Speaker 1: 0:00

Have you ever thought to yourself is it really possible to win in business and succeed in life? How do I get that double win? We talk a lot about work-life balance on this show, because it matters a ton to me. It is about building a business that lasts without sacrificing family, but how to actually get there can be really hard, and finding people who've actually done it can be even harder. On this episode, we interview one of my personal aspirational identities.

Speaker 1: 0:30

If I could pick the guy that I want to be 20 plus years from now, it is this guy on this episode, michael Hyatt. He has five grown children. He's been married to his wife, gail, for 47 years. As of the time of this recording, he has 11 grand children. All of them live close to home, and one of his daughters runs his company. I don't know about you, but for me that's a dream, and so I can't wait to share the insights, knowledge and experience that Michael has, not just in talking the talk, but walking the walk. Without any further ado, here's my interview with Michael Hyatt. Hey, michael, welcome to the show. Thanks, jay, good to be on with you. So I tell people all the time, but we've never actually talked until right now, other than a few Facebook messages. But if I had to list the top five people who have had the most impact on my 26 years in business or my 22 years in marriage, you are certainly on that top five list, so it's a real honor to have you on the program for everybody else.

Speaker 2: 1:23

Thank you for that, and you need to get out more.

Speaker 1: 1:29

So I was just reading back through a lot of your stuff. I got a big stack of your books here that have been influential to me. I'll put a link to a lot of those in the show notes. People haven't read them. They need to get out and get basically all of them. They've all had a big impact. But one of the quotes that I love that I've heard you say before some version of is that most people spend more time planning a one-week vacation than planning the rest of their life. Unpack that a little bit for me and tell me kind of what that means to you and the work that you do.

Speaker 2: 1:58

Yeah, I think that most people are drifting through life, that most people are drifting through life and what that means is they're not kind of conscious of the decisions they're making or the long-term trajectory that they're on. And this all came to a screeching halt for me, a big wake-up call, back in about 2001, where I had been asked to take over this division in 2000 at Thomas Nelson Publishers here in Nashville and I've been in the publishing business my entire career, and so I took on this kind of failing division that was dead last in revenue growth, dead last on profitability, and the CEO asked me to turn it around. And so he said how long is it going to take you? And I thought at the time that it would take about three years, and that's what I told him and he said well, that's kind of what I was thinking. I was totally making it up, I had no idea, but I got into it and kind of came up with a vision for where I saw this division going. I shared it with the team. We rolled up our sleeves, we worked hard In fact we were working evenings, weekends, nonstop but we turned that division around in 18 months. We went from dead last out of 14 divisions to number one in profitability, number one in revenue, number one in employee morale, and that was great. And I got the biggest bonus check I'd ever gotten in my life, which I was very excited about. And I knew my wife was going to be thrilled and would kind of validate all the hard work and time away from the family and all the rest.

Speaker 2: 3:24

So when I bounced into the house, pretty elated from the experience I just had and from the size of this check more than my annual salary I showed it to Gail, my wife, and she wasn't that impressed. She just kind of looked at me and she uttered the words that no husband, probably no spouse, ever wants to hear. And that is, honey, we need to talk. And I went you know what whoa. So we walked into the den and sat down. She teared up a bit and she said to me look, I want to start this conversation by telling you how much I appreciate all that you do for our family. It's not lost on me. I'm grateful, but I got to be honest. You are never here and even when you are, your head's somewhere else, you're distracted, you're thinking about work, you're just not present. And then she began to cry and got a little choked up and she said, if I'm honest, I feel like a single mom. Well, that was a gut kick because that wasn't what I was going for.

Speaker 2: 4:27

And I said, even though my calendar didn't reflect it, that my family was my most important thing, but I wasn't living that out. So I thought I need a different plan. So I actually hired an executive coach and it ended up being Daniel Harkavy, with whom I wrote my book Living Forward, which is all about life planning, and that was the beginning of a slow turnaround for me. It was easier to turn that division of that company around, but it was easier to turn my life around. That was more difficult.

Speaker 2: 5:05

But one of the first things he said to me is he said we've got to get some boundaries around your work because this is bleeding into everything. You basically do one thing, you work, and everything else is just kind of an afterthought. And that was true. And so he said would you be willing to put hard boundaries around your work so that you can open up some space to attend to the things that matter most? And I said yes.

Speaker 2: 5:28

So we gave some hard times when I would quit and go home every day and that I committed to him that I wouldn't work on the weekends and committed to him that I wouldn't work on vacations. And then he kind of asked the killer question, which was well then I'm sure you won't mind if I call Gail occasionally and check in to see how you're doing. That was the thing that really got my attention and gave me the accountability. And one of the first things after that to answer your original question, jay, was, he said have you ever put together a life plan? And it was like what? I've never even heard of that. And so he began to walk me through the process, and that was one of the most important things I ever did. And so in that moment when he shared that with me, I began to make the pivot from drifting through life to designing my life with intention. And the problem with drifting is that nobody ever drifts to a destination they would have chosen.

