Joe: Joe McCall, Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast with my good buddy Shaun McCloskey. Shaun, how are you, sir?

Shaun: I'm great. How are you, sir?

Joe: Good, good. So we just were 10 minutes into our previous episode and I forgot to hit the record button. So which is good anyway, because my introduction last was just way too long and we're going to cut this a lot shorter now. Shaun and I go way, way back. We've known each other 16 and 17 years. He's been on my podcast a lot. Great friend. We live just five miles apart and 5 minutes apart. And but I've been in Shaun's coaching programs for years. He started off as a kind of teaching and doing short sales and pre foreclosures, and my wife hung her real estate license under Shaun in his office as a as the broker. And I learned a lot about real estate from him. And then I joined life in there with him when he was doing that with a mutual friend of ours, Steve Cook. They parted ways as friends. Shaun started Leadership Boardroom a few years ago, seven years ago, I think, and I've been with that ever since. And Shaun's just a great dude. Well, anyway, he's got an event coming up in February that I really want you guys to go to. And the purpose of this podcast isn't to promote that event, but it is coming up in February and I'm going to be there. And if you're, you know, if you want to meet me and hang out, maybe play golf as long as the weather is nice enough, it's above 50 degrees in February, which it might be. Let's go golfing together, but come down to Saint Louis. Is it going to be in Saint Louis, Shaun?

Shaun: Yes, it is. And to be clear, it will be February or March, we're finalizing the dates with the hotel and stuff this week. So excellent. Well, we'll give you that and even more reason why it's not going to be some pitch to get you to an event. We're going to share some cool stuff today.

Joe: Well, anyway, I'm in Shaun's leadership boarding program, a highly, highly recommended. He has very few spots that he keeps open for this. So I don't even know if any are available right now. I know our group is closed, but anyway, he's been sharing some things in our group that I thought this was so good. Shaun I wanted to get Shaun on the podcast to talk about it because, you know, we can create one of the major cornerstone things of leadership, boardroom and what Shaun does, he coaches hundreds of people like really, really good high achievers and he helps them create a vision for what they want their life to look like and then design a business around that. And it sounds a lot easier than it is. It's a very detailed, in-depth process. But sometimes, you know, for the few of us and not everybody does this, but the few of us who do create a vision, how much are we really like putting in our effort into that? Like on a scale of 1 to 10, where are we in really taking that seriously or thinking about it or really planning our daily and weekly activities based on that kind of vision? So I wanted to get Shaun on to talk about that. So, Shaun, how are you?

Shaun: I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having me.

Joe: Yeah, and we are recording now, so my apologies again.

Shaun: Oh, that's good. That's good. Yeah.

Joe: All right. So real quick, talk about who you are. People don't know. You give us a quick introduction of you and just tell the clean stuff. Please. No dirty words and just keep it.

Shaun: No dirty, filthy jokes. Okay. All right. I'll keep all that out for at least the first 3 minutes. All right? So, yeah, so, man, I've been in business for myself since 2003. Start flipping houses, flipped a few hundred houses, and then built a business that I was pretty much a slave to. So at that point, you know, here I am, slave to my business a few years into it, doing fairly well according to maybe the world standards. I didn't feel like that myself. But at that point I started getting asked to coach other people, and my first student that I ever took on went out and made $1.3 million his first year, which I thought was, Man, this is the coolest thing ever. I'm really helping people.

Joe: I know who that is he's still doing deals.

Shaun: He is, yeah, he's still doing deals today. The problem, though, is his second year of working with me, he got a divorce and it's like, well, I'm not going to take credit for the divorce, but I certainly didn't help because I'm over here. He's learning how to run a business for me and I'm working 60, 70 hours a week or more. And it's like, that's not going to help your marriage, man. So he's learning from me. He's copying what I'm doing, and it's having a detriment on his family and his marriage and his hobbies. And so who cares if that business is going great if you got to sacrifice everything else. So that became this lifelong journey ever since, which sounds corny, but, you know, it's been this journey of like, okay, how do you have both? You know, how to have a great business. It's thriving, making really good money that also affords you the life that you really want to live. And you know, people hear that and they go, Oh, just so he's a life coach, and that's not what I'm talking about here at all. It's not some pie in the sky or lust strategy involved here, but we do two things. Number one, we ask people to come up with identify what you want your personal vision to look like for your life, get it in writing. And that sounds simple, but that's a little process. And, you know, we help people through that. And then once that's finished and not until that's finished, then we create a business vision on top of it. This is not a business plan. This is coming up with. Think of it, the fastest way I could describe it is. If life and business could look any way that you wanted to look, you wave a magic wand and it could look any way that you wanted to look. What would that look like? And number one, is that a realistic, viable life in business, which I hate the word realistic because I've seen a lot of unrealistic things happen. But can we make that happen with your current plan to do so? Most of the time the answer is no. I should say all the time the answer is no. And so what do we need to tweak in order to make it all work together to where you can have a great life, great business, you're profitable, you're able to enjoy the life you want to enjoy with the profits that your business makes, which is the purpose of it anyway. And we marry them all together. And so that's an ongoing process. The vision is a living, breathing, growing document, as I say. And so as you grow and get closer to it, it grows too. And so this is something that you don't just it's not like going to the gym once and then you're in shape. You have to go back. It's something that we do on a regular basis around here and we are intentional with it. So that's what I teach. And so I mastermind with my coaching groups. I have these small, intimate groups, 15 people or less, and we get together. Joe, obviously you know this because you're in one of them and we get together a few times a year and we mastermind for a couple of days. And then in between those mastermind retreats, I personally coach each of the members of my groups and help them with what they need help to get closer to those two things. And it's a lot of fun. But over that time, I should say I coach anywhere from medium size business owners today to some rather large businesses. My largest client has a half a billion dollar company and it's interesting the similarities between them, but when you get to coach that many people for as long as I have, you start to see patterns of things that work really well for people in business, in life, patterns that create absolute destruction and divorce and no relationship with kids and loss of hobbies and no fun. And so all I do today is I look at all those patterns and I say, okay, here's the things that I see that are working really well and here's the things that aren't. And you take that and do what you will. So I'll share some of that today here on the call.

