May 29, 2025 • 38 mins
Our discussion today centers on the profound transformation experienced by Lenny Richardson, who transcended adversity through the adoption of time management principles informed by the philosophy of eudaimonia, which emphasizes living a meaningful and fulfilling life. Lenny's journey, marked by significant challenges, including being expelled from college and grappling with depression, ultimately led him to recognize that effective time management is pivotal in realizing one’s potential and achieving success. He elucidates how this realization catalyzed a pivotal change in his life, enabling him to transition from financial instability to prosperity, while concurrently assisting others in their quests for fulfillment. Through his insights, we explore practical methodologies for enhancing productivity and the importance of prioritizing tasks that align with one's overarching goals. Join us as we delve into Lenny's experiences and the indispensable nature of time management in today's fast-paced world.
Our discussion today centers on the profound transformation experienced by Lenny Richardson, who transcended adversity through the adoption of time management principles informed by the philosophy of eudaimonia, which emphasizes living a meaningful and fulfilling life. Lenny's journey, marked by significant challenges, including being expelled from college and grappling with depression, ultimately led him to recognize that effective time management is pivotal in realizing one’s potential and achieving success. He elucidates how this realization catalyzed a pivotal change in his life, enabling him to transition from financial instability to prosperity, while concurrently assisting others in their quests for fulfillment. Through his insights, we explore practical methodologies for enhancing productivity and the importance of prioritizing tasks that align with one's overarching goals. Join us as we delve into Lenny's experiences and the indispensable nature of time management in today's fast-paced world.
In an enlightening exchange, Jacqueline Stranger and Lenny Richardson delve into the complexities of leadership and the vital role of time management in achieving both personal fulfillment and professional success. Lenny's narrative is particularly compelling as it traces his journey from adversity, including being expelled from college, to discovering the ancient philosophy of eudaimonia, which advocates for a life characterized by health, wealth, and meaningful relationships. This philosophical framework underpins his current endeavors to assist others in navigating their paths toward similar transformations.
Throughout the episode, Lenny articulates the critical importance of time management, positing it as a foundational skill for anyone seeking to enhance their productivity and quality of life. He reflects on his own experiences, illustrating how a lack of effective time management exacerbated his financial difficulties and strained his relationships. This self-awareness led him to adopt a more disciplined approach to how he allocates his time, a shift that not only improved his circumstances but also fueled his entrepreneurial ventures. Lenny advocates for a strategic mindset that prioritizes significant daily objectives over an overwhelming array of tasks, thereby fostering a sense of accomplishment and motivation.
The conversation further explores practical strategies for effective time management, such as utilizing planners and employing techniques like the Pomodoro method. Lenny emphasizes the necessity of assessing how time is spent to identify distractions and inefficiencies, underscoring the idea that individuals must actively take control of their schedules to maximize productivity. In conclusion, the episode serves as both an inspirational narrative and a practical guide, empowering listeners to recognize the value of their time and to harness it effectively in pursuit of their
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:59):
Well, hello everybody andwelcome to another amazing episode
of Unstoppable LeadershipSpotlight podcast. I am your host,
Jaclyn Stromminger And on thispodcast, as you know, we hear from
amazing leaders and getincredible game changing insights
that not only will help you bea better leader, but help you help
(01:20):
generate greater profits foryou and your company. So today we
are welcoming on to the show,Lenny Richardson. Right? Did I get
that right? Yes, LennyRichardson. I'm like, wait a second.
And so little bit ofbackground on Lenny. So after being
kicked out of college twice,we might have to hear about that.
(01:41):
Lenny faced a dark period ofdepression. However, his life took
a dramatic turn when hediscovered the ancient philosophy
of eudomania, a concept thatemphasizes living a fulfilling and
meaningful life. Thisdiscovery ignited a profound transformation
within him. So key thing hereabout leadership, you know, Lenny
(02:01):
went from being broke tothriving. So his transformation led
him to start a new businessfocus on helping people achieve Eudomania.
Through this journey, he hasrealized that the true secret sauce
to overall success was timemanagement. And I truly believe time
(02:24):
management is something we allcould do more of. And some people
actually are now calling itsomething else. But unless we can't
wait to hear from you, Lenny.So welcome to the show. So thank
you for being here. Welcome.
Thank you, Jaclyn. Iappreciate it. Thanks for having
me.
So, Lenny. Yeah, so Lenny, soyou know, I know you got a crazy
(02:44):
back rooted story, but I'dlove for you to just take us a little
bit through that. And how didyou come to time management?
Yeah, so not to be super longwinded, I tend to ramble sometimes.
So if I do, please stop me. Tomake a kind of a long story short,
as you mentioned, when I wasin college, twice I got kicked out.
It had nothing to do withacademics. I wasn't caught with drugs
(03:08):
or anything crazy like that.It was purely financial. Got kicked
out twice and that kind offorced me into the, the adult world,
so to speak. Had a lot ofjobs. The two main ones I had was
working at a gas station and Iwas working as a dishwasher at a
kind of a Irish pub in acollege town. As you can imagine,
that's a lot of dishes towash. But yeah, so as I'm kind of
(03:35):
working these two jobs, I'mstill struggling to make ends meet.
Like literally, I was at onepoint on the verge of being kicked
out of my apartment. Myroommates were really like mad at
me because I was the onlyperson not paying my end of the rent
or at least not paying enoughof it. And the Leasing agent. They're
contacting us, threatening tokick us all out. Very hectic times.
(03:59):
I realized that this kind ofwasn't the path that I expected out
of my life. I went to PennState. I consider myself to be a
smart student, so I figured,if I'm so smart, why am I in this
terrible situation? I didn'thave anyone around me to answer the
questions that I had about howto improve myself. That led me to
(04:20):
kind of reading a lot. Andthrough reading, I kind of stumbled
upon philosophy, because I wasa big philosophy fan. Learned about
this concept calledeudaimonia. And basically with eudaimonia,
it's sort of a framework forthe good life. That's kind of what
Socrates and Aristotleafterwards called it. Basically,
he breaks down the good lifeinto health, wealth and relationships.
(04:42):
And so to make this all veryshort, not go super long winded,
after years of trying to buildup the pillars of eudaimonia, as
I call them, health, wealthand relationships, I've realized
that in order for me to dothat, you need to have a certain
degree of time management.Because without time management,
(05:02):
it's, in my opinion, prettymuch impossible to adequately build
up your health, your finances,and your relationships. It's hard
to build them up, and it'sharder to sustain them without time
management.
Yeah. So. So, okay, so not togo down the rabbit hole, but obviously
you. You went through thisdarker period. And so how, like,
(05:32):
what was that aha moment foryou that you're like, I need to work
on the time management or howI'm spending my time?
Yeah, I don't know if therewas a, I guess one specific aha moment.
I think it was kind of just merealizing that I wasn't in great
(05:53):
shape. I didn't have greatfinances, not even close, especially
at that time. And I didn'thave great relationships. And I think
it was more or less kind ofthe stress of trying to figure out
how to make it all work.Eventually I kind of realized I need
to, like, really focus on howI'm spending my time. I know one
(06:13):
day in particular, this. Well,I won't call this an aha moment,
but it was kind of like, Iguess a moment that kind of made
me realize that managing timewas something I needed to focus a
lot on. A friend of mine, hewas kind of looking for a job, and
me and him had lived together.This is kind of in the summer of
the year. I got kicked out, Ithink, the first time. And so he
(06:37):
was looking for a job. He wasstaying with Me for the summer. And
we kind of figured we wouldjust map out our entire day and hit
as many places as possible tohelp him get a job, because he needed
one as quickly as possible tohelp me pay rent. And after doing
that, both of us felt superproductive. We felt like the entire
day was worthwhile. And upuntil this point, I never really
(06:59):
felt that way. I spent a lotof my time early in college, at least,
just kind of winging the day.Go to the gym, maybe. I'll go if
I feel like it. Study forclass. I'll study if I feel like
it. Go to class if I feel likeit, I'll go to class. So I was pretty
much winging the day. Afterkind of using my planner and figuring
out, kind of mapping out theday, I kind of realized this feels
(07:23):
a lot better. And we actuallygot a lot done. Let me try to do
more of this thing, so. And itwasn't like an overnight thing. This
is like a gradual process ofmonths and years of me slowly realizing
that if my life was going offtrack, it's probably because I'm
not managing my timeeffectively. When it's going great,
it's because I am managing mytime effectively. So not so much
(07:46):
a aha moment, I guess, but aseries of.
