The Entrepreneur DNA - Maximizing Time, Minimizing Effort: Lessons on Discipline and Prioritization | Craig Ballantyne | EP 40

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

In this episode, I interview Craig Ballantyne, renowned business coach and author, about the importance of discipline, intentionality, and time management in achieving entrepreneurial success. Craig shares his journey of building a life of freedom by delegating low-value tasks, focusing on high-leverage activities, and surrounding himself with opportunities. He explains why living like a billionaire, through outsourcing and strategic investments in people and environments, is crucial for scaling a business. The conversation also dives into personal branding, social media strategies, and how prioritizing the right tasks can transform both your business and personal life. About Craig: Craig believes that anyone has the potential to create their ideal life and build a thriving empire. His own journey began as a broke, anxious farm boy from Ontario, Canada, stuck in a cycle of binge drinking and working as a personal trainer. Through the guidance of mentors, Craig transformed into an Empire Builder, mastering the discipline, clarity, and systems needed for success. Since then, he has founded five 7-figure businesses across different industries, authored three books (including a Wall Street Journal bestseller), and mentored thousands of entrepreneurs—from 9-figure CEOs to busy parents and high school teachers. Craig has helped over 260 entrepreneurs reach their first 7-figure milestones and has guided countless others to achieve more while working less.   ---   Connect with Craig!   Instagram - @realcraigballantyne Website - www.craigballantyne.com   ---   𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧: After investing in real estate for over 17 years and almost 3000 deals done, Justin has created a business that generates 7 figures in active income through wholesaling and fix and flipping as well as accumulating millions of dollars of rental properties including 5 apartment buildings, 50+ single family homes, and 1 storage facility   Justins longevity in real estate is due to his ability to look around the corners, adapt to changing markets, perfecting Raising private capital, and focusing on lead generation which allows him to not just wholesale and fix & flip, but also accumulate wealth through long term holds.   His success in real estate led him to start The Entrepreneur DNA podcast and The Science Of Flipping podcast and education company, where he has coached and mentored thousands of aspiring and active investors over the last decade.   He is a nationally recognized speaker and is on a mission to educate as many people as possible on becoming a successful dynamic real estate investor.   𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒔 𝑯𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝑻𝒐 𝑺𝒂𝒚 𝑨𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝑱𝒖𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏:    “Justin is one of the best trainers in this space. He really gives everything to his tribe.” – Brent Daniels (TTP)    “Justin’s ability to connect with people and help them understand what he is teaching, is unparallelled” – Kent Clothier (REWW)    “We have been in the trenches flipping homes in Phoenix for over a decade, he is one of the best to do it.” – Sean Terry (Flip2Freedom)    Subscribe To Justin Colby: http://youtube.com/justincolby  View All My Videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/JustinColby

And so this one guy, his name is Ed O'Keefe, he said, you're the most productive person I know, therefore you must be the most disciplined person I know. And it's not actually true. I'm actually very lazy, but I'm selectively lazy. I don't do the middle class things that hold me down. And I also have built systems to protect myself and protect my time. And so there are certain systems that anybody can implement into their life that without even spending any money can make them more productive. And, you know, it costs nothing to say no to people.

It costs nothing to say no to toxic people. It costs nothing to say no to being in bad environments. If you just start saying no to that stuff, all of a sudden it will free up more of your time to do the right things. What is up, entrepreneur DNA family? I have another incredible guest. In fact, he can be known as the most disciplined man in the world. My boy, Craig Ballantyne is here. What's up brother, man. This can be a lot of fun. Let's rock. So where are you living? First of all, cause I know you go from Canada to Mexico. You're here in Miami with me. Where, where are you living

right now in this world? We live in Playa del Carmen right now. We just had our third child in Mexico. So they have Canadian and Mexican passports but we're moving back to Vancouver very soon it's too hot for me it's like cool here in Miami was there a reason to go to Mexico yeah so my wife got pregnant in 2021 and you know that's when all the craziness was happening and she's like you know you might not be allowed into the delivery room in Canada. You might have to wear masks, you know, all this bull crap. And so, you know, she wants, she, she and I both have a core value of freedom. So we moved to Mexico. One of our friends had a child in Cancun. They had a great experience. And so we went down and when you go and, you know, it's obviously the private healthcare

system in Mexico. And it's like, you go in there and it's like the private health care system in mexico and it's like you go in there and it's like going into you know subway if you want this you want this you want this you just tell them what you want and you get exactly what you want and so we've had all three of our kids down there i love that yeah for you i like i like this idea of freedom and this kind of goes right into business where i want to you and i were just talking about this and people don't understand how to actually move or work or operate in a way that creates the freedom they want but let's talk about a saying you just told me and i freaking love it and i don't mean to butcher it but like if you want to be a millionaire you need to live

like a billionaire yeah so you flip it around you go because dave ramsey's not going to like this right he's going to hate this idea. But you got to start with, yeah, you got to live like a billionaire if you want to be a millionaire. If you want to get rich, you have to live rich. And for me, growing up on a farm, I watched my parents work 12 hours a day. That type of idea to a person with a middle class upbringing, middle class mindset, they're not going to understand it. Neither is Dave Ramsey, but it is absolutely the way that you have to look at

your time in order to invest in getting back your time to be able to go from like doing $10 an hour tasks, $1,000 an hour tasks. And that's the leverage point that allows you to get rich. Yeah. Yeah. And you said something, you know, even to the point of, if you're going to drive, you'd rather take an Uber so that you can be working while in the Uber at a leverage point that creates more money, creates more opportunity, whatever that case is, where most people would be like, yeah, but I don't want to spend the 60 bucks. He's a mortgage broker and finance guy, and he's driving around all these meetings all day long. And I'm like, why are you doing that? You're stuck in traffic 30 or 45 minutes to get to a meeting. You're listening to a podcast, which is okay. It's still better than listening to the radio.

