Striking a balance between scaling your business and having a personal life is one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs to master. If you’ve ever felt like reaching your entrepreneurial goals requires you to give up family dinners, vacations, selfcare or anything else that brings you joy, then you need Jason Wojo’s wisdom.
In this episode of Conquer the Chaos, Jason, CEO of Lifeonaire, joins Clate Mask to unveil his secrets to balancing business success and life’s joys so you can stop stressing and start living.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Clate Mask: Hi, I'm Clate Mask, and on the Conquer the Chaos Podcast, I talk with inspiring business owners about what it takes to build a great business and a great life. That means more money, more time, more control, more impact, more freedom. So keep listening to hear the tough lessons they learned so you don't have to repeat them.
[00:00:23] Clate Mask: Welcome everyone to this episode of the Conquer the Chaos podcast. I am Clate Mask co-founder and CEO of Keap, and I’m so excited to share with you the guest that I brought today, because this is going to be an awesome conversation. Our guest today is someone who I've known for many years.
[00:00:45] Clate Mask: He is a great entrepreneur, but he speaks to one of the problems that I see plaguing entrepreneurs all the time. And the problem is how do you actually set the vision for your life that supports your business and vice versa? How do you make sure that your business is supporting that vision you have for your life?
[00:01:09] Clate Mask: So we're going to talk about that. My guest today is Jason Wojo of Lifeonaire. Jason, thank you so much for being here. Why don't you give just a quick introduction to our audience as to who you are.
[00:01:20] Jason Wojo: Clate, super excited to be here, man. I love what you're doing. I'd love to be part of this. And so my entrepreneurial journey started off as someone who found himself in several businesses working way too hard. I was introduced to Lifeonaire actually as a member.
[00:01:35] Jason Wojo: And this is what changed everything for me, where I started to really understand that business isn't just a tool to make money. It's not just a way to generate an income, but you rather can have a life and a business you love. And so now I get the opportunity to share this message all over, all over the world at this point.
[00:01:54] Jason Wojo: And I'm just so passionate. I got to tell you when Conquer the Chaos came out, I'm like, “This is gold.” Like you've encapsulated so well, what business owners and entrepreneurs struggle with. It's just such an alignment. I'm super excited to share with your audience how to actually make this a reality. How do you really do this?
[00:02:14] Clate Mask: Well, Jason, As I've gotten to know you over the last couple of years a little bit more in depth, I see what you practice. And absolutely, when you look at the personal keys to success and in particular, the second key being vision — life vision for your personal life, what you do — as I was writing that, I thought several times about you.
[00:02:35] Clate Mask: I thought about what you do and how you teach this. And the fact that you became a student of it first and then, and as a customer and then took it on, I'm really excited to have this conversation. Will you just tell everybody what Lifeonaire means? Because the name of the business has an important meaning for everybody.
[00:02:50] Jason Wojo: Yeah, right. Well, so everyone knows what a millionaire is, right? Like someone who has a lot of money, but the problem with that is — and by the way, there's nothing wrong with being a millionaire — but oftentimes, if you're not really careful, if you're not deliberate in the pursuit of that money, you'll find out that the life you thought the money would buy you is not what you actually experience.
[00:03:10] Jason Wojo: And so a lifeonaire is someone who has a lot of life, right? And it's the life that you're hoping the money will buy you, so that's really what we're after at the end of the day, right? It's life. It's not just the money.
[00:03:22] Clate Mask: Love it. And we're going to talk through this, but I think the audience, as the audience, you can probably see why Jason and I are so aligned on this because the when I wrote Conquer the Chaos, the six keys to success for entrepreneurs, I start with the definition of success and I say, “Look, success is balanced growth in your business and personal life that produces freedom.”
[00:03:44] Clate Mask: And so you can see how the alignment of our messages is there. And that's what we're going to talk about because the problem that I see that many entrepreneurs make, Jason, is that they get how vision for your business is very helpful. And they can even see how, okay, you set lofty goals, a kind of purpose mission. You have these big goals and then they break down into smaller goals, and then you have kind of this rhythm of how you go about executing your goals and your operation in your business. But then doing that on the personal side is much more challenging for people, and life is so dynamic and things are changing.
[00:04:24] Clate Mask: What I find is people really have a hard time setting that life vision, which is why I called it out as that second key to success. And just as a reminder for everybody, the life vision, as I describe it, is setting your identity, your purpose, your values, your mission, and your goals — identity purpose, values, mission goals, getting that set so you are clear on who you are and your business can support that and vice versa. Your business can support your life vision and your life vision can really support and drive your business. When you get this, it's really powerful.
[00:04:58] Clate Mask: It's super, super powerful. In fact, when you really study very highly successful entrepreneurs — and I'm going to use the term of success, meaning balanced growth in your business and personal life, right — when you see these people that are winning at life and winning a business, they figured this out.
