Core principles to help agency owners own their day with intentionality with Doug Fleener

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Running an agency can be a lonely proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. We can learn how to be better faster if we learn together. Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build, a Better Agency Podcast, presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to midsize agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market with 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here. And yep, you are right. I am back with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Excited to talk to our guest today about his new book and sort of his life focus as he sort of winds down his career. He’s had a very illustrious career. He is also had some interesting bumps in the road that have caused him to think differently about life and work, and we’re gonna dig into that. Before we do that though, I just wanna remind you that if you have not yet done the planning for 2024, it is time for you to do that. So it actually, it’s past time. You should have, you should been working on it several weeks ago.

We have tools for you on the website. There’s a blog that says, planning for 2024. And it’s got some great links to a life plan, which I think is super important for us as agency owners. And a business plan. A one page business plan that’s super simple to fill out, does, it does require a fair amount of thought, but the actual completing of the plan is easy, and that makes the following of the plan a little easier. So head over to agency management institute.com and under resources, click on blog and you’ll see the blog post there. So we’d love for you to download those tools are absolutely free, and we would love for you to take advantage of those planning tools to set yourself up for success in 2024.

Alright, so our guest today is a gentleman named Doug Fleener. And Doug has written a book that is all about, and this is me paraphrasing his book. I, I will let him paraphrase it himself in a minute. But it’s all about the idea of owning your day, which, if you own enough of your days, you get to own your year and your life. And how do we do that with intentionality and purpose? So Doug has had some interesting life events that have sort of shaped his view on this and have allowed him to put together some principles and some practices underneath those principles that I think will all find super valuable.

So without further ado, I would love to introduce you to Doug Fleener and dig into his life story and the, the learnings and outcomes that came from that. Doug, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks Drew. Thanks for having me.

So, tell everybody a little bit about what prompted you to write the book and sort of the overarching theme of the book.

Well, I, for about 16, 17 years, I did speaking in consulting, traveled the country, working around customer experience, did some, and also in retail. Then about six years ago, a client asked me to run his company. Didn’t really wanna do it, but he was great salesperson. And so I did that for six years. And it was a title company, law firm. We were based on interest rates. So when interest rates went down, the business skyrocketed, perfect timing. And then as their interest rates went back up, I needed to lay a bunch of people off and eventually said, you know, you need to lay me off. So I was trying to kind of decide, you know, what was that next thing to do, kind of in the twilight of my career, if you will.

And I was working with a coach and we were looking at the different things that have happened in my life and what have you. And, and so what the, and tell you how I got there. So the book is about about 37 years ago I was a cocaine addict and bankrupted a family business. Hmm. And so I’ve been on this journey of recovery. And in the conversations with the coach, what he really helped me connect the dots was how the elements of recovery really helped me be successful. And some of the elements of success of in business helped me in recovery. Hmm. So I wrote this book based on what I’ve learned in recovery that can be applied to anyone in business, especially business owners.

And, and so it’s not, again, a recovery book, but it’s based on the tenets of recovery.

So the book title the Day makes the year and makes a life with sort of, the subtitle really sort of tees up the idea that you believe that there are some core principles that if we apply those in our lives on a daily basis, sort of change the trajectory of everything. Yes,

Absolutely.

So talk a little bit about that. What, what are the six principles and the accompanying practices that, that we could consider deploying into our lives?

Right. Well, well the first one is when you first get into recovery, right? So you’ve been living this life of lies, cheating, hiding, alcohol, drugs, right? Whatever your addiction is. And so one of the things you, you know, you come to a complete stop and you have to learn really how to live your life differently. And so one of the first things you learn is how to really live in the day. You know? So in the beginning, successful is just getting through the day without taking drugs, right? Without drinking, without scaling, without lying. And so that first principle, and it’s really in the title of the book, is that it’s really about the day. You know, everything that you are gonna create in your life, your happiness, your company’s success, growing your business, growing your profitability, everything happens in a day.

