Being Organized and Having an Intelligent Vision for Your Life

Welcome to the Missing Secret Podcast. I'm Kelly Hatfield. Hey,

and I'm John Mitchell. So our topic today: being organized and having an intelligent vision for your life. So, Kelly, how important do you think it is to be highly organized?

10 out of 10,

right?

Like, yeah. There's no. There's not even a. There's no hesitation there. There's no. It is an absolute must to be

right

if you're going to be successful.

You know that's how I see it too. But you remember when we coached entrepreneurs, and and you know the goal they wanted to net a million a year, and typically they were five or six on organization. You remember?

Yeah.

I remember going, "Oh my God, how can this be? I mean, if you want to be highly successful, you got to be organized. I mean, that to me, it's you know two plus two equals four, and and but I also saw man this is so good you know we're giving them a money back guarantee to double their income. This is going to be like shooting fish at a barrel. You know you just make them more organized because you probably double their income right now, and and so I I had the same experience with my MBAs, I taught them yesterday our organizational system where you know you plan your day the night before and you time block your day and you know it's interesting. I ask them, you know, on a scale of one to 10, how organized are you? And they were you know a four or five, and you know it's interesting at at the McCall School of Business. You know, because it's one of the top 10 business schools in the country. Everybody in there is is super sharp, or they perceive themselves to be super sharp. And but I'm like, wow, your fours and fives on on organization really, and so I I see the great opportunity, and really to drive the the point home, you you'd appreciate this. I was sort of proud of this, so I have them at the start of the class. I have you know evaluate scale of 110. How organized are you? And I'm like, okay, now just have the perspective that you got to be to be highly organized. You got to be planning your day the night before and time blocking your days. Okay. So, but overall, how would you rate yourself on a scale of one to 10? And so, so, and then I started asking some of them, but I wanted to get it in their head. So then I teach them the whole system, and we come back to the very end, last five minutes. Yes, and I go. So remember at the start of the class when I ask you how organized you are, get that number back in your head one more time. Just just get that number back in your head. So I I let it pause, let it sit there, and I I have a

big red flag, and so I grab my big red flag and walk the. It's like a stadium classroom walk classroom. I'm waving my big red flag, and I'm like, "This is a big red flag. If you're anything less than a nine, you are going to have a problem being highly successful. I feel so strongly about this, and you know they're like, "Whoa, you know, and because now they knew exactly who they were because I had made them think about it before I did that, and so we will see. And and of course, I know that it's tough. You're telling them to take this organizational system that you've had for for you know maybe 10 years, throw it out the window. Start doing this new organizational system, and I know it's tough at first, and that you know they're not used to time blocking and all that, and so I get it that it's tough. and And I was telling them though because I have a TA, yeah, teaching assistant, and and you know one of the things that you and I both did not like in coaching was pulling on people to do stuff, right?

Right. Yeah, that was just like yeah, that was excruciating. I was like, I'm not in the teeth pulling business.

Oh no, no,

I'm not a dentist.

We'd rather go to the dentist and have a cavity built, did it? But we both came to that same conclusion. But you know, it's because it's so important. I told my TA, I'm like, okay, you're gonna earn your keep now, because I have I have laid it out there, but it is on you to work them and. There's 50 of them, and so he's got a lot of them to work. And I showed him how I want him to work them and to pull on them and and press the issue, all the stuff that I'm just not going to do at this point in my life as much as I care about them, and I'm just going to leverage myself through him. And but it was highly effective, and you know I was really so proud of you because yesterday watching you and me, it's you know you remember this. It's about a 10 or 11 minute you know presentation on the system, and and I cut it into like three different, three or four minute clips, and we talk about it, and it was just highly effective. And so now we're really getting down to the important stuff. But as it relates to our audience today, the the main point we're making is you have got to be a nine or 10 on organization. You just no other way you're going to be highly successful, and so just embrace it. You want to use our system? Go buy my book, The Missing Secret, is all explained, and and the forms are are there. And anything you want else you want to add to that?

