Four Keys for Labor Worth Celebrating and My Ideal Hamburger

This episode drops on Labor Day 2020 in the United States during COVID-19 lockdowns and other events. Staying productive in this chaos is key. Paul Simkins talks about four keys to keep yourself productive and some ways you can help your employees improve their productivity as well.

Plus, Paul shares his personal recipe for making what he considers the Ideal Hamburger. You can find the recipe, and many more, on the Smoke and Ash Facebook group or by emailing TLToolbox@BoldlyLead.com.

You can get a copy of Paul's eBook 15 Innovative Ways to Show Employees You Care and Not Break the Bank by emailing him at paul@BoldlyLead.com.

You can join the discussions at our Podcast Facebook group here.
You can learn more about Paul Simkins on his website.

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Transcript

Producer : 0:00

The tech leaders toolbox podcast is brought to you by Paul Simkins and the bully LEAD program, focusing on helping tech leaders like you, and the frustration of low performing teams, and losing excellent employees so they can increase productivity by 50%. Go home on time, and sleep better at night.

Paul Simkins : 0:22

Hello, and welcome to the tech leaders toolbox. I'm Paul Simkins. And we're here because how you lead today determines how your team succeeds tomorrow. And you are definitely a leader, because leadership is all about influence. It's whether your influence is a positive influence or a negative influence. Good leaders seek to increase their positive influence. And they do that by growing and good leaders commit to grow each and every day. This is Episode 33 of the tech leaders toolbox dropping on Labor Day 2020 in the United States, and all over the country, people are celebrating their work by well not working. It's going to be muted somewhat due to the Coronavirus going around right now so people won't be out and about as much as they have in the past but they'll still be some grilling going on and, and lots of parties. And we're going to talk about some ways that you can create work worth celebrating. Are you ready? Let's go. Labor Day has always been special for me and for my family I can I have so many memories of labor days in the past. such as when I was very young. We used to go to Captiva Island in Florida and we would always go fishing because Labor Day weekend was when the snook fishing season They opened up and we would head on down and stay in Captiva island for the weekend and just spend the whole time fishing for snow. We also a couple of times went boating out on the Indian River Lagoon and that was a great time for all we made trips to Rock Springs, which is again a local water spring where you can go swimming and rafting and all and it was a lot of fun. And with all of those was always cooking outdoors and that was one of the big memories and that's probably why I am such an outdoor cooking aficionado is because so much of my memories of growing up and so forth have always involved some kind of outdoor cooking. Anyway, I did a little research to see about what Labor Day was all about. And according to the Department of Labor. The purpose of Labor Day is a yearly national tribute here in the United States to the contribution That workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well being of our country. In other words, it's a chance for those who work hard throughout the year, to be able to sit back a little bit and celebrate the importance of the contribution they have made to making this country what it is today. And so I think it's important that if we're going to focus on celebrating labor, that we know how to create labor that is worth celebrating. Working hard, is an important part of this and not just working hard, but working smart as well. And we all know that there are those that simply don't put forth the effort all the time, they sit back and wait for things to come to them and wonder why they didn't get the success they want. In fact, I actually have to remind myself to keep moving I have a poster I keep up on the wall on my own. It's a quote by Maya Angelou that simply says, nothing works unless you do. And I keep that up. And it always reminds me it's right up there where I can look up and I can see it every day. So if you want this want that success, you have to put forth that effort first. And so I wanted to give you a four key things to remember to work towards achieving your success that are going to help you throughout the rest of the year. And the first thing is, you want to be in the moment. Now what does that mean? That means that wherever you are at the time, be there. What that means is when you're at work, be at work. When you're at home, be at home. Now, right now with the Coronavirus, that's hard to separate because a lot of times we are at work we're at home right now because of the restrictions, but still create Some separation in there. And this is a key This is so many people who do work from home struggle with it, because they have a hard time creating separation. But you have to be able to at least create a little bit of time where you say strictly This is work time. Using your calendar is a great tool for this. If you have kids, you know you have a family, put the kid put a calendar up on the wall and block out the times understand, this is the time that Dad's not available. This is the time mom's not available. This is the time we have to focus on work. And you should be doing other things rather than knocking on our door and, and wanting something from us. Set the boundaries because if you don't, then everything and everybody is going to demand your time. So work on being in the moment. I'm working now. I'm focused Sitting on work, give your best to the moment, you'll be more productive, more effective in every situation. And again, that calendar helps. So here's another one, refuse to assign blame. Now, many people want to contribute their lack of success to the economy, the administration, COVID virus, any number of things. Ultimately, however, you have to take responsibility for your own success. And my and the only argument I would ever give you for any of this is there are people who are right now during the COVID virus, making money. They're doing things they're being productive and