Author And Thought Leader Paul Casey On How To Create Success Through Growing Forward (#154)

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Deep Wealth podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth.

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.

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When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life.

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 Originally from Chicago. Paul Casey has been a professional speaker for over 25 years giving almost 300 presentations in the past four years alone. And he is one of the leading authorities in leadership and personal growth, especially time management, helping people take back their calendars and restore sanity to their lives.

Paul has spoken for organizations like McDonald's, Subway, Lamb Weston, Northwest Public Power and Autozone. And among the 80 leaders, he coaches per year 25 of them lead at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories.

Paul has a Master's degree in education and has been an Educator, Administrator, and Chief Operating Officer in five non-profit organizations. He has coached leaders for over 3,300 hours and is an ACC certified coach with the International Coaching Federation, as well as a Master Trainer and a member of the National Speakers Association.

Paul was honored as an entrepreneur of the year in the Tri-Cities in 2021. Through his company Growing Forward Services, Paul has partnered with his corporate and individual clients to transform their vision, their habits, and their lives. Currently, Paul carries out his mission of speaking breakthrough success by contributing daily inspirational growth messages on local radio, other people's podcasts, and social media.

Paul has inspired thousands of individuals and leaders to grow forward through his seminars, team building offsite retreats, one-to-one self-leadership coaching. And as a keynote speaker. Paul has written five books. The Static, Cling Principle, Maximizing Every Minute, Leading the Team You've Always Wanted, Leading with Supervision, and his newest book Leading Through the Dark Waters of Conflict. He interviews local leaders in his podcast, the Tri-Cities Influencer, and national leaders on his podcast Grow Forward Today.

Paul is married to a lovely Laura. Has two young adult children named after state capitals, owns a new puppy named Gizmo, and has lived in the Tri-Cities Washington area for over 20 years. For fun. He enjoys golfing and hiking and orange slices and he reads about 40 to 50 books per year.

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Sell My Business Podcast. And as always, I have a terrific episode lined up for you for all your business owners out there.

I have a question for you. What is your most precious commodity? Or what is your currency? And I'm going to give you a hand. It's not money. And you're thinking, okay Jeffrey, what could that be? Let me help you one more time. Your most precious resource is your time. We can always go out and make money.

We can go make a lot of money if that's what we want to do, but nobody on this planet, at least up to the airing of this episode has been figuring out how you can make more time. And today's guest is going to talk exactly about that for time management, to leadership, to everything else in between, we're going to cover off the things that you probably should know, but you don't. And this is where we're going to make a difference as you have your march towards creating a market disruption and a thriving and profitable business. Paul, I'm getting way ahead of myself. Let me pull it back here for just a moment and welcome to the Deep Wealth Sell My Business Podcast.

And Paul, there's always a story behind the story. What's your story? What got you to where you are today?

[00:05:10] Paul Casey: It's an honor to be on your show. Yeah, so I grew up in Chicago and I am now in the state of Washington. So I went via going to college in Florida becoming an elementary education teacher and then beginning my career as a teacher in Southern California.

So Chicago to Florida Southern California to here after a couple of years of being a fifth-grade teacher, which I really loved and thought I would do that for the rest of my life, my boss, the principal of the school saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. And that was leadership. He asked if I would be as vice principal, after two years. I was very young and I said if you think I can do it I'll stretch to that. So I taught physical education for half the day and was the vice principal for half the day and started learning about leadership now instead of 24 students. I had 520 students that I could influence, plus a whole fleet of teachers moved up here to the state of Washington. And then after a year was asked if I'd be the elementary principal of the school. It was a Christian private school. And I said, again, I'm only 26 years old. If you think I can do it, I'll do it. And they said, we'll send you to get your master's degree in educational administration and we'll pay for it.

I said I'm in. So I went ahead and took that position and again, took some lumps and leadership. Thinking everybody wanted to do it my way. But it was all these different personality styles, and a lot of people didn't have the same enthusiasm I had at 26. And so that was a big shift for me.

