The Buzzworthy Marketing Show

10 Principles of Leadership

Michael Buzinski Season 9 Episode 4

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What if the secret to unlocking true entrepreneurial freedom lies not in external achievements but in looking inward? Join us as we explore this compelling concept with Rob Dubé, co-author of "Shine: How Looking Inward is the Key to Unlocking True Entrepreneurial Freedom." Rob, along with Gino Wickman, crafts a narrative that starts with the end in mind, guiding entrepreneurs to align their decisions with their true selves. Discover how foundational disciplines can maximize your energy and bring you the inner peace you've been seeking.

We explore the art of balancing short-term actions with long-term visions, a vital skill for any successful entrepreneur. Rob emphasizes the importance of envisioning your life ten years down the road to align your current moves with your future goals. Learn how to manage your energy effectively by finding the right work-life balance, integrating personal and professional spheres for a lifestyle that supports both success and well-being. We stress the importance of presence, whether it's at work or with family, and how this mindfulness can significantly enhance the quality of life and work.

For the driven overachievers out there, we address the struggle of slowing down when everything seems urgent. Rob uses a relatable analogy of reducing speed from 100 to 80 miles per hour, showing that scaling back doesn't mean losing momentum. Instead, focusing on the most impactful tasks can lead to stronger organizations and more fulfilling lives. Hear about the vital role of continuous self-reflection and reassessment in maintaining alignment with the discipline that fosters true freedom. We encourage embracing delegation and regular self-checks to stay on the path of fulfillment, reducing the anxiety that comes with relentless striving.

Visit https://the10disciplines.com/ to take the True Self Assessment and check out the book.

Follow @urbuzzworthy on LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter. Get your copy of Buzz's best selling book, The Rule of 26 at www.ruleof26.com.


Speaker 1:

The disciplines teach you how to get past all those barriers that you're mentioning, and you may have to chip away at it. These are hard. These are not easy to do. They're actually hard. Anything that's hard is usually worth the time and energy to put into it.

Speaker 3:

Welcome to the Buzzworthy Marketing Show. Welcome to the show, Rob. How are you doing today?

Speaker 1:

I'm doing great Buzz. It's great to see you and Tori, yes, we're a special co-host here.

Speaker 3:

Tori, I don't know, if you're watching on the Buzzworthy marketing channel on YouTube, I'm actually pointing. We almost look like a third of the Brady Bunch right now. We're stacked up. Which way do I look? Right Left, yeah, there you go. So yeah, I think your right will point at me and then Rob's down, so we're good to go, there we go. You are the anchor here to our conversation.

Speaker 3:

I love it. Yeah, I love it. All right. So those who don't know, rob Dubé is a co-author of Shine. How Looking Inward is the Key to Unlocking True Entrepreneurial Freedom, and for our avid listeners, we know that entrepreneurial freedom is the second phase of the entrepreneurial journey. And so with financial independence comes entrepreneurial freedom. With entrepreneurial freedom comes drive. And the crazy thing is that this book actually kind of alludes to the third as well, with the 10 disciplines for maximizing your energy impact and inner peace, which I think the inner peace comes with that entrepreneurial freedom, and that's what we want to talk about today. You co-authored this with Gino Wickman, which has been on the show. We've talked about EOS with him, and then in the Easter, and when we were talking to him, he was just finishing up the 10 principles, so he's super excited about this. That guy geeks out on this stuff, which I'm hoping we're going to hear a lot from you about that. What was the catalyst of writing this book with Gino?

Speaker 1:

Well, gino wrote the 10 disciplines a few years back, maybe five years now, right before COVID. And when he wrote those, I was asked to do an interview with him for an audio book, and that book was the EOS Life.

Speaker 3:

Oh yes, I've read that one.

Speaker 1:

So the 10 disciplines were what I like to call the light version. And after that interview the two of us went out to lunch and I said you know, these 10 disciplines are very impactful. I had learned them from him because we were friends and have been friends for over 20 years and I sort of gleaned these disciplines off of him over the years, although he had never written them, these disciplines off of him over the years although he had never written them. So I said, hey, it was really cool that you put these into writing and I think it would be cool to bring them out to the world. What do you think? And fast forward, we started a company and ended up expanding upon the disciplines in the book Shine.

