The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
The root cause of all lawyers' problems is financial stress. Financial stress holds you back from getting the right people on the bus, running the right systems, and being able to only do work for clients you want to work with. Financial stress keeps you in the office on nights and weekends, often doing work you hate for people you don't like, and doing that work alone.
(Yes, you have permission to do only work you like doing and doing it with people you like working with.)
The money stress is not because the lawyers are bad lawyers or bad people. In fact, most lawyers are good at the lawyering part and they are good people.
The money stress is caused by the general lack of both business skills and an entrepreneurial mindset.
Thus, good lawyers who are good people get caught up and slowed down in bringing their gifts to the world. Their families, teams, clients, and communities are not well-served because you can't serve others at your top level when you are constantly worrying about money.
We can blame the law schools and the elites of the profession who are running bar organizations, but to blame anyone else for your own woes is a loser's game. It is, in itself, a restrictive, narrow, mindset that will keep you from ever seeing, let alone experiencing, a better future.
Lawyers need to be in rooms with other entrepreneurs. They need to hang with people who won't tell you that your dreams are too big or that "they" or "the system "won't allow you to achieve them. They need to be in rooms where people will be in their ear telling them that their dreams are too small.
Get in better rooms. That would be the first step.
Second step, ignore every piece of advice any general organized bar is giving about how to make your firm or your life better.
The Renegade Lawyer Podcast
No. B.S. Time Management - Ben Glass and Dan Kennedy - an inside look at their new book
Unlock the secrets to mastering your time with none other than legendary business consultant Dan Kennedy, as he sits down with Ben Glass to discuss their newly released Fourth edition of "No BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs." This episode promises to equip you with the tools needed to enhance your productivity and mental well-being while achieving financial stability. We tackle contentious societal trends like quiet quitting and the efficacy of remote work, stressing that the onus falls on management to foster an environment of productivity through clear job definitions, effective supervision, and measurable outcomes.
Dive deep into the essential roles of discipline and philosophy in navigating today's most pressing business challenges, from customer service dilemmas to staffing shortages that even industry giants like Applebee's face. Learn from real-world examples, such as nuvia Dental's struggle to hire reliable tele-reps, and understand the moral implications of an AI-dependent workforce. We underscore the importance of philosophical dialogues with employees and creating structured, disciplined business environments that encourage growth and purpose.
Finally, get practical as we explore actionable strategies to maintain discipline and productivity amidst distractions. From clustering tasks and making decisive actions to creating a success-friendly environment, this episode is packed with insights that can transform both your personal and professional life. Hear humorous anecdotes like Charlie Jarvis's airport diet and discover how sharing personal journeys can turn challenges into motivational forces. Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting, this episode offers valuable lessons and inspiration to elevate your game.
Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com
What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?
In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers.
One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.
There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.
that we still let you know, that we owners still let this happen to us.
Dan Kennedy:I think that most people in a low confrontation more than they fear and loathe anything else, including losing.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show where we ask the questions why aren't more lawyers living flourishing lives and inspiring others? And can you really get wealthy while doing only the work you love with people you like? Many lawyers are. Get ready to hear from your host, ben Glass, the founder of the law firm Ben Glass Law in Fairfax, virginia, and Great Legal Marketing, an organization that helps good people succeed by coaching, inspiring and supporting law firm owners. Join us for today's conversation.
Ben Glass:Hey everyone, this is Ben, and welcome back to another episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast. Today's a very special episode. We are releasing Dan Kennedy and I have co-authored. As you probably know, dan Kennedy and I have just released the fourth edition of no BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs. It's a terrific book that has a lot of strategies and tactics about getting and managing your time, but more importantly, fundamentally it's a mindset book, like a lot of things that Dan and I do.
Ben Glass:Anyway, I got to spend an hour with Dan talking about some of the philosophies in this book. Anyway, I got to spend an hour with Dan talking about some of the philosophies in this book. You'll also see that we go off on tangents and individual rants because we are aligned on a lot of things the way we think about the world but I think you're going to enjoy this interview because you're going to get some insights that you may not see from the book. Anyway, the book is available now at Amazon. Make sure you get the fourth edition, the one co-authored by Dan Kennedy and me, ben Glass. All right, and now to my discussion with Dan. Let's see, hold on one sec. There we go. How are you?
Dan Kennedy:I'm good, I'm good. I thought, in honor of the topic, I would dial in one minute late.