After several years, I took a different school. And then I was called by a church that I used to attend and they asked me if I would be like a family pastor for them and help parents with their parenting skills. And then eventually marriages with premarital and helping marriages succeed. I thought, okay, all the stress of my principal days rolled off of me cause that's a very difficult job.

And I did that for several years. Along the way, I heard about what coaching was and I thought, Ooh, it sounds a little woo life coaching. Didn't understand what that was. Met with a guy in a coffee shop and he said, this is what it is. And I went, wow! That is what I love to do. Help people get to their goals and vision for their life and hung out a shingle to do that.

I didn't know how to market it. All clients dried up, but I thought this is great. People are paying me money to actually help them succeed. I had already been speaking a teacher conventions, so I thought if I could start a business that was coaching speaking, and I had team building in there, could I actually do it?

I resigned from my job, started the entrepreneur journey in 2015. And haven't looked back since. I love what I do living my purpose each and every day.

[00:07:54] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. It sounds like you've done almost everything and the kitchen sink you've thrown in there for good measure, which is amazing. So Paul, let me ask you this.

You've been in different organizations and in different roles and from for-profit to education, perhaps not-for-profit all that rolled into one. I just have to wonder, are you seeing some common themes regardless of what people are doing or industry that they're in where we're making the best use of our time and where we're just squandering our time?

[00:08:24] Paul Casey: Yeah, Jeffrey, there is an state of overwhelm that is a common theme for all the people that I get to coach. People feeling that they can't get it all done, feeling guilty about forsaking their family or their self-care in their business ownership or in their leadership. Their to-do list just keeps growing and they don't feel like it's ever getting things crossed off so like a towel, just keeps getting wetter as it gets dryer.

So I sort of liken it to that. And that state of overwhelm is really taking away people's peace of mind and their joy in their leadership position or whatever position they have. So that's the common theme that I am seeing is that inability to get the priorities done that they really want to get done.

[00:09:10] Jeffrey Feldberg: And we've all heard this before and it's okay. Yeah. You know, We're all not doing this and we should be doing that. But in your experience, what would be some actionable takeaways coming out of this episode? That if we just did one or two, maybe three things that would just be a game changer for us, what would you suggest?

[00:09:30] Paul Casey: Now you're talking my language, I came up with a 12 commitments. I'm an effective time manager and it's really a culmination of how I've been studying this topic for 20 to 25 years, starting when I was a teacher because you have to be an exquisite time manager as a teacher, and then now applying it to the business world through the non-profit channel to get there. So yeah, I would say, first of all, don't skip the first step, which is manage your time around your values and your vision. You've got to reacquainted with your core values. And I don't mean literally put them into your calendar, like loyalty into your calendar. What I mean is, there are certain things that are very important to you and they often get bumped out first from the calendar. It's the old Stephen Covey is, right? Where you put the big rocks into your calendar first, and then you schedule around those. So core value is very important to get into your calendar and then your vision.

I would recommend listeners to have a one-year vision. You don't have to go way out. You can. I think it's fun to do a 5 or 10-year vision for your life and your business, but the one-year vision at least says, okay, one year from now, where do I want to be in my relationships, my business at my wellness. And it could be your finances, your fun, whatever that is.

That's going to give you a target to shoot at. Then we can reverse engineer in some goals. And then of course the key is to then put them into your calendar. And that's where these little tips and tricks really, really work. So a few habits you asked I'll dive into a couple of 'em here Jeffrey, one is at the end of your day, schedule a daily review call it the daily preview review. The last 30 minutes of whatever day your workday looks like. Some people call it the 4:30 preview. If their day ends at 5. During that time, you look back at your day and you celebrate your wins. What did you get crossed off your list and then culminate all those sticky notes?

