Advice For New Entrepreneurs On Setting Habits, Hiring Team Members, And Prioritizing Tasks w/ Jay Papasan (Author of "The One Thing")

What up, guys? it's Brian. Today we're going to go on a trip together down memory lane. What I'm beginning to do for some of these shorter episodes is taking clips from episodes in the past, the full interviews, and really narrowing down to find that really bite-sized nugget piece of information that was the absolute star of the show in the episode. And so today, in today's episode, you guys get to learn about the power of habits and goal setting from the author of the one thing, Jay Papazon. Guys, I'm going to be honest. It's really cool to listen to the questions that I was asking him in the past, because this was prior I believe one month prior to me even leaving to go to Greece on my trip around the world in 2022. So this was in April of 2022 that I recorded this with Jay. And now to fast forward to what my business has become, to how I've implemented his advice. It's just really cool to look back at the questions I was asking because I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea what I was doing, And now to have implemented that and become more experienced and seasoned with time and to grow a business that's beyond what I could have imagined. It's really really cool. And also, to go from someone that was interviewing Jay Papazon for the first time to now me emailing him back and forth for him to write the forward to my book, It's insane. It's really really cool. So, anyways, guys, sit back, enjoy. And here is Jay Papazon coaching a brand new, newly self-employed Brian Lubin back in 2022. Let's go. You also have a quote in the book which I love, And its success is a short sprint fueled by discipline, just long enough for a habit to take over.

Oh yeah, when I do keynotes, the predominant theme I talk about is this building power habits in your life. And now atomic habits is out And we almost called this book the success habit at one point and pivoted back to the one thing. But we realized ultimately the most successful people we interviewed, the most successful companies that we studied just had three or four habits. In a business there's a system that makes a predictable outcome, which is a lot like a habit. It was only three or four of those things that were stacked together to make for a really extraordinary outcome. Great writers you'd find almost universally that they would spend a couple of hours every day working on their craft, and it's weird. But if you do that purposely, day after day, the pages add up, the product shows up, the product gets better And they're just like. I could go through example after example. But yeah, habits are like it's the ultimate cheat. You don't have to have a lot of really purposeful ones, but if you could build five over the course of a year or two, most people their life would just like completely level up in ways they can imagine.

So, speaking of habits, i recently have left corporate America. I'm doing the podcast full time, i'm doing my thing full time while I travel. Now It's the first time I'm on my own, so I'm using myself as a human guinea pig as I build in public. And what I've noticed is, as a classically conditioned W2 corporate worker B, it is very difficult to not fill your time up. Very difficult because what you end up doing is, if you're a person that has been successful in the corporate world, you need to be doing something. And so I've noticed all of a sudden now I'm working 16 hour days and it's full of a lot, but which of those things are actually moving the needle right, like driving the ball home. So it's been a fun experiment trying to condense all of these into like a five hour a day. And that leads me to another quote you have which are the things that are most important? don't always screen the loudest.