Ben Glass:Well, I, you know, I said two in my facts and I looked at my note it said 215, and I'm like I can't even tell. But yes, in honor of the topic. So we on a conversation, but two friends that are catching up, co-authors of this book, riff on a bunch of these topics and go through it.
Ben Glass:Sure Fine Does that sound good for you. Yeah, okay, so good, all right, so I will do an introduction later, but let's just do this and we'll just start here. Dan, it's great, it's great to be able to talk to you again. It's been a while and I think, dan, it was almost a year ago, today or so, when you first faxed me and said hey, would you like to participate in the fourth edition of no BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs? You probably don't recall this, but I do. I said, yeah, sure, I'm really busy, as long as I have time.
Ben Glass:And you said 30 days.
Dan Kennedy:And I said, okay, we'll do that.
Dan Kennedy:Yeah, well, I mean, look, it's not the great American novel, you know, it's not like it's Moby Dick or From here to Eternity or something, and it's stuff that you and I are very familiar with, and it's a revision and an update and an improvement of an already existing book.
Dan Kennedy:So 30 days is kind of generous, the you know that. Look, the reason I invited you is because you are busy and and frankly I think one of the big societal problems we have right now is people don't have enough work to do. They're profoundly unbusy and in many cases they have decided and are being sold on the idea that being unbusy and not working is a good thing, being unbusy and not working is a good thing, when in fact nothing could be worse for someone's mental health, physical health, dignity, self-respect, self-image, their finances or for all of us collectively. Somebody just sent me an article I forget what it appeared in all about the quiet, quitting movement of work-from-home employees. No surprise to me, kind of not working but claiming they are Interspersing a day of work with walking the dog twice, going to a yoga class and doing the laundry and still thinking that they're at work. So you got invited because you're famously busy.
Ben Glass:And I remain famously busy. It's funny. Another article that floated around for a bit was about folks who were doing work at home, and then the business owner or the employer would find out the person is doing two 40-hour-a-week jobs because they're working from home to two companies. A lot of people were critical of that. I thought well, that's pretty smart, understand what he or she is paying for. Let someone work from home has typically no good way of measuring productivity in many cases and that person ends up doing two jobs like good for the employee who's at home.
Dan Kennedy:Well, yeah, well, it's yeah to your point. It speaks to. It speaks to the complete managerial failure. Right, we haven't really defined the job, we haven't figured out how much time it should actually take to do the job, and we have no really good supervision, no scoreboard, and so I'm not surprised. And look, I had a client for almost five years who I learned a lot from, who was an expert in employee and delivery man theft in the convenience store of the supermarket industry and he had been a former delivery man thief. One of the things that he, one of the unwelcome points that he drove home to owners and managers all the time, is if you're being robbed, it's your fault.
Speaker 3:We can even give the employee thief a gold star for ambition, misdirected, but nonetheless ambition.
Dan Kennedy:If you're being robbed, it's your fault, right and broadly. That definitely applies to time. You know if somebody is having their you know, they wind up at the end of the day and they I don't know where all the time went and they are letting people disrupt what it isising them, directing them, coaching them and managing them in a way that gets them focused. Well, they deserve everything that's coming to them.
Ben Glass:You know I didn't mean to cut you off. Is there more there?
Dan Kennedy:No.
Ben Glass:Yeah, so one of the things you and I talked about when we were putting the book together is that this isn't the first time management book in the history of the world. In fact I have got you and I grew up in the time of day timers. You're a couple of years older than I am but I actually have the first 12 years of my professional life in those little brown boxes with those little folders divided month by month, because everything I knew about time management was in those little books. But we make the point in the book that for the entrepreneur it's just different, and I've been making this point on interviews because and from my point, like nine kids, seven grandkids, if you don't get this right as the entrepreneur, you're still going to do the work and you end up stealing the time.
Ben Glass:You end up stealing it from your family and from your health and other, that you live for your life, that this is about you being the king and you talk about this in the book and everything sort of flows down from that. We'll get it and no matter what of the strategies you use in the book, you will get it. But philosophically, so many people, dan, have this hard time of saying yes, damn it. Like the world does revolve around me, I'm important, I'm the workhorse, I'm the racehorse Because we're the heads of companies. And so why do you think that is that there's this, that we still let you know, that we owners still let this happen to us?
