Ep27 Hacking Your Working Environment For Epic Productivity And Mental Clarity

In this brand new episode a friend and I go into a deep conversation about hacking your home working environment to experience epic amounts of productivity and mental clarity. Working with distractions around you (including the ones in your head) is a huge pain point for every entrepreneur and in this episode I reveal a few of the strategies personally use to stay productive and clear even while working from home with a 1 & 3 year old.

In this episode I'll discuss...

How to separate your work and family life...

Why meditation is crucial to productivity and life balance...

Strange brain hacking tricks to force yourself into flow states in a matter of minutes...

And so much more!

Resources Mentioned

www.JeremyReeves.com/4-Pillars 

Brainwave Studio

Shane's Website 

 

Want To Work WIth Me?

Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com  or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript

Hey guys, it's Jeremy here, back with another episode of the Sales Funnel Mastery Podcast. Today, I have a really cool episode for you. Me and one of my buddies, Shane Stone, we're going to be talking about how to be productive with a young family. And I know it's going to resonate with a lot of you that have young families because I get a lot of questions about this, actually. So I think it's going to be a pretty cool episode. 

So let me really quick introduce Shane. Shane basically does a lot of the same stuff that I do. he helps his clients set up websites, landing pages, and basically marketing campaigns. And then what he does is work with the inside sales teams of those companies to help them to monetize the leads that he brings in. 

So I'm going to let Shane actually elaborate on that a little bit more so you guys know a little bit better about what he does and all that kind of stuff. And then we're going to jump right into it. Again, I think this is going to be pretty cool and even if you don't have kids, you'll probably get something out of this.

So Shane, welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Shane: Hey Jeremy, thanks. Yeah, this is an interesting subject. Like, I've studied productivity and I have every manual and getting things done and you know, I've tried everything. 

As a solo entrepreneur like yourself, I have a team of people that work with me and contractors in such to help facilitate and and get things done a lot quicker but one of the things that being a solo entrepreneur, like, the free time that I have to sit and focus on something. 

And I've developed a system in over the last eight years of doing the work that I do. I've developed a good system of working, like how I get everything done, and you know, I've always prided myself on being a lot more successful and a lot more productive than most people. I even tell people like "hey, I get more done in a day than three people would within your company", that was kind of like my pitch that I'm working with if they already have an internal marketing people and salespeople, I'm like, "well, I can kind of do it all", where it takes them a day to go back and forth. So I just had my first job. I'm so excited and so proud to be a dad.

Jeremy: Yeah, congratulations, man. It's awesome.

Shane: Yeah, I mean, I'm just excited, you know. I hear all of your stories about being a dad, it is really exciting, I didn't know what to expect at all, I've always wanted to be a dad, but it also came with a lot that I didn't know, that I should be looking out for. Like, I kind of pride myself on being able to look out into the future and being able to see what's coming hand that's not what...

Jeremy: Yeah, it's definitely not. I actually have a story about that when you're done.

Shane: Yeah, so it's kind of like the (00:03:24) behind us. You know like my boy's been home for eight weeks now and a couple weeks ago he goes up at 2 a.m., kind of needing to finish something, like four clients and this requires a lot of thought and I was trying to like, "how do I get all the stuff done and and how do I get my mind into such a place like that? I can't get work done when there are distractions thrown at me. And so I was like, "I gotta email Jeremy and figure something out" 

So I am thankful. Like, you're one to take time to answer this and I think it will be beneficial for people too.

Jeremy: Yeah, definitely. It's actually really funny, I don't know if you guys can hear in the background as he was just talking, my dogs, I have 2 golden doodles and they're kind of like my office dogs, they started fighting while you were talking, so if you hear any growls, they knocked my space heater over, and I took a toy off them while you were talking so this is a very real situation going on here.

But like I said, this is going to be real beneficial to people even if they don't have kids. Like you said, you don't know what distractions are going to happen. So to give a really good example, I think it was yesterday, my wife texted me and she said the toilet won't flush, it was last night, actually. So I go upstairs and she decided to call her brother because he's really good with house stuff, I'm really not that good.

I'm good with my mind not with  my fixing abilities. So she calls her brother and she decides she's going to fix herself based on what he told her so I go up there and I walk in the room and the toilet is overflowing because she forgot to turn off the water because she was trying to drain the toilet and forgot to turn off the water valve and she flushed it the one time it overflowed and all that that all happened because my 1-year-old Katie took the toys off my 3-year-old, put them in the bathroom on our first floor hands my 1-year-old decided to go in the bathroom and throw them all in the toilet.

