Hello and welcome to another episode of the Making It in Asheville podcast. This is your friendly neighborhood podcast, where normally each week we sit down with an Asheville based entrepreneur, small business owner, and community leader. We'll ask them what they are making and how they are making it in Asheville. But this season, we're taking a slight departure from that framework and approaching things in a new way, and hopefully you're excited by it. So this season we are asking for your participation in a number of ways. I will detail them momentarily, but we are going to ask you to tell us what you want to hear, ask you what questions you might have for me, I'm, your host, Tony Upertachio, founded Making It in Asheville, making It Creative, the marketing business that sits behind it. In 2019, as we moved to Asheville, we were told very directly as we were preparing to move to Asheville, that you better bring your own job and even better if you can bring your own ladder, because the likelihood of finding a career that you can grow in is limited in Asheville. And so we took that to heart, started a marketing business and started a podcast to sit in front of it, so to speak. So this has been largely a passion project for the last four or so years. We've interviewed about 100 community members, and this is maybe episode 130 or so, and it's been the best thing that we've ever thought to do. And so this season, rather than stick with our norm of interviewing community members, we have taken a question, we have leaned in to this theme, which is ask the audience for some participation, and we got it. And so the participation that we got early, there was a number of things that came in. The one that we selected in part, you'll find out why in part, but the one that we selected is.
The.
Question was, what questions do you have for us? What questions do you have as a business leader or aspiring entrepreneur in Asheville? And in so many words, the response was something to the effect of what should we be thinking about for Q Four, and what should we be thinking about as we prepare for 2024? And wouldn't you know it, I just happened to have prepared a long presentation for the members of the Scout Guide, Asheville.
So.
Call that perfect, call it synchronicity, call it serendipity, call it whatever you want it, I'm calling it a little lucky. And so the context. The scout guide. Asheville. If you're not familiar, I will pull up some fun graphic. John Dupree. Thank you, John. We have oh, if you're not watching on YouTube, that might not have made sense. The screen is now showing the Scout Guide's website. If you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening on podcast, the Scout Guide, I'll describe it for you, is a editorial here in Asheville. You've almost certainly seen it if you've gone to any of the boutique, shops or beautiful hotels in downtown. The Scout Guide probably represents one of the highest quality print media guides here in Asheville. And the Asheville based owner, Megan, is absolutely wonderful. And so she reached out a couple months back, said, hey, can we put something together for the community of owners at the Scout Guide? I want to deliver value, I want to talk about strategy. And I said, yes, please. How can I help? And so put something together. You're about to hear it and or watch it if you're on YouTube. It was delivered to a room full of entrepreneurs based in Nashville that are members of the Scout Guide. The venue was at Engaged Asheville in Woodfin, and it was a lot of fun. So great engagement. The feedback was awesome. And it is my answer to what should we be thinking about in Q Four? What should we be thinking about 2024? I lean into strategy versus tactics. I lean into identity versus even effort. And so you'll hear all about that as we transition into the presentation. Oh, shout out real quick to John Dupree, podcast producer also helped capture that presentation for the Scout Guide. So without him, I'd have to attempt to recreate that moment instead. You get to listen to it now.