I think that's actually us quoting someone else, but I love that. I love that And that's that goes back I think it's called the Eisenhower matrix things that are important and urgent. Lots and lots of things that feel urgent that just aren't very important at all. Yeah, it's so easy, especially like you're self employed now, right? So you've got to wear all the hats. You're your own marketer, your own content editor, your own content creator. You're the talent, the podcast host, blah blah, blah, blah blah. You're also booking your own travel and lodgings and everything else. Like you have all those hats to wear. When are you at work and when are you at home? That's the $100 million question, right now, it's a matter of habits. So I actually we were coaching Rick Vellani, who was the co-author with us on Flip, and he and his partner Clay did over a thousand flips before we even interviewed them And they were incredibly successful and purposeful. But Rick shared that he had a real problem being present with his family. Do you have a family yet, brian? I don't. The benefit you have now is you're not actually losing with kids, that you don't get that time back. So, it's time, as you build out your career This is new career, you're about to take it abroad Can you build habits for a lifetime versus for right now? And I'll give you an example. I had an assistant, amazing writer, amazing editor and I knew that she came from a big family and wanted a big family of her own And we were talking about building health habits. She allowed me to coach her a little bit and she started going to the gym and she started going like at nine o'clock at night, because that was when everything else was done and she could go and get the gym to herself. And I was like I get it And I love that you're doing it, but do you think that you'll still be going to the gym at nine o'clock at night when you have your first child? And she goes? of course not. And I said then let's start with a habit that you won't have to remake then. So, as painful as it sounds like the reason, my wife and I get up and we work out at six am. It used to be at five am, but we had to get up when we could just have a baby monitor and we could be in our garage with a trainer and know that our kids were not going to interrupt our workout And when we didn't have to get a babysitter. So we intentionally moved it to a time early in the morning when we could have 100% control, and we've now been doing that three times a week for 13 years, and this is a sustainable, long range habit that we're not constantly reinvigorating and reinventing. So when you think about your business, what matters, what doesn't matter some of that you're going to have to figure out, but we know that if you create compelling content and have great guests that help you create compelling content, ultimately that's how your listeners will judge you And everything else. Over time, hopefully, you can earn the right to delegate to other specialists so you don't have to do it all. So think in terms of that five-year vision where what are the aspects that you hope you never have to give up And how are you spending your time then and build some formative habits that you're refused to bend on around that lifestyle today and everything else fits around it. And then the last bit of advice we gave this to Rick is just set a time. If you're going to end your day at six, give your significant other everyone the power to come in and say it's time to move. If you have to get two phones and leave one in your office, leave one in your office. Find a ritual, because it's probably going to be a home office When you're traveling. Your microphone's probably going to be in a corner of your hotel room or your hostel or whatever. What is a ritual that you can take that says I'm now transitioning, i am now leaving work and I'm going to transition my mind. Then train the world that you're not available. Then, if it's really on fire, someone's going to call you. But I create out of office messages Hey, i'll be returning calls at 8 am tomorrow. And then I train the world that I actually will show up. Gary sends me texts at night but I'll look at it If it's not urgent. I wait till the morning because, frankly, most likely most of the time people are sending stuff out when it's convenient to send it, not that they expect you at 9 pm to be responding Instead of being receptive to all of that. Just create those habits. I batch my emails in the morning. I batch them around noon. I try to knock out a few right before I leave the building to make sure there's not a burning fire from the day before. Everything that happens overnight now is just left Before big events. Do I cheat? Yes, on deadline for a book that's going to go out in three months? do I cheat? Yes, that's appropriate, but you can't put in the 16-hour day. That's not a sustainable lifestyle. That's a burnout lifestyle. That's a one-thing framework. What are the habits that you're building, not just for today, for your launch phase, but for the part that you're dreaming about, that you think that you can sustain, when you and your significant other might be actually trying to build a family around the business too?

I see patterns doing these interviews. You have two schools of thought that are right up next to each other. I have to wear the hats that I have to wear as I'm in the launch phase and as I'm building this thing. Then I earn the right whether that be through purposeful habits or revenue, a revenue mark to be able to start outsourcing to different people and then build a company. Now you have this other camp that comes out and it's like the virtual assistant world where they're like from the beginning don't ever even think about any of that From the beginning, use arbitrage, hire your assistants, hire everything out that you possibly can and build your business from the beginning as an architect position to where they are already handling the other stuff. I don't know if both sides have truth to them or if one side is correct. That's something that, as a newbie entrepreneur and I think the reason I'm asking this is I feel like a lot of people are in my position that listen to this. that could also get some clarity on this and perspective.

