EntreLeadership - #113: Michael Hyatt—The Power of One Conversation

Episode Date: September 21, 2015

#113: Michael Hyatt—The Power of One Conversation One of our most popular guests, leadership and personal growth expert Michael Hyatt, returns to the podcast for a great conversation on conversation. Plus he shares tips on improving yourself, failing forward, and why you need to take a nap every day.   entreleadership.com/podcast Super Selling Cheat Sheet    Another great episode sponsored by our friends at Infusionsoft.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are coming to you from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, and for leaders. We're thankful for your download. Our feature conversation this episode, our guest is Mike Hyatt. He lives and works, just a couple miles from our world headquarters here, and this guy is a guru. This guy understands personal growth leadership and more one of the most popular leadership personal growth blogs in America.

And so I asked him to come in and I wanted to talk about some of his most popular posts. Let's dive deep. And this is really funny. You're going to get so much out of this. Also, we're going to help you with sales. All throughout the month of September, our theme at Entree Leadership and helping you grow is around sales. Our very own Ramsey personality, Chris Hogan, does a wildly popular talk at our Entree leadership events. on the disc personality profiles.

Specifically, he kind of tunes us into, once we know who we are, how do we then use that same disc to sell better, to sell to the people that we need to know better? This really is a unique approach. This is going to help you with sales. So let's get right to it. We thought we'd pull a clip from a recent talk that he gave at an entree leadership one day. This is going to help you big time.

Let's get right to it. Here is Chris Hogan on the entree leadership stage. Different personality styles will approach that apex of a buying decision in different styles. So you look at that. We want to study it. We want to know it. You know a decisive person is going to make a decision quick. That car that I told you all I bought, I was on the car lot for 30 minutes.

I went, I looked at it, the man brought the keys out. I drove it, okay? 15-minute test drive came back and was right and checked. 30 minutes, maybe 40 tops. I didn't have time. I wanted to get it done. Why? Because I had done all this research.

I knew what I was looking for. I was ready to make it happen. Same thing with your product or service. Have your sales team know that, hey, if that person is a D, you just kind of want to stay out of their way. You won't let them kind of go through because you're moving through the process. They know. The I, they want to celebrate as they make the purchase.

They want to talk about how it's going to help people, who all it's going to help, and they want to tell you a little bit about it. as a salesperson, slow down and celebrate with them. Literally. Slow down and celebrate with them. Talk about it. Turn off sales mode for a little bit and now turn on relationship mode.

Talk to them. Because I can tell you, the interactive, that individual is going to be a walking, talking billboard for your product or service if you handle it the right way. Why? We know they can already make friends in the dark. Right? They can make friends anywhere and everywhere.

Well, if you serve them really well, they're going to tell all those people they know about how well you serve them. Those are also the kind of people you want to put cards in their hand. I promise you they'll give them out or take it a step further. Offer them an incentive or some kind of prize if some of their friends come do business with you. Watch what happens.

A $5 gift card will be like a million dollars to an eye. Number one, especially if you write a thank you note and put that gift card in there and say, hey, thank you for referring so-and-so. Watch what happens. They're going to repeat the behavior because they want another note. So with that, that interactive, that's a huge opportunity for your business. The stabilizing personality, they've got to be reassured. So you're going to have to slow way down.

Slow way down with them. Reassure them. Don't try to pressure sell them because they will shut down. Now, as you deal with an S, you want to keep in mind, that stabilizing personality can be a dangerous person for a salesperson. You know why? They're going to take every phone call you make, and they're going to talk to you every time you want to talk. And they're going to listen. They're going to track with you.

They're going to listen. And then they're still going to have to do what? Think. You're still going to have to think about it. So the next thing you know, you're like, well, man, oh man, I've had 14 calls with us. one individual. And we're still here at phase number one. So slow down, build their trust, build credibility with them, and then watch what happens. The cautious personality is going to need more details, even before the final purchasing decision. They're going to want those last

little bit of information. Well, let's teach ourselves people to expect this. Don't get mad all of a sudden. And imagine if you're dealing with a D salesperson. Okay? They've done this thing and they've sent some emails, they've sent them some, and all of a sudden now this cautious personality is asking for a few more pieces of data. Oh, that could break up the deal. But if that D personality understands this and says, you know what, they're going to always need information as we walk through this. If I know this, I can expect it, and now I don't have to get mad. And so you look at that, the discharge, and really begin to integrate that into your sales process. Prepare your sales team. Even your admin, your receptionist people, help them understand that, you know what, if you're

dealing with vendors that are coming in and out, help them to understand how they need to know it and interact with people as well. All right, I hope you enjoyed that. And we want to continue to help you along this route of how do you sell better? Because at the end of the day, no matter what business you're in, at some point, we're always selling. And so we need to know how to do it better. And so, Andre leadership, our team has put together some great resources that all free. Here are the three things you're going to get this month. You're going to get a super selling cheat sheet. Simply put, this is just a checklist for you and your sales team. Great for leaders and great for the rest of your team. Then we're going to give you a disc personality

styles cheat sheet. So once you really dive in and understand the disc personalities, this cheat sheet helps you communicate within the styles. Very, very helpful. And then finally, we're going to give you some sample closes, right? Some classics that help you close the deal. they stand the test of time. All of that, absolutely free. All you're going to do is text the word super sales. That's plural. Super sales, and you text it all as one word.

