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Hey, this is Sharan Srivatha. Welcome back to the Business School podcast. And in this episode, I'm going to talk you through how to become unstoppable. And what does that actually mean? Is to do more of the work that you love to do is to be more of the person you love to be. Is to create more of the change that you want to create. And all of that is not handed to us on a silver platter. We have to find our way through this weird thing that we call work and career to get to that place that we want. And during our weeks and during our lives, we have flashes of brilliance and inspiration. But how can you do more, be more, give more, achieve more. And I found that there are three things that are limiting us from being unstoppable. And I give you the exact solution on how to actually overcome those things. And it costs you zero money. Just a way, a new way of thinking about it. This is the episode on how to become unstoppable. I give you the three ways on how to do it. And it all starts right now.

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One thing is for certain, just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now?

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The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to.

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How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharan Trivata, and welcome to Business School Foreign.

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Talk about something that no one really talks about, which is how to become unstoppable. Now, becoming unstoppable is a really powerful thing because every single one of us wants to do more, be more, give more, achieve more. But how do we do more? Given that we already have packed lives, how do we bake through limits and achieve these big goals while we still have to do the things that are currently on our plate? How do we boost work and thinking and make courageous big decisions while still working, working through what we have? How do we master work and mindset and make these courageous choices without having a blueprint for it? Right? And that's what I've been thinking a lot about, which is how do you become unstoppable? And I've realized that being unstoppable is to do more of what you want, is to be more of what you want, is to give more of what you want. And there's only three big things that I found that limits people from being Unstoppable. And that's what I kind of want to focus on today. So let's get right into the thing, number one, which is how do you maximize capacity? Maximizing capacity is the number one big thing. And here's what I mean. I'll give you the solution around it. The only way you can do more and be more and give more and achieve more is to have more capacity. Now think about the opposite of this. So there's a great Charlie Munger way of inverting things, right? So what if you did not have enough capacity? What does that mean? So let's say you had a busy week and you got sick and you just did not have the health based capacity to do the work. What do you do? You can't work, right, because you just don't have the capacity. Normally you're at 100% and you can do what you do at 100%. But if you're at 30% capacity because you're sick, you can't function the way you normally do. And the more capacity you have, the better you can be, the more you can do. And a lot of people forget that the answer to maximizing your capacity, the solution is focusing on energy. And that's super, super important, right? Energy comes from a wide variety of ways. But like we all know this, that the energy and persistence to conquer all things is the most important thing. Like what is, how do you get the energy? And I actually believe my coach, Justin Rothing chauffeur taught me this. Energy has a number, energy has a metric. You can actually quantify energy. And about three to four years ago, maybe around the pandemic, I got into this idea of like, I want to figure out what my energy score is. So I started to wear like a OURA ring and a whoop band and essentially to track my energy. And the energy number that I track every day is called hrv, which is heart rate variability. Now all you need to know is, is the higher the number, the better, the lower the number that's worse, right? So a lot of times when I'm getting sick and I wake up in the morning and I see my HRV be 10, when it's normally 60 is I'm like, wait a minute, why am I, you know, six times down? And it's because I'm getting sick and I know that my energy number is lower. Most people don't know why they feel bad, most people don't know why they feel down. Most people don't know why they have energy. And just like you check your blood sugar levels or just like you check your flexibility, or just like you check how much you can bench press, or just like you check your credit score or just like you check your bank account balance, you got to actually check your energy. Because if you don't know how to maximize your energy, how do you know if it's any better? Like people talk about self care. They're like, oh yeah, I'm going to go to self care, I'm going to do some red light therapy, I'm going to take a spa day. Well, do you know if doing those things actually made your energy better? Because that may not be the self care that you need. I know, like I know that when I get an IV infusion and I get a massage and I stretch and I do mobility work and I'm with my children, I know those things that are, that give, bring love and energy into my life. I know that I can increase my capacity. And when I have more capacity, I can do more things. And we don't track our energy. And so I would highly, highly recommend that you could track your hrv. By the way, if you currently already have an Apple watch, it's built into it. So take a minute and just find the health section on your iPhone and you can go into your the settings and you can see where your HRV is at and you can see the trend around it. And you just wake up