A series of. Right, Right.
Yeah.
So when you think about, youknow, so when you talked, I guess,
sort of like about timemanagement, talk to me about, you
know, how do you use it nowversus what you used to do?
(08:15):
Yeah, So I. I've kind of. SoI've learned this over the years
when I first tried toimplement different time management
strategies. The thing that Idid back then that was a massive
mistake is I tried to cram toomuch into one day, at least for me.
This was a mistake for me. Idon't know about other people, but
I. I try to cram too much intoa day. I still keep my old planners,
(08:39):
and I. Now I use kind of likeGoogle Calendar, but in the past
I had paper planners, and Iwould literally try to pack in things
by the minute, like fiveminutes here, do this thing for five
minutes, do this next thingfor five minutes. Do this next thing
for 30 minutes. It'soverwhelming. And I found that it's
not the best strategy forbeing consistent because I think
(09:02):
if you pack, at least for me,if. If I pack too many things into
one day, and I try to do thattoo frequently, it kind of burns
me out, and it just kind ofmakes me unhappy. And then, of course,
if it burns you out, you kindof get this negative association
with it and then you don'twant to do it anymore. So the thing
you need to get done or thethings you need to get done don't
get done. What I've begun todo now more is I just kind of shoot
(09:25):
for doing at least one bigthing. I try to make a list of all
the biggest things that I needto do and kind of the main three.
I focus on those three. Andout of those three, I pick one every
day. Essentially. Some days Itake off and I don't do anything
because I want to relax. Butit's more of a decreasing what I'm
(09:47):
doing every day rather thantrying to increase what I'm doing.
So I would say that's kind ofa major difference between what I
used to do versus what I donow. I think the less is more philosophy
is fantastic when it comes totime management right now.
Are you. Because a lot ofpeople talk about whether it's. You
(10:09):
could call it time blocking,you could call it buckets, you could
call it God. People are usingother words for it.
Like chunking and chunking.
Yeah, like, you know, so isthat something that you also believe
in or.
Yeah, so I'll do that as well.I think mainly what I try to do and
(10:33):
this is what I teach clients.You can have a full calendar, but
make sure that the main thingthat you need to do is your priority.
And the reason why I say thatis because stuff happens. Like stuff
happens. Sometimes calls comeup, sometimes you meet a random friend
and you just converse withthat friend and you know, time flies
(10:55):
by. You meant to rest for anhour. That conversation took four
hours. It's okay, it happens.You get into traffic, just stuff
happens. So I do do thosetechniques, but typically what I
recommend to people and what Ido is make sure you have enough time
to guarantee that you can dothat one thing that matters the most.
(11:18):
Because if you focus on thatone thing, then even if everything
else in the day doesn't goyour way, you've at least still moved
towards your goal. So for mepersonally, what I usually do, and
this is actually a perfectexample, usually in the mornings
I usually wake up at about 6amSo 6am until about 8am I block out
to work out usually from kindof 8 until 11ish. I do work just
(11:42):
like the main work. And todayI screwed myself over because I woke
up late. So I didn't go to thegym today. But it's fine because
that wasn't the main thingthat I needed to get Done. The main
thing was certain work withads. We're doing other stuff. But
that's kind of just the pointI'm making is stuff happens. You
know, you get lazy. Thingscome up. As long as the main thing's
(12:03):
being done, that's the mostimportant thing, Right?
So when you think about whereyou are, like, right now, like, what
is the biggest goal that youhave with, like, with your business?
The main thing now is reallyif I'm just to get more clients.
To get more clients and growthe business, that's kind of the
(12:27):
main thing. We're sort of justtesting out different strategies.
So it's really just been arace to try to test those strategies
as quickly as possible and Iguess implement and kind of build
on those strategies. I'll givean example. Kind of right before
this interview, I was a littlebit frustrated with myself because
(12:49):
yesterday I was trying to planout ads for Facebook. And for whatever
reason, Facebook changed theirad management system. It's hard to
describe, but the way theirlayout is, they changed it. And I
couldn't find my ads. And Irealized this morning they weren't
running, or at least twoweren't running. So that's part of
(13:10):
what I've been doing. And justwhatever it takes to kind of get
more clients. That's been myrecent goal. But.
And so when you think about,like, what you do for your clients,
like, what is the biggest reward?
The biggest reward for me orfor. For them?
Like, for, you know, for youworking with your clients.
(13:31):
Seeing people get ahead wouldbe the main thing. I. I really can't
stress this enough. I get veryfrustrated with when I. When I know
people and I know they can domore. And this is one of the phrases
that kind of sets me off whenpeople say I don't have time for
something, that agitates me tono end because everyone has 24 hours.
(13:55):
So I feel like it's a. I don'tknow. It's almost like when people
say it, it's almost likethey're lying to your face to say
I don't have time. I thinkit's fine to say I don't want to
do something, or I don't wantto make that a priority or it doesn't
matter to me right now. Ithink that's perfectly fine. But
I think when people say, Idon't have time, I'm always kind
of like, is that true?Because, you know, this celebrity
(14:17):
that you like who seems to besuccessful, they have 24 hours. I
have 24 hours. You have 24 hours.
It all depends on what you doat that time, Right?
Exactly.
Spend your time in how you doit. Right. Sometimes I think people
probably say, oh, my God, Idon't have time to do that. But it
might be just an excuse.
Exactly. Yeah. I had a frienda few years ago, actually. He was
(14:40):
trying to get in better shape,and he took on this new job. He was
doing, I think, construction.And he said to me, he said, I want
to get in better shape, but Ijust don't have time to do it. And
I said, lily, I gotfrustrated. I said to him, you don't
have 20 minutes a day to workout. That doesn't have to be your
priority. But if you want towork out, then it can be done. Maybe
the strategies you have aren'tworking for you, or maybe you're
(15:03):
in your mind believing thatworking out requires three hours
a day or two hours a day orthis extreme duration of time. We
can kind of discuss that andfigure out how to make it work for
you. But to say you don't havetime, I think is a bit disingenuous
when I hear people say that.
(15:23):
So what are some of the toolsthat you use to help people do better
time management?
The main tool, honestly, themain tool is a planner. That's the
primary tool. I know there's alot of. There's a lot of tools people
can use and a lot ofstrategies. I know there's apps like,
I think Motion, a lot of AIsoftware I see nowadays, fancy apps,
(15:49):
they're all fine. Pomodoro, Iuse that. That's a fantastic tool.
Really. To me, the main thingis a planner. I think that's. If
you could only stick with onetool, that'd be the tool I recommend.
The main reason is justbecause what I tend to find is that
because time is so abstractand because the day, it's sometimes
(16:09):
difficult to track. Like, anhour can go by and it can feel super
slow, and another hour can goby and feel super fast. It's kind
of hard to, you know, perceiveit in your head. The planner kind
of lets you see exactly whatyou have done in that day or what
you didn't do. And then at theend of the day, you can always review
(16:32):
and say, okay, I spent threehours today scrolling on social media.
