The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Focused As A Bee: Six Buzzworthy Strategies To Thrive In A Distracting World by Jones Loflin, Sydney Loflin

Episode Date: April 19, 2025

Focused As A Bee: Six Buzzworthy Strategies To Thrive In A Distracting World by Jones Loflin, Sydney Loflin Jonesloflin.com/podcast Amazon.com What could you accomplish if you improved your ability to focus? Imagine what your life would be like if: You had the satisfaction of completing your goals You had perfect clarity on your priorities and your daily decisions were aligned with them You had a system to manage the countless distractions coming at you each day Focused as a Bee tells the story of Sydney, an ambitious young woman who is feeling overwhelmed with work and life. Constant distractions, a lack of clear priorities, and the failure to make progress on her goals are wreaking havoc on her self-confidence and work satisfaction. The future she envisions seems out of reach. She carries guilt for not improving her career success, but figuring out what needs to change remains a challenge she hasn’t yet overcome. And now she has a new distraction… A swarm of honeybees in her backyard! Reaching out to her beekeeping best friend Alicia, Sydney hopes she will get rid of them ASAP. Instead, Alicia invites Sydney to explore how the work of the bees might offer insights on improving her current work life dilemma. As Sydney becomes comfortable with the bees, she realizes that the secret to their incredible productivity and success lies in their ability to focus. With Alicia’s guidance, Sydney learns six permissions that enable her to: Complete her “one jobs” and stay focused on outcomes Reduce the temptation to shift her attention to less important activities Make changes to stay present in any moment Be patient with herself as she applies these new skills Focused as a Bee is a fun and essential guide for those tired of the status quo. Aren’t you ready to experience the buzz of success more often? About the author JONES LOFLIN is president of Helping Others Prepare for Excellence Inc. As a keynote speaker for three decades, he has empowered countless individuals to make better choices with their time, enabling them to thrive both professionally and personally. Jones’s innovative approaches to leadership and time management have garnered global recognition. His client list includes Federal Express, Choice Hotels, Clayton Homes, Saudi Aramco, and the United States military. Jones has four books. They include Always Growing, Juggling Elephants, Getting to It, and Getting the Blue Ribbon. His fifth book will be released in January 2025. As a coach, Jones is committed to helping people achieve meaningful progress in their lives.

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Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi folks, it's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, it seems that that makes it official. Welcome to 16 years, 23 in our scenes of the mix of official welcome to the 16 years 23 and our episodes of the Chris Foss show bringing you the most brightest smartest people in the show interviewed by an idiot with a mic as the host. I just made that up on the ramble and boy that sure worked. Unfortunately for me.

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reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Anyway, we have an amazing young man on the show today with us. He's the author, multi-book author of several books. His latest one just came out, January 7th, 2025. it is called Focused as a Bee, six buzzworthy strategies to thrive in a distracting world. Jones Laughlin joins us today. He's the author of the new book, I believe with his daughter Sydney, is that correct? Jones Laughlin That is correct. Pete Slauson And we don't have Sydney on the show, I think,

but she is the co-author, so I want to make sure that's clear to people when they Google it. We're going to be talking to him about his insights, his experience, his life's journey, and why you should be focused as a bee. He's going to sting you. Jones is president of Helping Others Prepare for Excellence, Inc. As a keynote speaker for three decades, he's empowered countless individuals to make better choices with their time, enabling them to both thrive professionally and personally. His innovative approaches to leadership and time management have garnered global recognition.

His client list includes Federal Express, choice hotels, Clayton homes, Saudi. Amarako. I'm not even sure I'm pronounced that right. I think I butchered that Saudi America America The United States military I just got I just got hung up on that I'm gonna have to go figure out what that is Next time I'll just say Saudi So welcome to show Jones, how are you?

So welcome to the show, Jones. How are you? Oh, who wouldn't be great now after that introduction? I was just trying to figure out when you breathe. When I heard you rambling that off, I thought, has he got an oxygen tank, you know, strapped somewhere on him that just pumps in air to his lungs? Because you just rattle that off without ever going, so that was incredible. I don't have a brain, so there's no reason to get oxygen to it. Just give it to your.com and tell us where people can find you on the

interwebs. Sure, absolutely. JonesLothelm.com. That's L-O-F-L-I-N dot com is a great place to find me to find out about the work that I do. If you're listeners that are on LinkedIn, I post a lot of content on LinkedIn because I do a lot in the business community. And so you can just type my name into the LinkedIn search box and love to connect with folks there so they can learn more about my work. Of course, the website for the book is focusedasab.com. Focusedasab.com. So give us a $30,000 overview of what's in this new book. Sure, absolutely.