Speaker 3:

Awesome. And so now you talk about it being entrepreneurial freedom. Right, so these are the 10 disciplines in maximizing your energy impact and inner peace. So why did you guys decide to focus on those three pieces right there? What's the significance in energy impact, inner peace as it pertains to entrepreneurial freedom?

Speaker 1:

Well, first, the 10 disciplines serve as a foundation in your life, the totality of your life, and we all know how important that is. You have to have a foundation in your life that is strong, that's unwavering, that's not cracked.

Speaker 1:

Once you have that foundation, you have absolute clarity in the decisions that you make each and every day, and so we always in the book we start at the end with what we call the three discoveries, and maybe we'll talk about those if you want to, but then we bring you back to the beginning in the book with the 10 disciplines and we teach you how to create this foundation that helps you really understand who you are and why you're doing the things that you're doing, and then to ensure that you have the right tools in place so that you stay true to that, and that's what those 10 disciplines do.

Speaker 3:

So this is kind of like a Quentin Tarantino self-help book. Here we start at the end.

Speaker 1:

I haven't heard of it that way before.

Speaker 3:

It's classic Quentin Tarantino. He's like last scene first. This is what we're going to build this whole movie up to and then he goes back at the beginning and works his way out. So yeah, let's talk about those foundations like you were alluding to. Yeah, how do we dive into that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1:

So I'll go through a few just to give you a sense of some things and we can build on it if you want to or we can take it wherever you want to, but the first thing that we start with is 10-year thinking, and this is where we encourage you to shift your mind from short-term thinking to thinking at 10-year timeframes, and when you do that, time slows down. You know we're busy driven entrepreneurs, we're going really hard all the time and we want everything now. We're a very now-oriented group of people and what we're encouraging you to do is to slow things down and, as I mentioned, when you do that, you get there faster.

Speaker 1:

And so thinking in 10-year timeframes you might imagine a simple exercise is just imagining what your life might look like 10 years from now.

Speaker 1:

And what we're actually trying to do is get you back into the present moment, right here, right now, because in each present moment, you could ask yourself is what I'm about to do? Is what I'm about to say? Are my actions aligned with how I see my life 10 years from now? We have a true self-assessment on our website you can find it there at the10disciplinescom and what we've found is that this is one of the more challenging questions that people have, and they have trouble incorporating this into their lives. So it's the first one for a reason, because it's like the North Star of this foundation. You have to be really clear about it.

Speaker 3:

And then that feeds back to how we approach EOS too. The Entrepreneur Operating System is, and you have that 10-year goal, right? Is it a liken to that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely there are similarities within there, there's no question about it.

Speaker 3:

Awesome.

Speaker 1:

So there's another one that people seem to struggle with in the data that we've received in over 3,000 people that have taken our assessment, and that is know your 100%. That's discipline number five, and that is knowing the perfect number of hours per day and weeks per year that you will deliver your impact to this world. So we started this conversation by you, asked me energy, impact and inner peace. Why is that sort of like the tagline? So you're here, you're driven, you have this DNA within you we write about that in the book and you're here to do something special. You're all building companies, organizations, and you have that driven DNA really to make a greater impact.

Speaker 1:

You may not realize that, you might not think about it, and a lot of you actually may, but to do this really, really well, you have to manage your energy. That's the other word that we keyed in on, that you keyed in on. And to manage your energy, you have to know when you're going too hard, and so we encourage you and we teach how to sort of decide what are those perfect number of hours per day, per week and weeks per year where I can truly bring the greatest impact. And this requires you beginning to notice each and every day, when you're doing things that don't align with your unique abilities, your superpowers, you know at many different ways. You know there's only like three or four things you're really amazing at, so accept that first. You're not amazing at everything.

Speaker 3:

That's a good thing I'd be amazing at golf, Like that would be the I could have that be one of my things.

Speaker 1:

I hear you on that one. That's a struggle for most people, for sure.

