From Millionaire Goal To Hard Lesson

SPEAKER_00 0:25

I was thirty. You know, my aim was to be a millionaire by thirty. I was always taught, if you want something done right, you need to do it yourself. And he said those words, Louie, your business is worth nothing. We think everything requires our attention. And I call this productive procrastination. What's the one thing that you really don't want to do?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Hi, and welcome back to Plan Like a Boss. Today I am super excited to be here with Louis Swart. Louis is a business coach for coaches and founder of Ironbridge, a human AI-powered virtual assistant company helping coaches avoid burnout and build self-sustaining businesses. With over 35 years of experience building, scaling, and selling companies and training coaches worldwide, Louis specializes in delegation and growth strategies that let business owners reclaim their time, profitability, and peace of mind. He's a published author, a top 50 finalist in next top speaker competition, and an international speaker known for turning I don't know what to post into I can't believe this works. Louis, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Thank you. What a beautiful introduction. I'm super excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Fabulous. Well, I like to start all of these out with tell us your story. How did you get here? 35 years is a long time. What brought you to where you are now?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Look, I think there's multiple things, but I the one thing that I remember was I remember sitting in a bank. I was 30. You know, my aim was to be a millionaire by 30. Just sold a business for five million that I had with my brother. And sitting in the bank and they were they were actually counting out the money. So, you know, they had one of those machines on the table where it goes grrrrr and then they put it in the envelope. I felt like a gangster, tell you. And um, they were like counted, put an elastic band, put into my briefcase, and I'd be like, this is so cool. And the then I started thinking back about a plumbing business that I had before that. And the plumbing business, I had 10 plumbers working for me, and I went to sell it, and I was 25. When you're 25, you've you're bulletproof, okay? And you're gonna change the whole world and uh everything's gonna be amazing. And I went to sell the business and I said to the broker, like, I would have probably been a little bit cocky, you know. And I was like, How much can I get for this? Sort of who can afford what I've got? And he said to me, Lou, who does the accounts? And I said, Well, I do the accounts, and he said, Who does the quality control? Uh well, like I do it, and who does the who does the hiring of people? I do it. And I was super proud because you know why? I was always taught, if you want something done right, you need to do it yourself. Do it yourself. Do it yourself. So I did that, I did that, it's gotta be right, I did this, I did this. And he said those words, Louie, your business is worth nothing. I mean, it's 40 years later or 30 years later or something, and I can still feel that sinking feeling in my stomach from that. I'd worked so hard to build up this business and to hear that it was worth nothing because I was the massive bottleneck in the business was devastating to me. But I'd already started another business with my brother, so I had to get out of that business that I was in, basically sold it for what the equipment was worth, didn't really make any money out of it. This time I was like, I am gonna delegate everything. So when it came to sell that business, they said, Who does this, who does that, who does that, who does that? Like none of the fingers pointed to me. Like, you know, one of those people, it's never their fault. You know those people, it's never my fault. Like it's them, it's them, it's the weather. I was I was that like that with my business. And so we were able to sell the business in two weeks for five million. So it went really, really fast because somebody else could just we could step out and somebody else could step straight into that role, which is really where you want to be in business. And that taught me such a valuable lesson. I worked just as hard, if not harder, in my plumbing business, and ultimately it was worth nothing. And I couldn't take holidays and I was stuck in the business. In the other business, I had people doing things, so now I was managing people, but it seemed much easier. And then when I went to sell it or to step away from it, was heaps easier. And so now what I'm doing is I'm trying to help people to actually get to that level in their life. I'm trying to help people to be able to learn what they should delegate, who they should delegate to it, you know, it to. And that's my mission.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

I love that. And it just it just goes to show you that you really do need systems and you do need to get stuff off of your plate for the future because I bought that felt so good when that five million was going through those money machines.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Really good. Very good.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

That is not a place in life I have made it to yet. So a lot of my listeners are solopreneurs or entrepreneurs that have like a very small team of one or two. So they would just be in the depths of their business.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

And like you said, it's tough. You're wearing all the hats. You are constantly running. Once again, you know, if you want it done right, do it yourself. That's what they're taught. And we're kind of in a society right now where being busy is a badge of honor, and and hustle culture preaches that you have to work all the time if you want to