Speaker 2: 6:25

We only drift to bad places.

Speaker 1: 6:28

You know, I have my copy of Living Forward sitting right next to me here and I read this book I don't know how long ago, probably roughly whenever it came out, whenever that was and I remember I had not done the exercise in it and I was sitting in a hotel room. I think I was up in Nashville at an event actually and it was raining outside and I was sitting in a hotel room. I think I was up in Nashville at an event actually and it was raining outside and I got in there early and I just sat and started writing out and doing the work of the book, you know. And I remember sitting at my laptop alone, in my computer, you know, in my hotel room, just weeping as I wrote this thing, because I realized the divide between who I desired to be, who I said I wanted to be at the end of my life, and who I actually was that day sitting in that hotel room.

Speaker 1: 7:10

And I'll tell you, one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life was on my company's 25th company anniversary, which was last summer. We did a big company cruise, took the whole team and their spouses and my wife the team had bought me a very nice watch as a gift, which was very kind. But my wife had my five kids write letters to me and my oldest son, who's now 20, he had never read this life plan that I put together when reading Living Forward. But if you read his letter and if you read that plan, they are very, very similar. And at that moment I thought to myself I guess I need to write a new plan, which I've not actually done yet, so I probably should but incredibly impactful work because it changed my life and arguably, probably the trajectory of my five kids.

Speaker 1: 7:54

I know you've got a bunch of kids as well, except they're probably older than mine. Yeah, and how long have you and Gail been married? 47 years, 47 years. That's incredible. So, yeah, that's great. I love that. And so, when thinking about you know you deal with and have worked with tons of entrepreneurs. Over time. You've had big transition where you've had your daughter, megan's, taken over your company as CEO and you know what do you see? You know today, as you still continue to coach and work with different entrepreneurs and leaders, where do people get stuck with this stuff? Like, what are some key things people could do to help them get unstuck when they're thinking well, I have to work really hard because I have to provide X, y and Z and I don't know another way to do it, like how can they get unstuck?

Speaker 2: 8:39

Well, I think so many times we create this false sense of urgency. I mean, there's a lot of streams that feed into this answer, but we have all these things that make us feel like it's urgent that we get this done now. It could come from sort of a scarcity mindset, you know, like if I don't chase this opportunity, there may not be another opportunity it could come from. You know, financially we're trying to set ourselves up for the long term and we can see that. You know, the runway is only so long that we have to do that. I think a more subtle and perhaps sinister motivation is, and the reason we spend as much time at work as we do is because work is a place where we have more control, more rewards, more encouragement, more rewards more encouragement.

Speaker 2: 9:25

And home is often especially when you have young kids is often chaos and you don't see progress like you do at work. There's not a lot of accolades, you know. You kind of feel like you're coming up short all the time. So I think there's this kind of avoidance, this natural avoidance of life at home, and we want to spend that time at work where we don't have to face a lot of that stuff. And I think just waking up to the awareness of that is a big step in the right direction. But then I think that's where we've got to take the long-term view and say kind of like we said in Living Forward, you know, if you go to the end of your life and you're attending your own funeral and what are the people going to say about you?

Speaker 1: 10:05

You know what?

Speaker 2: 10:06

are the key people in your life going to say about you, and the thing that I think that I dread is that they would say you know, to be honest, I didn't get to know him that well because he was always at work. You know, my dad didn't spend that much time with us, and I think that whatever we may gain short term by working harder, we're going to lose long term by realizing that. You know we were putting all of our effort, our best thinking, our best energy into something that wouldn't matter Like. When I left Thomas Nelson Publishers in 2011, I was the CEO of that company. It was a big company. We were a public company up until we sold it to private equity.

Speaker 2: 10:47

But one of the things I noticed is that when I left, all the people that I thought were my friends at work, like they, just I didn't have any contact with them. They didn't call me, I didn't call them. It was nobody's fault. It's just that our friendship was a friendship based on proximity, and once the proximity was gone, they weren't there. So you know they were what Arthur Brooks called deal friends, not real friends. And again, that's no fault of theirs. I don't think it's any fault of mine, but I do think it makes us reevaluate. You know, the people that we're going to have with us long term, if we steward it well, are our.

Speaker 2: 11:32

You know our family and our friends, and you know I have the privilege today and boy, I thought the wheels were coming off many times but I have five grown daughters. Three of them are married. We have 11 grandchildren and all the grandchildren live within five minutes of me and that's split between three families. All my girls are here in Nashville, where I reside, within 30 minutes of me. But that kind of thing doesn't happen by accident. And again, we made it's a miracle actually because we made so many parenting mistakes and there were just so many things that I wish I could go back and do a do-over. But I remember Dr Dobson, who recently died, said that you know, the average kid can survive the average number of mistakes made by the average parent, and I think that's true. If you just invest a little bit and give them some attention and focus, everything's going to turn out okay. But it does take that You're not just going to phone it in.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Yeah, two things I'd love to narrow in on even though I almost never talk about this specific stuff on this show, but maybe that's really valuable for people is friends and really transition of kids in different ages of life, because I'm dealing with a lot of this right now so maybe it's selfish of me to ask these questions. But on the friend side, I find a lot of business leaders, especially men. I think women generally are better at making friends I mean that's a stereotype, but I think they just generally are and men are better at, maybe, making deals. Well, that's probably not even true. There's probably plenty of them that are great at making deals.

