Ari Meisel

I Call BS on the Morning Routine

April 25, 2019 by Ari Meisel

I know, I’m coming in a little hot there. Honestly, I don’t want to knock the morning routine per se. In fact, I’m cited in Hal Elrod’s book, “The Miracle Morning For Entrepreneurs”.

But people put so much emphasis on it; like if you don’t have a morning routine, there’s no way you’re going to be successful.

The thing is, setting the alarm is easy. It’s what you do after that, that determines your productivity.

I get up at 5:45 in the morning. I have four children who go to three different schools, want four different lunches and require a full-court press of attention from my wife and me before I drive them to their respective schools.

I mean, it is a morning routine, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with me, and I like it like that.

After drop off, I have a full day of work that requires me to schedule interactions before 2:30 pm, because I pick my children up from school. Everyday. I’ve cleared my schedule to allow me to be entirely present for my kids while they are home. No distractions, no phone calls, no meetings.

After the kids go to bed, I get on my gym clothes and go out for a four-mile hardcore run in all kinds of weather over two bridges. I think about ideas, for my clients’ businesses and my own. I can solve many problems at a 7:00-minute mile pace because my body knows what to do, and my mind is free to engage in higher level thinking.

I can work stuff out in the half-hour it takes me. When I get home, I immediately make Trello cards for my team about those ideas. Then I shower, get in bed and watch TV.

I feel amazing. I look forward to that part of the day. It allows me to clear out my brain so that when the day starts, it can begin without lingering anxieties or unsolved problems. Plus an evening routine is so much more in my control. A morning routine can get easily derailed by a sick kid, a hectic travel schedule or a miserable night’s sleep.

The building of a nighttime routine requires self-discipline, as you only have yourself to hold to account. I believe developing that mind muscle is a cornerstone to building a more productive life.

My point in describing this routine to you is not so that you’ll be impressed, or irritated, it’s to illustrate the importance of a day designed around a singular priority, one at a time.

Super interesting sidebar here, did you know that the word priority was only used a singular noun until the Industrial Revolution? Then it quickly became a plural. So, if you think about it, there can only be ONE priority, because the definition describes something of the utmost importance.

So when you think about organizing your day, developing a routine, think about a singular priority during a specific time. When you make something a priority, then you make the time for it. Having too many priorities (more than one) is a sure-fire way to get your brain to do none of them. “I’m so swamped, everything’s a priority” no longer works, and that feels pretty damn good.

There’s No Such Thing As Stress Relief

April 9, 2019 by Ari Meisel

Anytime I talk about stress, someone invariably asks me about “stress relief.”

Ari, how do I stop feeling this way?

Ari, how do I relieve my stress?

Well, there are lots of ways to relieve stress, I say.

Would you prefer unhealthy relief like cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol?

Or would you prefer healthy relief like mediation, exercise, and good music?

…Because whatever you choose, you’re still not going to get what you want.

Allow me to explain.

You don’t actually want stress relief, no one does.

Advil provides relief from an achy knee, but it’s doesn’t repair the damaged cartilage causing the inflammation.

Imodium provides relief from diarrhea, but it doesn’t kill the bug that’s making your stomach sick.

Relief is a temporary reprieve from your symptoms — what you want is a cure.

You want the antidote to your stress — something that is permanent, something that will last.

That something is control. It has always been the antidote to stress because stress only exists when you lose control.

When you lose control of your life, you lack the ability to diffuse overwhelming thoughts and feelings and urges. Being overwhelmed is a fundamental psychological trigger for stress.

So if control is the key to defeating stress, how do I assert it? How do I get that precious sense of control?

By letting go.

No that wasn’t a typo. To regain control of your life, you need to become a master of letting go.

If you’re confused right now, that’s OK — when I first introduce this idea to any of my coaching clients, they’re always a bit baffled as well, but stay with me. Letting go to regain control seems counterintuitive I know, but it actually makes perfect sense.

As a human, there’s a limit to how much you can mentally manage at any moment in time. As long as your responsibilities stay below that limit, you’ll always feel like you’re in control.

But the moment your threshold is surpassed? — that’s when stress starts kicking-in.

In order to exercise ultimate control over your life, you need to reduce your obligations, and the easiest way to do that is by letting go. Now, what exactly you should let go of, I can’t tell you without getting to know you, but I can guarantee that if you make an objective, no B.S. assessment of your life, you’ll find plenty to let go of.

Now here’s an important distinction. When I tell you to “let go” I don’t mean that you should abandon a responsibility outright. I want you to let go but do so in a strategic way: through the power of automation and outsourcing.