All right. I believe that technology should be working this morning, which is exciting. Thank you all for choosing to be here. I got to see some of the forwarded emails, and it made me nervous, and so I'm standing directly in front of the screen. For some people, I'll just say, like, I've taken a test drive of this and I have it all transcribed. So if you're into reading this, I can send it after. The deck is not sexy in any way. And so you also are welcome to have the deck if that gives you life. You don't have to necessarily read every slide. But what I'll start with is I'm not a speaker. I'm not attempting to come down from on high with information that's going to well, that is anything other than what I'm trying to remind myself. So what is happening today is the information that I've heard that I'm trying to live into. And by teaching it or communicating it out loud, maybe I'll do a better job. And so not a speaker, but at my best, I make things simple. And that's what we're going to do today. And so what we set out to do when Megan and I talked was like, what are the goals? And the goals were, let's deliver something that hopefully affects Q Four. And then let's go on and say, like, if you live into what we talk about today, 2024 should be the best year in your business, potentially best year in your life. And that sounds hard and scary, but it can be fun, it can be simple. It could even feel easy if we're doing it right. And so the way that we're going to create these two changes or live into these two promises is by primarily focusing on core parts of your business. I call sales marketing, but it's more than that. It's like who we are, being in our businesses through leadership and et cetera, et cetera, such that the business grows and our life kind of expands. And that's the sentence that I said when I did the test drive. Sures, if you want it, okay. And so walk away today if we do it right, with a toolbox that's filled with some new stuff, new language, new frameworks, new mental models, and then, like, options for how we're going to move forward and what it's going to look like starting today or October through December, which is Q Four for most people. So before we get into this stuff, I just want to say the Scout Guide is really like, a special thing. So my wife and I moved here in 2019. In 2018, we did like, three Scout trips. We came up and we're like, let's see what this place is about. We ended up deciding to get married. We use this place to find our cake maker, and at any rate, 2018. One of the ways that I assessed, like, is there enough stuff going on in here? Was by buying every single print publication and taking every single pre publication that was available. My wife's like, what are you doing with all this stuff? And I wanted to know what was going on in Asheville. And what spoke to me was like, this thing, the Scout Guide was freaking pro. I don't know what it is yet, but all the businesses in there looked very legitimate, very upmarket, very so and premium, I would go so far as to say. And so in the years since, it's only proven to be more and more true. I think that what y'all are a part of is, like, arguably the most premium, upmarket, exciting cohort in all of Asheville by way of business owners. And that's exciting. And then for the people that are in the room, you represent the folks who are already doing the right things and want to potentially do more of the right things based on some email that Megan sent you about some guy that you don't know talking about Q Four and next year. So what an exciting group to be looking at. I commend you all and am excited and humbled, honestly, to be here. But again, I'll make a promise that if we do this, q Four is going to be special. Electric 2024 could be fundamentally different than any of the previous years. Also, I want to take a second to say, hey, Megan, and if you'll indulge me, I'd like to swoon for just a moment. 2019, my wife and I moved here. It was all just happening so fast. I started podcast. We're doing interviews every week. We're meeting all these people. We're going every single event that we could possibly go. We met it at the Bun house, and the Scout Guide wasn't like, I knew the Scout Guide. And then I got introduced to Megan, and my brain just didn't make the connection at the time. And so years go on. We have a kid, we get married. Pandemic happens. And the Scout guy just kept being this really cool thing. And the podcast was, like, white hot out of the gate for two years. Baby comes, slows down. I start losing my touch to the community at large, and I get a DM from Megan. And I just was like, this is so special. And the DM wasn't about like, how can we do something for the Scout Guide? It was like, how can we do something for the community? How can we create something for the people, a part of this thing? Would you be open to having a conversation about it? I was like, absolutely. We met. Super exciting. What is the most valuable thing? And we decided it's not like, what is the coolest, newest TikTok trend? It was these bigger picture questions. And so I left that first coffee meeting, just kind of overwhelmed by her focus on service, by the amount of generosity that I felt that she embodied, by attention to detail that she just exuded. And then, like, a handwritten letter note. I don't know if you have gotten one also, but, like, handwritten note, like, two days later, just detailing how that was the special meeting. And I'm like, whatever Megan wants, you got me. I'm in. And so this is kind of the result of that. So I just want to take a moment and just say thank you for getting us all in the room in so many different ways. This is all because of you. And so then, who am I? If you have ever seen or heard me