Hello, this is Christy Whitman with the Quantum Success Show
where you can get your information and inspiration to create your desires
and today I have a friend. I have an amazing person I cannot wait to
introduce you to.
Eben Pagan launched his first online business from his bedroom in 2001
and beginning with the ebook of all things
for dating advice and his company grew to over ten brands. Its so impressive
selling
more than a hundred million dollars worth of training and information products
with over 70 employees all a hundred percent virtual.
No office, thank you, great commute. Today Eben reaches
entrepreneurs around the world to grow their businesses through his online
training courses
and he also invests in and advises high-growth startups including
Entre Sports, Splash, Inflection, and On Gig. So
Eben I am excited that you're here. It's great to be here.
Real excited. So you know I know that we're going to talk a little bit about
creativity and productivity today but
why is creativity is so important today
and how can you make yourself more kinda creative in a way that really builds your
business?
Creativity is a
is a really interesting concept. A friend of mine wrote an article
not to long ago saying that he believes that creativity
is going to be the most important skill in the future.
They did a big survey.. I think it was IBM did a huge survey
fortune 500 CEOs and they came back and they said
creativity is the key skill the have.
Like even more important and things like leadership and
so forth. WOW! And I think if you look at you look at the most successful companies
that have sprouted up over the last ten twenty years
you just see a massive amount of creativity. I'm on a big Steve Jobs kick.
Every year or two I kinda go back into
you know watching his stuff and reading his stuff and I am right in the middle it
again and he was an incredibly creative human being and
I think if you look at the word creativity you know it
in you really ask what is creativity? What does the word mean? You notice that the
root is the word create
mmm... a lot of us think that creativity is just about coming up
lots of ideas but creativity is actually about creating thing. It's about
coming up with new combinations and putting things together in new ways
that are really valuable to other people. So you didn't create something
and it wasn't valuable to someone else then it wasn't creative as far as I'm
concerned. It's not just brainstorming. It's actually making stuff that other people
will find
more valuable. I love that definition of that. That is great and I love the aspect of it
it to because
you know it's not just being creative and thinking about things it's actually
implementing, taking action and making something happen. Like putting things
out there. So I love that. So how can you get done
more in a day and specifically how can you be more productive
in a way that leads to growing your business and your income?
Well right now one of the things I say sometimes
when I speak is I'll ask the audience... I'll say what is the number one priority
in business right now?Or what's the number one priority in business?
and you know they'll yell out things like profit,
and growth and you know managing people or hiring talent or creating
you know good products or something like that and I say no, the number one priority
right now
is distraction and interruption. That's the number one priority
meaning that we're inundated
with communication right and the professionals out there
are figuring out new ways to grab our attention you know in these
tall buildings in the middle big cities everywhere. There just sitting
all day long split testing ways to grab your attention.
Which we're all doing as marketers you know as well and so what we have to do is we have
to ask ourselves
okay how do we prevent distraction and we prevent interruption?
How do we keep our mind and our attention focused on things
in our business that create the most value and
to kink of cut to the chase of what creates the most value if you're wondering
it's usually working on your product making it better, making it more of what
your customers want
and you do that by talking to customers and asking what their you know their pains and
their
ah their fears and their desires and all of these kinds of things are and then work on the
marketing.
Working on communicating in a way that gets more customers
to kinda call you. So to... when you when you put all that together what you
kinda realizes that oh, you know what I've been doing what most people have
been doing. What I've been doing is waking up in the morning and going and checking my text
messages
or going and reading my email or listening to my voicemail or
you know getting on everyone else's agenda essentailly. Seeing what they all have
for me
and then we get caught up and go down those radicals for several hours
were fighting fires and maybe by the afternoon when we remember
oh yeah there's that part of my business called making money.
Maybe I should go pay attention to that for a few minutes. We've already burned up a lot of
our energy and our willpower
and creativity too...... exactly and we've spent it all on
other people's stuff. you know on on their ideas, on things that they need.
um and its fine you know to meet other people's needs but
your business you know if it's not not growing and its not making money then
it's not really a successful business. so we have to to prioritize that.
If our businesses doesn't succeed and we don't succeed; we can help anyone.
You know but if our business succeeds highly that we can. So what I recommend that people do
is set aside the first at least two hours at their workday
where they don't check email, they don't check voicemail,
they don't go get on everyone else agenda but they put that time when they
have their
their focus. They have the energy. They have the will power. They have their
creativity
and they invest that time improving their product and talking to the customer.
Improving their marketing. In creating their next best thing.
If you do that, if you just take your first couple hours before you got on
other people's agendas and you do that systematically, you make it a practice
in your business you can you can dramatically increase your success.
So it that what you would recommend to you know actually do with your time during
the work day to produce the most value in profit or is there other things that you
recommend too?
