Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Jeff Haden on The Motivation Myth, A No-BS Approach to Getting Motivated and Reaching Your Goals | Entrepreneurship

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

Jeff Haden worked for the same manufacturing company for 17 years with the goal of becoming a plant manager. When he finally got the opportunity to land his dream job, he realized that he no longer wanted it; instead, he wanted to become a writer. Despite having no professional writing experience, he started working odd jobs, like ghostwriting press releases and articles for Inc. Now, he has ghostwritten over 70 non-fiction books, including two NYT top tens and nine Amazon category #1s. How did he stay motivated to learn a new skill later in life? In this episode of YAPClassic, Jeff will reveal how he became a highly sought-after ghostwriter for some of the most recognizable CEOs and business leaders. We’ll also hear his advice on how to motivate ourselves, master new skills, and what to cut out of our lives in order to stay focused on our goals, including why he recommends we fire a friend.  Jeff Haden is a speaker, ghostwriter, and author of The Motivation Myth. He is also a frequent, and the most popular, contributor to Inc. magazine and a major LinkedIn Influencer, having amassed over 1 million followers. Jeff is a keynote speaker and the founder of Blackbird Media. In this episode, Hala and Jeff will discuss:  - How to stand out when changing career paths - The kinds of goals you should be setting when learning a new skill  - Why you should celebrate the small wins  - How effort creates motivation - How the most successful people stay motivated - How to take advantage of “me-time” - What activities and expenses to cut out of your life - Why you should fire a friend - And other topics… Jeff Haden is a speaker, ghostwriter, and author of The Motivation Myth. He is also a frequent, and the most popular, contributor to Inc. magazine. In 2021, his online articles for Inc. alone attracted more than 30 million readers. He is a major LinkedIn Influencer, having amassed over 1 million followers. Jeff is also the ghostwriter of over 70 non-fiction books, including two NYT top tens and nine Amazon category #1s, and thousands of columns, articles, presentations, speeches, and eulogies…the total is something just shy of twelve million published words. Jeff is a keynote speaker and the founder of Blackbird Media. LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course. Resources Mentioned:  Jeff’s Book, The Motivation Myth: https://jeffhaden.net/get-the-book  Jeff’s Website: https://jeffhaden.net/  Jeff’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hadenjeff/ Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset.

What is up my young and profitors? In today's Yap Classic, where we're playing my interview with speaker, ghostwriter, and best-selling author Jeff Hayden. Jeff is a very popular ghost writer, but you probably don't know him because he's a ghost writer and he's not supposed to let himself be known. But he's been the ghost writer of over 70 non-fiction books, including two New York Times, top tens, as well as thousands of columns, articles, presentations. speeches and eulogies. He's a contributing editor for Inc. Magazine and a major LinkedIn influencer with

over a million followers. In this episode, we dig into Jeff's book, The Motivation Myth, and we'll hear practical advice on how to build motivation through hard work. We'll talk about how the most successful people stay motivated to reach their goals, and you'll learn why Jeff thinks you should cut an expense, a personal commitment, and a friend out of your life. If you've been looking to find motivation in your life and make time for the things that matter, you'll want to stay tuned to this one. And I have to say, guys, I've thought about this episode so many times and it's gotten brought up in so many conversations over the last year or so. And that's because what Jeff talks about in this episode is so true. You don't just find motivation out of thin air. You find motivation by getting started

and doing the hard work. And it's always going to suck at first. But then you get better and better and better, and that keeps you motivated. And so you need to get started in order to be motivated. And I didn't really put two and two together before I talked to Jeff Hayden. And then, ever since then, I knew that motivation was a myth. So enjoy this conversation with Jeff Hayden. Hi, Jeff. Welcome to Young Improfiting Podcast. Oh, thanks for having me, Hala. I am super excited to have you on today. So you are a contributor to Ink Magazine. You've also ghost written over 50 books, and you're an author yourself of one of your recent books. It's called The Motivation Myth.

It's quite popular. So we'll go into that later. But before we do that, I love to get insight about people's career journeys. So from my understanding, you had lots of little jobs, and you always worked really hard in these little jobs as you were starting out in your career. Walk us through your career journey. Talk to us about the different jobs that you had and how that ultimately helped shape your career as a writer.

So stop me if I go way too long. So I worked my way through college, and I did it in a manufacturing plant, and I really enjoyed manufacturing. I liked that. So when I was graduating, I interviewed for lots of jobs, and they were all with, like, 40-year-old men in cubicles. That's what the job was going to be. And, of course, I was 22.

And so the idea of that seemed like death. And I liked manufacturing. And so the plant manager where I had worked said there's a new factory opening up in this town. It's a Fortune 500 company. It actually turns out they were the largest. commercial printers in the world. And so if you like manufacturing but see a career path that takes you into management and leadership and beyond, this would be a great place to go because you can ground floor at the facility and work your way up. So I thought, well, that sounds awesome. So I went and did that,

and I was the stereotypical college boy on the shop floor, which was both good and bad because one, people didn't think that I would work hard because I was the college boy. So I got to surprise them with that. But then it also, you know, the fact that I had some education and had some, some ideas of what I wanted to do beyond just being, you know, a machine operator or something like that, that was also advantageous too. So the cool thing about it, the company is R.R. Donnelly. And while they not necessarily would pay you more every time you got promoted, which is an interesting thing, they would allow you to basically learn anything that you wanted to learn. And if you wanted to get involved in other stuff, then there were opportunities to do so.

