What Is Really Stopping You From Being Productive? 5 Things Every Business Owner Needs to Rethink

You can spend an entire day answering emails, attending meetings, speaking with clients, managing your team, and checking things off your to-do list—and still feel like you haven't made meaningful progress.

Your calendar is full. You're constantly moving. There's always something else demanding your attention.

But at the end of the day, are you actually moving closer to the life and business you want to build?

This is a question worth asking, especially if you're a coach, business owner, entrepreneur, or real estate investor. These roles come with endless responsibilities. There is always another client to serve, another deal to close, another property to evaluate, another strategy to implement, or another problem to solve.

It's easy to mistake all that activity for productivity.

But productivity isn't about how much you do. It's about what you're producing with your efforts.

After working with thousands of people, I've noticed that the same patterns tend to come up repeatedly when people struggle with productivity. And often, the problem isn't that they're not doing enough. It's that something more fundamental is missing.

Let's look at five things that might be stopping you from being productive.

1. You've Confused Being Busy With Being Productive

The root word of productivity is produce. It comes down to a simple question: What are you producing with your efforts?

Somewhere along the way, we've turned productivity into a conversation about being busy. We measure it by how many meetings we attend, how many tasks we complete, how many hours we work, or how many things we manage to squeeze into a day.

We create checklists, calendars, schedules, and systems to help us get more done. These tools can be useful, but they don't automatically mean we're being productive.

You can have a perfectly organized calendar and still be working on the wrong things.

Think about a business owner who spends most of the week dealing with operational problems but never makes time to develop a long-term strategy. Or a coach who spends hours creating content but rarely takes the time to build meaningful relationships with potential clients. A real estate investor might spend weeks researching opportunities without having a clear investment strategy to guide their decisions.

All three people are busy. But are their efforts producing the outcomes that matter most?

That's the distinction we need to make.

For me, productivity is about producing a life worth living. That means doing things that are meaningful and purposeful to me, finding fulfillment and peace, connecting with people I care about, and creating things that matter.

I don't separate my work life from my personal life as if they're two completely different things. They both contribute to the same outcome: the life I'm building.

This changes how you measure productivity.

Instead of asking, "How much did I get done today?" you can ask, "Did what I did today contribute to the life and future I actually want?"

That question can completely change how you use your time.

Create space instead of filling every hour

When I look at my calendar, I see a snapshot of my life. Everything I care about should have a place in it—not just my professional responsibilities, but also my relationships, personal development, health, and the things that bring me joy.

I want space to think, space to feel, space to connect with people, and space to create things that matter to me.

If every hour is filled with meetings and tasks, something may have gone wrong.

For business owners, this is particularly important. If you're constantly occupied with the day-to-day running of your business, when do you get to think about where the business is going?

If you're a coach, when do you reflect on the quality of your work and the people you want to serve?

If you're a real estate investor, when do you step back to assess whether your investments still align with your long-term objectives?

A full calendar isn't necessarily evidence of progress. Sometimes, it's evidence that you haven't made enough room for what matters.

2. You Haven't Defined a Vision for Your Life

Before you start looking for productivity techniques, you need to understand what you're trying to produce.

That begins with your vision.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is confusing their goals with their vision. Goals are important, but they aren't the same thing.

A goal might be to grow your business to a certain revenue level, acquire a particular property, build a team, or reach a specific milestone in your coaching practice.

Those are worthwhile objectives. But here's a question: What happens when you achieve them?

What comes next?

I've seen how people can become so attached to a particular goal that it becomes their entire identity. They spend years working toward it, finally achieve it, and then find themselves asking, "What now?"

The problem isn't that they had a goal. The problem is that they may never have defined the larger vision behind it.

A goal is something you achieve. A vision is something you build toward.

Your vision includes more than what you want to accomplish. It also includes who you are becoming, what you value, why your work matters, and how you want to contribute to the lives of other people.

It gives meaning to the goals you set.

For example, two entrepreneurs might have the same goal of building a multimillion-dollar company. One wants to create financial freedom and spend more time with family. The other wants to solve a problem they experienced growing up and make a solution available to others.

They may pursue similar business goals, but the deeper reasons behind those goals are different.

And those reasons matter when things get difficult.

Building a business is hard. Maintaining relationships is hard. Taking care of your health and well-being requires effort. Anything worth building over the long term will demand something from you.

When your work is connected to a vision that genuinely matters to you, the struggle has a purpose.

When it isn't, you can spend years pushing yourself toward something that looks impressive but doesn't fulfill you.

