1344: Focus.ceo: Crush Your Goals Faster by Doubling Your Productivity in 25 Minutes with Coach-Speaker-Host-Actor David Wood

Robert Plank 0:01 We're here with David Wood, who believes that the tough conversations we avoid are our doorways to confidence, success and even love in both work and life. So Mr. David Wood, he was a consulting actuary to Fortune 100 companies, and he built the world's largest coaching business, becoming number one on Google for the phrase life coaching, and now Mr. David Wood coaches high performing entrepreneurs, executives and teams, even prison inmates, to amazing results and connection, one conversation at a time. So if you're the kind of person that is interested in forexing your productivity and clarity for exponential results, gamifying to boost focus and execution, finding courage, scaling your business so much more. And Mr. David is exactly the right person when you do sit up and pay very close attention to take lots of notes, close the door, get rid of all distractions, and let's rock and roll. Have some fun. Make some money. So Mr. David, glad to be speaking with you.

David Wood 1:00 Thank you. I like that build up. And, you know, just thinking about that bio and how it's terrible marketing. This is marketer of the day podcast, right? We just mentioned eight different benefits are going to get from this call and, and I doubt you will, right? It's too much. But if you leave this, if you leave this this, listen to this podcast episode, and you're like, all right, I got two or three things that I can do tomorrow. They're gonna help me get twice as much done of what matters in half the time. Then I would consider this time well spent.

Robert Plank 1:33 Oh, yeah, just make some progress, right? Don't give up because you haven't gotten to the moon or you haven't run across the country, you know, by yourself, make some progress, get the ship righted slightly. And so how does that fit into what we're talking here? You said we kind of promised a lot of things, but as far as like, where people are stuck, where their problems are, where they're frustrated, what's the before picture look like?

David Wood 1:59 Ah, the before picture. I like this All right. So if we're heading for clarity and forex, clarity and productivity, there were four picture, we're very scattered as human beings. It's the human condition, maybe always, but particularly, I think I imagine the last, say, 50 years, life was probably so much simpler 100 years ago. You know, you'd be like, All right, I'm going to chop down that tree today. And you go out and that's your job. You chop down the tree. But today we want dopamine, we want oxytocin, we want adrenaline. And so we've gotten so good at switching from task to task. We think we're multitasking, but we we can't, come on, come on. We can't do that. We can sequentially go from one to another. The human mind is like a monkey on crack, and most of my clients, when they when they come to me, they're feeling overwhelmed, they're feeling scattered, they're super busy. They don't have a lot of time to themselves, and they're not generally moving the needle as as fast as they want. So that's the before picture, trying to do everything and not really doing a lot of anything, at least at the speed that they would like to be moving at. And I'm not saying my method or my techniques after 25 years of coaching are the right way or you should do it. I'm only saying if you want to get there faster and you want to feel like a hero at the end of each day and each week and say, I said what I was going to do, and then I nailed it, that feels good. And I can tell you about that, but I'm not going to say what you're doing is wrong, and you got to do my way, because you might be enjoying the results you're getting, and you might be having a good time each day. If you are awesome, maybe this is entertainment, but if you want it to be better, I would love to help you. I enjoy that. I really enjoy helping people feel good about themselves at the end of the day, and if it happens to make you more money, well, that's a bonus. I'm not I'm not offended by that.

Robert Plank 4:06 I like it, yeah, like, we don't want to pursue perfectionism, right? If it's working, don't mess with it. But if you feel like there's something more, if you're unhappy, if it was working, but maybe it's just not quite what it was, then you're saying that we need to have this, this drive, this passion, this focus, this path and so as far as what you're building towards, Mr. David, as far as, l ike your life and business goals, what are you working to achieve?

David Wood 4:31 Mine?

Robert Plank 4:32 Yeah,

David Wood 4:33 wow.

Robert Plank 4:33 Getting Personal here.