every morning and track your HRV because you have this one continuous consistent measure that you know that you can do something to increase your capacity, to increase your energy. So very simply maximizing your capacity has got to do with one thing, which is increasing your energy. Because the more energy you have, the more things you, you can do. And a lot of people will say things like, well, I'm too old for that. That is a really bad thing. By the way, it doesn't matter how old you are. Like you and I should stop saying I'm too old for this because what are you too old for? That's crazy. You have more experience, you have more time, you have more capability, you have more thoughtfulness, you have more resources. You just are not tracking the right things and you just accepted that age is going to catch up with you. That's just not okay, right? So just because you're older doesn't mean you're too old for something, but it doesn't mean your knees are going to buckle. You have to create more energy because now is the time that you have all the raw materials built into place for you to Create unimaginable, unstoppable results. Unless you have an energy number that you can wake up every morning and track, you are deeply underperforming because you don't know what it is like to have more energy and therefore have bigger capacity. So that's, that's kind of like the most important thing. Now I'll give you a couple of quick tactical ideas that you can do. Number one thing is one of the things that I've learned over time. Especially some of you know this. I was a software engineer before, like, so I actually got in as a. I was an engineer by training. I wrote software applications. And the thing that I learned in this process was the concept of sprints. And the concept of sprints is sometimes people use two weeks, sometimes people use one week, but I use two week sprints. And literally, you ask yourself, you do a two week plan in this next two weeks, I have call it 10 working days and two weekends. Great. What can I accomplish in this time? That is a good use of my time and a good use of our focus and a good use of our priority. And then you map it out, you're like, all right, so now I'm taking the projects that I have and delivering it across that resources that I have. So now if you manage it like I manage my life in sprints, I can't go four sprints really hard because it'll break. So normally if I'm traveling, I'll go two sprints, then a, you know, a week of travel, two more sprints, and then a week of travel or, or a week of travel with the sprint. And I manage my energy accordingly. So breaking up high energy sprints has built in recovery periods because you just can't keep going hard. It's just not humanly possible. You have to manage your energy around it. Right? That's number one. Number two is, whenever I'm stuck, I always ask myself this question. Hey, if I had to stop working in the next hour, what would be the one thing that I would do? Like, if I only had one more hour to work right now, what would be the one thing I would do? And then you realize very quickly, what is the most important thing for that day? A lot of times you may have noticed this. If you are jumping on a plane tomorrow to go on a trip and you only have one day to work on things, you have to hyper prioritize prior to principle 80, 20, whatever. Like I ask myself this construct every single time is, hey, what if I only had one hour to work on something and then I was done for the rest of the day. What would I work on? And it bubbles up this most important priority, which is very interesting because what we always want to do is we are like, hey, I got four more hours, so I can goof around for three hours and then I finally get it done. We procrastinate way too much. And so how do you actually get the highest priority activity overall? And the last but not least is I always ask myself this question. Why am I procrastinating on something? So if I'm procrastinating on doing expense reports or doing billing work or calling clients back or writing email proposals, I want to be really honest with myself on why I don't want to do certain tasks, why I don't want to do certain, certain projects, why I procrastinate on things. You can learn a lot about yourself from the things that you procrastinate on. And that is called being honest with yourself. We call it truth talk. Why are you procrastinating on the thing? Now here's the interesting part. I'm not saying you don't have to do anything that you don't like doing. That's ridiculous. There's an 8020 rule on that. I try to build my life around doing 80% of the things that I kind of broadly can either tolerate or enjoy. And then 20% doing the things that I don't love. I've. They rarely met somebody unless they're a billionaire, where I've rarely met somebody that can actually do something that they are comfortable with. And they're always doing things that make them happy. It's just very rare. So my question for you is just understanding that you're procrastinating on the projects over and over. Ask yourself why be really honest with yourself, like you're only telling yourself this thing. And then say, you know what? I don't like doing that for a reason. And then ask yourself this one thing, which is, what would it take for me to not have to do this anymore? What would it take for me to not have to do this anymore? Then you can ask the question, maybe I have to hire this out for 10 bucks an hour. Would that be okay with you? If it would be, then it's okay if it is. And then you at least made a decision that you're going to have to do it. Now, a lot of times what I do is on the things that I have to do. I don't try to do all of it at the same time. I try to do only do A little bit. So I tell myself, you know what? I have to do this project. I'm going to go into five to 10 minutes of it. So I set a timer for five to 10 minutes. I do a little bit of it. So I kind of chip away at it. So I feel a lot better about it. Because the last thing you want to do is to do