they're making money. And so yeah, there are industries affected like that, you know, if, if you work in a restaurant, yeah, you're getting hit hard right now. So it's a great Time to get creative. I mean, you can sit there and spend all your time blaming, oh, it's just the economy. It's destroying us. There's nothing we can do. But look at it as a challenge to get creative. A challenge, what can we do to make money? Since the way we normally make money is not fully available to us right now? How can we sustain ourselves? How can we sustain our team? How can we sustain our organization when faced with these challenges, and you'll find that sometimes it unlocks things you never would have imagined. A good or a bad example of this. What I'm doing right now is I'm working on because, you know, primarily My business is doing live training, live speaking, keynote events, conferences and things like that, and there's not a lot of that going on right now. virtually none. Nobody is booking Live keynote speakers right now, or booking live training events in their offices right now, because well, most of them aren't in the office right now. So I have to make a change, what can I do still provide value to people and make money as well. So I'm making some pivots. I'm going to be offering online courses, I'm going to be offering some online keynotes, and possibly giving in involved in some virtual events. And so that again, that's a little bit of a pivot I can make to still provide the value I want to provide and still be able to make some money and sustain myself as well. So again, forget about assigning blame, not productive, forget it. Think instead, in terms of how you can overcome the obstacles in your way. Tip number three I'm going to give you is to work on your 1%. Now I've talked about this before being what I call a one percenter committing yourself to grow by 1% a day in order to be the person that you want to be. And remember the formula that we talked about with that if you've heard this in the previous podcast, if not, I'll give it to you. Now, if you focus simply on growing by 1% a day, every day, then over time that compounds, think about that. You go one year, committing yourself to growing 1% a day. Then what do you got? Well, most people say, Well, you grown by, you know, 256% actually, it's even more because it compounds it's 1% on 1% on 1% on 1%. So if you look at the big picture of if you were to say yourself, I want to grow 256% this year, you're going Whoa, wow, that I'll never make that. But it's easy to say I'm going to grow by 1% today and again, I think Talking about your calendar, put this on your calendar, schedule that 1% growth per day into your calendar. Have something specific to do during that time to grow yourself. And finally, step number four are Tip number four is settle for nothing less than your best. One of the mantras I was taught a long time ago is how you do anything is how you do everything. It's a great mantra to give your kids especially if you've got kids hitting your teens now and starting into their first job somewhere. They may be working. You know, my daughter right now works at a McDonald's while she's going to school, going to college. She's working at McDonald's. And she's not planning on making McDonald's her career. But I remind her every day how you do anything is how you do everything. Do your utmost best every moment you're working in McDonald's Fulfilling the qualities, being courteous, being efficient, being helpful, because that sets the habits that allow you to do your best at everything you do. And we're not 100% on, we're gonna have days that were off. That's great. Okay, let it go move on. Along the same lines with that, though, don't equate doing your best with perfectionism. Especially in the business I'm in. There's a lot of people, they're working on training programs, they're working on presentations, and so forth. And they won't stop until it's absolutely perfect. And perfection is actually the enemy of your best. So forget perfection. Do the best you can know when it's time to let it go. So those are four things that are going to help you. But what about your team as well? How can you think about moving through the rest of 2020 and into the next year? What are some ways you can help your team be their best as well. The first thing I will tell you is all those four things we just talked about for you. Model those behaviors, model those behaviors for your team, model the behaviors you expect from your team. That's going to be one of the strongest ways to get the message to them. Also, keep your two way communication open at all times. Going back and forth, especially important now, with everybody working at home. Keeping that communication open at all times, two way communication, be willing to listen as well as to speak and in fact, you No, there's the old saying of you know, we have two ears and one mouth for a reason we listen twice as much as we talk. When you communicate your expectations, remember we've talked before about in previous episodes, we've talked about keeping our communication consistent, and constant. Keep that message going the same message all the time, and constantly being putting that out in front of them. Keep your expectations reasonable and clear with your team and yet challenging. And then here is the best thing you can do to help your team be successful is asking every single member of your team at least once a week, if not more often, asking them straight up. What can I do to help you meet your goals this week? And then do it to one of the easiest things in the world, it's still their job, they still have to get it done. But you could help guide them. You could help pave the road navigate for them, you could help clear the path. All kinds of things you can do to help your team succeed on a weekly basis. Because when the team succeeds, right, you succeed as well. So that's just a few things. Again, right. We'll keep it short and sweet this week, a few things you can do to help make the rest of your 2020 be successful. And prepare yourself for 2021 which is got to get better. I don't know that it can get much worse. At least we hope not. Right. So other than that, let's hope you have a great Labor Day today and a great rest of your week. We'll be back in a moment.

