As entrepreneurs, many of us are used to checklists, task management, and crossing things off to keep things moving forward. I get it—I’ve been there. When I first started my journey, I equated being busy with being productive, assuming that keeping myself occupied with projects and tasks would automatically drive my business forward. But over time, I realized that most of those tasks weren’t helping me reach my actual goals.

Here’s the truth: most entrepreneurs aren’t building businesses; they’re just creating high-stakes jobs for themselves. They work around the clock, carrying their “job” everywhere they go—into their home, relationships, and even downtime. This approach can lead to stress, overwhelm, and burnout, leaving little room for the life they envisioned when they started.

The Myth of Busyness and the Need for Clarity

One of the biggest productivity mistakes I’ve seen—and made myself—is this relentless focus on being busy. We dive into endless projects, follow to-do lists, and convince ourselves that as long as we’re moving, we’re progressing. But without clarity, this movement is often directionless. I was trained as a high-performance coach to think about long-term productivity, yet when I first became an entrepreneur, I struggled to apply it to my own life.

Many people I coach have a vague idea of what they want but lack a clear, actionable path forward. They may have goals, but those goals often resemble a wishlist more than a strategy. They see successful figures and try to copy what they’re doing without understanding the “why” behind it. Real productivity, I’ve learned, starts with clarity—about who you are, why you’re on this path, and what you truly want from your life and business.

Vision and Strategy: The Foundations of Meaningful Progress

Before we can talk about checklists, we need to discuss vision. Having a clear vision connects you to your purpose, your “why.” It grounds you in your identity, values, and the lifestyle you’re striving to create. A lot of entrepreneurs start with a vague picture of what they want to achieve, but without a well-defined vision, their actions rarely align with their true desires.

Once you’ve defined your vision, the next step is developing a strategy. And by strategy, I don’t mean another to-do list; I mean a carefully thought-out plan that includes both the big picture and the individual steps that lead you there. Imagine you’re building a machine. Each part must be carefully designed, tested, and connected to create a functional whole. That’s how I approach productivity—by creating a design for my life that is both intentional and sustainable.

Moving Beyond “Taskmaster” Mode

A big part of what I help entrepreneurs do is step out of taskmaster mode. We often create elaborate to-do lists, believing that if we simply accomplish enough tasks, success will follow. But true productivity is not just about doing more; it’s about doing what matters. For instance, one of my clients spent hours perfecting social media content, thinking it would drive his business forward. When I asked him what he actually needed—clients or brand-building—he realized he needed immediate clients. We redirected his focus to activities that aligned with that goal.

If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself working hard without real progress, spending endless hours on tasks that don’t serve your core purpose. Real productivity involves evaluating what you’re doing and understanding whether it’s moving you toward your goals or just keeping you busy.

The Power of “The Thinker” Identity

I believe that entrepreneurs are thinkers who also do. While we may have a bias for action, it’s essential to create time to think, reflect, and strategize. As entrepreneurs, we’re so often bulldozing forward that we don’t pause to assess if we’re on the right path. And this reflection doesn’t come naturally—it requires intentional space and time.

Recently, I was preparing for a long-term trip with my family, and my instinct was to jump straight into packing and logistics. But instead, I took an hour to sit down with my wife and map out the essentials. What are the non-negotiables? What needs to be done first? Which tasks are “nice to have” versus necessary? That simple planning session saved us time, energy, and potential frustration—a small but powerful example of how thinking ahead can lead to more effective action.

Building a Life, Not Just a Business

We often forget that our businesses should support our lives, not consume them. When I became an entrepreneur, I knew I wanted a business that allowed me to be present with my family, contribute to my community, and continue my own personal growth journey. I wanted the freedom to nurture all parts of my life, not just the business side.

Productivity, to me, is about balance and sustainability. It’s about creating a lifestyle where work and personal life complement each other. This means being clear on your goals, establishing boundaries, and making sure that your daily actions align with your larger vision. It’s also why I teach entrepreneurs to design a business that supports their life values, not just their bank account.

From Checklist to Clarity: A Productivity Shift

In my productivity workshop, we don’t just talk about ideas; we dive deep into your life. I guide participants through a process of self-assessment, helping them understand where they’re currently investing their time and whether it aligns with their long-term vision. Together, we explore what real productivity looks like—not just for your business, but for every area of your life.

At the end of the day, productivity isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing what matters. It’s about focusing on the 20% of actions that drive 80% of your results. And it starts with creating the time and space to think, plan, and strategize. This is the foundation of clarity, focus, and sustainable success.

An Invitation to Grow

If you’ve been running on a productivity treadmill and not seeing real progress, I invite you to step back, rethink, and rebuild your approach. I offer a complimentary consultation designed to help you discover your potential. You don't have to take this journey alone. Having a mentor will drastically collapse time and help you make real progress even faster.

Schedule a consultation today.

TRANSCRIPTION

Rewire Your Brain for Productivity Edited_

[00:00:00] The constant frustration was that I was used to being busy with checklists and projects. My go to became, as soon as I started a business, let me get busy. And I did all sorts of things, but most of those things didn't help me move forward. Most entrepreneurs that I run into, they have a job. They don't actually have a business.

