3 Things You Can Do To Manage Your Workload Better

Hello one and, oh, welcome to the complete entrepreneur. It’s fabulous to be here. And I must admit it’s one of the first favorite times of the week for me. Um, it’s the complete entrepreneur is run at 5:00 PM Eastern time, every Thursday. And it’s where we look at, not just, what does it mean to be an entrepreneur, but what is the life of an entrepreneur and what does it mean to me?

Uh, an entrepreneur and, uh, it’s wonderful to, um, go along and, uh, to, to be here with each and every one of you. So welcome to Jeff, Olivia, my fellow moderator. So moderators there. So it is great to have you here with me, Jeff, welcome to the complete entrepreneur. Thank you, Michael. It’s great to be here.

Welcome everyone. I always look forward to the interesting and insightful discussions we have here looking at a kind of a different side of entrepreneurship and not just the business side, but the personal side. Um, and, uh, it’s an important topic that’s often overlooked. So thank you, Michael. For,

yeah, not a problem. Jeff, look, Jeff, what’s been happening in startup.club just before we get into today’s topic of managing the workload or how do entrepreneurs manage the workload, but there’s a, lot’s been happening@startup.club and you may want to share about that what’s been happening. Uh, sure. You know, it’s been very busy.

There are a lot of great rooms that happen on a recurring basis, just like this one. And just like we record, uh, the complete entrepreneur. We also have replaced turned on, so you can listen to this episode in past episodes. Of the complete entrepreneur over@startup.club, the website for startup club, or you can go right here to start a club in clubhouse and participate in the replays, which if you haven’t checked them out, it’s a really fun feature.

It’s like being in the room all over again. So, um, it’s great. And we encourage you to sign up for the mailing list over@startup.club, because we have a lot of special guests coming. We’ve got a very renowned author in the entrepreneurship and startup space will be joining us in January. So if you want to be kept informed for the big reveal of that, make sure you sign up for the.

Wow lots happening there. That’s for sure. It’s not club. Well today in the complete entrepreneur, we’re taking a look at managing the workload. There’s one thing that is actually certain about for entrepreneurs is that they end up accumulating more and more and more things onto their plate. So how do you manage all that?

How do you actually deal with it? How do you determine what should be on your plate? What should be off your plate? There’s all these different things that we take a look at. So we’re going to be sharing a number of great hacks that successful entrepreneurs employed to help them see the light at the end of the tunnel.

If you’re looking at your inbox, you’re thinking, oh my gosh, how do I get through all of this? Maybe I just need to work hard at what could be the solution, but is it always. If you’re in the audience right now, and you’re saying, you know what? I got some stories to tell them, to share about this, um, of my experience with being completely overload, loaded, and so forth.

And what I did to, to manage that the please stick up your hand. We’d love to invite you to the state and hear from you. One of the much pleasure the pleasures I have in, in hosting. The complete entrepreneur is hearing from people like you. So please feel free to stick up your hand. I’d love to hear from you and what you do to actually change the workload that your business ends up putting on you.

But I want to broaden it just a little bit. It’s more than just the business. One of the things I’ve seen from entrepreneurs is that they get through their Workday and all the stuff on it quite often, but it’s when they get home. And one of the kids asked for help with homework or the significant other says, can you do this?

Like even put the trash cans out or something like that. It’s like the straw that breaks the camel’s back and they just behave completely emotionally and irrationally and just go crazy. And why? Cause there was that one last thing, which was too much. Let me share with you to kick things off while we wait for people to stick their hands up and everything.

And they come to the stage. Uh, my experience with workload, um, many, many years ago I was in my twenties. What would happen is that I would periodically get sick and I began to scratch my head and think, why am I getting sick all the time? So one day when my wife and kids they’re they’re off somewhere else and I was sick and PID and I thought, well, I need to go along, do some work still, because that was my mentality.

Like work harder, not smarter. It was. So I began to write the list of all the things I had to do in the end. I had two columns of items on three sets of Peter’s back in front of all the things I had to do. And I looked at that list and I thought, wow, I think I’ve now discovered why I’m getting sick all the time.

And it was so true. It was just, there were so many stresses and so many things, um, uh, being imposed upon me, um, from all different sides and everything like that, that I lost track of really what was important. And, uh, I ended up jumping to everyone else’s tune rather than to my. So our supply would call up and I’d be dealing with urgent things or a customer call up.

I’d treat it as urgent and so forth like that. It was always, everything was just crisis and urgent. And it was a, um, blinding flash of the obvious. I know, but it was a defining moment in my life when I realized that, yes, my mind may be able to deal with a lot of this stuff, but my body will ultimately go and say, it’s my turn.

Ultimately, my body did that, say that, like I sit on a periodic basis where I would just get sick. So I thought there’s gotta be a better solution to this. And I began searching and questioning for a better way to run my entrepreneurial. And I be doing and trying and experimenting with different things to on that improvement journey for like the last 40 years.

And there’s one thing for sure is that I don’t get sick anymore. Um, if I get sick as was the flu, not because of an internal exhaustion or something like that, and it was a real eye-opener for me of that whole mind body relationship, but not only that is, you may think you’re being okay. But you’re actually not.

And your mark and your body will come back and address the issues if you don’t as a person do so. Yeah. So those are some of the things, my experience. So I’d like to share with you during the next time we have together. Just some of the things I’ve discovered along that way, but if you’re in the audience, you’re saying my gosh, that that is resonating with me.