That's. That's not reallygood. And I said, I didn't have time.
Like, I spent three hoursscrolling. I keep saying I don't
have time for something, but Ihave physical proof that I did have
time I just didn't use iteffectively. So I would say that's
(16:55):
the primary tool. That's kindof the main thing. I use planner,
I use Pomodoro. That's reallyabout it. My alarm feature. I try
to keep it as simple as possible.
So, you know, I truly believethat time management is one of the
biggest things. And I actuallydon't like the word time management.
I feel like it's, it's, it'slike it's more like life management
(17:18):
and how we, you know, or, or,or goal management in some ways,
you know, like how we actuallygo after our things and what we do.
And I, you know, one of thethings that, that I have found that
has actually worked really,really well is actually using, you
know, for a week or two weeksactually just, you know, doing a
day sheet where you actuallytracking every little moment that
(17:41):
you do. Like so you canactually become aware, right. Of
what you're, where you'respending your time or, you know,
it could even be like, oh myGod, I, you know, like every time
you pick up your phone or youhave to, you have to put it down
on the calendar.
Right.
If you have to mark the time,like 9:05, I picked up my phone.
Right.
You know, Absolutely.
So tell me you feel like, youknow, you know, in your experience,
(18:04):
you know, you know, I'd loveto have you share like a success
story about some, you know, aclient that had started working with
you and how they, you know, itchanged their life.
Yeah, so I had a clientactually. I'll share, I'll share
two, because two just poppedto my head. Yeah, One was from a
(18:24):
few months ago. She was, I dida bootcamp. It was a seven day bootcamp.
She joined the bootcamp andone of her goals was to sort of write
a book and kind of market. Sheteaches English to Portuguese speakers.
Okay.
So she wanted to kind ofmarket her book and she had been
procrastinating for months atthis point. And so one of the things
(18:46):
I teach people is when youhave an idea, execute on the idea
as quickly as possible. Don'tprocrastinate, don't linger on it,
don't overthink it. You canalways course correct, but just start
as quickly as possible. Withinreason, of course. Some things you
can't do right away, somegoals are harder to get started.
(19:07):
But right after the bootcamp,I think actually during the seven
days, she wrote pretty much anentire book. It wasn't a big book,
but she wrote like a smallbook, put it on Amazon and I think
within a week, made money fromit. Now, it wasn't like crazy money.
It was like, I think, 20 or$30, but still.
(19:28):
Right.
It's money that. It's money.And a lot of people, that's their
goal is to have a business orto have some goal where they can
make a side income or have aside hustle. And in days, she did
it by simply. It wasn't reallycomplicated. She just didn't procrastinate.
That's really all it came downto, is she just did not procrastinate.
(19:49):
So that's one example. Secondexample, just because it popped into
my head, and I think it's agood case study. There was another
guy, he was a client of mine,I think. Was it last year or two
years ago? Maybe. I forgetexactly when. And he had a. He was
kind of a freelancer, and hewanted to kind of create a copywriting
business. And so if I recallcorrectly, I think for about six
(20:13):
months prior to being aclient, he had maybe one or two clients,
and that was about it. He kindof went stagnant. And he. I'm trying
to remember. I think he reallyjust had a very long morning routine
that wasn't very effective, inmy opinion. And he kind of asked
(20:34):
me, you know, what's going on?How do I get more clients? What do
you recommend? And I said,first of all, I think your morning
routine is way too long. Hewould spend in the morning practicing
copywriting, learning aboutcopywriting, just doing a bunch of
stuff, going to the gym fortoo long. And I figured I told him
what we're going to do isinstead of having that very long
morning routine, just wake up.If you want to go to the gym, that's
(20:55):
fine. Go to the gym and thenspend the first five or six hours
of the morning, or four,whatever you can muster, just focusing
on getting more clients.Because that was the thing that he
wanted to do the most, isfocus on getting clients. And that
was coincidentally, the thinghe was doing the least of actively
trying to get clients. So Isaid, just focus on getting clients.
If you know a strategy thatyou've used in the past that's been
(21:16):
working, double down on it,and let's see where that gets you.
So I think this is aroundOctober, and he wanted to get, I
think, two more clients byDecember. He used the strategy after
a lot of me kind of being onhim to get it done. I think within
about a month he got four orfive clients. So he exceeded his
(21:39):
goal with time to sparebecause he Just sat there and focused
on getting clients. And foranyone listening who might be a copywriter,
I think what his strategy wasis he would go on upwork and submit.
I think it was case studies ofhis previous work to different agencies.
Yeah, but the case studies, Ithink each took him about an hour
(22:00):
or so. And it was very offputting. It's not very fun for him.
But sometimes the thing that'snot fun is the thing that needs to
be done right. My intentionwas not to rhyme, but I think that's.
Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's verytrue. You know, we actually. You
get what you focus on, right?So the more you can focus on something
(22:23):
if you're, if your goal is X,but you're like, as you said, he
was not focusing on that, itwas the thing that he was doing the
least. How do you expect toget that? It just not gonna, it's
just not gonna automaticallyjust appear in the universe, right?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I, Itend to see a lot of people, what
they do is some people confuseaction for productivity, if that
(22:49):
makes sense. So like, and I'mguilty of this myself, I was actually
from personal experience whenI was, I was, I used to be a real
estate agent. And one of thethings I was very guilty of is I'd
go to the office, scrollonline, maybe post a little bit of
content, but not with any realintent, with no real strategy behind
it, things like that. And inmy mind it felt like work, but it
(23:16):
wasn't good quality work. Soit was essentially kind of a waste
of time to a degree. I guessyou could argue that if I kept doing
it long enough, maybesomething would have come from it.
And something probably wouldhave, but really it was a form of
procrastination. I just didn'twant to do the things that I knew
was a lot harder. For example,I didn't want to door knock or I
didn't want a cold call. Ididn't want to do email marketing.
(23:38):
So I did social media becauseit's easier to kind of just post
content. Post once a day andthen not even once a day. For me.
You know, it's, it's funny, I,I talk to people a lot about this
where, you know, we talkabout, it's like is it busy work
or what is the work? And ifyou can focus on busy versus income
(23:59):
producing activities, incomeproducing activities are, you know,
picking up the phone, youknow, the knocking on doors. Right.
So what are those steps thatyou are doing? You know, you could
even label it in your Calendarand, you know, and your planner as
income producing time.
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
(24:20):
And what is that? Like, whatis that? Income producing time?
Yeah. What are you, Are youasking me personally what my income
producing time is or are you.
No, I'm just saying ingeneral. But it's true, because everybody's
income producing time. Andit's funny, it's like, you know,
you can sit there, you can gointo your office, you can move some
papers around. Oh, you canorganize, you could whatever. And
(24:42):
then you can say, oh, I wasworking today. Well, what was your
work? You know, what werethose income producing activities?
What were those things thatyou did to actually generate income?
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Ithink one thing I find people don't
do enough of too, is theydon't really, they don't track adequately
(25:06):
what's working.
Correct.
And I think, I, I don't know,I, I have a lot of stories with real
estate agents because I spenta lot of time with real estate agents.
And then in hindsight, youkind of realize at least this, you
know, if you're a real estateagent listening to this, don't feel
offended, but I've come incontact with a lot of real estate
agents that I would arguearen't super effective with their
(25:27):
time. Plenty are, but there'sa good amount that aren't. So I knew
some real estate agents whomade a good income and it was kind
of interesting where I wouldsee them sort of just maybe answering
random emails that don't seemto really matter. They want to grow
their business, but they'renot really actively trying to grow
their business. Or maybe theygo out for several hours and maybe
(25:51):
they put out postcards, butthey didn't get to that many doors.
