Blaine Oelkers – Improve Your Personal Efficiency & Productivity Instantly 

Tersh Blissett: Hello everyone out there in Podcast World. We’re having a great day. You’re listening to or watching Service Business Mastery Podcast. I’m your host. Tersh Blissett sitting virtually next to my co-host, Joshua Crouch. And we’re going to talk about productivity. We’re talking with Blaine. He is. We met each other about probably three years ago in our we do a weekly mastermind group every Friday. And Blaine is the guy who kind of puts that stuff together and he is the chief results officer and talks about really being extra productive within your personal life and really taking it to the next level. And that’s that’s what I’ve really learned the most about from Blaine. Josh, had you ever met you never met Blaine before, had you? [00:01:00]

 

Josh Crouch: Not in person. I’ve seen his name around. Just because we’re hanging around the same circles and stuff like that. But I’ve never actually personally met him.

 

Tersh Blissett: So his really cool. I got a book by Blaine. He is the book edition, the study edition of Thinking Rich, which is really cool, but I’m super excited to to pick Blaine’s, pick his brain and see what see what we got going on here. But would that be a said I hope you enjoy today’s show. And also, if you like this episode, please share it with your friends and click subscribe.

 

Announcer: Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and [00:02:00] Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources and so much more. Let their nuggets of wisdom goals guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.

 

Tersh Blissett: Hey, Blaine, welcome to the show. Hey.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Hey, guys. Great to be here. And Tersh. Three years now and running, and I’m honored to be on here with you guys and Tersh. I will say, I mean, in in all these years, the thing I like most is you have this kind of heart of a servant. You’re always looking to help people. And I think through this podcast, both you guys are helping [00:03:00] people. And the cool thing is, is that your podcast are living online so that you are you have the potential to help people not yet born. So I think there are people not yet born who will someday listen to this and say, that was the moment those guys helped me out. So I’m excited and honored to be here today.

 

Tersh Blissett: That’s deep right there. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show. And we’ve talked about this a couple of times, but we’ve never actually connected on the show. So I’m really excited for the listeners to hear what you have going on. I’ve learned from you a lot. It’s one of those things where you are the people you surround yourself with, and I’m honored to be with you every Friday and spend some time with you. Would that being said, can you share what you do because you do a lot of different things and connecting people and doing masterminds is one. But share a little bit about you and your background and what you do.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, yeah. So I would say like for me, like this defining moment, you know, people have these moments [00:04:00] of dawning comprehension or whatever. And you mentioned the book Thinking Grow Rich. And so I, I kind of like both of you. I’ve always been like a seeker, the seeker of knowledge, how can I do better? And I was probably wired with a little bit of that. But in college back in the eighties, unfortunately I need to date myself. But back in the eighties I ordered an audio cassette. Now maybe some listeners don’t even know what that is, but. But an audio cassette on this book thinking grow rich, right? So I was just looking to improve myself. And so in college I actually read I still have the book here. I read Thinking Grow Rich, this paperback version. And so when I read that, I realized at that moment reading that book like, okay, I can take what I think about and I can bring it about. I have the saying what you think about, you bring about, but I realized that there was a little bit of like a systematic approach in the way that our minds work and what your your kind of subconscious mind feeds to. Your conscious mind could be controlled [00:05:00] a little bit. And so so what happened is I did have some success. I graduated from Purdue University. I went to work for Hewlett-Packard. I didn’t last very long there because I really wanted to get out on my own.

 

Blaine Oelkers: I became a franchisee with Domino’s Pizza, and so I did that that for a while, and then I got held up at gunpoint. My wife’s like, I think you might want to sell that business. I go, Honey, you’re right. But, but I had I had some success. And I finally got out of my own and I basically started helping people get results. And I had a success in helping other people. So I’m kind of wired to to help people get results. And I ended up people started calling me, Hey, you’re like the chief results officer. And so I started a business around helping people get stuff done and kind of became America’s chief resource officer. I got that registered trademark so I could be the only one in America. But what happened is I made enough money that I bought one of the original thinking grow rich. So so [00:06:00] I have kind of the original one of the first 5000 copies. And when I opened it up, it cost me 1000 bucks. Maybe it’s worth four grand now, but. But when I opened it up, the first page was different. And I go, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. So I still had my old paperback. So I went, I got it. And sure enough, the first two pages were these instructional pages.

 

Blaine Oelkers: And then I found out and actually upon reading those and following those pages and we can talk about those pages if you guys want to, I my business was worth about, say, 253 and 1000 at the time, but I wanted to own $1,000,000 business. But within about five months of of reading those and following those instructional pages, my business was actually worth $1,000,000 and has never been less than that since. But but what was interesting is I found out I started comparing the books and there was all these differences. And so it turns out that most people read the wrong version. And for a number of years I was buying the version, the correct version, and the guy who was [00:07:00] making it passed away and his wife stopped producing it. So I ended up having to kind of create that book that you showed. I had to create the I had a kind of bring back the original with some instructions and with a book study version. And so that’s where that that book came from. But anyway, that’s that’s how I kind of ended up getting to where I am today and now I am. Chief results offer for for some masterminds like the one that that you’re in Tersh. Yeah. And a number of other ones. And really just trying to help people not only get more done but kind of get the right stuff done.

 

Josh Crouch: That’s really all. Yeah. Is that kind of weird? Because what is? I guess the vague question is, what is the right stuff? How how does somebody know something’s right or not? Because. Right, it is a little subjective for each business. So I guess I don’t know if that’s too vague of a question to start the episode here, but how do you how do you start figuring out what the right stuff to focus on is?

