← Mondays with Matt
Mondays with Matt
#12: Time is Your Most Precious Resource
00:49:37
Time is your most precious resource. You can make more money and you can work harder, but you cannot make more time. We all have 24 hours in a day and we all have a finite amount of days to live (we will die). Make the most of your time, and learn how to leverage effort and money to open up as much time as possible in your life.
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- [00:02]
Matt Reynolds
You're listening to the Build you'd business podcast powered by Turnkey Coach, where we help business owners find freedom over fear. I'm Matt Reynolds and I'm his brother Chris Reynolds.
- [00:12]
Chris Reynolds
Join us as we help build your business and move from fear to freedom together. Hey, you are listening to the Build you'd business podcast with your co hosts, Matt Reynolds and Chris Reynolds. We are brothers who have co owned business for many years. Not together, separate businesses, almost 40 years between us. So a little over 20 for you, a little under 20 for me. I'm excited when I get that day when I can say I've hit the 20 year mark. That's a big day of business ownership. And we created this podcast to help move business owners, young business owners, or really wherever you are in your business ownership, even if you haven't started one yet. There's so much anxiety and fear. It's just the fear of the unknown. You don't know what's coming. And I remember when we went through this in our early days of starting business, you're just sort of out there in the wilderness. And of course when we started 20 years ago, the Internet wasn't what it is today. And so being able to really sort of be a podcast coach for people to take some of that fear away and give them freedom because ultimately I think owning your own business first and foremost should be about freedom. The topic for today is that time is our most precious resource. And so we want to talk about time, but really all of the resources that we have. And there's actually in my book, Undoing Urgency, by the way, hit number one again in several categories in business and is I think 24th in business across like all business. That's a fun one because if you look at it, it's, it's like crucial conversations and four hour work week. It's like really big books that have been around for many years.
- [02:03]
Matt Reynolds
Congrats, man. That's awesome.
- [02:04]
Chris Reynolds
Thank you. Had a ton of reviews pour in the last week, which is really cool. No one that I knew in those first week or two that the book comes out, I can kind of recognize that I know a lot of the people and they're people that maybe I sent the book out to a little bit early and now getting great reviews and actually really fun feedback to read on the Undoing Urgency review page from people that I have no idea who they are and started to get videos of the, of the book out into the, out in the wild at my executive sent video of it being at sea tac Airport and we'll fly out. Actually, I fly out to SeaTac next week and so hopefully I get to see it. As usual, when you fly to Springfield, you. You have to have a few flights because there's no direct flights anywhere from here. So I'm hoping I get to see it a few times, take some pictures, maybe sign some books. Super excited about that. So a lot of this is gonna be even a deeper dive than what the book goes into. We talk a lot about this in the book, in the Undoing Urgency book. And again, quick promotion that that is still on sale for $1.99 for the Kindle edition. For two bucks. You can have all of this valuable information. If you've read the book, if you bought the book. Thank you so much for the support. If you've read it. Would love a review because those reviews help tremendously. Check out the reviews. The reviews are pretty good and really interesting takes by readers who. I have no idea who they are or what their story is. So let's dive into why is time our most precious resource? And ultimately, I'll start with this and I'll just hand it over to you that in the book, I define our primary resources that we have three. We have time, we have energy, and we have money. And you can always make more money. And I think in different periods of your life, seasons of your life, you have the opportunity to give more energy to. You have still a finite amount of energy that you can give. And that energy probably actually decreases as you get older. Like the energy that you have when you're 20 or 25 and you're young and you're not tied down. But the thing that is the constant for everybody is that there's 24 hours in a day and that we all have a finite amount of days to live and we don't really know how many days those are. And so because of that time, we would argue, is the most precious of these three resources.
- [04:26]
Matt Reynolds
Yeah, I mean, you're always going to find, especially if you're a very driven person, you're going to find that you are always short on time. I really don't know anybody. It's funny. This is another example of a place where I feel like the Internet just lies about things. There are people out there that are like, oh, I've just got all this time, and no, they don't. If you got, like, a lot going on and like, you're pushing forward as hard as you can, you do not have a lot of time.
- [04:51]
Chris Reynolds
You just don't well, certainly your total amount of time is identical to everybody else.
- [04:56]
Matt Reynolds
Yes, that's right. It's just used. Right. Because I mean, you, you're trying to maximize your usage of time because you've, you've sort of, sort of figured out this hack. But I think one of the things that's always interesting, and I think this is interesting for listeners who are right now sort of thinking, you know, maybe I've got more time than I've ever had before. And part of this is I remember thinking when I was young, how is it possible that someone could own a business, you know, do all this stuff that I'm doing right now, have kids.
- [05:24]
Chris Reynolds
Sure.
- [05:25]
Matt Reynolds
You know, be married and like, have to do adult things and all these things. The reality is the older that you get, you also tend to get better at finding all of those little pockets of time that you can actually use as well. So it's, you know, it's an important aspect as you try to figure out how to maximize the amount of time that you do have to recognize that there are a million little spots of downtime. You can use them all.