Yeah. And so, you know, when you put a bunch of good days back to back to back, that’s how you create success. And you know, one of the things I saw a lot in business is people have a lot of aspirations, a lot of things they wanna do with their company. And, but each day they’re just kind of going back through and through kind of the task, if you will. So it’s really about, at the end of a day, can you just say, Hey, I had a great day. I had more success than I did the day before.

Hmm. Yep. Makes sense. Okay.

That’s the first principle. The second principle is taking responsibility. That, I like to think that owning everything that happens in your life is really your superpower for personal and professional success. When, when I was newly clean and sober, these guys told me that whenever there’s something wrong, it’s within me. And I gotta tell you, man, it upset me. ’cause it’s like, Jesus, you know, I’m giving up alcohol and drugs, and now I gotta be a doormat. And what they really were teaching me Drew, is that what they’re teaching me is that when I own everything that happens to me, I have the power to change it. I can’t change what I don’t own. Right.

And so that was really, and, and for me, that was probably the one that was created. One of the biggest impacts in my, in my career, in my work is because when I get up against something, it’s not like the economy is out to get me or the man or what have you, or an employee or whatever, no matter what’s taking place, if I own it, I can change it.

So talk a little bit about what owning it looks like in practical terms.

Great. So I think, you know, first and foremost, I think owning it is not being a victim of it. Hmm. Right. The second thing is, is that owning it is looking at the situation rather than the person. Ah, okay. You know, so, you know, so you got a big project going on, you got some deliverables, and an employee calls out sick, sick, and you got two things you can either go to, all right, what are we gonna do about this? Right. Or you can really start to look at the employee and say, you know what? They disrespect me, they don’t appreciate me. Right. And none of that gets the project completed.

Right. And, and you still have to solve the problem.

Right. Whether that person is there or not. Yeah. But if you own it, you can change it. Yeah.

Alright. So what’s principle number three?

So principle number three is that intentional actions create intentional results. You know, when you’re, when you’re the owner of an agency, you know, you could probably wake up and create a hundred ideas of things you need to do, you know, and, and so the thing is, is that we need to really prioritize what are the actions that’s truly gonna drive us to the results we want. And so, you know, and, and I like, one of the thing exercise I like to do with people is each day, or at least get them to understand, is what are their true priorities? Right? Your priorities right? Is client, you know, keeping your clients happy and right, and satisfied.

It’s driving revenue, it’s it’s profitability, you know, at home. It’s being a good, you know, a good father, a good mother, a good spouse, and understanding what is really the truest high levels of priority. And then making sure that each day you’re taking those intentional actions to create those results. Yeah. And you know, I think sometimes Yeah, I, I, I work with a lot of business owners and I, I just love Right. Because they, they’ve worked so hard to get where they’re at. Right. But what got them there isn’t gonna get them where they need to be.

That’s right. That’s

Right. And so, yeah. So understanding what are the right actions on a daily basis.

Okay.

The fourth one is one that’s kind of near and dear to my heart is practice relentless simplicity.

Talk about that.

Well, thank you. There’s a, you know, there’s kind of a saying in recovery, right? That, you know, recovery’s not so complicated, right? You just don’t drink, don’t drug, what have you. Right. But we as humans are incredibly complicated.

Hmm.

And so you can look at any situation and be able to say, really just pull out, get it first, get rid of all the emotions

Yep.

And really get down to just the what are the couple things that really matter. Right. And if we go back to that example that we had on someone not showing up for work, you know, instead of getting complicating it all, you know, what do we gotta do? What are the next couple things we need to do? Yeah. You know, what, we might have to actually call in somebody or what have you. And so I think that’s a, that is a, that’s a skill that can be developed. And, you know, and I, and I think one of the things where agency owners could really benefit is, is when they think about their communications and what they’re putting out there to their employees, I saw a graph, a little graphic I saw once was, had all these dots on it and it said, here is what we’re telling our people who work for us.

