"Motivating Within Your Firm" w/ Matt Granados 228

Matt Granados is the CEO of Life Pulse, a consulting, coaching, and speaking organization that has created a simple solution for two of the biggest problems plaguing individuals' ability to perform both personally and professionally. The first - an issue with bandwidth. The second - an issue with motivation. Because of these issues, it is becoming more and more difficult for individuals, no matter their age, to live a fulfilled life. Again, LP's systems solve both of these.

5:35 System for sustainable motivation
7:17 Can everyone be motivated
7:52 Motivation is not a character trait, it’s a state of mind
9:45 How to motivate Un-mo’s
11:30 Motivational catalysts
14:45 The biggest issue when motivating people: managers
16:05 When employee goals are unaligned with the company vision
18:45 Managing vs motivating
23:45 Communication issues
29:13 Play to your strengths vs fix your weaknesses

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Find Matt @LifePulseInc

Jim’s Hack: The Magic of Thinking Big by Jim Schwartz

Tyson’s Tip: Otter integrates with Zoom and will transcribe your Zoom meeting.

Matt’s Tip: 34:20 Live your life 7 days at a time, day to day is too short. 

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Run your law firm the right way.

This is The Maximum Lawyer Podcast.

Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Mutrux.

Let's partner up and maximize your firm.

Welcome to the show.

Jim: Welcome back to The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. I'm Jim hacking.

Tyson: And I'm Tyson Mutrux. What's up, Jimmy?

Jim: Tyson, we’ve been spending a lot of time together lately, mostly in the Guild, doing podcast, doing Q & A's. It's been a good week.

Tyson: Lucky you. It's a good week for you.

Jim: Oh, dear Lord.

How you been?

Tyson: Doing well. I'm a little tired this morning. I don't know. When I got up, I was just really groggy. I don't know. I guess, it's just been a long week. It's a weird week, because we had a short week, so the days are all off a little bit. I don't know.

Jim: Yeah, that threw me off, but I'm on my third day getting back on the Miracle Morning, so I have been up since 5:00, got a ton done already. I'm feeling good.

I'm excited about our guest today. Do you want to go ahead and introduce him?

Tyson: Yeah, so our guest today is Matt Granados - I hope I said it right, with Life Pulse Inc.

How you doing Matt?

Matt: Doing well. How are you guys doing?

Tyson: Doing great.

Jim: Matt. So, you were introduced to us by our good friend, Joey Vitale. Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Matt: Yes. So, Joey told me about what you guys are doing and said that we should connect.

Life Pulse is a company that we started. It's a consulting company that, I like to tell people, we accidentally started. So, it came up from when my wife and I got engaged. She knew that marrying me was going to be difficult, being an entrepreneur, but she didn't realize how difficult that was going to be. She came to me and said, “Hey, you're a little crazy. A little crazier than I thought. How do you manage all this stuff that's going on in your head?” And I said, “Well, it's easy. Every Sunday, I ask myself these same nine questions.” And she looked at me like I was crazy. And I just assumed everybody did something like this. And I've been doing it for decades. She asked if she could use it and we can share it together. And I always joke, being kind of like a self-growth nerd - it was the sexiest thing anyone's ever said to me. Right, when she asked if she could use my system with me.

So, we started using it, and I realized how amazingly disconnected I was with my wife. I would’ve answered almost all of her questions incorrectly. We started using it. I started using it in one of my companies where it's a very unique sales business where we would hire individuals off Craigslist, who weren't the most motivated individuals or the most productive individuals, and we were able to build a $40-million sales organization.

So, we took that, converted it, and started teaching the system to our sales reps - teaching the system to our warehouse managers. One thing led to another. We realized that there's a lot of value in the system that I've been using that I never shared.

Eventually, I got reached out to by a Fortune 500 company. They told me that this little book that I had solves their biggest personnel problem, would I be willing to talk. I, obviously, as an entrepreneur and an opportunist, I said, “Absolutely. I'd love to.” I had no clue what I was solving or what we were going to talk about. They told us their biggest personnel problem is that they can't connect their corporate desire metrics with their individual’s desired lifestyles. And I said, “Well, that's interesting. Who else has that issue?” And they said, “Almost every business owner out there has that exact issue right now.” I said, “How did you use to solve it?” They said, “We used to just throw money at the problem and people would go away,” right, you’d give them big enough paycheck, they'll stop.