Delegation That Makes A Business Sellable

SPEAKER_01 5:45

be successful. So now that that you've been on both sides of the puzzle, why do you think we wear this as a badge of honor? And what do we need to do to start unlearning it? How did you unlearn that?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

What an amazing question. Incredible question. You know, because so many people, we go up to them, we meet them in the street, we meet them at a party, and we go, how are you going? And they go, I'm so busy, I'm so busy, I'm so busy, I'm like just I'm snowed under. I'm I'm like so busy, I've got so much, uh like I just gotta go. And they actually, what they're trying to say to you is, I'm so important. Everybody wants to talk to me. I'm so loved, everybody wants a piece of me. I'm so worthy, because look how much stuff I'm doing. That's what they're really saying to you. What they're really trying to tell you is that they loved, they're worthy, they are wanted. And it's not true, because we know that there's people that are like incredibly busy and incredibly poor. I mean you've only got to see, you know, some of the homeless people going around picking up cans, they are really, really, really busy. Okay? And then you look at Elon Musk and he's got the same amount of hours in his day. You can't be more busy than the person picking up cans out of the dumpster. You know? But what's the difference? And I mean we're somewhere in between there. You know someone like you, closer to Elon Musk, me someone like me, closer to the guy picking up the cans. But I don't know about that. But uh But y you know, the the thing is that uh that a lot of us actually don't know there's some really basic tools that we can use. Would it be okay if would it be okay if I shared a couple with you? Absolutely. Okay. So one of my favorite tools okay, I I have a I have a principle that we currently have too much information. We don't need any more information. But what we do need is we need implementation. We don't have enough implementation in our lives. So you know, we can s we can go on Chat GPT, tell us everything we need to know about a topic, right? We can go on YouTube, we can go on we can watch TV shows, we can go on any of our socials, and we can just you can literally just be sitting there learning and you'd never ever get to the end. Do you know that there's something like three and a half million I'll tell you what it was? It was three hundred and fifty million messages on Facebook a day. So how much information? We just got a ridiculous amount of information. But how do we implement stuff? Now, I always say, somebody listening to this podcast, thank you so much, really, really appreciate you. You know, you've giving us an hour of your time, which is incredible. Thing I we really, really appreciate it. But if you don't do anything with this, if you don't implement at least one thing from this podcast, literally the podcast is gonna be just an entertainment, another entertainment for you, like watching a Netflix movie, you know, or something. So here's the first thing that I've got. All of us have got a goal of where we'd like to be. So let's say we'd like to earn $100,000. Okay. We go, okay, I want to earn $100,000. How do we get to that $100,000? Well, the first thing we've got to do is we've got to work out how many hours have we got to get there. So I've got a 2K rule, and if you went and you worked for a boss, if you went and got a job, you'd probably work 40 hours a week. Okay, 40 hours a week is about the time. And you might work about 50 weeks a year. You couldn't work more than that. You know, you'd need some sick leave, some holiday. So that 40 hours times 50 weeks gives you a figure of 2000. Now what we do is we actually go, okay, so I've got 2,000 hours and I want to make $100,000. How do I do that? Well I break up I I divide $100,000 by 2,000 hours, and that gives me a d a figure of $50 an hour. So now I've got a figure of $50 an hour. Okay. Now, every hour I have to make $50 an hour to get to my figure of $100,000. Okay? And most of us, we probably don't want to work 40 hours. We probably don't want to work 50 weeks in the year. So let's say we should probably try and double that number. Yeah? Or if we want to make $200,000, we should probably try and double that number. So let's work on $100 an hour. Okay? If we may if we used to do $100 an hour and we did work full steam ahead for the $2,000 hours, we'd make $200,000. Now we've got a figure. So what I want everybody to do is get a post-it note and write that figure down. So that figure's easy to work out. You just say, how much do I want to earn in the next year? And divide it by $2,000. So if it's $100,000, you want to write $50 on the post-it note. If it's $200,000, you want to write $100 on the post-it note. Okay, and I want you to stick that post-it note somewhere. Stick it on your monitor, stick it on your wall, stick it somewhere that's going to be visible. And here's where the magic begins. Every hour, I now know that I need to make $100 to reach

