Stop Working More and Start Prioritizing What Works | The 80/20 Rule

0:00Adam Holbrook: If you've ever worked with someone who creates chaos, plays the victim, and blames everyone else, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Adam Holbrook.

0:19I am your host, Adam Holbrook. The reason I created the Managing Difficult People podcast, I was noticing lots of leaders sabotaging themselves, not leading themselves well and not leading their team well. And I said, maybe I can create a place, a safe place, where leaders and other people can listen in to my stories, my failures, my triumphs, my guest stories, and maybe they'll gain the listener, the awareness of what's holding them back in their own lives and have a pathway forward. I work with schools and organizations that want to change culture. Because here's the thing, when we stop talking about changing culture and actually do something about it, that's when magic begins.

1:10People are excited to show up for work. They're excited to work hard. They love the people around them. They feel connected to them. And yes, the bottom line increases too. And I do this a variety of different ways. As an executive coach, I do one-on-one coaching, individual coaching. I do workshops, book studies, personality assessments, dispersonality assessments, and many, many more methods. Today's podcast is all about priorities because here's the thing. The greatest leadership mistake that I made and the biggest mistake I'm seeing time and time again with the leaders that I work with on a consistent basis is they don't prioritize.

1:58They don't prioritize what they do and who they spend their time with. When I had my commercial office cleaning business, I was hungry to be a millionaire. I was working all the time, 90 to 110 hours, building this business. I had worked it up to around 14 employees. And my employees had zero loyalty to me. They would call out sick, not show up for work. And I said, why are they consistently taking advantage of me? And I was plugging holes all day long. and it made me miserable. I was spiraling out of control. I was wondering when I would be successful, how I would be successful, and I was chasing something that I didn't even know what I was chasing.

2:47And it all came to a head that Christmas Eve 2005. I thought about it all the time, taking my car, driving it off a cliff, and ending my life. That Christmas Eve 2005, I'm drunk. I'm in my car. I'm ready. I'm numb. That night, my dad calls me. And it was late. And he tells me he loves me. First of all, me and my dad were in some sort of fight. I don't know how long we were in a fight for. And he hadn't told me he loved me in years. And as many times as I replay that over and over again in my life, one thing I know for certain, God reached out to me that night through my dad's voice and saved my life.

3:42The next day was Christmas Day. After my 17-hour straight shift, I woke up to that 17-hour straight shift. I come home, I start researching how to sell a business. I decide I'm going to post my business for sale on this website. site. It was called businessbroker.net. And within four months, my first business sold for$220 ,000, which was more money than I ever had in my entire 28 years in business. For the first time, I had a little bit of money in my life, but I was still that same bad leader. I didn't recognize how prioritizing my days, my time actually mattered. Then I started to read some books on leadership.

4:28I started to attend conferences on leadership. I became a student of leadership and I started my second business. I started Smart Water Solutions, which was a bottless water cooler company. My company eliminated the jugs that would go on top of the water cooler. We would run this little water line to the water cooler unit. And then it would plug into the back of the water cooler and it would go through a series of filters to completely purify the water and give offices an endless supply of pure drinking water, which saved companies lots of money and it was helping the environment. And with the concept of leadership, I was learning.

5:11I built a bigger business. and after owning it for 10 years, Culligan Water approaches me and said, we wanna buy you. And I said no to them for three years. And finally, I decide to sell it to them for seven figures in 2020. January 14th, 2020 was the exact date. And the biggest mistake I'm recognizing, so now I have everything that I need in life, but I'm recognizing I wanna empower. The only reason I sold the company was I wanted to live a life of purpose. I wanted to be able to help other leaders that are struggling with the same things that I struggled with. That's my leadership story. And as I was reading John Maxwell's book, The 21 Laws of Leadership, he talks about it in one of his chapters, Priorities.

6:07And in the chapter about priorities, he talks about the 80-20 rule. And if you've never heard the 80-20 rule, you've got to listen to this. The 80-20 rule says you get 80 % of your results from 20 % of activities. This blew my mind the first time I ever heard it. That means everything we're doing in life, we should be spending our time recognizing what works, not more work. With this business I'm doing right now, I was spending so much time on social media, building reels, building constant contact, hoping to be the next YouTuber where people are paying me to show up and speak. But I was spending so much time and I recognized I wasn't getting much results from it.