David Wood 4:35 Thank you. Well, I just achieved one of them. I found my home base in Asheville, North Carolina. So that's exciting. I didn't realize I had a goal of building community, but that's been happening here. I host people at my house three times a month, and we got such a great community of friends. I still want to own my own. Home in the US. I have a property in Australia, but I want to have a home base here in Asheville. So my new goal is to buy a home, and to do that, I want to meet certain financial targets. See, I haven't, it's ironic. I'm I'm the revenue coach, and I help people expand their businesses, because that's what they want to do, but for myself, Robert, I've just been happy having a good standard of living. The last 25 years, there's been nothing I really wanted or needed. I've always been able to buy what I want. So I'm like, All right, let's keep doing this. But now I want a house, and the bank wants to see certain things on the statement, so that's changed a lot. I'm like, All right, game on. Now I'm willing to work harder. Now I'm looking for to ways to serve more people, generate more revenue. So that's a big goal. I want to turn pro in pickleball, because I always like to have an obsession, and Pickleball has been my obsession the last year, and I'm 56 but I want to turn senior Pro and keep building my pickleball coaching practice, which I launched two months ago. I got 20 clients right now, and it's it's fun, and I'd like to be in a long term, ideally, a life partnership, but a long term, committed relationship is very high on my list of priorities. So on a on the side, I'd like to do an AI app that'll help people with every tough conversation that they want to have, and actually coach them in real time as they as they're having the conversation. Send them a text. Say, Hey, dude, slow down, try this. So those are a few goals.

Robert Plank 6:45 Well, very cool, and it's great to have goals, right? And it's just really scary to realize that the average person probably doesn't have goals, or doesn't take them seriously or doesn't revisit them, and it seems to be a really important thing. And before we started recording our show, you mentioned a few just really amazing entrepreneurial ideas, right? The idea that you want to be in the driver's seat, not the passenger seat, the idea that everything you want is on the other side of fear, as I think Ralph Waldo Emerson says that a lot of people just drift through life. They get the momentum. They they meet somebody, and that's becomes their life partner, without any thought into it, right? They end up in a certain city, and then the the alternative is a little scary, right? The idea that you have a goal, you work towards it, you might fail, you might have some detours, but it seems like that's that's what we want to do, right? We want to take control of our life. And so what's that all about? When, when you help transform people in many different ways, when their goals are not what they want, the results are not what they want. What needs to happen. What sort of change do you provide?

David Wood 7:48 Well, I like that. You brought up two themes dear to my heart. One is, I don't like using the term goal setting. It sounds so boring. It sounds like you're doing taxes to me, oh, yeah, I prefer to call it. I'll call it something else, but I do want to talk about that, and also, courage is near and dear to my heart. You

Robert Plank 8:10 know, if only the AI app could send you a text and say, don't say goal setting. Say this, if only that existed.

