2026-01-05

All right, today is January 5th, Monday, the 1st Monday of the year. We are going to go through a little topic. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to set the stage. I'm going to talk to you guys about, uh, one of the pages of the book. And today, this is a denim. This is for the next for the next book, right? So the 111 leadership exposed book, that's there, you can go buy that right now. You can find a link, I'll put it up later. But today we're going to talk about you're not out of ideas, you're out of focus, right? So the answer is you're drowning in ideas, right? That's a problem. Everything's something new, every week, a new product. Oh, what about this? You know, it's like the squirrel over here, look over there. New market, new strategy, you think, ideas are gonna save you, but they won't. They're actually killing you. And you're stuck not because you like creativity. You're stuck because you won't commit long enough to one thing to make it work. You're chasing the shiny object. But your core business, uh, is bleeding, it's not working. It's not creating, it's not doing something. So you're confusing activity with progress. So here's the question you need to think about. What idea did you actually finish? Why? Because ideas are cheap. You can, you can go to chat GPT or rock or whatever and say, give me 10 ideas. It'll just give them to you. But execution is where the money is made. In fact, it's probably better to take an idea that somebody else is currently doing because there's a market and people buying it. And then, do it, the same way, do it for, do it half the time and twice the money. How about that? Execution is where a challenge. You probably have a closet full of half dozen projects, garage full of half built stuff. none of them are working because they didn't get your full attention actually to finish the work. It gets hard. Other opportunities you pivot. And now you're doing 2 things kind of badly instead of just one. And then another idea hits. And then it's all three, and you spread yourself so thin. And by the way, your team doesn't ever actually understand what they want to do. They don't know where to go. They don't know what they're trying to accomplish. You have to give them one vision. Your obsession needs to be one thing. Alright, so here's the action. Pick one thing today. It doesn't have to be your favorite. fact, don't do your favorite. Don't pick the newest. Pick the one that's closest to working, give it 90 days and finish it. Nothing new. Write it down, stick it on a card, put it in a closet, stick it in a pile, whatever. So, we're going to do team. We gonna do this. One thing, everything else waits. Stop every other project, let them die. Actually stop them. Redirect all your resources to this one thing. If it fails after 90 days, fine. Pick the next one. But give it a real shot. Don't just go bouncing from thing to thing to thing to thing to idea to idea, ID, execution, execution, execution. Pick one. Deliver it. Even if it sucks, even if it's bad, finish. I wrote a book. Is it great? Probably not. But it's finished. In fact, I, well, it's not even, I did my part. I'm waiting for The forward to be written so that I can publish it as paper copy. But you can go buy the e-book right now. So it's finished. Is it good? Doesn't matter. Does it matter if it's good? It only matters that it's done. And that I now have the opportunity to do the next one, right? So, you're not out of ideas. You're out of focus. Anyway, grab the mic if you're interested. Id love to hear from you guys. I want to hear about your things. I want to hear your thoughts. Here we are in 2026. Uh, let's go to AJ. Hey AJ, what's going on today? Good morning, Andy. Oh, shoot. Can you hear me okay? Yep, you're good. Oh, just have some feedback. Hey, man, blessings. Happy New Year. Wishing the best for everyone in the room, and I think we should all, you know, do our best for win wins with everyone we meet, and I appreciate you hosting the space, and I love that you picked that title, because I'm actually, um, I had an idea today. I was, I'm actually in my, uh, one of my storage areas, and I'm working on some tables, and I've got a hacksaw here. I got these beautiful tables. So those that don't know me, I have a humble fourplex property by a lake, and I do vacation rentals. Now, uh, starting very small with almost no money to spend, um, I was fortunate to make friends with someone at my church, and he was a maintenance guy. at a nearby Marriott hotel. And he said, you know, we got some old tables we're getting rid of. Do you want them? Can you get a flatbed out here? I said, sure, that would be great. So, the tables are great. But the feet at the bottom, their metal feet, and there's, it looks like there's a gap inside where, like, a foot was, or a cork was, or something to help give it some, you know, stability. So, what I'm saying is, these tables have been bothering me, 'cause it's always metal scratching on the cement. And I said, Wait a minute, if I put this upside down, I could take a wine cork, I could cut the wine cork in half. I can wedge it inside the gap, under the foot, and I can super glue it. I'm like, Yeah, this is American. Like, you're never out of ideas. Just a perfect title for the space that I tuned into right now. I love it. Awesome. Well, you know, the, send us, send me. okay. Send us, send me a picture when you're done. That that gets you a commitment. Yeah. Just, just DM me a picture. In the purple bill right now. I'm, uh, one of the, one of the feet, the super glue is drying, and on the other table, I got to do three corps in there, so, yeah. Fantastic. Yeah, they, I have a garage full of half finished projects. Half of them were designed, and thought of by my wife, and then given to me to finish, and I went, eh. And then she would go and do something else. Um, let me give you, okay. Yes, you're not out of ideas, you're out of focus. Let me help you with execution for just one minute. Let's say that you work for me, right? I