E190 | Why It Seems Like We Never Have Enough Time

The number one complaint we hear from coaches and leaders is “I don’t have enough time”. 

But is that really the issue?

There’s plenty of data to support that on average we actually work less and have more “leisure time” than ever before… 

So what gives?

Today’s episode is a deep dive into the illusion of not having enough time and the questions we should be asking ourselves to get to the bottom of this: 

• Are we simply filling our idle time with other tasks?
• Is our to-do list mal-aligned with our values?
• Are we comparing our time to others?
• How are we “valuing” our time?
• Why do we hate unwinding?
• Who owns our time?

We’ll tackle these questions and other fallacies then give you a new approach* to figuring out how to make more time for the things that matter. 

*Hint: it’s not to wake up earlier, use a planner, go to bed later, or set a timer… 

While you’re here, check out the resources mentioned in this episode:

• Tips for being more productive: E49: Productivity That Matters
• A strategy for dealing with a day that goes off the rails: Chaos checklist
• Our online course designed to help coaches navigate careers and life: VALUED
• A free quiz to discover what drives dictate your behavior: Drives Quiz
• Want to learn how to build your brand? Come to our Brand Builder workshop!

Speaking of time and being more efficient- there’s no tool more valuable than the VersaClimber. This is the ONE piece of equipment I’ll use when strapped for time and needing a good, hard workout that won’t crush my joints. Reach out to our friends and tell them Brett and Art of Coaching you! 

The Apprenticeship – Join us before the end of the year!

• Cardiff (Wales): October 9-10th
• Asheville: November 13-14th

Follow me on social media:

Via Instagram: @coach_BrettB

Via Twitter: @coach_BrettB

Subscribe to my YouTube channel here

Learn More About My Courses, Clinics, and Live Events At: www.ArtofCoaching.com

Brett Bartholomew  00:00

I’m so busy being busy that I can’t quit being busy long enough to learn how to not be so busy. This and more on today’s episode. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  00:15

Welcome to the Art Of Coaching podcast, a show aimed at getting to the core of what it takes to change attitudes, behaviors and outcomes in the weight room, boardroom classroom and everywhere in between. I’m your host, Brett Bartholomew, I’m a performance coach, keynote speaker and the author of the book Conscious Coaching. But most importantly, I’m a lifelong student interested in all aspects of human behavior and communication. I want to thank you for joining me and now let’s dive into today’s episode.

 

Brett Bartholomew  00:47

All right, how you guys doing? I am really excited to be able to lock in this episode today. It’s been a topic we wanted to cover for a long time. Firstly, I’d say this episode is brought to you by our friends at VersaClimber. This entire episode is all about how to think about time differently and so much of that ties into efficiency. That term alone is why I invested in a VersaClimber nothing really beats it in terms of giving you an efficient low impact workout, which I need because I did a lot of dumb things when I was younger, just to see how hard I could push my body, right.

I use it as a standalone as part of the circuit. I’ve used it with fighters, football players, what have you, executive’s, anybody can use it. My mom uses it begrudgingly when she comes and stays with me. And to be honest, one of the main uses I have found for it is to deal with stress. Being a small business owner, especially during COVID, and a coach and a young father, it’s great to just like, get on that thing and crank away. And I can get on there regardless of the weather or anything. So check them out at versaclimber.com, drop my name or say you heard about them on the podcast for a discount. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  01:50

Also heads up this episode features, insights, quotes and research from the following individuals, Sylvia Bellezza and I apologize if I’m pronouncing these wrong, I’ve just want to give credence to the researchers Nero Pariah and Nat Keinen, Kieran Newman, who wrote a great article that we talk about in here as well, and of course myself, so I always try to give credit where credit is due. We’re not going to sit there and every sentence I give, am I going to cite the source? Because that doesn’t really make for a great podcast episode.

But another thing is, you know, it’s interesting, I struggle with this. I don’t know if you guys ever deal with this. But a basic marketing tenet is always don’t sell the sizzle, sell the steak or don’t sell the thing, sell what the thing does, you know? And that makes sense, right? You don’t want to sell somebody an air conditioner and tell them about all the things you know, you want to say, Hey, aren’t you tired of dealing with 90% humidity and sweating when you go to sleep at night, right? People get that. And so I know I should use this in our own marketing. But the reality is, part of me feels like I shouldn’t always have to sell people on the value of communication. Because that’s what we do at Art Of Coaching.

The vision statement is simple. We want to change the way the world interacts when it matters most. And I don’t think I should have to tell you many stories about why interactions important, you should tell me, right. They have meaning. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  03:06

Think about all the things that have happened in your life, that were a manifestation of poor communication. Think about a relationship that went sour, think about a job interview that you maybe blew, think about some conflict at work that you could have handled better, all these. These are the stories, that’s the nice thing about communication, guys is if you really know what it is, it sells itself.

And it is the one skill that literally transfers in a positive way if you work on it to every part of your life. And you’re not as good as you think you are. I’m included in that you need to be evaluated, you need to be trained, it’s like anything else, we have to make sure that we’re not just trying to focus on upskilling ourselves on these things that seem tangible, or that we can buy and touch. It’s the invisible forces that often undo us. And that brings us to time. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  03:51

Now you can certainly tell the time on a clock and all that. But there’s time pressure, which is really what this podcast is about. We’ve had a lot of folks say, hey, there’s things I want to do but I never seem to have enough time. We hear it, whenever we’ve launched online courses. Oh, I just don’t have the time and money. There’s other people that want to travel and they’re like, If only I could find the time.

I have a friend out in Kansas I tell him to come visit because I’ve been out there like 30 times he’s like, Oh, I got kids, we don’t have time. And that’s a playful jab at him. I know he listens to the show. I got kids too and congratulations, I think his boobie due soon is second as a matter of fact. But time pressure is something we all feel to varying degrees. And it’s really the ticking clock that causes that anxiety. It’s our habits. It’s the way we speak to time in general. And don’t worry, this isn’t going to be an episode filled with the usual tips that you see in one size fits all leadership books or productivity based resources. That’s what we’re vehemently against here. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  04:47

Now, so we’re gonna acknowledge and avoid some of the quotidian recommendations that you typically hear, such as, hey, get a planner, wake up earlier, stay up later, put your phone on silent, don’t check email, take email off of your phone or just say no. Now to be clear, and I just had to do that bad movie theater voice and maybe get your attention. It’s not that those tips are not helpful. It’s that they’ve been talked about ad nauseam. So we want to give you something new.

