The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 129: Rory Vaden – Why The Best "Take The Stairs"

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's cool to be a learner, and you can be a thought leader, but I think thought leader is kind of lame, honestly. What I want is an experienced leader. I want somebody who learns and puts it in the action. I don't want somebody who learns a bunch of stuff and then just writes a bunch of thoughts about what they learned. I think there's a little bit too much of that in the world. You know, like I, my work in Southwestern Consulting is the most important work that I'm doing. It's like the trenches of building a real business every single day and interfacing with real customers and making sales calls and getting our teeth kicked in and trying to like, you know,

Starting point is 00:00:35 manage cash and hit a budget and recruit people and coach people through their fears. And like that is so much more rich to me than the research that we do and the polling and the thinking and the writing. And they're both valuable. I just, when I think of a learning leader, I think of somebody who's learning and applying, not just learning and critiquing. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders.

Starting point is 00:01:11 Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey, everyone, it's Ryan. I wanted to make a quick announcement. A number of you had sent me emails in regards to asking for a place to further this dialogue with like-minded, people, other listeners, fans, and friends of the Learning Leader show. So I set up a group on Facebook. It's Facebook.com slash groups slash learning leader.

Starting point is 00:01:46 It's a closed group. But if you'd like an invite, simply shoot me a quick note and I'd be happy to bring you into the group. This is a place where we can freely communicate and discuss leadership, learning, creative ideas, podcasting, and new and innovative ways of thinking a place where we could potentially argue a little bit, have an open mind, and have, constructive dialogue. I've loved the early response from the people who are already in the group, but simply

Starting point is 00:02:13 send me a note. I'll add you to it. I look forward to talking with more of you very soon. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawke. Excited for tonight's featured leader. It's with Rory Vaden. Rory is a self-discipline strategist whose book, Take the Stairs, is a number one Wall

Starting point is 00:02:38 Street Journal, number one USA Today, and number one. number two New York Times bestseller. As an award-winning entrepreneur and business leader, Rory, co-founded Southwestern Consulting, which is a multi-million dollar global consulting business. On this very interesting conversation tonight, a few of the topics we got into, the time, the specific moment when Zig Zigler saw Rory give a speech and came up and asked to speak with him and mentor him after he got done. Incredible part.

Starting point is 00:03:10 And then the Covey quadrants, most of us know them as urgent, important, not urgent, and not important. And Rory and I discussed why those quadrants are not perfect and why they actually need to be altered and how Rory would add the word significance to his quadrant. We go much deeper than that on this episode of Loring Leader Show. I know you guys will enjoy it. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Rory Baden. Rory, thank you so much for being here on the Learning Leaders Show. I'm excited to have you.

Starting point is 00:03:52 Welcome to the show. Quick question, and that is around sustained excellence. You study this for a living, and you've made a career out of it yourself, as well as the people that you've spoken with and you surround yourself with. I'm curious, what are some of the common characteristics that people who have sustained excellence all share? Well, that's an easy, easy one for me. And in my opinion, there is one that matters more than any other. And I was asked people, I say, hey, the last time that you were in front of a set of escalators and some stairs, did you take the stairs?

Starting point is 00:04:33 And most of us, the answer is no. Most of us take the escalator. We gravitate towards the path of least resistance. We move towards the shortcut. And Southwestern Consulting, you know, we started 10 years ago with. four of us. We now have 115 team members, and we basically study success for a living. And when you really get behind the scenes and you ask successful people, you find that one of the only things, perhaps, that they have in common is that success has nothing to do with a person's

Starting point is 00:05:02 age, their ethnicity, their background even, like who their parents were or like what their education level is. But the one thing that every single successful person has in common is that successful people have formed the habit of doing things they know they should be doing even when they don't feel like doing them. In other words, success is not about taking the escalators. It's about having the discipline to take the stairs. I love it, man. Who are the first people that you think of when you hear the word success?

Starting point is 00:05:39 Well, that's interesting. I've never been asked that question before. Honestly, when I hear the word success, the first person that I think about is me, not that I'm like the most successful person, but I think I internalize everything that I'm learning as it better apply to my life and I better be doing it if I'm talking about it. And so I think, you know, I'm a huge learner. Like I read on average like a book a week or so and I'm learning about all. all sorts of stuff and business and sales and leadership and like speaking and telling stories and also about, I mean, lately I've been learning a ton about online marketing and all that kind of stuff.