I may not be getting sick, but gee, I’m right on the edge all the time. I feel like I fly off the handle that my, my kids or I kick the dog when I get home or whatever it is, because it’s just, just too much on top of me. If you’re in the audience to please raise your hand, we’d love to hear from you. It’d be great to go along and hear what you have to say on this.

I’ve mentioned the workload. So Jeff got a question for you. Have you ever been in a situation where, like I sort of expressed where you’ve just got to the end of your tether and there’s just too many things on,

uh, yeah, there. Absolutely. Yeah, I’m there. Sorry I hit the, I do this all the time. I’m sure I’m not alone. I always hit the back channel button when I’m going for the microphone. Uh, anyway. Yeah. I mean, you know, feeling overwhelmed I think is, is, uh, part and parcel with being an entrepreneur, especially with a startup.

And I think, you know, the biggest thing and I still struggle with it and I, and I’m far from perfect. And how far from solve this problem is, you know, the only way to take the workload or lower the workload is to actually complete some of the work. And I think one of the big challenges I have. Is, you know, getting into that mode when you’re multitasking or multitasking or letting the, um, letting the, the email inbox drive your day, as opposed to actually getting through the work that needs to get done.

You know, so if you have 20 things on your to-do list and they’re all partially completed, you’re always going to have 20 things are needed to do this. So the thing that I focus on now, more than I ever have in my career is trying to, you know, not live inside my inbox actually set aside time to take a task or something or a project from beginning to end in completing it so that I’m done with it.

Instead of being in a state where I’m jumping from thing to thing and nothing actually ever gets completed. So that that’s really, I’m trying to manage the workload now by staying out of my inbox, you know, closing email and dedicating times when I’ll go through. And trying to complete a task before I leave it half completed and go to something else.

I hope that makes yeah. Oh, absolutely. There’s a term in the, I’m a bit technical in my background. There’s a term called thrashing and thrashing is when the Hydrive head. Um, in the old days you didn’t Hydrive fans versus modern day sort of, um, uh, memory driven, high drives, but the hard drive head would thrash.

You’d hear it going, moving backwards and forwards continuously as it trying to find the data you’re after. And as time went by your, your day to get more and more fragmented and hydride had had to move more and more and more to pick up all the different bits and bytes and everything all across the sectors of the disk platter.

And that was called thrashing is so true with our time. Is that. Work to completion. What happens is you end up threshing? So, so what I found myself doing, um, in the past, in my twenties is that I would do something, um, to a third of the way something else would come in a do, do that to like, uh, 25% of the way then something else would come in and I do it should have say 50% that I have to get back to the first one, but I have to work at where was I up to a game and I get, ah, no, I’d waste a huge amount of time because I wasn’t bringing things to completion.

What I wasn’t really doing was allocating sufficient time. My schedule to complete the. And that that is so critical, but, um, you’re listening to the entrepreneur, we’re tackling the topic of managing the workload. How do entrepreneurs manage their workload? And it’s great to have you have, is, um, here with us and, uh, on the stage of S what did you got to say on this topic?

Love to hear you. Yes. Thank you so much. Um, everyone, thank you for having me here. I’m very grateful to be on the stage, uh, discussing this topic because you know, in the, the thing that we always have to remember is that that real wealth is health. You have to be healthy to be successful. And you know, one of the things that I have encouraged my team to do is tell each other to take a break, because sometimes we get into the.

And I know this is for me. I get into a zone and I block everything out and I will forget to drink water. I will forget to eat. I will forget a lot of things because I get into this execution mode and where we are is where we’re gaining traction before we launch our MVP, which is kind of a dangerous thing because, and before you launch an MVP, and this is what all of our advisors tell us scale is not our friend.

So even though the promise of making sales and other things are very tempting, we have to tell ourselves, slow it down, you know, take care of ourselves, take breaks multiple breaks a day. And what we do is we fill it with Tom. With each other, not talking about work. That’s the other thing that that’s, that’s made our work life balance better is that we have lots of discretion.

You have asked, you’re telling me that we should say to entrepreneurs, slow down and to smell the roses along the journey of life it’s such. And if you slow down, you’ll, you’ll be in a better position, um, to move your, uh, your MBP to full production phase. Is that what you’re saying? Absolutely. I mean, even taking a daily walk, you know, I mean, you know, it depends on where you are in the world.

I mean, if it’s snowy outside, you know, you may not want to go for a walk, but where we are in Reno, Nevada, you know, it’s pretty nice outside getting some fresh air oxygen to the brain. It really does.

Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine that that’s for sure of, um, getting yourself into a different position and I’m a strong proponent of that. I must admit. One of the things that I try to do is get different inputs into, into my life so that I can tackle problems in different ways, but I never thought of it from the perspective of managing my workload.

Um, so Jeff, what do you think about what you’ve asked? You’ve said there, is that, is that something that you put a high priority on, like going for, going for a walk or you’re stuck or something like that? Yeah, I think, I think you brought up some great points of as, um, you know, on one thing it’s interesting because giving people a chance to talk about something other than work, I think you mentioned, and I think.

Something that’s become much more, um, important now since the pandemic started and people were working remotely and teams weren’t physically together, I think there’s a lot of things I’ve read and we’ve been doing it internally at the companies I’ve involved with is when you, when you’re starting team meetings virtually, you know, when everyone’s moving to zoom, instead of in person, it’s really important to give people a chance to say something about how they’re feeling, uh, something personal, something that has nothing to do with work per se, and just to let them feel connected on a human level since they’re not there on a physical level.