- [05:49]
Chris Reynolds
You and I have talked about this already some in the podcast, previous episodes that we've really, I think both of us have built our life around. I mean, I have the reputation in my business and in my community, in my family, in my church and whatever as being the guy that my entire life is focused around efficiency of time, that my time really is the most precious and valuable resource to me. And I also think I feel the gravity of that more as I get older. When you're 20, and of course people die when they're 20, 25, 30 years old, you don't know, but you sort of expect that you're in the first quarter of your life and you've got a lot of life left to live and therefore a lot of time. And so often you might take up some of that time with a lot of time waster, some of those unimportant, non urgent things. As you get older, I think you start to understand the gravity of how finite time is. As a matter of fact, my daughter is about to turn 20 in just a few weeks. Isn't that crazy, by the way?
- [06:46]
Matt Reynolds
That is insane. Completely insane.
- [06:48]
Chris Reynolds
You were there for her birth and we don't have much more time with her in the house and thinking about not being empty nesters, but having our oldest actually move out of the house and start a life of her own. And you start to realize, like man, the quality of time that you spend is Incredibly important. I wish I had really understood that when she was 2 and 3 and 4, and I didn't. And so again, hopefully some of you that are listening to this, you're young, maybe you're not married, don't have kids yet. Maybe you've got young kids, young family. The time is just as precious then as it is as you get older in life and you understand the gravity of that. So a story I've told in the past, I don't know that I've told it on this podcast or not, but an example I often use, and I'm sure there are some outliers that might say no to this, but I use Warren Buffett because Charlie Munger just died. We love Charlie Munger. We'll probably do an episode on Charlie Munger and poor Charlie Zombanak Almanac. Fantastic book. Hard to get your hands on. Warren Buffett is 94 years old. Charlie Munger was his business partner. And again, he just passed away. He was 99, I think.
- [07:56]
Matt Reynolds
I think that's right.
- [07:57]
Chris Reynolds
So almost 100 Warren Buffett, 94 years old. He is worth $150 billion somewhere in that ballpark, obviously goes up and down based on the stock market of the day. The question is, would he give up all the wealth he has to go back to being 20 years old? And I would bet everything I have. There's no doubt that he would. And that's because he can always make more money. The guy's incredibly smart. I'm sure he knows that if he went back to being 20, he could do this all over again. And probably lessons learned, especially if you took some of what you have learned over the years, certainly. But there's no doubt you're always going to, if you actually have the opportunity to truly buy back your time. And we're going to talk some about again, the Dan Martell book and some of the concepts of buying back your time, which is really about buying forward your time and not buying back because you can't truly buy back your time.
- [08:54]
Matt Reynolds
That's right.
- [08:55]
Chris Reynolds
I can't get yesterday back, but anybody that if you actually could and you can't, would. And so I actually saw also on Twitter this week on X this week, a poll that was posted that said if you could have a hundred thousand dollars net worth at 20 years old or a million dollars net worth at 30 or $10 million net worth at 40 or $100 million net worth at 50 or a billion dollars net worth at 60, which one would you choose? And of course, the overwhelming Majority picks. Well, I'd rather have $100,000 and be 20 again.
- [09:32]
Matt Reynolds
Yep. No, there's no question, because you can.
- [09:35]
Chris Reynolds
Always make more money.
- [09:36]
Matt Reynolds
Yeah. And not only that, but, you know, like, there is this almost inherently understood. We forget about it like anything else. Humans are so weird this way. We forget how valuable time is, and especially when we're in the pursuit of whatever the goal is. I mean, sometimes it's the pursuit of money, but sometimes it's the pursuit of any kind of growth or goal or whatever. You sort of lose track of some of these things. But I think sort of built into humans is this idea that, you know, you have a finite amount of time and, like, in the back of your mind. And again, you know, maybe some people try to never think about it. Like, they. They don't want to listen to this podcast because we're talking about, you know, you've got finite time. And so there is this urgency that comes out of that, that it's like, oh, man. Like, I can't just waste time.
- [10:30]
Chris Reynolds
That's right.
- [10:31]
Matt Reynolds
And I can't just. I don't have forever to go at this goal. So I have to do the things that I want to get done in a limited amount of time. And simultaneously, if I focus only on this one thing in my life, to the exclusion of literally everything else, I lose some of the things that make it meaningful.
- [10:51]
Chris Reynolds
That's right.
- [10:52]
Matt Reynolds
And that is very, very, very difficult. That's the balance that we all deal with. And I can tell you it is a tough balance for sure for some.
- [11:00]
Chris Reynolds
People, which this is certainly not us. And I would highly suggest that our listeners not be this either, that they do have a singular goal, which is just to make more money or just to be more financially successful. But to me, what an empty life to live. Because ultimately, what do you do with it? You don't get to take it with you. You don't get to. And so there are these things. Things, again, as I talk about in the book. And I think what is super important to me is not necessarily what's going to be super important to everyone else, but I think anybody that has a singular goal for a long period of time, for the majority of their life, and certainly there are times in my life when I've been hyper focused on a specific goal for a period of time, short period of time, for a season, I think that's fine. But ultimately we're doing this. There are a handful of things that we want to do and do well. And so as we get older, we Start to feel that we feel the finiteness of our time. Our mom turned 72 yesterday. It was her birthday. They're coming out tonight. We're gonna have a nice dinner and whatnot. And actually, I got to go over to Grandpa's house, so. To our grandpa. We lost her dad three years ago. So this is my dad's dad. He just got diagnosed with a type of cancer that's going to kill him in the next three to six months. And he's a huge Chiefs fan, by the way. I know that it's very. Chiefs are very polarizing. You're from the Boston area now. The Chiefs are kind of like the Patriots were back. They are. They are such a juggernaut that if you're not a Chiefs fan, you hate them. You hate the Chiefs. But my grandpa loves the Chiefs where I'm in Missouri, loves the Chiefs. And so I went over to his house to watch the playoff game because I knew there weren't very many more playoff games. In fact, had they lost, that very well, is likely the very last one I'm ever going to get to see with him. And so he's almost certainly not going to be around for next year's playoffs. And so there are times like that in life where you really do feel the gravity and the finiteness of your time. But I think what's really important in this podcast is that the sooner you can learn that lesson, if you can learn that lesson at 18 or 20 or 25, that's so much better than wasting 20, 30 years of your life and not really figuring that out until you're 45 or 55 or whatever.