But you could be sitting in the back of an Uber, taking calls, doing deals, making money, just like a billionaire has a private driver. They don't drive around and sit in traffic. And I never, ever drive. If I go, even if I'm in California and I have to go from San Diego to LA, it's an Uber. And it's, yeah, sure, it's an expensive Uber. But I make way more money in the back of the Uber than it cost me to buy the Uber. I have a slightly, not different take, similar take, but it's a funny thing that I do. I talk a lot about this, about always flying first class. and you know people like well yeah what about a pj okay well

that's different sure the intention about going first class is because the other people in first class create opportunities that can create more income and have more impact on your life and your business than the people in coach typically sure get me wrong there's times i've had to be in coach of course but for the most part i'm always doing that i'm always spending the money to be at the highest um you know gym like lifetime gym is like almost 500 a month it's insane um country clubs it's kind of the same principle that i lean into about spend the money to be around the people that can help you create opportunity in the same way you're talking about be efficient with the time that you actually have. Yeah.

Don't waste your time. One of my friends had a good phrase, give yourself the opportunity to have opportunities. And so if you don't go and put yourself around these other people who are going to show you opportunities, well, you'll never have the opportunities. And it's the same with the work. Give yourself an opportunity to have opportunities. If you're stuck doing busy work, if you're stuck driving yourself around, if you're stuck doing your own, you know, mowing your own lawn, if you're stuck doing your own snow

clearing, or you're stuck doing your own anything that could be done, like editing videos, especially in the day of social media. I get people who have huge followings, who I know are making hundreds of thousands all years personally asking me like, hey, what's the best editing software for a video? You should not know that. There's so much stuff you should not know. And I said this a lot years ago, it's a little less true now that a lot of people have made money in tech. But I used to say when we coached personal trainers to start an online business, the more you know about technology, the less money you're going to make. Because if you know how to edit your website, what are you going to do?

Edit your website? You're going to go like, okay, it's just going to take me 15 minutes. Yeah. And it's going to take you longer than that. And it's robbing you of writing the sales letter that goes on the website that makes you a ton of money. And so we would see this all the time, people coming in to the mastermind meetings and be like, I just can't get the thing done. It was like, what do you actually do? Well, I'm editing my website. I'm editing my videos. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. And that's that middle-class mindset that holds you down. So if you're thinking that I just got to do more work,

well, you'll never get ahead. Yeah. You and I were just talking about the busy work, right? And I deal with this all the time, specifically in the real estate space. Oh, let me go get the website or let me go get the cards or let me go drive the property and take my own pictures. None of that generates revenue. It doesn't create another deal. You're not going to go make more money. You're not going to be efficient with the time you have. And I wanted to bring up social media because you actually have an event right now. We're doing this episode as you have an event the very same day. And today's more of a social media day for you on this event. Let's talk about social media and some key points. Like what is going through your mastermind today that people can take away

even from this episode? So it is building your personal brand. And you know, people have talked about building your personal brand for 20 plus years now i've been i remember reading my first personal branding book in like 2000 and so yes you have to have it because everything becomes easier when you build your personal brand i have a phrase in my own life um it means it's how i've made my money it's how i met my wife is that the more good people you know the easier everything will be more good people you know the easier everything will be because if you know a hundred people and be more good people you know the easier everything will be because if you know a hundred people and you need a lawyer you need a plumber you need a babysitter you need anything if you know a hundred people you're gonna have a hundred different plus

recommendations if you only know 10 people you're not gonna have a lot of recommendations yeah so just get to know more good people by knowing more good people i was able to ask a girl for introductions that eventually led me to meet my wife yeah on instagram i love that yeah there's a there's actually a pretty funny story about if we got like 30 seconds for it you go let's go okay so i've had two hair transplants you might be a little late to the i was just gonna say god you have such great hair i know and i got two hair transplants and so the day after i got my second hair transplant i had messaged my friend van, who runs the ladies business community in Toronto, where I, where I was living at the time. I said, you know, I really want to meet somebody,

you know, a lot of amazing women, entrepreneurs in her group. Can you introduce me to like five people? And so she sends me five Instagram profile profiles and I went, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope. And I'm like, man, I must be the most ungrateful person in the world right now. So what can I do? What can I do? Uh, I know I'll go and look at who she follows and I'll just scroll through it. Swear to God. I scrolled 30 people. I'm looking at circles this big, right? I see this girl and I go this one. I'd like an introduction to this woman. And she goes, okay, but she lives in Vancouver. You live in Toronto. And I go, I'm still, I don't care. And so the day after my second hair transplant, when you get a hair transplant, it's like you fought Mike Tyson because you get all this

swelling and it just slowly goes over your face. Oh man. So it looks like you have Botox on day one and then it looks like you have black eyes today today too and so I was making a Botox joke and this girl that I got introduced to through my friend Vanessa Michelle who's now my wife thought it was a funny joke and you know we just went into like DMs for hours and text message for hours and next thing you know I'm on a flight out to Vancouver to meet her yeah and you know four months later we were living no it was a year later we were living here in Miami for a bit. And we got married about two years after. I have a similar but different story. Just the, you were very intentional with how you started that relationship.

