Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business. Do Life. Jon Acuff, back for another round, my man. Welcome back.
Jon Acuff: Let’s go. I’m going to try to do the amount of time that gets me a jacket. Like, the official like silent live when you’ve hosted five times. Like, I want to get the jacket.
Brad Johnson: Oh, we don’t have that. Like, you know what’s interesting? I’ve got a small group going back to the very first time we met at the Elite Advisor Blueprint. I’ve got a small group that have been two times. I think Michael Hyatt, our mutual friend, has been maybe three, maybe four, but I think this is our third round. So, it’s starting to become a thing, man.
Jon Acuff: Tell Hyatt, “Watch out.”
Brad Johnson: You’re coming for him. Watch out.
Jon Acuff: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Well, I know what we’re going to dive into today. You’ve got a new book right around the corner. I think, by the time this drops, I think it’ll be ready and dropping. So, we’ve got the new book, Procrastination Proof: Never Get Stuck Again, dropping April 14th, so about a month from now, as we record this. So, tell me, you’ve written a book or two. You’ve got a couple of New York Times bestsellers. I feel like they’re probably like children. You love them all, but what’s special about this one?
Jon Acuff: Well, for me, my life has a clear line. I didn’t write a single book from 0 to 34, and I was really stuck in my career. I had a bunch of different jobs. I was a job jumper, and I learned how to deal with that and to stop procrastinating when I was in my mid-thirties, and that’s how I’ve written 12 books since. So, when people say to me like I had a comedian friend of mine go, “Oh, when I saw the title of your new book, I rolled my eyes because you don’t struggle with procrastination.” I was like, “You have no idea.” And I totally understood his point, but for me, I feel like it’s something I’ve worked really hard at, and it doesn’t have to be that hard once you kind of figure out how to deal with it. And so, that’s why this one is special to me.
Somebody asked me the other day, “Do you just research topics you’re interested in, or do you try to fix problems in yourself first?” And I said, “Oh, it’s problems I have in myself.” That’s how the books are authentic. Even the format of the book is 71 short chapters. Because if you write a 400-page book for procrastinators, you’re not a procrastinator, you’re a monster. They’re not going to read that. But as a fellow procrastinator, I’m like, “No, I know how I’d want to read this book as somebody who deals with procrastination.” So, I feel like instead of writing a book where it’s like Jane Goodall writing about monkeys, like I’m a monkey who writes books for other monkeys. And then you see yourself in them, and then you actually can put them into practice immediately, because it’s not theoretical.
Brad Johnson: That makes a lot of sense. It’s like, okay, I’m procrastinating. Here’s the stack of books I meant to read because I need help here. You literally wrote the book in a way a procrastinator can get through it, like little bite-sized chapters all the way through.
Jon Acuff: You feel like a winner the entire time.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Love it.
Jon Acuff: Dude, when I’m on my Kindle, and it says like 82 minutes left in chapter, I’m like, “Ugh, you’re killing me, dude. 82 minutes?” I love the little bit of dopamine hit you get when you finish even a chapter. So, I just knew as a procrastinator, I would want that win along the way, and I wanted to make sure every other procrastinator, or everybody who’s a high performer that wants to keep being a high performer, would feel like, “Oh, okay, I can do this. This is going to move me through so fast.”
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, a theme, if we just kind of compartmentalize the whole idea of the book we were talking before we hit record here, procrastination is the most expensive fear you have because the price tag is your life. The solution isn’t willpower, it’s permission. That’s a pretty bold statement. What’s that mean to you, like if you can unpack that a bit?
Jon Acuff: Yeah. So, I mean, the simple thing is procrastination costs you time, and what else is life made of but time? That is 100% life’s ingredients is the hours I have in a day, the days I have in a week, the years I have in a decade. And that’s what procrastination costs. You look up and realize, “Wow, a lot more time has passed than I thought.” Everyone who has a milestone birthday, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, never goes, “Yeah, I do feel exactly 50.” I am 60. They always go, “Oh, it’s wild that we’re out here.” Everyone who has a kid who graduates high school goes, “It goes by so fast.” And life just moves.
And so, that’s what I mean by procrastination is the most expensive fear because it steals your life, because it’s chipping away at the only resource you’ll never get more of. And then what I mean by permission is that that’s what everybody’s waiting for. Everybody knows they’re capable of more. We did a study. We asked 3,000 people. This PhD named Mike Peasley helped me do it. We asked 3,000 people, “Do you think you’re capable of more?” And 96% of people said yes. So, everyone who listens to this podcast right now knows they’re capable of more, but they feel a little bit stuck. They don’t know what to do with that. And that’s why I always tell people, like whenever somebody says that cliché, everybody’s doing the best they can, I think that’s the dumbest thing ever. No, they’re not. They’re doing the best they think they can.
We are all doing the best we think, and there’s a huge difference between the best you can and the best you think you can. And so, I think as an author, that’s part of my job is to go, “Hey, I think you can do even better, and here’s a framework that actually works in the real world.”
Brad Johnson: I love that. So, Jon, one of the things that you mentioned is procrastination has always been a problem. I mean, I’ve struggled with it in life, but you said, “Hey, in today’s day and age with social,” you had a quote, I won’t steal it from you. The Netflix CEO, what he talked about as their biggest competitor, but it’s harder to not procrastinate these days because you got this little distraction device all over the place. So, what’s your take there, and what can we do about it?
