EntreLeadership - Maximize Your Day for Success with Ed Mylett

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks to Ed Mylett. Ed is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, speaker and host of The Ed Mylett Show. We dive into his new book, The Power of One More, and unpack the two keys he says lead to happiness and success. Later in the episode, George chats with Dr. John Delony—a Ramsey Personality, #1 national bestselling author of Own Your Past, Change Your Future, mental health expert and host of The Dr. John Delony Show. He shares how to push through resistance and the strategies he uses to stay well while going through tough seasons.   You’ll learn: How to manipulate time to get more done How inconvenience is the key to greatness The importance of invisible progress The cost of avoiding hard things   Support our sponsors: BELAY: https://bit.ly/351P9AE Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre   Links mentioned in this episode: The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast The Power of One More by Ed Mylett: https://amzn.to/3wDEiXX The Ed Mylett Show: https://apple.co/3MDjxTe Ed Mylett’s website: https://bit.ly/3NgvqhI Own Your Past, Change Your Future by Dr. John Delony: https://bit.ly/3DsDhoJ The Dr. John Delony Show: https://apple.co/3DxVdxt Learn more about EntreLeadership Elite: https://bit.ly/3Pw3QPg Download A 7-Day Plan to Triple Your Productivity: https://bit.ly/3Lp4xqs   Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: Elite: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipElite Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops   Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download the Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, how to get more day out of your day and how to harness the power of inconvenience. And then the practices of staying well while pushing through resistance. From the Ramsey Network, I'm George Camel and this is the Entree Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders like you grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. Today I'm talking with Ed Milet. He's an entrepreneur, best-selling author, speaker, and host of the Ed Milet Show, a top-rated business podcast where he interviews peak performance. across all industries.

We're going to talk about his new book, The Power of One More, and unpack two keys that he says lead to happiness and success. So let's jump right in. Here's my conversation with Ed. Ed, it's so great to have you on the Entree Leadership Podcast. How are you? I'm wonderful. Honored to be here.

Big fan of the show, so it's great to finally sit in this seat with you. Well, I can't get away from your face because it's always in the top charts on the podcast list. So congratulations and all the success with the Ed My Lead show. that's really cool. Thank you very much. As you know, this is a lot of work, but it comes from a heart to want to serve people and make a difference. And so the days fly by when you're having fun helping people. I love doing it. Oh, absolutely. And I'm excited about your new book, The Power of One More, the Ultimate Guide to Happiness and Success. And you outline 19 areas in the book, which I wish we could sit here for hours and just unpack all of these because they're so powerful. But we're going to

dig into two of them, if that's okay with you today. Certainly. I'd love to. Okay. So we're going to start with time management because that's something I know a lot of our leaders still grapple with. They've heard all everything when it comes to time management, but you unpack a really interesting principle here. In the book, you say time is a constant, but we treat it as a variable. Explain that to us. Well, time in general is a really interesting thing because the construct of a 24-hour day happened a long time ago. And it's incredible to me as technology has evolved. I get really detailed on time management of this book because it's really one of the maybe top five things that's changed in my life and how I bend and manipulate time.

And so there's a variable to it. We had a 24-hour day when there was no internet. Heck, we had a 24-hour day when there was no electricity, right? And so we've gone from all of these technology upgrades where you can get information in the, you know, get text, email, Google, something, anytime you want. We still measure time in 24-hour increments for a day. That's insane.

So I started to look, I started really about 20 years ago saying, this is crazy. We've all had those mornings where we can get more done in a morning than we do in a week. We all go, wow, an incredible morning. That's because we've compressed timeframes. So I now get three days in every day the average entrepreneur. or it gets one. My first day starts from 6 a.m. to noon. And in there, I try to get as much fun, my faith, family stuff, work, et cetera, as I can in a window like that. And then day two goes off. And this little clock goes off in my head about noon every day. It's crazy, but it'll happen for

everybody. We're like, okay, let me recalibrate. Let me take accountability. Let me assess. And then day two starts till 6 p.m., 6 p.m. to midnight's the third day. The more you measure time, right? Most people, once a year, take inventory of their life. High performers, maybe it's once a month, really great entrepreneurs once a week. What if it was three times in a given 24-hour day where you're making assessments, adjustments, and by the way, this includes fun, relaxation, and everything. But now I'm getting 21 days a week when the average person I was competing against as an entrepreneur is getting seven. Stack that up over a month, a year, five years. In my case, 30 years, you have a completely different existence in the world. And you are

happier and more successful. So that's what I mean by bending and manipulating time. You are archaic if you measure a day in 24 hours anymore. Wow. Yeah, that principle alone, you got to let that sit and go, okay, hold on, Ed. You're telling me that instead of seven days, I can do 21 days in a week. That kind of hurts your brain to think about. But what you're saying is, we're going to break this out into chunks of productivity, and it's not all work. You're not working for 18 hours. You're saying you're building in all of those things, but you're super intentional about those hours. Yeah, and by the way, the more performance is measured, the more it improves. And the more scarce something is, the more valuable it becomes. That's why diamonds are more valuable than paper.