I'm so excited because today we are talking about productivity from a completely different perspective than most of us have ever come to it before. I've been following Faisal Enzon for quite some time. He's a high performance coach. He's got over a decade of experience coaching entrepreneurs and specifically real estate investors and leaders in business through productivity.

And his approach to productivity is so different than The way I was thinking about it before, just following his content alone has just changed my paradigm about it altogether. Let me introduce Faisal Ensan. Faisal, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me on and thank you [00:01:00] for the kind words.

I appreciate that. A hundred percent. Absolutely. One of the things that you've talked about has been some mistakes that you see people making. And I know you've talked about people coming in and they're frustrated because they have a big dream. They have a lifestyle they're trying to achieve and they're juggling that balance of personal life.

Business and then our BHAGs, right? Our big, hairy, audacious goals, in addition to just the day to day operations of everything we have going on. And people struggle because they're working really hard and they become glorified taskmasters. And maybe they're efficiency experts, like they're watching this and they're like, I'm an efficiency expert, but I don't feel like I'm making traction in my life.

And I think that's really, Ooh, I just got chills. That's the heart of what I see in you that you talk about. That's so different than other people who talk about productivity. Can you share with us some examples or some stories of things that you've seen? [00:02:00] Some of the mistakes people are making. Thank you for the question.

I think that's a great question. I'll start with myself. Cause I've made a lot of mistakes myself over the years, uh, especially And when I jumped into entrepreneurship, uh, I came from the world of, uh, tasks and projects, and my go to was checklists. As long as I have a bunch of checklists to do every day, um, I should be able to be busy.

But what I didn't take into account was that those checklists were based on long term plans and short term plans and strategies that I didn't come up with. It was part of the business that I was a part of, and I was just assigned to. Small piece of that business. It didn't click until much later. The constant frustration was that I was used to being busy with checklists and projects.

My go to became, as soon as I started a business, let me get busy. And I did all sorts of things, but most of those things didn't help me move forward. And look at the irony of this. I started as a high [00:03:00] performance coach and I was trained to think productive long term, but for some reason it didn't click in in the beginning for myself because I had never been on this journey as an entrepreneur.

And so anybody who is starting out or in the beginning stages, or even if you've been an entrepreneur for a long time. You'd be shocked how entrepreneurs even operate most of the time. They're most entrepreneurs that I run into, they have a job, they don't actually have a business. At least a job is. You go there, do your work and you go home, but for them, they carry their job and their home within their relationships, their frustrations that are overwhelmed, their lack of clarity, all sorts of things.

They will carry it over and entrepreneurship is generally very difficult. But once you make it into a job that you don't even know how to operate, and it's difficult to. You're kind of surviving. It can become very difficult, not just for your business, but for you to run your life. I mean, most people have [00:04:00] families.

Most people have relationships. Most people have a life beyond their business. And at least when I jumped into this, I wanted a business that supported my lifestyle. And by lifestyle, I don't just mean going around having fun, doing all sorts of stuff like that. I meant my values around spending time with my family.

I wanted to be around my kids. I want to be with my wife. I wanted to be with the rest of my community. I have a fairly large family on both sides. I want to. Nurture those as much as my business. I wanted to grow myself. I wanted to learn and I didn't just want to be busy doing things. One of the big reasons why I jumped into this path was to be on a learning journey.

I'm a seeker. I'm trying to understand myself to this day, even after a couple of decades and I'm on a growth journey, I need space to learn, to think, to grow. The first few mistakes that I made on that path is to go in with that assumption of checklists and projects, and just keep moving forward. And my focus was very short term, even though I thought I was thinking longterm.

I just had an idea of [00:05:00] the future, but I never really spent enough time clarifying what my path forward is. And that's the biggest mistake. that, that you hear is that most entrepreneurs I talk to, for example, they will watch somebody who is successful in their field. They'll be like, I want to be like that person, which nothing wrong with that.

You can be inspired by people, but what they try to do is they try to copy the surface of how they are. Human beings are really good at this. We do this with religious figures. We do that. With other leaders that we aspire towards, we deify people all the time and we look up to them and then we copy the surface of what they do.

Oh, Elon Musk does this thing. Let me become like him. Let me do this. But you don't know what he does in the background. Actually, what you see a sliver of what he does, and I'm just giving examples that people are aware of, but whatever the entrepreneurs, whatever person that you have. Aspired to be, you're not seeing the whole picture.

So most entrepreneurs are not spending enough time trying to figure out [00:06:00] what do they really want? What is their vision for a better life? And a vision is powerful because it connects to your why, to your identity, to who you are, to your emotions, to why does this matter to you? Because that's going to be the initial point of your motivation.

And then Contrary to most people, I actually believe in a strategy. I came from an engineering background. There's no way you can build a machine without a whole plan behind it. And there are multiple parts that have to come together and you have to plan each one, design it, and then test it out for yourself.

for this thing to become a reality. So when I came into this, where I'm like, if I'm creating a whole design for my life, there is no way I can just create it with all the complexity, much more complex than a machine that you would build, that it's just going to happen just because I have a vision. So I actually believe in building a strategy around it too.