run projects, I run teams, I run companies. And as I'm doing some work, I ask you to do something. Hey, could you do a report on this, or could you go check on this other thing or check on that? Or could you go, you know, give you some assignment? Here's here's the best way to deal with it. Take the assignment, write down all the information, do 10% of the work, outline what you're going to do, outline what you think the answer is going to be, or at least the direction you're going to go and then send it back to me and say, hey, am I on the right track? Now here's what you've done. Number one, you've you've listened. Number two, you've executed on what they said. Number three. You're done to the 1st milestone. First milestone is, Andy, I think this is what you want. Please check. It'll take you 10 seconds. Stop, look, email. Yep, good. When can I get it done? That's what I'll that's what I'll say. And then you can answer, okay, you take a day, a week, a month, whatever, whatever you say. But the point is, if I ask you to do something and it goes into the ether and I never hear back from you, I have to remember as a leader, did I ask him? Did I ask her? Is she doing it? Does she know what she's supposed to be doing? Does she have any idea? Was I clear? Was I not? I start as a leader. I start thinking all this stuff. You can help your leaders out by taking that, by taking the action, whatever it is. Doing 10% of the work and sending it back to them and saying, okay, I'm going to do a document. do the research, I'm going to fill it out. Here's what I'm going to look, here's what it's going to look like when it's done. Am I on the right track? Just yes or no. If you do what I just said, 2 things will happen. I will guarantee this is 2 things that will happen. Number one, Your status stock, and credibility in the organization will rise above everybody else's, or at least to the same level as the highest performers. Instantly with the leader. And number two. The leader's confidence in you will skyrocket. All right, let's go to King David. Hey, Dave, King David, I see you've got your mic open. Why don't you go ahead and give us your thoughts? All right, I'm gonna mute you, and then we're going to, uh, we're gonna go to head crazy, head crazy. I don't know if we've spoken before, but how are you today? Hey, Andy, yeah, I'm back to the startup circle. So first, they just thank you, Andy. Oh, yes, okay, I got you. Cool. How you doing? Thank you for running the space, and thank you, Kevin, for creating this community service circle. Just want to toss it off there first. And you're not out of ideas, you're out of focus. Just wanted to share maybe a couple examples from my own life. There's a little bit of noise there. In the past, I have made this mistake. I have... run three startups. I'm trying to build three startups at once. And part of it is, you know, when I look back, I didn't really have faith in any of them, honestly. And I was, like, preparing for the pivot before it even happened. Like, basically, straining the failure before it even happened, and I thought I was being clever, where a pivot would be easier if I had a few other ideas. So, so, so one comment, just from my own experience, is that, you know, when I, now that I'm focused, I kind of get it, right? And another comment real quick, another mistake I made in the past is, like, trying to stay in stealth mode too long. Like, somehow that my idea is valuable itself, right? Like, if you can't even find someone else that has your same idea, it's probably a shit idea. And, you know, get, like, if, even it's proof of concept, even just finding some other people doing what you're doing, um, that kind of a better way to think of it, like, do definitely think of your idea, um, as shit. So, um... Well, I don't know if it's, I don't know if you should, if you should say it's bad or good. It just is. Here's, here's, okay. Just accept the fact that it might be. Yeah, there you go. absolutely. I love it. So just two examples from, you know, my experience where, and maybe just one more comment. This, you're not of ideas, you're out of focus. This is a particularly hard problem for founders that are not technical. So there's a lot of not technical founders out there that they think they have a valuable idea, and et cetera, right? Whereas a founder that does have the programming skills, they have to finish their idea kind of, right? They have to finish the app. Whereas it's especially dangerous for a non technical co founder, to not understand the true value of ideas, because they can spend a lifetime on an idea, whereas a programmer, it's somewhat easier for them, because they're like, well, I have to build this app. It has to do something. And so just a caution to any non-technical co-founder out there to really pay attention to what Andy is saying here today. Yeah, thanks. I heard a great podcast about bread. And they were talking about being a founder and starting a company and, and, uh, the, the guy said, uh, we have it. We have it all backwards. He said, We make it way too complicated. See, here's the thing. If you want to bake bread, 1st of all, lots of people want bread, so there's a market. Lots of people are selling bread. There's a market. You can get bread in every single store in every corner of everywhere. There's a market. So, there's people buying bread. Okay, cool, check. Number two, in order to become good at baking bread, you end up having to learn, uh, the recipe, how to bake, but you also need to learn timing, coordination, project management, in order to schedule everything so it comes out the right way. You have to learn about chemistry. Well, what about the yeast? How does it rise? When does it go? When do I start? How does it work? You also need to learn about physics like heat, heat distribution. Do I put it on on the big Rex? Do I bake it on a brick oven? Do I bake it in a regular oven? Do I run it through a, you know, conveyor? If you simplify your idea down to one simple thing that everybody is doing