If I got 24 hours to get something done, maybe it's not that important. But you start string. Here's what the other thing starts to happen. Other people treat you differently. You're walking faster, talking faster. You appear more valuable. You appear busier to people. And there's an energy. There's a vibration to that stuff. Now, for me, obviously Sundays for me are an exception. In my life, that's the day the Lord, I take time off. But even in those days, I still, I'm still crazy enough that about noon, church is over. I kind of recalibrate. All right, what am I doing with the kids now, right? And somewhere around 6 p.m. on Sundays, kind of my mind starts to gravitate back, all right, what do I have next week? What do my planning need to be? But it's completely

changed my life. And it's not easy at first, but after about a traditional month, you're going to go, this is crazy. It's noon. I'm restarting day two. And it starts to happen to you, and you're just a, I just use the word for it. You almost become superhuman. I'm so glad it's one of the two things you pick because there's so, I meant a lot of details on the brain and faith and other things in the book. But if you said to me, hey, I can take something from you that would maybe give you kryptonite and your success. If you took my 21 days a week from me, I'm not sure I'd know where I'd be right now without that. Wow, that is really powerful. So what does that look like when you snap and you go, all right, it's noon, it's time to recalibrate, reassess?

What does that process look like for you? Sometimes it's a six-second thought of, okay, here I go. You know, what just got done? What did I miss? What was the most important thing I didn't handle that? Sometimes it's a moment of reflection. Go, that was a great day. Wow, what an amazing breakfast with my daughter.

And there's a point of reflection there. But for me, because I'm a little bit crazy, most of the time, it's what didn't get done that now needs to get done in day two. And so it's typically very quick. It's actually almost unconscious when it happens. It's not like I grab my daytime around and start going through some journaling process or anything like that. But an awareness gives us power.

Awareness of a negative thought, it loses its power over us, awareness of a positive of thought magnifies it. So it's just becoming a more hyper-aware, more hyper-functional person when I'm just checking in on myself three times a day. And if I could really be hokey, it's a form of self-care. How am I doing? How am I feeling? What emotions did I just have the last six hours, you know, that I want some different ones the next six hours? You know, did I serve God like I wanted to? Did I serve my mom like I wanted to? A lot of times for me, it's stuff that would normally get away from me like, I didn't call my mom yesterday. Now it's new. I think I'm to call my mom this day. And so it's things like that that just remind me to get centered and check in

on myself. So what happens, you know, you're going through the day and it's easy when things are going well, you're checking everything off the list, you're getting the meetings done, the emails, but what about when things kind of go off track and something kind of catches you and it slows you down? What do you do to get back on the horse? That's the power of it. You're nailing it. It's that when that first, typically you have a bad 9 a.m. in your day. A meeting goes bad. Someone cancels. You lose an account. What's that do? Torpedoes the next 16 hours or whatever it is left in your day, 15 hours. Now I got three hours and then it's a new day. And y'all know how you feel. You wake up that new day. It's just a little bit different. There's a different energy. There's a different focus. It's in the past.

And so just the fact that there's a transition of a day, which sounds crazy, makes a big difference for me. The other thing I do, though, for me is I'm a big believer in changing your state physically. So if it's at the top of that end of that day, I will literally take five minutes and do some pushups on the floor, do some jumping jacks, walk around the building. I can get a workout in. But there's a connection between our mental health and our physical state that we're in. And so for me, when I'm down, when something's gone bad, you know, what happens?

You get stress, you get tense, you hunch over, your breathing becomes shallow, your face drops. So for me, oftentimes, it's just changing my breathing. And here's a nutty one I do. I will give myself the gift of five minutes and I will listen to some of my favorite stand-ups who are buddies of mine like Sebastian Manuscalco or someone like that and just give myself a dadgum laugh

for five minutes. the same physiology is working out, breathing, shoulders are back, and it just changes you. And also comedy just sometimes gives you a perspective, like, this is all okay, right? It's not the end of the world. But for me, that's the big power of it. If I have a bad day, I got another one in a few hours. And that's, just trust me, everybody, the fact that your competitors or your peers still can get Google and get something done in four seconds that used to take four days or had to make a phone call and get somebody to pick up and can now text, and they still measure themselves in, 24-hour increments, and now you've become aware, you've become alert.

