, let me make that applicable to the listeners that we've got because I think, Brandon and I talk about this all the time, Michael. We're always got a part. Here's what you want in a partner. Here's how you should hire an assistant. And I think to a lot of our listeners, they're like, that just doesn't apply to me.

I'm not ready for that, just like you said. But what I've learned is that success comes from taking action, right? And you won't take action on things you hate. If Brandon's success depended on him answering phone calls from tenants and asked him for something, he would have just stopped doing this. He would have gone to teaching piano to people or something that way beneath what his capabilities are because we just can't fight against our nature. If my success depended on me listening to people, vents about their emotions for hours at a time on the phone, I would just go back to waiting

tables or being a cop or something. It's not who I am. When you get the right assistant or partner, not only are they doing things that make you less money, but they're doing things that are draining the ever-loving crap out of you that you need if you want to be successful and actually take action. So that's why we're always hitting on this is there's people that will say, I want to invest in real estate, but I'm just scared to move forward. Well, what that really means if you unpack it is, I am afraid of math, I don't understand numbers,

spreadsheets scare me. So when I have to analyze a property, I get nervous and I get anxious and I shut down and I avoid it and I go watch dancing with the stars. Well, you can try to fight your way through that swamp, step by step, or you can find the person that likes spreadsheets

and partner with that person, and boom, you'll be taking action. And I notice as you progress into more successful realms, you get to the point where the stuff you're talking about really makes sense. I need an executive assistant. I think all three of us are probably very similar. Scheduling something, like I'll literally not go visit Brandon if it means I have to

get online and pick out the flight. I don't know why. I have no idea why it bothers me that much. I just won't do it, right? You can make $10,000, David, if you do this thing. But what I have to do to get there, I'm like, oh, I'll forget. I'm not going to do it. So you get that one right person and all of a sudden, boom, just stuff starts. It feels like things are just falling into place and everything's working out. But really, there's just a person who's in their zone. Whereas that person, if they could make $10,000 to go stand on stage and speak in front of people, they'd never do it. You could pay them $100,000 they wouldn't do it because that's the thing that they're uncomfortable with. And I've noticed that really successful people, maybe not that even,

just mildly successful people. Like take me, if you took away by assistant Krista and I had to start over selling houses as a real estate agent, I just wouldn't do it. You'd be a mess. There's no way. Yeah, I could not go back. Once you've hit that level and you see what it's like, you know, you were saying that, Michael and I just thought, yeah. I mean, as successful as we are, I just wouldn't do it if I didn't have her. And I want that to be a source of encouragement to people listening that it does not suck the whole time like it does when you're starting. You start to pick up these tools and it gets really fun and really energizing. Well, the thing about it is if you don't make that investment, you'll never be able to focus on the things that really bring the money into your business.

You know, you keep thinking. I hear this complaint all the time from entrepreneurs to say, well, I can't afford assistant. Well, guess what? You're never. going to be able to afford one. I mean, this is the risk part of it. You got to make the investment. Take the leap. And I'm not talking about crazy. You don't hire somebody full time, but make the leap. And then see if you can redeploy those same hours that you were doing the things that you hate in the things that you love and see if it moves your business forward. The other thing that I've realized and one of the things I talk about in the book is that a lot of entrepreneurs say, you know, they have a lot of objections to delegation in particular. They say, you know, if I want it done right,

I've got to do it myself. Right. Well, what is? you could hire somebody that was so accomplished and so focused on the stuff they need to be focused on that they're able to actually do it better than you could do it. In fact, I would say if you get the right person, they could do it better than you could imagine doing it. So like I just did a one-day conference here in Nashville, Tennessee, where I live that was on Tuesday. I've got somebody who's responsible for our live events. And so her responsibility is to rent the venue, print the workbooks, you know, everything related to the venue. I didn't see a thing to I walked in that morning to do the sound check of the conference.

So I didn't have to approve anything. I didn't have to get in the weeds on anything. It was better that I could imagine. I was, wow, I was blown away by what she did. That's what happens when you get the right person in the right job and what it frees you up to do. So I could focus on speaking. You know, it reminds me of that story.

I don't know if it was in one of your books or if I read it somewhere else, but there's that common story about Dr. Oz, right? Dr. Oz, the Oprah famous doctor who was doing open heart surgeries. And even when he had his TV show and he was doing like, you know, a magazine and he was like a big deal, he was still doing like a couple hundred open heart surgeries a year. And the reason why is because he literally would walk in and like he was so expertise in one thing. He would do that one cut. And the person's already cut open and he would do that one thing.

Wow. Yeah. It's like that's how he, because that is the most effective thing he could do with his time. He went to school for years and he practiced for decades to learn that thing that nobody else could do. And so some people look at assistants. and they say, and I used to be this way, be like, wow, you're too lazy to do your own work. Come on, Dr. Oz, you're too lazy to cut open a person and have to sew them back up again. Like, wow, look at you big shot.

And it's not about that, right? It's about like your highest and best use is not in cutting open a person or necessarily in doing your own bookkeeping. That's a great, great example. And I think for all of us, you know, as we get older, as we mature, that's the question we've got to ask ourselves is what is that one cut that I can make that makes all the difference, that I can't hire out, that somebody else can't see, that I've got a unique blend of talent and experience to recognize that. But that's the thing I do. And that's why I'm highly compensated.