that everybody is buying, you will have a way better chance of success. Then if you try to think of what the world teaches you by watching all the movies, oh, if I build a baseball diamond in the middle of a cornfield, people would just show up and pay me. Yeah. How about, it's probably not gonna happen. How about the other way around? You know what? You want to know why they turn parks into baseball diamonds? Because parents want their kids to play baseball. or softball. Within five miles of my house here in California, there are 20, 20, Baseball Diamonds, for kids to play baseball, 20. There are 7 dedicated ones specifically for girls to play fast pitch softball. Seven full fields, baseball fields, fences, stands, seating areas, little snack shops. For every age group. Right? Also, within within, there are 3 high schools within 5 miles of me. With full on stadiums and $1000000 tracks. Also, there is an entire warehouse that was converted called the Hardwood Palace, converted into basketball, 15, 16, more than a dozen full basketball courts. 10 foot rims, dozens, a dozen of them, at least, maybe, I think it's 16 or 17 of them, but There's a, there's an indoor skate park. There's indoor batting cages. There is 4 martial arts schools, et cetera. There's a gymnastics. There's at least 2 or 3 gymnast- within 5 miles of my house. There are 2 or 3 and every one of these things is full every single day. If you think you're going to create something brand new, awesome, super special unicorn-ish, ah, great, go for it. But if you want to make money, go do the things that people want. And that they're currently paying for. And figure out how to do it either better or faster. Uh, not cheaper. Don't do cheaper. is my one recommendation. I mean, seriously, my recommendation is don't make it cheaper. Make it better, make it faster. If it's better, charge more, if it's faster, charge more. And definitely do not build a solution in search of a problem. I've done that too, that's not a mistake. Doesn't everybody? I mean, if you start a business, you're gonna start doing one of those. But it's just, it's inevitable. It's natural, it's the way that we are taught, it's what's in every movie. It's what's in every TV show. It's when it's in almost every single book. I mean, okay. If we back up for a second, you're not out of ideas, you're out of focus. Who are the richest guys you know? Okay? The richest guys you know, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. Right? Let's just pick those 2 guys, right? We could say Ronaldo and Messi, we could say Formula One driver. We could say the guy that owns all the car companies, we could say the guy that, you know, that just passed away that owned all the fashion brands. Okay, pick any of them. Here is what's true about each one of their businesses. Number one, they are the top of the market, but they are not the only ones in the market. Number two, they're doing something that somebody else did before them. They just are doing it better. Better, cheaper, faster, whatever. They chose to do that. That's what they do. I mean, the guy that owns a New England Patriots owns Gillette Razors. All he does is sell razor blades. Bob Kraft, right? Owns Gillette, razors. Uh, that's why it's called Gillette Stadium. Think about it. Um, Elon Musk did not figure out how to drill tunnels. He just decided to drill tunnels in a different place. Elon Musk did not figure out how to make electric cars. He just decided to make him look cool and make him better. They've been electric cars around, electric cars were before gas engine cars. Okay? He did not figure out how to go into space. NA already did that beforehand. Russia already did that with a cosmonaut program before he did it. He said, well, I can just do the same thing they're doing, just do it better, faster. Uh, He does it less expensively than they do it. Therefore his margins are higher, he makes more money. Nothing is new. Stop with the new idea problem. Try to find something that's working for someone else that you can do, and then figure out how to do what they're doing. And half the time, and charge twice as much. People pay for time. I'll give you the dumbest example I ever heard. I can go walk to my neighbor's house, or to my dad's house, 100s of miles away. I can choose to take all the time it takes to walk there, knock on the door, say hi, tell him my message. For free. Or I can spend a few cents and write it on a piece of paper, and put a stamp on it, and put it in the mail system, and it will deliver to them in a few days. It might take me a couple weeks or a month to walk all the way from Sacramento to San Diego. Okay? Maybe it takes a day or 2 to get the letter there. It takes. But that's a few cents. I can do email and send it to him instantly. I can send a text and send it to him instantly. People pay for time. People pay for time. If somebody's doing something, and you like it, and you think you can do it, get people interested in it, and then do it half the time there, and other people are doing it. If you're going to start a business, do that. I don't come up with a new idea. You're not out of ideas. And frankly, most of your ideas are some variation of somebody else's stuff. I suggest you throw those out in the trash. Go find a business model that currently works. The 2 biggest restaurant chains in the country. McDonald's and Canes. I think, actually, Chick-fil-A is almost passing McDonald's, but let's just say McDonald's because they're everywhere and everybody knows them. And Canes, do you know what Canes is? Do you guys have a canes near you? If you're in the United States? No, I don't. Kane's sells... Chicken fingers, deep fried chicken fingers, and... uh, fries, and coleslaw. And soft drinks. And then if you want a combo, they have sauce with it, and you can also put it on two pieces of bread, and they call it a sandwich. It's like 6 items in their entire store. Pretty sure you could be profitable and be awesome if you only made 6 items. They were not the 1st ones to come up with