So it was a great place to learn all sorts of stuff. And as I worked my way up the ladder, I had lots of informal leadership positions. I worked in HR for a while. I worked in customer service for a while. I worked in other manufacturing departments. I went and helped start up a plant. I went to another plant where they were hoping to get the union decertified. And we were successful there. I worked on cross-plant projects. So I got exposed to this really broad, range of things that I probably never would have, even if I had changed jobs six or eight times. So I worked at the same place for 17 years. But yet it was as if I worked at a whole bunch of different places because of the experiences that I got to have. So to put a cap on that, my goal from

the very beginning was that I'd always wanted to run a plant. I wanted to be the plant manager. And so the only way that that was going to happen at Donnelly was at the time you had to go off and work in sales for a while, and they almost had this little list of things that you had to check off. And it really didn't want to do that. And so an opportunity to go to a smaller plant for another, it was actually a VC firm that had bought the company and try to turn it around. So the goal was either to say, can we turn it around, or do we just prepare it to sell and hopefully for a profit? So I went there and did that for three years. And what I learned was that my dream of being a plant manager didn't turn out to be what I wanted to spend the next 20 years doing, which,

you know, that does happen. And we'll get back to that in a second, because people get hung up on the idea that if they've embarked on a career path to a certain point, that there's all that time and effort and energy and quote unquote investment that they've put into it, and therefore they can't get off that train. And I disagree with that completely. And we'll talk about that later, I'm sure. So I was at home. My wife would say, well, I would say that I was just discussing the fact that I wanted to do something different professionally. My wife would say that I was whining about it, which is probably more closer to the truth. And so one day she said, what is it you would want to do if you didn't do this? And I don't know why, but I said,

I'd like to be a writer, I think. Now, I never, I didn't have no journalism background, no writing background. The only thing I'd ever written was things that I wrote for work, but I liked it. And so she said, what does that look like? And I said, like most people that have a dream, but no real path. I don't know. I don't even know how to get started. So three more months of me complaining and whining and wishing I could do something else. And she came home and said, I got you your first writing job. You're going to write a press release for a startup. I was like, wait, what? You know, because that seemed bizarre, but she had met a guy who had a tech company he was starting up and he wanted a press release. And she said, well, my husband could do that for you. So it turned out to be the worst

paying job I've ever had in terms of hourly rate because it took me forever. I'd never written a press release, didn't know anything about it, you know, struggled and finally kind of copied formats that I'd seen in other places that I thought worked and, you know, threw quotes into the right place and all that other stuff, turned it into him. And I, it's odd because I kind of hated it because I was so unfamiliar. This also happens to people, you know, you reach a certain point in your path where you have this level of competence and it feels comfortable to you. And so when you dive out into something that's completely new and you've never done before, suddenly it feels really awful because you're used to be incompetent and now you're not. And it takes that learning to be uncomfortable. It's a great

phrase to use. It's a terrible one to live at the beginning. And so I hated it, but I kind of liked it. And then he liked what I had done. And he hired me to do a couple other things. And so I thought, well, this is kind of fun. Now, keep in mind, I'm still working, I'm still running a plant. This is just nights and weekend stuff. And so then one day she came home and she said, you know, you've been looking for other work. So I signed you up on at the time. It was called Elance. Now I think it's called Upwork, but it's one of those sites where people that want to provide services link up with people that need services. And so she'd signed me up there and created a profile for me and bid on some jobs, and she got me a couple of writing jobs. And again, I was like, uh, I don't, how do I do this? But I just

kind of, you know, knuckled down and sort of figured it out and got better at it. And so the beauty of that whole approach of trying something new and being uncomfortable and not really having a really good plan is that the only thing I could figure out to do was, so if I need to write this for you, for example, then my job is to please you as a customer. That's the only thing I knew that I could do. So I wasn't worried about expressing some inner creative itch or, you know, any of that other stuff. all I knew was that I wanted you to be happy because I was going to feel terrible about myself if you were not. And so that gave me this customer-focused attitude that carried with me the rest of the way. And so as I got more successful and had written for more people and was writing my own things and stuff,

you know, people will ask me, how do I get started writing? You know, I really want to write. I really want to make a living. And I will tell them, well, you have to write at first for other people and you just have to take work that pays and stuff. And they think, then they will say, yeah, but don't. really want to do that. I want to write things that I enjoy and I want to write things that are fulfilling or whatever. And I always say, well, unless you're Stephen King, nobody's going to pay you. So, you know, you have to build to a place where you can express some of those things because you have

an audience and a platform and some level of success, but you can't do it right away because nobody cares. And that attitude actually held me back in a weird way for a long time because I started writing for ink. That was also because of my wife, because the problem with ghost writing is that, you know, it's all confidential. And so you can't market yourself very well because you can't say who you've written for or what you've written. So all you can kind of do is hold up your hands and say, I promise I'll try hard and I'll do a good job. And she said, well, you need some stuff in your own name. And so I thought, nobody wants to read anything by me because I had written some things that they'd hit bestseller list. They'd topped bestseller list. But they weren't me.

And, you know, I wrote them, but they weren't in my name. So I had no connection to anyone. And she said, yeah, but that's kind of what you have to do. And if you get some things out there that people enjoy and they see you're a ghostwriter, well, then that's a way that you can market yourself because at least they'll say, ooh, I really like this. Oh, and he's a ghost writer, this may be someone that I want to talk to. And of course, as with all the other advice that she's ever given me, it turned out to be correct. And so, you know, it turned out that basically ink paid me and pays me for the content that I produce.

but it also is marketing and advertising material, if you want to think about it that way, because people see that. But that idea that no one wanted to read anything by me did hold me back for a while. And so I finally, I had been pitched by a number of agents about you should do a book, you've got a platform, you should do a book, you should do a book.