Why Busyness Feels Like Worth

SPEAKER_00 11:05

my goal. Now, a task comes along. Do you use Canva? I do. So task comes along and you you just want to move a picture on Canva, okay? And then it's two o'clock in the morning and you're like, man, this thing, every time I move this picture, it moves the like the whole world around and it's like annoying, okay? So every time you're doing a task, you go, oh, I'm just quickly gonna do this myself because I'm gonna save some money. But you actually do a $10 task, like doing your graphics on Canva. It's a $10 task. Now you go, well, look, it doesn't really matter because I just I I saved. I saved, I just made $10, you know? The reality is that you meant to make $100. So if you did a $10 task, you literally just lost $90. So the next hour, you don't have to make $100, you have to make $190 because you've got to make up for that time that you lost. So all the way through the day, every time you do a $10 task, you have to do double on the high value tasks, which becomes really, really hard. Because for lots of us, it's easy to make it to make $50 or to make $100 an hour. But to do double that is much harder. So now we've got it, we've written down that figure on our post-it note, we've stuck it on our computer or wherever. And now, when you're working, I want you to look up at that post-it note and go, I'm moving this picture on Canva and look up at it and say, would I pay somebody, whatever that figure is, $100 an hour to do this? And generally you're gonna go, freaking no way. That'd be like I'd be I'd have rocks in my head to pay somebody a hundred dollars. Yeah. Except that is exactly what you're paying yourself. That is exactly what you're paying yourself to do it. So even that one shift, even just doing a post-it note, putting a post-it note there, is gonna completely change the way that you do business. It's gonna completely change your life. And it's something that's so simple, but it needs to be visual. It needs to be something you look up and you go, $100. I need to be making a I need to be making a hundred dollars. Is this worth a hundred dollars? No, it's not. And you you'll see that very quickly you start looking at tasks completely differently and going, I'm not gonna do that. It's not worth a hundred bucks. And as long as you keep doing stuff that's worth more than a hundred dollars, you're you're gonna get your goal. So for example, you're a podcaster. Beautiful. So reaching out to guests, ten dollar task. Okay. Setting up those setting up those meetings, setting up the calendars and all the stuff, all the IT and admin stuff in the back, ten dollar task. Talking to the guests, hundred dollar tasks. At least, you know, a couple of hundred dollar tasks. Reaching out to the guests afterwards and saying, you know, can we set up a meeting to have an you know to have a a follow-up chat? Ten dollar task. Actually having a follow-up chat with the guests and telling them about your services, hundred dollar task. Okay. Editing the podcast, ten dollar task. Putting the podcast out and you know, promoting it on different socials, ten dollar task. You know, commenting and building rapport with your clients, hundred dollar task. Building lead magnets so that you can actually promote your services in this hundred dollar tasks. Finding those uh advertisers that are going to help you, hundred dollar tasks. But you get the idea. So what's your hundred dollar task? What's your ten dollar task? 110.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

That makes total sense. So basically outsource anything that someone else could do and only do the things that truly require you and your genuine expertise.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

True, but if we put a money value to it, it helps even more. Because everything lives moving that picture on Canva, that requires me, because I know exactly where it's going to go. So

The Post It Note Hourly Rate

SPEAKER_00 15:15

we get caught up in that. We get caught up in that. So is it worth $100 is more important than is it something that requires your attention? Because unfortunately, the way we've looked at life now is we think everything requires our attention. When we are solopreneur, everything requires our attention.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Perfect. We're conditioned from childhood to have that belief that if you're going to do something right, make sure you do it yourself. It's what our parents told us, it's what their parents told them.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