Just that alone, you're going to tell me in two or three months, you go, my gosh, my life is different. Everyone around me treats me differently, and it's not perfect, but oftentimes just the compression of time, the manipulation, I call it bending time, bends and changes your life. Wow, that's powerful. So it really comes down to kind of the reset moment going, hey, I got another at-bat coming up in a few hours here. My week isn't over because this thing happened. I can reset. It's incredible. You're using that analogy. I was a college baseball player. I didn't mean interrupt you, but it's

amazing how like when two people are... It's rare that I have a sports analogy that lands, so I appreciate this. I'm just telling you. And for me, the worst part when I played was that last at bat of the night, I ground out into a double play. It's short. And it's the end of a series. I got to wait five days for another game, right? You ground into a double play in the second inning. You're like, all right, I'm getting back up. And there's an optimism. It doesn't sit. on you as long. In entrepreneurship, you are getting knocked down all the time. The measurement of you is not that you get knocked down. And it's not even that you get up, because everybody eventually gets up. It's how long do you lay on the canvas? And when you shrink days, the canvas time is less.

I get knocked down all the time. In fact, I had something issued a close of a big real estate deal I was doing. Didn't happen. And it's probably not going to happen. I got knocked down. But I had another day. This happened at like 4 o'clock. I had another day at 6. It's And so I was not on the canvas all that long. It's not that you're not going to get knocked down. It's the time you spend laying there and dwelling in it and wallowing in it because of your calibration of time that causes it to fester. Patterns start to happen. Negative momentum or positive momentum happens.

And you're back, you know, that's why when I get up, I get up much faster than most people. As an entrepreneur, I would credit some of my success to the fact that I stayed down less long. If that makes any sense. Yeah. Well, you definitely didn't play soccer. Because in that sport, the smallest thing, that guy's down for the count. And they work it. Well, they got to get the yellow card, right?

Yes. So you've got a lot of other principles in here around time that we don't even have time to get into today. But you talk about approaching time with a greater sense of urgency, learning how to control time instead of time controlling you, measuring your performance. Often you mentioned the importance of measuring performance and then focusing on the future. So which of those are you going, man, we got to get a hold of this thing if you want to learn how to really land time management?

All of them matter. But one thing correlated to time, I have another chapter in the book where I talk about being an impossibility achiever, an impossibility thinker and a possibility achiever. And what I mean when I say that is that oftentimes as entrepreneurs, or even as just human beings,

over time, we begin to operate out of our history and our memory. That's the program running, as opposed to our imagination and our dreams. If you're going to be an effective entrepreneur, you're a dreamer. you're constantly in your imagination. You operate in the present, and that's where time management matters.

But you are constantly a man. Any great entrepreneur that I know, and I've known Steve Wozniak's a dear friend of mine, right? He's founder of Apple. It talks all the time about jobs as imagination. He just couldn't turn the thing off, right? As an entrepreneur, you're in the dream business. You're in the imagination business, and most aren't. And most suffer for that.

There's so in the day-to-day of getting something done. I'll get around to the imagination stuff, Ed. I've got to execute and close the sale so I can put food on the table right now. I get all that. You will always just execute and have to put food on the table if you don't get into your imagination. You're operating out of your memory and your history too often. And this is a huge change for most people. When we're children, I believe we're happier for two reasons when we're young.

One, we were just with God much, not too long ago. So our proximity to God was very recent. The second thing is we live in our imaginations. And as we get a little bit older, we start to operate in patterns out of history. in memory and our imagination is suppressed. Be a good boy. Be quiet, honey. And they start to have this imagination and these dreams suppressed by the time we become adults. They're almost gone all together. You, the fact that you're an entrepreneur means you're a dreamer, means at some point you operated out of an imagination. That's what got you to make this leap. The other leaps you're going to make as an

entrepreneur will require an even greater amount of your imagination and your dreams. While executing in the present, that's why time matters. But it's not good enough just to, manage time, say I'm going to execute right now and not have a grand vision and dream that's always expanding, always growing, always being refined, always being communicated to the right people, including you. And if you're a praying person, I happen to believe that when I pray, I'm in my imagination oftentimes. I'm having a conversation with God about my dreams and my vision and I want to enroll him in my dream, in my imagination. That's where they come from. The last thing I'll say is, your dreams are not some hallucination.

