Productivity to Drive Success
On this episode of Next Level American Dream, Abigail and Sean are joined by Greg Helbeck. Greg recently developed a productivity education platform, modeled after what he does in his own business and life. He equates a lot of his success to the structure and achievement of his system and wants to share that. Over the last few weeks Sean has been implementing Greg's course and today they dive into how it works and its benefits.
Key Topics
How do you increase productivity?
What is the best way to plan out the week?
How is time-blocking effective?
What are controllable and uncontrollable targets?
Connect with Greg:
Pace the Way Podcast
-
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
week, habit, block, people, goal, day, controllable, tasks, system, control, book, helpful, podcast, planning, business, important, call, struggle, consistent, learned
SPEAKERS
Sean Thomson, Abigail Thomson, Greg Helbeck
Abigail Thomson 00:00
Welcome to the Next Level American Dream Podcast brought to you by Thomson Multifamily Group. Your hosts, Abigail and Sean, will discuss how you can take your American Dream to the next level through real estate investing, business practices, and personal development. Join us as we share our experiences as a father daughter duo who are trying to accomplish our goal of financial freedom. We hope you learn more about how to define and achieve your American Dream. Here's another episode of Next Level American Dream. On today's episode of Next Level American Dream, Sean sat down with a returning guest, Greg Helbeck. Greg recently developed a productivity education platform modeled after what he does in his own business and life. He equates a lot of his success to the structure and achievement of this system and wants to share it. Over the last few weeks, Sean has been implementing Greg's course, and today they dive into how it works and some of its benefits. If you're interested in learning more about multifamily investing, please visit our website at www.thomsonmultifamilygroup.com
Sean Thomson 01:06
Hi, Greg. Welcome to The Next Level American Dream Podcast. Thanks for coming back on!
Greg Helbeck 01:10
Hey, it's a pleasure to be back. I know when we were doing the first one I said to have me on again, and I'd be happy to do it!
Sean Thomson 01:16
Yeah, well, I'd have you on all the time. But you're you're a busy guy. And you know, I'm sure I'm sure you got other stuff to do than just do my podcast. But But thanks for coming on. I wanted to talk to you about your your productivity system. It's called elite productivity, habits, habits, right? All the productivity habits. And I struggle with this in my life. You know, I'm, I'm kind of one of those guys that just jumps up and goes to work, right? I don't really plan or think about it. And I just, I just get going, the problem I always have is, I get a lot of stuff done. But I also get a lot of useless stuff done. Because I'm not I'm not focused on what I the 20% of what makes up most of my productivity. I'm focused on everything, right? Yeah, yes. So when I heard about your dis program, I was really impressed that you had this sort of synthesized and created this, this process for people to learn. And so, you know, I was excited about getting it. I've been trying to deploy it in my life with some success. You know, it's, again, it's I struggle with these things. So I have my forms, actually, I've been working on filling them out and getting to get them done. Yeah. So this has been very helpful to having she's having the sheets gives you the structure so that someone, someone that doesn't isn't used to doing this, it makes it easier to kind of get started.
Greg Helbeck 02:33
It definitely helps. I mean, I this is all came from my own needs, you know, like I recreate the stuff, I'm just like, what, what works for me, and I'm sure if it works for me, it'll work for someone else.
Sean Thomson 02:44
So I wanted to have you back on and talk about this specifically, and kind of take a deeper dive. So that people listening can can can get a better understanding of what is involved. And so what they can expect when they go and sign up for it, and how it's going to help their their lives and benefit their businesses and things. Okay, it's such a deep system, that we will get in the weeds if we try to go too deep. But let's look at a few of the highlights. And we'll kind of talk about some of the key factors. One of the things that's been helpful is just sort of drilling down to a weekly planner and planning out what what's going to I'm going to execute for the week. Talk about that part for me.
Greg Helbeck 03:23
Yeah, no, that's big. And that's probably my favorite part of the whole system is like kind of looking at everything on a weekly basis. Because I think a week there's enough time to where you can get a lot of stuff done. But at the same time, it's not like you know, you don't really get overwhelmed because you're not planning your whole year out or you're planning your quarter out which can get a little overwhelming it's 90 days. So when it comes to planning the week, there's a I share two ways you can do it. So I kind of give the the people in there like two options. There's kind of a long way and the short way some people like the long way some people like the short way. I like a short way because basically you know in the system there's there's two buckets basically there's the habit bucket and then there's like the what I want to achieve bucket right. So the habit bucket is something I've actually learned from Darren Hardy, his great book called the compound effect. So I I modeled his system and I kind of tweaked it a little bit. But basically, it's like this week, what habits do you need to do in order to get closer to where you want to get to right? And then those habits don't just have to be necessarily involved in your career. They can be involved in your health or your relationship or your spirituality, whatever, you know, whatever floats your boat, and then within those habits basically there it's three things it's the habit itself so I'm looking at mine right now get up in the morning early read book to push up. So like the habit itself, the objective, which is how many times during the week, do you want to get that habit done? And then the third column is the reality or the result like what actually happened, right? So basically you just set in the beginning of the week I like to do Sunday's the day before Monday because it kind of calibrating that week. So when Monday hits your plan, you know, hey, how many times a week do you want to get up before 6am? You're right that there for me, I have six times for the week. And then at the end of the week, I'll go and I'll see All right, this week, how many times that I, you know, get that habit completed. So I think there's eight or 10 slots on my worksheet, you can have as many as you want, I prefer probably 10 or less, because you don't get overwhelmed. And then the second part of the habit that I the habits, I guess, system is that there's basically I call it the five to 15 method. And within that, you have basically like five to 15 things that if they get done this week, it's going to make progress. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a habit, right? Like, you don't want to put like a habit. And then also put that same habit down on your five to 15 method, because they're kind of different. So like, for example, a lot of them are like business objectives, like train my employee, Thursday, Friday, or get one deal under contract for the week, or get 55 new leads for the week, whatever the case is, but those are like things that if they happen, it's going to help, it's going to get you closer to where you want to get to, right. And obviously, this all starts with like getting specific on what you actually want. And then trying to come up with a reasonable plan, it's obviously not going to be perfect on trying to get there in the most, you know, trying to get there in the most effective way. Understanding that there's there's going to be obviously challenges and obstacles that are gonna obviously, you know, getting your way and then you got to learn how to overcome them and solve those problems to get to your goals.
