Thomas Green here with ethical marketing service, on the episode today we have Blaine Oelkers. Blaine welcome. Hello Thomas, I am so happy to be here and congratulations to you. I noticed that you have a couple of 100 episodes. So well done. I’m honored to be on the podcast. And then also I did like to see that you do support kids and so maybe we’ll end up talking about that today, but that is a special place in my heart, social entrepreneurship where you can actually kind of baked right into the business, the helping of the world in some way.
So, congratulations on that as well and happy to be here. Well, thank you, I’m very happy to have you, would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do? Yeah, sure. So my name is Blaine Oelkers, I am currently residing in phoenix Arizona in the United States and I am America’s um at the moment I’m America’s only chief results officer. Uh and so um what happened for me is early on, well, I’ll tell you there’s these times in your life where you have kind of these moments of dawning comprehension. And so for me I’ve always kind of been a seeker of knowledge. Um and I think a lot of your listeners are probably seekers of knowledge, listening to podcasts and stuff like that. But in college I was at Purdue University and I wrote away from a magazine article, had this request where you can get this this audio tape about the book, think and grow rich. So I have you ever heard of that book? Think and grow rich? Yeah, many times. Okay, so so I sent away for this tape and it turned out that Earl Nightingale, he was kind of became a mentor of mine.
He was reading an abridged version of thinking, grow rich. And so I read this book in college, so I ended up buying the book and reading it and I read the book. And and in that moment of reading the book, thinking, grow rich, I realized that you could, you know, take your thoughts, you know, in tournament in physical reality. So the book talks about financial think and grow rich, but the riches could be anything harmonious relationships, getting the right job, you know, meeting the right person. And so I started to apply Later what I ended up calling, what you think about you bring about my table little acronym for that. Um, I started to use that in my life. And that really brought a lot of success to, to me in relationships and I met my wife at college and we’ve been married 30 years now. So, so a lot of a lot of good things happened and I had enough success that I bought one of the original 5000 books For, you know, there was a 5000 printing. Now they say there’s hundreds of millions, definitely tens of millions of copies of that book. But when I read that, the original, I opened the book and it was different. And so, you know, the very first page, first two pages were these instructional pages.
Uh and so, and we could unpack those pages if you want. But but in those instructions, that was another kind of moment of dawning comprehension. First one was, hey, you know what you think about you bring about. But then this other one was really the instructions to kind of get whatever you’re looking for. And at that moment I was trying to have my business be, it was worth maybe about 300,000. I wanted to be a million dollar business, wanted to own a million dollar business. And I thought it might take me 34 or five years. But within five months of applying those principles, I had reached that goal and I kind of never, never went went back from that. And I started helping other people get results. I started working with mastermind groups um and and became their chief results officer. They started calling me that I went, I got the registered trademark from the United States Patent Office so that you know, I can be the only one of those. And now what I do is I spend my days helping people kind of take control of their lives by taking control of themselves. Something I call self influence. And what I like about self fluency is that it’s the power you already have to influence yourself.
You don’t need anything more. You don’t have to buy anything else. You don’t have to change anything. Like you already have these powers within you. It’s just tapping into that power that that you have. So I do have two kids as well. They’re kind of out of the nest. So I have a lot of time Um to to kind of work on my craft. And I worked from home for now, 27 years. And so that has also afforded me I’ve worked from home running businesses that had no daily operations. So that has afforded me a lot of time to kind of do research and test stuff out and figure things out. So I’m happy to be here today and I hope that I can share something that will help other people get results because I do feel like God has put me on the planet here to help people take control of their lives by taking control of themselves. Thank you for the introduction. Very, very good introduction. So, thank you for sharing it. There’s like three different one things that I want to talk to you about. So I guess that’s that’s that’s a good thing. Um the you mentioned the different versions of think and grow Rich, Would you like to share what the differences between what perhaps most people have read versus the version that you bought was?
Yeah, so, so most people read and I and I still have it a paperback version of the book, think and grow rich and it was actually, I came to find out. It was actually changed in 1960. Um Napoleon Hill actually lived in 1970. But it was it was written in the 20s, released in the 30s. And so what happened for me is when I opened up the book, the first page said, you know, what do you want most? And you know, I I was like, oh, I don’t remember that, you know? And then the first page goes on to tell you in great detail. This book is is not a novel, it’s not a story, it’s history, but it’s a textbook, it’s a textbook on the psychology of success, the psychology and the methodology of taking your thoughts, you know, and your desires and your strong desires and turning them into a reality. But that first page said before you read the book, get very, very clear on whatever it is you want, whether it’s money, fame, relationships, harmony, you know, whatever it is, getting super super clear and specific on what you want and very, you know, in as much detail as possible.