So, what happened? I went home from that meeting. Talked to my wife, who originally told me I have too many ideas and blamed her for starting Life Pulse. That's how the company started. So, it was all based on this little book that you see over here, this LP, it's a nine-part planning system which then led to us writing a book based on some of the clients we’ve worked with. So, we've worked with Google, Twitter, United States Air Force, all the way down to individuals, small business owners, attorneys, doctors. You name it. Anybody who considers their time to be valuable, we work with. Which led us to write this book, Motivate the Unmotivated, that's actually coming out later on this year. That's the story behind why we do what we do.

What we actually do is our whole goal is to bring intentionality back to life. You were talking about the Miracle Morning. What Hal’s done there, I think is amazing. I love that system. I think it's great for everybody to have a cadence like that. What we found is a way to do whatever system you're trying to implement.

We teach the how to the what. A lot of people learn what to do. We show how to do it. And part of it is because, as an entrepreneur, my whole job is to create systems that are more efficient than something else in order to bring value to a customer. That's what we've done.

So, we do the Unbreakable Foundation, which is building an individual's bandwidth while minimizing their stress. And then, we also have a program where we teach what we call Motivational Management. We teach people how to build sustainable motivation in their life and all the people's lives around them. And then, we also do what we call a 90-day Gold Rush. That's my favorite one because that's what our highest producing clients where we take them on a 90-day journey, whatever goals they want. It's a three-month program. We guarantee results. Otherwise, we give them their money back.

So, based on what we've done, anecdotally, and obviously research came to back it afterwards, we realized our system works really, really well and we travel the world teaching it to as many people as who want to hear.

Tyson: I find the title of the book fascinating, Motivate the Unmotivated: the Proven System for Sustainable Motivation. It's a great title. I love it. I think it strikes a chord, probably, with everybody.

But something that you talk about, in general, is strengthening your personal foundation. Can you talk about that and why it's important?

Matt: Yeah.

A foundation is something, I think, all of us as we become successful, which if they're in this group with you, either (a) they are successful or (b) their goal is to become successful. Once we hit kind of a point of, “Hey, we're cool with where we are. We're okay with where we are.” We tend to forget all the things that got us there. I'm a true believer that fundamentals-- there's no new fundamental. I mean, they've always been there. We tend to forget to do them. So, if you don't have a strong foundation-- and we all know these stories We've read these in multiple success books, without a strong foundation, when something comes your way, it's going to throw you off. So, by increasing your bandwidth and pulling more on your plate, if you don't have a strong foundation, that's like putting more weight on something that's made out of spaghetti sticks and marshmallows. Eventually, it's going to break.

So how do we build that foundation? Well, we start with the individual. So, if you sit there and say, “My company’s having issues.” I can almost guarantee you, a large majority of those issues are coming from what's happening between your ears, and what's happening in your personal life, and what's happening in the relationships in your life, what's happened physically with your body. And because of that, we've created what we've discovered as the four vital signs of fulfillment. That's what we work on with every individual. It’s how are you growing? It's internal, physical, relational, and professional. How are you growing your mind? How are you growing your body? How are you growing your connections? Then, obviously, how are you growing your career? And if you don't focus on those four evenly, it's like driving a car without having proper air in all four tires.

Jim: All right, Matt, do you think everybody can be motivated or do you think that there's some people who, no matter how hard you try, you can't get through to?

Matt: Yes, everybody can be motivated because, innately, we are designed to have desires. Now, some are easier than others.

So, the main character in this book is someone I call Unmo. Unmo is a long distant cousin of Elmo. For legal reasons, we didn't get full rights of it so please, attorneys, just back off, but you get the point, right? And Unmo, hasn't shaved in days. He’s always a little bit back. We all have Unmo’s in our life.

