The School of Greatness - 942 Work Like An Elite Athlete

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

“Done is better than perfect.”Than has taught me so much over the years about how to build a successful business and I’ve watched him scale his from 30 employees to over 300 in just a few years.I wanted to bring him on the podcast because I know scaling your business can be one of the most challenging obstacles entrepreneurs face.However, when I asked Than for his best advice on this, we ended up talking about how to hire the right team and empower them to make decisions for you.This whole conversation is a gold mine for anyone in business. For this 5 Minute Friday clip, I am sharing his thoughts on leading by example, taking care of yourself so you can perform well, and managing your time wisely.If you enjoyed this episode, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/942 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes

This is 5-Minute Friday! Welcome everyone to this very special episode with my dear friend, Mr. Than Merrill, who is not only a stud on the football field, but also a stud in the boardroom. And a quick note about Than, he is one of the foremost real estate investors and educators in the country, a nationally recognized expert in real estate, investing, real estate, education, and entrepreneurship, and a sought after speaker. I think it's vitally important that you as the business owner embrace a healthy lifestyle. I think, first of all, your diet and nutrition.

I mean, energy levels differ greatly. If you're not eating well, you'll probably be two-thirds as productive as you could be just by changing your diet. And as far as working out, you know, I work out six days a week. So I go, um, and I, I prefer CrossFit cause they're very short 30 minute workouts most of the time. So most of the time when I work out four days a week, I'm doing that two days. I'll, I'll do just a run because it's all I could get in that day for the beach. Uh, yeah. If I'm local right down to the beach, uh, or if I'm traveling or wherever, then I'll, I'll try to get in some sort of physical activity because it's, it's very important. It's also important. I think as a leader of your company,

if you embrace that lifestyle, your, your, uh, team members and employees will do the same thing and they'll follow suit and they'll be more productive. Absolutely. And it's, it's a cult, follow suit. And they'll be more productive. Absolutely. And it's, it's a cult, you know, you create a culture and the culture really the, the founder and the, the, the CEO, CFO, you know, the heads of whoever created the organization, whoever the founders are, create the culture. And so that's something we've tried to do. You know, once a quarter we get together, um, our company and we do what we call an inspire event. So everybody in the company gets together. If people work virtually, we'll have somebody come in and just share for 90 minutes to three hours,

depending on the topic. And the last, in January, we had somebody come in and talk about nutrition and different types of, so the whole company's on a water, a salad, a no sugar, a no bread challenge. I can't say the whole company, but the majority of people sign up for it. And so things like that.

Are you doing that right now? Yeah. So I'm on the, I'm on no bread. I'm on the no bread. No sugar is next week. No sugar is next week. No gluten or bread or is it just no bread? It's just no bread.

It's one thing at a time. It's a simple challenge, right? It's actually a really good idea by one of the team members who works with us he started off with you know a water challenge because everyone can have success drinking a certain amount of water each day and then you go you kind of progress up to the salad challenge and but i think it all starts with whoever's running the company i think that's important and so you know our one of the local um gyms there's probably 40 50 individuals at our company that all go to the same gym crossfit gym yeah yeah so it's uh yeah that's cool yeah it's uh how many are local how many employees local uh probably about 120 wow and

you guys have grown a lot so i think a couple years ago you only had like 30 or 40 yeah it was just a couple of us in the office stacked up on top of each other. Did you guys take another floor now or something? We have a couple buildings all right around here. Yeah. A couple buildings. So it's not just the one down the street. Yeah.

Where we live is right near the beach, so there's not a lot of office space. So we picked up a couple office buildings that are right across the street from each other. What are some of the other rituals besides working out? Like what's your morning look like? Both physically, you know, going through the motions, but also the mental preparation you have for each day.

Yeah. Well, one thing, uh, now that I'm, uh, married and have a young son, my,

I definitely had to transition some of my hours to morning time before they woke up because I do work from the house. One of the things that I like to do right off the bat is every morning I get to, I walk down to my office and for about five minutes, I just organize my day and I prioritize my day. And I think a lot of people don't do this and it's so small, but sometimes the most productive things are simple.

And so I look at, you know, the 15 activities that I have to do for that day. And I put them in order and I say, okay, what's the hardest one that I've been putting off? I'm going to get that one done first. And then I just prioritize my time and I time it. So I put down, okay, I'm going to spend 15 minutes on this. I'm going to spend an hour on this. And I'm not going to spend more time because a lot of times we end up spending three hours when we were supposed to write. Maybe we're designing a presentation that we're going to give to whoever. We spend forever on it. Yeah.

So you spend four hours. I give myself a limit. Yeah. I give myself a limit. And you put a time measurement against each one of these priorities first. Yeah. Really? So I always say done is better than perfect.

Of course. Because you can. Good and done is better than perfect of course because you can good and done is better than perfect and never done yeah because that's and that's the way i've always been because there's always going to be things that interrupt your day you know as a business owner and so i always you know make sure there's a little bit of time allocated for that and then just put a limit on how long i'm going to work on that and so i actually plan out the the however long i'm spending working that day into those blocks. And it's very, it's been very effective for me because it keeps me on track.

And, you know, it also keeps a mind that can sometimes get really excited about, you know, I get very excited about new ideas and new things. It's helped me say no to a lot of opportunities that really would have been more distraction than actually a good opportunity for the company. Hey guys, if you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show, then you'll love the free book I'm giving away right now. It's called The Millionaire Morning. It includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire

mindset. Get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping. Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com.