Starting point is 00:06:28 So, but, you know, one of my favorite guys, we just had him on my podcast not too long ago. We call him Navy SEAL Joe. He was a Navy SEAL for 24 years. He did 11 combat tours in Afghanistan. just like amazing guy. And I think of him as being successful. Like his mentality is so selfless. It's so much about the team.

Starting point is 00:06:54 It's so much about the mission. It's about the country. And it's about overcoming whatever pain or, you know, fear that you might have and just moving forward. So I love the Navy SEALs. I love learning from them. I just think they're amazing. Completely agree.

Starting point is 00:07:11 I've been very fortunate to have more than that. than a couple of them on this podcast and just the discipline it takes to do what those guys have done. I mean, I'm just scratching the surface. There's so many different qualities that they bring to the art and science of leadership and of leading from the front and going and doing the hard things. I'm a massive fan, so we have that in common. When it comes to the phrase, take the stairs, I read about this from Kevin Olli, the coach at Yukon. And did you guys, by chance, have you spoken with him about that?

Starting point is 00:07:47 So, no, I have not. But there's the signature quote from Take the Stairs from the book is that success is never owned. It's only rented. And the rent is due every day. And there was a coach at the University of Tennessee. Oh, gosh, his name escapes me right now. And he read a copy, Take the Stairs. He has a huge Twitter following.

Starting point is 00:08:10 And he tweeted that out. And then several of the kind of coaches started picking that up. And yeah, as I understand when Yukon was in the championship or whatever, like a couple years ago, I think, I guess maybe they have it in their locker room or something like that. Oh, it's their, it was a big part of their, like, their theme for that year, Yukon men's basketball team when they won the championship. I mean, you can just Google Kevin Ali take the stairs and there's a ton of articles out on it. And that's why I wondered if maybe you guys, you had personally coached him or if that was part of how it began.

Starting point is 00:08:48 I wasn't sure. Yeah, no, I have not personally coached him. But my guess would be that they probably do have the book because it was circulating amongst some of like the basketball, you know, some of the Division I basketball coaches. Yeah. Interesting. It's the first thing I thought of because I read that story a couple years ago. And I know, obviously, it's the title of one of your books.

Starting point is 00:09:11 But, Roy, I want to get into you and your background and how you got to this point. Because I think what you do on a day-to-day basis is probably, I think a lot of people wish they were doing your work. You're defined as a self-disciplined strategist. You know, best-selling author and you go around the world giving incredible speeches, inspiring and empowering other leaders and people to do more or more empower. impactful action. So I'd love to hear how in the world you got into doing this from the beginning to where you're currently at. Well, yeah. I mean, thank you. I, I, for me, a lot of this journey started not trying to solve the world's problems, just try to solve some of my own problems, frankly. I probably about maybe, maybe 12 years ago, about 12 years ago, yeah, I was 45 pounds heavier than I am right now. I had $50,000.

Starting point is 00:10:11 and personal debt. The first business that I had started was failing. And I basically woke up and realized that all of these negative things that had happened to me, Ryan, like all these negative results in my life, they stemmed from this one habit. And I don't exactly know when I developed the habit, but I know exactly what it was, which is that I reached a place where I was putting off doing things that I knew I should be doing that I didn't want to do. So the fact that I just didn't enjoy it or didn't like it.

Starting point is 00:10:41 it, I stopped doing it. And there's a word that we use for that in the business world, which is procrastination, right? Like putting off stuff you know you need to be doing. And I kind of became infatuated with procrastination. I started studying it and the impacts of it. We found out that the average employee in the U.S. self-admits to wasting 2.09 hours every single day. So it's about a fourth of their time. And the average salaried employee makes around $40,000 a year. So that means that their procrastination costs employers $10,396 per year per employee. And so there's this huge cost. Procrastination is the most expensive invisible costs in business today.

Starting point is 00:11:28 And it's also a tremendous invisible cost in our lives because nobody measures it. Like we have a line item or in our P&L for the procrastination expense, right? We don't create a budget for it, but our lives are dramatically affected. And so I just became really interested in that kind of area of study and helping people to take action, which is really what I do. I think I really help people, I get people to take action. And from the professional standpoint, so that was kind of like on the content side. And we do some speaker coaching like on the business side and teaching kind of people how to do some of this. And we talk about there's kind of three areas of being a great speaker.