Super sales to 33444-4. That's 33-44-4-text the word super sales, and you will get all three of those amazing resources. All right, really excited to bring this conversation with you. Mike Hyatt is a lifelong learner. There's so many things that I admire about. Mike, and I learned from him, privileged to be his friend for a long time, about 15 years now. But the thing that I admire most about Mike, he's very, very successful, but he is always

learning something new. Always. You can't follow the guy on Twitter for more than three days without him talking about something new that he's learning. And I think that's a wonderful example to all of us. So this is a fun perspective. You could talk to Mike Hyatt for days about things that would help you grow as a leader and as an individual.

We decided to kind of create the conversation around some of his. his most popular blog post at Michael Hyatt.com. Here is that conversation. Mike, good to have you back in studio. You are a neighbor, and I like people to know this, like two miles or less from here. Literally, I drove over here in five minutes. It's always, it was awesome. Great to have you in studio. Thank you. I want to start off with something local. Okay. Our audience knows we're here in the Music City. And I saw something on your blog recently that you kind of just invited people. Hey, why don't you come to Nashville? There are so many media types that are now flocking to this area. It's known as like this creative music place and movie stars and the people are shooting shows here.

But the media, the creative, the bloggers, the podcasters, there you go. Yeah. I thought that was really neat. And I kind of swelled up with pride when I read that. Why did you say that? Well, I just noticed that where you do, what you do is important. You know, there's a reason why all the people that are in computers, you know, all that coalesces around Silicon Valley.

And why Detroit, for years, was a center for the automotive industry. and why this was a center for the music industry. But now there are so many new media people that are here in Nashville and particularly in Franklin, Tennessee, that we can learn from one another. We can grow together. We can challenge one another. So I love that. And I want to add on to that. I have found that it is a fun community.

Like it's tight-knit. Everybody's kind of helping. It's an abundant kind of relationship. It is. It is. Not scarcity. No. That's totally right.

And I think people are really generous here. And people are willing to help and go out of their way to help. And I love that. All right. You know our audience well, long time friend of days. This is the Entry Leader podcast. I want to go back to the start of what you're doing now. And I know it's evolved so much.

But take us back. Here you are. CEO Thomas Nelson. And you make the transition to go out on your own. Take us back. Yeah. So I had a good gig. A great gig.

I'd been in that role for six years. But I'd taken the company private. Then we ended up selling it to Harper Collins. So it was the perfect time for me to do it. what I'd always wanted to do, which was to write and to speak full-time. And I thought, maybe it's now or never. And so I launched out. It was a little bit scary, but, and I thought initially it would be just me kind of as a

solopreneur, but then it kind of blew up. You know, my book platform, get noticed in a noisy world, got on the New York Times list. I started bringing a lot of speaking engagements. Plus, I started seeing a lot of other ancillary opportunities, which, by the way, completely reshaped my thinking about books. You know, a book is just a really nice business card that opens all kinds of opportunities. That's right.

So from there, we started Platform University, we started the platform conference and a lot of other things. So today, I have a multi-million dollar company with about 14 people working for me, and we're still kind of virtual. We have an office in Franklin, but most of the people live around the country. And we're just having a blast. We've doubled every year since we've started in terms of size. How many years has this new venture been going on?

So four years. Four years. All right, I want to go back. You said at the start of your answer to that question, I had some fear. Oh, we'd know this. Yeah. But I want to know what were the fears relative to you at that point in your career with your experience. What were the specific fears?

Yeah, I think the fears that I had, well, first of all, I had my own business back in the 90s, and it failed. Catastrophically so. In fact, it failed so badly that all of our money was pledged to banks. And so we didn't even have enough assets to go broke. That's really bad, actually. When you said that, I was thinking, I wonder how bad this was. And now that you described it, that's bad. Yeah, you know, whatever step below bankrupt is, we were there.

So it was a really painful experience. And I worked myself back and did really well in the corporate world. But I still had that kind of nighing fear. Do I have what it takes? You know, can I go out of my own? You know, maybe I've just been the beneficiary of this infrastructure, this big company that I was running. But if I had to go out of my own, could I really pull it off? So it honestly did keep me awake at nights.

So you launch out on your own. Yep. Real quick, kind of a speed round, I'm going to bring you around to something. I think folks really want to hear. What would you say the time period was how long before you really caught some serious traction? From day one to what? Let me just think here for a second. I would say it was probably about seven or eight months.