- [13:12]
Matt Reynolds
Look, there's like, two really important things there. I think one of them is. Is, you know, there are. There's, like, this school of thought around the idea about how you should. How you should spend your 20s. Your 20s should be a time of, you know, finding yourself and, you know.
- [13:29]
Chris Reynolds
Sowing your wild oats.
- [13:30]
Matt Reynolds
Sowing your wild oats and doing, you know, the reality is that it. It tends to be a lost decade for many. And. And I. I think that is unbelievably sad. Like, it should not be that way. You guess what, you get to find yourself and learn all the things about yourself that you're ever going to learn in the middle of doing things that actually are important and matter. You don't need to make that a time that you're sort of wandering around. I think it's a really, really important thing. And then I. You know, we literally just did a podcast on the idea that you want to do everything you can to form up your career and your business and all those things in a way that aligns with the passions that you are, you know, that you're going after. And so you're trying to build a life of joy in the middle of work. Right? Like, or what other people call work. Right. I said that a lot last time. I'll say it again. Like, that's another example of an idea that helps maximize the amount of time that you're spending. So again, if you're spending time miserable or you're wasting time, you really never, ever want to be in that situation in either of those situations.
- [14:40]
Chris Reynolds
Right.
- [14:40]
Matt Reynolds
You want make sure that if you're grinding it out, as we do, all as entrepreneurs, that you're doing it on something that you're really passionate about, something you really, really love. And you also want to make sure that you don't get so lost even in the thing you love. This is certainly the side of it that I tend to fall down, right. Like, if you get so lost in the thing that you love that you forget that there are all these other things you love too. And you need to make sure that you also are appropriately balancing your time in all those other things. Just a really, really important lesson to learn as early as you possibly can in life.
- [15:16]
Chris Reynolds
This is really the right way to look at the work life balance that people talk about. And we, you know, we've kind of crapped on that a little bit over the last several episodes about, you know, people think, you know, I work eight hours a day and, you know, for work life balance and what it was like, that's often just, that's junk. That's, you know, for business owners, you're on the clock or on call 24 hours a day. And if, you know, if. Certainly there are times I want to be able to check out, at least from my brain's perspective, to be able to be more present with my family, with my wife and my kids and whatnot. But the better way to look at it is that because there are important things in your life that are not always super connected, although they certainly are. Like, the success of the business often gives, obviously our family the freedom to do a lot of the things that we want to be able to do. And so you have to be able to understand that as you get older and you have more responsibilities, you have more obligations that you have to deal with with kids and spouses and whatever those things are, to be able to understand how to be able to balance that well. So that you're doing all of the things that you love tremendously. Very well. Which means there won't be time left over.
- [16:31]
Matt Reynolds
No.
- [16:32]
Chris Reynolds
For the stuff that you don't love.
- [16:34]
Matt Reynolds
That's right. I think that is the core lesson. Right. The core lesson is only spend time on the things that really matter and the things you really love and basically weed out everything else. Everything else?
- [16:47]
Chris Reynolds
Yep. I call it pulling weeds in the book. And the, I think it's chapter number two is before we can prioritize, we have to deprioritize. We have to get rid of the things that don't matter. And so to me, there are two primary lessons learned here in understanding that time is our most valuable resource. Number one is to make the absolute most of your time. That's what we've been talking about. Do you want to give any examples of how you do this as a guy in his 40s? I can do the same. How do you do that so that you are making the most of your time and don't fall prey to spending it on things that are not important, not urgent. Time wasters, whatever those things are. How do you do that tactically? Yeah.
- [17:29]
Matt Reynolds
I'll say that the longer that you do this, the less the temptation of wasting time exists. Like, I, I, I can't tell you. I really just don't sit in front of the tv. I don't, I, I don't, I just don't do things that are a waste of time. Cause I actually don't feel good when I do. Like, it's not, it doesn't appeal to me. Like, I think to some degree there is a. And I remember this. I mean, I certainly remember my 20s enjoying, you know, just sitting down and like marathon. A movie or something. Like I, or a series of movies, series of shows. Like, whatever, Whatever it was.
- [18:04]
Chris Reynolds
Sure.