[00:05:15] Clate Mask: They figured out how to set a life vision that supports the business and how to set a business vision that supports their life. And so that's the backdrop for this conversation. Now, tell us in short — you talked about Lifeonaire, having enough light, having a lot of life to live — tell us in short, how you help people do that. Help us understand your method on how that works.
[00:05:39] Jason Wojo: So, there's two, really two components to this. The first one is what you alluded to, which … And listen, I know everybody thinks they just need to make money in their business. I get it. I went through that phase too. But if you …
[00:05:54] Clate Mask: And by the way, you and I both want them to make money.
[00:05:57] Jason Wojo: Yea! And that's important. The thing that is oftentimes missed is what are you really trying to accomplish with that money? And that's where the personal vision can really apply. Because here's the thing, if you make a ton of money, but you're running around with your hair on fire constantly, and you can never enjoy it, or you're too stressed out, or you're never present with your family even if you're there physically, that's probably not what you're looking for.
[00:06:19] Jason Wojo: And by the way, this is a part that everybody misses, there will be a long term consequence to that, and it's probably not going to be good.
[00:06:27] Clate Mask: We call that the dark side of entrepreneurship, right?
[00:06:29] Jason Wojo: Right. And Clate, I just talked to somebody who said their dad was an entrepreneur. They're like, “My dad's business was his mistress.” And I was like, “Wow, I never heard it said that way before.” So we really help you with two things. The first step, and I think this is so important, is I believe, and I might get some resistance on this, but you have to figure out what you want your life to look like first, like as you define personal vision.
[00:06:52] Jason Wojo: And the reason is because the whole purpose of your business, aside from making money, is to give you a life you want. How are you going to create a business that complements your life and that supports that life if you don't know what that is? So you need to have that information
[00:07:11] Clate Mask: Yep, and this is where I think a lot of people struggle sometimes because it's not easy to just come up with your life vision. How do you do that? SoI have people ask me sometimes … In the book, I try to break it down into some elements to say, “Look, establish your identity — who you are, I am statements. “I am this …” That's the identity. Establish your purpose. Why are you here on this earth?
[00:07:35] Clate Mask: Why do you exist? I share it with people all the time. My purpose is to love, inspire and enrich others. That's my purpose. Your mission — what's your life mission that you're about doing here? Then once you've got your identity, purpose, values, And your values and mission … Your values are, I like to tell people, five things that you really highly value.
[00:07:58] Clate Mask: Then once you set that you can set your life goals and then begin to break it down. And I teach people to set the goals in five areas — physical, spiritual, social, business, and financial. I would love to hear … That's kind of a construct that I've put together for people, but what I find a lot of times is people will come to me and they'll say, “Man, it's really hard to sit down and fill that out.”
[00:08:22] Clate Mask: And so you do this. You help people do this, and I'd love to hear — how would you encourage people? How would you direct people? What tips or tricks would you give people when they're trying to set this life vision? Whether it's using the construct I provide them or some other construct, as I say in the book, I don't particularly care what construct you use. I just want you to have a vision that really drives you.
[00:08:45] Jason Wojo: Well, and before I even tell you that clay, I just for everybody listening, I want you to recognize There's nothing wrong with you. If you've never done this before, you're not broken. It's just that you've never maybe thought about the importance of this and have never been taught how this applies to your business. So, you've kind of just neglected it, and so that's okay.
[00:09:02] Clate Mask: And by the way, that's particularly true because in the world of entrepreneurship, the teaching is so much about the business. There's hardly anybody out there teaching the life-side of how you make the business work for entrepreneurs. There's a lot of people out there doing life coaching, but specifically, how do you do the life vision side as an entrepreneur to make the business work and then vice versa, the vision of the business that makes your life work.
[00:09:32] Jason Wojo: And so with that, as you know, this isn't easy to do because most people have been conditioned to follow the path and follow the masses. And so when we teach people how to do this as three exercises in particular that I think are really tactical, strategic things that people can implement on their own here unless they want help. And so those three exercises are this: The first one … And everything you said, Clate, I 100% agree with. When people get stuck in trying to figure out the answer to these, what we've found is that if you can push different components of their value system, you'll find out quickly, or they will find out for themselves what they value.
[00:10:09] Jason Wojo: So for instance, one of the exercises we do at our live events is write your eulogy. People have this … We're not the first ones to come up with this idea, but write your eulogy. But this is a twist of it: You're going to do two different versions. One of them is if you died today and you had to tell the whole complete truth and nothing but the truth and it came from somebody who knew you intimately, maybe even the things that you never shared but you know are true about yourself. What would people say about you?
[00:10:39] Jason Wojo: And then version two is what do you want people to say in their deepest heart of hearts? What would you like people to say about you? And so this is one really powerful exercise for two things. One, people start to recognize very quickly — are you saying things like, “Oh, he made 8 million in real estate.”?
[00:10:57] Jason Wojo: Or are you saying like, “He was a great father or a great husband or a great mother or sister, or he poured into his community or she did this or that.”? You start to identify those things of how you see yourself, and that can be really enlightening. The second exercise is, what would you do if you had 90 days to live?