And the more of that I can do, the better it is for me, the better it is for my business. Yeah. Two points I want to make on that. The first is when you're the person who wants to bust into someone else's world, if you can be the guy or the girl who steps in and says, hey, I got the person cut open. I got all your tools right here.

I did some research. Here's their blood type here. right like and you just walk in the hospital and grab the scalpel and do your thing the emotional reaction that you have when you're the doctor oz is give that person whatever they want to give them the peace of my kingdom i want them here all the time that's the very best way to ingratiate yourself to anybody who you want to learn from yeah the second thing is when i when i talk to high performers because brandon and i were in go abundance we but we rub elbows with people that are doing really well almost every one of them when i say how did you get how did you learn to sell real estate this well

or how did you build this company up? They all say I was working underneath this person or I got really lucky and my first year, I had my desk next to this guy and he took me under his wing. There's always this common theme of somebody taught me the ropes. And once you get to a certain level of success, remember that teaching someone else the ropes is very gratifying and it's going to help them, but it also helps you, right?

So I'm sure Dr. Oz had to learn how to cut those people open himself at first, don't stop with that. Now you say, I will teach somebody else how to do that part so they can support me, but it's not necessarily selfish because you're helping that person learn the same way that you learn. That's the way the apprenticeships and the natural progression really should work. Well, I'll give you an example from the world of book publishing. I don't know if the people that are listening have ever thought about writing a book. I don't know if you guys have written books, but nothing will advance your career faster. I mean, it's awesome to have a podcast. But when you have a published book, and particularly if it hits a bestseller list, it changes everything.

So I wrote like the first seven books that I published, I wrote every single word. I learned how to do that. Then I realized that it was kind of, this is another zone on the freedom compass, but it was a lot of it was in my disinterest zone. So I love the initial concepting. I love the initial ideation process, coming up with the frameworks, the principles. But I hate, and I mean hate the research. You know, I don't like doing all the research. I don't like interviewing, you know, former clients for case studies.

And I thought, what if I made this a team approach and I started hiring that out? I mean, it's similar to the Dr. Oz example. Yep. So now I go in on the front of the project, I call this the 108010 principle where I'm involved in the first 10%. I'm involved in the last 10%, but the middle 80% somebody else can do. So that's how I write my books. That's how I prepare my speeches. That's how I do almost everything today.

I let somebody else do the heavy lifting, but they don't think of it as heavy lifting because guess what? It's in their desire zone. So the guy that's my principal researcher right now, he loves nothing better than to have a problem or something he has to go research and spend hours on the internet or in the library tracking down the best research. And that frees me up to continue to generate ideas. Yeah.

I think, you know, Ryan Holiday is another bestselling author. Probably, you know, in a lot of people's opinion in mine, at least, he's one of the best authors in the world right now. He's doing very, very well. He started as a research assistant for Robert. Yeah, for Robert Green, right? Robert Green and who's the other one that we met Tucker? Yeah, Tucker, yeah. Tucker, yeah. Tucker, yeah. Tucker, yeah. Tucker, Max. I think probably a couple people, right? High level people. He did all the stuff you're describing, Michael, learned at level, and then went on to surpass a lot of those people with his own talent came forward. And it was just like what you said. He went in and he did that 80% that they didn't want to do. But the value that he got from

doing that was like exponentially high. Totally. Yeah. So good. So I have a question. What are some things that you should look for when you're hiring, say, an executive assistant, someone who's going to do the majority of the administrative and organizational things that you as maker or the, I don't know, what would you guys have a word to use in

your world for the kind of the idea person? Yeah. I would just, you know, the world is typically the CEO or the business owner, you know, the entrepreneur or the entrepreneur, whatever. Okay. So the person who's going to assist them whose job it is is to put them in a position to be successful. What are some traits you should look for? And do you have any tips for us on how to find them? Yeah. Well, the first thing I would do is I'm looking for somebody that's servant-hearted who just bites, you know, in service and end-pating needs. And Jim, my assistant is exactly like that. He's constantly thinking. And I've trained him this way, just has a natural bend toward it.

And that is, okay, you know, like I'm going to be doing this podcast. What is Michael needs that he's briefed on this podcast? Is familiar with these guys, familiar with the show, can talk intelligently, whatever it is. You know, I had to do some earlier recording today. He gives me all the background stuff. So he feels like it's a fail if I have to ask the question, like, well, where's this or I need that? He wants to make sure that I never have to ask that question. So somebody that's really servant-hearted, somebody that's obviously competent that has a deep commitment.

commitment to professionalism and to not just kind of resting on their laurels, but somebody that's a voracious learner, somebody that's curious. I'm looking for somebody that's constantly asking questions, always wants to take it to the next level and never get satisfied with what they know. So those are a couple of things. And I think in terms of, David, your other question, which is, you know, how do you find those people? This is a step that a lot of people miss. I think it's important to first get clear yourself on what you're looking for. And so as tedious as this may sound, I really recommend writing out a job description. And in the book, your world class assistant, which is my new book on this topic,

I make available a number of templates including a job description for a world class assistant. But it's a place you can start. But until you're clear on what you want, you won't recognize them when they show up. right? And so what you do is when you're not clear on the job description, you default to kind of charisma or likeability or something else that might be one of the attributes you'd like to have, but it definitely can't be the whole package, right? I mean, Brandon, you were talking about hiring people you like, but maybe you're not that competent. You know, that's a recipe for a disaster. So you want to get crystal clear on what you're looking for. And here's, I think,

the secret. And I go through this process in great detail in the book. You want to, to put out, you know, you want to put as many lines in the water to use a fishing metaphor. You want to put as many lines in the water as you can. Unfortunately, what happens is most entrepreneurs, they make a hire, they have somebody that they like who can fog a mirror and they hire them, right? So instead of actually interviewing lots and lots of candidates, like put the word out on your social media channels, email people that you know, talk to people at church, whatever it is, get the word out so you can get as many people as possible. Because you don't really know who the best candidate is until you're comparing them to other candidates.