Dan Kennedy:I think that most people fear and loathe confrontation more than they fear and loathe anything else, including losing. I was just writing about this the other day and I'm struggling to remember who the quote came from, struggling to remember who the quote came from, but it was in the sports world and he was asked why there's only, like you know, the pyramid, why there's 1% greats and another 4% pretty good, and then 15% pretty good, and then 15% good enough not to cut, and then the rest of it is pretty bleak. And he said, look, he said everybody wants to win. So everybody says they want a Super Bowl ring and they're being sincere, they do. They just don't hate losing enough to do the things necessary to win, and I think that's bigger than anything else. So I think that people don't hate not being in control of their time in their life enough to then do the things necessary to have that control, including rubbing some people the wrong way and being thought of as unreasonable or harsh or pick an adjective, and that just boxes them in so that they can't do the things that are necessary.
Dan Kennedy:And then I think probably the second thing is they haven't even figured out self-mastery. So imposing organization, organized effort, disciplines focus on others becomes problematic because they're not even imposing it on themselves. And that goes right back to the same quote. I mean, my earliest motivations in business were really not about succeeding. They were me really hating being broke. And there was a story how long when he played for the Raiders he was like famous for hating losing. They lost a game. Everybody kind of let him shower and get out of the locker room, in some cases before they even went in. And at one game home game he really hurt himself in the locker room. After the game. It had to be rushed to a dentist because he was chewing on the metal locker room door.
Ben Glass:And.
Dan Kennedy:I get that. I just really detest, not like hitting objectives.
Dan Kennedy:So you know, your daytimers say yeah me too and switched to that for a while, but one way or another, one of the things daytime taught you was to really be cognizant of the use of time in 15-minute increments. And I still, to this day, am pretty time-scripted not just scheduled but scripted. And even though it doesn't matter nearly as much as it did 10 years ago, I really hate being off script because of somebody else's messing around, you know, with my time and I banish people because of it, and you know I'm kind of an unreasonable person about it. But you find the same thing in the biographies and autobiographies. If you're a student of successful achievers in all sorts of fields, um a very low tolerance for losing. And if you're, if you're control of your time and your productivity and then around it, your life is a serious game than not achieving what you set out to do. Not putting the points on the scoreboard you said you were going to put on the scoreboard is losing, and I think also people are sort of ganged up on about this?
Ben Glass:They are. I don't know if you've read it yet, but there's a newer book out called the Everything War and over a decade ago, of course, the Everything Store came out and the Everything War is about Amazon and it's a purported hit piece Like it's everything bad about the company, and I'm reading it going. I don't know sounds like a pretty good model to run the world and to rule the world and to be the best by being disciplined, being number one, inviting people into your life under your rules. I think that you would enjoy. You know there's a lot packed into what you just said.
Ben Glass:One of your renegade millionaire principles is immunity from criticism and I so for me, and I know you and I could rant to spend your time what you're going to spend your time doing, and there's no one to counteract this like quote, you know, huge social influence that goes back to what you said at the beginning of the call, which is just sort of quiet quitting stuff. Influence that goes back to what you said at the beginning of the call, which is just sort of quiet quitting stuff, and I think that's sad and it's up to people like you and me and I just had a week ago I had a bunch of your lifers in my office who were doing a little mastermind meeting and we're all just rolling our eyes at much of the workforce today Much of the workforce today, yeah, and it's become sort of the number one impediment to business growth, coupled with the overall labor shortage.
Dan Kennedy:And so for a long time the number one impediment to business growth was in my field of expertise right, it was advertising, marketing and selling, and one way or another a business would hit a wall and they couldn't figure out how to go any further.
Speaker 3:And I would get to come in and fix that one way or another.
Dan Kennedy:And now, that is not my chief conversation with most clients now is they could grow more if they could deliver the customer service required.
Ben Glass:Yes.
Dan Kennedy:And it's everywhere. So it's at the small business level Chains. I saw the guy that owns all the Applebee's in New York and he was describing a problem. He said I don't really have it because we figured out how to overcharge and grossly overpay everybody because we're in Manhattan. He said but a lot of the Applebee's owners across the country and I've seen it with the one right here in my neighborhood on Friday and Saturday nights they have like 20% of the restaurant taped off that they don't seat anybody in because they can't serve them. So they're reducing their revenue by 20% only because they can't count on the cooks and the waiters to show up. They can't count on the cooks and the waiters to show up.
