The One Thing That Stops You Doing Everything in Your Business - John Lamerton

speaker-0: Ever feel like you're working all the hours and wearing all the hats in your business but still not getting anywhere?

speaker-1: This week, John shares his one thing, focusing on what you're best at and why most business owners are trying to do too much, not too little.

speaker-0: We talk about overwhelm, jumping between tools and ideas and how easy it is to lose consistency.

speaker-1: And what happens when you strip it all back and actually stick to just one plant?

speaker-0: This is what one thing. So let's get straight to it. What's your one thing that's made the biggest difference in your business?

speaker-2: I think for me, it is focusing on one thing and that one thing for me being marketing. I became the marketer of my business as opposed to the runner of. I was a busy fool for many, many years, quite successful with it, but having that laser focus to suddenly say, instead of doing 15 different roles for 20 different businesses, you are now doing one thing for one business. You are the marketer of this business. Everything else we can automate, we can... stop doing, we can delegate, we can get people on it, but this is your job. Your responsibility is you are now the head marketer of this business. And I think for a lot of small businesses that a lot of business owners who don't like marketing, they don't see themselves as marketers, they see it as a dark art. It's genuinely not. It's just, it's your responsibility to get people indoor and to solve problems for them. And for me, focusing on that one thing makes such a difference.

speaker-1: So give me some build up John to when you had that eureka moment. What did an average day look like for you?

speaker-2: Yeah, completely random. So I would be doing PR for a travel agent. I would be SEOing florist website. I would be doing a team meeting for my guys. I'll be going through our policy handbooks. I would be doing the accounts, be doing the bookkeeping and it would just be, it would literally be completely random. It would be whatever shouted loudest was what got done. This is absolutely pressure cooker. And I felt that I enjoyed that. I thought I thrived it. I thought I enjoyed it. This is great. And I blame Richard Branson for this by the way. Okay, so Richard Branson is the problem. Okay, Richard Branson. poster boy for British entrepreneurship. Now, one of the first books I ever read was, Finding My Virginity or Losing My Virginity. I always get mixed up, but his first autobiography, I read that when I just very, very embryonic started my business. And I thought, that's what I want. I want to be that cool guy. I want to be that guy who just rips up the playbook and says, I'm going to have fun running my business. I'm going to run my business. Started off without wearing a tie. I was a civil servant. That was what appealed to me. Later. wakeboarding on your own private island with a naked supermodel on your back. That was the next thing I wanted from Richard Branson. But here's the thing, I over the first couple of years developed and grew a successful business. Brilliant. But I'm not Richard Branson, because Richard Branson is what everyone should be. So if you're Richard Branson, or if you're a successful entrepreneur, you have to have a record company and an airline and a radio station and mobile phone contracts and you need to take on Coca-Cola in their own backyard and you need to do wines and you need to have bridal shop and you need to abseil down buildings and put on music festivals and eventually leads it into galactic space travel. That is what we are told we need to do. So I go, yeah, great. I've got a successful sort of student directory. Right, I'm gonna launch a betting business. I'm gonna launch a travel agent. I'm gonna sell mobile phone insurance. I am gonna put together a network of all the florists in the UK and I'm gonna do the same for sex shop. It's just ended up being this random collection purely because I wanted to be Richard Branson.

speaker-0: And so what was the point that something changed? What was the light bulb moment?

speaker-2: The moment for I read a few books, started with Tim Ferriss' four hour work week. I was getting a bit stressed. There's a photo of me in my first two books and I'm quite a bit chunkier than I am now. I've got a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. I haven't smoked in 20 years now, but I had a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. I am drunk in the middle of the afternoon and I do not look a picture of health. And that was because I was just, let's call it self-medicating to get through the 100 hour work weeks that I was doing. Because if you're running 15 different businesses and you are doing everything for those businesses because you're a control freak and you can't let go, then eventually something's got to give. And I ended up in a hospital room, I would have been 20, 25, 26 years old. And I developed this strange rash all over my body. And so I ended up in this hospital room and the doctor said to me, are you under any stress at all? And I don't know if you've ever seen a damn burst. Which is like, yeah. I've got this happening. don't know whether I'm going to make payroll. I've got the vat man chasing me for this. I've got this lawsuit hanging over me. I want to do this. Google isn't doing what I want them to do. And I said a simple yes would have done. And they actually said, like, you've got the beginnings here of a nervous breakdown. You need to change your lifestyle. You need to change your ways. Otherwise, you're going to be in here, but you're not going to be horizontal. Hang on. You're not going to vertical. You're going to be horizontal and you're going to have problems. So that was in my 20s to have a health scare in the prime of your life in your 20s, purely self-inflicted because of what just became. OK, I need to do something about this. So, yeah, for our workweek led to a book I'm sure you've talked about before called The One Thing, Gary Keller, J. Paphazan. And I remember. The first time I, so I listened to the audio book to begin with. I remember the first time I read that book, I was driving home. I live in Plymouth. was driving from Birmingham to Plymouth. And I got to about an hour from home and the audio book had finished. And I thought, I'm listening to that again. Cause that is what I need. That is what I should be doing. And it's the first time I'd ever. finished a book and gone, right, let's go back to the beginning and listen to that again, because this is gonna be my Bible going forward. And it literally was, was, well, let's rip everything up. I sat down with my business partner and said, right, from, it wasn't next week, but let's say next month, I am going to be head marketer for the sports betting business. Everything else, either you need to do, someone else in the business needs to do, we need to stop doing, or we need to automate it.

