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Focusing On Your $10,000/Hour Tasks (And How to Outsource the Rest!) with Benjamin Hardy

The BiggerPockets Podcast
71 min read
Focusing On Your $10,000/Hour Tasks (And How to Outsource the Rest!) with Benjamin Hardy

On last week’s episode, we talked to Dan Sullivan, author of Who Not How. This week, we’re joined by his co-author, Benjamin Hardy. Benjamin has spent the last few years getting his PhD in organizational psychology, writing books such as Personality Isn’t Permanent and Willpower Doesn’t Work. These tie perfectly into his new book Who Not How, and will help you get to the business, personal, fitness, or other goals you’re trying to reach.

Benjamin goes through why things like willpower and effort are often misunderstood, and how they can be used as tools to get you to your goals, but they aren’t the path. Benjamin walks us through why so many entrepreneurs get “decision fatigue” and why situations often rule over people, not the other way around.

Benjamin presents a very unique view on shaping your future, one that isn’t often talked about in the self-help and business space. With many entrepreneurs feeling stressed, fatigued, or just confused, Benjamin’s advice offers not only a practical, but tangible way to accomplish what you want and do better in your business and personal life.

We also double down on the importance of hiring people who will make your life easier, not just for your sake, but for theirs as well. Plus, Benjamin shares one of the most important hires you can make that will help you clear hundreds of hours off your calendar.

This episode isn’t just about why you should hire an employee. It’s about how you designate your time, and ultimately your life. As Benjamin says “Your future self is more important than your present self”, and for good reason!

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Listen to the Podcast Here

Read the Transcript Here

Brandon:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast, show 425.

Benjamin:
Your time is spent in certain ways. And if you force yourself to do all the hows yourself, your time is stretched and it’s ultimately all accounted for. Whereas if you find who’s to do these things for you, you now have the time to focus on what you value most. So you free up time, which expands your perspective, which allows you to ultimately make more money.

Intro:
You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors, large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com, your home for real estate investing online.

Brandon:
What’s going on, everyone. It’s Brandon Turner, host of the BiggerPockets Podcast, here with my cohost, Mr. David Greene. David Greene, I was so excited about talking to Dan Sullivan about Who Not How, but we got another Who Not How guest today lined up. You excited?

David:
Oh, totally. I love Ben. He’s one of my favorite people, I was telling you that. When we were talking to Dan during the podcast, I was frantically trying to get the information out like, “Can we get Ben?” This would be such a good followup to Dan’s show. There’s that one-two punches. The first one gets their foot in the door and then the next one delivers a lot of value. And that’s what you really need when you have resistance. As I’m listening to these guys, it’s speaking to me, I know they’re talking to me. I know I need this but there’s a part of me that will resist it. And that’s why getting hit more than one time to break through that is so important.

Brandon:
Yeah. So well said. So today’s show is with an amazing author named Benjamin Hardy. So Benjamin Hardy is the coauthor of the book that we talked to last week on the BiggerPockets Podcast on the weekend episode. It’s called Who Not How, Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. So we had Dan on last week. The reason we’re doing this two weeks in a row is, one, this is a very different show than last week. It’s very different because we talk to Ben about some of the other books he’s written as well. We go into why Willpower Doesn’t Work and some ways to actually get you to do the things that you know you need to do. We talk about personality and how your traits change over time and how this applies to your real estate.

Brandon:
Bt more importantly perhaps for today is David and I just know that this concept is one of the most important concepts in the entire world for real estate investors to grow, to learn, to become more successful. This concept of Who Not How. And last time we talked very big picture with Dan Sullivan about that. Today, we’re going much more granual on… granula? I’m not sure of the word. Granual, I think that’s the word. I’m probably saying it wrong. Anyway, we’re going to go more specific on, how do we actually apply that and do that to our lives? So hang tight for that. It’s a phenomenal show.

Brandon:
But before we get to that, let’s get to today’s quick tip. All right, so last week when we talked to Dan Sullivan and we talked about Who Not How, [inaudible 00:02:50] about hiring other people and finding ways to collaborate with other people rather than doing everything yourself. So your quick tip today, we’re going to talk about the similar concept today, so your quick tip is actually a piece of homework for you, and that is, I want you to outsource one thing, one thing that you have never outsourced before, and I want you to outsource one thing, it could be your oil changing from now on, it could be a lawn mowing from now on, it could be answering your emails.

Brandon:
You might find somebody on Upwork or on Fiverr, I don’t care. Pick one thing, and I want you to outsource it starting this week, and then let David or I know, go to our Instagram and find one of our recent posts that talk about this and just leave us a comment that just says, “Hey, I did this.” You can also put on the show notes of this page, biggerpockets.com/425, and we’re going to pick somebody and give them a free book just for letting us know. So with that said, we got to get on with today’s show. But does that sound good to you for quick tip, David?

David:
That’s awesome. What’s the one thing, Brandon, that you should leverage because it drains your energy and you hate it but you haven’t yet?

Brandon:
I haven’t said it for weeks, but it’s my calendar management. It drives me nuts. I spend an hour just trying to coordinate my Brazilian jujitsu instructor to come to my house because it’s just mess. So, yes-

David:
And you’re hiring an executive assistant to take care of that, right?

Brandon:
Yes. I’m in the process of [crosstalk 00:04:02]-

David:
So we’re going to be following up with you to hear how that goes.

Brandon:
Yeah. But there are other things that I could probably do. And I mean, there are a lot of stuff I could-

David:
You know what we should do? Once you get that down, we should do a video and put it on Facebook, Instagram, BiggerPockets that goes-

Brandon:
Maybe we do Instagram Live, what do you think?

David:
There you go. And say, “This is how I did it, this is what it looks like now,” and out the ideas out there for everybody else.

Brandon:
I like it. I like it. All right, we’re going to do it. So we’re going do an Instagram Live here next week after the show comes out and David and I will be talking more about what we did for that challenge. So come prepared with yours as well. By the way, I didn’t mention this, but if you are, wanting to find us on Instagram, David is davidgreen24, I am beardybrandon on Instagram and BiggerPockets is @biggerpockets. So follow all three right now. And that’s all I got. So let’s get to today’s show. Like I said, we’re talking with Benjamin Hardy, PhD, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, wicked smart guy, written numerous books that are all fantastic. I love this dude. And he has so many important things to say about how to accomplish more, how to work less, how to be more fulfilled with your life and how to make a whole lot more money by doing that. So that’s what today’s show is about. So let’s get to it. This is Who Not How, our follow-up, our one-two punch second interview.

Brandon:
All right, Ben. Welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast, man. Good to have you here.

Benjamin:
Very happy with you, gentlemen.

Brandon:
All right. Well, let’s go. We got a lot I want to cover today with you on a number of different topics. Recently of course, you just came up with the book Who Not How which was phenomenal. Of course, we talked to Dan Sullivan, your, what do you call him? Co-writer, coauthor, coauthor? Okay. So we talked to Dan on the podcast recently and it was phenomenal, but I wanted to go more in depth today on this. But before we get to this, I want to talk about one of your previous, your previous life and other things you’ve done up until this point, because I think that your journey exemplifies what we’re talking about today, and it’s a picture for what a lot of people who are listening to this have to go through. So maybe we just start at the beginning. Who are you? How’d you get into this world?

Benjamin:
So, name’s Ben Hardy, recently finished my PhD in organizational psychology at Clemson University. But while I was doing my psychology degree, I started writing. I knew I’d wanted to become a professional writer. I served a church mission and just fell in love with learning and so that got me into psychology and I did a lot of journaling. And so when I got into my PhD program, I started studying writing and learned about medium.com and started in 2015 and just studied virality, honestly, took online courses to learn how to write the right headlines, learn how to structure my articles and just was successful and was able to ultimately grow a huge email list, become a professional writer over the years and then joined networks. Joined networks like Genius Network, Strategic Coach, groups of people who could teach me how to ultimately turn my marketing knowledge, my writing knowledge into… learning how to turn it into a business.

Benjamin:
And so yeah, that was my journey. I wrote Willpower Doesn’t Work, which was my first traditionally published book that came out in 2018. And I guess to connect it with Dan Sullivan a little bit, when I was in my first year of my PhD program, which was in, I started in 2014, my aunt joined Genius Network. And so she really started to learn from Dan Sullivan and she gave me access to all of her trainings inside. And I just fell in love with what he was teaching and so I reached out and tried to join Strategic Coach and I found out you had to be an entrepreneur and you had to be making a lot of money. And I was making $13,000 as a year as a graduate student. I was like, “Oh, that might be like 10 years down the road, I guess.”

Benjamin:
And then over the preceding few years, my writing just really took off. I got a big book deal and so I spent that joining various networks and I got to know Dan. And then sometime in 2018, he presented this idea when he first crystallized it as these three words, Who Not How. And as I say in the book, I just thought it was so good. At that point, Willpower Doesn’t Work was already out and I was already working on the next book, but I just said, “Dan, if you ever want this as a book, I’m your guy. I’ll write it.” And so that started it, and that’s how we got here. I mean, there’s plenty of things that went on after that, but that was some of the bare bone steps.

Brandon:
Sure. That’s awesome. And it’s cool to see too that journey from you approached him, and he told his side of the story so later I’d love to get your side of that story of how you guys connected and why he worked with you. But before we even get there, you mentioned the book Willpower Doesn’t Work. Now, this is a book that when I first met you, it was at a GoBundance event that you were speaking at talking about this idea that willpower doesn’t work. And I love the concept. Of course, when the book came out, I got the book, I read it. I’ve read it a couple times now, actually. And it’s probably one of my most recommended books. So can we just spend a few minutes talking about why does willpower not work?