6:58And I started recognizing where I got my results from. And it was from being in contact with school leaders, being in contact with business owners, offering my services to them. And that really changed it for me, doing book studies, free book studies to principals. And I was spending my time doing all of the wrong things instead of taking a step back, breathing and saying, what works, not more work. And that's what I did with my commercial office cleaning business. I was spending my time doing in my business. I was in my business nonstop, constantly plugging holes, recognizing that I didn't think anybody could do the job nearly as good as me.

7:39And then when I read the 80-20 rule, it said, if you can find somebody to do the job, even 80 % of what you can do the job at, you should absolutely hand it off to them, delegate it. And if you're doing something and it's not bringing results and it's not required of you, you can just give it up. You don't have to do it. That to me was mind-blowing because I was spending all of my time in the business. When somebody would call and complain, I would run down there and fix the problem myself. And here's the thing. What 80-20 rule says too is it's not just what we spend our time with. It's who we spend our time with.

8:20Wow. I was spending my time with my lowest level employees. And this is what I'm seeing in all of the schools and companies that I work with. People are spending their time with their lowest level. I don't want to call it maybe lowest level, but it's the employees that need the most assistance because they're the ones that need the most work. But they're the ones that drain you. They're the ones that hold you back. The 80-20 rule says we should be spending our time with our top 20 % of our team members and we're going to get 80 % better results. That just blew my mind. The school principals that I'm working with on a consistent basis, they're spending their time with their lowest level teachers consistently because they're the ones that need the most classroom management work.

9:06They're the ones that can't deal with the parents. They're the ones that don't know how to manage their classroom. And they're good teachers. They just let them go because they know what they're doing. They're great. So one principal said to me, what do you suggest? And I said, maybe come up with a mentoring program. come up with a mentoring program for your high level teachers, where you can work with those high level teachers and empower them to help their lower level teachers. You're out of the picture because you have to grow the business. You have to grow the school. And if you're going to work in your business, it's never going to be that way.

9:40So come up with some sort of program. And with this one principle, it was a monthly checkup where they had to go through a series of questions and email me. But the teachers that needed the most work with the high level teachers they would meet up weekly and they would collaborate and always answer questions on classroom management, on ideas. And this changed everything because now you're not bogged down by all of the people that are consistently draining your energy. And for me, I was doing the same thing with my cleaning business. I was spending my time with my weakest team members because they were constantly calling out.

10:18But at the same time, it was like, I finally had good employees and I didn't want to like ruffle the feathers. So I just let it go. Just keep on doing it. But if I actually worked those key people in my organization, I probably wouldn't have been suicidal because I just didn't know how to be a leader. I knew how to be a hard worker, but I didn't know how to be a leader. And one of the top things you need to do is learn how to prioritize. And it's just not about who you spend about your time with, but it's what we're spending our time with. As a leader, we need to be spending our time on the bigger picture.

10:51And a lot of times we get caught up in the day-to-day operations and we're never seeing the big picture. We're constantly working from one problem to another. And how are you ever going to be able to put... Now, processes and systems are so important, but processes and systems are more of a management thing as opposed to a leadership thing. But here's the thing, is as a leader, you have to recognize what processes and systems you need, and you can put those in place. And I wasn't doing that as a leader. And as a leader of my cleaning business, I had processes and systems that were a log book, and I would do check-ins, but I wasn't truly empowering my good people.

11:31Empowering people is recognizing who your great people are and empower them because they're going to show up better. They're excited that they got more responsibility. They're excited that they're going to grow with the company. And they're going to be excited to help grow with you. And here's the thing that really got me. And I write about this in my new book that's up and coming. It's called You're Not For Everyone is the name of the book. And the chapter name is about multitasking. Multitasking is a myth. And a lot of times we're going from one task to another task to another task to another task, thinking that we just got to catch our breath.

