Start With A Win - How to Effectively Manage Your Time and Development with Eric Papp

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

In this episode of Start With A Win, Adam welcomes Eric Papp, Keynote Speaker and Founder of Agape Leadership, LLC. Eric begins the conversation by sharing his background in the leadership development and sales industry and his inspiration for initiating Agape Leadership. Agape signifies the highest form of love, which inspired the name of Eric’s business since he believes the highest form of leadership translates into the highest form of love. Eric discusses the importance of personal development, emphasizing if you’re not consistently improving, you’re gradually getting worse. He reveals how a lack of investment in yourself and not educating the mind will result in negativity, self-doubt, and worrisome thoughts. He also recommends reading 15 minutes a day devoted to your personal development, business, or spirituality. Eric explains people tend to habitually overcommit, overpromise, and under-deliver with obligations and responsibilities. As a result, people extend beyond their capacities. He further explains that activity impacts thoughts, interfering with the bandwidth to think strategically and develop ideas. In turn, this dynamic creates a lack of certainty, which prevents people from reaching their goals. He breaks down the concept of better thinking versus more effort, emphasizing the importance of planning time strictly for thinking and brainstorming. This consists of two components: Preparation = Establishing a clear game planPriority = How you will spend your time and debriefEnd Result = Measuring your progress and evaluating what needs to be changedEric shares one of his core time-management concepts—micro to momentum. This concept focuses on developing an unconscious habit by starting small on tasks and working your way up. He elaborates how this coincides with overcoming procrastination and perfectionism.   Connect with Eric:https://www.ericpapp.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericpapp/https://twitter.com/ericpapp?lang=enConnect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. Coming to you from Denver, Colorado, home of Remax World Headquarters, it's Adam Conto, CEO with Start With A Win. How you doing, Producer Mark? So good. Hey, guess what? Today we get to talk about kind of my two favorite things here. So like leadership and sales business performance. So I mean, I love these things. I love talking about leadership and I love talking about sales and business performance. So I mean, I love these things. I love talking about leadership

and I love talking about sales and business performance. So we've got a great guest. You ready to go, Mark? Let's do this. Awesome. Well, we have Eric Papp, who founded Agape Leadership LLC, an intellectual capital firm focusing on leadership and sales for business performance with the sole purpose of driving leaders and their teams to success. I love this. So Eric has a successful history of delivering proven strategies that help businesses and leaders increase productivity and performance in really what we know is a super complex world, especially more complex now than it ever has been. Keeps changing and confusing people. Eric's a successful author. He's a public speaker.

He's been doing that for over a decade, worked with thousands of managers to help their teams towards success. He's got a couple of books out, as I mentioned, Leadership by Choice and Three Values of Being an Effective Person, both with Wiley and Sons Publishing, one of my favorite publishers. And they're both top sellers recognized for the unique impact on business. So Eric, welcome to the show. Hey, Adam, thanks so much for having me on. And a shout out to you. I saw your recent publication in Forbes, that article, which is a great concept and I love it. You know, the pain of discipline versus the pain of regret. And, uh, that's it right there, man. I love that. So shout out to you and thanks so much for having me on the show. Hey, thanks Eric. Um, Hey, why don't you tell us a little

bit about yourself? Yeah, absolutely. So, um, that's cool. You're in Denver. I'm in Tampa, Florida. Um, formal education, people sometimes want to know, you know, formal self-education background was Jesuit high school and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. And then self-education, which I know you're, we're cut from the same cloth from there. Constantly reading books.

I love to read usually about a book a week or so. And then I sprinkle in there some type of fiction or James Patterson book. I have a wife, Breanne, and our little daughter, Eliana, 20 months. And what else? Oh, I'm big into the kettlebell and the Peloton for extracurricular activities. And yeah, man, that's a little bit, yeah. I love it. Healthy body, healthy mind, right? Absolutely. Yeah, totally. That's awesome.

I was talking to a bunch of leaders yesterday. I gave a speech. You and I do a lot of the same things here and help organizations realize leadership. And it was interesting because that was one of the key points that always comes up is you have this room full of people who aren't treating themselves right and they expect to treat their businesses right. You're like, you got to do both. Absolutely. Yeah. The mind is there for the body. If the body and mind are not in one tune, then it's really tough to see results because it starts with the way you feel, the way you move. And hey, and that ties into the whole starting with the wind.

