Check this. This is Marty's Minute Audio Podcast. I'm here with Chris Oakley. Chris was a keynote speaker at our event this year and really excited to be talking with you in your talk.
You talked about doing less better. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you came up with the idea and why? Well, first of all, it's not an original idea. It's been around.
It really comes down to time management, prioritization. It came out of having a lot of conversations with business owners that were burned out, that were in a million hats, they were doing a million things and they were winning, but that winning was causing them to burn out. So one day I was talking to a business owner, I said, I just need to do less and do it better and it came out of the store with me. And then I started going through this path thinking of it for myself.
I'm in the same trap. It's something I work on all the time. The better you get at doing less better, the more you stand out, the more you stand out, you get these results, the more opportunities and responsibilities that are running your play. I mean, it just kind of sounds weird.
Do less than do it. I get more if I do less. And if I'm doing less work, doing less different things, it's being really focused on what we're doing. It's identifying where you bring the most value, where you can stand out, where you can be remarkable, that aligns with your skill sets and passions and with your client base and really spending more time there.
Less time on the one client that you don't really care about, they're not making money off of, but they're high maintenance and you feel this way, it's taking time for your family and so you're not your pressure with your family. It's just spirals, right? And so I just said, do less and do it better. That's something burned.
Yeah, I mean, it's funny how you talk about, you know, people will put things on your plate, right? We think that if they give us more work, if people give us other things, but yet we don't really get anywhere, right? So I've been wrestling with doing less better for myself recently. I just started realizing that once again, with the business times I work with, no one's going to protect your time for you, right?
Like everyone else is in the same boat. Everyone has too many things to do and I'm not enough time. We are limited by the hours and the day, right? And we try to get as much as we can done.
And so what happens is that people put stuff on your plate. And if you're not, and as a leader, often you feel like it's your job and you got to serve and some of that's true and some of this time we just got to be thinking about like, we're adults, right? But I want it to be a really intentional conversation and I want it to be at the what's the cost? If I'm doing this, I'm not doing something else.
I'm not spending time with my family. I'm not working on this new thing that, man, if we figure this new service out or whatever, it could be huge for our business, right? And so there's a cost to it all and we don't spend time. Something I've been thinking about lately is a lot of times when someone brings something to you and says, hey, you've been doing this stuff really well, can you take on this as a project too?
Usually, our human behavior response is, yeah, I'll find a way to make it happen. Well, the reality is you still have the same limitations on ours. So making it happen is only a couple options. You sleep a little less, you work on the weekends, stealing from your family of things you want to be doing.
Or you steal time from the things that you were doing well that gave you this opportunity and now you're doing everything else a little crappier to execute on something crappier as well, right? So you have to steal it from something and we don't have that real conversation in our head. We'll figure it out. Well, that figuring it out is costing you, right?
And just sort of getting it done, it's not doing something great. And I think you kind of talked about that. I think it kind of hit home is you're only going to get better when you do those great things, right? Those one things that stand out, you know, nobody stands out by just doing more, right?
Well, you stood out because you work 15 hour days, you stood out because no one sees it, no one cares about that. If you don't do something remarkable, the perception is even though you're not going to know it may be remarkable that you're doing five people's jobs and you're working 80 hours a week and you're holding this thing together and somehow it's working, like that is actually remarkable, but no one sees that, right? So doing things that are remarkable to those other folks or what creates opportunities is what stands out. If you're just doing what, you know, holding it together, if you're just being average on those things or whatever, just meeting the deadlines or whatever that may look like, really the perception is great.
You're doing what I paid you to do. You're doing what you're supposed to do. So you're earning your paycheck. That's the perception.
And so it doesn't create that wow that remarkableness that's it. Oh man, we got to do more of this guy knows this stuff. Let's give him more money to do this. So what would you recommend or what do you recommend for somebody to kind of take that next step of doing less better, right?
You know, is your boss going to come down and tell you that or? No, you've got to change the conversation. You guys are having the concept. So if you're not the boss, if you're responding to a boss or that, you've got to start saying, hey, this is where I bring the most value.