Joe: Good and I'm excited about that. My camera was getting choppy here. I'm not sure what's going on, but we were having this problem before. I think I just fixed it all right. Now you see me okay?

Shaun: Yeah. You look good. You look beautiful. Handsome. Yeah.

Joe: Yeah. All right. You're talking about creating this vision for your life, your vision for your business. And I was thinking about this because this is. If I were to ask you, Shaun, if I were to come up to you and say, Oh, Shawn, I got a great idea for this business, I just heard this guy talk. I saw this guy doing this. I'm going to do I'm going to do this. And then what would be the one question you would ask me.

Shaun: I'd say is that is that in your vision? And, you know, that's the entrepreneur's nightmare. It's like the visionary, the person who can see things before they happen. And that isn't everybody, by the way, but the people who are entrepreneurs tend to have some visionary skills, at least, and they're often encompassing the vision of other people because of what sounds sexy when they hear a speaker speak or they hear a podcast, and then they go, All this guy made $10 million doing this. I should do that too. It's like, Well, classic number one, do you want to do that or are you just chasing the dough? And number two, does that even fit in your what I call your unique genius zone? Like, are you skilled in the same areas as the guy or the gal who you're listening to? And that's not always the case. And so, you know, first question I ask is, does that fit your vision? And if you don't have a vision, you don't even know the answer to that. And you might say yes to something that sounds like a great opportunity because there's a sexiness attached to it with dollars, or maybe you see somebody else's lifestyle. You think I want their lifestyle. So you think you're willing to do what they're willing to do to get it, but you might not be. So there's all kinds of stuff that goes into this. And if you don't have a crystal clear vision, then you don't have a method which to say no to the wrong things. You'll say yes to anything. And that's, you know, it's again, it sounds simple, man, but this is not easy to do, especially when an opportunity is presented to you. That's a great opportunity, you know? Well, more like one.

Joe: Yeah, well, the more successful you get to, the more successful opportunities for potential opportunities. Come get thrown your way. Oh, yeah. The more people you meet that are doing cool things and you're like, Oh, I want to do that. I could do that easily. That would only take a few hours a week, or that would just take a little investment here of my time or my money here, you know? But really, you have to have a clear written vision of what you want your life to look like. And then ask yourself, well, what kind of business do I need to do that Maybe your vision is to make $20 million a month. Okay, that's fine. Right? But like, what does that look like? And then when you're going to get sidetracked and you're going to get bombarded with all kinds of opportunities for, you know, for the rest of your life. So now you have to ask yourself, are these opportunities that I should be taking on? And most of the time the answer needs to be no. They say the definition of an entrepreneur is somebody who finds something that works and then stops doing it after a year or two. Right. And then finds it keeps on chasing all these other shiny objects. Okay. Shaun, So recently at one of our masterminds, you asked everybody a question. You were talking about the 0 to 10 scale. What was that about? Talk about that.

