Jason Komosa, chief business officer at BlackCart and mental coach, joins Small Biz Buzz to discuss the importance of maintaining a work-life balance mentality when things hit the fan, especially while we’re all working through COVID-19.
Let’s face it, we are living in a world where overwork is overvalued–this idea of we’re working so much to get onto the next task, then onto the next, and the next. Then we develop chronic stress and ultimately, it's the number one enemy of success. It makes things worse.
“We ignore our meaningful relationships. We cut out the fun of our lives. We eat poorly. We sleep poorly. We don't exercise. We don't move. We don't take walks. We're kind of just in this self-created isolated bubble,” said Komosa. “And we think it's helping us get more done when the reality is, it's having a reverse effect. It's actually hurting our quality work. I'd much rather have five quality hours of someone's time versus 12 hours of mediocre time. And they say, well, I'm going to wear this badge of pride that I worked 12 hours today. Well, great. And seven of those hours were terrible work. It's all backwards.”
Komosa strongly recommends tracking your time. Go through your day and write down what you are doing in every 15, 30-minute blocks. What you'll notice is you will organically change your behaviors to what you want to achieve.
The idea is first before you try to change and do something different, focus on what you are doing now. Then from that self-audit, decide you’re going to make some changes. The idea is to use that data to benefit yourself for the future–for tomorrow, for the next week, the next month. And so on.
Click play for more.
Transcript:
Crystal (00:01):
Recording.
Dusey (00:01):
This is recording and you're recording, Crystal is waiting to dive right in.
Jason Komosa (00:12):
I'm recording.
Dusey (00:12):
All right.
Crystal (00:14):
Let me make sure I'm recording. I feel like this thing randomly decides, okay, I'm recording.
Dusey (00:22):
Okay.
Crystal (00:23):
It's a go guys. [crosstalk 00:00:26]
Dusey (00:26):
We did it.
Jason Komosa (00:27):
We did it.
Crystal (00:28):
This is exciting.
Dusey (00:29):
Welcome everybody to this week's episode of Small Biz Buzz. This is Dusey hopping in here. Again, I love it when I get a chance to hop in here and to talk to people and not just do the recordings and of course our forever host, our amazing, wonderful, Crystal is with us. Hello.
Crystal (00:46):
Sometimes, hi I'm here.
Dusey (00:48):
All the time, Crystal, every moment.
Crystal (00:53):
Well, thank you, Dusey. You have more. What would I say? Confidence in me than I do myself, which I appreciate.
Dusey (00:58):
And we are joined by special guest, Jason Komosa. Hello, Jason. How's it going?
Jason Komosa (01:04):
Hello. Yes. Thank you so much for having me, everyone, team Keap on excited to be back on the podcast. And I love chatting with you guys. So this is exciting. Great Friday afternoon conversation.
Dusey (01:17):
Yeah, I'm glad you've joined the two timer club with us now, this is your second time. You guys can go back to our history and check out when Jason's been with us before, if you want to hear more from him.
Crystal (01:29):
And I feel like the first time you were on Jason, we were still all new to this COVID thing. We were still kind of stunned by all of its happenings. And I honestly think no one could have seen that 2020 was going to really require your help more now than ever before.
Jason Komosa (01:43):
Absolutely.
Crystal (01:46):
So you're definitely my favorite mental coach. And thank you for being back.
Jason Komosa (01:51):
Yeah, no, thank you for having me. And yeah, to think it's almost September 1st, nearly. And we're still kind of in this predicament, it's unexpected at the same time. It poses a lot of challenges, which hopefully will make us all stronger for the future. That's the idea here?
Dusey (02:14):
Yeah.
Crystal (02:14):
Totally.
Dusey (02:16):
If people weren't thinking, about their work life balance and what their day to day looks like to keep themselves healthy and in the right frame of mind, if they weren't thinking that before, then they definitely need to be thinking about it now. Right?
Jason Komosa (02:35):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Crystal (02:37):
I feel like the challenges just keep layering on for entrepreneurs, for everyone. But I always am thinking about what does this mean for entrepreneurs? It's been a crazy year in general. Do you want to remind everyone what you do for a living and then we can dive right into the topic I think is so critical right now.
Jason Komosa (02:59):
Yeah. Well first and foremost, I'm currently a chief business officer at BlackCart, BlackCart is a try-before-you-buy solution for ecommerce retailers. So you think Trunk Club or a StitchFix, we are the à la carte solution. So we're partnering with brick and mortar locations that have online stores. So Nordstrom, Macy's, Banana Republic, all those great guys to basically enable their in-store shopping experience online. So-
Crystal (03:28):
So awesome.