And I kept saying, nobody wants to read mine. You know, they want to read it by whoever I've written for. And so I finally, one agent was really nice and kind of pitched me in a very down-to-earth, like not cheesy, canned. stuffy way. And I thought, well, let's just see. I want to unpack some of this because you mentioned your wife several times. And for me, some of the biggest excuses that I hear, especially for somebody like you, you were in a place for almost 20 years working your way up, they always say to me, I feel too old

to start something new. Like you said before, they've put in the investment. They feel like they can't transition. I hear this all the time. It sounded like you had somebody in your corner who was pushing you. So what were you going through internally? Why weren't you pushing yourself? And then what's the importance of having somebody who might advocate for you and believe in you? Because it sounds like your wife really was that trigger for you. Part of it was comfort, you know, because I was good at what I did. I didn't love it, but I was good at it.

And those two do not always line up. So I was good at it. I had a really good job. So the idea of saying, okay, I'm going to go back and start at zero. that's not very much fun either. I balanced that out by just working really hard nights and weekends for a long time until I felt like, okay, I haven't replaced the income that I make, but I see a path, and I see how I can get there, and I feel solid about it.

And I always tell people that, too, if you're not willing to devote nights and weekends to whatever it is you think you want to start, then you don't really want to start it. And so don't even try. So that was part of it. And then I was a little bit of afraid. I'm old enough that I'm probably the last vestiges of that generation that still thought that the way to success was to get a job at a big company, work your way up, and that the company will take care of you and you will take care of them. And so the idea of being an entrepreneur was a little bit scary, and it was what other people did, not people like me. So that was part of it, too.

As far as my wife encouraging me and kind of nudging, she knew me well enough to know that all I needed to do was get started and that I would figure it out. But there's also research that shows that who your significant other is makes a dramatic impact on like your career potential and your earnings and things like that. And it isn't, you don't have to be around geniuses, although my wife is incredibly smart. But they call it partner conscientiousness. So if your partner is, you know, organized and focused and goal oriented and takes care of business and things that even if you're a sloth, which I'm not, but more so than her, although everyone is compared to her, then it rubs off and it is helpful to you. The real support was she said, look, when we finally got to that financial part where I said, I think I see a path, she said, do it for a year. Give it everything you've got. If at the end of that year you go, you know what, either this isn't working for. me in terms of what I like to do, or, you know, I don't really see a financial path here that makes as much sense as I thought it did. Well, you can always go back. You can always go and do so.

I may not have got, I wouldn't have gotten a job at that same place, but I had skills that were on offer. And then the biggest thing that I also had to get over, and now I realize is a total myth, is the idea that I was turning, I was closing a door on skills and experiences and abilities that I had wasted and lost, but actually my biggest strength as a ghost writer as I got to where I was writing more management, leadership, business,

well, I was the audience. I knew the audience because I was the audience. And when I talked to people about what they wanted, they didn't have to teach me about any of that because I already had lived it and known it. We just had to talk about what was maybe unique to them or differed to them or something, some little tweak.

So it was kind of cool because I wasn't a writer, who had to learn about some business thing in order to write about it, I was really a business person who just had to write about it. And so it became a major competitive advantage for me because I had done all that. And so just in a broader sense, if you've done one thing for six, ten years, however long it is, and you want to do something different,

it may seem like it's really, really different, and none of those experiences will carry over. It turns out that you bring a ton of stuff with you that you don't realize until you get there. And so all those experiences and skills, you find a way to weave them over, and they actually will distinguish you from the people who just followed that one path

because they didn't have any of those things, and they don't have a way to get them. So they only have what that path is. You can learn that path, but you brought all that other stuff with you as well. So it's actually an opportunity for you to separate your, and distinguish yourself if you choose to take a little bit of a different path.

Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day. We're 60 people all over the world. And when it comes to hiring, I no longer feel overwhelmed by finding that perfect candidate,

even though I'm so picky because when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post noticed. Indeed, sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast by boosting your post to the top relevant candidates. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored ones according to Indeed data worldwide. I'm so glad I found Indeed when I did because hiring is so much easier now.

In fact, in the minute we've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide. Plus, there's no subscriptions or long-term contracts. You literally just pay for your results. you pay for the people that you hire. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit

to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash profiting. Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed, is all you need. Hello, Yap, gang. I know my young and profiting listeners want bigger businesses and a better life.

and the New Year is the perfect moment to reset and commit to your growth. But let's be real. You can't build an empire if your finances are all over the place. That's why getting into it QuickBooks is one of the best first moves you can make this year. They've got powerful money management tools built right into their platform, and they have them for every stage of your business, whether you're a solopreneur or a small business. And I love that QuickBooks helps you get paid faster, pay bill smarter,

and even gives you access to funding when opportunity pops up. So QuickBooks can help you with bookkeeping, can help you with getting paid, can even help you with projections and understanding where your business is at financially. Plus, QuickBooks Money Solutions reduces manual work by half and keeps your money and your books perfectly synced. That means less time staring at spreadsheets and more time actually building the vision that you started with. That's the upgrade that every profiting entrepreneur needs.

Start the New Year's strong, take control of your cash flow with QuickBooks Money Tools. Learn more at quickbooks.com slash money. Again, that's quickbooks.com slash money. Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Incorporated, licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. And to that point, let's talk about motivation a bit because you mentioned when you started writing, you weren't very good at it and it was kind of discouraging.