David Wood 8:16 Yeah, yeah. Nice. Call back. So I prefer to call it gamification. See if you're playing soccer or pickleball, it's not a game unless you have lines on the court. You gotta have a container. You gotta be like, we're gonna do this and we're not gonna do that. This is good. This is bad. So over the next year, I didn't really have any goals, but I was just cruising through life, having a good time. I was in the passenger seat, and things were going well because the car was going where I wanted it to go. So again, nothing wrong with that. But as soon as I started setting goals, things started shifting. I started showing up differently. I actually stopped smoking weed, because I during the pandemic, I decided it was a good idea to smoke weed and help me sleep and give me something to do. But five years later, I'm like, hang on now I got goals. So that's that's not working. So the first level of gamification is, I think, over one year. And if goal setting sounds boring to you, just call it my one year game. What am I going to create that's going to have me do the happy dance? It's going to have me want to call my friends that I'm feeling so happy about it. Now, that's a high bar. I'm Australian, so we're not very effusive. Generally, we're pretty laid back. But, you know, every now and then I achieve a goal, like when I got a manager as an actor, I was calling people. I got a manager. This is awesome. When I landed the role of Dracula, I'm like, I can't believe it I got this role. So it's confronting for a lot of people to set goals, because what if you don't achieve them? What if you go for it and you fail? You. What if you don't have the right ones? So this is where a little courage might come in. All right, I'm going to spend 10 minutes just working out what would have this year be a success. We're at April right now. You still got plenty of months left. Write down some stuff that would feel really good. You probably want a revenue goal. You might have a time off goal so you can enjoy life. You should have a pickleball goal. You might have a relationship goal, but that's where I'd start, and then the next level of gamification, because a year is too long for any kind of practical use. I asked my clients to spend five minutes a week planning the following week. Just look at your calendar. Does it look right? Be honest about what you can do, and then have a dream list, because you got 25 things, 30 things that you want to do or think you're going to do. Let's face it, that's not going to happen. So be adult about it. This is what I'm actually committed to, and this is my dream list. And I'll pull out the list out of a draw if I get all this other stuff done. Now, you've got a game, you've got a game, you might even say I'm only allowed to work on these things, plus maybe three hours of putting out fires. But that starts to get really interesting. And then the next level is, what about tomorrow? Because even a week is way too far out. And so what's my game every day? And I don't think you should do this the morning off. You're too close to it. Do it the day before, when you still got some distance, and you can make executive decisions and go, all right, that's too much. I can't do it. I need help. I got to put that off. I got to reschedule that. I got to put that on the dream list. I really can't fit it in, like I'm asking us to be adult about it, and it's surprisingly difficult, but that 510 minutes is going to be so valuable tomorrow, because you've got a game to play, you can't say yes to these five other things that people ask you to do because you already committed to yourself. Yeah, this is what I'm going to do. You're going to have to say no to a bunch of things. But so those are the first three levels, and the last level, where I think it gets the most interesting Robert, is the next 25 minute. Next 25 minutes, what's your game for? The next 25 minutes, you need a container, or you'll just drift off and wander off and be on Amazon or Facebook or check in email, right? It's so easy to get lost, monkey mind on crack. So for the next 25 minutes, write down what is my clear goal? Not I'm going to work on the website for 25 minutes. Anyone can do that. You can just sit there in front of computer and say I did it. No, it might be specific, like I'm going to draft my bio in the next 25 minutes. Complete now, set the timer. 25 minutes. You cannot afford to be distracted. You can't have your notifications on it. You got no hope if you're actually going to do it. And this is the most interesting game of all, you have to treat it like a meditation and actually be focused for 25 minutes. And the second the timer goes off, you set a five minute timer, and you must step away from the desk. This is what makes it a game. Otherwise it's not a game. You got no container. And the more you do this, the more you learn. I cannot pass go. I cannot be distracted. I cannot afford to. I've got no hope of winning the game, which is that 25 minute task gets done. Do four or six of those cycles a day. And you really can feel like a hero at the end of the day. It's like I actually said I was going to do this stuff, and I nailed it all, procrastination goes out of the window. This is not rocket science, right, right? I'm not saying anything crazy, and you've probably heard it all before. This is called the Pomodoro Technique, that 25 minute game, yeah? But I like to phrase it as, let's gamify our our our year, our week, our day, and our 25 minutes. It's a lot more fun, way more fun when I do it.

Robert Plank 14:27 Oh yeah, and I can tell you do, right? I feel that the enthusiasm coming off you, and it's like, if you were, if you had a bunch of guys were, were like, you know, throwing the ball around and having fun. Okay, that gets boring quickly. It's easy, it's comfortable, but doesn't go anywhere. But you do pick your ball and you have actual rules, boundaries, what's allowed, what's not. It's maybe uncomfortable, difficult, a little mentally taxing at first, if you don't know how to play right, if others have been playing it for longer than you. But then once you get that dialed in, then the the results. Afterwards are much more rewarding. And just once you get past all that initial discomfort in the same way of you're like looking through life at different lenses, right different lengths of time. And you say, I wanted to figure out the next week and the next day and the next 25 minutes and all these things. And you say, I've got my time based factor, and I've also got my results space factor that way I really have to take it seriously. And the same way those first few times playing pickleball will just you'll get your butt kicked, you not won't be very good, but then once you start picking up this muscle, this habit, then it'll be a lot better. And so where's the disconnect with this? Like you said, we've heard this before in different pieces, and we can always learn stuff. We're learning stuff every day, all day long, whether we want to or not, but then it's easy to learn something and not apply it, and that's why they people need you, right? They need a coach, a guide, mentor, whatever the label is. And so where do you see the disconnect, the resistance, the pushback? Where do people fail? When you say, here's what can be done versus do it. They don't do it. Why does that happen?