You know, I would say that for me, as you're talking, I had it's not really an epiphany, but I something jumped out at me, which is, and I was thinking about it from my perspective too. You know, as I learned this methodology, I was reflecting back on that, and that number four or five that people give when they're organized, I think that there is a direct correlation between that number that people give at the beginning, as they you know before they are learning anything yet,

right?

Between that number and clarity, I prefer really my ability to be organized and be a 10 because I am a 10, you know, on organization was my ability. Once I had a crystal clear vision and knew the things that I needed to be doing to move the needle, planning my day the night before was a breeze because I'm planning it with my, you know, with my vision in mind, with my the things that move the needle. I'm tying them like my brain is lit up from the thinking sessions, from the you know everything related to the methodology. So being organized is it's just easy because I know that there is a tremendous amount of clarity. So the filter that I'm running everything through is you know. So I think that's part of why people are fours and fives is because they're not. You know, we said this a million times. They're not thinking deeply about anything, and I can say that because I was one of those people. You know that even planning, you know, and and can be overwhelming because you're not. You don't have clarity. It's like, well, I don't. What am I trying to filter in or out for my day?

You know that's a very astute point. I hadn't thought about it, but you're right. It's exactly the same thing. Yeah, that is really interesting. Well, and you know, here's the other thing that, and I'm going to teach this tomorrow, but it's maybe a bigger picture thing. I was telling him last week. I said, you know, you guys have given me a gift because I see that that I am mentoring myself, the 30-year-old version of myself, and I always wanted a mentor. God knows, I needed a mentor, and you know, my dad had had died when I was 24, I think, and not that he necessarily would have been able to mentor me business-wise to the level I probably needed, but you know, the reality is most people are not going to get a mentor. It's it's just it just doesn't work that way. In theory, it'd be great, you know, to have somebody 30 years older than you. But but here's what's what's interesting in in the methodology, advanced leadership itself, you mentor yourself, and with AI, it's hugely possible in a way that it never was before. And so, in this process of mentoring 30-year-olds, I'm getting, I'm feeling their their pains and their frustrations, and I'm thinking back on my life, and you know, I started out as a CPA, became an entrepreneur at 30, get into real estate development, and in my 30s and 40s was in seven different businesses. Well, I'm just going from one thing to the next, whatever is large. Play the next next thing, and I was telling them that the thing you have to be careful about in life is what I call the drift, where you know you're just going to the next logical thing, but there's no intelligent correction to your life. You just again you're on the treadmill. You know I know you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Yeah,

and I experience the drift, and I get to be 50, and I was telling them, I said, "Listen, the worst thing that can happen is you look back and you see that you've drifted for decades, and I'm like, and I experience this. It's a really painful experience to look in the mirror and go, you know, I'm not making the most of my life, and how disappointing it it is, and how disappointed I I felt at 50, and of course that was also the the fuel to make me figure out the solution. But

yeah,

and so I was talking to them about it, and and again tomorrow I'm going to teach them the concept of being a conduit of of learning, and you know I think you're a perfect example of not having the drift. You know, at 20 years old you get into the recruitment business, and you're at it now 30 years. Well, you know what? What an amazing, intelligent thing to do because you've got this evolving level of knowledge about the recruiting business that every year it's getting greater and greater. Just like you know, before we went on air, you're talking about a side of your business that that you're now gonna ramp up and leverage what you've wired over here to to that business. Well, you know that's just your evolving expertise, and it's relatively easy for you to do it. It's not, you know, you're not splitting atoms. But I mean, you look back and see how wise it is to have, you know, stayed in one industry.