before, it's because I have a tiny little podcast in a tiny mountain town called Asheville. And we've interviewed probably over 100 people at this point, business owners, primarily community leaders, asked them what they're making in Asheville and how they're making it in Asheville. And it has been the gift of my adult life. It's built all these relationships. It's gotten me into this room. At my best, who I am is someone who can make complex things look and feel simple, sometimes easy, oftentimes fun. At my best, I can create systems that help transition from, like, good to, like, a better version of good. Dare I say great. And then what I've really been leaning into in the last little while is attempting to live into and embody this concept, like ten X, which is everywhere. And there's a grant cardone. Ten X. And I don't mean that. I mean, like, a super expansive, all encompassing version of growth. And I'm trying to hold myself accountable to it. I try to hold my friends accountable to it. I try and hold everyone that means something to me. If I don't check you, it's because I don't know you yet and I don't care enough that you do the things that you say that you do or want to do. And so my promise one last time is that if we do this right, we'll leave here at least with one definite change in the way that you're thinking at the very least about business. Two, you'll see that there's a possibility to be different and do differently inside of your business and then finally you'll know that you're not alone. And like, Negan and I are here in whatever ways to support this concept of a new you that you might become. So that's a promise. How does that sound? Cool. That's the preamble. I'm going to resume the timer on my internal side and now I want to do quickly. I guess I didn't might have blown right by some housekeeping. I have nine. Four ish on my manual watch that sometimes gets told. So let's call it 904. When I did a dry run on this, I wasn't looking at people in the eyes. It took about 35 to 40 minutes. There's a chance I'll look at like a blank face and ad lib add some context to it. So I'm going to try and be very punctual. I don't see this going past ten. And then at which point we can do Q and A's or we can do I have like discussion concepts that we can break off into small groups. I have a podcast talk. Enough. I don't want that I am only talking. I want that this can become a dialogue. But alas, here we are. Let's begin. And I'm going to use throughout this conversation a storytelling crutch. I'm going to say maybe it's a metaphor, maybe it's an allegory of Bob the business owner, aaron the entrepreneur. They are me. They are you, most likely. Bob, you'll notice, is like not the best. Aaron is aspirational at times, but they all care about growth and they have goals in all of the main parts of their life and to me I find alliterations powerful. You might have noticed Bob the business owner, Aaron the entrepreneur. And so first they have goals to increase their income, grow their business, increase their intimacy with the relationships in their life, partners, friends, coworkers, colleagues. They want to increase their impact and their connection to the community. They want to live in integrity. So integrity, I like to try to define terms when I can. Integrity to me means that you are doing what you say you do. And when we're out of integrity, often our brains hurt. Like there's a distress that we feel. And so integrity to me is mental and physical wholeness wellness. And then they also find time for interests and Hobies that aren't just work and necessarily personal development. They don't always have to be climbing professionally. Like they go on hikes. I've started doing jiu jitsu. I don't know. So interests, right? And so Bob the business owner, Aaron the entrepreneur, have this full life that they're trying to expand. We're going to focus primarily on income and growing businesses, but it's all of the things. So the very first question that Bob the business owner and Aaron the entrepreneur might ask, and what I suspect some of you might have been thinking is like, what should I do to grow my business to have a good fourth quarter, to make 2024, the best year in my business ever? And to that, let's illustrate the world with our dear friend Bob, right? And Bob, let's just say the thing he wants to do is start a podcast. Start a podcast. Strategic choice that Bob is making is start a podcast. And so what does Bob do? Bob says, Well, I got to learn how to start a podcast. So I watch YouTube videos on how to start a podcast, watch hundreds of hours of best practices, what tech, what tools, how do you make the best possible podcast? He builds an Amazon list of all of the tools referenced in the videos that he watches about how to start a podcast. He then thinks about the name of the podcast. It's not great. Let's make a better name for the podcast. This is getting good. He goes into Adobe Illustrator, starts to design it, says, you know what, let me use canva. Canva. So makes a canva design of the name of the podcast that he thinks is the best name of the podcast. And it feels like I'm making fun of Bob, but we've been there. I've been there. We've all done Bob things. Now let's look at Erin for contrast. She goes, Podcast sounds like a great idea. Let me record one on my like, let me use a voice memo. How do I publish this thing? Publishes the voice memo, tells her friends and out loud commits in her heart and with people that she cares about that she's going to do ten episodes before she makes a call on whether or not this is a good thing for her and for her business and see what happens. Right? She starts by doing these podcasts on Zoom with whatever just in the room. She goes, oh, headphones