Your vision should include the kind of life you want to live

Don't define your vision exclusively in terms of revenue, business growth, property ownership, or professional recognition.

Ask yourself what those achievements are meant to make possible.

What kind of person do you want to become as you build your business? What kind of relationships do you want to maintain? What do you want your everyday life to look like? What do you want to contribute to the world?

These questions matter because your business is part of your life, not a replacement for it.

If you build a successful business but become disconnected from everything that matters to you, it's worth asking whether you're producing the outcome you originally wanted.

Your vision gives you a way to evaluate not only what you're achieving but also what you're sacrificing along the way.

3. You Haven't Connected Your Vision to Your Personal Story

Your vision shouldn't be something you've simply borrowed from someone else.

It should connect to who you are, what you've experienced, and what matters to you.

I've spent years trying to understand human behavior and why people sometimes struggle to move forward, even when they have the ability and opportunities to do so.

There were periods when I struggled with my own awareness of life. I had questions about why I felt miserable, why I couldn't move forward in certain areas, and why I struggled with addiction despite having been raised with tools and knowledge that should have helped me.

As I began to understand some of those experiences, my mission became connected to helping other people develop that awareness.

I could pursue that mission through coaching, training, books, or other forms of work. The specific business or platform might change, but the underlying purpose could remain.

That's an important distinction.

A business can be one way you express your vision without being the only place where that vision exists.

Find your contrast

One of my favorite ideas from a spiritual teacher is this: if you want to find your purpose, find your contrast.

Think about the things you struggled with in the past. What did you lack? What difficulties shaped your understanding of the world? What did you wish had been available to you or the people around you?

Sometimes, the things we struggle with become connected to the problems we eventually want to solve.

Consider someone who grew up without access to quality education and later decides to build a school. Their work may be rooted in a desire to make opportunities available to others that they themselves didn't have.

Or consider a coach who struggled to find direction in their own career and now helps other professionals navigate uncertainty.

A business owner might have experienced a problem firsthand and decide to create a better solution for other people facing the same challenge.

In each case, the work connects to something personal.

Your past doesn't automatically determine your purpose, and painful experiences don't have to define your future. But examining your story can help you understand why certain problems matter to you more than others.

Ask yourself:

• What did I struggle with that I wish had been different?

• What problems do I find myself caring deeply about?

• What experiences have shaped the way I see the world?

• What do I want to make possible for other people?

These questions can help you uncover the connection between your personal story and your professional direction.

Stop chasing somebody else's mountain

When you don't know what matters to you, it's easy to look at what other people are doing and copy them.

You see another entrepreneur building a particular kind of company, so you decide to pursue the same model. You see a successful investor acquiring multiple properties, so you assume that must be the right strategy for you. You see another coach scaling their business in a certain way, and you begin to follow their approach without questioning whether it fits your own vision.

Copying isn't always wrong. There is a lot we can learn from other people.

The problem arises when imitation replaces self-understanding.

You might spend the next ten years climbing a mountain simply because someone convinced you it was worth climbing. Then, when you finally reach the top, you discover that it wasn't the mountain you wanted in the first place.

Just because a problem is difficult doesn't mean it's your problem to solve.

Someone can guide you, ask you the right questions, and help you examine your options. But nobody else can determine what genuinely matters to you.

That responsibility belongs to you.

4. You Don't Have a Long-Term Strategy, and You May Be Trying to Do Everything Alone

Once you have a vision, the next question is how you're going to move toward it.

This is where long-term goals and strategy become important.

I've seen how business owners can move from one opportunity to another without giving themselves enough time to build something meaningful.

They start one business because it looks promising. A couple of years later, another opportunity comes along, so they start a second business. Then another opportunity appears, and they start a third.

Before long, they're managing several businesses, each demanding attention, energy, and resources.

Sometimes diversification is a deliberate and sensible strategy. But sometimes, people keep moving from one opportunity to another because they haven't decided what they're genuinely committed to building.

They haven't established whether the first business is actually the path they want to pursue over the long term.

So they keep looking for another option, hoping one of the opportunities will eventually work.

The same pattern can appear in coaching and real estate.

A coach may keep changing their niche, offers, and business model before allowing any one approach enough time to develop. An investor may pursue every attractive property opportunity without a clear acquisition strategy or understanding of how each investment fits into the broader portfolio.

The issue isn't necessarily a lack of opportunity. It may be a lack of direction.

Decide what you're building before you decide what to do next

Your vision should inform your long-term goals, and those goals should inform your strategy.

