“The Most Important Things In Life (And Sales Copy)”
Jim and Stew discuss something that happens to us all – LIFE. Often it can derail our plans, but it can also create a hyper-focused ability to get things done in half the time – often faster. When it feels like the world is falling around you, but you still need to figure out a way to get the important things done with your job, try this:
Make a list of all the things you need to do for your business – NEED to do every day / once a week.
Make a list of the things you do but maybe waste time in your day doing them.
Usually, you will find of the two lists that efficiency is created when focusing ONLY on the things you NEED to do when time is tight.
You can apply this to making deadlines, finishing projects, even when tasked with challenging things like being a caregiver to a loved one.
Now – can you have this type of hyper focus and efficiency without the tragedy of life tied to it? Try it and see if you can figure out the KEY elements of your business and what maybe pulling your away from productive use of your time.
Let’s Do This…
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The Transcript…
Jim Edwards: Hey, guys! Jim Edwards here along with…
Stew Smith: Stew Smith!
Jim Edwards: And today we are going to talk about something that has everything to do with sales, copywriting and content marketing and you might think nothing but has everything to do with it…
And today we are going to talk about a topic that is near and dear to Mr. Stu Smith’s heart, which is mental toughness…
Which is also near and dear to my heart as well…
The reason I want to talk about this had been going through some interesting things over the last year…
I was talking to Susan, my niece, assistant, right-hand person, one of my best friends…
And we were talking yesterday, or not yesterday…
We were talking today about the fact in the last year we’ve seen like we’ve had all these things thrown at us of my father in law being really sick and then passing away…
My dad being super, super sick and not passing away and being on the road to recovery…
Now a very dear friend of ours who is battling for her life with a heart condition…
Terri went down to help take care of her, and we thought it would only be five to eight days, turned out to be five to eight weeks…
And yet all these things just keep coming…
Boom, boom, boom, boom…
And in the last 12 months, I’ve had the greatest, business-wise, I’ve had the greatest 12 months as far as business building and making money than I’ve ever had…
Ever, ever, ever…
Which is really saying something…
And I think that it comes down to, for me at least focusing on what’s really, really important…
And during that time focusing also on my grandkids and being in, I mean, and I’ve also taken…
It seems like I’m taking more time off away from my business than I have…
Because I had to go take care of my dad…
I had to take care of all the stuff when Terri was taking care of her dad…
I mean, they’re just all these thing…
Stew Smith: Right. Training less, but still getting something done…
Jim Edwards: Yup…And I, I just kinda wanted to talk about all this…
Maybe I need just a, like a Stew, a Stew therapy session…
But…
Stew Smith: Well, think about what you’ve accomplished on top of all that…
And I can…
I think we all have those times in our lives where you have to drop everything…
And go help someone, right?
Or in some cases, it’s you who needs help, right?
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: You gotta drop everything… And that’s life…
And I think the more we realized that’s just life…
You got to deal with it…
I think that the stronger we will come out of it on, on the other side…
Stew Smith: And you’re right, I mean, you have to take care of what matters most…
But you also have to take care of what’s most important in your business…
Jim Edwards: Right…
Stew Smith: As well…
And that’s what you focus on…
You just focus on the most important pieces and not get caught up in the urgent…
The little things that you know, kind of distract you from actually focusing on what’s the most important…
Jim Edwards: Right… And that’s a great point… And thinking about that stuff…
That’s really what’s happened is I’ve been forced to ignore the urgent stuff that in the end doesn’t matter, and ‘I’ve been…
Like when I look at Facebook, it’s not…
I don’t look at every single thing that’s in my little update feed…
It’s like I’m basically looking for the stuff where I need to respond to a comment or something like that…
So that eliminates 15 minutes here…
Stew Smith: Yep.
