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All righty, Eric, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
So you are a CEO coach and you are my CEO coach, in fact.
Let's start with what does a CEO coach do and how did you end up in this rarefied position of being Ali Abdaal CEO coach?
So most CEO coaching involves doing podcasts.
Nice. Right. So I mean, I got into this position.
John Lennon had this great quote, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.
So it's like things have just unfolded in a weird and unusual way.
I started off as a consultant with McKinsey & Company.
For those that don't know McKinsey & Company, it's basically one of the top strategy consulting firms in the world.
And then was part of the early team at Skype, so helping build that.
This is back when we actually used to use Skype.
So long time ago. Yeah.
And then we had an exit to eBay for a few billion dollars, built a chain of restaurants in the UK after that, and moved down to Portugal, even though I'm here with you in London right now.
So I moved down to Portugal about 2 and 1 ,000 years ago.
And these days, yeah, I work with about close to about 30 founder CEOs, helping them scale their companies.
And in terms of like, what do you do?
Well, so I take a three -pillar, as you know, a three -pillar approach to scale.
So I always say, if you want to scale the company or the business, you have to look at that as the hardware.
And if the hardware is going to operate correctly, you need to code the software correctly in the software to other pillars to scale in parallel to the business.
And that's the leadership of the person at the helm.
And then also, them, just as a person, are they performing to their peak potential?
And there is an A to B journey in each of those pillars.
So in the company pillar, it's to help the CEO get the company from a startup to a scale up.
In the leadership pillar, it's to go from founder to CEO.
And then in that self pillar, it's to go from your current to your best self.
Nice. And those are the plans that we work against.
But the last thing that I'll say is things rarely go to plan for most people.
And Mike Tyson, he had that great quote, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the mouth.
I think the real benefit of CEO coaching, really like any kind of coaching, is just the general support and the accountability that it provides.
Because there's tons of stuff that you and I talk about that weren't part of the plan, that just come into the picture, and the idea that you might have, or something like that isn't going as you would like.
And so the relationship is organically driven in that sense.
How much money did you make when Skype sold to eBay?
Well, yeah, that's I don't publicly disclose figures like that, but it was a life changing event.
And the point that you didn't have to work again?
Yeah. So why did you decide to keep working?
I think once you get into the habit of building and creating things, then even right now when we move down to Portugal, the idea is semi -retire and not do anything.
But already now it's like I'm into the whole mix of building something new again.
It's just the act of building and creating, building teams, going for goals.
It's just fun. I mean, you can totally relate.
Yeah, it's something to pass the time.
Playing video games gets boring after a while.
Otherwise, what else are you going to do?
What are you going to use your time for?
Nice. You start off your book, The Three Alarms, with an interesting story.
I wonder if you can tell us that interesting story.
The interesting story.
Yes. So this is like 2010.
I'm on a return flight to the UK.
And shortly after the plane has reached its cruising altitude, I could sense that something's not right.
My left arm goes completely numb.
It's ice cold. Feel a ton of pressure in my chest.
I start to sweat a body of mine sitting next to me.
I asked him, Lewis.
I was like, Lewis, can you feel my arm?
He's like, oh my god, it feels like it's been hanging in a meat locker.
I thought, am I just feeling it?
Is this actually happening?
And flight attendant comes rushing over, sees that I'm really unwell.
There's a doctor on board.
The plane, luckily for me, there was one.
Doctor rushes over, does the whole vital sign check, and just says, we need to land the plane immediately.
He's having heart attack.
Yeah, not the kind of thing you want to hear.
Like when you're 35 ,000 feet up in the air, obviously, it felt like an eternity for the plane to land.
I was terrified that I thought my heart was, I could feel that, I mean, I could definitely feel like the beat was way, it felt very faint to me.
So I could feel like my heart was struggling.
And I was so worried that it was just obviously going to stop completely before we landed.
Get to emergency land, the plane.
There is an ambulance already waiting there on the runway.
You would know this better than me, but I think it's nitrates or something that they administered to increase blood flow to the heart or relax the tissues, or I don't know exactly what it does.
But I did feel better from that.
And then the paramedic, I remember I looked up into the eyes of the paramedic looking down at me.
I said, please don't let me die.
I have a five -year -old son.
And he said, just relax.
And I think we got you in time.
And I rushed me to a hospital.
I recovered in the hospital the next day.
I woke up and realized I needed to change my life, basically, because I had, prior to that point, I'd always been obsessed with peak performance.
This whole idea of like reaching your full potential, but I just approached it in such an unhealthy way.
I was like doing $100 work weeks at McKinsey and Company, during the time helping build Skype, when I was building the restaurant chain.
I mean, I had some times, for example, where I would literally work, it could be two, three days straight with no, or virtually no sleep.
And that could be like a regular occurrence.
And yeah, my body was like, yeah, you're not invincible.
So that was a wake -up call.
So you decided you needed to change your life.
What else happened?
I've heard a bunch of stories from people who have been sort of had near -death experiences, and they say that like, it's sort of like your life begins afresh.
Like, what are the changes that you start to see in yourself after that experience?
Yeah, so it wasn't like a change immediately, but I knew I had the change.
I mean, the thing that I focused on, like first and foremost, was just trying to get my health in order.
I wasn't sleeping as much as I should be, as much as I should have been.
My eating was like all over the place.
I wasn't doing the basic stuff like going to the gym as much as I should have been.
So I focused there, and I thought I was kind of getting that all dialed in correctly.
And then, it wasn't long after when my wife said she was gonna leave me.
And I was like, oh crap.
So I still haven't gotten this fixed.
And her thing was, she's like, you're here, but you're not really here.
You're just kind of like in your own world.
And there's no way with everything that she, like I wasn't gonna let that happen.
I wasn't gonna let, so then I started to really focus, dial in like being a lot more present at home, basically.
And then this, you talked about the book, The Three Alarms, like this model for me emerged where I knew work was important.
Obviously it was so important that I was overtracking on it, and I got into that whole situation.
Health is obviously important because it was almost lights out.
And when I thought it was going to be lights out, the first words out of my mouth related to relationships.
And then I said, please don't let me die, I have a five -year -old son.
So I really dwelled and thought about that and realized that if we take like an 80 -20 approach to life improvement, 20 % of the areas that we could focus on for like 80 % of the improvement that we're seeking, there's like this three -legged stool.
And if we really focus on showing up at our best on the health front, on the work front, and on the home slash relationships front, and I think that leads to a life well -lived or a better life, basically.
Work, health, and home.
Yeah. Nice. And so like why is it called The Three Alarms?
It's just a hook too.
So The Three Alarms relates to, so at one point, I literally, so I thought of my day as segments, right?
So you have the morning when I tend to work out, so that's mostly about health for me, then you get the work day and then you get home.
And I thought, what if I came up with an identity that represents me at my best, the superhero version of me, and each of those times a day.
So Health Front came up with this phrase, world fitness champion, not that I am one, but that's kind of the version of me that I want to show up at the gym.
World's Best CEO for when the work day starts, and then World's Best Husband and Father.
And I took those as labels and created three alarms on my phone.