I believe they're a preview, almost a whisper from God of saying, this is what's possible? This is what's possible. He's not playing a trick on you. That's not how it works. And so when they happen, don't be afraid of them. Embrace them, run towards them, get closer to them, help them expand. Last thing, your mind moves towards what it's most familiar with.

So if you're most familiar with your problems, your issues, your meetings and stuff you've got to execute. on, you will always move towards that. But if you're most familiar with your dreams and your imagination, your mind begins to move and gravitate towards that because it's more familiar with it. Wow. Mike drop, Ed. You got to go back and listen to that, folks. Just rewind the tape.

That was so good. And it reminds me of a study NASA did on children. And a five-year-old had genius, you know, creativity levels. And that same five-year-old as they become an adult, 98% of them lose that. And so it really comes down to that convergent thinking versus divergent thinking. As we go through the education system, we learn to have the right answer, stay in line. And what I love about entrepreneurs and our leaders listening out there is they're solving problems in a creative way. They have to lean into that divergent thinking if they want to have success.

So there's some really powerful reminders in there. Very well said, brother. I completely agree with you. So let's get into productivity because I think time management, we're all trying to manage time to be more productive. So we have to talk about inconvenience and to-do lists. I love what you say in the book. Greatness and convenience cannot coexist. They are diametrically opposed forces.

What do you mean by that? Well, it's counterintuitive, right? What we do normally is we want to move away from inconvenient things. The average human being has become very familiar with doing convenient things and avoiding the inconvenient. DePaulian Hill says in Think and Grow Rich, which is my second favorite book after the one I just wrote other to my scriptures. Because you don't just think and get rich. You have to do certain things.

And that's why I wrote one about thinking and doing in congruency. But having said that, he says that if you can get to the other side, the temporary thing you're going through, that you get introduced to your other self. And that other self is why that problem exists. And so what you've got to do when you're looking at a problem that you've got or something that you need to solve, the inconvenient thing is the path to get it done.

And so I've sort of started to build this muscle. When I look at my day, what's the most difficult thing I have to do? What's the most feared things first, first, first? Not inconvenient things. Most human beings are not wired to do difficult things. They don't do hard things. And when you become familiar with doing hard and difficult things,

I believe you become somebody completely different. So if you're constantly doing the easy stuff, you're not getting it done. I just interviewed Phil Heath, seven-time Mr. Olympia. And I said something to him that this guy's just gigantic, right? I'm sure there's some supplementation going on there at some point. But the point that I made to him was, Phil, You have a different relationship with pain than most human beings do. Your relationship with pain is completely different.

He says, gosh, I never even thought about that before. But he goes, I kind of chase pain because I know that's where all of my growth comes from. I said, when you hit the gym, you do the most inconvenient things, build the biggest muscles. This is true in every area of our life. But we have this proclivity. And if we're not conscious of it, we'll do it all the time. I don't want to do the inconvenient thing. I want to do the easier thing, the easier path.

You build yourself or a company full of people. who are willing to do the inconvenient, you are now in that success area of life. I really believe the athletes, even that I coach and work with, and I don't work with Tom Brady. But one of the things I've studied about him is the people that I know that have been around him have told me that he's a psycho

about wanting to do the inconvenient stuff in any given day, and that that's changed the culture of the teams he's played on where everyone's sort of chasing the inconvenient. And so that's my recommendation of the book is look at your day, look at the agenda and say, what's the inconvenient thing and run towards it, not away from it. Wow, that's powerful.

I think that inconvenience is where any growth that's, you know, real comes from, is that inconvenience. And that season of pain and, you know, suffering and grinding that out, you go, wow, I'm a different person than I was before, that other self that you're talking about. So that's such a great reminder. Think about the fact that you have a business when you're listening to this. How, dagum, inconvenient was it to start this thing? It was unbelievably inconvenient.

You probably had to leave a job that no one thought you should leave. Maybe you had to borrow some money. Start up capital. You're probably negative financially in some cases, right? Like, you've already done the most inconvenient thing, which is start your business. Stay down that road. You're too often avoiding this. And here's the last thing I'll say.