And it wasn't until you felt like you were getting good feedback that you actually started to enjoy it and get better and better at it. So talk to us about how you can actually create. create motivation by starting and being consistent at something. Probably the biggest gap or the biggest hurdle that people have to cross when you want to start something new is you are starting at a place of no experience, no expertise. You're kind of at the zero spot in most cases. And so if you look ahead to where you want to go, that bridge that you have to cross is incredibly daunting because it's like, okay, I'm just this. How am I going to

get all the way over there. And so if you're constantly focused on that end place, then even little successes that you make early on, which you tend to do because you're new, so you learn quickly and you gain some skill fairly fast, they're meaningless to you because compared to what you think you want to be someday, well, it's nothing. And so the biggest thing for me is, you know, because I struggled with the first few things I wrote. But then I thought, and I would think to myself, how am I ever going to be able to do this? Because it takes me way too long. I'm creating decent things, but gosh, it takes forever. And there's no way for me to make this work. And then I thought, well, okay, but I can't sit down and think, okay, I'm going to be Malcolm Gladwell tomorrow

or something like that. But what I can do is just work really hard on whatever is in front of me. So I switched over and just said, my goal, every time I do something is, all right, I have this to do. I need to do it as well as I can. I need to finish it. I need to. I need to. I to get good feedback from it, which means I did a good job, because whether I thought I did a good job didn't really matter. It's what the client thought. And that's all I can do right now. But that's enough. And so if I stack enough of those experiences up, then the experience kind of comes. And so by keeping a short time horizon in terms of my inner feedback loop, then if I worked on a project one night and it was a short one and I got it done, that felt really good. Because I set out to do what I

wanted to do, I completed a task, it went well, that was enough to get me to the next one. And so I just fell into this place of all I need is enough motivation to get to the next one. And if I get to the next one and I get to the next one, then suddenly you can look back and go, wow, I'm starting to come a long way. Because I'm, you know, you pop your head up every once in a while and sort of look at where you are and go, wow, that is really cool. And then you need to put your head right back down again and just focused on next and next and next. And so, and then the other part of it is that I'm not particularly smart. I have a college

degree, but I'm not particularly educated. I don't have anything. There's nothing. I'm decidedly average. Let's just say that. So I don't have anything. Well, I don't have anything special going for me, except for the fact that I realize that if I put in enough effort, there are a lot of things I can do. And so I'm very much an effort kind of a person. And so that actually works really well, because I don't think you get motivation from like this. I'm sitting around one day and suddenly I have the lightning bolt that says, I want to be a famous writer or whatever it is you want to be. That doesn't work.

All you really need is to say, I'm interested in writing. Let me get started in some fashion. And through effort, if you work hard at it, you improve, because we always get better at things we work hard at. It is a natural thing. It's just like taxes. It's a law of the universe. and whenever you get a little better, that feels good.

And so effort equals a little bit of achievement, which feels good, which creates motivation for you to take a little more effort, which means you'll improve a little more, which feels good. And so there's this really cool virtuous cycle of effort, achievement, fulfillment, happiness, motivation, that you can spend forever and ever and ever if you focus on doing it that way. If all you care about is this big end result, it's demoralizing and defeating, and you have to rely on willpower alone. And none of us have enough willpower to do that. But if you just get that cycle started, there it is. So to me, motivation doesn't come first.

Effort comes first. I love that. So let me pause you right there because I want to make sure that my listeners really understand this. So what Jeff is saying is that you don't want to focus on some big goal because you'll keep comparing yourself to the, that goal. You're going to think about where you are now, how far away that goal is. You're going to feel bad. And you don't want to feel bad if you want to be motivated. You want to feel good. So you want to focus on these small wins. So how can we better focus on these small wins? Is there a trick that we need to do? Is it something we need to reflect on every day? How do we make sure that we're constantly looking at

these small goals and making sure that we're making progress toward our bigger goal? So process really is everything with anything that you want to do. So, you do need a big goal, but your big goal is just there to help you design the process that you would use in order to get there. So say you want to run a marathon and you've never run before. So running the marathon is your big goal. But as you said, if that's all you focus on is being able to run 26 miles and you can only run one, you're going to quit because it's too far. And you feel bad after that one mile. You're never going to get there. So running a marathon, though, you can back it up and say, okay, what are the steps and stages that I'm going to have to go through

in order to build up the endurance and stamina and speed and all that other stuff that will allow me to get there? And there are plenty of people in the world who can lay that program out for you. So you know what to do. So the goal informs the process. Then you just say, okay, I've got a, whatever it is, six-month plan. What's tomorrow? Tomorrow is I'm going to go run a mile and a half. Cool. When you run the mile and a half, you can check it off. You get to feel good about yourself because you did what you set out to do that day, which if you think about it at the end of the day, the days you feel best about yourself or when you got done the things that you said you wanted to do. Where you feel bad is when you didn't. So you get to feel good about it. You checked it off. You had a successful day. That will give you enough motivation to tomorrow go, okay, what's tomorrow? Whatever it is, that's all you have to do. You just have to do whatever.