Benjamin:
Yeah, because situations are more powerful than people. That’s the main idea. In psychology is that we’re the product of our context. It actually really fits with Who Not How. Willpower would be doing all the house, whereas rather than doing everything yourself, willpower is a way of looking at yourself. It’s a very individualistic approach. It ignores context, it ignores the fact that you’re persuaded and influenced by other things. And so, yeah, willpower’s, I look at it from the lens of addiction. I came from a crazy background. My father was an extreme drug addict. My brother is still, three hours away from me in rehab. And willpower is the dumbest way to try to overcome an addiction. And so that’s a stretched out way of looking at behavior change. If you want to overcome an addiction, you definitely would not do it through willpower. And so that same principle applies to making a small change. And so I just thought, why not just write the book that explains the psychology of behavior change rather than trying to will your way through it?

Brandon:
That makes sense.

David:
Do you mind, Benjamin, giving us maybe a quick example of what it would look like if you’re having trouble accomplishing something, how you would tweak your environment instead of just telling yourself, “Try harder?”

Benjamin:
Yeah, exactly. I’ll give you two examples. One, so I look at environment in two different ways. One is actual environment like my physical surroundings, and the other one is more just general context. So what are the ultimate situational factors influencing you? So there’s a really good quote from Will Durant, the famous historian. One of my favorite quotes, I think about all the time, but he says, “The ability of the average person could be doubled if their situation demanded it.” In psychology, that’s a concept called the Pygmalion effect, that you’re either rising or falling to the demands of your situation. If you had a gun to your head and you needed to find a way to make a million dollars, you would start thinking a lot more innovatively than if you didn’t. And so for me that idea really matters because when I became a foster parent of three kids, all of a sudden I felt this huge surge of, I now need to do something differently.

Benjamin:
In other words, my environment or my situation demanded something more of me. So that’s one way of looking at it. Your situation in a lot of ways spurs your motivation. The other one, so as an application of that, actually creating more demanding situations. Maybe if you got like six months to write a book, cut it in half, shorten the deadline so that the situation demands more of you. That’s one way of outsourcing motivation to a situation. The other one is just actually changing the environment, whether it be removing bad default options. A lot of people, they just act unconsciously because of the default.

Benjamin:
I know when I go home, because I’m at my office right now, when I go home, there’s going to be carbs and bad food all over my environment. And so the default would be that I’m going to go home and just fall into my habit of just… And so I have to change the default. I have to actually have something good set out, something right so that I don’t set my future self up for failure. And so a lot of it’s just knowing that the situation is going to crumble you unless you’ve set yourself up for success and unless you’ve made a strong decision beforehand what you’re going to do.

David:
In a sense, what you’re saying is you’re humble enough to not believe your willpower’s going to carry you through living in an environment-

Benjamin:
I’ve failed enough to know that my willpower is not going to carry me through. Let me just share one last thought because I do wish that this thought was in Willpower Doesn’t Work. One of my favorite concepts about willpower is decision fatigue. Decision fatigue is the idea that if you have too many things on your mind, if you’re pulled in too many different directions, you’re scrambled eggs, you can’t think very well. And so one of the keys to removing decision fatigue is just to make a decision. Cut off alternative options, essentially. One of my favorite quotes comes from Michael Jordan. He says, “Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again.”

Benjamin:
Well, the reason why that’s so powerful is if you make a true decision and if you become accountable to that decision by getting people on your team, like if I’m truly committed to not going home and eating all the carbs, I not only need to be decided in my mind, but I have to have the situation also support me in that decision. I got to tell my wife, “Nope.” Kids, “Nope. If that dad starts coming home and eating cookies, call him out on it.” And so one of the big things that really helps you build confidence is going into a situation knowing what the outcome is going to be. If I go home and I don’t know what I’m going to do, I hope I don’t eat the cookie. But if you go into a situation not knowing what the outcome’s going to be, meaning you’re not decided, then you have to deal with decision fatigue.

Benjamin:
I then get home And I then think, “Am I going to eat the crap at home or not,” then I’ve just put myself in a situation where now I’m making a decision in the heat of the moment. And that’s again where situations beat people more often than not. It beats you out. So you want to really make the decision beforehand and then set up the situation to support that decision so you don’t have to deal with decision fatigue.

Brandon:
I’ll give you a real life example of how I do this, because this is totally true. My family, my wife loves to bake, just like it sounds like [crosstalk 00:13:39]. Love the carbs and the cookies and here we are at holiday season, there’s just crap everywhere. Right? So if I walk in the house and there was cookie dough in the fridge, like there is right now, I will go-

Benjamin:
[crosstalk 00:13:50] cookie dough.

Brandon:
Yeah, I love it. [inaudible 00:13:51]. It’s so good. I will walk by it the first time and be like, “No, I’m not going to have it.” And then like five minutes later, I’m walking by the fridge and I have to make the decision again, “I’m not going to have it.” And then I walk by again, I’m like, “I’m really probably not going to have it.” And a little bit later, I’m like, “I really shouldn’t have it.” And then you’re right, it wears you down over time.

Benjamin:
That’s the exhaustion of willpower, right?

Brandon:
Yes, it does. It totally wears you down. And so one little trick that somebody told me years ago, I don’t remember who, but I use it all the time. People laugh at me when I’m in public because I do this. Like if you go out to eat with me, you’ll find that I do this. And if you notice, I don’t know if, David, if you’ve noticed this, I will pour water on my food when I know I’m done with it, or I’ll take half my dessert sometimes and pour water on it. Because now I took out willpower from the equation, because I don’t want to-

Benjamin:
Yeah, you just changed the situation.

Brandon:
I’ve ruined it. I changed the situation. Now there’s water all over it. People laugh at me all the time for like… Or like, I’ll take cookie dough, if I’ll make cookie dough, I’m not against making cookie dough with my family [inaudible 00:14:40], I’ll throw it in the garbage right away. In that way I changed the situation. I’m not going to pull it out of the garbage. That’d be weird. And then I regret it and I’m like, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that, but I’m really happy that I did it.”

Benjamin:
I think that that’s brilliant. I mean, obviously I’m not saying you shouldn’t eat cookie dough. I’m just saying whatever your goal is, if willpower is the thing you’re relying on to do it, you’ve already set yourself up for failure.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s so good, man. Another thing I do, and you talk about it that I find my ways to obligate myself in other ways. Like you said earlier about the writing the book, you have a set number of days, so now twice now I’ve written books where I’m like, “I have 100 days to write a book. I’m going to write the whole thing in a hundred days,” and I publicly say it. And I’m like, “This is the thing,” and that becomes a thing. We do a thing at BiggerPockets called the 90-day challenge. It’s like, you’re going to buy a property in the next 90 days. It’s like this short thing, right? You can do anything for that for a short period of time. I just got finished with 75 Hard. I love those short-term things, but I also obligate myself to other people, right? So if it’s on my schedule and I got a meeting with David, I’m going to show up to the meeting with David. I don’t want to let him down. But if it’s an appointment with myself, I’m much more likely to let myself down, which is crazy.

Benjamin:
Social pressure is the key. I mean, that’s why I came out with this book in early 2000, but this book took me a year and a half to write, this book took me three months to write for the same reason you’re describing, is that I had to write this. It’s almost like I went to the gym with a workout partner. Like you said, you’re not going to let David down. Well, I wasn’t going to let Dan down. I wasn’t going to write Tucker down… let them down. And so because of the social obligation of they wanted the result as well, it was like I had a gym partner. I had to go, you know?

Brandon:
I played racquetball really hardcore like four years ago. People on the podcast, remember when I was really into that, because every day I had a partner who would show up and pick me up in the house. And he probably didn’t want to go half the time but he didn’t want to let me down, I didn’t want to let him down, so for about a year and a half straight, we played five times a week, at 5:00 AM and we’d just play racquetball. It was the best.

Benjamin:
I call that a forcing function. It’s whatever situational factor forces the desired result. And social pressure or just shared commitment to the same goal really makes that easy.

Brandon:
Very cool. Well, let’s move to the next book real quick, the Personality Isn’t Permanent. I’m saying that right, right?

Benjamin:
Yeah.

Brandon:
Another good book, I also have read it, love it. Tell me about, what was the reason for writing that book and what led to that? And what was the gist of it?

Benjamin:
Gist is that common views of personality are incorrect, common views of personality are usually what Carol Dweck would call a fixed mindset where we think that our personality is innate. It’s something you look for, you discover. And a lot of people are very definitive in their personality. I’m an introvert, I’m an extrovert, et cetera, and that thinking really stunts your imagination. Really what I wanted to do in that book was explain the research behind the idea that your current self is a different person than your former self was. You see the world differently than your former self. You make decisions differently than your former self would, and vice versa. Your future self is a very different person than your current self. Even if you don’t try to change and don’t try to grow, in three, five, 10 years from now, you’re going to see the world differently. You’re going to actually be in a different world, speaking of context.

Benjamin:
Who knows what culture is going to be like? Who knows what technology, who knows what challenges are going to be like in 10 years from now? And so most people, and again, the research is very big on this, most people think that their future self is essentially the same person they are today. They don’t imagine a different future self. And so as a result, they overly define their current identity. And when your identity… And by the way, identity and personality are two different things. Identity is how you describe yourself. It’s how you define yourself. It’s internal. Whereas personality is the byproducts. It’s what’s external. It’s how you show up. It’s your behavior.

Benjamin:
And so people’s identities are just so stuck in the present, whereas if you just define out your future self with imagination, and there’s a lot of cool research on this as well, it’s called prospection, whatever view you have of your future, that’s the thing that actually determines your behavior in the present. And so I just wanted to write a book to first off, show that your personality is going to change. It’s a lot more flexible and malleable than you think. And if you get really clear on your future self, then your identity and your behavior are going to change a lot more in line with who you want to be.

