EntreLeadership - This Is the Greatest Barrier to Your Success with Rory Vaden

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

Join us as our host, George Kamel, talks to Rory Vaden. Rory is a bestselling author, speaker and cofounder of Brand Builders Group. He shares what he says is the greatest barrier to success and the disciplines to focus on to overcome it. Later in the episode, George chats with Luke LeFevre—a board member and the Chief Creative Officer here at Ramsey Solutions. He shares common ways people get distracted from a project and what you can do to help them get back on track. You’ll learn: •      The most dangerous types of procrastination •      The #1 way to beat procrastination •      How successful people deal with hard things •      How to deal with procrastinators on your team Support our sponsors: •      Hite Digital: https://bit.ly/HiteDigital •      Kyro Digital: https://bit.ly/KyroDigital •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      Trainual: https://bit.ly/TrainualEntre Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Take the Stairs by Rory Vaden: https://amzn.to/3PazXDt •      Watch Rory’s TED Talk, How to Multiply Time: https://bit.ly/3nu7sVk •      Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden: https://amzn.to/3ugjHbP •      The Momentum Theorem Quick Read by Dave Ramsey: https://bit.ly/3nu7FYC •      Schedule a free 1-on-1 brand strategy call: https://bit.ly/3PeMOnW •      The War of Art by Steven Pressfield: https://amzn.to/3y91zSb •      Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni: https://amzn.to/3I7y4oK •      Learn more about EntreLeadership Elite: https://bit.ly/3a4HQv7 •      Download the Time-Tracker Tool: https://bit.ly/3bjFhWs 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 overcome procrastination to achieve success. And then we're going to talk about how to help your team push through that procrastination. 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 Rory Vaden. He's a best-selling author, speaker, and co-founder of Brand Builders Group. We're going to talk about what he says is the greatest barrier to success and the disciplines to focus on to overcome it.

So let's get to it. Enjoy this conversation. Rory, so great to have you on the podcast. George, man, it's good to see you, my brother. I can't believe it has been 10 years since your book Take the Stairs. Does that make you feel old? It does make me feel old.

That makes me feel old and the gray hairs that are coming in. And I have five-year-old and two-year-old. So I was up like changing, you know, we're doing potty training. Dad life. I was doing Dad-Life at 3.30 this morning. Living the dream. That's amazing. Well, this book, the principles in the book matter now more than ever. In a world full of noise and distractions and all kinds of things, leaders need to regain their focus and avoid and overcome procrastination. So that's what I want to dig into today if that's okay with you. Love it. Yeah. Let's go. So what have you found to be the greatest barrier to success for leaders out there?

The greatest barrier to success for leaders and for their people is procrastination. It is, it is, it is, is this idea that we are distracted. And there's three different types of procrastination, right? So we talk about the first type is classic procrastination, which is the one we all think of. So that's consciously delaying what I know I should be doing. I know I should go to the gym. I'm choosing not to go. I know I should pay the bills. I'm choosing not to do it. And we all have been familiar with that from the time we were kids, like doing homework. But that's not the most dangerous type of procrastination. The other two types are. much more dangerous because they're much more difficult to even notice. So the second type is what we

call creative avoidance. And creative avoidance is subconscious. It's unconsciously delaying the things we know we should be doing. And instead, we create meaningless things for ourselves to do so that we can do those things. That it's really a defense mechanism to avoid the stuff we need to do, but we still feel productive because we're completing insignificant or like trivial, trivial things. And our brain is actually addicted to this because if you monitor the human brain under brain scan, the brain loves to complete things. And so we love to check things off and cross things off, which, by the way, this is why, if you're listening, if you ever completed something that was not on your to-do list, and then you added it to your to-do list just so you could cross it off.

It's like a drug. It's so good. It is a drug. It actually literally is. Dopamine is released, okay? So that's the chemical that our brain releases into our system. And we are literally addicted to accomplishing the trivial in the same way that you would be addicted to any other type of temptation or indulgence. Because it makes you feel good in the short term.

But this is a massive, massive problem because success is not related to the volume of tasks we complete. it's related to the significance of them. And very often the way that you as a leader create results in your own life and with your team is by getting them to focus on the few things that really matter and moving, you know, kind of moving the ball forward in those. So that's creative avoidance. Wow. The third one is, to me, the most fascinating of the three.