Additionally, if you’re the type that loves to have something in front of you, whether it be additional examples, or checklists, etc, you can go to artofcoaching.com/chaos. That’s c,h,a,o,s for our free resource we put together in the past, which will only complement the all new material we’re going to cover in this episode, right. Again, that’s artofcoaching.com/chaos.

You can also hear another complimentary episode that goes into seven key areas I look at when I think of classic productivity. It’s what I use when I’m evaluating what to spend my time on by revisiting episode 49 of this podcast, the Art Of Coaching podcast, it’s episode 49. It’s called Productivity That Matters. As with all episodes, there’s also a free note taking sheet if you go to artofcoaching.com/reflections. Ali Kerschner does that for all of these episodes, it’s a free resource, it’s excuse proof. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  06:11

All right. So getting back on it. Why do we feel such time pressure? Why do we struggle so much, especially when research shows that people actually have more time at their disposal now than ever before, due to modern advances in industry and technology? Now, one of those reasons is our perception of time. But a detailed overview of that is going to come later. So right now I want to get into some of the most ran toward the material, the stuff that we as coaches and leaders are most guilty of.

And so in the spirit of not burying the lede, the thing that you may not want to hear, but perhaps in need to hear the most is that our own ambition and insecurity is often to blame, for the lack of time we feel or the time pressure. That’s right, I’m not gonna apologize for it, it ties into something we’ve talked about in our online courses. And it’s going to be a central theme for our upcoming Brand Builder workshop in the spring of 2021 here in Atlanta, shameless plug, go to artofcoaching.com/brandbuilder to learn more about that. But let you know, let me explain a little bit more. Because I know some people are going to be Oh, I’m turning this off.

 

Brett Bartholomew  07:20

There was a 2016 research article entitled Conspicuous Consumption Of Time, When Busyness And A Lack Of Leisure Time Become A Status Symbol. And it makes many interesting points of which I’m going to consolidate a little bit here, because I don’t want to just go into this research article. There’s so many other things to discuss. But what they say in that part of that abstract in the discussion is, while research on Conspicuous Consumption, has typically looked at how people spend money on products, signal status, such as I’m gonna buy this Cadillac Escalade, I’m gonna buy this $10,000 piece of equipment for my weight room, I’m gonna buy the latest and greatest computer, I’m gonna buy this, you know, watch, I’m gonna buy whatever.

So Conspicuous Consumption means like, what we’re spending our money on essentially that signals something because our things become extensions of us, right. What we wear, how we wear and what we own, how we own it, how we use it, that all says something about us. This article in particular investigated conspicuous consumption in relation to time.

Now, the author’s argued that a busy and overworked lifestyle, rather than a leisurely lifestyle has become this aspirational status symbol. And a series of studies shows that the positive influence of status in response to busyness and a lack of leisure time are driven by this perception that a busy person possesses desired human capital, right? Hey, they’re competent, they’re ambitious, they got a lot going on, they’re busy, they’re doing important work, or that they’re scarce and in demand or in the job market. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  08:52

The research also uncovers this alternative kind of conspicuous consumption that really operates by shifting the focus of the preciousness and scarcity of goods to the preciousness and scarcity of individuals, right, hey, I can’t come to this because I’ve got blank, or hey, I’d love to do now. Keep in mind, these aren’t excuses.

Like for example, I look at my calendar and we have our final Apprenticeship communication workshop in November in Asheville, North Carolina. So if somebody asked me to speak on that weekend, I literally have to be like, No, I’m sorry. I’m spoken for that weekend, and about 17 Other weekends now in 2022. And I’m not doing that to seem cool. That’s just the reality. Just like some of you might, you know, have somebody that wants you to do something, but you have a work trip or you have something else going on. You’re not doing that to put on a show.

So I just want to be clear, but what a lot of this is talking about is there are plenty of people who like to appear busy, or make themselves busy because it gives them convenient excuses not to do things that challenge them. And something that I want you to consider is that additional research shows that from 1965 to 2003. I thought this was interest saying, the average American workweek, sorry international listeners, actually declined by three hours, while leisure time increased. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  10:09

Now I know what you think. Well, that depends on profession, blah blah. Okay, timeout. And in many places in the developed world, the workweek has gotten even shorter since then. So I’m paraphrasing this next part from one study that showed out of more than 7000 working Australians, Matt J, what up? Researchers declare that time pressure is an illusion. They estimated how much time is necessary for basic living, hours of paid work, housework, personal care, and compare it to how much free time people had in their actual schedules.

And it turns out there is a big discrepancy, which was most extreme for households without children and the smallest for single parents. So it quotes it says those who feel most overworked, those who have the least free time, largely do it to themselves. That’s what the researchers wrote. In other words, we could theoretically spend fewer hours making money vacuuming, washing dishes, doing all this cooking or reading verbatim from the article and we’d get by without getting overwhelmed.

Although you may not want to subsist just above the poverty line, obviously, or give your kids as little attention as possible, the broader points important. Time stress has less to do with well, it really has more to do with the things we value and the time we actually devote to those things, even if that is perception and other research suggests it also relates to our attitudes and our mindsets about time, how we talk about it. So you can’t just blame the clock. It’s not just about waking up early, or what have you. So we can find more roots of this time crunch and deepen our own psychology. So here’s a soundbite for you. If all that sounded like jargon.

 

Brett Bartholomew  11:47

The fact is that many coaches and aspiring leaders are simply highly driven, ambitious, achievement oriented, service oriented practitioners. And we’ve seen this data at Art Of Coaching through the results of our quiz. If you go to artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou, we’ve had more than 1000 responses and results from people from all over the world.

And we see a lot of those drives are the, achievement drive, the significance drive, the adversity drive, the service drive, and this is relevant because when you have people that want to serve, serve, serve, give, give, give, push, push, push, grow, grow, they’re often miserable at taking it slow, slow, slow. They don’t know how to chill out, they’ll make themselves busy, even if they have some downtime. And those of us in strength conditioning talked about the importance of recovery, to elucidate or like or to elicit sorry, delayed training effects. Yeah, we don’t submit to this in our own life.

Those I’ve worked with in the finance side, my own father who is in finance for 40 years, they talk about the importance of slow not sexy dollar cost averaging, or compound interest, as opposed to engaging in high speed high risk day trading, yet they fall into the same trap, many people do. You poison your own growth, the moment that you think you always have to be on to the next thing is what I’m trying to tell you. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  13:09

And I’m just as guilty as anybody else. There are plenty of times where I feel like I’m not doing enough with my life. And I have to sit there and I’d be objective now I’m gonna sound like a D bag, humble brag. I’m not humble brag. I’m trying to go into like how messed up I am with this too.