Dan Kennedy:Well, that's pretty significant. I mean you're paying for 100% of that space and you're only utilizing 80% of it. Well, you know, I find it everywhere. It's just everywhere. I have a client, nuvia Dental. They're a big and growing chain of implant dentistry clinics and so they've centralized intelligently. They've centralized the telephone, the chief telephone function for all the offices. So the leads are brought in one way or another into an online place.
Dan Kennedy:They fill out a questionnaire and if they qualify, then they get moved to a telephone person and that person further qualifies them and moves them to an in-office diagnostic appointment. And every office they open, they got this thing down. I mean it does well, but they're running up against. We've got to slow down the number of offices we open because we can't hire enough people for the phones. They're overpaying. The compensation package is great. You get to work indoors, Everybody treats them well and they're not making cold outbound calls. They're on the phone with people who want to talk to them. And the dropout rate of showing up for three days and not showing up, of quitting, of not being able to find anybody to start with, is, like now, a monster problem, and so our conversation is about marketing to hire rather than marketing to sell.
Dan Kennedy:And it's not that they're not out there In every age group. They are good ones, but they're scattered and diffused. There's so few of them that in a given area in Fairfax Virginia, in a given area in Fairfax Virginia, if you needed 1,000 tele-reps, I'll bet it wouldn't matter what you paid. You probably couldn't get and keep 1,000 of them. So it's affecting every business and people are being sold on this. There's a book. You'll see it. You'll see me write about it in the October Kennedy letter.
Dan Kennedy:It was sent to me by somebody I won't name here, but I do name the letter. You would know him. He sent it to me direct from Amazon as a gift because he thought I would be fascinated by it. And I'm actually repulsed by it because one of its two premises is right out of an old Star Trek episode is that AI is going to eliminate the need for work. And won't this be wonderful? Well, of course, eventually, if humans don't do anything but cost and consume, ai will figure out how to get rid of the humans. That's like problem number one. But before we even get that far, if you liberate people from being useful and include that includes their work, being able to make a productive contribution. You rewire everybody.
Dan Kennedy:I mean, we know that there is a relationship between chronic unemployment and chronic crime, and it's not because the unemployed are committing crime because they're starving, because we don't allow that here. They're committing crime because they have nothing else useful and contributive and productive in their lives. So selling this, which is now, it's just a big thing politically, societally, big tech is selling it. Let's just pay everybody a guaranteed income, not to work and let's let AI do everything, is really morally sick and it will make a morally sick society.
Ben Glass:So, for those who are listening to this and this is exactly what I wanted to do, like not just talk about time management strategies, right, but this is philosophy and the advantage I think that the small biz owner right the Kennedy engineered and grown up small biz owner has over big business is. So much of my conversation with current employees and new employees is philosophical and those words like this, like work is a force for good in your own life, and learning to work and learning to be responsible is important. Like it doesn't. It doesn't mean we can solve all of our problems, but so many business owners are afraid to have that conversation for it may offend somebody.
Ben Glass:And we're not. We're very, we're very upfront and blunt about that. Let me switch gears, if I can, because one of the questions that people ask me and when I've done these interviews with some other interviewers about this book, they say, well, I think you and Dan are probably really really disciplined and uber disciplined. I said, well, I'm not very disciplined and I think Dan would say that he's not that disciplined. What we have done is we have built these structures around us very deliberately, because we're human beings and we could just as easily lapse into bad habits, distractions, as anyone else.
Ben Glass:I, you know, you've told any number of times the story of throwing the bread from Panera out on the way into the house, because if the bread's still there at the end of the salad, you're going to eat it.
Ben Glass:And I think and I talk in the book about, you know, before we moved into this larger office, actually taking advice from you and renting a piece of crap office in a slightly different town that wasn't even hooked up for the phones or the internet, had no sign on it, just a lock on the door that I went into to work. So let's just talk about that for a moment because I don't want anyone to think that you have to be super, super disciplined as much as you need to be, as you point out, like just aware of the value of your time, and you need to know that this is achievable, that there are others who think like you and I do on this topic, and if you've not hung out with somebody in those groups, you need to get in groups of people who will beat you over the head until you understand this.
