PODCAST HOST SHARES: How do you manage & maximise your energy as an Entrepreneur? with Debra Chantry-Taylor | Professional EOS Implementer - Episode 62 of Better Business, Better Life!

Welcome to another episode of Better Business Better Life. I’m your host, Deborah Chantry Taylor. I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs and their leadership teams get what they want out of business and life. On the show, I invite successful business owners and expert speakers to share their successes. They are open and honest about the highs and lows of business and also life as a business owner. We want to share those learnings with you to inspire you, but also to help you avoid some of the common mistakes. My hope is that you take something from each of these short episodes that you can put into action to help you get what you want, not only out of your business, but also your life. Good morning, and welcome to another episode of Better Business better lives. My name is Deborah Chantry-Taylor, and I’m the host of this podcast series. I spend my life as a professional EOS implementer, which is all about helping people create a better business, they can actually have a better life. And it’s part of my reason for being is to actually enable that I think life is too short to not be doing what you love. Today, I am going to be talking to you about the 10 disciplines for managing and maximizing your energy as an entrepreneur. And as you know if you’ve been missing for the last couple of weeks, it’s a pre recorded podcast, because I’m actually at this current point in time roaming around the South Island in a campervan with my husband and my two dogs, hopefully seeing some amazing scenery, drinking some nice wine, eating nice food and meeting some great people. So I’ve record0ed a whole series of these podcasts that you’re actually going to hear. But don’t worry, this is not going to continue this way. It’s only for a short period of time. I’ve got a couple of amazing guests lined up for when I get back. And I just snuck one in this morning as well. So you’ll actually have somebody probably in the next episode, who’s actually talking about their journey through the entrepreneurial life. And then we’ll come back for a couple more episodes from me. And then finally, when I get back, we’ll have a whole bunch of new people to come on board to the podcast. But in the meantime, I didn’t want you to miss out on having some useful tips and tools you can use in your business. And so today I am talking about these 10 disciplines, which actually come from a man who I have huge respect for and that man is Gino Wickman. So Gino develop the Entrepreneurial Operating System or EOS. And that is a system for managing energy in your business, which gets everyone focused in the same direction. And this particular podcast about how do we as entrepreneurs, as business leaders actually manage and maximize our energy as an entrepreneur, to ensure we can actually manage that energy in the business. I currently do about seven out of 10 of them. So I’m going to share the ones I do really well. And maybe the ones that don’t do so well and give you some examples of what we actually do. So that his whole book, The EOS life is written about how to live your ideal entrepreneurial life. And this 10 disciplines are actually part of that book. And when we talk about the idea of entrepreneurial life here at EOS, we talk about doing what you love with people you love, making a huge difference, being compensated appropriately with time to pursue other passions. I’m going to talk about these 10 disciplines and what we can do as entrepreneurs to help us get towards it in that EOS life. The first question we have to ask is know why are entrepreneurs different. And I guess it’s because you know, we already know about leadership or management’s not gonna tell you how to lead or manage, you’re already doing that. We don’t have to figure out how to motivate you, because you’re already motivated. Entrepreneurs take huge risks. They’re always putting themselves out there, they have huge energy, they’re very driven, they’re very passionate. And we’re not going to address exercising or eating right, because we’re kind of assuming that you’re actually looking after yourself as an entrepreneur. So the 10 disciplines I’m going to share with you are more about how you can actually put in place some really simple practices that can actually help you in terms of managing and maximizing your energy. So number one, and the first thing Gino talks about is 10 year thinking. And what he says is that you know thinking in 10 year timeframes, but its long term perspective, which is essential to any successful entrepreneur, if you can actually think long term, you can start to slow, dark time down, which improves your decision making and your patience. And so it allows you to prepare for the great, the good and the bad years in the business cycle, and grants you the foresight to be prepared for the unexpected challenges.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  4:21