Jim Edwards: I empower the people on my team to make decisions, so they don’t have to check with me on stuff…
I isolate the things…
Okay…
What’s the most important stuff I gotta get done today that and just get it done…
And I’m not sure how to explain this, but because everything has been so busy…
I’ve had two, and I’ve had to eliminate like the pre-talk and the post-talk that goes with doing shit…
I’m not sure that I can explain this right…
But there have been times in my life where I’ve spent more energy and more time in the lead up to doing something…
And then after I’ve done it, the cooldown from it…
Then just like,
“Look, I gotta get this done and this done and this done…”
I don’t have time to screw around…
Let me write this up…
Let me get these headlines done…
Let me write this email, let me do this article…
And it’s like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom…”
And I looked back, and it’s, I mean,
“Damn, I did all four of those things in like 45 minutes, whereas before that would have been like a whole morning.”
And all sorts of angst and other stuff going with it…
And I think part of it is thinking, “Okay, I gotta feel like I’m putting in a full day…
So this is the important stuff I got to do…
But I gotta get some filler in here too…
So it feels like I worked all day…”
I don’t know if any of that makes sense…
Stew Smith: I know what ‘you’re saying. I think what it is is that when you have half of your day or more eaten up with another event or task or whatever…
I mean that could be a full day’s job, and you’re trying to start your own business on the side…
You’ve been there, and the things that you did is you made that time efficient, right?
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: That’s the key efficiency…
So it’s Kinda like when I teach kids how to I see one kid in this lane swimming across the pool…
Takes him 20 strokes to get across the pool…
I see the other kid takes him six strokes to get across the pool…
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: It’s the same distance, but a third of the work…
Right? That’s really what we’re doing with our, with our own businesses, we just figured out a way to make it efficient…
And you know, I think the problem with trying to explain this is that it’s almost impossible to explain.
Jim Edwards: Right?
Stew Smith: You know, you make a checklist, these are the four most important things I need to do, and you get it done right now we can apply that to every single day…
Jim Edwards: Yeah…
Stew Smith: Now, if you could probably have a four-hour workday yeah…
Jim Edwards: Or two…
Stew Smith: Yeah… a two hour work day so, it does come to more of a focused efficiency, I think more than anything…
I mean we can call it mental toughness because I think there is a form of mental toughness that’s in there because you’re able to compartmentalize for that short period of time…
Get stuff done…
And then be able to turn it off and go focus on what matters most
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: In your life, I found the same thing…
Like sometimes I’m really busy…
I’ve got a lot in the schedule I gotta be somewhere at launch…
I got to get an article done in the morning…
So one of the things I do is the night before I write down all the notes what am I going to do that next morning?
I have a topic that I’m already kind of brewing on in the back of my head…
And then something that’s been really helpful for me are Venn diagrams…
Jim Edwards: Okay…
Stew Smith: Right…
When I talk about an article that has a lot of what’s a good word for it?
Jim Edwards: Stuff…
Stew Smith: Paragraphs, right? It’s just got a lot of topics in it that I have to coordinate…
Right?
Jim Edwards: Right…
Stew Smith: And so I put it all together and make one of these Venn diagrams like this…
Like this one, I made the other day…
It’s really just nutrition portion controls, sleep, exercise,
Jim Edwards: right…
Stew Smith: You know, you’ve got all these other little things, and I’m able to explain things a little smoother…
Jim Edwards: Right…
Stew Smith: In a little diagram out of whether it’s a Venn diagram or you know, so your wrap or something
Jim Edwards: Visual thinking…
I mean that’s really what you’re doing is using visual thinking to help you clarify your thoughts faster so you can express yourself quicker…
Stew Smith: Absolutely…
And I think that helps you have a greater amount of efficient focus…
Jim Edwards: Okay…I can see that…
Stew Smith: It makes sense…
Jim Edwards: Well, it does because I don’t know the exact percentage, but I think 80% of our brain power goes to visual processing, and 20% goes to everything else…
Stew Smith: Yeah…
Jim Edwards: So if you could access the biggest part of your brain to, to visually represent everything you got to get done and your brain goes,
“Oh, okay, I know what to do…”
That could be part of what’s eliminating that that chatter the pre and the post chatter…
I don’t know…
But I need to think that, I mean…
Stew Smith: Like your to-do list, I mean you have a to-do list, but you know, instead of the big to-do list that you and I made, that’s like a page long of all the different options you can do…
Jim Edwards: Right…
Stew Smith: You don’t do that…
It’s all one that’s about this big,
Jim Edwards: Right…
Stew Smith: Get it done…
Here’s the most important stuff I’ve got to get done…
I get done…
Jim Edwards: Right. And so for example, like this week I needed to get something done for my list…
I needed to get some sort of content marketing done…
So, I did a video on Monday, or maybe for, I don’t know.