Speaker 1: 13:01

But men struggle with true friendship, I think, sometimes deep abiding friendship. So I'm curious for you, as you've grown in business, grown in life and go how do I get the right other men around me who can be good friends to me? At our church actually, our pastor will call these people mat carriers and the idea is there's a story in the Bible where you know friends carry a guy on the mat to Jesus and it's like who are your mat carriers? So for you, how have you developed those friendships? And while also doing all the other things of being a dad, being a husband and running a business and all that.

Speaker 2: 13:32

Yeah, you know one way to say this and again, this is a stereotype, but to kind of follow your lead here. There are exceptions, I'm sure, but I think men tend to relate to each other sort of in a primal sense, as competitors, and women relate to others as potential collaborators, and so I think, you know, we need to move more towards that collaboration kind of idea. But I remember when I became the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers this was back in 2005. At that time we were publicly held and on the day that the board voted for me to become the new CEO and I was inheriting the company, in essence, from a CEO that had been the CEO for 50 years, and so it was a big deal. But John Maxwell not to drop a name, but John Maxwell is a very famous leadership author and he called me on that day. He was one of my authors and he called to congratulate me and he said he said I want to give you a piece of advice. And he said I wish somebody would have given this advice to me earlier. And I said yeah, all ears. What is it? And he said you know, you've heard that it's lonely at the top. And I said yeah, and I kind of reconciled myself to that and he said I want you to know that's a choice. That was a profound idea and a new idea to my brain and so I started being intentional with friendships.

Speaker 2: 14:54

At that point, you know, I befriended, for example, two other public company CEOs in Nashville and we got together on a quarterly basis, which doesn't seem like much, but it was a lifeline, especially as we ended up managing going through the Great Recession all together and different things. You know, those were the guys that understood my world and you know we could talk through it. I think friendships have to be really intentional. They're not just going to happen by accident. You've got to create first of all the space for it and then you've got to have the intention.

Speaker 2: 15:24

And I was reaching out to a friend of mine this last summer, earlier this summer, and I said you know, one of the things I really want to be is even more intentional with my friendships. And I just wonder if and it may seem a little bit artificial, but if we got together on a regular basis, like, say, once a month, and just had, you know, no rush, no urgency, had extended time to talk. I said, would you be interested in that, which took a little bit of a risk, because it almost felt like you know, asking somebody out for a date. And he said, man, I'm so glad you asked that because he said the truth is, I need more friends and I need more friends like you. And I said, well, I feel the same way, so we're doing that now. So I've got probably three, maybe people, three to four people like that that I get together intentionally.

Speaker 2: 16:13

But if you haven't discovered the work I think her name is you can fact check on this later Chasten Nelson and she's done some. She's written several books on friendship, but she has a phenomenal model on friendship that I won't be able to remember, but you got to read it and it was really inspiring to me.

Speaker 1: 16:37

Yeah, I will. You know, one of the things my wife started with a friend that ultimately ended up meaning me having really good friends over time was about nine years ago, almost 10. We started a thing called Supper Club and she had an acquaintance with another couple or another friend and it was kind of one of these things where we all wanted to just be around more like-minded people, that we also wanted to be a little more like in some particular way, you know. And we ended up with these group of four couples, us being one of them, and we rotate houses once a month and so once a month we'll be at each other's house and whoever's house it's at, we make a crazy awesome dinner. It's themed and you know all this.

Speaker 1: 17:23

It's very extravagant, it's very fun. We kind of try and one-up the person from the month before you. We just want to make it very fun, but ultimately it's a way of just loving on the people that are there. And if you come to Supper Club, you're not allowed to set up, you're not allowed to bring food, you're not allowed to clean up, you can just bring wine and that's it. And it's one of the best things that's ever happened to me from a friend's perspective, because all these people have a bunch of kids, they all own businesses, they're all about the same age, they've all been married for 20-something years, they all are believers. There's a lot of commonality and so it's a lot of shoulder-to-shoulder relationship and that's just been totally life-changing and life-giving. Whenever I see that on my calendar coming up, I'm like, ah, this is going to be a great week.

Speaker 2: 17:57

So I can definitely. Where I live, we had a group that we met every Tuesday night and we all lived within walking distance of each other, and up until the pandemic. So we did it for about nine years up until the pandemic, and it was the same group of friends and we got together and we just spent the entire evening, sometimes going later than we should have, but it was life-giving too, and unfortunately a few of them have died, some of them have gone to other parts, so it just kind of diffused, which is why I'm having to rebuild that now.