Thats....... Well even more important than that actually we can go upstream a little bit
further
is to make the very first part of your day about yourself.
so you know I recommend people create what I call a personal success ritual.
Before they create their business success ritual.
In other words create a practice every day where you take the for 60 to 90 minutes
and you do something that rejuvenates you and brings your
kind of brings peace and brings serenity
and brings your awareness.. see when you first wake up in the morning
you just had ideally 7,8,9 hours of
completely disconnecting from all of that stuff that your doing
doing during the day and your mind settles you know you're dreaming your
pruning
connections that you don't need anymore and your cementing the ones that
are going to be more for the long-term. You're resting your body.
So when you first wake up the last thing you want to do is go and
you know again read your email and get yourself all worked up.
Get yourself worried about the 47 things on your checklist to do. So
I recommend spend the first 60 to 90 minutes going for a walk,
doing some exercise. Taking the time to
bring your attention and just be calm and focused.
If you do that the important things you need to do will come to you
during that time. Yes.... I
you know I just had a daughter. I had my first child about 11 months ago
oh...congratulations
yeah and I thought ut oh, this is this is going to be a little challenge for my
morning ritual.
yes... But what I did is I adapted so you know
within the first basically the first week she was born
I started waking up definitely earlier than I used to.
She likes to wake up when the Sun comes up. yes... but I strap her on and
and we go out for a walk anywhere from one to two hours
and she for the most part just likes to
you know look around and sometimes she gets out walks
a little bit but it's a really nice time and having a you know a big baby strapped on you and
walking
it's good exercise.... exercise and honestly
my you know my objective I actually do creativity exercises when I am walking to
kinda warm my mind up and you know the one or two or three important things
that I need to get done that day
they just occur to me. They pop into my mind even though I'm not
again checking my email or looking at my voicemail. I don't do any of that stuff.
I don't
I don't check my email and I don't check my voice mail and I don't check my text messages
when I first wake up. I go for a walk with my child. Then when I come home I know
what I need to do. You know... so create personal success ritual.
Do something that really rejuvenates and charges you up in the morning
so that you know what your affirming to yourself, what your
affirming to reality.
What you are affirming kind of to being is that
your your attention is key. Like
having your having your own energy for yourself
that you can direct into the things that are important and if you affirm that to yourself
every single day as the first thing that you do, it just sets everything right.
You know it prioritizes everything correctly. You have more to give to your
partner, to your child, to your business when you when you're filled
from within. There's you you know it's like one of my teacher's says you're giving
from the saucer
because the cup is full and its full its you know so your now giving from the saucer
instead of the cup.
Okay, so Eben I love that you talk about
um you know that that it's really important to become at least competent
with sales & marketing in business. Can you explain that?
Yeah, most people when they
get into business they look at salespeople and marketers as kind of
second-class
people and they think that it's something that you
you know you get somebody that has a low sense of
morality and ethics to do if you have to
and that's only if your selling cars or real estate or vacuum cleaners door-to-door
kind of thing. Right....
The reality is that a professional sales and marketing;
the kind where you bring intention,
attention and you bring everything you got to it. You bring your heart to it.
It's actually very powerful and most customers
they don't know how to make a decision. They don't know how to compare your
product/service to
other products and services services. They don't know how to
value things and the process of learning professional sales marketing
is really helping to.... helping customers to understand
what your product can do for them in a way that motivates them
to buy. Now from the outside sometimes some of the more powerful direct marketing
and sales techniques
they can feel a little intense or a little bit intimidating
um but really um essentially no one that I know
that I've trained that's learned professional sales and marketing
really gotten it as ever turned back around and said
you know what marketing and sales still sucks and
it's still bad stuff but I don't want to do it. right.... Once they learn it
they realize oh, this is actually not that hard and it's not the kind of thing
where I have to
be rejected all the time or high pressure people into things.
it's actually about really understanding the other person. Having compassion for
their needs
and then communicating in a way that gets them to take action.
I mean I like to define marketing as just simply communication
the gets customers and if you're communicating in a way to get customers
then you're doing a good job marketing and if your not
well then you not and you should at least become competent in it
because it gives you a superpower. Absolutely! I heard years ago from
Eva Gregory, she is one of my first first teachers when I became a coach
that when you offer your services it's like going around a party
and you have your horderve tray you know and you just offer it and some people are
gonna take it immediately and some people will never take it but it's you
being able to offer your goods. Offer your offer your yummy treats and just
you know serve it like horderves. So awesome.Well
a lot of people you know... a politeness
like really serious deep heartfelt politeness
is um is oftentimes
its its overdone by people who haven't experienced success in their lives
and who come from families and lineages and sometimes cultures
that haven't experienced a lot of success
and when when you're around a lot of people who are not successful
um being polite is kind of a way to make it
easy for everyone. To make it a little bit easier to bear
you know. Um but the reality is that as you become more successful
and you start hanging out with people there are a lot more successful and you
spend more time around leaders
and people that are um that are up to really big things in the world
and I am not just talking about people who make a lot of money. I am talking about people who run
philanthropies and
run causes and people that run cities and people the run countries.
