Uncommon Advice
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Uncommon Advice
From Anxiety to Achievement: Craig Ballantyne's Path to Disciplined Success
Craig Ballantyne, known as "the world's most disciplined man," shares how he redefined discipline for modern entrepreneurs through systems rather than relentless hustle. He reveals his journey from crippling anxiety and unhealthy habits to building multiple successful businesses through what he calls "effortless discipline."
• Discipline through subtraction: removing what holds you back is more effective than adding more activities
• The critical importance of identifying your "ball and chain" – whether it's alcohol, social media, or toxic relationships
• How putting "level 10 effort into level 1 problems" causes entrepreneurs to miss their biggest opportunities
• Standards are more powerful than discipline – when something becomes your standard, you don't need willpower
• Breaking the entrepreneurial "doom loop" through better planning and preparation
• Overcoming anxiety by helping others: "You can't be generous and anxious at the same time"
• The importance of creating a detailed "movie script" vision of your ideal future
• Using the "Friday night rule" to evaluate new opportunities – if you wouldn't do it Friday night, don't do it at all
Check out Craig's new book "The Dark Side of Discipline" on Amazon and follow him on Instagram @realcraigballantyne for more insights on productive entrepreneurship without unnecessary sacrifice.
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If you want to live your dream life, you first must stop living your nightmare.
Speaker 2:All right. So I'm excited today We've got Craig on with us and I want you guys to get ready. Man, You're going to meet him, he's going to talk to you and share a bunch of information. He's not only mastered the art of discipline, but he's also redefined it for kind of the modern entrepreneur, in my opinion, on the things that you're doing. He's known as the world's most disciplined man, which is pretty epic, but his message goes far beyond that and rigid routines and relentless hustle right, I think that hustle culture has kind of taken over a lot of things and I think your insight is going to be unique to that. But you're also behind the bestselling book the perfect day formula, which I own two copies.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:And the uh, the game changing release of the new dark side of discipline, which is a really good book, and uh, where you challenges everything you thought you knew about achieving your biggest goals. Right, you dive into that stuff Now I actually I don't know if you know this, but I'm going to get into this. So you've also founded Early to Rise and you really got your start with the Turbulence Training System yeah, man, back in the day, right. So a unique story about that in a second. But with that, you're also highly sought after business coach. Right, you work with a lot of people.
Speaker 2:You've got countless individuals, from eight-figure entrepreneurs to busy parents, worked with a gamut of people, helping them with effortless discipline systems and established unbreakable standards which that kind of paved the way for lasting success without unnecessary sacrifice.
Speaker 2:A lot of times we believe we have to sacrifice to get what we want, and I think if you do it right, you don't have to. You can have it all if you do it right. So I'm really about theory, which is awesome because you're living it, which I love and appreciate, and you've gone from and another thing I identify with you've gone from crippling anxiety and binge drinking in the past to building multiple successful businesses, and I think entrepreneurship can be a lonely world can be a lonely world and I think guys, you know people, can find themselves in kind of these holes that they they resort to other alternatives that kind of just focused on on life and being the best that can be. But um, with that said, greg, welcome uh to the to the call to the podcast on common advice, and I'm excited to have you here and being able to communicate with our you know our audience and just put on a good show here for them today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:So one thing real quick is I want to put this out there a story that you may probably not remember, but we first met back in 2009. Wow, so I was in underground. Yeah, yannick Silver's event was, I believe, in DC.
Speaker 1:Yep, the fire alarm at that one. Remember that.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah. And then we and I think what's his name? Bob Parsons was speaking there too, potentially, yeah, he was, I remember that. So I was at the gym working out with a friend of mine, mark Evans.
Speaker 1:Oh, Mark Evans was at the gym working out with a friend of mine, mark evans.
Speaker 2:Oh, and I just yeah, yeah. So I, he started to introduce me to the online world back in 2007 and then, like we're a group, of us went out there and him and I were working out. You walked in and he, he introduced us and, uh, we had a quick chat and then we got to our, got to our work, man got our work it. So that was, I think, back in your turbulence days that was.
Speaker 1:That was, uh, I had not bought early to rise. I bought early to rise in 2011 um yeah, 2009. I remember that that was a very pivotal year and that was a a great event, and I met a lot of people that year at that one.
Speaker 2:That was good so tell once you. You know, I kind of gave a good intro.