I wrote my book Conscious Coaching in 2016. Since then, I created Bought In an online course, Valued an online course, Blind Spot an online course, all of which took over a year to create. 30 are anywhere from 10 to $30,000 were produced with like I fly out to LA or have other people fly in film, there were massive projects 18 months or more if I’m being like truly honest, I’ve co authored three or four other books, meaning I’ve contributed chapter, whether it’s 8,000 words to 20,000 words.

I’m working on a new book, we’re almost on Episode Two under the podcast, and even I have this issue. I mean, I don’t know if you guys follow me on Instagram or what have you. But the other day, I admitted, like one of the things I had to do this year was my neighbor, Matt Morrison, love him to death works for a large company. Matt goes, do you ever just chill out and play a video game and I’m like, I haven’t played video games since I was in college.

He goes, try it. And I literally did. I tried it. And I found that it helped me because it was something I couldn’t turn into work. It was something that made me turn off otherwise, like I’ll just find information and I’ll go down a rabbit hole. And I want to make it something useful. Or I’ll think about something in my own life that I screwed up on and I want to make it useful. But like I have to look at myself and my friend Karl tells me all the time like I know you want to continue to grow Art Of Coaching but do you ever just take stock of where you are. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  14:47

So I just want to tell you like anything I’m telling you here. I deal with too. I do too. Now I’m better at it than I used to be. I am better at it than I used to be and that’s my goal for you to help you get better at it. So just hear me out, will you? You poison your own growth, like I said, the moment you think you always have to be on to the next thing, even if that thing is interesting to you, you know. I mean even start, like just start a garden or plant a tree. If you don’t believe me, that’s another thing I did,I got into composting.

I’ve gotten into these other things I have like a Kamodo Joe, I invested in that because I’m like, if I throw a lot of money at this, and I don’t have that money to throw and it makes me think about something else that I have to spend time on and do slowly or what have you. You know, and it can’t get turned into work. Although I guess now I’m making it part of my podcast, maybe this will help. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  15:32

And I just want you to challenge yourself and think we love to recite these parables, such as the one about the Chinese bamboo tree. But we don’t harvest the lessons for ourselves. And if you know it, it goes like this. A Chinese bamboo tree takes five years to grow. It has to be watered and fertilized in the ground, where it’s planted every day. And it doesn’t break through the ground for five years. After five years, once it breaks to the ground, it will grow 90 feet tall in five weeks. So it doesn’t grow for five years. Imagine watering, watering, watering, feeding, feeding, feeding, nothing, nothing, nothing.

But then after five years, 90 feet, 90 feet in five weeks for my international audience. 90 feet is really freakin tall. That’s what that is. The question is, did the Chinese bamboo tree grow 90 feet tall in five weeks? Or in five years? At some say the answer is obvious. It grows 90 feet tall in five years. Because if any time that person stopped watering or fertilizing that tree, it could die. But some people don’t have the patience to wait for the tree to grow yet many people do. And you know, mind you, it says that you have to water every day, not every moment of every day.

Because you could say well, yeah. But you’re saying to chill out and that we’re always going, going going and we actually have to learn to chill. But then he gave an example of somebody watering a tree every day. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  16:55

Guys, the problem isn’t that many of you try to find something useful to do every day, it’s that you can’t chill out for one moment. You make yourself busy, because you feel like you have to be busy. Because you have to fill this hole. If more of us could just be at peace with the thought of some wasted or dormant time, you’d see that that time is never wasted or dormant. Even doing something where you feel completely worthless for a while. I gave you the video game example has value because usually like it brings me to a parasympathetic state, my mind can turn off. It’s not about the video game.

It’s about the detachment. And that moment I come out of it, you know, feeling like alright, now I’m more dedicated to focusing on something I really need to do. I just had my little bit of time. And of course that could be playing with my kid that could be you know, we invested in a hot tub, you know, things like that we try. We’ve literally tried to spend money on things so that we have to do it. Otherwise, it just sucks that we spent money on that thing and didn’t utilize it. That’s what we always mean by putting skin in the game. So many of you won’t change until you have to. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  17:52

That’s why I always get so annoyed when somebody’s like, oh, I need to do this, but I don’t have the time or the money. I’m like my God, when are you gonna have the time and the money? And then I hate when people are like, oh, I need to find a cheap mechanic. Why does everything have to be cheap and free? Well, that’s because it feeds this thing that like, all right, like if it’s cheap, like there’s no real consequence to it, it’s one thing to get value. It’s one thing to get value, we have no trouble of value, right?

We sell our Apprenticeships at around 1,000 bucks, you can get an early bird discount, super early bird discount for about 200, 300 a pop. If you pass our online course, that’s another $180 of savings. But I’m not going to take something that I teach for 16 hours that took me two years, and all that I’m not going to I’m sorry, I’m not going to price that at 400 bucks, my time is more valuable than that. I’m about to leave for another one here soon. Then when I leave my son, right, like I’m not gonna like that’s crazy to me. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  18:49

And so people just they make these excuses. They don’t want to waste time. They don’t want to do this. They don’t want to pay for anything. Because they don’t like, they just don’t want to relinquish control. That’s why so many people have trouble with this time thing is not only their insecurities, but it’s like they have to have control of every moment. They have to have control like because they don’t understand the wasted hours, give your brain subconscious time to work out critical problems. It’s the warm shower effect or going on a walk. So, you know, we talked to this as idleness aversion. So many high achievers have idleness aversion, they can’t be idle. And it says a lot about our insecurities.

Again, I’m being inclusive here. If more coaches were honest with themselves, they’d realize that despite them constantly saying outwardly, I want to make a difference. I want to make an impact which I get that you do. That’s great. But so much of that comes from not just a genuine desire to help others, but also your fear of being average. coaches don’t want to go to bed at night wondering if their average if they’re not being helpful, or being forced to reconcile, you know, whether or not they’re good enough at their job or in general because leadership’s are really hard and you can think you’re doing your job as an effective leader, but you may not always get the results that you want.

Because when you deal with people, anything that deals with people is complex, right? It can’t be controlled, it can’t be predicted, which is why we need this skill of communication to help us bridge that gap. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  20:15

But because leaders will feel like they’re ineffective, and they can’t just go to some seminar where it’s like, yep, you get a 98% score on effective leadership. And that’s the same no matter where you go, we have to do things to fill that hole in ourselves. And I’m sorry, you’re full of it. If you’re so you’re shaking your head saying that’s not true. If you are constantly filling your time with more work, more work, more work, more this, more this, more this beyond a point, you’re trying to fill a hole for something else, I don’t need to be a psychiatrist to postulate that I don’t need to be, you just need to be realistic.