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, that’s a it’s a great question. And so there’s a number [00:08:00] of kind of like exercises you can do to to try to discover that at a big higher level. Right? Like what’s my purpose? What are my priorities? What’s important to me? But what’s interesting is then when you get all the way down to the actionable part is you watch what people do and then they kind of reveal their real priorities. Now, sometimes those are conflicting, right? So I know a lot of a lot of service home service industry owners are conflicted. They want to do stuff with their family, but they want to build the business. So some of that that is difficult, but choosing the right stuff is kind of goes back to basically kind of what is important versus urgent, but but carving out time to work on the important stuff that’s not necessarily urgent. That’s typically where the value is. Now, how do you figure that out? Right. I mean, there’s this 8020 rule. Have you guys heard of the 8020 rule? Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So, so, so supposedly, if you believe in it and most [00:09:00] people do, 20% of what you do produces 80% of your results. And so you’ve got to focus in on the 20 and oust the 80. But to focus in on the 20, that takes like the one thing a lot of people don’t like to do and that’s think, you know, so so really the key to this idea of getting the right stuff done is something I call up next day planning. So like I never let a day end without planning the next one. And so it’s harder for some people. So we’ve got to do some tricks and we’ve got to we’ve got to build some new habits. And I love to talk about this thing called 21/2 Habits How to Create a New Habit in 21 seconds, not 21 days. If they told you it takes 21 days, they lied to you. So anyway, we could dove into that too.

 

Tersh Blissett: I’d love to hear about that, because me too. Julie and I, we’ve talked about this before. We actually we spoke about it last night. As funny as it is, right before you and I were texting like probably 5 minutes before you and I were texting. So this is a weird coincidence, but it’s we were looking [00:10:00] at our list of things that that need to be done and working on prioritizing them. Like there are things that are very important, but they will take like a long time to do it. And then there are other items that are a little less important but can be done relatively quick. And then there are other items that are very unimportant but can be done almost instantly. And so it’s like, All right, which ones? How do I prioritize which ones we do and essentially become the most efficient possible without wasting time, because even though we’re busy all day, we might not be productive all day.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Right? Yeah. No. So okay, so there’s a lot to unpack in that. There is this chart, Stephen Covey has it called The Four Quadrants. It’s also called the Eisenhower Box. And that’s where you kind of have these quadrants of what is urgent and important, you know, and you’re kind of breaking that that down and you’re trying to get away from the less [00:11:00] urgent, you know, and you want to move to the things that are important but not urgent, let’s say so. So when you’re looking at that, yes, there is this old rule that says if you can do it within 2 minutes, just do it now. I used to believe that. There you go.

 

Tersh Blissett: He’s got it right there. I literally was just going over that with our team in our group meeting the other day.

 

Josh Crouch: So that’s implementation right there.

 

Blaine Oelkers: That’s how you do it, you know. So so anyway, back to, you know, there’s this when you get looking at what you can do, right? They say if you can do it in 2 minutes, just do it. Now, that worked for me for a little while, but then I realized I had 20, 32 minute task. Well, there goes a half hour, right? So I chunked it down to one minute and I tried that and that still didn’t work. So now what I do is I put those things on a separate piece of paper and I do those things when I need a break, when I when I’m waiting on somebody, you know, if I’m in [00:12:00] a real boring meeting, you know, I’ll knock some of that stuff out but that that work for me. And so you’ve got to, you’ve got to first decide on, on what’s important and you have to carve out time for the importance.

 

Josh Crouch: That’s a that’s that carve out time is literally something that I have been focusing on because otherwise I know if I leave my schedule open, anyone can book through our team for an internal meeting or clients or prospects, and that calendar gets slammed like it. Literally gets to the point where it’s like meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting. And I don’t get anything done until like five, six, seven, 8:00 at night in my brains fried like I know I’m not thinking at my best capacity at that point. And that’s why usually I wake up early and get the stuff done early. But that carving time, I think is a huge point that people just let other they let other people dictate their calendar instead of like, hey, let’s look like two weeks ahead, let’s start [00:13:00] blocking out space. I know Tersh does this a lot. Space holders, so he can work on podcast stuff, he can work on his HVAC business project or whatever he’s working on. But I know for me, I started doing this a few weeks ago and it’s been like game changing as far as internally, just what I’m able to accomplish during that.

 

Tersh Blissett: It’s also hilarious that like I know your circadian rhythm, like I know my circadian rhythm and they’re the exact opposite. Like at 6:00 AM, don’t ask me a question. And Josh, Josh is wide awake and just ready. So our like when we record it 9:00 in the morning on Wednesdays, I’m like dragging until we get to about 930, 10:00, and then I’m just a little rabbit just go into town. But then like now we’re at it’s 130 here at 145 and I’m in my prime. And Josh is like, you can just tell Josh is like, All right, we’re wrapping up the day. It’s [00:14:00] funny how that once you learned that circadian rhythm and learning how to block people out and like you said, Josh, not not allowing other people to dictate your schedule that it makes that makes a massive difference. That was a game changer for me years ago.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. I mean, if people get to know themselves, right, that’s one of the best things you can do is know yourself and then block your block the time with yourself and put it in there. And don’t don’t let anybody break that. I mean, I think the biggest thing I see is business owners especially, you know, they’re under planning. Right. And I always say, like, let’s see, you’re about you walk down the tarmac, you’re about to get on the airplane, you look over in the cockpit and there’s no pilot, and you say, oh, maybe he or she’s in the bathroom or whatever. So you sit down and then they announce, Hello, hello. The Flight ten comes on, says, Yeah, there’s no pilot today. Now, how long are you going to sit on that plane? When she said he or she says there’s no pilot, then they might come back and say, well, I might try to fly [00:15:00] it. They’re they’re not even a pilot. So so you’re not going to stay on the unpiloted plane, but that is what you’re doing every single morning when you wake up and you don’t have a plan for your day, you’re not going anyways. Yes, you’re not you.

