Hey folks and welcome to another episode of Builders Business Success Podcast!

It is episode 55 and we’re getting closer, very close to the end of creating the content for the book.

So we started many, many moons ago using the content for the podcast to create the content for the book. So we’ve got an end to end, right from the start to the, from the attract all the way through to scaling your building business all in one space in this book. So we’re getting very, very close to the end.

What we’re talking about or the content that we’re covering today is on, it’s all about you this time. It’s all about the personal success ritual.

So we’re going to talk about how this personal success ritual can make a massive difference to your own productivity, how you feel your mindset, the outcomes that you can accomplish on a daily basis.

It’s to me, it’s one of those foundational fundamental parts of the whole process that it’s just critical because I think everything can be affected very positively and powerfully by in integrating this personal success ritual into your day.

Of course, we’re going to do Q and a, and of course, we’re going to use our floating light bulb here for the idea of the week.

And so we’ll be definitely sharing a fantastic idea with you.

*Transcription of the show*

The content of the podcast today is surrounding this thing that is called the personal success ritual. I need to give some credit to a chap by the name of Evan Pagan he’s an internet marketer.

I don’t know him personally, but I did buy a course of his many, many moons ago. And the reason I’m telling you this story is because this, the mindset of what I’m about to share with you is absolutely critical. So I bought a $2,000 program from him. And one of the bonuses was some time management training.

Now, for your information, I’ve been involved in time management for over 30 something years. One of the first things I did as a coach was I was flown by a company called Day-timer all around the country.

I was on about a half dozen to a dozen planes a week flying around Australia, teaching time management, because it had had such a profound effect on me. I wanted to teach it. So I got involved in this company and I started to teach it. And then we started our own company and refined it.

And bottom line is I’ve been involved in time management and personal effectiveness for a long, long time. And one of the bonuses that Evan had with his program was time management thing. And I just remember thinking, “Oh, well, you know, it’s not really a bonus for me.

What would I be able to learn? You know, in relation to time management, I’ve been doing it for so long.” And fortunately I caught myself having that thought and gave myself a mental slap around and say, “Hey how dare you be so closed minded and think that, you know everything.” Lucky, I did give myself that talk because I did open up the bonus that Evan sent through.

And it was all about what he called the personal success ritual and it blew me away. I’d never heard it before I saw how powerful it was, started using it, started implementing it, and then over the years have refined it. And that’s what I want to share with you today. And the purpose or the importance of the personal success ritual really is in the word ritual.

It needs to be done every day in Builders Business Blackbelt we encourage our members to do it every single day. And there are challenges within the group to how, how to get to as many unbroken days as, as possible. You know, and I think the last one that I was aware of was in the seven hundreds.

So one of our members was up around 700 odd days without a miss. So that’s seven days a week. That’s when you’re away without internet connections and power and all that sort of stuff, you set yourself up. So you’ve got all the resources to be able to do this no matter where you are or what you’re doing. The piercer is valuable because it makes every moment in your day far more valuable.

And the cool thing about it is it taps into this whole prevention is better than the cure, because if you’re using this personal success ritual, what will happen for the most part is that you will eliminate problems before they even occur. That’s one of the powerful things about it.

So if you’re eliminating issues and problems and challenges, before they even occur, think of how much time you’re saving, because you don’t have to put time into managing those things or solving those things. So we avoid problems that we create with our thinking by using the personal success ritual.

And we also avoid problems that we create with our poor planning by using the personal success ritual. So the personal success ritual has four steps, three of which we’re going to unpack today.

The fourth one is going to have a whole podcast episode all on its own because it’s so powerful. And I’ve just got a message from Hugh here he’s in the chat here in one of the Facebook groups. And he’s got three broken days this week with a sad face emoji with his personal success ritual.

The thing is with that is that you can start again, okay. The value here though, when you start to get the compounding effect of the personal success ritual, but before I get into the detail of it, the one last thing I want to share with you is that it’s called a personal success ritual. It’s not a business success ritual.