- [18:04]
Matt Reynolds
I actually don't get any joy out of that anymore. Like, I'm just, I get to the end of that. I'm like, I just didn't accomplish anything. And so I think the biggest takeaway in my 40s has been that there are so many pockets of time that people don't consider as potentially valuable uses of time. One that I deal with a lot. I have three children. They're extremely busy doing all kinds of things. I think all of my kids are in two to four sports or something. So it's just total chaos in our house all the time. We're outnumbered, so we're driving them all the time. I've learned that if I just take My laptop, wherever I go, when I'm taking them to a thing, that I save more time if I don't take them to a thing and then come home, I just take them to a thing and sit in my car and do work. And when they're done, they get in the car and I drive them home. Right, sure. And all of the time there is useful. So one of the things I've noticed is time with my children in the car is extremely valuable time. It tends to be me and one kid and my kids anyway, at least. And maybe it's because my wife and I are both just a little introverted. I'm certainly more introverted than she is. My kids will open up more if they're not staring me right in the eyes. And in the car, everyone's eyes are forward.
- [19:29]
Chris Reynolds
Right? Right.
- [19:30]
Matt Reynolds
So I can have any kind of conversation with my kids in the car that are maybe a little harder to have if you're having them eye to eye. And so traveling with my kids is good kid time. I don't think about that as wasted time. It's not wasted time. It's time with my kids to talk about kids stuff. Right. And when they get out of the car and go into baseball practice or football practice or whatever they're doing, I pull out my laptop and I get really.
- [19:51]
Chris Reynolds
Not quality time with your kids.
- [19:52]
Matt Reynolds
Not quality time with your kids. What's really close to wasted time. I mean, I figured this one out too, but I try and get to get as little of this as possible is driving on my own from one place to another. Now I turn that into audiobook time or podcast time or whatever, which is great, sure. But I would prefer to spend that time getting actual high velocity work done. And so, you know, that's a good time for me to. And so there's just a bunch of that, right?
- [20:18]
Chris Reynolds
Yep.
- [20:19]
Matt Reynolds
I have found ways to weed out all the wasted time in my life. And the key for me, right, is I work on a laptop. When that laptop is with me, I can work, I can tether my Internet on my phone and I can just sit there and work for as long as I need to. So I think the biggest way that I've figured out how to do that is just to get rid of all of the time that. That is a time waster. I just don't do that stuff.
- [20:42]
Chris Reynolds
One of the best ways to see where those places are is to do a time audit is to time audit your. Your entire life for a week or maybe two weeks even to, you know, 15 to 30 minute interval, you write down exactly what you did. And so you'll start to see that you really have more time than you think you have. Everyone again, feels very busy, feels very urgent. But when you leverage your time wisely, you'll find those pockets of time that you can get work done. So I still take my daughters on. They're older, they're teenagers and your kids are younger. And so if it's me and one daughter, obviously I'm driving and we're having good conversations and do the exact same thing. But if the family is in the car, I almost always have my wife drive and I'm hotspotting, especially if we're going to do a fun family thing. I found that it's like, well, look, I've got a 30 minute drive that I can knock out some work, mom can drive. The kids are at the age where they're, you know, they're playing on social media or they're on their phones or whatever. And then when we get to the place, we actually have a dedicated, like, we're like, all right, put the phones away, we go eat dinner together. We do the same thing. The other thing we use is we eat dinner at home almost every night. I love even cooking with my family. We cook together. Kids don't, maybe they don't help a ton, but I just like them in the kitchen with me. We have those conversations about how the day is going and the types of things. It's a relaxed atmosphere where you can truly in that scenario when you're doing a mindless task, which for me, cooking is somewhat of a mindless task, or you happen to be grocery shopping or whatever. Again, we've talked about a lot of that stuff should be hired out. But when you're doing those things, that's when you can actually multitask. If you're driving by yourself, I do the exact same thing. I love music, but I don't listen to music in the car. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts and whatever. So the key first lesson is to make the absolute most of your time making sure that you are doing things in your day to day life consistently that are focused on the important, not the unimportant and urgent type things. And the earlier you can learn that lesson, the better you'll be. Number two for me is to learn how to leverage the three resources. Again, we have time, we have energy and we have money. And so it's how to leverage energy and money to open up as much time as possible in your life. I Think we've mentioned this before. I've noticed that there's a generational shift that has occurred that our grandparents generation and our parents generation dad would always change oil in the car or change the brake pads in the car or whatever. I'm never doing that. I'm paying somebody to do that sort of thing. And so you have to understand that there is a direct relationship between our three resources of time, energy and money. No matter what, whether you, you use it well or use it unwell, there is a direct relationship between those three things. The key then is to understand how to best leverage that relationship of those resources using the minimum effective dose for maximum return on investment. And so again, it's not about doing the least amount of work or things or whatever. It's about what is the smallest dose, dose of allocation, resource that I can have. Time, energy, money, that brings me the greatest return on investment for whatever the thing is I'm trying to do. And so that's going to change throughout your life. In your younger years, especially if you're again, not married, don't have kids, you have the ability to work far more hours in a day than most others can. Even somebody like you or like me who have wife and kids, you've both been married basically 25 years and have kids. We have more responsibilities and obligations that again, because we only have 24 hours in a day, and because those 24 hours in are almost, not almost, but they are literally like a budget, then you have to budget your time to those different things. When you're 18, 20, 22, whatever age you are, and you're not married, don't have kids, don't have additional responsibilities and obligations, that's the time to go be the killer. You can absolutely work 18 hours a day. And you're young, so you also can. You don't have to have eight, nine hours of sleep either. You can sleep five, six hours at night and work all the rest of the time. And going back to the previous episode that we did, if you're doing it on something that you're passionate about, it feels like play.