Your strategy then helps determine which opportunities deserve your attention.

Without that connection, you can end up making decisions based on whatever seems attractive in the moment.

You might be working hard, but your efforts are scattered across activities that don't necessarily reinforce one another.

A clear long-term direction doesn't mean you must predict every detail of the future. It means you have a reason for the decisions you're making today.

It helps you distinguish between an opportunity that moves you forward and one that simply gives you something new to do.

It also helps you understand that difficulty isn't automatically a reason to abandon your path.

Anything meaningful will require effort. The question is whether you're willing to dedicate that effort to something that genuinely matters to you.

You also need people who support your vision

There's another part of productivity that people often overlook: support.

We tend to focus on individual achievement. We talk about our goals, our discipline, our mindset, and our ability to execute.

But no one builds anything meaningful entirely alone.

I've been able to build my business in part because of my wife, my family, my friends, my mentors, my coaches, and the people who work alongside me.

Without their support, the process would have been much harder.

It's easy to look at the person doing the visible work and assume they're responsible for everything. But there are often people behind the scenes providing knowledge, emotional support, practical help, and the space needed to keep moving forward.

I see this with business owners who tell me they're struggling with focus. As we explore what's happening, we sometimes discover that the bigger issue is in their relationships.

They're carrying tension at home, dealing with unresolved conflict, or spending so much emotional energy managing difficult relationships that they have little left for their work.

What looks like a productivity problem can actually be a support problem.

If your mind is occupied with conflict, worry, or emotional strain, it becomes harder to give your attention to the work in front of you.

Build a support system around the life you're trying to create

Your support system might include your spouse, family, business partners, employees, colleagues, mentors, coaches, or a community of people working toward similar goals.

For a coach, that might mean having peers who can challenge your thinking and help you navigate difficult client situations.

For an entrepreneur, it might mean building a team that can take responsibility for day-to-day operations rather than requiring your involvement in every decision.

For a real estate investor, it could mean developing trusted relationships with partners and professionals whose expertise helps you make better-informed decisions.

The specific form of support will differ, but the principle remains the same: you don't have to carry everything yourself.

If you don't have the support you need in one area of your life, consider where else you might find it.

And if you already have people supporting you, acknowledge their contribution. Don't mistake the work you do personally for the entirety of what makes your progress possible.

5. You're Executing Without Direction—and Your System Is Too Rigid

Execution is where most productivity conversations begin.

We talk about taking action, building habits, managing time, creating routines, and getting things done.

These things matter. But execution becomes much more effective when it's built on a clear vision, a long-term plan, and the support needed to follow through.

Otherwise, you can become very good at completing tasks without making meaningful progress.

You end up putting things on your calendar simply because they need to be done, because someone has asked you to do them, or because the day has become a series of reactions to whatever happens around you.

You're executing, but what is that execution based on?

Before asking whether you need to do more, consider whether your actions are connected to the direction you want to move in.

Your productivity system must be flexible

Even with a clear vision and strategy, life won't always follow your plans.

On the day of this training, I had to take my mother to the hospital. What was supposed to take two hours ended up taking four. I had to coordinate with my team, manage other responsibilities, and prepare for the session shortly before it began.

That's life.

Unexpected events will interrupt your plans. Family responsibilities will arise. Clients will have urgent needs. Business problems will appear when you least expect them.

If your productivity system is so rigid that one unexpected event throws everything into disarray, eventually, it will break.

I think about tall palm trees in Florida and the Caribbean. They sway with the wind rather than remaining completely rigid. Buildings are also designed with some flexibility so they can withstand stress.

There's a lesson in that.

You need enough structure to stay on course and enough flexibility to adapt when circumstances change.

For example, I've had periods when I could only get to the gym twice a week instead of four times. Rather than abandoning the routine because I couldn't maintain the original schedule, I adjusted it.

If I could only go once a week, I would still go.

You can slow down without stopping.

For business owners, this might mean adjusting your schedule during a demanding period rather than abandoning your strategic priorities altogether. A coach might reduce the amount of content they produce temporarily while maintaining meaningful contact with clients. An investor might postpone a planned acquisition while continuing to review opportunities and maintain relationships.

The point is not to lower your standards or use flexibility as an excuse to avoid difficult work.

It's to recognize that consistency doesn't always mean doing the same amount every day. Sometimes, it means finding a sustainable way to keep moving forward despite changing circumstances.

Avoid the cycle of starting and stopping

Another common problem is inconsistency.