Here's what I mean by earned the right. If it's a business, i'm very firmly in the camp of lead with revenue, not expenses, especially heading into potentially a recession. A serious recession could be 18 months, could be 18 years, we don't know. Nobody has a crystal ball. I'm not going to have a ton of fixed expenses right now if I can avoid them. That doesn't mean to go lay off your people. I don't ever want to do that. I just talked to the president of one of my companies this morning in our accountability meeting and we both agreed that we're going to freeze all new positions for at least this quarter to make sure that our billing cycle with the companies we serve we have even more runway than we currently have before we bring on, because what we're trying to do is make sure that we're really leading with revenue, that every expense we can afford. That means you have to make some hard choices. There's things that won't be done or won't be done well until you can afford to bring that person in. I love, instead of you being the center of the genius with the thousand helpers in the future, leveraging out things early. It's never been easier to do with virtual assistants and so many things where, if you know that your dollars per hour is $50 an hour, you can find tasks that cost $25 or $10 an hour and leverage those out. But here's the difference. My friend Ben puts it this way There's leverage and then there's luxury. If you are doing the $50 an hour while that other person is mowing your yard, that's leverage. There's arbitrage between them. Most people let that person mow their grass and then they stream Game of Thrones. That's luxury. It only works in the self-employment field. If there is arbitrage, you have to be earning the $50 to pay the $25. That's why, to me, it just makes it arbitrage. Your audience knows that. You know it. Leave with revenue And I would rather freeze my lifestyle as early as possible and then make all of those investments And then I can catch up my lifestyle when I've got everything locked to the floor and secure. It can't be taken away from me And I don't know most people I see as their income rises, their lifestyle goes right with it And the leverage in their lifestyle goes right with it And they imagine that they're as good as their last best year. If they made $500,000 last year, they are a $500,000 business Now. You're probably the average of your last three years. You just don't know it. Yet We just come through 11 years of slow, yucky growth. But it was 11 years of growth, so we don't know what contraction looks like. So cap your lifestyle at a comfortable place. Drive that note, don't have a note. Drive it till the wheels fall off. I drove that. I gave my car to my son. I just got my first new car in 12 years, paid cash for it. But very clear I refuse to move backwards, i'm only moving forwards And I'm gonna have assets to pay for things as I go forward in luxury, and all luxuries are cash purchases for me. So back to business. Get that revenue out and instead of buying stuff, use that to buy leverage incrementally as you've earned it.

I'm gonna go one more time.

This is a fun story You can cut some of these.

If you want, no, go for it Like my wife-. I've got nothing left. man, You've got me for the afternoon. I'm on your schedule.

This is like I'm preaching this stuff, because we work with 180,000 agents around the world And I'd say all but about 20,000 of them are self-employed business people And they stop working, they stop earning. And then there's this other group that have built really big businesses And we're trying to get more people into the business category, like Ben, my wife and I. When my kids went to school, she started a real estate career And that was a great gift. I wanted her to be an entrepreneur. I knew she could be one, and if she's in real estate, that just makes me smarter. Now we're both in the same field, we're getting smarter And she runs that business and I do this other thing. We decided to only live on my salary And I just cleared six figures when she went back into business And we just said that's all of the bills. Any house, any mortgage has to come from my salary, everything you make. We either use that for acquisitions, to pay down debt, or for you to get leveraged in the business. Because we weren't living off of her business, it was very easy for her very early on to pay someone per transaction to close the transactions for, and about eight months later she brought on a part-time assistant And she started building with leverage but she had extra revenue to invest in it because she didn't have to pay her own mortgage with that like some people. But that's an example of living it. So she is known in our little circle as one of the real estate agents that got leveraged early and has built a great strong team. One of her friends that works right down the hall has been tracking the same way with her career. Big business that can't ever get help. And so he says will you please go to lunch with me And I want you to help me find out how I can hire my first assistant And Wendy's great, let's go, you drive. I heard you got a new car And he goes yeah, and so they hop in. It's like you know where this is going. It's like a really fancy Audi And he's got it and they're talking about it, and he's like I just can't afford an EA. And, wendy, it's all highs, dude, you're driving your EA right now Like you're paying more for this new car than you would be spending on the assistant that could give you all that time back. So again, lifestyle choices versus leverage choices. Know the difference between a luxury expense and a leverage expense. I think leverage is great if it's responsible. Luxury is earned. Everybody should be entitled to stop cleaning their house if they can afford it and let someone else do that. That's the job they hate. I don't mind doing the laundry. I'm weird that way. I do it. I still do it, but I was so happy to give up Mow in the Yard in Texas. Oh my gosh. It was like three hours for me to mow it and then three hours to recover from the 100 degree heat. I've never regretted that in my life, and I don't work while they do it. I sit on my couch and I read a book and I'm happy. So I'm not labeling one as good or bad, but we just have to be responsible as we grow our business. So I just dumped a bunch of stuff at you, brian.