What tends to happen is motivation is not a character trait, it’s a state of mind. And when you recognize it as that, to all my attorneys out there, if it's just a state of mind, we can change that. And that's something that's really meant a lot to me is that why would somebody not be motivated?

And the reason people are in that unmotivated state of mind is because they aren't able to connect their actions with their outcomes. And that's what we do with the entire program is we teach people to find what's called a PVTT (Personal Value Tied to Task). When you find what that personal value is tied to your task, that brings worth to the actions to be taken.

Too many times, we throw stuff at people trying to get them to be motivated and it doesn't work. So, the hardest person right now, in my life, to get what I want them to do is my daughter. My daughter is three years old. She's got a genetic mutation that's causing her to have early onset muscular dystrophy. She can't walk, can't crawl. She's basically immobile. I use this as an analogy because it's what's happening in my life right now and I truly believe, if I'm going to be walking and preaching this stuff, I’d better be using it.

To kind of answer a caveat to your question, Jim, there are these things called motivational boundaries that you can only push people to a certain limit before we have to take a step back, let them catch their breath and let them move forward. I could use every motivational trick in the world to get my daughter to walk. That's not going to happen. I have to push her, and then let her relax, and push her, and let her relax. It's all about bringing people to the point right past the stress line, and then giving them a chance to get the reward, enjoy it, and then give them another target to hit.

So, it is a constant movement of-- I call it moving the food bowl. You know, how do you herd cats? Literally, you just have to move the food bowl. That's the only way you can herd a group of cats. So, this is the same way, when you're motivating somebody is find out what food they want and put the food bowl where you feel it needs to be, so they can at least reach it. And then, once they reach it, don't move it right away. Let them enjoy it. Let them eat for at least a second.

Tyson: So Matt, let’s say that you've got a group of Unmo’s working for you, what are some simple solutions for motivating your herd of Unmo’s?

Matt: Okay, so the philosophy of fire fast, hire slow, which is what you'll hear in most books, I get and, as an entrepreneur, I've done. But I don't like to fire people if I'm not giving them a system to succeed in. Does that make sense? Like, I think we start blaming Unmo’s for things that we can [crosstalk].

Tyson: The first thing that people want to jump to, fire the person. Fire the person. Usually, it's the system that's the problem.

Matt: And the cost of firing somebody and re-hiring is not worth the investment it would take to actually do what we teach to do.

So how do you take care of a group of people like that? So, if we were to come in and do our Motivational Management Program, the first thing we would do is we would do what we call our motivational catalyst assessment. So motivation, I relate to, is like a pilot flame in a furnace. If it's managed properly, it does exactly what you want, keeps your house at the right temperature, all that stuff. If it's not managed properly, it blows up, right? I mean, it's not any less dangerous than any other flame. It's just managed.

So how do we do that? We find a motivational catalyst. The catalyst is something that triggers motivation. So what I mean by that is if I put this in front of them, aka the carrot in front of the horse, it will trigger them to walk in the direction I want them to walk.

Too many times, when we have these Unmo’s, we think we're putting a carrot in front of their face that's going to get them to walk and we're on the side of the horse basically whipping the horse to walk, like we're babysitting. We're not managing. And we're confusing that with managing. So, I go through and find out what their motivational catalysts are.

Anyone who's listening, you can go onto our website, LifePulseInc.com/mca and you can actually take the assessment for free. You could have your employees do it as well.

But the four catalyst is freedom, acknowledgement, connectivity, and support. Freedom are individuals who are doing what they want so they can go do more of what they want. Meaning, they might be working in your law firm, not because they're passionate about law, right. They’re working in your law firm because they’re getting a paycheck. And because they have that paycheck, they're able to do something with that. So that's the first thing - freedom.

Acknowledgement are individuals who want to be told, “Good job!” right. That's that person that loves when you comment, “Hey, thanks for being here. I appreciate you being part of the team. You're the most valuable player on the team.”

Support are individuals who want to know that you're in it with them. Support people hate when the owners of the company are calling in from a vacation spot, right, while they're sitting there grinding it out. They want to know that you're part of the team.