And one of the things that Gino always says is that we people tend to overestimate what they can get done in a year. And they underestimate what they can do in 10 years. So if we shift this long range thinking and time slows down, you’ll find a certain peace will actually come over you and you’ll start to make better decisions and become more consistent. You’ll be a better leader for your people. And the irony is that whilst you slow down, you’ll actually get to where you want to go faster. So what is 10 year thinking? So this is really about thinking about the future in the long term. So if you think about the date right here right now, we are in August 2022 10 years from now is August 2032. Have a think about how old you’ll be at that date, this might be a little bit confronting for most of you, because for me, that means I’ll be 62 years old. And let’s face it in the past that was traditionally retirement age. Once you’ve got that really, really clear in your mind, you’re going to be 62 Debra in 10 years time, what is the number one most important thing you’ll want to have accomplished on that date? And this becomes your sole focus in terms of what you’re trying to do. So this can be from a business perspective, or from a personal perspective. But you know, once you have a really clear understanding of where you’re headed, you can then start to ask the questions around, does everything I’m doing aligned with my 10 year goal. And if not, you have the chance to actually adjust it and adjust your course to do that. Really compounding exercise really, really good getting you on track. And one of the things that Gino talks about is a 10 year cycle. So the 10 year thing, he will help you burn less energy, but you have to be prepared because in every 10 years, there will always be two great years, six good years and two terrible years that can actually put you out of business. So you need to be prepared for that. You need to always have six months reserves in the bags that you can actually go through those two terrible years that could potentially bookbinder business. And like it or not, is a 10 year cycle. It’s very rare that you don’t actually achieve that. So it means you have to know there will be some good years, there’ll be some great years, but they’ll always be there to terrible years. So thinking in terms of 10 year cycles and thinking long term helps you really focus on what’s important. Number two is about taking time off. And this is really funny because it’s the ones that I do. I’ve got the 10 year thing down pat, I do take time off. I’m actually currently as I said in a campervan, or motorhome, I should say, traveling around the South Island of New Zealand, taking some time out. And when Gino says take time off, what he means is you need to turn your brain off, just like your body needs deep restorative sleep your brain needs rest time too. And if you think about the Stephen Covey thing of sharpening the saw before you actually start chopping down the trees, the sharpening of the soil is when you’re turning your brain off allowing your brain the time to actually restore itself. So you can actually be the sharpest possible mind you can have and give you the best possible outcome. So we urge you to take actual time off, choose the number of days you will take off per year and actually stick to it. I have a plan that my entire year on this this trip I’ve got planned the whole of August being away has been in there since the beginning. And I knew that no matter what happened, I will be taking August off. I urge you when you do take this time to leave your phone calls and your emails to your assistant whoever is covering you while you’re away. Because any tapping into any of those things might just bring you back to the fighting fire. So the working in the business, it’s not going to allow you the time to really recharge your brain. If you can do this, you’re going to return re energized and subsequently become more creative and more productive. So how many days off? Do you actually want to commit to take time off, make sure you’ve got that written down, plan it out in your calendar. And I use the phrase which I learned from one of my fellow EOS implementers ‘Plan your life or your year before someone else does.’ I have a template where I actually plan out the whole year so that nobody can tell me all my life isn’t guided by everybody else’s wants and needs. I still make sure I have plenty of time for my clients. And then I want to make sure I serve in the best way I possibly can. But I know that I need to take time off as well.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  8:27 

So that is number two, take time off. Number three is about knowing thyself. And this comes down to you know if you can’t really be yourself, if you don’t know yourself, you need to know your strengths, your weaknesses, your modus operandi. And you need to be able to then use that in terms of what you’re doing. So if you don’t know how to start finding out who you are, here are a few tools you can actually use. You can use personality profiling tools, you know, there’s things like Colby, which is very much use in EOS, you’ve got your Myers Briggs, your disc was a whole bunch of personality profiling tools or some around relationships. The Gottman Institute has amazing things around relationship profiling. Next thing you could do is you could actually go to therapy. And I know this sounds very American and I gotta go oh, I don’t need a therapist that you have to remember that having a therapist isn’t just about having