Speaker 1:I think of you but you know, tell us a little bit about yourself that uh stuff that I missed. You know, I kind of gave a good intro, I think of you, but you know, tell us a little bit about yourself. Something I missed Toronto, but I didn't really want to be a personal trainer. I'm not the type of person who loves, you know, bringing the energy all the time, and it's something I can do in short spurts but not all day long. And so what I decided to do was figure out the online space and I sold my first workout program online on January 28th of 2001.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that really helped me, nate, was that I got critical credibility by writing for Men's Health Magazine, and so I just I got, you know, I would say, kind of lucky. As you know, preparation plus luck or preparation plus opportunity is luck, whatever the phrase is. You know, I sent one of my email newsletters to the Men's Health Fitness Editor and he put it in the magazine and that gave me the critical credibility, which is a huge, huge lesson for everybody listening. Like your, your business, your brand, needs critical credibility. It needs all that social proof, but it also needs, like, differentiation and how you're respected and whether that means like you have a 30 second clip on local TV or a column in the local newspaper, whether you write for a magazine or whether you have a book, all of these things give you critical credibility that sets you apart from the competition. And for me, that critical credibility was key because I have a lot of introverted tendencies and I don't like to go out and schmooze and stuff like that. So that's probably why we didn't have a 20-minute conversation in the gym. Mark's a whole lot more extroverted than I am, but I, you know, I just like to sit behind the computer. But I built this big network through that critical credibility, because I was able to reach out and get people's attention because, oh, you're the men's health guy. So that was where I spent, you know, 2000 to 2015, basically in that fitness world.
Speaker 1:But around 2000, well, first of all, 2006, I had my anxiety attacks, which we can talk about. In 2007, I joined Yannick Silver's Mastermind Group, which was huge. 2007, I also had my first business event, because all these people were asking me how are you growing an online business? So I started teaching people and then in 2011, I bought a company called Early to Rise, which was a health and wealth and success newsletter by Mark Ford, aka Michael Masterson, the author of Ready Fire Aim, which a lot of entrepreneurs will know about, and I took that over.
Speaker 1:And then that's where somebody, particularly this guy named Ed O'Keefe, said you're the most productive person I know. Therefore, you're the most disciplined person I know, and that just kind of stuck. I'm obviously not David Goggins, I don't want to be David Goggins, but I'm a productive person and most people will make the connection that if you're productive, you're disciplined. But it's really about systems which we can break down. And then in 2015, I stopped the fitness business. I shut that down because I just didn't enjoy being in that industry with all its claims and crazy promises, and I wrote the Perfect Day Formula. And then I wrote Unstoppable, which was how to overcome anxiety as an entrepreneur. Then I wrote Perfect Week Formula. Then I basically took six years off writing books and coached people through COVID and all those years. And then in 2024, I started writing this Dark Side of Discipline book because of some disturbing things I started to see, with people just going way too far and kind of losing the plot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's interesting, you mentioned Ed O'Keefe. I met him back in the day as well, back in 2007, I think is when I first met him, and then we did some stuff together back in 23 as well, kind of reconnected. So you know, it's the first time that we've talked this long and we know so many similar connections. So what are your guys that you do? This is just a random story, but uh, who, uh, who I know you're pretty close with and over the years where you guys have done stuff together, he actually one of the things he did at that same event he did a presentation on his uh sales funnel, on his sales funnel and that completely changed things how I look at the internet world and I would imagine that's all, all stuff that you guys probably learned together along the way too, but it changed the world for me, I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, so I want to. You mentioned the intro, the introvert, which is probably another reason we didn't talk for 20 minutes with jim, because I'm the exact same way. Well, I actually, when I go to those events, I develop and over the years I start going to those events, I developed the nickname. Oh yeah, I can because I'd be hanging out and then I'd be gone.
Speaker 2:I'd have to go recharge and sit in my room and chill or go to the gym and work out. But I want to. I want to take some time actually to focus on a few things today, one of them being your book. Uh, the dark side of discipline let's you know that's the new one that's out. I'd like to talk about that. I think it's it's very I perfect timing for me. I've always been a very disciplined person, but I've been wavering a little bit lately over the last year and a half and I need I need to get dialed back in. So I'm excited to that's so selfishly. I want to focus on on that, if you're all right. So you, you talk about in the dark side in the book. You talk about this Chuck story and how, the kind of the misguided chase for external validation. Can you expand on that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. I had a friend and he had it all on the outside. You know he was married with kids, you know fancy red sports car, he was in great shape, he had a great business, he had a beautiful house. And you know I've been in this house and you know I tried to help him with you know the perfect week formulas, which is time management. And I'd sat down in his basement office and, you know, walked him through, like here's how you're going to have more time for your family and all that sort of stuff. And and then you are, you doing, man, like you got this family you're super busy with, you're already disciplined, you're super busy in the business. Like, where are you going to get the time for this? And I don't know where he got the time from it, but it certainly wasn't the business, because I was keeping him busy and that was probably his family.