It's what we call priority dilution. And the reason this is so interesting is because priority dilution affects the very, people who you wouldn't think to be procrastinators. It's the chronic overachievers, the do-goaters, the checklisters, the taskmasters. It's often the leaders. Sometimes it's even the owners and the executives. And the reason is that it has nothing to do with being lazy or apathetic or disengaged like the first two, but it's the same net result that if you're a leader, you think about how many days do you leave the office with your most significant priorities left unchecked or incomplete, not because you're lazy, you're working very, very hard, but because we allow our attention to shift

to less important but perhaps more urgent tasks. While somebody struggling with creative avoidance is living a life that would be characterized as a constant state of distraction, somebody struggling with priority dilution would be characterized in a word as, a constant state of interruption. And so for leaders and your people, right, I want you to think about each person on your team and go, which person struggles with procrastination, which struggles with creative avoidance, which struggles with priority dilution. But for all of us, George, if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. And that's the world we live in today. Wow. That's powerful. I'm thinking about creative avoidance is he like, I'm a

to check Facebook real quick. It's the ADD, but the priority dilution is, well, I put out a thousand fires today for my team, so I'm such a great leader when you didn't send that email or make that call or have that meeting that you needed to have. And so that's, that's huge because you can be real busy, but not actually productive. This is actually where, so I did a TED talk that went viral a few years after Take the Stairs came out. And it's called, the TED Talk is called How to Multiply Time. The book was called Procrastinate on Purpose. I wish I would have called the book, How to multiply time. That's a longer story. But the point is that we figured out from profiling and studying all of these leaders, right, and we coached them. We do one-on-one coaching. So we worked with hundreds of

leaders. And we saw that there is actually a way to manufacture more time. And we all think that, oh, time is the one thing you can never get more of. But it's a total lie. You actually can. Now, there's nothing that you can do to create more time inside of one day. We all have the same 24 hours, which is 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds. But the way that you multiply time is by spending time today, you invest time today into things that will create more time tomorrow. You spend time on things today that will create more time tomorrow. But if you're constantly living in priority dilution or creative avoidance, you're just dealing with urgent interruptions, fires, and distractions, which was kind of the conversation of take the stairs, and you're not building the significant

significant long-term things that will create time tomorrow, which is like procrastinating on purpose. Wow. So a lot of leaders listening, it feels like a personal attack. Some of the things you just said. But for those that go, well, I'm coming after you. This isn't me. I don't do any of that. I get my stuff done. I'm a good leader. I'm very productive. How do you become more self-aware to know when you're doing one of these types of procrastination? You know, it's funny, George, because I was actually a little afraid of exactly what you said of like, oh, man, are people going to feel like I'm calling them out? Most leaders, though, when they read about this, they don't feel called out. They feel heard. They go, oh, my gosh, like, this is my life. I'm working so hard. I am completely overwhelmed. I am giving everything I have, and yet the harder I work, it almost sometimes feels like the further I fall behind.

And I think it's not about calling you out and saying, hey, you have to work harder. People often misinterpret the message of take the stairs. Take the stairs, this metaphor of the book and everything, is not about making your life as hard as possible. It's actually the opposite. It's about making your life as easy as possible. However,

it's predicated upon this unpopular premise that the shortest, most guaranteed path to greatness is to do the hardest parts of things as soon as possible. And in a word, we call that discipline.

discipline is the antidote to procrastination. Discipline is the thing that will break you free. Discipline is also the thing that will break your team free. It's creating a culture of discipline. For a leader, it is the discipline, and by the way, this is the procrastinate on purpose. Where that title comes from is the idea is you procrastinate on purpose with the insignificant things or the things that only matter here and now. And by procrastinating on the trivial, that is where you create margin.