And this is something that,what's a good way to put this? I,
I think sometimes people don'treally track what works best or how
to leverage their timeeffectively. I was going somewhere
(26:11):
with that, but I kind of lostmy. No, my train of thought.
But you know, Lenny, Itotally, I really agree with you
on this. I think this isactually, you know, and listeners,
I really want you to take thisbecause I think this is actually
one of the, one of the biggestthings that we all can do. And as
a leader, it's reallyimportant to track and know what
(26:32):
is working, whether it's, it'ssomething that you're doing with
your team. Is it somethingthat you're doing for your business?
We do, I always like to say,mma, we have to measure, monitor
and adjust. Like, what are wedoing to Track, you know, how many
calls are you making? Youknow, is it is the postcard that
you're sending out, how manycalls is that bringing in? I would,
(26:55):
me personally, when I thinkabout real estate agents and I, you
know, you get those cards inthe mail that say, I just sold this
house. No offense, whoop deedoo, right? Like, yay, congratulations
to you, you sold the house.What do you want me to do with that
information? Like, you know,are you like, what is that? It's
(27:20):
almost like, what is thepurpose? How about instead, you know,
you send something out thattalks about real estate that comes
in the mail that's going to belike, oh, you know, that's a really
interesting thing. Like,what's the call to action? So many
times you get those cards,it's informational, but there's no
call to action. You don't, yousent it to me. But how are you capturing
(27:44):
my contact information? Howare you going to, how are you going
to then take that postcardthat you just sent to me and turn
that into, you know, a way togenerate a lead if you don't know
me. If, by the way, and if youdo know me, why don't you pick up
the phone once in a while andsay, hey, how are you doing? Like,
(28:12):
I, I think the real estate, Ilove real estate agents. There's
a lot of people out there thatare absolutely amazing. But it's
amazing to me how many people,and I'm sure you probably know this
too. I do a lot of networking.I actually have a networking company
and there are so many realestate agents, and I can't begin
(28:33):
to tell you how many timesI've given them my card. Now ask
me the next question, which ishow much have they ever followed
up with me?
They're. Real estate agentsare notorious for never following
up donut.
Right? So, I mean, I thinkthat's like, you know, to me, that's
actually the other really bigthing is remember, like, if you are,
(28:54):
you know, as one of, as partof that time management, if you want
to go, like, part of that timemanagement has to be. Yes. Prospecting
new business and connectingwith the other people that you have
met. Right. You know, and, andthat's. It needs to go into that
whole, into that whole bucket.So you use a planner. You're what
(29:17):
has been one of the thingsthat you have done that might be,
you know, that maybe a littlebit different.
A little bit different. Thatis a good question. I know one thing
I try my best. I'll say thisthis is something that may be a little
bit different, but a lot ofpeople get mad at me for this, so
(29:37):
I'm assuming it's different. Ido not keep my phone with me when
I'm working. And if I havetime blocked out where I'm working,
I don't answer my phone, Idon't answer texts, I don't answer
social media pings. And thismakes a lot of people I know very
mad. Within reason, of course.If it's an emergency or if it's something
(29:58):
extreme, then I will answerit, of course, but I've had lots
of time. Actually, a few daysago this happened. A friend of mine
wanted to invite me out andI'm working and I think this is about
6pm or something. And he callsme, I put it on silent or mute, he
calls back and I say, hey, I'mworking, that's it. And he got frustrated
(30:19):
with me. But this happens alot. And I always say to people,
if I'm working, I will notanswer your call. I'm letting you
know I'm not being mean, butto me work time is work time. And
then once the work time'sdone, then it's time to have fun
or you know, do yourconversation, socialize, whatever
you want to do, that's fine.The reason why I do this is because
I found personally, andthere's good data to back this up
(30:42):
as well. Whenever people textor call you, if you answer every
single time, you essentiallycommunicate to people, my time is
not that valuable. At leastthat's the way I perceive it. If
every time someone called ortexted me I answered or engaged in
a conversation, I would neverget anything done. And I'm not saying
(31:03):
I'm popular, I'm just sayingthat between social media, between
the emails that come in,between you know, sometimes family
or friends that just want tocall and say hi, I might get maybe
an hour or two per day toactually really focus if I, if I
engage in all of that. So if Ihave a four hour block set aside
(31:24):
to work, that's work time.That's all it comes down to. So I
would say that's probablydifferent than most people. I don't
hear too many other people dothat. Certainly the people I know
don't do it or else theywouldn't be frustrated with me.
Right. You know, I think it'sactually, I think I, you know, I
think that is such a, again, areally great tip and for something
(31:46):
for people to, to take in oneof the key things that, that I think
is really great about that, isthat you and I would agree with you.
I think it's. I think that ifyou always answer and you always
are available, then peoplewill always think you're always available.
But if people know, like youcould have an automated message that
go after. Under when you're.If you're in a do not disturb mode
(32:08):
that says, I am so sorry thatI can't come to the phone right now.
You know, please shoot me atext or, you know, but I will. I
return phone calls and blah,blah, blah. Right. They come up with
some automated message. Right.That you can send out. I also have.
I actually do have. And I'veused this quite some time doing a
(32:28):
text replacement. You know, soif somebody messaged me, messages
me, instead of havingautomated, you know, I can just say,
you know, like, you know, ctncan't talk now. Right. Three letters
that are together. Can't talknow. As my thing. Sorry, I can't
talk now. I'll respond. Orplease let me know a good time that
(32:49):
you are available to connecttomorrow. Right. So that, you know,
like, my time is valuable and. Right.
Yeah, absolutely. I think ifmore people did that, their productivity
and just the amount of thingsthey get done in a single day I think
would dramatically improve.Yeah. There's one thing too, just
(33:13):
really fast for anyonelistening. There's something called
attention residue as well.This is also why I don't like, typically
when I'm working, besides notanswering my phone, I also put it
face down and I put it on.Usually on silent mode if I recall,
if I think to do it. Part ofthat too is if people text you and
you see it, you're still kindof thinking about it even when you're
(33:36):
working, so your focus is kindof split up. Or if you go on social
media, even for a few minutes,and you scroll and you laugh at something
and get back to work. You workfor 20 minutes, social media notification
pops up, you go back, you'rebouncing back and forth, and you're
constantly leaving some ofyour attention on whatever it is
you just recently watched orviewed or replied to. So you kind
(33:59):
of get that attention residue.And it's. Of course, if you do that
too many times, it's difficultto get good quality work done.
Right. You know, I thinkthat's a. It's a really great reminder
because I know thatstatistically, if you keep moving
your eyes away from something,you're just not focused on it. So
you have to be able to. It'slike, it's like Know, squirrel. Right.
(34:19):
Ooh, shiny object syndrome.Right. So we have that. So that's,
it's very true. So you know,Lenny, so tell us. Like, you know,
I, I love what you're sharing.I love the idea of, of helping people
with this. How can peopleconnect with you, learn more about
what you were doing and getmore of your wisdom?
Yeah. If anyone's interestedin the business at all, they can
(34:44):
findthat@productivityaccelerator.org if
they go there too. I also havekind of free courses on there that
they can take. The most recentone, there's a seven day course that
we just created. It kind ofwalks through a kind of a system
to be more productive in aweek. If anyone wants to connect
(35:04):
with me personally just tokind of talk about whatever or chat
online through my website,it's a good way. You can send me
an email. My personalwebsite's lennyrichardson Online
and Instagram. I'm onInstagram a lot when I'm not working.