David Wood 16:05 I think it's because of the pull within us to multitask and to be entertained. See if I don't, if I don't operate with this game, I get to be really busy. I get to check a text, I get to check an email, I get to do it. It's kind of fun to do that. And if we haven't set goals that really light us up, then why not? We got no real reason to change. And you mentioned coaching, and you need a coach? I don't, I don't think anybody needs a coach. It's all relative to what do you want to have happen, and how much change has to happen if you need to make some significant change? Most people don't do that quickly. They don't do it. I've made a lifetime study of how to learn something fast and how to do something in the fastest possible way. First thing I'm going to do is get a coach. All right, I'm playing pickleball now. I got to an advanced level very fast. I did it by going and getting coaching and finding out how to train and how to change everything I was doing when I learned Balinese. No one learns Balinese. I went and got myself a coach. So I wanted to learn chess bug house chess, which is a crazy form of chess with two boards at the same time and four people. You know, I went got myself a coach. I wanted to learn Tibetan throat singing. I went and got a coach. So I just think it makes sense if you want to create change, we can do it alone. If you're a very self motivated person and highly disciplined, then you're probably already doing all this stuff that I just mentioned, so it's great, but for the rest of us humans, even high performers, there are reasons that you know the top tennis players and the top golfers and have a coach. And there's a reason Bill Gates said everyone, everyone should have a coach. It's really just about if you want to accelerate, then that's that's the way. I know masterminds are good. Listening to podcasts are good, but it's not the same as having a person each week who's tracking you, who's tracking what you said you want, tracking your sabotage, listening for is this going to help you with your goals, or wait? Is there a blind spot or a patent here that no one else is going to tell you about? I don't think there's any real replacement and factor in. I'm biased. I'm a coach for a career, so I believe in I believe in coaching,

Robert Plank 18:38 right? So you believe in coaching if we want to accelerate, and it's and there's all this idea of this phrase, of getting stuck in your own head, right, and just kind of not being certain about your ideas and really solid, or are there blind spots? And I can see the value in speaking this out. And like you said, someone then tracking you. And it feels to me like it's all leading to long term fun instead of short term fun. It's like when we play a video game, right? You play Sim City, you build a town, and it's slow going, but it's rewarding, right? You're building a power plant and power lines, and you're building this thing up. And after a while, you got bored, and you say, you know, let me start some fires, let me cause some chaos, and let me do like, the short term fun and tear down and self sabotage and then, but then you get bored quickly, and you're done with the game. And so in the game of life and business, we want to achieve, we want to be long term.

David Wood 19:32 That's true. And I think it can be, you can. You can have your cake and eat it too, because you're right. You could be short term and go, I'm just going to flit around from thing to thing and just really enjoy my day, but then I'm not going to enjoy my year as much, because I'm not going to achieve all the stuff I want. But you don't have to be dull and you don't have to grind. That's why I'm suggesting we gamify. And by gamifying, it's not that hard. Did you go? All right, well, what do I really want to do today? I want to do this. I got a two hour block that's four specific 25 minute tasks. Going to write those down. I'm going to do what David suggested. I've probably heard about it before. I'm going to try it and then set the timer and see, see what it's like. You're also going to have to be willing to fail, because there are eight different ways to mess this up. I've, I've seen them all, and I expect you'll have some success, and then it'll be something that wasn't working. Some reason. You fell off, off the wagon, and it just didn't really work. And so usually my clients come back and we tweak it. They're like, All right, now, go and do this. And I find there are different levels of this. So you start at level one, you get good at that, then, okay, now try this and tweet this, and I have found it surprisingly satisfying and surprisingly fun. I enjoy my days when I break it up this way. When I don't, I might still have a good time, and I'm still quite busy, and I like days like that as well. But it's not the same as I really want to move towards my goal. I really want to, I want to, I want to own that house. That's different. That's when you got to pick, okay, what's going to move the needle on this? This is what's going to move the needle. So that's what I'm committed to today. Now I know what to do the next 25 minutes, the one after that, the one after that, it's almost like creating a boss for yourself. You don't have a boss. If you have a boss, sometimes they will like, handle that for you, but most bosses aren't that good, and so you still have to create it. But being your own boss, you absolutely must set this as if you had a separate personality that could decide this is what you will do today. I'm going to map it all out for you. That's why you do it the day before, because the boss in you can come out, and then when you wake up, all you got to do, roll up your sleeves, chop wood, carry water. It's such a relaxing feeling,