Somebody may seem perfectly competent until you start comparing them to other people and you realize, wow, I was shooting too low. There are a lot of amazingly competent people out there. Yeah, that's really good. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, or LLC held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims.

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Both of them have now quickly outkick their coverage. Is that the phrase David, you use all the time? Yeah, I like that. Now they're like running like huge parts of my business. So like I don't, I keep losing my assistance. So first of all, how do you avoid that? And second of all, virtual versus, you know, in your, neighborhood coming over to your house, taking care of stuff. How do you decide between?

Yeah. Okay. So, so, so like I would totally reframe that thing you, you said there about losing executive assistance. It's a great problem. That's a goal. Yeah, okay. That's actually my goal. So like I've lost almost, I've lost almost every executive assistant I've ever had. They've moved up in the company. Yeah. And I love that. I, you know, if I can have them for about three years, that's awesome. You know, then I, then that's a great training ground for other stuff. But I really believe in virtual assistance. One of the things that I realized, even when I was back in the corporate world is that most of my communication with my two full-time assistants was virtual. You know, we're emailing each other, texting each other. And like one of them set, you know,

10 feet outside my desk door. So it was still pretty much virtual. So then I had my first, when I left the corporate world and that first executive assistant that I hired was a virtual assistant. She was in Atlanta. I was here. Made almost zero difference. And here's why. Now, there's a few things. Like, I've got a personal assistant that works at the house now. And so, you know, picking up laundry, buying groceries, running errands, that kind of stuff. You know, you've got to have somebody that's physically present. But here's the deal.

Even that stuff can be done virtually. You know, you can use a courier. You can have, you know, there's all these grocery delivery services now. I mean, almost anything that requires the physical presence of somebody, you know, picking up the laundry, maybe a little tougher. You might have to send a courier for that. but most of the stuff can be done virtually. And I'll tell you the other thing I like about it.

And we used to have our entire team was, almost our entire team was virtual. It was incredibly productive. Because there is something about being in an office that can also be a drag on productivity. Yeah. I actually believe the best system is a hybrid system and that's what we have today. We have a workspace today where people are welcome to come. It's kind of our own co-working space.

People are welcome to come but not required to. come and when people really need to do heads down productivity kind of work, they stay at home and do it. And it's amazing what they get done. When they need to do a meeting or need to socialize or need to be part of the group, they can come into the office and that's good too. So I kind of like both. Yeah. Yeah, that's fantastic. How do you make sure virtual assistants are working? Do you ever worry about that? Do you think they're taking advantage of you? No, never. Here's the thing. And I would say this for people inside the office too. If you want to create a soul killing culture, measure people's productivity by the time they're butts in the seat. Yeah. Right. So the way to measure their productivity is by

the results they deliver. And honestly, I hold people accountable for results. I mean, our whole company is driven, as you might imagine, given what I've written, on goal setting. So we make sure that the team overall has three goals for the quarter. I personally have three goals for the quarter. Everybody in our organization has their three goals for the quarter. One goal, every goal has to have an owner. Somebody of my organization is going to own it. I hold them accountable for those results.

Honestly, I don't care if it takes them six hours a day or 12 hours a day, the results are what's important. That makes sense? It does. Yeah, that's perfect. One thing I heard somebody say, I think it was Gary Gunderson. And I've heard other people say, but he just said it very succinctly, was delegate responsibility, not tasks. Totally.

Right? Like everybody who's doing this well says the same thing. The hard part is most people who want to be an assistant are secretly trying to avoid taking responsibility. That's why they want to be the assistant, right? So you've got to find that assistant who understands it is my job to put this person in a place to succeed by doing what your assistant. I believe he said his name Jim is, which is Michael should never have to ask a question or look for something. It should already be right there because he took responsibility of that realm, what that world was, and therefore he's a very good servant to you.

So for people listening that are trying to figure out, how do I become more successful, how do I make more money, how do I get Brandon Turner to let me come work for him? If you're the person who can take over responsibility for a result that he wants, not just give me a list of tasks and tell me what you want me to do, you will quickly find yourself on the fast track. That's so good. One of the things that I teach in Free to Focus about delegation,

And that chapter, if I don't say so, it's amazing because I talk about the five levels of delegation and understanding the difference between these different levels of delegation. But I talk about how to delegate effectively by creating a clear vision for what you want done. In other words, help the person you're delegating to. Picture the end result that you want. What do you see? You know, visualize that. Write it down. It doesn't take you long.