So I would start providing, hey, this is what winning in my role looks like. Let's talk about that. Does this sound right to you? Hey, here's how I measure winning.
Does that feel right? You start having that come lead your leader, right? Through that conversation. So change the conversation, create visibility in your performance and start saying, hey, this takes me longer to do and I don't feel like I'm excelling this and I can't spend a lot of time here.
This thing over here is where I can bring the most value to this or where I love to be, where I excel. Leaders want to hear that stuff and they're not always thinking about what's getting your time in it. Your skills, it's a great visual performance so they can help you and they can see it and then change the conversation. Where do you bring value?
Yeah, it's kind of interesting because if you think about it, everybody waits to have that meeting with their boss or their leader will come down and tell them what to do. They're going to annoy them to be great. And I think what you're saying and what I hear is you've got to go up to them. You've got to sit down with them, tell them what matters, what winning looks like.
I bet you they'd be pretty shocked, right? They're probably not used to that. Yeah. And they're excited, right?
You want your team members to do that too. You want them to come to use it. This is what I love to do and this is where I bring them to value. And this is where I can make us the most money in this business because if I do X, Y, and Z, this is what's going to happen for a bit.
Don't you want that as a leader? Absolutely. And if you don't have a leader that wants that, you're probably not in the right game, right? You're probably the wrong company in a spot that you're not going to be able to do less better.
You've got a leader that's going to keep giving you more and more until they've been sealing all your opportunities to be remarkable. Right. So there's layers and layers of this. First of all, one of my favorite things is you really have to know who you want to be, right?
You have to spend some time analyzing, you know, this is a little sobering, I guess, but like I had to write my own obituary. Who do I want to get to? I zoom all the way out. So zoom out as far as you can see.
Who do I want to be there? What's the mark I want to leave on this world? What's the legacy I want to have? What were the quotes for my kids or grandkids and colleagues and what do I want people to say about them?
That's a really good way to zoom all the way out and see who you want to be. And then you start backing in. Okay. What are my skills?
What are my passions? That starts to bridge the gap for that destination. So I feel like you need to zoom out and kind of have at least a loose framework of where you want to go. Then you can start backing into where am I at currently and how am I taking steps?
Well, these are my skillsets. These are, I need to have this, I need to change the conversation with my boss. Currently, if I keep doing this thing and I keep trying to hold these things together, what am I really doing? What's the path I want?
I'm really on a path to average because they keep giving me more and more and I'm not doing anything remarkable. I'm going to live in this job for the rest of my life until I burn out or they fire me because I can't do it anymore. Right. That's the path you want.
So recognize the path and say, hey, okay, how do I change the conversation? It's a lot of self-awareness. It's a lot of communication to the folks that are guiding your path currently. Yeah.
It's knowing where you want to go. Yeah. I think it's really such a great title, doing less better. I appreciate what you've said and I think it is.
How do you find me great? How can you find those one things that can make you do better? When you stay focused and you do it, I think that great things will happen. You know, it's why I say zooming out so important.
I really truly believe everyone has made a leave a mark on this world to do something awesome. And if we don't start taking back the control of our lives in this conversation, you're getting robbed of that opportunity. Right. And you see it all around you.
People just grinding out their day-to-day jobs for what purpose, right, to make ends meet or whatever it is because they're in a spot that's comfortable. You talk a lot about, you know, comfort, right, and how that eliminates where you should be, right, like, steals that up. So for me, it's just so important. It's too short to not do something fantastic with it.
And you need to set yourself up in a game where you can do that, right? You need to take control and put yourself in a place where you're going to do something remarkable. Right. And then it's like where to start, what I could do, what somebody could do.
Just really think through that lens of a printable of a path. Where do I want to go? Where do I excel? Who do I want to be?
Just start the conversation there and then say, okay, that's where I'm going. What's the next step, right? You've got time. It's a step-by-step process.
The better you get out of the more opportunity, the harder it gets. You're going to do this forever. So don't let that ever well move. You just know where you want to go and start taking the first step for you.
All right. It's great, man. Thanks. I think that the people loved it and we look forward to our next step.
Thanks for having you. Thanks for having me.