103. Helpline: Planner Coaching Call

Episode Transcript

Verbs: Welcome to another episode of Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the Internet, so you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Mondays. I’m Verbs, here with Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton. What’s up, guys?

Blake: Don’t you love that sound? That’s the sound of the smooth, warm timbre of the man, the myth, the legend, Verbs Boyer in the house!

Verbs: Thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Blake: I’m so happy you are back.

Verbs: Thank you, everyone. Up top. Appreciate that. Thank you. Glad to be here. Guys, what has been going on? You’ve been holding down the fort, I see.

Courtney: We tried to. I wish we could get the unsubscribes back, but I don’t know. They probably won’t hear that you’re here.

Blake: To both of our current subscribers, please call your friends. Tell them that Verbs is back and the show is safe to listen to again.

Verbs: Wow.

Courtney: Blake, do we have a couple of minutes? I just want to hear a quick overview of what all Verbs did. I saw a few things on the ‘Gram that you did. It looked like you had an amazing time. I think everybody listening probably wants to know. What did you do with a month off?

Verbs: I had an amazing 30-day sabbatical. There was a lot of swimming, getting in the water. I can’t remember if I mentioned this before I went on sabbatical, but I was looking for a hobby, so I picked up some deejaying apps and a deejay MIDI controller and started diving into that whole realm of things. So, yeah, it was great. We had family visit. We took a trip down to the beach. My kids loved it.

I went roller-skating with my kids. So, between roller-skating and swimming in the pool and hanging out at the beach, that was probably the most time as an adult that I think I spent in the water since I was 12 or 13 years old, but being able to do it with my kids… It was amazing, very restorative. It was good not to have to think about work, although I did miss all of my teammates on the team, so when I came back it was good to catch up with everybody, especially you, Blake.

Blake: You know, my favorite part of your sabbatical, Verbs, was not when you went to the beach but when you took a little trip down memory lane, because you posted some awesome throwback performances of the artist currently and formerly known as “Knowdaverbs,” and there were some…how can I say…fresh bars that were dropped on my Instagram feed from… What was that? 2002?

Verbs: It had to have been the 2000s. I forgot about that. We moved last year, so I came across all of these boxes with a lot of VHS tapes, so I said, “All right. I know I have my sabbatical coming up, so I’m just going to go and try to convert those before I lose all the footage.” So I was able to swap those into a digital format and take a stroll down memory lane. But, yeah, that was fun.

Blake: So fun. If you’re listening and you are unaware, in a past life, Verbs dominated the hip-hop game.

Verbs: Dominated.

[Rap song]

Blake: Follow him on the ‘Gram and scroll down, and you’ll find some vintage stuff there.

Courtney: I feel like there was one clip you posted… You were in Amsterdam maybe?

Verbs: Yeah.

Courtney: There were so many thousands and thousands… I mean, a massive crowd.

Verbs: Yeah. When we were out on the road, we used to love going over and doing those European festivals. There was one called Flevo right outside of Amsterdam, and that one was known for having a crowd that loves every single genre of music. They just love music. Those were always the highlights of those runs during the summertime. So, shout-out to Flevo Festival.

Courtney: Was there 10,000 people there? It literally looked like such a huge crowd.

Verbs: Probably close to that in front of the stage, and then there may have been another 10,000 just on the grounds.

Courtney: That’s amazing.

Blake: And that was one of the smaller crowds you played for. I mean, the Knowdaverbs shows, you know…filling stadiums.

Courtney: I’m surprised, actually, that it got a slot on your calendar.

Verbs: I know, right?

Blake: Okay. Well, Verbs, I’m excited to have you back for two reasons. First, because maybe people will subscribe to the podcast again. You bring so much value. Secondly, just because I missed you. And the bonus reason is because this is sort of… We talked about memory lane. One of the things we used to do a lot more was we would bring people on. We would have them call into the show, so to speak, and we would help them process through their productivity problems of varying kinds.

So, that’s what we have in store on this episode, and I’m really excited about it, because this is someone who is a part of our community. She shared a post in our Full Focus Planner Community, which is free to join online on the Facebook.com, and we have her here. She’s waiting, I guess, for our producer to open the phone lines up.

