Thursday Three: Productivity Pyramid, Career Advice & The Psychology of Money

Every week I’ll bringing you a couple gold nuggets to inspire growth in your business to build wealth & create freedom. Find me on Twitter @brianbeers

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Funny and true - anyone who says otherwise is full of themselves.

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Rohun has some great advice here. A couple that resonate with me:

Success can lead to a bloated ego - thinking that everything we touch turns to gold. We forget about the education, relationships and years of hard work it took to create the success. To continue to have success you need to keep evolving, learning & growing. What got you here won’t get you there

Building a business is all about putting one foot in front of another, just like one more brick on a wall. The primary question I ask myself every day is “am I making progress?”

Am I making progress in my business, my life, my relationships, my wealth, and creating more freedom? As long as you are making progress every day then you will build a business you are proud to own and life that you are proud to live.

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Morgan Housel - The Psychology of Money, Picking the Right Game, and the $6 Million Janitor

Morgan & Tim dive into a ton of various topics related to money, investing, writing & more. One of the topics that really stood out to me is the fact that most people spend all of their money on material things: cars, houses, entertainment, video games, clothing, watches & more.

We think that material things will make us happy since they give us status but the truth is what we truly want is freedom. The paradox is every dollar we waste of material things slows us down from achieving freedom since money helps unlock freedom.

They also discuss how Warren Buffet is not the best investor in terms of average annual returns; there are better investors who’ve achieved higher returns. He’s the most successful investor due to the number of consistent years. 99% of Buffet’s wealth came after his 50th birthday. If he “retired” at 65 he definitely would’ve been wealthy but not a household name.

The key to growing wealth is to compound returns. No matter what asset class you invest in the key is to not worry about the next year or 5 years but have a horizon long enough and just keep playing the game.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Business With Beers

This past week I had Simon Severino on the show from Strategy Sprints to talk about how they help companies double revenue in 90 days.

Listen to the full episode here on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

In my Thursday solo episode I talk about identifying your highest value tasks using the Productivity Pyramid. Picture a pyramid broken into 4 sections, horizontally. The 4 sections are labeled, from bottom to top: 

Brown Time is time spent on tasks & activities that have little to no value to building your business or wealth. This includes watching Netflix, doing chores, or cleaning up someone else’s mistakes at work.

Light Green is time spent on tasks & activities that prepare you to make money. This could include market research, prospecting, setting up appointments, and data entry into spreadsheets. 

Dark Green is a time when you are in your zone of genius making money. Closing deals, pitching investors, negotiating contracts, selling to customers, whatever you do that you’re really good at AND it’s making you money.

Gold is time spent on “high lifetime value” activities like listening to a great podcast or audiobook. Joining a mastermind group of like-minded entrepreneurs, working with a business coach, even going on vacation with family which motivates you to redesign your business & life to create more freedom. 

Question: how much time are spending in each category?

We all have the same 168 hours per week. If you are serious about growing your business to build wealth and create freedom you need to spend as much in dark green & gold as possible. 

Strategies

1. Brown Time - reduce by proactively scheduling your day. Delegate or eliminate any low value tasks in your business. 

2. Light Green - systemized and delegated to someone else on your team. These are primarily administration jobs

3. Dark green - figure out what your money-making superpower and go all-in. Fill your funnel with opportunities (light green) then spend your time closing them (dark green)

4. Gold - many times when we face a challenge we think it’s a strategy problem but often it’s a mindset problem. We may have a limiting belief that’s blinding us from a solution. Gold actives will help reframe something you already know, teach you a new skill, or even a new business model.

Got 12 minutes? Listen to the full episode where I go into more detail on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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