- [25:22]
Matt Reynolds
It feels like playing all the time.
- [25:24]
Chris Reynolds
Yeah, you have not an unlimited amount of energy, but you have the highest amount of energy that you're going to have your entire life to do things that are productive in those early years when you don't have those extra responsibilities and obligations. Also, the vast majority of us, unless you were just a trust fund kid or something, has a very limited amount of money. So you don't have a high level of Resource of money. But you do have a high level of resource of density of time, a lot of work done in a shorter, in that same 24 hour period compared to somebody who has all those additional obligations and responsibilities. And so you've got that opportunity to leverage the amount of work you do, the density of work that you do, the energy provided in it. And if you do that well, and you understand that relationship between those three major resources, what you'll find is as you get older, you'll end up with more money.
- [26:22]
Matt Reynolds
Yeah, exactly.
- [26:23]
Chris Reynolds
That's the way this works.
- [26:24]
Matt Reynolds
Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I say that the 20s are actually maybe the most important decade for, for most people that the people that capitalize on their twenties go so far ahead of everyone else.
- [26:38]
Chris Reynolds
Sure.
- [26:38]
Matt Reynolds
You know, look, I think this is one of those places where if you can just fall in love with it, with the work, the thing that you're doing, you know, the grind and all the things you're going to do, it makes everything else so much easier. Just do that and you will get so much further ahead. By the time you end up with a family, wife and kids and all the various things, spouse and kids, you are going to be in a far, far better position financially to be able to actually spend more time with them than if you didn't.
- [27:06]
Chris Reynolds
That's exactly right. And so that's then to me is that next period of your life then as you then get older, have a family, have wife, have kids or whatever, those things are additional responsibilities and obligations. If you've done that first period of your life, well then you now have almost certainly you should have more money to use as a recourse to be able to buy back your time, often hiring others to give of their effort and time in exchange for your money so that you don't drown in urgency and spend countless hours on the things that aren't really important so that you can effectively use your time only on the things that are important. Now again, if you're listening to this and you're a broke college kid, then you're not there yet. Leverage your time. Leverage your density of time. Leverage your ability to outwork everyone at that age because you don't have those responsibilities and obligations. Don't waste the time on the video games and the time wasters that are out there, the binging Netflix or the doom scrolling social media and TikTok and, and whatnot. Leverage that work to be able to build up in your coffers the ability then to be able to start buying back that time and again, I would say it's really buying forward of your time so that you can hire out other people that might be then in their 20s who don't have much money, but who are willing to do the work and the effort and the time so that you can free up your time to do the stuff that matters most in your life.
- [28:39]
Matt Reynolds
Yeah, this is absolutely right. I think the. One of the themes that you. You sort of start getting to pretty fast is that the first skill to develop, and it's really ideal if you start developing this in, like junior high and high school. Like, I realize, like, for. It's probably not our audience at this point.
- [28:59]
Chris Reynolds
Right. Sure.
- [28:59]
Matt Reynolds
Is the ability to ignore. Right, right. Here's why. Because where most people are losing their time today are on things that they should be ignoring. Right, right. So I think it's probably most common. And I'm like, I get. I have an extra intense feel for this today because TikTok was banned yesterday and came back on yesterday.
- [29:23]
Chris Reynolds
10 hours.
- [29:24]
Matt Reynolds
I know nothing of TikTok. Never had a. Never had a TikTok. Don't know what a TikTok is, but apparently the kids look at it. And so there's this huge amount of time that people spend just scrolling this nonsense, and it's just brain rot. I mean, here's the thing. I'm not saying that there's never anything valuable in it. I love X. I do Twitter X. To be clear, I'm not taking drugs. I love it. But I have tuned the algorithm to give me AI information about tutorials that I'm going to go take and what's happening in that part of the world. I think it's really, really, really, really important that you learn how to ignore. Ignore the things that are screaming for your attention. You know, TikTok feeds and Netflix shows and video games that look like they're going to be super exciting whenever you sit down and play them. And then you realize that you just lost a year of your life on a thing that literally doesn't matter at all. These are the kinds of things that I feel like this is where most people's time is going. And so if you want to end up like all of those people, keep doing those things. Most people don't. Right.
- [30:35]
Chris Reynolds
Yeah, exactly.
- [30:36]
Matt Reynolds
Don't do it.
- [30:37]
Chris Reynolds
So we've already talked about the things like why we hire people to mow our lawns or housekeepers or delegate or automate those things as much as we can. I have sort of a wedding birthday rule. Obviously, there are times where There are people very close to in our lives that if they get married, I'm going to go to their wedding or if they're going to have a birthday party again, our family's coming to my house tonight to just have a nice dinner. Right. But if I get invited to a six year old's birthday party or I get invited to a wedding of people who are friends but more acquaintances sort of thing, I will often ask my wife, hey, what do you think the average wedding gift cost is? And she's like, it's 100 bucks or whatever for a wedding. And maybe I don't, 50 bucks for a birthday or something. And I say, okay, we'll just double it, then we're not going to go.