Speaker 1:

Right. So you're only amazing at a few things, and so it's your ability to get yourself into doing those things that you're amazing at each and every day, the most amount of time that you can put into that amount of time that you can put into that and then recognizing when am I sort of at my tipping point where I'm not delivering value anymore. Most entrepreneurs tell me they work around 50 to 60 hours a week. So I figure they're embellishing because they're probably working more and they forget that they're actually working on the weekends and they don't count it, like when they're at their kid's soccer game and they're looking at their phone and reading through emails and responding to them. They don't think that's working.

Speaker 1:

Tori never does that right when you have the boys at the baseball games.

Speaker 3:

You're never looking at the phone checking emails right.

Speaker 2:

Guilty.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, are you. Are you Jordan? Is that true?

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's true.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So you know, there's a great example. That's very typical, and what we want to do is shift that mindset, you know, because we want you to be in the present moment, you know, fully engaged with whatever it is, whether it's with your kids or your family members or whatever your situation is. We only have this present moment, right now, and let's appreciate everything about it and be fully in it. And so when we're not working, let's not work. Let's not merge the two, let's be off of work when we're off of work and be really good at that. So that's another one that, not surprisingly, driven people and driven entrepreneurs really struggle with.

Speaker 2:

Oh, sorry, buzz, I was just going to say one of the things that I really found interesting is because you kind of talked about merging right, and so there's a positive merge and a negative merge, if you will, but the 10 disciplines have you not silo your personal life and your business, but almost merge them to make a successful foundation and functioning lifestyle.

Speaker 2:

So you're not like you know, this is my work personality and this is what I do here and this is my personal life. You have to really find a way to build your energy within both and the lifestyle that you want to lend towards business and personal.

Speaker 1:

You're so right and you know, one of the things that we find in working with our clients I mentioned this 50, 60 hour weeks, or something like that is when they begin to reduce the number of hours so they can focus on the ways that they can make greater impact. They still go hard, but it doesn't feel the same. It doesn't feel like they're going hard, but yet they're going harder than regular people. And so I bring this up only to say is that we've created lives as driven people, as driven entrepreneurs, where we have been going so hard that when we dial it back a little and we're still going hard, it doesn't seem like we're going hard, but we are. We are still going, actually, in many cases even still too hard. It's just our default was so high that we don't.

Speaker 1:

it's like you're going 100 miles an hour on the expressway and you decide to dial it back to 80 and it feels like you're going 100 miles an hour on the expressway and you decide to dial it back to 80, and it feels like you're not even moving, but you're still exceeding the speed limit by 20 or 30 miles per hour. That's how we go, and so what we're trying to do is dial it back and get you to.

Speaker 1:

if the speed limit's 50 miles an hour, we're trying to get you to go 60 and pour all of your energy into the most impactful things and that's going to create a stronger organization. Your career is going to be more successful, but also you're going to have as Tori you mentioned a more fulfilling life in general. You know that's where you get inner peace. That's true freedom is when your mind isn't spinning, when you're at dinner with your, at a dinner date with your friends. You know, you want to be fully present with your friends, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so that's what. These are just a couple of examples of the 10 disciplines, and the key here is, if you read the book or you come into one of our programs or whatever, the key is you've got to merge all 10. Where people start to get off track is they pick and choose I'm this one, that one, I don't want to do, this one, this one. They actually are strongest. You're building the strongest foundation possible when you merge them all together, and that's what's so key in this process is bringing them all together.

Speaker 3:

Right.

Speaker 3:

I think it's amazing.

Speaker 3:

I love your analogy of you're going 100 miles an hour and you bring it down to 80 and it seems like you're going so slow, but you're yet you're still going, you know, 20, 30 miles an hour over the speed limit.

Speaker 3:

And I think that overachievers have a problem with that, like those A-type overachievers that are just like, hey, listen, if I'm not doing what I think is 100%, then I'm not enough, right? So what happens when I mean, most people are working 50, 60 hours a week in their business because they feel that they have to get that done, and a lot of times it's because they don't have any other resources to get everything done right. There's just not enough time in one day to get to all the emails, to get all of the projects done, to get whatever fulfillment that they're falling behind in and all that good stuff. So how do you cope? How do you help? How do the principals help cope with the fact that you're not? Does it address the fact that you might need that much time to get everything done? How do we approach that in the mindset?