Speaker 1:But he didn't need the external validation, he had everything that somebody could want. But you know, one day he stumbled across you know something on the internet that said, oh, you're not disciplined until you do these seven things every single day. And then he did it again. You know he did the challenge once, he did it again and then his wife walked out on him with the kids and you know there was probably a lot of factors in there, but that was one of them that he was spending so much time devoted to you and, whosever definition it was, he was chasing someone else's definition of discipline and chasing someone else's dreams and he sacrificed his own dreams. So all of the things that he was doing, like working out and reading and cold plunging, all of those things are good on their own, but they got in the way of the great, and that's the dark side of discipline.
Speaker 1:And as somebody who's written many books, I get a lot of people saying to me oh, I want to write a book. And then I'll see them six or 12 months later and I will ask them because I'm very interested to hear about their book and they'll say, oh, I haven't started it yet, I just can't find the time because they're so busy doing all these other good things. And again, they're sacrificing the great and that's the dark side of discipline is that people are doing so many things these days because in social media now you can hear about everybody's daily routine and you can see all of these things that are getting a thousand likes and you're like I got to go make a video of me getting in a cold plunge so I can get a thousand likes and you're really losing the plot about what matters. And that's what bothers me and that's what drove me to write this book, because it hurt to see my friend lose his family.
Speaker 1:Because I'm a family man. Family is like the most important thing. Business is great, monetary success is great, but if you lose your family because you're chasing someone else's definition of discipline or even because you're working too much man, I think that you've lost everything. So that fired me up to write this book, because I think that being disciplined and productive and successful, the foundation of it is pretty simple. It just requires a few systems, systems and then obviously, like you know, to have a hundred million dollar business you got to have some great ideas and great marketing and differentiation and stuff, but to at least give yourself the time and the opportunity, the basics are actually pretty simple and we don't need to do a million things.
Speaker 2:So what? In regards to discipline, like you said, there's there's this culture of like doing all this stuff every day and everyone's got to post about it. What is your thoughts on a good discipline? If somebody's looking to be more disciplined, what's your idea of that?
Speaker 1:The biggest thing that people need to do is get rid of the bad things. I've always been a huge proponent of discipline through subtraction Anybody who's ever gone into a weight loss program listen. You can add a green juice every single day, but if you're drinking a bottle of wine and eating a bag of chips at night, what's going to make the biggest difference? You having the green juice or you getting rid of the junk? In most cases, it's always getting rid of something which frees you up to go faster in life. So everybody listening to this needs to think what's the ball and chain holding me back right now? Is it booze? Is it porn? Is it Netflix? Is it Instagram? Is it scrolling social media? Am I hanging around gossiping friends, toxic people? Am I in a toxic relationship? Like you, can go and add a cold plunge and meditate and read a book a week, but none of those things fixes that 50 pound ball and chain that's holding you stuck. And so when I first work with somebody, it is let us see what is holding you back before we add anything new, because you're already overwhelmed. Your hair is already on fire. You're spinning too many plates. Whatever you know cliche you want to use, we don't need to add more complexity to your life. We need to get rid of the stuff that is holding you down.
Speaker 1:And for me, back in the day, it was binge drinking. You know binge drinking, you know a habit that came out of you know small town, canada, where I grew up and then going into college. And you know, when I got out of college, I didn't drop that bad habit, and that bad habit robbed me of years of productivity, of success, of relationships, of maturity, all of those things. And it wasn't like I wasn't doing good things. I was working out all the time, I was eating well, I was sleeping pretty well, I was reading, I was writing, I was creating, but, man, it was the binge drinking ball and chain that held me back.
Speaker 1:We need to figure out what are the things that are holding you back the most before we start going and saying, oh well, I saw some you know 23 year old influencer on Instagram and he's, you know, fasting for 20 hours and three ice baths a day and he's training for an ultra marathon and doing CrossFit all at the same time. I got to do those things. No, you don't. You gotta, you gotta step back and identify what you want.
Speaker 2:I like that. It's so, so key. It's a lot of people do and I've done it where I just what can I? What can I do to be healthier? What not? What can I extract to be healthier? What can I reduce? What can I get rid of? And when people do this one, that is such a great way of looking at it. That's awesome. Now I'm going to be a little vulnerable here on this, because you talk about the anxiety and I literally was just sitting with my wife and sister the other night. We were talking and I talked about the first time I truly had an anxiety attack. But it's anxiety and I'm up and I'm like it's two in the morning and I'm like can't sleep and I have to get up and I got to go work. I'm like, all right, let me go work on what's keeping me awake, or stress, right, that stuff happens. So what were some of the things you did to help solve that and alleviate the anxiety side?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a little backstory about how I got into it and then all the things that I did to get rid of it. So in 2006, I was making the most money. I switched from personal trainer to online business owner. I had a product launch, so I'm making money. I am in the best shape of my life. I look like I belonged on the cover of Men's Health Magazine. I had everything going for me.