Jason Komosa (03:28):
I have been working on that. Yeah, super cool. Especially now with COVID, right? It's helping people get items they need, you need a new pair of shoes, needs some jeans, whatever. You don't have to go into the store. Along with my position at BlackCart, I'm also a mental coach. And so my goal is to work with individuals and groups to essentially empower them, to become their best self, to close that gap between who they are today and who they know they are capable of becoming. So it's-
Dusey (03:57):
I love that because-
Jason Komosa (03:58):
... I'm honored and.
Dusey (04:00):
Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Jason Komosa (04:00):
What? No, no, no. Please go ahead.
Dusey (04:03):
I was just saying, I love that because I can see that gap in myself. I can see what I am-
Crystal (04:08):
Exactly.
Dusey (04:13):
Maybe it's not always easy to see, what you could be doing or what you could become. But in my case right now, I certainly see those places where I feel like I'm failing. I know what I could be, where I could be at. And yeah, trying to close that gap it can be a struggle.
Crystal (04:30):
Definitely.
Dusey (04:31):
Yeah.
Crystal (04:31):
A big struggle.
Jason Komosa (04:32):
Yeah. It's without a doubt in the world. We're all humans, right? We're all on this planet for a reason. And my philosophy is the only reason we're here is to self-actualize to give our greatest gifts to the world, to the universe. That's the purpose of life. It's not to get rich or famous, or, all these things that we might think, the stories we've been told or the way that our society, the zeitgeists of our society currently is. It's none of that really matters, the money and the fame, all that stuff this is about again, giving the world your gifts. That's kind of the purpose here.
Dusey (05:11):
That's awesome. I love that. So I'm going to take advantage of the fact that you're here to get some help out of this personally and hopefully it's helpful for everybody. So were talking about how crazy this year has been. There's a lot of parents that are going into homeschooling their kids, or maybe having a bigger part of their education at home while they're working from home. And I certainly find myself in that boat where my kids are home. My wife is home the first half of the day, and she's working the second half. So the second half, I'm the one here, making sure that all that stuff is happening. And I'm just curious right off the top, what advice do you have to people that work and are now kind of thrown into the situation? Because I know for myself, I find it definitely challenging to try to juggle all of that at the same time.
Crystal (06:04):
Right.
Jason Komosa (06:06):
Yeah. That's a great question. And I think the first thing that comes to my mind is the idea of embracing the rain and what is embracing the rain means, a quick analogy. You're at a concert, you're outside, it's nighttime and summertime, all of a sudden it starts pouring rain, right? And so you see these people they're just trying to run and they're trying to just stay dry and they're, ah, it's hectic. And what you have to realize is that once your clothes are soaked, you're soaked, right? What's the point of trying to run against the rain, run against the rainstorm? That does you no good. You're stressing yourself out. It's just like embrace it. Know that the rain is going to stop. It's the idea of, hey, it is what it is. One of my favorite quotes that I try to live by it's an author, Byron Katie, and she says "the only time human beings suffer is when we argue with reality, when we argue with what is."
Crystal (07:11):
That's so true.
Dusey (07:13):
That is fantastic, I really can relate to that, embrace the rain story because I actually find that easy to do literally, and a little harder to do figuratively. We were at Disneyland, actually, we were there, I think up until it was either the Tuesday or the Wednesday before the Saturday that they closed due to COVID. So we were there like some of the last people going through Disneyland. I just heard, vague rumors of things going on. Didn't have my head in the news because we were on vacation.
Crystal (07:48):
Yeah. Who is at Disneyland?
Dusey (07:50):
Yeah. One of the nights my daughters and I are there and it starts to rain and it's getting cold and everybody's going home and we're like, yeah, we know we're going to embrace the rain and we'd go hit all of these rides that, have no lines now. [crosstalk 00:08:06]And it was fantastic. Literally that was much easier for me to do than the figurative when I'm at home and everybody, none of the kids are in their zoom classes that they're supposed to be in and, not keeping up with their work and work stuff pinging me all at the same time. Yeah, it can be easy to just be like you know what, I'm done, but that attitude doesn't really help. Right?
Crystal (08:33):
Not at all.