David:
I saw that for myself when I went from a background where every day I was in law enforcement and every day it’s, how’s this person going hurt me, how are they going to hurt someone else? You develop a way of looking at the world and the only thing that I even noticed is a threat. If I’m at a party and everyone’s having a good time, it’s boring because you’re like, “Well, what’s there for me to do while I’m-”

Benjamin:
David’s scanning the room.

David:
Yeah. That’s exactly what it was like. I wasn’t thinking, how am I going to go contribute to this good time? And then when I became a real estate agent and my ability to grow that business was based on how well I was liked or how well I could network, I stopped looking only for threats and I started seeing, “Oh, there’s a conversation I could contribute,” or, “That’s a person who looks like they have no one to talk to,” where those things, I didn’t even see it. And I saw my personality become more charismatic. So I wasn’t something where I sat down and said, “I want to be a different person.” It was literally like you’re saying, a result of a different environment with different pressures where a different version of me was necessary to be successful. I took personality tests all throughout my life and I watched those results change constantly. Depending where I was at different times, I got very different results.

David:
So I think it’s very encouraging for people who feel like, “I just can’t do this thing,” or, “That’s just not me.” You may never be a power lifter if you’re a marathon runner, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do other things other people do. Would you agree with that, Ben? Would you say that for the most part we have the ability to grow much more than we think?

Benjamin:
Yeah. And personality is quite different from athletics. You know what I mean? Obviously, personality has a lot to do with what you can accomplish like on a field and whatnot, but I’m not telling people they can become seven feet tall and become LeBron James. This is personality. But yeah, I think the biggest, obviously there’s a lot of ideas in that book. How trauma shapes personality, how environment shapes personality, how your story, which is your identity shapes your personality. But I think the big, big thing that I wanted to, at least that I think about now with that book, because I’m actually writing a book right now called Be Your Future Self Now, which is a condensed, better version honestly than what Personality.

Benjamin:
But a thought for you is, is when you were like law enforcement or whatever it was, security, your goal was different than when you became a real estate agent. Once you became a real estate agent, because of whatever goal you had, you then had to ultimately [crosstalk 00:21:00]. And that’s really the thing that is the most surprising thing to me, is that our personality is actually driven by our view of our future. It’s driven by our goals. So if you set the goal to become a podcaster, you’re going to ultimately have to develop new skills and abilities. And so when you became a real estate agent, you had a different goal which led you to ultimately having to see the world a different way and having to act in that world a different way. And so my big thing is really be clear on your future self so that then you can ultimately guide your thoughts and behavior in a specific direction.

David:
What’s your stance or how much credence do you put towards subconscious things going on that you’re not aware of that are determining how your personality develops? I’ve noticed certain people are incredibly analytical and it’s often, what it looks to me is they’re trying to protect themselves from feeling pain that comes from making a mistake or something like that. And so, so much of their personality is driven by things that they never consciously chose, “I want to be this person.”

Benjamin:
Huge. Full chapter on the book on how your subconscious shapes your personality. And I think that obviously environment shapes subconscious experiences and how you interpret those, the meaning you give to those experiences shape your subconscious, trauma or whether… And so yeah, so subconscious is big. And in order to ultimately fundamentally change who you are, you’ve got to change your subconscious. My view of subconscious is a little different than a lot of people. My view of subconscious is, is that it’s your average experience, it’s you on autopilot. So for example, someone who makes 50 grand a year, that is their average life. That’s what’s normal for them.

Benjamin:
Subconscious is what’s normal, it’s what’s expected. It’s what’s you on autopilot. Whereas if your future self is making a million dollars a year, then your future self has a different norm. Your future self has a different average experience, different average day, different average habits. Habits and subconscious are very similar. But identity is a big part of subconscious, and so in order to actually get from your current reality to the future that you want, you’ve got to have the average normal life of a millionaire, and that would be unconscious.

David:
And I’ve seen this play out in practical terms in real estate constantly. We refer to it as a baseline. So everybody has a baseline of how they think the world’s supposed to work or what’s normal to them. And in real estate, an example would be the house is listed for 700,000. So if I pay more than 700,000, I’m getting a bad deal because my baseline is set at the least price. And what we do is we have to go to the client and say, “Where did you come up with the number that that’s normal? Look, that house on the same block is selling for 800 and it’s smaller.” Now the thought of paying 750 means they’re getting a $50,000 deal as opposed to I’m overpaying by 50,000. And it’s an example of how things that don’t make any sense are governing the decisions that we make and the way we live our life all the time.

Benjamin:
Yeah. I like seeking what I call either subconscious enhancing experiences or subconscious enhancing behaviors. An experience is an experience that shows you that your former view of the world was creating whatever you were having. So like in the book I talk about Charlie Trotter, the famous restaurant here, or whatever, he lived in Chicago, he had a really famous fine dining restaurant. Oprah loved his restaurant, and he would always bring in impoverished kids, homeless kids from Chicago because that’s where the restaurant was. And he would just do it to blow their minds. These kids had never eaten good food in their life and he just gives them for free the most fancy meal. People come from all over the world, and he did it to blow their minds. And a lot of people criticize him, but he was like, “I’m showing these kids that it’s possible to do new things.”

Benjamin:
And so I think that it’s important. There’s a lot of research on the subject of like, one of the core aspects of personality is called openness to new experiences. And I think it’s very important to realize your future self sees the world differently than your current self because your future self has hopefully opened themselves up to a lot of experiences that your current self is still shielding themselves from. And if you’d go out into those new environments and have those aha moments, your future self could create new things.

David:
Okay. So when it comes to the application of Who Not How, I’m going to ask you to give us a gist of what that concept is, and then maybe tie it into how your future self is going to be looking at things differently and how the way to get there may be the way the concept of Who Not How.

Benjamin:
Perfect. Yeah. So Who Not How is very much a strategy. It’s a way of achieving your goals. Rather than you doing the hows yourself, rather than you, whatever it is you want to do. For example, my lawn. I have the goal of having my lawn mowed. I would prefer for my neighbors would hope I have that goal as well. And so rather than assuming the burden to be upon myself, Who Not How invite you to ask, what if you found someone else to do that for you? Or what if you found someone to help you with that goal? And as simple as mowing a lawn, the reason it’s an important question to ask who instead of how is it allows you to think, “Okay, if I could find someone to mow my lawn for 30 bucks a month or 50 bucks a month, what would I then do with those four hours? Is it possible that with those four hours I could spend those in better ways?”

Benjamin:
And then, so the book is based on four, Dan Sullivan calls it four freedoms; time, money, relationships, and purpose. But the main idea is, is that your time is spent in certain ways. And if you force yourself to do all the hows yourself, your time is stretched and it’s ultimately all accounted for. Whereas if you find who’s to do these things for you, you now have the time to focus on what you value most. So you free up time, which expands your perspective, which allows you to ultimately make more money, et cetera. So that’s the big idea, is don’t ask how, stop asking how. And we’re trained to ask how in Western culture because we’re so individualistic. We’re trained in the education system to compete against each other on tests. I’m supposed to the other kid and get the A while he gets the B, rather than us coming together and seeing what we could create together.

Benjamin:
We’re just trained to think in competition, we’re trained to think about doing everything ourselves, and this book forces you to say, “There’s a million people out there who you could team with to help you with whatever goal you want. And you’re going to accomplish a lot more if you get other people involved.”

Brandon:
Yeah. You know, it’s funny, true story, just before this call, we were literally just debriefing after the last one David and I were on, and David mentioned to me, I’m going to share a little private conversation here, David, but David’s like, “Yeah,” he’s like, “I’m having a meeting with some guy, he’s trying to teach me how to buy a certain type of big real estate.” David’s trying to buy some big real estate deals coming up here soon, which I’m super proud of you, David, going to that next level. And David, what he said to me was like, and we were literally talking about you Ben, and about Dan and about this book.

Brandon:
And then he said, “I just got to figure out how to do this one thing,” and he’s going to teach me that. “I go to figure out how to do this. I’m lacking time to get this done and this done.” And I literally just held up the book. I was like, “Maybe you need to focus on something else, David. What do you think that could be?” And then we laughed about it, because the truth is like the immediate response that we both tend to go to is, “I got to figure out how to do this. I got to put that on my back and start walking and carrying it.” Why is it so hard for us to think the other way?

Benjamin:
Well, I think that either we don’t believe that other people can get the vision that you have, whatever it is you now think you have to learn how to do. We don’t think that we could bring someone along and say… the right person who would happily do that, we either don’t think we can get other people on board with our vision or that people want to join us or that we can lead them correctly. It’s really a lack of knowing that first off, it’s not that hard to find someone and tell them to execute on the things that now you no longer have to do. It’s not that hard to find whos. They’re all over the places. All it requires is that you’re really clear on the outcome.

Benjamin:
And yeah, I just think that we’re trained to not think we can do it. And I don’t think we value our time enough. And we think that it may even take more energy to find a who and lead them, and really, it’s… I don’t know why we do it but we’re not trained to have a goal and then ultimately become a leader and let someone else take it over so that we’re free but we’re still getting the benefit of the results. We’re not trained as entrepreneurs, essentially.

Brandon:
It doesn’t come naturally.

Benjamin:
Yeah. I mean, even entrepreneurs who are very successful, they have to train themselves out of it. All right, let me read something real quick. I’m going to read this. So I got a text literally at 1:30 today here in Florida time. So this was three hours ago. But this is from a guy named Jason Moore. He’s someone who has been deep in the self-improvement and entrepreneurial world for decades. I met him at actually something called Lifebook back in 2010. Lifebook is like a personal development thing. He said, this is just a quote, and it’s a testimonial, but I just want to read it because it’s literally the mindset.