Courtney: I think you should be a little clearer about exactly what she posted in the community, because it wasn’t just, “Hey, guys. Just having this problem. Can you help me out here?” It was basically a graphic, and the only thing it said was, “OVERWHELMED!” and then “Help!” and then the little shocked-eye emoji. Our producer Nick saw it come through before it even hit the community and was like, “Oh, we’re about to take this on the Focus on This podcast.” So, just to give you a little more context, this was not just like, “Hey, I have this problem.” It was like, “Help!”

Verbs: I’m sure she’s not the only one who ever has felt like that, but she was the one brave enough to post simply, “Overwhelmed! Help!”

Courtney: Guys, let’s be real. I mean, I was overwhelmed this morning. It was the first day of school. My husband had a work thing this morning. Both kids woke up 30 minutes before they were supposed to. Everything that could go wrong… It happens. It’s life. We all are there at different times.

Blake: Absolutely. So, are we ready to bring her in?

Nick: Let’s bring her in. Let’s just go. Welcome, Mariana.

Blake: Hello, hello! Hi, Mariana.

Mariana: Hi! How are you all?

Verbs: Fantastic. How are you?

Mariana: Again. I’ve met you before.

Courtney: I know! I was like, “I’m 98 percent confident you were on the show with us before,” which I think is so fun.

Blake: Recurring guest.

Mariana: I think I was overwhelmed then too, but I was getting an EA at the time.

Courtney: That’s right. And you had done all your homework. You had already read Your World-Class Assistant. You were on top of it. That’s awesome.

Mariana: I ended up with an EA from BELAY, and she’s great. She works out really well.

Courtney: That’s amazing.

Verbs: Fantastic.

Mariana: I went through some learning curve on how to delegate, but other than that, it went well.

Courtney: I feel like everyone does. It’s never as easy, but the payoff is big.

Nick: I wanted to bring Mariana to meet with our brain trust of people because I just happened to be peeking through the pending posts in the Full Focus Planner Community, and she was so overwhelmed, in fact, that she actually spelled overwhelmed wrong. So I said, “Just hold that thought. We’re going to talk to these three experts.” So, Mariana, just take it away. What’s this feeling?

Mariana: Oh god. I don’t even know where to start. I have been told multiple times that the feeling of overwhelm is a result of not having focus, which makes sense. I feel like every time I look at my project list… First, it takes awhile for me to make sure I’m delineating between goals and projects, but I have a very long project list, and that’s not even the to-do list to do with each of those projects.

Even considering the full amount of delegation I can possibly do cash flow-wise as far as our contractors and extended team members… I mean, there’s just no way. So then I go through the project list, and I think, “How can I prioritize this? What are the most important…?” but it feels like there are at least 10 of them that are “need to be done now” things that greatly affect either cash flow or keeping the contractors who are working with us or really just basic things that have to be done. They all have to be done now. Then I look at this list, and I just have this burnout, overwhelm. Where do I start?

Blake: I’m sure you’re not alone in that, Mariana, because both of our listeners… We established that we probably only have a few listeners who still subscribe since Verbs was gone on sabbatical, but both of them, I’m sure, have felt that way or maybe feel that way currently. So thank you for being brave and willing to have another conversation with us. I wanted to just establish…

Verbs: Can I ask really quickly, Blake…? A really quick question based on what Mariana was saying. So, I feel like you’re saying most of your overwhelm is in the work domain. Is that right?

Mariana: It probably helps that we’re doing a really massive move right now as well. We just bought some property.

Courtney: Okay.

Verbs: Just a little smidgen.

Mariana: I don’t really have rejuvenation time at all.

Courtney: Guys, we should just all hold the presses here and say… Mariana, I know at the beginning you said, “I know some people say overwhelm is a result of not being focused.” I pretty adamantly disagree with that. I just said right before you got on… This morning, it was the first day of school. My kids woke up 30 minutes earlier than they were supposed to.

Those things didn’t happen because I wasn’t focused. It was just life. I think it’s really important to say when we feel overwhelmed, it can be all of these factors, all of these life domains. They impact our feelings. I think it’s really important to say, “Oh, also I’m in this massive move.” It totally makes sense that you’re overwhelmed.