And then over in the middle was single dot, and it says, this is what we think we’re telling them.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah, I think it’s really about simplifying this. I think that’s a, I think that’s a challenge for everybody in this sort of busy, complicated world. And I think, you know, when, you know, we were just with some agency owners yesterday, and, you know, they have some tough decisions to make around their business, and they have to make an announcement that is factually very simple, but the nuance of it and the implications and how the audience is gonna receive it, and what they’re gonna think they meant. And like, it just gets super complicated and in an effort to manage what might be or might not be thought, right. The message all of a sudden gets super bloated as opposed to, here, here’s, here’s the facts, here’s how we feel about the facts.

And, you know, we’re open to answer questions about the facts. Right. So Yeah. Hard to do. And I,

Yeah, and I would agree. And you know, one of the little things I’ll, I’ll teach managers do is, you know, when an employee brings you an issue, just tell me what you wanna do. I’ll tell you if I need the backstory.

Yeah. Right.

Right. And so backstories is really creates complication.

Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. Okay.

Number five, principle is really about improving three things a day. And, you know, one of the things that has got me far in my recovery as well as in my business success was really, I learned very early on working for a gentleman of, I was former director of retail for Bose Corporation, and I worked for a guy there who, you know, one of the things I saw in him is he just got better every day. You know, he was the smartest guy in the room, but he was always still learning. Hmm. And so I learned is I have, I had to keep getting better. I need to improve my business, I need to improve my work, and I need to improve myself.

And, and, and so you hear a lot of people talk about they’re gonna improve by 1% a day, God bless ’em, but I have no idea what my 1% is. Right.

I’m just not, you know? Yeah. It’s hard to count that. Right?

Yeah. I’m not that smart. I don’t know what is a percentage, but what I can do is say at the start of my day, what are the three things I’m gonna improve? Or I’m gonna at least start out with an idea of how to improve something in my business, something in the way I work, something in the way I treat people the way I am at home. And if you improve three things a day, you know, at the end of a year you’ve improved 1095 things.

Wow.

Yeah. E exactly. And, and again, they don’t have to be big. Right. You know, I I I like to think that at any time I’m moving towards success and the person I wanna be, or I’m moving away from success and the person I wanna

Be. Yeah. Every choice sends you in one direction or the other. Right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I don’t believe we’re ever sitting still.

So, so do you have some sort of go-to Micro habits or Micro sources that sort of feed that three to three improvements a day?

I do. And I, and, and it’s something that probably when I mention it, a lot of people are gonna roll their eyes and, you know, but every morning, rather than jumping into email, rather jumping into the news or sports or whatever, I, I pull up an app and I journal Yeah. And I quickly just write out, so I’m on a Mac, and if you’re on a Mac, the, the day one app is a terrific app free, and if you wanna run multiple, I run multiple journals. And, you know, every day I just write out kind of who I wanna be and what do I want my company, how I want my company to be better. It’s also when I just kind of work out, sometimes I’m feeling cranky, I’m feeling nervous, I’m fearful, you know?

Yeah. Fear drives us a lot more than we ever wanna admit.

Right. For sure.

And you can journal that out by just, why am I feeling this way? Yeah. It literally takes 10 minutes. Yeah. And it’s, it’s a great practice. So I do that every morning at the end. I do it every night.

Hmm. Okay.

How I do. Right. So I created that kind of, that accountability loop.

And are there, are there, you know, is for you, is it a learning something new? Is it a thoughtful practice around something different or new? Is it, do you ever seek feedback from other people about how, what, what something might be that you could improve?

Yeah, I, you know, I, I do think that I, you know, I stay close with a lot of people. You know, kind of, when you’re head of a company, you’re self-employed. Right. You gotta, yeah. As, as a friend of mine says, you know, you gotta be careful to be, keep reading your own press clippings and breathing your own air. Right. Right. So, so I, I like to check in with a lot of people and when, you know, I’m asking how they’re doing, and when they ask how I’m doing, here’s the key is I’m honest, you know? Yeah. You know, I’m feeling a little, I’m feeling a little cranky. I’m feeling a little this and that. And, and the, the, the really, one of the things that improve three things a day works is that even if I don’t know what is I need to improve in at the start of a day, I am looking for them.