And then, connectivity are individuals who want to be part of something bigger. They're usually tied to some nonprofits. They're big in the community. Legacy is big deal for them. What you're doing, as far as your mission, is a big deal to them.

And we find out what they are. And then, we create what's called motivation packages. Now, this is the key. Every client I work with, when I come in, they have comm plans whether it's Twitter, whether it's a a standalone lawyer. That's what they think is motivating their individuals.

Money has been proven, time and time again, to not be a sustainable form of motivation. So, because of that, we then create these motivational packages based on what it is that's their catalysts. So, for example, a client of ours was opening up an office in South Carolina and I said, “What would you like to see happen?” So, ”We'd love, this year, for them to get 100 new clients.” I said, “That'd be great.” I said, “What would you do” They said, “If they get 100 new clients, it would be an absolute positive first year.” I said, “What if we could do it in 90 days?” They said, “You do it in 90 days, I would bonus the guy-- you know, and I think he said $20,000 to $30,000, if he was able to do that.”

I said, “Hold off for your 20- or 30-grand.” I said, “Let me offer him something else.” We took the test. His motivation catalyst was freedom. And we worked through this system. I said, “Here's what we're going to do. We're going to try to get 100 new clients in 90 days. And if you do that, we're going to give you two first-class tickets anywhere in the country or two business tickets anywhere in the world, along with a week off and your boss will come in and work your office for you.” This guy literally hit the goal in 45 days and then took a flight from South Carolina, first class, to Miami, Florida.

This entire program that my client was going to offer 20 or 30 grand for ended up costing him two grand because he ended up paying for his hotel and he felt so bad because he was expecting to spend so much That's how the system works. It's not about forcing people to do things, it's about taking time to understand who they are, and then actually giving them what they want.

Another idea we've done with clients is let your employees think of a bucket list item and put that out there. And then, the company pays for that item to happen if a specific goal is reached. And then, we work with the clients to obviously figure out the ROI to make sure that we're not throwing 10 grand at something that's only worth two grand.

Jim: Matt, what's been the hardest client problem for you to solve?

Matt: The hardest client problem. All the time, with almost everybody, I call it individuals who don't eat what they serve. Those are managers who won't do the program with me. I actually won't take a manager unless they're willing to be involved in the learning. So, one thing we do with a lot of the higher up managers in the company like Twitter, as we call it, the bridging the gap. What I do is, I coach the manager and I train the team. And I use the manager as the example.

So too many times, people will come and, “Hey, come on in. My team really needs this program.” “All right, cool. Where are you going to be?” Oh, I’ve got a lunch, I’ve got to go to.” “Well, then I'm not coming in.” If it's not good enough for you, as the head person, it's not good enough for your individuals no matter how low they are.

So, the biggest issue, when it comes to Matt motivating people, is the managers thinking that they have everything under control. I call it the deadly assumption of motivation is “I'm good. I got this. They need it, I got this.” And if you go through our book, the book is set up with a simple formula, which is the sum of you and them-- right, you, being the person who's motivating, them being the person who's being motivated, times the system will equal your results. And if you're not constantly working on you and constantly making sure that they have what they need to succeed, I don't care what system you have, anything times a negative is the negative. You're going to get a negative outcome.

Tyson: Matt, I mean-- I love what you're saying. I agree with everything you're saying. I think it's fantastic but sometimes you get an Unmo or maybe you motivate that Unmo but maybe their goals aren't aligned with your company's vision? How do you get those two to line up or is this something where then, at that time, you should probably cut them loose?

Matt: Well, you should free them. Right. Basically, you own a slave at that point. I mean, I know it sounds rough but you're forcing somebody to do something they don't want to do for something they don't want to get. I mean, why would you want that person on your team?

So, what I found is most people, we just need to change the way they're seeing things. So what we call it is, as a motivator, you need to recognize all you're offering. As an attorney, with your staff, on your team, is what we call a purpose vehicle. A purpose vehicle’s like a rental vehicle. Meaning, unless they are just passionate about-- let's say you're doing immigration law and they are so passionate about the mission to help other people become legal immigrants into the State or fight discrimination or whatever it might be. Maybe you can have Unmo come out of this motivational funk based on the mission Those are probably your connective people, right. The connectivity motivational catalysts.