Jason Komosa (08:35):
Yeah. It's that idea of the reality is if you stress yourself out about the rain or, for example, the situation of having your kids with digital learning and being schooled at home temporarily, if you stress yourself out, right? If you allow yourself to kind of just get agitated and aggravated, well, nothing changes about the situation you find yourself in. It's not like the COVID god's say, wow. Crystal seems really upset that she has to stay home or she can't go to field. Nothing changes, literally nothing changes about the reality you're in, the only thing you're doing is you're utilizing precious, finite energy towards something you can't control. And so then you end up in this cycle of negativity and stress and tension, all these things, but for what? It's going nowhere, it's doing nothing but depleting you of those resources.
Dusey (09:38):
Yeah. That's true.
Crystal (09:38):
I don't know if anyone listening is like me, but I used to, when I was younger, argue with reality and try to make it come to reason, I don't do that anymore. But I find that I internalize, I assess reality very quickly. I know that's where we're at. I make plans very quickly on how I can try to get to a better situation or feel better about it, depending on what the reality is. But then I also find, I internalize a lot of that stress that I don't express because I'm trying to be positive. And then my back hurts. I overeat. I could go down a whole long list of what I do. And then it takes me a while to realize, Oh, you're actually feeling depressed or stressed or upset. So I definitely identify with arguing with reality, but sometimes I guess, internalizing, it's not the best for you either.
Jason Komosa (10:30):
Yeah, no, the idea here is if you can, right? Accept the feelings, whatever you're feeling. And this is kind of one of the first things I learned years and years ago from my coach was that accept the feelings, whatever you feel. It's okay to feel that way, whether you're sad or you're angry or you're stressed or whatever, it's okay to feel that way. Honor those feelings, recognize those feelings. Don't try to push them away, right? Don't try to reject them because if you do that, if you try to push them away it only actually exacerbates the feeling you have, that you're trying to get rid of, "trying to get rid of." So instead of trying to push it away, honor it, accept the feelings and then kind of have a conversation with yourself, right, why am I feeling this way?
Jason Komosa (11:18):
Okay. And almost have that kind of deep dive within yourself, whether it's in a journal or in your head or whatever, and just kind of see like where are these feelings coming from? How can I use these feelings to my benefit? And as I mentioned a minute ago, it does you no good. If you sit there and you get mad or angry about the reality, because nothing changes. There's no good that comes from doing that.
Crystal (11:43):
Awesome.
Dusey (11:44):
Yeah. I enjoy getting on social media and seeing what my friends are up to, even what their thoughts are on, all the current events and stuff like that. And but I realized literally just yesterday, I was like I'm getting into these cycles of negative thought and stressing about things that I can't change as this information is bombarding me.
Dusey (12:10):
And I use social media for work pretty regularly. So it's not like I can, just completely abandon it. But I realized, that that was something that was kind of getting me into those cycles of negative thought that I'm going to take them off of my iPad and my iPhone, the two places that I use for personal stuff most often. I can still get to it on my computer, which I tend to kind of do for work stuff. And it's helped me remove a couple of those triggers, a couple of those things that would put me into that state of just kind of spiraling negative thoughts, right? So, yeah, that's something that has definitely helped me. I've been thinking about that a lot.
Crystal (12:49):
So thinking about.
Jason Komosa (12:50):
And.
Crystal (12:51):
Oh, sorry, go ahead, Jason.
Jason Komosa (12:53):
Go ahead. No, no. I was just going to say a real quick thing with that and using social media, right? If people's beliefs are that COVID sucks, this is terrible. This is awful. This is ruining my life. Well, that's the story they're telling themselves, the beliefs they have become their reality. And so yeah, your life with COVID it does suck because that's what you're telling yourself. If you choose to reframe or change the lens and say you know what, look at all the good things, that COVID quarantine has brought me, more time to read, more time to spend with my kids, more time to cook. I can go for a walk outside. There are good things if you choose to look at them, but if you choose to look at the "bad things," well then that's literally going to be your reality.
Crystal (13:42):
Agreed. I think that brings me right to where I was going. So I'm glad you said that, adding the extra layer of leaders and entrepreneurs that are facing these challenges. How can they use this time to grow their relationships at home since they're all around each other more, whether they're working, schooling, whatever they're doing, they're home together more so how can they use this time to actually strengthen the relationships at home?