And that's what the similar, like I did something that I met my wife here in Miami on a Sunday Funday, by the way. And, but I was very intentional every day after I met her. The very next day I FaceTimed her. And that intentionality ended up with me getting her. She's now my wife. She's the mother of my two kids, the whole thing. And it goes back to kind of everything we're going to end up talking about in this podcast

is being intentional, prioritizing what is the priority, doing the thing that actually moves your needle not just doing things so for me and you you're spending hours dming each other spending the intentional time letting her know i want to get to genuinely know you i don't want to just you know shoot a dm out there and it starts even before that in that we were both very intentional in what we were looking for she had had a list of the qualities that she was looking for in a man. I had a very clear description of what I was looking for in my mind. In my first book, The Perfect Day Formula, I wrote a chapter about the vision for my future. In fact, I wrote it in such great description that people actually for years thought I was already married to this person and had kids because chapter, I think it's 21 talks about,

you know, I'm living with, um, you know, TK and we, you know, we have two kids and they're named this and this. And, and, and so I wrote this entire thing. I wrote the vision and I wrote that in 2015 and it was five years from when I wrote it that the vision was occurring. And I met my wife in 2019 and I was probably like a year late on my vision. But this has happened to me multiple times in life where I've written five-year plans and achieved the exact thing that I wanted plus or minus three to 12 months. I love that.

And it goes back, we're getting a little sidetracked from social media, but I mean, it really does go back. Like when you put your energy towards something and it's clear, you're going to achieve it. The thing that I always say, people want to achieve it today. And when it takes a year or two or three, I'll give you the perfect example is this podcast.

Yeah. You were on the first version of this podcast in like 2019 yeah right uh i now am ranked i have two separate podcasts ranked in top 25 it was not always that way but for 11 years i kept podcasting and here we are now people give up yeah and so if you go back to the social media and the intentionality of it it's one thing to say well i'm i need to have an instagram intentionality of it, it's one thing to say, well, I need to have an Instagram. Everybody's got an Instagram. It's another thing to say, all right, I'm going to use my Instagram channel to generate

business. In order to generate business, I need to know my customer avatar and exactly what they want to hear. I need to enter the conversation in the prospect's mind. And those seven words, enter the conversation in the prospect's mind. If those are the only seven words or anything that you knew about marketing, you would know more about marketing than somebody who does an MBA from Harvard. Because it is just the most important thing. Monday morning, what is my client thinking in the real estate industry?

Well, they're probably thinking about, if they're simply a real estate agent, well, they had open houses on the weekend, maybe things went well or didn't go well, and now they're worried about the real estate commission thing and they're real worried about this and all that. It's like, okay, what's the message they need to hear right now? And have that video prepared. You can make that video three weeks in advance because you generally know what's going to be going through their mind. And then on Friday, when they're like super excited for the open houses on the weekend, you got to show up with a video that enters the conversation in their mind. That's right. And when you do those things and you're intentional about that,

that's going to be very business focused. Now there's another aspect to it that we're talking about today at my event is the, and you're probably very familiar with this is the personality side of it right so if you only do I'm entering the conversation in the real estate agents mind with very tactical real estate advice you're gonna get only so far that's right and one of the speakers that we have is guy named Brandon Carter do you know him I do yeah so Brandon's Brandon speaking and in the last 24 hours you know him? I do. Yeah. So Brandon's speaking. And in the last 24 hours, you know,

talk about serendipity. I've seen a very famous influencer, this guy, Mike Cernovich. I don't know if you know who he is. He's a political type influencer. He's reposted two of Brandon's videos in the last 48 hours.

One about why, and Brandon makes a very good case for why Dubai is a bad place to go because of the slave labor and all that sort of stuff. Sure. stuff. You know, it's like, and then, you know, Cernovich and Brandon are just like, just make another deal here and pay for the taxes that you're saving by moving to Dubai. Fair point. And so he's got that video, which has nothing to do with what's Brandon's business. Well, you know, it started out as fitness and now it's coaching business owners and mostly fitness entrepreneurs. What's, you know, a video about Dubai and slave

labor have to do anything. That's the video that goes viral, that gets people's attention, that then, you know, leads to his Instagram growth and all of his other videos being seen more about business. And yeah. Yeah. So you know grant cardone is is the same and you know i'm not recommending that you go and stuff your kids in the freezer at the grocery store like i saw grant cardone do on an instagram video um you know i don't recommend a lot of the stuff he does but he gets your attention sure and he has made probably of all the people um i mean donald trump is a is another person who knows that you got to get attention like from his previous career with apprentice and all that sort of stuff like if you have people's

attention it's like knowing more good people yep and then that way you have given yourself an opportunity to have more opportunities so you may or may not like the people that we've just discussed but you can't argue with the fundamental principle there. Well, they know the names. Yeah. Again, that you have enough attention to them that these people, I don't care if you like the two people you mentioned, you know who they are. Yeah, exactly. Right?