But, for the majority of it, is we need to find out, “Why are they here?” “Well, I'm here because I need to put food on my kid's table.” Okay. Well, then, guess what, your PVTT is not about getting these reports done on time. It's about getting reports done so that you can spend time with your kids.

So, there's three questions that we ask every single person when we're doing our weekly huddles when you're in this program with us. The first three questions of our LP it's “What are you focused on? What are you grateful for? And what are you working towards this week?“ What are you focused on? What are you grateful for? And what are you working towards this week? And what happens is, if I hear that, it usually takes about four cycles of hearing this, I know exactly how to motivate somebody.

So, Tyson, if you were to sit here and tell me that you're grateful for your family. You're grateful for your family. You're grateful for your family. And then, I need someone to work late on a case. And I know you have a recital you need to go to for your kid. Asking you to stay back is such a big withdraw on our relationship that it's almost probably not worth it versus we have a young strapping kid like Jim, right, early 20s, excited to get things going would love for extra time, would love to work later, and would love to be part of this whole push to this heavy working, but we don't know what if we don't take the time to understand them. So, it's all about knowing those three questions. What are you focused on? What are you grateful for? And what are you working towards?

Because what we also do is manage. When it comes to motivating, we tend to manage the people who are easy to manage and motivate the people who are already kind of motivated, and we avoid the ones who need it. Part of the reason why is we don't know how to address it. 

So, I had a time whereas one of my staff members, her focus was cancer. That was an eye opener. I was about to fire her. It turns out, the reason I was firing her was she was very ornery towards everybody. Every Monday, she would come in and just have this just-- you know, just wasn't fitting with the culture that we've built. And it new for her. I didn't realize what was going on. Well, she was going through chemo treatments Friday, Saturday, Sunday and didn’t tell anybody, and was coming in Monday to work.

Now, think about those two things. If I know what's happening in somebody's life, there's a lot more grace I'm willing to give them and I can help them with that. Another analogy I always put is imagine you and I are walking, and we walk down the street and somebody has their head down, and they bump into and they spill your coffee all over you. And you look up and they're texting on their phone. You're going to be pretty bothered, right? They shouldn't have been doing that, should’ve been paying attention. Same scenario. We look up and that individual has sunglasses on and a walking stick. You're not as bothered because you understand where they're coming from and why they're doing what they're doing.

So, when it comes to motivation, I tell people, there's two types of ways you motivate people. It's based on fear, which is by force, or it's love, which is based on understanding. And when I say love, people go, “Ah, well, then they’ll walk all over me and it takes too long to do all that. I’d rather just tell them to do their job and just do it.”

Over the length of a relationship, love is a faster and more sustainable way to actually get them to be motivated because you don't have to put as much energy to it.

Force or fear, you have to constantly be pressuring those people. You have to constantly, “Hey, did you get it done? Did you get it done? Did you get it done?” We're not here to teach how to force people to do things. We're here to teach people how to discover the value in the action you want them to take, so that they will take them on their own.

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Jim: We're talking to Matt Granados on The Maximum Lawyer Podcast.

Matt, we're really glad to have you here. My question for you is one of the things that we have struggled, and it sort of straddles that love or fear dichotomy that you talked about, is handling mistakes. The team does make an error. We've been talking a lot about how to fix that particular error, how to try to revise our systems, but how do you deal with the emotions of people that get upset when mistakes are made?

Matt: So, a couple things. Let's assume that that person's Unmo right now, right? Everything I do is around the same character. It makes my life easier and other people's easier to understand.

So, a big thing is the difference between responsibility and fault. If that person makes a mistake, that's their fault. But whose responsibility is it? It's whoever's in charge of whatever project we're doing. And what I mean by that is, I can't [inaudible 00:22:27] it wasn't my fault. All right, well, guess what? You're the owner of the company, you're liable for this. So whose fault it is, it's your responsibility.