will make it better. Let me use the headphone. Then each episode gets a little bit better than the last. But she's not necessarily making a podcast that she's stoked exists in the world. But she's in action, right? She's starting small. She's taking action. And so what I'll say is, what should you do? The answer is find a system and stick to the system, whatever that system is. And so some of the concepts to consider look at that, it's a YouTube video, is that it can be fun, but let's look at small, fun ways to build new habits. And the metaphor that I have tattooed on my body is this idea of a domino, right? If you knock over a domino, a domino can knock over a domino three times larger than itself or three times larger than itself. It can be a third of the size of the next domino. Will it start? I don't know. Is it starting? It's not starting. Okay. There's a video hidden in this slot that plays a video of a guy knocking over a five millimeter domino and then knocking over a 200 pound domino 13 dominoes later, right? So it is incredible what can happen when we start small and we build habits that can stack on top of each other. And so you don't get to see that video today. Can I go to the next slide? Can I go to the next slide? Okay. Think this is other term that's kind of captured my mind the last couple of years, the idea of behavioral activation. And I'm not a psychologist or trained in any way, but the concept is that our behavior can activate the feelings that we want to feel. Often people look for motivation to start doing a thing, and what they're finding is that doing the thing is what creates the motivation. And so behavioral activation is this whole really beautiful part of cognitive behavioral therapy where it's like, do the thing. What is the thing? Do the thing. And then by the time you're in it, you're going to start to feel the way that you want to feel while doing the thing, like you can start by doing. And so that is the challenge that I'll leave to you when finding fun, small ways to act. Think about the smallest domino and then just do something, and good things start to come. So then the next thought is let it come to you. And so there's this concept, and I've only recently seen. It called the Stacy Matrix. And for those in the cheap seats, chaos, top right corner, simplicity, bottom left corner. The axis is agreements. And then certainty. And again, I'll send this to you if you want it. And so the idea is that wherever possible, if we can move from expectations, which are the opposite of agreements, if we're living in expectations with our coworkers, with our partners, with our friends, we're living with the thoughts of a future that are not aligned, they're not explicit, they are not shared. And when we can move an expectation into an agreement, we've taken a lot of stress, potential, future stress out of the equation because we're at least saying the same things and believing the same future and working towards it together. And if something happens that changes our new understanding what the future is going to look like, we can just talk about it and make a new agreement. So one exorcis or access is agreements. How do we transition from expectations to agreements? The next thought is complexity, right? And so starting a podcast, by definition, complex concept. What if we removed some of the steps? What if we made some of the targets as small as possible? A podcast at its best. A version that we've published in the past has an intro song, has a review of the episode highlighting the highlights, maybe some quotes from the episode pulled to the front, then a sponsor read, then new music, then the episode begins. That's complex. If my goal is to publish a podcast, remove the complexity. Episode starts with the conversation. Bang. I'm recording the intro live with the guest. One take, let's go conversation, no edits. Send it into the universe. And so it is more certain that an episode gets published this week. If I reduce the complexity of what I say an episode is, makes sense. Agreements, expectations, allow things to feel simpler and allow things to come to us. It should not feel like we're doing two times more work to do more things that make a difference in the business. If we're reducing expectations, reducing complexity, increasing agreements, increasing the certainty, and then priority a one in whatever system that we're building is compliance. I don't pretend to be a dietitian or a trainer, but I see it consistently. The number one thing that correlates to successful outcomes, whatever you call success in diet and in fitness is are you doing whatever you've signed up to do? Is it going to the class? Is it eating a carnivore? Diet, a vegan? Whatever it is, are you doing this thing? If yes, correlation is high that you get the outcome that you want. So find a system, stick to it. And this concept called cowboy wisdom that I really love, takes really beautiful, complex things, makes it simple, is to increase the likelihood of compliance. Make doing the right thing easy, er, and make doing the wrong thing hard. Sometimes you see that as putting shoes by the door. Sometimes you see that as putting the alarm clock on the other side of the bedroom. I have to get out of bed, turn off the alarm. Well, now I'm up. Shoes are here. Like, I'll start a walk. It's not news, but these are powerful concepts that I'm working on living into. And so I already said that. The point that I'll kind of finish with on this is like, I am actively working on all of these things in my own life and in my own business. I don't have the master key, but this is the key as I understand it. Find a system, stick to the system, build a system that works for you, download a system that works for somebody else, stick