So that was the first page and then when you turn the page it tells you how to read the book. And so it basically it talks about this concept which you may be familiar with of the Mastermind group, which kind of says like when two minds come together, a third kind of unique, more powerful mind is created. So for example if we’re you know, talking about marketing and we’re talking about facebook marketing, you’re an expert at that, you know, and I said well you know I need some help on facebook marketing, maybe you come up with 10 ideas or maybe you’re 15 and I come up with five, you know, so that’s 20 but if we come together and pull those ideas instead of just 20 we’ll end up with 30 40 or 50 ideas. So the concept of the Mastermind group is one plus one doesn’t equal two, it equals 34, maybe five. And so this concept of you have to read the book and share, I ended up calling this your bring about statement, this is the thing, you’re trying to bring about, you have to share your bring about statement and you have to read it in community with at least one other person. Um and you have to read it in a certain way, no more than one chapter a day and it kind of outlines this whole kind of study club of reading the book.
And so what I did is I said, let’s do it. And so for five months in a row, you know, I did a study group where we went through the book as he recommended uh and it was in that process that you know, I was able to, you know, get you know, have that million dollar business appear in just five or six months. And when when the opportunity showed up for me too, grow my business rapidly, like I knew right away that was it and it actually came from from masterminding with other people. So those are the first big differences. Then as I read the book, I said, well wait a second, this, this whole experience is different and and one of the big difference was that he shouted a lot. So napoleon Hill wrote a lot of the many parts of the book, we’re in all caps, but most people read a version that wasn’t didn’t have that, it lost all that, so all caps, you know, that was that was a big change. And then I noticed that some of the chapters had changed and so when I, I was reading the book, so I happened to be a christian and and so there was mentions of jesus and things like that.
I’m like, well I would have remembered that in this other version, you know, and it wasn’t in there. So it’s made a little bit more politically correct and and things like that. So it was, it was interesting because then I found one person who printed that book, but then he passed away and I ended up having to go and and luckily um the very original, they call it the facsimile version with all the molding, you know, caps and all that stuff was available in the public domain. So I was able to pull that and make a derivative work where I took my study guide that I had created. Um and and chapter by chapter study guides. And I put all that in one book. And so that’s been kind of a joy to to publish and and make sure that people have access to that original, the original version. But those are the differences. And if you apply those differences, I find I find most people read the book and don’t get rich. But if you do these instructions, you’ll you’ll you will you will move towards riches. I I cannot never guarantee how far you go. But but a lot of that depends on your drive and your your ability to apply The 13 Principles within the book.
Thank you for sharing that and the deciding what you want or being very clear on what you want before you read. Is it makes total sense because you can in theory read the book and really not know what you want. And then, for example, the chapter and Perseverance or whatever it might be. Well it doesn’t apply to anything unless you originally. No. So um it doesn’t make sense. Are you aware of? Because Earl Nightingale read, think and Grow Rich, which presumably was the one you bought? Which version was it that he read? Is it the later one? So he actually read now. This came it’s going to be slightly dating myself here, but I got on an audio cassette, some some listeners might not even know what that is, but but an audio cassette which was limited in time. So it was a very abridged version. Um but what he, what he was reading to me, you know, sounded like the original, the original version, but but it wasn’t a bridge version, so it didn’t have any of the instructions and it didn’t even have kind of all the stories in there. But it led me to go by the book and then and then read it.
And then Earl, it was kind of a mentor of me through audio programs, lead the field, but he also did something called The Strangest Secret. Have you heard of that before from Earl Nightingale? I love it. The there’s a person who have quoted probably the most on on my podcast is our Nightingale. So I love it. Yes. So he said, you know this idea, I talked about white table when you think about you bring about kind of like the law of attraction with action. But but he was one of the genesis for me because he said, you know, we become what we think about that was like his strangest secret that people, you know should know or should apply, but but we’re not applying. And he won a lot of awards for that record that was to go pre cassette. That was, you know, I had that an LP, you know, vinyl record, which is when it came out and he won an award for the spoken word. I think it was the most sold album of spoken word ever. When it when it was when it came out. Yeah, he basically created a new industry with that, with the strangest secret. Is there any other inspirations that you took from him?