So one to go off in the morning to remind me who is it, what version of me is going to the gym, one to remind me how to show up during my work day, and then that last one, World's Best Husband and Father goes off at the end of the day to prompt the question, how would the World's Best Husband and Father
walk through that door right now?
And so the idea with the alarms is there to help you live a more intentional life.
Because I think a lot of the times we go through things without intentionality, and we end up being a little bit more reactionary than we should be.
Nice. So with the CEOs that you work with, what do you see as the, like I guess people listening to this and telling me that this was my impression of CEOs, and still to an extent, you would think of a CEO as like someone who's got their shit together, like these guys are kind of dialed in with their
health and their work and everything.
But the other thing that comes to mind is someone who's just like really neglecting their family relationships.
What have you seen have been the patterns of I guess, disease amongst the CEOs and me that you could?
The patterns of disease.
So leprosy. Yeah. So, so the typical person that I coach is a workaholic or over tracks on the work front, and that will typically come at the price of or sacrificing like health and like key relationships.
That's the typical profile.
And what I, the point I always try to drive home is like, look, I get that you want to optimize performance on the field of play and the field of play is say business, but if you're gonna do that, and if you're gonna think of yourself as an athlete, then if we're gonna optimize performance on the field
of play, we have to optimize performance off to field of play as well.
And, again, if this is athletics, I'm not gonna say, okay, Ali, here's the game schedule, I'll see you on game day, and that's it.
As a coach, I need to make sure that you're showing up for all the in -between stuff as well, and that you're doing your best to show up at your best when it counts.
So, yeah, I would say the disease, if we were to use that word, is that tendency to neglect the off the field of play stuff and over track on the field of play.
So then when people come to you and you're, to be like, hey, you're the CEO coach, and you're telling them, hey, let's think about your health and relationships, how does that land with people?
Yeah, so first off, like, that's not how you know.
So let's talk about your love life.
It doesn't land with people because that's not what I say.
Okay, yeah. So it's very similar to like how we started and how we started the whole conversation.
We have to look at the three pillars, and so it's like the scaling of the company is typically the tip of the spear for anyone that I work with.
But for that to happen correctly, they need to be leading as well as they could.
And then that last pillar is where we take that more holistic approach.
So the self pillar is where I say, okay, look, let's make sure the health is right.
Your key relationships are right.
But also there is a work component within that self pillar too, but it's rather fundamental and timeless, whereas the other stuff is more specific, say, to their situation.
So the work component within that self pillar is like basic things that I know that you love as well, such as productivity, time management, how you go about structuring your week.
Some of the things that ended up being some of the very first things that we talked about when we started working together, right.
Yeah. So in the leadership section of your kind of three pronged method, you said the A to B transformation is from founder to CEO.
What does that mean?
What does that mean?
Yeah, so let's just keep the athletics analogy or metaphor going because it makes things easy to explain.
So as a founder, you might still be running onto the pitch or the field of play and you might play a certain position.
You're keeping goal or you're like striker mid field or something like that.
That doesn't happen though in the Premier League, right.
We never see the coach running onto the field.
And at that level, when you're trying to scale the company to bigger and greater things, you need to be able to stay on the sideline, have that team of all stars on the field, direct traffic, get them to play super well together so that they can win as many games as possible.
And so as you transition from founder to CEO, you're doing less of the stuff directly yourself, which you probably, maybe some things you can do to a very high degree, but you're probably jack of all trading in many senses and not even doing a lot of the things at a very high degree.
So, and that's driven for multiple reasons, necessity, lack of financial firepower at that point in time.
So you're transitioning from that to, let's find the people who are truly world -class in each of those areas.
And if they're truly world -class in each of the key areas that are going to make your business successful, they should easily outperform you in the same sense that the coach of a Premier League team or an NBA team, I couldn't even fathom the idea of going out onto the court or the pitch and actually
playing the position better than any of the players.
It'd be like a ludicrous thought.
And that personally, I think is where you want to get to.
It's like to have that true team of all stars.
To continue the football analogy, some people often say that the players that got you to division one and two, or league one and two are not the same players that will get you to the championship and not necessarily the same players that will get you to the Premiership.
Now I find this idea quite distasteful because I have been operating with basically the same people for like six, four years now.
Yeah, what's your take on this?
It's like how, yeah.
This kind of analogy around kind of replacing team members as you go.
And look at Satya Nadella, right?
With Microsoft, he's totally risen through the ranks from an employee to now he's like CEO of the company.
I think both, you'll find both instances of both.
You'll find people that do grow throughout the entire journey and continue to grow and develop.
And then you'll find instances of people that don't make the cut.
And then you need a change in the lineup.
In one of the books, I think there's Patty...
What's her name? Patty McCord.
Patty McCord, yeah.
And the Netflix, HR.
I mean, fantastic. The key...
Yeah, the thing to keep in mind that makes the answer to that question or thought easy is what is it that you're building?
And you're building a team, right?
You're not building a family.
And her line is something along the lines of families strive to stick together no matter what whereas great teams are optimized to win at all times.
You can't get fired from your family.
And the way you determine whether or not a team should stay together is to what degree are they able to achieve the results that are being set by them or you or in unison for their role as a team within the business or if the team is essentially just a company for the company.
And as long as you're achieving your objectives and growing and developing, then the team is winning and succeeding and learning.
Hmm, some stuff is sliding into place for me in my mind around I think when you first started working together, I was very anti -goals.
I wonder if you remember what that was like?
Yeah, okay. What was I...
There is so much stuff that I think you're anti -goals.
Yeah, what was I...
Yeah, how was I two years ago as a...
Well, yeah, you're like...
Yeah, so there was definitely this resistance to goals thing.
And... So that was one thing that's changed.
Also, I remember I said to you, you had a resistance to almost like you felt like it was like, I don't know, evil or dirty or something to have like financial goals or targets.
And I remember this thing about I said, where do you wanna take the company?
Like, do you wanna take it to 10 million in revenue, for example?
And I remember the time you said, no, no, no, no, no, I don't need that, it's fine.
I just don't wanna do that.
And two, three, four million a year is fine.
And of course now it's like, no, we gotta get the time.
And I think there's like a societal thing at work there, which is...
And yeah, there's been lots of books written about this subject in recent years, about people's relationship to money and being careful about what they attach their goals to and the good or bad, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make a lot of money.
There's nothing wrong with having a business that's gonna hit certain financial targets.
The way I look at it is like, again, using a sports analogy, it's like, it's a way, it's fun, it's difficult to create a business to get up to 10 million a year in revenue.
If you break that down by the numbers, I think it's only 0 .4 % of small and medium sized enterprises get to the 10 million, a year or higher goal.
I think that's quite exciting because that basically means that that's roughly the equivalent of your odds of getting, becoming like a professional sports player.
Let's say you're in high school football in the US and you wanna get into the NFL and your chances of doing that and I think it's being like slightly less than that, but depending on the sport that you choose, my point is is like the 10 million goal is roughly equivalent to making turning pro.
That's exciting. You can have the goals around money because you wanna make a lot of money and that could be a goal and that's okay, but you don't need to justify that to anybody.
You can just want it because you simply want the goal.
It's fine, why? Because that's what I wanna do.
Like, that's good enough.