And they're getting attention. If you get that much attention, there's going to be a lot of people who really like you and money's going to come to you. Deals are going to come to you. It's going to be a great opportunity for you. So those are the two sides of being intentional with your social media, the personality side and then the business side

so that you're using it. You know a guy named Joe Polish? Yeah. Yeah, so Joe had a great phrase. I like to give credit where credit is due that use social media, but don't let social media be used on you. And I actually fell into, people call me the world's most dismal man,

but I have lots of flaws and faults of my own. And for a while, I was addicted to Twitter. And so I realized that Twitter in this day and age, if you follow the wrong, I mean, you can curate it, obviously. But I was following people with a little bit of political stuff, and I was getting angry. And it was coming through in other areas of my life and i was like okay i'm gonna stop and so i haven't gone to twitter i haven't gone to a news site in months and months since the day i just quit cold turkey yeah because i was letting social media be used on me yeah i was like man as there's

some really good stuff here but it's not worth it for the negative sides of it. So I was, I wasn't being intentional with that use Instagram. I'm very, very intentional that I'm using it for business purposes. Follow them on Instagram. Yeah. Craig Ballantyne, real Craig, the real, the no real Craig Ballantyne, real Craig, but you'll find them all over my stuff. Make sure you click it. Uh, so you gotta be intentional with everything in life but so let's let's talk about it because i'm so passionate about social media right and by the way i don't even have the biggest following i mean to some extent it frustrates me because i want more and you never know when something's going to go viral when is something going to hit that's the

topic i want to talk about is too many people get caught up in these likes and going viral but then they're not intentional with like if someone just went to your page to check you out, is there anything that you are clearly defined for? That's a good point. And if you just try to go viral on kiddie funny video, so you can go gain followers, but everything else is real estate, right? As an example, like it's not congruent.

I mean, I have a real world example of that. A good friend of mine he's posts funny videos of his kids so he'll he'll find something that has gone viral for somebody else he'll do his own version and he's i mean he's got like 50 million views in the last six months on funny type videos and then he posts business stuff in between that has like no views. And I read an argument that, um, there's two different, you have two different audiences. So there, so he's getting his funny videos seen by one audience and he's getting followers from it. But then the other stuff that he posts is not being sent out to those people. And they're not

the right people in the first place. So you are, you do have to be very careful it's a double-edged sword if you just chase the personality side of things and you get a lot of followers great but if they don't transfer into dollars you're just wasting your time you you could be doing a million other things a hundred percent i mean interestingly enough the hard thing that i see from people in my space because i tell everyone get your personal brand out there is first question question I always say, should I do it with my company or me? It's always you. The answer is always you. Always.

People, people, people, right? They need to know. I'd say it like this. I have three. They need to know who you are, what you do, and then what are you looking for? The what you're looking for is spread out inside of your stuff, but they need to know who you are and what you looking for is spread out inside your stuff but then you know who you are and what you do yeah and then when you ask when you say here's what i'm looking for whatever that may be then they're going to say okay well this guy is the expert at the thing so i'm going

to give him the thing he wants yeah you do have to be pigeonholed yeah to a certain extent right um and so the other side of what you just said, which cracks me up, my father is the epitome of someone who would frustrate you. He will not do social media. I mean, he has Facebook, but he doesn't believe in it in business because he always just says, well, I don't want to look at what people are eating and kitties. Right. But that's allowing social media to use him because he would then just scroll through. If you're not intentional about using social media for the purpose of business then it's a waste of time but it's such a platform like i don't know if you agree with me or not i'm finding a lot more business on facebook again as much organic yeah just an organic post and for whatever reason i feel like people have forgot about

facebook's actually the 800 pound gorilla kind of like that i don't want to be associated with that anymore because it's not cool the tiktoks and the instagrams and that's what you know the videos that there's a lot of business being missed on facebook huh i mean we run a lot of ads on facebook but i've never organic i personally have never done a lot of organic on facebook since i transitioned out of the fitness industry years ago so you know we're going to get on that as soon as we get back as you should and do a trial post whatever you might be looking for or do a trial post it works every time the other thing I would even encourage if you aren't and you probably are your groups Facebook groups yeah

killer way to cultivate the messaging and what you're doing. I love that. Yeah. They all sound like so old school and archaic, but yeah, that stuff works. Yeah. If you do it with the right intention. Right. And consistency.