Mariana: Yeah. I should have mentioned that. Just over the past year or so, I went from zero kids to three kids. I started living with someone who has three kids.

Courtney: Mariana!

Verbs: These layers, Mariana.

Courtney: Before we go forward in this episode, are there any more bombs you want to drop?

Verbs: Right. Anything else?

Mariana: Well, because it’s just normal. Right? So I’m just trying to…

Verbs: Are you moving internationally or just down the street?

Blake: She also just got back from Tokyo where she was doing gymnastics.

Mariana: I wish.

Courtney: Did you just call that normal? Actually, that is usually rare for people to go from zero to three kids in one year.

Verbs: In a year. Yes.

Mariana: And a steep learning curve.

Blake: What I wanted to establish again… What is your work? What do you do and what’s your role?

Mariana: Thank you. I have a company called Emu Systems. We’re also known as Emu Passive sometimes. We are specialists in the passive house building standard, which is a construction standard for the future that is a focus on occupant health, indoor air quality, energy efficiency, air sealing, and mitigation of thermal bridges. We teach and consult and certify to that standard. My business partner and I, who’s my ex-husband… Is that a bomb I should drop?

Blake: Yes.

Verbs: Call the bomb squad.

Courtney: This is the best. This is absolutely the best call of all time.

Mariana: I forget that that’s not normal too. We’re good.

Blake: You said, “I don’t have time for rejuvenation.” When was the last time you had a day that you really did not do any work and even resisted the urge to think about work?

Mariana: Well, that’s what concerns me. I forced that to happen recently. I knew this week was coming up, and this is our big builder training week. I knew it was going to be stressful. So, last week… We would normally have the kids for the weekend. We have them every weekend. My boyfriend took them camping for a night to give me a night just to be at home and watch some stupid TV and relax.

I did that, and it was wonderful. However, I was also just thinking of the list running through my head the whole time of what I should probably be doing instead of relaxing. I kind of worked through that. I forced myself, but I don’t feel like it helped in the way it should have. I mean, maybe I would be more stressed if I hadn’t done that, sure, but it didn’t… I feel this great need to produce, and it didn’t help me produce anything.

Blake: What in your mind is the emotion…? Courtney talked about overwhelm is this feeling. What to you would be the opposite feeling? When you say, “Help. I’m overwhelmed,” what is, from an emotional standpoint, before we even get to the practical… What’s the emotional state you feel you’re after, the other side of that coin?

Mariana: Confidence with just being on top of stuff.

Blake: Confidence that you’re on top of stuff.

Mariana: Yeah. Like, stuff is handled.

Blake: Is another way to say that the feeling that it’s done? The sense of “I don’t have to do anything right now because stuff is handled.” Is that what you mean?

Mariana: Not so much that. I like doing stuff. I will always find more stuff to do. It’s more that I’m meeting the expectations I need to be meeting, both from other people and myself, and that whatever has been set out, whatever needs to be done has been done. I think that need is where the problem is, because I see this list and I think they all absolutely need to be done right now, and it’s just not possible.

Blake: Let me clarify. The feeling you want is a feeling of confidence, and that feeling, in your mind, is accessible when what needs to be done is done.

Mariana: Yeah.

Blake: However, you also said there are always things you will be doing, and you’re struggling to differentiate the doing and the needing of things being done. In other words, it sounds like…

Mariana: That was just kind of in response to… You asked if the feeling of not having anything else to do would comfort me. Not necessarily. That’s what I meant by that. There’s always more that can be done. I believe you can always look to improve things. So it’s not that I’m looking for the feeling of “Oh, great. I don’t have to do anything.” It’s more that I’m looking for that confidence that what has been done has been done well and on time.

Verbs: It’s all accounted for.

Blake: The confidence that what has been done has been done well and on time, because there are always going to be things that need to be done as long as your company is in forward motion. So, can you be confident even though there are things that still need to be done?

Mariana: Yeah. I believe I could. Right now, though, it feels like stuff is slipping through the cracks. It’s like me on my own looking at these things, trying to evaluate importance, and potentially someone else looking at it would be like, “Mariana, that’s not as important as you think it is. Knock that off the list.”

Blake: Mariana, when was the last time you felt really confident, like what you’re describing?