chicken fingers. Right? They were not the 1st ones to come up with French fries, but they just decided we're gonna sell this, and that's it. It's like they had an MVP. It just ran with it, and then it was a success. It's just like, well, let's just start with this. And they're like, holy shit, this is enough. Something to be said there also for doubling down on what's working. Like, I know Andy's heard that expression before, but I remind myself, double down on what's working. I mean, it's a blackjack analogy, but you find something. So for me, in my case, I was broke, broke wannabe actor, if I can go on for about just a minute on this handy. Yeah, go ahead. Tell people your story. It's fine. got you. Thank you. Um, so, uh, struggling wannabe actor in my early 30s, um, empty, mostly empty apartment. had a folding table, my laptop. I was getting a refrigerator. Um, and I had a mattress pad on the floor in my clothes. Didn't know how I was going to pay rent, but I really wanted to take a stab at acting a second time, and I got a good deal on an apartment. And the landlord knew they could, they could be evicting me any in a month. So, I mean, there is something to be said for prayer. I did pray, channel my thought, energy, ask God for help. In a week, I jumped on board with Lyft and Uber, ride chair driving. All right. And for me, I had to double down, because for the 1st time in my life, the mouse was getting his cheese, like, instant gratification. You give a ride, you get paid, you give a ride, you get paid. Oh my god, the money's actually not bad. can do this all day. So instead of focusing on acting, I said, I'd be stupid to not focus on what's working. And because I did that for about a 5 years and I earned a promotion, I had the money saved, and I did some acting jobs in between. I had a little fun in between. I didn't totally give up on the fun. I was able to, uh, after five years, I was able to, um, acquire an old fourplex property, and then I jumped trends from Rideshare to, uh, Airbnb and stuff. So double down. Right. And and I'm gonna Mia Culpa here. I started by creating a digital course. I bought, okay, here's what I did. I bought a course and joined a program that told me how to write and build and create digital courses. So I created a digital course, Because I needed it called the, uh, uh, what do I call it? The, uh, Oh man, can't even think of it. hold on, let me let me pull it up. The personal job pipeline, which is how to get recruiters to send information to you, instead of you trying to get jobs, get recruiters to send them to you. Okay, so I, I perfected that over the last 30 years. That's how I get all of my consulting work. I get recruiters and other companies to send me what they're, what they need, and then I either help source it or I help deliver it. Um, and so I built a pipeline, and I built a course, and then I called a whole bunch of friends, and I talked to a whole bunch of people and said, hey, come listen to my pitch. They joined the pitch, and a couple people bought it. Okay, cool. And then I realized, that's dumb. That's the wrong market. I'm, I built something I wanted. And then tried to find other people like me. Okay, well maybe there aren't, maybe nobody else is crazy like I am. So then I said, okay, what's next? And I started doing spaces. I started doing a bunch of X. I started doing a bunch of content And I, one time said out loud, hey, you know, if you really want to get a better job, change your life, you need to take control of your life, kind of like be the CEO of your life. Oh my gosh, I got a huge flood of people. How, well, how do I do that? What do I do? Whats going on? So I built a kind of a program on being the CEO of your life, and I spent some time, I built the whole thing out. It was 6 steps. You know, uh, here, by the way, here are the 6 steps. You, Start tracking things because you can't fix anything you don't know empirically what's happening. Number two, you become a little better likable. Number three, become a little better communicator. Four, you get a little better mindset because if you start to communicate better and be a little more likable, you're going to threaten everybody who knows you. And so then you have to have a better mindset. Then number 5 is create a personal brand. And then once you have a personal brand and you're likable and you have a little better mindset, and you've tracking things, and you can communicate better now you have value when you network. There you go, 6 steps. And I ran a pilot program. I had about a dozen people in it, and I sent them 2 emails a week for whatever, whatever that is, 12 weeks. And at the end of it, I said, okay, if I was going to focus on any one of these things, which one was it? personal branding? Cool, personal branding. Okay, personal brand. That what I'm gonna do. branding. I did personal branding until... One of my clients said, Um, we're paying you to do this stuff. Can we pay you to coach some of our other executives and our other project managers? And I went, well, sure, of course you can. Well, if you double down on what they pay you for, that's what they're paying me for, right? So they're paying me. Okay. Then I started talking about that in spaces and on X and other places. And I said, you know, I have this outline for a book. I'm not sure I should write it. And everybody said, yes, please write. I got like 30 people said, please I want to buy it. Okay, so I put them on a list. I did that. I wrote the book, I published the book. I'm waiting for the forward so that I can get it printed, but there's the e-book. It's ready, it's available, and I've already sold like a dozen copies. And so now we're talking about Leadership, teamwork, and branding. They're all the same to me. It's about getting the attention of whoever your audience is. If you're an employee, your audience is your boss. If you're out of work, your audience is the HR people looking to fill your the seat they have opened with your butt. If you're a leader and you're trying to get your