Let's kind of get back to, you know, maybe talking a little bit more of what levels or what piece of advice, and maybe there's like a five-prong system that people can go into today, the next week, the remainder of this year, next year with some discipline in their business? Yeah, absolutely. First of all, what we start people with is the ADE formula, automate, delegate, and eliminate. And most people in their business, they're working a lot. They're working very hard, but they're doing a lot they're working very hard but there's they're doing a lot of stuff that is not their job so the first thing that we do is we help them delegate what is not their job like what are you doing all day long so we take people through a time journal

we identify the tasks we help them find their effective hourly worth so if somebody's making two hundred thousand dollars a year their hourly worth is about $100. Because generally you work 50 weeks in a year, 40 hours a week, that's 2,000 hours. You take 200,000, divide it by 2,000, you get 100. So your $100 an hour is your effective hourly worth in that situation. Well, what are you doing with your time? If you're editing videos, that's a $10 an hour task that you can find people to do. Which means that there must be, because you're probably spending a lot of time on those load value activities, there must be some activities in

your business, the leverage points that are giving you 250, 500, even a thousand or more dollars per hour. And you're not doing that. We just did this with a gym owner up the street in Delray Beach, and she was doing a lot of admin stuff and not spending any time in consultations where she sells a $3,000 coaching package. And last month she had a 90% close rate, but she only made time for eight consultations. So we said this month, we're going to help you automate, delegate, and eliminate the stuff you shouldn't be doing and open up time for a minimum of 21 consults that even if you are at 80% there, you're going to dramatically increase the revenue of your business. And so the number one thing I

tell people to do is to wake up in the morning and GSD on their MIT, RGA, ASAP, because that's when you have the greatest DWI. Love it. So you're going to get stuff done on your most important task in revenue generating activities. This is where, you know, most people are like, oh, you know, I do my to-do list the day before and I get up in the morning and I'm very productive. But you're productive at the wrong things. And you might be creating content or you might be, you know, writing a book or something, but it's not making you money. That's right so gsd on your mit rga asap because we all know that as the day goes on everybody's going to bring you their emergencies kids are going to get sick at school this is going

to happen that's going to happen internet's going to go out and if you don't do it first thing in the morning it's not going to get done that's right and daniel pink has a book called when the scientifically perfect it is great book yeah great book and you had the greatest discipline willpower and intention first thing in the morning and then it decreases over the course of the day no doubt i like to say that god played this little trick on us that he gave us the greatest discipline in the morning he gave us chocolate cake at night right and so you know most people aren't i mean you can go and get a donut but most people aren't you know interested in chocolate cake first thing in morning and they have lots of discipline so it's like a mismatch. And when they go home at night,

it's a long day, they got no discipline left. And it's like the chocolate cake's in front of them. And that's when everything goes wrong. But you do have the greatest discipline, willpower, and intention earlier in the day. It doesn't matter what time you get up. But you have the fewest distractions, the greatest discipline, go after the most important revenue generating activity. You do that in the first hour or two of your day. And if you did nothing else all day long, you'd be further ahead than most business owners. So you have to start with that aspect of it. One of the things that we teach people is that they have a time of day when they're five times more productive than any other time of the day. We call this magic time. So for me,

it's six o'clock in the morning and it's usually a range of about two to three hours. I know some people who are night owls, it might be from 9 p.m. till midnight. Great. Whatever time of the day, you have to go through and just have some self-reflection and introspection on this. So you identify it and then you have to protect it because most people will go, you know, man, you know, Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock, I was in the flow, but you know, I just had a meeting at 1030. And so I only got half an hour work done. Well, you have to identify it and then not schedule any meetings.

Don't do any emails. Don't take any calls and protect it. Ruthlessly protect your magic time because you will be more productive in that time. Yeah. Like, you know, everybody knows that they can probably get something done better at nine o'clock in the morning than after they went to burger king at lunch and had a you know a giant whopper and a soda no you're tired no like obviously there's a big difference in that productivity so by doing a little bit of self-reflection and introspection it doesn't

mean working more hours it just means doing the harder work in the magic time right like you got a three-year-old kid so so you probably got one of those toys where it's like take the square block and put it in the square hole, right? Yeah, of course. Most people, they're taking the round peg and trying to jam it in the square hole. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's not gonna fit. So you take your hardest task and you do that when you have the greatest mental energy. And if you simply make that shift, you also get further ahead because now you're more productive. Yeah, I think a lot of people, but the other part of what you just said, which is so brilliant, is people allow other people to steal that magic time.

And that is very hard for people to say the word no. Yeah. And that's where I've seen so much lift in productivity is saying no right like literally turning the phone over do not have email open whatever the thing is in that magic time don't answer your buddy's call your wife's call your husband's call like sure there's cases that it could be emergency i get the point but if you need to get something done saying the word no allows you to be a lot more productive. Absolutely. So I have this little phrase, if you want to do great things, you have to do fewer things. If you want to do great things,

you have to do fewer things. And you have to say no to other people's problems. Totally. Because you have your own, if you have intention, you know what you have to do in order to be successful. So saying no becomes a superpower. In one of my other books, I talk about you have to do in order to be successful. So saying no becomes a superpower. I am in one of my other books, I talk about you need to become the no-pra of your life. So think about Oprah, you know, Oprah has, you know, billions of people who would love a minute of her time. And, you know, she's a nice lady. She'd probably want to help everybody for a couple minutes. But if she helps everybody for a couple of minutes, she can never do the big thing that, you know, first of all, helps her and her business, but also has a huge impact on building people. So think about if Oprah was running your business,