So on a major delegation, I may take 15 or 20 minutes to actually write it down so that both of us have a close. clear understanding and agreement about what the end product looks like. Then I don't micromanage how they get it done. You know, I don't care if they buy this thing from that company or that company. But if I've given them budget parameters and a clear outcome, again, I don't care how they get it done. All I care about is the end result. Yeah.

How are, Brandon? Well, I was wondering, do you then, how do you feel about manuals in training versus like how much, I've been told in the past that I should have a detailed step-by-step manual for exactly how to do everything in my business, kind of e-myth style. But then others say that the speed of which the world works today just changes too much by the time you're done with your manual. Nobody looks at it again. It's on the shelf and it's sitting there. How do you balance that between training people and giving them a manual or how to do something and just letting them do it themselves? Where do you find your way in there? Yeah. So I actually believe in those kinds of

process workflows or manuals. And we as in our company, a application called Sweet Process. and it's an online app that's fantastic, but it allows you to document a workflow. But here's the key thing. We say to people, look, here's how I did it. This is the workflow. Feel free to improve it. But this gives you a starting place.

I'll give you a clear example. So back when I started my podcast, Lead to Win, I was doing everything. You know, I was doing the show prep. I was doing the recording. I was doing the editing. I was doing the show notes. I was doing the upload delipson.

I was doing every aspect. of it. But I hated it. So I documented every part of it. And at that time, I was just using Evernote. So I would open a note. I documented the process. You know, here's the 12 steps that I follow. And then when I hired somebody that could assist me, I said, look, there's probably a better way to do this, but this is how I've been doing it. So use this as a track to run on, but improve it as much as you want. But this at least gives you a starting place. Yeah, that makes a hybrid of both, right? Like you're a, you're giving them the freedom to do what they want. And, and B, you're giving them the structure to get started. And that's really good because I found when I have to build something from

scratch, it's really hard. Remember when you were a kid and you were trying to write a paper? The hardest part was getting it started, right? But if you give me some momentum moving into it and then my juices get to kick in where I want to go from here is a much more natural state. And that's, I think, what someone could do with that method. Here's another major hack. So a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck because they think, I just don't have the mind to document this stuff. And it sounds so tedious. Give the person. who's working for you the responsibility of doing that. So I could say, for example, to Jim, look, I want you to handle my email inbox, which he does, but I want you to document exactly how

you do it so that if you're taken out, you know, if a beer truck hits you and I got to replace you, somebody can come right in and know how you do it. So I've given him the responsibility of documenting those procedures, so I don't really have to worry about it. Yeah, I've been doing that lately with a program called Loom, L-O-O-M. Are you familiar with? Oh, sure. Okay, yeah, you quick video, record, screen recordings and it stays it in the cloud right there for you. Yeah, it's been. That's a great way to do it. Yeah, it's been helping me a lot. So I just label it like how to do this thing or how to research a property or how to find a property or, you know, whatever. And so now I have all these in my loom archive that I can give to people in the future. And now it's a video that they can go and then

making, and I'm having my assistants actually make manuals then like screen grabbing my video, which took me, I had to do it anyway, right? So I'm just recording a video while I'm doing a lot of tasks. And so my guess is, my guess is. My guess is. says that other people, entrepreneurs that are following you, would pay you hundreds of dollars for an online digital version of that. Yeah. In our company, we say everything that we do is eventually a product. Ah, that's cool.

So how can we productize everything? So if we're learning something, if we're doing something in the company, it's eventually going to be a product that we're going to sell. That's smart. I should figure out how to do that. We have a pro membership of bigger pockets and we have tens of thousands of pro members. But it'd be cool to offer like, hey, if you're a pro member, you get access to the Brandon and David's archive of how we do stuff.

That'd be cool. That's a great idea of myself. You know, one thing I've noticed is we all, at least me, myself, I have said to every single assistant I've ever hired, I want you to do what Brandon just said, what you just said, Michael, I want you to make a database of what you do

is to someone else. Not one of them has ever actually done that, which is, I mean, totally that's my responsibility as their boss that I let them get away with that. Eventually, I had to let them go because they didn't. But what I found is that every single one of them told me they would do it. And that's just one of the sources of to me as a new entrepreneur and really a new business owner trying to learn what do I look for

in somebody? How do I know? How do I get them to perform the way they said they would? And then there's some hires that just seem like I don't have to tell them hardly anything. I mean, they just jump in and they start doing that on their own. And I give them the tiniest bit of direction and they get so much progress. Can you share, Michael, maybe with some of the insight you've learned of doing this for a while and having successful hires and non-successful of what you look for, maybe is track record more important, is attitude? Like how do you kind of of what are you looking for? Well, definitely attitude is important.

Character's the most important of all. You know, I want somebody who is a person that has integrity and honesty, and those are two different things, you know, integrity. And by the way, this comes from Stephen Covey. You know, integrity is basically, you know, somebody that can act in a way that's true and honest and making their actions line up with their words. So if I tell you I'm going to do something, by God, I'm going to do it. that's integrity.

Honesty is making your words line up with your actions. So if I didn't do something, I'm going to tell you. I'm not going to try to fake it. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm going to be honest. So I'm looking for that kind of character. Then definitely attitude, man, the last thing I want is an emotional vampire, somebody that's got a negative mindset that's going to drag down the team.