Dan Kennedy:Well, yeah, the idea. A long time ago, a guy I worked with said you know, we could cure half the poverty problem if we just had every poor person shadow a millionaire for a week. We'd have a lot more millionaires and a lot less poor people, because the poor people think the millionaires are somehow superhuman and it's anything but right. And so, in a great many cases, people who appear to be in one way or another superhuman are not at all and have compensated for it by setting up systems and deadlines and commitments, imposed disciplines that make them superior beings but not superhuman beings. And so I get it about self-discipline and I get it about. The other thing I get, which I know you get to is well, that's all fine for you because you're Dan Kennedy.
Ben Glass:That's right. That's right and I started. I started here and you started there, right where you are.
Dan Kennedy:Yeah, oh, and, and you know. The answer to the second one is I wasn't either. You know you should have seen me when I wasn't. But the discipline is a. No, I am quite capable of every undisciplined thing you can think, of working on anything but the thing that immediately needs to be worked on. I'm quite capable of that if I don't have systems in place to prevent me from falling into that. I do not have a computer connected to the Internet because I wouldn't take a typewriter and go try and do my work in a strip club surrounded by naked women or out in the middle of I-95 either. I know myself I'm going to pay more attention to the naked women and the traffic whizzing by than I am to my work. So if my box is hooked up to the Internet, guess what I'm going to be doing? I like. I like videos of surfing cats just as much as the next guy. So part of the book is about, you know, creating a success environment for yourself, and so there's all sorts of things I have to prohibit myself from, and that winds up making me look incredibly self-disciplined.
Dan Kennedy:And you know, charlie Jarvis is a humor speaker, dentist, kind of in the days of the after-dinner speech, like at the local bar association meeting. Charlie was on that circuit, if you will. Charlie was on that circuit, if you will. And Charlie used to tell a story about being on a diet because his doctor and his wife had conspired together to get him on this diet or he was going to die. So he's on this diet and he's stuck in the airport on a long, delayed flight. And so he calls home and his wife asks him are you sticking to your diet? You're not eating that bad airport food, are you?
Dan Kennedy:And Charlie says you could never lie to my wife. So he says I told her I just ate a Snickers bar. And after she got done, yelling at him for 10 minutes, he said but you don't understand, I wanted to eat them all I mean. So we're all you know. And, uh, you know, and some people have more trouble with self, with what Horace Martin called the kingship of self-control. You know that others do. I was really bad at it with a couple things when I was young, one of which was drinking, and so that's that has made me cognizant of a personality disorder which is both an addictive and an undisciplined personality undisciplined personality.
Ben Glass:But being able to see yourself is the first step. I tell people look, are you happy? If the answer is yes, you don't need me. If your life is perfect, you don't need me. But if it's not a perfect, 10 happy. There's things we can do, and the first is just looking inwards to yourself and saying and then letting a coach look over your shoulder and say here's a couple of things I've learned from other people that I'm seeing in you that you might just want to think about to change, and none of it has to do really with willpower changed my life because I and I tell the story in the book about reading it on vacation and going to the phone booth and telling my, calling my team and telling me all right from now on, like no unplanned inbound phone calls. And, deanna, I didn't even know that was possible in a legal practice.
Ben Glass:No one had ever, ever, ever said that when the phone rings, you don't have to answer it. You can tell people that you know they can set a time where you can have screeners that find out if this is something that's legitimately you know worthy of your time or not. And there's, and I was like the first layer and my team said no, that'll never work, it'll piss people off. And the reality is as we write about in the book. It's like it's actually a customer service plus service plus. I'm ready, you're ready, I know what questions you're going to ask. My team has assembled the documents I need to answer the questions that we already know you're going to ask and I come up looking like a superstar, looking like a freaking superhuman being, when all I've done is actually had a process and a discipline for being prepared for the call.
Ben Glass:Let me ask you this your own business life has changed over the years, I suspect. I mean, I would know that your principles, the way you think about time and managing it and being ruthless and mean. But it's not really mean, because when you and I talk about ruthless, we mean, we're paying attention to it. It's not really mean because when you and I talk about Ruthless. We mean, we're paying attention to it, but today, like these days, we're recording this in August of 2024, as the book is coming out. If we followed you around for a week or two, I'm curious just what are you involved in?
Dan Kennedy:now.
Ben Glass:I know that you must be talking to Russell Brunson's team. A bunch no, no, no, no. Okay, good, no, no, no, no.
