Ari Meisel

Hack Your Friendships…

December 13, 2018 by Ari Meisel

…networking is so 2018.

I have a strategy for keeping my relationships strong with the people I don’t see very often. I guess you could call it networking, but I hate that phrase. I use Trello, but it doesn’t really matter what tool you use for the following friendship hack.

I have about 12–16 key people in my life that I just want to keep in regular contact with; not with any particular purpose. Most of them have given me business or speaking opportunities, but it’s really just that they’re interesting people. I always learn something when I speak to them.

It’s really, really simple in Trello because I just set a due date of, say, 60 days from now on each contact’s card. When we speak, I’ll put notes in there on Trello about what we talked about. It’s also really easy to do follow-ups. I can tag someone on my team and say, “Hey, I talked to this person, please send them a copy of my book.” Then, I have a record of that entire exchange.

As you know, I’m very, very much about the external brain. It’s really easy to get lazy and just keep all of your contacts and conversations in your head. But I think that it’s very helpful and way more effective if you get it out of your head, so you not only know what you and the person talked about, but what action you took afterward.https://upscri.be/6892b4?as_embed=true

With more and more people using calendly or scheduling software in general, I realized that there are a lot of people who feel like that’s not a personal enough touch. But I think calendly is a wonderful gift you can give people. You tell them, “You can book at any time that’s convenient for you.” Of course, when they get in there, they’re going to see the parameters that make sense to you so you’re actually controlling it. I think that this old-school notion that you have to have a secretary like Miss Moneypenny who’s personally going back and forth to set a time with someone is super antiquated.

These days, my contacts send me a calendly link and I started saving them on their cards in Trello. So when the due date comes up, I go to the Trello card. I see what the last conversation was, I pull up the calendly link and I book it, which saves a ton of back and forth. So I have a calendar full of really interesting calls and conversations with people whose counsel I trust and whose company I want to keep invigorated.

I used to talk about how the average meeting takes eight emails to set up and now calendly made it possible to do in one step. Now I can make it zero steps really as I’ve taken control of my regularly scheduled contact with these people. Everybody benefits. So there’s my little relationship management hack that you can all use and set up in about 10 minutes. And I hope you do. Make it an effective week.

Is it Cereal First or Milk First?

December 4, 2018 by Ari Meisel

There are two kinds of people in the world (and in my house as well.)There’s the type of person who pours the milk on the cereal and the person who puts cereal over the milk. It’s two actions that lead to the same result, regardless of the order.

Now, you might not think it matters, but it does, to everybody, especially me. It made me think about processes in general, as I was watching my children all do it the wrong way this morning.

Milk first, I mean really.

We all have methods to the way we do things. We’ve never questioned them because it’s the way we’ve always done them. But there’s always a reason. So when you explain processes to people, it’s so important to show the thinking, show “the why.”

The only way to do that is to have someone else interpret it. That’s why we created the POS system. (Process Optimization System).

Here’s the infographic.

As is usually the case, implementing this process on process will lead to a bigger question. Because, aside from the cereal thing, I think the world is really divided into two distinct groups of people. — those who engage and those who disengage. The disengagers are the folks who retreat into ”We’ve always done it this way.” The Engagers are those who say, “Well I never looked at it like that.”

I think that we go through seasons where those things might change. We may be hard-wired a certain way, but life gives us endless opportunities to see things from another perspective. So, if you look at the activities in your day, try to think how can you put the activity that you’re doing into one of those two boxes. The salient part of the questioning is that it might not be what you think it is. It’s why it’s such a good exercise.https://upscri.be/6892b4?as_embed=true

When I completely delegate something to one of my teammates, some people would that’s disengaging, but maybe not. When I allow myself to take 72 hours away from my phone, it may look like disengaging, but is it? It’s like the old Buddhist story about the farmer.

There was a Chinese farmer whose wild stallion ran off one day. All the neighbors gathered around saying “Very bad luck.” The Chinese farmer said, “bad luck, good luck, who knows?” A few days later the stallion returned with a herd of wild horses. The neighbors gathered around saying “Very good luck.” “Bad luck, good luck, who knows,” said the farmer. A week later the farmer’s son was trying to break in one of the horses and was thrown from the horse and broke his leg. The neighbors gathered and said “Very bad luck.” “Bad luck, good luck, who knows,” said the farmer. Several weeks later the Chinese army came to the town looking for able-bodied youth to join the army and fight. When the soldiers came to the farmer’s house and saw the boy’s broken leg, they left him alone and moved on. The neighbors gathered saying “Very good luck.” “Bad luck, good luck, who knows? answered the farmer”

It’s like all the precepts of The Replaceable Founder methodology, non-attachment does not mean disengaged, it means letting things be. Then and only then can we make informed decisions about the next step. How we choose to proceed depends on our wiring, and there are many paths to the same destination. My rallying call for you is to actively look for ways to disengage, so you can engage in the things you love.