So we start many of our huddles that are by zoom, with remote workers, with, you know, giving everyone. Especially when our Monday morning huddle, it’s always tell us one thing, you know, personal, that that was good over the weekend. Something that happened, what did you do? And give people a chance to, to bring their personal life, their personality, their humanity, back into, uh, the situation.

And I think that is very helpful. And I think people will be more productive if they have a chance to, to feel more human and not just feel like everything is work-related 24 7. So I thought that was a great point, um, that you brought up. Yeah. Look, I agree with you there. Um, Jeff, like it’s, it’s amazing.

One of the things that, uh, we instruct my own business is that we have an event every Thursday called. And what a cooler is. Um, everyone gets on zoom and we just share about what’s happening. Um, what’s been happening in our lives and also what’s been happening. What have we been working on? Cause you can get very disconnected.

And the goal is you may say, well, yeah, the goal is to, to, to show some personality, compassion, that sort of stuff. And that is important, but it has to come from a genuineness of you actually really do care about people and you care about your team and stuff like that. Um, I’ll give the flip side of that.

Um, just recently my wife and I, we got a notice from our health department saying, Hey, you may be in a COVID area. You better go along, get tested. Um, And, uh, and so she got a call from her work. Um, she, she called them up and said, Hey, I can’t get in. And then the administrator called back and said, well, can you come in for late?

Ron said, well, no, I’m not allowed to under law. I can’t, until I get the results from the COVID thing, there was no conversation about how are you going? What are you what’s going on there? Uh, what, what are you, are you traveling? Okay. Is there anything we can do to help, um, look, uh, thoughts and prayers with you?

I think it was all about them and how she could come into work to help their problems. And the impact that had was very good. And it’s all about managing the workload quite often is how do you best manage your team? I give them space to breathe, give them space to be human, give them the space to go along and to be able to express who they are is, is so, so important, but just shows that contrast of those two things.

So I just want to go to Rick right now. Rick mentioned the workload, you know, we talked, just touched on say doing some different things with that team and even ourselves, and sort of taking yourselves out of the environment we’re currently in or something like that. But Rick, what are you going to share on this topic here on managing workload?

Good to be with you, Michael. Appreciate it. I’m in a, kind of a iffy zone. So I apologize if I matrix on you, um, appreciate yours Jeffrey. So Olivia’s, uh, hosting this room and he’s got a real high value. So a couple of the things that I’ve found to be helpful are, um, It’s an old tool that’s been around for a while, but I think it’s still really useful and valuable and that’s using the Eisenhower matrix or the, the, uh, urgent important do decide delegate delete model to really help make sure that you’re focusing and putting your attention and your time on the things that matter the most.

I think a combination of that time blocking understanding your, your particular energy management. If that’s, if you’re a morning person, afternoon person, um, you know, eating from time to time and scheduling meetings, instead of scheduling our meetings, scheduling 50 minute meetings. So you’ve got the time and everybody else has the time to unwind decompress and start back up as necessary.

Those are a couple of mine, a hook that adds value. Rick. That’s great. Let me say some really good to appoint us there. Determining what is really important as entrepreneurs, we tend to sort of put one more things onto our plate, but really, is it important? Is this something you should be doing or something else, else someone else should be doing, or, you know what?

You shouldn’t be doing it at all. You don’t have to say yes to everything. One of the most powerful statements in the words in English language is no. And I think more entrepreneurs need to learn how to say no in a very polite way. That opportunity. Yeah, no. Why I’m focused on this because if I focus on this, I will bring it to completion.

Realize the benefits realized the gains. I can come back to you in six months time. I’d love to open up the discussion again, but the answer is no. And it’s a very powerful thing because what it tells the particular person bringing opportunity isn’t that you’re not interested is you take it serious.

You’re actually taking them seriously that if you say yes, it means your action or drive it through to conclusion and it’ll benefit both parties. Yeah. So, um, so Jeff, what do you have to say, if you have any thoughts or share just on determining what is important, and then we’ve got all these things in our workload, uh, but how do you determine what is really important and what should be on your plate versus off your plate?

It’s an interesting challenge. We all face. Yeah, I think Michael, you know, it’s funny because a lot of these things, this topic is, is very, um, resonates very well with, with my book. Um, I’m not here to plug my book, but you can look in my, uh, profile, but, but it’s all about what lessons I learned, business lessons I learned when I was making low budget, independent films.

And one of the things I talk about there, and one of the real experiences when you’re making a movie. I learned very quickly to realize what are the bare necessities like the three things that without which I cannot operate, I cannot make my film. Um, and it turned out that those three things were, um, you had to have a camera, obviously you couldn’t, you can’t make a movie without a camera.

You have to have film in the camera. And today in the world of digital, you’d have to have, you know, digital storage and battery, the equivalent to film. And then of course you have to have actors and actresses to get in front of that camera and tell your story. And without those three things on a daily basis, nothing else mattered, right?

It didn’t matter if Steven Spielberg was the director, he can’t make a movie without those three things. It doesn’t matter if you had the most beautiful location, uh, in the world as your backdrop, you know, no one will see that location. If you don’t have those three things, it doesn’t matter if you have the best script from the greatest screenwriter in the world, because you can’t turn that script into a movie without those three things.