Shaun: Yeah. So I got to speak to a room of about 250 of some of the largest. And for marketers, coaches, speakers in the country, maybe in the world. And I only had about 10 minutes to give a presentation. And, you know, you walk into a room like that, it better grab their attention right away. So I asked a question that I've been asking my students recently, and the question is, when's the last time you tried anything with all your might? When's the last time you tried anything holy to the degree at which you're capable? And so now this is an interesting question because first of all, you would think that coaching really high level entrepreneurs, they would be able to answer that question. And they do this on a daily basis. The overwhelming majority of people that I've asked this question to couldn't think of a single instance in recent history that they've given anything all of their might and I mean to their fullest potential. Now, in order to answer the question, first of all, you got to know what your potential is. And so I don't think very a very few people, I think even know what their potential is in the first place. But if I got an answer back from people, most of the time it was something physical. So, you know, you get a lot of guys in the room that work out and gals in the room that work out there and say, Oh yeah, I try everything with all my might sometimes when I go to the gym and that's a great answer. But then I would say, Well, what about in other areas? And most people can't think of one Now, if you're thinking of one right away, I want to challenge you to say, are you sure it was at a level ten on a 0 to 10 scale? Ten is to the point where there is nothing more in you to do any more than you've done. And people hear that. And it's like, as soon as I started asking these questions, all kinds of comments and objections and so forth came up. But this really started with a young lady that I started working with, an 18 year old gal, this is earlier this year, and her parents, who I've been friends with for many, many years, came to me and said, Listen, our daughter's really struggling right now. She had some loss in the family recently. She's going through some really hard time at school, just graduating high school. She doesn't know who she is, doesn't know who she wants to be. She's struggling with depression, she's vaping, she's doing all this stuff and it's like, we don't know what to do. She wants help, but she doesn't know how to fix it. And so will you help her to come up with a vision for what she wants her life to look like? And I said, Of course, I oftentimes will take on 2 to 3 people, but I don't charge that just need help. And it's not a part of my business. It's just something I enjoy doing and I hope it helps them. So I said, But she's got to want it more than you do as her parents. And so I'm going to interview her and we're gonna find out, is this something you're requesting her to do or is this something she wants? And, you know, her parents both said, no, she really wants it really bad. I'm like, okay, the parents always say that. Let me talk to the kid. And I already had a relationship with this young lady and I really like her like she's one of the smartest 18 year olds ever met. So I sat down with her on the phone one day and I said, I understand you want to change your life. And she said, Yes. I said, Tell me how so? And she said, Well, I really want to be a better daughter. I haven't shown up as a daughter very well recently. I want to Oh, by the way, this has everything to do with business. So stick with me here for a second.

Joe: Yeah, it really does.

Shaun: She said. She said, I want to be a better daughter. I want to be a psychologist someday, and I want to be the best psychologist and I really want to help people so they don't have to struggle the way I have, she said. I want to be a better friend, and she listed like 15 different things that she wanted to be better at in life. And I said, okay. I said, Well, all of that starts with, as you know, having a vision for what those things look like. And you're telling me a little bit of a vision right now, which is great, but we have a lot of work to do. And so I am based on your answers, I'm willing to work with you and I'll talk with you once a week, but I'm going to test you and I'm going to give you a little assignments throughout our time together. And here's the deal. I'm not charging you and I'm not charging your parents. But because of that, I'm going to expect more from you than I expect from my coaching members who are paying a lot to get less phone calls than you. And so I need to make sure you're willing to show up at a level ten throughout all of this. And she said, Oh, of course. I said, Well, I'm not sure you know what that means yet. So I gave her the first test and she passed it. She did it, and I gave her multiple tests throughout the next couple of months. And eventually it got to one assignment where I said, All right, we've done some good legwork at this point. You've followed through with what I've asked you to do. So one assignment for you this week, but it's kind of a big assignment. It sounds simple, but it's going to take you a little time and some thought. I want you to answer four questions for me. And I asked her four very open ended questions that were along the lines of Describe to me how you want your relationships with your friends to look like. So it's kind of an open ended big answers, a lot of answers probably to that question. It's going to require some thought. I said, I want you to think about this throughout the next week. You write down your answers and I want you to come back to me one week. We'll have another call and share with me what you've written and can you do this? And she said, Yes. I said, Can you put in a level ten effort with this? Because this is really important for questions. That's it. She said, Yes. So a week goes by and I'm getting ready to have my call with her that morning. And I texted her, I said, Hey, did you did you do the answers to the questions? I haven't seen anything come through yet. And she said, yes. And to test her, I said, let me see them. Send them to me right now, either email or text. And she sent me four sentences back and a text for all four questions, mind you. And I thought, Oh my gosh, this is going to be a quick call today. So when we chatted that day, I said, Question for you all, you tell me and I want you to be honest. You I sent you four insanely open ended, deep, thought provoking questions and you sent me back four sentences as your response. And they were short sentences. I said, I want to ask you a question you should be asked. At what level did you put an effort towards this exercise? 0 to 10. And she was not. I thought about it a lot this week. I really put a lot of thought in. I said, That's not what I'm asking. I'm just asking for numbers 0 to 10. And she hadn't hot around it, didn't really want to answer. And finally she said, Now, before she goes, I really did think about a lot. I said, No worry about thinking about how much effort you put in to finishing the exercise that I asked you to. She said four. And I kind of laughed. I go, okay, I'm going to give you a four, But that's generous, right? This is like one or two efforts. But let's just let's just use your level four. I said, Why did you put in a level four? And I'm just curious, I'm not making any wrong for it. I have no judgment whatsoever. But I'm just curious why you put in a level four when you said you wanted to be a better friend. And a lot of the things that I was asking you in these questions and she said, Well, I just got busy, which she didn't. I have already spoken to her mom earlier the day before that, and she was at her boyfriend's most of the week. And so and again, I got no judgment for it. But I said I said, look, I said, you came to me and you said you wanted this, this, this, this in your life. And in order to do that, I said, you have to show up at a level ten. Do you think it's possible for you to have any of that at a level ten in your life when you haven't even identified what level ten is? These four questions were to ask you What does a level ten friendship look like for you? What does you being a level ten friend even mean? And you sent me back one sentence for that answer. Do you think you can have a level ten friendships if you don't even know what the definition of a level ten friendship is? And she said, No, I don't think I can. I say, okay, well, I agree with that. And in the middle of our conversation, we had a great conversation for, I don't know, 30, 40 minutes. She goes, you know what I'm realizing? She goes, I am putting in a level four effort, not only at this, I'm putting in a level four at everything in my life. And I said, Interesting. Why do you think that is? And she said, I don't know. I don't. Why would I put in a level four? And I said, Well, there's a whole bunch of reasons. And I knew this because this is these are conversations I've been having with coaching students for months at this point. I said, Look, you're a really smart young lady, maybe one of the smartest 18 year olds I've ever met in my life. And I said, here's the first reason and tell me if any of you relate to this. Your Level four efforts yield the same results as other people putting in a level eight, nine and ten efforts. So you're so freaking smart that for only a little bit of effort, you you actually get pretty good results most of the time now, not always, but most of the time you get better results than most. Isn't that true? And she kind of smiled and she goes, maybe, you know. I said, Well, then why put it any more than a four? You're getting results that are good enough to get by. And she goes, That's true. That's why I put a level four everywhere. And I said, Here's the problem with that, though. It's good enough for everybody else to get you, by which, by the way, it's not for me because I will not continue doing these phone calls if you show up a level four or and these real quick and if that's what you want, I'm cool with that. But you said you want a level ten life and you're not going to get there based on your own definition of a level ten. If you're showing up level four, you might be able to fool everybody else. But this is in part why you're struggling with depression because you know you're faking it and you know you're full of crap and everybody else falls for it or lets you get away with it. And she smiled again and she goes, They do. You know what else she said? She said, Those answers would have been good enough for my parents. And I said, Really? And she smiled like she knew it all right? She knew what she was doing. She was manipulating the situation, giving just enough to get by. And I knew she was doing it because I do the same thing, you know? And it's like, okay, so this just opened up a whole series of conversations going further down this rabbit hole with coaching members. And the more I started asking this question, What have you ever given a level ten to? And I'm talking to people who are running, you know, $10 million companies a year and they can't think of something. Wow, man, this is this is definitely a topic worth researching a little bit more. So okay, so I'm blabbing a lot here from it.