Okay, that's pretty quick. Yeah. I mean, enough traction. It took me a year to replace my salary. Right. Okay. So, but I had serious traction after about seven or eight months. You know, speaking engagements rolling in.

And then when my book was published, a year later, that's when I really caught the big wind. That's really good. So we had Don Miller, who was a mutual friend on this podcast recently. And he blew everybody's mind. No surprise to either one of us there. But this idea that our customer is the hero and that we are the trusted guide, you really embody that. And I think you did such a good job. And I'm curious to know, you know, when you first get out there, you were speaking and certainly transferring knowledge,

which was helping people. Yeah. But after the book, and then you create a platform you, that's when you really begin to scale this. And that's all you do is think about guiding people. Is that fair? It is. In fact, my tagline, which frankly I was a little uncomfortable with at first, but my team talked me into it. They said, everybody that writes in via email says you're their virtual mentor.

You know, people are looking for mentors. They can't find them. They consider you their virtual mentor. So, yeah, I do see myself in that role. I want to help this next generation with leadership, with business, but not just to succeed at business, but to succeed at life. Because I honestly think you can't do one without the other. Eventually, one of them will crash and burn. Yeah, I love that.

So let's talk about that trusted guide. You really working hard at that in helping folks. And so I want you to speak to the entrepreneur out there who's just getting started or maybe they're stuck in first gear. Yeah, so for me, and by the way, I've been through Don's story brand process, and our team coming up with that moniker was really as a result of going through Don's process. But I would say you've got to start with your customer or your potential customer as the hero. You've got to get intimately familiar with what their frustrations are, what their pain points are, what their challenges are. And then on the flip side, their aspirations, their dreams. The more you know about your customer, what their real world problems are, the more you can solve.

those and speak to the real needs that they have, the more successful you'll be. And I think, you know, to your point, I think so many businesses, so many entrepreneurs are so focused on trying to toot their own horn, so to speak, and focused on the message they're getting out. And that's fine if you start with the customer. And then like Don teaches, you come along as the trusted guide who's going to help them get what they want. You do an incredible job of listening.

Thank you. follow, anything you're doing digitally, you listen to your audience. Thank you. How have you honed that process in the sense of allowing our audience today that's listening in to take something away practical? Give us something that you have learned that's transferable to our audience. Yeah, so I don't know how many people know this, but I have five daughters. Wow.

Okay, so in that environment, I learned to listen. And by the way, I think it's important that if you've never seen a picture of Michael, he's got a great head of hair and it's all real. That's an accomplishment in and of itself with five daughters. It's amazing I still have it left. But yeah, so with my daughters, you know, they were always talking and always needed somebody to listen to them. And there were many conversations where I just sat there and listened and asked questions and got great intelligence, but also communicated empathy to them. So there were many times we'd have a conversation.

They would get up from the couch or whatever, you know, wipe away the tears, give me a big hug and say, Dad, that was so helpful. I didn't say a word. All I did was listen. Another practice that Gail and I, my wife and I have had around the dinner table forever is we call it the one conversation rule. And that is no side conversations, but we have one conversation. We try to drill deep. So we'll throw a question out there for the evening for dinner and we'll just ask them.

You know, could be anything like what do you hope to do this summer or, you know, what are you dreaming about doing? What do you think about late at night? But just you're a great question asker. But to ask questions and then to ask the second question. Because when you're talking, you're not learning. And so to ask the question and to pull out of people, because if you'll just listen and shut up. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think it's easy for leaders and for entrepreneurs in particular to try to fill dead air.

When you just need to listen and nod, like a good therapist almost, people will tell you everything and anything. It's true. And I have found that if you just keep asking, it might take three or four questions before you crack them. Right. Sometimes it's just persistent questions. It is. But you do that so well in talking back. You listen and then you talk back digitally, you know, socially.

Like you engage with your audience. And I think that has been a real hallmark for you. How can entrepreneurs listen and communicate better online, meaning specifically socially? Yeah. Well, one of the things I try to do every year is conduct a reader survey. And I highly recommend this to entrepreneurs is to do a survey, but don't just answer closed questions. Ask open-ended questions where people can talk to you about what they're frustrations, their challenges, their aspirations are, but get this, Ken, then you pay attention

to the language that they're using. Because when you can repeat to people what their problems are in the language that they use, they think you've been reading their mail. Wow. So this is hugely helpful for sales copy for products that you're creating because you're going, that guy gets me. Yeah, that is really good. And they're like, oh, he understands me. And you just literally listen to them. I just repeated what they told me. That's all you did. That's really fun. Okay, so we've got entrepreneurs, and I thought this would be fun, folks. And this is a little plug for Mike, because he's one of the most successful leadership, personal growth blogs, in the world.