Yeah. That’s, that, that’s probably the key, right? Absolutely. Is that your, your antenna is alert to, to what’s possible. Right.

Yeah. And what, and and here’s another quick little thing that I do, is I, my goal is, is just to be a better person than I was the day before. Yeah. Hey, look, you know, 37 years ago when you, when you, you know, I, I actually woke up in a blackout on an airplane, and, you know, I had bank rubbed to this family business. It really affected my father, who God blessing me, forgave me. But, you know, when I, I was not a good person.

Right.

And so I have to continue, I had to continue to learn how to be a good person, but I needed to continue to do that. And so one of the little exercises I have is every, every morning pops up in my phone as a reminder to do five good things a day. And, you know, when I, when I’m very intentional in those actions Yeah. It pays off. And, and it’s funny ’cause my girlfriend, I’ll go get her. I went and got her coffee this morning and she, you know, she’ll jokingly say, all right, well, you can check off your first one. Right, right. Well, obviously it’s not why I do it, but I check off the first one.

Right, right.

Yep. And it’s a simple little thing, but it works.

Yeah. It’s, isn’t that funny, I, before I got married, I had a friend who was talking about the fact that her husband brought her coffee every morning. And I thought that was incredibly sweet. And so when I got married, well, actually before I got married, but now as I am married, I bust a hump to bring my wife coffee every morning. I’m almost always up before she is. And there’s something that just, I just like the way that starts our day, our day together, it’s sort of an act of service. And it, and you’re right. It, it does change sort of your mental and emotional trajectory a little bit. Something that simple.

Absolutely. And I, and I think for everyone who’s listening is that Right. Success is really made up of a lot of little small things.

Yeah. Right. Well, and I think for most of the listeners, they’ve kind of checked the box on the big things. Right, right. So, so it really is about these incremental improvements. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, and, and the thing that I, I learned is that when I get out of myself, I have a, you know, I have this natural self-centeredness, and again, sometimes it’s served us well. Right, right. It’s helped us create our company and get us promoted, or get us wherever we’re going. Yeah. But you know, it’s, it’s kind of, again, like a superpower. You can use it for good or not use it for good. Right, right. Use it for good. It puts me in a place to succeed.

Yeah. All right. So I think we have one more principle, right? Yes.

Yeah. And that’s, and that little conversation really sets up the last one, which is, I, I think something that most, most people do, but they don’t necessarily think about it. But it’s a principle. It’s called give to get. And look, the, the more you help others, the more you help yourself. And, you know, I I, I think it’s important that we give back to Yeah. The world. Especially as we get up a little more in age and we start to become successful. And I can look back and look at all the people that I wouldn’t be talking with you today if they hadn’t gave me a little something.

Yeah. Right.

Right. They gave me an opportunity, they gave me confidence when I didn’t have it. And, and I think it, when we give it, I just know that it comes back in many ways. And it’s, but it’s something that I think we have to really keep intentional into the, for forefront of our mind.

Yeah. I, I, I, I believe that when you come from a giving heart, and it doesn’t have to be big things, it doesn’t have to be money, it’s, it’s just a mindset that, you know, when you do that and you do it from a place of gratitude, then, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a very healing and healthy place to come from every morning. Yeah,

It is. And I think, you know, and, and again, for a lot of people who we know are listening is Yeah. They, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of stress. Right, right. And I have found that, you know, one of the easiest ways to get outta stress is to get out of myself and do something for someone else. And it just frees me up just for that moment. And I think when we free up our thinking, we free up the opportunity for other ideas and other things to come into our mind.