someone you can talk to. And not all therapists are the same some there’s some good therapists and not so great therapists. And it depends on what you’re looking for from a therapist. So do go and try it. Do try a couple of them. Make sure you find the right person. I know personally speaking to somebody externally has massive benefits in terms of being able to let things out of your system and get things out. The third thing you can do is start asking people in your life for insight. Ask them for good honest feedback. Tell them you know what are my strengths, are my weaknesses ask different people from different circles. Ask your your husband or your spouse or your sister or your brother asked your mother or your father asked the people in your community outside of work. Ask the people at work, get some feedback and just get a sense of you know how they see you. So you can start to really understand who you are. And the reason being is, you know, if you can start to be your authentic self, sure, you’ll scare some people away. Others will judge you, others won’t like you. But others will actually stick with you even more closely. And your energy will actually thrive because you don’t have to worry about being anyone but yourself, no matter the context. And Gino talks about this. In his book, he says that, you know, there was a time when he got thrown a surprise 30th birthday party by his wife, and in this room of people from all walks of his life, who were from his business, they were from colleagues, friends from his sporting clubs, people from his family, and he suddenly realized he was actually a different person around all these different groups of people. And that is a massive drain on our energy, and we’re trying to be something that we’re not, and then imagine being confronted by all these people in the same room, and suddenly you have to go, you know, what person am I? How exhausting must that be? So he has a most wonderful phrase, it’s an impassioned plea is that you let your freak flag fly and just be the unique being that you are. And by that he means fully unapologetically you, when you’re 100%, you have more energy, because you’re not faking it. And I kind of wrote this a few years ago, where I realized now, most of you who know me reasonably well will know that I have got two beautiful puppies and a couple of cats at home, three cats at home. And we will animal as I always have done, and my animals coming to my office with me, if you don’t want them here, fine, we can move them out from it, generally, I love having them around me. And I talked to somebody about the fact that you know, because it’s such an important part of my life. And I learned all these amazing lessons from my dogs, particularly, I’ve wanted to bring them on stage for a talk that I was doing. And I immediately got this other, you can’t do that. That’s not professional, what will people think of you? And I almost took it on board and thought, Yeah, that’s true here having dogs on stage, maybe not. And then I thought, no, you know what? Stop it. I’m gonna do it anyway. And so I had to go give a presentation at university to a whole bunch of students. And I took my two dogs and for the first time ever, I was completely authentically, unapologetically myself on stage. And I would suggest it’s one of the best talks I’ve ever given. Because I felt relaxed, I felt I knew who I was, I wasn’t trying to be anybody else. And the feedback from that event was just amazing. And now quite regularly, my dogs actually go with me on stage, if it’s appropriate to depending what I’m talking about. But certainly I love doing that. When I do my talks. When I work with clients, sadly, I am not sadly, I’m British and British, you know, we tend to swear a lot, it’s really hard for me not to use the F word or to you know, if you’ve seen the movie four weddings or a funeral, imagine that opening scene. That’s what I get. Like, sometimes when I’m frustrated, I use swearing as a way of expressing myself. And so I’ve been very, very careful. Because for some people, that’s been offensive, but at the same time, that is who I am. And I’m not going to hide that away. So I will always say to my clients, hey, you’ll have to excuse me, I talk too fast. I get very passionate what I’m doing and I will occasionally swear please there is nothing meant by it. There’s no malice intended, its just who I am.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:57

So have a think about you know, who are you? Who are you truly? have a think about going to a therapist, use some profiling tools, ask people for some feedback, and use that clarity break that I talked about to actually think about who am I? Why do I exist? What do I want out of my life and make sure you’re really clear about who you are 100% and before is perhaps what I’m not so good at and it’s about being still. So Gino emphasizes the power of taking time to be still and silent every day. So imagine a glass of water was sand in it. If you’re always on the go, then it is murky. When that glass is moving the whole time. It’s always murky. It needs time to settle for a few minutes, and that becomes clear, and lucid and calm. So we as humans are exactly the same. We need time to be still so that we can become clear, lucid and calm. And it’s tough, right? And