team to accomplish your goal, then it's your job to give them the vision. Bottom line is, it's always your job. It always your fault. So you're not out of ideas. You're out of focus because you don't execute. You start executing little tiny things each day. Clean your desk. Clean your car. Clean that one drawer in your bathroom that's full of all the junk extra stuff. Go into your kitchen. Pull out the one that's underneath where the phone used to be. That's got all the extra crap in it, and toss everything you don't use. You don't really need it. You'll never have to buy it again. And if you do, it's really not that expensive. Go throw that stuff away. Organize your closet, organize your room, organize something, start, simple and focus on one thing till it's done. The 111 methodology is one solution to one problem for one group of people. If you're leading a team, You have to have this is who we serve, and this is the problem we're fixing for them. The solution is what the team builds to solve the problem. If I could take every single one of my clients, every single one of the people who ask me for advice in the backchannels, every single person who's listening and just grab Tinker Bell out of the sky, shake the pixie dust on you. It would be... One solution to one problem for one group of people. So like AJ said, he started with, I'm going to be an actor, man, but I need to eat. So I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to do something else while I'm trying to get the Atkinson going. Right? Not losing track of it, but who did? oh, hey, you know what? I can drive a car and people like it and I kind of like doing it. So, I'm pretty good at it. It works and I make money. Solves all one except for the quote unquote after part. Well, when you have money, you can afford to pay for headshots and gasoline to drive to a job. And to take the day off to go to audition. Or that. And and to get a whatever clothing that fits the role that you're doing so that you can walk in as if you're already that kind of a person or whatever it is, right? Yeah, it's just, it's normal. It's, it's the exact same process you use to go to a job interviews. You go to an audition as you go to make a sales presentation as you go on a 1st date. You imagine the best version of yourself in that situation, and then you try to present that. Little bit of extra money here and there really helps along the way. That's why you end up with a closet full of extra hats. I'm bald. I don't have any hair anymore. Uh, and the hair I do have, uh, it looks horrible, so I just shave it off. But that means that, you know, in the sun or the rain or whatever, I'm probably wearing a hat. I have more than one hat. Some of them, I've worn once. Why are they still in my closet? I don't want to buy them again. They're special, whatever. Okay, fine. But the point is, You can choose to do whatever you want to do. Most entrepreneurs have shiny object syndrome. Oh, oh, I could do that. Oh, I can do this other thing. Oh, I can do this too. Hey, if they're paying you, 10 X that. If you're not sure what they're doing, just keep going around until people start asking you. Right? The reason that there's a benefit pivot of me from personal branding to more leadership in coaching is because the people in the back channel who are DMing me, and the clients that are asking me to actually help them are saying, I'm running a team. I need your help doing this. I'm doing this. Can help me? I've got this problem. We're trying to get funding. I'm trying to put together a structure. trying to build a team, trying to build a company. My. I've done that half a dozen times. I've run hundreds of teams, lots of projects. I can help you with personal branding, but mostly I can help you with content, but if you need to build a team and that's what people are asking me to do and build leadership, well, that's what you get. And by the way, there, the quote unquote solo entrepreneur monk, I'm the golden unicorn is a myth. It is a fantasy. It's the same as Tinker Bell and Pixie Dust. It's not real. You know what is real? You can be a solo entrepreneur, wear a whole bunch of hats, and have one person that helps you with your taxes, and one person that helps you with your investing, and one person that helps you with your payroll, and one person that helps you with legal reviews, and one person that gives you some ideas on marketing, and one person that helps you with your fulfillment. That's a team. They just don't work full time for you. They don't all wear the same uniform as you. But they contribute. And that's your team. The same things apply. You must give the team the vision. You must tell the team what your problem is, that you're solving for the group of people that you serve. Who do we serve? And what is their problem? That's the solution we're going to do. Most people think of the solution 1st. That what the idea is. All right, let's go back to AJ. Yeah, thank you. I love that you said shiny object syndrome. I'd never heard of that before, and it reminded me... Reminded me of a realization I had... a while back with, um, being... being a, I guess, I don't know if I would call myself a solo producer, but I am working alone a lot. And I'm not really an entrepreneur. I just leverage trends. I use the ride chair trend to save up a lot of money. Now I have a 4 plex property, and I rent it out. But I do a lot on my own, and I think I've fallen prey to shiny object syndrome. When it comes to, like, online ads, and someone's pitching a book, like, hey, I've got the solution for this. You want to make money, buy my book? And I'll buy the damn book, and I won't read it. And I was like, well, this wasn't quite what I was interested in, or, and I'll do it again. And then I got all these books. Like, pay some more of B, uh, or whatever. And I'm like, I'm not reading this. I just, I felt prey to shiny, shiny object syndrome. And I guess I, like, maybe you can help me realize a greater lesson here, but I think it's a lot to be said for rolling up your sleeves and, you know, reading a book is great, but if you don't apply the knowledge, right, then you're not rolling up your sleeves. And I've already got, I've already got real estate. I should probably be reading books on, like, um, how to fix Windows or contracting or laying carpet, like, like learning, those are all YouTube tutorials, I guess. or how or how to leverage what you currently have to buy the next one. