Unhackable: The Elixir for Creating Flawless Ideas, Leveraging Superhuman Focus, and Achieving Optimal Human Performance with Kary Oberbrunner: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Business Made Simple. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be breaking down Unhackable, the elixir for creating flawless ideas, leveraging superhuman focus, and achieving optimal human performance. To drop these value bombs, I brought Kerry Overrunner into EO Fire Studios. Kerry is an award-winning author, an international entrepreneur, and he makes high-performance productivity and goal achievement a breeze for busy professionals struggling to maintain laser focus in a world riddled with distractions.

0:43In today's Fire Nation, we'll talk about how entrepreneurs have dreams, but there's this gap between dreaming and doing. That's when most entrepreneurs get hacked between ideation and implementation. And technology was supposed to be a tool, but now we're the tool that technology is using. And the secret weapon of super achievers in every discipline is a formula called unhackability and so much more, Fire Nation. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Carrie and our sponsors. Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

1:15Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business. Join my friend, Donald Miller, each week as he shares value bombs on topics like the secret to making better marketing decisions. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Many EO Fire listeners have launched non-food franchises and Fran Bridge Consulting has guided them. Fran Bridge's founder and frequent EO Fire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at franbridgeconsulting.com.

1:52Kerry, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Pain is your friend.

2:08So I run in circles with people who are pretty intense, and there's two pains in life. Jim Rohn said it's the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. One weighs ounces and the other weighs tons. In my world, I believe there's chronic pain that most people live in, or there's acute pain that's intentional, focused, and short-term. And that's the type of pain we go after. It's just like a tough workout, a little bit of acute pain, and it gets over that chronic pain in your life. All right, Fire Nation, with that kind of value bomb, thank you for joining myself and Kerry today. There's no more to be learned here.

2:49Look away. No, just kidding. Obviously, we have a lot of fun things to talk about here today, Fire Nation. And I brought Kerry on for a number of reasons. That past value bomb you just heard was one of them. But as I mentioned in the introduction, we're talking today about the elixir for creating flawless ideas, leveraging superhuman focus, and achieving optimal human performance. Carrie, one thing that we've been talking about and I've been perusing through this great book of yours is that our lives are full of distraction. They're full of information. And you believe because of this, like our lives can actually become hacked.

3:28So what does that even mean? And what can we, Fire Nation, do to become unhackable? In our space, John, a lot of people think of a hack as a shortcut. You have life hacker, you know, these types of things. Bio hacker. Yes, yes. You know, it's almost like this, ooh, I'm going to find a shortcut thing. But actually the definition of hack is when someone or something gains unauthorized access to a system or a computer. Yeah. So you think about your bank account. You think about your computer, your smartphone. If it gets hacked, that's a bad thing. And it's when somebody overtakes it. So, John, a while back, man, I wrote a fiction book called Elixir Project about a future society where people's brain get hacked.

4:17And my audience, who's basically entrepreneurs, business people, they read it and they said, man, this is not fiction. This is fact. And again, this came out in 2016 before we really had a ton of conspiracy theories and all that going on. But the point is this. I don't go that route. I just basically say that entrepreneurs have dreams, but there becomes this gap between dreaming and doing. You see? So you had a dream. I mean, you had lots of dreams. You got a new book coming out. Fantastic. I've read it. It's awesome. Thank you. You have that dream for a book, but then you actually have to write it.

5:00And there's this gap between dreaming and doing. And that's where most entrepreneurs get get hacked is between ideation and implementation. Yeah. And so basically I did a ton of research into neurobiology, science, military, and I just said, what is the secret weapon of super achievers in every discipline? And it's basically this formula called unhackability. One thing that I was really curious about when we were kind of going through this part of the process is how one actually does become unhackable. Because I'm totally understanding what you're saying is, you know, we have this goal and it maybe is, you know, 10 years down the line or one year down the line or this very specific, clear goal that we have ahead of us.

5:50But between now and then, something hacks us and we don't get there. So what does that even mean to become unhackable, to start achieving and accomplishing these goals? It basically means closing the gap. So there's this crazy word that a lot of us said growing up as kids. We said abracadabra when we wanted something magical to happen. I don't know if you ever said abracadabra. I did multiple times. Yeah. Yeah. So the word's crazy powerful. It's really weird. It's the most frequent or common word used in all languages without the need for translation. Basically, you can say it in Hebrew, you can say it in English, you can say it in Spanish, abracadabra.