Speaker 1: 18:32

Yeah, it's been huge for us, though, and so I would just encourage people that are listening find that circle or create it. If you don't have it, go create it. Build the right people around you, and and I think to your point too it doesn't have to be 20 people. It probably shouldn't be two, three, you know, maybe four, like you know only only four people to carry a mat, you know, and so it makes a ton of sense to me. I'm going back to the kids a little bit, because I think it all overlaps.

Speaker 1: 18:58

People talk about work-life balance.

Speaker 1: 18:59

I like to call it a work-life blender.

Speaker 1: 19:01

I always say some days you need a little bit more spinach in it, and occasionally you need to throw some ice cream in there, and when it comes to kids, there's nothing that's been more impactful to me in my life than the five kids who well, I only have three that live in the house now.

Speaker 1: 19:15

Two of them have gone to college now, and what I'm realizing in this season of life is I think I did my best to prepare for the kids at all different ages, but, for whatever reason, I didn't really prepare or read or talk to anybody about the reality of these children becoming adults, and I always thought about them going from whatever zero to 18, but I never thought I'm going from 18 until the rest of their life. And so now that's the season that I'm in right now, and so I'd love for maybe you to kind of reflect back on and think on those different seasons of kids' lives, from childhood into them, transitioning to adulthood, and now them being, some of them, married and having kids. What do you wish that you had known in some of those seasons that you know now because you've walked through them?

Speaker 2: 20:04

Well, the funny thing about parenting it's the only job you're qualified to do when you're done. That's true. You know, if you had the knowledge back at the beginning it would be wonderful, but most of us don't. You know, we try to read the books, we listen to podcasts and all that stuff, but I really feel like parenting is a journey of de-parenting. So, you know, initially, you know when the kids are born they can't do much for themselves, so it's hands-on. You know you're directing them, you're keeping them from, you know, getting run over and basically destroying their lives. And so then it's a gradual letting go, and I think that a big mistake that a lot of parents make we didn't make this mistake, we made a lot of other ones, but we didn't make this one is they refuse to let go, and so even when they become adults, they're relating to them like they were still kids under their roof. And so, you know, to me there's the phase where you're the parent, and then you move into a phase, probably kind of as you're moving into, maybe later, junior high and high school, where you're more of a coach. You know you can accomplish a lot more by asking questions and helping them come to the right conclusion than just like over-functioning and over-directing them. And then there comes a point where, as they're moving out of college and into adult life, that they really become friends. You know you're there as a trusted advisor but we never imposed our advice on the kids in that phase. You know we're like we're here to help, but you know we also know that you're going to do it differently. And if you want our advice we're here, but we respect whatever decisions you make.

Speaker 2: 21:43

We had a little bit of a situation in the past. We're with Gail's mom, who's deceased, but she was very, very much imposed herself early on, like was constantly correcting us you know we weren't measuring up, was constantly correcting us. You know we weren't measuring up and constantly correcting us and that led to a lot of friction and unhealth in the relationship where I just had to sit down with her at one point and with Gail present and with Gail's dad present too, and I just said you know, this is not going to continue and here's the ground rules going forward, and if you can't abide by these, then we're just not going to be that close. And they were very respectful, really got it, and it really changed from that point forward. But I think this part like I would say today that my five daughters, my three son-in-laws I would really consider them my best friends Like we have a lake house not too far from here.

Speaker 2: 22:45

We were just down there. It's the time we're recording this, we're just past Labor Day weekend. We were all down there and I mean we just have these long, deep conversations. We have a text thread where it's, you know, everybody in the family is in that except the grandkids, and it's, you know, everybody in the family is in that except the grandkids, and it's just like I'll come back at the end of the day and it's like 60 messages in there. But when somebody in the family tends to get into something, whether it's pickleball or something else, the rest of the family follows suit and you know it's just a really healthy place.

Speaker 2: 23:14

But I think it's because we're not insisting on being the parents. You know, it's one of those things where it's kind of like the upside-down world of Jesus, where you know if you want to gain your life, you've got to lose it. In this case, if you want to get the respect, you can't demand it. You know that's something that's earned and I think if there's one thing, jay, that we did, and my daughters have told me this. If there's one thing that we did in every stage that really helped was we were quick to repair breaches in the relationship.

Speaker 2: 23:54

And I think a lot of parents, frankly, a lot of business leaders, are this way. They feel like if they are vulnerable with their mistakes, that they will be respected less. And the truth is it's exactly the opposite. And so Gail and I have been married for 47 years because we're quick to make amends. You know, if I say something that's hurtful to her, you know usually my conscience will tell me and I'll go to her. But sometimes she'll have to confront me and we're just quick to, you know, not let things escalate. Same thing with the girls. You know they're quick to bring it to my attention if I screwed up, and I do the same thing with them, and it just keeps everything healthy and well-oiled.

Speaker 1: 24:37

So when are you going to write a marriage and parenting book? That's my question.