Jon Acuff: Yeah, I mean, you’re right. People were distracted in the 80s. I was alive then. Like, they were distracted in the ’90s, too. It’s not that it’s brand new, it’s just gotten so much better. And the quote you’re referencing is Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix in 2017 at the LA Summit Conference said, “Our number one competitor is sleep.” They are worried you’re going to get enough sleep or you’re going to, they don’t want you to run, they don’t want you to get in shape. They don’t want you to scale your business or follow up with clients. And so, the phrase I like to use is the procrastination industrial complex is really good at their job. And you’ve got to kind of even the odds. Like, my first phone all it had other than like a calculator and the ability to call was a game called Snake.
Brad Johnson: Love that game.
Jon Acuff: It’s the best. And Snake was just like, if you hit the wall and you hit yourself, you die. But I was able to put the phone down. Like, I play a couple rounds of Snake and I’d be like, “All right, this is enough Snake.” I never doom scrolled Snake for four hours. I never watched one more episode of Snake. And so, that’s what I mean by it’s gotten better and better. Our distractions have scaled faster than our discipline, and that’s the challenge. And you even see it in small ways, like working from home requires a larger degree of discipline than working in an office. It just does. And no one got lessons on how to be disciplined as they drove away from their company when COVID shut things down.
And then we were like, “Yeah, I feel like people aren’t good at working from home.” It’s not that they weren’t good at work from home. It’s distracting to be in an environment without the confines and the construct and the boundaries of work. And so, the things that distract us have become atomic, and our discipline hasn’t. And that’s where I’m trying to hopefully even the score a little bit for people and say, “Hey, what would it look like for you to get better at ignoring distractions or better at, more importantly, caring about the things you really care about so the distractions don’t even cause a stir?”
Brad Johnson: Yeah. This might be a bold take, but I almost feel like procrastination has become a drug because, I mean, look at how the apps are built. The algorithm is built to addict you, and there’s a documentary called The Social Dilemma, and it basically talks about, like, literally, a lot of the people at Facebook won’t even let their kids have their own app they help create because they’re like it’s a drug.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. And there are studies that like the scroll down mimics the pulling the lever at a slot machine. Like, there are all these scientists, like the world’s smartest psychologists are somewhere in a room right now, and the name Brad Johnson’s on our whiteboard, and they’re trying to get more of your time. Like, your attention is their business model, and that’s fine. Just be aware of that and work against that. I wrote a post the other day on LinkedIn about the $9 sleep hack nobody talks about and it was just buy an alarm clock. Because I was telling a buddy, “Hey, you’re on your phone constantly at night. Just put it downstairs in another room.” He’s like, “But it’s my alarm clock.” They sell those for $9. I can fix that problem.
You’re also not a surgeon. That’s the other thing people say. They’ll go, “Yeah, I scroll for an hour on my phone at night in bed. I don’t want to,” and I’ll go, “Put it in another room.” They’ll go, “Somebody important might call.” I’m like, “How many nights does that happen? Are you a cardiac surgeon where you’re getting a helicopter is landing on your lawn, and your phone has to be near?” The phone accidentally made us all emergency room doctors, and we forgot it happened. Meaning I’m not that important, Brad. I got like three people I’m responsible for, my wife and two daughters, and if I’ve got them kind of in my team to a degree, but like you used to, again, I was alive in the 80s and 90s. The only person with a beeper was a doctor.
At a barbecue, there would be one dude who was like, “I got to check this. I could be called in. I could be called in.” And then subtly, over time, we all became that important, as if I needed constant access to all content at all times. I really don’t. And so, that’s what we’re up against.
Brad Johnson: Well, one more point on that, and then we’ll move on to like how to fix it and some of the principles in the book. I’ve started to see a trend of social posts of like how, I mean, I was born in ‘80. You’re slightly before me, but we grew up in the ’80s and ’90s. Back to the Razr was like technology back then with the Snake, right? The Motorola Razr. But when you, I’ve got this thing where I’ll sometimes go back to the ‘90s alt scene, and you’ll watch concerts. And guess what? Everybody’s there. They’re not distracted taking videos. But I was talking to a buddy, he’s like, “That’s what I love about the Masters. They make you check your phone,” and I was like, “Wow, that has to be like the only thing kind of in today’s existence where you go back in time before all of this chaos of people not being present where they’re at.”
Jon Acuff: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: And he is like, “And people love it.”
Jon Acuff: Yeah. They can also do that in other parts of their life. You don’t have to drive away from the Masters and be like, “It’ll be a whole another year until I get that joy again.” You have that same power. It just takes a little bit of thinking, a little bit of planning, and a little bit of figuring out, “Okay, how do I fight procrastination?”
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Alright. Well, you know this is a show with a bunch of advisors all around the world watching. You were saying you just spoke to a group of advisors. And you gave them a little survey to kind of get a pulse. What were some of the findings? And then how does the concept of how to get by the procrastination stuff that gets in the way for finance, what’d you find there?
Jon Acuff: Yeah. So, the permissions the book teaches are four. There’s permission to dream, permission to do. I mean, permission to dream, plan, do, review. So, four different permissions. And so, if you go to jonacuff.com/profile, there’s a 35-question assessment that kind of puts you into one of four buckets. Are you a dreamer? Are you going to get stuck in dreaming? Are you a perfectionist? You’re going to get stuck in planning. A perfectionist is always going to change the world as soon as the plan is perfect. Are you a hustler? You’re going to get stuck in doing. A hustler hates a plan. They hate a review. Salespeople are that way all the time. They’re like, “Just keep me in the streets.”