Starting point is 00:12:10 You have to have your, their mechanics. Okay, that's like how you speak from stage, telling jokes and stories and all that kind of stuff. And for me, my mechanics really was rooted in Toastmasters because I was 22 years old. I said, hey, I want to be a speaker. I want to inspire people with my life. And somebody told me about Toastmasters. And they have this contest called the World Championship of Public Speaking. And I thought, wow, what if I, maybe if I win the World Championship of public speaking,

Starting point is 00:12:40 that would give me the credibility to actually go out and speak as a 20-something-year-old. And it's, you know, so after this contest, it's 25,000 contestants that compete over nine months. And in 2006, I made it all the way to the World Championship. And I lost. But, you know, over 18 months, I went back and I spoke 304 times for free. I took over two dozen courses on huge. and storytelling and speaking. I read dozens of books, spent thousands of hours watching film, and studying and received 2,200 evaluations. And then in 2007, I went back to the World

Starting point is 00:13:20 Championship, which was the top 10 in the world. And that was the year that I, well, I lost again, but I lost higher. I came in second at 23 years old. Actually, I just turned 24 in the World championship and a few months later I was at a national speakers association event and I was in the lunch room you know in the big ballroom or whatever eating lunch and this gentleman walks up to me and he says hey is that seat taken and I said no sir you know by all means and he sits down and he says he goes are you Rory Vaden he goes you're the kid that did the world championship thing right and I said I said yes sir I am and I said and who are you he said my name is Zig Zig Zig Zigger And Zig sat there next to me, and his wife, the Redhead, Gene, she sat there, and I got

Starting point is 00:14:12 the chance to meet the Zigglers, and I talked to them for a couple hours, and then Zieg basically said he would like to mentor me. And so we talked every once in a while over the phone. I went out to his office a few times. I went to his home, where he was staying right before he started to lose his memory right in the last three or four years of his career. I was. It was backstage with him at the Get Motivated seminars, you know, and when they're like speaking with Barbara Bush. And that was all the same time that we started Southwestern Consulting, which is a whole story, you know,

Starting point is 00:14:45 that I can talk about how we started our business. And we grew it from scratch to we're now about $12 million business in 10 years. But that was a lot. That was kind of the beginning in a nutshell. $12 million business now started from just nothing at all out of your desire to want to speak and help and impact other. others. You said 100 and some employees as well. What exactly does your business, Southwestern consulting, do on a day-to-day basis for your customers? Yeah. Well, and it's just a couple

Starting point is 00:15:21 things. So we have, they're not all employees. A bunch of them are contractors. The consultants are. But we Southwestern and they answer to the question, right, how in the world do you build as a a 24-year-old kid, a $12 million business in 10 years. The answer is that you don't. There's no way you can build that. You help be a part of a team, and you build a team, and the team build a $12 million business. And I'm not the founder. I'm the co-founder.

Starting point is 00:15:52 So there were really three other people in the very beginning that were the start of the company, and we've brought on several amazing partners. and I think there's a quote, I don't know who said it, but it's a great quote. It's not mine. It said that if you do more than you're paid to do, then eventually you'll get paid for more than you actually do. And I think it's so true. I mean, we worked our butts off. You know, we started the company with a yellow page's phone book and we ripped it into fourths. And we elevate sales. That's what we do at Southwestern Consulting. We elevate sales. So that means both we teach companies and individuals how to increase their revenue, but also elevate the perception of the profession of selling and what it means to be a salesperson. And we do that primarily through one-on-one sales coaching is our core business.

Starting point is 00:16:43 And we've had about 5,000 clients come through our coaching program. We have like 1,600 active right now. The majority of our 115 team members are consultants and we teach them how to sell sales coaching. And part of that was, you know, as I was around the speaking industry and, you know, with the Zieglers and his late years. And I really wanted to be a part of creating a business that was bigger than me from the very beginning and that would live longer than I did. And so we built it from the ground up that way.