Jason Komosa (14:09):
I think it comes back to the idea of extreme ownership and loving yourself, loving what is, and exuding that love, that self-love, that self care to the home front, to your employees, whether it's remotely, right? We're all in this together. It's not like there are people out there that are COVID proof or whatever they think they're just invisible. And others are just "stuck at home." It is what it is, we're here. And so it's up to us to go out there and to show that compassion, show that love and support and know that you know what some people are, listen, people are in pain and suffering and let's have the compassion, let's have the empathy. Let's show them that we care, whether it's family members, employees, roommates, whatever it is, the idea is giving, continuing to give and to be empathetic of the situation because it does us no good.
Jason Komosa (15:11):
I've heard of some horror stories about how companies are making, whether it's companies or individual managers like making their employees take off an hour or two a day. If they have to, they have to make up hours because they have to take care of their children. And it's just like we're all human, right? We're not robots.
Crystal (15:31):
Yeah.
Jason Komosa (15:32):
I don't know. To me, it seems like we have to recognize we're all human beings. We're all human.
Dusey (15:41):
My mode tends to be like, I love to be the hero that's going to come in and save the day and do the extra work and make sure that everything's in place, right? That's my natural place to be. And.
Crystal (15:54):
You do a great job.
Dusey (15:56):
Thank you, Crystal. And that's all I have to say. Thank you. But I saw something and it was on social media, when I said that earlier, I wasn't trying to just like pan it and say, hey, everybody get off. But just thinking about smartly about how you use it can be helpful. But so I saw somebody that posted, hey, you don't have to expect yourself to be as productive during this time as you normally would be, that's okay to understand that this is a big change and there is stress. And there's a lot of other things going on. And you were talking about that coming from employers, which, Oh, yeah, that would be super harsh, but it can also come from ourselves, right? Of us saying, Oh man, I'm not doing as much as I used to. Why am I so terrible? And it's because everything is going crazy. That's okay to take the time to realize that there's a shift here.
Jason Komosa (16:58):
Without a doubt. Right? The idea of not beating yourself up. Human beings, we love to just beat ourselves down and berate ourselves mentally and say, Oh, I didn't do this. I should've done this. Or I didn't do this right. And all these things it's almost like you have to love yourself. And I guess one of the themes I've been preaching a lot lately is parent yourself like you would a child, right? If a child goes out there and tries something like a toddler trying to walk and they fall down and they get back up and they fall again, the parent doesn't go, you're a bum. You're a loser. Wow. I can't believe you didn't do that, stop trying. Right? [Crosstalk 00:17:43]
Jason Komosa (17:43):
It's just continual encouragement again. And again, and again. Keep trying, keep going out there. You're doing right. Can you self-parent yourself? Can you do that? Can you try to just show some self love and forgiveness, forgive yourself. It's okay. Right? We're here on this earth for a very short amount of time. Don't be beating yourself up. It's okay to just say you know what? I made a mistake. I'm going to learn from it. And I'm going to use that as data for future growth.
Crystal (18:12):
We only suggest you do what Jason just said. If you had an outstanding parent and you understand that what he is saying, parent yourself in a loving manner, if you didn't have loving parents, please parent yourself like someone else's great parents.
Jason Komosa (18:29):
Or your grandparents, let's say.
Crystal (18:32):
Sure. I just wanted to put that little surgeon's general warning out.
Jason Komosa (18:37):
Yeah. But it's so true, right? The idea of... You have to love yourself, right? It comes back to the idea that self compassion, self care, another kind of a quick tangent is the idea of, What is work made up of? Oftentimes we think that work is when I'm logged online and I'm doing my Salesforce, or I should say, Keap in this situation, of course. I'm on my Gmail or whatever. And then, when I have to be on Slack all of these things and that's work. And then when I close my laptop, well, then I'm not working and the reality is that our lives are not... It's all intertwined. And so if you think about like Michael Jordan, his work, right, Michael Jordan was played basketball, but it's the things he did that were off the court that contributed to his tremendous success on the court.
Jason Komosa (19:33):
Right. And that includes sleeping well, eating good foods, taking breaks, right, going golfing, doing all these things that he did off the court that fueled his success on the court. And I think the same can be said for everyone, when it comes to their careers, what are they doing outside of your work? Are you moving? Are you exercising? Are you eating healthy? Are you able to all these things that contribute to your success, "on the court," which in this case would be when you're at work, when you're online.