Joe: Yeah, this is really good. Really good. Some of the questions I'm coming into my mind as I hear the story again is giving a level ten sounds exhausting. All right. Like. I'm already busy as it is. I'm working in my business already 40, 50 hours a week, and I've got my family that needs me. I've got my employees that need me. I've got all these other business partners that need me. Maybe I'm not giving it ten, but I can't. I don't have enough bandwidth to give a ten. I'm doing the best I can, you know what I'm saying?

Shaun: Yep. That's a fair statement.

Joe: Give some more examples of this and then maybe answer what I'm saying there.

Shaun: Yeah. So check this out. The more I started asking all my coaching members about this, the more I started getting objections like this, and I got a lot of them. So I thought, why wouldn't anybody put in a level ten? There's all, all sorts of benefits to not put in a level ten. Some people said, well, it's just too hard to put in a level ten. Okay. Some people said, well, if I put in a level ten over here, I have to sacrifice everything else. And these are people who historically that answer it this way, historically do put a level maybe, I don't know, seven or eight in business, let's say, because very few of them even know what their full potential even is. But let's say they're put in a seven, eight or nine in business and they're sacrificing everything else to do that. And that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm not talking about, oh, another one is well, it's not sustainable to be a level ten in all things all the time. Of course it's not. I'm not I'm not talking about that at all. Think of it like this. Think of it like the gym. Okay. And by the way, this is the only scenario where I had more responses for yes, I've been a level ten with a gym than anything else, because people would say, yes, when I'm at the gym, I try as hard as I can. I go to failure, especially if you're lifting weights, right? Because they go, That's what I know. I get the most growth is when I can't do that final 10th rep without just complete exhaustion. And I say, okay, well, can you sustain that? And they go, Well, no, I said, Of course you can't. The growth in the gym is in the level ten. That happens for like a couple of seconds maybe at the most. Everything else from there is just leading up to it. And so level ten is not sustainable at all. And by the way, when you're doing a level ten at the gym on that 10th rep with whatever weight you're lifting, you're not also checking email and on the phone and talking to your wife and having kid time. So of course you're not going to be able to do level ten in all things at all the time. But you can for a moment and by the way, you can for a couple or a few things each day that you say are most important to you. So even though you can't do it level ten all the time, 24 hours a day, you can do it sometimes. And but there's all kinds of reasons why you wouldn't. So I had other people say, well, a good reason not to give Level ten is because what if I actually do give a level ten and it's not enough? Like what if I have to realize that I'm not good? Even my level ten is not good enough?