Starting point is 00:17:12 And that's allowed us to attract several people who all would have been capable to build the business on their own. But we instead do it as a team of partners to, you know, so that we get to do the things that we love, which is basically speaking and coaching and not dealing with all the back end of the business. So we, we handle that, you know, at the headquarters. We kind of deal with all that marketing and the CRMs and the, you know, managing the emails and the accounting and the HR and all that stuff so that the consultants can be out speaking and teaching. And it's really amazing. And I think part of the reason we're growing so fast is because there's a lot of people out

Starting point is 00:17:48 there that want to speak and teach. They have the sales experience, but they don't want to get on an airplane and leave their family. Like, you know, like I speak 70 dates a year, 60 to 70. dates a year. So I'm on an airplane a ton. My wife is also a speaker. She's one of the other founders of the business. And so we travel out together because we don't have kids, but we're going to have kids here hopefully soon. And then we probably won't be on the plane. But we created a model where people could do that without getting on an airplane and without having to like know everything about how to run a business. And we just kind of give them the system. But we help we help salespeople achieve their goals in life. That's that's the essence of

Starting point is 00:18:28 why we do this and one-on-one coaching. And so we teach our consultants how to run that that business. So take the stairs and on, you know, all of all of my work specifically, if you just say like, okay, Rory Vain, it's all a subset of Southwestern consulting. But my little area of expertise is around overcoming procrastination, improving self-discipline and helping people to get, helping people to take action. And that's kind of like a subset of just one small thing that we do to help salespeople. When you say procrastinate on purpose, which is the title of your most recent book, tease that out for me. I want to learn more about what you mean by that. Yeah, that's funny because people say, wait a minute, Rory, and take the stairs. You said procrastination was the killer of all

Starting point is 00:19:14 success. You said that procrastination was the foundation of a mediocre life, and now you're saying procrastinate on purpose. Like, what's up with that? And I did say all those things, and they are all still true exactly how I said them, but there is a very important distinction to realize, which is there is a big difference between waiting to do something that you know you should be doing, that you don't want to do, and waiting to do something because you're deciding that now is not the right time. So waiting to do something that you know you should do, but you don't feel like doing, that's procrastination. That's the killer of all success. That's the foundation of a mediocre life. I know I should be doing my taxes.

Starting point is 00:19:54 I didn't do that. Like, I know I should be making a sales call. I didn't do it. I know I need to get my butt to the gym. I haven't been going. That is procrastination. That is very different than waiting because you're deciding that now is not the right time. Procrastinate on purpose.

Starting point is 00:20:09 The book is really not about – the book is about how to multiply time, which is also what my TED Talk was about, how to multiply time. Procrastinate on purpose is just one of the five strategies in the book. But procrastinate on purpose is saying, you know what, I'm with my wife. I'm going to procrastinate on purpose on answering my email or incoming phone call. I need to make sales calls. I'm going to procrastinate on purpose on answering all my emails or organizing my office. There are certain decisions that you say, you know what, actually email can wait because I need to create the time to invest into the significant things or into the tasks that multiply time, which is, what the whole book is about and what the TED talk is about is how to literally create more time in your life,

Starting point is 00:20:58 which is what we basically have been studying for the last three years ever since Take the Stairs came out, was how do the world's ultra performers, the people we profiled that we refer to as ultra performers and take the stairs, how do they multiply time? It comes down to it. This reminds me, it's been a top of mind topic for me because I've talked with some incredible thinkers. like Cal Newport, who wrote Deep Work, Greg McEwen, who wrote Essentialism. It feels kind of in line with that, meaning these world-class performers, the top people that you've profiled and you're studying, have a great understanding of focus of prioritizing more so than anything else.

Starting point is 00:21:43 Well, so let's talk about that for a second, because I have something distinct to add to that conversation. So Greg McEwen is coming on my show here. It's probably not going to air for like six weeks or something, but our interview is coming up. And I read Essentialism. I love it. Absolutely love Essentialism. I think it's great, the discipline pursuit of less. Awesome.

Starting point is 00:22:06 The word prioritizing is a word in procrastinate on purpose. I come out and I challenge. I have a problem with prioritizing because people throw that word around like that is the end-all-all-be-all. but there's a very big limitation to prioritizing. See, prioritizing means to focus first on what matters most or to put one thing in front of the other. And that is a very valuable skill, okay? That's a skill that we need today more than ever.