So therefore every single day. You know, as the line producer of these movies, I had to make sure that those three things were present, right? Where was the camera truck? Was the camera truck going to show up on the set? First thing, did we have all the film? Um, the actors and actresses that were needed for that day, we had to have them picked up a driver, was at their homes.

If they were coming from home every morning, you know, hours before they had to be on the set to pick them up and make sure that they were there on the set, because if they weren’t, we couldn’t make that movie. So you have to look at your business in the same way, really break it down to like, what are the three things that need to happen that needs to be contributed to every day.

That’s actually going to move your business forward. That’s actually going to let you get from point a to point B because we’re very busy. Everyone’s very busy all the time, but we’re often very busy doing stuff that isn’t actually moving the business forward. So you have to really identify what’s your equivalent of the camera, the film, and the actors in your business.

Sorry, Michael. Yeah. Yeah. What great advice, Jeff. I’ll come back to you in a second. Olivia. Um, what great advice though. I look at my own business and I, every day I look at like three metrics every single day and does two things for me. Number one is they’re the ones that really matter, like you said, the, the, the film, the camera and so forth, the other ones really mattered for me, but more than that is that I get them into my gut.

So when those numbers go off, I can, I know in my gut straight away, there’s something going on and I need to dig into it further. Sorry about that. Yeah, go ahead. Jump all good. Michael, I just wanted to add, like, it’s also very important to what you’re saying, Jeff, um, to hire people you can trust to like delegate those tasks that are really important because at some point.

You can’t really do it all. And trusting your team becomes like key to your success.

Absolutely. Another not to turn this into a book plug, but you’re, you’re feeding me softballs here. One of the other chapters is called delegator die. And again, with the film analogy, there’s this idea of the alter filmmaker who does everything. But in reality, there is no such thing because you, you know, unless you’re just shooting a movie where you’re the only store and you’re holding up your iPhone against yourself, you know, it involves other people.

You have to delegate tasks, you can’t do everything yourself. And I think one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs, um, is to learn, to do that, to learn to which, which are the tasks that they should be doing, because they’re the best in the room and which of the tasks that they should be delegating to other people, because they’re the best in the room.

Absolutely. Like, I think that the key thing is this is it’s not just a delegation of tasks because if you delegate a task, the task is actually still on your plate. You’ve got to chase up to make sure the tasks are done is delegated our responsibility for the task. Then the person, your, your, your team members is now responsible for it.

And it’s no longer on your plate. It’s, they’re responsible for it. And I think that there’s a subtle difference that as a business grows, it’s not about task delegation, necessarily. It’s about responsibility delegates. And there’s a subtle but important distinction there. Um, I, I, once again, I look at my own businesses, um, when you have a lot of moving parts in them and there’s not a chance I can keep track of them all.

In fact, just recently I’ve sat down, um, uh, with, with one of the team and, uh, and I had to get them to explain to me what it was they do. Cause I couldn’t remember anymore. Cause I delegated there for so long that they went long and they’re off doing, um, an excellent job of it and they have to refresh my memory of what’s going on, what was actually happening and what they’re actually doing, um, uh, in that particular area.

But yeah, it’s important to that delegate your responsibility, but king, it’s great to have you on the stage of the complete entrepreneur as we take a look at managing the workload. So king, I’d love to get your thoughts on this particular topic. Welcome to the complete. Yeah,

I’m sorry, we’re getting some really bad feedback there. We’re going to have to, if you can just mute yourself now and we’re going to go on to Elizabeth, but king, if you can address those issues with love to have you back here to Elizabeth, welcome to the complete entrepreneur, we’re looking at managing the workload.

So what’s your thoughts on this particular topic? Hi, um, yes. Thank you for being here and for running this room, it’s been very interesting and, um, it does kind of quite relate to me because I do feel like a novice entrepreneur and I’ve always often described myself as organized chaos. Um, I’m very innovative in my ideas and have a lot of different goals and different things that I’m seeing.

Um, but I do often struggle to maintain consistent closure of the opportunities. And, um, and that includes sort of feeling a bit overwhelmed with the email inbox, um, because of all the different things that you can sign up to and collaborations you can potentially make with all sorts of incredible ideas that are both linking with your values or your alignment, or, um, also with financial benefits for both parties, but actually following through and making sure you take all the steps that are needed.

Um, and action. I think sometimes I end up avoiding by relaxing as Eve was talking about earlier. And I think I often lean towards relaxing a little too much and thinking about my goals and maybe writing some communication. But the action I suddenly. Shy away from, so, yeah, that’s a little bit of me.

Elizabeth has great hearing from you. Can I just say it’s wonderful to have you sharing so openly, um, on the complete entrepreneur, but the problem you’re actually shared about it’s. It’s actually very common with entrepreneurs where they have, so they have lots of great ideas, but actually, how do you bring something to a conclusion because you want to bring it to a conclusion, number one.

So it’s off your plate, but so you get the benefit of what it was that your idea was, or, or something like that. So I’m going to jump back there to your vision. You guys, what Elizabeth just shared there about bringing things to conclusion. Do you have any thoughts about that? Because you’re talking about minimum viable products and bring it to a million of all business and all that’s your stuff and that’s that breeds your conclusion, but how do entrepreneurs do that in a timely fashion before they run out of runway due to the cash run yet, or something like that?