Joe: Or I can multitask, right? Like during this podcast interview here, I'm getting a bunch of interruptions and I'm like, Well, I could check my text message here and Shaun won't notice and the listeners won't notice that are listening to the podcast and I can just look and do this kind of thing over here on my other computer monitor. But then I thought, No, hear here, I can't do that because Shaun's talking about what level. And if I, if I'm not given a level ten on this podcast, I'm going to be disrespecting Shaun. He's taking time out of his busy day to be here on the show. And then I'm going to look stupid because I'm going to ask dumb questions. I'm going to ask questions that are totally off kilter from where the, you know, the interview is going or maybe ask a question that he's already answered. And I've done that before. It it's embarrassing. Yeah, right. So now I'm thinking, well, sometimes because obviously you can't be level ten all the time, but sometimes there are things where you wouldn't you agree that you need to be level ten for at least a little bit and it may be every day or maybe for certain tasks. How do you find out what how do you know what those things are like? Is there a question.

Shaun: This is where so since you can't be level ten in all things all the time, you have to begin to determine what is worthwhile of giving your level of ten attention or focus or energy or time what is worthwhile of even giving it to in the first place. And so this is where the vision comes into place. And so if you don't know what your priorities are, so, for example, it would be much easier for you to be distracted. First of all, it's hard not to be distracted by all the stuff we got going on anyway, phones and computers and things going off all over the place and kids and family and needs and money and all the things. But that's impossible when you don't know what should be, what's most important to you. And so if we're on this call and this wasn't important to you at all and you didn't care about your podcast, you didn't really care about anything I had to say, it'd be real easy to show up at level one and go ahead and get distracted. So. But this is important to you, so you're finding yourself maybe battling with that a little bit, some of the distractions, but at least you're honoring, not getting not allowing yourself to get distracted with them in a moment that's allowing you to stay here with a level ten focus. And by the way. Anything less than that. You'll lose listeners. You'll lose people who want to even be on your podcast because they're going to go, Joe doesn't care. He's not even paying attention to his own podcast, and they'll see it. And so you're not going to get the level return results that you're looking to get with your podcast anyway, so don't even do it right. But again, this is sort of like figuring out what your priorities are going to be. And since you can't be a level ten to all things all the time, this is where you got to get your vision crystal clear. Man. And your vision, your vision can be big. And it also needs to be understood enough to be able to focus on the parts that you claim are important.

Joe: And that's so good because I'm thinking too, at the same time, like you could say, Well, I can't give a level ten anything because I'm doing too many things. Well, maybe that's the problem. Maybe you're trying to do too much. You're trying to you're focusing on too many things and you're only giving 50% when you should be giving. You're giving 50% to everything, when you should be giving 100% to this and this and maybe 10% everything else. Like we have a certain limit to the bandwidth that we can contribute to things, You know what I'm saying? So it could be a sign that you're taking too much because I'm thinking of some projects I'm working on now and I'm trying to launch some new things, new products or whatever, and it's just taken me forever to do it because when I sit down to do it, I'm not at a level ten on that thing. And so it's delaying this, getting it done. But I'm wondering why is that? Why can I be a level ten on that? Why is it taking me three months to do this thing? And I don't know if I know the answer to that, but you understand what I'm what I'm where I'm going out with that.