There you go. Good tie-in, my friend. So let's jump into your company here. Tell us about your organization. I mean, what inspired you to start the company? What do you see in its future? And what is really the key goal here of your company? Yeah. So Agape Leadership LLC, that's what I call it, Agape Leadership Training and Development. And the key, what is Agape, right? So Agape is the highest form of love. That's where it comes from. Like there's several words to describe love, you know, eros, erotica, philia, brotherly, you know, like the city of Philadelphia. And so I always thought, you know, hey, the highest form of leadership is the highest form of love. And, you know, self-sacrifice, giving to other people, unconditional. I got my start in this business working for a seminar company called Skill Path Seminars back 2008, something like that, 2007, 2009, somewhere around that time, and was going all around the country doing programs on leadership and team building. I would have people there from different organizations and such, and it was a tremendous stepping stone for me. I always knew I wanted to kind of start my own

business. And that's kind of how it started. So it was in one of their top trainers and kind of then launched off one of my own business into 2010. And much of it, you know, when I started, kind of still remains the same. Training and development, and then also keynotes at conferences and really at the core of it is to help people elevate their level of performance, you know, giving them something they can use today that can make them better off. Perfect. I absolutely love that, that concept. You know, we, I mentioned, I was talking to a group of leaders yesterday. We're talking about if you're not getting better, you're getting worse. And you got so many people who aren't working on these things each and every day. And it's, it's not, there's no net neutral in your existence. Wouldn't you agree? I mean,

it's, we got to work on this every day, right? Absolutely. You know, and that's something, Adam, you hit on and something very basic is just reading for 15 minutes a day. If you're not reading a book for 15 minutes a day, and I'm not talking a blog, I'm not talking something on your computer, but no, like a good book, whether it's leadership or spirituality or sales or development or something, what happens then is other things start, you know, those negative thoughts or those worry or those self-doubt or, you know, the weeds of the mind, that'll naturally grow. And you're exactly right. If we're not growing towards something, we're going in the opposite direction. And so nothing is stagnant. And that's really

a key thing because sometimes we can get out of those things. I know for me, you know, when, when, when the, when the pandemic hit, I kind of stopped doing my normal, like reading. Cause I was like, okay, I got to buckle down over here. And then it wasn't until a while that I was like, oh man, I'm missing that my daily reading and educating the mind. And then I really got a higher level of confidence and clarity. And so you're a hundred percent right. You know, and so often than not, we just, we take kind of professional development, personal moment for granted, like, oh, that's nice to do. Or, oh, I did that before in the past thinking that we already checked the box. No, it's a, it's a continual process because if not, you know, the weeds and the worry of the world start to weigh in on us.

I love that. And they eat up the one thing that we all have the same amount of. And that's time. When we don't know how to deal with that. And what's the first thing you hear out of people when you say, how's it going? And are you getting your things done? I'm busy. And you and I both know that's a big fat excuse in their life is there's a difference between

busy and productive. But you have to get yourself to productive through managing your time properly. And then that is one of the key programs that your organization offers. Can you give us some of the obstacles that people are facing when it comes to managing their day and ensuring that they get that productivity in properly? Absolutely. So that is, it's one of my stable programs, managing multiple priorities. And the biggest number one thing I see is we over-commit, over-promise, under-deliver. And I always share with folks, hey, your capacity to generate ideas, to fill up your to-do list, to select tasks will always be more than your capacity to execute properly.

And so it's like, well, you really have to stop and say no. And the person that did this the best in terms of in our, on a pedestal in business in the last century was Steve Jobs. His ability to say no to things was just, it was amazing. And we have to be like that. A lot of times we just want to fill things up that a lot of times we just want to fill things up because a lot of times that's habitual thinking of like, oh, well, if I'm not doing anything, well, then people think I'm lazy. Oh, if I'm not doing anything, you know, and it's like, no activity drives out thoughts. So if you don't have the bandwidth to come up with an idea, if you don't have the bandwidth to think strategically, then we just get caught up in

doing things. And a lot of times we're doing things and we don't have a level of certainty or belief in them. So then we never get to our goal because we're trying way too many different things when really it's taking a step back and working on that that inner part that inner game wow great points uh it's it's fascinating i mean you and i i think we could just sit here for hours and talk about how to how to um you know manage our day or or manage our choices i guess. I call it emotional maturity, which is choice management, which is what does your day look like and how disciplined are you with those no's. And you have to know your no. And, you know, K-N-O-W, your N-O.