Michael Hyatt.com is the location. And I thought it would be fun because you put out so much material. What if I went back? And, of course, you've got it all cataloged on your site, his most popular post. So I'm going to cherry pick, if you will. Great. Because I think there's some wonderful stuff here. So here we go.

You have a post called The Difference Between Trying. and doing. I love that. That hits us entrepreneurs right where we're at. Well, to be fair, I got this idea from Tony Robbins. So I was in a conference where he was trying to demonstrate to a woman the difference between trying and doing. And he said, I want you to try to pick up that chair. And so she picked it up. And he said, no, no, no, no. I said, try to pick it up. So she looked a little bit confused, set it back down. And he said, now try to pick it up. So she just stood there and didn't do anything. And he said, no, I said, try. And the point he was making is trying is really not doing anything.

You know, it's basically when you say you're going to try to do something, it's basically a way to fail with honor. So you can say, well, I tried it, and it didn't work. And so to actually do it means you stand for the outcome that you want. You're not just going to give it a try, but you're going to figure out how to get it done so that if it doesn't happen on the first try, you go to the second try, to the third try. You just keep hammering away at it because you're after the outcome, not just the process of saying, well, I tried that and it didn't work.

Anybody can do that. Absolutely. And that leads us to this idea of failing and failing forward. You were involved in that. I was. I mean, there's this guy named John Maxwell who you published that book. It's one of my favorite titles and books. But after having published that book and now you're out on your own, you failed.

You told us that earlier story. Absolutely. What's so beautiful about that thought of failing forward? What does that mean to Michael Hyatt? Well, it means that for me, failure is never final. It's only feedback. You know, it means that I can take what I learn when I fail, process that, and use it to succeed. Like I was talking to you about my business failure earlier, I would never want to repeat that experience again.

But, Ken, I would not trade what I learned in the crucible of that kind of adversity for anything in the world. It looked like a failure, but it was the seedbed for every success I've ever experienced since that time. All right, back to some of the most popular posts on Michael Hyatt.com. This is my personal favorite. I remember when you first started putting this idea out there. And this is great, folks. So don't tune off. We're not kidding around here.

This is legit. This is under productivity. Five reasons why you should take a nap every day. And by the way, when we talked about this beforehand, folks, I said, hey, I want to talk about this? He said, I took one today. Yeah, absolutely. How long was your nap today?

20 minutes. Oh, there you go. Yeah. I break this down for us. Five reasons. So here's the deal. There's been some very famous people that took naps as a matter of, of their daily routine.

From Winston Churchill to Ronald Reagan to John Kennedy, really high achievers. The thing it does, it's like rebooting your computer in the middle of the afternoon. Most people experience kind of an afternoon slump anyway. But when I go down for 20 minutes, and if you sleep longer than this, it won't work. Okay, so 20 to 30 minutes is optimal. Longer than that, you get into that heavy REM sleep and you wake up groggy and grouchy. But 20 minutes is enough to rub the edge off. And it's like Winston Churchill said this, it's like getting two days in one.

because you've got that same energy that you have in the morning when you wake up and you've got your coffee and you're hitting it hard. That's how my afternoons are when I take a nap. What time? For me, it's right after lunch. So I usually, like today, I went in about 1, 20 or so, and I lay down for 20 minutes. And I don't have to have a timer or anything, but I put some white noise on. And I just go out. And then automatically for me, I wake up after 20 minutes.

Now, some people will say, I can't get to sleep that fast. That was my next question. Yeah. How long did it take to where you could lay down and you're getting most of that 20 minutes? I can now go out in, I mean, I'm not making this up, probably 20 seconds, 30 seconds. It's crazy. But if you can't do that, you're laughing. I'm laughing because I'm anticipating the eye rolls and the comments from our listeners everywhere.

They're like, you got to be kidding me. Here's the deal. You do train yourself over time. Well, yeah, that's the point. So for a long time, I would just lay there and just close my eyes. My mind would still be racing and I'd just try to quiet my mind. and just get still. You know, we're not made to surge all the time.

Yeah. You know, we're made to surge and then to rest. I believe God built this into creation. You know, six days, shout out labor, and then one day you shall rest. And I really believe in taking my weekends off for the same reason. Did Churchill do an afternoon nap? Do you know? I think he did.

I'll tell you this. John Kennedy, when he did one, he had his aides come in. They shut the drapes. He literally got into his pajamas and got into bed. He did it for about an hour. Oh, wow. Yeah. But again, you don't, you don't, the science behind this.

The science behind that's not, that's not the best way to do. Yeah, so 20 minutes. And now you've trained yourself that you don't even need an alarm. Don't need an alarm at all. Wow. And even on Saturday and sunny when I could sleep longer, I don't. I just can't. I can't sleep longer than 20 minutes.

So seven days a week, you're taking a 20 minute now. That's right. All right. The next question, I think this is good. If you're traveling, how do you work it into the travel schedule? Because there are times where you're going nonstop speaking. Do you still work it in? I do when I can.