Crystal (20:07):
So normally when we talk about work life balance, we're really talking about the life part. What are we doing to maintain having a life outside of working, but I'm kind of interested with this idea of, with all the extra home responsibilities right now, what are some things we could tell entrepreneurs to do to make sure that they leave time to also grow their business? I know it's not typically what we need to hear, but I feel like in this kind of situation, the entrepreneurs out there they've carved out that time that they normally would have had when their kids are at school or when the kids are doing extracurricular activities, a lot of these things are stopped. So how can they make sure they're still getting the work part of their work life balance when people may look at them and think, well, you're your own business owner, so you don't need to work right now. You watch the kids or you do whatever, but their job is still a business.
Jason Komosa (21:00):
I love to use the idea of like when we were in high school and we had our schedules, right? And period one was math class. And guess what? You went to math class, even if you didn't feel like going to math class, you went to math and then after your hour-long math class or half hour or whatever, then you went to science and then you went to gym. And the idea that can we take that type of scheduling, the block scheduling concept. And can we apply that to our lives and knowing that A, we're setting the intention. So if you want to spend an hour of your time in the morning before the kids are up to do your work, or what have you, well you make the choice to set your schedule for the day and know that it's okay.
Jason Komosa (21:47):
If you don't necessarily adhere to, if curve balls are thrown our way, well, that's just life. But the idea is we've set the intentions to go out there to have some sort of block scheduling. And you work with, if you're married or if you have kids or whatever, you kind of work with one another and figure out, well, what kind of schedule can we work together with? And how can we co-create a harmonious day-to-day operations.
Dusey (22:17):
Yeah. So.
Crystal (22:17):
I love that, setting intentions is critical.
Jason Komosa (22:21):
Yeah. Just the idea of just setting the intentions and putting it out there that in itself is a win. And so you can create this kind of trifecta of winning because the win number one is to set the intention and then the win number two is actually completing what you intended to do. And then the win number three is at the end of the day, when you have your complete shutdown, when you're finally done with everything you wanted to accomplish, you look back on the day and say, wow, that's pretty awesome that I did what I intended to do.
Crystal (22:52):
Right.
Jason Komosa (22:52):
Right. We oftentimes overlook these, there's a book out there called "Tiny Habits". And the idea that can we celebrate these micro wins. If we celebrate these micro wins on a daily basis, all of a sudden, every single day you're having more wins. It's just a momentum of wins every single day, no matter how small, you're kind of going out there.
Jason Komosa (23:17):
And even if you don't, even if let's just say you have the intentions of having this hour and a half blocked for deep work and your kid gets sick and he's throwing up all over the floor. Okay, cool. That's okay. This is life, right. This is just a part of it. This is an opportunity for you to grow and to say you know what? I didn't do what I thought or I wanted to do today. That's okay. I'm going to just try again tomorrow.
Dusey (23:43):
Yeah. I think it needs to be about today and not yesterday. Right? It's what am I doing today? And not necessarily, I mean, not saying not to review, like you're saying, I love that kind of at the end of the day, saying, all right, look at these wins that I can celebrate, but if you didn't do it yesterday, well, that doesn't have any impact on it today. It feels like it sure does. It feels like, man, I haven't done it three days in a row or whatever, but in reality, it doesn't have an impact on what today is. So I think just that looking at today, this is what I'm going to do. And I can throw out, what I've done in the past, whether or not I've made it each time.
Jason Komosa (24:22):
Yeah. To think about. And I think this is just human psychology, where oftentimes we're either living in the past, which is thinking about the past mistakes, regret, whatever, or living in the future of anxiety or worry or worrying. And we're never kind of in the moment and really the moment right now is all we have, the presence. This is all we have.
Crystal (24:45):
That's for sure. Tomorrow might look completely different.
Jason Komosa (24:48):
Yeah.
Dusey (24:50):
Yup.
Crystal (24:52):
It's wild.
Dusey (24:52):
Yeah. I know for me, I love what you said about celebrating those tiny wins. For me, a lot of times, the hardest part is getting started. It's that first step. And I'm sure everybody's heard that kind of advice before, but I've really been feeling that recently of like, you know what, if I can start editing this video, if I can just start it, here's my goal to make three cuts, to do the very simplest thing I can do go in there and make a cut. But once I'm in there and it's open and I'm moving head into it, then I start to go, okay, yeah. And I can do this and I can do this. And before I know it I'm done with the project. Right. So I think that emphasizes to me the importance of celebrating those small things that you can do, just that getting started. And once you get started and you know what, I went in, I made those couple of changes and that's all I did. Well, I still did something, you know?
Crystal (25:46):
Yeah.