And like the leadership will go, “We need you to fill out this three-field form.” They’re like, “Ah, so what? It’s a Magna Carta.” And they’ll go, “It’s just the name and the phone number of the person you just sold to. Like, we need to know where to deliver.” They’re like, “Ugh.” And then analysts get stuck in the review. They tend to review mistakes from the past and predict failure in the future. So, when I gave this to hundreds and hundreds of advisors, they fell right into the middle. They were hustlers, and they were perfectionists. Like, you don’t get to be a successful advisor if you’re kind of like dreamy and you’re like, “Anything is possible.” And like you live in the land of data, like you live and die by, like clients can tell when it’s not working.
There are some industries where you can kind of be like, it could maybe be working, like advising isn’t one of them, so they were right in the middle, and the things we saw were things like tons of effort, but just the wrong direction because they had skipped the plan. Advisors, especially like when they’re going after it, and they’re like all in, and they’re like Goggins’d up, “We’ll skip from the dream right over the plan and just start doing it.” And you know you’ve done that, like if you’ve ever had to rebuild half a piece of IKEA furniture, because you just skip the instructions. You’re like, “It’s Swedish, there’s illustrations, I’ll be fine.” And then you build it, and about halfway in, you’re like, “The shelf is upside down.” So, a lot of advisors skip the plan.
Brad Johnson: Have you been talking to my wife, Jon? Because I’ve definitely done that a couple of times.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. We’ve all like, as a fellow hustler, I’m like, “Ugh.” So, then the other thing that, like the hustlers, again, they kind of get stuck is they never take a beat. They never take a pause. And so, there’s tons of momentum, but often it’s like one degree off, or it’s two degrees off, and you look up a year in or six years in, and it feels like a surprise. They go, “I had no idea that client was that upset. I had no idea I was that close to losing that.” But they never did a review, or they never took a pause to go, “This is worth investing in. This is still working.” They were so focused on doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, anything that slowed them down felt like a distraction, and felt like an enemy. And so, that’s where they can sometimes get stuck. A whole lot of effort just in the wrong way.
Brad Johnson: So, question on that, because, number one, yes, being a guy that’s been in finance approaching two decades now very, like your take right there, that is definitely a big sliver of advisors out there. Kind of the ready, fire, aim, oops, of just going the wrong direction with a lot of energy. How do you relate that to procrastination? Because it feels like they almost should procrastinate a little bit to get the proper direction before they run. So, what’s your take on that?
Jon Acuff: Well, my take on that is planning isn’t procrastination, like planning multiplies your action. The problem is when you’re strictly a hustler, anything that’s not action feels like bureaucracy. It feels like you’re holding me back, you’re slowing me down. I don’t need all these steps. And so, I always try to, that specific type of person, I try to get them to see that a little bit of planning multiplies what they can get done. Like, I’m not saying a ton of planning, I’m just saying a little bit, like it’s a force multiplier, and it’s your version. That’s the other thing. I’m not telling you like, “Hey, here’s the exact type of planning you should do.” What I’m saying is you should figure out what your version of planning is and install it and let it multiply the actions you’re going to be amazing at anyway.
You should figure out what your version of reviewing is and do it at the scale you need it to and the frequency you need it to. Like, people want to go, “Well, how often should I review?” And I always go, “As often as it helps.” There are some clients you probably need a lot of reviews with. There are some clients that don’t. Like, my advisor recently was like, “Hey, we’re going to start doing quarterly meetings and da, da,” and I was like, “Eh. Like me?” I feel like I’m dialed in. I feel good. Like we went from one a year to four a year, and it was too many. And if I’m in a season when I need them, I know I can go to him. I could go to him every month if I wanted to, but the review for us was it’s better if like every four months is good.
Like, that’s a good rhythm for me because to come into the office for two hours in the middle of a running and gunning season for me isn’t the best use of my time. And we’re 12 years into this relationship. I know he’s not like, well, I invested us in ponies or whatever. Yeah, I’m not worried. So, I just think as a hustler, if you’ll do those two things, it multiplies ultimately what you can do. A little bit of planning. So, I’m not saying you should procrastinate, I’m saying, yeah, if you planned a little… And here’s my favorite definition of planning. Planning is visiting the future and taking notes for when you get back to the present.
So, you thought about a month from now, here’s the success you want. Or a week from now, or six months from now, or 20 years from now, what do you want to be true? And then what can you do today to take some steps toward that? A hustler gets excited by that type of plan. Like, the micro version of that is one of my soundtracks, which is a repetitive phrase that I like to use is, “How do I hook up future me? I just want to hook up future me.” Another way is like, “I want to make tomorrow easy today.” I’m going to make tomorrow easy today. I’m going to make next week easy today. So, I’m always going, “What does Monday me do that hooks up Friday me? What does Friday me do that hooks up Tuesday me?” And I’m connecting those.
And now, I’ve gotten so good at it. I’m like, I want to be a 70-year-old who has good enough knees to wrestle on the ground with his grandkids. Like, God willing, we have them, but I want to be an in-shape 70-year-old. So, what can I do as a 50-year-old to send gifts to that person? That’s planning. That’s me thinking ahead. And every advisor that’s listening to this has had a conversation with a client who didn’t do that. And now at 64, it’s like, “Hey, I want all these things.” And it’s like, “Oh yeah, these would’ve been so easy at 40.” Like, your 40-year-old should have sent some of these things in the mail to you in your mid-sixties. And half of your job as an advisor is to try to connect that future to the present.
Because so many clients come in and they can’t see that picture, and you go, “Hey, if you did a little work here, it would exponentially grow, and like here’s what retirement could look like. Here’s what life could look like.” But if they can’t see it, they can’t do the planning, and they can’t do the hustle to get to it.