6:34And it means I create as I speak. Is that cool or what? That's so cool. I want to try that next time I'm in a very foreign country with nobody speaks English. I'm just going to go abracadabra, peace. That's right. So I create as I speak or it came to pass as it was spoken. And the crazy thing for those people out there who have faith, it comes from three Hebrew words. The first one is Abba, which is actually father. So it's made up of father, son, spirit. Is that freaky, crazy or well? This is all coming together now. It's so weird, man. So here's what I say. Even if people don't have faith, that's cool.

7:16I do. But I believe that we were created in God's image to co-create. And so when we are creating something, when we're doing our dream, we're actually living out our divine destiny. But when we get hacked, we're actually living out our humanity. So we have this choice every day, like, hey, am I going to essentially embrace my divinity? Like, am I going to co-create? Am I going to dream and do? Or am I going to get sidelined and sabotaged? And today, John, we have so many things against us. unlike any other time in culture. The average person has 5 ,000 ads a day. Yeah. According to D-Scout Research Firm, the average person touches, clicks, swipes, taps their smartphone 2 ,600 times a day.

8:07I mean, when I'm playing Settlers of Catan, the app, I'm probably doing that every hour. That's right. We have 35 ,000 decisions, and this gets into that whole decision fatigue, right? and attention economy. So marketers today, they don't even care if you pay for their product. They care that you pay attention. That comes before paying for products and services is attention. And so everyone's competing for our attention. And as a result, we are literally getting hacked. Most people wake up and the first thing they check is their phone. Oh, yeah. The last thing they check before going to bed is their phone.

8:48And how can we be creators when we're consumers? And so that, you know, unlike a lot of books where Cal Newport, Deep Work, it's almost like, hey, technology is bad. I don't think it is bad. I mean, you and I are using technology. You have clients all over the world. You've reached millions of people's lives because of technology. I love technology. but technology was always supposed to be a tool that we use but now we're the tool that technology is using the quote that i really want to jump back to that just really hit me to the core being a creator is how can we be creators when we're always consuming like fire nation how can you ever expect to create something when you're always consuming and we actually had a long talk about this on a clubhouse room that i was in the other day with this person's like I don't know what my problem is.

9:42Like I just sit around all day and I'm listening to the greats. I'm listening to Jim Rohn. I'm listening to Les Brown. I'm listening to this person and that person. How am I not successful? And you know, I jumped in. I'm like, bro, because all you're doing is listening. It's action. It's all about action. You can't create when you're just sitting around consuming. There's got to be a level to this. There has to be, you know, a balance to what you're doing. And I do believe like when I started my journey, I was in like a 90 % consumer mode, 10 % creator mode. And over time, quickly, I shifted that to 40, 60, 50, 50, 60, 40.

10:16And now I am 90 % the creator, 10 % the consumer, because that's where I'm at right now. I'm never going to stop consuming fully because that's how I come up with great content and stay cutting edge and learn things. But, oh, wow, like I will for sure prioritize my creation. So one thing that really jumped out to me kind of going through some of these great parts in the book that you wrote is you refer to the boon quite a bit. So what exactly is the boon and how do we, Fire Nation, acquire this? Yeah, it almost goes back to your point with the guy on Clubhouse where consume, consume, consume. It's easier.

10:53It's safer. You don't need a boon. You can say, oh, you know, I'm just I'm just eating everyone else's great content. But a boon basically is part of the hero's journey. It's talked about very little. People kind of just think, oh, hero's journey, yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole point of the hero's journey is that the hero achieves a boon, which is, I define it as your greatest ache, your truest longing, your biggest adventure. And in the pursuit of your boon, you're supposed to achieve it and then go back to the ordinary world that you left and share that new knowledge. I mean, that's what the Lord of the Rings is about, Star Wars, Hunger Games, you name it.

11:46So most people, I'll say this, this is a little edgy. I would say unless you know your boon, you don't care if you get hacked. In fact, you're craving distraction because it relieves the mental anguish of not knowing your greatest ache. I mean, if that doesn't cut some of you to the core who know that speaking to you, Fire Nation, it needs to start because something is going to get through to certain people who are just not hearing those words. And by the way, there's a lot of you listening right now. That just does not apply to you right now because you are doing the thing. You are making things happen.

12:25But for those people that are sitting here and they're like, you know what? If I'm being honest to myself right now, what Gary's saying is the truth. And another thing that I wanted to dial in a little bit on because I'm a huge fan of the word focus, follow one course until success. So when I was going through your process about focus filters, I'm like, tell me more, brother. Yes. Becoming Unhackable is really broken down into three things. Idea, focus, and flow. We call it knowing, being, and doing. The bigger words would be flawless idea, deliberate magnetic focus, and optimal human performance flow.