And I talk about this and free to focus, but there's a study that was done that people who are low performers will drag down the performance of anybody within 20 feet of their desk by on average 25%. So a high performer, on the other hand, lifts the team. And so you want somebody that's got the right attitude that comes into it. Most of the stuff that they need trained on, if they've got the right character, if they've got the right attitude, and if they got, you know, basic intelligence, I can train most of the other stuff that they need. And are you looking at track record primarily to determine if you can trust that what they say is what they're going to do when hiring them. Definitely. I mean, I would say that checking their references is critically

important. But the problem is when you get somebody on the phone to check a reference, people are very reluctant in a culture where everybody sues everybody to really give you the truth. So here's what I like to ask the candidate. We have this question in the book. I like to ask the candidate. I said, look, I'm going to be talking to your references. What will they tell me about you, particularly what your shortcomings are? That's good. So now of a sudden, they're going to volunteer it because they think I'm going to be checking. And so they might as well get it out there on the table first.

You have some really good advice for how to have those conversations, right? You mind sharing that? Are you talking about the, it wasn't my idea. I heard somebody say this advice once in a lot. I don't know if this is where you were going with this, but they basically said because of the whole, like nobody wants to, everyone's very guarded about what they say about somebody. They said they will, when they're interviewing, they'll contact, you know, the references. But they, I can't remember who it was. I should give them a shout out because it was here on the podcast.

But they said they will only hire someone if the person given the reference is selling them on the person versus guarded. Because of it. Right. It's like, yeah. If they're like, oh, yeah, they showed up. They were very punctual. They were very good. Or you've got to hire Jenny.

She's, oh my gosh. she's incredible. That means she really was incredible versus the garden. Yeah, I thought that was awesome. You know, the other thing we do too is almost for every job. And you can't do this at the highest level necessarily, but we will give people work that we're going to be asking them to do and to do a real live assignment. And we'll pay them to do it.

But we want to see the work product. So for example, if we're hiring, we recently hired a marketing director. And this is a person that was going to be reporting to our chief marketing officer. and so she gave the assignment to about five of the final candidates. She said, I want you to create a marketing plan for a new product that we're about to introduce. Here's sort of the parameters. Here's kind of what I'm looking for. But was it real specific?

And said, just produce it. We'll pay you for the plan. You know, it was a couple hundred bucks. But it was like unbelievable how different their approaches were. You get inside their thinking. You see how they approach a project. And you see what the final product is. And it tells you a lot about the qualifications.

the candidate. Oh, so good. Yeah, so good. Because you never really know how somebody's going to be until you have them do something for you. And then everything becomes much more clear. That's great. You know what that feeling like you make the assignment and it's like their first day of the job, you make the assignment a couple days later, you get it back and you start thinking, oh my gosh, I think I hired the wrong person. Oh my. So true show you, Michael. I hired an assistant one time. I hope she's not listening. Hired an assistant one time. My first time ever rig really jump into assistant. And I hired her to be my assistant. Now, I work online majority of time, whether it's bigger pocket stuff or my real estate. And the first day, I set her up with this computer.

And she goes on there, what does she say? She asked a question that was, I wish I guess remember exactly what it, but basically like, what are all these little dots all over the screen? It was the icons. Like, she didn't know what a computer was, like how it worked. And she couldn't figure out how, what a folder, how like, the foundational of computer life. Yeah, I was like, oh, like that day, I like, I did this. Like, oh my gosh. just hired what it took me like nine months to like get that out the door like that was so. And we like I just had to I did create it. Yeah, I had to create a whole new job for her.

Because like I realized like right then the first day she doesn't know how to work the computer. How did I not? How did I not? Yeah. Anyway, crazy. All right. With that, I want to move over to the last segment of the show. This is our famous four.

All right. The famous four are the same four questions we ask every guest every week here. And I want to fire me at you. The first one doesn't really relate to you. So I'm probably going to skip it. Do you have a favorite real estate book? But I'll kind of skip that one to the second question and let David take it. So you basically talked a lot and didn't say anything.

Very much. All right. So here's a real question for you, Michael. What is your favorite business book? Man, I've got so many, and I'm reading them constantly. But I will say that the myth had a huge impact on me. And it stopped me from thinking like a technician. and started me thinking like an entrepreneur.

And I've made even a further distinction that I want to be an owner, not an operator. You know, and that's like in every business that I own, I don't want the business so dependent upon me that if I were to go away or if I wanted to take three months off, and I do take 30 days off every summer, I want it to keep functioning. But the E-MyMyth was the first book that actually got me thinking that way. That's great. But Brandon and Josh interviewed Michael Gerber. on episode 125. Thank you, Kevin, for putting that out there. But it was a good show. So we normally

we ask you for two books. I'm going to ask you for a second book. Of your books, which do you think is your favorite or the best? I think free to focus. Yeah. I think free to focus. I got it right here. It's an approach to productivity that you just don't hear. And it's all about achieving more by doing less. And it gives you an entire system, end to end system for doing that, that very thing. I see why Brandon and it likes that book, just where you're telling me right now. That's just everything. Thank you. It's me.

Yeah, an awesome book. Very, very good. I mean, all your stuff has been fantastic. But, oh, by the way, you mentioned the operator thing. I'll let you ask the question, but you mentioned an operator thing. One thing that made a big impact on me was, I mean, obviously, Eameth was huge. But in a related note on that, Robert Kiyosaki had that book, Cashful Quadrant. And he talks about there's four types of like business people.