And for goodness sake, the cereal goes in first, the milk follows.

Want to Build a Hands-Free Podcast Production Process?

November 21, 2018 by Ari Meisel

Here’s how…

The process is fairly complex, but not complicated. There are different moving parts, for sure, but my sole involvement is the recording of the content and that’s it! So I make it, then I don’t touch it again.

If you can get out of the way of the process, you will find that your ability to produce quality content increases 10 fold.

It starts with the person booking an interview slot on calendly. I capture their email, mailing address, phone, and social media handles on that form. I have a dedicated podcast “event” there and it kicks off a bunch of different actions. There’s a zap in place that triggers after the booking is logged in Calendly. It’s on an hour delay at which time it sends a voicemail from me using Slybroadcast. It says, “I’m so excited to have you on the podcast. If you haven’t heard my podcast before, here’s a clip so you can see how casual it is and get a feel for it.

The day before the podcast, they get a text message through Toky that reminds them of the interview. After the interview, Magic, our VA service, gets an email saying, “I just interviewed this person, please send them a copy of both books as a gift, take note of their email address and social media handles. Once the episode comes out, we then reach out to the person, thank them for appearing on the podcast and also give a link to subscribe.

We do our interview over Zencastr. Once it’s complete, I save the file to a Dropbox folder, which automatically goes to Libsyn or Simplecast, our product production service. They do the audio editing, put in the intro and outro, do the show notes.

They also pull out a 15-second clip and a one minute clip that is representative of the episode. Magic then sees it and creates the waave files that post on Instagram. They make the image, post it on Instagram, both as a standard post on my personal page and as a story when it goes live. Magic then emails the guest, thank him for being on the show and gives him a link to the published show.

I have repurpose.io set up to take the file from Libsyn and create a Youtube video of it and post it there.

If you want to take it a step further, it’s possible to post a transcription of the entire episode on SlideShare. Repurpose.io sends the audio to temi.com who does the transcription. It then goes to Dropbox, where Zapier sees it and sends it on to Magic who posts to SlideShare because you can’t post automatically …. Yet.

Slideshare is owned by Linkedin. It’s been around a long time and has been a place for people to post mostly slides; duh, like powerpoint presentations. But a lot of people use it to post content that is not video or audio: documents, infographics, beautiful.ai presentations. I don’t know why, but SlideShare seems to get the best SEO juice, so it’s an interesting add-on to the process.

You don’t need a CRM

November 15, 2018 by Ari Meisel

As a productivity expert, the question I get most often is…

What is the best CRM?

To which I always respond…

Why do you need a CRM?

I’ve never been a fan of the all-in-one CRM tools that have tons of features you’ll pay for but never use and fulfill 80% of your needs and still don’t move the needle for your business. Most people say they need a CRM because all of their competitors have one, because their sales team is overwhelmed, or because they heard a sales pitch about a tool that was going to 10x their business (who doesn’t want their business to be multiplied by 10?)

So, why do you need a CRM? You want to increase sales, make customers happier, and make things easier for your team, right? I want to show you how you can build your own super-powered CRM that will serve your needs and no one else’s, will cost next to nothing, and work the way you work.

I’ve built a system that works so well that people often question whether or not they are talking to a human being. Yes, you read that correctly. it’s not that the bot is so good they think it’s human, it’s that the human is so good they think it’s a machine.

When I personally communicate with someone over email or SMS, they will often say “Is this really Ari, or is it a bot or a virtual assistant?” I see this as a massive compliment because we are able to communicate with people as if we have supercomputers in an earpiece, coaching us on exactly what to say next in a way that a mere human never could. When I tell them it’s really me and give proof (such as telling them the time and weather where I am and what I’m doing) the conversation is taken to an entirely new level and more often than not, leads to long-term relationship (what some might refer to as a “close” but the transaction is less important to me than the experience)

The components of a CRM

This incredible clip art from a Wikipedia article on Customer Relationship Management software lays it out pretty clearly. We’re taking the sum of all interactions we have with leads (customers who don’t know they will be your customer yet) and customers (customers who know that they are customers). Don’t take my parenthetical sarcasm to mean I’m not serious. It’s important to consider the emotional state of the individual in your CRM ecosphere as you communicate with someone. If someone is a lead you need to create context and relevance around the conversations you have with them in order to move them closer and closer to the point of trusting you enough to transfer your feelings to them.