Starting point is 00:22:36 And there's lots of things that help, lots of frameworks that can help you prioritize. My problem is that there is nothing about prioritizing that creates more time. Prioritizing is actually more like borrowing time. You're borrowing time from one activity to focus on the other. So if there's 10 items on your to-do list, prioritizing is a valuable skill because it teaches you the discipline of taking item number seven and saying, okay, I'm going to bump that up to number one and do that first. But it does nothing inherently in and of itself to help you accomplish the other nine things. And that's the limitation that nobody ever talks about. So all it is is juggling.

Starting point is 00:23:14 And that's how people say I'm juggling a lot because, yeah, you're just shifting from one. thing to the next. That is not what procrastinating on purpose is all about. It is a framework. The focus funnel is a framework for how to help you prioritize, eliminate, which is what Greg talks about brilliantly, is the first of the five strategies. We've already talked about procrastinating on purpose, which is the fourth one. But the mindset of what is different and multiplying time is not about prioritizing per se of just shifting your focus from one thing to the next. the way that you multiply time is by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that give you more time tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:23:59 In other words, it's not to say what is the most important task in my life necessarily that I should focus on that first. It's to say what is the most significant task. In other words, if you look at Dr. Covey's old time management matrix, the Y-axis was important and the X-axis was urgency. And that is the paradigm that most of us operate in for how we score our tasks to prioritize them. But there's something very substantial that's missing from that calculation because importance

Starting point is 00:24:29 is how much does something matter. Urgency is how soon does it matter. But what we're proposing is there's a third dimension that has been completely ignored, which is really the most valuable of all of them, which is significance. And significance is how long is this. going to matter? In other words, how is this going to play out over time? If you don't make the significance calculation of how long this is going to matter, then you inadvertently overweight the urgency calculation, which is what most of us do. Most of us struggle not with procrastination, but with

Starting point is 00:25:07 the new type of procrastination that we introduced and take the stairs called priority dilution. Priority dilution has nothing to do with being lazy or apathetic or disengaged like classic procrastination. Priority dilution is allowing your priorities to dilute because you allow your attention to shift either consciously or unconsciously to less significant but perhaps more urgent tasks. They're constantly fighting fires. They're falling victim to latest and loudest. And most people wake up and they ask this question. They say, what's the most important thing I can do today? Right? That's how we're trained to think. And we have a to-do list and we wake up and we go, okay, let's make my to-do list. And what's the most important thing I can do today? That is not how multipliers think. The way that multipliers think is they say, how can I use my time in a way today that creates more time tomorrow and the next day and the next day? And there may only be one thing on their list that actually multiplies their time. And what they will do is procrastinate on purpose.

Starting point is 00:26:11 with all the other stuff, even though it might be important and it might be urgent, but it doesn't meet the significance criteria. It's things that you can do, but you're only doing it once. And even if you do it once today, you're going to have to do it again in the future, whereas you can multiply time by creating systems. Well, there's five strategies. We can talk through some of them if you want. But the big idea is asking the question, how can I use my time in a way today that creates more time tomorrow?

Starting point is 00:26:41 You give yourself permission, which is the subtitle, five permissions to multiply your time. You give yourself permission to spend time on those things at the expense of everything else, which is where procrastinating on purpose comes from. Interesting. Have you seen the most recent TED talks from Tim Urban or Adam Grant? They were just released probably about a month or two ago. No, no, I know Adam has a new book out, which I, originals, I think it's called. It is.

Starting point is 00:27:16 The reason I bring this up is because Tim's TED Talk, which has been viewed about three million times in a month. Wow. It has been released. It was filmed in February, but it, you know, they wait to stay stagger those when they release them on TED.com. And it's titled Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator. and then Adam Grant's talk, which he was at the same conference as Tim.

Starting point is 00:27:41 I bring this up because Tim, I just recorded with Tim. It was a really interesting conversation because he calls himself a master procrastinator. And then Adam just called the surprising habits of original thinkers, which he talks about some of the topics from his book. And one of them is that they procrastinate because it builds and boost creativity. And I'm not going to try to give you a cliff's notes on the entire idea in book. but that's one of the core concepts that he talks about. And he lists some examples of people who have done that.