People that have strong service achievement, and adversity drives are always going to tend to be drawn grinders. And if you again, if you don’t know what I mean by drives, go to artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou. I’m not going to go into that here. But they tend to be grinders, my wife’s a grinder, there’s no length she won’t go to in order to challenge herself to ensure that she’s squeezing every ounce out of her like workday or her potential or whatever, in certain respects. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  21:13

But how can you be sure that more work is always the answer, as opposed to being a bit more patient or just picking your shots and changing your approach. I mean, there are so many people that say, I know coaches that have spent 1000s of dollars each year on books and workshops, yet if they examine those bookshelves, or their Kindle or whatever, or their notes, they’d see that they keep essentially buying the same thing over and over again, which leads to them seeing this like the world through the same lens.

You are not getting better if you just continue to study the same subjects, if you just continue to engage in the same experiences, if you just continue to like stay in your comfort zone or what have you. And for some of you work is your comfort zone. Being busy is your comfort zone. It’s like you don’t know what to do with yourself if you get out of that. It’s like oh my god, what do I do? I can’t stand myself, I don’t know or maybe you can’t stand others. You know, I don’t know what it is. But like work is a comfort zone for many people that want to make a difference and that needs to be looked at.

Because more time, more energy, more effort or not always the answer. Boxing taught me that, I box competitively in college. For you it might be chess, or it might be jujitsu, or it might be I don’t know, golf, you need to slow down and scan the environment internally and externally. If you want to make an impact, you need to learn how to pick your shots. Read the environment, know when it’s time to go, go, go know when it’s time to chill out. Right?

Most authors don’t just churn out book after book. There are outliers out there to be sure, but are we judging based on who are like, are we judging success based on quantity, or quality of their work? Right, the more shots you take isn’t always better. It’s not, it’s not. If you take more shots, you have more opportunities for success that’s contextual.

 

Brett Bartholomew  22:57

And again, the boxing analogy, if I just go in and throw punches, while I’m about to get caught by an uppercut, all that output doesn’t matter if I can’t block encounter and move and bob and weave and know how to go after him and then pull back. That’s just the truth.

Musicians don’t always put out albums, sometimes they take decades off or years off. Now, right? My favorite artists, right, I listened to so many different types of people. Many of them haven’t put out albums for 47 years. But then what they’re doing is they’re listening or engaging with other music to study the sounds and reflect. Now, they might still play their instrument, they might still write raps and freestyles. Right, but like, the point is, they also engage in other areas of their life.

So I asked you again to consider what is it inside of you that makes you feel like you can’t stop? That you’re not enough or that jumping into the next thing is the answer. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  23:48

Now to turn this on myself, again, I think many of you know I’m working on a new book. So you might say well, timeout, you literally just said you did all this stuff. You’re getting your doctorate, you have this podcast, and now you’re doing another book. But understand I’m picking my shots, this next book is very much related to something that a lot of people in the world are experiencing right now. It’s something that needs to come out of me. But I also know that after I write this next one, I don’t think I’m going to write.

I mean, if I ever write another book again, at least in the near future, whatever that is, I mean, it’s going to be on like people watching in airports or a children’s book. My first book was something I really needed to say, the second book is something I really need to say because I lived it, I’ve researched it. But I have no desire to like write a bunch of books. That’s just not me. You know, I have other things that I need to do and I also I’m just going to go off the grid for a little bit after that next book, I don’t know when it’s going to come out, could be a year, could be 18 months, could be two years. It depends. That’s a process. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  24:45

But I know I’m going to disappear for a while after that, because I’ve been going and I will have no trouble sitting on a beach somewhere or in a mountain cabin somewhere doing something useless, or just getting lost and not answering DMS or this or that or what have you. So you know just like you have to make sense of this not every shot is worth taking.

And it reminds me of something a former coalition member of ours. Stephanie Seeley said one time and I don’t know where she said she read it. So I’m giving her the credit. She said, when it comes to time management, you have to ask yourself who owns your time? Man has that stuck with me who owns your time?

Now, I’d add to that and ask you to use that question as a check in with yourself. But this isn’t about your boss, right? Don’t say, Oh, my boss owns my time, or, you know this and that, that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s not your boss, your job, right? They’re not to blame. Because there are some of you that no matter what job you had, what boss you had, you’re still going to make yourself busy.

The usual suspects of who really owns your time is your ego, your insecurities, your anxieties, your sense of perfectionism, your impatience, your naivete, your sense of purpose, maybe social peer influences. Maybe you were in some harmony, a state of harmony. And then somebody that you feel threatened by or somebody that you envy or somebody that whatever, came out with something or did something and you’re like, Oh, now I, you know, ruined your evening, you turn off the TV, you storm upstairs, and you feel like you need to start working on something.

 

Brett Bartholomew  26:14

Right, that’s who owns your time. You can’t blame it on people. You have to look at your ego, your insecurities, your anxieties, I want to be known as the best, I need to be known as in right now, I want to make a difference, I want to make it so much right now that I’m just going to go without any guidance or coaching. I have this sense of purpose. So I’m just going to dive headfirst into all these things and make myself busy. Hmm. I wonder why you don’t have any time.

These are the things that are constantly whispering to you anytime you actually want to unwind a bit. Maybe even when you go home for the holidays, right? I used to not be able to sit down and watch my mom loves this movie with Robert Downey Jr. called Home For The Holidays. We always have to watch, I swear to God, I’ve seen it 30 times.

And you go through that phase, you’re like, this is great, I love this movie to Oh my god, we’re watching this again to hey, I have work to do to Oh, my parents aren’t going to be around forever. I’m going to shut up and watch this movie for the 8 million times. And you know what? I’m going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. And you will too. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  27:10

So, that leads me to the next thing some claim to essentially hate unwinding. Okay, but why? Is it really because you feel like it’s a waste of time? Where did that conditioning and thought process come from? Especially when you have people like Amos Tversky, Nobel Prize winner, who stated that people waste years not being able to waste hours? And he did all right. He did okay.

And what he meant is waste hours, go do something that most people consider worthless, useless, mindless, and you know what a great idea might actually come to you. Going on a walk, not listening to a podcast while walking. Going on a walk and just allowing myself to be mindless helped me figure out half of what I want to talk about in this episode. And I’ve been sitting on this episode for a long time. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  27:53

So again, question if that time is actually wasted, because there are plenty of successful people, very successful people by whatever metric you want to measure who go to movies, who play video games, who binge watch a little bit of Netflix, who read crappy books, right? Just think, is your goal the last value signal to burnout? What is it? All right, I’m off that.