- [31:35]
Matt Reynolds
That's how it's done.
- [31:37]
Chris Reynolds
So. And when I got married and we were broke, I appreciated the people that showed up at the wedding, but I appreciated the $200 checks more.
- [31:46]
Matt Reynolds
And so there's probably an aspect of that. My wife and I talk about this quite a bit because I see this trait in some people and I have literally none of it. Like, I was born with none of it. So I, I don't know what this trait is about, but I'm sure many of you that are listening probably have it as well and, and will understand it. I am, I am very fortunate that I have none of the obligated gene, whatever that is.
- [32:10]
Chris Reynolds
Right.
- [32:10]
Matt Reynolds
Like, I have none of that. Like, oh, like I need to be. I'm obligated to do this thing or whatever. Like, nope.
- [32:17]
Chris Reynolds
Yep. But likewise, I think you and I'm the exact same way. I also don't feel any expectation to put obligations on other people. So if I host a Christmas party and somebody doesn't show up, I don't give my feelings hurt. I don't care. If we decide we're gonna do something that's fun and social, then we do the thing that's fun and social. And the people that show up, we have fun, social time with them. And then the ones that don't, I don't ever question. And my wife is not like that. I mean, she doesn't get her feelings hurt, but she'll often say, like, I wonder why so and so didn't show up at the thing. I'm like, who cares? Yeah, what does it, it doesn't matter. Do you think everything's okay with our relationship with them? Like, oh, who cares? That doesn't. I think there's been one second thinking about that.
- [33:02]
Matt Reynolds
Right. So the piece of that that really, really matters is like, you need to be responsible for your own time and your own choices. And look, here's the thing. Like, there may be things that you don't go to, and it does hurt other people's feelings. And you know what? That's okay.
- [33:18]
Chris Reynolds
Yep.
- [33:19]
Matt Reynolds
It is not your job to make sure that everybody else's feelings are okay.
- [33:22]
Chris Reynolds
That's right. Sorry. Like, Yep, that's exactly right.
- [33:24]
Matt Reynolds
You have to do. It's almost ingrained in this conversation of time and our finite amount of time. Time is so precious that you cannot let someone else dictate yours.
- [33:36]
Chris Reynolds
That's right.
- [33:37]
Matt Reynolds
And here's the real kicker.
- [33:38]
Chris Reynolds
Oof.
- [33:38]
Matt Reynolds
This is. I know it's going to be brutal for some people, but, like, your friends should not dictate your time. Your family should not dictate your time. There are many people who will impose themselves upon your time and feel like they have the right to do so, and you cannot allow it because there is not enough time.
- [33:58]
Chris Reynolds
That's right. You have your kids and all sorts of stuff. For us, early on, we decided our kids can do one thing at a time.
- [34:06]
Matt Reynolds
Yeah.
- [34:06]
Chris Reynolds
Oh, sure. Take your sport, pick your music, whatever. You know, our girls have played sports, but they're much more into sort of choir and acting and drama and stuff like that. And so they enjoy that. We're like, hey, we will totally support whatever the thing is that you choose the thing. But what you're not going to do is go to, you know, drama club and be in the big play. And as we get closer to the play, there's practice five nights a week and also play softball at the same time.
- [34:33]
Matt Reynolds
Yeah. I mean, you have to make sure that all of that stuff is measured out. And it's a great example, too. Like, you're. Your kids can become a drain of energy on the entire family.
- [34:42]
Chris Reynolds
Right.
- [34:43]
Matt Reynolds
And, like, it depends on your dynamics. There are all sorts of things about, you know, your specific cases that matter, but all of those things play against your time. If you find yourself waking up one day and it's 10 years later and you've literally lost all of your time to, you know, whatever these things are, that's a really, really bad thing. You want to make sure that you are the one making the choices about your time. And again, remember, you are not responsible for everyone else's feelings about whether you go to a thing or don't go to a thing. This is a really critical point because I think so many people end up in this situation where they're like, but I have to do this. No, you don't you don't you don't.
- [35:20]
Chris Reynolds
That's right, man. It's having agency then over your life and the control over your calendar. And your calendar. I talk about this in the book too. Your calendar is a truth teller. If every minute of every day is stacked full of things almost like a medal. Look how busy I am. That's not a medal, that's a stupid metal terrible. And so, I mean, I certainly want to have a routine where I have allocated my time extremely wisely throughout the day to be able to give myself the opportunity to do as much important work. And that doesn't just mean in the business, that's also on family or whatever as I can possibly do. But that means that I have to say no to a lot of the meetings, to the zoom calls, to the things that other people might think are important. And I just am like, you know what, in today's day and age, with AI transcripts, recordings of the meetings, if I'm just there to hear what's being talked about, just send me the notes, send me the AI notes or send me the recording. And I do sometimes actually still enjoy watching the recording. You can watch it on 1.5 speed. Speed. You can watch it while you're making dinner at the house, whatever the thing is. And so again, you can multitask if you're doing something that's sort of mindless and that works great. And then say, hey, I might have a follow up question about the meeting. As a CEO, and if I do, I do. And if not, I just am happy that I was filled in on the information without having to give up an hour and a half of my time.