Yeah. I, I think you’re right. I wanna dig into some of these a little more deeply. I wanna, I wanna get into some action items and some recommendations on how you can really live these, these principles. So let’s take a quick break and then we come back. I wanna start with the idea of being present. So, you know, you own a business, you have a family, you’ve got other, you know, you have a couple buddies who are middle aged and going through some things, like, there’s a lot of stuff swirling around us. And so it’s so easy to feel like you have to look ahead or feel like you’re constantly being chased by something in the past or whatever it is. So I wanna talk a little more about how you recommend that we stay present in the present.

But first, let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back to that. Hey, I know you wanna get right back to the show, but I wanna remind you that the 20 23, 24 salary survey, salary and benefit survey actually is out now with brand new data from over a thousand agencies of how they’re paying their team members, what kind of benefits they’re including in their packages. And you can find that on the a MI website under resources, and it’s just 99 bucks. So if that’s helpful to you, go grab it and use it in your planning, in your conversations with team members as you’re building out career paths and things like that. It’s super helpful to sort of see what everybody else is doing, what everybody else is paying.

It’s broken down by geography and also by agency size. So hopefully that would be super helpful to you. All right, let’s get back to the show. All right. We are back, and Doug and I are talking about his book and his sort of life experience. The book is called The Day Makes the Year, and then subtitle Makes a Life. And we were talking about before the break, the six sort of core principles that Doug has learned throughout his life through good and bad experiences that help him have a life, you know, that feels worth living. So right before the break, I was, one of the principles is to be president present, or you could be president too.

No,

Thanks. Be present even if you are president, please. But I think that’s a tough one. I, I think I, I know I struggle with that. There’s so much on my plate and there’s so many things on that stinking to-do list. And you know, I I, when I’m with people, whether, whether it is when I’m with you in a conversation like this, or I’m with my family or whatever it may be, I very much want to be present. But boy, it’s hard not to get in my own head and start thinking about, man, when I get home from this, you know, drink with my friend, I gotta do 12 things before I go to bed or whatever it is. So how have you mastered the ability to be present?

Great question. Great question. And you know, first there’s a, there’s a little saying that I really like is, you know, is just keep your mind where your feet are. Right. So, you know, and it’s really, it’s so simple, but it is the essence of being present. And, you know, most of the time, like you say, we’re in the future and or we’re in the past, and, you know, one of the things is in the past is the past can really hold you back. Yeah. And I think about those, you know, those bands, they’ll, they’ll put on someone and they’re running in place and they’re just holding them. Right. And so, you know, that band is regret feeling like that we really, we should have done something different.

Right. You know, there’s, you know, and again, a little cliche, there’s nothing to do about the past other than just let it go.

Well, and to your point, own it, right?

Yep. And, and, and it’s the actions that I do today, you, again, I bankrupted a family business and, you know, if I had let that hang onto me, I just never would’ve created any success. Right. But what I can’t tell you is through the years, you know, whenever I had a good year, I sent my father money. Right. Right. I took care of my past in my present. Yeah. And I, and I think when you think about like, letting your mind, race and what have you, this is where I think starting your day off understanding what you really want need to accomplish. Yeah. And I, I don’t, I don’t actually like to think of task again. I like to think of priorities and the actions associated with ’em.

So I think one way to stay in it is understanding is, is is just take, get three columns. Your first column is, you know, the, the, the highest priorities and the actions you’re gonna take, then the, the medium and then the low. And what you wanna make sure is, is that you’re gonna make sure that you’ve got to really focus on those high priority actions. Yeah. And so, look, you know, I, I’m a firm believer that if I couldn’t give you my full attention today, then I owe it to you to actually not do it.

Right.

Hey, let’s reschedule. Right. And so the the other thing I think I really learned is, is that, you know, it’s, it’s almost not our actions that probably make us more successful, it’s actually our reactions, right? It’s the pivots, it’s the adjustments that we make in a day. And if you’re not present, I mean, you just never know when some employ a client, something on television, what have you, just gives you that nugget that can have a huge impact on your business. And if you’re not present. And so I, I think knowing what you’re going into, what you need, and I think just knowing that part of especially being a, a business owner, an agency owner, is knowing that part of your role is to be present and mine those nuggets.