And the reason I say that is because I believe the single most important human contributor to the success of a business is the business owner. And I often ask this question in the Facebook group, which is the most important, is it the customer? Is it the team? Is it the business owner? very rarely does anyone say the business owner.

Most people say customer, you know, you haven’t got a business without a customer. I get that. But the quality of the person that can make the biggest difference in the success of a business is the business owner, not the quality of the customer. If you’ve got a crappy business owner, you have a poor team and the customers don’t get looked after.

So they don’t come back and they don’t see value. And all of that sort of stuff. If you’re if you’ve got an amazingly skilled, positive, proactive example as a business owner, generally the team just feed off that and you get this amazing team that looks after your customer, that helps you grow your business.

Helps you increase the quality of your customer’s experience, and everything goes up from there. So you need to be putting your oxygen mask on first, looking after yourself as a priority and becoming the best possible example you can for your team. And the rest will flow from that.

And so this is where it starts as a personal success ritual. So the first step in the personal success ritual is I’ll tell you that in a minute, but when should you do the personal success ritual?

You should do it as soon as your feet hit the carpet. It’s actually good to do this personal success ritual when you’re in a bit of a groggy state, right? Rather than getting up, having a shower, having a breakfast, sitting down at your desk and going right, let’s do the personal success ritual.

What I suggest you do as soon as you sit up out of your bed and you sort of stagger over, maybe you can hit the head first, you know, go to the toilet first, just real quick, but then you need to be into the personal success ritual. The first step is to become somewhat inspired. And this is a bit of a challenge.

So you may need to use an external stimulant and I don’t mean any sort of drug or anything like that. Jump on the interwebs or have something prepared on your phone, or what have you.

There is a particular video that obviously use for a long time. It’s one I recommend, it’s really old now, but it’s got so many fantastic messages in it. And so you use a video or you can use music, or you can read a passage from a book, or you can listen to something, but the bottom line is that step one of your personal success ritual is to get in a somewhat inspired state.

The more inspired the better. Now this is called external motivation. I am not a fan of external motivation, except in this instance, I think external motivation, a lot of people, and I’m generalizing here, but I’ve been to America quite a few times.

And I find that that Americans really loved the external motivation and seek it out and really go berserk, which is fine. But I think that it’s not the best type of motivation. It is useful in some circumstances, such as this personal success ritual, but really, if you need external motivation all of the time, it’s not gonna work.

Cause I think external motivation is a little bit like jumping in a really hot bath. It’s wonderful when you jump in, it feels really good, but it gets cold fairly quickly. So you need to keep adding the hot water to keep it warm.

That’s what external motivation is about. What I want you to get to is that point where you are motivated and inspired internally by what you’re focusing on, by what you are chasing by what you’re trying to create by who you’re trying to become by what you’re trying to achieve.

Internal inspiration and internal motivation is really the key here. The next step is the thing called is the 60 second success system. And this step is just a mindset thing. It’s a physical exercise where you get a pad and a pen. And the challenge is to write down anything and everything.

That would be just amazing, but there are some caveats. And that is that it needs to be impossible. I think that’s the easiest way to say, you know, you’d love to become this or accomplish this or have this or experience this, but there is no where in your belief system that says, “Yes, that’s possible.”

I want you to write down impossible things. So anything that you’d like to have become experienced accomplish, but without any limits to time, talent or money, that’s the challenge. And the interesting thing with this is that this is why you need step one. You need to be in a little bit of an inspired mindset to be able to utilize the value of the 60 second success system.

The old days it used to be, we called, we called it the dream catcher, same process, but we we’ve created the 60 second success system and put a timer on it. So we say, just do it for 60 seconds. Start the clock, go crazy for 60 seconds. And then, and then when the buzzer goes, stop.

The reason that I did that focuses is, is because sometimes some people would do it for, for a while, like 3, 4, 5 minutes, but they might do it the next day or the next day. I want you to get it run on and then stop it to create that hunger, to make sure you do it every day.

