Leaders are problem solvers, and that means coming up with the right answers. The problem is that you may have no one to go to with our own inquiries. It’s tough to be the one everybody’s looking to for solutions when you’ve got more questions than answers! The longer we’re in leadership, the more we’re convinced that asking the right questions is far more important than always having an answer in your hip pocket. That’s why we take time out once in awhile to let you ask the questions that are o...
Sep 24, 2019•29 min•Season 1Ep. 85
Leaders thrive on getting things done. The problem is that there’s more to be done than any one person can accomplish. That can leave you feeling overwhelmed, even paralyzed. Ever found yourself procrastinating because you couldn’t decide what to do next? There’s a better way. We’ve got a simple plan for any time you feel overwhelmed at work. These four action steps will help you regain your margin and be more productive than ever. If you find yourself feeling dread rather than excitement when y...
Sep 17, 2019•31 min•Season 1Ep. 84
Leaders like to plan their work and work their plan. The problem is that real-life gets in the way. Interruptions, distractions, and unforeseen problems can make a trainwreck of your week even before it leaves the station. By Friday, you can feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and wonder, “What did I really accomplish?” There’s got to be a better way to plan your week. Well, there is! And we can teach it to you. We’ve seen our share of Monday to Friday chaos, and we’ve developed a simple system that le...
Sep 11, 2019•28 min•Season 1Ep. 83
We're happy to announce our new Michael Hyatt & Co. podcast: Focus on This ! It's the most productive podcast on the internet. If you want to achieve your big goals and return toyour most important priorities, focus is the key. Building off of the successful framework of the Full Focus Planner, hosts Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton will providepractical solutions to guide you back to focus. Subscribe now and listen to two brand new episodes of Focus on This. Apple Podcasts: https://focuson...
Sep 10, 2019•3 min•Season 1Ep. 84
As a high-performing leader, we know you love using productivity products like the Full Focus Planner. But any new system can seem overwhelming at first. Honestly, our planner can seem that way at first. With so many features built in, it’s hard to know where to start. You may wonder if you’re actually getting the full value from this amazing product. Not to worry. We’ll give you the inside track on setting up your new planner so you can start using it right away. Here’s the main thing: don’t tr...
Sep 05, 2019•14 min•Season 1Ep. 83
Leaders are driven to achieve. The problem is that our intense drive can backfire. We sometimes set unrealistic goals or timetables, which are impossible to meet. Not that we don’t kill ourselves trying! When that happens, it’s easy to feel exhausted and discouraged. Why everybody else seem to make rapid progress? Is there a way to get unstuck? There is, and it’s simpler than you might think. Our decades of business experience have taught us this simple principle for making steady progress: Cons...
Sep 03, 2019•37 min•Season 1Ep. 82
Leaders create change. The problem is that not everybody wants change. You’ve probably faced the frustration of having your team be less than enthusiastic about a new initiative. That’s when you hear all the familiar lines: “We tried that before.” “It’ll cost too much.” “Why do we need this, anyway?” It’s exhausting. But there is hope! Here’s an easy way to get people onboard with a new initiative. It’s so simple, you’ll wonder you you haven’t thought of it before now. Here it is: When introduci...
Aug 27, 2019•26 min•Season 1Ep. 81
Leaders are achievers. But nobody bats 1.000. We all experience failure eventually. That can be discouraging—even humiliating! That’s why most of us react in one of two ways. Either we globalize our failure by thinking we won’t ever succeed. Or we sweep the loss away quickly and forget it. But what if there was a better way to fail? Failure doesn’t have to be fatal, and it should never be ignored. We know because we’ve been there! Your failures can make you a better leader if you take the time t...
Aug 20, 2019•26 min•Season 1Ep. 80
Good leaders want to do the right thing. But sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. Have you ever made a really dumb choice that cost you a relationship or an opportunity? It’s so discouraging to realize you’ve made an avoidable mistake. It can even make you question your decision making ability. But you can recover. When we see people who seem to always make the best decision, it’s tempting to believe that they’re just smarter than we are, or maybe have a unique gift. Not true! Nobody is born...
Aug 13, 2019•29 min•Season 1Ep. 79
What do you do when you have a customer you just can’t seem to satisfy? Or a team member who seems resistant to coaching? What about someone in a personal relationship who seems to suck the life out of you? Sometimes it seems like you’re investing all your energy in the wrong people. What can you do about it? Good leaders develop people. The problem is that not all employees or customers are created equal. Some can fail to develop despite hours of time and energy. It’s maddening to pour your res...