Sean Thomson 06:26
Yeah, and the way I kind of look at it, so the the habits for me are things that you do every day, sort of as lifestyle stuff. Yeah, that act like I do a breathing technique, I do cold showers, I do bike rides, I mean, those things are my habits. And that's how I look at those things. And the other things are tasks that are that are not just random tasks, but they're tasks that are targeted to your larger goal. That Yeah, and in your system, it's your weekly planning is actually part of a funnel from a greater, greater starting point, right? So you have a loftier goal. And the beauty of your system too, is that it sort of brings everything down to manageable smaller steps that are going to always target you towards your larger goal, right?
Greg Helbeck 07:07
Yes, that's the key is breaking it down, you made a good point there, if you don't break it down, you get overwhelmed, like, I'm like, hey, I want to buy 45 properties this year. You know, that's kind of a welding, right? But if you break it all the way down to, I want to get five leads today, right? That compound over a year is probably gonna get you you know, your your goal, you know, it's all about systematizing. And breaking it down to the smallest steps possible that you can do what your team can do.
Sean Thomson 07:33
Yeah, and we're talking about just the week, but in your system, you start with a lofty goal and get the brackets down from quarter annually, quarterly, to weekly, monthly, weekly. And the weekly planning is really kind of the weekly planning is almost another habit. Right? So it's, it's Yeah, it is a call. Yeah, it's difficult to force yourself to kind of do not accustomed to it. And I struggle with this again, this is I struggle with all of it. But this is another thing. So remembering on Sunday to kind of get your week tuned up. Yeah. And always remembering that, hey, I've got this larger objective that I want to connect these tasks to, is important as well, I think for me, anyway, that's what I've been finding. And I do think about the daily habits is, you know, I'm finding in my life that just having those daily habits, and being consistent with them, is really what's going to produce the best results, you know, I have, I'm, I'm trying to lose a bit of weight, and I'm a little bit older. And when I started my business, I gained a bunch of weight. And I've had people say, Oh, you just try this diet, try this thing, you know. And for me, it's about building a lifestyle that is sustainable. So I've tried to really kind of create daily habits, and instead of trying a three month 90 day crash diet thing or whatever, yeah, I've really tried to create sustainable habits. And tracking this is with your system is extremely helpful, right? So you can kind of see okay, how these, this is what I want to accomplish, and mapping that out. So it's very, it's very good for me anyway.
Greg Helbeck 09:00
Yeah, no, I I really happy you're, you're you're enjoying the system, and that you just made another good point there. Like, you know, it's, it's easy to get caught on to the new diet or the new marketing channel are the new type of building to buy. But at the end of the day, like, if it was that easy to do, if all you had to do is get a you know, weight loss system, everyone would do it, there'd be no value, the values and the consistency, and then the consistency and the habits are just directly correlated. Like if you want to have the habit actually be if you want it to be a real habit, you need to do it consistent. You know what I mean? Like, for example, on the negative side, you know, if you smoke a cigarette once every six months with your college friends, I wouldn't consider it a habit. But if you're smoking a cigarette once a day, then it's a habit because the only difference between the two scenarios I gave you was consistency. You know, so that it can work out you know, for you or against you for sure.
Sean Thomson 09:53
Right and staying on track is really a difficult part of creating, you know, you want to eliminate the add things like you said, you want to eliminate the smoking, the bad foods, the lack of sleep, you want to eliminate those things. But staying consistent on those things that are good for you, having a system like this really kind of helps you stay on track to do those things that you want. And what you're doing is you're, you're taking tiny, tiny steps or progress to your ultimate goal. So that's, that's really the best thing.