[00:11:18] Jason Wojo: Like if you got a fatal diagnosis that you are not gonna be on this planet in 90 days, how would you spend your time? Now of course, forget about the estate planning stuff and who's getting the house and the car, like the real stuff. Who are you spending that time with? What are the things you find most valuable?
[00:11:32] Jason Wojo: That is another insight into all of the things that you mentioned. And the last one we do is, what do you want your children's lives to look like? If you could design what their life would look like as an adult, what would you want them to experience? What would you want them to be, do, have? The kind of person you'd want them to like show up as …
[00:11:51] Jason Wojo: And what we … And by the way, the reason we ask that question is because we found a lot of times it's like people have a filter on what they think is possible for them or what's realistic or probable, but they take that filter off when they think about their kids. And so often, we'll have them write it and it will be like, so why do you guys think we wrote this?
[00:12:09] Jason Wojo: And they're like, “Oh, I don't know.” And I'm like, “It's because it's what you want.” And they're like, “Oh wow, you're right. I never thought of it that way.” So those are just basically some tools that we found useful to find the answers that you mentioned to those questions that are sometimes difficult to uncover.
[00:12:24] Clate Mask: Yeah. I really appreciate those exercises because, in particular, the last 90 days is a great way to focus people on what matters most. We've all heard the story of the, you know, the person on their deathbed never wishing that they had a little bit more time to do some more work. They wish for time for other things.
[00:12:48] Clate Mask: So I like that last 90 days exercise. I've heard the eulogy exercise, but I like your spin on it. I think that's a good way to do it. And I hadn't heard the kids exercise — what do you want for your kids? Is there any … When people are sitting down to do these exercises, is there anything that you've found that's helpful to get them in the right mind space to do it?
[00:13:09] Jason Wojo: One of the questions we ask is … And I think it's really important to consider, and this is not to press any buttons of pain, for instance, but I think people move towards something or away from something either because there's a pull in this direction of a positive, something that's pleasurable or they're getting pushed.
[00:13:28] Jason Wojo: They're getting poked from behind. So you've got the carrot in the front and the stick in the back. So I'll ask people like, “Listen, if you continue on the path you're on right now, maybe it's good and maybe you're happy with that, but if you're not, what is life going to look like in a year or three years or 10 years? imagine yourself on the same exact path you're on now. What's a high probability outcome that you're going to be experiencing? And is that what you want?” And sometimes that's enough to kind of snap people out of it to recognize this is what I want.
[00:14:00] Jason Wojo: Now, the other option of that is you could do a positive kind of experience for them where you could say, “Hey, imagine you've done these steps. You've focused on the things that are most important to you. You've done the work and what does life look like now? Then they can start to experience that in a positive way. Almost a surrogate kind of preview of what could be. And together … Again, the pain and the pleasure allow them to really embrace this because they have to internalize it. They can't just accept it intellectually. They have to really feel it and then they're more likely to take action.
[00:14:35] Clate Mask: Yeah. Okay. Awesome. You shared a few things in your explanation of the exercises and in this last part about ways that people can take the filters off and break down the ego that a lot of times blocks us from seeing the truth and seeing what we really need to.
[00:14:56] Clate Mask: So I really appreciate that because if we go through these exercises you just described — whether it's the eulogy exercise, the what you want for your kids exercise, the 90 day exercise — and we don't get the ego out of the way, then we end up creating a pseudo-exercise that doesn't really get us to a place of fulfillment and satisfaction of who we are and who we're trying to become.
[00:15:23] Clate Mask: I appreciate the way you said that and how the technique of some of those exercises will remove those filters. And I would just encourage people to remember, as I talk about in the book, it's that sneaky little ego that holds us back from really confronting the truth and being honest about where we are and what we want and what we would like the future to look like. I'll just add something that you said. There's a book out there that I really love called “The Three Laws of Performance” that teaches how we can change the future that we are headed for if we do something different. And the book calls it your default future.
[00:16:08] Clate Mask: And I really love that concept because what you just called out is you're saying, “Look, you're on a certain path, you have a default future.” And in this exercise that you're recommending, it's really to be honest, slow down, be honest with yourself and say, “Is that the future I really want?” And that takes a lot of courage to do that.
[00:16:30] Clate Mask: It takes a lot of self-confrontation, a lot of checking the ego. It is where change happens. It's where we go, “You know what? Heck no, I'm not going there. I don't want that. That's not what I want.” That's kind of the poke that you're talking about from behind, but you have to be honest with yourself to say, “Oh no, that's not what I want.”
[00:16:49] Clate Mask: But the other side of it is to go, “You know what? I see something better and more exciting and something like the eulogy exercise or the 90 day exercise. And that's what I want.” That’s the carrot that gets motivating, gets exciting, but either way, we have to have that moment of confrontation, self-confrontation of the future to say, “Is that what we want? Is that the default future we're really after?” So thanks for going through that. I think that's really helpful. One thing I've noticed as I've talked with entrepreneurs and coached them while they're working on their purpose, values, and mission is that there's an art to getting into the right mindset to do this work.