what would she be doing? You know, like I have an event going on right now. Did I negotiate with the hotel? No. Am I making sure that the AV is set up? No. Like I'm not doing any of that stuff. Somebody else on our team is doing it. That's set up? No. I'm not doing any of that stuff. Somebody else on our team is doing it. That's their zone of genius. It's not mine. My zone of genius is to get the people, sell at the event, and bring an amazing experience to people. And if I'm thinking about all those other things, it's like death by a thousand cuts. And we see that in a couple of ways in people's businesses. They're doing all the little things. But then also in your daily schedule, a lot of people are task switching. So they'll go and they'll do a podcast and think, oh, you know, it's only a 40 minute

podcast, but it's not 40 minutes. It's really twice the amount of time. Because if your podcast is at 1030, about 10 o'clock in the morning, you start thinking about the podcast at 1030. And so you start, ah, maybe I should wind down. I got to get the lighting, right? I got to get the microphone out and all that sort of stuff. And so you waste half an hour preparing for the 1030 podcast. And then you do the 40 minute podcast or whatever. And you might chit chat with somebody at the end. And then you have to transition back into the next thing. And it was like, oh man,

I got 30 minutes of work. And then I got another podcast or another call or another meeting. And if you are transitioning, that is death by a thousand cuts and you never get any quality work done in the day especially if you didn't gsd on your mit asap in the morning amen uh there's so much good takeaway here and a lot of this has to do with what i would i reframe it to my audience and i just say it's's not about time management. It's about priority management. So I say there's six different things or there's six. Every night you go to, there's the big six. You have the non-negotiable three and you have the most important three.

Okay. You're non-negotiable or exactly. You don't negotiate. They have to get done that very next day, non-negotiable. And then you have the most important and those are most important but if you have to kick the can because of time or whatever then the most important get kicked in the next day they come become a non-negotiable the people always want to talk about time management i don't necessarily believe in it we all have the same amount of time it's the priorities of that you have to manage your priorities.

And it's the creation of systems because, you know, at the start you said, oh, world's most disciplined men. And so why, you know, I'm not David Goggins. I'm not the world's most disciplined man. The reason why people call me that is because years ago I had two businesses. I had this early to rise business

and I had a fitness business called Turbulence Training, which I, you know, I started out everything. And so I was running those two businesses at the same time and creating a lot of content. And so this one guy, his name is Ed O'Keefe, he said, you're the most productive person I know, therefore you must be the most disciplined person I know. And it's not actually true. I'm actually very lazy, but I'm selectively lazy. I don't do the middle class things that hold me down. And I also have built systems to protect myself and protect my time. And so there are certain systems that anybody can implement into their life that without

even spending any money can make them more productive. And it costs nothing to say no to people. It costs nothing to say no to toxic people. It costs nothing to say no to being in bad environments. If you just start saying no to that stuff, all of a sudden it will free up more of your time to do the right things. But over the years, probably the two most important things that I've discovered that an entrepreneur, real estate investor,

anybody can use and are very, very common to very successful people is one, and they're so boring. It's like people are going to listen to this and they're going to forget them because they're so boring. This one, get to bed on time. Yeah.

Because if you don't get to bed on time, you're very tempted to hit snooze in the morning. If you hit snooze in the morning, you get up late, 10, 20 minutes late. You're rushing around. You don't have time to think. You over-caffeinate. You eat something poor. You get stuck in traffic. You're late to where you want to go.

Now you're in a bad mood. That bad mood affects you over the course of day and it's like that meme if you've ever seen it on instagram of the tiny little domino knocking over a big domino big domino next thing you know it knocks down a giant 200 slab because of that one bad decision which was getting up late which all could have been overcome not by hardcore discipline but just by a better system of getting to bed on time yeah and we just tell people an hour before bed set an alarm we call this the reverse alarm and an hour before bed if you want to get to bed at 11 o'clock at night the alarm goes off at 10

and you stop all electronics no tv no social media no phone nothing because it's always that last message or you know posts that you read it gets you fired up and so you stop that now you're left with an hour before bed you can have a bath bath, you can meditate, you can read, you can talk to your family, you can prepare your lunch. Like all those things only take a couple minutes and they all make you tired. And the next thing you know, you're onto bed, you're in bed and asleep on time, which means a lot for getting up the next day. And the second habit, which is also very boring, but very effective is better planning and preparation. So planning and preparing, like you have your, your six things. We have a slightly

different approach. We have people do a brain dump, which get all the stuff out of their head. Cause a lot of people are like, Oh man, I lie in bed and everything I'm tossing and turning. Cause all these things are running through my head. Well, if you do a brain dump in the late afternoon, you get all those things out of your head and it might be like 18 things. Like I got to get milk tomorrow. I got to pick the kids up, but I also have to do this real estate deal and I have to create five social media videos. Like if you go to bed with all that in your head and you don't have it dumped out, it really will keep you up. So we do that. And then from those 18 things, we do a priority to-do list. So you got 18 things you want to do tomorrow,

but only one of them can be- I might steal that because that is the reality is you're allowing yourself to really, and this is something I'm going to steal for myself, but even give you credit for is because there are times where I like will wake up because I didn't get the thoughts, the things. Oh man, I know tomorrow I have to do this thing.