Brad Johnson: So, I wanted to let you riff because so many golden nuggets there. And then I kind of circled because we’re talking about like us right now, or if I was an advisor out there, what are some things? But you know what advisors deal with all day, every day? People procrastinating actually getting an advisor, dreaming, building a plan, actually putting it into action. Like, it’s kind of a prime example of a proper appointment process in finance that a lot of advisors that have walked prospects through and hopefully to become clients. So, just to recap that dream, plan, do, review, and then you kind of labeled the type of people. Who was the dreamer? What was that label?
Jon Acuff: So, the dreamer gets stuck in the… The dreamer. Dreamer’s the first label. So, dreamers get stuck dreaming. They have a thousand ideas.
Brad Johnson: Oh, so the dreamer’s the dreamer. That makes sense.
Jon Acuff: The dreamer gets stuck there because they have a thousand ideas, zero actions.
Brad Johnson: Then perfection on plan, then hustler on do, then analyst on review.
Jon Acuff: Yep.
Brad Johnson: So, I want you to finish your thought, but then I want to circle back. If you’re an advisor dealing with a procrastinator, some tips that you might help them through that, how you would do that?
Jon Acuff: Oh, yeah. No, let’s just go there. And that’s why like I would say probably 20% of the corporate speaking I do is in the advisor space because like I did 10 events with an advisor, a company that does advising. And so, like the first thing I’d say is, let’s just talk dream for a second. No one willingly changes. I’ve worked with a million people on goals. No one willingly changes. Meaning I’ve never met somebody who woke up one day and said, “Today I’ll just have grit. Today, I think I’ll make wise financial decisions. Today, I’ll have sacrifice.” No. What always happens is there’s a dream worth doing the work for. The only reason people leave their comfort zone is something outside it is worth being uncomfortable for.
So, you, as an advisor, part of your job is to kind of pull that out of the person, to create the space, to have the right questions, to have the relational equity that they are even going to be vulnerable enough to go, “I know this feels far-fetched, but I’ve always wanted a lake house. My dad, we used to rent one once a week, every summer. And I said to myself, even at 10, ‘I want to do this more.’ And I know my family doesn’t have the money for that, but someday I’m going to be the type of lawyer that has that money, whatever.” So, you have to kind of get them to think about the dream and the dream, it’s their dream, so it can look in a million different ways.
I want to pay for college for my kids. I want to have them in safe cars when they’re 16, whatever. That’s the first step, because then if they can see that, they’ll start to recognize, “Okay. That dream’s worth planning for them.” Then you can…
Brad Johnson: It’s worth doing the work.
Jon Acuff: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: It’s inspiring.
Jon Acuff: Otherwise, you’re selling like toothpaste or flossing. You don’t want to be the advisor that’s like, “I know flossing is terrible, but in like 20 years you’ll be so glad you floss.” Nobody’s changing that way. Nobody’s investing that way.
Brad Johnson: So, one quick add-on there. You’re spot on, by the way. The very, very best advisors I’ve worked with over the years, they get to not what a financial plan is, not what it does, but what it actually means once it’s in place, like how is it going to help you get there. And a lot of finances is too much spreadsheet talk. And instead of return on investment, it should actually be return on memories, return on moments.
Jon Acuff: Yeah, 100%.
Brad Johnson: And once you get that to your story on the lake house, that’s why you busted your butt for two decades, so you can go have the grandkids to the lake house and create those incredible memories. And I think because finance trains so many of us, myself included, to here’s the product, here’s the ETF or the model that fits this risk profile, it does our whole industry such a disservice. So, I love hitting on that because that applies directly to our space. Anything else on the dreamer side before we get to kind of, if you were dealing with a planner or perfectionist?
Jon Acuff: Yeah. So, I like to back into the dream with people, meaning most people, if you give them the blank page exercise, get paralyzed. Meaning if you say, “Hey, tell me your 10-year vision, tell me your 20-year vision,” they freeze up. It’s almost impossible for them to do it, the majority of people. And part of it is we’ve misinterpreted great books like Seven Habits that says, “Begin with the end in mind.” We now said, “If you don’t know the end, you can’t begin.” You have to have the perfect vision. So, what I like to do with somebody who I feel is stuck, if they’re a client, is to go, “Tell me about some of your best moments from the last year, the last two years, the last three years.” Like I’m trying to get them to say out loud values they don’t even know they value.
Brad Johnson: Love that.
Jon Acuff: So, I want them to start to talk that way. And then part of my job as an advisor is to see patterns. You are a pattern recognizer. So, wow, they’ve mentioned this thing four different times, four different ways. Wow. That matters to them. Or like, wow, one of their values is freedom. They love the freedom to just go down to their daughter’s parents’ weekend at college. They want the kind of money that they’re not worried about like last second, we’re paying top price for a hotel because we wanted to take our daughter to the Auburn, Alabama game. Whoa. Moments matter, whatever it is. So, I’m trying to do that in the dream, and I’m trying to get them to say the dream out loud.
Brad Johnson: I love that. I literally was having a version of this conversation this morning. And there’s nothing lower for an advisor than to pour your heart and soul into talking to a couple that is across the table. You do a first, you figure out where the gaps are, then you go to the second, and you start to kind of show them how you may be able to help get from where they are to where they want to be. And then you get the dreaded, “Yeah, we’ll think about it.” And it’s like, “You obviously missed identifying that dream because there’s no inspiration to actually get there.” You know, it’s like, why?
Jon Acuff: Yeah. If you don’t have that…
Brad Johnson: I plug that into the GPS. I don’t know where I’m going.