Speaker 1:I remember I'd be walking, I'd single, I'd single, and you know I had no problems in life. I had nobody taking my time and yet something and it was probably the hypocritical way that I was living, that you know. I was leaving that personal training world where I was a good boy from Monday to Saturday and then Saturday night I was a binge drinker until Sunday morning. And that hypocritical lifestyle, combined with my introverted tendencies of keeping everything in my head and never sharing anything, never writing anything down via journaling or anything like that, it all just compounded into this anxiety attack that I had after, like kind of a. It was after the holidays, so I was binge drinking and then working early in the morning as a personal trainer, and it all caught up with me. I was exhausted on January 1st and that's when I had my first anxiety attack. You know, nearly 20 years ago It'll be 20 years ago this coming New Year's Day was when I woke up and I paced my room and I, you know, for 11 hours and I thought I was having a heart attack and eventually I went to the emergency room and then I got rid of it and then it came back again harder three months later, where I again binge drinking weekend and I was exhausted and I remember having this like disturbing dream and I woke up and my heart started pounding and that one went on for six weeks, 24 hours a day, tingling from the top of my head down the end of my fingertips. I could sleep about four or five hours a night, couldn't concentrate, and I finally got rid of it by.
Speaker 1:One of the most important things I think people have anxiety is to go to your doctor and have them do a little bit testing on you and they're going to say to you there's nothing physically wrong with you. And I think that's very important for somebody with anxiety to know there's nothing physically wrong with you, especially if you have any type of hypochondriac nature. So that was the first thing, you know, I went to the emergency room the second time with that second anxiety attack and they gave me a heart rate monitor and they said, hey, we'll call you if there's anything that we find in the next 24 hours. And I, you know, I watched that next 24 hours go by and nothing, you know, nobody called me. So I was like, oh man, okay, and then I realized I had to turn over every rock. I wasn't going to go to the doctor and get medication, but I was willing to do Tai Chi, yoga, qigong, meditation, all of these things because I knew that proper breathing and slowing down probably would help me and those things. I didn't like any of them, but they all made a big difference in helping me learn how to breathe properly.
Speaker 1:And then I started taking up journaling. I realized I needed like an outlet and so gratitude journaling and I'm doing more planning and preparation for my days. And then the writing that I do is very therapeutic in nature. So I write books, I write articles and I don't talk to a therapist, but I've used my writing as therapy. You know I write about all of this stuff and I share it willingly. I go on these podcasts and talk about it. So you know, this is like a therapy session. Just by sharing it and I realized like, oh, I got to get out of my own head and I got to go out and serve other people.
Speaker 1:Because if you just if you're anxious, it's because your wheels are spinning, man, like oh my gosh, and they're spinning in the mud because you're worried about something. And you're worried about something that's probably not going to happen and it's not going to be as bad as you think. But you are just inventing these stories in your head and it's taking up a lot of your brain's what I call CPU, right, your computational processing power and you're using all of that and you're not being able to be creative. And if you keep that in your head, then it just gets worse. But if you go and you journal about it, if you tell somebody about it, you feel better, but even more if you go and help somebody else, if you go and focus on solving other people's problems, you will get rid of your anxiety, because you can't be generous and anxious at the same time. They're incompatible. It's like having gratitude and scarcity. You can't have them both. So if you are very grateful and you are very generous, you will get rid of your abundance, your sorry, not your abundance your scarcity and your anxiety. And so I noticed, like, just when I was like if somebody asked me a question on Twitter and I spent like five minutes helping them out, I was like, oh man, I feel better. Yeah, I'm just going out and helping other people. And so that was another key component to me.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, the last thing, like a couple of months after my second anxiety attack, I you know, I I became I had this paradoxical entrepreneur life right when you. It's like the paradox of freedom, where, if anybody listening to this is dreaming of this, or it has gone from like a side hustle to now being an entrepreneur on their own. You know the worked corporate job in the day and your side hustle became so good, you were able to, to all of a sudden, quit your job. Now, all of a sudden, you could do anything. And when you can do anything like you can stay up late, you can sleep in, you can go to bed early, you can get up early, you can work for 12 hours. You can work on this. You can get up early, you can work for 12 hours, you can work on this. You can do this. You can not work. You can go to get a massage instead of working. You have this paradox of choice and it can be anxiety inducing.
Speaker 1:And so for me, I realized I was getting up at 7.30 in the morning, and to some people that's early, but to me that was late. I'm a morning person. I like to do everything in the morning and nothing the rest of the day. So I was getting up at 7.30, like half of my day is gone, basically and then I was checking my email on my BlackBerry in my bed. I remember this is 2006, 2007. And I realized like this is causing me anxiety.