I try to get it before. about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, so I've got some flexibility there. And frankly, there's times when I can't do it. Like, I'm going to be doing a video shoot tomorrow and Wednesday, and I probably won't get a nap in. Okay. So it's, but most days. Most days. Do you see an energy drop on the days that you can't get it in? Do you feel it? I do. It takes more grind to get through the day. But I will say the other thing, you know, productivity is one part knowing the hacks. The other part of it is just managing your physiology and your emotional state. And so for me, it's all about nutrition. It's about staying hydrated. It's keeping my body set up for peak performance. All right. And so another one of

your very popular post, slaying the dragons early, right? In the morning, it's like, what's your morning routine? What's a Mike Hyatt morning look like? Yeah, my morning looks like this. I get up at 5 a.m. First thing I do is I kind of look through the news and, you know, see what happened overnight. Then I go into a quiet time. You know, I pray, read the Bible, do some journaling, and that usually takes about an hour. Now I'm in a different place in life than a lot. lot of people are, so not everybody can do that. Then I put my gym shoes on and head to the gym. And so I work out with the trainer three days a week. The other three days a week that I work out, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, I'm doing cardio on my own. Then I come back, have breakfast with my

wife. I get to the office at about 8.30 or 9. And then my day begins. But what I found, Ken, and the reason that's called Slay Your Dragons before breakfast so they don't eat your lunch, is the reason I do that in the morning is because the important things, the things where you have to sharpen the saw and keep yourself, you know, really optimized for peak performance, the longer the day wears on, the less likely it is that you'll get to those because you have more interruptions. Nobody calls me at five in the morning. Well, that's true. You know, or six in the morning. You know, my day is not going to get derailed from five till eight or eight 30. When the derailing happens is later in the day. So if I leave the workout till later in the day, you know, huge probability that I won't get it in or it's going to get derailed. We're seeing so much more. I'm seeing it everywhere. Social media, magazines, business magazines I read about sleep, the importance of sleep. And this is like nothing new.

It's not like anybody goes, oh, that's a brilliant idea. What do I think of that? But it is an increasing problem for people, especially those that are trying to maximize. There are seasons of life where you've got to go really hard. But generally speaking, how many hours of sleep are you getting? Generally, during the week I get seven, but I have it as a stated goal to get. eight on the weekends. I would get eight or nine every night if I could. I just can't sleep that long, but I can do it on the weekends. I'm not sure what that is, but I can do it on the weekends,

because you're exactly right. You can correlate sleep, like that much sleep with heart disease or heart health, I should say, with productivity, with happiness. I mean, there's so many things that sleep's related to. When I was at Thomas Nelson, I literally published a book, this would have been back in the 80s, on how to get by on four hours sleep a night, because people were thinking that was the way to be productive. Well, as it turns out, it's not. You know, it's a false economy. You, when you're rested, you're more focused.

And when you're more focused, you're more productive. So getting a good night's sleep is mission critical if you want to be successful. All right, productivity, another big thing for you. You're just always focused in on it. You're more of the most systematized guys, I know, which is fascinating. A little jealous about it, but it is fascinating. The topic I want you to weigh in on is this idea you're talking a lot about writing about it, and that's accomplishing more by doing less.

Yeah. Is that a pipe dream? No, I don't think it is because I think what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs is they don't build their business right. It doesn't scale. And the truth is the one thing you and I have in common, we probably have different income levels, we probably have different talents, we definitely have different talents, we have different abilities, we have different connections and resources.

The one thing that we have that's exactly the same is 168 hours a week. And so that doesn't scale. you max that out, you're out of hours. So if you think you're not going to rest, you're going to build your business in a very inefficient way. You're going to build it so that you've got to constantly be hustling, working the weekends, working the nights, and ultimately your health fails, you blow up a marriage, you have some other catastrophic event that really impede your productivity over the long term. So I really think that the best way to build a business is to build it so that it can run without you as a part of it. And that's been my quest since I started this,

business. How can I assemble a team around me? How can I build a business so that I can really take, like I did in June, take the entire month off? It was awesome. Didn't have any communication with the office. The business continued to grow, continued to do well. But it's a mindset for how I'm trying to build a business because I want what Dan Sullivan calls a self-managed business that doesn't require my constant intervention and constant tweaking. I think when anyone hears that, man or woman running a business. They go, wow, that would be wonderful. How do you get there? Yeah. Well, first of all, you got to set as an intention first. If you don't have the intention, it won't happen. So I think that's where it begins. You know, I said, I was recently talking to my doctor and I was explaining

that I was going away for a sabbatical for a month and he said, oh, I would love to do that. I'd love to do that in about four or five years. And I said, buddy, why not next year? And he said, well, I couldn't do it next year. And I said, well, what if you could? What if you set that as an intention? You put it on your calendar and then ask yourself this question, and I found this to be a very powerful question, what would have to be true for that to come to pass? What would have to be true about your business? What would have to be true about your relationships? What would it take financially every other way for you to be able to do that? So to create a self-managed business, what would have to be true? What would that look like? Obviously, you'd have to have good people. That'd be part of it. You'd have to have

systems and documented workflows and a few other things. But if you don't have the intention, you're doomed to run on the hamster wheel for the rest of your days. You're an early adopter. Anybody who follows you knows that. I'd love to know a few recommendations, top of mind from you, that you think are, these are some technologies, or these are some platforms, that entrepreneurs need to be aware of and they need to be using, and why?