And this is what I find often when I talk to entrepreneurs, first of all, they don't have a vision. They usually have goals. They look like big goals to them. But they're not. And even if they [00:07:00] are big goals, it's not really goals. It's more like a wishlist. They wish that this thing comes true and they're busy all the time, but it's not clear how their actions connect to the outcome that they're seeking because they don't even know what the outcome they're seeking is and not just in business, but in their whole life, because I don't believe that your personal life is separate from your business.

It's a part of your life. So how do you make it work? You've got to do the work to think about it and really be clear. And that's why I believe the beginning stage of productivity is actually clarity. There are many things around what you need to be clear about, but it starts with clarity. If you don't have clarity, you can sit there, use any kind of tool, be the most efficient person.

But it's like that analogy of it's daytime and you're going towards the West. You're seeking the sun, but the sun is on the east side, but you're going towards the west. You're going really fast. You might be going really fast. You're going in the wrong direction. It doesn't matter. You brought up a really key [00:08:00] point.

I think is when we jump into entrepreneurship, a lot of us came from, A corporate career or a career of some sort. Like we had to have the belief that it is possible for me to embark on this new journey of entrepreneurship and that my skillset is enough to get me going. And we have some sort of idea where we want to go.

What I think is so interesting. And the heart of what you offer is taking it from up in the head. I think I know what I'm doing. We think we make a plan. We build out a strategy list. We build out to do's is really what we're doing. We call it a strategy, but it's really a task list of, okay, I need to produce this much content.

I need to get visible. Like all the things that you see people talk about, but you take it to a whole nother level of accessibility. And I think that's the shift though, that I've experienced watching you. You've shown me how to go from keeping my notebook and my organized [00:09:00] calendar and all my to dos that I think are the result or the thing that's going to get me the result that I'm looking for.

But you've actually slowed my roll, which by the way, is hard to do. So congratulations on that. I'm glad I was able to do that. And then you got me to really. Think deeper about what are my to do's actually doing for me and evaluating it in a way that I never really was doing before, because these were things I thought I should be doing.

So can you elaborate a little bit on that journey that you take your customers or your clients through that help them go from, yeah, I thought I had this going on. I thought I was doing this right. And now you've just shown me like, oops, there's like a whole new level that I didn't even know existed. How do you do that?

That's a massive paradigm shift. I want to share a couple of stories. So yesterday I was doing a call with 1 of the communities where I coach other coaches to build their [00:10:00] business. And a lot of these coaches are either in the beginning stages. They've done it for a couple of years, or they're just starting out and same problems that I'm talking about exist and.

Priority is a huge problem. Like they don't know how to prioritize. And by the way, these are coaches who are helping other people too. So not saying they can't help people, but they're struggling immensely with it. And I'm not saying I'm perfect at it, but. You don't need to be perfect at it. You just need to understand what works to build a business and what doesn't, what works to build a life by design and what doesn't, and most people's assumptions are not accurate.

So for example, with this coach, it looked valid to him. The challenge is he just got a client. He's, you know what? I spent about four hours building this reel, and I want to just understand how much time should I be spending on my social media versus other things. And I just asked him this one question.

What is the purpose of your content? Um, he didn't know how to answer that. He generally knew that if I post content, people will reach out to me and I'll connect with them. Great. [00:11:00] What are you trying to do in your business? Are you trying to build a brand or you're trying to build some big marketing engine that's going to give you clients sometime down the road, or do you need clients right now?

And no, my survival dependent on getting a few more clients. I'm like, okay, so why are you focused on four hours of reels? That's not going to help you. Now, why aren't you reaching out to more people? Why aren't you in front of other people? As a coach doing workshops, serving people, and then making offers because the most direct way for him as an entrepreneur to do that is to be in front of people, coach people, serve people, and then make an offer, whether that's at a one on one setting or a group setting in person online.

I don't care what it is, but that's his main thing. And that's the thing, at least on the coach's side, they're scared of because you actually need to go out there and serve and the market usually decides whether or not it's valuable or not. But by the end of the 10 minutes we had a conversation, he understood what his priorities are and his priorities [00:12:00] are connected to the purpose, the outcome that he's trying to drive.

But that's just in a short sliver, like he needs to do a lot more work to figure out what he really needs. And I've walked him through a few of the things. One of the reasons why he just got a client was because he actually clarified what he needed to do. He hadn't been able to get a client for the past six months.

Why did he get a client? Because he became clear about his long term, which can expect to what you asked me. I recently did an event in Santa Fe in New Mexico. I spent about eight hours walking a bunch of entrepreneurs through their vision, strategy, figuring out what are the challenges that might come up as they're doing this, how to make it even more practical, how can they set up better habits around how And how can they understand what they're standing for their identity?

They're clear about every aspect of it. And everything is laid out on their calendar for the next few months, few weeks, few years. They generally know where they're going. So when they wake up the morning, they're not asking themselves, where's my checklist? What should I do? It's on your calendar. You [00:13:00] need to do these things that are important to you.