Or you've had a little bit of success. And once people have a little bit of success, now they don't think they have to do the inconvenient anymore. Get comfortable. I already did that stuff. It's someone else's turn. Not if you want to go to the next level. The next level requires the inconvenient thing.

every time it requires the inconvenient thing. Well, that brings me to do lists. Now, a lot of leaders set up their to do lists to try to gain those quick wins. They want to check it all off. But what you're saying here is completely different. Explain to us how to take an inconvenient approach to our to do lists. If you do the inconvenient thing first, you build gigantic momentum. The rest of your day is downhill.

The rest of your six hours is downhill. So I'm a big to-do list person. Mine are not fancy. I just list the stuff I got to do. And when I start checking them off, I gain momentum. But I also believe if I knock the hardest thing off that list first, like, I'm crushing the rest of my day. Like, it's just slayed. If I can get that done, all this other stuff becomes incredible.

There's an important thing, though, when you're building confidence. I say in the book, I have a chapter on confidence which is linked to this to-do list. If you lack self-confidence, you have a relationship or reputation with yourself where you do not keep the promises you make to yourself. And if you want to change yourself, you have to begin to keep the promises you make to yourself. Okay. But the power of one more is the following. We don't always get our goals long term. We don't.

We get 20-something percent of them. We will always eventually get our standards. Always get our standards. And so if your standard is that you don't keep the promises you make to yourself, you're going to lose. If your standard is, I do the things on my to-do list every day and you knock them out, you're going to have self-confidence. But if your standard is, I do everything on my to-do list and one more,

now you built somebody that is not going to be taken lightly in the business world. So the standard should be, I do what I say I'm going to do, and one more. I'm going to do 30 minutes on the treadmill in the gym. I do 31. I'm going to make 10 contacts today. I make 11. I'm going to tell my daughter I love her. I'm going to tell her twice.

You start having the one more standard in your life, and all of a sudden those to do lists, these really inconvenient things, you now bring a confidence level with you to that list that allows you to do the difficult thing to build the momentum because you do one more. Yeah, and every time you set that bar a little higher, your standard increases, your confidence increases. I mean, there's a lot of psychological advantages to what you're talking about as well. Well, you say the important thing. It's not enough just to do these things. You have to make what I call a deposit in the confidence bank and say, look, I just did it. I did it. I'm doing things other people aren't willing to do or I'm doing things I didn't

used to do. Therefore, I deserve to get things I didn't get before or other people aren't getting. Give yourself credit. Wow. So why do you stress the importance of learning to recognize the difference between a problem and an inconvenience. Because a lot of times, you look at them and you go, well, it's the same thing. Every problem is inconvenient. They're not. But one thing that happens when problems come up, I'll give you something that people do when problems come up.

They immediately want to figure out who to blame. And that can happen later in your company. If you have a pattern when a problem is up, okay, whose fault is this? You've already wasted energy not towards the solution. Put 100% of your energy towards the solution. Now, a problem in your business may require a different level of attention, may require a different level of change, may require different methodology. But great entrepreneurs, as you said earlier, are the best problem solvers in the world.

And problem solvers are often really crappy stuff disguises huge opportunities or the reverse opportunities disguises really crappy stuff. But you waste time when you're trying to find the blame of it or even the root of it. What happened here? Solve it. This is really important. The best CEOs that I work with and the small business owners that I work with are incredibly good at getting right to solution and away from blame when a problem comes up. That's a really critical thing.

Yeah, that's what separates a decent leader from an amazing leader. Correct. A hundred percent of the time. So in your book, you share a really emotional story about your dad and how if he had not been a one more type of guy that your life would have been drastically. different. Now, I don't want to make you summarize it, but can you give our leaders a taste of why that is? My dad was an alcoholic the first 15 years of my life. And the reason I believe human beings can change is I watched my hero do it up close. My dad spent 15 years of my life, not living a good life. And then I watched him have one more try. And one more came up a lot. That's why I wrote the book. When my dad died last year,

I said, I'm going to write this book about all the things I've learned in my life. My dad, we were driving at a drive-through. I was 15 years old. And my dad said, by the way, only my dad would get sober on 420. If you guys don't know what 420 is, look it up, but my dad got sober on 420, April 20th. He's crying. I've never seen my dad cry before or after that day, brother. He looks at me in tears and says, I'm going to go get sober. And I said, Daddy, why would it be any different this time? And he says, I'm going to give it one more try. He said, your mom deserves a husband she can be proud of and your sisters and you deserve someone you can respect as your daddy. And that time it worked.