Next thing, our perception of time. You have to consider this you might feel more time pressure because it all coincides around this question: are you actually doing things that even align with your values? Research shows that people who participate in things they perceive to be drudgery report feeling more time pressure, like I feel time pressure with my doctorate because I hate writing, at the same time working on my book and so many other things that I can just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, bang out.

Like I have to be purposeful but there’s so you know, I have an editor that’s going to help me kind of tighten those things up. So I can kind of write the crappy first draft and get that done more quickly. Where with the doctorate, you know, of course, I have to like cite every sentence, do this. And my normal book has that as well. But we handled the citations towards the end of the book and what have you. It’s not written in the same format. So the doctorate is drudgery to me even though I know that I need to do it, it’s got value. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  29:15

So you know, when you think about this, are you doing things that align with your values, go back to Episode 49 to learn more about the seven categories that I use, but to stay on this for a moment, in a 2004 study of nearly 800 people working in Ohio, researchers were confronted with a puzzle, and it showed that when women did more than 10 hours of housework a week, they felt more pressed for time, and in turn more depressed.

But when men did the same amount of housework, they did not report those feelings. A similar pattern appeared for volunteering, men who volunteered more were less depressed, but women got time stress and didn’t seem to experience that benefit.

Now the explanation that those research just came up with, because I can imagine you’re with me in that well, that’s kind of vague, I need to learn more. But it was basically bolstered by the accounts of how people spent their time. So for example, men tend to do things that are more enjoyable forms of housework and volunteering, they cut the grass and coach soccer teams, they get into a flow and feel a sense of accomplishment with those things. Where women, on the other hand, are often occupied with small repetitive daily chores and service work.

But I don’t agree with a lot of this. And here’s why? It’s not that I don’t agree with the idea that yes, we can feel more time pressure when we’re doing things that don’t align with our values. I absolutely agree with that. And I gave an example. But I don’t agree with what they’re saying here in totality, because one that is super in a vacuum, like if my wife and I, like I hate mowing the lawn, I think lawns are just worthless, and they really are, lawns were created as a status symbol.

So that at some point, you know, when life got easier, and more and more people got a fluent, as we came out of, you know, I don’t know if it was the 1800s, or what have you, 1900s, I can’t remember exactly. But it was a way for people to basically say, Hey, I have this land that I don’t need to do anything with. I don’t need to do anything with it. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  31:10

Now, I like the idea of getting outside, I like the idea of being active, sweating, getting my steps and that’s fine. It’s that when I’m running a business, and I want to spend time with my kids, and I’m not home many weekends, mowing the lawn is just this like tedious thing that doesn’t add value to my life and actually takes away from the things I’d rather be doing with just seeing my little dude or trying to catch up on some work.

And remember, I own a small business, my wife and I like we are completely in charge of funding everything for our company. So I know that if I spend two hours hedging and mowing, and whatever, then that’s time I could be making money to help pay for new employees and new systems that make our life and our business easier, you know, and what have you.

Whereas, you know, I might have a neighbor, let’s say maybe he makes 300k a year, I’m making this up, right. Somebody’s paying for his time and he’s able to go out, he can go out there and mess with his lawn. It’s very cathartic for him, maybe his job is drudgery. I like what I do with you guys, I like this job, I like being able to interact with you. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  32:09

So I just want to make the point that like I don’t agree this whole idea of like the idea of like men cut the grass and women don’t. You know, on the other hand, I do most of the cooking in household. You know, I mean, Liz and I will share who empties the dishwasher. And sometimes she has to do it way more than I do now because she’s a woman, and I’m a man, but because I’m out of town, or because I run mentoring groups at night, you know, through our coalition or what have you.

And so, you know, we’re not really worried about the daily scoreboard, we look at the big picture of things. And so anyway, that’s where I think that needs to be teased out more, but I hope you get their point. It’s just saying when you’re doing things that don’t necessarily coincide with what you like doing or you value or you see the purpose in, if that’s all your day, you’re going to feel like yeah, this sucks.

There are some people that get into coaching and they think they’re just going to work with athletes all day. And then they realize like, oh my god, I have to deal with agents or I have to deal with GMs, I have to deal with whiny this, I have to deal with that and every job do. My neighbor Greg Baker, right, used to be a police officer, he has a great episode on the podcast. Here’s like after a point, policing became less about policing and more about you know, body cams and all this other stuff. I didn’t actually get to do police work. So we retired early. Right, there’s conflict there. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  33:22

Takes us to our next point. Another reason we feel time pressure. How you know, think of conflicting goals? How else does passion and alignment of values impact our perception of time? A 2018 article and I’m sorry about this, John. The last name is tough. I don’t know him personally. John Jeca Minawits, they go of Columbia Business School and Ashley Wilkins of Harvard Business School, they found a clue when they asked employees about how conflicted or aligned their goals were. And we all have multiple goals, right? We all have a lot of goals and I’ll get into this.

What he found his employees lacking in passion said that their goals were often competing with one another. They were always fighting for time and attention or recognition. For example, their drive to do well at work might make it really hard to get home and do dinner with a family. But passionate employees were a bit different and it depends also how they define passionate, right. They saw their goals as supporting one another. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  34:22

After all, as the article said, healthy home cooking and family bonding might give them more energy and motivation tomorrow. Wow. That’s a nice way to look at it. And it adds true if we just take it at face value, but there’s some holes in that as well. But revisiting the work by Kyra Newman, time pressure isn’t just about how enjoyable our activities are, but also how well they fit together in our heads.

Another study found that people that simply think about conflicting goals like saving money versus buying nice things or being healthy, eating tasty foods feel more stressed and anxious and in turn, they’re shorter on time, and it happens to coaches. You want to be great at your job. But you also want to be phenomenal with your family, you want to be in great shape. But you also want to be great at work. Well, you know, like, you just, you think about this, you just want to be great at everything.

So many leaders and coaches want to be great at everything. They want to be good at this and good at that and good at this and good at that but we can’t. Like when we talked about this in my online course Valued, right, the primary conflict in a coach’s life, really comes down to social rewards as well. So when we think about conflict, and why we feel time pressure, and why we can’t quit working, and why we have conflicting goals, and what have you, there’s a lot of coaches that want to do different things, you know, but that they think about like they’re in a field that’s so tough to evaluate objectively. And they want to be considered a true blue by their peers, that’s the ultimate accomplishment is so and so is a great coach, they’re reliable, or somebody will do anything for that jacket.