And you know how to prioritize based on the crucial outcomes and outcomes are not always in business. I get them to walk through their whole life. What is it that you want like that? You can't just say I want a 10 million business. Why is that important to you? What does that do for you? How does it connect?

Most people don't know how to answer these things until they go to their vision as to what they want. What are their values around it? What's their identity? What are they hoping to gain? And then once they do that stuff, it becomes clear, huh? They might not need it or want a 10 million business. What they might need is more time freedom.

And just a few hundred thousand dollars to that supports their lifestyle. And yes, they will build it and grow it, but that considerably reduces their overwhelm. And this thing in their minds, I don't have enough time to make hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you really want that or even need that? And if you don't do that work and you don't clarify what the specific goals are on the business [00:14:00] side, you need to become clear on the numbers.

Okay. If my product is sold for this much, what would I need to do? How many of these units do I need to sell for me to get there on a consistent basis without burning myself out, without sacrificing my life again, I'm simplifying this process. Of course, in reality, it's a little bit more complicated, but the root is most people don't know what they want and they haven't thought through.

And the one identity I'll give anybody who's listened to two, two identities. Uh, one identity is that of a leader. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, you have to start owning your role as a leader. In the beginning, you're leading yourself and maybe you have a family, you're leading them, but you're going to be leading your clients.

You're going to be leading partners. You're going to be leading other people. Own that identity, understand that you need to take a lot of ownership, that it's not just for you. You're supporting a lot of people in here. Like the people that are part of my team, whether it's in my home or in my business, they rely on me.

Part of their income [00:15:00] comes from that. I don't want to disappoint them. I don't want them to feel like I'm not doing my job and that's a human thing that increases motivation that helps you understand that. You know what? It's not just about you. It's not just about old. You're not feeling like working today.

No, it's about why is it that you're creating this and that your identity as a leader helps you own the consequences of your action, positive or negative. You're saying something that I wanted to touch on. You mentioned in the earlier part of our conversation, how people, one of the mistakes they make is following other people.

And I get it because it makes sense what you're saying about owning that leadership. Because what essentially happens is we embark on this journey of entrepreneurship. So what do we do? We see other high profile coaches. Let's just say, for example, like your person you were talking about, what are they doing?

They're producing content. And so we think, okay, we need to master content. So then we start going down this bunny trail of following the courses and following these people and implementing [00:16:00] their strategies. And then suddenly we say to ourselves. Oh, did we think about this from the beginning? Maybe we didn't realize that a content strategy is really a long game because there are a lot of experts who argue or claim that content can be an immediate return on investment.

So we just make that, we just follow along because we don't know what we don't know until we get into it and try it out. But what I really like about what you're talking about, the leadership role, I think is where it comes back to that experiential, where you teach people how to listen to themselves, how to critically think.

About things before they just dive in. And a lot of entrepreneurs, we're like bulldozers. We're like, heck yeah, I'm in let's go. And then we just run in like a fireman into a flame because we're thinking we've decided this is the way this is what we're going to do. So we're going to tackle it. I love how you get people to stop and really analyze the situation.

Leading back to productivity, because then this gets them to really think, [00:17:00] is this something that I should be spending my time on personally? Do I really need to learn to be a content producer or can I outsource this and focus on somewhere else? Or maybe that's something I incorporate three, four or five, six months from now.

Today, I'm going to do X, Y, or Z. Like you really get people to think and experience it that I really want to harp on that because it, to me. Is what makes you so unique as a coach. And by the way, for those of you guys that are following and listening, and I've gotten this far, I want to say that Faisal has a free productivity workshop coming up on Thursday.

It's at nine o'clock Eastern. So if you're already watching this, you're like, man, this is really good. And you want this experience for yourself. I want you to register and I'm going to make sure to put the link in the show notes because it's a three hour workshop. That isn't like any other workshop you've ever experienced.

I've been through it. So I'm telling you from experience, he doesn't just get up there and be a talking head, like you get to interact. You get to ask questions. You get to do [00:18:00] the thinking that. You haven't been doing yet. So I really encourage you guys to check it out. I learned this when my business coach was helping me understand some of this stuff and it helped connect the dots for me.

Our role as entrepreneurs is actually another way of saying an entrepreneur is that you're a thinker. Most people look at entrepreneurs as doers and they hold on to that identity. And most entrepreneurs are doers to begin with. They've done some level of success that gives them the confidence to start this other thing.

Okay. That they want to do their doers, but an entrepreneur is a thinker that does. You hinted at it too, is that we want to bulldoze through a lot of things. For example, at the end of the year, we're going to head down to Florida. My wife, my kids, we're going to be there for five months. We need to plan out what we need to do.

And we're not just going there for vacation. We're literally moving into our motor home and doing all this stuff. And it's a lot of complication around it. This Sunday, I got some time with my wife and she's like, let's start packing. Let's start doing that. And she's [00:19:00] like that. And I would go along with that, but I'm like, I don't know what the hell we're doing.

I'm not clear on what to do for us, what not to do for us. So we literally went to a coffee shop. We sat down for one hour and answered some key questions. Okay. Let's start with the end for us. Like we're going to get there at this point. What needs to happen for that to happen? What are the key thing?