Do you have any thoughts on this? Well, you know, here’s my, my take on it. My take is, you know, there there’s well more than one way to provide. And when you’re, when you’re in the startup phase, you know, you should never think that you’re ever really getting anything a hundred percent done mean you’re just setting goals to just reach certain targets.

But even when you get to that target, you know, that there’s going to be more work after that. So, you know, one of, one of my ways that I, I created value for my clients before we even had the MVP together, was that I took my expertise and I put it out there. And I said, I’m willing to work with you on a one one-on-one, um, level at a certain amount of time per week.

And, you know, you can, you can pay me a fee for that, that amount of time so that I could help you with some little issues. And when my product is. Then, you know, the user journey and everything that we focus on will solve those issues in a bigger way. And, you know, we generated lots of revenue, you know, because again, the need was there.

So, um, you know, making money there, there’s all kinds of ways to make money. And there are all kinds of programs out there to give you access to free money. I mean, it’s crazy how much money is out there. Um, now, now I understand how it feel can feel if it, it, it seems to be pulling you apart, you know, wonder,

I think we lost you with this there. Um, Jeff. Can you hear me? I’m just wondering whether it’s I hear you. Yes. Okay. Okay. Fabulous. Thank you very much for that. Look w you’re on the complete entrepreneurial, what type can you look at the topic of managing the workload? And it’s a common problem that entrepreneurs have, which they have a huge amount of things that they need to get done in order to secure an opportunity.

So how do you actually get through those, all those things on your plate? What are some of the things you do? Let me show you one of the top ones that I ended up doing as I became very deliberate with allocating my time. What I mean by that is I actually don’t have a, to do list. Um, if something needs to be done.

Then I allocate the time for it. It’s in my shingle. So think of as my to-do list in my schedule and what it forced me to do was to determine what I should do and what I shouldn’t do, because I would get a new sort of there’s a task comes in onto my plate. And I look at my shader and I got, oh, I didn’t have time to do this.

When am I going to do it? Um, is it more important than this other task? If it is, I might bump it the other task, or maybe it shouldn’t be there at all. Maybe someone else needs to do that. And it’s actually a really, it’s a big challenge. It was a big challenge for me and migrating from his great big to-do list to allocate the time.

And what I found in doing was getting so much more completed and it was a real revolution for me. So I hope that helps some of you out there. So we have Aaron on the stage. Aaron, it’s so good to have you on the complete entrepreneur. Love to get your thoughts on this topic of managing. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to ask my question and to share my story.

I absolutely see myself as one of those people who starts everything, but rarely finishes one thing. Um, I actually enjoy having a really long to-do list. Um, I have to-do lists all around my room. I have long-term to-do lists. I have short term to-do lists and it gives me a sense of accomplishment. But I, I can’t admit that is it, it is also a source of anxiety because I’ve never quite finished it.

Um, I just love the feeling of having a lot to do, and I’m grateful in a way for not having competing interests in my life in terms of family, spouse, children, and all that or pets. Um, but I also don’t give myself time for self care at all. Um, I can easily work all day. Um, that’s one thing that came, uh, came out in the pandemic.

I work from home now, and it’s really hard for me to shut off the laptop for my nine to five job. So I go from one laptop to the personal laptop and I could just do that all day. Um, so I do not have a lot of self care, but my question is given that I’m creating this startup and have a whole lot to do. I actually have the opposite problem.

I, I give myself a lot of leeway in, um, launched date, if you will, because there’s so much I have to learn social media content, operational, making sure my pricing strategy is correct. Making sure I’m confident in the value that I bring to the market. I’m holding back. I’m not launching because I’m trying to be perfect.

So at what point do you just, okay. You’re not going to be perfect. Just go out there and do what you have to do and figure it all out. Or wait a while. Take longer until you feel comfortable. Cause I can wait a while forever. Yeah. What a great question they heard. Oh my goodness. That’s a really good question.

I’m a big fan of . Whether that’s your business, where there software or whatever. And  is all about getting feedback from customers as fast as possible. Um, and whether that’s giving them a demo version of whatever you do or anything like that. Cause when you get that feedback from them, from the customers, you make sure they discover the product you’re building is not what they want, but it’s just a little bit different and that’s what you need to focus on.

That’s what they really want. That’s what really resonates with them, with the customers. Yeah. And, um, and it’s something to really think about is how do you iterate quickly? Like I look at someone like Elon Musk and his building Starship down poker return, I think Boca, Chica, sorry, Boca Chica, uh, in Texas.

And you wanna say what stash stash should be is twice as big as the Atlas five rocket that went to the moon. And he was launching these things continuously. It feels like, well, what are you doing that for? He said, because I’m doing 800 years of development at a massive scale. And he was learning every time he launched something you learned, you learned, you learned, you learned.

And then now apparently next year they’re going to be actually launching into space and all that sort of stuff. Um, but it’s, it’s so true with a lot of our businesses as well as you do not have them at perfect. Um, like the very first I remember reading, um, Jeff Bezos’s biography and, um, he th his payments for Amazon, right at the beginning.

They, you sneak in it. You say what? Sneakernet, he would literally get this from one computer, walk it over to another computer, build. It wasn’t automated. It wasn’t all come out to them and not that. And he ran it out of his parents’ garage and they moved products like that. It was, it was definitely not perfect compared to you look at Amazon nowadays and my gosh it’s streamlined and all that sort of stuff and everything.