Robert Plank 22:02 yes, and I didn't really notice this until I read the email. This idea of, there's the boss and the manager and the worker, and it seems like if we're doing a lot, if we're self motivated, self employed, we're doing most of the worker, but we still need someone else to give the commands. And so it's like, well, we do have a boss in a way. It's just us 25 minutes ago, or it says yesterday. And it's like, if you set those commitments right, if you had a wedding on Monday, if you had a funeral on Friday, then your present self has to show up, right? That it's set in stone. You decided on that. But then your past self sort of said, hey, you know you're doing the wedding on this day, doing the funeral. That way they give the commands and so, yeah, it's fascinating to think things, these things through, yes,

David Wood 22:46 and the reason my my website is focused dot CEO, is because we're all the CEOs of our lives, and we want to bring out that CEO in us more often. That's why I call it a CEO date with yourself to have that five to 10 minutes to plan the week. That's your CEO date, and then your five to 10 minutes to plan tomorrow. That's another CEO date with yourself. Now my clients who come to me for productivity, and there are like eight other things business, things that some people need. Not everyone wants productivity, but the ones who want productivity, I have them do that, that weekly CEO date and the daily CEO date, so that you can wake up and be in worker mode. It's when the two are trying to come out together that one's going to run over the other, and it gets completely confusing. So we get some separation, and it's surprisingly relaxing to wake up knowing what you're going to do and what you're not going to do.

Robert Plank 23:46 What a concept, right? Ican imagine when there's the Dueling Banjos, that's your recipe for stress and multitasking and just tug of war. And we don't want that, right? Instead, we want to double our focus, double our revenue, get focused, achieve more and be extraordinary. And along those lines, if someone says, Man, this guy, David, he has some amazing techniques. I feel like he's reading my diary. What are some next steps here? How can someone find out more about you and pursue this?

David Wood 24:13 Oh, hey, thank you. I'm always as a coach. I'm always like, yeah, how do you apply this? How do you how do you really take it into your life. And you know one thing is, you can listen to this again, get the transcript, and then go and take all the actions that I said, and it's, it's, it's not always easy to do alone. So what I want to offer listeners, Robert is I mentioned there are eight other areas. So there are nine areas I work with people in their in their business and their life, and productivity is one of them. The first step would be take the quiz. I have a business assessment that is awesome, and it's only going to take you 10 minutes, and it's going to ask you probing questions about your business and your life and what i. Want you to have once you've completed that 10 minutes is you'll know where the low hanging fruit is for you. Maybe productivity is one of your areas. Maybe it's lead generation. Maybe it's motivating a team and getting things off your plate onto the team's plate. So I'll give I'll give out a link where you can go and take this for free. That's the first offering. The second offering is, if you want me to review your results, I'm happy to offer 15 minutes of my time. And the reason I do it, and I don't charge for it, is, this is how I find the right people to work with. Some people, one call is all you need, and that's it. Okay, take the plan we come up with, go and apply it. Good luck. But some people like this is awesome. I can see that coaching would be useful, and if that's true, we can set up a coaching structure for you and see what would be best. It's the same link on the same page. You can say, Yes, I want to go to David's calendar and get on my calendar. There's no obligation to work with me, and I have no obligation to work with you. We're just going to see what coaching would do for you and if we'd be a fit. And then the third offering, if we do decide we want to work together for for 10 years, I've charged a flat fee, which has worked for the people who are making over a quarter of a million dollars a year. But for everyone else, it was, it was actually, wasn't appropriate. So I charge 2000 a month. That's my that's my regular fee. But people like, I can't afford that, and I agreed with them. It's like, I don't want you to pay $2,000 a month to a coach if, if your revenue is 100 grand, or 150 or 200 you should be paying less and getting yourself into a position where you can afford that. So the third offering is, if we do decide we want to work together, I won't charge a fixed fee. We'll pick a number that fits where your business is at right now, we'll pick a number that feels good. I've gone as low as $300 up to 2000 something that feels good for both of us. So you can get all three of those offerings at the same link. It's focus dot CEO slash quiz, at least take the assessment for yourself. And then you can skip booking a call with me. Or you can say, You know what, 15 minutes with David to talk about this. I want to do it. And then again, if we do decide to work with as a sliding scale. But please mention in the notes when you, when you submit your assessment, mention Robert Plank and sliding scale, so that I know that I made this offer and that I know to honor that when we, when we have our call,