There are lots of things we can do. Some things are negotiable. Some things are not like certain things need to happen. For example, there are certain bookings that need to happen in campgrounds. If I'm going to. Take my motorhome ahead, especially in busy season in Florida or in North Carolina, these regions.

For example, the safety for the motorhome and all that stuff has to happen. Insurance has to happen. There are certain things that are optional. If they happen, great. If they don't happen, it's not the end of the world. And here's what happens. And I'm using that as an adage for most people. If they're thinking about planning their life in business, which is much more complex than something like that.

People get bogged down by optional things. Things that, like you said, some marketer will say that, [00:20:00] Hey, content is going to attract people. And it's true, but is that true for you right now versus later? Because here's what happens. The lifeblood of most businesses, it's the cashflow. If you don't have any cashflow coming in, it doesn't matter how great your brand looks, you're not connecting to enough people to bring them in and building a brand, you do content strategy.

That takes a while. There's a reason why I'm patient around this stuff is because I know that it takes a while. That's not the way that I actually get clients. Eventually I will. But the main way that you do that is there are certain essential things that need to happen. Yes, you need to market yourself in the sense that if you're, let's say a coach, you need to put yourself out there and you need to be visible to people, whether that's in person, online or a mix of those, it doesn't matter.

And people need to know what you do. So you need to serve people and to get people on a call or in an in person thing and serve them. And that needs to lead to an offer. For example, if that's not done repeatedly, there is no [00:21:00] business and it doesn't matter how much content you produce, because here's what happens with content when you're putting out content and you can.

Add to that, whether you're a capital raiser on the investing side or you're a coach, you're putting out content a lot of times. You're putting out content, you're building a relationship with people. And that relationship takes a long time from cold to them getting warmed up to you and trust you enough for them to even listen to what you have to offer.

And it doesn't matter how brilliant your offer is, if they don't trust you. It's not going to happen. So at least we're trying to do you and I is to shortcut the journey a little bit by creating better content, better funnels and other things. And all that takes a lot of time and resources. And I need to have enough resources to pay you, other people on my team, all the systems that are happening.

So if my business is not functioning, how can I hope to pay you? And if I'm not paying you or somebody else, guess what I'm doing? I'm putting my time on something. That's not going to give me the short term payoff. I need to sustain the business to move it forward. And guess what else I'm going to do? I'm not going to hire people.

What I'm going to [00:22:00] do is I'm going to put all my time into this, and plus my time that is with my family for my personal growth. And pretty soon I'm spending 60, 70, 80 hours and I'm burning out. I have no relationships. I've lost track of why I even got started with this thing. And pretty soon all I can do is just show up to work and just be busy.

And now I'm busy just to run away from the problems that I've created in other parts of my life, whether that be in my health care. And that'd be with my relationships and other things. And, and people look at somebody like Alex Hermosy, for example, he's a brilliant guy and I'm inspired by him, but I'm not Alex Hermosy.

I'm not driven to work a hundred hours in the way that he talks about it. He has one specific mission. He wants to make entrepreneurship a great thing in the world. He wants to build the best business there is. These missions are very intertwined into his own growth and his life partner, Layla Hermosy, she just supports that and they support each other.

As far as I can tell, they have no family, uh, outside of that. In fact, he has made videos saying that I've broken [00:23:00] contact when most family members focus is his growth. And fine, no judgments around that. That's his choice. But that's not how my life is. I have two kids, one on the way. I have a big family. I care about my community.

I care about how I show up as a leader in my home. So business is not the only thing. If I don't know how to operate my business, I'm going to spend about a hundred hours here and nothing else will move forward. And this is what most entrepreneurs are good with. And they'll always say that I'm busy, but nothing is moving forward and they're overwhelmed.

And then you have guys like Gary Vee. Alex Tremozzi is another example, but he's realistic and he'll say something like, I get it. Not everybody's like this. He acknowledges that other people may not have the ability to do as much as him. I watched Gary Vee and. It's a non negotiable putting out content is a non negotiable.

You don't have time. Just find the time. Maybe it's an American thing too. I don't know if anybody's watching from Europe or other places, I feel like they have a better balance on this than we do. Even my background in corporate America, it was [00:24:00] like work first, family, second, self third. It was almost like you were not considered good enough if you didn't.

Have all the energy put into your business and servant for others and all of that stuff. And I feel like the time is changing, but there are so many entrepreneurs. This is what I feel like is that crux is we have this pre programmed belief. And then we see content creators and influencers telling us that either one of two things, either work your.

But off and don't take a break until you finally achieve what you're trying to do. Or there's these other people who were like, yeah, I pretty much did nothing and everything worked out for me. And I made a million dollars overnight. That's like one or the other. And so you're stuck in the middle going, which way do I choose?

And how come I'm not as good as they are? And I feel like I'm burning out and working my butt off here and nothing's happening. Right. So that's the pickle [00:25:00] they're in. So the only thing left to do, it seems. is to just get into work mode. If I'm doing something, then something good must come of it. That's an assumption that we're left to make because we don't know what else to do.