Relinquish the responsibility of sorting email — filters can keep that inbox nice and tidy.
Stop trying to build your own website — outsource the job to 3rd party.
Quit wasting your time trying to schedule meetings with prospects — Calendly.com can handle it.

You see the point, right?

Your world is probably awash in time-consuming responsibilities that can easily be released with very little risk thanks to automation and outsourcing.

The more responsibilities you relinquish, the more mental bandwidth you’ll liberate.

The more mental bandwidth you liberate, the less overwhelmed you’ll feel.

The less overwhelmed you feel, the more control you’ll have over your life.

And if you’re in control of your life,

You’ll rarely if ever, suffer from stress.

See? Step by Step, Easy Peasy. You just have to change how you look at what you do and stop doing things you shouldn’t.

Why Do You Have Email?

April 3, 2019 by Ari Meisel

Lots of people think that Email — like breathing — is essential and there is no way of getting around it. I disagree.

You can absolutely choose to abandon it completely. More and more people are doing just that. Not me. I love email. My inbox is a delight to navigate and a great place to get shit done. The difference between me and folks who say they hate email is that I know exactly what to do with this epic communication tool.

People who don’t use it correctly, drive me bananas.

SPOILER ALERT: BIG RANT AHEAD

There was a post by Adam Grant a while back, I absolutely loved. He said he doesn’t understand people who do not answer email or complain about email. He said it’s like if you were walking down the hall, would you not say hello to somebody just because too many people are saying hello to you in the hall?

Now as you all know, there’s not a ton of subjects that I get passionate about in this way, but I have to say email is probably one of them. I think it’s a total bullshit cop out when people say, oh, I can’t deal with email. It’s too hard, there’s just too much of it. I just don’t even look at it.

I’m sorry if some of you reading this still fall into that category, but I don’t think that’s the case. You’ve been around my content enough.

But if you are still making those excuses, you need to throw up a flag really quick because I want to help. In fact, just send me an email (GASP) oao@lessdoing.com and I’d be happy to send you my InBox Zero course for FREE.

But I digress.

It’s so obnoxious to me for somebody to not have any form of response to an email. Now I’m not saying you have to respond to everyone in your emails, but a few months ago, an acquaintance of mine who is very, very well known in the business world, made a personal email introduction for me to another really, really well-known person in the business world. A personal introduction.

So I wrote and the guy never responded.

About a month later I followed up and the guy never responded. No response at all. And I have to say, this has nothing to do with me feeling jilted. I just think it’s completely unacceptable to exist in the business world that we live in and to have an email address, (which is a choice, by the way). And not use it for what it is there for; as a communication tool.

If you don’t want to deal with email, don’t have email. But don’t have it and ignore it. It’s rude.

I find it completely unacceptable because what that says is that either you’re an asshole or you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing and you shouldn’t be running any operation.

I don’t care how much money somebody is making. There is no excuse for that kind of thing.

So again, if you decide that email’s overwhelming, create an autoresponder. If you decide that email is really just not your thing, don’t have an email address.

Oh and I’m just getting started…

Next…. I need to vent about the time-honored tradition of having somebody manage your inbox. A lot of people when they’re looking for that great executive assistant, look for somebody who can manage their inbox.

I think that that is a patently bad way to approach both communication and leadership.

First of all, you don’t need more people. You need a better system. You need to get better at making decisions. Your inbox is the perfect place to practice.

You really just need to make three decisions in your inbox.

Deal with it

Delete it

Defer it

So subrogating responsibility to somebody else is a bad idea. First, your inbox should not be unmanageable to the point that you need someone else to manage it.

Second, it’s not good work to give to another person. It’s dehumanizing work. You wouldn’t have somebody walk down the hall with you and say hello to people as they passed you on your behalf. That would be gross.

You have to look further upstream. There are probably lots of things that are going through your inbox that shouldn’t be there in the first place. For example, you should never be sending email to people that work with you internally. Use a different tool like Slack or Voxer.

Your inbox should be filled with interesting and exciting things; things that show you opportunities. It should be a box of opportunities. Why would you want to hand that over to somebody else? And if that’s really the case, then you don’t need to have email at all.

There’s nothing wrong with telling somebody to email your assistant. There are plenty of very, very successful people in the world who have never had an email or an email address.

Why do people think this approach is so bad? To just say to somebody, “Get in touch with my assistant, he’ll relay the message and we’ll communicate that way. It’s so much better than having somebody emailing you, thinking they are communicating with YOU, only to discover they are not.

I promise you it will forever change the way that people communicate with you. There is a trust that is broken when you do that. I realize that this approach is going to piss off a lot of people. But how you handle (or don’t) handle your email says a lot about how you make decisions and it has a ripple effect across all your daily engagements.