So, and yet even they would say they’re on their journey still. So Aaron doesn’t have to be perfect. What it has to be. Is it ability to get customer feedback? It needs to be good enough to get that customer feedback is a critical. Jeff, do you have any thoughts for Erin on that and what she shared just then on the perfection cycle?

Well, I mean, perfection versus getting things done, I, you know, perfection is, is a tough topic because, you know, we have a, a mantra, you know, working for many years with Collin county, Who has often joined us in this room. We always say, if we’re going to do something, let’s do it right. But doing it right.

Doesn’t necessarily mean perfection. Um, because sometimes, you know, perfection can be the, I don’t know what the saying is, but perfection is the enemy of something or something as the enemy is, everything’s an enemy enemy of everything. But I mean, you have to know when it’s time to ship. I think Seth Godin talks about that a lot.

Like it’s really important to ship because it’s almost like that saying analysis paralysis by analysis, you can just spend way too much time working on something and working on something and working on something and not actually get it out there and actually getting your product or service out there earlier.

I won’t say too soon, but earlier is actually going to help you towards perfection because sometimes you need that real market feedback. You really need. Your product to be in the hands of customers and get their feedback to move it closer towards perfection. So I think it’s really important to, to figure out that fine balance between when something is ready to ship versus being perfect.

And then of course you can get closer and closer to perfect as you iterate. Once you have real world feedback, I think that’s really important. And today, you know, we’re fortunate because it’s easier than ever to get that real world feedback because you have a consumer base that’s used to making comments in social media.

That’s used to leaving reviews. That’s used to reaching out to customer support because you don’t have to call a phone number and, uh, stay on hold for 30 minutes. You can actually tweak your customer support questions and get responses. So I think, um, perfection is a tricky one. Um, shipping and figuring out when the right time to ship and ship doesn’t mean physically shipping it in the mail necessarily sh ship means getting your product or service in the hands of actual end-users actual customers.

So I don’t know if I answered your question exactly Michael, but yeah, no, it was a great answer. I think one of the things I quite often say to people is everything is perfect. Given the constraints. For instance, if someone said, Michael, can you please develop me a cashflow for my business? And you’ve got 10 minutes.

I can guarantee you, it will be. Given the constraints of 10 minutes. On the other hand, if they said, can you develop a cashflow for my business? And part of the way you’ve got a week to do it and research and all that sort of stuff, and really dig into the analysis, then you’ll get a completely different project, a completely different result.

So whatever use it, given the constraints, is it given the constraints of materials, given the constraints and other resources, staff and so forth, given the constraints of your time. And one of the things that entrepreneurs sometimes need to do is say, I’m going to create an artificial constraint. And that constraint is, this is going to be launched on this.

Kumquat may it had been launched then, and by creating an artificial constraint then, because you could always, as you sit down and just keep on going into the future and the future and the future, you will get the best product and you possibly can get into the hands of real users and customers by that date, come what may and take that attitude.

And it’s one of the most important things I think that entrepreneurs need to do is create those constraints on themselves because they don’t create those constraints. Then either the business completely swallows their lives and that they no longer have a personal life anymore because the business just ate it up because there’s no constraints or they go along and never launched something.

Cause there was no constraints. Um, there’s all these things, but to look. Um, I hope that also helps, um, add to the mix there, Aaron, but it’s great to have you on the complete entrepreneur

pleasure, but anyway, lovely here from Victoria. Victoria is great to see your smiling faces there. It’d be complete entrepreneur love to hear your thoughts on managing the workload. If you have some ideas around that, welcome to the complete entrepreneur. Thank you so much for holding this space. I have a lot to say, but I will keep it short.

I really wanted to piggyback off of some of the things that, uh, you had said, Michael, when you spoke about allocating your time and not doing that to do less, and really it comes down to what gets scheduled gets done. And when you’re managing your workload people, I’m sorry. I just lost my, um, excuse me. I just lost my earpiece.

Um, what often happens is that people will do. Uh, to do less and they put no time constraints on them, which is what you were just talking about. It’s like, well, today I will, I don’t know, contact six people and I will have 10 phone calls or whatever that may be, but yet they don’t get that scheduled in their day.

And then they, and then often entrepreneurs find themselves at the end of the day, wiped out tired and feeling like they haven’t completed and gotten anything done and they feel like they’re on the hamster wheel. So one of the things I would really encourage is to make sure that you schedule time is schedule your day out because that’s how you grow because we’re energy goes, uh, focus where focus goes energy flows, right?

So you gotta focus and you need to schedule another thing that you said that I’d like to piggyback on was when you talked about. Uh, and I’m going to paraphrase. So please forgive me, but basically delegating responsibility. I think as an entrepreneur, when you get to the point where you can hire and delegate others, you have to make sure you empower them to do what needs to be done.

If you give them a task, you give them the power to do it, give them the, um, the confidence to do the tasks that you gave them to complete. And what I do a lot of time with my team is when they come to me with things, I always say, bring me solutions and not problems. And that way, when they come to me, they’re like, well, Victoria, we saw this, that or the other, and this is how we think we should solve it.

And I think as entrepreneurs, we get stuck in a problem, oh, I don’t have enough clients. I don’t have enough money or, but I would say switch that. Don’t say what you don’t have figure out. Okay. Where can I get that? If I were to have the money, where would it come from? And start, start asking the right questions of yourself and I could go on, but I’m going to leave it there.

