Lessons

Lesson Info

MITs (Most Important Things)

We're building this portfolio you'll leave here I've always felt that this work is really like staring out over a buffet where everything looks good you may even get through that buffet and have some items on your plate and go I could eat every one of these items but I may not be able to eat them all so as we go into this fourth element it's a um it's an interesting exploration to pull all these things together maybe go to a new piece of paper in your journal those of you online maybe bring up a a page break in what it is that you're looking at, but when you think about this idea of focus I love this quote by mr jobs I'm actually just going to pick out one piece of it and that the quote there that's so important to me to think about is yes it is easy for that email inbox toe attract another idea I used to go to bookstores back when you could go toe bookstores in real life and for me it was this amazing exercise and looking at what was available looking at what's there I think different...

things have replaced this so why I still subscribe to magazines why I'll still create part of my day just to let myself wander through the internet but what I'm learning more and more is it's not a matter of can I focus on things but it's really a matter of what do I ignore and so this piece this element this aspect if you will of your productivity profile portfolio is really going to be around defining your work and we did this a little bit as a start earlier this morning where we looked at the service that you're providing the product you're creating or that experience that you hope people walk away with but what I want to explore between now and the end of our second session is what we call your m I t is your most important things now when I first started learning about this they were called different things they were called roles they were called goals that were called objectives and what I found is that by taking a looking kind of unraveling what is it that I wake up in the morning and cannot wait to get to what is it that the end of the day I wish I had an extra half a knauer of time but I know I need to sleep a little bit I need some down time with my wife a little bit I need to get outside of that one last walk those are my most important things now there's a bunch of ways to go about this one would be to pull out a piece of paper and kind of think to yourself it in noun language ing what are my most important things my marriage is a most important thing. My health is a most important thing. My financial security is the most important thing for this exercise between now and the lunch break. What I'm gonna ask you to think about is your business is your public manifestation, and if you're thinking about that one and about thea, choose one or the other and I always like to share the way that this came about was when jodi and I were starting our business way back when I sat down with a mentor of mine and we took a look at what we wanted to create that business for we wanted to take a look at what the hope wass that people would gain from that we came up with for the first one from where jody and I had come from was to create a business that was lifestyle drew written first. Now, because that was such a strong pendulum swing, I'll leave it to your imagination to think of where we came from the first primary m I t for us, every decision that we make has to pass through that filter. Does this support our lifestyle? Does taking that meeting sixty to one hundred twenty months from now, support our lifestyle does writing that article for that publication supporter lifestyle does asking to show up on creative live for two days. Support our lives how every decision we make that's the first arbiter of yes or no on or off if you will the next one well very close to it then because it had to be close to it was our mighty around revenue and we had two data points I'm going to think to yourself your data points of what your committees are, but one data point was I was a high school teacher in the state of california, so I knew about what that range was and the other data point was I was ah consultant inside of a small firm and I had that data point of what that was and so we kind of took a look and and extrapolated out a little bit about what would what would it look like if we were succeeding the third one then became who do we want to work for? No notice that that first decision of the lifestyle business that started kicking clients out really fast in a good way could not service them at what they were asking because it would have required that I was living off site for four, six or eight weeks at a time that wasn't that lifestyle choice that we wanted to by the way, quick aside when we started our business, how I made my original client list is I went to my garage, my closet in my bookcase I wrote down any product or company I had ever paid money to receive a product from and that became my initial client list on the list for companies like dell computers, apple computer specialized bicycles, trek bicycles, toyota hey, a boy can dream any company who had any. I paid anything for I went to town, and I connected to their hr department. I connected to their training and leadership department. I let them know who I was, what I was doing and what I had done to get me here. My first client out of the gate was one of my favorite outdoor clothing companies simply because I said, hey, I bought a lot of your stuff from doing this thing. I'd love to connect and talk about that that was right in line with our miti's, if you will, if the fourth one then was, what could we create that these kinds of folks would want? And that became the surveys that we did literally going toe linked in finding people who I thought were in a position to bring this kind of information to the table and asking them he want articles? Do you want videos? Do you want seminars? Do you want workshops? Do you want nothing? And then, over the past seven years of building up things, so are our website talks about my lifestyle business one of the things that we wrote in is that I take a month off every year a month, thirty days move away this year I did two weeks of cycling through colorado thirteen days of riding high road nine hundred ninety eight miles I'm not saying a thousand was close we have created a revenue stream that I can look into the future and see things right now in the