For sure. I mean, I, I'm, I feel so lucky and grateful that at 22 years old, you know, and for me too, it was a it was immediate. Like I'd been, you know, for a year in a sales job back when, you know, I'll age myself here with yellow pages, you know, but selling yellow pages. But they

did have paper at that point, right? They

did, yes, they did have paper, and but I was, I did, I hated the job, and this was also back in the day where you didn't jump around like you. I'm like I have to commit to this for a year, you know, because I can't build my resume looking, you know, like I'm hopping all over the place or anything. And so, you know, literally a day to the year later, I you know, in the newspaper, found this job, circled it, went walked in, you know, and was so lucky that I felt I didn't even really understand, you know, what the business was at that point. And within two weeks, I was like, "Oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. So, like, I am so lucky that that, you know, that that happened. That that's my story because I know that there's a lot of people who aren't as lucky, you know, to have landed somewhere where you just knew, like I knew, with ever every fiber in my being, that like, oh, this is intrinsically like I can do the things I want to do. I can make the impact that I could I want to make. I can, I love the feeling I get from being of service and helping people, and I knew I had found my home. And so for me, being in the industry for over 30 years has been, you know, and in a really high burnout industry has been a real gift because, um, to your point, being able to now, you know, go and you know revamp and reimagine this other brand that I have, like I'll be able to do that, especially now with the help of AI. You know, I'll be able to leverage that to get that, you know, up and rolling and launched, you know, for the beginning of the new year. In within the next three months, I can probably have it done in, you know, you know, six weeks. You know, I'm up and running, and so it's not drifting and staying in that space, and you know, and working my way up and in different roles within that space and working for a large company, you know, I did that for nearly 14 years, and before I started my first business 18 years ago, and that was an

excellent training ground. You know, I was going to argue with not argue, but you know, have a counterpoint to your point, which is there definitely is was a point in my life where I drifted within my profession. You know, I think staying, you know, with the same company for nearly 14 years and not doing what I was meant to do maybe five years before that, you know what I mean? I got comfortable. I got, you know, the compensation was great. I got comfortable. It wasn't until there was a pain point and kind of an inflection point. In the market and with the leadership at the company I worked at, that I was like, you know what, the timing's right. I'm going to jump, you know. So I, but I do feel like for there was probably three years where I was doing what I was doing in my sleep. You know, I could, I didn't even have to think about it. I wasn't being challenged anymore. I was on that proverbial treadmill where every day was rinse and repeat. I didn't have to think about anything, and that for somebody like you or me doesn't feel good. Like I knew I was meant for more. I knew I was meant to do more. That I was wasting my potential and my impact that I could have, and and so that was a real catalyst for me to, you know, to jump. But yeah, very long answer to your point. If I think, you know, being in the same space is a is a real asset,

right?

But I'm not gonna. I'm also not going to, you know, overstate that because there's absolutely periods in which I drifted within, you know, my space up until I was about 40. You know, up until you know, the time where you and I met. You know what I mean?

Again, you were just way in life like I did as well, and you know I tell you how this relates to our audience. I think is the same way it relates to my MBA. So I was telling them, I said, so now that I am mentoring the 30-year-old version of myself, what I see is that I drifted for 20 years in seven different businesses, and what what I should have done, and if there was somebody 20 years older, they might have said, John, you know, you need to get an evolving expertise in in a particular field or subject, and and let that compound every year. Like if I had stayed in real estate development, you know, I built like 300 apartments when I was 30. If I'd stayed in that for you know the rest of my career, I'd be such an expert at multifamily and real estate and all that, and I would have probably been wildly successful, just from the compounding effect. And so I was telling, and when they become, when they join the MBA program, they make them figure out a specialty. And like one of the specialties is marketing. And one of my favorite students wants to be a an entrepreneur long term, and they all are going for the big time consulting firm positions, like with Deloitte or Bain and Company, you know. And and so I was telling them, I said, "Here's your vision today. I'm getting my MBA. I'm going to get that MBA job, and I'm going to make more and more money from just you know rolling through it. I'm like that is not going to work. That is a formula for an MBA to drift. Here's what I want your new vision to be. I want you to take that specialty that you have, and see yourself when you're 50 years old being a true expert in that field, and you're going to get paid for what you know and your expertise, not because you have an MBA. And I said, so get the vision of evolving that that expertise, and it all takes shape as you go from from one job to the next, or even one assignment to the next. And you know, if you're if you're specializing in in