[00:17:27] Clate Mask: Part of that art is not expecting it all to happen at once. In a very funny way, what I've noticed is when people say, “Okay, I'm going in the room. I'm locking the door. I'm going to come out with my life vision,” you put yourself into this place that's not creative and productive in the way that we need to be to do this.
[00:17:54] Clate Mask: So, in a funny way, you have to give yourself permission to let it take a little time, have a few iterations of it, and that's okay. But there's also value in secluding yourself a little bit, getting away. What I find is there's this combination of slowing down, quieting things down, getting away, relaxing and pushing yourself to have an iterative experience so that you don't let it take years and years to establish. You want this to happen over a relatively short period of time to where you can get a version one, a first draft of your life vision.
[00:18:34] Clate Mask: So I just wanted to share a couple of things there and wondered if you had anything else that you find helpful as you're coaching people to get into the right mind space? I'm sure that when you do it in a group setting, you probably do certain things to get people in that place where they can be productive and creative in a way that yields a vision that they're excited about.
[00:18:58] Jason Wojo: Yeah. And I'm going to echo a lot of what you said. So when we do this, for instance, one of the very first things we do is we have to … And this is not coming from a place of anything more than we're just simply further along than some other people, but it's not that we're any better or any smarter. It's just that people have been doing things the way that's worked for them or not worked in a particular way.So the first thing that we have to do is really help people understand that there's a problem.
[00:19:27] Jason Wojo: One of the questions we'll ask is like, we'll ask the audience actually is like, “So tell me, why are you here?” And we get a bunch of answers and then we'll say, “Okay. And so what would a perfect life look like for you? What would your vision look like?” And usually we get this … At this level, it's an entry level question, so people don't have deep things yet. Then we'll say, “Okay, so guys now listen, out of every business owner, entrepreneur you know, close your eyes right now and raise your hand if you can think of at least three to five people that are experienced, that have a life that represents what you just heard.”
[00:20:06] Jason Wojo: And almost none of the hands go up, like maybe one or two hands and I'll have them open their eyes. I'll say, “Look, listen, we're all smart in here. We're all hard workers. Many of us are overachievers and perfectionists and all this, and we're all trying to accomplish the same thing here. There's clearly an issue, if in a room of 100 people, only three hands went up of someone who has that life. And so can we just recognize and agree that there's a challenge here that something's wrong.” And everybody agrees. So that's the first step.
[00:20:38] Jason Wojo: It's kind of like the other exercises I mentioned — get them to recognize something's wrong. But I want to also really emphasize that you hit it on the head. And yes, we do it as a group. So that helps somewhat versus on your own. It is harder on your own just because you've been conditioned for so long.
[00:20:55] Jason Wojo: You don't have any other input, but the thing with your vision is for us, I believe it's a living, breathing document that matures and evolves as you do. Maybe you have kids and when you first created it, you didn't have kids and maybe some changes. And it doesn't happen overnight.
[00:21:14] Jason Wojo: But what we found is the more you refer to it, the more you keep it in front of you, the more you start to internalize it. And I'm personally not a big woo-woo person. However, there is something magical that happens when you just continually refer to something. And it starts to become ingrained in you and you'll notice something. You'll be like, “Well, you know, my first version, I thought this was kind of me, but I have some better verbs here, or this isn't quite right. Let me change that.” Then gradually over time, it starts to become part of you, that really piece by piece starts to show up in your life. Each component — it starts to show up.
[00:21:53] Clate Mask: Okay. We're going to keep this going, but first a quick message for you.
[00:21:57] Clate Mask: Conquer the Chaos listeners, let me talk to you straight for just a minute. You're running your business, and it dominates your mind. It can be very difficult to take a step back and see what's needed to create balance in your business and your personal life, and to create great growth and development and progress in your business and personal life.
[00:22:15] Clate Mask: One of the most powerful ways to gain the perspective that you need is to get away from things and immerse yourself in an environment where you're going to be inspired, where you can see possibilities, where you can create connections, and where you can learn and grow and develop. And I know of no better place for entrepreneurs than Keap’s Let's Grow Summit. For years. We ran this conference as just an amazing mecca for entrepreneurship. And then, truth be told, for a few years, we didn't run it. We got back to it last year, and this year, we're putting it on and it is going to be awesome. I am so excited about this.
[00:22:52] Clate Mask: And I want you as our listeners to not miss out on this event. It's going to be November 20-22 in downtown Phoenix with the main days being the 21 and the 22. You can register for it by going to keap.com/letsgrowsummit. That's https://keap.com/letsgrowsummit. And you can take advantage of our early bird registration pricing, which expires at the end of July.