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, right. Um, here's here's another thing. Um, Wow, okay. Uh, I literally, while we've been talking just 5 minutes ago, hey, do you got a couple minutes to talk? Yes, about this is my current bill rates. Here's what I'm here's what I can provide for you. So yes, it works. If you do something and people like it, They'll ask you for more of it. Um, okay, let's go back to AJ real quick. Here's, here's, hold on, hold on ahead. Here's here's what I do. If I don't have time to read a book, I won't buy a book. And if somebody gives me a book, I'll tell them, thank you. I'm going to put it on the shelf. I haven't read yet. I may or may not have time to read it. I learned this technique when I was working on a project in Cairo, Egypt. I received an email every 5 minutes on average, every 5 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 2.5 years. Okay. If it takes you one minute to read everything, you cannot read every email you've received every day, let alone all the emails that you receive. On a weekend. Come in on a Monday morning. You have Friday afternoon, all day Saturday, 24 hours a day, all day 24 hours a day, Sunday, all the way in the morning until you get there, you have more emails than minutes left in the day to read. You cannot do it. So what I had to do was establish rules. Here is the rule. If it's to me, I'll read it. If it's, if I'm CC'd in it, it goes in the CC window, and I'll keep it, but I may or may not ever read it. It's there in case I need to reference it, but I'm not reading it. I'm not responding it to it. And if I read it, I'm not going to respond unless it says, Andy, I need, and then has a explicit statement or question. Otherwise, it's like Reddit, next, Reddit, next, Reddit. I am not going to spend any time thinking about it or answering it. I'm just going to go through it. I apply the same thing to the books, to the courses, to the details. It does not come in my office unless I have a specific need to fix an answer. That's it. That's the way I do it. You can choose to do whatever you want. But, It is a little bit uncomfortable at Christmas. Thank you for this book. But I don't have time to read it. I won't be able to read it until March or April. And you know what? It comes across badly sometimes. Uh, You know, I've been working my whole life on becoming a little more likable. Some days are better than others. How about that? Um, But. Functionally, You know, functionally, we can get a lot done. Let's go to, I see Netta has asked for the mic. Hey, um, head crazy, you wanted to say something before we get to Netta? Uh, appreciate it. And that very last comment, you know, definitely, uh, you're making yourself too available. You're sort of diminishing your sort of authority in a way. So. Kind of. Um, can't, you know, it can come across that way. You're not out of ideas, you're out of focus. Um, too often in the past, I had a shiny object syndrome in my head, and I started building it, and it seemed sort of intuitive. You have an idea. It's shiny. You start building it. What I'm realizing now, ending, I think you'll agree, is that I would have been better off selling a product that wasn't even built yet. And then figuring out if people are even interested in that product, and they're refining that particular idea to where someone was like, Yeah, I would buy that product, and then and only then would I build it. I, I, the problem was I, I did, I had a shiny object in my head, but what I needed to do was search for a shiny object that was actually needed by somebody out in the field. So I just kind of wanted to reformulate what I said, and another way that hopefully makes strong sense. Yes, everyone should adopt the idea of a waiting list. I'm gonna write my, so I've written the 1st book, cool, check mark, done. I'm going to write another book. If you're interested in that one, you know, DM me or whatever and put, I'll put you on the list. I get enough people on the list. I going to ask for money. If people give me some money, I'll write the book. Otherwise, it's just a draft. I ready to go. Exactly. And if nobody says it, then I'm not gonna spend any time finishing the book. Why? Why? Right? Let's go to Nedda. Hi Neta, how are you? Happy New Year. What happened to your engineer as well? Actually, closing another space. I'm dropping for a second. Happy New Year to you, Andy, and to everyone in the audience. Um, I just wanted to kind of shine in on, um, the the part when it comes to focus. In project management, uh, also in scrum, we have, um, a matrix called the Eisenhower Matrix. And it's a quadrant of four. And it helps you decide, um, where you're gonna put your different priorities in it, right? This way you can make better decisions and this way you can focus better. There's also another, there are many frameworks you can use, basically what I'm trying to say. And a person without a roadmap, a person without a North Star, is a person that is blindly sailing across the ocean that is super foggy. So, uh, I always believe in words are powerful. So it's the beginning of the year, set up, set realistic goals for yourself. Use these frameworks. Find your North Star. What is that one thing you want to accomplish in 2026? And stick to it. If there's one book that I could recommend anyone to read that will help them, is actually 2 books. And I'm looking at it right now. The one thing, by Gary Keller. And, uh, atomic habits. By James Clear. Yeah, and they That's my show for today? And thank you, Nada. and they both have newsletters. So if you're interested, James Clears is 321. You can