As Zig Ziglar said, sales is just a transfer of feelings. You are excited about your product and service and you want them to feel that too so they become a customer. Someone who has become a customer has completely different expectations around the interaction they want to have with you.

For a lead/customer, the CRM needs to make them feel understood. My friend Joe Polish often says “People don’t buy from you because they understand you, they buy from you because they feel understood.” For a customer, a CRM should make them feel like they are your only customer.

For your team, a CRM should be Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada, whispering in her bosses ear as each person at the cocktail party approaches her “That’s the daughter of the Prime Minister of France, Coco, that last time you saw her was at the Vogue Christmas Party two years ago, she had just gotten back from a vacation in St. Barths and was writing a novel” at which point the boss gives Coco and air kiss and asks how her book turned out. This creates instant connection and context for further conversation.

So let’s break down the complements of the perfect CRM into each piece you need, but first…

We interrupt this broadcast for an important message about all-in-one software tools

I’ve written before about the Rube Goldberg setup I prefer to have in my business and the businesses of those I coach because it enables me to see the components when they work, and more importantly when they don’t. I’m able to swap out the email marketing component of my setup because I’ve found a cheaper, better alternative without the massive headache of completely switching systems, dealing with my data being held hostage by a proprietary system, or fighting with the mental fallacy of the gamblers dilemma, thinking that the expensive system will work if I just keep paying for it.

At the end of the day, I know I can build a better mousetrap, and so can you.

Thank you for observing this important announcement

https://upscri.be/6892b4?as_embed=true

So the three main phases of the CRM cycle are communications, data processing/analysis, and enriching the knowledge of team members.

Communications

How do you communicate, in general? Email, email marketing (newsletters, etc…), SMS, live chat, direct mail, online and offline ads, and phone calls should cover it for most of you. We should see our outbound communication as a means to get someone to raise their hand. That’s all I want, just raise your hand so I can see you in the crowd. Every time I give a talk somewhere, I like to ask questions and get people to raise their hands. The question means nothing, nor does that answer, what matters is that they raise their hands. You’ll never get the whole room to raise their hand, it doesn’t happen. You could have Tony Robbins in a room and he could ask “How many of you are humans?” And you’ll still only get a portion of the room raising their hands. The point of getting people to raise their hands is to elevate certain people in the crowd from a “No Star” prospect to a “One Star Prospect.” Dean Jackson teaches that a “Five Star Prospect” is someone who is:

Willing to Engage
Friendly and Cooperative
Knows What They Want
Knows When They Want It
Knows They Want It From You

So if we can get people to raise their hand we have immediately begun to segment people and once we do that, the conversation can evolve. All of our communications to “No Star Prospects” should contain a question. If you visit our website, the live chat will popup and ask “Are you interested in becoming more replaceable?” I’ve only seen someone actually say no once (and if you are reading this article, I have to meet you so you can be studied and cloned). Usually someone answers yes and now they are at level one. If I write back and they say someone that shows a genuine struggle with overwhelm and an openness to share information, now they are a “Two Star Prospect” and the conversation evolves further. I never consider any of these conversations a “sales conversation” until we’ve gotten to four stars because up until that point, it’s just a conversation, an education, hopefully for both parties.

In every communication channel, I simply want to learn more about the person so that if we do get to the point if discussing working together, I can deliver information in way that is efficient and relevant.

You can use any email provider you want for the outgoing stuff, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, MailJet, etc….I don’t care, because all those do is get people to raise their hands. Once they do, it definitely helps to have a tool that can not only consolidate communications but also spread the load across your team so no one, including the boss, can become a bottleneck in the sales process. My favorite tool for this is Intercom.io which can combine multiple business email address (think support@company.com or help@company or raiseyourhand@company.com), live chat on your website, Facebook messenger for your business page, Twitter DM, and even text messages and phone calls (this requires an add on called Toky).