Mariana: I mean, I’ve had it in waves. Pandemic time has been rough. We do hands-on, in-person builder workshop training, so there was a period at the beginning of that where we were kind of scrambling to figure out how to pivot things. But at the end of 2020, I felt like we had a good solution in place and were somewhat on top of it, and now we’re dealing with new problems. It’s a new business model, really, because we’ve gone online with things, and that was never the case before.

There are a lot of problems to figure out as far as how to get construction workers onto online training and things like that. I would say it goes in phases, where maybe a month at a time I feel pretty confident that we’re on top of things, and then… Right now, we had a full-time employee leave, and I’m shuffling around team members, and builder training week… Is that another bomb?

Verbs: Can we add that sound effect in, Nick, whenever the next bomb drops?

Mariana: I think there’s just a convergence of a lot of stuff, and when there’s a convergence of a lot of stuff, that’s when my confidence plummets that I’m getting it done.

Verbs: Sure. How would you say you’ve been doing when it comes to doing a Quarterly Preview, saying, “Hey, here’s what’s ahead,” accounting for everything, and then placing that in the upcoming months? How have you been doing with that?

Mariana: I struggle with the quarterlies. I even set aside time to just do a quarterly review all day. I just got to the point… Just to give you my Full Focus Planner history, I started the Full Focus Planner when the pandemic hit. Like, April 2020 was when I started. I really got into the swing of things… I didn’t even start doing Weekly Previews until the beginning of this year, and I feel like I’m getting a lot of value out of that now, whereas I remember at the beginning thinking, “When am I going to sit here and write on this list? Self-care? What am I going to write in that section?”

I think the Weekly Preview is starting to force me to think about things on a weekly basis. I haven’t gotten to that point with the quarterly. I always kind of start it, and then it spins out into other things. I don’t know. You need to do one of those… You know that guided Weekly Preview thing you did? You should do that for the quarterly.

Verbs: Boom.

Blake: A couple of things that I think, Verbs and Courtney, maybe we can agree are coming up are that there is are lot of things happening in Mariana’s world that are, objectively, big “life in motion” things, and we can also acknowledge that she’s struggling to determine what she, in her role, really needs to be doing, and there is always more left over that’s not done. We can also maybe see that the time to get above, you know, that 30,000-foot view we get with the Quarterly Preview is, at best, an unreliable process right now that’s not really doing the job it’s supposed to do.

Verbs, I think it was smart for you to zero in on that, because there’s a cascading effect on that, particularly in your role. When that’s shaky, everything else becomes harder and harder and harder to discern in terms of importance. We’ve also established that you do have a coach, but maybe, perhaps, you’re not getting the outcome you need from that relationship on a consistent basis if what you’re feeling is this consistent lack of confidence or consistent overwhelm. Are we in agreement on these observations?

Courtney: I think that was a beautiful summation.

Blake: Okay. So, there are two things that come to my mind. I don’t mean to put an oxygen tank on your back and force you to scuba too deep, but this concept… There’s a really practical thing. One is that when you’re leading a business… And even for you listening, if you’re not leading a business, this maybe still applies, because you’re listening to a productivity podcast, which means you’re interested in personal growth.

If you’re interested in personal growth, it’s because there’s something in you that wants to have a fuller life, a better expression and experience of life. Growth inherently is uncomfortable. There will always be this ebb and flow of uncomfortable growth and learning and then ease (“Oh, I reached that level”), then uncomfortable growth and learning, and then some ease.

With Mariana what you’re hearing is there are probably some areas of her life… Like, the fact that you’re able to peaceably have a business relationship with your ex-husband… My guess is there was some discomfort, and maybe now there are some things that are easier about that. I’m just projecting. I don’t know how all that goes, but to me, that sounds like a challenge, to put it lightly.

There are maybe areas, domains of your life, Mariana, where you’re doing a great job, where you’ve actually pushed through some discomfort and now you’re experiencing ease. In business right now you’re in this thing of “I’m feeling all this discomfort.” Well, that only happens because you’re growing. So, recognize that there will always… The goal is not to run a business and never be uncomfortable. The goal is to actually…

This is the second point I wanted to make. Your emotions aren’t due to your circumstances; they’re due to your perspective about your circumstance. The good news is you can control your perspective of your circumstance. I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s definitely not easy. That’s why it’s so helpful to have a coach or someone outside of your situation who’s farther along who can help you process through, “Well, what is this perspective?”