four hours worth of work that you don't enjoy because you're going to hate your life, right? And that dramatically reduces your energy, it dramatically reduces your love for your work, it dramatically reduces your capacity. And that is not a good thing. So the number one thing that keeps us away from having an unstoppable life to do more, be more, give more, and achieve more, is to maximize your capacity. And that is to track and manage your energy. And the energy adds a number. And that number, unless you have to think about a number differently, is hrv, which is a heart rate variability. So if you don't have an oura ring or a whoop band, at least get an apple watch, which you can track it every single day. I think that'll help you a lot. Here is kind of the number two thing in which can make you insanely unstoppable, and that is the ability to think strategically. Now you may say, well, Sharon, of course it makes sense, but the ability to think strategically, most people don't have. And I'll tell you why, they've never been taught how to do it. And this is why I love listening to really successful entrepreneurs or I love, like talking to my mentors about it. I love asking questions of people and I want to see. I don't care about the answer. I just care about how they think about the answer. The problem is throughout the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem. It's a really great Dan Sullivan quote. The problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem. So when you ask somebody a question, you don't want to pay attention to their answer. You want to pay attention to how they think about their answer, Right? Why can you ask a question to a Warren Buffett or an Elon Musk or someone that you may respect? I don't know whether you respect them, but someone you may respect, and why do they answer that question differently than you do? Is it because they have more time, more experience, more resources? If maybe they are not emotionally connected to your problem, what is it? But I will tell you this. The answer to having an ability to think strategically is to have a framework. You don't want to think strategically and just use your preconceived notions about things, right? Because I think that is super, super important because we can get stuck in our ideas. There's a great quote. Let me kind of like recall it. It says if you see everything through the filter of your preexisting beliefs, you are not in reality. You are just in your own world of confirmation bias. I think that's a Neil Strauss quote. Let me try to say that same exact quote again. If you see everything through the filter of your preexisting beliefs, you are not in reality, you are in your own confirmation bias. Because whatever you see, you just reconfirm what you believe and that is unhelpful to you. What you want is a framework for thinking. You want to know how Peter Drucker thinks about something. You want to know how Elon Musk thinks about something. You want to know how Warren Buffett thinks about something. You want to know how Oprah thinks about something. And the thinking is not a gut based reaction. Somebody has thought about the framework of thinking about something. I'll give you an example, right? So if you are a service based business and you say, hey Sean, I, you know, I'd love for you to take a look at my business, I will say, great, let's look at it. Because generally I overlay this framework of traffic systems and skills on top of a professional services business. So traffic is how do you actually fill the funnel systems is how do you set more appointments and skills is how do you actually deliver to get paid. And so I can tell very quickly whether it's a traffic problem, which is a leads problem, a system problem which is a conversion problem, or a skills problem which is a delivery problem. I can tell it very quickly. Now there's a lot more deeper components to all of this. But the key there is if you ask me that question, I can overlay my framework onto your business and I can very quickly diagnose it. But the interesting part is I've applied that framework, I don't know, a thousand times. So am I good at, you know, evaluating a business? Maybe, maybe not. But am I good at utilizing the traffic systems and skill framework to evaluate your business? I'm probably best in the world because I have probably done that because I came up with the traffic systems and skilled mechanism. I probably utilize the traffic systems and skilled mechanism to evaluate businesses more than anyone else in the world has. So I'm really good at it, right? But I use the framework so that I don't randomly start Asking dumb questions and then irritate the founder or the CEO because they don't really understand what to actually do next. So having a framework for thinking about things makes it really interesting. So for example, if you said, hey, Sean, you know, I'm having a lead generation problem, so instantly, what am I going? Where do I just ask dumb questions? No, I want to know whether you have organic based lead generation, you have paid lead generation, or JV and activities generation, right? So now I can say, hey, tell me about how you work organically, or tell me about how you do paid media, or tell me about how you use joint ventures and affiliated relationships or activities. So you may think that's weird, but now when someone tells me that it's the lead gen problem, I can very quickly figure out how they're generating traffic and where the lopsidedness exists. Because now there's a framework for thinking about the problem. The problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem. So the ability to think strategically has got to do with framework. So when you hear people and you hear their answer, just, just try to evaluate what framework they're using to come up with that answer. I give you like a very interesting tip here. This is worth the price of admission for this podcast. If I see a really good interview with, like, with someone that I respect, call it a Tony Robbins