So, one thing is, is recognizing, if you're a traditional motivator and you're focusing all on them, you're not focusing on you, there's probably some hypocrisy happening that they're seeing. And because of that, it's like, one of my favorite lines in How to Win Friends and Influence People is when he talks about look, you know, “If I made a mistake, how can I be upset if someone else has?” I read it. Well, that's a very powerful good point. I'm still bothered that they messed up, right, I still get frustrated without a doubt.

But it's also recognizing that communication’s usually a big reason why mistakes happen. And, as a motivator, we talk about the reason why communication is so difficult is we are taking an emotional thought and trying to communicate it using a logical form - language. And because of that, things get lost in translation, even face to face, let alone, “Hey, I sent you these messages through email. I sent you these messages through a text. I sent you these instructions here.” I can tell you almost every single time an employee of mine mess up or a client of mine’s team messes up, I can point at some of the fault and some of the blame to communication issues.

Now, assuming communication’s perfect, which is rare, what I always tell people is you need to recognize and be responsible for the difficulty of communicating. So if you're telling Unmo to do something and Unmo keeps making the same mistake, unless you've made a bad hire, and that person just absolutely not capable of doing their job, which I think is overblown in the world I'm in, as far as the fact that we're hiring poorly. I don't think that's the case. I think people hire pretty well, especially these days with all the information we have on people.

What happens is we need to recognize, “Okay. Yes, they are capable. Why are they making this mistake? Are they lazy? Are they not paying attention? Are they rushed? Are they overwhelmed?” and figuring out the root cause so that we can address the cause. So that next time, it's not as big of a mistake.

And also, we push real hard on this concept of progress versus perfection. As we're building people. Look, once we've built people, then we can be a little bit more on the same team of why did you mess this up?

So, dealing with the emotional side of it, it comes to that that aspect of fear versus love. If they're scared of you, which I bet you most of the people who are listening to this, there's team and that's not just because you're lawyers, I'm saying just in general, most entrepreneurs have a little bit of a fear-based style in the way they motivate people. Very few have a love-based style.

When you have a love-based style, people can come to you with their issues and tell you, “Hey, I messed up. How do I correct this? How do I do this?” So, if they're getting emotional because of a mistake they've made, there's a high likelihood that the relationship that you have with them is more of a fear-based motivation than it is a love-based. And part of that fear based, here's what I would say is it always defaults to fear-based because they're scared of not getting a paycheck. So, unless you're putting a love-based option out there-- and again, love is not being super soft or cuddly. Love is a very-- it's not always an easy thing to do. It's not always a nice thing to do. It's what's best for the individual you're working with.

Tyson: So, Matt, I have a question that I normally ask lawyers. I don't think I've asked it to a non-lawyer yet, but you seem you seem like you have your shit together. So, I want to ask you this question because it's going to make you think a second-- because you really do look like you have everything together. You're highly motivated and everything, but what is it that you struggle with the most?

Matt: I can't spell, but that's just something I've always had an issue with.

So, what's something I-- there's a lot that I struggle with. There's a lot of flaws that I have, in general. What I would say, I struggle with, is I ready, fire, aim. I take action, way faster than I should. And if I would just take a step back and breathe, I would make way less mistakes. It's kind of the way I've always designed everything I do is to start, get it out there, get in front of people, take the beating of how bad it is, then perfect and get another version, get another version, get another version. Where, other people do the opposite. They're paralyzed by thought.

So, in the rare times that I would say that I do this, where I push things too fast, I'm comfortable with that. Where I make the mistake is assuming other people are comfortable with that. So, for example, my wife. I'm assuming, “Hey, like with-- let's go back to what we're dealing with my daughter, Natalie. I want to go to every potential medical person. I wouldn’t even say doctor, right? I don't care if you're a guru in a mud hut. Like, you think you can help her, I want to go talk with you.

My wife didn't like that because she knows me. I'm out there. I like this person. I'm stroking a check. Before we leave, we're going to get started. She wants to think through it. So, I had to explain to her that just because I get excited about an idea does not mean I'm going to take action right away. And she was very clear to show me all the times in the past that I've done that and it's right. So that would be my biggest issue. My biggest flaw is I take action, sometimes too fast. If I were to take a step back and think a little bit more about it, it probably wouldn't be as much of a struggle, going forward.