The subtitle says it best. It's how to stay focused in a distracting world. We take principles. I say we because yes, my daughter, Sydney, wrote this book with me. We take principles from the world of honey bees and beekeeping that people can apply to their own lives to make sure that what they say is important is actually get done. Get done. So what is the, what is the, give us the, it's, it's a, I don't know if an allegory metaphor

is the right words, but I flunked second grade. So basically give us the story of this young lady that's in the book. Sure. Absolutely. The young lady's name is Sydney. I'll explain more about that in a moment, other than the fact that she's my daughter, but Sydney is a young professional who's finds that she's just not moving things forward, whether it be in her job or whether it be in her personal life. She just feels stuck in the status quo and she's moving from one thing to another. And one Saturday morning, she happens to look outside her window and sees a swarm of bees who have taken light on a fence in her backyard, which is something common here in my part of the world.

In fact, I was catching some bee swarms just a couple weeks ago. And so what happens is that she calls her best friend Alicia, who's a beekeeper, and says, you got to get these things out of here. I hate bees. And so when Alicia comes over and sees the bees, they talk through some things about the bees. And Alicia convinces Sydney to actually keep the bees in her backyard and invites her to learn from those bees and her journey with Sydney to actually keep the bees in her backyard and invites her to learn from those bees and her journey with Alicia in working with bees to learn principles about how to stay focused in the moment and how to get more of your most important

things done. So that's the gist of the story. We do live in a distracting world. I mean, we've got the beeps, the notifications, the beeps, the bells, the dings, the bells, the dings, you know, there's all sorts of people who, you know, the emails that are peeing you, you know, you wake up in the morning, open your emails and it's, you know, everyone wants to go one way or another and they need an answer now. And the same thing with, you know, Facebook and social media. And a lot of people are kind of, there's kind of a dopamine sort of addiction to it. Sometimes where people are just, you know, the fear of missing out, you know, where

they're like, Oh, I gotta make sure I get all my notifications. I remember when I first, when Twitter first started back in the day, this is like nearly days that I had friends that they would insist on reading every tweet that the people they followed had put out before the, as they went to bed, but they wouldn't go to sleep until they had made sure they had read every tweet. I was like, you need to, that's probably, I don't know, those are the best choices. And that was the early days of Twitter when it was, you know, there was some good stuff on there, there wasn't, you know, we're trying to overthrow the world.

So yeah, it was, it's, it's kind of, there's so many beeps and distractions and it's hard to get done. Even at 57, I go to bed and I'm like, God, this, you know, I wanted to do this and I want to do that. And what did you do today, Chris? Oh, you got pulled away by this, that, the other.

And so it's really hard not to get distracted and pulled away. Absolutely. We say in the book that we have to give ourselves permission to focus because we naturally give ourselves permission to be distracted for those very reasons. For the very reasons you just said, we don't turn off the notifications. We don't capture our thoughts. I mean, I'm 58, Chris, and I'm the same. I still do the same thing. I'll get ready to go to bed and go, oh, yeah, tomorrow morning I need to do such and such. I need to remember that in the morning. All night long, my mind is racing with that and I don't sleep as well because it's holding

on to that information. We give ourselves permission to be distracted by the things we don't do. And so the book gives six ways, if you will, to give yourself permission to focus, how to be present in the moment, how to not be pulled by distractions all the time. And you have six principles that you use in the book. Buzzworthy strategies is how they're built. Can you tease a couple out to us? Absolutely.

The first one, it just really focuses the capstone. But the one that I think is just critical is the permission to prioritize You know if you think about it, we spend our days carelessly going everything's a priority If everything's a priority say it with me audience We have to do that why are honey bees an example of that? Honey bees are an example of that because every action they take is aligned with the outcomes they want, both individually and as a hive,

which is a healthy hive, a thriving colony, if you will. And so every action they take, we've been beekeepers for six years. And so I can watch any action a bee takes. And if I think about it long enough, I'll go, okay, I know why that B is doing that because it's gonna contribute to this, it's gonna contribute to this,

which is gonna help make that colony healthy. Compare that to our days, Chris. You know, on a scale of one to 10, I can't say that every one of my activities every day is a 10, is completely aligned with my priorities. I mean, can you imagine somebody going, oh yeah, I had it as a goal so that was doom scroll for 10 minutes Yeah, you know and no one has got that on their on their vision board

On the vision board look at me permission prioritizes one another one that's I think's really important permission to be unavailable We can unpack that with more a little bit later, but we're so available that we're inaccessible to what's really important. We're available to our inner thoughts, we're available to the environment around us, we're available to the people, and it just limits our ability to be effective. Yeah, it's those other people that are the problem. They always want things, they always want them things and they want time and they want energy. And, you know, I tell my wife and kids, look, I'll be with you when you turn 18. Anyway, I'm sure.