or an Elon Musk or a Ray Dalio or a Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger or Naval Ravikant or whatever, I'll take the entire transcript of the YouTube video because you can just get it for free on YouTube and I will put it into AI and I'll say, hey, I want you to analyze all the answers that were provided in this transcript with the questions asked. And then for every answer that was provided, I want you to figure out if there was a framework that was used in answer answering this question. Now think about what I just did. I may not be able to discern the framework that Warren Buffett or an Elon Musk give. Maybe because they use first principles thinking and I don't know what the first principles are. But now if I drop the reasoning into AI, now I'm like, this is amazing. So now the AI is able to take each of the answers and the AI is able to like, use its knowledge of the world and help me understand whether there was a framework built into answering that question. In fact, you should take this podcast, you should take the full transcript of this, you should put it into AI and say, hey, what is the framework that Charon used to build this podcast. Then you'll start to see, if you dig, dig into it, and you start to see the frameworks that are used. You can say, hey, does it match to other frameworks that you've seen in the past? Like, what would a framework that you could give me that would be used to help me answer these questions. What you're trying to do is you're trying to discern the framework associated with this. I will tell you whenever I, you know, watch a YouTube video or interview or a TED Talk that I like, that is the thing that I do is I'm not trying to get the information from the talk. I'm trying to get the framework so that I can think about it differently. Because the problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem. And that's the key kind of hack here, which is the ability to think strategically is not just based on your experience. It's based on being able to call upon a framework at any time so that it guides your thinking. So you think about, like, the 80% solution in a much more thoughtful way, in a much more proven way, which is really, really helpful. They call them mental models or first principle thinking or whatever. It allows you to deconstruct the idea in a really, really thoughtful way. So hopefully that AI tip is a good one for you. Here's number three, which is getting the courage to decide. Most people struggle because they don't have the courage to decide. And I'll give you the answer around this. The answer to having the courage to decide is not the courage to decide. The answer to having the courage to decide is to actually focus. Right? The answer to having the courage to decide is to actually focus. I was talking to a CEO of a company recently, and he said, and he's a decent friend of mine, I know him pretty well. We were doing like a roundtable discussion and he said something to me. He said something in the. That was asked in this podcast where he said something like, I've removed fear from my vocabulary. And I lost so much respect for him because he's lying through his freaking teeth. He's lying. It's such a wrong thing to say. Like, there is no way that there's any human on the planet, unless you're a psychopath, that you are not afraid of something. There is no way. And let me tell you why. You can't be brave if you're not afraid. You can't be brave if you're not afraid. Like, I lost a lot of respect for him. I have fear. But you can't be brave if you're not afraid. You can't have courage if you're not afraid. And so it's not the fact that you don't have fear, it's that you've done certain things with so many reps that you can't. That you know how to do it so you feel more confident. Right? Let me give you an example. Most rich people or wealthy people feel confident because they feel like they have enough financial resources that they can buy themselves out of any problem, but they're still afraid. Afraid of what? What if they lose all the money? What if they get in a slander based lawsuit? What if they lose their reputation? What if all of that happened? Like all of that's very interesting because you cannot not be afraid about anything. Richard Branson is still afraid. Warren Buffett is still afraid. Elon Musk is still afraid. You can't be brave unless you're afraid. And I will tell you right now, if you claim to me that you're not afraid, you and I are not going to get along. Because you're essentially telling me that there's no room for growth for you. And you may hate it, but I'm sorry, like I'm afraid of a lot of things. That's why I have seven coaches. That's why I pay these people money to help me, guide me, support me, talk me through my fears, show me a framework, help me think better. Because the problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem and the way you have the courage to decide and focus. To decide is to focus. And focusing is like super hard. The thing that I learned in all of this, which is if you have children, especially girls, I have an 8 year old daughter. Most of you in this recent generation, you probably watch the movie Frozen. I don't love the movie Frozen. It's very entertaining. My daughter enjoys it. But there's a song in the movie which talks about the right next thing or the next right thing. And that really stuck with me. I realized that I needed to figure out a mechanism to always know how to do the right next thing. And knowing how to do the right next thing takes courage. Knowing how to do the right next things takes focus. Knowing how to do the right next thing takes help. Knowing how to do the right next thing is. Cannot be achieved without that singularity of focus. And how you do that is to have some kind of decision making rubric around it. So I'll give you a very Quick example. Let's say someone brings a problem to me, right? And most of my closest team members know this. They know that, hey, don't bring this problem to Sharon. He's