Or you can tie it to the equivalent of winning an Olympic gold medal or something and why does an Olympic athlete wanted to win Olympic gold?
What, do you love gold?
It's like, no. It's like, why do you wanna do it?
Because it's hard. Why is that important to you?
Well, because it's hard.
It's competitive. It's challenging.
It's difficult to do.
Oh, so you have to show it to the rest of the world that you can do difficult things.
It's like, that's how we complicate it.
It's like, it's okay to want to do difficult things and it's challenging and it feels great when you do it and yes, that means that probably some other people didn't do it and you did and that can feel okay and good too.
Yeah. Yeah, I've recently started to think of it like a video game in the sense that when I'm playing on the PlayStation, I will set it to very hard difficulty.
Not ultra hard because that's a bit too much.
That requires too much grinding.
I'm like, I don't play an ultra hard difficulty, but playing on very hard difficulty is a good level of challenge.
And like during the pandemic, my housemate would be like, you've been trying to take out that bandit camp for the last four hours.
Like what are you doing?
And I'm like, you don't get it.
Like each time I do, each time I have a go, like I'm getting closer and I'm killing that person with stealth and there's something about the challenge that feels really fun.
Yeah. And then I had appeared a few weeks ago where it was like a weekend, I was in London, I had a dinner in the evening and I had nothing to do in the daytime.
I was thinking, okay, I can basically do whatever I want.
And I decided to go to the local WeWork and tinker away on our productivity lab, but like designs and graphics and stuff.
Yeah. And it just felt really fun.
It was like, this is what I choose to do on the weekends because it was really fun.
Yeah. And it's sort of like a video game where the points in the scoreboard is real money that you can use on real stuff, like a fancier apartment and like business class flights.
Yeah. That's pretty fucking sick.
It's like you can't translate Call of Duty points into real money, into real experiences, but you can translate the scoreboard on this video game of business into real experiences that buy your freedom.
That mean you can get a cleaner and outsource having to do your own laundry and you can fly business class and it's like, what's not to love?
Yeah, I've heard so many people, I don't even know if the study actually exists, quote some kind of study where it's been proven that beyond a certain level of income, there's not really significant improvements in happiness and that hasn't been my experience.
So it's like, as I've become more and more successful throughout life, and that's been roughly commensurate with earning more and more, life for me has gotten more fun and more rich in experience and more pleasurable and I wouldn't trade that in to earn the whatever that study was referencing.
Yeah, 75 grand. I think for me, my day -to -day happiness hasn't changed very much at all along different levels of wealth, but it's just like, it's like right now I am doing the same stuff basically that I was doing five years ago.
I sit in a room in front of a camera and I talk about stuff.
It's just that it's a nicer room, the camera's nicer and the stuff I'm talking about is the fact that I was at a sort of mastermind in Paris yesterday or at this cool writer's retreat over the weekend or I gave a talk for Google or something like that.
It's like the experiences change and for me, the coolness of the experience changes, but it's fundamentally the same kind of thing.
I don't think it's kind of nice because when you're playing a video game, whether it's on easy, medium, or hard or very hard, it's still the same video game at the end of the day.
It's still that game of life or business.
It's just that the rewards change.
You get slightly nicer gear, you get nicer weapons and there's something really addictive and fun about upgrading your gear and getting new weapons to be able to take down a bigger monster.
And if someone really looks at it, they'd be like, wait, you're acquiring this equipment to level up your character so that you can kill a monster to get more equipment to level up your character so you can kill a bigger monster.
That's exactly what I'm doing, but it's really fun.
Yeah, and there's two things at work, right?
It's like you want to be constantly feeling challenged and then the things that you need to be working on will need to increase over time and vary in nature as your skill and expertise develops for you to feel that constant challenge.
But then there's also that compounding accumulation feeling and I don't mean like from a wealth point of view, but I mean, so earlier today, we were talking about how cool it is that with what you're building with a business that there's so many different pieces to the puzzle.
There's so many different facets, so many different parts of like the armor to polish and to get right.
And that's very challenging and very difficult to do.
And as that compounds and accumulates over time, it's like you're building this like incredible fortress that you can use for whatever purpose that you want.
And at the same time, you're creating this massive competitive moat around the castle on that.
It becomes more and more and more difficult for someone else to replicate what you're doing.
And then going back to the Olympic athlete, would they want to participate in the Olympics if when the gun went off, they were the only person ever in any event running?
No, it's like you do want to be racing against others.
It's like a natural part, fundamental part of the human spirit, to compete and to win.
And I think people should be happy to lean into that.
So for example, there's this thing going on.
I mean, we've all heard this like, the only person you should compare yourself to is the person who you were yesterday.
Garbage. It's like, it's like one of those things that people say that it's like it sounds nice when you hear it.
And oh yeah, okay. You know, that's, I can kind of, I don't think there's anything wrong with comparing yourself to other people.
I don't think there is, I think you should do both.
You should compare yourself to who you were yesterday, but it's okay to also compare yourself to someone else and use that as a bit of drive and inspiration for you to level up your own game.
Yeah, I found that recently, I've been spending a decent chunk of time with people who are way richer than I am with way smaller audiences who are also selling courses.
And I'm like, wait a minute, what are they doing?
That's like so different to what I'm doing that they're making more money with like a 10th to 100th to like one millionth of the audience size that I do.
And it'll make more money than that.
I'm like, whoa, that's cool, I can learn from this.
They figured something out that I have yet to learn.
And that's not you comparing yourself to Ollie last year, right?
So, it's okay to be competitive, it's okay to want to build and accumulate things.
It's all okay, there's nothing wrong with it.
Why was I so anti -goal?
Okay, I think I was anti -goal because I was like, I drunk the base camp Kool -Aid.
You know, like DHH and Jason Fried write all this stuff, doesn't have to be crazy at work, all this stuff around how like growth for growth's sake is like dumb.
And as long as you have a profitable business that you're happy running, then that's all that matters and blah, blah, blah.
And I'd really drunk that Kool -Aid for a very long time.
I also drunk the Kool -Aid of stoicism around like, don't attach yourself to things that are outside of your control.
And so for me, like, A, setting a financial goal and B, being attached to it, was signing myself up for unhappiness and like, you know, desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you reach your goal and then the goal is not actually gonna make you happy.
I remember you basically saying something being like, sure, that's all fine, but like right now, you're running your business with a blindfold on and your team has a blindfold on.
At least just take the blindfold off and just see where the target is.
You don't have to be attached to it.
But it will just, just by default, knowing what the target is, will just immediately improve your aim if you're playing dogs or bow now or whatever.
I think I remember I said something to you like, you're like, yeah, what do you think about not having goals?
And I was like, hmm, it's sort of like I've put you into a shooting range blindfolded.
I'm like, yeah, go ahead and try to hit the target and you're not gonna have a chance.
Probably gonna end up, I don't know, you might even shoot stuff into the ceiling or something.
But at least if you can see where it is, yeah, you might not, as you said, you might not hit it right away, but at least you have a chance, you will get better.
And there is, we are goal oriented as human beings.
We want to achieve things.
We wanna set our sights on stuff and close that gap from where we are to, it's evident in climbing mountains, playing a video game, building a business, competing in athletic events.