Kids. Well, that joke kind of backfired a little bit, but I am in Utah. So there's that. There's a Utah joke in there too. Yeah. My favorite, one of my favorite people in the world lives in Utah too now, Chris. Todd Musig, who's my co-author for Juggling Elephants. Give a shout out. He's in Sandy, Utah. Todd will look forward to hearing the show and going, Oh look, another Utah. Yeah.

I grew up, my father was in subcontracting work and we built Sandy. Pretty much. Anyway, let's talk about your journey through life. You've done a lot of things with your life. You're a speaker. You go on stages. You've written, I think this is your fifth book. Tell us about your journey through life.

What was the things that shaped you when you were young and starting out and got you to here and then I believe at some point you own bees, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. We currently have about eight hives. Oh, wow. That we were taking care of. Yeah, we currently have about eight hives. Oh wow. That we were taking care of. Yeah, I love the way you asked that question Chris about

what shaped what shaped my life and of course I had to start with my parents. I had incredible parents who really had stilled with me the value of hard work of being you know a servant leader to others and so I'm eternally grateful for that and then for me your listeners are gonna find this funny is that is that I grew up an only child so that really shaped me. They're like, oh, that explains it. I don't know. Everything.

But but I did, you know, I found and I was the other thing was I was an overweight only child. And so I found that, you know, I would try to make people laugh or get people interested or say something interesting to get people's attention because it's an only child You know, you don't have brothers or sisters and you won't try to be the center of attention and those things I said that that's the early days and after high school. I thought I wanted to become a teacher I was actually an agriculture teacher horticulture teacher if you will and taught for a few years that my amazing wife of soon to be 35 years in June.

And then I started teaching said, you know, I think I want to try something different. So I went into speaking, training, development. In 2000, I had one of the big things that shaped me in my life. And that is when somebody handed me a book entitled, Who Moved My Cheese? Now, for your listeners who are 35 and under, they're going, what? Yes, there was a book entitled Who Moved My Cheese. It was a parable about how to become better aware of change around you. Book changed my work in life because I saw some opportunity for my own growth. And so I was involved with that book as a trainer for a few years along

with doing my own thing. And that led to shaping me into the other books I've written. Juggling Elephants, always growing and then now of course focused as a bee. So that's what's gotten me here. That's not who I am, who I am. Yeah, is the husband to Lisa, the dad of two perfect daughters and one really cool son-in-law. And so how long did you have the bees before it kind of struck you to create this sort of analogy with the book? Absolutely. We got our bees in 2019 and we kept them. We're miserable beekeepers.

I'm telling you, first year, Chris, we lost the whole hive. I mean, it just, cause we didn't know how to manage them well, even though we were asked some questions, things, but then we've gotten better. We learned from our mistakes. And so we've been beekeepers about six years. And probably into about the second year of beekeeping, we started going, these creatures are amazing. Because you first of all, because you can, you know, you can go to a beehive. Now you get me excited. You go to a beehive, and you take the lid

off, and you would think they would all just come out after you. And a couple will because this their one job their soldier bees protect the hive but most of the rest of the hives kind of goes yeah it's a giant just ripped our roof off back to work they're they're so focused on what they know needs to know and so that's one of the things that really connected with us and so then it was just a journey of, okay, what does that mean for us? Um, because I think it's really important that you live what you write about in a book like this.

And so city and I started talking about some ideas and different things than eventually, you know, I think there's a book here and that led us to, you know, what is now focused as a B. Yeah. I like your other title too, juggling elephants. Yeah, that one, can I just say Chris, take it back to you and your Utah connections, Todd and I were standing out in his front lawn,

putting in an irrigation line and saying to Utah, and so we were talking about how busy we were and about how there's not, you know, Todd actually was saying, you know, I just don't have time to get the things done at work I want. And I'm just not being the dad or the husband I want to be. I just never have time for myself. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we all struggle with that.