Benjamin:
He said, “Dude, with Who Not How, my mindset way of thinking is changing, a simple step with a massive impact. Today, I made a to-who list.” Well, he said, “I made it to-who list and then cleared all of my to-do lists of anything that someone else could do, and I ended up with just five things on my to-do list.” He said, “And even though I don’t yet have certain whos in place, I’m just organizing things and it’s a huge weight off my shoulders.” He said, “Suddenly I find myself asking others, even just around the house, ‘Hey, can you handle this for me?’ Two small examples, one, asking my mom who’s in town to handle stuff I usually do for the kids, and two, hiring our housekeeper two extra days per month so that she’s not coming.” And so he just said he is training himself to just ask who rather than always needing to do the burden himself. It’s crazy.

Benjamin:
I mean, really the book’s just about the more teamwork you have in your life, the bigger your future can be, because the more you can think about your future and the more you’ve got other people doing it. And for me, it’s really important. Go straight back to decision fatigue. I’m really glad we’ve already talked about that. If you have 50 to-dos on your list, you’re not going to have a flow state very much, because if your brand’s going too many different directions, you can’t get into flow. Flow requires that your mind is clear. And so the point of the book is for you to clarify where you want to spend all of your time and energy and effort, your core priorities. For me, writing books, doing podcasts, and then going home and really spending time and being hyper present with my kids.

Benjamin:
If I can find whos that then allow me to do that so I don’t have to deal with all of the noise of scheduling this podcast, et cetera, then I’m free to be in flow for the things I want to do. And my brain can focus rather than being pulled in many different directions. So to me, it’s insanely important, but it also allows you a lot of leverage to do what you want to do.

David:
I know Brandon wants to jump in and ask you quite a few questions on the Who Not How book. We’re going to. Before we do. I want to ask you, Ben, because you’ve done this very, very well. You became somebody else’s who, and that is not an easy task. I think that’s part of the reason why people hesitate to go find their who, is they don’t know if they can find quality or if that person’s going to care. And you’ve really solved that Rubik’s cube of, “I bring value to the people they come with. They chose me. They said, ‘We want him to be the person to write this book.'” What can you share about the approach and the mindset that you develop to become someone else’s who that maybe you see other people struggling with or not getting right that’s preventing this chemistry from occurring?

Benjamin:
That’s a really cool question. I think that by the way, it goes twofold. We all need whos, but we’re also the who of other people in various situations. In this case, I’m a who to be on your show. When I go home, I’m going to be the kids… “My dad’s who.” I mean, my kids I’m their dad, that’s a who. We are all whos, but we also need whos. And so in this case, I really wanted to do this book with Dan for multiple reasons. One of them is just, I wanted to learn from him. I just thought this is a cool opportunity. And I learned speaking of real estate, an dI don’t know what you guys’ opinion of this book is, but like I read Rich Dad Poor Dad like 10, 15 years ago. And one of the ideas that always stuck for me was, “Work to learn, and you’ll always earn.”

Benjamin:
And so for me, whenever I’m looking for collaborations or mentorships, money is always a unintended consequence. I know that I can make money if I write a book with Dan, but my primary objective was just to learn as much as I could, and also to contribute to his goals. I knew that if this book existed, it would be an asset to Dan. This book is going to make Dan millions of dollars. Actually the goal of this book is to get 500 people into Strategic Coach, which you probably already referenced. That would earn Dan lifetime value of 500 clients, $40 million. And so I understood that if I went and helped him with his goal… And so I think part of being a who is knowing the other person’s goal, wanting to be a student or wanting to be a contributor to their vision. It doesn’t always have to be about your vision.

Benjamin:
In this case, I was able to contribute to the vision, but I wanted to support his vision, kind of like Sam to Frodo. Sometimes you want to contribute to someone else’s vision because it’s that important to you. And so I just wanted to contribute to his vision. I was a giver. I was willing to write the book, willing to learn. And I was an enormous beneficiary of all of that. I had obviously positioned myself, I was already a professional writer, I already had a platform, I already had the skills, but even truthfully, I didn’t necessarily have the skills to write this book when I jumped in.

Benjamin:
I knew I had the confidence that I could figure it out, but writing that book was difficult because I’d never done a co-authorship. There are ideas that are semi outside of my sphere of knowledge, and so I took a leap of faith to try to be the who, but luckily I had the support with other whos to ultimately help rise me to the level of being able to do it. But I wanted to. I was willing, I wanted to help him achieve his goals, and I put myself in his circles so that I could then position myself to go do that.

Brandon:
What I love is that, we’ve talked about this a little bit with Dan, but I’ll rehash it here, is that you didn’t just come with no skill, no background and be like, “Hey, I want to write a book for you.” And he would have just rejected that. You came with years of experience and hard work and you got dragged through the mud on a number of writing projects in the past. And so you weren’t coming empty handed. And I think that’s a big part of it, is that you came with some with some ability. So first of all, people out there trying to attach themselves to other people’s businesses, just remember that. What have you done to earn the right to be that persons who?

Brandon:
And also, I wanted to bring up this idea that like, I think there’s a tendency for people when they think about hiring or they think about bringing in whos in their life is almost like they think, because I know I’ve been guilty of this, thinking almost derogatorily about that, who. Like, “Oh, it’s just the house cleaner. It’s just the person I’m hiring. It’s just, that’s a lower position.” But I love that you brought up earlier that we all whos to somebody else. I mean, like, I might be the owner of Open Door Capital, my real estate company, but I may who to Josh Dorkin’s BiggerPockets, right? I’m recording this podcast right now.

Brandon:
And when I started with BiggerPockets about eight years ago helping Josh do the podcast, I didn’t know hardly anything about marketing or sales or even real estate. I mean, I was okay at real estate, but because I was his who, and now I’m a who to private equity firm that owns a big chunk of BiggerPockets, that’s okay. I’m fully okay with that because it doesn’t have to be a negative thing. We’re all whos in some areas. So let’s say [crosstalk 00:36:11]-

David:
You’re also a who to the investors for Open Door Capital. You are doing a job of earning money for those people.

Brandon:
Yeah. They give majority of my money on the fund. I’m a who, I’ll be the worker all day long.

Benjamin:
That’s I think a big idea that we wanted to present in the first place, is that you don’t want your whos to be viewed as lower than you. If I have someone who’s answering my emails making 10, 15, let’s just say they’re making 13, 14 bucks an hour. They’re not beneath me because they’re answering my emails, they are a huge asset to me. And I think that this is one thing that I love about Dan is he views people as unique. He views people as skilled. And so rather than looking at a who as a cost, you look at them as an investment, you look at them as, first off, you’ve just… If I hire someone for 20 hours a week to answer my emails so that I don’t have to do that anymore, I’ve just made an investment in myself, in my future self.

Benjamin:
Now I have those 20 hours to expand in different ways, but I’m also making an investment in that who. I see them as part of that collaboration. I see them as wanting to get better. So yeah, you have to look at people and whos as collaborators. I would even prefer to look at it that way at, rather than employees, is they have a special role that helps you achieve your vision and you’re helping them achieve their vision. And I think that that’s actually a part of it. Like for example, my person who answers my email, I’m helping him or her achieve their goal of providing for their family, of having a job where they can work wherever they want in the world. I’m actually their who as well, because I’m paying them and they get to achieve their goals of working flexible hours, of working from where they want. So I’m actually a who to them as well.

David:
That’s what I love about this concept, is I feel like we spend a lot of time on this podcast harping on finding the person to do the thing for you, and we don’t spend as much time saying, “This is how you be the person to someone else.” And it’s like you said, it’s 50% of the equation. It doesn’t work if all we do is say, “Go find someone to do everything,” but we don’t ever ask ourselves, “Well, how do I excel at the thing I’m supposed to do?” And I guess if you really boil it down, Ben, what you’re saying is get very clear on the role that you’re playing in this relationship. Where are you a who and where are you looking for a who, and then stay within those lanes. So that’s typically what creates the secret sauce that makes something really explode. A sports team’s probably the easiest analogy, when everyone knows what their role is and they do it well.

Benjamin:
Yeah. Tom Brady doesn’t view his frontline as below him. He sees them as freaking essential and they’re all a team achieving the same goal. And without that frontline, Tom Brady is screwed. Right? And so they’re respected, and if they’re not respected in that role, it doesn’t work. So every who is fundamental, every who is important. And yeah, I mean, I never felt below Dan for writing his book. He always elevated me because he was like, “You’re so much better at this than I ever could be. I’m not going to tell you how to do your job.” And I think that this book in a lot of ways can really redefine leadership, because it’s not about telling someone how to do their job. It’s actually giving them full ownership and autonomy to doing it the way that they want to and trusting that they can.

Benjamin:
And I’ve found that again and again. Like I just hired someone today. You give them the vision, you give them what they need, but ultimately you let them own it. And when they own it, they can build confidence and they can get better. Obviously they’re there if you need their help, but I never felt below Dan. I only felt like he was so grateful that I brought anything to the equation. And he even said, “Without you this book wouldn’t exist.” So it’s like, it gives you, it, you never feel below someone when people are looked at that way and when relationships are looked at that way. They’re not transactional. They’re not transactional, they’re transformational.

David:
So Ben, what catches your attention in a who when you meet someone and think, “Ooh, this person will be really good in this area of my life.”

Benjamin:
Well, I look at whos different. I look at like there’s people I want to learn from and partner with, and then there’s obviously people maybe I want to hire. I actually let my assistant hire all people on my team because she’s the one who actually works with them. I work with my assistant and she works with the team and so I let her do the hiring. She chooses the people. When it comes to like, whether it be a relationship I want to develop, a partner I want to have, usually it has a lot to do with, is this person fascinating to me? Is this someone I want to learn from? Usually it’s just initial curiosity.