 

Josh Crouch: I notice that like if I don’t think about the next day or the night before or a couple of days before. I kind of like I just I’m doing busy stuff. Like, I realize I do it after the fact. I’m like, man, I didn’t really, like, accomplish anything today. I just kind of move some stuff around. Kind of wasted my time. I feel like I wasn’t, like, the most productive version of myself.

 

Tersh Blissett: And then worst thing is to look back over the week and you’re like, I was.

 

Josh Crouch: Shit. I didn’t do anything.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, exactly. But I didn’t get a dang thing accomplished all week. And it’s regret because time is that one commodity that you can’t get back, you know? And and I love what Blaine says every time we leave we part ways is what is it about the the pilot?

 

Blaine Oelkers: Well, the bad news the bad [00:16:00] news is time flies. The good news, you’re the pilot, right? So that’s that feels leads right into that story about you getting up and getting on the pilot list plane. If you don’t have that plan and your day is going to go so much better if it’s planned. And, you know, there’s some easy techniques like let’s say let’s unpack that habit. Let’s say that you want to make sure that you plan your day every day, and that’s the new habit you want to start. So do you. Do you guys have any idea how you can create a new habit in 21 seconds?

 

Tersh Blissett: No, that’s what I’ve always done. I need to know that.

 

Josh Crouch: Three weeks, 21 days. That’s all I’ve always heard. I’ve never heard someone say you could do it in 21 seconds, but I am very interested in hearing this.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Okay. So so first of all, we have to understand that you are already a habit master, right? So so sometimes if I’m doing a live presentation on, you know, like more than half the room typically thinks they’re no good at habits. And so the first thing we have to establish is you are a habit master. And so what I do is I ask people, I’ll ask you guys, do you guys brush [00:17:00] your teeth?

 

Tersh Blissett: Pretty often.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. Are you?

 

Josh Crouch: Every morning. First. First thing I do. First thing I do. When I get up, I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth.

 

Tersh Blissett: Okay, so.

 

Blaine Oelkers: So, so. So, Josh, you know, at the last 365 days, how many days have you missed doing that?

 

Josh Crouch: None.

 

Blaine Oelkers: None. Boom. Habit, master. Ding, ding, ding, ding. All right, so the.

 

Josh Crouch: Light bulb goes off in the crowd’s head.

 

Blaine Oelkers: That’s right. And so what happened is the way I discovered this was my wife. She had migraine headaches almost daily. Now she doesn’t have it anymore. But the doctors would say, look, you’ve got to fill out this log, like what you eat, how you feel when the headache happens. And so she had to fill out this log and she’d only do it for a couple of days. Then she’d lose the log, then she’d forget to do it, then she’d be in a migraine. I’ll say, Where’s the log? You do not want to ask that during the migraine. So I learned that very quickly.

 

Tersh Blissett: Duly noted.

 

Blaine Oelkers: But but we realized that, you know, I realized and I said, look, let’s do this. We took the headache log and a [00:18:00] pen and we put our toothbrush on top of it. Now she’s a twice a day. Ah, never misses. So. So every time when she was brushing your teeth, she just made the notes and so she went for it was close to like 90 days without missing a day in this log. We took that back to the doctors. It was very helpful, got the right meds, got all the stuff and and life was good. And so the key, the key to this 21/2 habit creation is that you link it to an existing habit. So that’s why it happens basically instantly. So another example for me is that I wanted to I have this Bible app, so I want to make sure that I do this Bible app. And so right now, today I’m at day 400, 1455 days in a row without missing that app. Now, the reason is because I have it linked it to opening my phone now every single day of my life. I turn my phone on and I and I look at it, right. So on the home page is just this app so that I’m not allowed [00:19:00] to touch any other button. So there could be a text from my kids, there could be some big news thing. There could be an email from Tersh about a podcast. I mean, exciting stuff is in there, but I can’t touch any of that until I do that first. So I have it link the opening of my phone, which happens every day. Ta ta doing that thing.

 

Tersh Blissett: So what if it’s a habit that’s not first thing in the morning or it’s not that you couldn’t relate it to like first thing in the bathroom or in the evening and, you know, routine. What if it’s if it’s a habit you’re trying to develop in it. So like at a random time of the day.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. Yeah. So good. Good question. So what happens is that there are things that you’re a habit master at already that happen more than once a day, once a day, every Monday, you know, certain days of the week or weekly or monthly. So the trick is, and I have articles about this where I kind of like list all these things to help you figure out what to link to. [00:20:00] But you’re right, you for the habit linking to work, you have to figure out what is that thing that that you could link to. Right? So, so do you have an example of something that that happens more randomly for you?

 

Tersh Blissett: No, I don’t think I don’t know.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Like some people say they want to exercise. That could be at a different time of the day.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: You know, what was that.

 

Tersh Blissett: Hard pass on that?