Gino says don’t be discouraged if you’re not wet at first. This is a discipline that takes time to develop. If you can do it though, and I am learning how to do it myself. The result is you’ll be more creative, you’ll have clear ideas and your energy will shoot through the roof. So the best way that you can actually do this is at the start of your day, just take 10 minutes, even if it means coming into the office first and then taking 10 minutes, sit quietly in a chair. Be completely and utterly still pause and breathe and just see what happens. With this for 30 days it becomes a habit. And I think you’ll find that if you just keep calm and just breeze. That clarity that lucidity comes when the water is not being shaken consistently. Number five is about knowing you’re 100% Every year at the end of every year, Gino actually looks at his calendar and he adds up how many days he worked and how many he actually had off. And he weighs that up against how his energy levels felt during the year. And if you felt spread really thin he reduced the number of days he wants the next year. And if you felt like you had good energy the whole time around he might push that away a bit or he might stick with the same but the key thing is you’ve got to pay attention to your energy levels throughout your working days, your weeks and your months. And that will help you determine your capacity and define your 100%. I’ve said in earlier podcasts I know for me now 55 60 hours is about where I’m at my sweet spot. Anything more than that, unless there’s a more diminishing return, I’m just not – I’m actually going downhill, I’m actually not getting any more effort. And in fact, my productivity slips. I also know now it’s taken me a few years. But I now know that I need to have a decent break throughout the year. And lots of mini breaks as well. And so I actually plan out my year in advance, with all my holidays, all my rest time, all of my long weekends, my family time and have it in there before I even start looking at making the point was for clients. So think about what is your number? What’s your 100%? How many hours per week do you want to work? How many weeks a year do you want to work? And it’s different for everybody, but be really clear about that. And once you have that, then also think about what’s your ideal wakeup time. For me, I know that it’s generally around about 530 6, strangely, five o’clock, and I’m exhausted anything before five and I’m just about walking dead. So it’s always been five minutes. It’s my day, where your time What time do you need to go to bed to do that? So for me, if I want to be up at 530 in the morning, I’ve really got to be in bed by 930. I need eight hours sleep? What time do I need to go home from work? You know, Steve will tell you I often get a phone call. And it’s like, are you coming home this evening, darling? I’m so sorry, I forgot. So now we actually have it in my calendar, there’s a time when I need to go home. And that is to enable me to have the time that I need to spend with my family. And then once you have that number, you know what your ideal wake up time, your ideal time to go to bed, your ideal time to go home. Just follow it regularly. Because if you can be in high energy, and you’ve got 100% of your energy, you are absolutely the best version of yourself. Number six is say no often, and this is something that we talked about in the last podcast is like actually, really, really successful people know to say No to almost everything. And there’s a really great book by Greg McKeown, I think it’s called Greg McKeown is his name, but he wrote a book called Essentialism. And he talks about really getting back to the absolute basics you know, it’s either a hell yes. Or it’s a no, there is nothing in between. So if you know your long term goal, you know why you’re on this planet. If you know how many hours you can work in a week, you can be really comfortable and you know, either go to Hell yeah, I want to do that is to make my boat go faster, make my heart sing, make you feel amazing, or it’s a no nothing in between. And so when someone asks something of you that’s outside of your capacity, you’ve got two options, right? You can say no and feel discomfort for a few minutes. Or you can say yes, or regret it for days, weeks, months or potentially years. So Gino’s says ‘I love saying No to people. It’s so easy for me to say no, because it’s so obvious what I’m saying No to.’ And what he means by that is is very, very clear on his long term goal and how things work in with that, which means it does not fit in with that long term goal. That’s a definite no.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:00 