look up their newsletter. Look up their name. You'll find them. They're both wonderful authors, great books. And, uh, they, they all were, we're all circling the drain on the same idea. And that is, You have to, Decide. Choose. Make sacrifices for one thing. Everyone is worried that their one thing that they choose may be the wrong thing and they'll go too far down the road and then fail and. Okay, how about this? Think of it differently. If you don't change anything, you will be on your same spot. You'll be in the same place in the ocean. And we've talked about that before. If you just tread water in the ocean, that's it. You've chosen. It's over. It's just a matter of time. Start the clock. And when the clock runs out, it's over. If you swim, You have a chance. It's not over. You're not out of ideas, you don't have shiny object syndrome. They're all good ideas. It's the lady in the red dress in the Matrix movie. Are you listening, Neo? Or are you paying attention to the woman in the right dress? Look back. Oh, it's a thing that's going to kill you. Here's the crazy part. And I mean this crazy because this is true. Every idea is a good idea. Some ideas are better than others. But every idea is a good idea. And with enough effort and money, every idea will work. Every one of them. The real quick, that's not the question, though. The real question to ask yourself is, Is somebody doing this? Can I do it just as good or better? Can I do something in less time? Can I eliminate 80% of what they're doing and still provide some kind of value? So just, I'll give you an example. My coaching clients are almost all on just like a DM concierge service that DM me questions. I think about them, work through them, figure out what the best answer for them is, customize a response, send it back a text. I hardly have any meetings. But I coach a bunch of people. And I coach them, just, they send me a text, hey, I got this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they just brain dump. And then I go, okay, it looks like it's this idea. Here's what I was thinking about. Here's what you want to think about. Here some answers, here's the stuff I do. All on text. And my corporate clients, let's say I charge them 100%. The clients that just do the DM texting, and that coaching, Like, 2025%. Why? It's easier, it's faster. You get stuff instantly. You don't have to worry about, you don't have to schedule your time. You don't have to do your hair. You don't have to put on an outfit. You don't have to be in a comp- You could be on your way in a taxi, on the way to the airport and go, oh, crap, I forgot. Man, I got to fix this one thing. da, da, da, da. Land? There was an answer. And almost all of the people who are my clients are the kind of people who... don't really have anybody else they can trust with really weird questions they're asking. Because if they ask their team, their teams start to think of them as, what the hell is smoking, what's the problem with you? But I get it. I've run my companies. I've been there, I've run big things. I understand. So, okay, let's go to AJ. No, thank you, Andy. You mentioned earlier, there's no such thing. Oh, I'm sorry, you said, all ideas are good ideas. And, um, I was kind of picked out apart, and here's what I, here's what I came up with. Because philosophically, like, don't we say that's a bad idea? Why would anyone do that? Or like, it seemed like a good idea at the time, right? I think we've all heard that one. Um, but it sounds like what, what, what we're, I'm learning is what appears to be a bad idea actually has the premise of a good idea inside of it, but maybe it's being executed wrong, and that's why it looks like a bad idea. Am I on track here? Because If we say all ideas are good ideas, how is a bad idea a good idea, right? So I'm thinking maybe it's just executed wrong. And there's a seat of greatness in it. Does that make sense? Okay, I'll give you a personal, practical example of a what I thought was a massive failure that turned into a massive success for me. Okay, here we go. Yeah, awesome, wonderful. I'm I'm in a big meeting with like 50 people. I'm sitting in the in the the far left corner of the room. There's, it's a huge table. The president of the telecom company is sitting in the middle. The engineer who's doing all the oversight is sitting at the far end of the table. So if you think 25 people shoulder to shoulder and they're on the other corner, and then a bunch of people on the side, and then us, and then all of them on that other end. And they start saying stuff like, well, you know, we started this project doing this, and by the way, the idea has expired, so there's no problem here. Okay. And there's doing this and you guys are doing this thing and and I just... For whatever reason, couldn't just let it go that day. And so I interrupted failure number one. In front of their bosses, failure number two. And I said, are we really gonna just do ancient history? Or are we going to finally try to figure out how to fix this thing? So number three, I called them out, challenged them directly, and implied that they were just stalling. They were, of course. But, Here's the other thing. It was not my role. It was not my place, and it was definitely not my microphone to do that. So it was like 10 failures in a row. Here's what happened. After that, I got the daggers, eyeball, and daggers from everyone. Everyone, except for the president of the company, who kind of was trying to not smirk. Okay, but everyone else in the room was giving me the what the hell did you just do? And I realized, as it was coming out of my mouth, oh God, what am I doing? Failure. They sent a note that said, Andy is incompetent, unqualified, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of this stuff right. So the project pulled me out. Put me in the back room and made me in charge of all the documentation and all the contracts. So I went through everything with a fine tooth comb. Everything, I read every single word of every single contract, of every