Jon Acuff: You won’t do any of the work. Like if you, you know, and again, that’s where a lot of advising is listening. I mean, you know that. Like, I learned that doing 50 to 60 corporate events a year, the pre-call is the most important part of what I do. By the time I’m on stage, I’m dialed in. But in that pre-call where I ask the right questions that are easy to answer, again, we’re so nerding out on advisors, I love it. But the questions have to be really easy to answer. You can’t ask a question that makes you sound smart, but they don’t give an answer. That’s the wrong question. It has to be really, really easy for them to kind of plug into and have a real answer and really feel like, oh, these are the words I care about.
And then you as the advisor, you repeat those back with your wisdom and they go, that’s brilliant, and all you’re doing is repeating back their definition of success and how we can help them get there. That’s a much better conversation.
Brad Johnson: I love the hack you shared with. What are some of the best moments? If they just look back a little bit, do you ever take that back to like childhood or is that too far back?
Jon Acuff: I go as far back as they want to go back. I don’t, in an exercise like that, your goal is no boundary. No boundary. So, like, I’ll ask travel questions, but like, I want them to be able to say, man, one of our best moments was when we didn’t have much money, we checked into Disney and they upgraded us to the wilderness lodge. And we couldn’t afford it, but we could take a boat to Disney, and then you go, man, it would be cool to just be able to do that. Like that kind of thing. like whenever you wanted to, right? Like imagine with the grandkids. So, you did that with your own kids. That’s a really fun thing.
So, I’m trying to get them, I don’t put any boundaries on it because people answer that question with a filter of, well, that doesn’t count. That doesn’t count. I say to people, fire the bouncer. As we have this conversation, fire the bouncer. Anything that you define as the best moment gets in here, and it might be, I like the chance to get my granddaughter off the bus. Oh, that’s awesome. Like, if you retired early, like you could be the– like those four steps they come down where they’re excited to be done with school, you’re the person that gets to greet them. Like that would be really, so I’m trying to get them to say as much as they want and the timeframe doesn’t matter.
Brad Johnson: So, where my head’s going and I think you said it, you don’t want to give them a blank canvas. I don’t know if you said those exact words, but…
Jon Acuff: I want to give them a framework. A framework’s easier to fill. Fill in the blanks. I’m trying to make it so easy.
Brad Johnson: Well, you know where my head goes, it’s funny, I had this same conversation with our team. It’s like, don’t bring my business partner. And I’m like, hey, what are your ideas? We’re idea guys. We’re like, oh, well what if we do this, this, this, this? And it’ll be an endless stream of ideation. And I’m like, start to narrow it down like, hey, we thought about option A, B, and C. What are your thoughts? And then we can kind of tweak and massage, but you’re doing the equivalent here. Don’t bring them a blank canvas where like, I’m not an artist, I don’t know, but you’re kind of painting the picture, pulling at the thread. It’s kind of the paint by numbers version of here, let me help you build the dream.
Jon Acuff: I want it. And here’s the other thing, as an advisor, you know some of those. Give them some easy ones, say, hey, I’ve been talking to people in the last couple weeks. I’ve heard some really great answers. Let me give you a couple starter kind of answers that people have given me. Like, give them that on ramp to it. Like, don’t make it hard to answer that question. I’m always going, how can this question be easy to answer? And with some examples, they’ll go, oh, I get what you mean. Like, let me add my own version of that. I think that’s a fruitful conversation.
Brad Johnson: Well, and what you also did is you painted the picture. Verbally, you’re like, hey, those four steps coming down off the school lists, what if that was like, really important to you? I remember my grandma did that for me and that’s the coolest feeling. So, you’re kind of like giving them little nudges.
Jon Acuff: Dude, you’re going, you’re saying stuff like this, like, have you ever had a car that when you park somewhere, you look back at it as you walk into the grocery store? Like, have you ever had that moment? Like those are the kind of things that men and women go, oh, you’re right. Or like, we own a mountain house and nobody told me this as we were buying it, but like when we drive there, as the elevation goes up, my stress goes down. Like, I have it on my GPS, I can see it on my GPS, it’s going up and the temperature’s going down. I’m like, oh, that’s what you– no one gets excited by just the phrase, like, no one’s going to be like, your investment will rise by 4%.
Here’s the thing you, like, stories are stickier than statistics. Stories are stickier than statistics. No one sits around a campfire and goes, remember that time we raised our revenue by 4%? Like, that’s not the story they tell, so it’s, I’m always trying to get them to answer it in a way that they believe in the story, that they know I’m the one that’ll help them execute the story. And that changes everything.
Brad Johnson: Well, and to double down because you’re like, as an entrepreneur, my revenue went up 4%. No retiree is going to sit around towards the end and say, hey, remember that year we made an extra 4% over the benchmark of the S&P? That’s not what they’re talking about.
Jon Acuff: They don’t even remember, like, no, not at all.
Brad Johnson: Okay, this is good. Let’s follow this. So, okay, dreamer, now let’s say they’re kind of a planner perfectionist that might be labeled in our industry as an engineer, a do it yourselfer where they procrastinate, and maybe that’s both the analyst and the perfectionist, I don’t know, but how do you start to think through people that procrastinate that way?
Jon Acuff: Well, I mean that, like one of their broken soundtracks is, I’ll make a decision as soon as I have all the information. And so, to that, I say we don’t live in an all-information world. Like, you’ll never have all the information. There’s too much. Like, the example I use sometimes is they used to say Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of all the books. Meaning if a book had been published, he had it, because that was possible. In the 1700s, 1800s, that was possible.