And it's two in the morning. I didn't have a five month old baby that I know is going to wake me up again at four. i'm like no right that's brilliant i mean i think people need to really do that brain dump late afternoon what four or five is something yeah and listen if you have to do it at noon better that you do it early than not at all yeah so you know if it's incomplete but the earlier you do it the better um you can do it right before bed but it might fire you up a little bit too much so probably a couple hours before bed. And you do that.

And then, like I said, you have 18 things on there. Only one of them can be number one. So great. Here's the number one thing I have to do tomorrow. And that's the thing that you should probably be doing in that magic time that you have. And then everything else, you get through it as much as you can. And so when you do that planning and preparation, you're going to be much more effective in your days. A lot of people are winging their days. They might have a couple

meetings on there, but they don't know what they're going to do first thing in the morning. They wake up and they're like, yeah, I really want to do something, but I don't know what to do. If you're doing your to-do list in the morning when you have the greatest discipline, willpower, and intention, man, you're too late. You're too late. You got to do that the day before. Because everything that you love in life, if know if you love football you think those guys are making stuff up as they go along you know they script every play they practice it over and over again if you like movies like they're not making the stuff up when like okay action and then people just mix it up it's a script everything good is following a script And so if you want your life to be good,

it should follow a script. I like that. Yeah. People overcomplicate it. And it's as simple as what you just said. I'm going to reiterate it because I thought it was so brilliant. A, go to sleep at a decent time, right?

On time. Yeah, on time. And reverse alarms is a great strategy. Because I get up early in the morning and a lot of people think, oh, well, you got to get up early in the morning to be successful. And chances are you're going to be more successful if you get up a little bit earlier than you are right now, because just the way the world works, right?

You know, we're a long way from nine to five, but we're still kind of in the nine to five mindset. And so if you get up too late, it's not going to be good for you. But I also have friends who are night owls who have made a lot of money working in weird hours sure so it's the fundamental principles of planning and preparation of knowing yourself and when you're most productive and removing distractions that allows you to be successful at any time of the day so i'm not a 5 a.m club type person i think that's actually really bad for a lot of people, especially if you're doing 7 a.m. right now and you think, oh, next week I'm going to go

5 a.m. That's going to last for like a day and a half. And you're going to crash and say, oh, early mornings are stupid. But they're not. I had anxiety attacks back in 2006 and I was getting up at 7.30 in the morning. And I know I'm a morning person and I get up at 7.30 in the morning and there was a million things I wanted to do, which was like a small contributor to the anxiety. And I was like, you know what? I got to get up earlier. And so for the next seven days, I got up at 7.25, okay? And then for the seven days after that, I got up at 7.20, yeah? And then I got up at 7.15. And at the same time, I was also checking my phone five minutes later. So I started creating this big gap in between when

I got up and when I checked my phone and I used that time to be productive. And so about six months later, I was getting up at 5.30 in the morning and not checking my phone till 9.30. And that's when my business went like that. And it was five minutes at a time. And so it's not about the time you get up. It's not about the hour that you get up it's about what you do with the hours that you are up i say something similar and i use 15 minute increments 15 minute increments every week so to go from seven to five if you really wanted to do it it's going to take you what eight weeks but it's because it's 15 minute increments right right and it's manageable that's manageable it is the person that goes oh i'm going to 5 a.m

because justin said so it's like you'll do it for four or five days and you'll be exhausted and and what's probably worse than that is that you will then have some negative self-talk yeah because if you go five minutes at a time man that's so easy but you know what i was confident after seven days in a row i was like man i can do this yeah i can do this and then the next week man i can really do this but if i go from seven to five and and then i'm like i can't do this what have i done to myself i can't i can't i've said yeah i've set myself up for failure and well if i can't do that i can't do this i can't do this and the next thing you know i think that's a great subject that unfortunately we're not going to have enough time to speak about, but like this idea of the negative self-talk based around goals or achievement or whatever it may be.

I think there's a lot of people that set this idea of like, I need to go achieve this pretty big thing. In our example, we're going from seven to five. It's a big jump. And then they break and can't fulfill it. And then this negative self-talk and now it's a trickle-down effect oh i can't do this uh oh that's too big i don't want to attempt that oh it didn't really work last time so i'm not gonna and then they're always wondering why can't i get bigger grow bigger make more money and it actually is is they're not looking at the moderation

in the slower step down or the slower step up versus trying to swallow the elephant. Yeah. And so when you get in that position, then they hit the panic button all the time. And that's common. Like, you know, I have a little presentation planned for Friday about, you know, what's the difference in a good entrepreneur and a great entrepreneur and a good entrepreneur hits the panic button every time. Like when something bad happens, oh my my gosh everything's over and listen we're all on that entrepreneur roller coaster yeah but if you're putting yourself through the ringer at the same time your highs get higher like oh yeah i made a sale it's amazing it's like okay

you made a sale it's all right yeah and then it's like oh you know i got a refund you're way down here you're just using up your brain computer operating system like Like if I used to have this old laptop, you know, back in 2000 and all the time, you know, if there were seven tabs open, it would say CPU usage at a hundred and the computer couldn't do anything. And it's the same with the beginner entrepreneur who has that negative mindset of, I can't do stuff. That's filling your brain with negativity and you can't fit in creativity when your brain is full of negativity that's right and it's the same with you know oh everything's going wrong and and they're they're often fatalistic and you know the end of the world here and if you are filling your brain with that stuff

then you never are going to be able to be creative and if you want to get ahead you have to be committed to being creative you know confidence plays a big role here that I think people undervalue. And when you go incremental, like what we're talking about in the example of sleep, it also builds a self-confidence that you're not even probably aware of. Oh, I did it. Oh, I did it again. I did it again and again and again. Oh, I did this too.