single, Facts that was sent every email that was sent, I read everything. When it came to a head and the project started to fail, we went into arbitration. Okay? We won a $350 million lawsuit. Day one of arbitration in a foreign country. Because I opened my mouth, and got shuffled to the back room and put in charge of all the contracts. So big, big, fat, stupid. At the moment, thought it was a good idea. I thought maybe we could move them forward with a little bit of, you know, Creative criticism, total failure, absolute, undeniable fact. My boss could have easily just said, that's it. Thank you, get on a plane, go home. You're out, you're fired. Forget it, whatever. He didn't, he pulled me and put me in the back room, mostly because I had gotten under their skin in the meaning by being my big fat stupid. Because I was the big, fat, stupid, and I got under their skin, they kept me just as the kind of like the, hey, by the way, we're gonna bring Andy to another meeting. Do you want that? I think that was his whole threat idea. Nothing to do with me other than the fact that I could just say what I said. But it turned into winning a $3500000000 lawsuit. That's when a good idea turns out. No, please. I would never recommend anybody doing that. It was not fun. It was terrifying. I thought my career was over. I thought everything I was ever going to do in that type of world was ended. I thought, oh God, I was a career limiting move. My career is over. But it turned into a win. Doesn't always. Beautiful, beautiful. But it happens. Now, other, other ideas, um, I thought buying a one particular car was a really good idea. Turns out it was a piece of crap, but, Because it was a piece of crap, I met the mechanic who then turned me onto a different one, and then I ended up with something else. I I look at it through the lens like this. Everything in life. happens for the good of those who love and serve God. It's your choice to love and serve God if you want. But the Bible says, everything works out for those who love and serve him. I don't know what works that mean. It might mean that my life is a series of challenges and frustrations, and at the end, you know, I squeak into heaven or something. Maybe that's what it means. I don't know. I really have no idea. All I know is, If you have the best intentions, you're still going to fail. You're still going to screw up. You are still going to have problems. When you have problems, when you screw up, what do you do? Do you keep going? Well, you got to recognize that you screwed up, but you can still turn it into a positive. So, not that you should ever purposely try to cause problems. Not that you should ever purposely try to just, you know, poke the bear. Because, you know, the bear will kill you. My point is be your true authentic self. You're gonna screw up anyway. You might as well do it from an intentional heart than just showing up and getting smacked. You're gonna get smacked anyway. Yeah, when you, um, Andy, when you spoke your mind at that meeting, um, it's because they were out of ideas. And then they put you in the room where you were able to focus on the legal contracts, which I'm guessing that gave you an idea which helped you win in arbitration. Isn't that interesting? Well, I don't know if they were out of ideas, or if they were purposely doing it. I don't care. I'm not I'm not here to determine what other people think or how they act or what their what their motivations were. All I know is, as soon as that happened, I thought it was over. I got put in the back office and I thought, 0 my god, I've got a good team myself. And so I studied every single word of every single thing, and I identified a large number of places that were, Let's say squishy. And then the lawyers took the squishy things and turned them into something valuable. It wasn't, I had no. I mean, maybe I had a little to do with it. It wasn't me. Uh, I just said, what about this clause? What about that phrase? What about this one? And they took it and went and did with it. But the only reason that I was able to do that and focus was because all the other responsibilities were given other people. And I was given responsibility of that. So I just took it. Again, back to the, back to the, you're not out of ideas, you're out of focus. If you're given something to focus on and people are paying you to do it, because they believe you can do a good job at it, do your best job. Do your very, very best. So, AJ, what's your big takeaway for today? Oh, great question. Um, well... Yeah, it's gonna be the focus. It's gonna be, um, based on what I was regaling the room with earlier. My ride share to Rich's story. If I had had one foot in my ride chair vehicle, the 2009 Prius or whatever, and one foot in the audition room, constantly, I wouldn't have done as well financially, and I wouldn't be in the position I am now to own real estate. And so it was the doubling down and the focusing on someone else's great idea. Someone invented rideshare. I dont know, like Travis Kalinik with Uber, whatever. Um, don't really like the guy, but, you know, just running with a good idea. Yeah, and saying focused. Okay. Cool. Every day people come to this space and they listen. Most people listen, most people will take a note. Most people will just listen and not do anything. Some of it goes into their brain, some of it bounces off, some of it they reject. I'm just going to keep showing up and talking about the stuff that I believe is true. And I might be wrong. But I honestly believe everything I say is the very best I can say at the moment for every one of you. There's so many people in the world who are praying for help. You guys have their help. You have their solution to their one problem. You just have to have enough courage to start and do that. If you're interested in coaching, if you're interested in my book, yeah, just reach out to me in the back channel. And I'll show you how we can we can do any of that. And with that, we're going to have a great day. See you guys tomorrow. Bye.