My Instagram is leviticusrich. So that'd be the probably the
(35:29):
second best way besides emailfor anyone that wants to chat with
me personally.
Okay, so but we go to yourwebsite. You can go to productivity
accelerator or your personalwebsite. LennonRichardson online
dot com.
Yes, LennonRichardson dotonline for the first dot.
Online. Okay.
And thenProductivityAccelerator.org for the
(35:50):
business website.
Got it. Okay, well, we willhave all of those in the show notes.
Lenny, I just think what youwere doing is really fantastic because
time, again, as you have said,we have 24 hours in a day and we
need to be able to be moreefficient, effective and efficient
with our time and be able tofocus on the right things, not just
(36:13):
everything.
Yes, absolutely. Especiallynowadays with all the distractions
in the world.
Right, right. So listeners, Ihope you've enjoyed and gotten some
great nuggets. I know I haveand it's like little. Some really,
really great reminders. So ifyou have enjoyed this, please do
me a favor and hit subscribe.And also please share with your colleagues
(36:36):
because I know, I bet you havesome friends and colleagues that
probably could do better ontheir time management too. So please
share this episode and pleaseconnect with Lenny on the socials,
go to his website, check,check everything out. And I really
appreciate, appreciate youlistening. This is the Unstoppable
Leadership Spotlight podcastand I'm your host, Jaclyn Strominger.
(36:56):
And thank you, Lenny for beingan amazing guest.
Thank you so much, Jaclyn. Iappreciate you for having me on.
Thank you.
Well, hello everybody andwelcome to another amazing episode
of Unstoppable LeadershipSpotlight podcast. I am your host,
Jaclyn Stromminger And on thispodcast, as you know, we hear from
amazing leaders and getincredible game changing insights
that not only will help you bea better leader, but help you help
(01:20):
generate greater profits foryou and your company. So today we
are welcoming on to the show,Lenny Richardson. Right? Did I get
that right? Yes, LennyRichardson. I'm like, wait a second.
And so little bit ofbackground on Lenny. So after being
kicked out of college twice,we might have to hear about that.
(01:41):
Lenny faced a dark period ofdepression. However, his life took
a dramatic turn when hediscovered the ancient philosophy
of eudomania, a concept thatemphasizes living a fulfilling and
meaningful life. Thisdiscovery ignited a profound transformation
within him. So key thing hereabout leadership, you know, Lenny
(02:01):
went from being broke tothriving. So his transformation led
him to start a new businessfocus on helping people achieve Eudomania.
Through this journey, he hasrealized that the true secret sauce
to overall success was timemanagement. And I truly believe time
(02:24):
management is something we allcould do more of. And some people
actually are now calling itsomething else. But unless we can't
wait to hear from you, Lenny.So welcome to the show. So thank
you for being here. Welcome.
Thank you, Jaclyn. Iappreciate it. Thanks for having
me.
So, Lenny. Yeah, so Lenny, soyou know, I know you got a crazy
(02:44):
back rooted story, but I'dlove for you to just take us a little
bit through that. And how didyou come to time management?
Yeah, so not to be super longwinded, I tend to ramble sometimes.
So if I do, please stop me. Tomake a kind of a long story short,
as you mentioned, when I wasin college, twice I got kicked out.
It had nothing to do withacademics. I wasn't caught with drugs
(03:08):
or anything crazy like that.It was purely financial. Got kicked
out twice and that kind offorced me into the, the adult world,
so to speak. Had a lot ofjobs. The two main ones I had was
working at a gas station and Iwas working as a dishwasher at a
kind of a Irish pub in acollege town. As you can imagine,
that's a lot of dishes towash. But yeah, so as I'm kind of
(03:35):
working these two jobs, I'mstill struggling to make ends meet.
Like literally, I was at onepoint on the verge of being kicked
out of my apartment. Myroommates were really like mad at
me because I was the onlyperson not paying my end of the rent
or at least not paying enoughof it. And the Leasing agent. They're
contacting us, threatening tokick us all out. Very hectic times.
(03:59):
I realized that this kind ofwasn't the path that I expected out
of my life. I went to PennState. I consider myself to be a
smart student, so I figured,if I'm so smart, why am I in this
terrible situation? I didn'thave anyone around me to answer the
questions that I had about howto improve myself. That led me to
(04:20):
kind of reading a lot. Andthrough reading, I kind of stumbled
upon philosophy, because I wasa big philosophy fan. Learned about
this concept calledeudaimonia. And basically with eudaimonia,
it's sort of a framework forthe good life. That's kind of what
Socrates and Aristotleafterwards called it. Basically,
he breaks down the good lifeinto health, wealth and relationships.
(04:42):
And so to make this all veryshort, not go super long winded,
after years of trying to buildup the pillars of eudaimonia, as
I call them, health, wealthand relationships, I've realized
that in order for me to dothat, you need to have a certain
degree of time management.Because without time management,
(05:02):
it's, in my opinion, prettymuch impossible to adequately build
up your health, your finances,and your relationships. It's hard
to build them up, and it'sharder to sustain them without time
management.
Yeah. So. So, okay, so not togo down the rabbit hole, but obviously
you. You went through thisdarker period. And so how, like,
(05:32):
what was that aha moment foryou that you're like, I need to work
on the time management or howI'm spending my time?
Yeah, I don't know if therewas a, I guess one specific aha moment.
I think it was kind of just merealizing that I wasn't in great
(05:53):
shape. I didn't have greatfinances, not even close, especially
at that time. And I didn'thave great relationships. And I think
it was more or less kind ofthe stress of trying to figure out
how to make it all work.Eventually I kind of realized I need
to, like, really focus on howI'm spending my time. I know one
(06:13):
day in particular, this. Well,I won't call this an aha moment,
but it was kind of like, Iguess a moment that kind of made
me realize that managing timewas something I needed to focus a
lot on. A friend of mine, hewas kind of looking for a job, and
me and him had lived together.This is kind of in the summer of
the year. I got kicked out, Ithink, the first time. And so he
(06:37):
was looking for a job. He wasstaying with Me for the summer. And
we kind of figured we wouldjust map out our entire day and hit
as many places as possible tohelp him get a job, because he needed
one as quickly as possible tohelp me pay rent. And after doing
that, both of us felt superproductive. We felt like the entire
day was worthwhile. And upuntil this point, I never really
(06:59):
felt that way. I spent a lotof my time early in college, at least,
just kind of winging the day.Go to the gym, maybe. I'll go if
I feel like it. Study forclass. I'll study if I feel like
it. Go to class if I feel likeit, I'll go to class. So I was pretty
much winging the day. Afterkind of using my planner and figuring
out, kind of mapping out theday, I kind of realized this feels
(07:23):
a lot better. And we actuallygot a lot done. Let me try to do
more of this thing, so. And itwasn't like an overnight thing. This
is like a gradual process ofmonths and years of me slowly realizing
that if my life was going offtrack, it's probably because I'm
not managing my timeeffectively. When it's going great,
it's because I am managing mytime effectively. So not so much
(07:46):
a aha moment, I guess, but aseries of.
A series of. Right, Right.
Yeah.
So when you think about, youknow, so when you talked, I guess,
sort of like about timemanagement, talk to me about, you
know, how do you use it nowversus what you used to do?
(08:15):
Yeah, So I. I've kind of. SoI've learned this over the years
when I first tried toimplement different time management
strategies. The thing that Idid back then that was a massive
mistake is I tried to cram toomuch into one day, at least for me.