So the toilet got clogged. That was last night. And this morning Katie's dad came over to see, because he's also really handy, to help figure out what the problem was. So I actually spent probably roughly a half hour today, carrying the toilet, taking it outside, we got this big odd (00:06:30) kind of shoving it down the whole of the toilet, trying to push this toy out of it because it got clogged in there. 

It was actually one of my dog's toys, one of those (00:06:38), those really hard rubber things, so you threw that down there. So it's a good example of of what we're talking about here. You never know when that stuff is going to come up.

And it kind of sucked actually because today I finally launched my Facebook campaign for the new coaching program that I'm just starting which I'll end with, you guys can hear about that in a little bit. And I had two really big deadlines today and two phone calls, I just started another revenue share equity partnership kind of thing for a new client that I met. So we're doing that and then also this call. So today's been a little bit nuts.

There are a lot of different kind of techniques to make sure that I still get everything done even though stuff like that happens which we'll go over in the podcast. So with that said I know you had a couple of questions for me so I'm just going to let you ask me the questions and then I'll go off based on the question.

Shane: Sure. When I sent you the email, I said, the subject to the email was just like (00:07:48), like everything felt like who is piling on and piling on and I can't keep my lists, you know. We have things come up all the time. Now my wife normally works but now she's off on maternity leave so she's home, and how the baby home and have the dog home. 

And all those stories. It just seems like everyday, like you just have these little things. You can't ignore those and those are the most priority because I always put family first as I know you do too. So as I was sitting there I was like, "how the heck am I going to get all this stuff done and be able to provide for my family and keep moving all of these projects forward?"

So it came down to the one idea like how do I, with all those distractions being thrown at me, how do I keep my mind focused enough to sit down and create magic because that's how I think of copywriting and the work you do. Like you're much better at what you do than I am...

Jeremy: Thank you.

Shane: Because that's hard work, man. That's a lot of deep thinking to really put yourself into a mindset and be able to speak for another product. So yeah, I was like Jeremy be the perfect person this like how do you, with all these distractions out there, how do you get yourself into a mindset to create magic?

Jeremy: There are a lot of things that I've picked up over the years. I would say the first thing is you need something that was separate business from family. I've talked about this a lot. I have a very, very strict set of criteria how I build my business. Increasing revenue and stuff is kind of like a given, like, that's what I want to do every year.

Actually, last year I didn't much because that was kind of like in maintaining year to get ready for this year because I'm doubling this year. But I did that very strategically. But that's kind of like always the goal. It's just you always want more but I also do that within very tight parameters. I work for essentially from 6 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon every day and that's it. 

There certain times like in the last two weeks I've had two projects that got extended by a lot just because of different circumstances that happened but it's very, very, very rare for that to happen. For two projects like that to happen, it's like literally the first time to ever happen to me in my career.

And so I've been working a couple nights lately. I might do that maybe five nights a year. So it's a really rare situation but I kind of keep everything in those parameters. You know, in our house, we have a really big house so there's a lot of room hair and the way it's laid out it's really like we're very fortunate for our situation because my wife is home. She actually can't drive because of seizures with epilepsy in everything so our whole family is here all the time. It's me, my wife my, 3-year-old, my 1-year-old.

So as you can imagine, there a lot of distractions. When we bought this house, I think it was 3 years ago or 4 years ago, I essentially had the whole downstairs to myself while I'm working. It's like a finished basement. You walk down and there's a playroom. 

When you walk down the steps, there's this big open room that we really don't do anything with, and then you take a right, there's a playroom. You go left from the playroom, there's my room. To the right, I'm actually going in a circle here, to the right of my room, is basically an entertainment room, that's my unwinding room. 

There's a PlayStation in there, there's a TV in there, I meditate in there, I'm getting a treadmill to put in there, and then beyond that is basically what we call the cold room. It's like a cement room and the others are fridge in there it's kind of like storage and all that.

So I've been fortunate that I have an awesome wife that very, very understanding and realizes that I'm the only one working. So I have to get things done. There's no room for me to slack and do all that because I'm the sole income. And we had a lot of conversations about this. We've kind of tweaked it over the years, so you're not going to get perfect from day 1. 

But she really understands that during the day while I'm working, she doesn't come down and bother me. If she has questions or whatever, she usually texts me and I get her texts and I write her back or I don't write her back if I'm super busy like in the middle of writing something like that.

We have a lot of systems like that where we're basically like she just says, "Okay, you're working, I'm not going to bother you". I work in 50-minute chunks. I work for 50 minutes and then I take a ten-minute break, so she knows, like, typically, if she has any questions, she has to tell me anything, she'll tell me while I go upstairs and take a break.