If your perspective is, “I shouldn’t have this much to do” or “This should already be done by now,” then the emotion of overwhelm is really natural, but if your perspective… And I’m just riffing, but if your perspective is, “The fact that there’s so much to do means I’ve done an incredible job building this business, because we’re on the precipice of another level of growth, and because I’m committed to seeing my vision come to pass, I know I’m going to come through this…”

Maybe it doesn’t remove the overwhelm, but maybe it brings it down a couple of degrees that brings your clarity of thinking back, your executive decision-maker back online. When we’re too far in overwhelm, we spin out of control, and we can’t make critical decisions. It damages our critical thinking. So, those are just a couple of things I noticed.

Mariana: You sound like my boyfriend, actually. My boyfriend is a nutritional health coach, and he’s always trying to talk about your perspective on things and has made me even enter a little line on my FFP where I try to do a daily affirmation about something I’ve done well.

Blake: Good. You maybe already know this, but your role as your company grows and changes also has to grow and change. You can’t expect to get better results in your company by doing things the way you did them previously. I’m sure you talk about this kind of thing with your business coach. Right?

Mariana: Yes. Delegation is really a hard thing. I’m kind of a perfectionist and haven’t quite figured out how to make sure I get the results I want out of folks I’m delegating things to if they’re not naturally someone who shows that initiative. I think that’s just a whole area that needs help.

Courtney: Guys, help me get this quote right. What does Michael say all the time? “Perfection is the death of good”?

Mariana: Perfect is the enemy of good.

Courtney: Nobody knows the…?

Verbs: We understand the heart of it, though. Yes. Something about not needing to be perfect. Just get it good.

Courtney: I was hoping I could get it exactly, but I can’t.

Verbs: I can’t remember.

Blake: Are you meaning perfectionism is the enemy of done?

Courtney: That’s a great quote.

Verbs: True too.

Courtney: I like that one.

Blake: That’s Blake Stratton’s version.

Courtney: I’ll attribute that to Blake from now on. Michael says something along those lines. I think in leadership, keeping ourselves in check, being able to hand off things and ask ourselves, “Could this person do it 80 percent as well as I could do it?” If yes, hand off with the expectation that, most likely, nobody could do it exactly the way you would do it because they aren’t you, and trying to see the win in those things. I think that is actually a muscle to be built and flexed over time.

So, rather than seeing it as, “Oh, I just keep not getting it the way I would want it,” think of it as like, “I am building this skill of being able to hand off and not look at the project and say, ‘That’s not exactly how I would have done it’ or ‘It’s not perfect,’” but celebrating “Wow! They did get it done.” We say all the time… With my assistant, I’m like, “Even if you can do a bad first draft, that’s really helpful to me.”

Mariana: It’s more my fault, not necessarily theirs. I don’t take the time to give instruction well because I just want it done and I know I could just do it. Oftentimes, my thought process is “Oh my gosh! It’s going to take me longer to explain to someone how to do this than it’s going to take for me to do it myself,” which I know everybody says when they’re talking about delegating.

Courtney: Yep. Well, Blake has already hit on this so well, but I just want to say it again, and I remind myself of this. The business, my team…they’re never going to go past me. I am always the cap. If I stop growing, if I stop being committed to doing the work to grow, that’s it. We’ve stopped. So I have to be aggressively working on my own growth if I want my team or my business to also grow. It starts and ends with me.

Blake: Mariana, this also comes back to the whole Quarterly Preview, but really it’s about vision. With our coaching program, we actually have our clients come to Nashville four times a year. You wouldn’t believe how many people… I’m like, “I don’t know if that’s a compliment.” It’s kind of a backhanded compliment.

They’re like, “You know, the best part of this day training I did was that I got on an airplane and left my business for a full day just to work on my vision. It wasn’t even anything you guys taught me.” I’m like, “Uh, thanks?” The point being, getting out of the business to work on the business and on your vision for it, on yourself personally and for the business, is so incredibly high leverage, because everything else is downstream from that.