It's like, what more evidence do you need that human beings love goals, they love achieving things and they love going from where they are to a newer and better place.
And when they get there, does that mean that they then wanna set the next thing?
Yeah, and that's okay, that's the game.
Yeah, because people sometimes view this as a bad thing, that oh, you just change the goalposts.
I was like, yeah. Yeah, because they achieve this.
No, but you should just be content with where you are right now and not be attached to anything.
Said who? Like, I don't think that's the spirit of some of the people that I admire from like a leadership or a company or like athletics or musical entertainment point of view, right?
Yeah, I think you can be content with where you are, but also be striving for the goal.
And this was like the big kind of unlock for me, like you can set a goal and also not be attached to it.
Like I don't actually care if we don't hit 10 million.
Just like I don't actually care if I never could kill the bandit camp on Horizon for a bit and all and it's just, it's just a nice thing to aim towards, why not?
And I think the key is there is no right answer.
All I'm trying to say is there's nothing wrong with these things and they shouldn't be demonized and it's okay, you know, to be very, very goal oriented and want to achieve.
I guess if you're trying to scale a company, it's kind of hard to do that without the goals.
Yeah, I mean, if the base camp approach or philosophy, if that works for you, then you do it, right?
But the other thing though too, that I see sometimes founders do and I think you were at risk of doing is just making the assumption that the way you think and feel should be the way to also to get the best out of the team, you know, it could be different, right?
So now the way that we have things set up, right, is that you are working on more of like the visionary, kind of like creative stuff and you have part, you know, certain areas of the company that you get involved in, but the rest of the team is running a much more structured and systematized approach
than you had, you know, ever personally run when you were like running things directly 100 % yourself.
And I think that's delivering results.
Yeah, because I was like, I don't want systems.
Yeah. And I'm like, damn, I want really want my team to have systems.
Yeah. I want my calendar to be empty, but I want them to be very structured and how they're doing things.
So exactly. To my point, so it's like, don't make the mistake, you know, and I know you're not now, but don't make the mistake of assuming just because you don't want something and don't like operate in a certain way that that isn't how it should be done.
It just might mean that you need to house or put that way of thinking, you know, into a different group within the company or have someone else run it, who does think more naturally like in a systems or in a more programmatic way.
So I had a resistance to goal setting.
Or what else was I like two years ago when we first started working together, if you remember?
I'm curious about what you see as like the A to B changes.
Yeah. I think you are, you've become, and you're continuing to become more of like, I would call it like a proper businessman, you know?
So I see this a lot of times, especially as I've gotten more involved in the creator space, you know, myself, where there's just so much, well, you made reference earlier to, you've met people who have like much smaller audiences and they're, you know, so I think people, especially in this space, kind
of do things a little bit too loosely, hack things together, and they don't take like a proper business approach to what they're building or creating.
And so they leave a lot of value on the table as a result.
And I think you're a lot more focused and you're willing to, you know, have those like two spheres co -exist where you can operate in one way, but you still recognize the important significance and need to have, you know, more structure and systemization in other areas of the business.
And you're taking that approach of, you know, Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy, I have a lot of good books, but that one, you know, who, not how.
So it's like finding the right people, right?
To lead the things and do the things that maybe you don't want to do yourself.
So it's like before, I think you were making the mistake of when you had resistance to doing things in a certain way, you would just immediately go, okay, so therefore we're not gonna do it.
I don't wanna do that, but it's now you're more leaning into ah, so who is the right person who would do that and would enjoy doing that?
So I think that's been a big change.
Definitely with the goal setting in general, I think the company is a lot more focused and systematic in terms of how goals are set and how they're reviewed.
And we talked recently even today about further upgrading that.
What else? Actually, let me flip the question back to you as well.
So like what changes have you noticed?
You know, if you think of how you were, you know, a couple of years ago versus how you are today.
I think today I have a lot more confidence in that we are building a business.
I think I didn't really know what a business meant two years ago.
It's like I stumbled into this.
I sort of started a business when I was in med school that was like helping people study for their med school entrance exams.
And that sort of grew a bit.
And I guess I sort of thought of it as a business, but I didn't know what the word operations meant.
I didn't know what marketing was.
I thought marketing was billboards.
I never heard the word sales before.
I was just sort of making stuff up as I went along and being like, oh, cool, I guess I'll just make a website.
Cool, I just use the Vamp Write for checkout.
It's cool, I guess I'll just use Appianitor to check into Google Sheet.
And it's like, yeah.
Now what you even see is a slightly different word as well.
It's just slight nuance, but I think it's important.
I don't even think, you're building a company, not a business, you know, a company, like, I mean, you can feel right, that word feels a little bit more substantial, right?
And that's what you are doing, right?
You have a content team.
You have a commercial team.
We're talking about different product suites, better understanding, you know, the customers within each.
What are the, you know, how do we establish learning intent within each of these potential, you know, product portfolios?
And what are the entry points and lifetime value?
And how do they progress?
And, you know, we've talked about matrix organizational structure where you can have things that are, you know, designed by product suite, or if we want to use value ladder as a term, but then we need cross -functional support, such as like customer success, and HR, and finance, and legal, and all that sort
of stuff. That's more, that's next level thinking, right?
That's not like the Ali who is coming out of Cambridge University.
Yeah, I think me two years ago, still felt, and I still have this to an extent, that I've sort of lucked into this.
Like I got lucky with the timing on my YouTube channel, and then, oh, I just sort of made some courses, and then, oh, whoops, there we are.
Like kind of thing.
And that's the fact that it all happened so fortuitously, I think contributed to my worry that it could all just vanish.
And that I am a YouTuber first, and therefore, and YouTubers have a sell -by date and a shelf life.
And within, I don't know whether my time in my 15 minutes of fame is gonna last for one year, two years, three years, or five years.
But I do know that at some point, the fame will start to decrease.
At some point, people are not gonna be as interested in my content as gonna diminish in view count, and all of that stuff.
And therefore, I think I was operating, I think I was thinking of myself as almost like an athlete, but like the nerdy version of that.
Which is, I've got a few years while I'm in our prime to really make hay while the sun shines.
Whereas if I think about it, now what athletes are doing is that they're building businesses on the side.
And so all that's gonna happen is that you will, you're building assets, you're building wealth.
And the current manifestation of that is, YouTube channel, it's you on camera.
I mean, you are right, you're gonna get to a point where I don't know many YouTube channels where the person's like 85 years old.
Right, so that's like a natural thing.
But I also think your journey as a businessman, as an entrepreneur, is gonna continue to evolve and grow as well.
And in the same way where athletes start new businesses, who knows?
Down the road, maybe you own a percentage of a football team or something.
Or you start like a line of products or you start investing in other companies.
So that will just morph and change over time naturally because that's what people do.
So instead of attaching your identity to, I'm a YouTuber, I think it'd be more powerful to attach your identity to, I'm an entrepreneur or I'm a businessman and what do you do?
And well, I both create, see, and take advantage of various opportunities.
And right now that opportunity is like YouTube videos and courses.
But that vehicle may change in the future.
Down the road. I can't imagine not being an entrepreneur in the future.