Because the secret, the real secret sauce with the personal success ritual is every day, every day, every day, every day, and also doing things to improve the quality of each part of the four steps of the personal success ritual.

So you write all of these things down, the things that you’d love to have loved to experience love, to accomplish, love, to become, but it’s impossible. Why do we do that? Because we’re stepping into a place where anything is possible. And what that does is it starts to chip away at our self-imposed limitations.

When you speak and take most adults, almost all adults through a goal setting process. It’s very dull and very boring and a very common response I’ll get to this is I just can’t seem to find anything that really inspired me. I can’t find anything that captures my imagination when it comes to goal setting like most goals, but most adults are really dull and boring.

I wonder why they don’t get accomplished because they don’t grab people by the emotions, by the heartstrings, keep them up late, get them up early through passion to chase down these goals. So we’ve gotta be able to allow ourselves to create goals that capture our imagination.

So they get done. So they get chased. So they become a focus. But because we have these self-imposed limitations, it’s really difficult to write goals that inspire us. So this step two this 60 success system is absolutely critical. And it’s absolutely critical that you do it every day because you just chipping away.

The amazing thing is if you just spend 60 seconds or a couple of minutes in this place in your mind where anything is possible, then when you go to the goal setting, you’ll find that what you thought it was impossible before in your real life has small semblance of possibility. The things that you thought were going to be really difficult don’t seem to be so different called anymore.

And so it becomes possible for you to have an inspirational thought, let it run down your arm, through the pen and get onto paper and become a goal. And the one thing that I want to really make clear is that the 60 second success system part, so step two is a warmup exercise. It’s not about goal setting.

It’s getting you ready for goal setting. And then step three is goal setting. And there are multiple ways that you can utilize this goal setting section.

Again, I would suggest you put a timer on it. So I have a countdown timer for three minutes or five minutes or something like that, where you are doing one of three things, you are creating goals, you’re identifying goals, things that you would like to accomplish personally or professionally.

That’s one thing that you can do in that time. The second thing you can do in there times is start to unpack is necessary to be done, to achieve, or accomplish these goals, okay?

Or step three or part three, or action three is just be with your goals. You don’t need to create new goals every day. Once you’ve unpacked those goals, you don’t need to figure out what more you can do.

You can just spend time with those goals and reread them and maybe add a little bit of detail or see yourself having accomplished those goals, or see yourself doing the activity that is related to that goal. Basically, just pend time with your goals.

I don’t know how many people I’ve seen they get all inspired and I write goals and it’s maybe it’s New Year’s Eve or something like that. Or they’ll go to a motivational workshop or whatever, and they write this stuff and it ends up in the top drawer. And 12 months later, they go to another one and find the old goals from 12 months ago. You’ve got to spend time with them.

And the one last thing I’ll say on these goals is that it is totally okay not to accomplish a goal, if you’ve got something better. Through the 60 second success system, you become more inspired, you can see further, you can think bigger and you come up with something that is much more attractive.

Something you have more passion for than the current goal. I don’t have an issue with you scrapping that current goal and going and putting your energy into the thing that you’ve got more passionate about. In fact I’d encourage you to do that. Don’t get into that situation where I’m not writing any more goals until I’ve finished these that’s bullshit. You can chuck them out, it doesn’t matter.

The thing is, I want you to be inspired. I want you to be motivated and passionate about what you’re doing, not in this situation way, “Oh, I have to do this.” You know, and you’re carrying on like that. No tripping over your bottom lip because I have to do this and I can’t do this. That’s exactly what I want you to get away from.

So I don’t have an issue with you chucking away those goals, as long as they’re being replaced by something that is giving you more energy. So step one is something to get you inspired. Step two is the 60 second success system. Step three is being with your goals, creating them unpacking them, or just spending time with them. Step four is a thing called the prioritized daily action list.

And this is how to create a quality written plan that can, without too much effort, cut your working day in half. I don’t think it’s that difficult to get someone to increase their productivity, their effectiveness by 400% you might think, well, I work really, really hard now.