it is that you have to do today. And if you focus on that, you get to be successful every day. You get to feel good about yourself every day. And you will stack up enough of those days that every once in a while, you will pop your head up and say, wow, I just did a 10-mile run. Who thought I could do that? But before you get too excited and go, oh, what about the 26? You got to put your head back down because you're not there yet. And then you say, cool, I can rent 10 miles. That's awesome. What's tomorrow? Tomorrow may only be a three-mile run because that's part of your process of recovery and whatever else it may be. Whatever it is, if you're doing what you set out to do that day, and if that process is designed so that it will

basically guarantee that if you put in the effort, you will succeed, you're good to go. So the goal informs the process, and then all you worry about is, am I doing what I need to do each step of the way? You didn't start a side hustle and end up with 35 people working for you by one day just saying, you know, that's what I want to do. You knew you wanted to do. You knew you wanted to create a marketing agency and a podcast. You knew what you wanted to do, but you broke it down into, okay, but what can I do right now? And what am I doing each day to get there? And then all of those wins stacked up on themselves and probably made it a little bit easier

for you to keep working that hard because you saw a path to where you were going to get. And I think something that's key here is that a lot of people think that motivation is external, but really motivation is just a feeling, right? It's an internal feeling. It's dopamine rushing to your brain. where you just feel really happy about what you completed and it makes you want to do more. So let's talk about your new book, Motivation Myth, because it's a really interesting book. I have a lot of things that I want to talk about in it.

So let's start with the conventional approach to motivation. What do all these like gurus always say in terms of how people should gain motivation and why is your approach different? One of them would be that like you said about internal versus external, there's the whole idea that you need to find people around you that can keep you motivated and you know you need a mentor to keep you motivated and i've never i don't know anyone who's done really hard things that has done so just because they had someone else constantly encouraging and pushing them i don't feel like that works from the outside of it doesn't mean anything to you and if you can't find it in yourself there's

nobody that's going to get you there so that would be the first one i think it's great to rely on other people for advice for tips for strategies for techniques it's also great to to rely on other people if you want them to be accountability buddies, but not in terms of did I reach my ultimate goal, but in terms of, hey, every Sunday, we're going to talk, and you're going to check in and make sure that I did the seven things this week I said I was going to do. So your accountability buddy should be process, not ultimate goal, because you can fluff, you can fluff the ultimate goal. So that's one. The other is the, which I referenced earlier, which is the whole lightning bolt theory of motivation

where one day you just wake up and it's like, oh my gosh, you know, I want to be a world, I want to be a, I want to be, you know, Serena Williams and Win Wilmolden and be the best tennis player in the world. That feeling may hit you, but that feeling isn't going to carry you through all the time and effort and struggle and failure and challenges and all of that other stuff.

So, and I don't know anyone who's had that lightning bolt. Every really successful person that I've talked to just had an interest in something. said, hey, I would like to learn how to do that. I would like to get better at that. And that really was their focus, is can I improve at this? Eventually, they had bigger goals, but that idea of just constant improvement, that's what really took them there. And that's what keeps you there, because once you achieve something, if all you cared about was achieving it and you achieve it, well, what's left? There is no fulfillment left. The Metallica guitarist,

Kirk Hammond, they've been around for 40-some years. And I asked him one time, I said, you know, there's so many people that reach your level and they've burned out and they don't enjoy it. And he said, you know, my whole goal all along was I wanted to be good enough that I could play music with my friends and they would want to play with me. And he said, and so I'm still in that spot because these are the people I want to play music with and I need to be good enough that they will want to play music with me. And so all the other stuff that comes with it, you know, being a rock star and the money and all that, that's a byproduct. And he doesn't downplay that. But that's a byproduct of the fact that this was really what my goal was, and that's an internal goal, not an external goal.

So the idea that you'll get the lightning bolt, that doesn't work at all. I'd love to hear more stories about that because I know that you've talked to huge athletes like Venus Williams and Lance Armstrong. How did they get their motivation to become the superstar athletes that they are? Venus is a really good example of what we talked about earlier, like skill stacking or like I said, being an and. Because as they were growing up, there's this idea that she and Serena, you know, that their father basically manufactured tennis champions out of them. And while he was their coach and did push and did work with him, she says even when they were like 10 years old, they weren't allowed to just be tennis players. So they would be riding to a tournament in the car listening to tapes about, you know, how to buy foreclosure homes and make money. And she said, you know, we hated that stuff.

But it was his way of saying, there's more to life. there's more that you need to be doing. And so like Venus, you know, she owns a clothing company. She owns an architectural design firm. She's got a couple different master's degrees. She does a variety of things. And, you know, I think it makes her probably better at all of them. And it kept her from burning out in tennis where so many professional athletes do tend to burn out so early. But like for her, she's a good example of the, yeah, when she was little, she dreamed of winning Wimbled. because, you know, that's what you do when you're little. But really, she just wanted to get better. And their dad actually kept them out of a lot of junior tournaments and kept them off of that traditional path because he wanted their skills to improve and them to be focusing on improving certain things,

not letting natural talent allow them to win, where then they would think, well, I don't have to work that hard because I can already win. So, you know, why do I have to do that, dad? I'm winning all the time. So he was very much focused on, but you need to be better at the skills. or you need to be better at that skill. And by layering them all together, you know, suddenly they

kind of emerge and they seem to come out of nowhere, but it's because they had developed skills. So I don't know if that answered your question. No, yeah, I love that story. I just don't know anybody that said, you know, that woke up one day and said, yeah, I want to be X. And that's all I need to carry me all the way through. Most of them have failed more times than most of us. And I think that's part of it because that means they took more shots and they tried more things. You know, there's the other idea that really successful people kind of were born that way. And I don't think that's true at all. In fact, most of them, like I said, have failed more times than the average person because they were willing to try.

And so what distinguished them is the idea of what's like you. You're working at Disney. Great job. Great company. But you had other things you wanted to try. and you were willing to try it. And so had it not gone well, you still would have learned a ton. You still would have gained a lot of skills that would have taken you somewhere else.