Yeah, I started off as a consultant with McKinsey.
Then went into tech with Skype.
Then built the chain of restaurants.
Then went into CEO coaching.
Then started to invest in some of those companies.
15 months ago, I started to create content on LinkedIn.
And that's like, I mean, that happened while we were working together, totally unexpected.
And that's, you know, absolutely exploded.
So, you know, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans, right?
So you keep weaving, you know, it's like a river.
It's like, you know, the environment goes in different places.
Yeah, yeah, it's good we're putting it.
I think, and I noticed that I still have this to an extent.
I think I did feel a lot of anxiety around not knowing what the path would be.
And now increasingly, but still not fully.
I'm now in the mode of like, as when you walk the path, the path will appear.
That kind of idea. When you're driving at night, you don't need the headlights to illuminate the entire distance from New York City to LA.
You just need to be able to see, you know, 100 meters in front of you.
Yeah, and I think I bought a lot of the narratives that entrepreneurship is risky.
And that, oh, building a business is a big risk.
And like medicine, that's a safe career.
And so if I think about it, and I was just like thinking out loud, I think there was a lot of, like, yeah, when I was a doctor, I was never thinking, oh my God, this is risky.
I was thinking, I'm a doctor, but as an entrepreneur, I'm thinking, oh my God, this is risky.
This could go away anytime.
Like who knows what's going to happen?
Who knows if we're going to make revenue.
And yeah. It helps you protect the downside.
Yeah. So, you know, even your relationship to those feelings can go from, oh, I need to stop those feelings to, oh yeah.
That's, you know, that's my intuition.
That's like, it's signaling me to think through have I really protected things?
Am I thinking about things in the right way?
You know, maybe that's helped you rather than hindered you create a more resilient, sturdy, you know, growing business.
Yeah, I think so. I think it's one of those things that, you know, every feeling serves you up until a point and then it starts to hold you back.
And I think now I have more of a sense of confidence that with the skills that I've built up, the team, the money, the network, all that stuff, like I now get, or what that, I now get the value of all those things in a way that I just didn't before.
People would be like, you know, your net worth is your network.
And I'm like, what the hell, is it?
Like a few years ago, when the only people I knew were other junior doctors, I'm like, why does the fact that I know other junior doctors actually affect, but now I get it.
I'm like, oh, it's just obvious.
Like there's just so many people around now that I know who are running all these businesses who I could partner with, who I could, like worst case scenario, I'm sure I can just make half a million a year just offering anyone I know who runs a SaaS company to be like, I'll be your in -house YouTuber.
And be like, come on.
Yeah, of course. And there's so many opportunities and stuff that, it's just like, it's almost hard to fathom.
And I'm trying to think back to what I was a few years ago.
I just wouldn't have got it.
Like someone would have told me, oh yeah, you know, the skills and network you're building is gonna be really valuable.
I'd been like, okay, I'll take your word for it.
But now that I've built skills in the network, I'm like, oh, okay.
And even now, knowing like further down the line, like there are people I know who are in there, like 40s and 50s, for example, who now, as part of their network, are people who work in government and stuff.
And that just unlocks a whole new game that you can play if you really want to.
Like you probably know CEOs of very big companies.
And so if you want us to do corporate trainings, your mates are probably the people who'll hire you.
And be like, yeah of course.
And you can probably make at least a million a year just doing corporate trainings if you're working very few hours, if you really wanted to.
And as a 22 year old, there's no way you have that network unless your parents are friends with those sorts of people.
But as you ascend through the ranks, as you start to get to know other people who are doing interesting things, as they start to ascend the ranks, your own network becomes more high powered as well.
And you start to be like, oh, okay.
I see all these opportunities.
And so that whole thing that you started off with, this in this segment of the chat, oh, I view myself as having been lucky.
Not in the, no, not really, not in the way that you're suggesting, or the way in which that might be interpreted.
It is, yeah, you've created your own luck, right?
And that phrase is absolutely true.
There's one of the, I forget who said it, but the harder I work, the luckier I seem to get, right?
And if you are out there, if you're meeting people, if you're trying new things, if you're willing to take risks to experiment, from the outside in, the person might think, oh yeah, he was super lucky, or she was super lucky.
No, they're like, they, you know, if you stay in motion, and keep acting, and keep the momentum going, then you will be in a better position to take advantage of opportunities that come along that others will seem lucky, but that you in fact positioned yourself to experience.
Yeah, and I think the thing on that front, like I've been in motion since age 13, trying to make money on the internet, which led me to, Oh, you're doing that 13.
Oh, freelance web design, and then trying to build like an affiliate marketing pyramid scheme, and then trying to build like an online forum for kids to learn lock picking and stuff, because they wanted to be a secret agent, and I thought that was cool.
Then trying to build a video game, emailing Nintendo and Blizzard, being like, hey, can I make a video game out of Pokemon?
And they never replied.
You know, that kind of thing.
And then eventually getting into the point where in med school, I was like, hmm, I want to teach people how to get into med school, and I know how to build a website, so I can just market my services, and I know how to subtly advertise on forums, so I can do that, and then I'd teach, so I can do that.
I was like, okay, cool.
And then it was all of those things came together.
Yeah, and then in 2017, it was like, I need more lead gen for my business.
I didn't know what lead gen was, but I was like, you know, we did 10K revenue, then 100K, then 150, and then we did 145.
And I was like, Oh, our revenue's dipped.
We need more customers.
Why don't I start a YouTube channel?
Which led to that timing of the YouTube channel.
And it was like nine years worth of in motion trying to make stuff work.
And then the thing that hit was the medical school courses business.
And then the thing that hit on a whole different level was like the YouTube channel.
But it was all this motion that was happening.
And I think one of the things that I see amongst people wanting to get into business are like, oh, I really want to start my own business, but I don't have the right idea.
There's this thing of like, if you can't see the path, if they can't see the path, then they won't take any action.
But like there is no, it's so hard to actually come up with a path because for like your career, there's no way you could have saw the path when you got started.
Zero way, like impossible.
But I have a North Star, you know, I have a vision and it's very meta and it's just simply, you know, to achieve my full potential professionally and personally and keep channeling that desire, ambition, and effort into, you know, whatever is interesting me at the moment or as, you know, and is equally
representing an opportunity, right?
It's the same, I mentioned, you know, LinkedIn earlier, what you talked about, about how like several things came together.
You know, I started a post on LinkedIn for the first time in January, 2023, right?
So that's like 15 months ago, almost at a half million followers.
Now it's growing like 70 ,000 per month, you know, 70, 80 ,000 per month.
Accounts like second most influential, you know, on the platform, you know, globally, number one management and leadership.
And I have other people who will come to me and say, how have you done that?
Almost as if they think there's like a formula or something that they can also do.
And what they're not recognizing is that, my ability to like talk about certain subjects and, you know, create content and, you know, pursue that in the way I'm doing is an accumulation of like 20 plus years of career experience that's now having an outlet through content creation, right?
So it's same sort of deal.
Yeah. One of the things that, one of the exercises that most kind of, I think, move the needle for me was the ideal week exercise.
Yes. I remember we did the scale up assessment thing and there were all sorts of action points and a bunch of things were action points that I should do on a weekly basis.