Shaun: I totally get what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, sometimes the answer is because you're trying to level ten, 400 things at once and there's no way to do it that way. So you end up showing up at a level two and all things. And by the way, you never get level ten results in anything if you're showing up at a level two and all the things. Right? So if you got to me distractions, I often I often begin coaching someone who's in business, who's had success in the past, but maybe today they're trying to run 12 different businesses, eight of which are just getting off the ground. This is this is an entrepreneurial nightmare, and I see it all the time. Well, they're trying to get it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, guess what? He's not an operator in the hundred businesses that he owns. All Richard Branson does, by the way he operates in his unique genius zone. He has an idea. He puts together people in the right seats that can make the idea come to fruition. He is a visionary, and that's it. He is not running any of the companies that he's doing. He knows his role and he stays in it. And by the way, if you want to compare yourself to him, you don't know what his life really looks like anyway. So knock that off. It could be a complete disaster. And I know this because I coach guys and gals making 20, $30 million a year and their business is great. And everywhere else they're a complete train wreck, which is why they come to me. Their result, first thing is have you create a life of business so complicated it you can't give a level ten to anything because there's too much going on. You know, if that's not the case, then do you have your priorities figured out? And this is a vision problem too. So do you even know what should be a priority to you? This comes up all the time where it's like, you know, Joe, you have no shortages of ideas that you want to implement in your business At any given time. You could have 40 different ideas that you want to implement, right? Yeah. Well, there's the one thing that you can't seem to get yourself to do, but you say it's important. Is it more important than the other 26 things in front of it? Well, maybe long term, but maybe it's not urgent enough. Maybe other things are more urgent or calling your attention more, or maybe your calendars to fall. So there's all kinds of stuff that goes into this. But these are all reasons why people don't give a level ten. And my question to all of them was, okay, but you're saying you want a level ten life and can you have that if you're spread too thin, if you don't know what your priorities are, if you're not operating in your genius zone, it's really hard, man. And all of these things compound the ability to allow your focus to wander and to get sidetracked. It happens all the time. It happens with me too. I'm not immune to this by any means, but we get back to the point. The point is you can have brief moments throughout the day where you do give something a level ten, and you can do it with two, three or four things at a time. So I went to the gym this morning. I was up at 530, a really bright embrace in the gym this past year, and I gave a level ten multiple times. I did shoulders today and I did triceps today. I did three exercise sets, four sets, three different exercise for two muscle group. And on the end of each of the muscle groups, I went to absolute failure to where I literally could not lift another rep if I want to do that is a level ten. And by the way, in the gym, that's where all the muscle growth comes from. It doesn't come from a level four effort. You're not going to tear the muscles enough to get them to grow. So you have to get so in the gym. This is interesting to me. The goal of the gym is failure. Your goal is to do the last rep to where you can't lift. One more pound, one more rep, right, because that's where the growth is. So I started looking at that. I'm like, what if we did that business where we tried so hard for a brief period of time? That only happened for a couple of seconds at the end of my workout of each of the muscle groups, right? So I wasn't at a level ten, though. I wasn't completely, like out of breath, exhausted the whole morning that I was at the gym. It was just for a few minutes. And I can do that. And by the way, I can leave the gym and I can come home and I can give my kids a level ten focus for 5 minutes before they leave for school. Anybody can do anything for 5 minutes. I can put the stupid phone down. I can pay attention to them. I can sit with them at breakfast and I can just ask them about their day and be present with. I can do a level ten presents just with the kids. Just for breakfast, just for 5 minutes. Now, I got to level terms today, right? Then I can get to work and I can say, Man, I've got coaching calls scheduled for today. While I'm on the coaching call. I'm not going to check email. I'm not going to check my phone. I'm not going to allow myself to get sidetracked. I'm going to give my student on the call today Level ten Energy and Focus. I help them out a level ten as much as I know how right now to do. And there's a third one, right? And then, you know, maybe later on the afternoon, I busted my butt. I did as good as I could. I might even take a level ten that, you know what I mean? Or I just chill and I allow myself to just relax and take a little nap. That's okay. But all I'm saying is I'm challenging people to be intentional about this, to get your vision figured out so that you can get your priorities figured out, so that you can maybe simplify enough to be able to give anything in your life a level ten and then try it and see what happens. There's something that comes with your confidence and the way that you walk when you know you tried something with all your might two, three times today. There's some it something happens to you, man. This is why I've been going to the gym first thing in the morning. It's one thing I know every single day I can go to failure, that the goal is failure, and that when I'm done with, I don't always want to do it walking into it. Don't kid yourself, but when I'm done with it, I go, Man, I freaking tried with everything in May and I nailed that one thing today. If I get nothing else done, I tried one thing at level ten and I did it. And that's all that over in business and life and level ten Focus and level ten time with your kids in snippets. Matt Watch what happens. It changes your life. It's crazy. By the way, I only know this. I'm going to tell you because I've mastered all this. I'm telling you this because when I started asking all these questions, I realized I'm not showing up at a level ten in most areas. And I had to take a real wakeup call here and say, hold on a second, man. If my business isn't exactly where I want it to be right now, maybe it's good enough. I'm better than this. You know, even when it came to my coaching members, I was like, well, you know, no one's leaving. They're still paying every month. And I've got a great stick rate. I've got a good business, man. Come on. You know, the reason the young lady was depressed is because she fooled everybody else and she knows better herself. I was doing the same thing. That's why I knew where she was coming from. I could be reaching out to my coaching members on their birthdays. I could first of all, I could ask them when their birthday is. I don't know when their birthdays are. I could have follow up sequences in place that are automated that when Joe, you tell me you're going to accomplish something by a certain date, I could put a follow up sequence, a place that reminds you of it as it gets closer and hold you accountable to the things that you said that you were going to do. I didn't have any of that place, you know. So just because no one's leaving and just because they're still willing to pay doesn't mean there is an opportunity for growth and improvement. And I know better. And when I do, I don't walk the same way as I do when I know that I've tried my best to serve my people. That's a whole different day, different business, different relationship with your clients. The whole thing's different.

Joe: It's making me think about things that I got a lot of projects I'm working on, and some of them I'm putting in a level one, level two effort into it, and it's forcing me to ask myself, is that should I keep on doing that project or should I just trash it or shelve it or stop trying to do it, or do I need to change my level of effort? Or does it have to be like either a zero or a ten?