This was a mistake for me. Idon't know about other people, but
I. I try to cram too much intoa day. I still keep my old planners,
(08:39):
and I. Now I use kind of likeGoogle Calendar, but in the past
I had paper planners, and Iwould literally try to pack in things
by the minute, like fiveminutes here, do this thing for five
minutes, do this next thingfor five minutes. Do this next thing
for 30 minutes. It'soverwhelming. And I found that it's
not the best strategy forbeing consistent because I think
(09:02):
if you pack, at least for me,if. If I pack too many things into
one day, and I try to do thattoo frequently, it kind of burns
me out, and it just kind ofmakes me unhappy. And then, of course,
if it burns you out, you kindof get this negative association
with it and then you don'twant to do it anymore. So the thing
you need to get done or thethings you need to get done don't
get done. What I've begun todo now more is I just kind of shoot
(09:25):
for doing at least one bigthing. I try to make a list of all
the biggest things that I needto do and kind of the main three.
I focus on those three. Andout of those three, I pick one every
day. Essentially. Some days Itake off and I don't do anything
because I want to relax. Butit's more of a decreasing what I'm
(09:47):
doing every day rather thantrying to increase what I'm doing.
So I would say that's kind ofa major difference between what I
used to do versus what I donow. I think the less is more philosophy
is fantastic when it comes totime management right now.
Are you. Because a lot ofpeople talk about whether it's. You
(10:09):
could call it time blocking,you could call it buckets, you could
call it God. People are usingother words for it.
Like chunking and chunking.
Yeah, like, you know, so isthat something that you also believe
in or.
Yeah, so I'll do that as well.I think mainly what I try to do and
(10:33):
this is what I teach clients.You can have a full calendar, but
make sure that the main thingthat you need to do is your priority.
And the reason why I say thatis because stuff happens. Like stuff
happens. Sometimes calls comeup, sometimes you meet a random friend
and you just converse withthat friend and you know, time flies
(10:55):
by. You meant to rest for anhour. That conversation took four
hours. It's okay, it happens.You get into traffic, just stuff
happens. So I do do thosetechniques, but typically what I
recommend to people and what Ido is make sure you have enough time
to guarantee that you can dothat one thing that matters the most.
(11:18):
Because if you focus on thatone thing, then even if everything
else in the day doesn't goyour way, you've at least still moved
towards your goal. So for mepersonally, what I usually do, and
this is actually a perfectexample, usually in the mornings
I usually wake up at about 6amSo 6am until about 8am I block out
to work out usually from kindof 8 until 11ish. I do work just
(11:42):
like the main work. And todayI screwed myself over because I woke
up late. So I didn't go to thegym today. But it's fine because
that wasn't the main thingthat I needed to get Done. The main
thing was certain work withads. We're doing other stuff. But
that's kind of just the pointI'm making is stuff happens. You
know, you get lazy. Thingscome up. As long as the main thing's
(12:03):
being done, that's the mostimportant thing, Right?
So when you think about whereyou are, like, right now, like, what
is the biggest goal that youhave with, like, with your business?
The main thing now is reallyif I'm just to get more clients.
To get more clients and growthe business, that's kind of the
(12:27):
main thing. We're sort of justtesting out different strategies.
So it's really just been arace to try to test those strategies
as quickly as possible and Iguess implement and kind of build
on those strategies. I'll givean example. Kind of right before
this interview, I was a littlebit frustrated with myself because
(12:49):
yesterday I was trying to planout ads for Facebook. And for whatever
reason, Facebook changed theirad management system. It's hard to
describe, but the way theirlayout is, they changed it. And I
couldn't find my ads. And Irealized this morning they weren't
running, or at least twoweren't running. So that's part of
(13:10):
what I've been doing. And justwhatever it takes to kind of get
more clients. That's been myrecent goal. But.
And so when you think about,like, what you do for your clients,
like, what is the biggest reward?
The biggest reward for me orfor. For them?
Like, for, you know, for youworking with your clients.
(13:31):
Seeing people get ahead wouldbe the main thing. I. I really can't
stress this enough. I get veryfrustrated with when I. When I know
people and I know they can domore. And this is one of the phrases
that kind of sets me off whenpeople say I don't have time for
something, that agitates me tono end because everyone has 24 hours.
(13:55):
So I feel like it's a. I don'tknow. It's almost like when people
say it, it's almost likethey're lying to your face to say
I don't have time. I thinkit's fine to say I don't want to
do something, or I don't wantto make that a priority or it doesn't
matter to me right now. Ithink that's perfectly fine. But
I think when people say, Idon't have time, I'm always kind
of like, is that true?Because, you know, this celebrity
(14:17):
that you like who seems to besuccessful, they have 24 hours. I
have 24 hours. You have 24 hours.
It all depends on what you doat that time, Right?
Exactly.
Spend your time in how you doit. Right. Sometimes I think people
probably say, oh, my God, Idon't have time to do that. But it
might be just an excuse.
Exactly. Yeah. I had a frienda few years ago, actually. He was
(14:40):
trying to get in better shape,and he took on this new job. He was
doing, I think, construction.And he said to me, he said, I want
to get in better shape, but Ijust don't have time to do it. And
I said, lily, I gotfrustrated. I said to him, you don't
have 20 minutes a day to workout. That doesn't have to be your
priority. But if you want towork out, then it can be done. Maybe
the strategies you have aren'tworking for you, or maybe you're
(15:03):
in your mind believing thatworking out requires three hours
a day or two hours a day orthis extreme duration of time. We
can kind of discuss that andfigure out how to make it work for
you. But to say you don't havetime, I think is a bit disingenuous
when I hear people say that.
(15:23):
So what are some of the toolsthat you use to help people do better
time management?
The main tool, honestly, themain tool is a planner. That's the
primary tool. I know there's alot of. There's a lot of tools people
can use and a lot ofstrategies. I know there's apps like,
I think Motion, a lot of AIsoftware I see nowadays, fancy apps,
(15:49):
they're all fine. Pomodoro, Iuse that. That's a fantastic tool.
Really. To me, the main thingis a planner. I think that's. If
you could only stick with onetool, that'd be the tool I recommend.
The main reason is justbecause what I tend to find is that
because time is so abstractand because the day, it's sometimes
(16:09):
difficult to track. Like, anhour can go by and it can feel super
slow, and another hour can goby and feel super fast. It's kind
of hard to, you know, perceiveit in your head. The planner kind
of lets you see exactly whatyou have done in that day or what
you didn't do. And then at theend of the day, you can always review
(16:32):
and say, okay, I spent threehours today scrolling on social media.
That's. That's not reallygood. And I said, I didn't have time.
Like, I spent three hoursscrolling. I keep saying I don't
have time for something, but Ihave physical proof that I did have
time I just didn't use iteffectively. So I would say that's
(16:55):
the primary tool. That's kindof the main thing. I use planner,
I use Pomodoro. That's reallyabout it. My alarm feature. I try
to keep it as simple as possible.
So, you know, I truly believethat time management is one of the
biggest things. And I actuallydon't like the word time management.
I feel like it's, it's, it'slike it's more like life management
(17:18):
and how we, you know, or, or,or goal management in some ways,
you know, like how we actuallygo after our things and what we do.
And I, you know, one of thethings that, that I have found that
has actually worked really,really well is actually using, you
know, for a week or two weeksactually just, you know, doing a
day sheet where you actuallytracking every little moment that
(17:41):
you do. Like so you canactually become aware, right. Of
what you're, where you'respending your time or, you know,
it could even be like, oh myGod, I, you know, like every time
you pick up your phone or youhave to, you have to put it down
on the calendar.
Right.
If you have to mark the time,like 9:05, I picked up my phone.
Right.
You know, Absolutely.
So tell me you feel like, youknow, you know, in your experience,
(18:04):
you know, you know, I'd loveto have you share like a success
story about some, you know, aclient that had started working with
you and how they, you know, itchanged their life.