Jason Komosa (25:48):
There's a concept that I love and I appreciate to all, everyone, my clients, my family, my friends, everyone the idea of floors and ceilings and a ceiling is kind of the ideal situation. I'll use working out for me personally. I used to tell myself if I don't have a good 45 minutes to go to the gym or to do a workout class, well, it's not worth it. It's not worth it for me to just, that's the story I told myself. And so if we set a ceiling of an ideal situation like 60 minutes at the gym or whatever, but then we set ourselves a floor, the floor being a minimum, so small. And so what most people would say insignificant that it's impossible to miss, right? One pushup or one burpee. Can you do one burpee every day?
Jason Komosa (26:38):
And basically, and it's not necessarily the idea of the calories that you burn, it's the idea that you're stringing along the fact that if you didn't have the 45 minutes or your kids got sick or whatever you basically say to yourself you know what? I wasn't able to hit the ceiling today, but at least I did the floor.
Dusey (26:57):
I hit the floor. Yeah.
Jason Komosa (26:58):
I did the one burpee. I did the meditation. Right. I did the one concentrated deep breath. Yeah. I didn't have 15 minutes. I didn't.
Dusey (27:07):
I love my Apple watch, ping and saying, breathe and go, okay. Breathe. Okay. That's all I got. But at least I did it.
Jason Komosa (27:16):
Can you do one or if you're a journaler, right. Most people, let's say you're writing a new book, your ceiling is writing five new pages a day, but the absolute floor is one sentence. Can you write one sentence every single day? At least at the very least. Can you do that?
Crystal (27:33):
I feel like that's so important right about now, because that kind of exercise is exactly what would help entrepreneurs at this time. What is your floor and your ceiling for your work? What's your floor and ceiling for your family? That balance has got to be critical right now.
Dusey (27:49):
Yeah.
Jason Komosa (27:49):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And really what's the most important work that there is, right. If you look at, let's just say, there's obviously 24 hours in a day, let's say, hopefully you're sleeping or in bed eight of those hours, right. What are you going to do with those other 16 waking hours, who is in control? Who's in control of what you're doing with those hours. And oftentimes there's this theory out there. I don't know if you've heard of this, it's called the Faulty Theory. The Faulty Theory basically says, need to continually be getting things done and then moving onto the next goal as quickly as possible.
Crystal (28:26):
Right.
Jason Komosa (28:27):
Right. We live in this world where overwork is overvalued, right? And so the idea is we're just working so much to get to onto the next task, to get that done, to do the next task. And you have this chronic stress and ultimately it's the number one enemy of success. It really is. It makes things worse. We ignore our meaningful relationships. We cut out the fun of our lives. We eat, sleep poorly. We sleep poorly. We don't exercise. We don't move. We don't take walks. We're kind of just in this self-created isolated bubble. And we think it's helping us to get more done when the reality is, it's having a reverse effect. It's actually hurting our quality work, right. I'd much rather have five quality hours of someone's time versus 12 hours of mediocre time. And they say, well, I'm going to wear this badge of pride that I worked 12 hours today. Well, great. And seven of those hours were terrible work. But you, it's backwards.
Jason Komosa (29:30):
So the idea is you got to take extreme ownership of your time. You got to figure out a balance that works for you. I'm not here to suggest or tell you what you should be doing. I'm here to encourage you to have that self-reflection and shine the spotlight on what is really important because the end of our lives, no one's going to look back and say, wow, I wish I worked more. They're going to say, wow, I wish I spend more time with my daughter. I wish I spent more time reading or projects, woodworking. I mean, no, it's the idea that you have to take that extreme ownership of your time. Because no one else is going to do it. It's it's up to you.
Crystal (30:12):
I have to say, this whole thing has made me actually realize what is important in life. Corona, it does suck in a lot of ways, but I feel like there's been so much that has come to light for me about, you fill your time with so many things every week to stay busy, to get social. And really at the end of the day, there's a handful of friends that I've stayed in contact with during this checking in on each other. My family. I've been trying to become a painter, although I'm so nervous to put any paint, strokes down on anything I've purchased. I think about it a lot, but I'm getting there, but it's like I've started reading again. When you really strip it all away, I feel it gives you that time to kind of reflect and think about life. And for me, it's that I need a lot less than I thought I did. So what are some questions people can ask themselves, entrepreneurs can ask themselves right now to self-reflect and use this time to their benefit?
Jason Komosa (31:11):
Yeah. I don't really have a default answer, I guess I would say it's more about where do your priorities lie, right? If you look at my day or my week, what do I want to accomplish? Not just work wise, but interpersonally, how do I want to grow? How do I want to support my team? How do I want to support my family or my friends? How can I provide value? How can I give without expectations of return?