Speaker 1:

Well, the disciplines teach you how to get past all those barriers that you're mentioning, and you may have to chip away at it. These are hard. These are not easy to do. They're actually hard. Anything that's hard is usually worth the time and energy to put into it. There are long-term results that go along with that. So let's say you mentioned emails. Let's say you're overwhelmed with emails, which everybody is, by the way. We teach you how to delegate your emails, not answer emails.

Speaker 1:

Actually, Well, you need the resources to be able to do that. You need somebody who you can work with, who can answer emails for you in the way that you would answer an email, and you need to only see a small percentage of the emails that come in, because those are the ones that only you can handle, but when you really get down to it, there aren't that many. So that's just one very simplistic example, but very hard to do.

Speaker 3:

And so, yeah, I mean it took me about six months for my executive assistant to be able to get probably 80% of my emails, and I think I'm down to about 90% of the emails I do not see anymore.

Speaker 1:

It's amazing, right See, now you have freedom, now you have time, now you have the ability to make greater impact, but you had to invest in yourself to do that. And this is where it all gets kind of into like a mind game with people. Well, I don't want to pay somebody, I can do that. There's a million reasons. We don't have time to go through them all, but history.

Speaker 1:

It's all the things that we allow ourselves to be held back from doing. And so you just have to ask yourself do I really want what I say I want? Do I really want to build an organization? That is everything that I could have ever imagined. Do I really want to build a life? That's everything I really could imagine. Because really, what's happening is we're building lives. We're not 100% sure why we're doing it. We're going after things sometimes, and sometimes, when we get them, we're not even fulfilled. In fact, that's usually the case. So then you have to ask yourself why did I spend 10 years grinding it out, doing all this stuff, and I'm still? Actually, I'm feeling more anxiety in my life. I'm feeling less fulfillment. What's up with that? You don't need to do that. You don't need to do that. You have the opportunity. You're a driven person. That means you're willing to do whatever it takes to get somewhere, and so you can now take the time and really be reflective.

Speaker 1:

Slow things down Another one of the disciplines, discipline number four be still Slow things down, let your mind and your body catch up, let your soul catch up, so you begin to align your decisions and you start coming from a place of love in your life, not fear. You are coming from fear in most of your decisions in your life and you don't even realize it. Fear is your ego your ego's in the way You're going after things that don't actually really align with your true self. You're trying to please other people Could be like your parents, or it could be someone close to you, you or you're trying to keep up with the Joneses, or whatever the way they people think You're not doing it for the right reasons.

Speaker 1:

This is a hard pill to swallow. What I'm saying right now. It shakes people's lives up. They run away from it because it's too hard, it's too painful to accept it. But my hope for you is that you don't wake up one day and you're at the latter ends of your years and you're saying to yourself I beat myself up for decades and I'm exhausted, and I'm exhausted and I'm still unfulfilled. It doesn't need to be that way.

Speaker 2:

Rob, one of the things that I wanted to ask you is and I think a lot of entrepreneurs are guilty of this is we talk about the 10 disciplines and, as an entrepreneur, a lot of times I'm like, okay, I'm going to fine tune and I'm going to figure out these 10 disciplines and then I've got it all dialed in. But I have the sense that this is not just a let's get through the 10, figure it out, implement it and then we're done. I think this is a lifelong cycle and journey that you have to continue to check back in on discipline four, discipline 10, or whatever it might be, so that you keep yourself aligned. Is that accurate in saying that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you for noticing that. That's very astute. We encourage people to go and take the true self-assessment every 90 days for that exact reason because our businesses ebb and flow, as we all know. Our lives ebb and flow. We have things that come up that are unexpected all the time and we get out of alignment constantly.

Speaker 1:

That's okay, that's being human, that's like our human experience that we all have together and it's our ability to come back to the foundation and reset, noticing areas where, oh my gosh, I totally got off track. I've been working 60 hours, I was down to 35 and I was doing so great. All of a sudden, next thing, you knew I was going hard again because X, y or Z are happening, which is okay. That can be like a season, as they say, or something, but you just reset and dial it back and so, yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up, because it's important to keep your eye on the ball and you can do that with the true self-assessment. And again, every 90 days, at least twice a year, check in, see how you're doing.

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