You know, I think in in listening to that the strangest secret kind of over and over and over. I I learned a little bit about storytelling and you know, how the mind works and, and really the power of the mind, I think from him. Um and the attitude was big, he was real big on on attitude and kind of controlling your attitude. I think that, you know, when you realize, hey, when I think about I bring about and you and you buy into that, you know, that then he kind of takes you into this next thing. So, so what are you thinking about? Right? And, and how do you control what you’re thinking about and especially right before big circumstances or, or big sales calls or big, big moments in your life, controlling that. Right before you know what you think about kind of right before you go into something, whether it’s uh, you know, something hard or something easy or something celebratory that that’s an important moment. So I think I learned learned quite a bit from him about that too. What are you thinking about at the moment in relation to bringing it about?
So, so I’ll tell you another story. Um, which I think the listeners, if they only do one thing, they only do one thing today. This would be the one thing. And so I ended up one of my bucket list items five years ago was to do a Ted x talk. And so I was quite scared about it. But, but I got the opportunity, somebody nominated me. And so I did this talk and I ended up doing the talk about white table. What you think about you bring about. And I told some emotional stories, which I usually, I’m not an emotional person. So that was kind of different. But anyway, so I, I do this talk. And, and in the end I had people, I passed out these cards and I talked about how your brain is, is a garden really, you know, and and and earl talks about this and what you plant, you know in that garden of your mind, that’s what’s gonna grow now. Now if you plant nothing, then weeds are gonna grow. And that’s even like worse because then you gotta pull the weeds or other people might plant stuff in your garden of the mind. Um, and I asked people, I said, we’ll write down on this card, you know what, what is something you want to bring about in your life?
So so just write it on the card. So everybody does that, they handed out these cards and pens. And then what I had everybody do is I had everyone uh take out their smartphones. Now now there might have been a few flip phones in the house, but, but almost everybody has a smartphone today and I had everybody take a picture of that card and make that they’re unlocked screen on their phone. So now I don’t know what you have on your unlocked screen. But typically when I ask people who haven’t, haven’t heard my talk, you know, it’s either nothing like the default screen or it’s like a picture they like could be the beach, could be family, could be friends, something that they like. But what I’m, what I asked you to do is put put that goal on there because it turns out that a company many, many years ago now, Apalachee tracks that you can see how many times you unlock your phone. But for the average person, it’s between 60 and 160 times a day that you see your unlocked screen. So if you’ll put your what what you’re trying to bring on.
So so for me I I started this year I started a kind of a a division of my company called self fluency, art and science of Influencing yourself. I started a new division and so my bring about statement is that I want to be serving 330 for business owners, which is, that’s who I primarily served by November 15. So so I have that on my unlock screen. I made a cool graphic using Canada and if anyone’s used that for Canada.com as a a free uh program that allows you to make cool graphics of certain sizes. So that that’s good. But that’s what I’m bringing about right now is is that I’m pouring into, You know, building that where I’m serving 330 for business owners to help them get what I call super results. And one of my strategies for that aside, bring about statement is to be a guest on podcasts. So, so what happened is, you know, using this methodology of what you think about you bring about? I said, Okay, let me get on some podcast, this will help me be a better speaker. Help me get my message out.
And I said I want to be on 52 podcasts this year. And so people at the beginning of the year, like, yeah, how many of you’ve been on, like, well in my whole life I’ve been on eight and so you know, uh that’s gonna be, people are like, yeah, that’s gonna be hard, you know? But, but anyway, I have a big, big linkedin group and then I also found something called pod match, which I think is where we might have met. Um, so I just started, I started that process and so now it’s april I’ve been on 11, I’ve been on 11, 12 now you are my 12th this year. Um but through those other sources, I have booked 29 other ones, so I, I’m, I’ve got over 40 that, that, that I’m either going to be on our books, so it’s not gonna be a problem, we’re gonna be okay. So, so I’m excited about that. But those are the things that I’m, I’m bringing about right now. How about you? What, what, what what things or, or things are you trying to kind of bring about? Well, firstly, I want to say, I have no doubt that you will reach that number whatsoever and thank you for sharing that.
Um it’s interesting because I asked, I told you before, should we say before we started recording that I’d be asking about what your goals are and the reason I asked that question is because I don’t actually have a clear goal that I want to achieve and that might be because, you know, I I I kind of have achieved something that I wanted to achieve already. And now I have to look for a new goal type thing. And so I’m looking for what that might be, which is why I asked the questions of what what your goals are. Um So yeah, any any thoughts on perhaps if you’re stuck and you’re looking for your new goal and you don’t have one yet, because that that would definitely help me. Yeah, I think there’s a few exercises that that we do in workshops to try to uncover, you know, a direction right for for you, you know, and so there’s a couple of different ones. one. Uh well, some people, some people use the eulogy one.