People commit to a new routine, work at it for a few months, and then stop. They make progress, lose momentum, and struggle to restart.

Sometimes the problem is that the routine demands too much. Sometimes it isn't connected to a meaningful goal. And sometimes people try to do everything independently without seeking support or accountability.

The result is that their efforts never build on one another for long enough.

A more useful approach is to create a system you can maintain and adapt over time.

Identify the activities that genuinely matter to your long-term goals. Decide what you can realistically sustain. Then establish a minimum level of progress you can continue making even when life becomes difficult.

You may need to adjust your pace, but you don't have to abandon your direction.

And remember that execution isn't only about your individual effort. Your ability to delegate, ask for help, and rely on the people around you is also part of making your plans work.

The Real Question Is: Are You on the Right Track?

If you're struggling with productivity, focus, or consistency, I would encourage you to step back before immediately searching for another productivity tool or technique.

Look at the bigger picture.

Are you clear about your vision? Do you understand the kind of life you're trying to create?

Are your goals connected to your personal story, your values, and your sense of purpose? Or are you pursuing things simply because they look impressive or because other people are doing them?

Do you have a long-term direction and a strategy for moving toward it?

Are the people around you supporting your progress? Have you built the relationships and systems you need to sustain your work?

And finally, are your daily actions based on those things, or are you simply filling your calendar with whatever demands your attention?

These questions matter because productivity problems don't always begin at the level of execution.

Sometimes, you're stuck because you haven't clarified where you're going. Sometimes, you're carrying too much alone. Sometimes, you're pursuing the wrong opportunities. And sometimes, your system is so rigid that it cannot accommodate the realities of your life.

Adding more tasks to your day won't necessarily solve any of these problems.

You may need to revisit your vision, rethink your priorities, strengthen your support system, or change how you approach execution.

A Practical Exercise: Rethink Your Productivity

Take a few minutes to answer these five questions honestly.

1. Vision: What kind of life am I trying to create through my work, business, or investments?

2. Personal story: Why does this matter to me personally? What experiences or values make this direction meaningful?

3. Long-term strategy: What am I committed to building over the next several years, and which opportunities genuinely support that direction?

4. Support: Who is helping me move forward, and where do I need more practical, emotional, or professional support?

5. Execution: Which of my current activities are contributing to my long-term vision, and which are simply keeping me busy?

You don't need to solve everything in one sitting. Start by identifying the area where you feel the greatest disconnect.

Then make one meaningful adjustment.

It could mean removing a recurring commitment that no longer serves you, having a conversation you've been avoiding, delegating a responsibility, or setting aside time to think strategically about your business.

The goal isn't to create another checklist that makes you feel productive for a day.

It's to bring your daily actions into better alignment with what matters most.

Final Thoughts: Productivity Should Help You Build a Life That Matters

As coaches, entrepreneurs, business owners, and investors, it's easy to become consumed by the things we're trying to build.

There's always another milestone to reach, another opportunity to explore, or another problem to solve.

But the point isn't simply to do more.

It's to create something meaningful with your efforts—and to build a life you actually want to live in the process.

That requires more than discipline and time management. It requires a clear vision, an understanding of your personal story, a long-term strategy, the right support, and the ability to execute consistently without becoming so rigid that life breaks your system.

When these elements work together, productivity takes on a different meaning.

You stop measuring your progress only by how full your calendar is. You start paying attention to whether your actions are taking you where you want to go.

And you begin to create more room for the things that matter, rather than spending all your time reacting to the things that demand your attention.

The goal is not to spend your life being busy. It's to use your time and energy to build a life that matters to you.

So, before you ask yourself what else you need to do, ask a more important question:

Am I doing the right things for the life I'm trying to create?


TRANSCRIPT

What is actually stopping you or slowing you down from being productive. I'd say framing it in the negative gets us to think about there are lots of things we can do to be productive, but what stops us or what slows us down from actually being productive? and I'll start with because one of the things I've learned just working with thousands of people at this point, there are usually similar patterns that keep coming up over and over and you might have worked on it too. And one of the first questions things that I have to question myself and I usually question it when somebody tells me that they're struggling with productivity is you have to define the thing before you do anything because it's a word. Usually the way language works a word points to a reality.

A word in itself is nothing., productivity points to a reality that you're going to move forward. And what does that look like? So, let's look at the meaning first and then we'll dive into what slows you down from or stops you from actually being productive in your life. And the root word, if you actually look it up, is produ produce.