Yeah. Well, I think too, I think about if you’re not present when you’re with someone else, regardless of the media, if you’re talking on Zoom or you’re in person, or you’re on the phone or whatever it is, I think sometimes if you’re not fully present, you miss the opportunity to hear the undertone or the unsaid thing and what they’re talking about or, or watching their body language or whatever. And you miss the opportunity back to what your last principle, which is to give them what they need from you. Right. I, I think it’s so easy to stay on the surface with people because you’re kind of already mentally onto the next thing that you lose that opportunity to have impact and to see, you know, be be able to read between the lines and say, you know what?

There’s, there’s something there I need to poke into a little bit, or I need to ask a little more about or lean into. ’cause I, I think there’s something deeper happening right now.

A absolutely. And I, you know, and I think when you’re present, I mean, we can all ask them, Hey, how’s your day? Hey, what you working on? Right? Right. When you’re present, it’s the next question,

Right?

Oh, right. So why are you feeling that way? Right. You know, what, what is your challenge? And then that’s really, and and what’s amazing is, is you can help somebody, maybe save them a ton of time, save your company a lot of money, or just given that little bit of extra confidence that they need to finish through a tough part of their day.

Yeah. Well, you know, I think so often what we hear from agency employees is they want more from their boss. Hmm. And I think, I think a lot of business owners, a lot of agency owners translate that to, they want more of my time. And I, and I often wonder, is it that they really wanna spend more time with you? Or do they want the time they do spend with you to be deeper and have more meaning?

Yeah. Yeah. I, I would agree. And I, and, and one of the ways I think an agency owner can do that is put it is to, you know, ask that employee, give them some kind of intentional coaching for them to bring back later in a day or at their next meeting. Hey, you know, when you come back, I want you to tell me, you know, the three things that you really did well and what are two things you think you could have done better this past week? Yeah.

Right.

Right. And then they come way more prepared to maximize the time that they have with the owner.

Yeah. Again, it’s about the intentionality of it all. Right. Yeah. In terms of, you talked a little bit about sort of starting your day by understanding your highest priorities and all of that. I’m a, I’m a firm believer in starting every day or wrapping up every day knowing what are the three most important accomplishments. I need to check off the box tomorrow. So I know I go, I go to bed knowing, okay, these are the things I, these are the priorities for me tomorrow. And yeah, I know that a lot of other little things I’ll feel around them, but those are the big things I gotta get done. Whatever get done means. When you talk about sort of prioritizing intentional actions, talk a little bit more about that because I, I also think we’re so busy and so distracted that we kind of wander through our day sometimes with a little less intentionality than we think we do.

Yeah. I think we become a human pinballs, right. And so with, you know, we own the flippers, but everything above is just sending us off in different directions.

Yeah. Yep, yep.

And so, you know, one of the, one of the ways I kind of like to look at a day is to think of it like a three-lane highway, my high speed lane, my middle lane, and my slow lane. Hmm. And, you know, one of the things that when I’ve got the high priorities of, Hey, we gotta get somebody hired, right? Or, you know, we need to get ready to get this announcement, right? I can’t get in that slow lane and work in the minutiae of the work and my, you know, so I constantly ask myself, you know, am I in the high speed lane and I’m in the high speed lane with the right priorities? Right. And, and it’s really just an easy way, you know, we drive every day, so it’s an easy way to focus is what am I driving and which lane am I in?

Right. And a lot of times it’s, you know, we go to that slow lane because, you know, we do it better than anyone else. Well, it may be better than anyone else, but it’s having so little impact on your, on your revenue or your profitability Right. Where your employee, you know, retainment. And those are the things that I as an owner, really need to be working on. Yeah. And, and just kind of on that, I I, I would just add is I think one of the things that most owners need to learn to do is quit worrying and focus as much as how something gets done. Just ’cause you wouldn’t do it that way. You know, what you need is you need it done. You know, when I coach people, when I ask ’em really what are their priorities, what are the things they’re focused on, you know, it’s stuff, it’s pet peeve kind of stuff, and it’s not having the kind of impact that it could have.