 

Brett Bartholomew  35:54

I remember, there was a time where, apparently, to become a master strength and conditioning coach and get a jacket, you have to spend like 20 years working for a team or something like that. But then I think about all these coaches that work in other settings, or maybe they work in the private sector, they’re not eligible for it, well it used to piss me off and all I did was strength and conditioning, I’m like timeout, you know. I had opportunities to work in pro sport or this and that but just because I decided to go to the private sector at some point in my career, even if I’ve done this 15, 20 years, I can’t get a jacket.

And you know what, guys, you get to a point in your career, you’re like, I really give a shit about the jacket and 90% of other people can either. Like that’s great, and people get the jacket and what have you. But by and large, once we get this thing, it sits in our closet, or we forget about it, because we’re all obsessed with the second mountain. There are people that got that jacket that are like, Hey, I would have rather had a book and people that had a book, they would say I’d rather have the jacket, it’s never enough for us.

And coaches are so competitive, they lose sight of that. And, you know, I know a lot of that can see like this thing of saying, hey, I’ll do anything for this or that recognition to be seen as an industry leader or seen in general. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  37:02

I know that can be seen as an attack, it’s not, it’s a call to action for coaches wake up and realize how your insecurities and your desire for acceptance can create actually more issues. Especially if time pressure, you constantly got to be known as the person, there’s constantly gotta be something going on, you constantly have to show somebody that you’re learning and growing and what have you. A coach in one of our courses said it himself. And this is all a quote, I didn’t see it at first, nor did I want to admit it.

But beyond a point, I had to do that all the things that I had to do to get into the field. Much of the reason I kept chasing certain jobs or certifications, or even the acceptance of my peers, was because I felt like I needed to be accepted and respected by others. It even influenced the way I trained or worked out. I beat up my body routinely to the point where I had trouble chasing my kids around when I was home.

Also, I could still hold my own in the weight room around peers, or at conferences with other really fit and strong people in my field. Everything was about how can I make this S on my chest a little bit more visible. To me that S stood for servant. But after taking this course, I came to the tough realization that I wanted to be seen as or considered Superman.

 

Brett Bartholomew  38:19

And I promised listen, like, I’m not gonna run away from the fact that I think that’s a pretty cool, like natural organic advertisement for our course Valued. valuedcourse.com. But the fact is, is I’m not going to run away from it, because that’s why it was created to help situations like that. And I just want you to think a little bit about these things. I want you to think about like what you’re doing, and why you feel like you don’t have time and if it relates to anything I’ve said so far. And I’m gonna say this with a bit of tough love.

If you’re gonna say, Hey, Brett out of the things you said, One, it’s my fault because I have idleness aversion because I’m a high achiever and I just know how to push and that I’m really trying to over almost kind of compensate for something or because I identify with the comfort zone of work and feeling busy. If you’re like that’s BS and if you say, or it’s because my perception of time is off, because I’m doing things that don’t always align with my values. Nope, that’s BS. And also Brett. No, it’s not at all, because I have conflicting goals. That’s BS, guys. I don’t know what to say.

Because while we’re not done yet, some aspect of those things is true. I’ve done this too long. I’ve done this too long, I made too many mistakes myself. And I know out of the 8 billion people in the world or the 50, 60, 100,000 some odd that are going to listen to this episode within the next month. Somebody that hits and we know we see it in our groups. People say hey, I work for this great organization, but I want to build my own brand. How do I do it?

We’re running a Brand Builder workshop next year, depending on when you’re listening to this. March, I believe it’s March 2021. Again, go to artofcoaching.com/brandbuilder. And the majority of people that have applied for this have said I want to do something more and help more people. But I also have a job and I need more time. That’s what led us to create this. That’s what led us to create this. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  40:18

Knox College professor, I’m going to use a lot of rational persuasion here. Tim Kassar, who’s an expert on materialism, co-authored a seminal paper on time scarcity once joked, hey, if every research project that I was currently working on right now was a cat living in my house, it would be very clear that I had a problem. If your To Do Lists literally feels like a herd of hungry cats all in competition for your one can of food your time. No wonder you’re overwhelmed.

So as Newman states while we may freely choose some tasks on our plate, others are largely the product of our insecurities, our society, our culture and actually this wasn’t from Newman, this is from Australian National University professor Lyndall Strazdins, and she spent the last decade trying to show how time scarcity matters for individuals in public health. An example she gives is being a good suburban mom today seems to include chauffeuring your kids around, the neighborhood to countless sports and hobbies. If you don’t do that, well, you’re not living up to a set of norms.

And that goes back to my examples with coaches. Right, I saw this all the time, I still see it in coaching culture, if they’re not at every mega conference, learning about training or lifting at this or doing that, or whatever. It’s like, they’re not living up to this set of norms. But guys, you have to ask yourself at some point in time is, maybe it’s time for these norms to evolve. Right? It used to be normal for coaches, like you couldn’t talk about wanting to do something more or building a brand. I used to not be like somebody said, you shouldn’t write a book, it’s selling out. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  40:29

At some point, you got to decide whether you actually care about these norms more or care about making progress in your life more. Do you care about social acceptance more? Or do you care about diving into what you actually need to work on what you’ve been running from more? Because you’ve got 24 hours, and you get to a point where you just can’t expand your day? Yes, it’s very inspirational to hear people be like, well, I woke up at 4am and taught myself code. Alright, but like, some people might not be able to do that.

So you have to look at these bigger issues, we have to get to the root of the issue, not just tactics. Now, I can’t just throw medication at different illnesses. At some point, I need to look at my health behaviors. So another piece is when we’re caught in time conflict it can be a sense of control some external obligation. This happens to my wife’s daycare pickup runs up against an important meeting. Maybe your work shift starts at nine but the bus is late.

External obligation I think of right now, with our coalition mastermind. You know, I have a call every other week that I run from 8:00 pm to about 9:30 pm. Well, that makes me miss putting my kid to bed, because I also worked out and trained some my neighbors around that time. And no matter how I shuffle it around, there’s always something I have to do that night, or I’m traveling or what have you. And so there’s a lot of these time conflicts, which can feel like there’s not enough time

. Now, at the end of this episode, right? It’ll be what about 5:00 pm my time, my son will get home in about an hour so I can spend more time with him today. But I’ve got to leave town tomorrow to speak at another event. So none of us are going to have that much control. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  41:52

In 2007 study, researchers interviewed 35 low income working mothers who are caring for at least one child, and they asked the moms to talk about how they spent their previous day, how they manage to feed their families when it’s hectic. The researchers were able to pinpoint a lot of different ways of managing time, some were more successful than others, right. The least successful was reactive, where mothers didn’t feel in control of their days, all of them felt time scarce beholden to the clock, unable to accomplish everything they wanted to.