middle of a thirty four day a trip fourteen workshops all with the clients that we want to be working with I reach out to those folks I let them know what we're doing what we're working on but that m I t has held and then the products listening to the community asking them what is it that we can serve up for you what is it that weaken gift to you? What is it that we can get to you and last last winter we had a certain demographic from my community say you know jason, we go to your workshops for one or two days and then we separate out what would happen if we could connect in once per month as we went so we created a new product for that monthly check back in now we have to measure ourselves on this well, I'm gonna ask you to think about over the lunch break today as you're refueling and getting ready for the afternoon is how do you measure your committee's, objectively and subjectively that object of are there numbers that you can put two things? Jody and I found out that there were too many days to be out at one time, and by the way, her number is a little bit different than my number, and we live accordingly. As far as that revenue, we had to measure that that's like the easy one to measure, because it's always a number right there, and we're going to go on through that, so your job is to kind of take a look at what is from the morning session, the more that you're creating. When you think about that in these two ways, what does it look like? Is the vision as the product as the service or experience? And then what are you going to do about that? So on the screen, behind me or in front of you or online, you can take a look at this. When I think about what I do for my work, I got it down to two things. I'm thinking back to your example of, of building the event and you've got the music and you've got the people, but you're you're funding the programs across the world, what are the two or three or four m? I tease the most important aspects of that? Does that change? Who I invite? Does that change how I invite the refer er's and I got to say what's on my mind about that that concept is the numbers you get and I'll put the right people you get could be two different meetings I could get a lot of people or I get a few of the sneeze er's the people who will promote that you notice underneath what I did is I went ahead and what's going to talk about this later in the afternoon and even a little bit into tomorrow is I went and I said to myself what keeps me busy during the day getting to those two things and I'm gonna get that as much as I can down to as few as possible so your committees and I would start with for your demographic people often ask me you know how many of these should I have in my response to it always is I want as many as I need but as few as I can consistently advertise I need my world I need my friends I need my colleagues my co founders I need my partners to know here the few things that jason stands for here the things that drive his person his business his product his service in his experience so that is the forth element if you will of this productivity portfolio where it comes together I believe from this last session is how doe I think through ooh, those enmities from a noun perspective what does it look like from a verse perspective what do I do about that? And then of course with the m I t concept of breaking that down to what can I consistently fall back on and advertise to that world that I'm playing with how different are your business miti's from your life miti's should there be carol but I know you're thinking demographic in the one um and so how do I service them? But then how do you like the servicing of your lifestyle which is number one for you how does that fit? Two of nineties in my mind I'm going back to the first flip chart uh whiteboard that I wrote up where we did what is your mohr on? We had a bunch of responses from the online audience and they had a bunch of responses from you as well by default mine are both because if you notice that first wanna put lifestyle business I think I have to be intuitive about here. I believe that if I had done that exercise in nineteen ninety five as a first year teacher it would have been different I bet client list would have been up on the top it would have been called students and then every decision because I know for those five years that I taught every decision that we made where we went on our honeymoon was for my students and jodi let me do that. We went to we went to aa central europe for thirty days, and I got to do serious research while we were traveling around a topic that I knew I had to come back and teach better tolerance, diversity and getting along. So at that point in my life, everything went through that filter ten years from now, there may be a new filter, you know, one of the things that we heard this morn thing I think runs any reassuring about the sharing giving of that overflow I can I can see that one coming, you know, how much can jodi and I give away experience workshops thinking, but that is further down that list from lifestyle business for now, I'm looking at your experience personally, you know, you're going from that kind of employee experience where you're on the clock for an organization need but this side thing that launched today that could, um mitigate or limit what you have to do over here. It's, why I love pen and paper because I will, I hope your date stamping. I hope your date stamping your notes today because what I want to do is I want to take a look at this rough draft at my t list I want to bring it back in six months oh, I mean here's, a good question. How often do I update those enmities? I do it two times number one. Seasonally I revisit that all right, here we are in the time of the year we're heading into a new season right now, and I know there's different hours of day, there's, different things that I want to be doing there's different people be hanging out with if I look at the calendar for the next three months and in the second time that we reevaluate miami tease is a major life change when when I got the book deal, that was an eighteen day experience where, uh day zero I didn't have a book deal. I met someone on day eighteen. I had a contract in a check. I'd revisit my my tease. They gave me a four and a half month deadline, so we had to make some different decisions about our lifestyle, about our revenue, about our clients and on down that list.