13:02But focus filters, best analogy I can give, think back to the beach. You go out on the beach, which I'm jealous of your Puerto Rico amazing location there. But you go out there and for a bald guy like me, it takes three hours to get burned. Okay? Okay. But what happens if I, weird analogy, but what happens if you want to get burned in three minutes? Well, what you do is you have a magnifying glass. In other words, a focus filter. It's the same sun, the same skin, but what it does is it amplifies the energy. It amplifies the intensity. And that's what focus is. Most entrepreneurs are living a very diffused life where we kind of slow bake our dream.

13:53But what unhackable people do is they bring laser focus. And so I said in my research, what are focus filters? And there's three of them, urgency, agency, and energy. So you put one on and suddenly you become unhackable. You use two or three and it's like, wow, watch out. So let me give you an example, urgency. Most entrepreneurs don't have a deadline to their dream. It's kind of like, ah, you know, I'm going to focus on this and when I get it done, I get it done. Well, think back to school. When did we do the assignment that the professor gave us on day one? We usually did it the very final day.

14:41Parkinson's law, brother. Tasks will expand to the time allotted. Oh, I love that. That is so good. Exactly. It becomes more complex in our brain because we have the luxury of time. Well, you, my friend, and many of the people on this incredible show, we don't give ourselves that luxury. We take that deadline and we move it way up, like ridiculously up. And what it does is it cuts all the perfectionist crap out and says, stop making excuses. Stop allowing yourself this think time. And what it does is it amplifies the energy. It's a focus filter. So we call it urgent care and not just normal health care.

15:24Why? Because there's a cost. If you don't get seen, there might be a death. And that's what we need to do. We need to put urgency back into our lives because you know what? You're not guaranteed tomorrow and neither am I. And that deadline will actually kick our butts and force us to become unhackable as opposed to just, oh, I got so much time. Let's watch the next Netflix. A strategy that I use for this specifically is called the Pomodoro method, where I literally will set a timer and then I watch with my eyeballs the first few seconds tick off that timer. It clicks my mind into what I call focus mode or another word for this could be urgency mode.

16:04And I get stuff done because my brain knows that, hey, guess what? I have 42 minutes to do this. So I get to rest after that. So let me just get it done now. Let's just do it. Because when you, your brain, it takes a lot of energy to really focus and to do some serious bandwidth. And when you don't let your brain know that there's a carrot at the end of that stick, it's going to find every excuse not to do that. Like when you sit down and you say, I'm going to write one chapter of my book today. Well, guess what? It's going to be 6 p.m. And you're still going to be like, I'm going to write one chapter of my book today.

16:32But when you say, I'm going to write one chapter of my book in the next 45 minutes, you will get it done because your brain goes into laser mode and you make it happen in Fire Nation. If you even think Kerry is close to done dropping value bombs, you could not be more incorrect. We have an amazing acronym coming at you when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Are you ready to close 2023 out strong by surpassing your revenue targets? Q4 is the time to make it happen. But in order to do that, you need the right tools to help you fill your pipeline, nurture prospects, and close deals. Lucky for you, there's the new HubSpot Sales Hub.

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19:37John has served as an Inc. 500 franchisor and is a multi-brand franchisee himself. And he does more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at FranBridgeConsulting.com. That's FranBridgeConsulting.com. Kerry, we're back, and I love the part in your book when you show how we can save time with an information diet. Now, again, that is an acronym that I teased before the break, D-I-E-T, break this down for us. This is your friend on Clubhouse. He should have heard about this. So what I mean by that is, John, I don't know if you've ever had this, but when I'm bored or stressed, I'll just go to the cupboard or the refrigerator and eat.

20:28I did it an hour ago. I'm not proud of myself. And you know Jeff, your workout guy. I'm friends with him too. So he would not approve of this. Jeff would be like, natte, natte. Yes. But so many people do that. I do that. You feel overwhelmed. You feel stressed. And so you go to the refrigerator or cupboard and you just eat because it's a distraction. Well, guess what? let's take that to the metaphor of the internet. Now we go to the internet of life and the refrigerator of information, the cupboard of information, and we scroll and we scroll because it gives us the dopamine release, the hit. We see how many people liked or favorite, you know, retweet the whole bit.

