Welcome to the win at home first podcast. I'm your host, Corey Carlson. This podcast is where we talk about how successful business leaders win, not only at work, but also at home. On this podcast, we will go behind the scenes with great leaders to hear stories of how they win. Thank you for listening and on to today's episode.
(00:24): Hello, my name is Corey Carlson. I'm the host of win at home first podcast. And today we're going to be talking about the intellectual capital. This is the fourth of five capitals. So in a previous episode, we've talked about spiritual capital. What are you hearing and learning from God? Number two, relational capital, who are you doing life with? Three is physical capital. How are you managing your time and energy? And the fourth capital is intellectual. The currency for the intellectual capital is all about insights and ideas. How are you creating, generating ideas in your life? And then how are you implementing them? I know in my own life, there's been times where I've just got in the zone of working too much and kind of being too busy. And I find myself when I am interacting with whether it's clients or maybe it's my own kids or it's friends, I don't feel like I've got, but really new ideas or insights to bring, instead of using the same old quotes or the same old stories.
(01:29): And the well has gotten dry intellectual capital is all about, is us staying current with ideas and continuing to generate new ones, but then going in and implementing them and not just hoarding them for ourselves, but to go teach and equip and empower other people. So there's three main pitfalls I see in this, in my own life, as well as in clients that I engage with, the first one is we don't make time to learn. The second is we don't implement what we learn. And lastly is we do not teach others what we're learning. So the first one I want to talk about today is that we don't make time to learn. And so often all of us are very, very busy checking emails running from meeting to meeting. And we never sit down to actually learn to see what else is going on. And we've all been around people that are great learners.
(02:27): Like we've heard the phrase before leaders are learners, leaders are readers and all that is so true. I know in my own life there was an individual, his name is Tom. He was one of my bosses and yeah, always had the best stories. He always had the best nuggets to bring into a meeting. We could be talking about a new partnership and he'd have all of these ideas and things to bring into a partnership, or we would be talking about pricing and he would have some different thoughts on pricing and strategies. Well, come to find out, he was always reading in advance of some big discussions doing his homework. He also would read other type books so he could always have a good story or, you know, a good example. And so he's always fun having meetings because he was a well-read leader. And so for all of us, as we lead our families, as we lead our teams at work, we need to be just that well, Rez that we're bringing other opinions, other ideas, and really adding to the collective story.
(03:34): One of the greatest teachers of all time, and we've all heard it is Jesus. How he is so incredible at how he consistently talked and different metaphors, different illustrations. You know, he said, I am the true vine. I am the bread of life. I'm the light of the world. I am the gate. I am the good shepherd. I am the way the truth and the life he consistent Lee was using different metaphors and different examples. At the end of the sermon on the Mount, he was such a good teacher that in Matthew seven 28 through 29, it says, and when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teachings, or he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes. See Jesus' intelligence was also modeled the way that he led his team, the way that he was leading his disciples, he just was continuing to learn and to share.
(04:30): So we need as leaders to have that posture of learning first is how can we continue to absorb? How can we continue to think? What I find interesting in law when I work with clients is they'll make comments that, Oh, I, you know, I don't have time to read. I'm very busy. I don't have time to maybe listen to podcasts, whatever it is when I always find myself talking about to them is when we, when I in my client engagements, they're one hour calls, we most often do zoom and it is so neat because when I'm working with a client, they're never looking at their phones. They're now looking at their emails. They are completely dedicated to that one hour. And so often what I'll tell them is you absolutely do have time to learn. Look, in this last hour, you have not looked at your phone.
(05:18): You've not looked at your email, but instead you've been committed to this experience and learning same thing as applicable at other times throughout the week, where if you just carved out time and were dedicated to learning, you can in fact do it a few years ago, I was just getting hammered at work where the business line was not doing very well. I had all these different inputs of whether it was my boss, whether it was coworkers, whether there's people out in the field telling me, these are the things you need to do to grow the business. Corey, do these things. I just never found my time in my myself creating time to do anything. There was a particular book I read called the accidental creative by Todd Henry. And in there, he talks about focusing on the big three of your business. And as I thought about that, I was like, I need to carve out time where I block it out on my calendar.
(06:15): And I focus on what I believe to be the big three things I need to do for my business. So that's exactly what I did every Thursday from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM. I closed my office door. I didn't look at my emails. I turned off my phone and I focus just on what I believe to be the three big things that would move the needle for the business. I thought about my own ideas for those big three. I was thinking through and vetting through some of the suggestions and ideas I heard from other people and believe it or not, that strategy worked. Those three ideas. I was able to think through and continue to push forward that they actually help increase revenue. And most importantly increase the bottom line of the business. That strategy itself is what allowed me to help lead the team to get the EBITDA earnings before interest tax depreciation, amortization, which is the big profit at the bottom of a P and L that allowed me to help lead to get it to triple during the time that I was there.