Greg Helbeck 10:22
For sure. And it's in that that's something I need to hear every day, right? Because I think everyone, you know, whether you're on social or any, everyone always makes it seem like they're crushing it, there's no problems in their lives, they never feel like oh, maybe you know, what's what's going on in their business, what's going on their family life, whatever. And I think it's, it's when you're doing the work on a daily basis, and whether you're doing the work yourself, or you have a team that you're running a little bit of both now, you know that the days when you're consistent, you know, I just kind of make up the type of day like the base hit day, you know, where you didn't like, the house didn't burn down, but you didn't go cash, the hundred thousand dollar check, like those base hit days are what gets you to your ultimate, like home run day where you know, you buy a sick deal or you know, you, you know, your employee closes a deal, and you didn't have to do anything, you know, you weren't involved in it. And like those cool days that happen those home run days, they're all they're brought to you by the base hit days, you know, it's like a commercial, this show is brought to you by whatever. And that's like how it is. And, you know, I used to get a little, I guess, anxious or impatient. I'm like, oh, today, I didn't do anything special, but I didn't do anything terrible. You know, those days are like, what drive you to your goals. You know, I mean, it's not like every day, you're going to get up and you're gonna have all the all everyone's calling me, it was all good news, you know, like, got all these leads, they're gonna give me the house. It's just that's not how it works. So that's why you got to be consistent. You know, it's like you're setting yourself up to be in the best chance to hit the success if you're consistent enough.
Sean Thomson 11:49
Yeah, so if you can master this weekly planning, that's really going to contribute a great deal to to the greater goals of whatever success you're looking for. So I think that's just having this system to kind of lean on is really helpful.
Greg Helbeck 12:05
Big time.
Sean Thomson 12:06
So let's talk about you know, once you've kind of in your system, you've got that, like I said, the annual the monthly or quarterly, all that stuff. And once you're kind of getting this weekly sort of task and habit system deployed in your life. You want to look at this, like you said, on Sunday, you you go back and you look at your week, and you say what was successful? What wasn't right. So you have a reflection time period as well. Yeah. That sort of explain that part.
Greg Helbeck 12:31
Yeah, that was, you know, that one, I got inspired to do that. I think I read a book called Principles by Ray Dalio. It's pretty popular now. And he mentioned like reflecting and I never thought, you know, thought of it. And I did it one week. And I'm like, Huh, because I started, I'll tell you how I started it. Because like I, you know, I was doing a lot of work in the beginning, this is a few years ago. And I'm like, man, like, is this work? Like productive? Is it not? Like, there's a lot of stuff that happens during the week, you know, Monday to Friday is a lot of stuff, you know, even Saturday, Sunday, right? So you need to, like, get out of the weeds almost. And like sit down in silence for you know, 1020 minutes once a week, which is very easy to do, people are going to have time to do that yesterday, if you have time to, you know, eat dinner, you have time to do this for 10 or 15 minutes. Like it's crazy. You're saying that? anyway. So like, you know, you go back and you know, in my course, I teach how to how to go back and say like, Alright, like, a week or seven days, like, what are the good things that happened this week? Like what was good? You know, what was productive? What good things actually happened that actualized this week, right? And then in contrast, like what what crappy stuff happened, like, you know, where there's some deals that blew up? Were there some issues where there's some, whatever, what are some things that happen? And then this, that's a three part question. And this is number two here? What's the root cause of that problem? Like, that's a bad thing that happened? Why did like, what's the root of why that happened? Like, what, what was the real reason for that? Did you do something? Was it uncontrollable, whatever. And then the third thing is, the third part of that second question is, you know, what's the possible solution that you could do to overcome that problem? If it's something you can overcome? And then right there, instead of being like, oh, the deal blew up this week? You know, you could say, Oh, the deal blew up this week, what's a possible solution? Well, I could go back and renegotiate whatever, you know, but basically come up with solutions to the problems that you just diagnosed. The third question is really like, you know, what are some aha moments, some big nuggets you got from the week, maybe things you've learned, just kind of all brainstorming thing there. And then the fourth one before the four out of five question is, what are some good things? What are some like things that happen that might have surprised you good or bad? Oh, I didn't think I'd get this much money for the property, you know, whatever the case is, I didn't think the seller would you know, go to jail Before closing, you know, could have could be kind of something you weren't expecting good or bad. And then the fifth thing is like, what are things what are some things you can do with all this reflecting you just did that are kind of tasks or action items you could do the next week to move forward. And then that kind of sets you up to get into your place. laning mode. So that's that's the whole thing right there. I didn't memorize it because I do it every single week. I've been doing it for like three plus years. I haven't missed a week and I won't miss a week.
Sean Thomson 15:09
Yeah, well, that's, that's amazing that you do that. I'm struggling just to do my first week, you know. So it's thing consistent with it's tough. But so essentially, the reflection is you take, you sort of take this week as a whole, or do you take sort of the tasks that you set out for yourself for the week and examine each of those?
Greg Helbeck 15:29
I take a look at kind of everything, you know, I mean, because there's a lot of things like for the planning, for example, like I'll there'll be like half of the things on there, I'll have like, kind of no influence over like, Oh, I can't necessarily directly go buy a property like I can, I can say that would be cool to do. But like, at the end of the day, there's a lot of things out of my control that can prevent me from buying a property. But at the same time, I couldn't like directly spend time cold calling, or directly have my cold call or make calls. So like, I kind of look at the controllable and the uncontrollable, and then I like kind of synthesize both of them. And kind of make my decision off of that. But it's a lot of it has to do with the, you know, the tasks and the objectives that I was looking to get for the week. And that's how I kind of base a lot of the reflecting.