Intercom immediately starts to build a profile on the person based on their location, their email address or phone number (if they input it), and can pull relevant history on them including past conversations with team members, the last page on your website that they visited, their last charge through Stripe if they are already a customer, even the last time they booked a call with you through Calendly, or attended a webinar through Crowdcast for example. This shows up on the right hand side of the screen as your communicating with them. This information is shared with any team member that engages that person and can even inform automated bots if you really need to ramp up communications quickly. In addition Intercom can automate messages based on someone meeting one or several criteria. So if someone visits your site from Germany and they haven’t been to your site in two months, you could have a pop up informing them that you now have team members who speak German. If someone is a customer and they have been with you for 6 months you can automatically text them to thank them for the loyalty. Both scenarios merely open the door to another possible conversation, further evolving the relationship. Every interaction, in every channel, is captured and “paper clipped” to the persons dossier to provide that context later on.

Data Processing and Analysis

The communications system is kind of like a magician’s hat. Sometimes you flip it over and there’s nothing in it. You tap on the top, spin it around a couple times and you’re met with…absolutely nothing. Other times you reach in and pull out a bunny. If you’re really good, you reach in again and pull out a second bunny and maybe a third. But how do we keep track of the bunnies when they aren’t in the hat, since they obviously still exist. That’s where the data holding tank comes into play.

My choice for this phase of your CRM mastery is Trello. Trello is amazing for 90% of cases. If you’ve got massive amounts of leads and customers (I’m talking hundreds or thousands) then you would want something better at handling structured data, and my pick for that would be Airtable .

In Trello I create a dead simple pipeline with just a few phase:

New Opportunity
Engaging and Qualifying
Closing
Closed
Cold

Every new opportunity gets added as a card to the first list. This can happen manually or through an automation. If I meet someone at an event and they give me their card, I’ll take a picture and make a card in the first list. If our machine learning algorithm (more about that here) picks someone out of the crowd or they book a free info call through Calendly, a card is automatically created. When a card is created, it will automatically include the source and any other information we can pull either from their existing profile in Intercom or from publicly available sources like Clearbit and will automatically add a due date for three days later to make sure someone follows up.

Then we reach out through the most appropriate means, given our initial contact. If it’s in person I like to go with SMS. If it’s email we stick to email. I strongly dislike when companies force you to “switch channels” in order to communicate. If you ever email a company to cancel a service and they tell you that you have to schedule a phone call to discuss closing your account (RingCentral shamefully does this and it’s why I will never use or recommend them) just call your credit company and deny any further charges.

If they respond, I just ask more questions about their business and their challenge. I’m genuinely interested, because it’s one of the ways I learn, improve and am more able to help people.

The questions you ask are more important than anything you will ever tell the person. Questions show that you are listening, that you understand them, and that you understand the problem. When you are able to articulate someones problem better than they can, the human brain will automatically associate you with the solution.

Once their is a two way dialogue, their Trello card gets moved to the Engaging and Qualifying list and a due date gets added for one week later, unless the person requested a specific date for follow up, then we enter it manually. All the while, our interactions continue to be appended to the card and their Intercom profile. If I have an interaction outside our normal systems, such as personal SMSto my phone, I will literally screenshot the conversation and add it to the card.

Once they have said that they want to be part of one of our programs, they move to Closing and follow up is set for a day later.

Once the Stripe card comes through, that triggers another Zapier automation to find the card and move them to Closed.

I keep a Cold list for people who are unresponsive or not interested and that adds a 45 day follow up, just in case we want to give one more try down the line. If the lead magically revives we move the card back to the second list.

Informing the Team

Each list is sorted by due date so and Trello has a calendar view which syncs with our team Google calendar so on any given day, any member of our team knows exactly who to contact, which channel to do it through, and what to say. The Trello integration with Intercom means the persons history is right there on the card for anyone to see.

We have a metric at Less Doing called “Time to Departure” which is the number of day’s notice you would have to give your team before you could go on vacation. For many companies the number is as high as 60 days. At Less Doing, it’s zero. I could start a conversation with someone about our Replaceable Founder Course, put their card in the second list, and walk out the door to a totally disconnected vacation. Two days later, someone on my team would see the follow up in the calendar, check the card and see that there was a few texts back and forth with the person, or maybe a recording of a call we had through Toky. That team member can get the context and reach out to the person, with the simple goal of furthering the conversation.

Choose your own adventure

I always think about the customer journey in my own company and others with whom I interact. You can always improve it, make it more personal, and answer questions before people even knew they had them.