And then when he got sober, I said, Daddy, are you going to stay sober forever every day? He goes, I don't know. I'm going to stay sober for one more day. And I've remembered that every time as an entrepreneur, brother, when I was going to quit, I'm like, you know what? I'm just not going to quit for one more day. I'm going to go one more day. And my dad's life changed in that one more, brother.

Now, here's the thing that just occurred to me last week. I just want to share with you. I've never said this before. I want everyone to hear this, because I think as an entrepreneur sometimes solving people's problems, we go, I'm not qualified. or wants some more successful people to listen to me. My dad getting that one more try, because here's the premise of the book.

You're not as far away from your dream as you think you are. You're one decision, one relationship, one meeting, one podcast, one thought, one new emotion, completely changing your life. It's true. And my dad's decision changed our lives. But this is what occurred to me, brother. Someone helped my dad. And I don't know who they are.

I've already written this book. It just occurred to me the other day. someone helped my dad change his life. And here's the hook. Do you know what qualified them to help my dad? Their mess. The fact that they were once a drunk and a drug addict. The fact that they screwed their life up

is what qualified them to help my dad solve the biggest problem of his life and change my family forever. So don't discount your mess. Don't discount the stuff that's not going right right now. Don't discount your frailties. Those may be the very things that qualify you to change other people's lives, to solve other people's problems, is your mess.

Whoever that precious soul was, my great, great grandkids are indebted to them. I would not be talking to you right now had that person not helped my dad make one more decision and give it one more try. What an incredible story. I mean, if that piece alone was worth the podcast, if you're listening right now, that was it.

That was the gold. Thank you so much for sharing that story, Ed. I want all the leaders to check out the full story in the book because there's so much power in what you're talking about. So as we close here, you've alluded to this already, but why is it important for our leaders listening to adopt that one more lifestyle? What's on the other side to be gained? The other side is your destiny.

You were born to do something great with your life. Bible says to us that where there's no vision, the people will perish, right? I think if you dug deeper in that scripture, I don't think it means we don't see anything for our lives. I mean, listen, most of you would like to fly on a point. private jet as opposed to fly coach. Most of you would rather eat a steak than go to Del Taco. Most of you, right? Most of you would rather retire your parents or yourselves than not. Most of you would rather be happy than sad, proud of yourself than depressed.

So we have a vision for our lives, some. It can get clearer. Our issue is depth perception. We think we're further away than we are. And because we think this, listen to me, we act in accordance with it. And that pattern will always keep that life in the distance that you believe it's in. I have a chapter in the book, I'll say lastly about this called the pinata. And I went to this party for a five-year-old, and they're hitting this pinata. And the first kid hits the pinata, and no candy comes out. He gets tired. He quits. Another kid comes up. He's banging on the pinata. No candy comes out. Another kid. And eventually they get to the fifth or sixth child. A couple of them already left. What was happening that whole time when they're hitting that pinata is invisible progress.

what I call it compound pounding. There was no evidence progress was being made, but every one of those swings was making progress. The last little boy gets up, he takes one swing, boop, Penaena-bussed open, candies everywhere, everyone jumps on it and gets the candy. Was it his shot that broke the Penaata? Or was it the cumulative effort of everybody,

those compound invisible blows that were happening? As an entrepreneur, you're hitting the Penaata every single day and you're making invisible progress. doesn't feel like it. It doesn't look like it to you. It doesn't look like it to your family oftentimes. And far too many of you, because you're not giving yourself credit for that compound pounding, the invisible progress you're making, will quit before the candy comes out. And if you'll just stick around long enough to wait for the candy, whichever that means, the happiness, the money, the achievements for you, there's candy coming out of that thing eventually. You've got to keep hitting

that pinata and know you're making progress even on the days and the months and the weeks and the years where it doesn't feel like it. Man, that is gold. This is one of those episodes everyone's going to have to go back and listen to again because there's that much wisdom in it. Ed, you're super inspiring.

I'm so excited about your new book, The Power of One More. Thank you so much for taking the time to inspire our leaders out there. Enjoyed every minute, brother. Thank you. Thanks so much, Ed, for an incredible and inspiring conversation.

If you all want to get a copy of his new book, The Power of One More, the ultimate guide to happiness and success. Just use the link in the show notes. All right, coming up, we're talking about how to do the hard work to become successful, even when resistance is trying to hold us back. We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right, coming up, I talk with Dr. John Deloney.