It's it's a simple root word, but we forget. we've made productivity around about being busy, about running around, about creating all kinds of checklists and calendars and all all the fun things that I do as well, but it's kind of got lost in the translation and produce means what are we creating or producing with our efforts and it doesn't necessarily the word itself doesn't necessarily mean it has to be on the professional side. That's the other problem. A lot of people look at productivity on the professional side usually more so than personal. But I actually look at the foundations of it is produce.

What am I producing? What kind of thing am I producing in my life? and what I'm producing is a life worth living if I look at it from my perspective. Now you can decide what that is for you. Now and I have to define what a life worth living is.

So for me that is a life where I get to do the things that are meaningful to me, purposeful to me. I get to live a life where I'm more fulfilled and at peace with myself. I get to live a life where I get to connect and take care of others that I care about. I get to live a life where where I do the things that matter to me, things that bring me joy and I look at peace and joy to be very connected to each other., and ultimately that I'm I'm fulfilled by the life that I'm building.

Now, if you can that's a general thing, but it encompasses everything. I don't look at my work separate from my life, my personal life. It's all the same. I look for the same qualities in my personal life and my business life and my work life.

When I'm getting into partnerships, I look for that. So, when I'm going to be working with this person, relationships are difficult. What is going to be the quality of interactions? I can't predict everything but my my question is that would I want to work with this person for the next 10 years would I want to be in consistent conversations pretty much every week of working day with this person same thing with my life partner same thing with my kids I'll even assess my kids like if my kids were around somebody else would they be really annoying [laughter] to them like I don't want them to be that like annoying in the sense that they can question people they can do all kind they not everybody has to like them but what be proud of them if they go out in the world.

So I'm I'm also looking at it from that relationship point of view and relationships make a big difference in our life and the quality of our life. So productivity and it's the first time I asked a client I remember he was surprised. I'm like, well,, for me, if I have a calendar, it's a snapshot of my life, which means everything that I care about should be on that. And I look at all seven days 24/7.

Everything that I care about is on that calendar because all of them are producing one thing. And that one thing is the life that I care about. Whether that's related to me, my relationships, my purpose, the things that I'm creating out in the world that I'm interested in, the things that bring me peace, joy, love, all those things. If I don't have it, something is missing.

And I and now we can go through what are the missing pieces? What actually really distracts people when it comes to productivity? The first piece was that we don't even we haven't even defined it because it's become this thing about being busy. It's actually about and that's why I said that in the in our my message this morning and in the email that once you really get it, you will actually spend less and less time being more time having space rather than being busy.

It it creates a different meaning. For most people, it's become about being busy. For me, it's more about, yes, there's busyness in life, but I look for opportunities where I have space to think, space to be, space to feel, space to connect with people, space to create things that matter to me, space to, yeah, work on things, but I' I've created that space. Every time I see more busyness on my calendar, I actually suspect that there's something that has horribly gone wrong.

So, [laughter] the signal is completely opposite for me. For most people, the signal is if they're busy with calls and doing things and all that stuff, it seems like they're moving forward because it gives you the feeling of being productive. However, it's defined by people. But that's not what we're doing.

So, where does where did things go wrong? So, the first place it goes wrong is you haven't even defined what kind of life you want. And that's that's where it actually starts. That definition I gave you to produce a life that matters to me, create a life that matters to me, that came from my vision for life.

There's no powerful leader you're going to find in the world in the history of world. you go find any kind of culture who does not have a vision for themselves and their community or the people around them. you will that will be an exception if you ever find it. but you will find that and it's it's even biblical. It's like without without a vision people perish. It's like it's even in in in in our in the roots of religion is that. Why?

Because we've as human beings as soon as we found out the ability to think and create. We started creating a longer term vision than what's in front of us. That's what separated us from other animals is that we could look past the stimuli around us. Whatever was around us. we could create a world that didn't that was not in front of us.

And a lot of times most people confuse their their goals for their vision. And a goal is usually very specific. I need to hit this target. I need to buy this business or this house or I need to take this business to this level. scale it to this level at this timeline with this kind of team.

That's a goal. That's a great goal. Nothing wrong with goals. But based on what are you going to do then?

And this is why when people get to hit that point, they're like, "What now?" Because their whole identity was tied into that goal. But a vision is a little bit different. Your vision actually contains your story as a human being. Your vision contains who you are because your vision is not just about creating things.

You're also becoming the kind of person who's going to create that. you're also supporting other people around you. or your s sense of purpose is heavily tied into your vision as well. Your past is heavily tied into that where you came from because whatever vision you came up with will be connected to whatever life you have gone through. As an example, what why do I care about this? Because I struggled for quite a few years to have any kind of awareness about life.