Crystal (31:41):
Right.
Jason Komosa (31:43):
I just feel oftentimes as I mentioned a second ago, the idea of this, the self-created bubble, we're kind of in this little ice capsule and we have to break free of it and we have to figure out what can we do to infuse love and value into the world, right? This is why we're here. We're not here to get rich or to get famous or to have a hundred million Instagram followers. There's this kind of false hood in our society. There's a false correlation between the amount of money someone has or career success someone has and the happiness, the idea that someone driving the $200,000 Rolls Royce is 10 times happier than the guy driving the $20,000 Honda right next to him. You're driving on the road, right?
Jason Komosa (32:40):
There is nothing wrong with wanting the Bentley or a Ferrari or whatever. But the idea is that it's not going to make you happier. And I think especially for the younger generation. Go ahead.
Dusey (32:52):
I was just going to say, I think I saw some research some years ago. That was, I don't know how they measured happiness. That's always a question when I see these kinds of research things, but all of their indices on happiness, kind of plateaued at about $75,000 a year.
Crystal (33:09):
I have heard that too.
Jason Komosa (33:12):
If you're a single individual making about $75,000 a year, once you hit that mark, your happiness, your quality of life does not increase as your income increases. And so it comes back to what am I doing here on this earth? And what do I want to be remembered by, right? When we die, no one's going to say, wow, Jason drove that really awesome car. Remember how big his house was? No one's going to say how big my house was. It doesn't matter. But will say how did Jason impact the world? What did he do to make this place better?
Dusey (33:46):
Right. Well, I hope that it's not all that they would say about you, with you, I know that would not be the case. That would be very sad for someone to be like, well, what do you think about them? Well, he's got a great car.
Crystal (33:58):
If that's what their perspective would say. I think they've got to shift it a bit.
Dusey (34:06):
Yeah. You know something you said earlier about, when you're talking about kind of time blocking and that person that's working 12 hours. It makes me think when I first started at Infusionsoft my boss' boss there, Candy, she told me I'm not going to be impressed if you're staying late and getting here early and working tons of hours, I will be impressed if you get more and better work done in the same amount of time that you were here. Right.
Jason Komosa (34:36):
Yeah.
Crystal (34:36):
It's true.
Dusey (34:37):
So yeah, that always stood out to me is it's diminishing returns. The more hours you put in a day, you're not getting as much out of those last ones.
Crystal (34:48):
The last.
Jason Komosa (34:49):
Yeah. Without a doubt, without a doubt.
Crystal (34:51):
The last company I worked at, and I won't say the name, but they thrived on how many hours you would work and they would give you more and more and more and more just to fill those time. I do think at some point it's like, I shouldn't be punished for the fact that I was efficient and got the same high quality work done in less time than you're expecting to take, why should I be punished to get more? Or like triple the work of someone else. But their mindset was a bit different.
Dusey (35:24):
Yeah. My brother-in-law's told me yeah, I can't take any more time off because nobody where I work uses their. I was like, do you have time? Yeah. But nobody where I work uses their time. And I'm like, yeah, but does that mean that you're not supposed to, well, people see it that way. It's like, Oh man, yeah. That's a rough situation to be in.
Crystal (35:46):
That is.
Jason Komosa (35:46):
Yeah, it is. It really is. And the idea that, as we talked about it earlier, the idea that the time off, the time away from work well really, that is contributing to the performance, to the quality of work while you're at work. Right. All these things, the breaks, right. They're needed. I'm actually taking a road trip all next week. I'm not bringing my laptop. I'm not taking my-
Crystal (36:11):
How fun.
Jason Komosa (36:11):
... my computer on vacation because why would I do that? I want to get away from work. I love my work. I love all my work. I just want to have a digital detox. I want to get away from the phone and the laptop and the iPad and just embrace nature. And when I come back, right, the battery is going to be up to a hundred percent and I'm going to be ready to go back and give that quality at work. But in the meantime, I'm completely off. I'm completely offline.
Crystal (36:43):
Yeah. I think that's so smart. Dusey, go ahead. What were you going to.
Dusey (36:48):
Thank you. Yeah, I was just going to say, like the example I gave my brother-in-laws when a workplace is creating that environment, but just to kind of bring it back to what it's like to be an entrepreneur, a small business owner, like it's very easy to put yourself there. Right. Very easy to put yourself in that spot.