Thank you for letting me Victoria was great. I love that. Bring solutions, not problems. This is real. It’s very tangible. Um, I, I’m a strong proponent of that. I hate hearing people just bring problems, um, as if you’re the font of all knowledge and you’re going to be able to solve everything for them. And they put you on a pedestal.

What are they actually saying is I want you to give the responsibility back to you because if it goes wrong and you give me an answer, then, uh, that your fault, not mine. Yeah. So no bring solutions and we can discuss the solutions and the merits of the proposed solution. Don’t bring me problems. So good.

Here’s another one. Here’s some hacks for you. Um, uh, a really good hack is this always carry a note. Um, I’m a strong proponent of this, and I know that Richard Branson is as well, always carry a notebook. And I remember I was in the meeting and that these people, they wanted my advice for something and, uh, uh, for their business.

And they were sitting down discussing things and I noticed they didn’t have any notebooks. And, and I say to them, at one point, I’ll paraphrase. It wasn’t this rude at all. But I paraphrase. I said, look, I said to them, what I’m saying is what I’m saying really good for you and, uh, really useful. And they said, it’s fantastic.

Really appreciate it. I said, if it’s good, then why aren’t you writing it down? And they said, oh yeah. And I say, you see, I know that when you write something down, it will end up getting done and it’ll stick in your memory loss. And so important as entrepreneurs write things down, you have that random Ford you’re traveling in the cab somewhere, write it down, that, that idea and you think, oh yeah, just write it down.

And per data, top of the page, it, write it down. And I find that. It crystallizes my thinking. I quite often I’ll sit down on my couch at home and I’ll just have my notebook and my pen. And I’ll just write a whole lot of, I may write Peters at times of my thoughts about directional type issues or what we need to tackle Nick.

Where’s the lodged opportunity. And if you look back through the pages of my notes, you’ll find that my thinking is, has morphed and. And my greatest over time as I got more and more information, as I thought about things into greater depth and so forth, and that was really useful. So get yourself a notebook, get yourself a pen.

Look, you could do it electronically. You do one. Notice that personally, I find a notebook and pen for those times. I find my laptop is very useful for other types of work in that manner, but get them notebook and pen. I highly recommend it. Jeff, Jeff, you, um, heavy influence just on that on notebooks and pens and things.

And, and well, I do, I do, um, you know, for many, many years, you know, long before computers, I kept notebooks and had stacks of them and would always walk it. I had a, a boss early in my career who insisted that, you know, if you walk into a meeting or into his office to talk to him and you didn’t. A notebook in hand, you would literally get screamed at and told to leave and come back.

So I got into the habit very early in my career of always having a notebook. But today I actually use a remarkable too, which is a digital notebook, which I actually love because I can have one, one thing to carry. It’s very thin. It’s like a thin tablet that I can have organized into different notebooks within it for different companies.

I’m involved with different projects, et cetera. And everything’s backed up to the cloud and I can access it from any device on I’m in love with my remarkable too. I don’t get anything for saying that, but I, I definitely, um, plug it. Um, and I also prefer when I go into meetings now I try not to bring my laptop and only bring the notepad only bring the remarkable too.

So I can do the handwritten notes. I believe a hundred percent. What you said, Michael is when you, when you write stuff down, it’s easier to remember it. So. Taking those physical notes is important. And also if you go into a meeting with a laptop, invariably, you’re going to be tempted to get distracted, look at something else, checking email, et cetera.

Whereas if I go in there and all I have is my notebook, I’m just going to take notes for the meeting and I’m going to be more present and more focused. So, um, yeah, I think notebooks a great tool. Yeah, I find it’s really very useful to have a notebook. Like you were saying. The other thing I found was I adjusted my day where I actually get up really early morning.

Typically I’m up about five 30. Um, I am, and I, in that quiet time before the rash of all the other things with the team game coming in at 9:00 AM and all that sort of stuff, I find I get much done. I really do because I can focus, but I allocate the very first, like 30 minutes of every single day. And I do this basically seven days a week.

Um, I allocate 30 minutes for me and we say, well, what do you mean by that? I allocate it to re. Um, information, I allocate it to, uh, investigate other strange and interesting topics. Um, I allocate to look at what’s happening in my industry. Um, I allocate it to, for me, I, I, I also spend time, I read a bit, uh, a, a chapter of the Bible each day.

So I allocate these times for me, and that’s really important. And why do I get these disparate sort of things in there as well is because I find that when I’m tackling problems in my business, the idea from an article I was reading about from Nassar or something like that will suddenly come to bear of this is how it can solve.

It could be their management practice that they adopted or whatever. And it could be some weird and wonderful thing like that. Like the other day. Well, yesterday I was reading articles on how they managed to, uh, working on building what bubbles so fast and light travel and sourcing. Well, what is important about that?

To me, it was, you’ve always as an entrepreneur going to have me short-term medium and.

Awesome. Very long-term go and be right out there. And that’s what it means to be an entrepreneur. That’s the carrot for me is what’s my really long-term goal and it drives me alone and it strips off my, um, a lot of things off my, um, my plate at the time, as well as I think about those long-term goals. So that’s the thing I find is really useful for me.

And I make sure I get my seven hours a night sleep. If I get. H or more, um, the big between seven to eight, if I get eight or more than I’m a zombie the next day. And I’m, I’m terrible to be around. So I’ve worked at how much time on need. And if I get less than six to seven, um, that sort of range, I can, I can handle it for a few for a few days, but, um, I really accept date, ideally.