Benjamin:
A lot of it has to do with goals I have. Like for example, David Osborne, someone I know who’s been on your show. He and I met and we ended up writing a book together. He’s someone I really want to learn from. He’s someone who fascinates me, someone who draws me in. I like him as a person, I resonate with him, and I know that I can contribute a lot to his life, and I know that he could contribute a lot to mine. And so I know that it wouldn’t be a one-way situation. I always think about with people I want to learn from, or connect with, or collaborate with, or just be friends with, is it something that we could both actually become better as a result? So that’s how I approach it, is I really want to learn. I love learning. I love contributing. And is this someone that I would actually really want to contribute to? Would I want to stay up at night and work hard out of genuine service for this person as well?

Brandon:
Do you think the Who Not How applies mostly to business? Do you see it applying to all areas of life or primarily business? I’m guessing you see the [crosstalk 00:41:32].

Benjamin:
I think it applies all over life. Not to get-

Brandon:
So how do you do that?

Benjamin:
So like your kids, like your kids or who’s. I mean, it’s not always about what they can do for you. It’s about what they contribute to you. Even in an addiction, addiction, you can’t do it with how. That goes back to Willpower Doesn’t Work. You need a who, you need a sponsor. You know what I mean? If you want to get to a certain level, like if you want to go do an Ironman, I recommend you get a coach who’s done Ironmans. You can apply it to wherever you want to be good at life. I’m just starting a YouTube channel, which I know goes back to business, but get an editor, get someone who’s coaching you. Even your spouse, your spouse is probably the biggest who in your life and influences a lot. So I think Who Not How is just the quality of your outcomes end up becoming the quality of how you set up your relationships and the quality of who you’re in relationship with.

Benjamin:
Even from like a religious point, Who Not How fits. Christians see Christ as the who. You can’t get to heaven without the how, I mean, without the who. So I think it has huge application outside of business. Business is just a very important place to apply it.

Brandon:
Yeah, it’s so good. I’ve talked about it before, but there’s a site or app I guess you call it called MyBodyTutor. I’ve been using it for like four years now or three years now. And I lost like 40 pounds, kept it off since then. I just write my food every single day. But what’s the reason it works so well is not because it’s an app, it’s because there’s a person every single day who looks at what I ate. This goes back to Willpower Doesn’t Work, right?

Brandon:
I don’t rely on my willpower because I just write down what I ate and then the next day I get feedback from them every single day, seven days a week. I get a real life person who tells me that I did a good job, or, “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t have had that cookie dough.” I think that’s the one that gave me the idea for the water. It’s little tips like that, it’s who. So rather than, “How a, I going to lose this weight? How am I going to keep this weight up?” It was, “Who’s going to help me keep this weight up? Who’s going to help me do this?” So that’s just one area of my life I apply it.

Benjamin:
Well, and involving whos is helpful. So like for example, my mom was just in town and she wants to lose 25 pounds. And I’ve been actually finally getting myself around to doing keto a little bit. And one of my great friends, Richie Norton, he’s lost 40 pounds on keto this year. And so I did a three-way text with Richie and my mom and I just said, “Richie, you’ve crushed it with keto. Will you help me and my mom?” We’ve just integrated the who. And then he just sends this text with his biggest recommendations, all the things he’s learned over the last three months losing 40 pounds. And he will help us. Now I’m like, “Mom, anytime you want to call Richie, he’ll help you. If you’ve got a question about keto, call Richie. Rather than you finding, having to dig in and do all the research, just go straight to the who already has the answers.”

Benjamin:
And the more you can bring in whos to your goals, it just becomes more fun. Now, keto, for me, isn’t a solo journey. It’s with my mom, it’s with Richie, and so I’m far more likely to do it. But also, there’s a really good book. Have you guys ever read the book Tribal Leadership by chance? It’s all right if you haven’t.

Brandon:
I have not, no.

Benjamin:
So one of the things that, and this goes to Who Not How is a lot of people when it comes to relationships, especially if they’re individual focused and competitive focused, they create what are called dyads. So for example, a dyad is like me and you. I’m going to be in a relationship with me and you, whereas people who are connectors, they create triads. So it’s like, if I’m creating dyads, it’s like, I don’t want to connect my mom with Richie because me and Richie, that’s my relationship. Right? Whereas like more connectors are like, “No, I want to connect Richie with my mom. Now we have a three-way relationship, triad.” And who have low self-esteem, they want to own a relationship, and so they don’t want to share their relationships with other people. It’s like, “No, I’m not going to share my…” But people who are more confident and more relational, they connect people all the time. And I find that if you connect people with whos, then you get a lot more connections.

Benjamin:
I mean, that’s one of the things I actually did love about Joe Polish, and still do is, he is always connecting me with new people. And he’s just giving me constant whos, and then that’s what creates interesting synergies. And so I think a really great way to build teamwork is just to constantly be bringing people together. I just brought my mom in with Richie and now all three of us are trying to accomplish the same goal. It’s just building triads rather than being so exclusive in your relationships.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s so good. The last couple of books I’ve written, what I literally will do is will open up a Google document, like a Google sheet so it’s like the spreadsheet, right? And then I have on the left, the far left column has all the dates for the next a hundred days or whatever. And the next column says, “Brandon,” and the next one has somebody else. So last time it was my friend, Brian Murray, who’s my partner in Open Door Capital, but he’s also, we decided to write books together. He wrote a book and I wrote a book. We co-wrote both of them, but we basically, he led one, I led the other, and every single day we simply wrote down one number, how many words we wrote that day. And so every day it was side-by-side.

Brandon:
I wasn’t writing a book by myself, I was writing it with him. And before that I did the same thing with my previous book. You get other people involved and it just… Again, I love how this does relate so closely with Willpower Doesn’t Work and the Personality, like stuff. It’s like, it all connects together because certain people are good at certain things, certain people are not, and I’m terrible at willpower.

Benjamin:
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s just great to involve other people. Meta-idea from my perspective is, is, and this goes straight to Personality Isn’t Permanent, whatever view you have of your own future, that’s what determines your mindset and your behavior in the present. So if I see myself, my future self as I’m making 300 grand a year or whatever, that determines my identity and my behavior and the present. Well, if you can get other whos involved and if you can stretch out your view of the future, which is really the goal of this book, now because it’s not me doing everything now our company or what not, or now I can make 500 grand a year because now I’m not doing all these 50 micro tasks, but those are being taken care of, now I’m focused on this. Because your view of the future just got bigger, now your present goes a lot better.

Benjamin:
And that’s actually one of my favorite Dan Sullivan quotes. He says, “The only way to make your present better is by making your future bigger.” And there’s all the science behind why that’s true, but I just think the goal of Who Not How is to allow you to free yourself up so that your future can get bigger and so that you’re not the only one doing everything. And so I think that that’s really the goal of the book, is to expand your view of what’s possible, but also to deeply enhance your sense of time. Like I talk about in the book, for example, some people just refuse to drive.

Benjamin:
Dan Sullivan himself actually has not driven a car really, except for like one or two times on vacation since 1994. He just said, “I can’t,” he’s like, “I refuse to do that how.” He said, “I just don’t want to drive. And so when I’m driving, I want to be thinking, or I want to be doing this or that.” And in the book I talk about just people who their time is very valuable to them, so they need to be in the backseat of an Uber doing business meetings and making $5,000 on a call while paying someone 30 bucks to drive them downtown versus them doing the driving. And so it’s just, how can you get more people involved in your life so that you can do the higher impact things? Even if that higher impact thing is simply just going home and being present with your kids without having to think about anything else.

Brandon:
You know what’s fascinating about that? So Ryan Murdock, there’s a guy named Ryan Murdock. He lives actually in Hawaii here, he lives in my other unit. I have a multifamily property, he lived in the other unit. And people have heard about Ryan on the show a lot, he’s been on the show a couple of times. But Ryan and I hang out a lot, and every time we go somewhere, I always have him drive. I’ve always had him drive. And here’s the interesting about that, is one, because I get a lot of my text messaging, I get caught up on all my texts and all my stuff while he’s driving. But here’s what I wanted to go with that is, I feel, I mean, real here, but I feel like less of a man because he’s driving me around, because in my identity or my background, the man does the driving.

Brandon:
And maybe the word man is even the wrong thing here, but there’s a, you don’t have somebody drive you around. That is your job. You’re the man of this family, this household, that’s my job. So it’s interesting how even today, I have to overcome that idea.

Benjamin:
That’s the crux of the problem right there for a lot of people, is, is that they feel… And Dan actually breaks this up. He says, “There’s a time and effort economy and there’s a result economy.” If you’re just interested in results, you don’t care how it’s done. You can let other whos do it. But if you’re in that time and effort economy, you reward yourself for how much effort and energy and time you put into it. And my own father-in-law read the book and he is the biggest how thinker in the world. He’s like, “You probably wrote this book to spite me, Ben.” But I said, “Well, thankfully you’re a really good who in a lot of people’s lives,” but he gets a lot of… His identity is based on the idea that, “I was the hard worker that did that.” Even if it was the wrong task to do, even if he knows if he had hired someone to do it or gotten someone else to do it, he would have actually 10X-ed his result, I think it’s culture that ingrains that idea, but it’s also just rewarding yourself for the wrong thing.

David:
And is that a component of a personality?

Benjamin:
Of course. Yeah, but again, that thing can be changed, but yeah, whatever your thought patterns are, whatever your belief system is, or whatever your way of doing things is your personality.