12:06And then we finally catch our breath. We reach for a drink. We binge watch TV. We scroll on our phones, not because we're weak, but because we're exhausted from being everywhere in the same time. But here's the thing. You can't do two things at the same time that require your attention effectively. What we're really talking about is task switching. And what a lot of leaders are doing is they're not prioritizing. They're going from one task to another task to another task, back and forth. And in that back and forth, you lose time, you lose energy, and you lose a little bit of your soul. Instead, I love to work in time blocks.

12:49Time blocks are dedicated, uninterrupted space where we can work on one task at a time. That's how the greatest leaders work. That's how I've written all three of my books. If I didn't work in time blocks, you wouldn't be reading my books. And here's the thing. Time blocks are when you silence all your distractions. You let your key people know that you're not going to be available until after the time block is up. And once the time block is up, you reward yourself. I like to make a cup of coffee. I love coffee. I like to walk the dog. I call my wife back, call that friend back. But if we honor every distraction that is coming at us, we're never going to prioritize our lives.

13:35We're never going to actually be moving our lives forward. We're going to be constantly juggling from one activity to another. But you might be saying to me, well, I can't just ignore my boss. I just can't ignore my wife. They'll fire me. They'll divorce me. And here's the thing is if you let your key people know that you're not going to be available during that time block, there's a good chance that they're going to honor it if they recognize the power of multitasking as a myth, the power of time blocks, and a time of prioritizing one task at a time. And here's another kicker is with these priorities, you got to recognize when your brain power is best.

14:16For me, in the morning is my key time for writing and thinking. So I go for my morning walk every single morning and I'm constantly working out ideas. It's usually like 5, 5.30 in the morning. I'm walking, working out my ideas, taking notes if I need to, practicing my speeches. Then after the kids leave for school, I'm writing because my brain is fresh. Now, a lot of times with our priorities, we spend all of that time doing the busy work, catching up on emails, doing useless returning phone calls that can wait till later. Once your brain is drained, my brain is drained by one o 'clock in the afternoon and your timing may be different than mine.

14:57But once your timing is your brain is drained, that's when I do the less important tasks like returning that call, you know, writing bills. I don't want to use up my big time for that. Unless I'm teaching, unless I'm training, unless I'm coaching, I'm not going to fill up that space. That space is very important to move my life forward. So let's recap. Map. Multitasking is a myth. We can't do two things at the same time that require our attention. We have to recognize the 80-20 rule. 80 % of our results come from 20 % of our activities. And this requires us to pause. Reflect on what works, not more work.

15:44because then you can recognize what I need to be doing more of and what I need to be do less of. Recognizing the 80-20 rule is for what we're doing, but also who we're spending our time with. And if we're going to spend our time with, you've heard the expression, you are who you spend your time with. And if you spend your time with a bunch of people that are your lower level employee, it's going to bog you down. It's going to make you crazy. If you spend your time with successful people that are going to make you better or your team members that are growing with you, they're going to grow with you.

16:17You're going to grow with them. And you're only going to employ somebody that actually is the leader you are or lower. Now you may get lucky and you might be able to bring somebody on your leadership team that has qualities that are higher than yours. But unless you get with the program and start making yourself a better leader, they're eventually going to leave. So you got to always be making yourself better. And I've learned these mistakes the hard way, but prioritizing isn't just about what we're doing, but who we spend our time with and recognizing we need to work in time blocks and honor those time blocks, silence those distractions and work toward making yourself better.

16:58Because when you show up as your best self and work toward your best self by prioritizing, by not multitasking or back and forth tax switching. You show up better for your people. You're not so exhausted. You're not so difficult anymore. I'm grateful that you're with me today on the Managing Difficult People podcast. If you, your team, would like to change culture, you would like to see what the next steps are, go to www.managingdifficultpeoplepodcast.com and reach out to me. And my email is info at adam-holbrook.com. Till next time, God bless. Thank you for joining me.

17:46Adam Holbrook: So that's it for today's episode of the Managing Difficult Pupil podcast. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or iTunes wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a$10 ,000 private VIP day with Adam Holbrook himself. Be sure to head on over to managingdifficultpeoplepodcast.com and pick up a free copy of Adam's gift and join us on the next episode.