And they're saying, yeah, I could pay $10 to somebody to do that. But what if it's what if it's not as good as I would have done it? Is, you know, I've wasted that $10. So now I'm down. Granted, I guess they're not down $90, they're just down ten.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Good cool. Good cool. So we already delegate so many things in our life. I mean, I don't know if you made your own glasses. I mean, that would be pretty impressive if you, you know, went and made your own glasses and did them. But I mean, maybe you delegated that. Maybe you delegated that to somebody who's spent seven years learning how to make glasses. Right. You know, maybe you made the bookshelf behind you. Maybe you, you know, you you did that yourself. Maybe you service your own car. Maybe you make your own clothes. Maybe you do your own hair. Right. We delegate those. We just go, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna, you know, make my own bookshelf. I'm just gonna go find a wooden bookshelf and I find one. Might not be exactly like what I wanted, but you know, it's g it's kind of what I want. And yet when it comes to business, we go, I can't delegate anything. People could make a mistake. You know? I'll let somebody cut my hair. Well, I mean, if I had hair But I you know, I don't want to let somebody touch my things. And there's so many things you can put in place. There's so many uh, you know, SOPs and checklists and stuff that you can put in place so people don't make mistakes. But a lot of these people that you're delegating to have done it for way longer than you have. I've got people that just work on can they work on Canva and graphics all day, every day. And I can guarantee you that you'd make more mistakes. I would definitely 1,000% make more mistakes than what they do on graphics. You know, because that's what they specialise in. And I've got people that do my my GHL, that's what they specialise in. And I've got people that do all these different aspects, and they're they're incredible at that. So the losing control is a really big one. People feel like, oh, I'm gonna lose control as soon as I get somebody to do it. And they also feel like, how can I trust somebody? How can I trust somebody to do the right thing? But you're already delegating so much in your life, you know? And you wouldn't trust somebody or give somebody, you know, you wouldn't get somebody on the first day and go, hey, listen, what I want you to do is go into my socials and delete all my friends that I don't, you know, delete all the people that aren't proper friends. Like they would just be crazy. You'd be like, This is crazy, okay? You'd go, hey, listen, go into my socials, have a look, comment on a couple of posts, da da da da. How are you gonna do it? Tell me, you know, and then you'd go, oh, okay, they did a great job. And then you give them a little bit more work and a little bit more, a little bit more. So they've got to build trust the same as a partner, the same as a, you know, anybody else would have to build trust in your life.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

I love that. And I love that comparison of all the things that we we do outsource. We we do I have a mechanic, I have a hairstylist. You know, I I had a person come and chop down my tree that got damaged in a storm, although I did consider buying a chainsaw myself. But I think that was just to play with power tools. But but yeah, I mean, it's you're right. We we do it without even thinking about it. And I've never heard anybody compare that to business, but you're right. Now, we also live in a very tech-obsessed world right now, and there are so many AI agents out there, and there are a lot of solopreneurs going, I'm gonna use AI, and that way I can get more done. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Okay. So in answering this, can I can I tell you my second tool?

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yes, please do. I'm I'm ready to learn.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