Sean Thomson 16:12
Because the goal for the reflection is to what's what's sort of like the overall arching goal for the reflection, is it just to refine your techniques or refine your task levels? or define the problems?
Greg Helbeck 16:26
It's to really just get a whole like, kind of 30,000 foot view on on the actual work that was done between you and your team, to make sure that it's on track. And it's also going to capture bad things. And it's going to really help identify issues a lot. Like the biggest thing I learned from it is it really helps see trends before they become issues or, or, you know, they can be beneficial anyway, but you can really start to, if you spend time kind of viewing your activities for the week, you can start to see trends before they get big. You know what I mean? Oh, well, I think that leads in and down. You know, I think that's because of, I don't know, and then you see week over week is that trending up or trending down. And the only reason you're doing is you're deliberately taking that time to really like spend a lot of time thinking, you know, it really thinking seriously on the things that happen versus, you know, when you're actually working during the week, or you're spending a lot of time doing. And it's, it's hard to sit there and think it's actually harder to think, than it is to do because doing doesn't require a lot of mental energy, you're just there typing whatever talking. But when you have to, like sit there and think I'm like, why is this a problem? And how can I solve that, that requires a lot of mental stamina. And I'm not saying I'm some genius, or people doing this are geniuses it's just it's like a discipline, it's a mental discipline, just like a physical discipline. And, you know, when you turn that into a habit, it's it just allows you to work much more effective, you can start to see things like cut out stupid things to cut expenses, you know, stupid deals, you know, I bought a bad deal, I'm gonna lose money on out in California. And, you know, reflecting on it. I was like, I shouldn't have bought that property because I didn't know homework on it. And I thought that my you know, what didn't stink? And I'm gonna lose money on it. But you know what I mean, I reflect on it. And I will make that mistake in the future.
Sean Thomson 18:11
Yeah, so this time period gives you an opportunity to sort of just dive into those things that you took care of that week, and find the successes and losses and then try to eliminate losses for the future and examine what caused them exactly when they're trying to incorporate more of those wins for you in the future. If you're doing that, on this micro level, it's almost a micro level, I guess, for weekly basis. Yeah, it's really it's really refining, refining, you know, closely on your immediate actions for the next week. So it's helpful to kind of keep you always evolving really rapidly, I think.
Greg Helbeck 18:46
Yes, that is exactly what it does. It helps you evolve rapidly, right? It keeps you aware of the week to week decisions that are getting you to your goals. Not that you actually that was a really good way you articulated that it's it really helps you evolve quickly. And a lot of this is honestly based off of I read Ray Dalio, his book, this is three or four years ago, and that really helped me connect the dots. You know, I've read that book a few times now and listen to it a few times. And it's, it's really, really, really interesting to articulate how other people think and then you know, taking what they say and write and, you know, make videos on and using the cool stuff that you want to use in your own life.
Sean Thomson 19:25
Right, exactly. Let's talk about so we've got we've got our week, planned. We've we've gone through that week. We've we've not looked back at our previous week, and we reflected on it. And we're refining that some of those things. Let's talk about kind of the decision making process. You know, I asked myself all the time. You talk about this in your in your system, and you talk about this quite often, I think, just in general but the controllable versus uncontrollable. Yeah, I anytime I find myself in a situation I always ask myself, do I control this? Is this within my control? And what I'm trying to what I'm Trying to identify for myself is, what action Do I need to take to progress forward? Right. So, you know, the example, I guess, the stoic example that I hear all the time is the abuses, probably 10 times in the show, but you know, you're at the airport and, and your flight gets delayed, what do you do? Right? Yeah, an opportunity to do something productive for yourself, like get a meal, or get phone calls or do some things? Or you can go over and scream at the ticket agent, that doesn't help anything. Right? Yeah. It's finding those things that you control. And if you ask yourself that question, do I control this, it'll help you get to a more productive answer. And you you take it to a different level with the task that you're creating is controllable and uncontrollable tasks and focusing on you know, you still want to have uncontrollable objectives, but focusing on those things that you can't control the most. Right?