Speaker 2: 24:41

Oh my gosh. You know we've kind of flirted with it a couple of times, but you know it's kind of like well, it's not really consistent with my brand, but I'm kind of wanting to write some books that I don't. I just want to write. I don't really care about the brand thing.

Speaker 1: 24:54

Well, you can put you can put my vote in for whatever that counts. It's very, very small, but I would love to read it, and my wife and I are passionate about a lifelong marriage as well, and I mean the dream is that our kids would grow up and still want to be in close relationship, you know, and even better if they, if they want to be close to home, you know. So how did you pull that off? Getting them all to be so close to home? I mean, what a gift.

Speaker 2: 25:20

You know, I don't really know. I mean it's kind of weird, but it's, it's really cool. We certainly didn't demand it. We didn't even suggest it. You know, I just think they love the area that we're in. Their friends are here.

Speaker 1: 25:40

And for whatever reason, they decided to stay. It's great, I love it. One of the things that you have talked about a couple of times already on this conversation is boundaries in some form, so boundaries of what it looks like for work and marriage, boundaries in relationship to your in-laws, and then you and Gail kind of working that out together, and I always think that the right guardrails or the right boundaries actually create a lot of freedom, not the other way around. But I'm curious from you how have you and Gail, and then you and people in business as well, because you've had big transitions with you know your daughter Megan taking over, you know full focus. You know how have you successfully navigated those boundaries? Because one thing for you to go this is what I think the boundary should be it's another for everybody else who has a part in it to also agree. That's what the boundary should be. Yeah, how have you navigated that?

Speaker 2: 26:30

Well, I think you know, a major influence on my life has been Henry Cloud's work on boundaries and another book he has in addition to boundaries. He wrote that one with John Townsend, but another book he has is Necessary Endings, which is one of the most powerful books I've ever read. I've read it a couple of times. I've given it to all my clients at some point. But I think that it's important to first of all reframe boundaries as not something that's necessarily constraint, but it's basically the path to freedom. So I'm launching a new AI newsletter next week and this has kind of been an area of interest for me, and so I was looking at two platforms to do that. I was looking at one called Substack and then another one that I know the guy that owns this company called used to be called ConvertKit. It's just called Kit now.

Speaker 2: 27:34

Well, kit has all these bells and whistles and features and all these things you can do. There's literally nothing you can't do with it. But Substack is has less options, more boundaries, and I chose Substack because I said I think I'll be able to be creative in my writing and focus there rather than just endlessly tweaking all the things that I could do. So it's a case where less is more, and so I think, to give you a practical example in the work world, one of the things that Daniel had me do early on in our coaching relationship was he said what time are you willing to quit work every day? And I said I'm willing to quit at six o'. What time are you willing to quit work every day? And I said I'm willing to quit at six o'clock. Now you have to understand that I was leaving the office at six, but then I would go home, have a quick meal with the kids and then I would crack open the laptop and I would work till 10 or 11 o'clock at night.

Speaker 2: 28:25

So there was no boundary really. And so he said well, I'm talking about the boundary, I'm talking about when you're going to quit work and you're not going to pick your computer back up until the next morning when you go to work. And I said six o'clock and he said, okay, great. Well, what that forced me to do was it caused me to manage my day in a very different way. So before, when there was no boundary, you know I would get sidetracked, doing things that I shouldn't be doing, have conversations that were really pointless, and I just wasn't that efficient. But suddenly now, because I had a hard deadline, I was going to quit at six and that was going to be it till the next morning.

Speaker 2: 29:03

I managed to that and it's a little bit like. You know, you're never more productive than on the Friday before you go on a one-week vacation, because you've got a hard boundary, you're about to fly out to wherever you're going for your vacation and if you're committed to not taking work with you, then you've got to get it done. And I mean you're just like, unbelievably efficient and effective on the Friday before vacation. Well, that's the beauty of boundaries, like during the pandemic, as a company, we decided because we had a lot of people working that had small kids, and you know it was a lot to manage, and so we said we're going to go to a 30-hour work week, which we still do to this day.

Speaker 1: 29:44

So we work from 9 to 3.

Speaker 2: 29:45

I don't work from 9 to 3. I work from 9 to 5, but I do four days a week and I take off on Fridays. So the crazy thing about it was I said let's try it as a two-week experiment and see what happens to our productivity. I could tell no difference in terms of how productive we were. So I said, okay, let's do it. And this was like the summer of 2020. I said let's just do it for the entire summer and then we'll see. And again, no lack of productivity. It was the same, and so we're still doing it to this day, and there's been a lot of research around this and a lot of studies done, particularly in Europe, that going to a four-day workweek or a 30-hour work week actually increases productivity, because people are more focused during that time and they're getting the rest and the rejuvenation they need so that when they show up at work they're much more focused, much more resourceful and just get more work done in less time.