(07:23):And so just an amazing opportunity, but it never would have happened. Had I not carved out time and been dedicated to it. And so for all of you, if you just are struggling to figure out, Hey, when can I work on the business? There's not enough time. I suggest that you carve out the time to focus on the big three, make that time to learn for your business, where it takes that actual intentionality. And during that time is, we've got to eliminate the distractions in our life. There's a lot of times I know when I'm trying to learn, I'm trying to think that I, all of a sudden, I'm like, ah, I'm just going to look at social media real quick. I'll take a look at Facebook, take a look at LinkedIn. See what else is going on? Maybe start to do a deep dive and think, Oh wait, let me check my email one more time before I no press any further.
(08:15): And it's just those distractions that continue just to get in the way of what we're doing in his book, fanatical, prospecting, Jeb blount. The author talks about how there are two different things that we can do in our minds with work and making time for it. And it's the idea of expanding or contracting the amount of work we need to do based on the time that we have. So as I'm working with clients and telling them, Hey, you need to block out time to do that deep work for your business. They'll often say, well, I don't have the time. And so I'll walk them through these two different ideas. And the light bulb usually starts to go off. And the first is this idea of Parkinson's law and CID that work expands to fill the time allowed for it. So let's say you have six hours worth of work to do, but you have a full eight hour day.
(09:09): What Parkinson's law says is that we actually will expand out that workload to fill the full eight hours. As I just mentioned it is we start to do the work and we're like, I'm going to check my emails. Maybe I'll get up and get another cup of coffee. Alright, now I'm going to start to work. Oh wait, maybe it's time to go to the bathroom. Maybe it's we just find these consistent distractions. That's the idea of Parkinson's law. The other one is Mark. Horseman's corollary to Parkinson's law that we actually contract our work to the reduced time. Allowed know, all of us can relate to this. When we go on vacation the last day before vacation, it is amazing how much work we all can get done. We're firing off emails. We're making those phone calls. We don't want to. We make those final tweaks to a document and we send it off to the next person who needs a proofread, where if we're using this idea of six hours worth of work, we could almost get it done in four hours when we are cranking through trying to get stuff done.
(10:13): So for you, if you're thinking I don't have time to learn, my encouragement to you is start to block time out in your schedule. Do that one hour a week or one hour a day. Maybe as I mentioned, I did for the big three. Then based on that idea of Horseman's corollary, the idea that work will contract it in fact, will where wherever you're spending that hour learning. When you go back to your work, you'll be able to crank through it much faster. I've seen this time and time again in my own life. When I went right, the book went home first, I went back to the same idea of blocking out time, not looking at social media or email. And I would just focus on writing and I was able to write so many more words, so much more better thoughts by being focused. So the first thing we need to do, if we are in fact, yeah,
(11:05): going to be a leader is to set time aside to learn. You're unstoppable at work at home. It's another story sound like you. Good news. I'm here to help. If you're ready to win at home, then go to Corey M carlson.com and download your free copy of 10 ways to win it all.
(11:33): The second is we do not implement what we learn. I see this a lot of different times and even in my own life. And I've even been posted on social media as of late, a lot about, we don't need to listen to another podcast. Obviously this being one of them, we don't need to read another book. If we're not going to implement. If we're not going to take in the information we use and do anything about it. No, there's really no need to continue just to consume this information. How we want to start to pivot as leaders is instead of just being consumers is we want to be producers. We have to be producers. When I see people not implement a lot of times, it has to do with confidence. They'll hear a great tool on a podcast or even in a book. And then as they go to roll it out with their team or roll it out in their personal life, they start to lose confidence like, Oh, is this the best idea to use?
(12:30): It seems like a lot of leadership tools that we use, usually our shapes. And you'll see that in different books as well. But you'll hear this idea of, well, let's use this, this idea of the square. And then maybe you read another book and it says they use the idea of the circle. And then the other book will say, use the idea of a triangle. And so when you go to roll it out, you're like, Oh man, which one should I use? Which is the best one. No, I forget it. I won't use any. And my encouragement to you is just pick one and go more times than not any of them will work. It's just, they need that confident leader to roll it out and to implement it. There was a quote I heard years ago, it says anything worth doing is worth doing messy.