 

Josh Crouch: First, I’m going to start texting you when I go to the gym. I was there like 530 this morning.

 

Tersh Blissett: No, don’t text me. You’re going to give something.

 

Josh Crouch: You’re going to get a text message, a Facebook messenger and a phone call.

 

Tersh Blissett: That’s probably what I need. So I’ll get up earlier.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Well, so, so like back to this daily list. So, so I had one client, she wanted to do that and I said, well, what do you do every morning? So so one she could she could do it while she’s brushing their teeth and I before but she says every morning I start with a cup of coffee and I said, look, you can’t have the cup of coffee until the list is done. So I said, Now if you want to drink your coffee and do the list, that’s [00:21:00] okay. But otherwise you can’t. And so then she just she went on to not miss any days because she has the coffee every single day. Now it’s helpful if you link to something that you have an urge that kind of you surf to to do the thing that you may or may not want to do. So, for example, like I do this Bible app in the morning because I want to get to my text messages, my emails and all that other stuff that’s in my phone, right? So if you can serve some kind of an urge like that, you have the urge, you want to brush your teeth. It can be a similar thing, but but finding that thing to link to is, is, is what works. And you’re already a habit master at so many, many things. You wouldn’t believe it. We’re creatures of habit, so you can find something to link to.

 

Tersh Blissett: I’m going to link that every time you I want to get the urge to look at tick tock. I should have to read ten pages of your your study book.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, that’s something that should be before you send me a tick tock that you just looked at.

 

Tersh Blissett: Oh, [00:22:00] man, that’d be a lot.

 

Blaine Oelkers: I mean. I have an iPhone. So so I take those apps like that and I bury them inside folders that say, don’t do it. So there’s an extra I have to do like this. That’s a lot of folders in there. But but anyway, it inhabits both works, like dialing up the resistance or dialing down the resistance if you want to do it, or dialing up the resistance if you don’t want to do it. So there’s a whole thing about bad habit elimination, but that’s a whole other topic.

 

Josh Crouch: No. I love how you tie that to something that. Because people there’s things we look forward to every single day, whether it’s the cup of coffee, reading, the I mean, I say newspaper because I don’t know if people read newspapers anymore, but they read their news or whatever they do explore. I mean, honestly, like I never even thought of it, like, because first thing I do in the morning, I brush the teeth, I check my phone for emails and messages for my team and stuff like that. And the day the day starts and it’s now, now I’m now I’m going like like it depends on what I got in [00:23:00] my day is going to whatever direction that points me to. But doing something first before that I can see where that would be very beneficial to put something in place there.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, well I have a habit of looking at emails in the morning because they used to piss me off every morning. So now I don’t do it before 10:00 and look at my first email before 10:00 because I would get fighting mad at some emails and ruin my day.

 

Blaine Oelkers: So. So, Josh, true? If there was some new new thing you really want to do and you say, I can’t turn on my phone or I can’t touch my phone until I do that thing, you’re going to knock that out of the park because you’re going to want to get to that phone. You’re going to get up early if you have to or you have to condense it down, right? Like I also like to take a mind shower in the morning. Like most people, they shower their body every day. But I like to shower the mind with a little meditation, kind of clear the the garbage out or the take out the head trash. Yeah, I like a ten minute shower, but you know what? If I only have one minute or 3 minutes, I’ll still do one. I’ll still [00:24:00] I’ll get it in because it’s one of the things on my home screen that I have to do before I can look at everything else. So sometimes you short, you want to win early and win often. You might want to shorten it down, but but don’t, don’t fail because when you fail, then you get angry. Then your energy shifts, you lose momentum. So I always say win early, win often, even if you have to chunk it way down.

 

Tersh Blissett: So you said that that it was on your home screen. Is that like on your desktop, your computer home screen that you have your mind, your meditation app.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Or, you know, so on my phone. So like when you open up, if you have an iPhone or even an Android, there’s there’s screens of apps that you can push them all to the second screen. So when you open up your phone, you only see a small number of apps, right? That’s where I that’s where I have that.

 

Tersh Blissett: What do you recommend for your morning shower, your mind shower.

 

Blaine Oelkers: For the morning shower? I’m in the shower, but for.

 

Tersh Blissett: The water and I got a shower rain showerhead and.

 

Blaine Oelkers: No, that’s right. That’s [00:25:00] that’s a nice one. The Westin Hotels have those. All right. So I use an app called Headspace, but there’s also an app called Calm, which a lot of people like. There’s one called Insight Timer that’s free headspace and calm have free versions, but also paid versions. So I think those are probably Insight Timer, those are probably the top three.

 

Josh Crouch: So what can you explain to me what what those are? Because I’m not familiar with those, but like what what do those apps do on a daily basis?

 

Blaine Oelkers: So those are through yeah, those are meditation apps. And so basically they walk you through like you can take courses from them about meditation, but, but they, they can walk you through exercises where you breathe, you clear your mind. They’re great to stop to, to lower anxiety, but you can also take them to improve your finances. So there’s, there’s various things you could do, but it’s basically meditation [00:26:00] apps. So walk you through breathing. They also have like music, right? Like if you’re if you’re wanting to study or if you’re having trouble falling asleep, I’ve used it many times to they have versions that kind of gradually bring you to sleep. So it’s a lot of things for the mind, but it’s mostly kind of meditation based.

 

Tersh Blissett: Now that that I mean, that literally takes the thinking and growing rich to the literal that literally defines it. But what’s the the benefit of. Doing the mind shower. Like it’s something that obviously Josh and I don’t do, but we probably.