There's employees, self-employed, business owners, and investors. and about how most of the world lives in employee and self-employed. But I don't want to be self-employed because that means, like you were just saying, that means you're operating everything. I want to be the business owner or the investor. And those are the two quadrants I want to be in. I just that makes a lot of sense. There's another book, too, that I just recently read that I want to recommend that's in the same vein.

And it's a book called Clockwork by Mike, Michael Lewis. And the subtitle of Design Your Business to Run Itself. I got that one right here. He's got that book. I love that book. That's a great book. Very cool. All right, David, question number three.

Next question. I'm getting to hog them all. What are some of your hobbies? Oh, awesome. Well, first of all, hobbies are a high priority for me because all the research shows, Chapter 3 of Free to Focus talks about rejuvenation that when you engage in play, it activates a part of your brain that's essential for greater creativity and greater productivity. So I really pursue hobbies as a way.

of making sure that I'm bringing my best self to work. But I have two hobbies that I love and I spend increasing amount of time doing. Fly fishing. That's number one. And I took up playing the Native American flute about two years ago. Really? So like when I go fishing, I hire a guide because I want to learn from the very best and I want to catch fish. Native American flute playing, I hired one of the world's top Native American flute players.

And I meet with him every two weeks via Zoom. and man, I love that. That's become a real passion of mine. That is so cool. I kind of want to ask, how deep was your candidate pool of Native American flute players to pick from when you wanted to find the best coach?

Well, there's only two, but as it turns out, like every other hobby, you know, it's an entire industry of people and shows and podcasts and flute makers and all that kind of stuff. That's what's the main on the internet. Isn't that you guys great about the internet? Is that like no matter how obscure something is? Like there's a tribe around that thing.

Yeah, it's great. All right. Last question from me of the day. What do you think separates successful? I'll say anybody, successful business owners or even successful at anything, real estate, whatever, from those who give up on their ambitions, they fail at their ambitions or they just don't get started at all. They just never take that for a step.

What separates the people if you had to narrow it down? Well, you know, some people talk about grit. I kind of thought you were going in a different direction. So I had a different answer for that, where that question was going. But I, you can go there anyway. Well, I, I, you know, I, what is, how I was going to answer it?

I thought you were going in the direction of what keeps people successful, people that are successful. How do they stay successful? An equally good question. Okay. So the thing that I find is the more successful you become, the more time you have to allocate to thinking. And so your job becomes more about thinking than doing.

In my most recent podcast episode, my podcast is called Lead to Win, I did a thing. I did a thing on, I call it the fit model of thinking, F-F-F-I-T, but it stands for frequent, focused, intentional thinking. And I break that apart in that podcast episode, but there's got to be a regular time that you set apart where you're really focused on solving some deep problem in your business or creating some exciting breakthrough in your business. And you've got to be intentional about it.

You know, what schedule gets done, And so it's got to be in your calendar. It's got to be a commitment that you don't break. And you just got to get alone and think. You know, you've got to, because most of the breakthroughs in your business, the thing that'll take you to the next level is a thinking breakthrough. It's not just brute force of doing more. It's got to be in the thought process.

Yeah, so good. I actually just watched the master class or part of it this morning with Bob Eiger, I think is his name right, from the CEO of Disney. Yeah, and like he made that exact point. Like a big part of his job is just to sit there and quiet and think. And I was like, yeah, the more successful you are, the more important that is. Cal Newport said that too. He likes to walk and think.

He likes to get the juices kind of flowing. Cal Newport's awesome. Yeah, he is. Really like that guy. Cal, we love you, even though we never really expressed it. David, take us out. Last question of the day. This has been a terrific interview.

Thank you very much, Michael. You clearly know what you're talking about. Can you tell us where people can find out more about you? Yeah, the best place, the one stop shopping is to go to Michael. Michael Hyatt.com, and that's Hyatt, like the Hyatt Hotels at H-Y-A-T-T. Unfortunately, no connection. Oh, too bad. Well, if you were connected to the Hyatt hotels, you probably wouldn't have had to build the way you built. You wouldn't have the insight to show us, yes, exactly.

There you go. All right. Well, thank you very much, Michael has been fantastic. Really appreciate it. Guys, thanks for having me on. Great to be with you. Perfect. All right. Now was our interview with Michael Hyatt. Awesome, awesome, awesome stuff. What do you think, David? I love the way he communicates. He's straightforward, but he's still easy to listen. too. He's talked about this enough that he can really communicate those points clearly and succinctly, but they're so big. I mean, we just, you and I see this so often, the people that are operating a high level, high level investors, high level business people, high level authors. There's these patterns that show up in their success. And a huge one is finding people to help you

do the stuff that you don't like doing. Yep, that's true. And that's why I'm always looking for new people. And I know you are as well. And I really like your point you made earlier about, you said, if you can like outsource these things, then they actually get done. I wanted to actually stress that more, but we moved on in the conversation. So I want to revisit it real quick here, what I mean by that.

It's like when you're a real estate investor, it's process that matters more than outcome, really, and almost everything. I'm almost eminated business, right? It's like when you want to lose weight, the process of losing weight matters more than like the number on the scale. It's are you working out?

Are you lifting weights? Are you running? Are you eating healthy? The same thing is true for real estate. So the process of things like how many deals did you analyze? How many phone calls did you make? How many leads did you get?