Dan Kennedy:Okay, good, no, no, no, no, and that's an interesting thing in and of itself. So what you would find first of all if you followed me around, you'd probably be bored. But first of all you would find clustered work, meaning the same kind of work clumped together rather than scattered out during the week. So this week is pretty uncharacteristic in that I'm on the phone two of the days. Typically, everything would be clumped into that had to be on the phone, would be all in one day.
Ben Glass:I think we're talking with our friend Parteev on day or two, because you have a number of books. This is like the third book this year. I think that hit the stand.
Dan Kennedy:Fifth Fifth Okay, and so I clump work together a lot so that if it's a writing day, it's a writing day, for example, and then everything else gets ignored. That day I don't look at incoming faxes, I don't take or check incoming calls, I don't, I write, and I have still stuck to that. I have just about everybody pretty well trained, personal as well as business, in how to engage with people and those that are ignorant of it get a lesson, get it explained. But three strikes and you're out. So like with, with the crew at no BS Magnetic Marketing, and then Russell's crew at ClickFunnels. You would think what you just said would be true, but it's not. They're very good about it Now, of course, some of them I've worked with for years. So Darcy's there and Molly is there.
Dan Kennedy:You know, and Russell has known me for years, russell was a it's never really a good I don't like the word for our relationships but he was a student of mine when he was in high school, so there's a pre-understanding in place right? Secondly, limits are written into my contract. Limits are written into my contract and like so Jenny, who's now chief operating officer, but she was Russell's assistant at the start of that whole thing, I don't know four or five years she commented at one point fairly early that she had learned from the way I communicated to her that I don't like five different memos about five different things, that I like to communicate in lists organized like all at one time. And so she picked up on that and switched to that being her means of communicating with me communicating with me and that taught her that very few things actually require immediate attention and so she doesn't need to communicate with me every day.
Dan Kennedy:Once a week works just fine. I've been client and we're in the midst of a lot of stuff, but every couple of days they'll fax me with eight things, eight questions, eight items in a single list, and so they weren't doing that. They've learned to do it by seeing what I do, and in both cases they've commented now we do this all the time because it works better. And other people that we interact with, the smart ones, notice it and say to themselves gee, I better stop sending these people 10 emails a day, because obviously that's not how they prefer to communicate.
Dan Kennedy:So they've been extremely respectful not just of my time, but the way I manage my time and prefer engaging, and so, like I speak to Russell once a month and I interact mostly with Darcy, and it's really, it's frankly, pretty light lifting. Now you know how come. All you did was hit the pipe with a hammer. How come? The bill's 500 bucks, right? Well, it's five bucks for hitting the pipe, but it's 495 for knowing where to hit it.
Dan Kennedy:So it's not like I'm being grossly overpaid I don't mean to imply that, but it's a really good working relationship and it's perfectly manageable within my schedule. And so back to your question. So if you were following me around, so what am I doing? Well, so I have 12 private coaching clients who I speak to once a month for 20 minutes each time. 20 minutes each time. And I do those all back to back.
Ben Glass:So I can do three in an hour and most people would be shocked to hear that people are paying you a ton of money to speak to you for 20 minutes. But you talk about that in a book. I mean years and years of experience being that that we can get shit done in 20 minutes and move the ball forward yeah, I mean it, it focuses, it focuses the mind, right?
Dan Kennedy:I mean, these are all smart, successful people, they're all running good-sized businesses, and so they come to that 20 minutes. They got their shit together. Um, uh, here's the quick report. Um, here's the two things I want to get through on this. Call A third, if we can, and boom, we're off to the races.
Ben Glass:Um, and if they had an hour by the way.
Dan Kennedy:they wouldn't show up that way, that's right.
Dan Kennedy:Right, I mean, and so I have a day of that every month, pre-scheduled for the year for the year, and I have the day adjacent to it for other accumulated requests. So most interviews get forced onto that day, most sort of one-off business calls get forced onto that day. Business calls get forced onto that day. So I have two days a month of 10 in the morning until 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Phone I write two full newsletters a month, um a article for no BS, a Monday memo that goes out every week for no BS, and I'm interviewed once a month, um typically, uh, 45 minutes by Marty Ford and 45 minutes by Russell Brunson, and then that gets transcribed and converted into newsletter content and so forth.
Dan Kennedy:Yep, we noticed that leveraging yeah, and as you pointed out, I have a little kind of no BS book factory going.