[00:23:16] Clate Mask: So if you are needing a reflection time, an opportunity to take a step back, gain greater perspective, inspiration, and most of all, see what automation — the fifth key to success — can do for your business, then make sure that you attend the Let's Grow Summit. Keap.com/letsgrowsummit, November 20-22 in Phoenix. I look forward to seeing you there. Alright, now back to our chat.
[00:23:41] Clate Mask: Okay. I love this. There's a couple of things you talked about that I want to emphasize. The first is the concept of a living, breathing document. And this is why I said you got to get a V1, a first version, but you don't have to perfect it so much that it's never going to change. It's that you're getting a version in place and then you start to live it. And this is why … and what I teach — it's In the planning document and planning materials that I provide to people — it's that you're revisiting, you're rewriting it every week, and as you rewrite it, it's very common that you start to find little things that are adjusting and you need to get changed.
[00:24:22] Clate Mask: Then when you do your quarterly planning, you're looking at the big picture and you're going, “Oh, okay, well, what needs to adjust here?” And it's amazing how over the course of a quarter little things start to get clear, but it's because you're living, you're practicing. It's a living, breathing document.
[00:24:40] Clate Mask: So I love that about what you described. And then the other thing that you talked about is in a group setting, you've got people who are being intentional. I think that's the point I want to call out. When you talked about “close your eyes, raise your hand, if you see people that are living this life,” I really want to acknowledge the fact that what you're doing is you're waking people up to the possibility that they might be on the path to the dark side of entrepreneurship.
[00:25:12] Clate Mask: That I really commend you for because it's such a subtle thing that happens to people because we're so ambitious, because we're so driven, because we freaking love our businesses. We do. We love them. And if we're not careful, it feels to our kids, our loved ones, our family and friends, that it is our mistress — the way that you described your friend.
[00:25:32] Clate Mask: And that is such a subtle thing that happens. We love our business. We also worry about our business. We stress about it. It's there all the time. And so I want to acknowledge you for, in your setting, you help people wake up to that possibility — that maybe they're a little further down the path to the dark side than they would prefer.
[00:25:54] Clate Mask: My guess is you probably have some people who come to your event and they've hit, they've gone splat on the wall. They've actually experienced the dark side, whether that's addiction, drugs, divorce, near death. There's lots of things that are ugly that we don't very often talk about in entrepreneurship, but they are ugly and they can have a toll on ourselves and on the loved ones around us.
[00:26:21] Clate Mask: It's really easy to not talk about it and just be charged up and excited about the business. And if you don't wake up to the reality of what might be going on, then you will end up having some regrets. I've been in that place where I've been like, “Whoa, hold on. I got to pull back. This is getting too out of balance.” I mean, I say it. I share in the book. It's part of the reason why I'm so passionate about it is because I've flirted with the dark side. I know what that looks like. And I've seen way too many friends, family, loved ones in their businesses get swallowed up by the business.
[00:26:59] Clate Mask: Like I say, sometimes, it's a swallowed up success. Sometimes it's a swallowed up failure or struggle. It happens both ways. So I love that you call people out. You wake people up to it. You're intentional about it. You're helping people see it. And I definitely love your concept about the living, breathing document.
[00:27:21] Clate Mask: That is what the vision becomes. So let's just maybe … One last part on this, on the creation of the vision.
[00:27:29] Jason Wojo: Well, Clate, can I say one last thing real quick? As you were speaking, something hit me that someone right now might be listening and being like, “Well, so you guys are telling me to pump the brakes on my business, to not make as much money, to kind of cool the jets and you're telling me to stop.”
[00:27:44] Jason Wojo: And they might be feeling like we're trying to tell them to not be successful in business. That is not what we're saying. No, we're saying be successful at the things that really matter. And I think it's an even … Listen, anybody can make money in business if they work hard enough for long enough, but that, I believe, is a low bar.
[00:28:04] Jason Wojo: What if you could be successful in life and in business? If you're a smart overachiever, you enjoy a challenge, how about we embrace that finish line instead, where you work smarter? You do things differently than just pure blunt force trauma, right? Let's do things a little bit differently.
[00:28:24] Clate Mask: Yeah, and this is a great segue to the last part I want to talk about with vision because you go through a process to create your life vision. You guys have a process of how you do that, which I'll make sure you get a chance to share with people at the end here, if they want to learn more.
[00:28:40] Clate Mask: I give people some tools and some ways to do that. There's lots of people out there that teach, by the way, it's probably about 99% of the people that teach success on the business side and about 1% that teach entrepreneurs success on the life side to go with the business side.
[00:28:55] Clate Mask: That's why it's really easy for us to get pulled into the success side. It's naturally how we think about it. It's naturally what people are talking about. So we have to be intentional about the life success and the business success. And so the last part I want to talk about here is, okay, you've got a life vision set. Now, how does that, on a day to day basis, help you to achieve success in your business and vice versa on a day to day basis? How does the success in your business help you to achieve your life success? Any thoughts on that as you coach and teach people how to do that?