to it, and then you can iterate over time. But we shouldn't be changing systems rapidly. So the next question we might ask, what strategy is best for me? So you're like, oh, well, if it's actions based, maybe I need a strategy what should the strategy be? So let's look at our dear friends Bob and Aaron one more time. So Bob, as a strategy to grow his business, starts saying yes to every client. Sometimes the yeses are like, yeah, I can do it for less. Sometimes the yeses are, yeah, we can technically do that. So, yeah, we'll do that for you. Sometimes the yeses are just like, what is the easy thing? So it's like, I do outreach when it's easy. I do follow up when it's easy. I allow things to get messy in pursuit of, like, what is the lowest, easiest thing to do? And sometimes that makes the world around us messy, right? So our offices might be messy, our trucks, our businesses might be messy because we're scrambling to say yes to all of these things that aren't defending us or strengthening us in really any powerful way. As a counterpoint, we have someone like Erin who considers her own unique value proposition, right? She thinks, well, let's differentiate by doing the thing that we are most excellent at and doing it more often looks to increase surprise and delight for her clients. Making small moments feel more meaningful and more powerful. Does work either for free or is like the most expensive version of the work that she does and actively gets rid of clients that aren't a fit anymore but doesn't dump them. Bad breakup ghost it offloads them with a white glove service to other service providers who are a better fit for that type of client because you now have a different target for where you're headed. And then perhaps most importantly, builds a team of a players around her who are all aligned and incentivized appropriately, and she is actively working to take work off of her own plate and hand them to these people that love that type of work that she doesn't. So what is the strategy? Not said explicitly in the last examples, but the strategy, the only strategy that matters is how do we find ways to deliver unreasonable amounts of value to our customers? What does that mean? Well, my argument is that the difference between a good version of a business and a great version of business is the value that business delivers for its clients, for the team members in the business as well, but definitely for its clients. And so begs the question, what do clients value? And so there's that fun saying like the good, fast
Who?
It's not how, it's who, right? She then thinks about things like hiring contractors and consultants. She thinks about hiring her first employee, virtual or otherwise. She thinks about outsourcing certain parts of her brain to other people. Sometimes that looks like a personal trainer. Sometimes that looks like a nutritionist and a meal planner. Sometimes that looks like a nanny or a babysitter or a house cleaner offloads the things that are not life giving. Such that the answer to how do I get this next expansion is really a question of who needs to be in her life. And then last thing she focuses on doing, right? So she thinks about building momentum. We talked about some of this and the dominoes. She thinks about building systems into her calendar. And personal to do list becomes something of a personal operating system for her life. She thinks about staying in action. When she feels herself up in her brain, she says, what is the small thing I can do right now to find some progress in this space? And then she makes doing the wrong things harder, right? So I have a million things you can do to make your phone feel dumber. I have a million things we can do to get some of these notifications that come down. All of those things are important, and I gladly show you what my phone screens look like. But the point is, whatever it is for you, whatever's the blockers like, let's look at ways to make the bad things harder and the easy things easier or the good things easier. And so we'll take those examples and make them actionable. Ten x simple choice create value by being right, not by necessarily thinking about how by being. And so I want to make it clear, I think that the word like how is our enemy today, right? How to do things is not a high value question with sufficient. And I'm wondering if this will show up with sufficient want to. How to always becomes irrelevant. If you want to do a thing enough, the how to becomes irrelevant. There are a million ways to do things. You'll choose one if you want to bad enough. So how to is the wrong question. The right question is like, who right? Who do we need? Do we need employees and contractors? Do we need help in some ways that aren't business related so that we have more free time in our business? Do we need folks above us? Mentors, advisors, coaches who can see the playing field from the stands? Right? Sometimes it's so easy to know that Bob's an idiot. It's so easy to know Bob's an idiot. We do Bob things all the time. So how do you see that you're being Bob? Sometimes you need people outside of your brain seeing the world for you and saying, hey, you just did the thing that you said you don't want to do anymore. Why'd you do it? So coaches, mentors, advisors can see with a perspective and communicate not necessarily advice, but just perspective in a way that is incredibly valuable. And so if we're to rank these three most important words for me is, like, if we're to rank them, it's be, who do I have to be? When you know who you have to be or who you want to be, if you can see this version of yourself in the future, you can make really easy choices on what actions then follow. That person does certain things, these things I now do. And then when you