 

Josh Crouch: Should. Why do you say obviously like that?

 

Tersh Blissett: Because we’re both asking questions about it. It’s like I could be telling you all about it if I did it, but I don’t. It’s everything I can do just to get out of the out of the bed and make it [00:27:00] stumbled to my office without murdering anybody in between the two. So, like, I probably need something to make mornings a little bit more positive, but I’m legit curious because I’ve heard that it’s very difficult to start the process. Like it’s very easy to stop and fail. And throughout that process of meditating on your own.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yes, it is. And if you say I’m going to start a meditation program or an exercise program or any program, once you fail, then your brain kind of puts up a roadblock to even starting again. It’s really bad. So what you have to do is you have to win. And so what I mean by that is you have to chunk it all the way down. And if someone’s really a good teacher of meditation or even exercise, they’re going to say, okay, let’s start with one minute. One minute. You have one minute, one minute. I mean, you know, you know, you’ve got one minute. So start with one minute, Bill, from there. Now, if someone says, well, I’m going to do an hour a day, I’m like, okay, but just make sure we start with one [00:28:00] minute this week. So so the idea is start small as small. It needs to be like my mind shower could be one minute if I have no time. You know, it could be one minute. Typically I don’t I’ll probably 3 minutes is the lowest I go, but I prefer 10 minutes. But but you just start small and you build up from there. And the benefits of of the mind shower is a couple some there’s physical benefits so like you’re calmer, you’re less irritable, you’ve kind of reset yourself. You know, physically your blood pressure comes down. So there’s a lot of physical benefits to it.

 

Blaine Oelkers: And mind wise, you kind of clear your space. And it’s in the it’s at the end of the mind shower that I’m kind of thinking, okay, what’s the most important thing today? And so I pick a word each year. This year my word is vital. And so when I start my day, I look at my schedule and I say, like, what’s the vital thing? Like, if I could only get one thing done today, you know, and I got that one thing done, I would feel like it was a good [00:29:00] day. And sometimes people use different exercises. The one I like is I say, Well, what if my daughter, she lives only a mile away? If she called me up and said, Dad, let’s go for a hike today. So I got one hour before I’m going to go on a hike. I’m going to scrap my plans for that because my daughter is like super busy. You know, I’m going to scrap all my plans and I’m going on that hike, but I only got one hour. What’s the most important thing I can get done today? And when I knock that thing out and I really don’t have the hike, then I’m I’m on a high for the rest of the day. So, so, so that mind shower for me is that pivotal morning thing that kind of springboards me into a good day.

 

Tersh Blissett: So what happens if you’re overzealous and you’re you’re constantly picking like, well, say you just start off with 10 minutes and you fail. But not only that, like if you followed this, the mind shower that you described here properly, but then you’re your targets or your goals that you’re if you set for the day every single day, you fail to reach the targets and goals. I think we’ve we’ve talked [00:30:00] a little bit about like a 70% rule, like winning and tennis, and we’re talking soccer for my kids and stuff like that. Explain like share kind of a little bit about like that thought process.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. Yeah. So, so I was I got my kids involved in tennis and and I’ve been a work at home dad. So I was able to like be coach and help the high school team and all that anyway. But what we realized is that there was this ideal win lose ratio, and so somewhere around 70 to 75% win, you have to win 70, 70% of the time. Now, if you’re winning 99% of the time, you’re not learning anything, you’re not stretching, you’re not growing. And that’s more my problem is I set goals for the week, but I want to win so much that I have to I’ve got to back it down. I’m winning too much. So if you’re winning 80% or more, you’ve got to stretch. But if you’re losing more than 30% of the time, 40%, 50% is 60%. You’re losing you’re not achieving your goals. [00:31:00] You’re going to quit and you’re going to lose energy. You’re going to lose motivation. So you’ve got to keep that ratio. And so what you need to do is you’ve got to drop down the targets. You’ve got to make the target smaller. They shouldn’t be deadlines of disappointment. There I go again. Now you start now the head trash piles on. Now you’ve got garbage bags full of head trash if you continue to lose. So so you have to win. So you’ve got to chunk it all the way down to the doable to the winnable, to the one minute if you have to. Everybody’s got a minute. And then if you don’t even do the one minute, now you have some kind of core limiting belief that that you’re going to have to go back in, reprogram and come back out victorious because everybody’s got a minute.

 

Tersh Blissett: So how do you know? So this leads this question leads into another question, but how do you know if you’re winning or losing in that that that frame? If you how do you know if you’re winning more than 80% or if you’re losing more than 35%? Because when you look back at the day, a [00:32:00] lot of great things will happen. But maybe this is just me. But I focus on the one thing that that that I failed at. And so that overwhelms the day for me. Sometimes it’s like. This is a this is a super crappy day. And then Julie’s like, Yeah, but what about all these great things that happen today? Like, Yeah, but what about this one job that.

 

Josh Crouch: You focus on, the thing you failed at versus all the successful things that you’ve done?