Speaker 1: 30:45

You know, I've not ever tested the four-day work week, even though people talk about it all the time, but I probably should. One thing that is really interesting to me is I would say the one time that I almost always hit inbox zero is the day before I go on vacation. Yeah, there you go. It happens all the time. I'm always able to accomplish it, but any general week we were talking about it today as a team it's kind of a general expectation as we're working towards inbox zero we don't just leave 2000 emails in our inbox. And I thought to myself, how often am I actually getting there? And the truth is it's not that often, you know. I mean I'm constantly working on it, but it's like the. It's like the laundry with five kids at home, you know, it just never ends. So this is really interesting.

Speaker 1: 31:22

I'd love to dig in on AI a little bit of a hard turn from parenting and relationships, but you brought it up, so I'm going to go there. If there's two things that I'm probably most interested in in this season of life, one is how do I successfully navigate children going from in my house to being adults and then still having good relationships? And two, it's AI. I love this stuff.

Speaker 1: 31:41

It's how it's actually how we got connected, because I was following some different groups on Facebook that you also happen to be in and I was like, is that the Michael Hyatt? And then we were commenting back and forth on the same post and then I ended up sending you a message. So, thinking about AI in the context of business life, we've seen this before technology promising to reduce our workload, to reduce the amount of time we're working, and yet it seems like for a lot of people, that's not actually been true. We've got more technology than we've ever had, and yet most people seem to work more than they ever have. So do you think that it's true that AI has this capacity for us to be able to get more done at a better quality in less time? Or is it just an oasis in the desert?

Speaker 2: 32:26

No, I think it absolutely does. But and don't ask me how I know this it's easy to reinvest that time back in AI and you know, just end up you end up with the same amount of work that you're doing. You're just doing different kinds of work. So I think it's always going to come down to the human who makes the decision about what they're going to do with that extra time. And so I feel like AI is right now saving me roughly 10 to 12 hours a week, but I've been able to redeploy that time in doing things that are truly human and truly rely on my creativity and give me an opportunity to do the things that only humans can do. I'm a big AI enthusiast, there's no doubt, but not at the expense that only humans can do. I'm a big AI enthusiast, there's no doubt, but not at the expense of humans in the loop and not at the expense of our own humanity.

Speaker 2: 33:16

I think there's a reason why we were created in bodies. You know we're not disembodied people. You know, jesus wasn't a spirit. He was the incarnate Son of God and he was, you know, body, mind and spirit. And the bodies are important. They're so important that they're going to be resurrected, you know.

Speaker 2: 33:37

So I think that we have to live an embodied existence and I think what the screens do and what too much time in the virtual world does is it disembodies us and we lose connection to our five senses.

Speaker 2: 33:51

And if you, I've dealt with a lot of anxiety and stress over the course of my adult life and one of the best remedies for that is just get outdoors, you know, feel the earth beneath your feet, take up gardening, do something that gets you outside, go for a walk. I was just talking to a guy this morning and we were talking about, you know, most religions have a physical practice Like think of Hinduism and yoga. What was the practice for Christians? What was the physical practice? Well, it was walking. You know Jesus walked everywhere. You know he walked and taught and I just think that reclaiming that is important and we can't ever let AI become a substitute for that. That's why I'm not really enthusiastic about virtual reality, although I can see the benefits. I definitely can see the benefits of augmented reality, but you could lose yourself in those spaces and it's not real and you become less than human.

Speaker 1: 34:51

Yeah, I feel that too. It's interesting when you were talking about you know coaching and having you know Daniel come alongside you and help coach in a pivotal season of life. I've seen some people and I've even used it in some levels of this where AI is kind of my coach in some way. But the one thing I have thought about and you mentioned this word multiple times it's accountability. The AI can give me a lot. They can help me dissect my ideas and help me reconstruct plans and come up with all kinds of things, but it's not going to call me and go hey, did you talk to Claire and, you know, ask her the thing that you said you were going to do. You know, hey, can I call her and ask if you really are? You know taking the time off that you said you were going to ask, if you really are, you know taking the time off that you said you were going to Like it's not going to do that.

Speaker 1: 35:30

And so it's interesting because there's still that place for humans in the mix of it all.

Speaker 2: 35:33

There definitely is, and I think we're going to have to fight for this as we go forward. It's just. It's not that I'm opposed to AI, but I am very pro-human and I think we've got to have the priorities of that first, in fact, I would say, because we published the Faux Focus Planner, which is a physical planner in a world where, you know, digital apps, particularly task managers, are a dime, a dozen, they're just, you know, everywhere. But we really believe in the value of analog first. So again, it's like I'm one of the most tech people you'll ever meet and I can talk AI at a deep level, but I do have my analog tools and I do have, you know, my human first connections, and those are vitally important. But it's not either or, it's both and and. So I'm all enthusiastic about AI in the service of human flourishing.