Aug 06, 2019•27 min•Season 1Ep. 78
As a leader, you probably have a huge goal in mind. It’s the heartbeat of your ambition, the reason you get out of bed in the morning. Chances are good that you’ve thought about it long and hard, and you may even have a timetable and specific objectives for reaching it. The problem is that distractions, interruptions, and “business as usual” cause us to loose sight of our goals. Before long, another month, another quarter, maybe even another year has gone by with no progress. It’s disheartening....
Jul 23, 2019•27 min•Season 1Ep. 81
Leaders must motivate people. The problem is that everybody’s different, so what inspires one team member may demotivate another. It can be confusing to lead a diverse team. But personality is not an unsolvable puzzle. And we’ve got three powerful tools to help you put it all together. We’ve identified three personality assessments that give you a clear understanding of how your team members think, feel, and work. Use these in your business, and you’ll never wonder how to motivate your team agai...
Jul 16, 2019•34 min•Season 1Ep. 80
Every leader is motivated by a compelling vision for the future. There’s something you want to achieve. You know where you’re headed. The problem is that it’s hard to keep that vision real for your team. They’re busy and easily distracted. Before long, another quarter has slipped by and you haven’t made real progress on the big outcome you’re after. How discouraging! But there’s hope! We’ve got a compelling formula for communicating your vision to every single member of your team. Based on decad...
Jul 09, 2019•33 min•Season 1Ep. 79
Do you ever have enough hours in the day to do all you need to do? If we’re honest, most of us would say no. Work, family, friends, rest, exercise, reading, relationships—something’s got to give. For most of us, that something is self-care. The result? We give more and more to work and others, and less and less to ourselves. It’s a recipe for burnout. But you deserve more than life on a treadmill. And there’s no need for you to throttle back your dreams. You can have the double win: win at work ...
Jul 02, 2019•43 min•Season 1Ep. 78
Here’s the situation: one of your most lucrative clients has admitted to unethical behavior and is entirely unwilling to change. Do you keep the account and tie your name to their misdealings? Or do you terminate the relationship and lose over a million dollars in sunk cost? What about this: your top salesman is accused of inappropriate behavior toward team members of the opposite sex. You believe the complaints, but the top-performer denies them. Do you fire the salesman and lose your “rainmake...
Jun 25, 2019•34 min•Season 1Ep. 77
Has this ever happened to you? You get in the car and pull out of the driveway, just like you do every day. Then it dawns on you: “This is Saturday!” You’re halfway to the office when you realize you were headed to the store. Oops. It’s easy to drift along in the wrong direction. That happens in life. And it happens in business. That phenomenon is called the drift. Just like the current in a river, life has unseen forces that pull you along in a given direction. Lifestage, busyness, culture, obl...
Jun 18, 2019•31 min•Season 1Ep. 76
Feeling overwhelmed? Wow, do we know what that’s like! When you’re caught in that whirlwind of tasks, it feels like you’re downrange at Top Golf! You’re pelted with a new to-do item every few seconds. It’s even worse when you don’t have a staff. With no one to delegate to, you just fall further and further behind. But there’s another way! Though we have a good-sized staff now, it wasn’t always that way. We know what it’s like to work alone or with limited help. And we can tell you that it is pos...
Jun 11, 2019•32 min•Season 1Ep. 75
Ugh, another meeting! Do you know the feeling? We sure do. We’ve sat through our share of bad meetings. But would you believe we actually love meetings now? It’s true. We got so sick of lousy meetings that we decided to do something about it. When we founded this company, we determined that meetings were going to be something more than a necessary evil. We wanted to make meetings productive and engaging, like they were meant to be. So we created a meeting rhythm and cadence that ensures we have ...
Jun 04, 2019•31 min•Season 1Ep. 74
To build a winning company, you need a winning team. A-players can skyrocket your success, and nothing will tank momentum faster than adding a B- or C-level player to the mix. We all seem to know that at some level. But when it’s time to hire, we always seem to be in a hurry. We feel some unstated urgency to keep the seats filled and the machine running. That almost always leads to a bad hire, as we’ve learned the hard way! But there is a way to make recruiting easier, and we’ll tell you about i...
May 28, 2019•34 min•Season 1Ep. 73
Has this ever happened to you? You land what you think will be your dream job. But after a few months, you realize . . . you really don’t like it. Aargh! That’s happened to us, more than once. Sometimes the job wasn’t what you thought. Sometimes the role changes as the company grows (or downsizes). And sometimes you just realize you’re in the wrong career. Either way, it kind of makes you feel stuck. It’s demotivating to wake up every day and realize the job you have is not the one you want. But...