So, my second tool is we need to focus on one thing every day. Now, I personally, I'm not wildly, I don't me and my credit card, we don't have a love, we have a love-hate relationship. Okay, when I'm using it to buy cool stuff, love it. Okay, when I gotta come and reconcile it, hate it. Okay, right. We we're not we're not happy because they want to know. Three months ago, I spent $47 on, you know, uh in Dindigo. And I'm like, who the hell is that? And what was I spending $47 on a Tuesday night at, you know, two o'clock in the morning? What was going on there? Okay. So I don't like reconciling my credit card. So I get to my desk and I'm like, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. Today, I the can't the accountant's been on me. He's like, Louie, you need to give me your credit card statement. You're, you know, you need to reconcile this. I need to do it for taxes. I'm like, okay, okay, I've got to do it today. Today I'm gonna do it. So I get to my desk and I'm like, okay, I'm reconciling my credit card. And I get there and I'm like, no, my desk's a bit, it's a bit messy. It's a bit messy, okay. So what I'm gonna do is, I mean, I can't start work until I've I've got to have a tidy desk. So I start tidying my desk. Okay, now I'm tidying my desk. I'm like, okay, I get a couple of books, I'll put them back in my bookshelf, and I'm like, okay, then I'm like, man, the bookshelf is like really messy, hey. So I so I'm just gonna re- I'm just gonna like get my bookshelf sorted. And then I've messed some stuff on the floor, and I'm like, you know what? I'm just gonna vacuum the floor quickly, okay? Even vacuuming the floor is more favourite to me than reconciling my credit card. I could wash the dishes, like you could say to me, you know, give me any household task and be like, I need to do it right now. Okay. And I call this productive procrastination. Because cleaning my desk, super productive. Right? But I'm procrastinating from what I should be doing. Arranging my bookshelf, super productive. I'm procrastinating from what I should. Vacuuming by procrastinating. Okay? So a lot of us get to the end of the day and go, oh wow, I was so busy today. I really was busy, but actually I didn't do my credit card statement. And I get into bed and I'm like, oh my goodness, I didn't finish my reconciliation of my credit card, I should do that tomorrow. And then, you know, I'm I'm waking up in the morning, I should do my credit card today. And then I'm going, I'll I just go out, you know, I just make some brief. I should really do my credit card. And whatever I'm doing, I'm going, I should be doing this, I should do my credit card, I should do my credit card. And I should owe all over myself for the whole day. And I still don't get it done. And then I go into tomorrow and I shoot all over myself again tomorrow. Okay, I should do this, I should do this. But if we actually just go, what's the one task I have to do today? And I learned this the last business I grew to turning over 35 million with 450 staff. And I can tell you there's a gazillion things. Your to-do list is like, it's got heaps of things. But I would go into the office every day and I'd say, What's the one thing that I need to accomplish today that's going to move the needle forward? Just one thing. And no matter what happened in my day, no matter what chaos happened, at the end of the day, if I accomplished that one task, I'd move my business forward. And that made a massive difference to me. You know, it's you know that Brian Tracy, eat that frog. Same concept. What's that one thing? And you know the weirdest part is? People say to me, I don't know what the one thing is. And I go, What's the one thing that you really don't want to do? I'll ask you, what's the one thing that you really don't want to do?

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Oh, it's it's totally budget and credit cards. It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Well, that is your one thing. That is your one thing that you need to do tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

I I

Trust, Control, And Delegating Well

SPEAKER_01 23:35

actually I hate doing it, but I have it scheduled every Friday. That's what I do on Friday. And you do it? I I do. I do actually. That's incredible. There are t well, I didn't use to, but it's it's the same, it's the same concept. I would do everything else. And then it would get pushed to the next, and then to the push to the next, and then push to the next. And finally, I was just like, no, you like I became a mom to myself, and I was like, no, you are going to do this. It's gonna take five minutes. And it really doesn't take that long if you do it every week. It does. But I would put it off, and then I would have like six months worth of things.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

I do the same thing with laundry, but that's another story. The closer you hold it, it's the putting them away part.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Absolutely. But once you master that one thing, you know, it changes the direction of your business.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

That's such great advice. And and so simple. So simple.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Absolutely. So these are these are two of the two of the tools that people can implement straight away. Right? So the post-it note, you can every single one of us can do a post-it note. We can write it on a whiteboard, we can write it on a put it on the, you know, monitor, put it on the wall, put it somewhere that it's su you want it to be super, super it's like having a vision board, but a mini vision board.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

I love that. I I have post-it notes all over my desk right now anyway.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Here's my my one percent better. Get one percent better every day.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Okay. Okay. I love it. The one percent is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Gonna have to add a hundred dollars right next to you.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