And All those other things that you've accumulated throughout the day, get them onto a one list. Whether that's electronic or you can go old school with one list, then think about tomorrow and say, what are the three things that I must get done tomorrow? I will feel disappointed if I don't get these three things done tomorrow, then you shut off the light and you go into your, the life part of your work-life balance. And what it does is it allows you to like release work. And then tomorrow when you come into work, you're like, I already know my big three are, I'm going to go after it. So that would be the first tip I would give. A second one would be to frontload those tasks into the morning. I think afternoons are runaway trains. I can't remember where I got that quote from, but I agreed for it. That's when somebody walks into your office at two o'clock and says, I need this by the end of business. And you're like, oh no, I've dragged all my priorities into the afternoon.

And now I've run out of time blocks and I have to procrastinate yet again, my priorities. So eat that frog, you know, get that thing done at the beginning of the day. And it sets off a productivity snowball for the rest of the day. I'll give you one more and that is the change, my productivity life. And that was blocking your time. Setting appointments with yourself.

For each of those priorities and then obeying your calendar. We would never blow off an appointment with a potential client or a one-to-one with our teammates, but why do we do this to ourselves? Jeffrey? Why do we just go like, nah, I'm not going to do that priority. We've got to respect ourselves enough that we honor that time.

And when nine o'clock comes and we have to start the performance review, we actually do it at that time as if it was an appointment with someone else.

[00:13:10] Jeffrey Feldberg: It's sounds so simple, but it's so easy for us to confuse simple with simplicity and it really isn't. And so I imagine that there's some listeners that are saying, okay, yeah, Paul, you know what?

I hear you on that. And I've even tried that before in the past. But I get to the office or my home office, whatever the case may be. And I have the best of intentions, Paul, the best of intentions, but the phone starts ringing or something urgent comes up or someone texts me, and it's drop everything now and deal with it.

So for a business owner, who's in that kind of predicament. What do you suggest of how can we actually implement these strategies? Because they work when you do them, but it's a question of how do you actually get to do them.

[00:13:54] Paul Casey: That's a great question. Because as soon as you come up with a plan, resistance comes calling, it just always does. It's like as soon as I declare a goal into the world, yeah. I lean into it, but also resistance starts pushing back. So I totally agree. With that, that all these systems require a lot of self-discipline. One guy raised his hand and one of my seminars said Paul, this is all fine and good, but this is all about self-discipline it's there.

And I laughed and I said, yep, you are a hundred percent correct. These are tools that you can use, but you've got to implement those tools. So yeah, Jeffery, you definitely need to have boundaries but also be able to be agile. What I mean about that is if there is an employee that needs to talk on my team, that I'm going to definitely prioritize that over that one thing that I might want to get done right now because people are more important than tasks. So now if I, of course, let everyday squirrel away by being reactive, by putting out fires all day long. Now I've got a systems problem. I can actually go upstream from that and try to get ahead of it by putting some boundaries in and it could be as simple as closing my door.

It could be getting away from the office to a library or coffee shop to get those top priorities done. So people can't find me. So there are little ways to try to get ahead of that to have those boundaries, to make these systems work.

[00:15:17] Jeffrey Feldberg: It's amazing, just a little bit of preparation that you put into something like that can really make all the difference.

Okay, let me throw another zinger at you. And it's just a business owner saying, Paul, yeah, you know what? I hear you. And hey, I've tried to not only manage my time. I've tried to plan my day and I do the heavy lifting in the morning and just leave the afternoon, open for phone calls and meetings. But hey, I am in a startup business or my business is going through a lot of growth and I know we're understaffed and working on that, but it's not here just yet.

So in that kind of situation, Paul, where it's just pandemonium everywhere, practically speaking, what are some techniques or strategies that we can do? Because when we don't do these things and we know we're off the rails, we just know it. I feel it creates even more stress. And now we're like, oh geez. I didn't do the planning and now I'm behind on this. And it's just adding to the stress level of already a crazy stressful day. How do we deal with that?

[00:16:12] Paul Casey: Yeah. A couple of things. First of all, there's the old Stephen Covey of the four quadrants. You've probably seen it. Probably a lot of listeners would nod their heads, smile oh, I remember that from the late eighties or the early nineties where we have the urgent and important quadrant.