in your life that you then reinvest into the significant things. And we describe significance as the things that matter long term. But that takes discipline. You have to resist a fire. You have to resist the urge to answer your email where the newest email is at the top. I mean, that's how most of us organize our inbox. The newest emails at the top. But very often the most recent email is not the most significant item for us to deal with. But that's how we organize our inbox. It's how we organize our mind. It's how we organize our attention in our life. And so we're trapped in this prison of our own construction because we don't have the discipline to break free. So you have to do that. Meanwhile, your team, which typically, you know, your team is probably more likely struggling with

procrastination or creative avoidance, one of the first two. They have to develop discipline and you have to create a culture of discipline as a leader that says, even though we live in an escalator world, even though we live in a world where everybody is chasing the shortcut, even though we see indulgence and temptation all around us and everything is promised instant, you have to develop a take the stairs culture, a take the stairs mindset, which says, even though the world around me is taking the escalator, I'm going to consciously choose to take the stairs. I'm going to consciously choose to do the thing I know I should be doing, even though I don't feel like doing it, not because I'm embracing this, let's make life as hard as possible kind of thing. It's not even like a Navy

Seal kind of mentality or like, do it. It's just going, I'm doing it strategically because I realize that the payoff of discipline is freedom. The payoff of discipline is peace. The payoff of discipline is performance, results, abundance. But the only way to get there is through making short-term sacrifices. Yeah. It reminds me a lot about the money principles that we teach and how Dave says, you work too hard to be this broke. And the same thing applies to leaders.

You work too hard to not have, be anywhere closer towards your vision and just get a bunch of stuff done that didn't matter. Yeah. And so we've got to kind of get the debt out of our lives when it comes to the productivity. That's probably another book in there somewhere. Well, you know, for those of you that don't know, right, I am first and foremost a fan of Dave Ramsey and financial peace. I mean, that changed our life.

we had $55,000 in personal debt when I met, heard of Dave, read the book, then we had a friend that worked here, and I spoke at Devo back in 2008, and then we just kind of like become friends over the years. But the same thing that, you know, Dave says that, like you worked too hard to be broke. You also work too hard to be constantly stressed and overwhelmed. But why? It's because we're engaging in the same bad habits. And the same way that Dave says, look, the way to get control of your life, right, is the first

thing you do is like you make a budget. and then you get an emergency fund, you have to do the same thing with your time. You have to stop and go, let me identify what are the things that really matter. So just like the parallels between financial riches and margin and the riches of freedom and time freedom are so parallel. It's crazy. You have, just like you have to tell your money where it will go, otherwise it will disappear. You have to tell your time where it's going to go. Otherwise, it will disappear. In fact, this is called the law of Douglas MacArthur that the amount of busy work always expands to fill the amount of attention we allow to be available. So if you want to control that busy work, you have to narrow

your attention. You have to narrow your focus and you have to really sink in to the things that matter. But the debt snowball, the gazelle intensity is the same concept. We call it the magnification principle of focus. And we use the metaphor of a magnifying glass. Right. So if you take a magnifying glass and you know if there's like you take a piece of paper and it's just outside and it's on the street and you know there's the sun nothing happens to the paper but maybe you did this when you're a kid you hold up a magnifying glass catch the piece of paper on fire why because focus is literally power it's scientifically power sunlight focused enough creates enough heat to catch a piece of paper on fire Water can actually be streamlined tight enough that it can cut through steel.

Focus is power, which is why if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. What is a budget? It is focusing your money. What is a schedule? Focusing your time. These seven parts of the Take the Stairs mindset, which are what make up the book, these are the seven ways of thinking of focusing your mind. So it's all the same principles.

Yeah, that's amazing. It makes me think of our momentum theorem as well. focused intensity over time multiplied by God equals unstoppable momentum. And so many of the principles you just mentioned prove that to be true. And we've experienced that for 30 years here at Ramsey of just, let's focus on this thing and do it really well every day. So I love this conversation. And submit it to God. Exactly. That's a huge part of the equation. Because when you multiply it by the infinite, you get infinite results. Amen. That's amazing. So we don't have time to go through all seven types of strategies that you lay out. But if there was one where you go, okay, in this year,

where I know leaders to be, their mindset, what they've experienced, what is the one you would say, hey, focus on this thing, this week, this month with you and your team? Totally. The fundamental or foundational one is the paradox principle of sacrifice. And this matters for leaders in their team because never more in the last couple of years have people pointed to circumstance and blamed their results on circumstances. But like, circumstances. cannot dictate whether or not we are successful. Our choices dictate whether we are successful. And our character is what determines our choices. And so championship character, right, comes from like cultivating this disciplined choices. And so the way the paradox principle