Starting point is 00:28:12 And Tim talks a lot about himself, actually, in his talk, inside the mind of a master procrastinator. So when you, in your book, and that's why it made me think of it, called procrastinate on purpose. And I think there's some potential differing views between what you've said about procrastination and what a guy like Tim Urban would say about the creativity and sometimes even having time deadlines, how that can boost his creativity

Starting point is 00:28:38 because he's procrastinated to get something done. In his case, it's usually writing some sort of a blog post or doing a TED talk. Yeah, well, that would be a fascinating discussion. Maybe you should connect us. I would love to. I would love to have that conversation.

Starting point is 00:28:56 Yeah. You know, in that, I'd be interested to hear his thoughts because in that scenario of like, okay, I'm going to procrastinate as a strategy to boost my productivity. Yes. I don't see why it is necessary to do that to boost your creativity. So in Take the Stairs, we talk about one of the seven principles.

Starting point is 00:29:19 The Take the Stairs is all about these seven insights that make, that people misunderstand about self-discipline and how self-discipline is really easier than we all think once we know how to think about it the right way. But that the principle, the buy-in principle of commitment, the strategy is you increase your level of commitment and thereby your likelihood of success by intentionally creating the question how instead of accidentally relenting to the question should. So instead of saying, can I do this? Is this possible? You just say, how is this possible? How could I pull this off? So I think the way that I would describe that is whenever you have a deadline and you have procrastinated so far that you're coming up to the deadline, Now you're in a bind, and so you have, you're forced to be creative, right? You're forced to ask, okay, how can I get this done? I have to think of a better way to do it. But I would also say there's a cost there in terms of stress and anxiety and potentially

Starting point is 00:30:16 pressure on the people around you, depending on what the project is. And also, if you don't figure out a good enough solution in the time that's available, you actually could have compromised quality. and you could compromise relationships by actually missing the deadline because you were not able to come up with the answer in the short term. So there's no reason. So all I'm saying is I wonder how much that self-imposed or somebody else imposed deadline forces the creativity conversation. But could you create that same creativity conversation without having the deadline? In other words, there is the danger.

Starting point is 00:30:58 I think the danger that we would probably both agree on is the danger is just going through the motions every day without thinking. And the problem is we have so many apps and tips and tricks and tools and technologies and calendars and checklists that we have created to help us so that we don't have to think. And that's the most dangerous problem. Like I wrote a blog called the best productivity app in the world. and I go through all this, you know, this long thing or whatever, and then you get down and basically the point is it's your brain. It's your freaking brain. You have to use your freaking brain. But we don't use our brain. Everything that we have done has been about not using our brain. It's about having to, it's about thinking less and having more things done for us. And that's a real problem versus asking the question how and being more creative. And so, you know, I think, strategically, you know, to that point, procrastination, procrastination in that essence, is forcing you to be creative. And I think that's different. When I say procrastinating on purpose, I'm actually not saying procrastinating on purpose. I'm, I'm saying ignore the small stuff so you can focus on the big stuff.

Starting point is 00:32:11 I'm not actually advocating procrastination. I'm actually, we're actually advocating the same thing there, which is ignore the minutia to create space to multiply your time or be, creative about, you know, other ways of doing it. And so I think in that regard, we're very aligned on that probably. Absolutely. Curious, a side note. How did you come up with that title, that book title? Procrastany on purpose?

Starting point is 00:32:39 Yeah. It was a totally, it was a totally marketing ploy. It was like a media ploy. Oh, I was going to ask you. I'm glad you just straight came up and said it. I mean, was it like a, I mean, titling is important, you know? I mean, and it's very important. and there's a lot of thought and marketing and testing.

Starting point is 00:32:56 And I know all of that happens, especially when, you know, it's a guy like you who's well known. So I was just curious how you came up with it. Yeah. So it was a total media marketing pull. I mean, procrastinate is one of the strategies. But, you know, and let me just tell you this. Also, since you brought it up, Ryan, I don't think I've ever talked about this on a podcast. I did write a blog about it.

Starting point is 00:33:15 It totally failed. On the one hand, you go, oh, procrastinate on purpose, that's so catchy. That's so contradictory. that's so like whatever. And I think people, maybe they do have that thought, but they're not buying the book. The TED Talk, on the other hand, I called the TED Talk How to Multiply Time. And the TED Talk was recorded at Douglasville because I got turned down by 25 different TED organizations.