No one could do that today. Like, 2.2 million books are published every year. So, part of your job as an expert is to help that perfectionist go, hey, we’re going to make a decision with the available information and then we’re going to iterate, we’re going to review. This isn’t a perfectionist gets stuck because they go, once I make a decision, it’s forever, or once I make a decision, it’s for 10 years. And you go, no, no, no, no, no. Like part of having an advisor in a relationship is we’re iterating, I’m going to keep my finger on the pulse. Like, I’m going to be available. Like, we’re not, like, we’re auditioning this idea, we’re trying this. That gives up perfectionist comfort.
Brad Johnson: So, what do you do with somebody? I’m just tying back to a couple conversations I’ve had here recently. What do you do with somebody that when they get to that second step, maybe they’ve done the dreaming, they’ve done some of it, and now they’re trying to go down in the weeds. They’re trying to pick out the granite countertops before you even finish the blueprint. How do you pull them out of that or make them aware that that’s not really serving them? Paralysis by analysis is another way to say it. They’re just overanalyzing the whole time.
Jon Acuff: I think part of it is you give them big picture. You take the small thing they’re looking at and show them the big picture. So, like…
Brad Johnson: So, zoom out.
Jon Acuff: Zoom out and go, hey, like, so today, we had a conversation. This is just from my business. We’ve got a live event we’re doing. And somebody said, hey, I think we should only focus on having the new book at the live event. We’re going to have a merch table. Let’s only have the new book, not another book that you sell. And I was like, that’s fine. And we went around and round and on, and then I said, guys, guys, we’re talking about a hundred books. We’re going to sell a hundred extra books that day. That’s not like, if you do the math on it, you can often see things are absurd to get stuck on.
So, when somebody goes like, hey, here’s this thing I’m thinking about, I’m really stuck on this thing, I’ll try to pull it out high enough and make it big enough that they can see, oh, this isn’t the thing.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, one of the things that is a very common issue in finance, back to kind of unpacking different forms of procrastination based on different personality types is kind of the planner, reviewer, probably couple different flavors of similar things, whether it’s perfectionist, analyst. How do you start to pull people out? You’re mentioning zooming out, but are there other questions or frameworks of people that tend to go down in the weeds and just overanalyze over and over and never make a decision?
Jon Acuff: Yeah, I mean, part of it is I try to figure out what’s their value system too. Like, with a client, you’re looking at going, oh, they do need a little information. I’m not going to fight them on, they want more info, but I’m not going to give them overwhelming information, because sometimes the perfectionist is almost testing you, like, well, let’s see. Like, they come in kind of like, ah, advisors, I know what advisors are like, or I had an advisor nine years, I didn’t have a good experience. So, all advisors are like that one.
And so, like, sometimes it’s you being able to go, oh, you speak data as a perfectionist. Here’s some data that I think you’ll find interesting. And if you want to have a conversation about it, great. So, it’s not that you’re fighting it, like you never want to fight a perfectionist on going, don’t worry about the data, don’t worry. Like, don’t worry makes a perfectionist crazy. They go the opposite direction. That doesn’t calm them down, that fires them up.
So, again, I’m trying to say to them like, oh, this little thing, here’s what it’s costing us right now, because we’ve all been in meetings where we look around the room and go, there’s 10 people in this meeting. This is a $3,000 meeting. This issue is going to make us $500. What are we doing? We can see that. So, I’m trying to clarify.
Then I’m also trying to go, I respect that you want more information. Here’s some more. I’m going to serve you that way too, so that you feel good about that. And then the third thing is getting them to do something small that leads to something bigger. Like, I’m not going to shock them with like, hey, we’re going from this type of planning to doing at this level. I like to say, like, hey, let’s date this idea. Not marry it. We’re not like, we barely know each other. Like, this is money. Money is like the last taboo. Like, dude, I know people, other men that will tell me crazy things about their marriage they’re struggling with, or pornography or gambling, whatever. And then you go, hey, what’s the financial number you’re trying to hit for retirement? And they go, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, dude…
Brad Johnson: You crossed the line, buddy.
Jon Acuff: You crossed the line, buddy, I don’t– and if we’re not talking about that with our closest friends, we’re doomed. And so, like, I don’t want to try to shock somebody into doing, I want to lead them there at the pace they’re ready to go. So, I’m using phrases like, well, let’s date this, not marry it. Like, we might get serious down the road, or like, let’s audition this idea. Like, let’s do a three-month audition on this or a six-month audition.
And as I succeed, you’re going to want to do more. Like, the bottom line is my goal is I want you to be willing and excited to do more and more and more and more. But we just got started. Let’s figure out what it looks like for us to get into that space. How do we audition some of these things? Because that shuts down the perfectionism’s fear of it has to be perfect, it has to be everything, and it’s forever.
Brad Johnson: Do you think– something just occurred to me, do you think that’s almost like a form of defensiveness where, like, if you went into a therapist, hey, why do you procrastinate? Why do you overanalyze? It’s almost like, because I don’t trust. And so, maybe that’s baggage that actually, because they did get burned with an advisor that sold them a product. They didn’t actually know what they were buying. So, now, it’s like overcorrecting to where it’s like, I must analyze every single product that goes into my portfolio in the high detail. Is part of that just the psychology, almost like a therapy session?
Jon Acuff: 100%. A person like that is surrounded by bear traps and they’re waiting for you to step in one. They’ve been hurt or something happened. They’ve surrounded themselves with bear traps. And then the second you say the wrong thing, they go, I knew it. You’re just like every advisor. So, yeah, 100%. And that’s why like, in the book I say procrastination is not a problem, it’s a solution. It’s just not a good solution.