sacrifice works, and here's the story that people love. So I grew up in Colorado. We've been in Nashville since 2010. So we've been here a while. But in Colorado, we are world famous for the Rocky mountains. And so what happens is to the western part of the state, we have the Great Rocky Mountains. But what a lot of people don't realize is that Colorado as a state is divided almost exactly in half. And so to the eastern part of the state are the great Kansas Plains. So it's really flat. Because of that sort of unique topographical landscape, Colorado is one of the only places in the world that has both buffalo and cows. And there is a great lesson, George, for leaders to learn from state. studying the way that these two creatures respond to storms. So when a storm comes, storms almost always

brew from the west, and what happens is they roll out towards the east. And what cows do is very natural. So a cow can sense that a storm is coming from this direction, and so a cow will run east to try to run away from the storm. Now, the only problem with that is that if you know anything about cows, you know that they're not real fast. And so the storm catches up with them rather quickly. Well, without knowing any better, the cows continue to try to outrun the storm. Instead of outrunning the storm, though, they actually run with the storm, which maximizes the amount of pain and time and frustration they experience from that storm. Isn't that stupid? But humans do the same thing all the time. We are constantly trying to avoid the

the inevitable challenges that come from these sort of difficult circumstances that our very own choices have led us to be in. People who are in debt, I can speak from personal experience, are constantly trying to find ways around paying their bills and controlling their spending. People who are overweight, I was also 45 pounds heavier than I am right now. I can speak from personal experience are often making rationalizations for why it won't work, why it won't change, I've already tried, or it doesn't matter, it's not going to affect me. people who are struggling in their marriage and they're having difficulty with their communication, they're often avoiding the difficult but meaningful conversations that need to be had to reconcile

that relationship. And the same with leaders. There are difficult decisions you need to make. There is a person that is on your team that you knew six weeks after they started, they weren't going to make it. And you've allowed them to hang out for nine months to pollute your culture, right? There is someone on your team who had a bad attitude last week, and rather than addressing it, you've let it sweep under the rug, and now it's becoming an acceptable, tolerated part of the culture. And the key insight that the ultra-performers have made that most of us have not yet is ultra-performers know problems that are procrastinated on are only amplified. Problems procrastinated on are only amplified. So waiting always makes it worse. What Buffalo do is very unique for the animal kingdom. And so what Buffalo do is they wait for

the storm to cross right over the crest of the peak of this mountaintop. And as the storm rolls over the ridge, Buffalo turned and they charge directly into the storm. So they run at the storm, and by running at the storm, they run straight through it. which minimizes the amount of pain and time and frustration that they experience from that storm. So notice how it's the exact same storm, which is such a great metaphor for every leader listening, right? Even though we're in different industries and in different parts of the world and different sized companies, we're all dealing with the same types of storms, right? We all have too much to do.

We all are trying to find good people. We're all trying to develop better processes. Like we all have the same struggles, even in our personal life, financially, physically, spiritually, meridally, like we don't get to choose whether or not we have storms. Our only choice is how we respond to those storms. And so the paradox principle simply stated is easy short-term choices lead to difficult long-term consequences. Meanwhile, difficult short-term choices lead the easy long-term consequences. The reason we call it the paradox principle of saccharacteries, sacrifice is because of this. It's the things that seem easy in life, all of these things that feel

good in the short term, they are the very vehicles to the more difficult life. Meanwhile, all of the things that we think of as hard, right, making a budget, you know, controlling our spending, being disciplined in our workout routine, praying every morning, like controlling our attention and what comes into our mind, being mindful of what we say, filtering our thoughts, all of these things that feel difficult are actually the vehicles to the easier life. And so that is the great paradox here. There is no sacrifice. There's no such thing as sacrifice. There's only short-term down payments on these rich future blessings. And the truth is that procrastination and indulgence are nothing more than creditors that charge us interest. Oh, I'm loving all these

financial analogies, you know me. Man, that's good. Yeah, this is beyond leadership. This is life. And it makes me feel good that I don't need to be Jocko and David Guggins to develop that level of discipline. So thank you for the encouragement. Although it wouldn't be bad to have their level of discipline. Wouldn't hurt. Those guys are some animals. Like they are amazing. Oh yeah. But yes, exactly, George. Like you don't have, it doesn't have to be that. Anyone can become that. You don't have to be born that way, wired that way. Any leader listening can go from where they are today to a different version of themselves that has that discipline where they have that time back in their life. They're productive, doing the right things, getting closer towards their vision.