- [36:54]
Matt Reynolds
For the meeting, look, it's the same trait. Same trait. So people who feel obligated to, let's say, family or loved ones or friends or whatever, there are people who don't feel obligated to those people, but they feel obligated to the people at work. So people at work say, hey, I want you, I want you at this meeting or whatever. Again, you have to have the agency to say no. And I think there are really good examples. As a founder, you get that, right?
- [37:20]
Chris Reynolds
Sure.
- [37:21]
Matt Reynolds
Without being a founder, you sometimes don't. Sometimes the boss is like, you're showing up to this meeting and that's what's going on, Right?
- [37:26]
Chris Reynolds
Sure.
- [37:26]
Matt Reynolds
But I think one of the stories that I love and you hear about this all the time is I know we talk about him a lot, but it's a fascinating guy, is Elon Musk. And I know that he has been known to go into meetings or have one on ones with people or whatever. If he's interested in having conversation with him and minutes in he will just stand up and leave. The second he realizes that it's like this is not worth my time, he's gone. Now I'm not saying that you need to have that Asperger's response or whatever, but it's just like, look, you need to care so much about your time that you are unwilling to allow other people to waste it. Like that is critical and you have to be. And there's part of that is just having your own confidence and your own voice to be able to be like, I'm sorry, it's just not worth, like, send me the notes, you know, like whatever. You can find kind ways to get out of things like that. But I do think it's a really important thing. And it gets more difficult and more important as your business is more and more successful because your employees will want you in more things and will need to actually detach more than they are attaching and as a difficult thing to go through.
- [38:32]
Chris Reynolds
So learn as important as it is important to them.
- [38:35]
Matt Reynolds
Yeah.
- [38:35]
Chris Reynolds
And so they think, well, it's gotta surely then it's important to the founder, to the owner, to the CEO. And it may be important like the outcome of that thing. It should be. I hope my employees are not working on things that are not important, but it's not necessarily important for me to be on the meeting.
- [38:50]
Matt Reynolds
Well, I think, you know, you can always reposition those things as I trust you enough that I think you're going to get this thing done correct.
- [38:57]
Chris Reynolds
Right. It gives them agency and gives them ownership. And we've got a future episode coming up on systems and standard operating procedures. And that podcast will go is here's how you write and put together systems and standard operating procedures, but then here's how you give them away.
- [39:13]
Matt Reynolds
Yeah, that's right.
- [39:14]
Chris Reynolds
Which is the most important thing. Because if you've got a million systems and standard operating procedures and you're responsible for all of them, then you are now drowning in urgency in a business that owns you instead of you owning the business. Okay, so let's wrap this up with this. So this is how this works in my life on a daily basis in the business. And so again, I apply the minimum effective dose rule to this system. And what I do is I will rank and we do this with my executive team, with anybody that oversees a team, we will take the goals that we think we want to accomplish. For the year or quarter or even month that we think are important, we've got a list of those things, and they might not be in any particular order in the beginning. And then we rank those tasks, those goals, based on two variables. One is, on a scale of one to five, how much resource is it going to take? How much time or energy or money or combination thereof. And time is always the most valuable resource. So on a scale of 1 to 5, how much resource is it going to cost? Right? And I think about this often as, like back in the old days when we played video games as kids, right? There were games that you play and you would collect resources and then you would use the resources that you had more of. And so we say, okay, how many resources is this thing going to cost? There's an opportunity cost based on the resource. And then we also then rank it on a scale of 1 to 5 of the impact it's gonna have on the business, right? So times given the highest weight of a priority for resource usage. So to give an example of what we've done here on the podcast, just a few weeks ago, in a previous episode, we talked about the first three steps to actually starting your business. And very quickly recap there. Those three steps were, number one, to create a business entity with your state. By the way, all of these things that we talked about are things that must be done to run a business, all three of these steps. So create a business entity. File an articles of organization with your state. That is cheap, I. E. It doesn't cost much money. It takes very little time and very little effort, but you have to have it to have a business. So, okay, high impact, relatively high, certainly important, very low resource. So that's what we're looking for. Low resource, high impact. To apply for an EIN number again, which is just like a Social Security number for a business, right? Totally free, virtually no time, virtually no effort. Okay? Now, I'm not only just a legal business in my state, I'm a legal business federally. Something that really has to be done, something that has to be done to get to step three, which is open a business bank account. That's step two. Again, very low resource cost, very high return on investment. Three, open a business bank account. Opening that business bank account is almost always free. It takes a little bit of time, a little more time and a little bit of effort. But still, once you have that business bank account, you can go back to those previous episodes about profit first and how you should allocate your money. Very important. All three of these Steps are necessary to run and own a business, and they're a pretty big impact, therefore. And so they're certainly important, but they also use very low resources, which is why we suggested those three steps to start out in your business. Now take that to the next step. As the business grows, as our business has grown, it will naturally grow in complexity. That just comes as business grows. But the same principle still applies. And so as I'm working with the members of my executive team and they're considering the big goals for the year, I asked them to literally rank all of the goals they'd like to accomplish on a scale of 1 to 5 for resource cost and what the primary resource used will be, and also rank it on a scale of 1 to 5 of the impact it will have on the business. And so again, you can see where this is going. We want to choose the goals that make the biggest impact while using the least amount of resources. That is med in a nutshell, that is minimum effective dose for maximum return on investment. And then as the business grows and gets more successful, we still apply the same principle, but we can now consider what resources are most abundant to us, which helps us make decisions about what goals to pursue next. Again, you think about these young startup companies, especially, especially in tech, full of a bunch of 20 somethings, they have tons of time, they don't have more than 24 hours in a day, but they can work way more of those 24 hours in a day. And therefore they also have nearly unlimited energy, but they have very little money. As time goes on and the business grows, you might have significantly more money and decide that the money is the place that I actually want to spend because I'm trying to buy back time and effort, time and energy. And so that's how we rake them. So I think anybody can do this, no matter how big or small your business is. As you think about the next sort of steps, as you think through, and I know we haven't actually done a true game plan episode yet, but you start thinking about the goals, actions, metrics and execution of the things you're trying to accomplish in your business or life. You look at that list of things that you want to accomplish and you just rank them. How much is it going to cost in time, energy, money, and what impact is it going to have? I want the ones and this is how I put them in prioritized order to have the lowest cost for the highest impact.