But when it comes to motivating myself and the topics that I teach on, it's hard because I always say, “If you become what you want to become, it's hard to avoid it. If you try to be something you're not. It's hard to do it.” And one thing we do is by making this book here, it's a nine-part system every day, for seven days a week. It literally takes about an hour to do. And it spits off, what we're finding with users, an extra 15 hours a week of productivity by going through this system. So, when you have a lot of margin in your week, you can make up for a lot of the faults and issues that you have.

With that, you know, we're talking with attorneys here, I don't even know what the average attorney charges. I know mine charges well over $500 an hour, so I try not to call him if I can avoid it. But you start talking 15 hours a week, more billable time, or productivity, or think about the teams that you have underneath you. I mean, the ROI on this type of stuff is crazy. I don't care how long it takes to get that to be part of your culture, you bring productivity and motivation as part of your culture. It's going to change what you're doing.

So, again, my flaw, I act very quickly. And because of that, I think if I were to take time to think a little bit more, even here, how I answer questions here, I kind of think as I talk, but if I was to take time to sit back and think, then act, I think I would be further along than I am right now with much less bumps and bruises.

Jim: All right, Matt. So that brings up the question, do you think that we are better off playing to our strengths or trying to fix our weaknesses?

Matt: So, philosophy. Again, I love this. It's like you've already read the book, Jim. 

Again, I keep using Natalie as an example because it's so raw to me. I hope you guys-- you know, sometimes people don't like hearing about kids who are having issues but it's just the life I'm living right now.

So, when we brought Natalie-- at first, my whole thing is actions, actions, actions. So, because of that, the girl can't crawl, she can't walk, we need to work on her physical abilities. The State came in and said, “Hey, we need to do a cognitive test.” I said, “Why are you wasting your time with that? She's okay. Like, she can talk. She's doing well. We need to get her walking. So let's focus on physical.” And they said, “We just have to do it.” They did the cognitive test. This was at about two and a half years old. She was testing at about a six-month physical, where she was doing what six-month-old’s do. Mentally, she was at about a five year old. I'll never forget, I kind of sat back in my seat like, “You idiot.” Again, going to acting too fast and not thinking through it. If I would have kept on the pace in the plan I was going, we would have put all of our effort into getting her to walk which, highly likely, will never happen, based on just what science says with genetics and stuff.

What we instead did was we started focusing on her cognitive skills, playing piano, typing on the computer, getting used to doing things that she could do for the rest of her life, and get further ahead. So, at three years old, she's playing Hot Cross Buns on the piano. That's the only song-- I don't know how to play piano. That's all I know how to teach her, right. We can't get a piano teacher to teach her until she's four, which is frustrating, but that's kind of where we went.

So, to answer your question, the philosophy that we live by, and I learned that day, was to change the way you just said that but it is manage your weaknesses, leverage your strengths. So, don't ignore your weaknesses. Like, they're there.

I can't spell, so if I'm going to publish something, I need to pay other people to look at it before it goes out to the public. I know that if I'm the last eye on it, it's going to have an issue on it. Does that make sense? So, recognizing what are your weaknesses.

That's why what we do with clients is we do a SWOT analysis of ourself, just like you would with a marketing plan, if you're familiar with SWOT, right. What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats? What are your internal strengths? What are your internal weaknesses? What are your external opportunities? What are your external threats?” in whatever it is that you're doing. That's part of our program, when we do our full coaching is finding out, “All right, what are you good at?” If you're good at selling, and you're terrible at managing, why are you managing? There's other people who are good at that.

One of our business is called Local Vendors Coalition where we help local farmers sell to big box stores. We had a time where I got a phone call from my driver said, “Hey, I wrecked the truck.” This is a 26-foot box truck, refrigerated truck, full of fruits and vegetables going to Whole Foods. I get down there and he, basically, went under an overpass and tuna canned the entire thing. Fortunately, he didn't break anything besides the truck. Usually, when a truck like that hits something, somebody dies, and that didn't happen.