And what I mean by that is you’re using it to avoid something that seems harder or scary or difficult. And so, you’re going, I don’t want to like– there’s a lot of people that go, I’m afraid of money, so as long as I don’t think about it, I won’t have to deal with it. And that’s their plan. And then, eventually, like money does become real. Like, eventually, and so, they’re using procrastination because they think the solution to not deal with money is for me to not deal with it and just kind of hope it works out. So, yeah, that’s very much a, I’ve been hurt before or I’m afraid of money. And I don’t know what to do.
Or I’m afraid I’m looking embarrassed. Like, there’s some people that go, I don’t want to ask the wrong question, so I won’t ask any. They don’t want, you know, like, and part of your job as an advisor is like, there’s no bad question. Like, this is no– like, you’ve come into a Swiss, like watch factory. It could be feel complicated in here. There’s no bad questions. I don’t like, you can ask the silliest question you want and I’m going to be so excited you asked it. Like, that’s the other, because as an advisor, you live and breathe this stuff and you naturally forget people don’t, and if so, like, it’s the same with me 15 years into doing keynote speaking. When I coach young speakers, I have to really interview a lot of young speakers to remember what that was like so that I don’t say something that’s complicated and takes 15 years of expertise to get, but that I remember like the first time I spoke and nobody showed up, and what did that feel like? Like, that’s what I kind of have to tag into, and that’s what I think a good advisor does.
Brad Johnson: Couldn’t agree more. Do you think, on the perfectionist, maybe it’s the analyst, do you think any of it is ever the fear of losing control?
Jon Acuff: Oh, my gosh. The whole, yeah, perfectionist is about control. And the real fear, if you think about the fear behind the fear, because that’s usually what’s going on, the fear behind the fear is if I lose control, I won’t be able to handle the outcome. I’m not up to whatever scary thing is going to happen. It’s not even just the thing, it’s usually, and what will I be left with? How would I recover? I don’t have what it takes to recover from that. That’s most people’s fear when it comes to losing control. Like, if I ask for a raise and they get, or like say I’m negotiating a salary and I ask for more and they say never mind, and they withdraw the offer, I’ll never find another job. I won’t be able to handle that.
And there’s so many people that go, well, I better be careful. So, yeah, it is about control, and the thing that I tell perfectionists all the time is that life is about holding two opposite things in your hand. One is accept uncertainty. You got to accept uncertainty. You don’t control everything. There’s so many things in life you don’t control. But at the same time, increase certainty. Like, there are things you can do that will increase the certainty of things happening. There’s also a lot of things that you have to just accept we live on an uncertain planet. I don’t control a lot of things. And if I try to like, if you want a miserable life, get those switched. Try to control the things you don’t control. Let go of the things you do.
Brad Johnson: That’s like Stoicism 101 right there.
Jon Acuff: Yeah, yeah.
Brad Johnson: Get pissed at the weather outside because it’s raining. And good luck without them, right?
Jon Acuff: Or mad at the economy. Say, like, I can’t be a great advisor until the economy approves, or I can’t be a great advisor because the government is so wack. Like, if your plan is to wait until the government is awesome, in any administration, let me be clear about that, you’re going to be waiting a very, very, very long time. Like, same with the economy. Like, the economy impacts me, but it certainly doesn’t control me. Like, it certainly gives me challenges, it gives me dares. The economy dares me all the time. It’s like, I dare you to do something with this. Like, I dare you to figure this one out. I’m like, all right, well, let me figure that out, and you get to answer that dare or wait until the economy’s better. But again, you’re going to be waiting a very long time.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Okay, I want to run a quote by you that’s one of my favorites. And I’m curious, because I know you’ve run in a lot of cool circles. Have you ever crossed paths with a guy named Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach?
Jon Acuff: I haven’t met him personally, but I’ve read a bunch of his work. Yeah, he’s the goat.
Brad Johnson: He’s like, this might be a bad analogy. I feel like he’s like the Jesus of business, because he’s like a sage, like he’s coached on entrepreneurs for a long time.
Jon Acuff: It’s crazy, yeah.
Brad Johnson: But I had the chance to, it was actually right before COVID hit, I was in Strategic Coach and would flap to Toronto, and then it kind of halted. But he said something, I think it was one of my last sessions with him, and he said, what if procrastination was a source of wisdom? And what you just hit on that last one is what if you allowed it to teach you something about yourself? Because typically, the stuff you put off is the stuff you shouldn’t be doing or don’t enjoy doing. And so, like as a business owner, entrepreneur, why are you still doing it? So, what’s your take on that? Does that hit home with you? Do you have a different way to…
Jon Acuff: Well, it hits home with me in the sense of, I think you should be the greatest student of you. Like, I always say, I’m the best Jon Acuff salesman. You should be like, your job is selling you to you. Like, most of goals is selling yourself something that you really want to do, but you probably don’t feel like doing in the moment. So, like, I really want to be in shape, Brad, but there’s a lot of mornings I don’t want to get up and work out. Like, I do this workout program called F3, which is this free men’s bootcamp thing at 5:30.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, familiar. It’s like a guy’s group in the morning, right?
Jon Acuff: Yeah, 5:30 in the morning. And there’s a lot of mornings, dude, at 4:55 that I’m not like, yay, it’s still pitch black. I’m going, it’s 8 degrees. Like, we work out recently, it was eight degrees. There was no part of me, I was like, hooray. But I know, ultimately, the drive home is amazing. And the only way I get the drive home is if I do the other stuff. And so, I’m trying to sell myself.