(13:15): And I find that. So to be true when we are looking to implement something in our own lives. So whether on this podcast, you're hearing this idea of this big three or blocking out time. Maybe there's some other time management tool that you're thinking about. I've talked about the importance of journaling. And if any of those things you've not started, grabbed one and implement in your life. Start journaling, start doing your quiet time. Start doing no social media after 8:00 PM or whatever it may be. But lot of times we all can get in these cycles in our life where we're hearing things were consuming information, but we're not doing anything about it. Steve jobs has quote ideas without action. Aren't ideas, they're regrets. I think that's so true in a lot of our lives where we have all these great ideas, but we're never taking the time to implement them.
(14:14): The last area that I see happen a lot is we don't teach others what we learn. This could be for a variety of reasons. I spent a whole career in corporate America. The last company I was with, we had IP, we had intellectual property. We had some patents around a couple of our solutions. And well, it was interesting as the leadership of the company really just value that IP to the point. We didn't want to share with anybody. We don't want anyone. If we're going to tell anybody about a process and then they had a sign, you know, NDAs and non-competes and all of these, you know, different paperwork to protect it. So when I left corporate America to start coaching, it was so interesting working with Brandon, who's the executive director of five capitals. He would basically continue to remind me, Hey, intellectual capital is number four.
(15:09): We do not need to hoard it. We do not need to put our arms around it. We lead with spiritual capital and then relational capital. And that's how we'll no grow. The business is being spirit led and then just building relationships. And then we'll be sharing the intellectual capital. And that was just so mind boggling to me because I was so used to that idea of intellectual capital. We're going to hoard it, but instead I've given away freely, and that has been a game changer and something I'm very, very grateful for, of learning that and really changing my mindset on it. And so now it is one of those where it is about sharing information, whether it's sharing information freely on a podcast, it's writing a book and it's these ideas of, Hey, let's share it, let's get it out there. Let's help teach others so that they learn Cal Newport who wrote the book deep work.
(16:03): He talks about. If you don't produce, you won't thrive. Cal Newport who wrote the book deep work talks about if you don't produce, you won't thrive, no matter how skilled or talented you are. Part of producing is teaching others. It's taking that information. You're learning and going producing. [inaudible] sharing it with others. Benjamin Franklin has the quote, tell me, and I forget, teach me. And I remember involve me. And I learned, so if we want to elevate our family, if we want to elevate our team and we have not only got to be telling them, but it said, teaching them, involving them in this idea of teaching others and the benefit that it can have. One of my favorite parts of scripture is an acts four when Peter and John are speaking to the rulers, the elders and the high priest in Jerusalem about why they continue to preach about Jesus even after his death and after Peter and John, they defend their reason for teaching the crowds.
(17:07): The audience was amazed and I love it. It says here acts four, verse 13. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated common men, they were astonished. And they recognize that they had been with Jesus. See, there are some people that are born with it, intelligence advantage, but more times than not, we can all get there by learning, by learning from others, by growing in our intellectual capitals, just as Peter and John did by spending time with Jesus, same is true for you. Who are you learning from? Who are you, you know, soaking up all that information from and learning. And then also for you as a leader, who are you teaching? Who are you helping produce? [inaudible] implement not only into your life, but also into their life. So as you're learning intellectual capital, don't just hoard it.
(18:04): Don't just try to be the smartest man or woman at the table, but instead give it away to help equip and empower those that are around you so that we can raise the bar of your team. We can raise the bar of your family instead of hoarding. It has so I learned to do it when I was in corporate America, when we had the IP and the patents, but instead giving it away freely. So you go from here. As we wrap up this podcast to be thinking about intellectual capital, how can you grow in insights and ideas in your own life? Create the time, the space to learn how critical is to learn, get other people's insights, ideas. I love the idea that as we read other people's books, we get to learn in five hours, reading a book, what they spent, maybe their whole life creating. And that's the value of reading books is capturing these nuggets that many people spent years putting together, but also not only just to consume, but to go implement in your own life, start creating these new habits, start implementing these insights and ideas in your life. And then lastly is teaching others, teaching others. What's your learning to help elevate those around you. So thank you for listening. Very, very grateful for those that are listening and downloading and sharing. It means the absolute world to me that you are consuming this information, and now
(19:39): I want you to go and produce and teach others. Join us next time as we talk about financial capital. Thank you very much. You're unstoppable at work at home. It's another story sound like you. Good news. I'm here to help. If you're ready to win at home, then go to Corey M carlson.com and download your free copy of 10 ways to win.
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