I don’t like that one where you kind of, you know, write your own eulogy and and all the things you accomplished. So I’m not a fan of that one. It’s a little on the negative side. I tried to tend to be more on the positive side. So instead, um I used to have this exercise about your 100th birthday. I have recently updated that as I aged to 100 and 40th birthday party. So you envision that you’re attending your 120th birthday party now you got to lean muscle mass, you’re looking good, there’s been some scientific advantages here. You still have full faculties. So it’s not, it’s not a bad 120 it’s a good 120 but you’re at this party and you’re kind of on the side watching, you’re, you’re sitting up there and one by one, people are coming up. People from your family, people from your maybe business community, people from your regular community and they’re talking about what you did and the contributions that you made. Um and so that exercise of of kind of living that out tends to help you, you know, figure figure that out, figure out maybe what direction you want to go, you know, in your life.
So that that’s one, another 11 of my favorites is called the powerball test. Now, now in the United States, we have this thing called the powerball, but most countries have like this big lottery that you could win. Alright, so whatever the big lottery is here, the powerball can, you know, routinely get to $500 million. And so envision that you win and you’re the only winner, so you win $500 million. Now, what happens is the government’s gonna take a couple 100 million of that, but let’s say you still have 300 million, so you have 300 million. And the first thing you’re gonna do is, you’re gonna party like crazy. So you’re gonna go out, you’re gonna party, you’re gonna travel the world, you’re gonna buy the house, the castles, you’re gonna buy friends cars, you’re gonna just do all the partying and spending all that stuff and you’re gonna do that for a year. So a year ago by goes by and you do all that stuff and at the end of that year and you give money to charities and you set up, you know, all the mission work, everything you want to do, but a year later, you still have 100 million in the bank and you get up and it’s a year later and what would you do that? There’s no more celebrating is no more party.
Everybody’s taken care of everything is done. What would you do then with your life at that moment? And it’s interesting And in live workshops, when we go around the room, 90% of the room says I would help people blank. Now the blank is different based on your experience, what what your experience is. But, but most of the people are like, I would help people, like, like, so, so I would help people take control of their lives by taking control of themselves. So even so when I say to my wife, you know, you know, we, we talk about this and I’m like, yeah, if I want the powerball, I would still do thomas’s podcast, like it’s what I really want to do, what I feel like I’ve been gifted and called to do. Um, so, so sometimes that powerball test can be very, very helpful. The last test that I use is a business kind of experience where whatever here the Wall Street Journal is, is like the big business publication. But you think about some period out in the future, three years, five years, whatever you want, let’s say five years out in The Wall Street Journal is going to do an article about you.
What is the headline, Right? What what is the headline? You know, and you know, so, so for me it could be, you know, America’s Chief results officer, you know, helps millions of business owners, you know, get results or something like that. So you come up with the title of that and then some people go on to bullet point based on how much time you want to give it a bullet point the article. And then some people actually write the article. And it’s interesting over the next months that follow to to see how what you’ve envisioned in that article begins to show up, right begins to show up. But for you, you know, I would say you got to pick something and don’t delay long do make a prompt decisive decision and then move in that direction. And if it’s wrong, that’s okay because if it’s wrong, you’ll know you won’t have the motivation, you won’t, you won’t want to get up early to do it. And that’s OK. But you’ve learned in the process of moving. Um but but where you are, it’s a dangerous position after you accomplish the big goal uh and the great study about astronauts before they’re allowed to go into space.
And especially before they’re allowed to go like to the moon, they had to have a set of goals that they were gonna have once they got back because when they had that big goal, there was this huge depression that happened after they kind of achieved their lifetime goal, which was to go to space. Um So it is important, you’re in, you’re in a dangerous spot thomas, you’ve got to find something, find something new and you might have something in the back of your head, I think, well, I am, it’s it’s thank you for touching on it because I do feel like perhaps I’ve been, I’ve been here not having a clear long term goal for a while, so I appreciate the but you make a good point, which is you said that you would have come on the podcast regardless. And, you know, when you when you told me about that, what would you do if you had 100 million in the bank type thing? I probably would have to start a podcast at that point. So it is very possible that I’d be doing exactly this. Yeah, so it could be a little more, you know, have a little more bling involved with it all. But you know, it’s yeah, you would you would do it, but maybe, you know, at a bigger level or something.