And that's the fires that are burning that we just have to deal with today, but not everything is in that quadrant. If so, we've probably have some issues that we need to get ahead of. Then there's the urgent to somebody else, but not as important to me this could be emails. Cause usually email is somebody else's agenda or their to-do list.

And so we've got to put some boundaries around that one. Then there's the quadrant four, which is the not urgent, not important. We're pretty good at those, but there you'd be surprised how many of us squirrel away with those escape activities like going down the rabbit hole of Netflix or internet surfing for too long.

But it's the quadrant two ones. Those are the not urgent but important tasks. We've got to put those literally into our calendar, or we're not going to do them because no one is going to come to our door in a start-up situation and go, Paul, are you professionally developing today? Paul, have you done your budget for the year?

Have you, you know, all those things and you're like, Nope, nobody's yelling at me to do that. So again, I'm going to procrastinate them. So that's one tools, put it in the right bucket and prioritize those quadrant two activities. The other one is very simple and you wouldn't do this every day, but you'd list all your tasks on your to-do list, whether it's a legal pad or electronically, put three columns next to it.

One is urgent one's important. And once total, so give it the first to do item a score from one to 10 on how urgent how soon does it need to be. 10 is like today, gotta get this done, 1 is eh, whenever I don't want it to fall off my radar screen though. Then a scale of 1 to 10 on home port.

It is to your success. You really, you have to, and you've gotta be discriminant with this of how important is to your success. Then you're going to multiply those two scores together to get a total. You're going to go through your, to-do item, just do this one time, and then you're going to see that all tasks aren't equal in their priority for you.

You re-rank them by priority and those become your big three for the next day. I don't have too many clients that would do this every day. That would take a lot of work. But if you just start doing that, you'll get in the practice of re ranking what is most important. So you know what to hit each day.

[00:18:33] Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that. You know, for our listeners here, I hope you're paying really close attention because there's some terrific and practical takeaways here. A quick thought experiment here.

So we've done it, the night before we've written out the top three things that we're going to do tomorrow, we're doing the heavy lifting in the morning so that we can have the afternoon free to deal with everything else that happens.

But we have maybe a certain someone in the office who is just constantly interrupting. First, it'll be an email when you're not replying to the email. They'll send a text when you're not responding to the texts.

Maybe they'll give you a call and you're not picking up the phone. They're actually knocking on the office store and it's for the most mundane types of things, you're in this deep thought that could create the market disruption for the next gazillion-dollar offering for your company. And then you get interrupted by that person.

And it's constant and we'll make this thought experiment even a little more difficult. Maybe it's your boss or someone that you're reporting into so, and those kinds of things you're heading in with the best of intentions, you're actually doing all the right things, but it seems as old as person is conspiring against you, this constant interrupter, what we'll call it, Ian, the interrupter.

Ian the interrupter is doing this. How do we protect ourselves from Ian, the interrupter in your world with your strategies?

[00:19:50] Paul Casey: I'll give you several things there. First of all, if you have an administrative assistant, I would definitely make this person your best friend, because they're going to be someone that could sort help protect that after your boss.

That might take a different strategy that we'll talk about in a moment. But I would say that person will protect your deep work time, the time where you get those priorities done, I've gone with the sign on the door. So the door as a company, I would say you could have some door rules.

The door completely open means you could stroll in and say, got a minute, which is never a minute, but I think it's better to say is this a good time? And so I would rather use that phrase than got a minute. You can have the door ajar, which means knock first and then come in, but obviously, there's some work getting done in there.

And then a door closed is a signal to everyone. It's a nonverbal signal that I am in deep work mode. Now you wouldn't want to keep your door closed all the time, because that would make you inaccessible or unapproachable. I've literally have the sign on my door. It's a stop sign. When I'm in deep work mode, that will say, I am working on this.

I actually am very transparent and say, I'm working on this month's budget or approving payroll. People walk away. If they know you're approving payroll, by the way, they don't want to, they don't want to interrupt that. And then I'll say I'll be available at this time and have one of those little clocks we'll be back by, and I'll say, when I'm available on that clock, then people go, oh, He's not available, but oh, he's available in 25 minutes.