Producer : 14:56

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Paul Simkins : 15:25

Alright, since it is Labor Day, here, one of the things we talked about one of the most commonly prepared dishes on Labor Day for all of these parties is a good old fashioned hamburger. And people get really, really fancy for this. I mean, you can look up recipes and people are putting all kinds of things on their burgers and seasoning them all kinds of ways. And just sometimes, you know, you don't need fancy, you just need a good old tasty, juicy hamburger. So what I want to share with you today and and by the way, you know I share recipes like this and, and talk about outdoor cooking with me and my friends. We have a Facebook group called smoke and ash. And on the smoking ash Facebook group me my friends we talk about all kinds of outdoor cooking smoking, grilling, using Dutch ovens, cooking over open fire, all of it and we share recipes all the time, we share our plans for cooking over the weekends. In fact, a lot of people right now, by now have already shared their plans for what they were cooking for Labor Day and probably have already cooked it by now. So you can come out that smoking ash Facebook group and join us. We'd love to have you out there. What I want to share today is a recipe for my ideal hamburger. So if I'm wedded sometimes where I just want a good juicy hamburger. This is how I prepare it and I think you'll like it too. Now this recipe I'm giving it serves for so of course naturally all you have to do is double it if you want to make it for more people, and I start with one and a half pounds of ground beef. Now for an ideal juicy burger, I will generally use 80% lean because you got to have a little bit of fat in there. Remember fat is flavor, but also it helps keep it moist. And so 80% lean, I wouldn't go any higher than 90% lean. If you go with the like the 93% lean. It's going to be a little bit too lean. So anywhere between 80 and 90% lean. So again, one and a half pounds of ground beef. I use one egg. I use about two tablespoons of whole wheat panko breadcrumbs. I like the panko because it's lighter. And also whiskey sugar sauce, always have trouble pronouncing that. I learned you know, years ago. I heard On a cooking show, just call it what says here sauce. So you want some what says here sauce, and just salt and pepper. So what you're going to do is take your ground beef, you're going to put it in a medium glass bowl, I like glass bowls, because they're nonreactive. Put it in the glass bowl and make a little nest in the middle of the meat. crack open your egg and drop it in there and pierce the yolk. So it starts to bleed. And then throw your breadcrumbs over top of that. And a few dashes of that. Watch this here sauce, and then you're going to salt and pepper to taste. Now you're going to mix it up, mix it all up with your fingers. You know don't use a spoon or anything else. The fingers are the best thing for this. So mix it up with your fingers. And what I do is I'll take off first of all take off all your jewelry. And then secondly, take a can of nonstick spray and spray your hands before you do this. That way it'll make it cleaning your hands easier. Just get in there with your hands, mix it all up, squeeze it between your fingers, everything gets thoroughly mixed, and then form it into a great big ball. And then you're going to divide it into four equal parts. Each equal part will be about six ounces of meat. And then you're going to take each small ball and you're going to flatten it out and put it onto a piece of waxed paper, because it's easy to remove that way. And so as you make them put them on piece of wax paper, once you got all four prepped, then you're going to take that out on your grill, you're going to slap those on the grill and cook them. And what you want to do is, first of all, never pierce it with a fork or anything because that of course that bleeds juices out. Secondly, don't take your spatula and smash down on it when you put it on the grill because that also squeezes a lot of juices out. That's also why it's so important to flatten it beforehand because Naturally the burgers will actually puff up and shrink in diameter a little bit. So you want to start with flat. So you're going to cook it flip it once and till it gets to the desired doneness that you want. And then that's it. Now if you want to dress it up a little bit and give it a little bit more flavor, specially over a charcoal grill. This works really well. I take a little bit of melted butter, a little bit of bourbon and a couple of dashes of hot sauce and mix them up and I will brush that on each burger as I'm cooking them. And that adds real nice little extra flavor to it. So once they're cooked the way I want them. I use the Hawaiian style hamburger buns and I like to put cheese lettuce, tomato mustard, pickles and a slice of onion on it. That's my burger. And that's what I like to have. Nabeel, what that recipe, I make that recipe available for you on the smokin dash Facebook group. And all you have to do is go out there and you can download the recipe from there. Or you can simply send me an email and ask for it. Send an email to T l toolbox at boldly lead.com that's t l toolbox at boldly lead.com. All right, so this week, we talked about four tips for making for working that deserves celebrating, creating labor. That is we're celebrating and how to help your team be successful at doing that as well. If you have an idea of what you'd like us to talk about on the podcast, or if you'd like more information about how I can help you and your team. All you have to do is send an email to me at Paul at boldly lead.com calm. That's Paul at boldly lead calm, and we'll be glad to talk about that. So that's it for this week until next week, go out and be the leader. You were meant to be. Transcribed by https://otter.ai