21:15And what it does is it distracts us. So in order to move from a consumer to a creator, you need to go on a diet. And this diet, it stands for D, determine where you want to go. I meet so many entrepreneurs who don't know where they want to go. And so, hey, at least I'm listening to Les Brown. At least I'm listening to Jim Rohn. At least I'm feeding my brain something. But it's kind of like someone who says, let's go on a road trip. Where? I don't know. Let's just go. It's fun for the first five minutes, and after the 50th day of driving nowhere with no destination, it kind of becomes pointless.

21:56And that's what we need to realize. You have to determine where you want to go. James Allen said, until thought is linked with purpose, there is no intelligent accomplishment. So we need this filter, and the filter is determine where you want to go. I stands for identify who's getting the results that you want. And so, John, I bet you in your beginning entrepreneurial journey, you probably identified a couple few people that you said, man, they're getting results. I'm going to listen to them. Big time. Actually, seven specifically. But yes, I did. Oh my gosh, look at you. So that's seven is amazing.

22:38Seven is a lot better than 700, which most people do. subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, and then it just hacks them. Because every day they get up and they say, oh, that's what that person's doing. That's what that person's doing. Now, you identify the few people, the seven, who are getting the results that you want, and then you dive in. You follow them. E stands for eliminate empty calories. All right. So this means like you literally go to your social media and say, who am I following? Who is coming into my awareness that's hacking me? And let's face it, there's been people that I followed that hacked me because I'm like, dang, they're crushing it all the time.

23:22And now it's this comparison game. Comparison is a hack. So look, if they're not adding value to your life and they're just making you jealous, unfollow them. Focus on your game, not theirs. And then T stands for turn your focus after you've squeezed out every last drop of value. So the fire nation, all they have to do is listen to Entrepreneur on Fire. And I'm not just saying that. I mean, like you are literally bringing in the select people. So we don't need to go chase all these other podcasts, all these other lists. I am filtering for you, Fire Nation. I'm the filter. No, but it's true. These days, a curator of information is actually more valuable because who has the time to exert the sideways energy to say, these are the few voices I should listen to.

24:20Yeah. And another example of this, by the way, too, is like, I don't want to be trying to consume the fire hose of news that's out there in this world. Yes. But I found a curator. It's a daily podcast called The Newsworthy with Erica Mandy. And she's fantastic at just giving me less than 10 minutes a day, the news that I need to know, the news that I need. So she curates it for me. And I'm able to eliminate all those other empty calories that are in my world. And that's just an example. You can do that in so many places in your life, Fire Nation. I love that. That's a great example. So Fire Nation, I want you to know something about being unhackable.

24:58Those of us who are unhackable, we make frequent decisions. Kerry, talk to us about why this is the case and if it's even a good thing. Yeah, decide is a really edgy word. It comes from a Latin word that means to cut off or kill. And it's the same suffix as suicide, pesticide, genocide, insecticide. In other words, most people do not want to make a decision instead of an incision because it deals with cutting off something. And we've been told by unsuccessful people, keep all your options open. You know, just keep all your options open. Well, guess what happens when you do that? You leak power.

25:43And I believe we each have this life force. And what do they do with a tree that's unhealthy? They literally cut off the branches. They prune back the options that the SAP is going to so that the SAP can only go into the few branches and be all in essentially. So yeah, unhackable people make quicker decisions and rarely go back on them. I should say hacked people delay in decision making because they want to keep all their options open and they often change their minds. So one thing that we as humans strive for a lot of times, it's not everybody, but a lot of people are like, I love to travel.

26:25I want to see new experiences. I want to have new life moments and all these things, which I get, and I've been doing that for years now. I mean, I make a point to travel a lot around the world every year. So talk to us about how these new experiences, and even more than that, the new information that we take in as a result, how does that specifically affect our brain? The third part of becoming unhackable, so you have flawless idea anatomy. We talked a little bit about abracadabra. We talked about focus filters, and now we're talking about flow, optimal human performance. Flow can actually happen through flow triggers, and I've done a bunch of work with Steven Kotler on flow, great author on this whole concept, But one of the flow triggers, meaning that an intentional activity you can pursue in your life so that you feel more flow is novelty.

27:24So novelty means that we get out of the rut. I mean, some people, I hear you, like same route every day, same food, same show, same, same, same. And yes, there are some advantages at times to putting some decisions on autopilot, like not spending 30 minutes picking out your outfit like Steve Jobs and other people have done. However, if we get locked into a rut and our whole life is on autopilot, we will not experience flow. And this is where, John, in Puerto Rico, the foods, the scenery, the routes, I mean, you purposely get outside of your rut, your routine, so that you can tap into flow. And this is where, yeah, right, a lot of times we feel flow when we're doing a new experience, like skiing or parasailing or this type of thing.