I love it. I love it. So I have a third tool if you'd like it.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Uh keep keep giving me the tools. We are loving this today.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Okay. So my third tool is this, and before I give you the tool, I've got to tell you a story. Okay. So I normally get up at seven o'clock in the morning and like then I kinda start my day. First meeting's like half past seven. So this other morning, I woke up at five o'clock, okay? Woke up at five o'clock in you know, do you ever have one of those mornings where you get out of you wake up and you're like, okay, I'm awake now, right? Okay. So I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna play on TikTok for a little bit. Right? Because I love TikTok. I love TikTok, okay? So I'm just gonna play on TikTok for a little bit. So I'm on TikTok, and I'm I'll spend maybe 20 minutes on TikTok, okay? You know, like we all do. We spent 20 minutes on TikTok and then then I was like, I better get out of bed and have a shower. I had a shower, and then I came and sat at my desk and I'm like, what? I like nearly was late for my half past seven meeting. And I'm going, hang on a second. I woke up at five o'clock, I played on TikTok for about 20 minutes, I had a shower, either like I had an X factor, like, ooh, like something happened in the shower, because that's what I think happened. Where I lost two and a half hours just having a shower, or I lost the time playing TikTok. But you see, what we do is we wait until the end of the day and then we go, I was so busy, what did I do today? And we go, well, I spent 20 minutes on TikTok and I had a shower and I had a meeting and I had this. Where did the time go? So what I have for you is a post-time planner. Now we all plan for our day in advance. We say, hey, today I'm gonna wake up at six, I'm gonna have breakfast, I'm gonna, you know, have a shower, I'm gonna do this minting, I'm gonna do this task, but we don't necessarily do that. We have a plan that we're gonna do, but we don't necessarily do that. Because we're so distracted by all the things that we've got around us. So how a post-time planner works, it's super simple. You get a piece of paper and you write down every half an hour. So let's say you get up at six o'clock, you're at six o'clock, hoppers six, seven, hoppers seven, eight, hop is eight, nine, ten, hop, like all the way down. And then you set your you set your watch so it just gives you a charm every hour on the hour. So your watch goes ding and you go, okay, what did I spend the last two half an hour doing? Okay, so I was in a podcast for both so I was in a podcast, so you'd like you were in a podcast. Next time it chings ting. Okay, what did I spend the last two half an hour doing? Well, I spent the first one, I went to the kitchen and then I was washing the di I went to wash the dishes, and then I ended up my phone dinged. It was a funny meme from a friend, and then I actually ended up watching cat cat videos. Okay, so so I washed the dishes in the first half an hour and I watched cat videos in the second half an hour. Okay, and very soon, after two weeks, you're gonna look back at that and you're gonna say, Wow, I am spending so much time here on Canva, all right, or watching cat videos or whatever that is, and it's gonna give you a whole different perspective of how you're spending your day. Suddenly you're gonna go like, okay, I'm spending so much of my day watching cat videos. I mean, they're cute. They're cute. And everybody should be watching cat videos a hundred percent just for our own mental health. But they do absorb a lot of time.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

I'll say one for the end of the day when you're unwinding.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Yeah, but you get that ding on your phone, and it's like I've got a mate, and then he sends me a cat video, and I'm like, oh, okay, and then I look at that cat video, and then there's another cat video, and then eventually I'm watching some guy who's got a bone arrow and he's like shooting fish off a boat with a bone arrow, and I'm like, how did I possibly get to this? And I still haven't done my credit card.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

You need to turn on your focus time.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Very true, very true. So those are the three, those are the three tools. Those are the three tools that I think are really good for everybody. The post-it note is by far the most powerful one you're gonna do. Okay. Post-it note somewhere super visible. And then the post-time planner, so write down every half an hour. What did you actually do for the last half an hour? And don't like you can you can cheat and go, oh, I spent the last half an hour doing. Just be honest with yourself. You know what I mean? Because you're building this because we do.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

I spent the last half an hour counting my millions of dollars.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

I mean, when the bank phones you and says, Tonya, please can you just come and move some of your money? We can't close the safe door anymore. I mean, then you have to do that. I understand.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

No, that makes that makes total, total sense. And I I've not ever done that. I do, I do time tracking so that I know how much time a task is going to take me. And now after talking to you, I'm gonna look at my time tracking and go, was that $100? So I love that. It it yes, yes, everything that about that is fabulous. Now, um, let's talk about when you're in the throes of it and that urgent task comes up. You know, you're you're going along great, you've got your you've got, you're gonna reconcile your credit card, but then there is a fire that you have to put out. And I think we all know that those fires aren't always actual fires.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

So how how do how does a solopreneur or a small business owner filter out tasks that they may think is a fire, but maybe they don't even be need to be doing anyway? Or it truly is a fire and and they need to put it out. What is the best way for them to sort through all of that?