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. So. So that is more of a. Preprogramed in your mind and you’re getting something good from that. So, so so you have, you’re focusing on that one thing because then maybe it pushes you to do more the next day or you’re getting some benefit from that focus onto that negative thing that that one bad thing rather than kind of like surfing the good stuff that happened. Right? And so you have to kind of question that and see and maybe it’s advantageous for you because it’s it helps you do more and go [00:33:00] for more and never be satisfied. But if you never stop and smell the roses and you never enjoy the plateau, then you’re more susceptible to burnout. So that’s why it’s a it’s a little bit of a balance and that’s probably why your bride is able to balance you out, kind of. My bride does that as well for me because I’m all about go, go, go, go, go. But you’ve got to have some plateaus. You got to enjoy it. And most people you say, are you winning most of the time or losing? And they just answer the question, you don’t have to keep a score or tally. It’s just, am I winning more than I’m losing? And it’s not losing. It’s learning, right? So so every time that something goes wrong, that’s that opportunity to learn. But what you have to be careful. I have this saying why table what you think about you bring about you have to be careful because your brain is looking for things to to make whatever you think. Truth. Yeah.

 

Tersh Blissett: Confirmation bias. Yeah.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah. Like if I tell you, hey, Tersh, today is going to be the best day of your life, and you’re almost hit by a car. Hey, Blaine, you were right. I was [00:34:00] almost hit by a car. My life was saved. But if I said today’s the worse going to be one of the worst days of your life, and you almost get hit by the car. Same thing. And then you say, Blaine, you’re right. I was almost killed today, so it’s all in your perception. And so that’s that is the huge takeaway. I actually got that from a guy named Jim Rohn who is a personal mentor of mine. I got to share the stage with him a few times. But but he was the one that said, you know, it doesn’t matter what happens to you, that doesn’t determine your life outcome. It’s what you do about what happens. That’s what makes all the difference. So anyway, that’s I think you’re gaining something from that focus, but I think you could tweak it a little bit.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. And I love like whenever we’re we’re meeting in Masterminds it’s one of the largest challenges that we have is the reward aspect. So we we create targets for ourselves for the next week. And then if we if we don’t reach those targets, then we have a leverage. So we have to do something which is typically painful or it’s a give away [00:35:00] something like I think a leverage one time a car of mine. Like if I didn’t reach this target, then I would, I would give one of our mentors a car that I own. And like, if you know me, you know that like, I literally have tattoos of car parts. Like I’m a, I’m a gearhead. And then that same one, the reward was for Julie and I to go to Universal Studios. Well, we did that. And then it was like, All right, now, then everybody held me accountable to rewarding myself because I was like, All right, we accomplished that task. Now let’s move on to the next one. And we kind of skip over the rewards. And like you said, if you don’t ever stop to smell the roses, then it’s like psychology was. You just start building up this. You never reach that. You never get the dopamine drip.

 

Josh Crouch: There’s always something to fix, right? There’s always that next, oh, once this is fixed, you got this next thing and then this other thing, and then you never feel like you’re actually winning. Even [00:36:00] though and I did, this is the first time I ever did this. So the end of the last day of 2021, I scheduled an email for myself for December 31st of this year. Where are we at personally and professionally today? And I’m sending it to myself at the end of this next year so I can reflect back where we were because I know it’s like so I actually looked at the email like the other day because it’s in my schedule and I’m like, What? What is this? I forgot I scheduled it and I’m like, Holy crap, we’ve made a ton of change already and we’re not even a full quarter into the year yet. So it’s interesting to like send yourself those little messages here and there and I might even do it quarterly now, like end of March, like send myself one for the next quarter or something like that because it’s I just looked at I told Brittney the other day we were laying in bed. I’m like, Man, we made a lot of changes and a lot of really good stuff in the last couple of months. You don’t realize it because you’re so focused on the day to day grind, if you will, [00:37:00] and you don’t think about all the positive things that have come out of that work that you’ve done.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, no, that’s awesome. And future self stuff is great. So senior yourself that and even having your future self a year from now, writing you a letter giving you encouragement like saying, hey, stick with this. This is this is what really turned out well again why table what you think about you bring about you’re actually kind of creating that and if your desire this is what thing grow rich says if you’re. I are strong enough to like the burning white heat of desire. If it’s strong enough, you’ll. You’ll get that thing. Things will start to happen. And so for me, back to thinking grow rich, what happened is I read those instructional pages in the first page, said, hey, you’ve got to get really clear, crystal clear on what you want, super specific. And then the second part was, you have to read this book in community with other people. And so what happened was I got really clear about what I wanted, this million dollar business, and then I did five book clubs in a row, and that’s why I kind of made it a [00:38:00] book study edition. But but in those few months when what happened was I had this business and the ability my call, the reticular activating system, which is this kind of executive secretary in the back of the brain that lets things. And I was in a room and somebody talked about needing to sell their business and man, I picked up on that and we ended up buying I ended up buying this other business emerging with mine, which got me to my goal. And I thought I was going to be 3 to 5 years in like maybe five, six months. So anyway, that’s again your future self kind of what you think about you bring about is, is, is really key, key stuff.