Like, do you have time in your week scheduled to think strategically about the business?
Do you have time in your week to review the numbers?
Like what numbers? Okay, let's stop, let's build a scorecard.
Regular one -to -one schedule with all the people that report to you.
Yeah, the concept is simply to recognize that we all have the same amount of time, you know, in our days, in our week.
I don't have more time than you have.
So largely a big component of why certain people are more successful than others comes down to how they make the most use of that, you know, essentially most valuable resource, our time.
And the traditional approach to a week for an entrepreneur or someone else is to not think about it very, very intentionally.
And it's sort of like the week starts and you're just hanging onto the back of a train, you know, reacting from one thing to the next.
And that does not lead to, you know, the most ideal outcomes or probably doesn't lead to you, you know, safeguarding your health and home as well and all that.
So it's super simple.
It extends the notion of time blocking for work, say, on your most important projects to just every facet of your life, right?
So it's like everything goes into the week whereas your workouts, they need to be scheduled, they are calendar appointments, whereas the time that you're gonna be, you know, meeting with friends or dinners or, you know, time off, like all that guilt -free, kind of like free time, leisure time, that gets
scheduled in, you know, first, you know, without any guilt.
And then you optimize the rest of the week by basically consolidating like activities.
So I'm gonna block out certain mornings for focus work.
I'm gonna group together, you know, one -to -ones, I'm gonna do external meetings here.
I might do podcasts there.
I might create videos or content, you know, here.
And that's the basic idea.
And I remember what really prompted us to go into that so quickly as we did is because at the time, you were struggling with, I need to get this book written.
And I remember I said to you, how many hours per day should you be writing?
And you said, ideally, and I said, yes.
And you're like four hours a day.
And I'm like, well, where are the calendar appointments that show the four scheduled hours per day?
And you were like. Yeah, it's obvious, but yeah.
And then, you know, and then you really ran with it, right?
So I know that's become a great core part of your productivity systems and tools and what you're teaching to others, which is amazing, because if more people could live their weeks more intentionally and schedule what matters, I think they would get better results and feel a lot happier.
Well, what other issues do you see that people struggle with when it comes to managing their time?
Because yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
We all have the same 24 hours.
And yet, clearly, we all use, you know, caveat number one that people will say is like, yeah, well, I have a job.
I have to look after person X and person Y.
It's like there's all of that kind of stuff.
But I guess beyond that, what are the things that you see people struggle with when it comes to time management?
Yeah, so I'd say two things.
So one is, what should the time go toward?
And then the second thing is, when you're supposed to be working on whatever that is that you've identified, how truly focused are you?
And how truly uninterrupted is that time?
So going to the first point, you know, there's this question of if everything were to remain the same, you know, where would change have the greatest impact?
Because it's very easy to fill our time with lots of things, but you have to really ask yourself, what's truly moving the needle here?
You know, what is the most important things that you can be focused in thinking about and doing?
And I don't think people step back enough to ask themselves, rather than trying to just stay busy, am I staying busy on the right things?
You know, the things that are truly most important.
For you at that point in time, it was, you know, writing the book.
That was like the most important thing.
But then there's the issue of, okay, so you're sat down, you're working on the most important thing.
And if you were to time sheet your day, especially in those moments, just as like a solicitor or a lawyer does, whereby you have to record every single thing that you're doing.
The typical person, even though that they've now scheduled this time block to work on the most important thing, if they were to literally put an entry every time they change task, it would probably look like something like this.
9 a .m., I sit down to write the book.
907 a .m., I'm responding to a Slack message.
913 a .m., I'm gonna research something very quickly that relates to the Slack message.
916 a .m., I'm gonna reheat my tea that's now cold because I need that to help focus on the book writing.
You know, 920, I start to write the book again.
937, something else happens.
And you get to the end of that, say, hour that was supposed to be focused with intentionality on that, which is most important, and you realize that your attention was fragmented into a million different directions.
And a lot of that happens unconsciously.
And so my top advice to help combat that natural tendency in all of us, and I had this, too, is to literally, at least for a two week period, time sheet your week.
Time sheet, exactly.
Where does your time go?
You know, activity, start time, end time, total minutes.
Do it manually. Just the act of that doing, of doing that shines like a spotlight of awareness on, you know, what you should or shouldn't be doing.
So it's these fundamental things, no matter what somebody is trying to build.
It's like I see people struggling with the same things.
They're working on not necessarily the most needle moving things, and even when they think they are, they're actually not as focused and working, you know, in the zone as they should be.
How do you figure out what the most needle moving things are?
I think it's really easy to overcomplicate that.
And so I think we're all quite smart, intuitive.
And I think the issue is not so much at not being able to identify that as not creating the space to ask the question and to reflect, you know.
Yeah. You're intelligent enough that if you truly pause and say for the next hour, all I am gonna do is look at all the things that I am doing and ask myself if everything were to stay the same, where would change have the greatest impact?
And I think some top candidates will quickly emerge for most people.
So I don't think it's about not being able to identify.
I think it's more about not creating the space for the identification.
That's good. Because I guess when I, I guess this is nice because it gets people a quick win.
I guess when I think of, whenever I think of like, okay, what should I be doing with my time?
I always kind of zoom out like, all right, cool.
Like let's start with the life vision, let's start with the work vision, let's then figure out what's my 10 year plan.
Is that a 10 year plan?
Still what I want to be doing?
Okay, cool, I'm in for 12 months goals.
Am I still happy with those?
Yep, cool, I'm happy.
And it's all like 20 minute journaling exercise to get at.
Yeah, I really should just be working on this product that I knew all along.
Had I just asked the question of like, everything would stay the same.
What's the one area that would most move the needle or that has the biggest impact?
If it was today and it was after this podcast, I would be like, I would go to the gym because I didn't this morning because I had a late night last night, so gym.
And once I've done that, the single area that would have the biggest impact is work on the offer for my productivity thing.
I don't need to do the whole elaborate like life journaling method that I do every year in my annual reflection.
I can just ask that simple question and then just get something answered pretty quickly.
Yeah, it's like we talked about driving the car.
You're going from New York to LA.
It's like, you know that you're going to LA.
What do you have to do right now?
You're driving at night is just make sure you're staying on the road and the lights are being up the next hundred meters so that you know where to drive.
What's the most important thing that I should be doing at the moment?
Well, look at the road, it's turn right or turn left.
I think, yeah, so I think just generally speaking, I think things are just a lot simpler usually than people make them out to be.
And that it's another way to look at it is that it's less about this obsession with what's the right answer.
And it's more about having an obsession with, well, what's the right question that you should be asking?
Because if you ask yourselves the right questions, and again, give yourself the space to answer correctly, there's a timeless wisdom, I think, within all of us that gets activated, thank God, because otherwise we wouldn't continue as a species that will help you arrive at the right answer.
Another thing people often struggle with is, yeah, just this thing of focusing during the session.
Whenever we poll our audience and ask, when it comes to productivity, what's your biggest challenge?
Focus and distraction, we're ranked fairly high on the list.
Any tips on that front?
Yeah, so I mean, I used to, oh my gosh, I used to really struggle with this personally.