Okay. I'll just come back from that. And sometimes they don't, or they'll shoot the email or the text instead. So that's a practical solution, but let's say Ian, the interrupter gets through somehow and they just are not self-aware and they continue to just talk your ear off a couple of exit strategies.

I'll call them. One of them is walk with me. Walk with me is one that I'll use with that nut lack of self-aware person. And I'll say, I'm just heading to the, and I'm not going to lie. Of course, I'm going to say to the restroom, to the front, I'm heading to lunch, I'm heading to something that I truly am heading to.

And I'll say, walk with me. And then you peel off at the end. And the conversation ends. I've only had one person Jeffrey ever follow me into the restroom. So people will respect that boundary. But walk with me is a good one. Another good one exit strategy is when they say got a minute, you can look at the clock and go, you know what?

I have four minutes or some odd times, seven minutes, three minutes that now most self-aware people will go, oh, he's on a schedule. And so they'll try to keep it short by making it by picking that odd time. So you know, the whole concept here, all the other one is if they sit down in your easy chair in front of your desk, you stay standing.

It gives a very clear signal that this is a short standup meeting that we're going to have. So some people might think maybe one of those might be inappropriate or rude. So I'm going to say what works for you but you don't want people stealing time from you? Here's a quick illustration Jeffrey it's like if you had a stack of $20 bills on your desk, in your office, and someone came walking in and took a 20 off the top, you'd be like, whoa, hey, give me my 20 back.

 Those are my twenties, but people walk in or offices and we allow them to take 20 minutes of our time all the time. And we don't say whoa. We just let them take another 20. And then that puts us way behind.

[00:23:08] Jeffrey Feldberg: So Paul I love that analogy. Let's go back to that. And then I want to ask you a question just in terms of mindset, but that analogy that you just gave is incredible because if you think about it, firstly, our time is worth more than $20 as an example.

So for all our listeners out there. Ask yourself the question and be honest with yourself, what am I really worth? What am I generating?

So when someone comes in and they still literally, 5 minutes or 10 minutes, multiply that by what your permanent worth is. And yeah, that's a whole different way of thinking about that. But Paul here's a question that perhaps you can help. And as leaders, we do this naturally with other people when we're overseeing them or they're reporting into us or able to share our thoughts, we're able to exert ourselves in a professional way that has them grow and learn and us grow and learn.

But oftentimes when it comes to our personal space, As leaders, we tend to your point to not protect it. So somebody comes in, hey, do you have a minute? And it's never a minute and 20 minutes have gone by and it doesn't happen once. It doesn't happen twice. It's happening many times, but we almost feel embarrassed to stand up for ourselves and say, actually, you know what, I really don't have a minute.

Can we pick this up a little bit later? I'll get back to you or, hey, why don't you email me what's going on and I'll get back to when I can. So if that sounds like one of our listeners out there, and you're saying, yeah, hey Jeffrey, that's me, Paul, speak to that listener of how do we change our mindset to begin advocating for the most important person in the room and that's us because my thesis is.

If we're in a good mindset, if we're taking care of ourselves first, we're now in the position where we can take a care of really everyone in our life and everyone in the community and our stakeholders and beyond. So this is a really a crucial concept. So what would you tell us Paul on that side of things?

[00:25:01] Paul Casey: So good. And if you haven't taken the little quiz, the four tendencies by Gretchen Rubin, it's a book and a free assessment. The Four Tendencies, you can find out pretty quickly if you're the rebel, you're the questioner, or you're the obliger or the upholder. And I think the person you're describing, which we can resemble those remarks is the obliger blows off themself and their own standards, but they always meet everybody else's expectations. This quiz is all about expectations. I don't get a cut on this by the way, but it was just, it's very fascinating to see if you are an obliger, which means you're a pleaser and you just want to put everyone else first, which is great.