David:
And that’s what I guess I’m getting at, because that’s me, that’s 1000% me. I have to, every day, if I don’t exhaust myself and go home mentally drained, or every time I go to the gym if I don’t leave it all there, then I don’t think I earned the right to say that was a good day. And then that keeps me from ever going to the gym because that has to be perfect. Or I make worse decisions in leadership roles because I had to work myself really hard. And I guess I’m speaking this out loud-

Benjamin:
That’s your current personality.

David:
Yes. And what I’m realizing is in order to be a better leader to the people that have trusted me with their livelihoods, I have to be willing to change that. I have to let it go because it’s expensive. It’s hurting me and a lot of people underneath me that I’m hanging on to it.

Benjamin:
Amen. No, I think that’s so true. And I think here’s what’s beautiful about changing your personality, is if you do anything outside your current character, that’s the way of doing things. If you, for example, went to the gym and didn’t do things the way you currently do them, you went and you just enjoyed a 15-minute workout and left. That would be different from your former self, right? That would be a different type of workout than your former self, if you were to not need to exhaust yourself, et cetera. That would be different than your former way of doing things. And it’s really beautiful to take the time to reflect on how you’re different from your former self.

Benjamin:
I, for example, two, three years ago would not have applying who not how very well. But I can look at my current self and relate my current attitudes, my current behavior, my current philosophy with my former self and I can say, “I’m making progress.” Dan actually calls that the gap in the game. That’s actually the next book Dan and I are writing together, is focusing on the gain rather than the gap, because it’s easy to get in the gap as an entrepreneur, it’s easy to focus on, “I’m not yet there,” versus take the time to look at actually how different you are from your former self two to three years ago, and the progress you’ve made, the things you actually do differently than your former self, and appreciate that. That gives you a sense of progress and confidence which allows you to have hope, which is really important that you can keep changing. But I guarantee you, you do things pretty differently than you did even two or three years ago in various aspects of your life.

David:
Yeah. And I would say like my friendship with Brandon helps a lot when it comes to that, because he’ll point out like, “Hey, look at what you used to do [crosstalk 00:52:44]-”

Brandon:
What are you wearing, David?

David:
“… look at how he’s…” That’s funny, not.

Brandon:
First time I met David, he’s in pajamas.

David:
He loves to [crosstalk 00:52:51]-

Benjamin:
It’s really good to measure yourself against your former self.

David:
But what I was saying is, it helps to have another person that can remind me of that, because I get caught up in the craziness and I don’t think about how David now is so different than David.

Brandon:
No, David, you are a dramatically different person than when I met you four years ago. It’s dramatic. People should go back and listen to your first episode on our podcast when you were a guest. I mean, you still, you were funny and you were entertaining, but you were a different person when you were on that show than you are today. And it’s fun to see.

David:
Well, it was rewarding that I got to this. My life is better right now. And this is what I guess I’m so grateful, Ben, that we have you sharing this both for myself and for everyone who’s listening, because a lot of the time what I think our listeners go through is Brandon and I are dangling this carrot. That’s like, “You can have financial freedom, you can get out of that cubicle. You can spend time with your kids,” And we’re getting them like, “Yes, yes, yes, I want it.” And then we say, “Now, go buy some property,” and they go running and they slam into this brick wall of fear. “But I don’t know how, but I can’t do this. I don’t know what it looks like.” Their personality is working against them. And what we’re really trying to accomplish with this podcast, you’re doing an awesome job today, is showing them how you tweak the parts of you that are stopping you from having what you want. Right?

David:
We all know what it’s like to get in an argument in a relationship to win, but the worst part of ourselves comes out and not the best. And it doesn’t have to stay that way for 40 years. You can learn how to figure out what in your personality was triggered by whatever happened and bring a different side of you out. And for the people that have walked through it, like you, Ben, you can say, “It is so worth it.” That’s why you’re trying to help highlight a path that people can take.

Benjamin:
Totally. Yeah, and there’s a really good idea called self-signaling in psychology. Basically what it means is, is that when you act a certain way, you then see yourself as the kind of person that does that kind of thing. So for example, if I hire a personal trainer, “Oh wow, now Ben Hardy must be the guy who hires a personal trainer.” And so you can apply a behavior and then your identity follows, and then your personality eventually evolves. And so for someone who’s been how thinker for a long time, if you were to actually apply this even a small degree, actually hire someone to mow your lawn so that you don’t have to do that, now you just applied who not how, then you’ve just built that little bit of confidence muscle that you can then apply it in a bigger and bigger way.

Benjamin:
It’s just like going to the gym for the first time. It might be out of your identity or out of your personality, but you go one, two, three, four, five times, and now it’s part of your identity to some degree because you now see yourself as the kind of person who does that. And so it just takes small wins. It just takes applying it to a small degree. But if you do that over and over, in two, three years from now, you’re going to be a different person than you were in the past because you’re now going to be operating and doing things entirely differently than your former self did them.

Brandon:
This is so important. I want to stress this for a minute. This idea that… Oftentimes we talk about the idea of there are $100 an hour tasks that you do, there are $10 an hour tests you do, and there’s $1,000 an hour tasks we do. Right? And so like when you’re mowing your lawn, it’s a $10 an hour task. But if you were negotiating a real estate deal, that could be a $10,000 an hour task. So we do more $10,000, less $10 stuff. It makes sense. I think we understand that concept. And if not people should read Who Not How and-

Benjamin:
That’s a big, important concept to understand.

Brandon:
It is very, very important. But where I wanted to expand on that was this idea of sometimes I feel like I am hiring someone to drive me or to do my lawn landscaping and I am being “less of a man” because I’m not changing my own oil. And I get this kind of feeling that I am therefore… And then I’m not replacing I’m not replacing it with a $10,000 an hour task. I’m literally surfing more. Or I’m like-

Benjamin:
Which is really good for your $10,000 an hour task.

Brandon:
Which is really good. Okay, I 100% agree.

Benjamin:
Yeah, recovery. There’s a lot of research on this. And even Dan himself, when he coaches entrepreneurs, he calls it free days, but he pushes everyone in Strategic Coach to take 150 days off a year. And you’ve whoed it out so that you can do that just because, and there’s an enormous amount of research on this. First off, recovery is really essential for high performance. There’s a whole field of it now called occupational health psychology. But one of the core concepts is called psychological detachment from work, that you literally not only leave the physical workspace, but you mentally completely turn it off. And in order to do that, first off, you’ve had to have been in flow. Like for example, on days when I don’t work, on days when I’m just sitting here and looking at YouTube not working, I have a hard time psychologically detaching because I’m feeling like an imposter. I go home and it’s hard for me to detach.

Benjamin:
Days where I’m in flow and I’ve knocked out like the one to three things and I feel awesome, I actually want to detach. I want to go be with my kids. I want to go hang out. But it turns out that actually being away is where all of your best creative ideas are going to happen. Only 16% of creative ideas happen when you’re actually focused at work. Most of them happen when you’re in the shower, you’re recovering, you’re chilling, you’re on vacation. And so you need to emphasize and prioritize recovery in order to lock in and high perform, and Who Not How just allows you to do more of that, so that actually being on the waves and surfing is probably essential for you to actually be in flow for your next podcast or for that $15,000 deal. It gives you the confidence, it gives you the ability to do it at a higher level. So those two things actually go hand in hand.

Brandon:
Yeah. I think that’s phenomenal. One thing that I’ve mentioned on the show before, but I’ll say it again now and I recommend it. I schedule a weekly, like every week, somebody, this lady, she’s the misuse from like the four seasons hotel here on Maui. She comes to my house and she gives me a massage. And then I get my wife one as well every single week, because I find that that hour or hour and a half is the best time. I mean like yesterday, I won’t go into details, but yesterday I came up with a really, really good idea and I was like, “Oh, this is so good,” by sitting there. The week before, I literally outline the entire book that I want to write. Now, maybe I’ll write it, maybe I won’t. But it was clearly like a $10,000, maybe $100,000 long-term idea for getting a massage, which felt awesome also. So that’s so good.

Benjamin:
It’s the whole sharpen the side [inaudible 00:59:01]. If you’re not sharpening the saw, then you’re just cutting with a dull blade.

Brandon:
It’s so, so true. So yeah, schedule those times in your life. Don’t feel guilty about them. But also, you touched on this, and this is what I want to bring this, my rant here to a close was, which is, even if you’re not doing a $10,000 an hour task, you are becoming the kind of person who does like that mentality of Who Not How, and that’s what I thought was so powerful what you said, is like, it’s a muscle that you build up. So just because you hire someone to change your oil and you save an hour of work and it costs you 30 bucks doesn’t mean you have to go then suddenly and earn $100 or it was worthless. Just because when you go to the gym one time, you go home and you look in the mirror, you’re like, “Well, my muscles aren’t any bigger,” doesn’t mean it was a worthless trip. And that’s what I think we find these little ways.

Brandon:
So here’s where I want to shift this. I want to get some tactical or tangible stuff for our audience. We’re not talking about just… I mean, obviously this includes hiring a full-time employee. You could hire a full-time employee, but that’s not necessarily what we’re talking about here. Right? What are some other ways people can get whos in their life to give them more of that time freedom so they can then do the $10,000 an hour tasks?

Benjamin:
Yeah. I mean, it definitely doesn’t need to be a full-time employee. I think if you don’t have a digital assistant or even just an assistant in general to start taking off a lot of the initial cons, a lot of the initial behaviors that you have to do, you can hire someone 20 hours a week, 10 to $15 an hour, a lot of enormously capable people to take off at least 20 hours of your tasks. That not only frees up your time, it frees up your decision fatigue. So that then you can then, even if it’s just go and connect with the right mentors or go and get yourself in the right environments. And so I do think, as Dan I would say sometimes it takes courage to make an initial investment in yourself.