May 21, 2019•32 min•Season 1Ep. 72
Have you ever worked for a really bad boss? The kind that kind that makes you want to tear your hear out, or quit, or maybe both? Nearly everybody has at some point, including us! In fact, we’ve got a few of our best bad boss stories to share today—plus some from our listeners. So what do you do when your boss is really insufferable? In our experience a bad boss can do incredible damage to morale, productivity, and even the emotional health of the team. The good news is that there are ways to do...
May 14, 2019•35 min•Season 1Ep. 71
What’s your biggest roadblock to productivity? Many people would say, “Interruptions and distractions! I can’t get anything done because I keep getting interrupted!” If that’s you, we’re going to solve that problem for you right now. First, a little celebration. We are so excited that Free to Focus made 4 major, national best-seller lists! That includes number one spots at the Wall Street Journal business list and the Amazon.com list for personal time management. We’re so excited! To celebrate, ...
May 09, 2019•26 min•Season 1Ep. 71
Do you have a really big dream or far-out goal that you’ve never told anybody about? We’ll bet you do because we’ve had them too. What’s sad is that most of those dreams get buried under a huge mound of fear and insecurity. It doesn’t have to be that way! We’ve felt that same fear of acting on our deepest desires. And we’ve learned from experience that when you do take the risk of sharing your dream, people usually tell you “get real” or “be practical.” It’s discouraging. After a while, it’s jus...
May 07, 2019•38 min•Season 1Ep. 70
Do you know why Steve Jobs insisted that the original iPhone have only one button? Because nothing succeeds like simplicity. Take out your iPhone, if you have one, and compare it to a Comcast remote. See the difference? Sleek simplicity versus mind-boggling complexity. We all know that simplicity increases speed and fuels business growth. But we seem to be stuck with clunky, cumbersome business systems. And they multiply like rabbits! Hiring, project approval, communication tools, and even expen...
Apr 30, 2019•31 min•Season 1Ep. 69
If you could make a single hire that would revolutionize your productivity, would you do it? Of course we all would say yes. But we’ve found that most leaders procrastinate when it comes to hiring an executive assistant. That’s right, an EA is the most important hire you’ll ever make. Having a good assistant makes you incredibly productive by taking on your low-leverage tasks and helping you channel your time and energy where you can be most effective. That creates an instant boost in productivi...
Apr 23, 2019•36 min•Season 1Ep. 68
As business owners, we’ve learned that we can’t do our best work sandwiched between meetings and phone calls. We need focused time for strategizing, writing, and working out difficult problems. You probably do too. But how many times do you get distracted in a typical day? Ten? Fifty? A hundred? Research indicates that the average worker is distracted once every three minutes. We’re swimming upstream against a flood of emails, notifications, texts, and drop-in visitors. You just can’t be product...
Apr 16, 2019•31 min•Season 1Ep. 67
We are so excited to announce the release of my (Michael’s) latest book, Free to Focus: A Total PRoductivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less! In fact, we’re having a party! You can read the first chapter of Free to Focus here. Here’s what’s happening inside the episode— We outline the 3-part system of productivity: Stop, Cut, Act. We tell what makes this system different from the many other task- and time-management approaches. You’ll hear from actual users of the Free to Focus method, who ...
Apr 09, 2019•26 min•Season 1Ep. 66
We're so excited that Michael's new book is coming out on Tuesday! It's called Free To Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less and today you're getting to listen to the first chapter here on this bonus episode of Lead to Win. Also, as a special extra bonus for our listeners, we’re giving away five bundles of Michael's best-selling books, Your Best Year Ever , Living Forward , Platform , No Fail Meetings , and Free to Focus . For your chance to win, share this podcast epi...
Apr 04, 2019•21 min•Season 1Ep. 66
What’s your biggest distraction? Be honest! For us, there’s no question about it—our biggest distraction is ourselves. Too often, we find ourselves responding to text messages or jumping from low-priority task to another instead of tackling more demanding work. Well today, we’re going to show you how to beat distractions and make yourself more productive than ever! Research shows that the typical worker is interrupted about every three minutes! Worse, we often distract ourselves by checking soci...
Apr 02, 2019•31 min•Season 1Ep. 65
What’s the true state of your business? We’re convinced most leaders don’t have a good grasp on that question. But you can! In this episode, we conduct a live coaching call with Andy Bond, a business owner from Chattanooga, Tenn. Andy recently took our Business Health Assessment, and we walked through his results and gave some pointers on Vision, Focus, Team, and Self-Leadership. This was a blast! We had a great conversation and dug into some of the key areas where nearly every business needs to...
Mar 26, 2019•31 min•Season 1Ep. 64