going to balk. And the reason is that I have a framework for evaluating problems. And that is, does it increase revenues? Does it decrease cost? Does it increase joy? Does it reduce stress? Let's say it again. Increase revenues, decrease costs, increase joy, reduce stress. So if you come to me with a project saying, hey, I have this idea to increase sales, so I'm like, all right, so you're going to increase revenues, but you're going to spend money so it doesn't decrease cost, does it increase joy? Maybe, maybe not. Does it increase, does it reduce stress? Maybe not. So give each box. Increased revenues, decrease cost, increase joy, reduce stress. A score of 25 each. So net net is all four together is a score of 100. So it's my job to figure out where I can have a scoring mechanism for everything. So now it allows me to talk to my team and be like, huh, that's a 23 out of 100 project. There are other things that are 50, 70, 80, 90 out of 100 project that we can do because it can do more things, right? That allows you to have a decision making rubric and in my case, a scoring mechanism that allows people to have the first pass at figuring out whether you're doing the right thing. Because it helps you focus, you know, helps you decide on certain things. And the only way you could do this is to practice making smaller decisions every single day. A lot of times when someone gives me a problem, I try to make a decision quickly. Now, just so you know, I'll give you the easiest, best piece of advice I've ever received around this. Is this the how you make decisions? The courage that comes from it comes from understanding whether that decision is reversible or not reversible. And what I mean by that is if the decision is reversible, right? So if you want to buy something on Amazon, if you want to buy a pair of shoes at Zappos and you don't like it, you can return it. That decision is reversible, right? Yes. It takes a while to try the shoes on and send it back, etc. But you can get your 150 credit back, right? So the decision is reversible. You reduce the time to make that decision. You're like, you know what? This is a reversible decision. Let's go make it. Let's take the best shot at it with A I have 80% information, I'm going to make that decision. But if the decision is not reversible, then I'm taking a little bit more time to make that decision. Then I'm actually doing what I call a pre mortem. A pre mortem is, you know, a lot of, you know what a postmortem is. When something breaks and things don't go well after it's actually happened. We do a little what they call an after action report in the military and figure out what actually happened instead. Can you simulate the pre mortem, which is, can you just assume that you did the decision and it did not go well? Well, what did not go well? Write those things down and solve all of those things before you make the decision because it helps you make that decision better. Right. So small little things like that, like mental models like that allow you to make decisions faster. So when someone actually throws something at me right now, I can instantly go to a fast or slow decision making process. I might say a lot of people will say, well, I need time to think about it. Well, when someone tells me that they need to think about it and they need to tell me that for every decision, I'm like, you're not getting any better making the decision. It's been five years and every time you have to make a decision, you take like four days to make this decision. And that costs a significant amount of time. And that's really weird. Like you got to make decisions faster. But what framework do you use for that overall? Right. So three big things that we kind of talked about, I think, number one, to maximize that makes you unstoppable. Number one, to maximize your capacity. The solution is monitoring your energy. And the more energy you have, the more capacity you have. And the way you do that is by tracking your energy. And I use a variable called hrv, which is heart rate variability. The second is the ability to think strategically. Now that's just not about experience, it's about finding a framework. So always seek to find the framework and things like that. And if you did not hear the AI tip I gave you, just go back and listen to that one. And the third is how do you have the courage to decide? And having the courage to decide is having a mental model associated with how to give you more focus. And the more focus you have, the easier it is to get things done. Because where focus glow, where your focus goes, your energy flows. Overall. This is the thing that I want to kind of share with you, right? Everything is based on these three Things and the three things related to it are how do you actually. Can you have the solution of getting more energy? Can you have the solution of having more focus? And can you have the solution of having a framework? When you have those, your ability to do more, be more, give more, and achieve more goes through the roof. And that's what makes you truly unstoppable. By the way, you're probably doing this while driving or doing other things. I'm curious if any of this was helpful to you. This is a conversation that I have with the founders, that I advise, the companies that we've invested in, and even our own teams, and all the huge real estate operations that I help bring on to real. I have the same conversation with them and I wanted to have the same conversation with you to hopefully give you a framework that will help you in this process. So if you like this, do me a favor, just screenshot this and tag me on social. That way I can make more like this for you. Otherwise, give me some feedback. So I don't know whether you like this or not. So please, please, please do me a favor. Screenshot this, post it on social, tag me so that other people can get access to this, and I will know that you like this and I can make more this for you. Remember, Harvey, slice of greatness is a choice and I'll catch you on the next one.