Cool trick to help entrepreneurs get the stuff done that they don’t like to do.
On today’s episode Russell talks about taking personality tests and finding out valuable information about himself and his wife. He goes on to share what he learned about himself and how he’s using it to keep himself motivated to complete tasks.
Here are some of the fun things you will hear in this episode:
So listen below to find out what kind of personality Russell has and how knowing will help him with his business.
---Transcript---
Hey everyone, good morning. I hope you guys are doing awesome today. I’m out driving in a winter wonderland, which is really cool except for the fact that the sun shines off the white snow and it’s totally blinding me, it’s killing me.
So I’m excited for a couple of reasons. One is we are super close to launching our Marketing In Your Car Free MP3 player. I know you’ve been hearing it on the outro for a little while. I thought it was going to be shipped here from China faster than it was, and it took forever and now we have it sitting in a warehouse and I haven’t had a chance to write the video, but soon.
In fact, I think the first week in January we’re going to launch it. So it’ll be a free mp3 player with the first 250 episodes. If we do this it’s going to bring a lot more of our friends and family into the Marketing In Your Car fold, which I’m excited for. I did a podcast a little while ago talking about the strategy behind what we’re going to do and now we’re actually doing that. So it’s going to be kind of cool to see that and hopefully grow our member base substantially and get more people listening while they’re in their car. So it’ll be cool.
Now what I want to share with you guys today, I had a really cool Voxer conversation back and forth with Dana Derricks, which is one of our inner circle members, about a concept. I thought it was super cool and I just wanted to share it with you guys, because I think it’s important. He messaged me saying, “As I’m getting more and more successful and I see you, how do you justify doing something? How do you justify going to the DMV? How do you justify going and getting a haircut? Because the opportunity cost of your time is so much higher. You go get a haircut, you’re driving there, driving back, an hour of your time. If you were to pay a client that, you would have charged them $10 grand for that hour or $5 grand, or whatever that is. Instead you’re doing this whole thing. It’s way cheaper to pay someone to come to your house and cut your hair while you’re working so you don’t have to slow down.” Or if the pool breaks down you gotta go home and sit by the pool for two hours waiting for the pool guy to come and fix it. How do you justify those kind of things?
And I was like, that’s interesting and I started thinking about that from my point of view and it’s funny, recently I’ve been doing all these cool personality tests to learn more about myself, which I recommend for everybody. I did the 16 personality for my wife and for me. We got some crazy cool insights from that. One of them, I’ll just share with you guys to hopefully give you an idea of the kind of gems and gold you can find through here.
One of my wife and I’s frustrations we have with each other is a lot of times I’ll say something like, “Hey, what do you think about this?” and she’ll be like, “I don’t know.” And she always goes straight to I don’t know, and it used to drive me crazy. You gotta think about it for a little bit. And when she did the 16 personality tests, one of her personality traits was, there’s one like how we do things based on more thinking or more feeling.
And James Friel, who was out here with us doing the Trello stuff with us the other day, he had us take this personality test. And my wife’s was very much like, she makes decisions based on feeling not on thinking. So it was 80% was feeling and he had kind of a similar situation, except he’s flipped, he’s thinking not feeling. And he said that Yada, his girlfriend, when she’d say, “What do you feel like having for dinner.” He’d be like, “I don’t know, I don’t feel anything for dinner.” And she’d be like, “What do you think you want for dinner?” he’d be like, “I want this.”
For him, if he said thinking vs feeling, it would automatically just, his brain could comprehend that. Then he could think exactly what he wanted to think. It was hard for him with “What do you feel like for dinner?” “I don’t feel anything for dinner. I don’t know.” So my wife is the opposite. So the other night I said something like, “What do you think about this?” and she’s like, “I don’t know.” And I was like wait, “What do you feel like, how does that make you feel?” and it opened up this huge conversation. This little tweak and it was huge. So there’s buried gold in these personality tests.