So it is difficult to say no, though. Because, you know, especially if you’re half British, you kind of go oh, I don’t want to upset anybody want to offend anybody. So how do I say no? And just saying no, it was really blunt. So there’s a really good way of doing it. You don’t have to explain your No. If somebody says to you, Hey, Deb, would you come into this talk for us next week? You can say ‘thank you for thinking of me, but I’m afraid it’s a no thank you.’ You don’t have to explain why. Yes. You just say no, it’s not for me. Gino did a talk that we’re watching where he got somebody to ask him for something. And he was he was literally, ‘Yep, yes. Thank you. But no.’ And that is how you do it. So just make sure. So write down one thing you should have said yes. Should have said no to and not yes to? And how could you have said no to it? What is the one thing commit to say no to one person this week. Number seven, is also been talked about in my previous podcast, don’t do $25 an hour work. Now if you want to earn six figures, plus, as an entrepreneur, running a business, then you have to make sure that you are paying someone to do that $25 An hour work for you. So you’ve got the energy to do the things you’re good at the things that only your six figures. So think about the things you hate and how it makes you feel when you’re doing them. And think about the things that you love and how it makes you feel when you’re doing that. So be very, very clear who’s the delegate and elevate tall and just think about you know, what are the admin tasks that you’re doing in your professional life and your personal life? Sit down and write a list of all the administrative tasks you’re actually doing? Is it to cleaning the house? Is it that work that you’re answering emails that make no sense for you to be doing, write every single thing down? And now you’ve got a job description for your new assistant go ahead and hire one and I would thoroughly recommend that everybody should have an assistant when I first heard this from Gino I thought well that’s old fashioned you know we don’t need assistant in today’s age I can do everything myself. I’m super you know super onto everything. I know technology is but why would you be doing it? Why would you waste your precious time doing things that somebody else could do. And so it’s it’s having an assistant, having a VA over the Philippines, it’s just made such a massive difference to my life. I mean it clean it at home takes away that time you spend cleaning, when we get into our next house, I will be having a gardener. It’s not that I’m a snob is that I don’t like gardening, I want to do gardening when I want to do it. And when it makes me feel good, I don’t want to have to do it. And if I’m having to continually garden the garden, then that is taking away time from things that I love doing. So don’t do $25 An hour work, make a list of all the things that you want to delegate and get yourself an assistant. Number eight is prepare every night. So Gino says that you should not go to sleep until you have clarity on what you’re doing the next day. And the reason for this is you know if you go to sleep, and you’re not really, really clear about what you need to do the next day, this is usually the time where you wake up at 2am 3am in the morning, kind of oh my gosh, I’ve got to think about this. And suddenly you find yourself in a bed writing something down, possibly grabbing your phone, which is great, not for your sleep. So you know he says that just sit down, put yourself in front of a he talks about a legal pad I use my remarkable, I love my remarkable. And I literally sit there and I go through and even though I have an electronic calendar, I literally write up my calendar for the next day, I go through all the points I have to do, like I said all the tasks I need to do, I put my focus and who I wanted to focus on tomorrow. And this will actually help you sleep better wake up with more ideas and hit the ground running. And I learned one of my previous podcasts guest when we first wake up in the morning is the only time in our lives when we are actually in theta state, which is where our brain has the capacity to take things on board. So if you didn’t go to bed at night, having got everything out of your head and you wake up in the morning, the best thing you can possibly do is make zero decisions. As soon as you make a decision that could be built out of that theta state, pick up something you want to learn, be it a book or course whatever it is that you’re doing, and actually feed that into your brain at that point. As soon as you have to make a decision that theta state is gone. And that is the best time and stuff will actually go into your brain. So on that basis, you know, have your coffee ready to go know what you’re going to wear the next morning, have everything ready, prepare the night before, and then you know be ready to do it. So before you go to sleep, lay out your next day carry out for the entire week, see how you feel it’s been a massive difference to my sleeping patterns. You can use any device or pad that you like just get it all out of your head. And then use the Pomodoro principle to break down work into chunks. Think about the course you made, about the meetings you to attend, think about the projects to finish and listen to my podcast, the guest name, but I will put it in the links. Listen to that, how he actually works that. And if you like to be spontaneous, then you’ve actually lost control of your life and you’re letting other people manage your energy. So sometimes by being actually more restrictive or more structured around the way you plan your day, you have the ability to be more spontaneous, but you don’t want to control those control of your life. So you need to plan your own life and do what you need to do.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:59 