Oh, i'm digesting it, i'm chewing it. I love it? No, it's so. From the show I get to pick up different quotes and different paradigms, different stuff like that, and I believe that paradigm just answered like that was the missing link between the two ideologies right there that I was battling, because I don't think that a lot of people listening to this show and myself included, I don't necessarily think we have a luxury problem materially. Most of the people that listen to this are seasoned investors. We pour all of our money into deals, real estate, all this good stuff. Have my house hacks, i've got my car and cash, all that good stuff. Financial foundation is solid, but she's like financial independence technically. But what you said about leverage and luxury as time to, where I, as soon as you said that, i was like man, i've outsourced this, so I have a lot of time in my day, but is that time really being spent on generating revenue? And so then, as soon as I thought about that, i was like OK, then earning the right is making sure I am so chock full of revenue production in my calendar, so full of revenue generating activities, my one thing, that that then earns the right to be able to get the other things outsourced.

So if you needed a $75,000 assistant, i'm going to go ahead and multiply that times 1.15. It's going to cost you $87,000 roughly, whatever divided by 12. 7200 a month roughly times 321,000. Basically, if you can, outside of your rainy day, like your reserves for your business, all of those things, i would go ahead and pre-save, if that's the next hire, three months of that person's salary. You will know in three months, if you're paying attention, whether you're getting now an increased return on that investment or just time back And you can let that person know. Like I'm hiring you because I expect our business to go forward more than the $86,000 invested in your talent, you will yield, either through my time or yours, some dollar plus amount, a multiple, yeah, exactly, and I just think most people don't hold those dollars accountable. But it's not like you have to save up a year of their salary. Most people understand the first three months we're both dating. Either I'm not gonna like you as a boss or we'll both fit. But you also have to decide now. Is the business growing as a result of this investment or did I just get a better lifestyle? And if you can afford the lifestyle, great. But like early in your career, it needs to be an investment in your business.

Jay, that's so huge man, Especially right before I'm about, because I wanna be sure to let the audience know, because sometimes people look at my life and they think it's all sunshine and fricking roses. They're like, oh, you're going to greet.

You just said you work 16 hours a day, man. That doesn't sound like sunshine to me.

I don't know how you have time for your significant other at that rate. That's a fantastic question, okay, so here's the kicker, right. So I'm in that stage of business right now to where it doesn't feel like work to me because I fricking love it so much And so it's so much. Harder for me to and that's why I try to get people towards is, instead of necessarily like making this whole financial freedom jump, which is where the chapter one ends of what's been put out in the media. Everyone in media knows financial independence, retire early, all this stuff Nobody really talks about. Same thing that we discussed previously, which is the clarity about if money wasn't an object, what does your life look like? Yeah, and so my life looks like this, it like me and you talking right now. This is why this is successful, and it will be because I'll outwork anybody that's doing this as a hobby, because this is my one thing. I love this, but it makes it difficult for me to turn the switch off.

If right now you're just getting bonus time, just know that if you want to have a family, right, i have- to make the pivots now Like you're gonna come home from work and it's gonna be like you want to be present. You want to be present at book time and bath time and have energy for those things. Yeah, it's fine. I just think I'm glad that you're not part of the hustle culture, Like you can cheat with hours for a limited amount of time, but at some point it will start to feel like work And if you're not unplugging and recharging on a regular basis, like at some point that energy does go away.

That's what the trip's for.

Like it's still relatively new. I'll think about it. It's like the first three months you're dating someone you don't really even fight that much. Then all of a sudden the argument happens and it just. It always shows up that way. The things, even the things we love the most in this world, like my spouse, like we argue, we get in fights, Some of the glow comes off Doesn't mean you love them less. But, like, a marriage is hard work And I think a career can be too. But I love that you have that innate excitement around it, Cause that gives you some sustainability. That means that there are parts of the job that you truly they fill you up And those are the parts, as much as makes sense, that you want to keep us the founder as long as you can.

Hey, real quick. If you're still listening to today's episode, i'm assuming you got value from it, so I need your help. Specifically, my two year vision with this show is to help over a 1 million people do what they want, when they want, with who they want, and I can only do that with your help. There are two main ways that a podcast grows. One is through ratings and reviews, and the other is word of mouth. If you could please leave me a five star rating and a review on Apple podcasts and Spotify, as well as send this to one or two friends that you think would get value from it, we can reach the people that we're looking to reach. Thanks in advance. Talk tomorrow.