I couldn't I couldn't answer questions around why am I miserable? Why can't I just move forward towards the things even though I have the mind, I have the ability, I have the opportunity. I was stuck. Why am I stuck in addiction? why is it that my parents raised me with all the tools and responsibility, knowledge and everything that I needed but I couldn't move forward?

I struggled with that awareness for a few years and once I figured out pieces of it and I'm like you know what I I don't think I had this. So a lot of my mission became how do I spread that awareness? Now the medium of it is actually it could be through coaching, through training, through books, through all kinds of mediums and my goal could be I'm going to build a business to move that forward. But I also do that in my personal life.

My personal life I will get people to be aware by asking them some certain questions or by modeling certain things. So when I hit the goal in business, it doesn't stop. It's a part of me. It will it'll be with me for the rest of my life in one form or another. and according to at least Simon Sinek when he talks about these things he says that pe people and again this for you to think about that most people are born with their vision and story and it gets solidified by the time they hit their teen years and then the rest of the year whether they live through that authentically or not that's a different story.

And if that is true I don't think we've been given the tools to figure out what that vision is which is cool because we do that in this community. In fact, we're this next month, we're going to actually start working on the vision piece. That's going to be another set of groups that I'm going to be running from vision to your long-term goals, strategy to your priority areas, what you're going to execute on. We're going to work through all that.

And we have those who have been in this community, they know they've worked through it. So, if you don't have the vision, you're going to struggle. and the other thing that I alluded to, the thing that's connected to your vision is also you can put it in different ways. your energy, your trauma, your story, they're all tied into it. some if you actually study some of the most successful people, you'll notice that they've gone through some kind of struggle or pain in their life. Usually, we'll call that a version of trauma. Whatever they create out of it is the thing if if they're able to create something out of it is linked heavily to that story. if they might consciously link it to it or they might just do it because because they were they were like that just like I shared it with me but for example somebody who creates a solution for let's say education like they become the they build a school or they are the head of a school and when you ask them deeply like why does it matter to you and what why did you go towards this well because I we didn't have education where I grew up we had to struggle to to create that and he went through that pain and he wanted to create that they really struggle and he wanted to make that available to somebody or she wanted to make that available to somebody.

It came out of a pain. sometimes that's the case and this is why one one of my favorite things that I heard from a spiritual teacher I'm not sure who was but that if you really want to find your purpose find your contrast. So your story makes a big difference and a contrast is the opposite of what you have right now in the past. So whatever you have now what was the opposite? What is the thing that you struggled when you were little with that could be in my case with awareness that could be with your family that could be and it could be multiple things but there's a core that becomes a part of your identity and that story is important to track and part of that I had shared is that there's there's there's there's pain that comes out of that but there's also energy like I said lots of people who are successful they actually attribute their success to some kind of pain now over time you have to balance that out and figure out well why are you going towards that what does it matter because sometimes people sacrifice other things internally because of that but it's deeply linked to that vision because if the vision is not connected to your personal story it's a random thing that you've picked up from somebody else it sounds good but it's not deeply tied to you and usually when I walk people through a vision exercise what I look for is do they feel it or not did it connect with their story and do they feel it if they can't feel it it's not a real thing, and sometimes people don't feel it because they can't connect to it in the moment, but sometimes it's they've made up something in their head.

So, that's the first piece of it that you're who you are is deeply tied into your vision and story and you haven't unravel that enough. So, you're chasing somebody else's goal that looks good. And this is what human beings do. If we if we don't know who we are, well, our mind will look for what is the next human being doing that looks somewhat good and we copy that.

You want evidence for that? Go around and look at businesses. How do they promote themselves? Look, look how they do the their customer service.

Look go to your loved ones families like each other's family's place. you'll see that your couches, how it's decorated. Everybody copies each other. It's very human to do that. But when you don't have your own ideas, you'll copy.

This is why when people become more and more authentic, they start to do very odd things. They have different kind of decoration. They have a different kind of lifestyle. They have a different kind of business.

Why do they do that? Not because they're they're trying to be different, but because they just are. I mean, there are some people who just want to be different. That's different.

But as soon as you figure out who you are, you tend to do things a little bit differently. And that's heavily tied into that vision and your story. So that's the first piece. If you don't have that, you're going to you can always be sure you picked somebody else's mountain and you're running towards it and you're going to spend the next 10 years trying to figure that out and then realize why did I just climb this mountain.