So, to Dan’s quote, I go, I love any quote that’s about self-awareness and learning from a moment. So, if you go, wow, I’m really putting this off, why? What’s going on behind this? What’s really at play? Or like, I love to interview overreactions. When I overreact to a situation, I have a real learning opportunity. Like, I’ll give you an example. Somebody, this is like two years ago, I was on a podcast and they emailed me and was like, hey, please make sure you have the right kind of microphone and right headphones. And I got so offended inappropriately. I was like, I have a microphone.
I didn’t write this, but in my head, I was like, I have a bigger podcast than you. Like, my ego just went crazy and I had to pause and go, that’s just the standard email they send to every guest. Why am I acting like they said, you’re a loser? You don’t have a good podcast. You don’t know what you’re doing. And I got to learn about myself. So, yeah, anytime you get to go, like while procrastination is teaching me or overreaction is teaching me, I think that’s a good spot because then you can kind of, I would say that’s a review. Then you can review it and go, do I want to keep doing that or do I want to do something else?
Brad Johnson: Well, I can’t have you mention F3 without giving a shout out to my buddy Dave. Actually, I think that was part of like back in the day when I was recruiting advisors, I went and did an early morning workout, to your point. And I think that was like one of the– he’s like, well, this dude show up and put in work. But what I learned about F3 is they give you a nickname if you’re new to the group. Do they do that in your group?
Jon Acuff: Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Brad Johnson: What’s your nickname, if you can share it?
Jon Acuff: Yeah, totally. So, the first day you go, at the end of the workout, you circle up and you talk. You tell kind of an embarrassing story about yourself, and they give you a nickname. And so, I told them the story that probably like 12 years ago, I did a book signing line with John Maxwell. So, he was at one table, I was at the other, and he had 500 people in his line, and I had zero in mine.
And so, they said, your name is Minwell, as in minimum, like the opposite of Maxwell is Minwell. So, they call me Minwell, and it’s such a funny, it takes the seriousness off it, like guys, especially competitive dudes who are going after something hard can get kind of serious. So, the nickname is such a great diffuser. There was a kid that his first day there, his shoe fell off during the workout, so they nicknamed him Cinderella. And so, it’s stuff like that, like where the names are so funny. But yeah, so my name is Minwell. But when I’m tired, it sounds like Manuel. So, often at Christmas, they’re all calling me Emmanuel, he is with us. So, like…
Brad Johnson: Well, you like just piggyback that story with your story about like, hey, do you know who I am on? Do I have the right headphones and mic? That is the power of just like, you want to keep people around you that kind of keep you real.
Jon Acuff: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah.
Brad Johnson: And so, it’s interesting. So, I’ve only gone to one F3. My nickname, Toto, because they found out I was from Kansas and I did it in Washington State, so…
Jon Acuff: No, I love it, dude. It’s the best, the thing, like it teaches you so many lessons. One that I learned recently is that, so like, say we have to do 200 pushups. The guys that finish first will come around and go, hey, do you need me? Can I give you 20? Can I give you 10? And they’ll do extra pushups for you. And I learned in that moment, the strongest have to be the most generous. The guys that were the best have to be generous. And I love that leadership principle of like the best have to be giving. And then, you as a man, like. I don’t know if you’ve met men, they’re not good at receiving help. It’s not one of the things we’re great at. So, to have another dude who finished his pushups first and go, hey, can I do 20 for you? That takes humility to be like, dude, I am dying.
So, like, the other day we did a workout, 30-pound backpack, 60-pound sandbag, and dude, that’s 90 pounds. I weigh 155, like that is a significant part of my body. And at the end of the workout, we were walking back to the car and this other dude, his name is Bubbles because he owns like a dozen car washes, was like, do you want me to help you carry your sandbag? And I was like, yes, dude, I am dying. And so, I just think competitiveness teaches a lot of lessons and so does having men, women, a spouse, like that can tell you the truth and can keep things pretty light so you don’t get stuck in this loop and think you have to do it all yourself or that it has to always be serious or that no one can tell you the truth.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, hey, dude, I know towards the end, we got a little more onto the life side, which I love. That’s what this show’s about, doing business, doing life, how those two come together. Any closing thoughts? We’ve hit all over procrastination. I love how you applied this to our industry. Such good advice. I know a ton of advisors out there are going to go and literally use this in their next appointment to help people break through to get where they want to go. But any closing thoughts as we wrap here today, Jon?
Jon Acuff: Yeah, I love your industry and I believe in it deeply. I’ve had a great relationship with an advisor. We’re on our 14th year. So, for me, just thanks for doing what you do. I think a really fun part of financial freedom is to not become a burden for your kids. Like, that’s a long-term goal. Like, I want to set my kids up. I don’t want to be the type of parent that’s like, they have to bail me out, so that you’re creating generational relationships that are stronger because of the financial side of things, I’m a big fan. So, I’d just say I’m a big fan of what you guys do and hopefully that came through today.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, it did. I can tell it. Number one, I can tell you’re passionate about what you do. You’re not the guy just writing books to be an author. You actually care. You’re investing yourself and kind of scratching your own itch with the topics you write about. But this applies, not that I didn’t love our other conversations, man, we always have a good time when we’re jamming, but this one directly applies in so many ways, not only to the entrepreneurs, the advisors running businesses, but also, how they can serve their clients. So, love it, man. And let’s connect when I’m down Nashville-Franklin area here in a month or two.
Jon Acuff: All right, we’ll go to F3. Let’s go, dude.
Brad Johnson: All right, my man.
Jon Acuff: Thanks buddy.
Brad Johnson: We’ll see you. Bye.