Ben Glass:Let me ask you about your phone day, because 10 to 5, and there must be follow up, things that you want to confirm, things that you are going to do perhaps. So then, and then in the book you talk you mentioned, there's a brief mention about having people to outsource things to do. Perhaps. So then, and then in the book you talk you mentioned, there's a brief mention about having people to outsource things to do. So how do you, how do you manage that? Because 10 to five is a long time, twice, twice a month, and certainly there must be. I would imagine that there's a to-do list, or at least like I'd learned something and now I have to retain it someplace. So I'm curious about that. Yeah, there's a tail. I'm curious about that.
Dan Kennedy:There's a tail. I'll promise somebody to go find XYZ form and send it to them or fax them. I'm going to connect you to Bob and now I've got to fax Bob. So there's a tail.
Ben Glass:But are you managing the tail yourself? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Dan Kennedy:Yeah, no, I'm down to a one-man show.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Dan Kennedy:We closed the Phoenix office quite some time ago and Vicki retired to the Northwoods and Carla helps a little woods and Carla helps a little. It's not, you know, her number one on her hit parade, but but she helps a little. But I have no staff okay nor do I have virtual staff.
Dan Kennedy:So the delegation stuff is like I have a couple different people who are either managing investments and money or collaborate in doing so. Like I have somebody who just handles what I do with ETFs, corporate notes and individual stocks and so once a month she brings me you may or may not know, but like corporate notes and stuff, there's like a monthly inventory of them. And Goldman releases we got this. And Citibank releases we got this. Citibank releases we got this. It's right around the first of every month she brings me and stuff pays off. She brings me a report once a month, real quick, on where we are, what paid off, what your cash balance is and what's now available if you want it.
Ben Glass:She too has learned how to communicate with you.
Dan Kennedy:Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and look, the other thing it does is that if there is an urgency that causes somebody to stick in an extra communication, it's legit. It's only happening if there's really an urgency, and so that's helpful, too. Helpful too, and, like on my big client project, that is an ongoing thing. There are vendors, depending on the client. Project includes Kia, who you know well for graphics, so I'll delegate it, but I am still supervising it. Craig Simpson, for like for this big client, right now is working on a very big direct mail test matrix.
Ben Glass:Craig was here two weeks ago with that group I mentioned.
Dan Kennedy:So I'll delegate it, but I'm still sticking my nose in it. So I still do a fair amount of copywriting not nearly what I did before. I still do a fair amount of copywriting, not nearly what I did before and sometimes speaking, not like I just did a day for Jay Abraham, a mastermind group he brought to Cleveland, so I would do it live. I've done Zoom things now and then, which I detest, but I'll bet.
Ben Glass:That's why I didn't ask you for Zoom on this.
Dan Kennedy:But I'll do that. Well, I won't even run it, yeah right. A round sheet comes out and runs it. Yeah right, a round sheet comes out and runs it. But so those occur now as speaking interviews on stage. We have a day at ClickFunnels Live in February, whenever that is next year or before.
Ben Glass:Vegas right.
Dan Kennedy:Be in Vegas, yeah, so I do a little bit of that, but nowhere near what I did. And my other activity is curtailed because of being blind in one eye parrot in the other and all of that. So I can't drive at hardest races, I can't go train the horses. I'm pretty much reduced to spectator and participant in decisions. So it's like 20 hours a week. That is no longer going there.
Ben Glass:Let me ask you, so that's a good. You mentioned the word decision-making and, as we wrap up here, we write in the book about and I write a chapter specifically on sort of the power of decision-making and how, in my 43 years of marriage, like the one major difference between Sandy and I is that I tend to make decisions very fast and she doesn't, and my view of the world is hardly anything you can decide will be 100% immediately fatal. So let's just put the ball in play and now make changes as we go along. But let's just talk about that for a moment, because I think it's nothing that slows entrepreneurs down is that is that they just ponder stuff so long and so indecisively, whereas I think the most successful ones just just do shit and fix it.
Dan Kennedy:Yep, I say, success is cooked up in a messy kitchen, and so there's a certain amount of messes being cleaned up. That is a price to be paid for decisiveness and for speed and ultimately for quantity of output. And I am unconvinced that the quality of most decisions goes up with much age, of most decisions goes up with much age. So the same wife you've got.