Right? So, so yeah and some of what you’re doing now, I mean you know very few podcasts make it to the length and size of yours. So you know you have a pretty good, pretty good thing going here and you have a unique, I like I called dry snarky way of interviewing people which which I think is is a lot of fun and enjoyable to listen to. I also want wanted to pick up on something which he said about because Earl talks about this as well in the sense that you mentioned, I would help people with X. I think he called it blank and he he said that I think it’s in being in service to others. So the reason we’re here is to be said to be of service to other people. Um So there is a there is very much a theme here with Earl and your approach which I which I love but I do before we move on, I do want to ask you about the results because you’re the Chief results officer and um I do I do love that kind of accountability. So um what would you share on on getting results?
Yeah, I think um so let’s talk about one of the things we can talk about is what I like to call the 30 minute hour. So let’s talk about getting results. So the 30 minute hour is how to get an hour’s worth of stuff done in just 30 minutes, right? So we want to compress time now, who doesn’t want to compress time? Everybody wants to compress time. But in this idea of self influence, you know, which is kind of, you know, the art signs of influencing yourself. Kind of the power you already have. You know how to do it, you already know how to compress time. Uh and and so we’re gonna tell your we’re gonna share now so that you and your listeners can have these these 30 minute hours. But I just want to, you know, preface it by saying you already know how to do it Now before we tell everybody the secret of the 30 minutes power. What I want to do is I want to talk about the reward side. So let’s say thomas that right now, I’m gonna show you how to do this and you do it, you do it for For four hours in a row. So you have these 4:30 minute hours and you just saved two hours of time.
So my question is to you is, what kind of, what would you do with it with an extra two hours of guilt free guilt free time on your hands. So for me, like I like the peloton bike, I might go for a long peloton bike ride, I do, like walks, I do kind of like to take a nap nap is good. Um reach out to friends. Like sometimes I feel like I don’t reach out enough to friends so I would probably, those would be some of the things I would do with my my guilt free to two hours of time. What about you? What what would you do in that case where you had to two hours of guilt free time. Like the guilt free thing because I immediately thought I’d just do more work if I had to, if it was like you know you really don’t need to you need to take some time away from work right now. I do a walk. Nice nice. Okay and walking is really good balances. The hemispheres of the brain especially walks in nature are are awesome so that’s good. Alright so there is for people like I said you already know how to do it. There is this day for some people a couple of times a year that you have this day where you are 3 to 10 times more productive than average.
And now we’re just looking for two X. We’re just looking to take 60 minutes, compress it down to 30 that’s two X. But on this day you’re 3 to 10 times more productive than an average day. Now. Do you know which day? Uh you know of the year? That is? I do not. You do not. Okay. Alright this is good then. So this is something new but once I tell you you’re gonna know it’s like it’s going to be the moment of dawning comprehension. So the most productive day of the year for most people is the day before vacation. So now think about that for a little bit. The day before vacation is a different day than other days. And so what I’d like to do is is to have people think about that. Like what do you do the day before vacation? That’s different than the other day. So so for you, I don’t know if you, hopefully you’re getting some vacations here, but but do you remember, you know um you know these days before vacation for yourself? Um I’m not, I’m not a big holiday guy. So I I tend to take my work on holiday with me, but I can appreciate how other people do take holidays and vacations.
And also there’s a spring in the step as well there. Yeah. So when you’re thinking about the, like if you’re going away somewhere, even if you take your work with you, there’s a lot of things that that have to happen kind of that day before vacation. And so let’s let’s unpack it a little bit. So what I’d like to tell people is that I have a little acronym for pdf now. Now Pdf stands for portable document format. Everyone knows, hey go print out the pdf or email me the P. D. F. So I wanted to use those initials P. D. F. So you can remember, you know, the 30 minute hour equals the day before vacation equals P. D. F. So Pdf stands for plan delegate and focus. And so what happens is these, these um, these days before vacation and where you can use that to compress time kind of without the stress of of the day before vacation is first planning. So P stands for planning. And the most important thing you do is never let a day end without planning the next one. But what happens is in the day before vacation, you only have a certain amount of time. So you plan that day out maybe even get up 30 minutes early, but, but you’re planning that day out because you don’t have time, there’s a lot of things you don’t do on the day before vacation chit chat, you know, gets stuck on the internet, gets stuck responding to emails, whatever you keep moving, but but you plan that day.