And a lot of times I go up there and make tea and while the water's going, I play with the kids just to kind of like get that mental break from working. So that's one thing. You really have to get your wife to understand that yes, you're in the house but pretend that you're not. 

You need that solitude. If you're just doing little stuff, like little tweaks on a page or whatever and it's not really deep thinking, you can have people talk to you and still do it like a mindless activity but if you're being productive, you're not doing that stuff anyway. So if you're doing mind work, whether it's thinking about strategy or some kind of high level thing or you're writing or whatever it is, you really need that solitude. You need quiet.

And that's why it's so important if you're in your house, you need it to be separated and if you afford it, it's even better and you want to do it, some people don't want to do it, I wouldn't want to do it. Like, I've thought about getting an office separately and the reason I don't is because my wife with her seizures and everything. I don't want to be not here all day. Because if she ever had one, and fell on the ground, I would hear it from down here and run upstairs.

But yeah, you have to have that solitude. Another way, one thing is you're to get those distractions, they're going to happen in your house, at your office, anywhere, it just happens. So you have to be able to segment your mind. Like almost compartmentalize. Let's just say I'm in the middle of writing and something happens. You go upstairs, you come back down to it. You need to be able to get back into the zone quickly.

And one of the things I do with that is I, instead of just sitting down and going right back into it, which a lot of times, then you'll check your email then you'll go on Facebook and you really don't do anything productive for around twenty minutes, I sit down and close my eyes and remember what I was doing last and it kind of gets my mind back. It gets the wheels turning, you only have to do this for like thirty seconds. 

But it kind of reminds your mind what you were just doing and then you open your eyes and you go back right into it. That helped me. There's different things that you can do.

Shane: That's actually an amazing point that I've never thought of before because as you were describing that process of getting up and going upstairs or even if it's just to go grab something to eat real quick then coming back down, the computer just has  hundreds of things that you can (00:16:36 - 00:16:37). 

And so even that little piece of sitting down and remembering what you're working on, just thinking about that before you look at the screen again, that's going to be a huge one for me to try out. 

Jeremy: Yeah. It really works. Especially when you're a writer, there's so much that relies on you getting into the zone. I was recently talking about this. When you're a writer, you need to get into the zone because that's where your subconscious pours out. That's where you can just sit down and just pound out copy without having a file like your fingers are just going.

And I know if people aren't writers they probably have no idea what this means but...

Shane: If it's anything, there's like athletes like always talking about being in the zone, like Michael Jordan always used to say it, he's in the zone, he's not really thinking, it's just happening perfectly.

Jeremy: And that's the same thing like imagine you're in a bar and they're kind of being aggressive with you and they want to fight you basically. So you're in the bar, there's a big difference, like if you went and got training in Martial Arts, when their shoulder moves, I'm pretty sure if you're into any of this, correct me, I think this is true, I'm not into Martial Arts or anything but I think this is true. 

Basically, the shoulders are kind of like the tell-all if they're going to through a punch because their shoulder moves first and their arm kind of follows. So they're trained to look at people's shoulders and if they see shoulders moving, they judge it based on the direction that it's going and that tells them okay, whatever left arm's coming up, right arm's coming up, it's coming straight, it's going out like for a hook or whatever, and that essentially tells them there to put their arm to block it. 

And again, if anybody knows this, I think I'm correct on that...

Shane: Sounds true...

Jeremy, Yeah, sounds true, sounds true. We'll pretend. But if people are trained in that, they don't think. Their subconscious picks up that shoulder movement and boom, their arm goes up. And that's when you see people that somebody's just throwing punches at them and they're blocking everyone, it's because they're not thinking and urged subconscious just reacts. it's just instant.

Compared to you've never been in a fight before you don't know how to pick up on punching calls or whatever, you're going to be thinking like "okay, okay, what's he doing? What's he doing? Where's his arm going?" and you're never going to block it because you're in your head too much and you just have to let your subconscious dictate what your body does.

And it's the same thing when you're writing and even when you're doing high level of thinking for strategy, you kind of just have to get out of yourself and just kind of like get into your flow state and let your subconscious come out. There are a couple things that I do for that, just so I can put this into a more applicable type of thing.

Number one is that try to meditate every day. When I was in college, I got really deep into meditation. I would meditate for like an hour, an hour and a half everyday. I've had all of this really, really crazy spiritual experiences in all that stuff which I won't get into but it's pretty crazy when you really get your mind there.