Let me give you a metaphor. Depending on how high a building you want to build, it matters how deep you dig the foundation. When you’re building a house, it feels like nothing happens for forever because it’s just digging, digging, digging, clearing out this thing for an actual foundation.

For you, the fact that you’re not sure what you should delegate or if you’re struggling with “I’d better just do this myself,” it tells me that you’re out of touch with the cost, and you’re out of touch with the cost because you’re out of touch, probably, or have haziness around the vision. It’s like, “Boy, we want to build a 10-story house” or “We need to add two lanes here because this population is going to double.”

Now, all of a sudden, you can stomach “Hey, you know what? That was a bumpy road” or “That made traffic worse” or “This client got really ticked off.” Even at Michael Hyatt & Company, we occasionally have clients who are upset, and it’s because our system broke, because our system is growing and we’re fixing it. We’re doing construction on it, and it makes us better.

Anyway, I hope that encourages you. I don’t know if you can arrange it with your business coach. If not, we need to have another conversation about getting you in our program. But see if, “Hey, you know what? Instead of an hour… What could we do to actually get six hours to really go deep on vision and process through this so I can be more in touch with the cost of this busyness and the cost of this delegation?” Not only will that help the practical; I think that’ll help the emotional components of getting caught in the to-dos and the overwhelm.

Courtney: That was awesome. Hopefully that was so helpful for you.

Mariana: It was.

Courtney: We appreciate you so much.

Mariana: It was lovely talking to you guys.

Courtney: You too.

Mariana: I hope I can talk to you again sometime about some other crisis I’m having.

Verbs: Keep us updated.

Courtney: Absolutely. Yes. Keep us posted on how it’s going. Thank you so much.

Mariana: Bye.

Verbs: See you, Mariana.

Blake: Bye.

Verbs: The good news is you don’t have to stay stuck in overwhelm. When you leverage the Full Focus System and the best thinking of the Full Focus community, you can experience breakthrough. Courtney, I know you said you had a final thought you’d like to leave our listeners with.

Courtney: First of all, we did not know anything about Mariana’s situation. Hopefully, as you were listening, you got a lot of ideas for maybe when you have that feeling of overwhelm. Honestly, first, I hope you just stop when you feel overwhelmed and say, “Hey, this is a feeling. What’s the cause of the feeling I’m having?”

Blake, I know you were so good on today’s call because you do this with so many of our clients. We had no idea what she was going to be talking about. As I was listening to you, I was like, “I know there are so many people listening now who would probably love to have a chat like the one we just had with someone like you.” The good news is we have business coaching consultants who do this every day.

If you are a business owner who has more than $500,000 in business revenue and you would be interested in having a coaching call like this, I would love to give you the link to do that. You can sign up and apply at businessaccelerator.com/succeed. You can register to book a call there. Again, Blake… I mean, Verbs, that was amazing. Right? I was just sitting back watching. I’m like, “Blake does this all the time, and you can tell.”

Verbs: Let the man work. Yeah. That was fantastic. Listeners, thank you for joining us on Focus on This. This is…

Courtney: Wait. Wait. Wait.

Verbs: What? What happened?

Courtney: Guys, we forgot a really important thing, like really, really important. Verbs, last week you and I hosted a workshop, which was so fun. Right?

Verbs: It was.

Courtney: It was amazing.

Verbs: Loved it.

Courtney: But tomorrow our friend Blake here is doing a webinar, and he has a series of webinar time slots coming up for Free to Focus, our course. So, if you are listening and haven’t signed up to watch that webinar, you should definitely do that. Is there a link?

Blake: Nope. Just go on the Internet. How big is the Internet? You can find it.

Verbs: Go do the Google.

Courtney: Okay. If you want to be part of that webinar, if you want to hear all the wisdom from Blake, you can sign up for that at focusonthispodcast.com/webinar. If you are feeling overwhelmed, that’s a great place to start. Free to Focus is the system, along with Best Year Ever, that your planner is set up with, so there’s so much you’re going to be able to apply from both this webinar and this course that’s coming out.

Verbs: Again, thank you for joining us on Focus on This. This is the most productive podcast on the Internet, so please share it with your friends. We’ll be here next week with another great episode. Until then…

All: Stay focused!