He's a Ramsey personality, number one bestselling author of Own Your Past, Change Your Future, a mental health expert and host of the Dr. John Deloney show. We're going to talk about what he calls doing the hard work and how to push through resistance that might come your way. He's also going to share some strategies that he uses to stay well while going to be through these tough seasons. Here's our conversation. Dr. John Deloney, welcome back to the podcast. What's up, George? How we doing? I got to say, congratulations.

Number one national bestselling book, Own Your Past, Change Your Future. How does it feel? I have to finally look at the mirror and admit that it's not just my mom buying all these books and putting them in her closet. So, no, it's pretty cool, man. Here's what I know. I know if I'd written that same book when I still was a Dean of Student somewhere, I would have sold like 400 copies. And so it's, it's, you know, it's, Absolutely, because I'm here with this incredible team. It is an amazing team. But also, some life-changing content in this book.

I've loved seeing the reviews of people and how it's been affecting them. So good work. Real proud of you, man. Let's get into the meet here. We're talking about the practices of staying well while pushing through resistance. And this is something you had to deal with while writing your book. So I'm excited to dig into your personal experience. But our friend Ed Milet was just talking about greatness and convenience cannot coexist.

That's an interesting thought there. Yeah. You're always talking about on your show, the Dr. John Deloney show, doing the hard work. And when you tell people that, what are you getting at? Because that's a very vague term to just say, you've got to do the hard work. Yeah, I think... So I love what it says about convenience and greatness. I think we have a culture that's designed to lean towards convenient and optimization.

With the easiest thing. Right. And in fact, that's what all of our technology does for us. Like, Netflix just tells me what it thinks I'll want to watch next, right? or Jeff Bezos just tells me, here's some things you probably want to buy, and suddenly I'm like, I guess I'll get some fishing line, right? You just buy stuff.

And so our whole way of being is geared towards that. And so I think it's wise to step back and say, have I over-convenience to myself as a way of being? But I think when it comes to doing hard work, I think that's it's arena-specific. And so sometimes I need to do the hard thing and speak up in my home. I need to tell my wife, hey, I don't like this when this happens.

Here's what I need in this season, and that's hard for me. Other times the hard work is shut your mouth, right? Stop talking and let your wife explain something to you because, hey, she's way smarter than you. Get over yourself. And right, so I think the hard stuff is arena-dependent. Sometimes I need to get over myself and get in the gym more. And sometimes the hardest thing for me to do is I've got to rest. I've got to have a season of rest.

I'm just running my body into the ground. And so doing the hard thing is often looking. looking at what's the identity I've said before, like, who do I want to be? What are the goals I have underneath that identity, right? And then what do I have to do regardless of how I feel to live into that identity? And that's how you're going to be able to point you directionally towards doing hard work. And that takes a level of awareness to even zoom out a little bit and go, hey, what are the practices, disciplines, what's the hard thing that I know I need to do, but I'm procrastinating or it's just too hard? I don't want to deal with that today. I don't want to

deal with that today? It does, George, but I think that points back to what I think is the, is, man, if you told me to distill down, like, the number one challenge in the world, I don't think it's the economy. All that stuff matters. It's loneliness. And I have to know I'm not good at coaching myself. That's why Michael Jordan had a nutritionist and a coach, a basketball coach and a position coach and a workout, you know what I mean?

Like great people surround themselves with great. people to say, hey, you feel like you're tired. I'm looking, you're not. Go do the exercise. Or, hey, Deloni, you've got to take a break, right? So I know enough about myself to know during seasons of hard pushes, I'm often my own worst enemy. I've got to surround myself with other people. And every single business owner out there has to do that. Yeah, you talk about connection a lot on your show as being a key. Kind of a one-trick pony there, but man, you've got to have people. Yeah. You have to. So what does the hard work look like when you're in a a tough season because it's easy when things are going well. But when you're in a tough season,

when you meet that resistance, doing the hard work gets even harder. So, you know, when you wrote your book on your past, change your future, I remember having conversations with you when it was, man, you could go to a dark place. Because it was a hard, hard work. What were some of the practices that you used to stay well during that time and do that hard work? Number one, you've got to have a schedule and you just got to grind it out. And we have this, these romantic illusions about how people what it feels like to be writing. And I live on some acreage out here in the woods. I mean, I had a beautiful writing spot,

and I dragged a desk out on my front porch, and I just wrote outside. Like, I was doing all the things. It was miserable. It wasn't fun. It was hard, and then I'd get annoyed, and I'd have to go back and delete seven pages and start again. And then I'd get a chapter back,

and then the editors were like, this is garbage, and what are you doing with your life? I can't believe we hired you. Does your mom even like you? Right. So it's a constant. So here's the deal. If I wait until a hard season to create my steps towards leaning into hard things,

towards the goals I want to have, it's too late. It's like just waiting to the recession to start saving your money. Like you've missed the boat, right? You need to have had good behavioral financial practices all along so that when the tough seasons hit, you're ready to rock and roll. Similarly, I have to have a season of discipline beforehand. I've got to have a very clear. Here's when this is due.