And I so appreciate you coming on and encouraging all of our leaders today. 2008, there were a couple hundred people in the room. When I spoke at Devo last fall, there were a thousand people. And that's because you guys continue to pay the rent. Success has never owned. It's rented. And the rent is due every day. And, you know, the whole organization is driven by the fact, not that we need to be more successful, but that there's still people out there who need us that we haven't reached. And I love that about y'all. Well, that means a lot. We appreciate that encouragement and thankful to have a friend like you here in town. Thanks so much for being on the podcast, Rory. My pleasure, bud. Thanks so much, Rory for coming by the studio,

and congratulations on 10 years of Take the Stairs. If you guys want to grab a copy of that book, just use the link in the show notes. On top of that, Rory wanted to offer our list. listeners, a free one-on-one brand strategy call. So to take advantage of that, just click the link in the show notes and fill out the form. All right, coming up, we're talking about procrastination and your team and how to help them push through it. We'll have a conversation about that right after this. All right, coming up, I talk with Luke Lefevre, one of our board members and chief creative officer here at Ramsey Solutions. We're going to talk about the common ways people get distracted from a project and what you can do to get them back on track. Here's our conversation.

Luke, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you back. Thank you. You know what we're talking about today? Yes. I hope so. We are talking about procrastination. Yeah.

And you told me something funny just a moment ago that you procrastinated in prepping for the conversation about procrastination. I did. I did. That's why when they said, Luke, we want you to come and talk about procrastination on this. I was like, I am probably perfect for this or terrible for this because I'm an expert on procrastination. Yes. For better or worse. I have to fight it every day. Well, as a chief creative officer, you lead a lot of creative people, and creatives are known for being procrastinators.

That's true. Because inspiration doesn't always strike. That's right. So, yes, that's me. And so I have to figure that out. Well, you're here to help us. So let's talk about this. What are some common ways you've seen people on your team get distracted from a project and start to procrastinate?

Well, as I was thinking about this, I'll go backwards a little bit. I think I am one of the worst culprits of this. And I read a quote one time from one of my favorite books, The War of Art. I've talked about it before on here. And in it, there's a quote at the beginning. And it's from a playwright and a novelist. His name was Somerset, Mom. I don't know if I said that right. But he goes, I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at 9 a.m. sharp. And I just, that stuck me with, since I read that, and I was like, oh, yeah. It's about showing up and doing the thing, whether you feel, like doing it or not, because I'm never going to feel like doing a hard thing. And so I think

procrastination is just an element of creative war. And you might think, oh, I'm not creative. That's not me. This guy is not for me. No, no, no. I think you're all creative and we all are doing stuff in our businesses to make our business better, to make the world better. And anytime you're doing something like that, you're going to have resistance to it. And that resistance manifests itself as procrastination. I'll do it later. I'll start tomorrow, and then eventually you just never start because you keep saying tomorrow. And that's like I have to fight that every stinking day. Yeah.

And entrepreneurs and they're problem solvers, and every problem requires creativity. Exactly. And so this is a resistance we've got to face as leaders and our teams as well. So what do you do when someone on your team is habitually distracted or procrastinating? How do you have that conversation? Well, it's hard. There's no easy answer because it depends on the person. Like, if you've read Lanchione's ideal team player, we talk about that a lot here.

Are you dealing with just someone who's a lovable slacker who everybody likes but never actually does anything? Well, there you need to go. You need to deal with it. But one of the things that I do for people and for myself is I was in a band back in the day. And I learned that I hate practicing. So people are going to listen to this from me like, Luke is just lazy. No. Well, if you know the Enigram, I'm a nine.