are a certain person who does certain things, the outcomes the haves take care of themselves. Bob did it the inverse. Bob bought the tools, bought the tech, bought the software, bought the things because he thought he needed to have stuff so that he could do stuff so that he could be this successful entrepreneur guy. It's backwards. It's backwards. It's wrong. And so there's this incredible leader, and there's only quote in the thing, frances Hesselbine, she recently passed, considered by many to be like, the best business leader. She was a nonprofit business leader of the 20th century. Her go to always said is that leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do. And I hope that we can take this kind of with us here. And so who do we need to be to create this ten X life? And almost certainly the answer is, like, we need to identify what the zone of genius that we each have is right now. It's unlikely that it represents more than 20% of your time, and we need to change that. And that is what I am setting out to do personally in my own life. This is a zone of genius space for me. I haven't done this in I don't even know april was the last one, and before that was three years. And so we need to clear everything that's not that out. And how do we clear it out? With vigilance, with malice, with love in our heart, but like, get it out of here, give it to someone else, figure out how to stop doing it, because we find the growth in the 20% and in the zone of genius. And so what this looks like for me is that in the last several months, I have hired a very expensive business coach. Exceptionally terrifyingly expensive business coach. I have joined a mastermind for business owners who are dads who also want to get back in collegiate athletic shape. Very niche mastermind, but speaks to me and has been an incredible gift in my world, and I am even in Asheville, creating a mastermind for the making it in Asheville. Past guests and folks who've come to some of our events. Because for me there is no question that if left to my own devices, my truck gets messy, the wrong things are easy, and I step into some form of cruise control that is not fulfilling, that it does not move me in the direction that I say I want to be moving in. And so I am living outside of integrity. Even if the only person who notices it is me, my mental health goes to help because I'm not who I say I want to be. And so this is how Ten X has shown up for me. I am fully all in financially and emotionally and energetically into this idea that employees, coaches and then peers, right? So, like, are we surrounded by people who are going to require all of us? And I think it's a gift to have that level of responsibility. And so let's recap. Question one was how do I take or the last question was how do I take my life to the next level? And the answer is another question who do you need to be?
Right.
So how do I take my life to the next level? New question. Who do you need to be to access whatever level it is that you're thinking is the target? Who do you need to be to make it feel inevitable? Second question was what strategy should I then imply or employ to grow my business and to see continued growth or success in one of these? I call them five domains that matter to me. And I say again, perhaps not the right question. The question is, what can you implement to systematically create value for the stakeholders in your life that matter? So that can be your partner, that can be your kids, that can be your clients. But how can we systematically make it so the operating system is built to constantly be searching for value and then delivering on that value, like surprise and delight. Surprise and delight. How can we surprise and delight the people that matter to us? Sometimes it's customers. Today we're focusing on customers. Last question might be and then what should I do each day? How should I plan each day? How should I act each day? If we want to use bad words, how ugh? And the answer is, well, what system wouldn't make it inevitable? What daily actions would make it inevitable? Do those and be compliant to the system that you choose. Make it easy to be compliant. Reduce complexity to make it certain. Transition from expectations to agreements to live in a shared future. These are all good questions. They're just like there are better versions of the questions. And I think that it's so unique for each of us that to attempt to pinpoint what we should all be doing would not have been the right use of time. And so I thank you for your time. And what I'll say is the promises at the front and let me just make sure I'm going to go back and find them. The promises at the front were promise experience an undeniable change in your thinking about your business and that you will leave with the possibility to be different and do different. And then the last one was that and Megan and I are here in whatever domain is most valuable to do this with you right. This is my diary. This is my journal. I'm not living this perfectly, but every time I feel myself go off track, these are the thoughts that I have. And this is my commitment for my next Q four. Starting a couple of weeks ago, starting a couple of months ago, but the rest of this year, and I hope that you'll join me. That's it. That's the thing. I have small group discussions. You all have mostly everyone has notebooks. We can sit and quietly journal. We can spend some time talking about it. I kind of defer to the room, but Q and A and or small group breakouts was the next step. I went fast, I think. Yeah, it's 945. I shaved 15 minutes. Feel good. Does anyone have any questions on we want to define some terms. We want to stretch our legs. I'm afraid of people standing up because that might mean we're done.