We got down there. I remember sitting there going, “Why in the world am I, as a salesperson, taking this liability of driving trucks? There's companies out there who do this professionally.” And my cheap self said, “But yeah, we could do it cheaper.” Really? Run a truck under a bridge, see how cheap that is, right. It's not cheaper just because you're going dollars for dollars. You have to add risk and you have to add reward to all of the things that we're doing.

So, to answer your question, again, I like to talk a lot. Hopefully, that's okay. But it's manage your weakness, leverage your strengths. That is the philosophy we work with every client.

Tyson: Matt, talking is what we do. We like guests that talk a lot. You make it easy on us. That's good.

But hey, we do need to wrap things up. Before I do, I want to remind everyone to go to the Facebook group, big group, get involved there. There's a lot of great information being shared. If you want to join the Guild, we’re going live at the Guild this morning. So, if you're listening to this, you're not in the Guild, you're about two weeks behind. So, people in the Guild are getting this in real time, so join us there. And if you don't mind taking a few seconds and giving us a five-star review, we'd appreciate it.

Jimmy, what's your hack of the week?

Jim: So, we had Adam Woody on, a couple of weeks ago, from Magnetic Marketing. He recommended a book which I, of course, ordered on Amazon before the podcast episode was over. That book was The Magic of Thinking Big. I'm making my way through it. It's a little bit-- not woowoo, but a little bit like rah rah. So, I don't know that it's that realistic but there's good nuggets in there. You know me, I'm always just looking for some good tidbits or things. I'm, of course, looking forward to Matt's new book so I can grab that. So, The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz.

Tyson: I'm saying the exact same thing whenever I saw that Matt was coming on. I was like, “This is Jim’s guy, man.” And so, the woowoo, the rah rah’s all Jimmy, so.

Matt, so we always ask our guests to give us a tip or hack of the week. It's a podcast, a book, inspirational tip, whatever it may be, it can be any tip that you might have.

So, do you have something for us?

Matt: Inspirational tip. I always joke because my topic’s motivation but I'm not a motivational speaker. I don't teach people how to like get excited. I teach people how to stay sustainably excited.

So, that the hack of the week would be is to live your life seven days at a time. If you’re day-to-day and you're doing day-to-day to do lists, you're going to fail almost every day. The day’s too short. If you do monthly planning, that's fine, to kind of get your brain right. But when it comes to execution, seven days at a time. There's two reasons why. Number one, is because a week is linear. Meaning, if you can't get something done on Monday, you have time to finish it on Tuesday. Number two, is the finish line is close enough where you feel the pressure. So that's the reason why every single thing we do is seven days at a time. That's why this planner is a week at a time, every single thing we do. So that would be my personal one.

What I would say, as far as like outside of what we do, just to kind of get away from our content, I use an app that's called Boomerang. It's not the one on Gmail. There's a different one. It’s called Boomerang. What it does is, it's like almost a notepad that links right to your inbox. It is one of my favorite apps that I use. When I have an idea, I just send it in there. If I want to take a picture, I'll send it. Just hit send and it goes right to your inbox. And that's been super helpful to keep notes, keep ideas fresh, and get them where I see it on a regular basis. So, Boomerang would be my app to go to.

And that would be--

Just for sake of time, I'll stop there.

Tyson: That's good stuff. Good stuff.

My tip of the week is we've talked about Otter before on the podcast, but there's something I learned yesterday from Kira Fonteneau. She told me that there's an integration with Zoom. So, if we wanted to, which we've not done yet, Jim, you can get a paid-- we did it for the firm yesterday. You can get a paid version of Otter that syncs with Zoom, that will transcribe your Zoom meetings. We did it yesterday for our-- we have our team training every Wednesday. It was incredible.

Now, I wouldn't say it does a very good job of splitting up the different people talking but you at least get the text automatically transcribed. It is really accurate, too. So, I highly recommend it, if you're regularly doing things on Zoom that should be transcribed, because it's extremely accurate. You can just go through and space it out, however you want it formatted because it's pretty damn good.

Matt, thanks so much for coming on. This has been a lot of fun. We really appreciate it.

Matt: Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Jim: Thanks, Matt. See you, bud.

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