Well, I would say the most powerful technology that we've adopted, we've been doing it for over a year now, is a technology called Slack, S-L-A-C-K. it's virtually replaced email for my team. I hate email. And this is reduced 85% of it. Because you know how it is? You're in an email conversation and you start getting all these emails that are no longer relevant to you.

Slack is basically like text messaging, but in a controlled environment where you can upload documents and reference stuff. And the only way to explain it, I say to people, just try it. Now, this is one of the fastest growing software companies ever. They have a multi-billion dollar valuation right now, and everybody I know that uses it loves it. And it creates culture because it enables people, especially virtual teams, to be able to iterate quickly, to be able to have conversations, to be able to plan projects. And I don't know really how to explain it, but it's just, it's awesome. All right. So what are you excited about when you look at the current environment for entrepreneurs?

What excites you? Oh, man. I think we live in the most unbelievable time ever. You know, people complain about the regulatory environment or government and all that stuff, but we have so much opportunity in this culture right now, mostly because of the online world, because of Facebook. You know, about a third of my business comes off of Facebook right now. And I love the opportunity to get introduced to new people,

to grow my mail list, to build my business, and to do it with a business. pretty small team. I have about 14 people doing several million dollars a year at very high margins. That wouldn't have been possible before the internet, before Facebook and before Twitter. Wow. So you're encouraged. Oh, when I hear people talk about, you know, the economy's down, I go, gosh, I must be living in a different country because that's not the world I'm experiencing. Yeah, and I ask, that's a setup question. I had a sense what you would ask. The follow-up was a setup. Here's the point. We hear so much stuff in the media about how bad things are. And I'm not saying.

saying they are not. However, when we go out on the road for these entree leadership events, and there's over a thousand leaders who are winning on all different levels, it's very exciting. And I want you to speak to this idea of what we hear and what we read versus what we see on the everyday Main Street. Do you think there's a real difference there? Yeah, I do think there's a difference. I mean, I think part of it may be as simple as whatever metrics they're measuring aren't picking up this kind of entrepreneurial tsunami that's happening in our country right now. Right.

That's not tracking. They're looking at conventional industries. They're measuring people out of the workforce, all that stuff. But they're not talking about the infrepreneurs, the mediapreneurs, the solopreneurs, the entrepreneurs, all these people who are kind of outside the mainstream, but are killing it. Plus, I think also good news just doesn't sell. It doesn't.

It doesn't make you look. It doesn't make you look. It doesn't make you click. Nope. And it's interesting. All right. You have five daughters. Yes.

So I think you can speak to this. Plus, you are really, truly, a mentor to so many men and women. There's some exciting things happening when we look at women in business and entrepreneurs. This entrepreneur space, this mompreneur, that's a term now. Yeah. It is. It's a thing. It's an actual thing.

And they're doing great. And they're listening to us right now. What excites you about seeing all these women enter the marketplace with ideas that are winning? Well, here's the fun thing. So out of five daughters, two of them work for me. The other three are hardcore killing it entrepreneurs. That's great. But the thing about it is there's no barrier.

They don't need some man's permission to succeed. They're just out there doing it. And I think there's an enormous opportunity for women, for people from any race. You know, there's just not the cultural barriers that there were before because you don't need somebody's permission. You can just go start a business. You know, you can find an opportunity, find a need to be served. And that doesn't require a certain gender. It doesn't require a certain race.

It just requires somebody who has the heart of a servant. Where are you, Michael Hyatt, growing right now? What's an area that you're intentionally growing? I'm really growing on trying to let go more and more of my business and let the team run it and stick to the two or three things that I really do well and stay out of everything else. And that's kind of hard. Yeah, sure. But I've got really competent people.

And as I'm doing that, I'm finding that. I'm finding that they're coming back to me with things 10x or 20x of what I envisioned it because I'm not the constraint anymore. That's great. Yeah. Let's talk about how you set that environment up to where it could happen. It's hard. It's hard.