Crystal (37:07):
Yeah.
Dusey (37:09):
Some people could easily tie their worth to the, how their hours worked on their business or their thing. I'm not saying don't hustle, but there's a point where you're not doing your best work. Right. So.
Crystal (37:24):
Yeah, without the break.
Jason Komosa (37:26):
It is funny, every single day. We as humans have a finite amount of quality work and quality energy at once. We're at that level of, 10% or less, whatever, it's like, okay, that's a sign that's I'm done for today. Right. And I'm not suggesting you just slack off and don't work. But the idea is, this is science, right. You only have a certain amount of finite work. And then it's time for you to have that digital shut down and to go out and do things that are not work-related like take a walk, read a book, cook some food, spend time with your kids or your significant other, whatever it is, allow yourself to rejuvenate for the next day. Because if you come back to work and you're already half depleted and you continue to rinse and repeat, well, that's what's called burnout.
Crystal (38:18):
So Jason. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Dusey.
Dusey (38:21):
Sorry. I was just going to say, there's different types of work to be done too, so sometimes even just kind of a task change of like, okay, I've done my thinking work, and now I can task change into maybe something that needs to get done. That's just monotonous. That I can put on a podcast or put some music into as I'm getting later in the day or whatever.
Jason Komosa (38:39):
Go fold laundry.
Dusey (38:41):
Yeah, exactly.
Crystal (38:43):
Well, all I was going to say, Jason is we're coming up on time here, but I wanted to ask, you've mentioned a couple exercises that entrepreneurs can do, setting intention, setting floors and ceilings. Is there another exercise entrepreneurs could do to make sure they stay calm and focused?
Jason Komosa (39:03):
Here's what I love. And this is something it's a bit challenging to do, but it's to really track your time, go through your day and write down what are you doing in every 15, 30-minute blocks? And the reason I asked them of this is because what you'll notice is you will organically change your behaviors to what you want to achieve. Just based upon doing a deep dive on yourself, right? People want us to put more steps in the day. They want to walk more. What do they do? They buy a Fitbit or some sort of device that tracks steps. If they want to lose weight, what do they do? They start a food journal. They just write down what they're eating. What are they consuming? It all comes back to tracking, right?
Jason Komosa (39:51):
You want to sleep better, buy an aura ring, right? That tracks your sleep. So the idea is first before you try to change and just do something different, do something drastically, focus on what are you doing now?[crosstalk 00:40:06] And then from that self-audit, self-audit, and then say, okay, well, I'm going to make some changes. And again, don't beat yourself up for doing whatever you're doing. The idea is to use that data, to benefit yourself for the future, for tomorrow, for the next week, the next month. And so on.
Crystal (40:24):
Such good advice.
Jason Komosa (40:26):
It's all valuable information. And there's no point in having that self-negativity, right. Just say, listen, okay, this is what I ate today. Tomorrow, I'm going to change it. Right. Or here's how many steps I walked today. I'm a few thousand steps behind. Cool. I'm going to try better tomorrow.
Crystal (40:42):
Right.
Dusey (40:42):
I love that because a lot of times we don't even realize what our baseline really is. We have a gut feeling as to what it is. And that gut feeling is probably that I'm terrible and it's bad. Right. So let's find out what it really is and start from there. I love that.
Crystal (40:59):
Yeah. It's such good advice. Okay. Jason, tell our listeners where they can find you at both of your hustles right now, your business, as well as your position in your new company.
Jason Komosa (41:11):
Yeah, absolutely. So my website is jkcoach.me. So J, K, Jason Komosa, jkcoach.me. And then my other BlackCart is just [email protected].
Crystal (41:26):
Awesome. So definitely check them out if you're an entrepreneur or a leader that wants some mental coaching. I hope Dusey, I know you want to use this to get some personal advice. Did it suffice?
Dusey (41:39):
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Crystal (41:40):
It did for me too. I feel like every time we have Jason on, I leave feeling lifted. Like I can go do some more. So thank you so much, Jason. [crosstalk 00:41:48]Yeah.
Jason Komosa (41:49):
Thank you for having me Crystal and Dusey. And like I said, hopefully next time, couple of months or whatever I can come on in the studio, we can do a true official in-person podcast. But I love hanging out with you guys and thank you so much for having me.
Dusey (42:03):
Absolutely.
Crystal (42:03):
Yeah. Thank you, Jason. Okay. That's a wrap for Small Biz Buzz.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
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