It's it sounded like it was a great mountain to climb. But was that for me? Just because a problem is hard doesn't mean you got to solve it. It has to be connected to you.

And nobody else can answer that. Somebody can guide you through it, but you're the only one who will know that internally., and that connects to your long-term goals., and, and I've also added strategy there., and I'll talk about both of it. So long, most people don't have a long-term goal system or strategy. That, for example, this is how it shows up in business.

U well, I started this business because, you know what, I thought it was a great opportunity. And then couple of years later, they started another business. That's seemed like a really good opportunity. And a couple of years by the now they're on the third business. before they know it, they have five businesses running or three or four businesses running.

And when you ask people, what are you doing? Well, I'm I'm spreading the risk or or or or I'm doing this because every millionaire does that. I'm like, no, that's not true. That's not a thing. every person who started with a business, they started with actually one thing.

Later on, they spread the risk into other businesses and other investments and everything else. You're only doing that. We're only doing that because we don't know if we can be dedicated to this and we don't know if this is a long-term path and we're hoping that one of the three works. It's like our secondary and tertiary plan.

[laughter] There was this dialogue. I don't know what was that. Oh, it was somebody talking to a kid. A kid is like, "Hey, I want to be a pianist.", somebody asked him who who who was fairly successful, but but he's like, "I have a backup.

I have a secondary plan." And he looked at him, he's like, "You're too young to have a secondary [laughter] plan." like go for being a pianist. But this is what we do, right? We have a backup plan, not because we think it'll be too difficult, but because we're actually not sure that it's our thing and everybody around us tells us too difficult and probably will be too difficult because everything big is too difficult. Everything long-term is too diff difficult.

Think about anything in life. anything that you've you have worth having, a family, a business, health, your well-being, they're all difficult to have. They're all difficult to maintain. Why would you dedicate day in and day out all your time towards something that connects deeply to your story? The reason why I can sit here, whether I'm on this call or not, and this was a it was such an easy decision for me even though the path was hard.

I was going to study this stuff about human behavior whether I worked in the field or not. I'm like I might as well get paid doing this if I'm going to do this anyway. It sounded much at the time I was doubting it but I'm like later on I realized that was a smart decision. It's like I get paid for what I enjoy anyway.

Why would I go anywhere else? that's on the work side. Same thing with family. Why would I want to create a miserable life? Why do I want to even my my colleagues like people I work with even clients even collaborators people I hire.

I tell him like if we're going to be miserable, we can have conflict. We can have tension, but if we're constantly miserable around each other, why are we doing this? what is the point of this? We can struggle through things. I'm okay with that.

But we're struggling towards things because we're working towards a common path. That's the same with my life partner, with my wife. Marriage is not easy, but we're struggling towards a path. We're we're happy because of the struggle at times.

Sometimes it's hard, but we are dedicated because it matters to us. It's a part of our vision and purpose. We have a common vision in there. And this one really gets to people and we forget this in the world in the world that's that's very individually focused and that is lack of support especially in the western world and I consider myself part of the western world.

I've also lived in the east but you understand that the individuality is hyper grown in the west. Everything is about my well-being, my health, my happiness, my this, my the other, my goals. But we forget in that process that we're also a social animal. In fact, your biology, you cannot deny your biology in this process.

You, your brain cannot function without other people. You want to know, you want to test that out, go somewhere alone for a good few months without any distraction, without your phone. You'll see how long you'll survive. This is why we admire people like hermits who will go off into the into the forest and they survived and somehow came back.

And by the way, if you study a lot, most hermits that we know about, they came back and they started a religion. They brought a bunch of people around them and then started a they created disciples. Why? Because it was too lonely.

[laughter] It's like we admire them for going off for a little bit, but they realized they're human beings. They had to come back. So we forget that when we don't have social support, things break down really fast. That's if you want to understand this, think about this.

It was a comedian, I think Joe Rogan said this in one of his plays. He's like, "Do you know how weird we are? we take some of the worst people in our society, murderers, rapists, all kinds of people. We take them out of the jail around other bad people and we put them in isolation." Why do we do that? Because it's harder to be in isolation than to be around murderers and rapists that's And why do people form groups and cliques and offices and homes and society and in in groups? why do we do that?

Because we're social. That's how we learn. That's how we support each other. and you want to look at some of the data around this. Look at the your the correlation between somebody's success, happiness, even longevity is connected to how happy you are in your marriage.