The fact that it did work, well, that's cool too. But it's because you were willing to try and expand beyond whatever just the one thing was that you were doing. But it was, you didn't have the dream to take over the world. You just said, you know what, I think I could do this. Let's see where this takes me and what I learned along the way. And probably the last one I will say is that for a little, lot of successful people, their goals tend to evolve and expand as they go along. Because when you're first starting out, all you can do is set a goal based on what you've seen other people do,

because you're not there. So you set that. But then as you go along, you realize it, okay, but I really like this part of whatever this is I'm pursuing. Don't really like that part as well. So I'll shape my goal a little bit. Then I'll evolve my goal. And then at some point you reach a place where maybe the goal you set, oddly enough, wasn't big enough because you didn't realize that you had the capability and the potential to go beyond that and to figure things out that would allow you to do that. So it doesn't have to be immutable. It can be something that evolves and shapes and changes. Where you run into trouble is if your goal is, I don't know, I'm holding my hand in front of my face in case people can't see. But if your goal is up at your forehead and because you

get lazy and it seems like it's too hard and you let it drift down to below your chin, that's a different type of shifting goal that isn't necessarily a positive one. But if it expands and unfolds as you go and you learn about yourself and what you like to do and what you're capable of, well, that's how it should be. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. What's up, Young and Profiters? I remember when I first started Yap, I used to dread missing important calls. I remember I lost a huge potential partnership because the follow-up thread got completely lost in my messy communication system. Well, this year, I'm focused on not missing any opportunities. And that starts with your business communications.

A missed call is money and growth out the door. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled QUO, the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2, and it works right from an app on your phone or computer. The way Quo works is magic for team alignment. your whole team can handle calls and text from one shared number, and everyone sees the full conversation. It's like having access to a shared email inbox, but on a phone. And also, Quo's AI can even qualify leads or respond after hours, ensuring your business

stays responsive, even when you finally logged off. It makes doing business so much easier. Make this the year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash profiting. That's QUO.com slash profiting. Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. What's up, Yap, gang? If you're a serious entrepreneur like me, you know your website is one of the first touch points every single cold customer has with your brand. Think about that for a second. When people are searching on Google, everybody who interacts with your brand first is seeing your

dot com initially. But here's a problem. Too many companies treat their website like a formality instead of the gross tool that it should be. At Yap Media, we are guilty of this. I am really due for an upgrade from my website and I'm planning on doing that with Framer this year because small changes can take days with my other platform and simple updates require tickets. And suddenly we're just leaving so much opportunity on the table.

And that's why so many teams, including mine, are turning to framework. It's built for teams who refuse to let their website slow them down. Your designers and marketers get full ownership with real-time collaboration, everything you need for SEO and analytics, with integrated A-B testing. I love that. I love testing and making sure that we've got the best-performing assets on the page. You make a change, hit publish, and it's live in seconds.

Whether you're launching a new site, testing landing pages, or migrating your full.com, Framer makes going from idea to live site fast and simple. Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at Framer.com slash profiting for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's 30% off in 2026. Again, that's framer.com slash profiting for 30% off. Framer.com slash profiting. Rules and restrictions apply.

Happy New Year, yap gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh starts. And fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged. And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is your sign. There's no better time than right now. 2026 can be the year that you build something that is truly your. the year where you take control over your career, and it starts with Shopify. I've built plenty of

my own businesses on Shopify, including my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So it's a two-day workshop. People buy their tickets on Shopify. And then my mastermind subscription is also on Shopify. I built my site quickly in just a couple of days, payments were set up super easily. And none of the technical stuff slowed me down like it usually does because Shopify is just so intuitive. And this choice of using Shopify help me scale my masterclass to over $500,000 in revenue in our first year. And I'm launching some new podcast courses and can't wait to launch them on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person, just like the millions of entrepreneurs that they power.

You can build your dream story using hundreds of beautiful templates and set up as fast with built-in AI tools that help you write product descriptions and edit photos. Plus, marketing is built in so you can create email and social campaigns easily. And as you grow, Shopify can scale right along with your business. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash profiting. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting.

That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year with Shopify by your side. Let's talk about the time that it takes to start something new. because I think this is a really important point. You want to start something new, but you have all these commitments, you're distracted, and at the end of the day,

you need to build in time to try something new to learn something new. So what are your top tips in terms of reducing distractions, in terms of making time to fulfill the process that you're supposed to do every single day for your new goal? Probably my biggest one is to redefine how you think of me time, you know, where people say, oh, I need some me time, you know, whatever that is. So if me time is, wow, this is going to sound really harsh, so forgive me. But if me time is, and there's nothing wrong with this, watching Netflix or hanging out and chilling

or whatever that is, if that's the me time that you have, that's cool. But that's not necessarily productive time in building some other skill. You don't have to use it differently. But if you're saying, I have other things I want to do, I have a side hustle I want to start, whatever that might be, then what you need to say to yourself is, my me time is actually that that's me time working on my side hustle is me time and if you think about it in terms of I'm going to learn I'm going to grow I'm going to develop I'm going to expand I'm going to do something positive in my life when that well that's probably the best definition of me time that you

could actually have is that wow this has the ability to change my life in a positive way and so that's probably my big one is just to redefine what me time means to you. So when I was working full-time and trying to build some writing career, you know, my me time was working on that. And so when I, when it started to pay off for me, it was like, okay, well, I'm missing some other things, but I'm not really missing the family time because I protected that, you know, and I'm not missing some exercise time and some health time because I protected that. What I'm really missing is stuff that, I don't know, it's a snack. It's not a good meal. So is that a bad thing? You know, I