Speaker 1:So the next day I decided I'm going to get up five minutes earlier and I'm going to wait five minutes longer to check my phone Just 10 minutes. And I did that for seven days, 10 minutes. And I had this 10 minute window where I was able to do stuff and kind of take control of the day. Then the next week I didn't go to them, join the 5am club. Instead, I got up at 7.20 and I waited until 7.40 to check my email just little baby steps. And I did this every week, five minutes on one side, five minutes on the other side, until I finally got to like 5.30 am wake up time and 9.30 am before I touched my email, and that was when I had some of the biggest shifts in my business and my productivity, in building those systems that allowed me to become so productive and crank out more content, and it really reduced my anxiety because I got my work done so early in the day and now I really felt like I had freedom.
Speaker 1:So those things, and again a lot of that comes through the self-reflection, introspection of me going. I like to get up early and get a lot of stuff done, so therefore I can't be wasting my time on checking my email. And you know, of course, like you get 30 sales overnight but you get one refund, all you're going to do is focus on that one refund notification, and sure enough I did. Or you know, like somebody you know one negative comment, you spend the next three hours thinking of snappy comebacks that I never did post, fortunately. You know you waste so much brain power on that stuff, and so I realized like that was the key to setting me free. And so those were the things. And and now, like you know, I could have too much caffeine, I could have a bad day and the anxiety attack will never come. I can get a little grumpy and a little bit quiet, and my wife will catch me on that, but I'll never have those anxiety attacks again because I have the systems in place to overcome them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so, that's key and it's interesting to say that because I have the systems in place to overcome them. Yeah, that's key and it's interesting you say that because I like getting up early too and I actually feel stressed if I get up after a certain time. I wake up and I'm stressed and then I'm like my day kind of just snowballs the wrong way and I got up. Maybe I don't use an alarm and I got up maybe 10 minutes later than I'd normally like to up and I sit down to get my stuff done, like what is the core activity I need to get done? Yeah, because otherwise it's very easy to start poking around and get sucked in. If you check email first, you're getting sucked into everyone else's day for you, not your day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and most people you know you said something there that's very key is, you know, get up and go to work on the thing, and most people don't think about what's that thing you know the day before. So they get up and they start thinking, well, what should I do? And if they get up thinking that, then the next thing you know, like, you probably got like a 30% chance of choosing the right thing and 70% chance of going down a rabbit hole, you know ping pong and around, and then you end that day at five o'clock and you go, man, I've been up all day, I've been so busy, but what did I really accomplish? And if you don't break that cycle through better planning and preparation, which is really just doing your to-do list the day before, if you get that done, you're very clear. Like I got to spend an hour and a half on, you know, project X first thing in the morning. Once you, once you get to that stage and you have that level of clarity, that's where you're going to have huge breakthroughs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. So this actually brings up another thing you talk about. It's that I want to get into is level 10 effort into level 10 problems?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so you know we go back to the story of that Chuck guy. You know he was putting a level 10 effort into the discipline challenge. Now, discipline was not even a level five problem for him. He was already disciplined, so it was a level one problem. That's what we call it. You know something that's not important, and he was putting his most effort and energy into it effort and energy into it. Now, the most important thing in his life was his marriage. His level 10 problem was his marriage. And what level of effort was he putting into it? Maybe a two or a three, you know? Maybe buying flowers on Valentine's day, maybe writing a nice mother's day note on Instagram to his wife, but other than that, he was coming up out of his office late, he was not spending time with them, he was not helping out with the kids, not having connection with her.
Speaker 1:You're having that mismatch and that's what I see in so many people, even in entrepreneurship. You might have a difficult business partner that you need to have a conversation with them. You might have a team member that's becoming cancerous and is really causing a lot of problems, or you might have a funnel that's not working, and when people run up against those problems. What they often do is start a YouTube channel. It's like, what are you doing starting a YouTube channel when you have this level 10 problem over here? And the reason why people do that is because you can go and start a YouTube channel, have a YouTube video up in like an hour and you will feel like you've accomplished something. You know you have that dopamine hit, but that is just a perverse form of procrastination against the thing that really matters in your life.
Speaker 1:So what we challenge people to do is to sit back and think all right, be honest with myself here what's my level 10 problem in my business and what's the level 10 problem in my personal life? And it's not going to be hard to figure this out. Everybody should know this. It's like you know, whatever your revenue constraint is in your business, or your profit constraint in your business, or the or that team tension or problem that comes up all the time, you know what your biggest problem is in your biggest in your business. You know what your level 10 is, and it's the same with your personal life, whether it's your health, whether it's your relationship. You know whether it's the same with your personal life, whether it's your health, whether it's your relationship, whether it's a bad habit you have, maybe it's a friendship gone sour, maybe it's a financial situation that you're in. You know what that problem is.