Like I would sit down and within five minutes, I'd get distracted working on another thing and it was very, very challenging.
So yeah, a few different things.
And I think you have to try things out to figure out what works best for you.
So one is, if you just commit to having a time sheet, any moment, you change activity.
So again, you've sat down to work on your most important thing.
It's nine o 'clock, 907, you're gonna go check your email real quick.
You need to write down the entry.
909 on YouTube, you need to write down the entry.
And the act of having to do that becomes a royal pain in the ass after a while.
And it both highlights your task switching.
And then you start to get to these moments where you're like, am I really gonna record this entry that I'm gonna go onto Instagram right now?
Like that's pretty stupid.
Let's not do that. So that definitely helps.
The other thing is just chunking down basic stuff like Pomodoro technique, basic concept, right?
25 minutes or whatever.
Work like in focus bursts and only record successful completion of that if you work completely uninterrupted.
The other thing is a centering exercise.
So this is something that I learned from this book, The Now Habit by Neil Fiore.
And I did a lot of sessions one to one with Neil.
So the idea is that your mind is kind of constantly getting, at least for me, like easily scattered into a million different directions and you have to kind of re -center.
And I did that through a series of deep breaths.
So basically the moment I noticed I was getting distracted and feeling like frazzled mentally, I would just take three deep breaths to kind of like re -center in that moment, relax the body.
Another three deep breaths to let go of the past.
Another three deep breaths, let go of the future.
And then another three deep breaths, and I love this part.
And again, I learned this from Neil, to take a vacation in the present moment.
And then three final deep breaths to approach with curiosity, interest, and excitement, the task at hand, not needing to know exactly where is this going to go, but know that if I just focus in the next hundred meters ahead and I just keep working, the path will emerge.
Oh, that's nice. The Now Habit.
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you just reached out to Neil being like, bruh, can I have some sessions with you?
Yeah, I don't think he, exactly.
I don't think he, I have this habit of whenever I read a book and if I like what the author's having to say, it's like, okay, well, let me reach out and connect to that author.
And I don't think, I think he's, obviously he's older now than he was in the past, but I think I'm not sure he does, you know, coaching anymore, but at the time he still was.
So yeah, it was like 10 years ago or so.
That's good. Thinking about these deep breaths.
Yeah, it's like, there's so much of our life that happens on autopilot.
Like, I realized this because like at the moment, the book that I'm reading in bed is The Power of Now.
And like last night started reading A New Earth, which is also by Eckhart Tolle and basically says the same stuff.
It's just like, I'm just like.
Sure better. Yeah. And I'm just like reading it, I'm like, like I've literally spent the entire day literally just on autopilot and like, whoa.
Cause I always kind of thought that like, oh, I don't need this meditation thing.
Like I'm fine, I'm not stressed.
Like, it's just meditation, it's stress relief, right?
But I'm starting to see what I'm missing by not being in tune with like myself and centered and connected and all that stuff that feels even weird to say out loud.
And as I read Eckhart Tolle's words, I'm like, oh, yeah, yep, yep, me.
He's like, you know, most people will struggle through the world.
Will I go through their day completely oblivious to everything that's around?
I'm like, shit, that's me.
Yeah. And even just taking a minute to do a few deep breaths.
It's just like a bit of a ritual, yeah.
And you get back into that present moment and that's where life is happening, right?
It's impossible for it to happen in any other place.
So it's like to re -anchor into that is a massive, not only does it improve focus, but it massively relieves stress and anxiety.
That's the whole idea of take a vacation in the present moment, right?
Because the past has already happened, there's nothing you can do about it and the future hasn't happened yet.
Okay, so I'm about to turn 30 soon in a few months.
Any tips? What advice would you give to 30 of yours?
Have a really big birthday party.
I wasn't talking too much, okay.
No, I've just joking around.
This is actually what Bill Perkins told me.
I asked him any advice.
He was like, hey, get a relationship therapist right now and be celebrate the wins more often.
Just throw a party for everything because it's like, you know, you're not afraid you're gonna work, you're gonna have success, but like you're probably not gonna celebrate it.
So he was like the thing I would tell everyone younger than me is just celebrate things more.
Well, that's how we start our sessions, right?
It's like every single session we do is, you know, what can we celebrate that's happened over the last two weeks?
I do think you should throw a big birthday party because why wouldn't you?
Yeah, exactly, yeah, might as well.
It's like you're celebrating, celebrate you, you know?
I mean, I personally, yeah, I love surprises.
I love parties. I love like, you know, getting people together.
You know, do something fun.
Like I don't know, go like something exhilarating fun, go like paintballing or something.
We're literally writing down birthday party something fun.
I'm like, I'm actually gonna forget this.
It's useful, the reminder is useful.
Yeah. Well, I'm gonna do something fun for my birthday.
I did buy myself a PlayStation yesterday, it was just all right.
I was like, you know what?
I've got a TV out, so yeah.
You know, what else should you be thinking about or doing?
It's like, I think you're doing it.
You know, maybe that's insightful right there, too.
You know, do you give yourself enough credit and do you kind of rest in the fact that, you know what, I'm doing all right and I'm doing well and it feels good, and you know, because people you can approach, you talked about achievement earlier.
You can approach achievement from like this place of lack versus abundance and you know, a place of lack.
I explained this to my boys, it's like, it's sort of like you're a Lego character and you're needing to achieve because it's like your arm is missing and so I need to complete this to like complete myself versus if you achieve, you're putting like a little hat on the characters.
So it's like achievement is like additive versus it's necessary to complete you.
And I think when you strive from a place of being satisfied rather than from a place of, oh, you know, I'm not good enough, like there's a massive positive impact on your psyche.
Yeah. So, you know, maybe your birthday gift to yourself could be maybe more fully resting or owning that, you know, change in psyche, you know?
Cause I would say, you know, you know, in our work together that it's definitely toned down but I still notice that, you know, sometimes it's, you know, when you're talking about wanting to do things or change, it's like, it's coming from, and to a certain degree, this is still, you know, healthy having
some of this, but it's like, oh, it's not good enough.
Things are not right and it should be, you know, better.
Things are actually pretty good.
And there's a way more that's going right, way more, like a thousand times more than things are going wrong.
And that would probably very much align too with what you're reading at the moment.
What do I feel that way?
Cause I'm also like, like I always, for whatever I'm doing, I think I do a reasonable job of finding a way to make it feel good and like finding a way to make it fun.
But it's like, that's when I'm doing stuff.
I think it's in, I wonder if it's in moments where I'm not doing stuff.
Like the moments in between where life happens, that kind of the my, like my mind is constantly, is always like, I should be doing something.
I should be doing, oh, or I should be doing this specific thing.
Or like, oh, you know, I haven't given, I haven't said nice things to the team in a while.
Oh, you know, these three videos that have come out in the last week, I really should have sat down and recorded a loom reaction to each one so that our editors can feel like they're having an impact and I can actually give him feedback.
And I'm like, oh, I really should have done this thing in those moments in between.
And it's when I kind of going from one thing to another to another, the thing itself is super fun, but it's in those moments.
So maybe it's in those moments.