You you see that they've kind of taken off a little bit of veneer or a
little bit of this kind of superficial
over etiquette were over politeness with other people
and a more direct and more straight with you. Now sometimes
their not. I mean we know that some politicians and you know some business people are
you know are not but the bottom line is most people are generally good at most of them as
they become more
powerful and more successful they strip this off and become more direct
and it's refreshing you know and so you can take some of that stuff off.
A lot of times this is really like a deserving issue you know. People don't feel like they
deserve to have success because they haven't had it their whole lives
so they don't take the steps to go out and directionally
ask their customers what they need and then directly ask the customers to buy
and when they start doing it they realize people actually appreciate the
directness. They appreciate you telling them what's going on. They appreciate you
asking direct questions
and the politeness while a beautiful value
and again while it comes from a really beautiful place in the heart
is often better for social relationships.
That when people are spending money they want you to be more straight with them
and it's a skill that you can develop.
Absolutely. Well one of the big things that I do in my business that has helped me be
really super successful as I have created a phenomenal team around me
and one of my skills that I have learned because I came from
a father who owned his own business. he was the you know the cook,
chief bottle washer, I mean he did it all right....So he didn't he
want something done, you gotta do it yourself and I am glad I let that
philosophy go to the wayside because I really believe you need a team and
and one thing that I've gotten really good at doing is delegating
and you know...so I wanna tell you how how can
you delegate the things that take up your time and what prevents people from
actually doing that?
Yeah well you brought up an interesting point.
You know a lot of us feel our businesses like we have to do everything ourselves
and what you find is that if you're really a committed
business owner... like a really serious of entrepreneur
you will be able to do a better job at most of the things in your business
than the people that you bring on. You will actually be able to do a better job
at it.
Now as you get going you know for example once we got going
you know we had a bunch of business and we're growing really fast
I had to hire someone to run our technology.
Now he is a far better computer programmer, is a better developer than I
will
ever be. You know and So you will bring people on the will be better
at certain things but the things that you know are around the product
and marketing, interacting with customers you're probably going to be the best
at
and so part of it is finding great people
delegating to them and then letting them go through the process of
growing until they're really great at something
rather that continually jumping in and taking it back from them because they're not
doing as good of a job as you.
So an expectation that I like to give to people is expect someone
you hire that you delegate something to you um
as long as its not something like a computer developer where their obviously just
a lot better
then you...... sure.....or something like this but expect when you delegate something they
probably gonna do 60-80%
as good of a job as you and if they can do 60 to 80 percent as good a job as you
but but they can also give you all that time back,
it is a complete bargain. You know when I I started my business
it was me doing everything. I built the websites and I made the book and I
answered all the customer service emails. I checked my stats and I literally did every
single thing
and then several months in I hired a virtual assistant
who came to work for me for less than $10 an hour
and and she took about 20 hours of work
a week away from me... now this was dating advice that we were teaching
at the time... so a guy writes in and he asks a question about dating advice or you know
has a need. Is she, this new person whose just met me going to be able to do as good of a
job answering these questions? Of course not.
But you know what with some templates from me and a little bit of training for couple of
weeks
she's going to be able to do 60-80% as good of a job
but I get back twenty hours a week... right... that I can now go
start a new marketing channel. Like I can go to affiliate marketing or I can go
create a whole other product.
you know when we a for example we launched our second product
in that business. Which was little under a year
like around a year after I released my first book we released our second product which
which was an audio series.
our business doubled that day and it stayed doubled
because we launched our next product. I never would have been able to do that
had I not delegated and I never would've been able to delegate had I not had the mindset
it's gonna be good enough if they can get 60-80%.
So find great people and then delegate and let them learn lessons that
they need to learn
and realize that if you can get back your time it's worth
having a slightly you know less good experience for
a period inside your business. Awesome. I so appreciate you and I is
I really I've just had so much respect for you. I still have respect
I used to have....... in this moment
I have respect....... No I've always heard such
amazing things about you. I've have actually seen you speak.
I've enjoyed our connections that we've had and I'm
you know really excited to just introduce you and your wisdom to
what I call my family. So thank you for being Eben
and family please leave us a comment. Let us know you're taking away from this. This is
really great advice from
Eben and we would love to continue the conversation.So let us know what you're
taking away.
Let us know how you're gonna implement What Eben was talking about in your
business
and have a really great week.