Starting point is 00:33:42 They did not want me to come. I finally found TEDx Douglasville. It was their very first TEDx event. There were probably 100 people there. there was very low production quality. They don't have a big network of getting it out like a lot of the big TED conventions do. You get the first 100,000 views just because they send an email to their list. These group had none of that.

Starting point is 00:34:05 But I call that TEDx Talk How to Multiply Time. It's been out for about a year, and it's had over half a million views. No promotion, no advertising, just organically. And I go, damn it, the title of the book should have been How to Multiply Time, because people might think procrastinate, here's my self-assessment of why my book title sucks, is people might look at procrastinate on purpose and go, oh, that's interesting.

Starting point is 00:34:31 But inherently, people don't actually want to be a procrastinator. We don't strive to be a procrastinator, so we go, oh, that's interesting. But even how to never procrastinate probably would have been a better title. So, you know, I mean, the book is selling fine, but it's selling in channels that we're, controlling, right? It's people who have heard about me or they, you know, they hear me on a podcast. It's it, but, but, you know, we have a system that we are able to see like where all the sales are

Starting point is 00:34:59 coming from. And the organic sales of just like, I never heard of them. I just grab the book off the shelf. It's not selling very well. And, but, you know, so anyways. Huge credit for saying that. Nobody ever says that on a podcast or publicly. And I love your honesty there, Rory, with with, admitting as something's happening, like, hey, I could have, you know, maybe I should have, you know, maybe I should have done a different way. I think that is a crucial component when I see people who sustain excellence is they're willing to be honest with themselves and they're also willing to share. I mean, it shows that you're real and I really appreciate that. I do sincerely because I don't think I've ever heard somebody say that to me like, ah, it's, I titled it wrong.

Starting point is 00:35:39 It's not selling as well unless we're controlling it. So I appreciate that. I have one more question before we get going. I know you're up against it. You're in a hotel here getting ready to travel. But when you hear the phrase learning leader, what is the first thing you think of? Man, I loved it. When you said that to me, being a learning leader, I loved it because it's that whole idea to be a great teacher. You first have to be a great student. And so that's what I think of. I think of that to be a leader, every great leader is a learner.

Starting point is 00:36:12 And not every learner is necessarily a leader. but I think every great leader is a great learner, even if they're just learning from their own mistakes. And, you know, just like I was talking about this horrible book title that I came up with that is not selling very well. And, but the book's amazing. Like, the book is really good. It's just the title sucks.

Starting point is 00:36:37 But, I love it. So that's what I think of. But I think, you know, when I think of learning leader, the other cool thing I really, like about that is I go, it's cool to be a learner. And you can be a thought leader, but I think thought leader is kind of lame, honestly. What I want is an experienced leader. I want somebody who learns and puts it in the action. I don't want somebody who learns a bunch of stuff and then just writes a bunch of thoughts about what they learned. I think there's a little bit too much of that in the world. My work in Southwestern Consulting is the most important work that I'm doing. It's like

Starting point is 00:37:13 the trenches of building a real business every single day and interfacing with real customers and making sales calls and getting our teeth kicked in and trying to like, you know, manage cash and hit a budget and recruit people and coach people through their fears. And like that is so much more rich to me than the research that we do and the polling and the thinking and the writing. And they're both valuable. I just, when I think of a learning leader, I think of somebody who's learning. and applying, not just learning and critiquing.

Starting point is 00:37:47 Love it, man. Love it, Rory. Thank you so much for being here, man. Where would you send everybody to learn more about you online? Yeah. So Rory Vadenblog.com is the place to go where we share insights and inspiration for movers and shakers in the world of business to help you take action. So go to Rory Vadenblog.com.

Starting point is 00:38:07 There's a free webinar there, actually, on how to multiply your time. So you can check that out. You connect with me on social. I post three times a week, real short posts in my podcast every Wednesday. So all of that, Roy Vaden blog.com. And the last thing I would just leave you with is just remember no matter who you are, no matter who you were yesterday, doesn't matter, no matter how successful or failure you were yesterday, it doesn't matter because for all of us, success is never owned,

Starting point is 00:38:33 success is only rented, and the rent is due every day. Love it, man. Closing hard. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for being here, Roy. really appreciate it. Thanks, brother. My pleasure. All right. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time.

Starting point is 00:38:52 Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 129: Rory Vaden – Why The Best "Take The Stairs"

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