Now I just do like 20 minutes a day or something like that and it's really just, that's also a good way to separate. Like, I usually do it after lunch. So I work, I eat lunch, and then I meditate because after lunch, it's really easy to just kind of like wander off. So that meditation for me is a good separation of the morning and the afternoon. 

If I don't do it then, I do it at 2:45 or so, before or 3 o'clock or whatever, before I'm going upstairs to see my kids because then it helps me separate and this is a good one for you, it helps separate business from personal life. You have to have something in the middle there that kind of like signals, okay work is done, now it's personal time. That's something I picked up six months ago. 

And it just hit me one day and I've been trying that and that helps a lot. It could be cleaning your office desk, it could be meditating, it could be whatever, doing a set of push-ups before you go upstairs. You just have to have something that says, that tells your mind, it anchors in your mind, okay work it done, now it's personal.

Shane: Yeah so, because there's a different cycle, and this is a big point like there was the point in my life when I started being an entreprenuer I wanted to work for myself was the idea. You know I did work when I wanted and play whenever I wanted. So it's kind of in a progression of and you know my girlfriend who is now my wife, so that whole dynamic has changed like the idea of... So it took me a while, because I used to just wake up and work whenever I would work, all of us really cared about working on my business and then it became my wife and now we're having a son. So the separation now is definitely not all there because there's something else that I really care about (00:22:36).

Jeremy: Yeah! Yeah!

Shane: No, I have this little baby that everyday... He smiled at me this morning...

Jeremy: Oh, yeah! It made your day... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still remember all that stuff, in fact, I'm actually getting tears in my eyes right now just thinking about it and it happened years ago. But yeah, it's pretty crazy, what babies can do to grown men.

Shane: I never maybe could be proud of something that hasn't really done anything.

Jeremy: Yeah, they kind of just made it, like, they're there.

Shane: Like the idea of, when it was just me and my wife, it was the same scenario, we live in like a townhome, like I have my (00:23:26), it's only separated by stairs, there's no door or anything, so she would work, she's an investment banker, so she would work 7 to 7 everyday, so it's very routine, like when she would leave, and I could separate it really easily.

Whereas now, like I'm taking the lead shift of feeding and I'm trying to squeeze work in every little spot and try to do it in the way, like, I feel good to be doing the work. Or it's probably a story I'm just telling myself too. 

Another question I wanted to ask you about. Like, writing and stuff is really hard for me, do you have like a certain state of mind that you always want to be in or when you talk about meditating too, is there something that you say to yourself to get this kind of started, just to get that mind focused?

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so there are, let me look on my apps real quick, so I use and this is a really, really good one, this really is for anybody who does basically any thinking work, this is awesome, so write these down. These have really helped me over the past probably around like 6 months I've been using these and it's just phenomenal.

It does kind of what we were just talking about, it kind of gets you into the state faster and it also keeps you from breaking focus. So I use, I'm on a Mac, by the way, so I use something called 'Brainwave Studio' it's like an app, so it's 'Brainwave Studio', and I have headphones hands I plug the headphones in and they have basically binaural beats, in fact, actually, I think this one, I think these are isochronic which are supposed to be a little bit better than binaural beats.

The flow state is basically just a brainwave state. If anybody knows, there's like the beta brainwave state which is like if you can imagine ripples on the water, it's really really ripple-y, like, it's up and down really fast and that's when your energetic, when you're stressed that's when it's in the really high beta range. But healthy beta range is when your energetic and and enthusiastic, you're fully awake, that kind of thing.

One step below that is the alpha brainwave state and that's when you were more relaxed. Like, think when you're reading a book. That's basically the alpha brainwave state.

And then below that is theta and delta. Theta is when you get into a lot of creativity and Delta is kind of like is kind of like a dreamless state. I won't go in Delta because it's really not applicable for here. But just from my meditation days, if you can be able to get into Delta while you're still conscious, it's awesome. I've done it a couple of times while I was meditating, the things you experience are semi-crazy.

So what I do, this brainwave studio, you put your headphones on and it puts these beats into your brain it's kind of like *makes sounds* that kind of sound and that essentially latches onto your own brain waves. Say you're at a 15Hz or whatever and the lower Delta is 1 to 6 or 7 and Theta is 6 or whatever to 9 and then Alpha is 9 to maybe 12 and then above that is Beta. Most people are like 15, 16, just in their normal daily life.

So you're there and you start listening to this stuff and there's music and stuff and those beats are there. You don't really hear them that much but you want to be able to hear them just a little bit and it essentially latches onto your brain waves and gets them down to whatever that beat is at.