It is hard. What's the communication or the checks and balances with those people so that they tell you when you're stepping in maybe too much or you realize, okay, I'll let go for a second. Like, what does that look like? Well, I think for my job as the entrepreneur, my job, is to envision the outcome. So I have visions of stuff and, you know, what I want to see happen, but I'm disciplining myself to write that down on an outcome-based kind of way. So I describe the outcome I want and what has to be true when this project has done well. I don't concern myself

with the project, with the budget, with any of that stuff. I just get very clear on the outcome. Then I hand that off to a project manager to execute. Okay. So then their job is to make what I imagined to make that real. And I don't care how they do it, you know, within the bounds of, you know, our overall operating budget, within the bounds of, you know, proper ethics and all that. I really don't care how they accomplish it. And they have processes that they think of that I would have never thought of. And by the way, we're using a test right now that's been hugely helpful. I mean, everybody's heard of disc and strength finders and all that. We're using one called Colby, K-O-L-B-E. Have you heard of this? No, huh? The Colby test is the only,

test out there that measures how people initiate work. So, for example, there's some people that when they get a new project, the first thing they do is begin researching. There's other people that want to put together a complex action plan. The way that I work, and you may be this too, I'm called a quick start, and I just want to get in the game, just do something, anything, don't overthink it. Oh, yeah. That's me.

So as it turns out, if you're not careful as an entrepreneur, you start hiring people that are identical to you. That's the worst thing you can possibly do. You need to have people that compliment you and balance you out, and that means filling the company with people that are not like you. Oh, that's good. All right. That's a great resource. Say it again.

Colby.com. You can take the test in about 20 minutes, cost about 50 bucks, and we use it for every new hire. I'm looking for a CFO right now. And so we did the Colby thing. They got a program called Right fit. By the way, I have no affiliation with them at all. Right. But they have a program called Right fit.

And I describe what the job is. They say you've got to have this kind of profile. don't settle for anything less, and we're getting everybody tested. That is so important. Because if you don't figure that out, and you're like you and me, it's like a bunch of dads getting together and putting bikes with training wheels together, and they send all the kids out and they all wreck at the same time. That's what's going to happen. Exactly. That's brilliant.

Really cool. How do you spell that? Colby. Yeah. K-O-L-B-E.com. All right. K-O-L-B-E dot com. Check that out.

That's really great. All right. Before we let you go, you've got a great resource at Michael Hyatt.com, and I want our folks to know about it. It's called shave 10 hours off your work week. Tell folks how they can get that. You can get it by just going to Michael Hyatt.com, and if you sign up for my newsletter list, you'll get it. And basically, this helps you address the low-hanging fruit and recover 10 hours from your work week

so that you can redeploy those and things that really matter. Well, your good friend, it's terrible that we have to see each other like this. We have to schedule it and get you to drive a mile and a half to come get in the old Entree Leadership Studio. But it's always great to have you here. You're great friend. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks, Ken.

Great to see you. Big thanks to Mike Hyatt for spending time with us. I know we're all better for it. Hey, I'm really excited. I just saw on my calendar. Eric, the producer, let me know this. He and I are actually going out to Infusion Soft World Headquarters. Our partnership with them is really, really strong.

Love these folks. Dave's been out to their offices. I'm heading out there. Culture, culture, culture, all over the place. So I'm going to take some pictures, some video. We're going to do some fun stuff out there. We'll report back to you on that. But really excited about getting to know their team better.

We use them as we've told you. And we're loving this series. They want to give you value content. They want to help you grow your business. That's why they exist specifically for the small business, man and woman. So here is our popular series with Jeff Mask. One question. For the men and women who are feeling like they're in the middle of that tangled fishing line.

You know what I mean? It's like, oh, my gosh. They're in multi-system chaos to use a infusion soft term, right? How do they untangle this? All right, because they're there. Okay? So now how do they begin the process of untangling? Boy, it's such a, it's not as hard as people think it is, but people feel like it's just impossible.

Yeah, because they look at the knot of fishing line, and you go, oh, my gosh, I want to just punch myself in the throat. Right, right? I'm just going to call in sick for the next month. Thank you very much, right? It's just, it's crazy. So the way you get over that is, first of all, recognizing that problem exists. Quit kidding yourself that having multiple. systems is the way to scale and grow your business. That is key. When you recognize that and you

learn and you are committed knowing that when you centralize into one system, you'll be so much more free, you'll be so much more effective, and your business will run much more profitably. When you can agree to that and understand that, then the solution is almost irrelevant because you've already got to that place. So what you do is you find the right type of system that's out there that enables you to get all those systems altogether that's built for the entrepreneur. That's why InfusionSoft is what it is and why we do what we do. We're not a software company that, you know, let's just build software for the enterprise and then water it down for the small business. We kind of laugh a lot of times when we hear people say, yeah, we serve SMB, small to mid-sized businesses. We chuckle.