In contrast, mothers who had an active time style, which is what they called it, you know, they had some success with scheduling, managing or structuring their days, they felt a little bit more in control. Now, that can’t happen for all of us. And I’m a case study example of that. But what I do try to do is say okay, I’ll give an example recently, you know, my wife and I go to Costco all the time, we’re pretty frugal people. That said, I ended up and this is not a sponsor. Trust me, I’m not big enough to get these guys to sponsor me.

Although we did keep hounding them, Matt keep writing them emails. I ended up paying for butcher box. Now why? Because it’s way more expensive than the meat I can get at Costco and we could sit there and talk about quality this, that whatever. No, because I’m time poor and there’s certain times that I can’t afford to go 20 to 25 minutes you know, this way in town, sit in line, come back, that can be an hour and a half.

So when this is the problem, so many people look at dollars to say oh is that value, like my friend John would do this. I love him to death. But all hire a handyman all day as opposed to doing home improvement projects myself be on a point. And he’d be like, well, you’re wasting money. Well, that depends, right? Because like, it’s not that dollar to dollar, it’s what does it cost me to go across town to Costco, wait in line, do this come back all the time, I can’t always do that. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  45:20

So I’d rather pay more upfront for that convenience, where I get some of that time back, because maybe that’s with my son, maybe that’s recording a podcast for you guys, maybe that’s anything like that and so you can’t just look at dollars  to dollars. You can’t look at hours to hours, you got to look at values to values, you got to look at reality towards perception. You do.

Another example is you know, and when I lived in Phoenix, and my job was just to be a strength coach. Sunday night, I could batch cook. Now, a lot of Sunday nights, I’m not home certain times a year. So I might have to batch cook, boom, one thing is in the instapot, boom, one thing is on the grill, boom, one thing is in the oven. Or mornings might get started a little later, which couldn’t happen when I was just a strength coach.

But now that we do more consulting and educating in a wide variety of fields, and I’m either home or off site, or what have you, you know, like my days can start later, my days can start later, because I have international clients at night. So I can actually do some of that batch cooking, it doesn’t have to be on a Sunday, I can do it during the week. Guys, you’ve just got to find what works best for you. But I don’t want to hear that you don’t have the time. Because you do. You’ve just got to figure out where you’re gobbling it up.

There are non negotiable work hours, for sure. There are babies who are not fond of sleeping through the night for sure. But a lot of this is part of our psychology. So according to even a research, rather than experiencing life as masters of our own fate some people always feel like they’re at the mercy of external forces, this external locus of control. So they’re less resilient to stress, they’re more depressed, or they’re just more short tempered. I don’t, you know, I don’t have the time. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  46:55

And that’s why it’s hard to, you know, seize control over your own schedule. I’ll give you another example. And this piece of the final point, the value of your time, about I don’t know, four years ago, I started using Calendly. And so when friends wanted to connect or whatever, and if we were playing phone tag a lot, I’d send them something and be like, hey, schedule something here. And I think I’ve talked about this before certain people be like, Oh, you’re big time now.

You know what, I’m gonna point this at Stuart McMillan from Altis. It always be like, I can’t believe I have to use a scheduling app to get on a call with my friend, I say, Hey, buddy, it’s not that, it’s that you and I have sent like 30 texts trying to figure out when we’re going to connect. That’s a waste of time, which I know yours is valuable. If you just click on this link, you can literally pick any time that’s available in the next two weeks. It’s not a big time thing. It’s like I’m trying to make this more convenient for you thing.

When people reach out to me on Instagram, or they’re like, Hey, would you come on my podcast? Would you do this? I send them a link, go to our website, fill this out. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Nobody’s big timing you. Nobody’s big timing you. We’re just trying to make things efficient because we value our time and we value your time. And otherwise, you might sit with an unanswered DM for like six days because I don’t check my DMs daily. It’s just people’s feelings get in the way of this stuff. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  48:11

I think of the same thing with like, when people quote me for speaking, hey, what costs? X amount? Well, so and so didn’t charge that much. That’s a stupidest negotiation tip you could tactic, you could ever use, right?  Like, first of all, you’re asking something different of me than that person would have you?

Second of all, you’re asking me to come out during my busy season? Which what do I call Marriott in Phoenix in the winter, when it’s beautiful there and say $400 A night, It’s 1:30. You know, some other time they’re gonna be like, cool, yeah. And that’s our busy season or the hottest time of year, do you want a room or not? Right. What do you value your time? So that’s the last piece of this time pressure puzzle is money. And that’s complicated. If you work multiple jobs, or you can’t afford to pay for a babysitter, you’re bound to feel short on time.

My wife and I can feel short on time, because we are 100% responsible for the financial commitments of our own business, 100%. We do not have external like, we don’t have investors, we don’t have this, we don’t have loans, anything like that, like literally. So we’re gonna feel short on time and we have to be very, very conscious with our time, because there are actual ramifications if we’re not protective of said time. I talked about this inside look at I even think about one time when we talk about money. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  49:32

One time I’ll be very transparent. Somebody booked me for a speaking gig. It was like $7,500 for what they wanted. And I told one of my friends that and he goes, man, big time I go, buddy, I pay $5,700 in payroll tax alone every two weeks. I mean, like literally anytime payroll, runs. $5,700 just goes to Uncle Sam, that’s not my payroll. That’s what I pay on top of payroll.

So even if one of you listening book me to speak and let’s say I charge 10 grand just for the sake of discussion, literally every two weeks, and we’re about to hire somebody else, like five to seven of that comes out of my pay like that’s and so you consider like, you think that you’re paying me or somebody like me to speak for 60 minutes? No, you’re not, you’re paying and this goes into you guys see, when people pay you, people are paying for the time it took you to create the thing, the time it takes you to deliver the thing, the opportunity costs, right, all the other things that go into it.

And listen, this is what markup is for in any industry. I’m talking to you through a microphone that I guarantee you didn’t cost $75 to make. It didn’t cost that. They have to build in so many other things. This is absurd that so to this point, I have to talk about economics at this level with some coaches, but there are I mean, about 60% of our listeners, 65% are still strength and conditioning coaches who don’t get educated on this. They don’t. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  50:55

So I’m sorry, for those of you that are like, Dude, I get it, like, why are you yelling at me, but you have to understand in my core industry, one, we’re still trying to help while this podcast is for everybody. I am still trying to create systemic change in this one, which is behind, because they’ve listened to this gaslighting for so long, that they should just give, give, give, free, free, free all that it’s absurd.