So so planning is key. You get up early and you typically have a clear vision, like you have mapped out that day really, really well a lot of times I tell people, you know, um would you, you know, let’s say you’re getting on an airplane and as you go by the cockpit you look in, there’s no pilot and so you sit down and then the flight attendant comes on and says, you know, there’s, there’s no pilot today. Uh And and so how long are you going to stay on that plane with no pilot. Right? Or or worse, the flight attendant says, I think I’m gonna try to fly, you’re out of there, you’re getting off that plane. Well that’s the same thing people do when they don’t plan the day. Uh And Earl was a big big fan of planning the day, but but you’ve got to plan the day, otherwise it’s like you’re boarding a flight with no pilot. And so bad things are gonna happen if you don’t have a plan. So planning is the first key to having the 30 minute hours. So you, so you plan out, you’ve got a clear vision number two is delegated. So what happens is on the day before vacation as new things come up or you realize all these things you have to do, you think who before the do, so you think who before the do, so you’re thinking who could do this besides me.
And you’re delegating a lot of stuff. Typically you’re going away. So you have to delegate all kinds of things. And so the 30 minute hour, many times that compression of time comes from that awareness and and delegating to other people, you’re deferring, You’re delegating, it’s not as important as you think and many things, the 80 20 rule would say 80% of things are not as important as you think they are. Uh and the 20% is much more important, you know, than the other 80. So you’re doing a lot of delegating and differing. So that’s the d so plan delegate and the most important is focused at the f so focus what I like to call fierce focus is that the day before vacation, some things are happening, you you don’t chitchat, there’s not a lot of idle time, like you stay moving, you stay focused during that day, you say no a lot, you say no, a lot more of the day before he goes, no, no, I’m going on vacation. You know, I have a little sign here says, you know, day before vacation to remember that as I’m going through through as I’m going through my day and typically that day you use timers.
So I use a lot of timers, like I say, well I’m gonna check my email for 30 minutes or 15 minutes, or I’m gonna look at getting booked on podcasts for 30 minutes and I’ll set a timer, I’ll just tell Siri on my iphone, you know, set a timer for 30 minutes. She’ll do that for me. So you use timers a lot. That’s a great way to kind of compress, compress time. The other big thing that happens on the day before vacation is that you use tasking and and and tasking, there’s single tasking, multitasking and batch tasking, you use all three. So single tasking is when you let’s say you have to do something, you know, um and it takes all your focus, you know, you need to edit a podcast or you need to to write some sales copy or something like that. It needs all your focus. That’s single tasking. And you you shut out the world, especially the day before vacation instead of an hour to to do that thing you say, I only have 30 minutes. So if I’m only have 30 minutes, I’ve got to turn off all the rings, dings and bangs, I gotta get in here, I gotta get this thing done. I gotta focus.
Um So you’re really shutting out the world. Single tasking, multitasking. You’re doing that the day before vacation where you do two things at once, Right? So if I’m like, I want to spend time with my family, but I want to get exercise in. Ok, so we go play tennis for an hour. I just did both of those for an hour. So it’s like, you know that, you know, there there’s a, you know, 2 30 minute hours, There are 30 minutes hours, right? Right? They’re blended in to to form one hour. So, so you’re looking at where can you do two things at once? Like um the day before vacation you say, well, I’ve got an hour driving in the car, you’re not just gonna be listening to music, you’re gonna be making calls, getting stuff done, listening to maybe a podcast you wanted, you’re looking for times and ways to do two things at once. That don’t hurt the, you know, that your, your ability to get production on, on either one of those things. Uh and then the final one is batch testing and that’s where You batch together things that that that go together or have the same context. For example, if I had five phone calls to make today, I wouldn’t make one do something else, make another, do something else.
I, I batch them all together and say, Okay, I got five calls to make, I’ve got one hour, let’s go where I’ve got 15 minutes, 10 minutes each go. You know, and so your matching that stuff together or running errands, you’re gonna, hey, I’ve got three errands to run, let’s do them all together. That’s the most efficient. So its efficiency of doing the computer work all at the same time, doing the phone work or, or you know, doing the errand work or having meetings, you’re kind of patching it all together and then other, you know, tricks are, you’re using technology, right? So there are ways to use technology like apps For example, I rarely listen to podcasts at regular speed. You know, I’m listening at 1.3 same thing with audible and and books. So I’m looking for technology to, to help me and I think the overriding thing That happens the day before vacation, you know, you’re planning, you’re delegating, you’re focused. But you kind of release the perfectionist, right? You release the perfectionist. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to get done. And so when you bring all those things together, it’s pretty easy to get more stuff done.