Yeah. And then they feel like they don’t have enough time at home and what have you.

Right. Well, and I think too, when we ask someone to do something, we often focus on telling them how to do it rather than what we want the result to be. So, hey, I need you to do this report, and the most important thing for me on the report is that the client understands what the next steps are and the implications of them not accomplishing those on our timeline or whatever it is. Right. Right.

Yeah. But I think when the point you point though is, is also is if you don’t tell an employee what’s important Right. You leave it up to the employee and probably their three or four last managers.

Right.

Right. They’ve defined it, not you’ve defined it.

Yep. Absolutely. You know, I I I love the idea of simplifying. I mean, that’s a, that’s a, I think a big focus for, for a lot of people, but saying, I’m gonna simplify work or my life and actually doing it are vastly different. So when you, how do you help clients identify where they can simplify what, what things are, what they are, and they should leave them alone? What things can be simplified, and then how do you help them implement that?

Yeah, so, so in the book, there’s, so the, the book is around six principles, and then there’s a lot of practices. And so in that particular chapter, there’s some very specific practice. And, and one of ’em is, I’ll just call it, you know, I called it moonwalking. And so Right. I, I start off with, hey, what, what, what, what’s this thing we wanna have happen? And then I’m gonna work my way back and, you know, and we’re gonna try to, you know, we’re gonna keep it in under five steps or what have you. But really understanding is working your way back to the point where here’s the place we need to pivot, here’s the change we need to make.

Yeah. And really narrow, keep the focus, narrow, you know, anytime, especially you get in a meeting, you know, with a bunch of your people, you know, you go in with one intention, and then you come out with, everybody worked on something else. And in the book there’s a, there’s a guy I worked with at Bose named Peter Theron, and he taught me one of the simplest little things. One time we were in a meeting and everybody’s talking, all these actions are going, and Peter just stopped everybody and goes, what problem are we trying to solve?

Yeah.

And every person in that room was trying to solve a different problem.

Ah, fascinating.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it, it happens way more than we know. So I think part of simplifying is, is again, making sure that we understand, you know, what we want to accomplish, what is it? And I think it’s getting it down to really very specific, you know, what do I, you know, what do I want my client to do at the end of the engagement? Right? Right. Okay. So I want them to re-up what’s gonna be the three things we’re doing right now, and what are some ways that we can actually take that to another level, brainstorm it, pick one, do it.

So, so as we, as we wrap up our hour, I’m curious, we’ve, we’ve talked about a lot of different things. If somebody’s listing and they’re like, yep, all of this makes sense, is there a place to start? Is there a natural, like, all right, here’s the thing I start doing tomorrow that puts me on a trajectory to be able to sort of live out these principles more fully.

Yeah. I was at a conference out in Scottsdale weekend before last, and Guy who I know got to know we’re talking and, and afterwards he just turns to me, he goes, gosh, you know, there’s just so much I need to do and I just don’t know where to start, so what’s your advice? And I said, well, just tell me one thing. And he gave me one thing he needs to do. And I said, okay, do that. And he just looks at me like, dude, that’s all you have. Right, right, right.

I was, I was expecting words of wisdom. Right. Yeah.

Right. Exactly. And, you know, look, it’s, it’s, it’s about doing something right. It’s about, and I think what happens, I, I always kind of compare it to like laundry, like thinking about doing laundry is way worse than doing laundry, right. Max, you’re better off, I think, if you’re a business owner to pay someone to do your laundry and use your time differently. But that’s a different story. Right. But, but you know, it’s, if you’re listening and you’re not sure what to do is, I would start with just identifying what are my priorities and what’s just one thing I can do today with one priority. Yeah. And then tomorrow and really just start focusing, and again, being on those present of how I’m spending my time, not letting the task, not letting the day, not letting it drive me, but me driving my business.