The when I listen to goes between 11and 15 so I was actually a little bit off on the things. When you're normally black kind of conscious I think it's up around 17 or 18, I'm not an expert in this.

Shane: Like the idea behind it because every once in awhile like I do something, somewhere to go to sleep. Where my mind if I'm working on something really heavy that I didn't come to a solution before I tried to go to bed, my mind is just kind of racing and so it feels like it's just on a different level of consciousness, trying to just solve the problem that I'm trying to get away from by going to sleep.

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. So basically, what happens when you listen to this stuff, you put yourself into the same brainwave pattern that you can get in a flow state and that kind of like sucks you in. So like, if I'll be here and I'll be on a stressful day or whatever and when I go to write, I put the headphones on and I listen to this thing and it's between whatever Hz. 

There's all kinds of different things that you can do, why can't even relaxing before an important event. There's all these things, so it rotates between 7 and 12Hz, relaxing before sleep is 6 to 11hz. There's different ones. I use the one it's called 'Mind Training' and then I use 'Censoring Motor Rhythm Session'. Basically, it quiets down your mind so you get into more of your subconscious, and it helps with concentration so you don't break focus and it takes down any anxiety, stress.

So instead of you sitting there, writing and you have all these things going on in your head, you sit down, you write, this stuff kind of takes out all that chattering mind stuff and you're able to just focus and you have one thought and basically that is you writing or whatever you're doing at that moment.

So it really just takes all that stuff away. It's kind of like if you're trying to multi task and you were trying to do one thing and with your other hand to you're trying to do three other things, that's how most people work but when you put the stuff on you have both hands you just put that thing away.

Shane: You can get it done that much faster and it's all it is.

Jeremy: And the app I think it is like $2. It's ridiculous. It's a no-brainer kind of thing. Doing that, I can guarantee you you'll be at least 30% more productive, at least. If not, a lot more than that.

Shane: Even the idea that you explained earlier about how to separate the personal from the business is like the simple fact of putting your headphones on. Turning it on is like the exact same trigger that you're saying a love like this is how you get in the zone, it's like if you don't put those headphones on to go up and spend time with your family that's have it funny, you know. So that's interesting in itself right there.

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. There are a lot of things like if you can kind of anchor, there's different things that your mind kind of anchors to and it's like yeah like what you said you put the headphones on and your minds like "okay, it's ready to work" or "okay, I'm ready to work". It's funny I actually had them on the one time my wife came into my office and she looked at me and saw that I had them on and walked right out the door. She didn't even say anything. It actually broke my focus because I started laughing because it was kind of funny because she knows how adamant I am about that.

So yeah, that's another thing. Give me another specific problem that you have maybe I'll be able to pull something out.

Shane: The one thing in this is like talking to my wife because she's very supportive too and she has her MBA and she understands what it takes to be a business owner and she said to me multiple times when she's been home she's like, "man, I didn't realize how hard it is." 

She went to a top 10 MBA school and to have her say "oh my gosh, do you have to do so much to own your own business where you're doing the accounting and everything from the janitor to the CEO (00:32:31) everyday", like, all of that I (00:32:35) my wife that's really supportive helping me through this which is really helpful. 

When I was talking to her last night and I had the realization that part of it is my expectations with myself of when I get up. I get up every day, I kind of have certain expectations of what I should be getting done. And if I would wake up and say "I only have one thing that I want to get done", then I would be happy but that's not how I wake up. I wake up and want to change the world every single day.

Jeremy: yeah, that's the entrepreneurial curse. I think everybody listening to this can resonate with that. One thing I would say that helps with that, is one of the things that I've done, I actually have in my mind like we're talking about revenue before, I actually know my exact (00:33:37) number that I want to achieve and then once I hit that number, it's a high number but it's achievable, I would say probably the next couple of years, but I actually have an end goal and most people don't have that. 

It's just like more money, more money, more money, more money and I think it's hard to find that. The way that I found mine, I actually broke down how much we spend personally and I included taxes, what I make now, taxes I pay now, what we spend personally and then based on that what gets invested, black personal investment, stuff like that.

And then I said "okay we're spending X dollars now and basically my perfect life where I can spend basically as much money as I want to on the things that I'm going to." It's basically about double what were spending right now. So I figured from there, okay, so I want to spend that much per money, so that's my personal after tax income that I want to make.

So there's that number. Because beyond that, I don't need anything else like I don't need like a 50 foot yacht. I don't even know if that's big. We'll say a hundred foot yacht. I don't need 15 vacation houses you know like I want one. So I know exactly what I want to spend personally and why I want to spend it and exactly what I'm going to spend it on. It might change after my kids grow up and all that. But with kids it's semi-reasonable.