And it's so much, it is freeing to use that word, whereas we were raised with that word being condemnation. Your parents would say, no, when it came to doing something, and you see little kids go, no, to different things. But the reality is it's the most powerful word that gives you freedom in this world. So do you think that is one of the key reasons why business leaders get overwhelmed? I think it does go back. You're right on, you're dead on something, Adam, you're, you're spot on in that thing about this phrase. If you don't have something to do, I will give you something to do. You know, we all heard that when we were a child by a parent or somebody, you know, if you don't have something to do, you know, I'll give you something to do.

And it's kind of like that stay busy mindset. So the concept now of like taking a step back or not filling your calendar completely with all these meetings and zoom calls and things like that. And to actually carve out time for thinking or, you know, for brainstorming is a very new concept because habitually we're always told to be busy, you know, Oh, get, you know, work real hard. And I talk about the distinction between better thinking versus more effort. And like I said, activity drives out thought. So, you know, if somebody is just the hardest working person, they're not usually going to come up with, with the best ideas because they're just so overwhelmed. It's kind of like our phone or smartphone. If you want to go to

take a picture on it and you ever get that thing, it says like storage capacity, you know, you, you have no more storage. Well, that's how I'd say a majority of knowledge workers, business owners are going around with is they've got no capacity to fully execute on what they're doing because you know, they've got all up here. And so really being able to have the bandwidth to execute on something is very key. You just said something that was really, really interesting to me about being the hardest worker versus being a smart worker. And you hear a lot of people, usually they're the ones that run around and say grit and grind and hustle and things like that, but they're not talking about focus and they're not talking about priorities and things of that nature. So it's interesting. How do you bounce those two things off of each other where it's, okay, you can go out and work hard and accomplish nothing

because you're trying to work hard at a whole bunch of different things, or you can work very smart at one thing and accomplish a lot with it? I mean, where do you see that dichotomy come in? And what should we be thinking about when it comes to hard work versus focused, smart excellence in doing something? Absolutely. And there's got to be two. I don't want to just kind of say that it's no, it's all just sit back and, you know, the whole law of attraction or the secret, you know, we don't have to do anything. No, I'm not saying that, you know. But what I'm saying is you have kind of two periods where you have preparation and priority preparation is okay. Let's get clear on our game plan.

Okay. Let's see, you know, these are the, the, the homes that we're going to target, or these are the calls that we're going to make. Let's really, let's put a game plan together. And then the prior, you know, may, when it comes to working on our priorities, okay, tomorrow we're going to spend two, three hours knocking out calls where, and then we're going to do a little debrief afterwards, you know, as opposed to just getting up every day and just cranking, you know, with something, you know, so having kind of batching the two, like batching the time that you take to

prep, to prepare and to think and to kind of analyze. And then when you go hard, you know, and then to, you know, go hard for an hour, two hours, three hours. So kind of having that ebb and flow of that to kind of really see, okay, where do we need to adjust? Where are we making progress? Where are we not making progress? Yeah. Because sometimes the flip side of that, it's like sales, right? Sales is easy if you work it hard and it's hard if you work it easy. And I know a lot of people that tend to work it easy and it's always hard for them. They're always trying to chase the next best thing. And so it's like, no, if you just, let's get consistent and then, you know, we can kind of incorporate something else. So it's kind of having those two, you know, batching that,

that level of, of thinking time with, with application. Awesome. And I want to be clear to everybody, this, there's not a smart or hardworking, it's not a binary decision. It's smart, hard focused work that, uh, that prepared for, that is calculated that you're talking about, and disciplined in a manner that creates consistency and consistent results. So I want to kind of change channels a little bit here and talk about how procrastination and perfectionism fit into all of this. Because you talk about those things, and I'm really interested in this because you see a lot of people put things off. And typically what they do is they pick up their phone and they start thumb surfing or they go and binge watch something