And then in just a moment of brilliance, Todd said, am I just supposed to run around like my life, some kind of circus? And I said, say that again. And he said circus. I'm like, what would it look like if you manage your work in life like it's a circus? And we went into his house and we sat down not only we didn't draw down a napkin, I wish we had but it was an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper. We started, you know, diagramming some things out. What does that look like? What do you, what would it mean to be the ringmaster of your circus? And, and yeah,

that's where that came from was our own experiences. And then coming up with the idea of what would it look like to manage a circus? The idea for juggling elephants is that when you're trying to get everything done, it's like juggling elephants. It's impossible. Yeah. I haven't think of when I do big tasks, I think of it as eating the elephant and one, one bite at a time. So I try not to get over, if I feel like I'm getting overwhelmed, Oh my God, this is a whole lot of stuff to do. I think of it,

just take one bite at a time to the elephant and eat the elephant and make sure you bring some a one or some hands 57 sucks. You're gonna fucking need it. That else eat that elephant meat. It's not pretty. I like focus as a bee versus you know you've crossed out on the cover busy as a bee. You know there's that old adage of working smart or working hard you know and a lot of people will you know think that because they're being busy that they're achieving something. I've seen that a lot of people will think that because they're being busy, that they're achieving something. I've seen that in a lot of entrepreneurs.

I'm busy. I remember we had one guy on the show. He was so busy with work because he was low bidding a lot of jobs, but he was a new businessman who had it in contracting, who had it factored taxes, employment taxes. He got about a half a million dollars in debt before he realized that he was under bidding everything getting all the business because he was under bidding because he wasn't factoring taxes on his under bids and and he was busy as a bee but he wasn't focused

yeah because here's the thing was did he ever have his outcome? Yeah, I want to be drowning in taxes one day Yes, yeah, I like but the whole idea there is you're right I mean you said it great Chris is that we often have a lot of activity But is it towards the outcomes we want and and bees people say oh, I'm busy as a bee No you can be focused if you're a you're focused because every action you take is aligned towards the outcomes you want. And that's why we're now busy.

So you're saying that bees aren't getting distracted by video games and checking their status on Instagram and stuff? Is that what you're saying? They don't do that? I think so. I can't quite see the size of their screens in the hive, but I think that's the case.

A couple's working on the iPhone for those people too. They'll ruin their lives as well. Yeah, busy. You know what I mean? Like you say, bees know their job. They know their place in the world. Probably you can say that some of this being focused as a bee delegation might be important because you mentioned that, you know, the bees have roles, right?

Yeah. Yeah. they have one job. We, we talk about that. In fact, the fun fact about honeybees for your, your, your listeners, Chris, yeah, bees have specific jobs in a hive. And by the way, every worker bee in a hive is female. Okay. We'll pause there and let all the women go, of course, who gets the work? None.

The male's role in a hive is one thing. And that is if a new queen is hatched out, she needs to be able to lay fertile eggs. So he needs to be available for her to help her to get pregnant. And that's the only purpose of a drone bee. And so they eat and they mate. And now the males in the audience are going, yeah.

Hold on. In the fall of the year to conserve resources, the worker bees kick out the drone bees. So yeah, be careful when we talk about, think about what do we wanna be? The whole idea of this one job though, of having one job, that's a critical part of delegation. What is my one job?

But if I'm doing somebody else's one job, if I'm doing responsibilities that somebody else really ought to be doing, I need to find ways to delegate either all or part of that to them so that they're doing what's most contributory to the success of the hive, whether that hive is a family or a business

or an organization, and so that I can get my one job done based on my roles, responsibilities, the priorities, the needs, and the moments. We need focus time. One of the things I found was, my audience has heard this story a lot, one of the things I found a year or two ago was in the morning, instead of opening the email and the text messages, getting pulled everywhere all at once, I get up in the morning, I have my coffee, I go out and sit with my dogs in the yard, start my circadian rhythms,

get my vitamin D, and I just try and start my morning with peace. And my book, Jogging Elephants, or our book, Jogging Ele book, John elephants are Todd, we we kind of allude to that and that you are letting someone else be the ringmaster your circus. If you open your phone or do or you know, just look at your text emails, you are inviting someone else to start your day in a way that may not be aligned with what's most important to you. And then it's critical that you like you said, you start the day. I'm the ringmaster of my circus. I'm going to choose to start my day in a way that's meaningful to me, that gives me the physical, mental, and emotional energy I need to go out and take on things during

the day. Now you're not the ringmaster of everything. Other things happen. Things are out of your control, but you're taking the opportunity to control the time that you have toward the outcome you want. And that's so important. Now you have an offering, I think, where you have on your website's forward slash podcast, an assessment that people can utilize to tell us about that. Absolutely. Yeah, we've taken the key ideas from the book and we create an assessment of questions that

you can quickly take. And then once you take those or answer those questions, you can look at your score and say, okay, am I a worker B? Am I a wandering B? And you can kind of see what are those areas where you could focus on improving to get better at using your time more effectively. So yeah, they can get that at joneslotham.com forward slash podcast. And it's got a whole assessment of questions that you can reflect on and ask yourself and of course utilize with the book. Tell us about some of the services you offer on your website and

offerings you have there. Absolutely. My primary role is that of a keynote speaker. I speak to a lot of different organizations of all sizes, usually based around something like focus and productivity or work-life balance or success, time management, that's the second one. And the third one would be leadership. And of course they all grow out of some of the principles in my books. I also do other learning programs. Sometimes organizations want me to come

in and facilitate strategic planning sessions or help them work through a challenge. The other service for help them work through a challenge. The other service for me is that of a coach. I've been a professional coach since about 2017. I say professional in the sense that I've actually went through training so that I'm not just trying to do something I'm not capable of.