And look at this. I got to 5 a.m. And that may have taken however many days or weeks, but the ability to say, I did the thing I went out to set to do and I achieved it, builds an internal confidence, whether you're knowing it or not. And a lot of people don't even recognize that's what's happening. It's that identity shift from, you know, the best thing that I got at James Clear's Atomic Habits book was the identity shift. Because, yeah, you can build systems and all that sort of stuff, but sometimes the system will break. But if you have built the confidence in yourself that, like, let's just say around

alcohol or something. Like, I quit cold turkey November 2021. And, you know, I was a binge drinker when I was younger, then I was moderate drinker and then i just decided no none and now i'm i'm a non-drinker therefore that's my identity and you know at first it was challenging sure but i just built the confidence i can go to restaurants no problem i can go to social outings and you just stack those wins and that builds the confidence but it all comes like at first it had to start with, I am a non-drinker. And when you're able to do that, it leads to the confidence. And so it is so important to stack the wins. Tiny Habits is another book, Atomic Habits. You build the systems, you get the confidence, but also it's making sure that you start with the identity, the intentionality. That's right. It is really the intentionality. That word is

probably the fundamental of this podcast. When you have the intentionality about who you want to become, who you are, what you do in certain circumstances, you can really make a huge shift in your life and with consistency. Yeah. When people are not identifying, so I have a five laws of success for all entrepreneurs. And the first one is decide what you want and who you need to be to get it. That's one. What do you want and who do you need to be? The identity part, right? So I use the example.

If you want to have a six pack, you need to not eat donuts and drink Coca-Cola. Right. I mean, it's just like, but people don't go there and they don't decide what they want. Back to your perfect day example. I mean, everything we're talking about kind of fits in these five laws. So decide what you want and who you need to be at it. Then commit to it. So don't eat the damn donut, right?

Eat a salad or eat, you know, whatever it is. And then you got to take the actions required, right, to achieve the thing that you want. And then you need to be able to remove your ability to be uncomfortable. You have to be able to remove your ability to be uncomfortable you have to be uncomfortable right it's uncomfortable learn how to walk crawl swim ride bikes we all did it and then remove your time expectation on the result yeah that's a good one the fifth one and i don't want to say it is kind of like number one but that's what everyone has trouble with whatever the thing they're trying to achieve they want it yesterday they want it in 30 days they want in a year and it ruins psychologically actually ruins people because then their

confidence wavers i can't get there i won't be able to get there it's taking too long i'm not going the right route man they don't and it is tough with social media because that's the that's an example of social media being used on you. That's right. And you see, whether it's you or whether it's many of the successful people on social media, and they're like, man, I really want what that person has. And a week later, you haven't gotten too far on it. And you're like, that just makes you feel bad. Yeah, that's the confidence thing. But if you just remove that and say, I'm going to achieve it no matter what, hell or high water, cause I'm committed to who I am and all the other four,

then who cares? Go achieve it. That's exactly it. I was talking about some of the mindsets of my most successful clients recently. And it was in the number one, what, uh, was they were going to be successful. Yeah. And I actually use like come hell or high water as an example of this woman who's at her event today. I knew from the first call, I had a call with her in 2009. She's been a client of mine that long. And she was a broke nutritionist at the time. She had her fiance. I was selling DVDs of an event and her husband or her fiance at the time had to pay for the DVDs of the event. But I could just tell the confidence that she had on the call because she had a big why. Her mother had passed away from type 2 diabetes and she didn't want other people to experience that. She was just hell-bent on success.

And she had everything that you had listed out. She just didn't know it yet and just needed someone to come and pick her up and show her the ropes and sort of thing. But that is so common among the people that are successful. And whether they have a university degree or whether they're super intelligent or not that stuff is not that important yeah what's important is that intentionality and that mindset and true belief in yourself guys this has been real craig ballantyne everywhere you can find him find him everywhere dude this has been an incredible we don't have enough time to go on to even more, but find him because he does his own masterminds. He

has his own coaching business. He can help all of you entrepreneurs get to this next level. So real Craig Ballantyne all over Instagram. Any last words for the people? I would just say that what really makes a good life is not about money and stuff. Money and stuff is good, but it's about people and experiences. And so the more people and experiences that you get, that will make for a great life. And that comes through being intentional with what you want, who you need to become, and how you spend your time getting it. I like this. This has been great.

If this made any impact on you at all, and we know it did, make sure you share this with at least two people. And I will see you on the next Entrepreneur DNA with another special guest. Peace.