I was missing junk food, if you want to think of it in terms of that. And really, it was much more fulfilling to be things that, to do things that made me feel better about myself. And again, if you're not willing to sacrifice your chilling, hanging out, vegging, whatever it is, time in order to do something else, well, then whatever that something else is doesn't mean enough to you. And so that's cool. Find something else. If I could just add to this, just to help people understand that this can be temporary. So when I was building my podcast, building my side hustle, for almost three and a half years, I did not turn on the TV. To your point, the thing that I enjoyed was working on my podcast and working on my business. I literally didn't turn on the TV. Now that I was able to quit my regular

marketing job, I have people working for me. Things are great. I watched a season of Ted Lasso. It can be temporary. You know what I mean? And it doesn't have to last forever, but you need to sacrifice that veging out to your point for a period of time. And it doesn't have to be forever, but you do need to put in the time in order for something to actually happen. That raises a really good point because as you get better at whatever else that you're doing, then you're more efficient, you're more effective, it's more automated, it's more effortless, it's all of those things, and you spend less time per output measurement than you did in the beginning. And then you could either apply that to improving that even more, or it frees you up some time for some of those other.

other things as well. So it's a really good point that the first few months, it is going to feel like that's all you do in your non-day job time, but it gets better because you get better. And so knowing that going in is really important because there are dark days at first where you think, wow, this is really hard. And I don't know if I'm ever going to get there and look at all these things I'm missing, but it does get better if you hang in there. I call it the two-week rule. If you're going to start anything that's hard. If you think that's what you want to do, then you really need to commit to doing it for two weeks. Whatever your process is, just say, you know what, no matter what, I'm going to do this for two weeks. And it's the reason that's simple. The first couple of days

are terrible because you're not good at it. You don't know what you're doing. It feels like a struggle. It's really hard. And if you measure yourself after two days, you're going to quit because it's like, oh, can't do it. But if you give yourself two weeks, by the end of that time, you will have improved, you will have gotten better, you will know more about what you're doing, you'll have gotten a little bit of fulfillment and satisfaction, and you'll at least be able to say, you know what, yeah, I can start to see, I can see how this is starting to work. I can see where I'm improving. Then you can make an informed decision about, but is this really something I want to do? You know, if you decide that on day two, when it's really dark, everything you try, you will decide

you don't want to do because it's too dark. So the two-week rule is a big thing. As far as time, management stuff. The other thing that I would say, because it can sound like what I'm saying is that you need to be 24-7 working, and I don't think that's healthy or long-term productive. You probably have to work more than you are now just by default, or else you'll lose your full-time job. And then what will you do? Because you still have to kick ass at your full-time job while you're doing it. But the one that I think would be really important is that you have to, and this sounds too robotic, but it's not, you have to actively schedule your free time. You have to say to yourself, okay, I know I have a full-time job, and I know I'm going to spend a few hours tonight working on, if it's you, working on your podcast in your early days.

But I've got other time in there. So what am I going to do with that that is the best use of that time, whether it's family time or friend time or whatever it may be? but you have to jealously protect that just as much as you're protecting the time that you're spending on the work stuff. So if you don't have a plan for that, then you're probably going to fritter it away. It's not going to feel very fulfilling. And then after a little while, you're going to look around and say, wow, I'm not spending time with my family. I'm not seeing my friends. Whatever it is, it's important to you. Because when you get to those times, you won't be ready.

You'll just be like, oh, what are we going to do? Do you all have anything you want to do? But if you've actively protected it and scheduled it in your mind, then when you get there, it's like, oh, cool, this is my X time. I'm going to do these things. It'll feel good. People will feel better about you if it's people things because it was active and fulfilling and meaningful and you were focused. So that's a big one, too, is schedule your work time and be really good at that. but go ahead and plan for your non-work time in a good way.

Not in a, you know, I have to play. You know, you say that and people think, wait a minute, I got to plan my free time. That sucks. I don't want to have to do that. Well, but it's okay, if you think, okay, I want to go out to dinner and a night with two friends. We're going to do that on Tuesday night. That's going to be awesome. Well, that's a great plan.

Or if it's, I want to take the kids to do so-and-so, or we're just going to go outside. Whatever it is, it's a good plan. It's not a restrictive plan. It's a good plan because you're being intentional about your life. And the best way to feel good about your life is to be intentional about it and to do the things that make you happiest or more fulfilled or whatever it is that you are trying to achieve. I love that. So there's a couple of things in terms of time management that you mentioned in your book that were really interesting. So one of them was to fire one of your friends.

And you also say that you should cut an expense and drop a. personal commitment. So I'd love to talk about some of those. So we'll do the fire of the friend last. So the cut of personal commitment, as I started to get a little bit more of a profile and some kind of public something, whatever you want to call it, people would ask me to do lots of stuff, you know, and it would be right for this or do a speaking engagement here or whatever it is. And then I got to a point where I realized it, well, wait a minute, this does nothing for me. The people that I'm doing it for don't really appreciate I don't really enjoy it.