And so I coach executives, mid-level managers around some of those same topics that I speak about. So those would be my key sources, along with the books that are available at my website or of course, Amazon, the place. The jungling elephants. I like that. It's going to stick with me. I'm going to remember that.

So how, what do executives that want to work with you for coaching and stuff? Is there a minimum sort of thing that you require? Is there only certain people you work with, maybe a financial success thing that they have to have? Some people only work with companies that are maybe smaller, mid-size or large, etc. etc. Right. I typically find that really people come to me, whether it be for coaching or for organizationally,

by topic. I was talking to a client last week who's got a national sales meeting coming up and coaching or for organizationally by topic. You know, they've got, you know, I was talking to a client last week who's got a national sales meeting coming up and he said, Jones, the challenge to my people is that they just have no work-life balance. Now, let me just time out. There is no balance in life.

It's all about being in the right ring at the right moment, as we say at Joking Elephants, but work-life balance is a term we use to identify a host of other challenges just like we say hand me a Kleenex when we mean a tissue. To me it's a placeholder term so work life balance. Anyway, he said yeah are people just really struggling with work life balance? Would you come in and help us develop some better strategies and plans on how to get to those other areas of our life.

We call them rings, joking elephants. You know, it really people come to me by topic more than size of the organization. I try to find creative ways of making things work for an organization. I had an organization recently that that just was so small that they couldn't bring me in for it on site keynote, but they bought books and I'm going to do a virtual presentation for them after they finish reading it And so yeah My goal is not to put a stumbling block for folks But is to find some way that they can leverage something I have to make better choices with their time

Whether that be through reading speaking or coaching anything coming up any Retreats events you want to promote, future books, etc. Let's start with the future books. The answer is no, not right now. Because I am, and true to the book's message, focus is a B. My goal is to get awareness out about this book, to develop tools around it. We're going to have more advanced assessments like the one that's at the website right now. But that's where I'm at with it. I want to make sure I'm not dividing my attention, diluting my effectiveness by already thinking about other books. Do I have

some plans? Sure. But that's not where I want my attention to be right now. One of the things I'm excited about is the opportunity in a few weeks to be at the Choice Hotels Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. And I love the folks who are in hospitality. Hello to all my hospitality listeners out there. Choice Hotels has chosen me for, I think this will be my 13th year to come out and work with their people around time management, around work-life balance, and leadership. And I'm just honored that they continue to find value in my work.

Now, Chris, you're saying, do you go do the same thing every year? No, that's the beautiful part is that it challenges me to come up with fresh new content every year to be able to deliver those people, to help them go back and do an amazing job of leading and managing those properties across the country and other countries

for travelers like me and you when we visit their hotels. As we go out, give people a final pitch to onboard with you, reach out how they can reach out, get to know you better and utilize your services, buy the book, et cetera, et cetera. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, I think a great place to start as you said is joneslaflin.com forward slash podcast for resources related to our time together today. Of course, my website j joneslaughtland.com is a good place to start.

There's a button in the top right. They can click to contact me directly so that I can get in touch with them more efficiently. And then also, Dan, again, I put a lot of content out on LinkedIn, because that's where the business audience is at. So I, you know, posting their news, I would love for people to reach out to me there and connect.

Well, it's been fun to have you on the show, Jones, and wonderful. People should definitely pick up your book. We all need as much focus, help as you can. I get to the end of every day and I'm like, God, I just need to have done so much more. But there you are. Thank you. And thanks for what you're doing, Chris, and bringing some positive energy in a world that certainly needs it. You got it. You too as well. Thanks, Jones. Order of the Book, folks, where refined books are sold. It is entitled, Focused as a Bee, Six Buzzworthy Strategies to Thrive in a Distracting World.

Out January 7th, 2025. For our audience, go to Goodreads.com, Ford says Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Ford says Chris Voss, Chris Voss One, on the TikTok, and Chris Voss Facebook.com for it says Chris Voss Chris Voss one on the Tik Tok and Chris Voss Facebook.com thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time and I should wrap it up for