And you do it one action at a time. Yeah. One day

At a time. I mean, really, at the end of the day, it’s all about intentionality, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s,

It’s about choosing to be intentional about your choices, about your time, about your words, about your focus.

And you know, that’s what, that’s how I quit using drugs and drinking when I hit complete rock bottom and woke up on an airplane. Right. And it’s the same principles that work here is, you know, what am I gonna do today to be more successful than I were the day before? Yeah. It’s not your thoughts, it’s your actions.

Yeah. Yeah. So true. You know, this interview is gonna air right after the first of the year, so it feels really timely that, you know, we’re talking about this and that, that it’s, it’s a great time of year for folks there. There’s that, that reset button that we’re, that we’re just automatically triggered at, you know, in late December, early January. And so I think it’s a great time to sort of think about how do I, how do I show up more intentionally this year in big and small ways and Yeah. And watch the progress of that.

Just put one successful day together after another successful day. Yeah. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s not about making these big resolutions and everything. Yeah. Just what am I gonna do better than yesterday?

Yeah. And, and, and maybe what is, what does a good day even look like? Even understanding what, what that, how, how you grade a day. Right. You know, how do I decide is this, was this a good day?

And for me, that’s why that morning routine is so important. Right. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna do everything I’ve said, but at the end of a day, if I ask myself, was it, why was it a good day? Right. And I can point to specific things that happened. Yeah. Then that’s how you create success.

Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Doug, this was a great conversation. If folks wanna find the book, wanna reach out to you wanna connect, what’s the best way for them to do all those things?

Yeah, thanks. You really enjoyed the conversation. So again, the name of the book is The Day Makes, the Year Makes a Life. And it’s available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. And you can also come to my website and Doug Fleener dot com and we put out, I put out a weekly newsletter that helped learn to use these principles each week for each day.

Awesome. Thank you very much. Thanks for sharing your story and turning it into something that can be helpful to a lot of other people. I appreciate that very much.

Thanks for allowing me to share it, man. Appreciate it.

You bet. Alright guys, this wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. Doug gave you plenty of things to think about. And more importantly, you know, from my perspective, plenty of things to start doing or stop doing or do differently, differently. I, I, I am a firm believer that our actions tell the story. And so lots of conversation today about choosing your actions more intentionally and really maybe simplifying what those look like, honing them, and, and coming from a place of gratitude and intentionality. And for all of us, I think one of the things we challenge with, our challenge with is the whole idea of really being present.

I think we are all pulled in so many directions at any given moment, and we have so many devices pinging at us. We have so many thoughts banging around in our head. It’s hard to stay present. I mean, it is, it is a conscious choice that we have to battle against all of those distractions to do. And so as you kick off this week and as you kick off the year, I would love, I would love to hear how you are gonna focus on being more present. And then when I see you next, let’s talk about what that’s done for your day and for your life and your team and your family. ’cause I, I think there’s great power in that. So let’s all, let’s all work together to put that into practice.

Alright, before I let you go, of course I have to and want to thank our friends at White. Label IQ, as you know, they’re the presenting sponsor of this podcast. So they do white Label, design Dev, and PPC. They are born out of an agency. They actually were a problem. They were trying to solve for themselves, which is how can we, how can we do those things more cost effectively and still deliver a high level of quality for our clients? And when they figured it out for themselves, they realized lots of other agencies had that problem. And so they started serving their fellow agencies. So good, good human beings. Head over to White Label IQ dot com slash aami and you can read more about how they serve agencies just like yours. All right.

I’ll be back next week. I’m gonna have another guest with me to get us thinking differently as we delve into 2024. Super grateful for all of you. So glad that you are here every week and we continue to learn together. So I’ll be here. I hope you will too. I’ll talk to you soon.

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