Speaker 1: 36:21

Yeah, for sure. You know I was thinking about this on the analog side because one of the things that has been really helpful for me I always tell people when I get really stressed out. One of the things I'll do is I'll just make a list physically on paper of all the things that I'm worried about and then I'll scratch through all the things that I actually don't have any control over, like World War III. I don't really have much impact over that, so I can just scratch that one out. But there are some things that I could take a next step on and I can circle those things and just write one next step. And then the other side of the paper, what I do is I'll physically write down all the things I can think of that I'm grateful for and there's something about even right now, as I'm taking notes on this podcast, I'm physically writing on paper because there's something about how it engages my brain differently, even though I mean I love I'm the guy that waited in line for a whole day for the first iPhone, and so there is really something tangible about that physical work On a real practical level.

Speaker 1: 37:16

What are some of the tools and things that you're doing? I mean, you said you're starting a new AI newsletter. Love to get to know more about that. And then, what are some?

Speaker 2: 37:30

of the actual practical things that you're using on a day-to-day basis that are either fun and or improving your workflow. Well, first of all, I'm in AI almost every day, all day, and so primarily I'm using it for content generation. So I'm using it to test my ideas, to flesh out my ideas, to challenge my ideas, and so I've got a whole workflow related to my content creation. That's enormously helpful. But I'm using it in my personal life too. So, for example, when I get medical tests done, like blood lab draws or an MRI and you can't see it on camera right now, but I just had surgery on I tore my bicep tendon earlier this summer and I just had surgery on it two weeks ago.

Speaker 2: 38:13

So I'm in this big brace that makes me look bionic, and but I can plug all that stuff into a custom GPT that I've built and I can have it analyze all that stuff, and the crazy thing about it is that I will usually get answers that are as good as I would get from a doctor. Now I always caution people and say you know, don't just go over what AI gives you. You need to check with a real professional. But I can't tell you how many times I've walked into a medical appointment, since I've been doing this now for a couple of years and I'll have my chat GPT report and especially the doctors I have are open to AI, so they would look at it and say, yeah, that's pretty much it.

Speaker 1: 38:58

Yeah, you know it's interesting.

Speaker 1: 38:59

I was reading a recent study that Mayo Clinic is doing.

Speaker 1: 39:02

There's a Mayo Clinic down here in Jacksonville, florida, where I'm at, and I think there's two other major ones in the country Maybe there's more than that but they were testing in the cardiac unit this AI assistant to the doctors and it basically read the patient's entire file and in two of the locations they were using the AI and one of them they were not.

Speaker 1: 39:22

So it was kind of the standard to make sure they were comparing equally and it increased the likelihood of a positive outcome from like 73% to 92%. I mean it was shocking the outcome it created the other day one of my little girls I thought we thought she had broken her wrist. She loves jujitsu and she had fallen and thought she'd broken her wrist, took her into an urgent care, got her an x-ray and we were waiting a very long time for the radiologist to get back to us but they had texted me the x-ray and so I just took the x-ray, dropped it in, you know, to a tool that I have, let it read it and ask it to evaluate it for me, and it ended up giving the exact same diagnosis which thankfully it wasn't broken that the radiologist gave, and it was even down to the thing of like things to pay attention to. It was amazing. I did that with my elbow.

Speaker 2: 40:10

And I think that's you know like.

Speaker 2: 40:12

There was an article published in the Wall Street Journal probably a couple months ago, but there was a big study and I can't quote the study or the source, but you can look at the Wall Street Journal for this.

Speaker 2: 40:26

But in terms of diagnosis, ai is vastly superior to humans and the reason why is because AI, first of all, it has access to all the knowledge in the world virtually in the world but it also is unbelievably good at pattern recognition, so it can see the nuances, like I've even heard people taking a picture of some injury or whatever and then having Chad GPT do an analysis on it.

Speaker 2: 40:49

And because it's so good at pattern recognition, it can dial in that diagnosis. And again, I would caution people to see a medical professional just to validate it, because AI does at this point still hallucinate. But I'm using it in every aspect of my life. My wife uses it for meal planning, for example, and in fact a buddy of mine built a custom GPT where you basically take a picture of what's in your fridge and it gives you a bunch of options of what you could make for dinner based on the ingredients that are sitting in your fridge, and it gives you a bunch of options of what you could make for dinner, based on the ingredients that are sitting in your refrigerator.

Speaker 1: 41:19

Yeah, that's what got my wife into it. I'm the super technology-driven guy. I always want to try the newest tools. I'm a little bit of a software junkie to some extent Probably not a good word usage, but I am and she's kind of the late adopter. So on the spectrum we couldn't be farther apart.

Speaker 1: 41:34

But it was a it was a recipe thing of figuring out how to make a particular meal or what it was that she really liked. And then the other day this was incredible. I wish I had the pictures to show people. Maybe I could put them in the show notes. But she was trying to figure out how to redesign our back patio and she had taken a picture of the area that she wanted and then just described the, what she actually wanted. And then she even found a few different pieces of furniture but she couldn't think about how to arrange them a certain way and it I mean it was just in ChatGPT Incredibly it arranged it to a way that she really liked. It gave it a few bits of feedback. And if you look at our back patio now and you look at this picture that ChatGPT actually designed, it was the interior designer, if you will, of her back patio, but with her assisting and giving you know what she wanted for feedback.