[00:29:26] Jason Wojo: Yeah. So a couple of thoughts on that. The first one is for if your life vision is dictating or has a huge influence on how you run your business, and they're integrated. The way we could look at this is, for instance, let's use an example of a sample calendar. And let's say you have an ideal week or an ideal day. If you could do anything you want in your business and in life, what would it look like? Starting with life first. And so let's say you have a bunch of your day allocated to certain things like, “Hey, I'm gonna have lunch with my husband. I'm gonna go to the gym in the morning. I'm gonna have dinner at night.”
[00:30:04] Jason Wojo: And then what you do is in the spaces that you have not included things that you want for your personal life — because you put down the personal life stuff first — now you look at this as the area that I have available for work. And so now you're integrating both life and business. This gives you a reason why you need to get it done.
[00:30:25] Jason Wojo: So for instance, we do a lot in real estate investing. And so we'll have a property manager or a real estate investor go out and change a toilet. And they think that they're saving themselves $150 instead of hiring a plumber. But now what they're ended up doing is it took them two hours because they got the wrong part and they got the wrong flapper. It takes them three hours to do it. And now they're missing dinner and they're missing their kid’s soccer games and stuff like that. So having a linkage between your vision and your actual real life calendar gives you a tangible tool and a reason.
[00:31:00] Jason Wojo: It gives you bookmarks to the end of your work day so that you have to get those things done in that amount of time, unless you want to sacrifice something. What are you going to give up? Are you going to give up the lunch with your spouse? Are you going to skip the dinner? Are you going to miss your gym workout?
[00:31:13] Jason Wojo: This is a tool to really help you tangibly see the impact of that. As a funny example … We use this all the time. It's like let's say you're going on a vacation on a Saturday morning and you're going on a cruise and that Friday before you leave, you get more done in your business than the previous Monday through Thursday.
[00:31:33] Clate Mask: Right!
[00:31:34] Jason Wojo: Right? Yeah. You talk about this and like, why? It’s because you have to. What if you approached every day like that, with that urgency and scarcity that I'm not going to sacrifice my personal life for my business and I'm going to figure out a way I'm going to be smart and how I run my business so that I could have both of those together?
[00:31:51] Clate Mask: Love it. Okay. So what you've described … I would summarize what you've just described as life design for entrepreneurs. You're … And by the way, there's a lot of people out there that teach life design, and there's a lot of people that teach success for entrepreneurs.
[00:32:12] Clate Mask: But like I said, most of what gets taught on success for entrepreneurs is on the business side and you get some time management stuff and some other things, but you said something really crucial as you described this: Why are you doing this? Why does it matter? And the why is embedded in your vision.
[00:32:31] Clate Mask: Your life vision. Your purpose — what really matters? Why does it matter? When we get really clear on that on the personal side and we have our business goals on the other side, then we can start to actually design the time that we invest — the way that we allocate our resources to accomplish both our business goals and our personal goals.
[00:32:53] Clate Mask: And so that life design for entrepreneurs, what I would say to the audience is it really does come down to the calendar. It's the calendar. It's what you're scheduling to do. And if you're not intentional about the scheduling of things that matter to you on the life side, the business side will take it all.
[00:33:14] Clate Mask: This is like Parkinson's law for entrepreneurs.
[00:33:17] Jason Wojo: That's right.
[00:33:18] Clate Mask: Parkinson's law is the task that you are engaged in that will take the amount of time that you allocate to it. No matter what. Now let's abstract that to a business. The business always has more to do than you can allocate to it.
[00:33:34] Clate Mask: So it'll just take everything if we're not careful. Parkinson's law for entrepreneurs. So if we don't design life in a way that serves our personal goals and helps us to achieve the business goals, then we get in this place where, and this is a bad place to get, we start to resent life demands in the business side.
[00:33:57] Clate Mask: And we begin to get really frustrated on the business side or on the life side with how much the business is requiring of us. And that's a really crappy place to be because you can't win and you feel it every day, like, “I cannot win. There's not enough hours in the day. I can't make this work.”
[00:34:16] Clate Mask: And I talk to so many entrepreneurs who are dealing with this beneath the surface. A lot of times they haven't been able to articulate it. They're not actually … Every once in a while, they'll have an outburst and they articulate it and they hear it. Their friends and family hear, but usually it's just kind of beneath the surface where on the life side, you're like, “Crap, the business is taking too much of me and I know it.”
[00:34:36] Clate Mask: And then on the business side, you're like, “Gosh, don't they see that I've got to do these things? I have to get this stuff done.” So you get in this place where you're very frustrated as an entrepreneur. and unfortunately, sometimes, it causes entrepreneurs to quit because they're like, “I can't do both these things.”
[00:34:50] Clate Mask: I want to just double down on what you said about designing the life. Once you get the life vision and you get the business vision and you work out how they compliment each other, then you get to start to do all kinds of fun things in the design of your day, your calendar, your days, your weeks, your months, your quarters.