- [44:49]
Matt Reynolds
Yep, that's exactly right. And this also drives the point about why we want to make sure that the things that we are doing, especially early portion of your business, why those things should be the things that you are naturally incredible at.
- [45:07]
Chris Reynolds
Right.
- [45:07]
Matt Reynolds
Here's why. The resource cost is lower.
- [45:10]
Chris Reynolds
That's right. Way lower.
- [45:11]
Matt Reynolds
Right. Like for example, if what is the resource cost, Matt of you writing a complex AI agent in Python. Right.
- [45:21]
Chris Reynolds
Like extremely high. It's a. I don't know how to code anything.
- [45:24]
Matt Reynolds
Gotta learn it.
- [45:25]
Chris Reynolds
So I've gotta learn it first and then. That's exactly right.
- [45:27]
Matt Reynolds
So the reason that it matters so much, we talked a little bit on a previous podcast episode about how I said, you know, I actually really like this idea that to the man with a hammer, go find all the nails. Right. Because the resource cost is so much lower for someone who is already an expert in that thing.
- [45:48]
Chris Reynolds
That's right.
- [45:49]
Matt Reynolds
As your company grows and you pick up new talent, your net resource cost, your relative resource cost decreases because you have greater expertise within the organization who.
- [46:01]
Chris Reynolds
Can have more tools.
- [46:02]
Matt Reynolds
You have more tools.
- [46:03]
Chris Reynolds
A tool that you don't personally know.
- [46:05]
Matt Reynolds
That's right.
- [46:05]
Chris Reynolds
But that the business.
- [46:06]
Matt Reynolds
That's right. Think about, you know, like, very rarely do you have somebody who comes in who is like cfo, level vp, finance, whatever, at the very, very beginning. And once they come in, you gain a whole new set of functions that are like really easy for your company. It didn't get any easier for you.
- [46:23]
Chris Reynolds
Sure.
- [46:23]
Matt Reynolds
But it's easier for the company because you got a guy that does it all the time.
- [46:26]
Chris Reynolds
Right.
- [46:26]
Matt Reynolds
So that is which why if you.
- [46:29]
Chris Reynolds
Were the one doing it, it also got easier for you.
- [46:31]
Matt Reynolds
Right? That too. That's exactly right. But for whatever part of the business you're not good at or you don't have a natural inclination for, whatever, as the business gets bigger and bigger, you can kind of move those resources in that direction. And that is why the resource cost aspect of this matters so much.
- [46:46]
Chris Reynolds
Right. And why when we look to hire people, we don't try to hire people that are just like us.
- [46:50]
Matt Reynolds
Yeah. We need to fill in gaps.
- [46:52]
Chris Reynolds
You find your weak link, you find the places where this is the thing again, that if I hire this position, it's going to have the greatest positive impact on the business. If I hire another person that's just like me, then I haven't really accomplished anything. I just have another person that's like me who already have that skill set. And so, yeah, so when I opened the business as a service guy, as a people person, service oriented, I could ride all those systems and standard operating procedures and thought processes about how to serve clients well. But as we've moved more and more into the tech space, I've had to lean on the tech team because I can't write code. I don't know how to do that. So yet I still want what is typically then communicated back to me by the tech team is not how many lines of code it took to write this feature. It's the impact it's going to have on the service of my clients and my staff and my coaches and whatnot. And so it still continues to leverage what they are best at and the communication back to what's important to me and what I'm best at. And so this is how we can use our time from this principle applies in life and in business at any age, at any season, at any period of time. Regardless of how much of those resources you have. The one thing that you can never gain more of. You can't go from a 24 hour day to a 25 hour day. And so understanding how to why time is so precious and how to leverage the other resources to be able to free up your time. Especially as you grow older and get more responsibilities and obligations as the business grows and it becomes more complex. That is a foundational principle of growing a healthy and successful business. Long term, a hundred percent perfect. Again, that is another episode of the Build your Business podcast. I am one of your co hosts, Matt Reynolds, here with my brother Chris Reynolds and super excited to be doing this podcast. It continues to have some great reviews. We would love to have a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We love to read those and get good feedback from our listeners. Tell a friend or family member business acquaintance about the podcast if you think they'll receive value from the podcast and we'd be most appreciative. And man, we'll hope you have a great weekend and we'll see you next.