As entrepreneurs and investors, we often hear the phrase, “showing up is half the battle.” For the longest time, I believed this was true—until I realized that for most people, even showing up consistently is a challenge. The truth is, if you can master this one thing, you’ll be twice as productive as most people in business. In fact, it might make you three or four times more productive.

In my experience as a coach and business owner, the one thing that has consistently bothered me is how often people fail to show up. Whether it's missing meetings, rescheduling appointments, or simply not being present for their work or family, this inconsistency costs people more than they realize. It used to frustrate me as a coach, but over time I’ve come to understand why it happens and, more importantly, how it can be fixed.

The Real Problem: Not Showing Up

Here’s the issue: most people don’t show up regularly or consistently enough to gain the experience they need to improve. They spend more time worrying about how to do something better, but if you’re not showing up, you’re not making mistakes, and if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning. Every week, I get messages from people who booked a call with me for coaching or business mentoring, and almost without fail, I’ll get a cancellation or someone doesn’t show up.

When I follow up, the responses are always the same: “I forgot,” “It wasn’t on my calendar,” or “I didn’t see it.” These aren’t isolated incidents. This happens far more often than we’d like to admit. What this tells me is that people are operating in a very reactionary way—they’re jumping from one thing to the next without a plan. I used to think this was just a few people, but I’ve come to realize it’s the norm for many entrepreneurs and investors.

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Consistency Builds Trust

I’m not saying this out of judgment. I’ve dropped the ball a few times myself. But when it happens consistently, that’s where the problem lies. It’s not just about missing a meeting here and there; it’s about how frequently that happens. And this doesn’t only impact your professional life—it impacts your personal relationships too.

Think about it: how often have you promised your spouse or kids you’ll do something with them, only to reschedule or cancel? Over time, this erodes trust. And trust is not binary—it’s not a matter of having it or not. Trust exists in degrees, and when you consistently fail to show up, even in small ways, you lose degrees of trust with the people who matter most to you.

In business, this lack of consistency impacts your reputation. You’ve likely heard the saying that your credibility precedes you. If you’re known for missing meetings, being hard to reach, or constantly rescheduling, that’s going to harm your credibility and make it harder to grow your business.

Why a Calendar System is Essential

One thing I’ve noticed is that many people don’t have a system in place to track their commitments. For example, if someone books a call with me, they get several notifications—via email and text message. Sometimes I’ll even personally follow up to confirm the appointment. Yet, people still miss the meeting. It boggles my mind.

The lack of a calendar system or tracking method is a big part of the problem. If you’re relying solely on memory or random notes, you’re setting yourself up for failure. The other side of it is that many entrepreneurs overbook themselves, filling their calendars to the point where they become exhausted and start rescheduling things or skipping them altogether. I’ve worked with clients who had to reschedule multiple meetings simply because they were stretched too thin.

Shift from Reactionary to Strategic

If you find yourself constantly rescheduling or missing important tasks, it’s likely because you’re operating in a reactionary mode rather than a strategic one. Take a look at your calendar. Are you overbooked? Are you consistently not showing up for important people in your life, whether professionally or personally?

My advice is to start analyzing what’s really going on with your time. If you don’t have a calendar system, build one. Take 15 to 30 minutes each day to reflect on what you’ve scheduled, what you’ve done, and how you’re managing your commitments. This small daily habit can make a huge difference.

At the end of the week, take a broader look at where your time went. Did you block out time for specific tasks and follow through? Did you jump from one thing to the next without really focusing? When you don’t take the time to track your commitments, your mind will lie to you, making you feel like you were more productive than you actually were.

Thinking and Planning: The Real Game Changer

One of the most critical skills in entrepreneurship is the ability to think and plan strategically. Reactionary thinking is driven by your emotions—it’s easy to fall into a pattern of putting out fires and responding to whatever comes your way. But that’s not how the top 15% of performers operate.

As human beings, our strength lies in our ability to anticipate and plan ahead. We have to start thinking about our businesses, our families, and our personal lives in the same way. For example, in the past, communities would plan for famine during times of abundance by storing food for future scarcity. This kind of forward-thinking is what allows businesses and individuals to thrive in the long term.

Stop Not Showing Up

The biggest takeaway from all of this is simple: stop not showing up. It’s one of the most overlooked aspects of productivity, but it’s foundational to success. You don’t need to be perfect—none of us are—but you do need to be consistent.

If you’re ready to take control of your time, I encourage you to join me for my free, 3-hour productivity workshop on October 31st. We’ll dive into these concepts in more detail, and I’ll walk you through a step-by-step process for building systems that will help you show up consistently and operate at the highest level. Plus, you’ll have the chance to network with other entrepreneurs and investors who are committed to improving their productivity.

I’m excited to share these tools and strategies with you. Let’s finish the year strong and set ourselves up for long-term success. I look forward to seeing you there!