And you're actually going to the crux of the problem that most entrepreneurs learn from trial and error. There's no one skill set that's business. There are so many skill sets that you need to learn. Most people underestimate this for you to understand. I've been in this path for a decade. I'm still learning so much.

I feel like I just got started just to operate my business in different times, different economies, different things happening out in the world. And just the pivoting and shifting takes so much out of you. Most people completely underestimate. They think that it's a lot like getting into a job and getting training for it.

And then just moving forward or going through school for three years and doing that. It's not the same. That world is so different from this. And this is why Robert Kiyosaki will say the life and entrepreneurship are very close together. The way you learn in life is by making mistakes. [00:26:00] Here's what makes human beings powerful.

The way we learn as human beings is that we learn from other people around us. We don't just learn from our own mistakes. What makes human beings brilliant is that we're a social species that have bigger brains. And so we can learn very quickly from each other. And, and speaking of the Western world, we're given this illusion that human beings operate in as individuals.

It's a great concept. I think individual identity is important, but then it goes too far to the extreme. Whereas. I'm going to make this happen on my own and I'm going to be self made. I'm going to make hundreds of millions of dollars and do this. Doesn't exist. There's nobody, whether it's Alex or GaryVee, they all have teams around them.

They all have people that are supporting them. That was my biggest thing. Whenever I saw Brandon Burchard and all these guys, they were always on stage alone. But for some reason, it never connected in my head in the first two years that They have huge teams. They have co collaborators that are constantly supporting them.

And I can bet you, all these guys are part of the same group. And I know Brandenburg has a mastermind where all the biggest influencers are part of that. Every year they go there, [00:27:00] they meet multiple times a year. They exchange ideas, learn from each other. They cross promote. They didn't do any of this shit alone, and we're actually sitting here and trying to do this alone.

And finally, I took the advice from Brendan Burchard. He's like, Hey, if you're coming up in the beginning, stop trying to connect with people who are way ahead of you. Start building a community around you of other people who are doing the same thing. And that's exactly what I did. I started connecting with other people.

I started hiring coaches. I started becoming part of other communities. This is where the value of Coaches and communities come in because when you're there, it challenges your assumptions and thoughts. You're assuming a lot of things that you don't know. You don't have a frame of reference. I don't know what the hell I was doing.

I still don't know what the hell I'm doing when, for example, this new recession or idea of recession that came around and this is a completely different economy than eight years ago. Like when I started, it was very different. And there was this one business owner said that if you didn't make money in the past eight years, you're a monkey.

I don't think it's fully accurate. He's exaggerating, but it was a little bit [00:28:00] easier to make money. So for example, there's a real estate company that I know who they offer mentorship. And this is directly from their CEO. I won't mention the company. And I went to one of their events where I was speaking there.

Yeah. And it was so easy for us to make an offer of 30, 000. People just put in their credit card and that'll be good. Now people are asking for multiple payments. They're asking for delayed. And that's actually true for a lot of places. And when the economy changes and when things are expensive, inflation comes to people and it's the right thing to do.

They pause and they rethink where they're putting their money investments and other things. So now businesses have to. Pivot. Now, I never operated a business in this kind of economy. So what did I do? My first order of business, I'm like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Let me find somebody who does.

Let me find a coach who has been doing this for at least a couple of decades, who's gone through this cycle and the economy goes in cycles. But then you run into business owners, they'll be like, Oh, the economy is bad. I got to stop doing this business. If you don't learn it now, you'll never have a business [00:29:00] to begin with.

So it makes no sense. Investors say that all the time. Coaches will say that all the time. No, the economy is not really good. Let me focus in other areas. I'm like, no, this is the time for you to double down and understand, because if you can understand this and you can build a business in any, But circling back to the thinker is really important.

So the identity as a thinker and doer is really important because most of the time you already know to do things. That's why you want to be an entrepreneur. And my guess is because you are a high performer, you wanted to do more things and you felt locked in an environment. That's what I felt like.

where you've had a ceiling and now you wanted to be an entrepreneur and you value freedom as well. So you're creating this thing. You're already a doer. The problem is that you haven't thought clearly enough to do things. So one is to strategically think about long term and short term. The other one is to actually put in more and more time that gives you space to think.

And C. What's happening in your [00:30:00] life, in your business, that's hard to do. And this is what throws off most people. There are no ends to checklists in business. If you can get through all your checklists in a week in a business, you're not doing enough in business to begin with. So you might be under the assumption that if I check off everything, I'm doing good.

You're doing horrible. In fact, I do have checklists, not for the sake of just doing them. I have over 2000 things, literally 2000 things. Not all of them are important. I just put them in. I don't want to keep it in my head. And I review them. And based on the projects that I'm focused on, which one needs to be done first, which one needs to be done later.

I give myself time to think. And whenever I get into the mode of doing too much without thinking, I get overwhelmed. Always. What did I do? I don't have space to think. And I'm in overwhelm mode, which means that now I'm operating from my reactionary hindbrain system versus my prefrontal cortex. That's the thing that analyzes.

That's the thing that's creative. That's the side of our mind that that helps us to look at [00:31:00] complex situations and make better decisions. But if you're always overwhelmed, which is a thing in entrepreneurship, you will be because it's hard and there's a lot in there and it will test you. And this is why emotional resilience is so important in entrepreneurship, which you will develop.