One of the things that spoke to me most, I think something is just like talking about surrounding yourself with mentors, colleagues or whatever it is, being in the room with the right people. How do you surround yourself with people that are trying to be successful at their small business, to try to not be stuck in the daily grind of the minutiae of what we all have to do to run a small business? And I think just using the network of Scout guys, I feel like this is just like a natural route to.
Be able to pull on.
Some of us have very common interests on a social level, but also on a business level. And I just encourage you all to use Scout Guide as part of a tool for that. Bounce ideas off of each other and take time to develop those relationships just outside. And going to coffee once a month with somebody, I mean, it's invigorating. And speaking of, like, Tony and I, we've gotten together a few times and I feel like it just energizes me to be excited about what I'm doing every day again and thinking about how to be better at what I do. I just encourage you all to that's a very easy way, inexpensive way, if you will, to really just be able to connect.
My wildest dream for I see you standing up being like, how do we formalize this? And so for me personally, my mind is such that I like fun, I like spontaneity, but I can't give it to myself unless I am also being dialed and disciplined and on top of the things that I'm on top of. And so I am at my best when there's more than monthly accountability. I need biweekly at minimum. I need weekly with people that care the most, and I need daily with someone that I respect enough not to bullshit. My recipe is maximum responsibility and commitment to certain folks in my world that aren't my wife, so that I continue to stay in integrity with who it is that I say I want to be. And so I completely agree. I think that this crew is an exceptionally special crew, and there are millions of ways I'm glad to be helpful, to think about what consistency could look like, what systems I've used, what tools. But I didn't want to think about trees and miss the forest. And I think that this is my forest. This is how I think about the world. Yes, you did.
Thank you.
What I'll preface is that books have been this incredible gift in my life and also put me into Bob mode. So sometimes is YouTube, so sometimes is social media. And so I say this with a level of but don't go buy all the books that promise the system. Right. Start with a system. And so the best that I've seen in daily system creation is this book that has changed names. It started as everything in its place. Or maybe it's now Everything in its Place. Work Clean is the new working title. So everything in its place. Now called work clean. The idea is this guy looks at Michelin star restaurants and chefs and uses that as a metaphor for how we can organize our own lives such that the important things are getting done. Meals are dropping at a table 37 at the same time. It's really this incredible operating system. That said, all operating systems work if we comply, so to speak, with the process. So I would make it as simple as possible to start add complexity over time once you're nailing it. Work Clean. I got other books. You don't have to have questions. You're welcome to ask questions. How would we feel about maybe spending a moment or two with these such that we can attempt to attempt to capture some of what was most impactful to you? Let's get it out of our brains. You guys have sat quietly for about an hour now. Paper or out loud with your tablemate? Cool. Thank you.
Hopefully you enjoyed that. I did not listen to it during that slight pause. This is just being recorded, so hopefully you enjoyed it. I have the entire presentation available. If you're interested in it, please visit Makingitanashville.com Season Eleven. We'll have all of the links to the episodes for that season. Additional context for the request that we're making for your engagement on that website. Additionally, we'll have an area spaceway for you to get that presentation if that is interesting to you as well. We'll have a way to get the transcription of that presentation if you'd rather just kind of read through it. All those options are going to be available on the website. Makingitanashville.com Season Eleven is probably going to be the easiest place to find it. Otherwise the homepage and you'll be able to navigate it's EasyPeasy again this season. We're requesting your engagement. I want to hear from you specifically. So visit Makingitanashville.com Season Eleven again and let us know what you're thinking. Let us know what questions you have. Let us know your answers to the questions that we have for you. And you can do that either through a form on that site, on that page on that site, or you can use our handy dandy hotline number 828-552-4832 828-552-4832. We'd love to hear from you. Questions will be updated as a prompt on that voicemail every so often, but if you have anything you'd like to share, we ask that you keep it positive. We're looking for referrals to businesses, recommendations to businesses you can rave about, a local business service or company you can highlight upcoming events you can share. A fun and quirky asheville ism. You can send love to someone who may or may not be a business owner, but we'll also have prompts for you. Use the hotline to get 15 Minutes of Fame or 15 Seconds of fame on this podcast in the episodes ahead. Thank you for listening and until next episode, we'll see you around.