Greg Helbeck 20:50
That is probably the most important thing in the entire system, honestly, be and like, I, I still struggle with it. Everyone struggles with it, I'm sure the rock Dwayne The Rock Johnson struggles, yeah, it's, it's like there, there's so many things like it, a lot of the goals that you set, then I set that everyone sets are uncontrollable, for the most part, I want to make X amount of dollars I want, you know, my family loves me, whatever it is, like, you really can't control other people and monetary goals. So you have to kind of like ask yourself a derivative of that, which would be like, well, if my goal is to make a million dollars next year, what's the number one thing I can do? That is under my control that can help me get to that goal, and it's, you know, whatever that answer is, you know, get more leads, or you know, call more sell whatever you get, you kind of get the point there. But when you when you can kind of segment that, that question into a controllable task or control will have activity, it just puts you in a situation where if you just focus on doing the things you have control over and you do that over time, most likely, it's going to lead to you hitting your goal, right, because like I can't necessarily like my goal is to buy more properties right now. And like I can't directly buy one property every week, as much as I would love to do that. I cannot control that. But I can control. picking up the phone, when the seller calls, I can control, calling back the leads, I can control following up with the database, you know what I mean? Like, so there's a lot of things that I can control, and I can control my team doing the same thing on my behalf. So I think that's the biggest thing that people struggle with, including myself. And when you can kind of figure out like, like another example. And then you know, we'll go from there, it's like, I want to lose 50 pounds, you can't necessarily push a button and lose 50 pounds. And I personally don't want to lose 50 pounds, that would be weird, but, but you can control like what you put in your mouth, and what you you know how often you move your body. And if you do that for you know, like, I don't know, five or six months, I'm sure you'll probably lose some weight. A lot easier said than done, right? Like, let's be honest. But that's a great example of it. I think the health example, I use that in my course a few times. That's the the easiest way to make an example out of this kind of concept is because that's something that everyone understands. And it's it's applicable to a lot of people whether you want to gain weight or lose weight. And that's, you know, that's like the best way to kind of start to segment that principle in the course.
Sean Thomson 23:23
Yeah, so get healthy. What would be your goal? Oh, that's completely that's completely out of your control. Exactly. You can't just like become healthy, right?
Greg Helbeck 23:34
Yeah, exactly. 100%.
Sean Thomson 23:36
But the things you do control is go for a walk, go for a run, go for a workout, or eat a salad instead of a cheeseburger. Yeah. Yeah. You know. So those things you do control. So you want to focus on the controllable elements of your ultimate goal. 100% otherwise, yeah, otherwise, you just you just it's a dream at that point, right? If you're, if you're not creating controllable tasks, or, or dream processes, or whatever you want to call those, you're never going to get there. And I really relate to the example you use about buying houses, right? So I want to buy more houses. And I don't control if anybody's going to sell me a house. Yeah, you control I can control if I call them. You know, I call 10. If I call 10. Leads today, right? That's going to be more productive to focus on those things I can control and get those get those phone calls to happen. As opposed to just like thinking I want to buy more houses, right?
Greg Helbeck 24:31
Yeah, totally. I, I wish it was easier than that. But it's true. And it's like you, you're making a good point. I think a lot of these things that you and I are talking about today. They're they're connected with each other, right? Like if you focus on the controllable thing and turn that thing into a habit that's controllable, and it's a habit and it's gonna put you in a chance over time to do the to the goal, like if you call on 10 sellers a day and you multiply that times five, that's 50 times 50. You know what I mean? Like, it's all you're just putting the in your favor to, you know, over time, are you going to hit your targets or not? And if you don't hit your targets, that's fine. Why didn't you hit your targets? That's where the reflecting comes in? What was the root cause of this? What do you what could I have done better? You know, I have a whole section in the class on, you know, tracking numbers, right? Doesn't matter if it's a business number or health number, like, how many leads Did you get, you know, how many offers make, you know, how many pounds to lose based on the calories? It's all trackable? You know, and I think a lot of people want the sexy thing, they want the push button. There's just this is not how it works, you know? Like, it's just not how it works. And it's, you got to keep it simple. And you got to hold yourself accountable.
Sean Thomson 25:38
Yeah, you know, but the funny thing is this, a lot of times the controllables and uncontrollables. When you write them down, they look, they look the same, right? They look the same, they look similar. Yeah, they do. But if you if you focus on if you give them equal weight, it's, it's, it doesn't work, right. So you have to figure out, Okay, I control this, the step that I'm taking now, and that's getting towards this goal. And you want to focus on those to be your actions. And it's sort of all boils down to the same thing, right? So it's about, you know, setting goals is great, but this is about achieving those goals, right? They want to, you want to set yourself up to to achieve the big goals, but also these smaller daily goals. And one of the critical questions you have to ask yourself every time is, do I control this, and then take the actions that you need to to, to make progress on those items that you do control. And that'll get you closer to the ones you don't control? For sure.
Greg Helbeck 26:30
100%? Well, and even, you know, if you just did that, you don't like it, you know, because it's, it's like, it's like the double edged sword. Like, yeah, you want to have all the goals that you can't control there, because that's like, really your target. But if you just focus on things, you have no control over every day, you're going to like, be miserable. But if you just have things that are controllable, you have no real end game. So I think it's spending, it's probably 2575, like, spend 75% of your time, you know, doing the things that you have control over to hopefully achieve the 25% of things you have no control over, which will get you to your goals, right. And you can do that with anything, right. And I think it's easiest in business, because I think in fitness, I'm not an expert in fitness at all, or business to be honest with you. But I think it's easier to do it in something that you can measure easily. I think if you're trying to like, you know, have your wife like you're more whatever, like, it's, that's a little more kind of broad, like health is a physical number business as a physical number. So if you do this in other areas, you can do it, but it's going to be a little bit more generic, but it's the same concept. It's getting better. And it's using a system to get better without just like sitting down on the couch and wishing for it.
Sean Thomson 27:40
You can use this in relationships, too. So if your goal is really to get your wife to like you better, yeah, then you would probably want to find things that you guys can do together or think you can do for your wife. You know, those are your those are your controllable items. Right. So the uncontrollable is I want my wife to like me more. What What can I get this guy to do that? Yeah, right. Yeah. So it's applicable, I think.