marketing, maybe maybe you're going to go in the field of digital marketing, maybe, or it may go the opposite way. You may go, you know, digital marketing is useless because there's so much clutter that, and you get on an assignment where there it's relationship marketing, you know, the opposite direction, or it's all sorts of things. Your your career will take you where you're going if you have a vision of a an expertise like marketing is a is a neighborhood. It's not an expertise. It's sort of the neighborhood of of that you somewhere in there you want to really zone in and get a true expertise in in one or two specific areas. And I'm going to teach them tomorrow. This idea of being a conduit of learning, and I saw how transforming it that was to me when I was in my 50s, and I learned how to be a conduit of learning, where you know Through Ginger, you know, turned me on to Success Magazine, and that they had the, you know, the hour CD where Darren Hardy would interview four people, and I ended up creating a system around that. I like bought 33 back issues or 36 back issues of Success Magazine, and. This system for where I listened to two CDs every week, and it was so transformative in my life as I was running my reverse mortgage company. and And I remember my my employees, the inner circle, would go, "Where the heck are you getting these ideas? It's an idea week, and like, hey, you know, these are the ideas of brilliant people, of real experts.

I'm just a conduit of learning, and so you know, the the lesson for maybe our audience is wherever you are in your career, if you're 30 years old or you're 60 years old, realize you have to get an expertise and a and and build on it every year and have a vision of what that that looks like and a key part of that is you're going to be need to be a conduit of learning with a system because if if you don't have a system then personal growth is simply an intention. Everybody, nobody in the real world actually grows. Very few people do. I take them. Nobody, very few people actually grow. They all have the intention to grow, but they don't grow. And for those that do, boy, what a what an advantage! Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I mean, there there's just no arguing that point. That's been a game changer for me. I'm lucky that I've I'm like a lifelong learner and have always focused on that. Now it's more intentional, you know, because I break it down by topics and things along those lines. But man, it is a you know, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. You know, there is there are people that have come before you that have laid the groundwork that have you know now those can spark ideas and you can come with with new ideas that way. But point being, like you're not alone. You can you know there there's so much information out there that you can you know that's been tried true is tested you know that if you just start taking action on you know, it can make a huge impact in your in your life.

Do you each quarter figure out a new thing to to grow in, or how does that how does that evolve for you that you decide, you know, that that adjusts specifically what you're growing in?

Yeah, I think there's two the the lane that is like a non negotiable for me that I'm always I'm learning in is health is related to health and well health and wellness so that's one section for me kind of spoke of the wheel that's the foundation for everything for me and then yes so like by quarter um so like right now um and for the last two quarters actually it's been a focus on AI and understanding how AI how I can utilize it within the businesses, you know, what are the just understanding it better on how again to leverage AI within my businesses specifically, and then learning a little bit too about how that can bleed over to my personal life. But mostly, I'm using it for business, and you know, and then it might be marketing for a quarter, you know, it might be you know launching you know, launching a brand, or, or you know, if I feel like I need a a mindset shift, or there's something I want to roll out to the team, I'm going to use that quarter to learn about that, so that before I roll it out to the team, so it's got a real intention behind it, and it's all aligned with what where I'm going.

Clearly, you're Leading yourself,

yeah, absolutely, yeah.

You know, you brought out AI. I saw something really interesting in the Wall Street Journal this morning. So Nvidia has come up with a system to control rogue AI agents from going off task.

Oh, okay. And

they said that if if they had applied this to OpenAI or Claude, their agents would not have gotten out and doing things they weren't supposed to do. So it's a major development in the world of AI, and it just hit the paper this morning. We'll see. I, you know, there'll there'll be people that challenge it, but you know, Nvidia is the king. I mean, when it's when they're saying it, you know, there's probably credibility to it, and I think you know, my only my own personal opinion is that sure? They you have to. I mean, it's it's so powerful that, of course, it could be super dangerous too. I mean, and it's it goes both ways. But the opportunity with AI is so great, and I think that the intelligent thing to do, which would be for for Trump to now this may be an oxymoron, but

were you going to use the word intelligent and

yeah right right I know you're a big Trump lover, but. Think about this. This is what he should intelligently do: bring the top 10 AI companies to the White House and say, "Okay, on Thursday and Friday, I want you to come to the White House. You're going to stay overnight. It's going to be a two-day event, and we're it's a working session, and we are going to figure out the guardrails for AI that we can all collectively agree on. Do not depend on the U.S. government to regulate it and and all that, because they're going to be super slow and inefficient. So this thing needs to be fixed now, literally right now, and we can't wait for for government. So let's let's dial government out of the loop for the moment. But you know, give them two days to figure it out because it's not. I don't think it's it's really all that complicated. Believe it or not, they all know what they what the problems are, and they all have an idea of what the solution is, and they're all good people, and they want what's best for the world. So you know, pretty much, pretty much.