But if you're always overwhelmed, you have very little space to think as a part of your brain is fighting for energy on two sides of your brain. The one side wants you to be in reaction more and be afraid all the time. The other side needs you to think. Or you need it to think, but you don't know how to use it.

And because we don't know how to use our mind, we've never been trained to do that. We actually just go back to what we're comfortable with, which comes back to checklists. Do you teach that in your productivity class? Do you talk about how I've been trying to, I use the word try because to me, that's the lowest form of commitment.

That's the way I was taught. Try is the lowest form of commitment. So when I say that, that is indicative of the fact that. I'm not making a commitment. I'm just owning it. I'm not making a [00:32:00] commitment to creating time to think. And part of that is because I feel guilty when I'm sitting there thinking I'm not getting something done.

So I'm curious, do you talk about that? In your next workshop, are you going to go into like how to actually approach this? Like how to structure that time? What to do with that time? If my brain is too focused on thinking about all my to do's, I can't sit still. I have a really hard time with that. Are you going to teach that the way I do these?

Workshops or webinars, however you want to talk about it is I don't just talk about things. I walk people through a process for them to think for themselves, so I walk people through an assessment for different parts of their life so I can help them understand how to get out of the checklist mode and start to think about what are the key areas that you need to actually look at in your life in detail and start thinking about how are you doing in each area and start breaking down?

What do you need to do? That will shift you to as a positive [00:33:00] direction. And what we've heard on the Pareto side is what are the 20 percent of the things that gives you the 80 percent of the leverage. And most people say these things like work smart, uh, think Pareto principle, uh, block times, all of it.

But nobody actually knows. We live in a culture where pretty much everybody learns from TikTok. It's like short form content. I was with a client the other day. I gave him a recommendation and. I usually give this recommendation whenever somebody's struggling with communication or relationships. It's the five love languages.

Because it's part of the pop culture, you will see so much short form content. It's like, hey, I know about it. You can go take the test for ten minutes on their website. I know what my love language is. I know what my wife's love language is. I'm like, great, have you read the book? No, you need to read the book because there are details in there that if you understand the thinking behind it, it will make it easier for you to implement this.

We haven't taken the time to do it. That's the culture we're in this short attention span. We don't go towards depth, so we want quick shortcuts [00:34:00] and it doesn't exist. It's a complete illusion. This is the only time in history where. All we think about is shortcuts and stuff, but it's also the only time in history where we're not getting anything done.

We're just busy all the time. Our attention spans are not there. The quality of our life has dropped too, because we're misusing our mind. We have a joke. Some of our family members, I'll be sitting there and I'll start a story and they will ask a question. And then as soon as I go into it, they will.

Switch gears. What is the squirrel moment? Like you just asked the question. Why'd you ask the question if you didn't want to know the answer? And we don't realize what all this stuff is doing to us. It's training our mind to think a certain way. And you can train the mind to do anything. But now from childhood, we're doing it.

At least with my generation, your generation, we've experienced a world without phones and social media. We understand the value of longer conversation. We understand the value of doing. Hard, long work and not seeing the effect of it for a long time. [00:35:00] We understand the value of being around relationships.

Relationships are hard. Nowadays, when I run into people, it's like, one thing happened. Oh, didn't work out. What happened? That person didn't have emotional intelligence. What do they do? They didn't go for therapy when I asked them to. What happened in the, that person got jealous. So, work with the person first and then figure out if that person needs therapy too.

It's like these reactionary things, and we pick up on pop psychology from the world where, Oh, I'm this kind of personality. It, like, psychology has become a lot like astrology, where you're like Aries and Virgo and whatever. Alright. Psychology is all like, I'm introverted, I'm extroverted. So they pick up all these little pieces of information.

And because it's easier to make decisions on small pieces of the information, they make decisions and they move forward, but then they haven't thought through it. And this is where, again, the value of a coach community can be really powerful. And what I do in this workshop is [00:36:00] get you to go towards depth.

You're going to spend three hours with me. First of all, it goes by really fast. So it's not like you're listening to me and I'm just training. You're actually walking through your life. You haven't done this, so it might feel weird to you. But what will happen is it will clarify why you're struggling in different parts of your life.

And it will also clarify what you need to do. And I will also talk about a plan. What do you need to do to be 10 times more productive in the next year, in the next five years, and I have a whole process around that. I can walk you through it and it'll be up to you for you to go in that direction or not.

But at the least, I'm going to help you understand where you're stuck. What do you need to focus on to move forward and then at least build a few steps forward for you to go in the positive direction. But there is a lot of work that needs to be done in the background, which I'll give you a plan around and some resources to do that.

To work through but what I can say is that take this as a gift as an opportunity because most people don't do this because most people don't do this. They don't have a functioning business. They don't have a functioning [00:37:00] life. They don't have a functioning mind. And by that, I don't mean that people are insane.