Greg Helbeck 28:02
It is totally applicable. It's more Yeah, no, it's true. And I've done stuff like that before, you know, and it's all it's definitely helpful.
Sean Thomson 28:09
Yeah, for sure. Let's talk about so that I think this will bring it kind of all back. Together. There's a ton more to this too, by the way, in your course. It's there's it's hours of this information. And all the worksheets are very helpful. So there's, there's a ton more, but let's talk about the sort of time blocking your day and your and your week, right. So you've got, we've got the week plan down, and we've reflected on on the previous week, and where we're finding everything, making it better. We've identified the controllable elements of our week that we're going to focus on. And then you talk about time blocking in your course, as well. And this has been helpful for me, you know, I try to do health things early in the morning. And then I have blocks of work that I do. They get interrupted, of course, but you know, I have my weekly kind of mapped out. So it's extremely helpful to kind of focus on those tasks, but talk about how time blocking can sort of bring all this together tight together.
Greg Helbeck 29:01
Yeah, totally. So the thing with time blocking, it's just basically, it's taking all of the things that you need to do and setting out specific time throughout the day where you're going to get that done. So it's like if your controllable goal for the week is make 100 sales calls, you know, you're going to say, all right, on Monday, from 10 to 11. I'm going to make 15 sales calls, right and now I'm going to block that out that's going to be on my calendar 15 sales calls 10 to 11. No one's gonna bother me. And the benefit of doing some of them this this applies to you know, you could time block anything really for the most part that gets done. And when it gets scheduled, it gets done, right. When that's on your agenda for the day, you're going to get it done. But if you're like, Oh, this week, hopefully I'll have some time to make some sales calls. That's never going to get done because there's there's always distractions, there's people calling you, there's people emailing you, and then when you get into those time blocks, like I was explaining, you know, sales calls, fitness, whatever. You got to protect those things like and I learned this from the book, the one thing Gary Keller great book, it's like, you know, I'm doing this time block thing, no one's distracting me during this time block. So like when I time block, for example, assuming I don't need my cell phone, which I don't need for the most of the time, because I have a calling software on my computer that I can use if I need to call during a block. I phones in the other room, you won't get in touch with me. Right? The only way you get in touch him is if you're walking to my office, and you know, usually got a knock first anyway. But that the reason I'm strict about that is because like I can't be interrupted, and it's, it's gonna be bad for me. And it's gonna be bad for the person interrupting me because I'm setting these goals out for a reason. And then you're probably thinking, Oh, Greg, that's insane. You know, are you crazy and counter intuitively or not counter? intuitively, I have another thing I do. I learned this from a book called 12 week year. It's called buffer buffering, basically, buffer blocks he calls it. And it's it's just time you're allocating every day, I have like three or four slots on my daily like kind of agenda, where I'm just making calls, I'm returning calls, I'm returning emails. And when you kind of block all that into like, a specific timeframe, it's easier because you don't spend your whole day like the who's who's Greg, you hate the screen, guys, I don't have time for that, you know, that's not productive. That's, that's busy work. So I have three or four times during the day where I'll take my phone calls, I'll call people back, I'll reply to email. And then the rest of the day, I'm just time blocking, you know, whatever, I want a time block. So it's just, you want to segment that. So you're not like reacting all day. And you're, you're kind of on offense versus defense.
Sean Thomson 31:32
Yeah, what I'm finding in my time blocking, I've just recently started since starting your course, and I have my my blocks of time. And I will schedule things in those blocks, if it's if it's scheduled ahead of time, like, like, This podcast is not on my weekly time. Block, right. But this is something I've put into a time block that I normally have allocated to something else. But that thing gets pushed to another time. It's really all that happens. And what I find is that if you're if you're in your time block, and some distraction comes up, like you said, a phone call or an email, you know that you have a time block for that coming up? Yeah, so you can just say, Okay, I'll get to that in 30 minutes when time block hits, right? Yes. So it becomes less of a fear of missing out kind of thing where I got to get this Call now and say, okay, that's going to happen in in my next time block. So I've got It's fine, right? Yeah, gives you kind of permission to push it down the road a little bit.
Greg Helbeck 32:27
100%. As long as it's not like something urgent, like if a tenant calls me saying, house is on fire, I'm gonna you know, I mean, like, there's, there's certain exceptions to the rule. But generally speaking, like, the first thing I do when something like that happens, like, if someone tries to interrupt me, I'm like, is this urgent? Is this gonna directly result in, you know, losing money, or a tenant being in trouble or contact someone on my team in trouble? And if the answer is no, you know, I'm going to push it to that timeline, you know, but if I have a deal on closing, and the buyer is like, Hey, dude, you know, the tenant just freakin pulled out a gun in the yard. You know? Like, there's, there's a lot of there's a lot of variables, but generally, that's not the case. And you know, that's how I can I put it through a real tight filter. And if it can wait, it can wait, you know what I mean? Because it's like, there's a great book, what is it called the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It's a common book, but the big takeaway I got from that thing was like, what's urgent versus what's important, right? And a lot of the times like that important stuff, making calls or networking out, that's not really urgent. Like, it's not like, Oh, I need to do this right now. Right. But the guy calling you is, is technically it's urgent, because he's calling you at a specific time where he wants you to answer. But that not that doesn't necessarily mean it's important. So I think segmenting that he has, like this whole bucket, he's I recommend, that's a really good book on productivity to Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And yeah, I just got to kind of protect those time blocks with vengeance.