16 Personalities is cool. The other cool one is the Disc Profile. So Mandy on our team does a whole bunch of really cool things for the inner circle members, she’s one of the….me and her kind of coach inner circle. She does more personal development standpoint, I do the marketing standpoint. Together we’re a super cool ninja team that make people even more amazing than they already are, if that’s possible. But Mandy makes everyone take a Disk Profile. When I took mine one thing she told me that’s in there is basically I’m a big believer, or I have to have a positive ROI on things or else I don’t want to do them.
I started thinking about that and I’m like, that’s kind of true. If I don’t see an ROI on something, it drives me crazy and I can’t do it. From a religious standpoint, honestly why I struggle reading scriptures and things like that, because I’m reading it, but what’s the point of it? So for me, I’m building in these forced ROI things for me to do what I need to do. For example, and this is more the churchy side, because it illustrates it really well for me.
For example, when I speak at church, and I have to prepare that week, I’ll focus on reading, I’ll enjoy it so much, studying and get ready because I know that at the end of it I’ve got to give this presentation, so there’s this ROI. The reason I’m doing this is so I can give a really good presentation at the end. Now obviously I don’t speak every week at church, the way Mormon church works, you speak once every 5 years and everyone gets a chance. So it’s like, alright 5 years from now, I’m going to get speaking opportunities, that’s not going to work. So what I’m starting to do is I’m working on launching my own podcast where basically I will throughout the week study and learn and I’ll be creating a talk and I’ll give that on the podcast and that’ll be my ROI. That’s what I’ll be looking forward to. I’ll be working because I have to have this thing for the podcast. Now there’s an ROI, now I can justify in my brain, why you do this or that. Things like that.
Anyway, that’s just an example. But everything in my life. What’s the ROI? As Dana asked me that, I started telling him, “you know, for me, first off, it’s hard. I got a new car and I was supposed to go to the DMV. I didn’t for two years, I just drove around with plates that didn’t work. Me going to the DMV opportunity cost was so….there was no ROI, it was useless.” One of the ways it’s useful is if I get pulled over. I’m just not going to get pulled over. And I didn’t for two years. Finally someone on my team forced me to go. They took me there and forced me to sit down and I got it done. But it was two years of driving without whatever the DMV’s supposed to give you.
The pool example, I kind of told him, “Well you know if the pool, for me to go sit and wait for the pool guy for two hours, it’s going to drive me nuts. There’s no positive ROI other than the pool works. So for me it’s like, what’s the benefit for my wife and kids? What’s the ROI for them? Oh here you go, I have a chance to spend two hours with them. I’m going to sit there and whatever that is. But that’s an ROI, it’s not fixing the pool, it’s the time with my kids. And as soon as I can justify that and make that, then I’m like, cool I can do this because this is the ROI for me and my brain.”
And I never thought about the hair cutting thing, I’m actually getting my hair cut today, so I thought that was kind of funny. It is kind of a waste of an hour of my day. Just to go get my hair cut, I should pay my girl to come here and cut my hair while I’m working on the treadmill or something, I don’t know. It would be kind of funny.
Anyway, I just thought it was interesting. For you guys, as entrepreneurs probably a lot of your brain works similar to mine, where you need that positive ROI. So sometimes when you’re struggling to get something done, at least for me, it’s because I can’t see that. So I have to associate what is the ROI that I’ll get from this. If it’s something I’m excited by I can go do it and I can conquer it. That’s why this book that I’ve been killing myself to get it done, I know the ROI on the other side of it, is the only thing that keeps me moving. Because there is so much pain associated with writing a book for me. But I know in my mind what the ROI is. From a financial, from a transformational, all the things that I care about and why I’m doing it. I see that ROI and it’s what drives me to keep moving forward.
Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you guys today because I thought it was important and hopefully you guys can start attaching ROI’s to things that you’re struggling with. And I think if you do that it’s going to give you the motivation that you need to get those things done. So there you go. With that said, take some personality tests cause that’s cool too. Alright, appreciate you all. Have an amazing day and I’ll talk to you guys soon.