So then I looked at what have to make in business net revenue. Okay, show based on that I'm going to pay X dollars in taxes, I want to put X dollars in a charity, I want to save X percent to put into personal investments and then I have what's left over is essentially my personal spending account. So I actually have like that just based on mapping that all out, I actually have an end number. So that has helped me. Just that alone, has clarified everything that I'm doing.

Because like you said you you want to change the world, you want to do everything, a lot of that just comes down to the whole entrepreneurial curse, like everybody just wants more, and more, and more, and more but my kind of challenge to you would be why?

Why do you want more? Is there something? Is it status? Is it you want more money? And if it is, how much do you want? I would try to figure out that answer because when you get that, and this is fairly recently that I figured this out, by the way. So I'm not coming down on you, whatsoever because...

Shane: The revenue part's definitely I know that. Because when I first started in business I go to (00:36:43) seminars, the rah-rah kind where it's like set a goal. The idea between like setting a goal like "Oh, I want to make this much money", is different than like you're explaining it like okay, I want to do this and then what do I have to do every month and what does it look like and break it down to that is great, it's big. The part of me, so that's definitely like a big part, I call that the tangible stuff that I get.

I'm a builder by nature. I like building something. I sent to you my email that I'm not really ready to talk about at all but I kept on (00:37:27) last 9 months building it like a software project, like there's part of it too, that's the intangible part that I know if i don't wake up today and work on that, that's never going to be able to make money or somebody might come, so there's just a lot of fear stuff around that too, I guess.

So you got any advice, like ideas or experience about that. Like, I always want to wake up and build something too and see this little Lego set that I built, see how cool it looks.

Jeremy: Yeah, the thing that I would say about that, and that's another thing, I think it's just an entrepreneurial curse that we all go through including myself. It's basically we want to do everything. We have 10 projects that we want to do, and kind of what a lot pf people do is just say there's five big things that you want to do, what most people do is, okay, I'm going to do a little bit here. 

And then the next day, I'm going to work a little bit on this next one, the next day, I'm going to work a little bit on this next one, and then I'm going to work a little bit on the next one and you never really get anywhere because you're poking each one just a little bit. 

What I've done that really has helped me, is saying, "okay, here are the top whatever 3, 5, 10, 50 projects that I want to do (we'll just stick with 5). So here are the top big 5 things that I want to do", and then you just have to be really clear about which one's the most important.

Me and my wife make decisions like this what I do is I take whatever number I narrow it down to three because that's usually fairly easy and then you look at the three, so it's 1, 2, 3  and you say, "1 or 2? Which one is more important?" and then let's just say you picked 2, and then you say, "okay, 2 and 3, which one is more important?" and then say you picked 2, so then it's "okay, 2" and then you go after that one and it's easier than saying "okay, of these 5 things, which is most important?

Like, You have to make a decision, just break it down, chunk by chunk to make that decision, so you just work on one at a time. And it's really scary to do. Even with client projects, I tell clients right up front. I say "listen, there's a chance that you won't hear from me for like a good two weeks," I give them updates along is the way to let them know I'm still alive. 

I'm not going to work on your project for one day and then come back 5 days later. I just go 100% focus on one thing at all times and I just dive into it and I might get a big project done in a week vs but they wait a couple weeks and then that one week is 100% focused on that one thing, nothing else and it's done.

And if I took the time, let's just say it took 40 hours to do that 40 hour week. So if you were to break that up and do 2 hours here, 2 hours there, 3 hours here, 5 hours there, he would probably end up taking 60 plus hours because it was so scattered.

It's really all about focus and attention and just kind of putting...

Shane: Sometimes it's the simple things too. I have Bruce Lee posters and stuff all by my desk, it's all like "Remember to focus on the simple things" and just like laser-focus on what I want to get done. Yeah, that's helpful. Even a sort of one week revenue goal that I want to achieve. The next week's like I want to build something and just have something really that will benefit me in the long-term and just provide me short-term benefit. So that's good.

Jeremy: Yeah, and one last part of that is figuring out with you're going to focus on, also look at like in your decision-making, keep in mind, like, okay, you have let's just say project 2, that's one you picked and does that project move along some of the other ones organically. So I'm trying to think of something off the top of my head...

Shane: It's how they influence each other...

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. You might get, you do 100% of the project and just by doing that, you already have 15 or 20% of another one done. So that's also another way to kind of look at it and just put that into your decision-making. I do that a lot with figuring out strategy for business like where I'm going to get traffic what service I'm going to offer, stuff like that. I look at it that way.