Sean Thomson 33:49
You have to be fluid with it, somewhat. And like you said, there are some times where the priorities trumps everything else. Yeah, you know, if you got to get up, if you got a big the biggest deal of the year coming up and someone's calling you about that deal, you need to take that call.
Greg Helbeck 34:02
You're going to answer that call. Yeah.
Sean Thomson 34:06
That's for sure. But if I like I'll get a bunch of emails during my my time when I'm trying to be on the phone. And if it's not related to my phone calls, I'll just push it, I'll push it back, you know, it just depends. But I think the time blocking the purpose there is to take all this effort you've put into planning your year, your your quarter, your month, your week, and, and giving yourself every opportunity you can to get those controllable tasks or items accomplished, right? So the purpose is, is to give you that that specific area of time that you need to get the weekly goals done, right. If you don't, if you don't set up your time blocks, all that work you did planning your week and reflecting on the previous week and getting all that stuff done, can get blown up because all of these other outside influences that distract you, you know, social media, emails, all these things that are going to control your week. And that's what happens to me a lot of the times I, I'm really good about kind of knowing what I need to do. But you get to where you're just sort of a fireman for the week and trying to keep everything under control. When really, you want to be focused on that 20% that's going to move you towards your big goal, right. And the time blocking gives you that opportunity.
Greg Helbeck 35:20
I 100% agree with that. And you made a good year at a fire man all week. It's true. If you don't do this, you're gonna have really good intentions, I'm gonna crush it this week. And 10 emails later your whole day, you're just replying to emails and those emails are not in congruent with your goals. And at the end of the day, you're like, oh, man, I, I totally dropped the ball today. And all these things come up. And then the next day, it's the same thing. And same thing, same thing. So like time blocking is you got to create those time barriers and those time blocks. Because if you don't, you're just gonna be distracted all day.
Sean Thomson 35:52
Yeah, it gives you an opportunity to win, as opposed to just being just like you said, distracted and trying to put out fires all the time. So I think time blocking it for me, especially it's been helpful. That's that's kind of the one thing that I've been most successful without the program, I'm still struggling to kind of navigate the rest of it. But I'm learning right as I go through, but the time blocking has been kind of nice. It just I know that I have this time period, especially with my stuff, the the things that aren't business related, I feel guilty, right. So I feel guilty about working out and riding my bike, and taking that time for me. And that's how I got chubby, right? So because I was I was focused on work all the time, and I let my health go. And I've decided last couple years that, hey, my health has got to take a higher priority than it has in the past in the past. You know, I started my business I gained 60 pounds, my blood pressure was up, I was having migraines all the time, you know, so I was just like ruining myself. And so last couple years, I've decided this is a priority. So now I set this time block. And now I don't feel guilty about it. It's just part of my time block. Right? So it's, it's just kind of something that's going to happen that day, as opposed to before I would go for a bike ride or something. And the whole time I'm thinking, Man, I gotta get back to work. I got to get back to work.
Greg Helbeck 37:04
You feel guilty. I have to be sometimes, but if what good good is your health? What good is your business? If your health isn't great, you know, it's like, that's, that's, that's part of freedom, too. It's like, yeah, I work so hard, if you can, you know, celebrate the wins spend the money.
Sean Thomson 37:19
Yeah, but if it's part of your time block, it's like, well, it's just for my time block. Right, I've got that. I know, I know, I have a plan for executing what I need to execute for the day. And this is just part of it. So it gives it takes that guilt off for you. Or you can say this is this is just what what is in my time block. And this is what's important. And it makes that a priority. And it takes that guilt away from you, which makes it so much nicer. You know, I can go for my bike ride now. And not feel bad about myself, you know.
Greg Helbeck 37:47
Yeah, right. Because it's part of the day, you know, from two to three, you're riding your bike. So you know, during two to three, that's all you're supposed to do. You know, and I think that's important, too. I do that for exercise every day. And I might even go to the chiropractor after this after this podcast is over. Because I have little some open time I'm looking at my calendar. And you know, at the end of the day, this was the only, like, I have time blocks for the day. But this podcast show we're doing today was the only like meeting they were someone else was dependent upon me, you know, because a lot of the time once I can do like whenever during the day, that's big to like, you know, I think another productivity hack, you know, is this isn't like it's not really an a training, but trying to limit the amount of like, meetings, you have to take mostly virtual now with the world we live in to where you don't have too many people you're obligated to see every day, you know what I mean? Like, I think when you book your whole day up with zoom calls, it's like if you kind of like, you're kind of stuck. So I like to limit my zoom call availability or what in person availability to like two or three a day max. And then everything after that. It's like it's my business and working on it. You know, I mean, because I think people tend to overbooked themselves. And they're on zoom calls all day, which could be productive calls, but you're just really kind of stuck to your computer. So I really try to limit my zoom availability anywhere from you know, one to three meetings a day, and then you know, I'll do that every day. But that that way, you don't spend your whole day on this on a freakin computer, you know, with with, you know, for nine hours.