Speaker 1:And now you have to be honest and just say okay, what, truly, what level of effort am I putting into this business partnership that's gone sour? What level of effort am I putting into this $30,000 worth of credit card debt that I put up, like maybe a three out of 10.? And then the next step, what you need to do, is write down the 10 to 20 action items that would make it look like you were putting a level 10 effort into it. You were putting a level 10 effort into it. So so somebody listening to yeah, like I do have 10 or $20,000 worth of credit card debt. That is the biggest problem. I really need to attack that.
Speaker 1:Okay, what would it look like for you to put a level 10 effort into that? Well, you would cut your cards up or you'd transfer your all your debt onto one card that has the lowest interest rate. You'd talk to people to maybe, like you know, forgive some payments. You'd talk to your banker. You'd you would increase your income. You would sit down with your family and cut spending, like you would. You would go to your garage, sell everything that's in there that you possibly could Like that's a level 10 effort. Great that that problem is going to go away a whole lot faster once you put that level 10 effort into it. And so you can apply this to those two areas personal and professional and you should do this basically every month and just attack the level 10 problems and that's where you're going to have the biggest breakthroughs in your life and it'd be the most productive year of your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's huge. That's really really good. You also talk about in your book. You talk about standards eat discipline for breakfast, right? So for an entrepreneur just starting out, right? We have all walks of life listening in here. Who might feel you know they might yet have the right to set high standards for themselves, right? They're just getting started out or unsure what those should be. How can they begin to define and implement some of these unbreakable standards?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a good question, and so you know we need to look at this, as we need standards for all areas of our life, for our business, we need standards for our relationships with our spouse and our kids, we need standards for our health and we teach people how to set them in there. But one of the things that's really important is setting the standard in your business. So your standard of communication, like you know when you, if you have a customer, come on and say you're providing a service, what's your standard for getting back to somebody when they send a message to you, because you know you hate it when you go and deal with a business like facebook. Like, their standard for getting back to anybody if you have a problem with your account is like never reply, and you know that makes you angry as a customer. And so think about what would your customers like? Well, your customers would like to get a reply within one business day for sure, if not way faster. So set that standard. And then, as your business grows and you bring on customer support staff, et cetera, and an executive assistant, you always maintain that standard. Hey, we always get back to customers same day, provided that they sent a message to us before 3 pm close. Whatever time Eastern Standard Time. Whatever time Eastern Standard Time. Okay, great, that's the standard.
Speaker 1:And whenever the standard is violated, you have that one-on-one conversation with the person who dropped the ball and you remind them like, hey, these are the standards, what systems do we have to put in place so that you are always hitting that standard? And the standard is the standard that it's not broken. It is always the level at which you play. And you have that again for your business, for your personal life. Like, hey, I always pick up my clothes when I go into my bedroom. I don't leave them lying around on the ground. That's the standard, because your standard is.
Speaker 1:You know, there's a great phrase about in parenting that behaviors are caught, not taught. Because you can tell somebody to do something, you can tell your kids to pick up your clothes, but if your clothes are all over the floor, what are they going to do? They're going to put their clothes on the floor because that's what they see, because that's the standard that they see in the actions. And so if you want somebody to do something, you have to set the standard and do that thing so that they will follow through and do the same sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lead by example, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And put those, put that stuff in place and follow through. I love it. So a couple more questions for you so you can also talk about the doom loop escape plan. Can you describe a little bit about what the doom loop typically looks like for an entrepreneur, perhaps related to procrastination and consistent results?
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. So you know, if we talk about what we were talking about there before with the, you know, start of the day, like most of the entrepreneurs get in this doom loop of they wake up in the reactionary. They don't have a to-do list, they don't know what to do. They've got an idea, but they also they're going to procrastinate. So they open up email, they open up social media and now they get behind and they're frustrated and at the end of the day they feel bad. So they go home and then they're probably going to have a glass of wine or a few beers to take the edge off and they're going to stay up and watch some Netflix, which means they're going to get up late the next day and the doom loop is just going to continue because they didn't plan and prepare. And it's over and over and over again. And the more you stay in that doom loop, the harder it is to get out.