Um, and so I’ve learned things about myself that then helps me manage the workload. And that’s so critical. Um, I appreciate you trying to say some things it’s great to have you on the platform, but you’ve got some real problems with your, um, connection or something like that. So we might have to go along and if you could please leave yourself muted.

That’d be great. But anyway, so they’re the sums that things that I have done, um, I use automation software. I make sure I take my breaks. Like you were saying earlier, I drink more water. I eat much healthier than I used to. I hate to say you could not drive your business off hamburgers and pizza and chocolate.

As much as those things are nauseous at times, it is going to give eventually so eat healthier. And, um, one of the people I really got inspired by in eating healthier was Jeff. So Jeff you’re, you’re a vegan. Yes, I am for, for probably about 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve been like, I always say I prefer plant-based foods and I, and I do so for, um, I’ve been doing so for like five years now.

Um, and that’s really helped me in my energy levels. So if you’re looking at workload hacks, that’s something I looked at, um, take a break from your computer. Like I’m I run a, an internet company. Uh, we loosely managed billions of transactions every day, um, going through our servers, but on tr I tried to be methodical about taking a break from my computer, get up, stretch those legs.

And here’s one, um, for some of you need to hear is once you’ve achieved your goal with that to complete a project or something like that, keep yourself a reward. Give me. It’s an important thing to do, because if you don’t give yourself a reward, that’s sort of like you get the next project and say, well, is it worth it?

Give yourself a reward, whether that’s at a half a day, a day spa, or whether it’s a buy that new TV you’ve always wanted to have, but whatever it is for you give yourself that reward. And, uh, and it’s, it’s something special about that. One of the things I did as a reward many years ago was I knew my kids really wanted to get the new X-Box and, uh, and they wanted to have all the whole, these games.

So I went out and I just bought it for them. And that was my reward. And my reward was seeing my kids just have lots of fans who are, we played some games together. And that was a great reward. Yeah. And. It brings up the other point, when you give yourself a reward, think about your family and loved ones and that sort of stuff as well, because they’re part of your journey and Sarah site, many of them, they didn’t sign up for the journey they just happened to be tagging along.

So the fact that they’re there with you is more by happenstance than anything. And it’s nice to give them a reward as well. But anyway, you’ve been listening to the complete entrepreneur. We’ve been taking a look at managing the workload and a very different sense of not here’s a whole lot of littles things you could possibly do to help you out, but looking at, and I’m packing it so we can lead better lives as entrepreneurs.

There’s so many ways that you could so many things you could do to help manage your workload, the cues, or choose one thing at a time and let it become a habit inside. Whether it’s getting up earlier, whether it’s making sure you take a notebook anywhere, whether it’s doing some of the things that other people talked about in this, in this discussion, all very important.

But in the meantime, Jeff, I’d love to hear what’s going on@startup.club. And I met in December. Fantastic, exciting things. So you want to share. Yeah. Thank you, Michael. And thanks everyone for participating tonight. This has been a great discussion. It’s a, it’s a great topic. We could probably do a whole nother episode of the complete entrepreneur.

Um, staying on this topic, Michael. Um, clearly it resonated with a lot of people, which is great. Uh, we recorded this too. So if you want to go back in and listen to the recording and take notes, you’ll find the recording over@startup.club, which is the website for startup club. And you can also find the replay, you know, clubhouses new replace feature, which is awesome.

If you go to the startup club here in clubhouse and scroll down, you’ll see a tab for replays, and you’ll be able to find the replay of this room and other episodes of the complete entrepreneur in the replay section, which is great. It’s kind of like being there all over again. Um, and you could jump from speaker to speaker.

So what’s cool about the replays is if, if you remember that Michael said something really interesting, you know, Um, tap fast-forward and just go to Michael every time he speaks until you find that the bit you’re looking for, it’s really a really cool feature that clubhouse is developed. Um, and we encourage you to go over and sign up for our mailing list over@startup.club so that you can be kept informed of special events and other shows.

We have a very well known entrepreneur author. Um, who’s coming to join us in one of the rooms and start a club in January. So if you want to be kept informed of the date and what room that’ll be in, definitely sign up for a mailing list. Uh, Yeah, it’s great to hear all this exciting things happening with startup like Bob.

Um, you’ve been listening to the complete entrepreneur. I want to thank my fellow moderators, but more importantly, my one, the wonderful people that put their hand up to come to the stage. It’s really, I get so much about those different people that Toro your bears and rich shared. And I just want to say thank you to all of, all of them and also for you in the audience.

This is why we do this each week. And what motivates me is seeing and getting those feedback comments and so forth like that from you and the audience that stat about, um, the complete entrepreneur. But next week, next week, we’ve got a great topic. It’s a topic of building a life, not just a business, many entrepreneurs are so focused on their vision for their businesses, that they forget to have a vision for their.

Uh, great family is like a little slice of heaven on earth. So how do you build a great family and this combined with the vision for your business? I think this is going to be a really interesting topic and one that as we begin to unpack, unpack it of this special time of year around Christmas, it’s really gonna resonate with many of you in the audience.

So it’s wonderful having you here. Great to see you again next week. God bless you all. See you later. Bye. Thanks Michael. Thanks everyone.

Bye. Thank you.