I did a video, and then I needed something else…
I said, “Okay, let’s take the transcript of that and let me take, put that into an article…”
And then I took that article, and I created a couple of different calls to action for it depending on where I was going to post it…
And as soon as I get the article done…
It was like boom, put it up, let’s get it posted…
Don’t screw around…
Not
“Well, you know it’s done now let me go get some coffee and let me call my friend and let me check Facebook…”
No, I got this done…
I need to go get this shit posted…
I got to have this call-to-action forward here…
This call-to-action forward here…
And have this call-to-action forward here…
I need a graphic here, but I need a different graphic over here…
Let’s just get it done…
Stew Smith: Yep…
Jim Edwards: And then it was funny, I had one of my biggest weeks on social media that I’ve had in a while because I don’t know…
Because I didn’t screw around…
My topic was real clear…
It was hard hitting because I couldn’t screw around…
I just had to get to it…
Yeah…
And there was emotion behind it …
and then it really resonated with a bunch of people because I think it was more of a gut level explanation thing…
And yet it was my least amount of time spent on social media in a long time…
You know, your phone tells you your screenshot device I screen time was so low they were asking me…
Stew Smith: Are you still alive?
Jim Edwards: Yeah…
Stew Smith: Did you go? Yeah… did you lead your thumb? Get cut off, can you not log in?
Jim Edwards: So I think that all of these things, it’s just…
‘It’s interesting to think about this because if you could do this on purpose when it’s not being forced by a calamitous event or something…
I think that would be important…I mean, that would be great…
Stew Smith: You know, I think that’s how people achieve excellence, to be honest with you…
If you’re able to do this kind of focus every day when you don’t have the world falling apart around you,
Jim Edwards: That’s really, isn’t it? It’s the end, or it’s the internal drive rather than the external driver…
Stew Smith: Yeah…Yeah…I mean, you’re right…
I mean, you started off this discussion about mental toughness, and that’s, it really comes down to that…
And if you think about what mental toughness is, probably one of the best definitions I’ve ever used in articles…
And I’ve, I’ve found this, and I don’t know who said it, so it’s not me who made it up, but I love it’s:
“Finding the fuel when the tank is empty.”
How do you do that?
And that’s just one of those questions that sometimes it’s answered when nobody else is around you, and it’s just you alone with your thoughts and thinking about,
“I gotta do this, I gotta do that…”
And you just start getting it done…
Jim Edwards: Right, right…One step at a time…And that I was just about to say exactly what you said there…
One step at a time…
Sometimes finding that fuel is maybe because this happened to me night before last, I didn’t have the fuel to get the whole thing done…
But I kept playing the game with myself…
“Okay, one more step, one more step…
Let me get one more step done…
The next step, the next step, and I didn’t get the whole thing done…
But I got it so far that I didn’t have that gnawing feeling of incompleteness…
I knew that in first thing in the morning it was going to be “Boom! I’m going to have this done.”
And it’s kind of like when we run, I know, you kind of taught me this…
Instead of thinking about the whole run, think about the next bend, visualize the next thing…
Okay, I’m going to make it up to this thing…
I’m going to make it to this thing…
Do math problems in your head to distract yourself from the pain you’re feeling?
To put a focus on something else…
Anything just to make it that next hundred meters and then all of a sudden…
I don’t know if this happens to you…
It happens to me like on every single run…
As soon as I get the half to the halfway point of that run…
Most of the time my speed actually picks up…
Because I know that I’m on my way home…
Stew Smith: Yup…All downhill…
Jim Edwards: Right…
Which they could have brutalized me if I’d have been in the military because…
“You know what? Oh, you’re not done!”
“Shit!”