Servant leadership up to a point until you're in the ditch and burnt out. And I think you were alluding to that in your question. And I like to share with my team that if I'm in burnout, I can't help any of you and I want to, so I have to also maintain those boundaries. So one real practical way is to make sure that you give your key people.

One to ones. Those one to ones are going to assure that every week you have a clear, focused uninterrupted time with each person, making them feel valued, giving them vision. Removing barriers and they can always cherish that time they have because you're going to prioritize that walk around. Is there another good one where you go onto their turf?

And now that we're start on the backside of COVID coming back to the workplace, or even if we schedule a zoom meeting or a teams meeting with people that are virtual, we are trying to get into their world and see if we can help. But then I also share with them so that when my door's closed, though, I'm working on a project, that's going to help somebody on our team right now.

So it's really thinking about I'm still being a servant leader when I closed my door because the project I'm working on is going to help my team. That may be the mindset shift that is needed.

[00:26:56] Jeffrey Feldberg: Paul, what it sounds like is in advance to put some preparation time in and at Deep Wealth, we're all about preparation with our nine-step roadmap of preparation. But one of the things of the preparation is to really think about systems that can deflect and protect your time but in a friendly and productive way.

 So whether it's the walking around or the structured one-on-one meetings, any other tips up your sleeve that you can share with us of what we can incorporate into our I'll call it our time protection zone?

[00:27:28] Paul Casey: You could take your team on a retreat or just at the next staff meeting, you could say, let's talk about everyone's favorite communication channels because you've got email, you've got direct messages, you've got the phone, you've got texting, you've got all the different ways in person.

And if we were to just quickly survey our group and say, what are people's favorite method of communication? And as a boss or a leader, you would definitely say yours because there's a good chance. Your team doesn't know what your favorite forms of communication are and which ones for what purpose?

For instance, if it's urgent, you're going to send me a text or a direct message. Otherwise, you're not going to text me cause I'm not going to get back to it those texts, email, maybe for certain purposes. And if it's brainstorming or crucial, decision-making that we're going to need to have an in-person meeting for that.

That's going to help get ahead of some of these interruptions because your team's going to know down deep if this is really interruptible or if this isn't interruptible and then of course, you're going to respect your team by communicating with them as much as possible in their favorite channel. So that's one, accountability is another one,

Jeffrey where you declare out loud as a team, maybe a standup meeting in the morning. What your big three priorities are by just saying that out loud, everybody goes, oh, they've got purpose and intentionality today. So I want to help them make sure that they get their job done and here's my big three and ready break. And then we can help each other, get our tasks done, but it's modeling intentionality for the rest of the day.

[00:29:01] Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And we need the time. It's just, we don't know what we don't know. And obviously, it's a blind spot for us. And so now that where unveiling the curtain and when we now have the opportunity to really make a difference. And Paul, I know you've recently launched a podcast and you're really getting out there and the number of episodes, congratulations with that.

That's always easier said than done, share with our listeners a little bit about the podcast. So what are you doing and focusing on?

[00:29:26] Paul Casey: Certainly. So my podcast is called Grow Forward Today. My business is growing forward, so I kept the branding there grow forward today. It's on personal leadership development.

So I'm bringing on guests that are going to talk about one area of leading yourself. Because if we don't lead ourselves we can't lead our teams. So soft leadership always precedes team or organizational leadership. So we have a great discussion and it's usually on that theme also highlighting that guest if their services could be used by the listeners. That's awesome.

[00:30:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: For our listeners, all of this will be in the show notes it's going to be a point and click, and off you go with that. And so Paul, if we take a 50,000-foot-in-the-air overview now of this, and we've been in the trenches here, we've been in the weeds, you've given us some absolutely terrific strategies and advice of what we should be doing.

Pareto's law that's been around since the ages and Pareto's law and some people call it the 80 20. And It says that 20% of your actions or activities are generating 80% of your results. As an example, in the business context, if you took a look at your revenue and it's not going to be exactly 20%, but I would suspect for most businesses, 20% of the customers are probably generating 80% of the revenue.