So get more results and to have those 30 minutes hours. So any questions about that, about the pdf? I love it. I think there’s an awful lot of value in your answer as well. The thing I was going to say more of a, more of a joke than anything is that people could listen to me on two times speed but they wouldn’t be able to do that with you. Yes, I I I do, I do try to put a lot of words in, you know, you pack a lot in a lot of, a lot of value into your answers. Yeah. Yes, yes, I am a fast talker. So maybe for us we have to go to the point point eight speed at times. Well, do you, how often do you use all these principles would you say? Yeah, I mean I’m using everything on a daily basis on a daily basis. I’m using these principles. I, you know, I think some of the habits that I created, that’s why another big, you know, thing for people and and results as habits. But I’ve created some habits that, you know, planning my day is probably one of the bigger ones that and I and I like to do it in the afternoon of the day before, and then I kind of I kind of lived my life a little bit a day ahead because I’m already kind of working on things for tomorrow, and so so I think habits are a big one, but yes, I’m using these principles on a on a daily basis and and sharing them with people pretty much on a daily basis to and for those people who don’t plan their day ahead, what would they, what would they gain as a result of doing that?
Yeah, I think, you know, you have to, I try to meet people where they are uh and and so I think that if they, you know, you don’t want to be totally structured, so, so I I plan my day, but I don’t plan every minute of my day, but wherever you are in the planning process, taking one step and then see how it feels. So all this stuff with um with self influences, kind of self evident, like there’s research studies and I can get psychological studies and I actually got to study with this guy dr robert Sheldon, who lives here in the phoenix area and influence and there are social psychology studies and and productivity studies, there’s a lot of studies and science out there and and you know, I I read that stuff and but most importantly, is, is it self evident to you when you do it, so I would say if you’re not a planner, try it out, try it out and and and try just getting a piece of paper and saying tomorrow, here’s the top thing or here’s the top two or three things that I’d like to get done tomorrow. And then if you can try to get them done earlier in the day, see if that’s a better day for you and and then if you want then you take one step further and then one step further and one step further.
I have a technique, probably One of my favorite actually techniques. I have something called the 21 2nd habit and it’s how to create a new habit in 21 seconds, not 21 days. So if they told you it takes 21 days, somebody lied to you. Um but again uh we were all like super habit masters and and and we just need to tap into that. So so for example this 21 2nd habit, I tell the story about my wife who she used to have migraine, headaches and she had to keep this log, you know of like what she ate and what was the weather that day? And when did she get the migraine? And and she could only do it for a few days and then she’d lose the log. Uh And so you know, or you know, she’d forget to do it and then I would ask her about it when she had a migraine. Well bad news don’t do that. Uh So that was funny. But but anyway in the end what we figured out? He said, look You’re already a habit master at brushing your teeth. And I asked people, you know, most people brush their teeth at least once a day, some people twice and she was twice a day. And so we did we put the headache log with the toothbrush every time she brushed her teeth she would fill out the log and she went like 90 days in a row filling that log out, you know?
And that changed the medication. That changed everything. And now she she she rarely has a migraine headache, which is awesome. But this idea of habit linking, that’s the key. And so back to the story of the plan or what I tell people if they don’t plan at all. I say look if you don’t have a plan for tomorrow and you’re going to bed and you’re brushing your teeth, leave a pad of paper and a pen next to the toothbrush. And while you brush your teeth, dentists recommend two minutes during that two minutes just map out a few things for your day tomorrow. See how that feels. Uh you know and most people will say that that’s great and and after a few days of that, you know, they’ll miss the day here or there. But after a few days then they’ll they’ll want to make that planning a part of their life now some people do it the opposite they like to do in the morning. And so I say, what’s the first thing to do in the morning? I’m just talking with the business owner a few weeks ago and she’s like, I have a cup of coffee. I say, how often do you have the coffee every day? So you’re a habit master drinking coffee in the morning? Yes, if I don’t have it, I go crazy. So I said, here’s the deal. If your, your little list for the day, your next day planning if it’s not done by coffee time, you have to do it either while you’re having the coffee or you could surf that urge to have the coffee and say it has to be done before your first sip of the coffee.