SPEAKER_00 31:09

It's an amazing question. I don't think anybody's ever asked me that question. You're gonna have fires. If you're a business owner, you're gonna have fires. Your day is just gonna be putting out fires generally. You're putting out fires. How do I get more leads? Why did that advert not work? You know, how am I gonna reach out to these people? Uh, you know, what's happening with this client? This client hasn't paid me, you know, these services are falling over here, or you know, somebody's phoning me from some random Nigerian prince, phoning me, telling me that I'm, you know, gonna get a hundred million dollars if I just give him fifty bucks. You these are important, these are important things. These are important things. You know, he just might be the prince. But as long as we focus on that one task, you know, that is one task that needs to get done. Because in your mind, in my mind, cleaning my desk was an urgent task that needed to get done before my credit card. Vacuuming the floor was an urgent task that needed to get done before my credit card. So I didn't take it as, oh, this would be nice to just do as a distraction. I took it as this really needs to be done. So we're gonna put those tasks in as everything we are gonna create fires. My mind wants to protect me. My mind so wants to protect me from any pain. And I associate pain with reconciling my credit card. So my mind wants to protect me from that. It is gonna

Productive Procrastination And One Thing

SPEAKER_00 32:35

cause fires, it is gonna come up with amazing doozies of fires for me, just to get me out of something that it knows that it thinks is gonna give me major pain. So the fires lots of times are us. Lots of times the fires are us. You know? I mean there's times when obviously there's things that we can't help, like, you know, there's there's, you know, somebody could have an accident and we may need to go and help them, or you know, there might be something that's really seriously done.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

But yeah, no, totally.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Those are so minimal. They are min minuscule, those fires. The fires that we make in our head, there's gonna be a gazillion fires.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Yes, yes, no, that totally makes sense. Now I want you to think back to that 20-something year old you with a plumbing business. And if you could go back in time and give that guy one piece of advice, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 33:31

I would shake him like there's no tomorrow. I'd be like, I don't, I don't know. He was pretty this there's so many pieces of advice that I've got for him. I've actually written an encyclopedia, it's like alphabetical, arranged in alphabetical order. But um, business-wise, a couple of pieces of advice. One thing is definitely to always get contracts and always have stuff in contract. Have a contract because we start, we start business, and you know, lots of times we start business with a partner, or we just start a business and it's like fun and we don't really need to do anything. And we start it, but as soon as you see it's got legs, contract it. Okay, so as soon as you see, hang on, this is gonna work, I'm gonna make money here, do up contracts. Because otherwise you leave it and you know, you leave it and the business grows and grows and grows and grows and grows and grows. And then it gets to a point where you now have a dispute, but now you're disputing 10 million. You're not disputing like, you know, 50,000. And that's a very different dispute. Like if you're disputing, you know, getting $10,000, very different dispute to you disputing getting $10 million. And I've been burnt several times, several times, you know. So contracts are super, super important. And then also learn how to like literally learn how you can delegate and how you can do this focused work. And more so now, because we're going into an era where you know, we were talking earlier about AI, and AI is an incredibly wonderful procrastination tool. Yes, it is, an incredibly wonderful productive procrastination. Because you know what? I go in and I go, There's a new Claude. Oh, I've got to like download it, I've got to work out how it works, I've got to do this, and I'm not making any money, but I'm like, oh, I've got to work out how to do this, and then I'm just starting to learn how to do that, and then they go, Chat GPT's got a new product out. I need to definitely work out how that works, and then oh, there's an agent I can put on my computer. I've got to work out how to put an agent on my computer, you know, local agent, and then get that to there's there's Hermes. Hermes is a local agent. Oh, that's amazing. Oh, there's open claw. I I could do open claw. Let me work out how open. Oh, hang on, there's Victor, which is like Hermes, but it's like smarter than Hermes. I could do that. Oh, hang on, there's Canvas got a new AI thing that I could do. We end up like a, you know, like a dog like with 50 zillions. The reality is AI is brilliant. What is the thing that you want it to accomplish? And I only know this because I trained AI for two years, I trained people for two years on AI, and I made no money. Okay, no money. Because AI is changing so fast. So I would teach you how to do something today in two weeks' time, obsolete. Then I teach you the new thing. Two weeks' time, obsolete. That's how fast we're changing. I used to teach people how you can put yourself in like a, you know, you can have you an iron man, all right? And and so, like, okay, this is how you do it. This is the prompt that you do, and everyone's like, oh, give us a prompt, we want the prompt. And then it would it would create you me an iron man, but my face would be different on GPT. It would change my face because it copyright rules, okay? So change my face. Then I'd okay, well, so now we've got another program called Remaker where we swap my face with the face that the new pictures made. And I I told people how to do that. Then Nano Banana came along and goes, pfft, that's no problem. I'll just put your face on there. So we're like, well, okay, we're all gonna move to nano banana because nano banana is gonna do better than what uh GPT did, you know? And then we all yeah, and then we all moved across to we all moved across to do nano nano banana, you know, and then we're like, well, take all the stuff off GPT, we're gonna do this now. And then GPT has just come up with the new graphic stuff that is incredible. And it's like, well, do we move all of our stuff back here? You know, do we chase that the shiny object? Do we do we um you know, do we are we are we desperately trying to get that new iPhone when we don't even actually know how to use the old iPhone and we actually only use it for phone calls. But when the new iPhone comes out, we've got to get that iPhone. Right. Because that's ridiculous. Just learn all the features that are in your current iPhone. You've got like mind-blowing features in there. Learn all those features.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