So, you know, in a society like ours, I love this quote, too, in a society like ours, the go to answer for happiness has always been like, make more money, buy more stuff and what? You know, most people are trying to say is no what people actually need is more time. But that coincides with you dealing with your own insecurities, your own obstacles and all these things. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  51:38

Because an abundance of money can still feel like a scarcity of time. Right? The assumption is that rich people have so much money that they could do with their money. Well you know, like, they could do so much. But like, then they just get more expensive hobbies. And that’s why I lose it whenever I’m like, hey, somebody will reach out and say, hey, I want help with this, great, we got this workshop, if you just go to artofcoaching.com/brandbuilder, it goes silent.

We will follow up, my wife will follow up and be like, hey, TJ, I’m making the name up. You know, you were interested? Do you want to do it? Oh, sorry. I just, I don’t have the money right now. Okay, well, hey, did you know that there’s a payment plan and this? Yeah, I just, I don’t have it reach out in six months. Okay, we reach out in six months. Oh, you know, like, it’s just not a good time. And we’re gonna assume that guys, not everybody that says that stuff is honest. Right.

Like we said, there’s just the thing that they’re missing is there’s never enough time and money, they’re gonna continually put themselves in that situation. And then what we see all the time, because we saw it with our course, Valued, people didn’t want to buy it at first, because it was the first thing marketed towards coaches that would help them financially or deal with burnout and that was new. And they felt like it was like, well, that’s still serving, I shouldn’t need help with that. COVID hits, boom, takes off. We don’t want that to happen to you.

I would much rather have you pay us for things where we can help you be proactive than you learn the other way. Because let’s say you paid 2500 for professional admission to our Brand Builder workshop. And you want to start your own LLC and you want to start your own business or you want to have your own brand. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  53:11

Guys, let me tell you about a time two years ago that I paid a trademark attorney $5,500 And they gave me really crappy advice and a certain trademark that I pursued didn’t hold up. Gee whiz, if I could have paid $2,500 to learn what 4500 taught me. Or when somebody’s like, Hey, I don’t know if I want to get on this call. You know, I don’t really have the 300 bucks or whatever. I’m like, Well, you want to start a business, right? Yeah. Well, creating an LLC is going to cost you money.

And it’s just like, we’re so reactive. I think that’s what I’m trying to say in this rambling. We’re so reactive. That’s a big reason why you feel time pressure, your values aren’t clear. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  53:48

Alright, so I’m going to consolidate this because we’ve covered a lot, we have covered a lot when you think about why do I feel like there’s not enough time? Why do I feel like I’m always under time pressure? Right. Don’t just like beyond a point getting up earlier, staying up later, putting your phone on silent, not checking email that doesn’t help beyond a point. You have to look at the deeper issues, the deeper issues because there is plenty of time.

You just have to say why do I have such an idleness aversion? Or aversion to idleness? Why can I just like, be still for a moment? Why do I always have to make more work for myself? Why do I always have to do this? Do that? Why am I so insecure? Who owns my time, is it my insecurities? Is it this? Is it that? look at what you’re doing, is it conflicting? Are you trying to do too much at the same time? Are you doing stuff that you don’t like anymore? Are you doing like, what is this? What’s the value of your time?

And I’m telling you, the majority of you reach out you’re not valuing your time appropriately. You need to raise your prices, you need to do this. Like I’m telling you, I promise you need to deliver a great service. Well, what is my time worth? I don’t know. What’s your self worth? Right, we talked about this all the time. Like, what do you value yourself at? Because like you think if you’re charging like 60 bucks if you have spent 100s or 1000s of dollars on educating yourself, if you have spent a lot of money and you’re spent a lot of time and then you’re like, well, I don’t really want to charge people, you know, I’m in it for this, I’m in it for that what you’re saying is you’re actually just like not valuing yourself. And I’m sorry, that’s true. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  55:29

If you want to know what to charge for your time, and this was a whole other we did this podcast with Danny Matta, we’ll probably do another one. It’s what to charge for your time?

There’s no one right answer, there’s not a formula. It’s like this, yep, this is right here, what you charge for your time, you have to say what did it cost to acquire this information and this knowledge? What does it cost to deliver it? What am I saying no to, quit devaluing yourself, quit to say yes to this? What experience am I going to deliver, I will never, ever apologize for our online courses being around $500 When we paid $30,000 to create them, and we want to charge them at 800.

we created a damn good experience in those courses. We’re not perfect. I will never apologize for my live workshops being anywhere between $1000 to $2500. Because we want to hold ourselves to this standard, where we deliver twice as much value. Well, everybody think that? No, we can’t please everybody and that’s fine. That is what it is. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  56:18

But I’m just saying so many of you don’t value your time enough and you want you want some formula, you want some answer to validate it, when in reality, you need to value yourself, value your time and I’m sorry, you need to just hold yourself to a standard of what do I think this experience is worth. But it’s scary. It’s scary, because some of you may feel like scared of success and that you can’t charge as much for your time.

And you might say, Well, I’m charging $60 but I think I’m giving like $1,000 worth the value. But it scares me to think what $1,000 worth of value might look like. Yeah, well rise to the occasion, rise to the occasion and quit devaluing yourself, quit coming up with excuses. So I got, and that’s a lot. So check these things out, send them to a friend, I’d really appreciate it. Some of you deal with this. All of you deal with this, whether you’re ready to reconcile the things I told you or not, I don’t know, maybe I either became your best friend or your worst enemy. Let us know. Write to us, check it out. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  57:16

If you want to do more, and you’re somebody that’s like, hey, I want to get better at managing my time. I want to help more people. Whether you consider that building a brand or just figuring out how to take the next step in your career, learning what your time is worth pinpointing the unique problem you want to solve, clarifying your audience go to artofcoaching.com/brandbuilder. Again, I don’t care if you’d like to turn brand or not. I love you when I say that. But brand is just your reputation. If you like, that’s where the term came from. You were branded. So we talk about so many of those topics there. It’s live, it’s in person, it’s in Atlanta, and we’re going to do whiteboard stuff, we’re going to do dinner at my house. And we’re keeping this small. Give it a chance. What do you have to lose?

From Brett Bartholomew, Ali Kerschner, Liz Bartholomew, anybody else that may be on our team. By the time you listen to this now in the future, we appreciate you. Signing off.