— Faisal Ensaun

Are you a multifamily investor who struggles with:

• Difficulty focusing amidst numerous opportunities?

• Overwhelm from juggling multiple paths forward?

• Balancing the demands of your W2 job, family life, and your multifamily journey?

• Lack of consistency?

• Feeling like you are always busy, but not moving forward quickly enough?

   

  
  
  If you answered yes to any of those questions then...

  This training is for YOU!

  
  Discover how to 10X your productivity and finally move the needle in your investing journey. Register here! 

TRANSCRIPTION

Don't do this and you will be twice as productive as most entrepreneurs. And I don't say this lightly, and it might even be three, four times more productive than most entrepreneurs and investors. It is one of the things that used to be a pet peeve or the thing that I used to get annoyed the most about as a coach and as a business owner.

And until I got more experience that you might've heard this quote. showing up is half the battle. And here's the problem. Most people actually don't show up regularly or consistently enough, whether that is in meetings or for scheduled appointments or to do their work or to show up for their family or to show up consistently to do things like this.

For me, this is useful for my business. Most people don't do this consistently enough. And this is why people say showing up is half the battle. It's not, and most people are obsessed with how am I going to do this? How can I do this better? If you don't show up, you don't have enough experience. So you haven't learned enough from your mistakes.

So you don't know what to do. And I can tell you pretty much every week I get a message. And these are scheduled appointments with people who have requested to book a call with me, whether it's for coaching purposes or business mentoring or whatever it might be. And almost pretty much every week I'll get a call.

Hey, I can't make it for this call. I have to Reschedule or they won't show up at all and I won't have any kind of response and I'll send a message to them and almost always I forgot it or I didn't see it on my calendar or I didn't see it in my email and it shows to me one of two things. One. You're all over the place.

You're very reactionary with your time, and you're just jumping from one thing to another. And most entrepreneurs operate like that. Most investors operate like that. And that's the norm. I used to think that was just a few people like that, but that's the norm. Now, mind you, this is not a judgment in the sense that It hasn't happened to me.

It has once in a while. I will drop the ball. There have been one or two calls over the past maybe five years, six years that I have completely forgotten or something has happened. Life has happened. Lots of things or an emergency has happened. Fully understand all that stuff. But the challenge is the consistency of it.

Um, it's not that you can't drop the ball on a meeting or to not do something or to not show up for somebody in your life or something like that. It's not that it's that. How can we improve the frequency of that? So take an assessment of that right now. When was the last time you dropped a call? You didn't show up for a call or you had to reschedule consistently, or you are jumping in from one thing to another, and it might not even be professional.

It might be that. You keep promising your family, your spouse, or your kids that I'm going to play with you, or I'm going to be there, or we're going to go on a vacation, or we're going to do something, but it's never happening. And here's the inherent problem. The inherent problem is that it creates mistrust.

It breaks down trust for people. And even though trust is not binary in the sense that you either have trust or don't, you have degrees of trust in different people in your life, including yourself. So when you start to break down that trust in your personal life, what that means is that people don't.

want to be close to you anymore. They don't feel like you value them. They don't feel like you care about them. And that's a huge problem in any of your relationships. And then the other side of it on business is a credibility thing. And you might've heard the quote in business, your credibility precedes you.

People know you based on your reputation and credibility. If your reputation is of somebody who is not consistent, who doesn't show up, who misses meetings or who, who people have to chase or who's reactionary. Those are not good reputations to have. It's going to harm you in the business sense. And so if you really want to be productive, the first thing you can do is no matter how unprepared you are, no matter what's happening, make sure you show up.

And I'm not kidding. Like it's such a weird thing for me because example, if somebody books a call on my calendar, They get two, three notifications through their email and they will also get notification through text messages. It's come to a point where I will actually get my team members or I will send a manual message as well to confirm that they're showing up for the appointment.

And it boggles my mind. And I've worked with a lot of people in this area and many people don't have calendar systems. So they rely on their memory or some Some written things somewhere that will remind them and they don't have a system for it. So no wonder they won't show up for the appointment. No wonder they won't do something.

Or if they put it on the calendar, they're so reactionary in their day that they won't actually be able to show up or they will reschedule it or they will consistently reschedule it pretty soon. Their reputation becomes a problem for them and for their business. And the other side of it is that they're not strategic enough.

They don't think long term. They don't think how to put certain things on their calendar. And I recently was working with a potential client, and one of the things he does is he over books his calendar. So when he gets exhausted, he will reschedule, or he won't do the things that he needs to. Now, we all have done that.

I'm not saying that you will never do that, but If you pay attention to your calendar, if you pay attention to whatever your organization system is, and you look at it and you're overbooked all the time, and you're not showing up for the people you're meant to be showing up, whether those are your clients, your family, or whoever it is, then you are operating in the world of reaction, not in the world of strategy, not in the world of movement forward.