So my suggestion is simple, if you want to have somebody else manage your email for you, you shouldn’t have email at all.

Do You Know When to Walk Away?

April 2, 2019 by Ari Meisel

Knowing when to Hold ’Em or Fold ’em is the Key to Scaling your Business

Right up front, I’m no Kenny Rogers fan, but he definitely got that line right.

At its most basic level, the game of poker is all about knowing when to keep your cards and when to abandon them.

I find business to be a lot like poker — every decision is a calculated risk. Not every risk pays off, some cost you dearly, and even those bets that have a 99% chance of paying out aren’t guaranteed.

In poker, it’s your cards and how you use them that determines whether you win or lose.

In business? — it’s your customers.

Customers are a deck of living, breathing cards. And like any deck of cards, some of your customers are going to be aces and some are going to be jokers, with the vast majority falling somewhere in between.

Aces are the Holy Grail. They’re trump cards that provide lots of staying power and big-time rewards when used properly. So — if you’re lucky enough to get a few in your hand — you generally want to hold onto them for dear life.

But sometimes that unyielding desire to hang on to those aces can hurt you.

Aces can cloud your judgment and make a hand seem stronger than really is. And that illusion can deceive you into making a stupid decision you’ll soon regret.

Which is why sometimes you need to fold your aces.

As an owner, there will be occasions where “folding” a client becomes necessary, no matter how great (and profitable) they’ve been for business.

HERE’S WHY…

Remember, the customer-company relationships is just that…

A relationship.

It’s not a dictatorship where one-party gets to rule with exclusivity over the other, it’s a mutually beneficial exchange…a partnership.

When a customer stops acting like a partner and starts seeing things through a one-way lens, it’s time to consider terminating the relationship for the greater good of your business.

Now, this isn’t a license to throw customer service to the wind — far from it!

You should take every reasonable measure to deliver on a client’s request. After all, they are giving you their hard-earned money.

But there are times when a relationship is simply a bad fit.

That’s why it’s crucial to set limits for yourself, your employees, and your company.

Draw a mental line in the sand and do not stray from it.

Saying goodbye to an overly-demanding customer will sting in the short-term. You’re intentionally letting revenue walk out the door, but in the long-run, it will pay off in a hassle eliminated and time saved.

TURN A NEGATIVE INTO A POSITIVE

When you are forced to fold on a client — and if you’re an entrepreneur growing a business, this will happen with more often than you think — don’t despair!

The terminated relationship isn’t a total loss.

In addition to freeing up some company bandwidth and eliminating a source of stress, intentionally parting ways with a customer is an incredibly valuable learning experience.

Make sure you extract at least one lesson, even a small one, from the failed partnership and use that lesson to build a better business.

Learn enough of those lessons over a long enough period of time and that business you’ve been building will evolve into a powerhouse.

So remember…

In the words of Sean Connery, the best Bond ever, (I’m prepared to fight you on this, BTW),

“A key to success is playing the hand you were dealt like it was the hand you wanted.”

Do that and you’ll be more than alright.

Want to Succeed? Become Replaceable

March 29, 2019 by Ari Meisel

The market is saturated with really innovative books and philosophies about growth; how to find new opportunities, how to create new content and marketing, how to identify and nurture customers. Entrepreneurs especially have endless choices these days when they are pursuing those solutions.

My book, “The Replaceable Founder”, is not that book.

This book will assist you in uncovering what is holding you back, and find where your constraints hide.

It will show you the relevance of becoming replaceable.

It’s a daunting word, for sure, but it does not mean what you think it does.

My methodology does not seek to make you disappear; it aims to give you the time and space to truly lead.

It is, after all the bottlenecks we are trying to avoid as we nurture our vision. The truth is excellent ideas shepherded by brilliant people will usually succeed. In Latin, ceteris paribus which translates to “all other things being equal.”

So this book is about the constraints that impede progress, and it’s been my experience that the obstacle is usually the founder. It is this person, the one who came up with the brilliant idea, the one who wants to get it done, yesterday, that becomes their own worst enemy.

They may rush to bring their aha moment to bear, and then bring in the wrong people to help. They buy cumbersome and ill-fitting software, and they don’t put the proper systems in place first; processes that reflect and support the mission of the organization.

These hasty decisions mar progress and erode the company’s DNA and those breaks in the DNA multiply untethered throughout the evolution of that organization.

What remains, several months or years into a venture, is an overwhelmed founder with too much to do, not enough time to accomplish anything significant, and an attitude of defeat which will surely spell the demise of a terrific idea.