or go stand at the water cooler or who knows what it is, go for a walk, but they put things off and they never get to them. But at the same time, you have people that overwork things. They're focused on trying to do them too well. Is done better than perfect? Or how do you, somebody wants to get in shape, try to go as micro as possible. You know, like if you're writing a book, okay, let's just write one line. People with, oh, I could do that. You know, okay, great. We'll do right one line, you know, and then try to do it tomorrow. And then you're going to start to trick yourself into, okay, I can do two lines. I can do a paragraph. I can do one page. Okay. So you got to really generate that momentum. And then over the course of, you know, 65, 70 days, it becomes that unconscious thought, that habit where you can, the effort itself doesn't seem so paralyzing, you know, or if it's like reading a book, people think, oh, you know, this is the mere fact, you know, oh, you know, I've got to read a book and, you know, the book's 400 pages, whatever that can be a warm, but if you say, Hey, I'm just going to read a page, just kind of really, you have to really trick yourself into that. You really have to kind of trick yourself into that, that little micro step, and then to generate that level of momentum. And that's where I think a lot of times with procrastination, perfectionism,

we get in our heads, we're our own worst enemy. We, we, we think we find something so daunting, so unencumbering when it's like, wow, you know, we're really, no, just, just get into it. And then if, um, somebody else I've heard, um, Dan Sullivan talks about this 80% approach. Hey, when you're 80% ready, you know, take action or just, you know, 80%, you know, get it out there. We're never going to be a fully a hundred percent. And I think that is a great thing to have too, is, you know, done is better than perfect. And, um, you know, you can always kind of go back, depending upon the project and, and adjust things or, or, you know, learn from that. And as you go forward, but, uh, but yeah, procrastination, perfection, it's, it's only becoming more apparent because now we have these smartphones. And so now instead of going for that walk or doing some of that commitment, we just say,

Oh, let me just, let me just check my phone. And we go on social media, there goes 25 minutes. We check the weather, you know, we'll, we'll do any excuse. And then that kind of pulls us away from what we really want. And then at the end of the day is we get tired in life, not by what we do, but what we don't do that weighs on our mind. And then it's like, oh man, I should have done this today. I wish I could have gone for a walk. I wish I've would have called that person. And that's normally times where we, then we, we start to beat ourselves up and we create that level of incongruence in ourselves. Some really good points there. I love that, you know, what weighs on us is what we don't get done.

I mean, you think about that, the things you get done, it's such a relief. It's so energizing when you accomplish something, when you've got a project or, you know, you're even just going to the gym in the morning. When I'm done with that, I feel energized, not by the act of going to the gym, but the fact that I did something for myself and, and accomplished it. So that's a, that's a huge point. Thank you for, uh, certainly bringing that up. I've got a question for you. The, um, how do you record your day and your time management or choice management in particular? Do you use like a written day timer or do you just use your phone or what is your secret to that? Absolutely. And so this is my priority planner. It's in its third edition. This is something I've

created. I put it out there on Amazon, but it's not something that, you know, I really, and I, and I usually give these to my audience members and when I'm doing trains and things like that. And it starts off, Adam, you'll love this. It says three wins from yesterday. So I write down what were my wins from yesterday. So like, for example, going to the gym. Okay. Or I did a 45 minute Peloton ride. Great. That's one of my wins. Had a great call with this, did a great podcast with Adam. So, and I write that down right at the top here. And sometimes I'll, I'll, I'll peek ahead and I'll write it for the next day. And then I adjust my three priorities and that's the 80, 20 concept. Okay. What are the three main

things I want to do today? That's going to really, you know, propel me forward. And, and that's how I have that in that time, um, outcome and action item. So this helps me plan my day. I also have a weekly strategy sheet that helps me plan my week. And, uh, that allows me the focus, you know, and, and the key thing here is I don't fill it up. Not every part of the week is accounted for. Not every part of my day is accounted for in, in, uh, my planner, but you know, it allows for that flexibility, but it really helps keep me focused on the most important thing. Like you asked, like, what's, what's some of the challenging things I'd say in work environments is keeping the most important thing, the most important thing,

because all these other tempting things pop up and we say, oh yeah, okay, I'll do that. And, and we commit ourselves to something when really what's really important, we're not fully executing on. And that is, you know, so keeping the most important thing, the most important thing is, is, uh, is a challenge. I think we all have myself included. I love that. I always say the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. I've seen concept is it is so true because there's always something that flies in front of your face or somebody runs into your office or cubicle or whatever with their hair on fire going, Oh, I need you to do this. And you're like, hang on, you know, let's, let's take a deep breath and take a step back. And where do we fit this into our priorities? So it's, it's fascinating.