I don't want to go into too much because it's actually a new thing that I put into my cooking program. And I go really deep into this and it's ridiculously awesome concept but it's just being able to look at the strategy of your business and the next thing you do. Think about it in terms of how can I do this one thing that sets in motion, gives energy to all these other things.

And that by itself is a really good way to improve on productivity because you're working on one saying and moving ahead other things at the same time but yeah that's another thing when is getting more focus.

Shane: Gotcha. I have one last question. You deal with clients and people all day, it's like setting expectations for other people because I ran into that myself, I only deal with only 5 clients because I have to work with them ongoing. It's a little different but I'm getting used to it but I know there's a lot of people that do more, one-off.

So sometimes I do a lot of one-off things as well. Or with new clients. Just saying those expectations, can you just talk a little bit about how you set those expectations with your clients. Because people these days are kind of getting used to the idea of like "hey, I need to get responded to right now, like, if I'm going to give you money, I want results sooner rather than later."

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. What I usually tell people, i don't give start dates I only give end dates and what I normally do and I'm starting to do more of this as I'm starting to do bigger and more complex sales funnels and stuff like that because it's really, really, really to say "Okay, we're going to be done on x date because when you're building funnels with 175 emails and 4 sales letters and you're doing all the design on each little page and there's 50 pages, it's almost impossible to get it perfectly accurate with deadlines.

So what I usually tell people is "I'm not going to give you a start date, I'm not going to really tell you when, exactly what date I'm going to start because I'm dealing with several clients and everybody has their rough deadlines. Every once in a while everybody has a specific deadline if they're doing a product launch that's already in motion or whatever but it's usually like "I need them done as soon as you can" type of situation,

So I tell them "there's really no start dates, I'll give you an estimated end date.' For example, the client that I just took on, I told him basically around like somewhere around late March, early April. I try to get it done before the second part, before early April, like, I try to get it done March, and then along the way, like I say "Hey, we just hit this snag, just letting you know, in case that pushes the deadline back a little bit, are you still okay on your end  with the deadline, that's not going to mess anything up for you." 

And like there are situations where  you know that I'm dealing with right now, that I've worked it's probably like a solid 5 nights and I think 2 weekend days which is again, amazingly rare for me. But it's because I had 2 big deadlines with clients and I messed something up on my end with just the coordinating and everything and I was like "You know what, I'm going to pound through this, I'm going to get it done for you because I was going to."

And I always let them the situation, anybody listening to this knows that I'm all about transparency and it really just comes down to just telling clients, giving them expectations like "This is going to happen, sometimes things happen, if something happens, it's going to push back a deadline, I'll be the first one to tell you about it." Well, I mean I guess I'm the only one that can tell them, "But you know, I'm going to tell you immediately, so we can make sure that it's not ruining anything in your schedule and all that." 

You know sometimes if there are any problems along the way and I can tell somebody's annoyed, I typically don't work with the type of people who are like impulsive. As people get to a higher degree of business, success, they typically get to a higher degree of just internal maturity, I guess. Like, I usually don't get too many impulsive kind of crazy people, they're pretty much all level-headed cool people, but I can tell if somebody's annoyed, I bring it up.

Like, "Hey, listen just tell me. Did that cause an issue? Here's why it happened." 'll just explain it to them. It doesn't really happen that often but when it does. or if someone says, "Hey, you haven't emailed me back in 3 days, can we communicate better?", I'll write back and be like "Hey, listen I've been like just nose-deep into your project, I got a lot done in the last 3 days. Sometimes I forget to come up for air for a couple of days."

Which happens because there are times when I won't check email for like a day or two and it's because I'm in such zone, that I just don't want to think about it, I don't want to get myself out of that zone. So I hope that helps, I know it was kind of like I wrapped around it a little bit.

Shane: Yeah, it does. It just kind of like ties in because I like to do that too and part of it with this whole question that  I wanted to ask you about having the distractions around you, I just called my family a distraction...

Jeremy: Yeah, they're a good distraction.

Shane: A very good distraction but being able to set those expectations for other people too, so even if it's, I just tell them that it's a little bit longer, it might be 6 weeks from now that we're going to have any results and usually I would tell them the 3, now that I have more responsibilities here at home, I just...

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah, try not to overcommit, yup.

Shane: That's fine and if I get it done in 3 like a normally would, then even better.

Jeremy: Yeah, I found that with a lot of people, if you're just transparent with them they're really, I've had some legitimately crazy people that I've works two ways like certifiably insane but it's only like probably two people that I can think of that...