Speaker 1:Now what you need to get out of that doom loop is a circuit breaker, and the circuit breaker is often going to be better planning and preparation, because you know, if you live that day over and over again, you'll never get out of it unless you do something different and the number one key that we see is getting ready for the next day, and there's a couple of components to it, like what I've been and I was actually just chatting with chat GPT today because I've been struggling with this because the number one thing that I see is determining success in people of all you know fitness, health, business, et cetera is getting to bed on time. But how do you make content that's interesting about getting to bed on time? And I had a conversation with ChatGPT about that this morning. It gave me some ideas, because if I'm coaching an entrepreneur and they're all disorganized, I'm like are you getting to bed on time.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I'm at this conference or I'm traveling and I didn't get to bed on time. And then they get up late and they get stuck in that doom loop and it's hard to get out of it. And so getting to bed on time is key, but also doing that to-do list the day before is key. And if you do those two things you'll break out of the doom loop. Because if you get to bed on time, you'll get up on time. If you have your to-do list done, you'll go to work on the top of your to-do list and, provided that you don't get distracted and you have systems set up to avoid the distractions, you'll start the day with wins. And now you're out of the doom loop and you got to continue to do that work to stay out of the doom loop. But that's the key, because most people just go through life stuck in doom loops.
Speaker 1:You know it's like the person who works Monday to Friday and then they get drunk on Friday night and then they get in a fight with their spouse on Saturday morning, so they go and get drunk again Saturday night, and then they're drinking watching football on Sunday, so they're in a horrible state on Monday they go back to the gym, they don't get results and it's just this doom loop life, unfortunately, that most people get stuck in and you feel sorry for them because when you look at their life, you can see exactly how to fix it, and most people, when they're on their own doom loop, they don't see exactly how to fix it. But it's almost always the same principles get to bed on time, do your to-do list, do your planning and preparation, and that's how you're going to win it so one thing you you've talked a few times about and we both mentioned, is like being prepared the day before.
Speaker 2:Do you use any tools or resources online? Because you know, I visit today's automated world. There's all kinds of softwares and systems and people can get kind of bogged down trying to figure out what to do. Yeah, I've tried to use a bunch over the years. This is the one that's always worked best for me. It's got to to be yellow. But what about you? I mean, what's some of the stuff that you leverage daily to help you stay?
Speaker 1:So I don't use much. But I will share some of the successful coaching clients. What they use. So first is something called the Opal app, o-p-a-l, and the Opal app is not a planning thing but it's a protection thing. It goes back to what we talked about at the start of the podcast about subtraction, and the Opal app blocks.
Speaker 1:You allows you to block yourself really, because you set it up. You set up, like you know, from 5pm to 8pm. I'm not allowed. You know I can pick up my phone but my phone cannot access any social media, can't access access text messages, it can't access my email. So I can pick up my phone but it's useless. And we have a lot of our clients who do that. They do this. You know various blocks of time over the course of the day, so that you know the phone is the number one destroyer of attention. You know it's the distraction tool. So if you block it from actually doing what it can do, you'll have a better chance of you making the right decisions. So that's one of the tools. Then a lot of our clients are starting to use ChatGPT to help them organize their days a little bit better.
Speaker 1:But I don't think that's necessary if you get the structure down and you do the time blocking that I talked about in the Perfect Week formula, and then it's just making sure you have a classic to-do list. And the to-do list shouldn't just say you know, tomorrow I'm going to get up and, you know, create that PowerPoint. It should be I'm going to get up and create that PowerPoint. And here are five you know starting points that I can have. For you know the starting point I need to have start with a great story. I need to then introduce myself, I need to tell them what they're going to learn, I need to teach these three things. And then I need to have my CTA at the end be like this Okay, great, now I have those five bullet points.
Speaker 1:So when I wake up the next morning I can go right to work on that PowerPoint, build it out whatever, using whatever systems are available now. So it's not just having a to-do list of, like, you know, write chapter one, you know, build PowerPoint, but having a little bit of breakdown for it so it's easy for you to get into the groove in the morning and then making sure that you know at the end of the day, it's that discipline through subtraction, making sure that your phone is not disturbing you, making sure that your phone is your phone calls are not disturbing you, making sure that nobody's bringing you emergencies during your magic time or deep work time, and it's just everything has to wait and allowing you to focus on what matters, because these things they don't need fancy, fancy stuff. They really simply are a matter of you building the systems to keep the distractions out, and we don't want to bring more in.
Speaker 2:That's so good. I actually use the. It's called Freedom, it's very similar to Opal. Okay, I use that. So that's been very helpful, but I'm definitely going to start, because I don't do that. I don't actually, I have my, I have the task and the bullets that I'm going to work on, but I don't break them down to be a little bit more granular, of like three to four steps. All right, yes, yes, I have to get this done, but here's what that looks like. That's really, really good.