Speaker 2: 42:19

Yeah, it's an amazing tool. This is why we started. I mean, I have this thing called the AI Business Lab and people can find it at AIbusinesslabai, but it's basically where my newsletter is and it's also. I have a mastermind with business owners and so we get together once a month I interview an expert on AI. But the difference is we're not interested in AI for AI's sake. We're looking for the practical applications to small business owners. So that mastermind is all geared around that, and I think that it's easy to kind of just jump from tool to tool and what is possible to experiment with it, and you know, some people are called to do that. But my interest in AI is how can it improve my life and how can it help me make my life richer so that I can do the things that only humans can do?

Speaker 1: 43:10

For sure. Have you done any? Have you played around with any of the AI app development stuff?

Speaker 2: 43:15

Not really, but our company has quite a bit. So you know, in our, in our company, we have a full-time web developer and so he's dealing. He's working with lovable, which is a platform, and cursor is another one, but I haven't gotten into that, but it's on my list. I've got an expert actually lined up for December for our mastermind. It's going to come in and teach us all that stuff.

Speaker 1: 43:36

Yeah, if your developer's not tried it, there's a great one called Replit that I really love. I've tested pretty much all of them. It's one of my favorites and it's just incredible the other day. So I also, in addition to running the marketing agency here at Business Builders, I also help with a large church here in town and get to lead a lot of the creative and marketing teams there. We don't really use the word marketing in church, but it's the same idea.

Speaker 1: 43:55

And we were sitting in a creative offsite the other day and the lead pastor was like, well, I'd love to have some kind of digital invite tool for Christmas where we could send people kind of the Christmas image with an invite but let them text it directly to their friends from themselves. And I was like, yeah, we can do that. And he's like what do you think we can have it done in time for when we start talking about Christmas? And I was like I can have it done by lunch. And in all reality, this tool is built and ready to go. We're actually reviewing it tomorrow.

Speaker 1: 44:22

That same day, in probably less than an hour, I built this tool where you can just there's 15 different campus locations with multiple service times, so it can get confusing. And on this app, you just load it up, you pick your campus, you confusing. And on this app, you just load it up, you pick your campus, you pick the service time you're going to, you hit share and it pops up that little kind of share bubble that is on your phone. That makes it easy to text somebody or email them or put it on social, whatever you want, and natively inside the app and you can just text it right to your friend from your number and it pre-writes a message around it. That would have cost me thousands of dollars in development, even at cost, and it would have taken weeks to get it done, and I literally had it done in less than an hour. It's incredible what it's capable of doing.

Speaker 2: 45:01

Yeah, I can't wait to get into that.

Speaker 1: 45:04

Well, we are running out of time. I could spend all day talking about AI and I really appreciate your insight and time today, but as you think about talking to business owners, entrepreneurs and leaders who are trying to build a business that lasts without sacrificing their life and their family, what's some parting advice that you would leave with them today? So maybe something we haven't talked about, or just to reiterate something that we already have.

Speaker 2: 45:26

I would say that everything flows out of your leadership and your character, and self-leadership always precedes team leadership, and so if you can't lead yourself, you're not going to be able to lead anybody else, and I think that's why integrity is so important, initiative is so important, influence is so important, but you will replicate in your business and, frankly, in your family, who you are and what you focus on, who you are and what you focus on.

Speaker 2: 45:58

So I think it's important that we get the prototype right first and make sure that we're living a good life ourselves, because that's going to be the prototype for a lot of the people that look up to us. And I would say this goes right back to parenting too, because more is caught than taught, and you know the kids are going to replicate and imitate your behavior or react to your behavior, more than anything you do. They won't remember the lessons you taught them, but they will remember who you are and how you made them feel, and the same is true for your employees, and that's what creates a great legacy is when you have people that are living a good life before God.

Speaker 1: 46:33

Well, your life and example and work have had a huge impact on me personally, on my business, on the team here at Business Builders, on my family, on my marriage and on my kids, and so thank you for that and thanks for walking the walk, not just talking the talk. I'm going to go to AIbusinesslabai and sign up for that newsletter Now. As soon as I get off this podcast, we'll put a link to it. Anything else you'd want to link to or send people to that might be helpful for them.

Speaker 2: 47:01

No, I think the bigger connection to everything I'm doing is fullfocusco. That's where you can find our planners, our courses, my books, everything else that we're doing All right.

Speaker 1: 47:11

Well, michael, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been an honor. Thanks, jay, honor for me. Hey, I hope this video has helped you with some tips and ideas to build a business that lasts. Make sure you subscribe to our channel so that you don't miss out on the next videos that we roll out and, more importantly, for some awesome free resources. Head over to our website at buildingabusinessthatlastscom. You can get a free copy of my book there, where I tell you how I have built an agency that's grown year over year for the last 20 years in a row. So go grab that, buildingabusinessthatlastscom, and make sure to subscribe to our channel. Thanks, we'll see you soon.