How many direct mail letters did you send out? Those are all process things. The problem is entrepreneurs like myself and probably you, David, can identify with this. We don't oftentimes work our process very well. Like we like the idea of it. When it comes down to the nitty gritty of actually making phone calls, we're not always that good at it. I know I'm really not that good at it. So by hiring other people, some people are just really good at process, especially when their job is to do that process.

I need you to just do the A, B, C, D&E. I mean, when I worked at a grocery store when I was 16 years old, like my process was like put groceries in a bag, put it on a cart and wheel it out to their car. Like the CEO of that grocery chain, he wasn't going to do that. But that was my job. And so I did it really well because I was just good at process stuff.

So I guess that's one way that we can incorporate this in our real estate is like find out what those processes are that are vitally important to your business and then figure out how somebody else can do those so they actually. get done versus just, oh, yeah, I know I need to do that or I should do that. Well, and you usually have to start off doing it yourself. You make the process, you execute the process. And if you don't do, if either you don't make a process, you won't do much. And if you don't execute, you won't get anything done.

You have to do both. But once you've done both, you've earned the right to leverage, to bring somebody else in. And the cool part is that you've given them a job description. Like, hey, here's what I do. You go do it. Oh, here's how I do it. You go do that. And that's really the process of how you build a business.

I've told people it's a lot like, like, is it salmytosis or meiosis? You learned about it when you were in school. You start off with like one little cell and it splits into two. And then those two cells each split into two more, right? You start off doing all of your tasks. It's called making a baby. That's what you call it. Which you've been doing very successfully.

I mean, hopefully by now you've got a new little baby boy, right? I've got another nephew. Hopefully right now. Yeah, hopefully. All right. Well, this is about you though, Brandon. We're talking about our guests right now. It's not always about.

me, David. Stop trying to make it about me. So you start off doing everything and then you split those tasks off like what Michael said. And then once that person's overwhelmed, you split their tasks off. And like for me in my business right now, I really want an executive assistant. I really want someone that can come in and I can say, hey, here's all this stuff I want to do and they can come up with the process to accomplish that goal. So anyone who knows a really talented executive assistant that's looking for a job that wants to move to California, hit me up because I definitely want that. And you will see like with you with Open Door Capital, how quickly did you, you start to scale once you had the pieces in place, right?

Wasn't it just like immediately? Yep, it really was. I say there's like four pieces to that. It's like vision. If you have a good vision, you have the right team, you have the right leadership of that team and everyone's taking the right actions, the VTLA, and I need a better acronym for that. But when I have a better acronym, that will be a future book. But when you have vision, team, leadership, and action, like it's just explosive growth.

And the big piece of that, probably the biggest piece of that is team. How do you build that team? And it starts, I think probably the most important first hire for most people is going to be that assistance. So you can stop doing your $2 an hour task of checking your email or responding to direct messages on Instagram or whatever it is that you're wasting time doing. Let somebody else handle that stuff, mowing the lawn, even maybe cooking your meals. I don't a lot of people who just hire somebody to cook their meals because that's not what they don't like cooking. And it takes them a lot of time. So if they can pay 20 bucks but have an entire meal delivered for their family, let's just do that instead.

And so it's finding other ways to outsource it to delegate. and that's all what Michael was talking about today and why this applies to real estate investors so much. Yeah, because real estate investors have to take action. And if there's parts of your personality that are preventing you from taking action, assistant can often help you overcome that. Yeah.

What are some of the things that you can think of? If we can do a quick brainstorming here before we let people go, that an assistant should be able to help you with. Like, what are some things that investors can do in terms of like helping somebody grow their real estate business? I mentioned earlier, just to start the process, like they could be helping take phone calls.

Like, if you got tenants, have them start taking phone calls so you don't have to deal with the phone call side of things. And I don't know people are like, well, it's only like two hours a week or two hours a month. It doesn't matter. It's the practice, the habit of learning to get things outsourced. So that's one thing. What else you got? Yeah.

So what I do in my business is I'm running it. And as stuff comes in, I start thinking with every 100% of what comes in, who can I give this to do and how can I give it to them to do? So let's say that I get an email from a property management company that says, hey, Mr. Green, your water heater is leaking at this property. What do you want us to do? Because I have them so that they ask me, rather than them just send their $1,000 contractor, maybe I want to fix it.

So my brain thinks, okay, I want three quotes from handymen. All right, well, I don't have three handymen. Well, I'm going to have to go online and look for handymen. That's an assistant job, right? Make a spreadsheet, get three different handymen's numbers from Yelps. Call them, tell them this is what we need and ask them what they would charge to do it, right? And maybe get referrals, too. That would be a great job for an assistant.

Like get referral. You get three referrals from three different contractors, report back to me what you found. Oh, would that be amazing? Like, it's one of those things. We know we should do that. As an entrepreneur, I know that I should get three bids on a project and get referrals from those contractors. I know that.

Do I ever do that? Hardly ever. Like, I rarely do it. Why? Because I'm busy. Yep. So then it comes back to bite me later on. And then I regret.

And you don't like talking on the phone. So if you don't like talking on the phone, you're going to make it as quick and painless as possible. Yep. You'll pay later. You'll pay in the end when you've overpaid or your contractor doesn't show up and you're left without a backup plan. When you give it to an assistant to do, that's their job.