And the deadly sin of a nine is sloth. And so, like, if I'm not careful, I will just go to the. that place. And so I have to do things to keep myself going. So when I was in the band, I learned I didn't like to practice unless I had a show on Friday night. Well, then I'm practicing a couple times that week getting ready and getting my brain right in the right spot. So what I've done for myself and for people on the team is I give them a show date. And you could call it a deadline, sure, but sometimes it's not the end of the project. Like the deadline might be in June, but I need to see their ideas earlier and I feel like they keep pushing it off. So what I'll do is I'll

say, hey, why don't you come to branding committee next week on Tuesday and just talk through what it is you've been thinking about? And so just the mere act of having them have a show or some kind of performance gets their brain to, like, put it together into some kind of slide deck or something, and it just keeps the ball moving. And so give people a thing to perform at because people are often, they'll just put it off if there's no, there's no date or there's no something to come perform at. And nobody likes looking stupid in front of a crowd or a group of people. So that's what I've learned to do. As the human brain likes to achieve something and check it off and have a reason to do things. And it reminds me of the importance of having that mission and vision in place and having role clarity in place and those goals for your team and desired futures. Because it helps the team understand, oh, I'm not just doing this for busy work.

Yeah. Like this matters. This is a part of the vision. So I love that idea of giving them a reason to do it, a reason to show up. Give them a show. They have to perform for. And you asked me earlier about the reasons, the common ways you've seen people get distracted from a project. Like, like I said, if you're putting something out that's good for your business, for the world, something, it's going to have resistance. And so any kind of resistance, any excuse, your brain, I just think is always looking for these things.

It could be anything. The TV show, phones, drama, family troubles, addictions, coworkers, gossip. But our initial gut level instinct is to not do hard things. And so if you're like, oh, I just don't want to do that. Like you're going to see Joe standing over there talking. I'm going to go see what he's doing, you know, and say hi to him. You have to combat that with intention. Yeah.

And one of the things that gets me is thinking about how procrastination affects others. How many people are not getting helped because I'm not doing this thing. I'm not putting this thing out in the world. I'm not doing my best. And so that really is a great way to make it. not about you and about my creativity and my work, but this matters for people outside of these walls. Yeah, that's exactly right. We talk about that all the time. So collaboration can be a great thing, and we love to collaborate here at Ramsey. We love a meeting. We love meeting together.

We're here all thousand of us plus in the same building because we love that. We value that. At what point does collaboration become a distraction from getting work done? Yeah, if you get the group together and you just talk about the work, like if you're just like, and then there was this problem and then there was this problem. I've had that happen before. You just get together and you don't actually do anything. You just talk about what you should do. You leave the meeting going, I don't know what happened, but I think we had fun. Did we just restate the problem a bunch of times, you know, that kind of thing? And so it can, it can be but distracting. But overall, I think it's really good as long as like you give

time ahead of time or in the meeting for some people to figure out what it is they think. Because you have all different kind of personality. So if you just throw a box, bunch in the group, you'll have, you know, the loud person who talks all the time or the person, the leader, everybody's waiting for them to talk or whatever. So what I would like, what I like to do is have a little bit of time in the meeting even. Hey, let's just spend five, 10 minutes. Let's answer this question for yourself. And you can write, you can type, you can do whatever to get your answer out. And then, hey, what do you think? And then people can say what they think out loud. And then that's where I think the collaboration actually works. Yeah. Yeah. So talk

me about accountability with your team. Yeah. How do you make sure they're on track without it seeming like, well, you're just, you know, the hovering art director who's just always watching what you're doing, making sure you're doing it. Yeah, this one's tough. And I'm trying to be really honest here. Accountability is not easy. And I'm constantly working on it. The accountability, procrastination, theirs are all really hard, hard things. Part one for your team, they have to know what the expectations are. If they don't know and you didn't say, hey, on Tuesday, when you come this meeting, here's what I want you to talk about. If you don't say that, they don't know. You have to give them a deadline. Brendan, our CTO here, he has a great talk on accountability.