Shane: It's probably a whole another podcast...

Jeremy: Yeah, like I mean they were certifiable and obviously I don't work with them anymore but for me, for any service-based people out there, if I have a client that I don't like working with them for a project, as soon as that project is done, I actually tell them, "you know, it just didn't work for me, go find somebody else. And I help them, I give them resources, whatever. First of all, it takes a lot I love balls, it took me awhile to get there. 

But once you get to its success level where you don't "need" people, then it helps with that kind of stuff and then you can tell people "Listen, this is how I work. If that doesn't work for you, that's fine." And it makes your life easier and I think it's better for everybody when you set the expectations in the beginning.

Like I don't have any big, huge list or anything but I kind of just say a couple bullet points both how I work with client's but I mean and this is kind of like 5% of stuff in 95% of cases it all works out fine. But I hope that answers that one.

Shane: It does and this has been really helpful like a lot of things you know I send a simple question and such a simple question doesn't really have a simple answer because of so many things involved with it.

Jeremy: Yeah and that's why I figured when you sent that out, I was like, "You know what, I have to do a new podcast episode anyway. I'm just going to get you instead of just calling you and talking about it like I email back and forth whenever I'd rather just jump on the phone and do it and I apologize, by the way. I know I've been slacking on my podcast lately, so sorry about that. As I've mentioned the last couple of weeks have been more than insane.

Thankfully, my wife is very understanding like I said before but anyway yeah so... Do you have any other questions I can answer?

Shane: I think that's all from here. I really appreciate it, though. I learned a lot and I hope... I'm excited to go back and listen to it again and listen to the whole thing and take it all in again.

Jeremy: Yeah, I do that a lot when I'm on the phone with people because you really get it all when your on the phone you have to kind of go back and listen to it and I'll put on the podcast, I think you listen, as far as I... If not, you better.

Shane: But yeah, I hope that helps. Before we get off, let everybody know if you have any websites or if anybody wants to get in touch with you or whatever, let them do that.

Shane: Yeah, my main website is ShaneStone.com just my main blog and anybody who has a sales team, typically 5 to 20 people and they generate all their leads like online, you know I'd be open to talking I don't have too much free time especially with the new baby but after a little while, I'll be kicking the groove again and I'll probably ready to start create my own magic for somebody sales team.

Jeremy: Nice, nice. Sounds good. So I would encourage everybody to check out his stuff and before I get off the phone, I'm just go to a super quick plug for myself.

So I just launch business, feel free you could shut the podcast off because it wouldn't be for you but unless you want to go to the funnel and just kind of look at. Basically, the beginning of everything, I made a new video and it kind of goes through kind of my whole process and everything that I do when I work with service-based businesses.

The video you can see at http://www.jeremyreeves.com/4-Pillars/ and again it takes you bike in the opt in page and all that kind of stuff to put in your email for the video and the video takes you through the process when I work with my coaching clients. Again, this is just for service-based businesses and it's a really good video, by the way. Even if you just want to copy it, I put a lot of thinking time into it so I wouldn't say you're a bad person if you did that. 

That's my free gift to you if steal my stuff there's a lot of things that go into that. But yeah even the video itself is very educational and if you think you're a fit, basically I'm looking for somebody that's making at least a $100,000 gross to go through a coaching program and kind of show you how to get clients in get fully booked and stay fully booked at all times and have a more reliable business. 

Sales funnels is part of it, it's a good chunk of it, but it's absolutely not the whole thing. I know I'm known as a sales funnel guy you know within sales finals there's so much more. It's not just like throw out the landing page, throw out the sales letter, throw out an upsell. It's really not about that, it gets way, way, way more deep into the actual strategy each individual part of your sales funnel and how your positioning your company and tell you're attracting people and what type of people, all that kind of stuff. 

But if you want to see the video, it's at http://www.jeremyreeves.com/4-Pillars/, and will also go there.And with that said, I hope everybody has a good day.

Thanks again Shane for coming on and probing me with your questions, they were good ones. I hope it helped everybody. Whether you have kids and to work at your house or you don't, whatever situation you're in, if anybody has any questions, you need like clarification on anything, let me know.

One more thing, that Brainwave Studio, that's the app that I use to get into like the flow state and stuff and listen to the binaural beats, I'm on a Mac. I don't know if you have a PC I don't know what would it be, I know its Brainwave Studio on a Mac. There's other ones you can get, there's free ones, there's all kinds of stuff.

But just look for a binaural beat program. So with that said, that is the end of today's show and I will be back soon wiz war tips and strategies and stuff on how to build sales funnels and grow your business. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.