 

Tersh Blissett: So let me ask so part two of the question from earlier. As we’re trying to become more productive throughout our day personally, both personally and business was how important is us? Is it for us to. Write down our entire activities for the day. Like spending a set period of time of [00:39:00] just tracking every task you perform. Throughout the day four, let’s call it a week or two weeks or something like that. Or should we just do something different to figure out what we’re doing throughout the day? Because sometimes as a business owner, it’s really easy for us to just be putting out fires all day. And then you look back at the day and you’re like, Oh, I didn’t get anything done. I wasn’t productive. Whereas if and also you can say sometimes like, Hey, I’m super busy all day long. Don’t add more tasks to me on my plate. But in reality, there’s a lot of stuff that we’re doing that we shouldn’t be doing, and we could be delegating that stuff if we realized how often we were doing that.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, no. Great point. All right. So occasionally there’s I call it personal tracking, right? So occasionally, if you’re trying to figure out now, this is really good sometimes for employees to do, too. But but yes, you can gain a lot of knowledge from tracking your day. And so there’s [00:40:00] two ways to track your day. So one is a timed timing. So in other words, like I and I could provide you guys with worksheets if you want, but but it’s every 15 minutes in 15 minute intervals. That’s what the sheet is. Now, if you want to do hourly intervals, whatever you want, but you’ve got to set a timer like a reminder on your phone or whatever, that every so many minutes you’re going to break for 60 seconds and you’re going to write down what you’re working on. And so what you did. So that’s that’s one that’s just basically time wise. And again, typically you only have to do for a couple of days, it’s just a couple of days. And now, now you have to do a couple of days for whatever day you’re tracking. Some people let’s do on a workday that’s different than the weekends. And so but whenever you’re tracking a couple of days works the other one is is based on I have some sheets where you just record every time you switch from one task to another. So so that way, like if you’re doing something for a number of hours and then you don’t have to track it every 15 minutes.

 

Blaine Oelkers: But but if you switch or you’re multitasking, [00:41:00] then then you’re looking at that stuff. And a lot of times what that stuff does is it shows you where where the problems are that you kind of knew, but you didn’t really have the data. Like you’re you’re in meetings too much or you’re spending too much time on the Internet or on email. You know it. Tick tock, tick tock. Exactly. So tick tock. But but what has to happen is you know yourself, so you have to switch just like you said, like, I can’t go on tick tock until I do this or that. And the best owners, what they do is they frontload the day. They frontload the day. So like by 10:00 am they’re done with all the important stuff. Like they got it done, like the most important stuff is done and then the rest of the day is the rest of their day. So they don’t overschedule their day. They under schedule the day which forces them to be more efficient, more productive. You know, there’s this thing called Parkinson’s law that that whatever time you give a task, it’ll expand to that time. So so cut it down. Cut down the meetings, cut down the fluff. But but frontload [00:42:00] your day so that with whatever you think is important, that could be exercised, it could be connecting with your family, whatever it is frontload the day. Then if the day gets away from you, it’s not as costly to your productivity of the important stuff.

 

Tersh Blissett: Mm hmm. That’s good.

 

Josh Crouch: So this is great stuff. Yeah, this is. This is.

 

Tersh Blissett: Awesome. Josh, did you have any other questions? It looked like you’re.

 

Josh Crouch: No. I just want to talk to Blaine for a few hours.

 

Tersh Blissett: All right. We could talk for hours a day.

 

Josh Crouch: I just. I love this stuff because you’re always looking for. Ways to make. Just make make the day more. I mean, we’re always kind of trying to find that next level of efficiency. I mean, Tersh and I yesterday and Julie sat and did a Zoom meeting for the podcast and like it was so much fun to like build this stuff up because we were just like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And it was like, I felt like I was I felt like, happy. And yeah, and I had a high because I was like, this is awesome. Like, what a what a productive day. And [00:43:00] I love that feeling. Like, it’s you almost go searching for that feeling again. Like, how do I get that high? Like, it’s like a drug.

 

Blaine Oelkers: But no, it actually is like physically you’re getting different brain chemicals like dopamine and and other brain brain chemicals. When you are doing that, like when you’re in this highly flow, productive state, it’s super good. I mean, I don’t know how much time we have, but one last thing from a productivity standpoint that I like to share is what I call the 30 minute hour. So that’s like how to get an hour stuff done in just 30 minutes. So yeah, let’s.

 

Tersh Blissett: Let’s, let’s dove into that real quick. That’ll probably be the last thing we’ll wrap that up.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Okay. All right. So all right. So let’s start first with the reward here. So I’m going to prove to you and you actually already did it. You’re you’re just like a habit master. You’re already a productivity master. You may have forgotten, but but you have. But let’s start with the reward. So let’s say that I’m going to show you right now how to get 30 minute hours and you string a few of those together. [00:44:00] So now you have a free, guilt free, 2 hours guilt free. You got your stuff done because you did the 30 minute hours. You did four of them in a row. Now you have two free hours. So I want to to find out what would you do with those two free hours. So for me, you know, I love the peloton bike. I probably jump on the peloton. I would maybe read a book. I would get out for a little bit of walk, maybe take a nap. I mean, what would you do with 2 hours guilt free? So let’s go. Let’s go. Josh, first, what would you what would you do with that time?

 

Josh Crouch: I would probably go work out so I can lose some weight.

 

Blaine Oelkers: All right. Working out. All right, Tersh. What about you?

 

Tersh Blissett: I would probably work on cars and organizing the shop of some sort.

 

Blaine Oelkers: All right, nice. All right, all right. So. So the first thing, I just want to start. Start with the reward. All right, so let’s talk a little bit about this. So there’s a day that occurs sometimes a few times a year where you’re more productive than any other day [00:45:00] of the year. So and Tersh might have heard me talk about this before. Do you guys know what that day is?

 

Tersh Blissett: I do.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Does Josh?

 

Josh Crouch: I don’t.