So if we combine some of the things that we've talked about, maybe there's a habit around in those moments in between to do that recent and exercise, the deep breath to, you know, you take three depth.
So again, it's like, you take three deep breaths just to relax and you're like literally picturing, you know.
So typically, you know, areas that we hold tension, like our shoulders or jaw.
And if you're in those first three deep breaths, if you're like, you know, literally like relax your jaw, it's like crazy how much tension we have here.
And then three deep breaths to, again, in the next three deep breaths, I'm gonna let go of the past.
You know, the past has already happened.
You know, there's nothing I can change.
In the next three deep breaths, I let go of the future.
The future hasn't happened yet, you know, it doesn't exist.
And in the next three deep breaths, I'm going to take a vacation in the present moment and feel just how good it feels to be right here, you know, as I am.
And then in the next three deep breaths, you're coming back out of it to kind of enjoy whatever that is, like with your full attention.
And that could just be relaxing in that moment and not beating yourself up about relaxing or needing to do anything.
Or it could be to redirect your energy to, let's say, you know, you can also use this in a focus work session to get back on track if you felt yourself kind of like mentally deviating from, you know, the path.
But in just, you know, 15 deep breaths, you can totally recenter.
Nice. That's good. That's really good.
Yeah, I was, I met a guy yesterday in this Paris event thing, he was working on a book and it's like more than halfway through the process.
And he asked, you know, any tips for me in a book writing?
I was like, honestly, just take it less seriously.
I think when I was writing the book, it was always like this, a Skepta, Skepta in the back of my mind.
That was always like, it was a constant feeling of should.
Anytime I was doing something, there was in the back of my mind, I should be writing the book right now.
I know it's the most important thing, why am I not writing the book?
Like, anything else, anyone who's working on the business, it was like, oh, I'm working in the business, but I should be working on the book and that sort of thing.
And it's just somewhat unnecessary because I wasn't working on the book.
So like, what's the point of like weighing myself down with this should or I should be doing X right now.
It's like, either I will do it or I choose not to, but either way, the should is not actually serving anyone.
No, and that's another thing that I picked up from Neil.
He calls that language of oppression.
So I should be doing this or I have to.
And typically it's I should be doing X or I have to finish and that is gonna create a personality split in that.
And it's almost like you got this parental authority figure inside telling like, the little child, you should be doing this or you had to finish this.
And so that's gonna create resistance and the resistance typically manifests in the form of procrastination.
Well, I don't wanna, if you're oppressing anything, a good group of people, or eventually it's gonna lead to rebellion and some.
And instead, if you replace that language of oppression, with language of choice and choose whatever you want.
So I'm choosing to not write the book right now.
And I'm choosing to just do this, whatever this is instead.
But you're operating with agency, with like a sense of control, or I'm gonna choose to start to write on the book.
So instead of I should be, or I have to finish, I choose to start.
And if you just keep focusing on continually starting, the finishing takes care of itself and it feels a lot more so overwhelming.
The funny thing is I know all this stuff intellectually, but like, it's just hearing you say it and remind me, it's just like, oh, actually, yeah, you're right.
That's really helpful.
Yeah, but that's the thing.
Like I say this to other people, I feel like I just don't take my advice.
Yeah, that's the case for all of us.
We all know this stuff.
We all know that, and this stuff applies to everything.
We all know this stuff, but that's not the point.
Knowledge, you know, when I was growing up, I'm a lot older than you, right?
My next birthday won't be 30, it will be 49.
But when I was growing up, the phrase is knowledge is power.
Knowledge is not power.
Like certainly with the dawn of AI and everything, it's like knowledge is no longer power.
I mean, obviously in medical profession, yeah, but generally speaking, it's not about knowledge, it's about application.
So you don't give yourself credit for knowing, you should give yourself credit for actually doing.
And so even somebody who's listening to this podcast and oh yeah, I know this, like, whoa, be careful.
Because you may be giving yourself credit for the knowledge and you get no points for that.
You only get points for applying.
So we all know this stuff, but how often do we actually do the things that we know we should be doing?
And that's where the gap is.
And I think actually, that's also, I think...
If I look at the success that I've achieved personally in my life, if I look at all the successful people that I know, I would say the number one differentiator between the person who achieves their success, however they define their success, versus someone who doesn't, is their willingness to do the things
that they know they should be doing.
And you can use language or choice to do that.
And their ability to do things that don't always feel great to do.
The Olympic athlete who's gonna win a gold medal, the horribly painful workouts that they go through, do they want them to end at some points?
They're like, oh my gosh, this is so difficult, of course.
It doesn't always feel good, but they still do it.
It's all a concept of delayed gratification.
Choose your pain wisely, right?
Oh, who was it? Oh my gosh, the Jim Rohn?
So nothing comes for free in life.
Everything requires payment.
And I do take a bit more hardened view on stuff like this.
And I think of payment as pain.
And you can either choose with the pain of discipline, right, today, or the pain of regret tomorrow.
So you have to choose your pain wisely.
I'm not entirely sure I agree with that framing.
I know. I know you don't.
I know you don't, because I know your hope.
Yeah, you feel good productivity and all of that.
So the way I think of it is that discipline is needed in those moments.
A small dose of discipline helps you begin.
Yeah. And there's a lot of research that supports that, right?
So it's not actually the whole thing.
So when you have resistance to something, it's actually not the whole thing that you have resistance to.
It's just the starting.
If you start enough time, the finishing takes care of itself.
And so the phrase that I use is I choose to start for just five minutes, because I know that in my experience, I never know when the 300 second has gone by.
And then I'm kind of like in the zone.
So yeah, to clarify, the pain that I'm talking about from a discipline point of view is the same thing that you're talking about.
It's like developing the skill to basically, it's like physics, an object in motion, it stays in motion less equal and opposite force.
So your goal then, those people that are more successful than others, I think they've become very, very proficient.
And gangstals it. At creating the momentum, getting the boulder rolling down the hill, knowing that the initial push, that's the painful part, but not falling victim to the saboteur in their mind that's trying to convince them that it's the whole thing.
It isn't. It's just 300 seconds.
I think there's like a whole book in that idea, like just get started.
And all of the different ways to hack your brain into just fricking getting started.
Cause that's like the thing.
That's all it is. And they're very, very good at pushing past those points because they don't allow themselves to be deceived into thinking that it's the whole thing, whatever that thing is, it's not.
It's just the initial momentum.
Eric, thank you very much.
I think it's a good place to leave this.
Where can people find out more about you?
So we're doing that thing together, right?
For this podcast. Yeah, we have business coaching bundle.
Business coaching bundles.
So in the description, you've thrown some things in there.
I've thrown some things in there.
So basically take advantage of that.
You're going to get a free copy of one of my books, The Three Alarms.
You're going to get the scale up assessment that will pinpoint where you need to focus on.
If you're an entrepreneur in terms of improving your business, peak performance assessment.
If you just simply want to level up.
You've put in there the 90 day kind of goals template and the ideal week template.
So it'd be crazy to not take advantage of that.
Yeah. It's completely free.
Link down below in the show notes or in the video description, wherever you're listening to this.
Thank you very much, Eric.
Awesome. Thanks a lot.
All right. So that's it for this week's episode of deep dive.
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