Robert Plank 27:39 very nice, very flexible. You figured a lot of amazing things out here, Mr. David and we said that that link is You're welcome. That is focus, dot CEO slash quiz where you can get that free business assessment and strategy call to see if you and Mr. David would are a fit. The goal is to double your focus, your revenue, your time off, and your happiness. And growing as a human and leader is a great bonus. That's focus. Dot CEO, slash, Q, U, I, Z, you fill that out, you take the quiz, and as you said, David, you can stop at any point that you like, right if you like where the car is headed for now, then great. You can take that quiz, get some results, and you can listen to this podcast again, transcribe it. Get some great stuff there. But then if you say, All right, well, now you've ignited the fire in me. Now I want to see where this can go. Then there's some options there for you and Mr. David to to jump in and get on this ongoing process. We've all experienced it right, whether it's a teacher or a coach or accountability partner, this idea of having another human being in your partner, to track you, to call you on your stuff, to listen to provide feedback, to see what's going on, see those blind spots. It's indescribable, right? It's invaluable. But that very first step is to go to focus dot CEO slash quiz, to get that focus coaching, biz assessment and strategy call and this coaching is for business owners who want to double or triple their businesses, if you want to achieve more by focusing on less, if you want more for your life and relationships and more for your business, if you're coachable, if you want to achieve your goals, which we said, well, it's more fun to think of it in terms of gamification. Then go to focus dot CEO slash quiz. Go there and fill out that quiz and see what those results are. Before I let you go here, Mr. David, it's time for the scary part of the podcast where I try to put you on the spot and I ask for a quote or lesson that has served you that you can pass on to us. So what do you have for a quote or lesson,

David Wood 29:44 the worst thing that can happen to you is a thought. What does that mean? Firing Katie, I used to think that circumstances were the worst thing that can happen, like losing your leg or losing a loved. One or losing money, or, you know, whatever it is. No, I no longer believe that. After working with Katie for so long, I now believe that it's, it's what we're thinking about, what happened, that's the thing that hurts us. So a lot of the work I do with my clients is, is when they're suffering, when they're upset, when they're stressed, what are you believing? Let's take a look at that and find out if it's true. And I've rarely found a thought to be absolutely true. In in the 15 years I've been exploring thoughts, so I look, I'm all for helping people change their circumstances. I'm a coach, like, let's do it. But the worst thing that can happen to you is not business going bad. It's not something that happens. It's what you're believing about it. So the worst thing that can happen to you is a thought,

Robert Plank 30:55 I like it time for some better beliefs, right? Time for some reframing and some mindset we can do that with Mr. Coach, Mr. David Ian wood. He's a coach, speaker, host, actor. You can find him on LinkedIn, at linkedin.com/in/focus-ceo, but where we really want you to go? Here's the very next step. Here. Focus, dot CEO, slash, quiz, go there right now. We'll see you there. And thank you, Mr. David Wood, for giving us a plan, for blowing our minds, for helping us out. I really appreciate everything you brought to the table today.So thank you.

David Wood 31:28 Thanks, Robert. It's good to meet you. You.