 

Tersh Blissett: So hit me with the day before you go on vacation.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Bingo. So the day before vacation, people are 3 to 10 times more productive than a normal day. Now we’re only looking for two x, not three X to ten x. We’re just looking for two x. And so what happens is those days are different now. We don’t have time to unpack it all. I’m going to just kind of give you the answers here, but but I have an acronym called PDF. So, so just remember 30 minute hours the day before vacation and use the PDF. Now sometimes that’s easy for people to remember because we say, Hey, I’m going to go print out the PDF, which I sometimes ask people if you know what that stands for. It’s portable document format, but not in our case. The PDF is going to stand for something different. It’s going to stand for planning, delegate and focus. So what happens the day before vacation that gives [00:46:00] you that added productivity? The first one is, is your planning. You can’t wake up the day before vacation without a plan. You’ve got so much to do to cram in. You’ve got a plan. You know where you’re going to be, what you’re going to be. You over plan that day. So that’s that’s key number one. Number two is delegate. You ask for help. You know, you can’t get it all done.

 

Blaine Oelkers: You know, you’ve got to set up these people to do things while you’re away. So you’re doing a lot of delegation and you want to carry that through some. I have a little sign says day before vacation in my office to remind me all day long planning delegate. But then the last one is the most important one and that is focus on the day before vacation. You think about all the things you don’t do, right? So the day before vacation, you’re not in long conversations on the phone, you’re not chit chatting, you’re not lost in long emails. You know, you don’t have time for any of that, right? You’re really, really focused in. And so that’s that’s the key. So you’re saying no to a lot of things, right? So you want you want to be doing that. You’re [00:47:00] sharp, you stay on schedule. You use timers, right? You say, look, I’ve only got 15 minutes to make this call, to do this thing, to get this report done, you know, to finish payroll, whatever it is you’re using timers and time blocks throughout the day. You’re also using what I call single multi and batch tasking the day before vacation. So single tasking is like, Hey, you’ve got to do some work where you’ve got to shut the world out. You’re doing that. You’re shutting the world out.

 

Blaine Oelkers: I’ve got to get this thing done. I’ve got to build this report. I’ve got to do this thing that only you can do that’s single tasking. Also, day before vacation, a lot of multitasking, meaning two things at once, like, I want to exercise, but I want to spend time with the kids. So we’re going to go kick the soccer ball. We’re going to go play tennis. We’re going to do things where I can get more than just one thing. I’m going to make some calls from the car or I really need to listen to Tersh and Josh’s podcast. So I’m going to listen to that in the car while I work out. So you’re looking where you can do two things at the same time, and then the last one is batch tasking, where the day before vacation you don’t go [00:48:00] three times out to three different stores. You batch your errands together, you batch your computer work together, you batch your phone calls, you batch that stuff where the context is the same. You batch that stuff together to kind of make a big a big difference and you use technology to your advantage. So anyway, the PDF Planning Delegate and focus you do that you can you can get 60 minutes worth of stuff done in just 30.

 

Tersh Blissett: It’s funny you mentioned the timer like I had this.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Little love.

 

Tersh Blissett: That automatic timer and these here where I will force myself to do like stop doing a task because I’m guilty of diving into rabbit holes and just just spending 6 hours on a task. And it’s I found that it’s very important that I. I put the time restraint on myself because then I won’t like an email pops up. I won’t go over there and pay attention to that. I’ll stay focused on the task at hand if [00:49:00] I know I only have 60 minutes to do it or 30 minutes to do this and otherwise I would go over there and then get distracted with that and then come over here and think I’m all over the place because I don’t have that time restraint settle myself. So I like that you mentioned that stuff.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Well, that’s key. The other thing is you ought to do mine capture like you’re in the middle of something, but then you get this idea and you could jump on the Internet and you could do all this stuff. And the idea is to capture that somewhere. Like, I sometimes just use Siri and tell her to take a note on my phone or I have a scrap piece of paper where I’ll write the idea down, but get it out of your head, like capture it, but then get right back to your task. That’s been a big savings for me because I get a lot of ideas in the middle of other projects.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, I like Evernote for that. I’ve recently been really gotten on to Evernote and.

 

Josh Crouch: Speaking to Evernote.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, you can do a lot of a lot of different things if you’re on the Internet and you want to, you can clip something from a website and just say, just send it straight to Evernote and you can look at it later. You can set it up an [00:50:00] automation so that it reminds you to look at it later and all this good jazz, which is really cool.

 

Josh Crouch: You have to teach me how to use that. Tersh.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. All right, cool. Blake, we appreciate you coming on and sharing everything with us. It is really good. Where is the best place for people to go to learn more about you? To connect? You have a lot of books out. I mean, you have lots of different resources and everything was that was the best place for us to reach out and learn more about you.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Yeah, probably as simple as it is. I did a TEDx talk show, Blaine Blaney, TED.com. I did a TEDx talk and talked about why table what you think about you bring about and I kind of reveal a little little kind of a little elegant simple thing you could do to remind yourself of your goals a couple, maybe 60, 100 times a day. So it’s kind of a cool little hack mind hack, but, but anyway, that’s probably the best thing. And once you opt in there, then you’ll kind of get my articles and you’ll get my email and you can reach out.

 

Tersh Blissett: Cool. Blaine Well, we appreciate it. And if anybody has any questions, [00:51:00] don’t hesitate to reach out to any of us. We we really appreciate you being here. If you’re here to the end of the show, please click subscribe, share this episode. And yeah, with that, I hope you have a wonderful and safe day. We’ll talk again. All right.

 

Blaine Oelkers: Thank you, guys. I appreciate you and appreciate all the service you’re giving to the industry so well.

 

Josh Crouch: Thanks, Blaine.

 

Tersh Blissett: Our pleasure.

 

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