So my encouragement to you is to start looking at your calendar. If you don't have some kind of tracking or calendar systems, build one and start analyzing what's happening. Take about 30 minutes or 20 minutes or even 15 minutes every day. Take a look at what happened throughout the day. What did you move around?

Did you actually honestly put the block time that you had for that specific thing, or you just pretend that that was the thing that you used? One of the practices I have at the end of the day, I'll look at the block times are actually do that a couple of times a day where I'd be like, I blocked it off for this thing, but I couldn't actually do this.

So that helps me learn. that, Hey, this is how my mind operates. I need to do better. And the more I've done this, the more I've realized how my mind works. So I adjust my time that way. And then energy that way. Same thing by the end of the week, all the time, you should be tracking all your time. Where is it going?

Whether it's on the personal side or business side, look at it, look at your calendar. And the way I help my clients understand this is your calendar is a snapshot of your life. If you're running a business or multiple businesses, you have a household, your family have lots of things happening. It needs to be on the calendar.

It needs to be somewhere where you can visually see. It needs to be somewhere where you can track the data. Why? Because if you don't have data, your mind is going to lie to you. Trust me, it's gonna lie to you. You're gonna think that you spent a lot of time being very productive, but more than likely, you're just busy and busyness does not equal being productive.

That's one of the biggest lies in the modern time. You should be spending at least half an hour to one hour looking at your calendar where your time is going. And as you do this more, you're gonna get more efficient at this every day. But at the end of the day, you should be looking at it yeah. Your plans should be laid out for the next week, two weeks, three weeks, one month, at least on your calendar with details.

If you don't have that, then you don't understand how to build strategic plans. That doesn't mean things can't change or things can't move around. It just means that you're giving yourself the space to think and anticipate and be strategic. That is hard to do. And this is why Maxwell, one of the leaders I follow, who said that the hardest skill set is the skill set to think.

And that's what thinking is. Not the chatter in your mind, the thoughts that run in your mind obsessively, consistently, that distracts you all the time. It's actually the ability to think. Think and anticipate. That's what makes humans actually human. Because if you look at the history of human beings, one of the most powerful skills that we have is the ability to look ahead and not react to what's happening.

So, for example, when there was famine that's coming up into a community or there were crops that were being harvested. We thought about well, when is there going to be drought or famine or something like that? So we give people less food so they can survive. And that's what helped us increase the amount of people in a given place.

And when there was abundance, we stored food so we can use it for later. It's the same thing applies to you personally as well. Are you anticipating what's happening with your finances, your business, with your leads, with your marketing, all that stuff again? You do not need to be perfect. I'm not perfect.

I struggle with this area a lot. But are you working on improving this area? And if you're not productive, I guarantee you that your reactionary at best reactionary means that you're reacting to your hindbrain emotional system. Emotions are great for connecting, for being there for people, for feeling like a human being, but it's not great for thinking.

It's not great for helping you be strategic. So yes, it has its own place. But if you don't have a process strategy and you don't have a way of analyzing data, you're probably struggling in the world of productivity. So stop not showing up. That's my biggest thing here. I hope this was helpful. I invite you to show up for my workshop.

That's on the 31st. We're going to cover some of these things much more detail. I'm going to Walk you through your life for three hours that we're going to be on that workshop. It's completely free to you. It's going to be other investors, entrepreneurs. It'll give you a chance to network with them as well.

Cause I give you opportunity for that too. You're going to find the link for this in the post below where you can register. I purposely keep it limited to a few people. Because I want to encourage interaction and understanding of how other people operate, how other business owners operate, and how do they do things better as business owners and as investors.

So make sure you show up because it's going to serve you a lot. It's going to be on Thursday, 31st of October at 9am Eastern, three hour workshop. It's not just going to be me training. I'm going to be walking you through a process to give you some tools and strategies and steps. systems for you to track your productivity well and for you to understand the mindset behind how to be as productive as the top 15 percent of the world's highest performers.

And that's based on a process and research and data that has been tested over and over. And I've been walking my clients through this for the past 10 years, a decade. So make sure you show up to that. You're going to get a lot of value. We're coming up to the end of the year. You want to become, this is the time to push so you can get your projects and all sorts of things done.

But also it gives you an idea of how you can plan out the next five years, 10 years better, how you can look at the important parts of your life and not drop the ball and not regret creating what you really want to create in your personal life and your business over the course of the next five to 10 years.

Because a lot of people end up with regret when they don't do this work. Excited to see you on Thursday, October 31st at 9 a. m. Eastern. And I would love to hear from you. What are some of the things that you've done that's helped you be productive? Have you run into this thing where people don't show up or people miss meetings or their reactionary?

Please share your thoughts below. I'd love to hear from you because I bet it's not just my experience until then. Hope you have an incredible day. Bye.