And that's how you, um, how you really cause frustration and discontent in the workplace is people just, everybody's running around with a crisis and that doesn't do anybody any good. So, you know, all this planning creates success and accomplishment. And we try to go from idea to execution. We try to get, we get an idea and then we go right to like some, some, and it's like, no, let's go from idea to filter idea to like, okay, what's the goal impact and focus of this new project we want to take on? Cause that's a lot of times employees are overwhelmed because you know, a manager, somebody gets this idea and they want to implement it. And it's kind of like, well, you know, we've got seven other things that we're trying to juggle right now. Where does that fit

into here? And so that's always the biggest thing. And that goes back to what I said earlier, our ability to generate ideas will always exceed our ability to execute. And, uh, you know, that's, that's at the core of it. So it's being able to, like, as you said, you know, say no, you know, or not right now. The big secret, everybody, I hope you heard that say no one to say no. So, um, you're speaking at a, uh, big event here in Colorado, Colorado association of realtors conference coming up. Anything, uh, the audience has to look forward to. There are a lot of people that listen to this, that will be at that particular event. So, uh, sneak peek, what are you gonna be talking about? Sneak peek. So I'm gonna talk about, um, the mindset strategy and execution. And then within that, I'm going to, I'm going to

dial into this, this state of certainty, what I call a state of certainty, SOC state of certainty, because it really tackles, you know, procrastination, perfectionism, when we get in our head and not wanting to do something, you know, and I'm going to talk about how to kind of trick ourselves to get into a level of certainty that allows you to get into action and doing that on a daily basis, weekly basis, and what that starts to build in our lives. So I will talk about SOC, state of certainty. I have, I have little t-shirts that are made state of certainty, things like that. But that concept I think is so important because a lot of times people, when they're trying to get to a goal, trying to get to a task, our brain, we kind of go,

well, what did I do before? What did I do last year? And even if it didn't work, we do the same stuff that we did last time. And it's like, no, you've got to take different action. We've got to take a different approach to something. So that requires a different level of thinking. You know, it's Einstein said, you know, these problems can't be solved at the same level of thought, you know, you've got to get that higher level. So higher level of certainty. And then that gives us a new course of action to take. Such a wise statement, getting our minds right and certain about it before we attack the challenges. So Eric, I have a question for you that I ask every one of our amazing guests on the show. And I know you're going to have a really cool answer to this because you've already filled us

with a lot of gold here, man. There's a lot of great information. Eric, how do you start your day with a win? Right out of the gate before my feet even hit the ground, I start talking to myself. So when, when my head is still in the pillow, like when my eyes come up, I start talking to myself, man, today's going to be a great day, man. I'm looking forward to this. I'm looking forward to this interview with Adam. I feel great. I feel terrific. I start the self talk because that is the very first thing that I, that I start to get going. Because if not, then it's like we're dead in the water. Like, oh man, what's today? Oh, okay. Today's Thursday. Oh, today's Wednesday. Okay. How many days until the weekend? And that's where that kind of starts.

So immediately self positive self-talk right out of the gate. Awesome. Eric Papp, Agape leadership, keynote speaker, author, just a great guy and one heck of an achiever. Thank you for being on the show and thank you for starting your day with a win. Thank you, Adam. Enjoyed it. Yes. And hey, thank you for listening to Start With A Win. Listen, Adam is releasing his book very soon. It comes out this fall. So get on the pre-order list. You want to pre-order this book. It's, it's fantastic. Uh, you're going to be motivated, inspired, and it's going to change your life. So pre-order that book. Uh, don't forget to go onto iTunes and subscribe, write a

review, rate the show and for more great content. And to find out, uh, all the places you can get that book, head over to startwithawin.com. Hit us up on YouTube if you're just listening to this and maybe want to see some of the visuals and our crazy dances. Like, subscribe, all that great stuff. And until next time, start with a win. Bye.