We do something unique in our coaching business, we don’t offer a contract. We don’t lock people into a year or even a quarter. I always tell people that they should remain a part of our program for as long as they find it valuable. It doesn’t lock either of us into a relationship that’s not serving both of us, and keeps my team and me on our toes to continue to provide unquestionable value, month after month. We believe in what we do so strongly that I want to remind people of their option to cancel, BEFORE we bill them each month. There are plenty of ways to email someone when they make a purchase but preempting one requires some thought. Stripe won’t email someone to let them know they will be charged, nor will your email marketing tool.

So I tried to visualize who the person is that should get that email. They should be part of one of our programs, they should have been billed 25 days prior, and as of today their status should be consider active. These are all parameters I was able to set in Intercom and within a few minutes I had built the thing I wanted without contacting my CRM technician or buying some expensive add on software.

Our CRM includes about 15 different tools, all tied together through various automations (I didn’t even mention the automated text messages, voicemails, postcards, and gifts that we can integrate) and whether or not you copy what we do (you’re encouraged to!), my hope is that you can see how you can have the exact system you want, and achieve the results you need, with a little bit of tinkering, noodling, and obsessing.

The Link Between Learning Disabilities and Entrepreneurial Success.

November 7, 2018 by Ari Meisel

Did you know that there’s a strong correlation between entrepreneurial success and learning disabilities? In the U.S alone, it’s estimated over a third of entrepreneurs have some form of a learning disability. Nearly 35% of US entrepreneurs suffer from dyslexia. That’s more than double the rate in general population. In Australia, people with learning disabilities have a rate of entrepreneurship 50% higher than the average.

While at first glance, these numbers might point to an optimistic conclusion that suggests learning disabilities make you better suited to entrepreneurship, that’s a false flag conclusion.

If we dig a little deeper it seems a lot of people with learning disabilities are forced into self-employment because the regular workforce is a terrible fit.

“I would have had a great deal of difficulty if I had gotten into a staff job. I knew that. That’s why I started a company. I was fearful to the point of being paranoid that I would end up working in a big company,” Peter Knight, the CEO of Checkfree, about his ADD. (Source: http://yourbiz.msnbc.msn.com)

So with the traditional work avenue unsuitable, starting your own gig seems a simple answer, But how effective are entrepreneurs with learning disabilities?

The research suggests there’s a set of key problem solving / deductive skillsets that entrepreneurs with learning disabilities over-index at:

Spatial reasoning: A greater ability to visualize and solve problems known as spatial reasoning which aids skill-sets in engineering and filmmaking. Richard Branson’s Made by Dyslexia group is doing breakthrough work here.

Verbal Reasoning: Stronger verbal reasoning capacities that enable entrepreneurs to connect seemingly disconnected ideas (E.g Finding analogies). Paul Orfalea, CEO of Kinko’s, has said that his “learning style helped him see the big picture and not worry about tiny details.”

Narrative reasoning: Great memory for personal experiences. This skill can be helpful for poets (such as Philip Schultz), essayists, memoirists, and other writers (like John Irving).

Dynamic reasoning: Ability to reason in novel situations. This is helpful for the business or scientific field, as exemplified by Jack Horner and likely Albert Einstein.https://upscri.be/6892b4?as_embed=true

Supplementing this is the following key areas where entrepreneurs with learning disabilities have been shown to have a statistically significant advantage compared to those that don’t:

Financial success:

Psychologists who analyzed the mental makeup of business winners found that learning difficulties are one of the most important precursors of financial success.

Branson has gone on record to say that his dyslexia has made him a better business owner, primarily because it showed him how to “delegate tasks [he] wasn’t so good at” which allowed him to see the bigger picture of his growing the business. (Source: http://fortune.com)

Resilience:

Coping strategies they have used since childhood offset their weaknesses in written communication and organizational tasks. They have nurtured the ability to identify trustworthy people and handing over major responsibilities to them [source]

Big picture thinking:

Entrepreneurs with learning disabilities have an inherent aptitude for tunnel vision and big-picture thinking [source]

Indeed, there’s a bit of a cross-correlation happening with learning disabilities, but our biggest learning has been this:

Learning disabilities drive people to entrepreneurship at a greater rate (due to obstacles in the traditional job market) — but once they get there, more often than not they thrive.

There are certainly drawbacks to having learning disabilities as an entrepreneur — namely the inevitable overwhelm. Founders often lack a strong enough social support system, which can lead to further isolation. The anxiety that isolation can create often makes things like fundraising and networking difficult, even painful for some founders with social disabilities.