Well you might, but that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean that you’re accomplishing what you really are dreaming about. It doesn’t mean that you’re effective. It just means that you’re using up a lot of energy and perhaps going around in circles and you are busy, busy doesn’t equal affect you.

So there is this thing that is called the prioritized daily action list that can make a massive difference in your personal productivity every day, and really get significantly more, done, more accomplished, more achieved by having a proper quality system to set up your day. And that’s the four step.

There’s a little bit to that. So that’s why we’re not doing it in this episode. We’ll definitely be doing it in a future episode, the prioritized daily action list. So look out for that. So the four steps to the personal success ritual, once again is the inspiration.

So grab yourself a video, there’s plenty of them on the interwebs that really gets your blood pumping. It needs to be first thing, as soon as you get out of the bed. Next thing is do 60 seconds.

Set a countdown timer, anything that’s super cool without limits, do the clock thing, you know, and just write, write, write, and really challenge yourself to write down the most crazy zany embarrassing stuff. Once you’ve written that down, you can burn the list, you can eat it, you can get rid of the evidence. It doesn’t matter.

Once you’ve done the exercise and, and been able to write down that thought job done, then you move into your goals for three to five minutes.

Then we spend a couple of minutes putting together a very, very powerful list for directing your day. And we’ll go through that next time.

Q & A

Q and A, the question that was asked not this week, but a little while ago was about someone was a little frustrated with interruptions. And they said, “How do we eliminate interruptions?”

This kind of plays into this prioritized daily action list a little bit as well. So you’ll need to make sure you keep your eyes open for that training in that next episode of this podcast. But one of the things with interruptions is we tend to attract them.

If we are the type of person who is, you know, got seven balls in the air at any any one time. And we’re a bit of a believer in multi tasking and all of that sort of stuff. And we think that we can do multiple things at once.

We tend to be the type of person that will attract interruptions. We will notice them we’ll react to them. Whereas somebody who is really connected, too focused on their high leverage activities, that the things that are directly connected to the goals that they’re super passionate about.

And this kind of makes sense with what we’re talking about with the PSR. Those type of people tend not to even see those interruptions and distractions because they are so focused in the big idea.

I wanna share with you some things I’ve been learning from a book called “”Deep Work””, and that’ll help you to understand this a little bit more as well, but the key with it is having a full plan, some time management gurus that I’ve heard suggest that you allow time for interruptions in your planning each day.

And my response to that is this bullshit, do not do that. Have a completely full dance card of things that are really going to make it big difference too, achieving your goals both personally and professional and allow no room for these interruptions or distractions.

So you’ve got to have high leverage stuff in your plan. So it’s all all but automatic for you to say no to the distraction or the interruption, because the thing you’ve got on your list is so, so important, you know, and I’m forever use the same analogy over and over that when you’re on your way to catch an airplane.

And you’re only just going to make it on time. You’re not going to stop and feed your mate to cat because he’s asked you to do a favor. You just, you’re not going to do those things. You’re totally focused on where you’re going and where you’ve got to be at a certain time. And nothing’s going to get in your way.

And there’s a sense of urgency about that, that same sense of urgency commitment, focus, connection can be created every single day.

If you can create a good quality plan that is full of actions that are directly connected to goals that you’re super passionate about. And I’ll guarantee you, once you master that, you won’t get interruptions, you won’t get distractions.

And if you do, you will effortlessly say no to them. And as I said, it’ll probably be the next episode next week, that we’ll, we’ll unpack the prioritized daily action list. And that is my absolute best answer on how to eliminate interruptions.

There are all sorts of other suggestions, but I think let’s just cut to the chase and it’s really up to you. And if you’ve got a really high quality plan that you’re passionate about and connected to you won’t even see the interruptions. And if someone keeps persisting, you will effortlessly say no to that interruption or that distraction.

If it’s taking you away from something that you know is really passionate or you’re really passionate about.

Personal Productivity Hack

We’re going to use our light bulb now because it’s idea of the wick used to be personal productivity hack, but saying we’ve got a levitating light bulb. We had to change it and go for idea of the week.