And 20% of the customers are probably generating 80% of the profits. So now let's put this into your world when it comes to time management, as an example, if there were a few key attributes or strategies that if we did nothing else, but these one or two things that these, you know, 20% of our actions are going to help us generate 80% of the results in terms of.

Carving out that time, having that thinking time and just being able to really get the deep work done. What would that be for you given that you're doing this day in day out, you're working with leaders and you're coaching and with businesses, you're really seeing it all? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

[00:31:24] Paul Casey: I love the Pareto principle. And it is true that if you really took the time to think about what are those 20% things that give you the greatest payoff that is critical to put, like I mentioned back in the very first point of, you've got to get those into your schedule first. So for me, it is wellness and self-care has to be first.

And I know it doesn't sound jazzy or sexy, right? So to running a multimillion-dollar business, but again, we've got to have the foundation strong and if we let ourselves go it's gonna, we're gonna lose the energy and not be able to keep up with the pace, for running a successful business. We're going to lose our joy.

We're always going to be teetering on the edge of burnout. So I would literally put in that twin, the first 20% is self-care. The second area I would put is relationship building again. No, one's yelling at you to do it. Like you've got to develop relationships that HFRA, no one does that.

If you don't you're going to be alone in leadership and obviously not going to have a broad network from which to draw from, but if you do develop relationships and you prioritize that in your 20%, you're going to have people to go to when you need them. It could be a mastermind group that I know, you're a supporter of as well. It could be dormant clients that you're going to poke once in a while to see because oftentimes they're the greatest source of a new contact. It could be friends that you just have to vent a little bit on or commiserate with because they're going to be an outlet. So you don't dump on your family when you get home.

And then of course your family is huge. They have to be your biggest supporters. And if you forsake them, it's not watering a plant, it wilts after a while. So I started with very personal things, self-care and family because they need to be in your 20%.

[00:33:10] Jeffrey Feldberg: And you know, I love that you brought up the family aspect of it because all too often, we tend to perhaps overlook it or we'll even take it for granted.

And I'm a big believer that if it's not working on the personal side, it's going to spill over onto the business side and vice versa. And we've been talking about all of these things in the workplace, but perhaps one of the most important things and particularly coming out of the pandemic where a lot of people were working from home and you didn't have that home office separation, or maybe for some people now, With remote work, working from home is just the way that it's going to be for the foreseeable future.

And when I'm speaking with business owners and leaders and just frontline people, one of the insights or challenges that I'm hearing from them is, you know what, Jeffrey, it's just hard for me to turn it off. And I don't know how to shut it off when the day should be done. But it's now family time. And when I'm with the family, I'm thinking about business and when I'm in the business, I'm thinking about family, I got it all backwards and just the stress and the pressure that is putting on me and the fear of missing out and everything else that, that goes along with that, any tips for us, Paul of mentally, and from a mindset perspective, how do we shut it down so that we can glide into the family time and into the evening and have those, I call the magic moments, those quality moments with our loved ones.

[00:34:33] Paul Casey: I've heard practical tip and you're learning for me that I'm a very practical guy when it comes to this topic. But I think rituals are very important to make the shift from one area of your life to another. You're right during the pandemic, when we were all stuck at home in a lockdown it all blurred together every day was blurs day, they said. And unless you had a crafted out workspace with the door that you could close and separate your work life from your family life. Things got all blurred together and we actually suffered more burnout as a result of that.

So rituals such as if you're driving home, you don't have to have certain music that you listened to, or if you're a person of faith you say prayers during that time. When you get home, you change out of the work clothes and into grubby clothes, more and more comfortable ones as if you're leaving the workday behind.

Maybe you connect with your family immediately after you changed your clothes to show that I am now in family mode or I'm in my personal wellness mode. During that time we need these rituals to shift back and forth. Then of course the flip side is also true. When you go into work, do you water your plants? Do you change the calendar dates to you turn on your favorite tunes?