Dan Kennedy:A slow, prudent. You know worrier, and of course women worry more than men. Period generally, you know like they worry about whether the throw pillows on the couch match and get upset when I say, like it's all good I didn't even notice what color they were.
Dan Kennedy:Yeah, well, I mean most guys left to their own devices. There could be a dead cattle in there and they wouldn't notice it for six months, but they worry about this right. So you know. I mean, the joke at everybody's house who has a maid who comes in is that I've got to clean up today around here because the maid's coming tomorrow and that's you know you would never hear that from a guy.
Dan Kennedy:I've yet to be persuaded that the quality of the decision improves with the time invested in making it. Now, that's not to advocate, just pure recklessness. I wouldn't pick this month's corporate note to buy by throwing darts at a dartboard, but I make the decision in one phone call and because the rage of the decision is narrowed to start with, you know, I mean, I've learned as a copywriter. There's not a single thing I've done in 49 years at that that, had I spent another six months on it, I couldn't have done it better. A choice of headlines you know, if you gave me another three months and I considered another 500 options and I got 15 other people's opinions, could I have made that headline better? In most cases the answer is yes, but at what price? Right, and at what margin, and at?
Ben Glass:what margin, how much better.
Dan Kennedy:Schwarzkopf used to say he would rather have his troops marching in the wrong direction than not marching, because it was easier to change their direction than it was to get them started in the first place. And I think that's you know, really true of most things. I think like sleep on it is fine, but one night ought to be enough Sleep on.
Ben Glass:It is fine, but one night ought to be enough. Yeah, and have your circle of advisors who can bring you accurate facts, who can make the three things that are on the checklist of things. We who have grown up in the Dan Kennedy world and have created multiple businesses from that world, the advantage we have is that we are nimble and we don't report too much to boards of directors or anyone else but our own families.
Dan Kennedy:And I think that's been huge and I think that's been your impact on the world. So thanks for all of that. Well, I just wrote about a guy that he's got a business just in Phoenix called Pooper Scooper.
Ben Glass:Yeah.
Dan Kennedy:And they come to your house and scoop up the dark of your backyard twice a month and within a year he's up to one employee and he's up to within a year, he's up to one employee and they've got $180,000 in annualized revenue under monthly contract and they're probably going to be franchising in the near future.
Dan Kennedy:And yes, we all start with different advantages and disadvantages Born into a good family, born into a not-so-good family, adopted, raised on the good side of town, raised on the bad side of town, good school, bad school, all that is true. But ultimately, at least here we all get the same fundamental opportunity. I was on a Canadian tour multi-city tour with Jim Rohn, so we spent a lot of time together on a Canadian tour multi-city tour with Jim Marone. So we spent a lot of time together and flew on the puddle jump plate together from city to city and it was kind of cool because I knew Jim but I hadn't got a chance to spend a lot of time with him before.
Dan Kennedy:And we were talking about testimonials and how he had just some, you know, heart-wrenching, incredible testimonials, as did I, but that they represent a tiny fraction of the people to whom we spoke and sold courses to. And Jim shrugged and he said they all got the same cassettes and I think that's, you know, the deal. I mean, think of how many other people who could just as easily have your daughter's story to tell or, with greater difficulty, still have your daughter's story to tell, who instead have a story of frustration and disappointment and misery and perennial low-income and always the broken-down car and essentially they all got the same cassettes.
Ben Glass:And I think what you have done the best is to grow a tribe of people who can articulate that philosophy. Um, and we, you know, we, we just keep shouting it and pushing it and most will not listen but some will. And every single person, dan, you know, I know of who's running businesses coming out of your world. They have that, those success stories, and it's the same ratio. But fundamentally we have changed people's lives. So thank you for that. It's been good to catch up.
Dan Kennedy:Thank you. So thank you for that. It's been good to catch up. Thank you, and I'm glad you have returned to your 30-year-old health.
Ben Glass:Yeah, it's an interesting journey. I just said in my head that I was going to do this. You know it wouldn't have been all that sort of suffering in the hospital. You know, like tubes running out of your body, like it's got to go for some good, and so let's just, let's use it, let's inspire someone. A couple people's lives have been probably saved now because they've been watching videos on that. Okay, let me just see. I just do what they tell me to do. Day with Dan and Partee Yep. The 15th Perfect Thursday.
Dan Kennedy:All right, my friend Sell all the books.
Ben Glass:Thank you, sir Yep. Bye, bye-bye now.
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