[00:35:08] Clate Mask: And you can start to kill two birds with one stone. You can start to do really creative things. You can start to buy back your time by hiring somebody for this or for that because you recognize why you are doing it. The why is so important. I'm glad you called that out. Any thoughts as I described that about life design for entrepreneurs that you want to touch on before we tie off this part of the conversation?
[00:35:30] Jason Wojo: Yeah, man, one thing. It's this like … And someone right now is thinking, “Well, listen, you know, Hold on. I totally relate to that, Clate, and I already can't get what I want to get done. And I'm working 80 hours a week. How in the heck am I supposed to do this and still have a life outside of business?” To which I'll say two things …
[00:35:46] Jason Wojo: One is I want you to think of the 80/20 rule, which almost everybody's heard of at this point. And as it applies to work, let's think of it this way. 80% of your results will come from 20% of your hours. Let's say you're working a 40 hour work week. And I know it's not an exact science, but it's a principle, right?
[00:36:02] Jason Wojo: And so 20% of a 40 hour work week is eight hours. So that means 80% of the results in your business are coming from eight hours of work per week, assuming it’s a 40 hour work week. So I’ll just let that simmer and see if you're listening right now, see if this is holding true for you. But many business owners aren't doing the right things in their business and this is why they're so busy. The other thing I'll say is this, so in 2017, a study was done.
[00:36:28] Jason Wojo: It was a survey. They looked at 1,989 office workers in the UK, and they discovered that the average person, out of a full eight hour workday of true work, was only doing two hours and 53 minutes. So let's round it to three hours. That's 15 hours of true work per week that was accounting for that entire 40 hour work week.
[00:36:52] Jason Wojo: So this is where we need to be honest with ourselves as the business owner, like, “Gosh, maybe we really don't need to work all these hours, or we need to think about the business and run it a little bit differently than we have been.”
[00:37:03] Clate Mask: Yeah. And maybe we're allocating 40 hours a week, but whatever that number is — 50, 60, 70, some people are working 80 hours — but maybe you're just actually just being beaten by Parkinson's law for entrepreneurs.
[00:37:16] Clate Mask: You're allocating a certain … You've got this job and it's going to always take more time. So I appreciate that. I know as we wrap up here, you and I both have … There's lots of hacks for how we can buy back our time, how we can hire people, making sure that we are only doing the best things.
[00:37:35] Clate Mask: I share in the book, the ICE exercise — what are you incompetent, competent and excellent at? Do a survey of everything that you're doing and only do the excellent stuff. There's other ways to just generally think about, look, do what you do best, delegate the rest. There's an exercise that I call the five Ds where you're feeling overwhelmed.
[00:37:56] Clate Mask: You do the five Ds. The first D is dump everything out of your brain. That's just all the stuff you've got to do that's overwhelming you. So dump it all out. The second thing is delete a bunch of those things because you don't actually have to do them. They're just bugging you and be honest about, do you really need to do these things? No, delete them. Then there's some that really need to get done, but you don’t need to get them done now — that's defer. Defer those to later.
[00:38:15] Clate Mask: That's the third D. The fourth one is they need to get done. They need to get done in a fairly short order, but I don't need to do them so I can delegate them. That's the fourth D. The last one, after all four of those Ds are done, and hopefully you've whittled down 80%- 90% of what was on your list, Is the do by you.
[00:38:32] Clate Mask: And so that's a simple exercise that people can do. I do this all the time when I'm starting to feel overwhelmed. I do that five Ds exercise. So whether you do an ICE exercise or a five Ds exercise, live by the principle of doing what you do best and delegate the rest, certainly recognizing how much your time is worth and then not doing the things that aren't worth that much time. Paying someone to do it … Buy back your time. Dan Martell, a friend of mine, talks about this very well in his book. And that's something that entrepreneurs can and should be doing as they design their life to create the space for the things that matter most that bring fulfillment and satisfaction.
[00:39:12] Clate Mask: The kinds of things they would be doing in those last 90 days … So there's one last thing, though, that you and I both love that helps us get more time and that's automation. And that's the fifth key to success. It's one of the reasons why I talk about automation so much because the straight truth is there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done in a small business.
[00:39:33] Clate Mask: There just isn't. They're not enough hours, but you can automate to replicate yourself. You can automate to get a bunch of other things done for some people. They may not know Jason was our Customer of the Year a couple of years ago because he automates the heck out of things, which shouldn't be a surprise given that Lifeonaire is what he does. But anything that you want to share, Jason, about automation and what that's meant for you in being able to have a great business and a great life?
[00:40:04] Jason Wojo: Man, there are not enough positive things I could say about the utility and the application of automation in the business. To me, this is the game changer for people because everybody … Listen, delegation is great. It's very important. There are things that cannot be automated and delegation is required. However, delegation is more expensive. It's more difficult. There's a whole lot more skills that are involved with it.