Sean Thomson 39:08
Yeah. And that also goes back to you've set your priorities for the week. And then you know, what is it that's important, right? So sometimes, sometimes having a podcast with Shawn is super important. Right?
Greg Helbeck 39:19
I always loved your podcast. That's the that's the fact that, you know,
Sean Thomson 39:22
sometimes it's not, yeah, sometimes you just want to have your time to do what you need to do. Right. So yes, the one thing that unexpected for me, the time blocking for sure is has been the freedom that it gives me, you know, just on an emotional level to say, hey, yeah, this this is what this is what's important. And that's been you know, that's been the thing I've enjoyed the most is to say, you know, I don't have to feel bad about it. And I also know that I'm doing those things that are that are moving me to that goal, too. So it's much nicer at the time blocking has been amazing, I think.
Greg Helbeck 39:53
I'm glad you're enjoying it. I enjoy it too. I've been doing it for years, and I think it's one of those little things if you start to apply it slowly but surely. You'll start to love it and you'll never go back to not doing it.
Sean Thomson 40:03
Yeah. Well tell people kind of where they can find the course and get started going through all the things, you've got all the worksheets I showed some of the work, you know, you got all the worksheets and, and helpful stuff and videos on how to do it and all those things where would that be?
Greg Helbeck 40:19
There's a couple ways. So if there, I'll give you three ways to do it. So if you're interested, you know, just following me on social, go to @grego_37 on Instagram, send me a message. And I can, you know, say of course information. If you want to watch the free I have a free 30 minute video, I think it's 30 minutes, it's a free training on like the number one thing that I've done to you know, increase my productivity, if you want to check that out, go to www.getgregscourse.com. And then the third thing that you could do if you want to, you know, just just for you to have for free is go to www.pavetheday.com. If you go there, it's a free report that I created that basically gives you like a how to master your day blueprint. And it's a free download, you know, no strings attached there. So those are three ways. If you want to kind of get plugged into my world, I'd be happy to to serve you and connect with you. And I try my best to put out legit stuff on social every day and just very transparent with everything. I don't hide anything I talk about the good, bad and the ugly. And you know, I just kind of like using Instagram within reason to to help inspire other people. Maybe if they want to go out and be entrepreneurs or go out and get some freedom in their lives. I hopefully I can be the guy who helps them do that.
Sean Thomson 41:39
Yeah, it's what I can tell you has been it's tremendously helpful to me, just because I'm not tuned into that stuff. And you've been sort of tuning this for years. And and all the tools you give is really been great. But so you also have a podcast too, Pave The Way. Podcast. People can check that out too.
Greg Helbeck 41:55
Yeah, two shows a week. I interview you know, a lot a lot of high achievers. So two shows a week. I think Tuesday Thursday, we market them. So yeah, if you want to check the show out, go to just Google Pave The Way Podcast on iTunes or Spotify. And then you know you you see it you know if you feel like show, by the way, if you leave a review would mean a lot to me. And I'm sure Sean's the same way. If you're like you like Sean's show, if you're getting value from Sean, I've listened to some of the shows they're awesome. leave a review for Sean because people who are new to podcasting, the way that you grow the show, besides advertising, is when people are researching you. And they want to see the reviews. So if you'd like the show today with Sean, on this podcast, leave Sean a review. And it will help him tremendously and will mean a lot to Sean as a podcaster. Because that's how you grow shows with reviews.
Sean Thomson 42:43
Thanks for that!
Greg Helbeck 42:44
I had to. It's so important!
Sean Thomson 42:46
Yeah. I hate asking for that myself.
Greg Helbeck 42:49
I'm shameless with every show. I'm like, if you get value, we have review and I I call it out. I'm like, it's a pain in the ass. It's gonna take you one and a half minutes. You got to go on your phone, you got to type something in. I know, it's terrible. It's like pulling teeth. But please do it. Thanks. Bye. And then they leave a review.
Sean Thomson 43:05
Well, I need that too. So we're just kind of getting ours off the ground. And it's great. Well, thanks, great, man. I appreciate you coming back on. It's always I always have a really good time when you come and talk. I like just I like just talking to you. So I appreciate you coming on the show.
Greg Helbeck 43:19
What whenever you want to have me back. I'm always open to coming on man. So we can do this whenever you want. I'm happy to share some value to your audience. And I appreciate you having me.
Sean Thomson 43:28
Yeah, well, I'm sure it was a tremendous help. I know. It's been a help to me. So I'm sure there's somebody out there that got a ton out of it. And like I said, I appreciate you sharing it and then I will have you back again we'll find we'll find some other excuse to get you on the show.
Greg Helbeck 43:39
Anytime, my friend.
Sean Thomson 43:41
Well, thanks again. Appreciate it.
Abigail Thomson 43:44
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level American Dream. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today, want to contact a team directly, or are interested in passively investing and being a part of our deal room, head over to our website at www.thomsonmultifamilygroup.com. Before you go, please leave a review! Your comments help us create more episodes for you to enjoy.