Shaun: No, no. But no, but here's what I will say. So if you've got too many projects going on, you know, most people think that there's three answers to Should I do this? It's like, yes, I should or shouldn't, or maybe, well, first of all, eliminate maybe from a list because maybe has no decision and no action within it. So let's get that off the table right now. So then people go, Well, there's only yes, I should do it or no, if your visions figure it out, it makes it a little bit easier to say yes or no, because you can say, does this fit the vision or not? Yes. Okay, then maybe I should pursue it. Well, hold on. Does this idea or this project fit the vision more than the other 32 projects that I've got going on? Where does it fit in the priority list? We talked about that a little bit. And so if it's at the bottom of the list or if it's certainly not one of the top, let's say you can only take on three or four projects at once. Right. By the way, everybody's overly optimistic on how many projects they can take on at once. And just we got to get real honest with yourself. But if you look, let's say you have, you know. Ten different projects you're trying to decide between and you can only work on and really put a level ten effort into three or four of them. Well, then there is another answer to the question instead of just yes or no. It could be, yes, I am going to do that, but not right now and come back to it in a month or two or three when the first three or four projects are done and then you implement the next one. That way you're giving a more focused, significant, meaningful effort to the three or four, and you're able to put in snippets of level ten efforts at those three or four projects rather than putting in level two efforts at 30 projects. That's not going to get you where you want to go. It never does. I've been doing this a long time. I see these patterns of when it doesn't work. When you're trying to implement 30 projects at once, it ain't going to work. Everybody thinks they can multitask and do all these different things at once. Go ahead and keep believing it doesn't work.

Joe: Sometimes I feel like I beat myself up. I'm just like, You're just being too lazy, Joe. You need to stop being so lazy or I don't know. It's a challenge that for me personally, I want to be a ten. Obviously, in these different things, I'm working on different projects that I have because they are important. But are they really that important? Because if they were, I would when I have that time blocked off in my calendar, I would be on time to start it and not push it off. Right. And I would I would not ignore it because like this coming Monday, I've got the full day blocked off. I already know myself right this coming Monday. I've got the whole day blocked off to record some new content for my course. Right. And if I know I'm not going to give a level ten to that, it's supposed to start at 9 a.m. and maybe I'll start at 10 a.m.. Maybe I'll go check the Wall Street Journal, see what's going on in Israel. You know, I'll go take a longer lunch. I'll go play golf. Right. Yeah. It's frustrating to me because, you know.

Shaun: Yeah, man.

Joe: I want to give it a level ten to It made sense when I put that on my calendar two weeks ago. I don't know. You just got to make that decision, right?

Shaun: Yeah, well, and, you know, there's a whole lot that goes into what you just said there. Some of it is. There's plenty of days that I'm supposed to go to the gym and I don't want to. And then there's the discussion of, well, do you have enough discipline to get started even on the days that you don't want? Okay. That might be something worth looking into. Are you? I use the word realistic at the very beginning of this podcast, and I don't mean to like dream realistically, I just mean I have a whole section of the three day event that I teach called Know Thyself. It's like, know yourself well enough to know that if you have too much going on like know yourself well enough. So, for example, when I when I finish up one of my rounds of coaching retreats, these are pretty intense coaching retreats for usually about two weeks straight. At the end of that, if I think I'm going to write a book the following Monday, give me a break. I can be as ambitious as I want to be. It ain't going to happen. I don't care how much my heart is in it or says that I want it. If I plan it after I'm coming off of retreats like that, I'm going to be changing my mind the morning up because I'm going to be tired. I'm going to be still a little amped up from the retreats, but I'm not going to have the energy to do what I need to do. I'm going to want to, but I'm going to distract myself by going to play golf or a motorcycle ride or whatever else I'm going to do. Right? So part of it's no thyself. Part of it is maybe you need to work on your discipline a little bit. Part of it is, is it one more project that you're trying to take on in a sea of 30 projects? And is it the most important one? You know, another one? Is it in your unique genius zone? Is that the role that you should actually be playing in your business? Maybe it's not. Maybe you're procrastinating it because you don't even want to do it in the first place. You just want the results of it. Another thing is, are you comparing yourself to other people or to where you think you should be or what you think you should be doing? I mean, these are all I've see. People struggle with this every single day, and I do too, at times. But, you know, comparison there's a saying, a comparison is the thief of joy. And so tell me, if you ever experienced this. I go to a mastermind and I see how much Joe seems to be pulling off. He does seem to be pulling off 30 projects at once, and this guy's making more money than me. And this one over here is doing better events with more people. So I start to compare that, and instead of making decisions with my vision at the center of it all, I'm comparing myself to other people and what looks sexy because of the surface level stuff that I've seen them pulling off. And I think I can pull off that in addition to the other stuff I got going on too. And that's not good, man. Now, again, this is why they're so important. You need to make decisions from your own vision and put a level of effort in your own vision things, not what you're comparing yourself with other people to, not where you think you should be at this age based on the life that you think you would love to have if you could write your ticket.

Joe: That's good. Really good. All right. So we're over our time allotments. My apologies, Shaun, to wrap this up in a pretty bow, what would be some final advice for people on this topic? What are some things that they can actually take home and start doing today? What are some good questions to ask them?

Shaun: Well, the first thing I would do, because I would say, as corny as this sounds. Start by come up with a vision for what you want your life to look like. And we usually help people with this in about 11 different categories. I'll give you a few of here just to get started with. Start by identifying if I could write my own ticket, if I could wave my magic wand and have life look any way I wanted it to look, how would I want my friendships to look? How would I want my relationship with my spouse to look? And you might say I don't have a spouse. Well, if you wanted one, how would you want that to look? How would you want your relationship with your kids to look like? What would you love to do for charity? What would you love to do for fun? What kind of hobbies would you like to have? And you start getting some of the stuff out of your head. You do the personal stuff first, and then with the business you go. If I could write my own ticket and have any role that I wanted in any business, forget about the vehicle. Forget about what type of business, Forget about how much money you need to make all this stuff. You start getting ideas out of your head and you said, Man, if I could write my own ticket, what would that look like? And I've got a couple of free resources you guys can use for that. I've got a little, little small training I put together. If this will be helpful at all for you, I'll show you a little bit about how to do this, a little bit about how to make sure the visions that you create are in alignment with what your areas of gifting are and your strengths. And so if you'd like, I can share that a link with them and they can all go to the web page and get that here.