And second to that is your friendships and your community, your your how long you live, how happy you are, how connected you feel, how successful you are is deeply connected to your relationships. We have data on that. Why? Because all of it reinforces and I can just from my personal experience I can tell you without my wife I wouldn't have built this business.

There was no way to do it. I'm I might have done it in my own way in a in struggling and painful and it was hard enough to be able but she made it 100 times easier by supporting me in that process by actually making certain sacrifices that without which it would have been much harder. I couldn't have done it I couldn't have done any of this without my parents. I couldn't have done any of this without the the like this the knowledge and the social support from some of the friends everybody mentors coaches that I've had.

But it's easy to say me being here and doing all the work that oh it's all me. It's not. It just wouldn't. And how do I know this?

Because when I work with a lot of business owners who are struggling usually they don't connect it because they say that I'm I'm struggling with my focus. Then I go into their relationships and I see that they're their biggest problem is their they can't they're struggling in their relationships and that's seeping into their work. They're distracted. They their energy is tied into people and that's not a good energy.

This another funny thing. So whenever I work with clients, usually couples, if they're having kids, you will see this. As soon as they're having kids, the man usually is excited to go create things. the woman usually is nesting [laughter] like we call ourselves a little bit different than other animals but our instincts prevail in those cases is like our our social instincts like why do why are we so motivated I was talking to one of my close friends who who's a lawyer he has his own business too we were kind of comparing our milestones every time we've had a kid we've had a big boost in our business in a funny way like might be a coincidence but every time we had a kid there was a boost in business because there was an instinct internally that we got to provide. It's we're super tied into that process.

Now, all I'm saying is that who are the people that are supporting you? And this is where people get stuck. Either they don't have the right support in their home. And sometimes we don't have that.

But they haven't done the work to seek that support outside. That could come from friends, that could come from colleagues, that could come from mentors, coaches, communities like this. That can completely dramatically change. This is why they say we're an average of five people. you're an average of five people around you because your thoughts are constantly influenced by those around you.

Whatever you hear, whatever you feel, whatever you act on. And then finally, I know we have about 12 more minutes and this the final point, execution. this is where people spend a lot of their time try to do is like I'm going to take action, but what did you take the action based on? Was there a vision there? Was there a long long-term plan?

Was there social support in there? Did you make sense of your own story? I'm not saying stop everything and do that, but while you're doing that, you need to be clear about these areas. Because more than likely, you're stuck from the top down.

Not because you're not taking enough action, but because you're not clear about who you are, your long-term path. You don't have the right support. You haven't made sense of your energy of how to move forward, and you're executing based on checklists. and this is where things go wrong with execution. It's not based on a long-term plan and vision. your your process is too rigid.

Think about how life works. Right now today I had to go to the hospital to spend time take care of my mom and take her there. I spent about it was supposed to be 2 hours ended up being 4 hours. Then I had to get my team to figure out everything.

And then by the time I came here it was literally 15 20 minutes before this call. I had to prepare for this call. Life will throw things at you. If you're too rigid, you will break.

And that's why I was grateful that I haven't broken with this because I'm I tend to be much more flexible. Same thing with like the past few weeks I've been struggling. So, I've gone to the gym two two times a week instead of four times. I'm flexible.

I can do that. Even if I could go once a week, I'll go there because I think life will keep throwing things at you. When you stop, it doesn't do anything. Can you can slow down, but don't stop because you cannot predict what will happen next next because a lot of things are out of your your your predictable range, which means that stop being so rigid.

One of the good analogies, if you go to Florida or any of the Caribbean regions, if you watch these tall palm trees, they sway with the wind like this. Imagine they were so rigid. Think of how we do design buildings, the skyscrapers. They have to have a little bit of sway.

Otherwise, they can break under the the stress. same same principle. if you're so rigid, whatever you execute on, it will not work. It will break eventually. that's one of the problems. inconsistent. Most people are inconsistent what they do. They will do it for the next few months and then they will stop or they slow down so much that the thing doesn't have the same effect. or they work in silo and alone in their own way in their own corner.

They don't seek support and they will struggle. and I can tell you with all the challenges that have happened in my life, if it wasn't for the people around me, I would have broken easily. even with all the mindset changes, even with all the things, it would not have been as simple as this. And I see that ongoing pretty much with everybody., and just as a review, think about this. If you if you're struggling with productivity and focus anywhere, the first thing to step back is question is that are you on the right track? Do you are you clear about your vision?

Are you clear about your long-term path?, are you do you have the support that you need? And are you executing based on those things or are you just putting stuff on your calendar because real life is just throwing things at you and most people are doing the latter.