Oh no, I understand. I I am still rocking an iPhone 13. I am way behind the Boda.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

Nice. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

But but also I I understand that the the Chat GPT image AI versus nano banana on any given day one can be better than the other. So now we talked earlier about implementation being so important. I always like to wrap things up with asking my guest, give my audience one thing that they can implement today to start moving their business in the right direction.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Do the post-it note. Trust me, do the post-it note. My post-it notes have been on my computer always, okay? And my post-it notes has gone from I need to make $50, is this worth $50? All the way up to my post-it note being $1,000 on my computer. And I need to do this, is this worth $1,000? That post-it note is going to change your whole world because you don't know what tasks are worth now. You're not even thinking about what tasks are worth. The tasks you did yesterday, did you think of any of them? Did you go, what's this task worth? We didn't. We just did it because we're so used to doing it. It is habit. I had a guy come to me and then he charges $250 an hour. And he said, Louis, I can't do anything tomorrow because I've got to mow the lawn. And I was like, What? And he said,

AI Shiny Objects, Contracts, Final Action

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Well, it I it takes me four hours. So he mows the lawn. And I'm like, that doesn't seem like a good use of time. I'm like, would you pay somebody a thousand dollars to mow your lawn? He's like, no, hell no, I'm definitely not paying somebody a thousand dollars. That's ridiculous. I'm like, well, that's what you are literally saying you're gonna do tomorrow. You're gonna pay yourself a thousand dollars to mow the lawn. And he goes, okay. And he said, but now how am I gonna get somebody to to mow the lawn? And said, well, just ask around. Any case the next week he gets hold of me. He says, Louis, you will not believe it. I got a young guy in and he mows the lawn for $150. He said, the guy arrived, he brought his own lawn, lawn mower, a ride on, zipped around, he'd done the whole lawn in two hours. You know, gave him $150 with a massive smile on my face. And you know, and that's the thing. We don't think about it like that. We don't actually break the two apart. We don't break apart what we should be doing. So the post-it note is the most important thing. If you take away nothing from this interview, post-it note. Post-it note, post-time planner, one task.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

I love that. Now, where can listeners find you?

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Everywhere. If you go to louiswat.com, so just Louis like Louis Vuitton, L-O-U-I-S, and then SWAT like smart with a W. So S W A-R-T. So Louiswat.com and I've got my LinkedIn profile. I've got um you can actually get access to my book, The Beameth, that talks all about the busyness and how we all the things that we've discussed today. But I've made them super simple in a parable. So it's a story. You can just read a story and it's just gonna be an exciting, interesting, funny story. And then uh there's some tools in the back. Some of these things we talked about today in the back of the book that you can do.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

Awesome. I am gonna get that book. And I'll make sure to link Louis's uh website down in the description as well. So go ahead and check that. It'll be easy to find. And do what he says. Get that post-it note, write that number down and start changing the way your business works. And until next time, keep planning like a boss.