What do you do to situate yourself and mentally prepare now for the workday? And then a mindset. I would, you mentioned the word mindset. I think gratitude is very crucial that when we leave one area of our life, we're grateful for the things that we got done and the things that we our wins in our day at work so that we can leave those behind and now try to get some wins at home.

And then as your head hits the pillow at night, what is the gratefulness for the family time that you had, or your hobby time? So you can just go that was also fulfilling for me. And so I feel a little, I'll say balanced, but we're never really balanced, but so it's more integrated for the rest of our life.

[00:36:23] Jeffrey Feldberg: Some terrific tips there. And again, it all sounds so simple on the surface. And as I like to say, don't confuse simple with simplicity, but really Paul, what that's coming down to, as I heard you share that with us, it's really all about rituals and I know rituals can play such an important part of anyone's life and the power of a ritual.

Once you get it going. You never have to think about it again in the sense that it just comes natural. So as an example, for most of us, we wake up in the morning and it's just natural. We brush our teeth right away that's just our ritual. Don't even have to think about it. It's not a to-do list that we have to go to.

We don't have to write that down. And so if, what I'm hearing you say in terms of shutting down or unwinding create a ritual that signifies to you both in your environment, maybe the clothes that you're wearing or what you're doing or what you're saying, that signals to yourself hey, okay. It's now shutdown time, it's now family time and I'm going to be going into that. So thank you for sharing that. And Paul, we're beginning to bump up against time here, and we're going to start to wrap up this episode. And we're at the point where I get to ask one of my favorite questions and it's a thought experiment. So I'd like you to think about the movie Back to the Future and in the movie Back to the Future, you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time.

So now imagine it's tomorrow morning and Paul, that DeLorean car it's right outside your window. The door is open it's waiting for you to hop on in and you can now go to any point in your life. Paul as a young child or a teenager, whatever point it would be. What are you telling your younger self in terms of life, wisdom or lessons learned or, hey, Paul do this, but don't do that?

What does that sound like?

[00:38:07] Paul Casey: The great question. And I was very filtered growing up and a very, very shy almost to the point of awkward, awkward, shy. I would tell myself to speak up. I would tell myself to get involved in the conversation to push back respectfully. So to learn some of those skills or those assertiveness skills that would have started my growth journey earlier. And then I would have been able to help even more people earlier if I would have done that and not just hang back and be a spectator, but being more of a participant.

[00:38:40] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. I love that. And again, you're right. It's just such practical advice, lessons well learned and some insights for all of us to take away.

And Paul, I'm going to put all this in the show notes if somebody would like to find you online, Paul, what would be the best place?

[00:38:56] Paul Casey: My website is growingforwardservices.net. Is all things Paul Casey and my services, you can link to the podcast from there or any of the five books that I have written from there. And then also I'd love to offer your listeners a free time management gift. If I could share that.

[00:39:14] Jeffrey Feldberg: Oh, would love that's very generous.

Yes, please.

[00:39:17] Paul Casey: Yes. If you want to re-up your time management game, some of the things we talked about and maybe some even others go to takebackmycalendar.com I'll send you My Control, My Calendar Checklist. You can also text the word growing to 72000 open a text to 7 2 0 0 0 right now, type the word growing. And if you accept that you'll get my Control My Calendar Checklist.

[00:39:40] Jeffrey Feldberg: For listeners out there. What an offer. Please take Paul up on that. My goodness, I can't complain about the wisdom you're going to get and the price is right. It doesn't get any better.

Well, Paul, thank you so much for being on the Deep Wealth Sell My Business Podcast and for taking part of your day and spending it with us. And as we wrap up this episode as always, please stay healthy and safe.

[00:40:00] Paul Casey: My pleasure. Keep growing forward.

[00:40:02] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.

[00:40:05] Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions.

[00:40:15] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity

[00:40:20] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

[00:40:26] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix.

[00:40:42] Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately.

[00:41:04] Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended.

[00:41:15] Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

[00:41:28] Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even.

[00:41:46] Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

[00:42:13] Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever.

[00:42:32] Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

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