Now, when you say that, you serve M. You don't really care about the S. You say the S is someone with 5,000 employees. That's not a small business. And then you say stuff like, you know, go find your IT team and your marketing team to go implement this. And you scratch your head as the entrepreneur going, I got one other person with me or I'm alone. You don't get me. You don't connect with me. And we put our arms around that individual and we say,

we hear you. We get you and we built a team and a community and an ecosystem globally to help you, to help you get centralized so that you can get organized, you can save time, you can grow your sales, and have a life. That's the beauty of it.

Instead of just running your business and have your business run you, why not let your business enable you to run your life in the way you choose? Because you've organized, you've centralized, and now you can, well, what do you know? Be home by 530 for dinner? Novel ideas and entrepreneur.

It can happen. We're committed to helping that happen for everybody worldwide who is running a business instead of just subscribing to the philosophy that, well, you run your own business, it's a 24-hour thing and you're just not going to have a life. We say BS to that. Head over to Infusion,

soft.com slash entre. That's infusionsoft.com slash entree. You've got a great free resource. Thousands of you have taken us up on this offer. I got the data from Infusionsoft the other day on a phone call. And people are loving it. This is their small business playbook. It's case studies. This is not just a book put out there with tips and principles. Actual case studies of their clients who were winning big because of Infusion Soft. They'll give you a playbook and so much more. It takes you about 60 seconds to sign up and get that. absolutely free infusionsoft.com slash entre. Well, I'm pumped, super pumped about the Entree Leadership Summit, part two. The first one was an amazing event out in Southern California, the next one in May 2016,

all the details at Entreeleadership.com slash summit. I got a tweet the other day, Eric, the producer. A lady basically said that. She goes, Atkin Coleman wasn't kidding when he said there was a surprise big name on the speaker lineup. So I wasn't kidding. It's really a big surprise. Now, by contract, we're not allowed to broadcast who this speaker is, but we can tell you on the website. I don't know why, but that's how it is. So you've got to go check it out. Huge name added to an already stellar lineup. Jim Collins, Seth Godin, Dr. Henry Cloud, Dave Ramsey, Chris Hogan, Chrissy,

Chrisie Wright, Pat Lynchione, and more. It's going to be a phenomenal couple of days in Dallas, Texas. But here's the deal. The secret speaker, you can only find out at entreleadership.com slash summit. Now, one of the things we want to do is we want to kind of tease you about the content at this event. We did this several episodes ago with a speech excerpt from Summit 2015 with Pat Lynchione. This time we go to the vault, and this is a portion of Dr. Henry Cloud's amazing talk at Summit. He'll be back again in Dallas, but right now listen and learn from Dr. Henry Cloud. All right, we're going to be talking about something for a little while here called boundaries for leaders.

Basically, a boundary is a property line, and we do that for a couple of reasons. One is it defines ownership. Now, whoever owns that property, something else happens. If you own it, you have control of it. And if you have control of it, then you get to have the free. freedom to make decisions that give you consequences. Most of the time, we don't realize how ridiculously in charge we are if you have leadership or control of something.

So here's the two words that define ridiculously in charge. A leader who's ridiculously in charge owns the results and owns the culture and owns all the stuff they was talking about. and realizes that whatever I'm finding there, I'm either creating it or I'm allowing it to exist. Why is it that some leaders get great results and some don't? And I would submit to you that it's basically because leaders that get results are leading people in ways that the people's brains can actually follow them.

Very important factor. The dates, May 22 through 25, 2016, Dallas, Texas, the event will sell out. We're already almost there, and we're way ahead of the game. It's going to be a phenomenal event. Get your ticket, learn more about the secret speaker, and learn about the event, how it's going to lay out. It's going to be wonderful. Entreleadership.com slash summit. Entreleadership.com slash summit.

All right, folks, we have had this amazing EA help content. going all month. This is the final week for you to submit your entry. Final day to enter 925. That's September 25th. We will announce the winner via email on September 30th. If you're new to the podcast and you're going, what are you talking about? Well, EA Help, one of our longtime partners, their actual alumni of everything we do at

Entree leadership, they are giving away a virtual assistant, a virtual executive assistant for you for free. for 12 months. That's a $40,000 giveaway value. Unbelievable. They're the best in the business. They've got an army of virtual assistants that help men and women like you win big. And so they thought, well, let's do this for Entree Leadership. Let's have some fun with this and give one lucky listener a free 12-month virtual executive assistant. All you've got to do is go to ontreleadership.com slash giveaway. Entreeleadership.com slash giveaway and sign up. Someone's going to in a virtual assistant. $40,000 value. Go now. Well, folks, by my show notes, it's telling me that sadly we're at the end of another Entry Leadership podcast. So thankful to Mike Hyatt for spending

time with us. Love the content from Chris Hogan and Dr. Henry Cloud. Remember everything you need to know, you just go to Entryleadership.com slash podcast. We have show notes on everything that has taken place within this episode. And if you need any of the resources from this episode, all of the information there on the podcast page. As I always say, but I truly mean, on behalf of Eric the producer and our entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.