Okay, okay, Todd.

Well, we we digress, but but you know, you can get all the you and and keep it to the top 10 and figure it out and come up with the best plan and have that plan very action oriented and then say to um you guys implement this and and I want to see it implemented over the next three months and now that would be real leadership and it's much needed, but

it's a hoax. Though it is super intelligence now, it's not artificial intelligence. Oh, that's super intelligent. So careful. Excuse

me. Excuse

me. And it's all folks,

right? Yes. And yeah, that's a whole other thing. But but you know, I I continue to see. I just saw something this morning that with AI that sort of blew me away. It taught me to do something, and literally, I'm I'm three times more effective today than it was a year ago, and and just life.

Yeah.

And so there's so much opportunity, and I remain with the idea that that either get on the AI train or you're going to get run over by the train, and that that would also apply to the United States because China is not going to slow up, and I fully support creating guardrails. But here's what's interesting, because I've studied this a lot. China is five generations behind us in AI chips. Believe it or not, you know the latest AI chips operate on what is known as like I think it's seven nanobytes a second, And China's level of chips are like 28, and so less is is more. The smaller it is, the better. So they're like five generations behind us, and that's why the United States and and Trump are prohibiting the selling of those chips because they are limited by by that. Now you know some people say China is six months behind us. Some people, more realistically, I think say they're three years behind us. But you know the reality is we've got to thread that needle between doing AI safely and still going full tilt, and so we'll see how it works out. But what's your take on that? You buy that?

Yeah, I think so. But I think it's a bigger issue than that. I think that I like your idea, but I think it needs to be something that's global. Like I think that you get leaders from all of the nobody wants. I don't. Well, I hope so. Wants nihilism and the whole, you know, us to the human race to, you know, to cease to exist. So, you know, you need to come to like everybody. It doesn't matter if we've got guardrails, if China and some of these other countries don't, because then the cat's out of the bag. You're already seeing what it has the capability of doing, and so there needs to be like a standard operating kind of procedure around how we're going to navigate AI as a world, because you know its capabilities. You know we're going to be launching false, you know nuclear, you know at each other. You know what I mean. And so I think that that's like they recently said there was a you know a situation that came up that we were too far away from something with China because of something that the agents had done, you know, and I don't know enough about it to speak to it. But it is a bigger than just the United States. It's a this is going to be the best minds in the world getting together to solve this issue and put put the necessary things in place. To make sure that we're not getting these rogue agents that are going in breaking into systems, and you know what I mean.

Well, but but you know, think about this. I would trust China as far as I can throw. I have no trust in China, and I support trying to work with them, but I would expect nothing from them. And so my that's why my attitude would be, in fact, I'd probably I'd probably exclude them simply because I they couldn't be trusted and and I don't think they would be helpful. And I think the attitude ought to be okay. We got to make this thing safe, and we got to extend our lead, and because if China advances AI without safeguards, and they have agents that go rogue, those agents are going to just stay in China. They're going to be worldwide, and so they're going to cause whatever we're fearful of on their own. So you know, I would have no faith in in China having the moral responsibility to do what's right, and so that's why we better be going full bore and and doing it as safely as possible. And if Nvidia's new system for this is is as good as it's purported to be in the Wall Street Journal, then we're going to get there, and you know we're going to have a prosperous future. I think.

I hope so. I hope you're right.

Okay. Okay. Well, your man is on the job. I am scanning everything in the Wall Street Journal and and news in general. So I will report back next

week.

Okay, we'll see you next week.