So the idea of the week is to have you go listen to a copy. And it’s fairly challenging to listen to, but I highly recommend a book called “”Deep Work””. And it’s just dispelling this whole myth.

Multi tasking is a great way of getting lots of things done. I’ve always been a believer and a proponent of multitasking sucks big time, like multi tasking in my world is the way to waste the biggest time the most time.

That’s the technique that you use if you want to waste a lot of time, yet people persist and there are still gurus out there that teach you about multitasking. And it’s just bullshit.

And there are so much evidence and so many stories in this book, “Deep Work” to help you understand that if you really, really are committed to getting things done, and that’s super important, the projects that you’re working on and what have you having massive time blocks is the why to do it and cutting yourself off from the world to be able to do it and not having little interruptions and beings and notifications going off and phones beeping and all of that sort of stuff.

You’ve got to get rid of all of that sort of thing, and then put yourself in a place.

Cause it takes a while to get into a mindset of concentration of deep concentration. And if you keep going, “I’ll just keep my eye on that while I’m doing this and that beings. And I’ll just reply to that.”

And or if you’re doing that while you’re trying to work on something that is really high leverage, that is super important for the forward momentum of yours business or part of your life or goals that you’ve got.

You’re really shooting yourself in the foot. If you’re trying to do it in this distracted way, you will get significantly and I mean, significantly more done if you time block, but use significant time blocks don’t that there are certain things you can do with a 15 or 20 minute time block.

And previously I’ve said 55 minutes is probably the limit or 50 minutes for a time block. And then a 10 minute reward.

What I’m learning through “Deep Work” is it’s okay to have like a 90 minute time block, if you’re really cutting yourself off from all distractions.

So get yourself a copy of that. It’s counterintuitive. It’s not what most people feel that they should do. They feel that they should be available and all of this sort of stuff. It’s just not true. And I’d love you to get a copy rather than me explaining it to you.

Get a copy of that book and absolutely devour it because it is amazing. I can’t remember the author’s name. It doesn’t matter, the book is called “Deep Work”.

It can get it on audible.com.au, or you can buy a hard copy, whatever you want. Just depends on whether you like listening or whether you like reading.

Takeaway & Jump On A Call

So what is the takeaway from this ear podcast that is ended and has gone over time as per usual, which I’m getting a little bit better, but not much.

The takeaway is you have so much more control over your business performance, and that is the workflow and the profitability, the client quality that you, the quality of clients that you work with and your own personal experience, then you think you have.

And if you get into a personal success ritual, if you start to use prioritize daily action list, if you start to get into that mindset that we’ve taken from the “Deep Work” book, you won’t know yourself, you’ll be able to accomplish so much more.

You’ll have so fewer distractions, you make so much more progress, which gives you confidence and hardens your resolve to continue with these disciplines and with the skills and it can make a massive difference.

So I hope this podcast episode was valuable to you. I hope it got you to start to think a little bit deeper. And as I said at the start, we’d love to help you with this.

And there are a ton, and it’s just a growing amount of resources that we’ve got out there that we can put you in front of. And we’d love to be able to do that. And how we do that is just getting a real quick conversation. There’s a link in the comment sections.

You just click that takes you to a little form, fill it out so we can learn a little bit about you and your business.

We’ll jump on a call. You can schedule it in, in a time or a date that will suit you. It’s a real short call to find out where you are. What’s in the way where you want to go.

And we can point you really quickly and efficiently to the resources that you need to do what you want to do with your business. So let’s jump on a call.

Let’s have that conversation and let’s help you out as quickly as possible. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Builders Business Success podcast. We’ll be back live again in all of the different Facebook and YouTube platforms at 10:00 AM, Sydney time Tuesdays.

So we’ll be back next week and it’ll be the prioritized daily action list, you won’t want to miss it. It’s an absolute game changer. I’m Mick Hawes from Builders Business Blackbelt.

I think that’s it. So see you next time. Bye for now.