Yeah, so I had a clientactually. I'll share, I'll share
two, because two just poppedto my head. Yeah, One was from a
(18:24):
few months ago. She was, I dida bootcamp. It was a seven day bootcamp.
She joined the bootcamp andone of her goals was to sort of write
a book and kind of market. Sheteaches English to Portuguese speakers.
Okay.
So she wanted to kind ofmarket her book and she had been
procrastinating for months atthis point. And so one of the things
(18:46):
I teach people is when youhave an idea, execute on the idea
as quickly as possible. Don'tprocrastinate, don't linger on it,
don't overthink it. You canalways course correct, but just start
as quickly as possible. Withinreason, of course. Some things you
can't do right away, somegoals are harder to get started.
(19:07):
But right after the bootcamp,I think actually during the seven
days, she wrote pretty much anentire book. It wasn't a big book,
but she wrote like a smallbook, put it on Amazon and I think
within a week, made money fromit. Now, it wasn't like crazy money.
It was like, I think, 20 or$30, but still.
(19:28):
Right.
It's money that. It's money.And a lot of people, that's their
goal is to have a business orto have some goal where they can
make a side income or have aside hustle. And in days, she did
it by simply. It wasn't reallycomplicated. She just didn't procrastinate.
That's really all it came downto, is she just did not procrastinate.
(19:49):
So that's one example. Secondexample, just because it popped into
my head, and I think it's agood case study. There was another
guy, he was a client of mine,I think. Was it last year or two
years ago? Maybe. I forgetexactly when. And he had a. He was
kind of a freelancer, and hewanted to kind of create a copywriting
business. And so if I recallcorrectly, I think for about six
(20:13):
months prior to being aclient, he had maybe one or two clients,
and that was about it. He kindof went stagnant. And he. I'm trying
to remember. I think he reallyjust had a very long morning routine
that wasn't very effective, inmy opinion. And he kind of asked
(20:34):
me, you know, what's going on?How do I get more clients? What do
you recommend? And I said,first of all, I think your morning
routine is way too long. Hewould spend in the morning practicing
copywriting, learning aboutcopywriting, just doing a bunch of
stuff, going to the gym fortoo long. And I figured I told him
what we're going to do isinstead of having that very long
morning routine, just wake up.If you want to go to the gym, that's
(20:55):
fine. Go to the gym and thenspend the first five or six hours
of the morning, or four,whatever you can muster, just focusing
on getting more clients.Because that was the thing that he
wanted to do the most, isfocus on getting clients. And that
was coincidentally, the thinghe was doing the least of actively
trying to get clients. So Isaid, just focus on getting clients.
If you know a strategy thatyou've used in the past that's been
(21:16):
working, double down on it,and let's see where that gets you.
So I think this is aroundOctober, and he wanted to get, I
think, two more clients byDecember. He used the strategy after
a lot of me kind of being onhim to get it done. I think within
about a month he got four orfive clients. So he exceeded his
(21:39):
goal with time to sparebecause he Just sat there and focused
on getting clients. And foranyone listening who might be a copywriter,
I think what his strategy wasis he would go on upwork and submit.
I think it was case studies ofhis previous work to different agencies.
Yeah, but the case studies, Ithink each took him about an hour
(22:00):
or so. And it was very offputting. It's not very fun for him.
But sometimes the thing that'snot fun is the thing that needs to
be done right. My intentionwas not to rhyme, but I think that's.
Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's verytrue. You know, we actually. You
get what you focus on, right?So the more you can focus on something
(22:23):
if you're, if your goal is X,but you're like, as you said, he
was not focusing on that, itwas the thing that he was doing the
least. How do you expect toget that? It just not gonna, it's
just not gonna automaticallyjust appear in the universe, right?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I, Itend to see a lot of people, what
they do is some people confuseaction for productivity, if that
(22:49):
makes sense. So like, and I'mguilty of this myself, I was actually
from personal experience whenI was, I was, I used to be a real
estate agent. And one of thethings I was very guilty of is I'd
go to the office, scrollonline, maybe post a little bit of
content, but not with any realintent, with no real strategy behind
it, things like that. And inmy mind it felt like work, but it
(23:16):
wasn't good quality work. Soit was essentially kind of a waste
of time to a degree. I guessyou could argue that if I kept doing
it long enough, maybesomething would have come from it.
And something probably wouldhave, but really it was a form of
procrastination. I just didn'twant to do the things that I knew
was a lot harder. For example,I didn't want to door knock or I
didn't want a cold call. Ididn't want to do email marketing.
(23:38):
So I did social media becauseit's easier to kind of just post
content. Post once a day andthen not even once a day. For me.
You know, it's, it's funny, I,I talk to people a lot about this
where, you know, we talkabout, it's like is it busy work
or what is the work? And ifyou can focus on busy versus income
(23:59):
producing activities, incomeproducing activities are, you know,
picking up the phone, youknow, the knocking on doors. Right.
So what are those steps thatyou are doing? You know, you could
even label it in your Calendarand, you know, and your planner as
income producing time.
Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
(24:20):
And what is that? Like, whatis that? Income producing time?
Yeah. What are you, Are youasking me personally what my income
producing time is or are you.
No, I'm just saying ingeneral. But it's true, because everybody's
income producing time. Andit's funny, it's like, you know,
you can sit there, you can gointo your office, you can move some
papers around. Oh, you canorganize, you could whatever. And
(24:42):
then you can say, oh, I wasworking today. Well, what was your
work? You know, what werethose income producing activities?
What were those things thatyou did to actually generate income?
Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Ithink one thing I find people don't
do enough of too, is theydon't really, they don't track adequately
(25:06):
what's working.
Correct.
And I think, I, I don't know,I, I have a lot of stories with real
estate agents because I spenta lot of time with real estate agents.
And then in hindsight, youkind of realize at least this, you
know, if you're a real estateagent listening to this, don't feel
offended, but I've come incontact with a lot of real estate
agents that I would arguearen't super effective with their
(25:27):
time. Plenty are, but there'sa good amount that aren't. So I knew
some real estate agents whomade a good income and it was kind
of interesting where I wouldsee them sort of just maybe answering
random emails that don't seemto really matter. They want to grow
their business, but they'renot really actively trying to grow
their business. Or maybe theygo out for several hours and maybe
(25:51):
they put out postcards, butthey didn't get to that many doors.
And this is something that,what's a good way to put this? I,
I think sometimes people don'treally track what works best or how
to leverage their timeeffectively. I was going somewhere
(26:11):
with that, but I kind of lostmy. No, my train of thought.
But you know, Lenny, Itotally, I really agree with you
on this. I think this isactually, you know, and listeners,
I really want you to take thisbecause I think this is actually
one of the, one of the biggestthings that we all can do. And as
a leader, it's reallyimportant to track and know what
(26:32):
is working, whether it's, it'ssomething that you're doing with
your team. Is it somethingthat you're doing for your business?