Speaker 1:I like that to procrastinate on something. So I realized and I learned this from another book writer and it's like you know, if you want to write a chapter, you should have three subsections in each chapter and then a couple of questions for each one. So now you have, if you have three subsections and three questions in each one and you want to write 1500 words, now you only have to write about 200 words for each one of those questions and you have 1800 words for the chapter and it's done just like that. It's so much easier compared to oh man, I got to write a landing page, or I got to write a chapter, a book. That just seems like a big, big, monumental task and people will have inertia to that and they will resist it and they will procrastinate. But if it's like I don't actually have to write a landing page, I just have to write five sections that each have 300 words and they're all different sections, Then great, Awesome, I can do that and it's a whole lot less intimidating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. So, looking back at your, your entrepreneurial journey and you've coached thousands of people over the years and worked with a lot of different people your newsletters I can only imagine how many subscribers you have there. Which is what we focus on a lot of is newsletters in our business. Could you distill your most potent piece of advice for an entrepreneur who feels disciplined but isn't seeing the desired results in their life?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. The number one thing that you have to do is you really have to get clarity on what matters, and so we believe in the book that, before you can go and start figuring out your discipline plan, you really have to have a very clear vision for your future. Let's go three years into the future. Tell me exactly where you're living, what your family life is like, what your business is like, what your work week looks like, what your fitness and health routine looks like, what you do, what you don't do, where you vacation, what cars are in the driveway, et cetera. Now I know exactly what the North Star is, and only now can we then build the plan to get there.
Speaker 1:Because climbing Mount Everest, it's the same path. It's the same. Putting one foot in front of the other, going up the same path, you don't have to invent a new way. And whatever it is that the entrepreneur's goal is whether it's building a $10 million info business or building a million dollar coaching business or, you know, getting a newsletter to a hundred thousand subscribers it's all been done before. The path to success is generally smooth, but if you don't know exactly what you want to achieve, you can get lost in the chasing of too many things and the distraction and not knowing which thing to work on and therefore not giving the number one thing the most attention, and you feel like you're very busy without accomplishment.
Speaker 2:So you first have to step back and then you can move forward. So that's the number one thing that I would encourage people to do. What does it look like? What does it truly look like, not just like, hey, in three years I want to have this. It's in three years I'm going to be in this house. My family is going to be doing this on a daily basis. My routine is going to, you know, like that's ultra detail. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's big, because that's the movie script for your future and I can close my eyes and I can watch how your day is going to play out. Watch how your day is going to play out and then, therefore, with my experience and the experience of any coach, they'll be able to say okay, I know exactly what will get you there and I know exactly what will be a dangerous detour for you, because a lot of my coaching clients they actually call me Dr no, because most of the time I'm just telling them no, don't do that, don't do that. No, not worth your time. Because it's just, it's the curse of the entrepreneur. We're very ambitious people. We want to do a lot of things. We want to help oh, you know this person. They don't have a business big enough, but I would love to help them. Yeah, but you know you can't help every.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking particularly about this one client of mine. He's a consultant up in Alaska. He makes a million bucks a year as a consultant and all his companies that pay him like $100,000 for consulting they're all $10 million plus businesses. But every week some new business, new entrepreneur in his area who's making a million bucks only comes to him and says, hey, can you help me and could he help him? Yes, does he want to? Yes, but he's also fully maxed out on how much he can work right now and he still wants to take his business higher.
Speaker 1:So how on earth can he say yes to any of those things? So I just continually say, hey, no, you can do this, but only if you do it Friday night after 6 pm. And then that gets people like to go no, I'm not doing it. You know pretty quickly. So the next time somebody out there is thinking, oh, should I take on this new project or this new partnership or something, just use the Craig Valentine Friday night rule. Like you don't have any time in your work week, so you have to do this Friday night and sacrifice your family time or your social time, will you do it? Oh, okay, then that's your answer.
Speaker 2:That's a good one. Hey, well, one it's. This has been great. I really appreciate it. I feel like we've packed in some really good lessons and value for our listeners. So one I'm grateful that you jumped on and were able to talk about all that stuff. So thank you. And the next thing is where's the best place? Like I want my listeners to be able to and I'll be shooting this out to our newsletters as well Like, where should they follow you? Where should they connect with you? How should they connect with you? How should they?
Speaker 1:get with you? Yeah, absolutely. So two places. Linkedin, um, I'm on there now. I haven't used it in a while, but I'm on there now. But also, more importantly, is Instagram. So, at real Craig Ballantyne and Instagram, that's where you and I connected. And then also, uh, grab the book the dark side of discipline book at just on Amazon. Just grab it there. There's a, there's a link inside the book for tools on how to create your vision, on how to create your standards. That'll be really valuable for people as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So, that's good. I'll also link that in those things in the show notes for them. Perfect, thank you, awesome man. Well, thank you so much for being on. I greatly.