Number nine is about putting everything in one place. So successful people receive copious requests and make lots of commitments. They have numerous ideas, and they solve many problems throughout any given day. So write down everything you think about every plan, you make everything you do in one place. And this will actually streamline your energy and prevent you from forgetting important ideas and meetings, you will let yourself and others download frequently. So it just gives you this this much simpler way of actually managing things. And again, I don’t get paid by them. But I love my remarkable because I can actually store everything in there. I can put it into folders, I can categorize it. I can search on things based on titles and words and things in the actual document. So this has really saved me a huge amount of energy and time because I’m not looking for what note pad was that? And what diary is that in? Where did I put that I can just go that one place and make sure that it’s there. So decide that one place that you’re going to put every single work commitment, idea and thought into capture everything that comes up in the day in that place. And just try it for a week. If you think about it, having stuff all over the place makes the brain have to work overtime. And working overtime means wasted energy. And this is all about actually conserving and maximizing our energy. So put everything in one place. And the very, very final or discipline number 10 is about being humble. And so the way that you described this in the book as he talks about arrogance, you know, a level of importance you place yourself on in comparison to others. So where are you on the humble to arrogance scale? And Gino, he recommends you ask people, you know, on a scale of you know, being completely humble to being completely arrogant. Where do you actually sit? Because when you are humble, you get more energy back from the people that you’ve put out. I can only say I have been absolutely blown away by the number of people who’ve offered to come on my podcast where people have offered to help my clients for the people who you know, when I need something, they’re just there for me. I spend my life trying to help others but it’s just so rewarding to see that come back as well. So listen, this is how I would do it. So Gino recommend doing it list the five most important people in your life? Is it your spouse? Is it your work colleague is it your when your suppliers, the five most important people, your best friends, your family, and then reach out to them and ask them where they would place you on the arrogant to humble spectrum. The more humble you are, the more it will help you attract people who mirror your attitude. I am so fortunate to be part of communities like the EOS community, like the connector communities, people who are all very, very similar in terms of humbleness, in terms of helping first. And I have to say, I love that – I love that about my life, I am surrounded by people, I’m doing what I love for people, I love them, there’s nothing more important in life. So that is the 10 disciplines of managing and maximizing your energy. There is an EOS live blog all about it, which means you can actually go there and you can read small things. I think there’s also there’s an EOS life podcast, which goes more into EOS life side of things. And there’s also a web page for the latest updates as well. So I will make sure that all of those links are in the comment section of the podcast or the description section. And there’s some really great tools you can download. But I would highly recommend getting hold of the EOS life book, which also contains these tenders of busy managing and maximizing your energy. And Gino goes into some specific examples with people that he’s worked with and some exercises you can actually do, which is accompanied by us on the EOS life journal, which actually helps you record all this as well. That’s it from me for this particular podcast. I’ve got a couple more episodes of myself while I’m still out and about until I get back in early September. And then we’ll be back straight into interviewing other guests. I hope this has been helpful. If there’s anything I can do to help you please do reach out my contact details are there in the description. Have an awesome week and make sure that you maximize your energy and get the most out of your life. Thank you. Thanks again for joining us on better business better life with me your host Debra Chantry Taylor. If you enjoy what you heard, then please subscribe to this podcast and let us help you to get what you want out of business in life. Each week we release a new short episode which will give a success story and three takeouts to put into action immediately. These will help you take your business from good to great. The podcast is also supported by free resources, templates and useful tools which you can find at Debra Chantry. taylor.com I am a trained entrepreneurship and business coach, a professional EOS implementer and an established business owner myself. I work with established businesses to help them get what they want. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to have a chat about how I might be to help you. Or if you’d like to join me as a guest on this podcast. Thanks again to NZ audio editors for producing this podcast. See you on the next episode.