speaker-1: let's be brutal on it. If you had not gone to hospital that day and you'd somehow just managed to plough through, do you think you would have still come to this conclusion?

speaker-2: something would have happened. You know, that was the wake up call, but if I hadn't gone to hospital, there would have been another wake up call. Now it may have been, I've been in A &E rather than a scheduled appointment. It just may have been, I mean, I had a mini blow up probably 10 years ago. I'd again taken on rather a lot too much and... just pre-COVID, I had a meeting with my business partner. I wanted to go one way, he wanted to go another way. I was right, obviously, and he wasn't listening to me. And we had a back and forth for about 10 minutes. And then I just stormed out, I went, I can't do this anymore. And he was like, where did that come from? And it's like, that had nothing to do with that conversation. That had absolutely nothing to do with the problem we were discussing. It had everything to do with the other 25 problems I was trying to deal with again. multiple businesses, multiple investments, doing more than one thing for more than one business. And it required a little bit of simplification, a little bit of subtraction. It required, right, let's write down everything that I'm doing. I'm not doing that anymore. I'm never doing that again. Property investment, thank you. Steering well clear of that going forward. And just reiterating, this is what I do best. This is how I help my business the most. That is what I need to be doing and nothing else. So there definitely would have been another wake up. because I mentioned the damn bursting if you keep adding water and you don't release that pressure eventually it will crack somewhere it will burst somehow that water that pressure will build up and it will release

speaker-1: think you're completely right. think what I'm trying to ascertain is I think there's always little touch points that we miss and it's if you could go back maybe a year before that horrific incident where you have to go into hospital, what were the points where you think, you know, if you could have been that Jiminy Cricket on the shoulder, you could have interjected.

speaker-2: Yeah, nowadays I would notice those signs because I would just be, hang on, you've been a little bit short with your family here. You're turning down the opportunity to do stuff you enjoy just to work. You're making yourself massive. I mean, this was before the sports direct mugs came out, but a massive mug of coffee at 10 o'clock in the evening to power through because this has to be done. And you're creating like Frankenstein's monster. You're creating this problem for yourself and noticing those little signs. I came across a photo of me in this office from 20 years ago and I was very nostalgic about it to begin with. was like, ⁓ you know, those were the good old days. Look at me there, you know, young me, didn't have so many lines on my face then with my massive box computer on the desk. But then about a day later, I noticed something. I was like, ⁓ it's dark outside. Looking out the window, it is dark outside. are. Working at night. Nowadays, I rarely work past 4pm. I've done enough to earn my stay on the planet for another day. Let's close the laptop and let's move off. You know, it is those signs that, okay, you mentioned powering through and if there's one thing business owners are very good at, it's powering through. It's, I can just keep on going and I can, but not at that same level of effectiveness. I've just spotted the size of your mug there, Phil. I talk about the masses. We are recording this in the morning, guys. It's okay. It's not 10 o'clock in the evening.

speaker-1: This is not wine. blowing on the...

speaker-0: I think you've made some probably really hard-hitting points because if, I see it a lot, in my particularly in the business that is my business that I run now, but very similar connotations to when I was employed and worked for somebody else and that, you know, powering through everything's got to be done. How do you deal with everything? Just keep going mentality. So I think that if people are listening and they're in that situation, it'll be quite hard to hear some of what you've said because it's very home truthy almost. And sat here now, I'm really intrigued because if I sat here today and I was like, I am just going to do one thing in my business and be that one person that who does this. I don't know how I would do that and what would happen to my business. So I'm really intrigued if you could share a little bit around how it actually does work in practice if you're a business owner and how you try to achieve that, but still run the business.