She didn’t go for that one, but she went for, I’ll do it while I drink my coffee, you know, and then she’s been, you know, a number of days in a row. So this idea of habit linking um that’s my, one of my favorites. I have a habit, my my top habits I’ve linked to. Um Well, well for me I linked it to my smartphone. I have a habit master opening my smartphone in the morning every morning happens. Uh And so when I open my smartphone, there’s only a few apps and I have to do those before I can touch anything else, look at text messages, email, news, whatever. And so my streak now is about 1470 days in a row that I’ve done take one examples of mind shower, like most people take a physical shower, you know, but how often do you wash your mind? So in the morning I like a 10 minute mindshare and if I’m short on time I’ll do a three minute mind shower, but every morning, you know, for you know, 1400 mornings I’ve got this mind shower that where I’ve kind of cleaned my mind up. So anyway, that might have been too much of an answer for you. But you know, I think that hopefully that’s helpful for people.
The great principle and I’ve not heard it before, habit linking and totally see how, how it would work as well because it’s a little anchor to essentially remind you that what this needs to be done and just linking it to an existing habit that you’re already doing. So yeah, thank you for sharing. I will definitely use it. Yeah. And the power, it’s even more powerful if you can link it to some kind of an urge that you have to do something that’s a natural like like having a cup of coffee right? Or my urge that I want to check my other things on my phone right? If you can surf some kind of an urge that kind of even gives you more power to, to kind of promptly get that thing done so that you can get to your cup of coffee or brushing your teeth or whatever that thing is that you that you want. It’s brilliant. Thank you. Is there anything that I should have asked you about today? Um No, I I think the only other thing that that I did want to touch upon it and maybe even have a short conversation you know, with, with you about is this idea of social entrepreneurship, this idea that businesses like a, well the one that I liked early on was tom’s shoes, you buy a pair of shoes and the company gives a pair of shoes to someone that needs a pair of shoes.
My wife and and family went on a mission trip and came back and and wanted to help kids and we’re like, well we’re not good at charity, but we’re good at business. So we created a greeting card company that every time you purchase a greeting card, you know child gets nursed. Um So so anyway, I like that and I and I noticed that you were doing that. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about about that and and and see how did you come about that and how did you and why did you kind of even bake it into your business initially, it was actually something that I did personally. So I had just one sponsored child that I was that I sponsored for for years and I actually hadn’t implemented it into any anything because I actually wasn’t in business at the time when I started I was an employee. Um and as I when I went into business you know a few years later it started to do better and better. And I introduced the idea of every single new client that we get on we sponsor a child. So each client has has their own their own sponsored child.
And the the nice thing that one of my staff members lucy implemented was because you get a picture every time we sponsor a child. So now we’ve got a picture of all of our Children sort of up on a big clipboard and it starts starts to really kind of make an impact on the on the mind where you’re and some people refer to it as like the reason why like a powerful reason why you’re in business but in terms of you know another another accountability perhaps you know if you know if you don’t feel like going into work then there’s another reason you know some people relying on you to keep that keep that going so and you know very rewarding. So those those are the kinds of reasons why. Nice, I love that and I didn’t have the I didn’t have the detail the depth there of how it’s a the client gets you know has this one and and then actually you know if you share that with the client, oh by the way, here’s yours. It’s you know, it’s a little sally you know like that that makes it real. So that that is awesome.
You know, congratulations on on that as well. So yeah I love that. And I went um I I also I went to stanford for a couple of weeks. I didn’t I didn’t graduate from stanford graduate from Purdue University but I went there a couple of weeks to study social entrepreneurship because I I really do like it and I think it’s a way unlike charity, which kind of the state flat, how much people give the you know businesses, you know, can can make a big impact, bye bye. Kind of like you are baking it right into the business so you know, well well done. But that was the only other thing that I wanted to uh to just make sure I understood today. Well thank you. It’s good to talk about it and like I said it’s it’s rewarding for for people who do want to go down that route. But I think you’ve given a massive amount of value today. So I really appreciate that. And I’m sure your your other podcast episodes will be just as good. But for people who let’s say they want to connect with you, where do they go? Yeah. I think the easiest is just um go to blame ted X.
So B. L. A I N E ted T E D. X dot com. And that’ll get you my ted X talk. Which I think is really quite good. I think I’m getting close to 200,000 views there. But but then you’ll be connected to me. You get my email, you can learn about me and I’d like to help you get results. I do have kind of a results community where I put out articles and and some of the mastermind groups I work with as their chief results officer. I write articles every month for their publications and I send that out to my results tribe as well. So yeah we could be connected that way. Did I really liked the Ted X talk as well. So congratulations on doing that and for your for your contribution and for being a great guest today. Blaine, thank you very much. All right thank you thomas.