Benjamin:
It might take courage to take that initial investment, but you almost can’t afford not to. Once you actually do it, it’s one of those point of no returns where you realize now you can’t go back to those types of tasks because now you’re now required again, as well Durant would say, “The ability of the average person could be doubled if the situation demanded it.” Eventually you get to the point where you’re now demanded to be in those higher tier environments to bring in. But I just think you just got to try it. And so like in this case, I would say, hire a person, hire a who to take on a lot of the tasks that you shouldn’t do. And it could be 20 hours a week, hire a digital assistant.

Benjamin:
I think almost everyone listening to this podcast, even if you’re in real estate, et cetera, whatever you do, you should have an assistant to help you for 10 to $15 an hour to take off 20 hours a week of your tasks that you allow yourself to do and just free yourself of them. And what you will find immediately by doing that is that your view of your future just got enormously bigger because now you can focus those 20 hours on anything else. You could read a book, you could go and meet people. You could do more of that book, write more of that blog, do more podcasts, whatever it is you want to do, you could go and learn more about real estate, whatever it is you want to do, free up your initial 20 hours by hiring a digital assistant. I think that that’s just a killer one. And I think, I don’t know why people don’t do that. I just think that that’s a really big first step for anyone who sees themselves in any way as an entrepreneur.

Brandon:
The decision fatigue thing. I find myself going a little crazy with managing my calendar or my schedule. So I’m hiring-

Benjamin:
Don’t do it.

Brandon:
Yeah, I’m hiring a person right now. I mean, I’ve had like four or five assistants over the years but I keep promoting them to other levels in my company, but now I’m hiring somebody who-

Benjamin:
I did the same.

Brandon:
Yeah. So it’s a great problem to have. It’s a great problem. But I’m now hiring somebody specifically not in the real estate space for a reason. Because I keep hiring people from BiggerPockets, from our community and then they’re awesome and then they just end up running huge things. So I’m hiring somebody whose sole job has been for years be an executive assistant and that’s what they want to do going forward. And because I want to stop making decisions on whether or not I do that podcast or don’t do that podcast, or whether or not I attend that meeting or don’t attend that meeting-

Benjamin:
You’ve got to create that filter for you.

Brandon:
Yep, somebody else does it for me, and I will do that.

Benjamin:
So it never even comes to your mental awareness, right?

Brandon:
Yeah, exactly.

Benjamin:
You’ve trained them to make the decision for you.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s going to be an amazing thing, so I’m-

Benjamin:
That I highly recommend. I’ve had that filter in place for a few years and very few things hit me. And again, you got to avoid the fear and the scarcity mindset. Is it possible that because of that filter I missed one or two really amazing opportunities? Yes. But the freedom I’ve had by not being aware of the 400 other ones was worth missing those one or two.

Brandon:
People should rewind that last 30 seconds to listen again.

David:
And I think, Ben, because you understand this concept, it makes it much easier for you to become the right person’s who. You know how this works, you’ve had people that you train to do this in your life. So when you come across a Dan Sullivan, you make it so easy for him to turn the reins over and say, “Run with it.” He doesn’t think, “Oh, there’s going to be a car crash. I got to jump in there and I got to fix it. I have to run my own calendar.” And just out of curiosity, has anyone written a book about how to be that person, the mindset it takes to be a good who?

Brandon:
I don’t know.

Benjamin:
Chapter seven does its absolute best. It’s called How To Be A Good Who For Others.

David:
There you go.

Brandon:
There you go, yeah.

Benjamin:
But it could be better, but I think that, yeah, in my case I really try to be a good who, if I’m going to do something, I really try. If I’m a dad, I’m going to try to be a good dad, but yeah, I think a lot of it’s that I stay out of situations I know I don’t want to be the who. But one of the big aspects of Who Not How, and I even break it down in the book, even me as the who got stuck. It actually took a year longer to get the book deal that I want it to. It was August of 2018 when Dan had that conversation, I heard about it and I’m like, “Dan, can I do this?” It wasn’t until almost a year later that we finally got the book deal, and now we have a 10 book deal, but I got stuck. I was actually finishing school, I was writing Personality Isn’t Permanent, but I got stuck and eventually I had to finally start applying who not how. And I was like-

David:
To give you the time to go be who. That’s awesome.

Benjamin:
Yeah, I needed someone to go and negotiate the book deal because I couldn’t do it. And so I got a who. But one other aspect of that, the one of the reasons why I think I can be a good who in some cases and I’m not in others is when I really want to be the who, I’m willing to go through the learning of it. Like in this case, I had to get an enormous amount of coaching from Tucker Max who edited the book and who helped us set all this up. I had a lot of my own subconscious blocks with this book, and I actually write all about it in this book. But for a long time, I couldn’t get myself to write it because I was trying to impress Dan or I was trying to do what he wanted. And eventually Tucker coached me, he’s like, “Dude…” And Dan also coached me, he said, “Ben, you’re the only person who’s going to write this book. It’s up to you what this book is. This is not Dan Sullivan’s book although he’s the author. You’re the who, so you have to actually write this however you choose to write it. You get to decide what’s in it. You get to write the chapters.”

Benjamin:
It took me a minute to process that where I’m like, “Whatever this book becomes, it’s because I decided that was in there.” And so in other words, I had to own the how. I had to own that I was the who. And sometimes that takes a while to actually realize, “They trust me and I need to trust myself to make these decisions.” And I think that it’s really beautiful when you allow your whos to do that. When it’s like, “You get to decide what this is going to look like,” rather than, “I’m going to tell you every time, I’m going to tell you how to do this.” Like, “No, you get to choose how this goes. I trust you. You need to own it. You need to own whatever this is going to be.”

Benjamin:
And it took me three or four months of being stuck, and then once I finally owned that, it was really easy to write the book. And I just said, “I’m just going to write the book I want to write.” And they said, “That’s why you’re the person who’s here. You’re the person who writes these kinds of books. We want you to write the book you want to write, Ben. Stop trying to be someone else. Write the book that you would write. That’s why you’re the who.”

Brandon:
That’s so good, man. So good. All right, dude. Well, we got to get you out of here in a few minutes so why don’t we head over to the last segment of the show? It’s time for our [inaudible 01:06:59]. This is the part of the show we ask the same four questions to every guest every week, and we’re going to throw them at you right now. The first one is a real estate specifically related question so we’ll gloss over that one. We always what people’s favorite real estate book is. But instead, the second question, I’ll let David asks. He usually does.

David:
Yes, I do. Usually do. Ben, what is your favorite business book?

Benjamin:
I think lately it has been this book. This is a famous book. It’s old school classic but it’s the basis of like all of my other books that I love, basis of 4-Hour Workweek, basis of Eat The Frog, basis of Essentialism. This book is just killer. Been very good to me lately. Actually I’ll share one more. Peaks and Valleys. The guy who wrote the book Who Moved My Cheese? I think it’s Spencer Johnson. The book Peaks and Valleys, tiny little book. I have it here somewhere, is so good.

Brandon:
So by the way, the first one was 80/20 Principle by Richard Kosh?

Benjamin:
Koch, yeah. 80/20 Principle. And then the second one is this one right here, check this out, Peaks and Valleys by Spencer Johnson. This book is small. It is so good. Just talks about how the bad things in your life happen because of what you do on your peaks. Whereas the good things happen in your life because of what you do and learn from your valleys. And we all go through valleys. It could be COVID, could be losing a job, could be losing a spouse, doing something. We all go through valleys, sometimes our own [inaudible 01:08:24] or sometimes situational, but what you do because of those valleys determines your future peaks. And what you do during your peaks can create unnecessary valleys.

Brandon:
So good. I got to read that one now. I love Who Moved My Cheese? It’s phenomenal.

Benjamin:
Same style, same style.

Brandon:
Yeah, very cool.

David:
Do you mind sharing briefly for the listeners that aren’t familiar with the 80/20 Principle, what it’s referring to?

Benjamin:
Yeah, absolutely. So this is the guy who wrote the first book, really breaking this down. And then so many offshoot books came from this one book such as the 4-Hour Workweek. 80/20 Principle really connects with Dan’s idea of being in the results economy versus the time and effort economy. It’s the idea pretty much that 80% of results come from 20% of inputs. 80% of outputs come from 20% of inputs. And so 80% of whatever you’re accomplishing in your life comes from 20% of what you do, which is why you should probably get a who to take care of the other 80% and just focus on the 20 where you get the biggest result. And so, yeah, I mean, it’s a book that forces you to think about results rather than the process.

Benjamin:
So often we overemphasize the types of processes, and in this book and the principle it teaches just says, “What is the result you want? And what are the one or two things that are going to get you that result?” And why I like the book is because it forces me to focus on those $10,000 an hour tasks. Those are the 20% of things that I do that create 80% of my results. And so it forces me to say, “Is doing this task way outside the 80/20?” You know what I mean? And I train my team to do the same. It’s like, “Is this part of your 80/20? Are you doing something you clearly should be doing or are you doing something that’s honestly a waste of time?” And it allows me to let a lot of balls drop that are outside the sphere of things that actually create meaningful results. I’m fine dropping lots of things that are in the 80% of things that only create 20% of those. I’m fine missing all that because I got all that free time back to go hang out with my kids.

Brandon:
That’s cool, man. Have you read the, not sequel, but it’s in the series, 80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall? He wrote it as a followup to that book. It’s phenomenal.

Benjamin:
No, is it awesome?

Brandon:
Yeah, it’s awesome.

Benjamin:
I bet. There’s a lot that comes out of the idea.

Brandon:
Yeah. He takes that as semi concept and he applies it to like marketing. and Perry Marshall is like the godfather of digital marketing. And so yeah, that’s a good one too. But anyway-

Benjamin:
And as a separate thought, here’s a quote that I heard just two days ago, and it’s not 80, but it’s 90. The quote is that, “90% of results come from the first 10% of the process.” Now, this is a little different, but how you set something up in a lot of ways determines if it’s gonna fail or succeed. And so that’s why I-

Brandon:
That’s really good.