[00:40:29] Jason Wojo: Automation is incredible because I mean, so many reasons. Number one, of course, it's less expensive than delegation. It shows up 24/7. It doesn't care if you use it once or a million times. It performs it the exact same way every single time. It's not taking long lunches and extended vacations, and it's always showing up without a hangover.
[00:40:50] Jason Wojo: I also believe here's the other thing that you just mentioned, Clate, with the ice exercises. I think of automation, I call it like the great equalizer. And what that means is it allows you to get time back from running the operational side of your business, so that you can develop your skills and get better as an owner because ultimately, you're going to be the cap in your business in many cases. So as you now have more bandwidth, you can become better. Automation gives you that time back, and it's there … I mean listen, we spend, I don't know, a few hundred bucks a month on Keap. There's nowhere on this planet that I can … I couldn't keep my employees locked in the basement and feed them under the door for cheaper than I can get Keap. I'm not saying to do that, but it's just such a no-brainer that there's so many benefits. I think if you're not automating, you're going to struggle.
[00:41:44] Clate Mask: Yeah, obviously I say all the time, “Automation's a great game changer for small business.” It's what changes the math of trading hours for dollars. It's what creates more hours for you and you guys do it great. We're automating all across your business, and that's the key thing that I love to see.
[00:42:02] Clate Mask: It's not just automating the marketing, but the sales, the service, the operations, the processes, the workflows. Turning those standard operating procedures into standard automated procedures — from SOP to SAP, as I say all the time. So you and I, we're preaching to the lead singer in the choir to each other here. I know that, but what I would say is, I think a lot of times people think it's too … “Well, some people can do that. I can't do that.” It's like, no, it's so accessible. So for anybody that's thinking, “Hey, I'd like to get some more hours in my day and use automation,” check us out at Keap.com.
[00:42:35] Clate Mask: It's what we do, helping small businesses automate. You guys have done an amazing job of that, Jason, but I hope that the majority of what we've talked about here is really sinking in for our people. We talked about how automation is just one of the tools to use to create greater balance in your business and personal life, to get that growth that you want in your business and to get that growth that you want in your personal life.
[00:42:58] Clate Mask: And you guys do some really cool things for entrepreneurs, so I want to give people a chance to learn more. Where can they go if they want to learn more about you and Lifeonaire?
[00:43:07] Jason Wojo: Yeah, the best place is just lifeonaire.com. And essentially we have two events. One's called the Get A Life Getaway, where we help people really … We spend three days helping people figure out their vision, then reverse engineering the action plan to actually achieve it. And then the second event we do, called a Business Builder Workshop, is now that you've identified what that vision looks like, how do you actually in real life create a business to support that life? If you identify that you want to work 20 hours a week and make X amount of dollars, like how do you really make that happen? And that's what we focus on at the Business Builder Workshop.
[00:43:39] Clate Mask: Awesome. So lifeonaire.com. I recommend it to people to go check it out. It's pretty awesome stuff. I hope that as people have listened to this episode of the podcast, the realities of trying to manage the business and the life are clear, but also there's a way that you can break that down into actionable steps, intentional things that you can do to have a vision that supports the life that you want and a vision for your business that supports the business you want and then how to marry those through great design of your life vision and your business vision.
[00:44:18] Clate Mask: That's a huge passion for me — a big part of what I wrote about in the book. I know it's a huge passion for you. It's what you do. And it's something that I just want so much for entrepreneurs who are in that place of frustration, where they just feel like they can't win at both or trying to play these two games that both require way too much of them.
[00:44:35] Clate Mask: And there's just tension and frustration. It leads to that dark side of entrepreneurship. A lot of times it leads to stagnation, failure, getting out of the business on the business side and then on the personal side, some really ugly consequences happen. And so I hope that this has been a useful episode.
[00:44:52] Clate Mask: You've done a great job of bringing it today, Jason. I appreciate it. Thank you for everything that you do out in the community for entrepreneurs and the way you serve entrepreneurs. I love what you do in helping entrepreneurs see what's possible with automation as you use Keap. And I know we'll be together at the event in November — the Let's Grow Summit, an amazing conference for entrepreneurs that people don't want to miss November 20-22 in Phoenix. So we'll see you there and anybody who's, uh, following and watching what we're doing with the Conquer the Chaos Podcast and what we do at Keap. I would also invite you to come join us at the Let's Grow Summit, November 20-22 in Phoenix, Arizona.
[00:45:38] Clate Mask: It's going to be awesome. All kinds of tools and tips and tricks for how to apply automation to grow your business and how to be successful in business and life. It's what we do. I’m excited about it. Jason, thank you for being here. It's been a ton of fun talking about this. You've brought a bunch of great tips and tricks and tools for people to practice. I love the exercises you recommend. I highly encourage them to our audience. So with that, we'll wrap this up as another episode of the Conquer the Chaos Podcast. And until next time, Keep growing.