And so I realized that there were things that I was doing that weren't really advancing me either professionally or personally. And so I thought, I need to stop doing that. Why am I doing that just because it serves my ego? Anything you do strictly for ego is a waste of time. And so all of us have some sort of commitments that we have that we do just because we think it makes us look good to other people. I don't, whatever it is. And so if you need more time, those are the first things that you cut. Because your ego doesn't matter. Your output and the impact you make is what matters, not the reflection of yourself that you think you see in other people's eyes because they don't

really care. So that would be that one. Cut an expense. The tricky part when you start a business is that you never have enough money, even if you have a full-time job. And it's really easy for expense creep to occur. And suddenly you look at that. around and you've got subscriptions of this and you've got, you know, five apps you're using, you have all these things that you think are designed to make you more efficient and effective, but all they do is cost money and they cause you to change what is optimal for you in order to interact well with whatever that function is. So I don't know, a lot of people try personal finance apps. And so you end up, you know, you have to put all your data in, you have to log, you have to

do all this stuff. And I know a lot of people that have quit using them because they realize that they were running their life based on how the app wanted it to be run, not on what was best for them. When I worked in manufacturing, we had a lot of software programs that were designed to collect data and monitor a lot of stuff. And they made us less efficient because we weren't doing job changeovers in the best way to be fastest and most accurate. We were doing it so it served the software. And so my boss, finally came in and said, all right, this is out. What is the point of this? So look around at expenses that you have that actually, one, that cost you money that you don't need to spend, but two,

that are causing you to live your life or work professionally in some way that is not optimal for you. Because if a tool doesn't make you better than what you are, then it is a tool as an impediment. And then finally, so fire a friend. You know, there's the old quote that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That's true. I would take it farther, though, and if you think about leading a really busy life, and we talk about time management, everybody talks about time management, but what rarely gets discussed is energy management. And what really matters to you is your ability to manage your energy and have enough energy that you can go from one thing to the next to the next, feeling excited about it,

having some enthusiasm, having the energy to do it well, And there are people in your life who actually negatively impact your energy. Some of them might be customers, oftentimes they're friends or family. Everybody has at least one person who you interact with them because you either always have or are supposed to or something. But when you're done, it's like, oh, you know, that actually drained me. And so if the people around you are not actually making you, they're not helping you generate energy. I know this sounds very mystical, but I think hopefully.

hopefully people can get it. If they're not helping you generate energy in a positive way, and they're actually sucking the energy from you, then maybe they shouldn't be around you quite as much. Or you have to figure out a way to interact with them that that doesn't happen. Because what you really are limited by is not necessarily time, because time is fixed. We all have 24 hours. But the energy that you have to apply within the time that you're spending, doing something, that is variable and depends on how you intentionally ensure that you have some energy to go there. And so that's actually a good analysis for whether something that you're doing on a side hustle is a positive thing for you, not just money-wise, but fulfillment-wise.

If it doesn't make you excited, like you were excited to work on your podcast or to work on help people with LinkedIn profiles or all those other things, that was actually fun. That gave you energy and you could work longer at it maybe than your full-time job sometimes because they were fun. And so if what you're doing is a side hustle generates energy for you, it's a really good sign that you're on the right path. If it's a slog and a struggle and it almost feels like it drains you to do it, then that's probably not something that you should pursue. And you can, it may have felt like a passion, but a passion generates energy, truly. And if it's not generating energy, then it's not really a passion, and it's probably something you should

discard and do something else. I think that's a great point. So the last question that I ask all my guests is, what is your secret to profiting in life? I don't know if I'm smart enough to have a secret, but I would say that if we use the word profit to mean feel good about yourself and feel successful in however you choose to define success, then try to make as many of your goals have as many different layers to them as as possible. So if it's a financial goal, then hopefully it also has maybe a family goal or a personal achievement goal or a lifestyle goal or something else. The more goals can operate on multiple levels, the more likely you are to work hard at them. A good example of that is, as I've reached a point where I've had some level of success,

I get to blend things that I want to write about. Like, I get to write about things that I'm personally interested in. For instance, I like motor racing. So I write a lot about that. And I've gotten to meet a lot of drivers and a lot of team owners and a lot of lots of people in the sport. And so I enjoy it personally because it's an area of interest. But it also benefits me professionally because that's how I get paid. And so I've done the same thing with athletes and entertainers and musicians and people I wanted to meet. I get to talk to really cool people because I've kind it reached that place. And so the fact that I write about it is kind of a fun byproduct. But I enjoy the conversations and I always learn something and it's really neat to do. And so when a goal can fulfill you

or satisfy you or whatever it is on a variety of levels, then that's great. And so if you're, I don't know, 25 years old and you're, you know, a junior supervisor somewhere and you say, well, that sounds really good for you, but, you know, how am I supposed to do that? Well, if If one of the things that you enjoy is helping other people, if you're a supervisor, you can do that all day long because you can develop people, you can put them in positions to succeed, you can introduce them to other folks, you can help the network. There's a lot of ways in doing your job that you can also enjoy that personal gratification that comes from the fact that you helped people.

And it'll make you a better supervisor because if you do those things for your people, your team will succeed at a better level than that. and other folks. And so all you have to do with whatever you're doing is kind of take a step back and say, okay, how can I make this work for me, not just as it's supposed to work for whatever this is, but in other ways that make me feel good about myself. So that would probably be my biggest one is to just not say, I want to do X, here's what I'll get out of X. It should be, I want to do X. What are all the things that I can get about that out of that that are meaningful to me and that are fulfilling and gratifying to me. And it's, you can pretty much find that in anything you have to do

if you're willing to look hard. I think that's brilliant advice. And I think merging all those passions is so key to staying motivated, staying happy with what you're doing. And it switches things up, keeps you kind of entertained as you're going along this path and this career. So, Jeff, where can our listeners learn more about you and everything that you do? Well, if after all this, they want to hear even more from me. I write for ink. I'm a contributing editor there, and I don't do much social media. I am on LinkedIn, and I do respond to people. Sometimes it takes me a while, but I do. If you write or want to connect, I will, and I will eventually get to it, I promise. So that would probably be the biggest one. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for this conversation and for all

your wisdom. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.