Doing This Will 10x Your Business Growth

Urgency versus impact. So I guess what I wanted to ask you here is, like, was there a particular experience or time where you yourself notice, like, hey, there’s something off with how I’m going through my businesses and not making enough of a difference. Like, when did you realize that you needed to make some sort of shift and it was that particular shift between urgency and impact?

Well, God, for like, the first 28, 29 years of my life, I felt as though I was doing the right things. I felt like I was busy and working because, like, when I tell my story and how, like, my life fell apart at 28 and I was in the back of the van and, like, it wasn’t as though I wasn’t trying up to that point. It wasn’t like I had just completely checked out and just been like, I don’t care about any of this. I was trying, and I had the to do list and I was checking it off, all the stuff, and I was doing things, but my life wasn’t improving, it wasn’t changing. And so at a certain point, I can’t remember, there wasn’t like a certain, like, an inciting incident. But just through conversations with my mentors at that time, one thing kept coming up, which is that if you’re working hard all the time, but you’re not making progress towards your goals, then you’re working on the wrong things and being open to the fact that, like, 90 majority of the time, we’re going to be working on the wrong things because our biological selves want to default to easy things. We want to get the dopamine, we want to deal with the fire, right? They say in Australia, the tall poppy gets the, get the, gets the axe or something. I don’t know what they cut over there in Australia, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease, the tall nail gets hammered.

These, you know, the urgent things, those little tasks that kind of crop up, we can check them off. We can feel good about doing them because we, we feel like we averted crisis. But then you look up, you know, a couple weeks later, a couple months later, and you’ve just been in that firefighting mode for so long. And if you’re constantly in firefighting mode, when do you ever have time to go plant seeds? When do you ever, when do you ever go plant the seeds that could blossom and come to fruition? If you think about that, like, think about that concept, do you need to put out the fire over here or do you just need to start, go over somewhere else entirely and plant seeds? And most people would be like, I gotta put out that fire. I got to put out that fire to save this thing. And you look over there, and you’re like, well, dude, the thing is, there’s only a couple trees left over there anyway, so even if you save those, like, what? That’s not much. That’s not going to get you to your goal. If your goal is to, you know, have a whole forest, like, you’re gonna need to go plant the seeds, but most people are just so uncomfortable looking over there and say, I’m gonna let that burn, and I’m gonna go plant seeds, because I know that this thing is actually gonna move the needle meaningfully over the next however long.

And so that’s. That’s a very hard thing to overcome. I don’t think there was, like, a singular moment for me in my life. It was just the gradual realization that if you’re working hard and you’re not making the progress that you want, you’re probably working on the wrong thing. Things.

Okay, that’s great.

Yeah.

All right, so then my next question is, like, now that you’re experienced with, like, impact versus urgency in your own business, have you noticed a pattern between, like, particular impact type tasks? Like, which ones particularly show up again and again? Is there, like, a certain set that you know for sure that in your business, like, these have to be done? Yeah.

So, yeah, so I won’t get into, like, the specific tactical. Like, here’s the actual task. But I will tell you the way that high impact tasks typically present themselves versus high urgency tasks, and that is the high impact ones tend to be very hard. They tend to have very long time periods between when you put in the work and when you see the reward. That’s. That is almost always the. The hallmark of a high impact activity. It’s something that you need to sit down, and you need to work on this in solitude, in silence, in quiet, behind closed doors.

Nobody can see it for months and months and months, and it doesn’t feel like you’re making any progress. And then one day, you look up, and it’s bam, there. Case in point, a really classic example of this is writing a book. One of the most impactful things that we did at Invictus Capital was, I wrote a book in 2020. I spent all of 2020 writing this book. And I don’t know if you’ve ever written a book, but it takes a long time. It’s hard, and there’s nobody else there with you. You just.

You sit in a room by yourself and you write and you write and you write, and then when you’re done writing, you write some more, and then you edit, and then you write, and then you edit over and over and over. And this was a whole year of that activity, suffering in silence on an activity that was very impactful or would be impactful, but had no impact at that moment, then we published the book. And since 2021, that book has brought in over $5 million of revenue for our businesses without having done anything else to promote it or really push it. It’s just out there, and it continues to make money for us and bring in leads for our business all these years later. So if you look at it now, you would say, oh, Anthony sacrificed a year of work and he’s gotten five years of value out of this. And honestly, it’s going to be into perpetuity because that book is evergreen. It’s going to continue serving us for as long as we want it to. Right? So that is a very high impact task.

But at any point along that journey in 2020, if you were to come to me on a day when I’m writing the book and I’m only halfway through it, and it’s like, this doesn’t feel important, this doesn’t like, there’s other things in my business that are more urgent that I need to deal with today. Right. But if I didn’t make that time for that book, we never would have gotten all the downs, the backside upside. Right? So that’s like, I think one of the hallmarks is when it comes to really impactful activities, they typically are things that in the moment, they don’t feel like are making a difference. You just have to hold the faith and the belief that this is going to be a meaningful driver down the road, that’s, that’s a big one. And that’s the same with your personal life, too, by the way. Right? Like all the things that are worth having, whether that’s a deep relationship with a loved one, whether that’s an incredible physical health, whatever, right? These are things that on a day by day basis, you don’t see progress. And so this is why most people give up on them.

They don’t keep inserting into their relationships. They don’t keep going into the gym because there’s not an immediate feedback loop. Whereas the really cheap dopamine in life, like the really urgent, easy things like eating on the couch, watching Netflix, you get instant dopamine, you get instant reward, but you get nothing beyond that. Whereas the long term impactful activities, you get no dopamine in the morning, in the moment, but you get nothing but downstream benefits. And the longer you stretch the timeline in which you’re willing to measure the benefits of that activity, the more benefits you accrue. So if I measured the benefits of that book in the first year, it’s zero, it’s negative, right? If I measure it in year two, it’s positive. Year three, it’s massively positive. If I measure it in year 30, imagine how much more positive it’s going to be.

So the value of an important activity versus an urgent is how much impact it’s going to have over a long time frame. And that’s a really good metric. Just in general, is like, if I put out this fire right now, what’s the long term benefit to the business? If I put the time and energy into this activity, what’s the long term benefit? Do that mental calculus. And I think a lot of times we just look at things on too short a timeline and. And we. We miss all of the compounding effects that come from doing the really important, meaningful activities. Typically, the urgent activities, they don’t compound. You put out the fire.

Great, cool. Like, that’s it. Now you got another fire over here. But that. That thing is now damaged and didn’t matter anyway, right? So then the negative things in life typically do not compound, whereas at least not compound in a positive way. They’ll compound in a negative way. But did I answer the question? Sweet. Okay.

All right, that’s gonna do it for us. Guys and gals, we appreciate you being here, trying out some new formats with the podcast. If you guys like it, let me know in the comments. Shoot me a DM over on Instagram, the Anthony vacino, and we will see you in the next episode. But until then, stay hyper focus, my friend.