Still, entrepreneurs with learning disabilities can build deeply empathetic company cultures that encourage and support innovative problem solving and out of the box thinking. They bring a focus and vigilance to challenges others can’t.

A learning disability can be a debilitating burden, especially when it goes undiagnosed. But the coping mechanisms our brains develop to work around our own particular learning issues can build muscle in other parts of our brains. And those muscles seem remarkably well-suited for the life of an entrepreneur.

Parkinson’s Law — The Holy Grail for Entrepreneurs

October 31, 2018 by Ari Meisel

Ok so imagine you’re in London in the Fifties. The government claimed in a somewhat puffed up, Post-war fashion that the growing number of civil servants was a direct reflection of the increasing amount of work that needed to be done.
It turns out they were full of shit, and Cyril Northcote Parkinson told them so in an essay in The Economist in 1955. Its publication led to a scientific discovery rightly called Parkinson’s Law; which states that work is elastic and it will expand to fill the time available for its completion.
Parkinson’s law is governed by two forces, namely the rule of multiplication of subordinates and the law of multiplication of work. The first force is that when a civil servant is overloaded with work, he will look for appointing two subordinates rather than a colleague on his level of the hierarchy. This way he is not putting a promotion at risk.

He has successfully multiplied the officials for the same volume of work. The second motive is that these officials will occupy themselves for the whole day with their available amount of work. As a result, the present situation is that it takes far more people to produce the same effect.

How much do I love this stuff?https://upscri.be/6892b4?as_embed=true

Anyway, three fellas who are famous for successfully implementing Parkinson’s law are Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square and Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX.

Maybe you’ve heard of them.

Parkinson’s Law can be used in three principal ways to make businesses more productive: to create constraints, to reduce daily decisions and to set useful deadlines. Applying Parkinson’s law has allowed Bezos, Dorsey, and Musk to cement innovation and disruption into their respective corporate cultures and collective work ethics, and they’ve done vice nicely for themselves; thank you very much.

Through the implementation of Parkinson’s Law, more projects get completed, more ideas move forward, and more products can be launched on time for maximum efficiency. Bezos, Dorsey, and Musk all know that it is useful to shorten deadlines, as it guides employees’ focus. Constraints are good for businesses since they allow teams to work more in the least amount of time applicable to complete it.

JEFF BEZOS (AMAZON) — Bezos firmly believes that corporate bureaucracy, if given full autonomy, would kill most great ideas. Innovation comes at the cost of flexibility, and bureaucracy is its polar opposite since it is a normalization of behavior and interactions.

“Change is not possible without saying yes.”

It’s why Amazon has implemented multiple paths to make “yes” a default option. Employees are encouraged to approach another leader if a particular leader refuses to act on an idea an employee proposed. It is a direct challenge to the classic rules of bureaucracy.

“ A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”

In the same spirit of flexibility and empowerment, Jeff Bezos has implemented a two pizzas rule for meetings:

“If two pizzas aren’t enough to feed everyone attending the meeting, make the meeting smaller.”

The rationale is that productivity is negatively correlated with the number of people attending a meeting: the more people attending a meeting, the higher the tendency for the meeting to go off the rails.

JACK DORSEY (TWITTER AND SQUARE) — Dorsey has proved himself to be of the most prolific entrepreneurs of his generation, having succeeded at managing two companies at the same time, Twitter and Square.
He has mastered the art of productivity, allowing him to get more work done in less time. He doesn’t even use a laptop anymore. He works entirely from his iPhone. He implements strict deadlines for his employees and the result is obvious. He advises his employees to categorize their tasks depending on their energy. He also says that one should learn to delegate tasks to avoid getting overwhelmed by the insignificant decisions.

Almost all of his meetings only use Google Docs. They start with a 10-minutes of reading and commenting and clarifying relevant documents. It also allows his employees to work from anywhere and it gets to the critical issues faster.

ELON MUSK (SpaceX & TESLA) — Musk is known for his impossible deadlines; both for his employees and business projects. But both SpaceX and Tesla have completely disrupted the industries they have entered. So there’s that.

He believes that communication is the key to success and that employees should take the most accessible path necessary to complete the task. Also, his employees do not waste time on tasks that don’t improve the situation. All actions must preserve resources and invest them only on value-generating projects.

Overall, founders, like the fellas I just mentioned, who have embraced Parkinson’s law dynamize teamwork, stimulate innovation and create disruption.

Be those guys.

Get Chapter 1 of my book, The Art of Less Doing:

Less Work, More Results,
More Happiness

Connecting to Me Personally