Joe: Yeah, what is that?

Shaun: It is Business Vision Workshop dot com. That's the event page, Business Vision Workshop dot com. If you forward slash free gift I put together, I think there's three or four resources like this there's a training there's the unique genius owned training and then there's the first steps and how to get your vision up and started. And I've got all that written out for you right there. You'll go and put in your email address and then it'll email it all over to you. And then if you want to know, be notified about future events. We can do that too. If not, you can. You can opt out of that. That's fine. But couple of things I put together as a free gift to help you guys get started on your journey in this. Again, this is stuff that it is simple, but it's not easy. But if you're going to if you're going to put together some efforts on anything at a level ten, make sure it's a worthwhile effort. Right. And make sure you're not trying to do that with too many things at once. The last thing I want you to do here, last thing somebody said to me, man, if I put in a level ten effort on all things all the time, aren't I going to be exhausted all the time? No, that's not what I'm talking about. Let me give you one little example on a personal level, because I give you some business stuff. I was recently I had a little bonfire at my house. This was a couple of Saturdays ago, and the kids were outside with us. My mom was in town from out of town. I had gone to the gym that morning and done legs. My legs were completely blasted out. They were really tired. I worked them out really hard and I had a full day of doing yard work, washing the cars like we did all kinds of family stuff that they did all kinds of stuff. Here it is. The end of the day. I just want to hang out, have a little bonfire with the kids. The weather outside was gorgeous and I just wanted to sit and do nothing. Right. And it's getting dark out. One thing my kids love to do when it's dark is they'll jump on the trampoline in the backyard. And they love more than anything when dad jumps on the trampoline with them. And so, you know, here I am. I finally sit down and take a break. And it was a level ten day man was a really, really good day. And I was I was pleasantly exhausted. You all had a day like that. We were at the end of the day, you're pleasant, exhausted. And my kids said, Dad, jump on the trampoline with us. And my first thought was, Nope, I'm done. I've level two and everything else now. I didn't really level ten with them that day, but I did. And all the other areas, all the other chores I got done in the gym and all that stuff. And then in that moment I thought, you know, level ten doesn't have to be for an hour. I can go jump on the trampoline with them for 5 minutes. And so I got my butt off the chair and I walked over to Trampoline and I said, Guys, I don't know how long you do this. My legs are jelly, but I'm going to let's have as much fun as we can for as long as this will last. And I went out there and I jumped on the trampoline for like 3 minutes because that is all I had in me. And we laughed and the kids loved it and that was it. I was like, my legs collapse And I go, Guys, I'm done. I need to go relax. And I go, Thank you, Dad, for jumping on the trampoline with us for a little bit. That was it was 3 minutes. 3 minutes. So, you know, I'm not talking about doing this sustainable for 24 hours a day. And by the way, after that, I slept at a level ten because I was pleasantly exhausted from the day, you know what I mean? And so it was kind of cool. But I'm not talking about this doing this in all things all the time, 24 hours a day. I'm talking about picking things that you think are important to you, and then you get to decide where am I going to put a level ten on and at least consciously choose it instead of just letting fate decide, I guess.

Joe: Good. All right. So this link again, I put a I created a slide here for Business Vision Workshop dot com slash free gift. Is that right?

Shaun: That is it.

Joe: Cool. And then will there be a place there where they could maybe put their email in and get more information when the.

Shaun: Yeah. They'll go to the go to the link and you'll put in. Just put in the email address and it'll automatically email you the resources that we talked about. I think there's a couple of more little, little mini trainings in there as well, but I want to put together some stuff that help you guys get started without just hearing it where you have actually got things right in front of you could follow some step by step things.

Joe: Excellent. And so then they'll also be notified when you get the dates and the location and all of that information about the next Business Vision Workshop.

Shaun: Yes. And if they choose and they don't want to be notified, then they don't have to be. There's a selection on their says, don't notify me about events, just send me my free stuff. So they can do that too.

Joe: Well, it'll be good event. I'm going to be there. I hope to meet all of you guys there as well. I always recommend Shaun's events. This has been helpful, Shaun. Really appreciate you being here. And thanks for challenging us to be at our best. Be a level ten in the right things, you know, So really do appreciate it.

Shaun: Man, we didn't even sling too much poop at each other. That was actually not bad at all. I'm kind of surprised.

Joe: We did it. I was pretty good. All right. Well, we'll do it later, I promise. All right.

Shaun: Thanks for having me, man.

Joe: See you later, everybody. Bye bye.

Shaun: See you guys.