They're going to do it. Now, what happens is they don't want to be responsible for the whole thing going wrong. So your assistant doesn't want to choose which of the handymen most likely you're going to go with. So they're going to bring it back to you. Here's the three people. Here's what they said. Here's the bids. Now, that's fine because we like making decisions.

We just don't like executing our decision, right? Yeah. So I'll say, okay, assistant, go with this one. Tell them to go look at it and report back to us and what the labor is going to be, what the materials are going to be. And that person reports to the assistant, not to David, because David may not be answering his phone. David may be doing something else. The assistant puts it on my calendar, comes and talks to me, emails me, whatever I want. Here's what they said. Okay, tell him good to go and find out how long it's going to be. So as you're seeing,

like, that's kind of the rhythm and the flow of how this relationship should work. It's fine if they come to me with a five to ten second question, what do I do, A or B? Because you or I, we're really good with knowing how to make those decisions. But the execution, of that. I don't want to have to call the handyman. He doesn't answer his phone. I got to remember to call him later. I forget two days go by. Oh, yeah, I never talked to that guy. I'm irritated. The assistants will handle that. They make reminders with the CRM that I gave them to get to get a hold of that person. And that's just for one little thing, like when something breaks. Everything that crosses your path, you can then start to create a very similar structure, which empowers them to handle it for you. And the more experience that they get solving these problems, the more confident they get. They get to the point where they're They're like, I don't even need to tell David. These are the three quotes. This is obviously the best one, right? I'm going to go ahead and tell him to start.

And then I'm going to say, hey, David, I told the guy to start any objections. Oh, wow. Thanks. That sounds great. Let me know how it goes. Boom. Now they're starting to take over responsibility for the result instead of just the task that I that I gave them.

And that's really simple, right? It doesn't have to be terrible. Let's say, Brandon, you say, I want to talk to 10 brokers today, but it's got to be me because I know how to talk to the brokers. Well, your assistant can go get the phone numbers of all those brokers. She can call their assistant and say, hey, Brandon wants to call you at 2 o'clock on Friday. Does that work?

And she can schedule 10 conversations, you know, or maybe 10 is a lot in one day. But one for two, one for 2.30, one for 3, 1 for 3.30. So that you don't have to worry about that broker not answering his phone. It's already set up and scheduled. You make the call. You have the conversation. You take some notes. The assistant takes those notes.

And she sees what your follow-up request was she executes or he executes the follow-up request. That will make you massively more successful once you've incorporated follow-up an organization so that you're not going to say, oh, I don't want to make those phone calls. Too bad, dude, you got a list sitting right there on your desk and it's scheduled on your phone or on your calendar to make those calls. You're like 400% more likely to actually do it under that circumstance. You're right. There's a book out there by Brendan Burchard called the High Performance Habits.

Have you read that one? No, but you've talked about it. You actually got it for me, I think. I need to read it. You sent it to me. How rude? You know, like, I'm never going to send you a book again. I shouldn't have said that because you clearly forgot.

Are you turning this back on me? You don't even care about me to remember what books you send. That was a very manipulative move. That way. All right. So on that note, one of the habits that he talks about in there that high performers have is necessity. They facilitate necessity in their life. In other words, things like that force you, whether it's in terms of like I have to do this because I have a strong reason like my kid, my wife, my family.

Or like it's already on my calendar. I'm going to show up. because most of us, if we have an appointment with somebody, we're going to show up to it. And so high performers find ways to force necessity to get things done. That way you're not relying on free will or willpower. You're relying on necessity. It's just on my schedule, I've got to get done.

And an assistant can make that happen. That's what smart people do. If you're smart and you need to get a hold of me, if you get a hold of my assistant and tell them, it's going to get in front of me. If you text me, you become one of the 400 messages I haven't seen, right? And I do that too, right? When I'm trying to get a hold of somebody who's like hard to get a hold of,

like actually I won't say it, but I'm working on getting a high profile person for our podcast. When he emails me, I'm like, what's your assistance email? Right? Because he's not going to keep emailing me, but if I get his assistance email, boom, that's how it's going to get in front of them. That's how we actually got Tim Ferriss on the show back in the day

when we talked to Tim. It was through a good friend of Tim Ferriss. Okay, yeah, so fine. All right, well, this has been fantastic. I hope this was helpful for you guys, again, thinking about how to take the stuff Michael was talking about today and applying it to your real estate. a lot about goals. Here we are at the beginning of the year. I want to encourage you to set some big

goals. And in fact, depending on when you're listening to this, I'm actually doing a live, free webinar here at the start of the year. In fact, I might even do it like two weeks in a row just to make sure that everyone can get to it. It's going to be on how to make 2020 your best real estate year ever. It's going to be awesome. We're going to have tens of thousands of people signed up for this thing. So make sure you sign up for it and learn how to set the right goals and everything we talked about today, how to incorporate it into your business. So make sure you go to biggerpockets.com slash webinar to sign up for that. And that's all I got. So David, you want to get us out of here? Yeah, this has been fantastic. Thank you guys for hanging around to listen to Brandon and I.

I really hope that this brought some clarity to how you can take the next step in your investing business because we want to see you guys build wealth. This is David Green for Brandon, fear of commitment, but addicted to success Turner. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.

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