We do, I always like to say,mma, we have to measure, monitor
and adjust. Like, what are wedoing to Track, you know, how many
calls are you making? Youknow, is it is the postcard that
you're sending out, how manycalls is that bringing in? I would,
(26:55):
me personally, when I thinkabout real estate agents and I, you
know, you get those cards inthe mail that say, I just sold this
house. No offense, whoop deedoo, right? Like, yay, congratulations
to you, you sold the house.What do you want me to do with that
information? Like, you know,are you like, what is that? It's
(27:20):
almost like, what is thepurpose? How about instead, you know,
you send something out thattalks about real estate that comes
in the mail that's going to belike, oh, you know, that's a really
interesting thing. Like,what's the call to action? So many
times you get those cards,it's informational, but there's no
call to action. You don't, yousent it to me. But how are you capturing
(27:44):
my contact information? Howare you going to, how are you going
to then take that postcardthat you just sent to me and turn
that into, you know, a way togenerate a lead if you don't know
me. If, by the way, and if youdo know me, why don't you pick up
the phone once in a while andsay, hey, how are you doing? Like,
(28:12):
I, I think the real estate, Ilove real estate agents. There's
a lot of people out there thatare absolutely amazing. But it's
amazing to me how many people,and I'm sure you probably know this
too. I do a lot of networking.I actually have a networking company
and there are so many realestate agents, and I can't begin
(28:33):
to tell you how many timesI've given them my card. Now ask
me the next question, which ishow much have they ever followed
up with me?
They're. Real estate agentsare notorious for never following
up donut.
Right? So, I mean, I thinkthat's like, you know, to me, that's
actually the other really bigthing is remember, like, if you are,
(28:54):
you know, as one of, as partof that time management, if you want
to go, like, part of that timemanagement has to be. Yes. Prospecting
new business and connectingwith the other people that you have
met. Right. You know, and, andthat's. It needs to go into that
whole, into that whole bucket.So you use a planner. You're what
(29:17):
has been one of the thingsthat you have done that might be,
you know, that maybe a littlebit different.
A little bit different. Thatis a good question. I know one thing
I try my best. I'll say thisthis is something that may be a little
bit different, but a lot ofpeople get mad at me for this, so
(29:37):
I'm assuming it's different. Ido not keep my phone with me when
I'm working. And if I havetime blocked out where I'm working,
I don't answer my phone, Idon't answer texts, I don't answer
social media pings. And thismakes a lot of people I know very
mad. Within reason, of course.If it's an emergency or if it's something
(29:58):
extreme, then I will answerit, of course, but I've had lots
of time. Actually, a few daysago this happened. A friend of mine
wanted to invite me out andI'm working and I think this is about
6pm or something. And he callsme, I put it on silent or mute, he
calls back and I say, hey, I'mworking, that's it. And he got frustrated
(30:19):
with me. But this happens alot. And I always say to people,
if I'm working, I will notanswer your call. I'm letting you
know I'm not being mean, butto me work time is work time. And
then once the work time'sdone, then it's time to have fun
or you know, do yourconversation, socialize, whatever
you want to do, that's fine.The reason why I do this is because
I found personally, andthere's good data to back this up
(30:42):
as well. Whenever people textor call you, if you answer every
single time, you essentiallycommunicate to people, my time is
not that valuable. At leastthat's the way I perceive it. If
every time someone called ortexted me I answered or engaged in
a conversation, I would neverget anything done. And I'm not saying
(31:03):
I'm popular, I'm just sayingthat between social media, between
the emails that come in,between you know, sometimes family
or friends that just want tocall and say hi, I might get maybe
an hour or two per day toactually really focus if I, if I
engage in all of that. So if Ihave a four hour block set aside
(31:24):
to work, that's work time.That's all it comes down to. So I
would say that's probablydifferent than most people. I don't
hear too many other people dothat. Certainly the people I know
don't do it or else theywouldn't be frustrated with me.
Right. You know, I think it'sactually, I think I, you know, I
think that is such a, again, areally great tip and for something
(31:46):
for people to, to take in oneof the key things that, that I think
is really great about that, isthat you and I would agree with you.
I think it's. I think that ifyou always answer and you always
are available, then peoplewill always think you're always available.
But if people know, like youcould have an automated message that
go after. Under when you're.If you're in a do not disturb mode
(32:08):
that says, I am so sorry thatI can't come to the phone right now.
You know, please shoot me atext or, you know, but I will. I
return phone calls and blah,blah, blah. Right. They come up with
some automated message. Right.That you can send out. I also have.
I actually do have. And I'veused this quite some time doing a
(32:28):
text replacement. You know, soif somebody messaged me, messages
me, instead of havingautomated, you know, I can just say,
you know, like, you know, ctncan't talk now. Right. Three letters
that are together. Can't talknow. As my thing. Sorry, I can't
talk now. I'll respond. Orplease let me know a good time that
(32:49):
you are available to connecttomorrow. Right. So that, you know,
like, my time is valuable and. Right.
Yeah, absolutely. I think ifmore people did that, their productivity
and just the amount of thingsthey get done in a single day I think
would dramatically improve.Yeah. There's one thing too, just
(33:13):
really fast for anyonelistening. There's something called
attention residue as well.This is also why I don't like, typically
when I'm working, besides notanswering my phone, I also put it
face down and I put it on.Usually on silent mode if I recall,
if I think to do it. Part ofthat too is if people text you and
you see it, you're still kindof thinking about it even when you're
(33:36):
working, so your focus is kindof split up. Or if you go on social
media, even for a few minutes,and you scroll and you laugh at something
and get back to work. You workfor 20 minutes, social media notification
pops up, you go back, you'rebouncing back and forth, and you're
constantly leaving some ofyour attention on whatever it is
you just recently watched orviewed or replied to. So you kind
(33:59):
of get that attention residue.And it's. Of course, if you do that
too many times, it's difficultto get good quality work done.
Right. You know, I thinkthat's a. It's a really great reminder
because I know thatstatistically, if you keep moving
your eyes away from something,you're just not focused on it. So
you have to be able to. It'slike, it's like Know, squirrel. Right.
(34:19):
Ooh, shiny object syndrome.Right. So we have that. So that's,
it's very true. So you know,Lenny, so tell us. Like, you know,
I, I love what you're sharing.I love the idea of, of helping people
with this. How can peopleconnect with you, learn more about
what you were doing and getmore of your wisdom?
Yeah. If anyone's interestedin the business at all, they can
(34:44):
findthat@productivityaccelerator.org if
they go there too. I also havekind of free courses on there that
they can take. The most recentone, there's a seven day course that
we just created. It kind ofwalks through a kind of a system
to be more productive in aweek. If anyone wants to connect
(35:04):
with me personally just tokind of talk about whatever or chat
online through my website,it's a good way. You can send me
an email. My personalwebsite's lennyrichardson Online
and Instagram. I'm onInstagram a lot when I'm not working.
My Instagram is leviticusrich. So that'd be the probably the
(35:29):
second best way besides emailfor anyone that wants to chat with
me personally.
Okay, so but we go to yourwebsite. You can go to productivity
accelerator or your personalwebsite. LennonRichardson online
dot com.
Yes, LennonRichardson dotonline for the first dot.
Online. Okay.
And thenProductivityAccelerator.org for the
(35:50):
business website.
Got it. Okay, well, we willhave all of those in the show notes.
Lenny, I just think what youwere doing is really fantastic because
time, again, as you have said,we have 24 hours in a day and we
need to be able to be moreefficient, effective and efficient
with our time and be able tofocus on the right things, not just
(36:13):
everything.
Yes, absolutely. Especiallynowadays with all the distractions
in the world.
Right, right. So listeners, Ihope you've enjoyed and gotten some
great nuggets. I know I haveand it's like little. Some really,
really great reminders. So ifyou have enjoyed this, please do
me a favor and hit subscribe.And also please share with your colleagues
(36:36):
because I know, I bet you havesome friends and colleagues that
probably could do better ontheir time management too. So please
share this episode and pleaseconnect with Lenny on the socials,
go to his website, check,check everything out. And I really
appreciate, appreciate youlistening. This is the Unstoppable
Leadership Spotlight podcastand I'm your host, Jaclyn Strominger.
(36:56):
And thank you, Lenny for beingan amazing guest.
Thank you so much, Jaclyn. Iappreciate you for having me on.
Thank you.
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