I just means that I give this example. Imagine this was your hand and your arm was constantly doing that. And you couldn't stop it. This is our mind. Like our mind is running these thoughts in loops over and over. And we don't know how to control it because we've lost the ability to control the most important organ in our brain, um, because it's trained to think a certain way.

And it benefits the people who want your attention. It benefits people who want to use you as a consumer. It doesn't benefit you and your business or in the quality of your life. So if those things are valuable to you, join us. And it's like in the Little Mermaid when she's using a fork. Was she trying to do something with a fork?

She takes the fork and she brushes her hair. Hold on, I don't remember the name she comes up with. It's something unique. It's like totally not even a word, but she brushes her hair. She's assuming that people use it to brush their hair. And to me, she wasn't taught what a fork [00:38:00] is. And if you think about it, like you said, we aren't taught how to use this tool, our brain.

And so we're using it the way people are telling us to use it. Short form content, as an example, I was listening to your Talk about that. And I'm thinking my daughter, she's nine and she's in third grade. So she's reading. And the thing that she picks up on and reads the most is graphic novels. They're almost like what we would think of as comic books, but they're a little bigger than that.

And at first I was like, man, I personally would never read that book. I was a, Black beauty fan. Like I was into horses when I was little, I still have all my collection of my black beauty and black stallion books. So I picked one up and I started reading it to her. And it's interesting because I started to see like little kids are not reading these.

Detailed stories that have so much nuanced stuff that's going on in the, and there there's reading the graphic novels. [00:39:00] It's like us watching short form content versus taking that time to really think and experience it on a different level. And so I've committed to reading it to her, even though she's bored to tears, because I want her to experience something different than this like short form book novel.

That she's getting. So I love that. I love that you're talking about. We weren't trained on how to use our brain and really getting to experience a new way of doing that. So I'm looking forward to this. Coming up, I'm going to sit through it again because it's so worth it. And I think the first time I went through it, you've changed quite a bit since then.

So I'm excited to see what's new. And I really want to say guys, just, I encourage you to come out and join us on zoom and you can register. I put the link in the chat already. So if you're watching this, you've got the link, go ahead and save your spot. Even if you can't. Get through it. Cause I know you guys are like three hours.

I've already got other things. I'm on my schedule. First of all, if you can clear your schedule, this is the thing to clear it for number one. [00:40:00] Number two, if you really can't then register anyway, because you're going to get bonus content that Faisal was just talking about that you don't get later and you get to watch the replay, not that the replay that's not as good, but if you have to do second best, definitely register anyway, because it's worth it, I promise you.

Is there anything else that you want to add on that comment and can you also plug your website just because if we turn this into a podcast audio version, I want to make sure that's in there. Yeah, so you can just go to, if you see my name there, if I sell and son. com and Lindy will put the link somewhere there to remind me what the short form content.

So I'm going to say something controversial. A lot of people, entrepreneurs, they're into personal development and they read a lot of personal development books. I actually look at personal development books a lot. Like you look at the story books that your daughter was reading because they're actually the summary of all the.

Hundreds of thousands of material that we have in [00:41:00] psychology and philosophy and studies done in the background and cultural Studies that have been done in the background. So they're like the gist of it. I'm not saying anything wrong with every personal development books as well, but even that's like when people read those books and they try to implement, it's the surface of what you need.

It doesn't actually highlight what you truly need. Some things are useful, but not everything is useful. There's a lot in the background. And you haven't gone into them and it's not in your interest. So it doesn't matter. This is my passion, what I care about. And I came from the world of philosophy and I've married philosophy, engineering, psychology.

And my thinking and my own experience in life and just getting data from other people. And what I've learned is that there's a lot more depth to your life than any of these books, podcasts, any of them that can capture. And what I try to do in my coaching process is get that depth out and get you to become clearer.

on your path forward and build a system and a habit [00:42:00] and a process for you to actually make your dreams a reality for you to grow to the next level. So if you're going to hold on to anything, hold on to your role as a leader, know that there are other people counting on most people underestimate this life can be crushing for people who are not growing because the more you grow, the more complex life gets with kids, with responsibilities, with businesses, with all sorts of things.

And your spirituality. If you're not growing, you're not actually tackling life directly, and you're not dealing with the challenging parts of it, and most of why people are not productive is because they're not dealing with the reality of what they need to deal with. Their lack of clarity, their challenges in their relationships, their challenges in not understanding their own sense of purpose, and not dealing with their spiritual demons.

Those things stop you more from being productive than some checklist or a system or something else. So the easier thing to do is let me find the next app. That's just going to give you the surface solution. It's a bandaid. It's an, you're going to use it for a few days and then you're going to fall back.

And what I do with my clients is help [00:43:00] them to go deeper and understand who they really are and what they stand for, how they need to show up as a leader and how they can build a path for themselves and those around them, whether those are their family, community, their organization, their team, whoever they may be.

And if that's important to you as a leader, definitely show up. And I think you will really enjoy the process. 100%. Thank you so much for your time and your wisdom, sharing it with everybody. I'm truly grateful and I appreciate you so much just being in my life without even realizing it. You've made immense changes in me personally in my own development.

So I'm grateful to you, Faisal. Thank you so much. Thank you. That means a lot. I appreciate that.