Here's when we have to get this done. And there came the time, hey, family, I need y'all to leave for a week. My family had to leave. They left the state. That's how dramatic it got. Or they said, how about we leave? Because you're not fun to be around, right? But it took family sacrifice.

It took all of us in on this thing. But we had already set those things up in advance. So that when it was in the grind, dude, I didn't have to think about anything I just had to do. An easy thing is like working out in the morning. I don't go to bed without stacking up my shorts and my T-shirt and my shoes and my watch. And if I don't stack them up and I'm trying to, I'm just going to go back to bed. I just won't get up. I know they're right there.

I've cleared the path so that it's easy for me to grab that and just head down to the gym. And so it's like that, except in every facet of our lives. So you've got to have that discipline beforehand. It won't just show up. It's all about beforehand, man. Yeah. Yeah. And then you've got to have people to call.

Like, there's times when I'm like, man, what are we doing? I'm not going to sell any of these books. You get those really dark seasons of doubt. We're getting ready to do a new marketing campaign for our business. And it's not working. or we don't think it's going to work or the last one failed or whatever the self-doubt is

you've got to have people around you. To stay connected and have those disciplines before you're in that tough season. Build them right now. For the tough season. That's what they're for, man. Yeah.

So as we wrap here, give us one practice you think every leader, if they're not doing it right now, they need to be doing so that they can stay well through the tough seasons. Get with somebody that they can trust

that is either somebody that they is a coach that they pay, they've got a skin in the game, or somebody who has not a power hierarchy. So not somebody you work with, not somebody you're married to, but somebody that you are on the same level with. They own a business, they run a thing,

they're an associate vice president of a bank, whatever. And you can sit down and say, here's the next two months. What am I missing? Here's the next six months. What am I missing? And I do that professionally with the team here. I do that personally with my wife.

I do that with my kids. I do that with several people in my life. Just today, I texted a buddy who's hired. up in the banking industry and said, are we going to be able to softly in the economy, or are we going to have a recession and how bad will it be and whatever? And he wrote me back what his thoughts were. And then my next thing was, okay, so I'm thinking about doing this with my money over the next 12 months and 18 months.

And he said, great, I would make one tweet to that. So I'm, I sit by Dave Ramsey for God's sake, and I'm constantly seeking what's wisdom and what's advice, not what do you think? What do we need to do? What do we need to do with our money? What do you think about this? What am I missing? What are the holes in my gaps?

what were the gaps in my action plan. The number one thing people can do is get people around them and be honest. Well, as always, John, a lot of wisdom, a lot of heart, a lot of humor. Always love having you on the podcast. Thanks for being here. Let's be honest, between me and you, lots of good looks too, right? That's, wow, absolutely. You can't see it.

Mostly with you. Mostly with you. It's worth it. Thanks, John. Thank you so much, John, and congrats again on a number one bestselling book. If you all want to grab a copy of Own Your Past, Change Your Future, we've got a link for you in the show notes. And like John mentioned, staying connected is so, so important.

And one of my favorite things about Entree Leadership Elite is the advisory groups where you can connect with our business coaches and like-minded business owners to get to that next level. So check that out. We've got a link for you in the show notes. Now, as Ed talked about, you have to make the most of your time if you want to be more productive. So in addition to all the great strategies that he shared, our team has put together a seven-day plan to triple your productivity. All you have to do is take seven days and day by day start adding these time-saving tasks to your routine.

And by day seven, you're going to see an increase in how much you get done or your money back. But it's free, so actually, I guess no money back. But really, this is worth your time and it's going to save you lots of it. So to get this free download, just use the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, give us a five-star rating and write us a review. We love to hear your feedback. And the simplest way to help us grow the show is to send this episode to a friend who might enjoy it.

Be sure to follow us at Entree Leadership wherever you hang out on social media. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check it. out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network like Ramsey Call of the Day. Check out our new Ramsey Call of the Day podcast. It'll give you a quick hit of advice about life and money in under 10 minutes. Listen to the Ramsey Call of the Day, wherever you listen to podcasts.