If the founder is spending their time like this, they are detracting rather than adding value to the initial offering. They will fail, and more importantly, they will not know why.

The solution lies in a fundamental shift in mindset whose hallmark is, “Everyone should be as replaceable as possible.” I do not mean personally, I mean professionally.

It doesn’t mean firing; it means optimizing processes so that people, especially the founder are free to drive their vision forward and this is impossible to do if they are mired in the daily grind of putting out fires.

The objective must be to replace the “how” not the “what” and the “why”.

Naturally, the founder should be spearheading the mission of why but the how needs to focus on replacement, making everyone as replaceable as possible, without actually replacing them.

Remember, the founder’s team has a wealth of knowledge and experience.

They wouldn’t have been hired to help grow a business if they didn’t possess these talents. Their unique gifts continue to be more and more valuable every day they are with an organization. The core team is invested in the vision, has a passionate and proprietary interest in its success, but like the founder they are spending too much of their time doing things that could be done by someone else, faster and for less.

If the founder is paying his Marketing guru to post on Instagram, they are wasting money. If their accounts person is personally answering customer queries, they are drowning in inefficiency and if the founder is unable to relinquish control to anyone outside the core team, productivity halts.

I realize that to many people, this may sound like a paradox, a double edge sword. “If I make myself replaceable, I’ll just replace myself out of a job!”

Admittedly, in many organizations I’ve worked with, there are those who can’t or won’t see that finding an optimized solution enables, rather than disables, but the people who do embrace the notion can fill that empty space with new and better opportunities.

It’s the opposite of the Peter Principle, the satirical book about incompetence, written by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in 1969, that heralded the notion that people rise to the point of their incompetence.

Peter and Hull uncovered the lunacy of traditional corporate structures that only promoted based on a person’s ability to do the job they currently held, which left many within the organizational structure over their heads in positions they were incapable of mastering, rendering them obsolete.

My view and I’ve seen it work countless times, is to get to a position, through optimizing, automating, and outsourcing, where the founder, in particular, is now able to step up into that void and get shit done. Real shit. Substantive shit. Shit that turns that great idea into a brilliant triumph.

The mantra must be:

Become replaceable.

Seek out the constraints.

Remove the bottleneck.

Allow the natural growth to happen.

Microworkers — While they may be small, they are mighty

March 20, 2019 by Ari Meisel

People often come to me with a solution rather than a problem.

A lot of times when the person comes to me, they believe they need to hire people.

They have a problem.

They have a process that’s not working.

There’s an inefficiency in their business.

They are convinced that adding people will make things better.

So they look for guidance in terms of where to find the people, how to train them, how to identify what kind of people they need. The problem with that is if you add people to an inefficient process or broken process, all you’re going to do is create frustration, lose money, and possibly worse.

So I always start with the optimized part of my methodology first. But today I had a conversation with one of the Less Doing Leaders and was reminded of an exception.

There are situations where you don’t want to add a few people… you want to add thousands.

It’s a situation where you have automation by human and there’s a website called microworkers.com, which I suggest everyone take a look at so you can get an idea of the kinds of things that you might have people do.

It’s a very interesting niche for a specific business opportunity because there are lots of tasks that are so small, so minute that a human being can execute in a matter of seconds with little to no error, but it’s still beneficial to have a human being look at it.

Here’s a very basic example.

Show somebody a picture of an apple and you ask them to click, is this a fruit or vegetable? It’s a task that might take somebody a second to do and they’ll probably get paid three to ten cents for doing that task. Because the system has access to literally thousands of people, what they will do usually is show that same images to five people. Those five people will weigh in. If one of them doesn’t agree with the others, it automatically kicks that image back to the system and has five new people weigh in on it.

The entire process takes a matter of 15 seconds.

There’s an unlimited workforce essentially available to do this. So when I was talking to one of the leaders today, he said he had a very tedious and very repetitive process around recruiting. One of the things that are required as they go through Linkedin listings, is to find certain people.

Yes, it could be automated, but the human solution is a better alternative.

In this scenario, people actually can do it better; if given such a small slice of the pie that they can do it quickly, cheaply, and without making mistakes. So in this particular process, they look at a candidate’s profile and if the person has had three jobs or more in the past five years, they are automatically rejected. For obvious reasons.

A human being can look at that and just say, one, two, three, yep, done, yes or no, a few seconds. We can do that at scale and we can do that extremely cheaply with no error.

Cool, right? Think of some processes in your business that could benefit from an army of workers. Inputting SKUs, making yes or no decisions, either or, judgments, well you get my drift.

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