Benjamin:
I think about that a lot. If the first 10% of the process is junk, you’re probably screwed.

David:
That’s so good.

Brandon:
That so perfectly applies to real estate.

David:
Yes. On my team we call that creating adhesion. The very first phone call with a client, if you create… There’s going to be bumpy times during a transaction, there’s no way around it. So if you create this adhesion where you’re bonded and they trust you and they like you and they know that you have their back, you’ll survive those bumpy times. If the very first initial 10% is very dismissive or it doesn’t matter to me, they’re gone. You’re going to separate when there’s bumps in the road, so when creating systems. You’ve said so many good things, Ben. We should just have you on like five times a year.

Benjamin:
Well, one just quick thought on that, because like, if it’s clearly started wrong, you have two choices. You have to eliminate it or you have to start over with a new system. As an example, this book was confusion.

Brandon:
What’s that? Personality Isn’t Permanent?

Benjamin:
Yeah, this is Personality Isn’t Permanent. I’m sorry, yeah. And that’s why I took a year and a half to write it, it’s because we didn’t start correctly, but also, I wasn’t clear correctly on the vision. And so it took me like a year just to research. Whereas this book, we already knew the idea from the very beginning. Who Not How, we knew the concept. We loved the collaboration, we loved the team, and so it started right and the results spoke for themselves. But one of the reasons why I’m redoing this book, I’m not really redoing it [inaudible 01:12:13] but I’m doing a different version, which a much better version called Be Your Future Self Now, that one I already know is going to be an enormously more successful and better book because the first 10% was a lot better. I was a lot clear on the idea, I was a lot clear with the publisher and how it was set up. And it was just the first 10% was right, and so therefore I knew it was going to be a much better process.

Brandon:
That’s cool, man.

Benjamin:
Or a much better [inaudible 01:12:37].

David:
That’s the person who’s like, “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’ll buy anything, I’ll look at everything. I’ll analyze them all,” versus the one that’s like, “Nope, I want a duplex in this part of town, in this price range.”

Brandon:
Yep. “And this is what makes it a good deal. I know what I want.”

David:
There you go.

Brandon:
We call that the crystal clear criteria now in real estate. It’s what location you want to buy in, what property type what makes it profitable? What condition? And I’m missing one in there. But like, it’s like, once you get really clear on that, that 10% will make everything else you do easier, yet people don’t do it. They just wander around. So anyway, cool. Yeah, 80/20.

Benjamin:
Well in this book, by the way, that’s the impact filter that Dan takes you through. He says the first 20% or the first 10% is just getting super clear on the what and the why. If you can do that, it is so easy to find the who, because you’ve clarified the vision so clearly, what it is, what success looks like, what the outcome is, that is your job. If you can do that, finding the right who becomes very easy because they’re resonant with the result. And so they’re like, “Yes, I can do the how.” If you don’t do that part right, then you’re always going to be blaming the whos for doing it wrong when it was actually your fault for not clarifying the vision.

Brandon:
I love it. I actually wrote down earlier, I wanted to touch on it. We don’t have to now because you just said it, which was you talked about being… I think you said the word outcome. You have the outcome. I don’t [inaudible 01:13:50].

Benjamin:
Outcome driven, yeah. Results economy, but yeah, you want to be very outcome focused.

Brandon:
Yeah, and so 100%, when you have that outcome, and so a real life example is I had a, in Open Door Capital, my real estate company was like, I wanted a thousand units, this is what we wanted, I knew what property type we’re going after. And then it was really easy to find people. So now I have five people that I hired. Or four people that I actually pay and then a partner. I lined up everyone, and it was so easy to find each one of them because I knew exactly what I wanted, we knew the outcome, and then we accomplished our three-year goal in 18 months. And so like now we just crossed a thousand units. Why? Because we had the right who.

Brandon:
I mean, I have literally worked less, that sounds terrible and my investors are going laugh at this, but I have worked less buying the thousand units we just bought in the last 18 months than I worked the previous 15 years buying the whatever, a hundred units I did before that on my own. And it was a hundred times easier the second time around because I had the who. That made all the difference.

Benjamin:
And you also are a different person than you were 15 years ago.

Brandon:
I’m also a very different person, because my personality is not permanent, yep.

Benjamin:
But think about it, you apply who not how better, you’re a lot clear on the vision, if the current you is put 15 years into the past into some of your former situations, think of how different current you would handle those situations.

Brandon:
Yep, totally different. Totally different. Crazy, man.

David:
Isn’t that the dream we all have that we wish we could go back to high school knowing what we know now and do it over?

Brandon:
I’d be the coolest guy in high school.

Benjamin:
Oh, my goodness. You would handle that situation very differently.

David:
Yeah. But that’s what’s cool about what you’re saying, is know in 15 years we’re going to be someone different who’s going to handle things different. So you’ve dropped some serious nuggets. That whole, just the idea of the results economy versus the time effort economy, what I took from that is what rewards you? Are you rewarded by a result or are you rewarded by the fact that you told yourself, “I worked really hard. I did really good,” will dictate how you set it up. And that’s-

Benjamin:
When a lot of people are rewarded by how much time they punched on the clock.

David:
There you go.

Benjamin:
Right? But the more you’re rewarded by tangible results, the less it’s about how much time and energy you put into it and the more it was about who not how.

David:
Man, this is good. Now I just want to go find a whole bunch of whos. If someone’s here in this scenario who, call me Whoville, I’m hiring. [inaudible 01:15:57] who. All right, Ben, when you’re not getting PhDs, writing books, networking with really big people, doing the keto diet, all kinds of cool stuff, what are some of your other hobbies?

Benjamin:
I mean, I’m a big sports fan. I’m a big NBA fan and college football fan. I became a college football fan, honestly, because I was at Clemson when they won a couple national championships. But yeah, I mean I have six kids and so a lot of it’s just watching my kids on their hoverboards and playing football with my kids, watching them play tennis, cooking, just hanging out with my family. Very simple life. We-

David:
Minecraft?

Benjamin:
No, we’re pretty anti video games at the moment.

David:
Nice.

Benjamin:
They play plenty of stuff when they’re not at our house, I’m sure. But we just try to do sports, watch movies, cook food together, just hanging out. My life’s pretty simple. I mean, I love going to the gym. I love reading, walking, sports analysis, stuff like that.

David:
All right, cool.

Brandon:
Well, my last question. What do you think separates… I’m sure I can guess your answer on this, but what separates successful people, entrepreneurs, individuals, business owners from those who give up or they fail at what they’re doing or they just never get started?

Benjamin:
I mean, there’s a million different answers to that question, but I think what I’ll say is, are you defined by… And this is basically Carol Dweck, fixed mindset versus growth mindset, but people with a growth mindset, they value their future self more than their current self. Someone with a fixed mindset, they value their current self, be all end all. So if you fail that test or if you miss that thing, your current self is the be all end all you, you didn’t do it therefore you can’t do it because your future self is no different than your current self. But people with a growth mindset, they know their future self has different knowledge, skills capabilities than their current self. And so it’s okay if they failed, it’s okay if they messed up because that’s how they’re going to learn and their future self is going to be more capable.

Benjamin:
And so I just think valuing and appreciating the differences between your current and future self and also recognizing your future self is more valuable. As an example, a seed in my current self’s hand could be a massive oak tree in my future self. My future self’s backyard, compound interest, right? A big bag of seeds in my current self’s hands could be an orchard in my future self’s backyard. Same is true of just investing five bucks here, it could be thousands of bucks to my future self. So I just think your relationship to your future self matters a lot. And most people, they think their future self is basically the same person their current self is, which sets them up to not go through those transformational learning experiences.

Brandon:
Boom.

David:
Some Confucius level wisdom right there.

Brandon:
That was awesome, man. I love it.

David:
Okay. For people that want to hear more of this, where can they find out more about you?

Benjamin:
Benjaminhardy.com. You just go to benjaminhardy.com, sign up, put you’re email in and you can get access to my free 30-day Future Self course. 30 days of just intense content emails created, takes you through all the science, that’s the easiest way. Obviously you can buy the book Who Not How, but to get access to me and more directly my ideas, just go to benjaminhardy.com and get free access to the 30-day Future Self course.

Brandon:
That’s awesome, man. Well, thank you for joining us. This has been phenomenal. David Greene, take us out. Thanks.

David:
Yeah, I can’t even think. That was so good. Ben, this might be the first time that I wasn’t able to come up with a nickname for Brandon Turner because you just [inaudible 01:19:12] so much good stuff there.

Brandon:
You’re stalling right now so you can come up [crosstalk 01:19:16]-

Benjamin:
I’m glad that it was worth your time. Thanks for letting me hang out. It was a huge pleasure.

David:
All right. Well, this has been fantastic. I think I need to go marinate on what we just heard, listen to this a couple more times. I’d encourage everybody else to do the same thing. I’m pretty sure if you listened to this more than once, you will pick up on new things that you missed the first time around. So this is David Greene, for Brandon constantly reminding me that I’m a better person today than I was six years ago when I was terrible.

Brandon:
Turner.

David:
Signing off.

Outro:
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In This Episode We Cover:

  • Why willpower doesn’t work in the way many people think it does
  • Why situations are often more powerful than people
  • How to remove “decision fatigue” and stop it from plaguing your life
  • How to find the right “who” for your organization and life
  • Defining your crystal clear criteria for your future self and the roles of others
  • How to be the right “who” for someone else’s “how”
  • Applying behaviors so your identity can follow
  • Focusing more on getting your “$10,000 tasks” done
  • And So Much More!

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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.