But thank God I don’t do that to myself…
But that kind of a thing, just employing that I think it would be fun for us sometimes, and this is kind of a just freewheeling and stuff…
There are some things that I like to that, some different things that I like to teach, but I think it’d be fun for us to brainstorm…
Some just brainstormed some things about how to get stuff done…
Just mental…
Kind of like that book you did about motivation for working out…
Stew Smith: Sure…
Jim Edwards: Doing something along those lines for motivation to get that one last thing done every day…
Because the way I look at it…
I had a sales manager teach me this…
He said, “If you make one extra sales-call a day, every day, over a 50 week year, five days a week, that’s 250 extra sales calls a year…
That could be the difference between being an average performer and being a peak performer…
And he said, once you make one extra sales call, it’s easy to make three, but making that one extra one…
And so just, I don’t know, I think we’re at the end…
Stew Smith: Yeah, no, that’s really good…
Cause I liked always closed it with you know, none of this is easy in life isn’t easy…
And unfortunately, things like this happen…
Jim Edwards: Right?
Stew Smith: But you know, you’ve done a really great job with you’re not only are focused on the basics of your business and getting it done and crushing it…
But you also added on this our 22nd podcast…
Jim Edwards: Right.
Stew Smith: In the last 10 weeks…So I know you’ve had issues for the last 10 weeks and
Jim Edwards: Oh, ‘I’ve had issues for the last 50 years, Stew…
Stew Smith: But you know, laughter helps as well…
Jim Edwards: Yeah…
Stew Smith: You gotta stay positive about everything and just keep moving because this stuff does happen…
It’s going to come in, and it’s going to throw a curve ball at you when you don’t expect it…
And you just have to focus
Jim Edwards: Right…
Stew Smith: That’s the key… And like I said if you just make yourself a to-do list and just get the basics done and…
Maybe that’s a good drill for everybody today…
You know, if you want something to do, let’s make a little short list of all the things that you have to get done in one side of the list…
And then all the other things that you do in a day…
Right…
And let’s compare the two…
And you may see the hand the side on the right hand is you know, the stuff that yet that you do…
There may be some things in there that you can clean up every day and you don’t necessarily have to do them daily.
Jim Edwards: Right…
Stew Smith: Maybe you can handle doing them weekly yeah…
Jim Edwards: Or skip them altogether
Stew Smith: or outsource them…
Jim Edwards: Right… and a great example of that, just as an aside, I had somebody send me a message through LinkedIn…
Um, I don’t do LinkedIn…
Stew Smith: I don’t, I probably should, but I just don’t have one…
Jim Edwards: But I just don’t do a lot on it…
Stew Smith: I have one too,
Jim Edwards: but I made the decision, you know what, LinkedIn ain’t my paint, my peace as they used to say back in the 80s,
“Not my piece, man…”
Um, it just ain’t my thing…
And so you gotta be, you gotta pick and choose…
So I think that’s a wonderful exercise…
I’m going to do that, too.
Make a list of all the things that I have to get done…
And I’m also gonna make a list of all the stuff that I actually do…
You know, those things and other stuff and see where I’m wasting time…
That is an excellent, that’s an excellent thing…
I think there’s probably an app to do that with…
“What’s an APP?”
You know what?
Here’s your frigging APP…
So the frickin and piece of paper and a frickin pen…
Okay…
There’s your APP…
That’s old school…
That’s called an analog app…
Stew Smith: Yes…
Jim Edwards: Awesome…Great job…Stew…
Why don’t you…
You’re doctor Stew today…
Why don’t you finish this off and take us home…
Stew Smith: So, hey you guys, thanks for signing up and checking out the Sales Copy And Content Marketing Hacks Podcast…
Jim Edwards: There you go…
Stew Smith: Make sure you are joining the Facebook page, the closed Facebook page that we have…
That’s also a Sales Copywriting And Content Marketing Hacks Facebook Page…
Jim Edwards: Oh, there you go…
Stew Smith: TheJimEdwardsMethod.com and sign up for that premium package, and you will see a lot of cool stuff that will, I guarantee you save you time…
Jim Edwards: There you go…Actually, the premium is closed right now, but since you said that, I guess we’ll have to open it back up for a couple of days…
Stew Smith: There you go…
Jim Edwards: There you go…Cool…
Thank you, Stew!
Thanks, everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time…
Have a great day!
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