And he's like, that's half the battle is we don't set the expectation of what we want. And so once you set it, that's when you just like have to keep bringing it up. Like people want to know what you want. If you're the leader, they want to know what you want. And so if you set that expectation, let them know, hey, this is what I want by this date, and then hold them to it and say, hey, remember, we got that meeting tomorrow. I'm excited to see what you're going to present. And that, that's what I do. And this is not a shameless plug, but I do. We use the, on the creative scene, the Entree Elite dashboard. And so we put all our desired future stuff in there and we look at that thing. If I don't have that stuff written down, like, I'm not, I'm not going to

remember exactly what we talked about last week or what we're trying to get to. So we have, hey, by the end of Q2, we want this thing to happen. And these are the five things that we need to be doing for the next six weeks. And we have them written in that thing. And we use it. And it's really helpful. If I don't have that, I'm just floating in the wind. Like, I have to have that stuff.

It reminds me of Donald Miller's quote that our brain craves clarity. Yeah. We want that clarity. And it also reminds me of the quote, an unspoken expectation is called a thought. Yeah. And so we can't do that as leaders. We have to be communicating with our teams, setting the expectations,

checking back in and making it clear for the whole team with something like the desired future dashboard or feedback loops like the weekly report tool inside of elite to make sure that we have those in place, those systems in place. If I just, it's the easiest example, but man, I thought about getting my wife flowers. That's nice. Yeah.

It's a nice thought. I didn't tell her and I didn't do it, but I thought about it. You were so close. There's no expectation. That's good. So as we wrap here, what is your favorite question to ask someone who you think? think is procrastinating. I don't have a good answer for this. We might need to edit this one out.

There's no good question. It immediately went to like, what are you doing? What's you doing over there? Just, what's going on over there? What's you working on? You know, I had a designer one time that had to get this, it was a live event workbook done. This was a few years ago. And he had to get this workbook done. And I was out for a couple days or something. And I came back and I could see on the screen that literally while I was gone for those two days, nothing. moved forward. Like it wasn't different. And I did, we were walking to lunch and I was like, hey, it doesn't look like anything's happened. What's going on? And he was just like, oh, he just got overwhelmed with the scope of it. And he just got overwhelmed. So it was like, all right, well, let's just step back and look at what's going on. It's usually not about the work. It's usually about something else going on. So he spent a bunch of time getting his files organized.

Like it's always easier to do these simple things like, well, I think I'm going to clean my office, or I'm going to organize my desktop instead of doing the hard work of slugging it out and you just got to get in there and start making the thing. So I don't know if there's a good question but it's you can't just

if I think someone's procrastinating you can't ignore it. You just got to, you do. You just say, hey man, what's going on? How's it going? Well, it's going well, you know? Well, it sounds like it starts with trust in a relationship

before it ever turns into the question. Yeah. Because otherwise it feels like an attack but when I know, hey, Luke is for me. He cares about me as a leader and he's not asking to attack me. He's asking because he wants to know how I'm doing. Right.

This isn't, what are you doing? This is, hey, man, how's it going? Is it going all right? Like, I'm the leader. I'm not like the slave driver. I'm the, hey, here's where we need to go. I'm supposed to help you get there. So you're right.

You're right. Well, it's just as much on the team to raise their hand to go, hey, I'm stuck. I'm stuck. Can you help me get unstuck? Can we get some other people in the room? Yeah. And I think that takes a level of maturity, a level of vulnerability and a level of trust with the leader that it's not going to backfire.

Yep. And that's really hard for a team member to do. Somebody said to me one time, hey, Luke, it's much farther from their desk to your office than from your office to their desk. So them raising their hand to say, hey, I'm stuck is really, really hard. But you going, hey, how can I help? If you're noticing they're like putting something off, I notice something's up.

Let's go talk about it. What's going on? You know, and that's not, what are you doing your work? That's, hey, what's going on? Let's figure this out. So you're right. Yeah. Setting that tone.

It's crucial. Exactly. Well, I appreciate your vulnerability and your procrastination and the ways that you've got unstuck and helped your team push through that resistance and appreciate you as a leader on the Ramsey team. Thank you. Good to be here. Thanks so much, Luke. Always love having you on the podcast. So what's a good way to determine if you're procrastinating?

Well, one way is to keep track of what you're spending your time on. Is it the most important thing? Or are you putting off that one project you're dressed? To help you keep track of all this, our team has created the Time Tracker Tool. You just download this PDF and write in what you're doing in 30-minute increments. And then you'll rank each activity and by the end of the week, you'll have a great picture of how you spent your time. 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. 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 Rudder.

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.