speaker-2: Yeah, if we use that analogy of the dam again, and it starting to show signs of cracking, ultimately, there are only two ways we're going to deal with this problem. Number one, we remove the water, we remove the pressure. Number two, we strategically break the dam and we actually create some outlets, we create some cracks and we allow the water to escape in a controlled manner. When I had my big blow up 10 years ago, I spent a weekend with a pad and paper just writing down everything that I quote, have to do all the things that only I can do this, no one else can do this, mostly because I'm a control freak and I want to do it myself. And you put them into a couple of buckets, you put them into, yeah, I absolutely have to do that. There is regulatory reasons, it is my name on the personal guarantee, that has to be me. But there will be lots of things on that list that you could put in the bucket of someone else could do this, or do we actually have to do this thing? And the answer is subtraction. It's our natural. response to say business terms we can power through. We can just let me get another coffee and we'll just pull an all nighter and we'll get this done. But we very rarely question should I be doing this? Is this the greatest use of my time? And again, the one thing that focusing question, what's the one thing such that by doing it, everything else is easier or unnecessary. People don't listen to that unnecessary part. There are things that you can just put down. I have a list here. I have a folder for those watching on the video. I have a folder. This is called my could do list. And if I open art, you can hopefully see there are pages and pages like A for there are like scribbled notes, there's highlights, there's post-it notes, there's I listen to podcasts, I've printed off a summary, I've got photocopies of books that I've read. This is all the stuff, little tiny scribbled notes as well. This is all the stuff that I have to do, okay? There's all the things that I want to do in my business. Now, I cannot. Basically, it. If you gave me three years and nothing else on my plate, I might just be able to get through that. But do you think I'm going to be leaving that and just doing that thing and not adding anything new to it? Of course not, because you're listing podcasts, we're getting ideas. And all I do now is I've trained myself to capture those ideas, put them away, file them in my could do list. there is no, because it used to be previously have idea. That's a brilliant idea, John. Do that. OK, what about the other idea you had? Yes, we'll do that one as well. And the idea you had last week, yeah, still working on that one as well. Okay. And you just try and juggle all these things. Now, file it away and then methodically work through one thing. And can I just share one more little thing on my one thing? This is the greatest thing I've ever done. Right, so all my could do list stuff, right? I break it down into a 90 day plan. There, I don't wanna give you too much information, but there's my current 90 day plan. That is broken down into three things over the 90 days. I then, I'm going to show you a blank one, so you want me to read my writing anyway, break that down into a weekly plan. There's my weekly plan. What does that say at the top there? You can read that. This week's one thing that is in red box outline. So there is always one thing that I do every week. Every day, I then choose a new.

speaker-1: This week's One Thing.

speaker-2: one thing, what is the most important thing I can do today? I then take this, which is a Sharpie, other brands are available, and this, a Post-it note, other brands are available. I've got these nice colorful ones that are like pink and orange and green. And I write on there, today's one thing, and I write what it is, I take that Post-it note and I stick it to my monitor. And it sits there nagging at me until I've done it. And then when I have done it, I rip that Post-it note, I screw it up into a little ball and I throw it in the bin and I feel so good. I feel so accomplished because I have identified the single most important thing that I can do today in my business to move towards my long-term goal. And I've done that.

speaker-1: I think that the world we live in drives us to a short attention span, drives us to the grind, drives us to shiny object. I think... The beauty of what you've just done there is that you've just written down all of those tasks because we all do it. Don't we? have a hundred tasks on the bubble. Each one is incredibly important. And one of the things my wife probably won't enjoy me saying this, probably doesn't enjoy me doing this, but if I wake up at three in the morning, because I've got four things to get done and I can't sleep, I will get up. I will come through to the computer. I'll write them down. And at that point I'll realize they're not very important because I've written them down. until they are written down, they feel like the most important thing in the world. that I think.

speaker-2: Every idea you've got is a million pound idea, isn't it?

speaker-1: Possibly more, possibly the amount of sandwich shops I've thought of opening at 3 in the morning. Virgin Colour would have nothing on me.

speaker-2: Can I share one little bit of an app I use? It is fantastic for this idea capturing. It's an app called Brain Toss. I believe it's available on the Android and iPhone cost space. memo, two, three quid. It is my most used app on my phone. You open it up, you have a choice. You can either record a 30 second voice memo, you can type in some text, you can upload a photo or a screenshot. So the minute you have the idea, which when do we have our ideas? We have our ideas in the shower. We have our ideas when we're walking the dog, when we're sat on the toilet. Those, when we're in bed at three in the morning and... for reason not able to sleep. We don't have our best ideas sat at our desk ready to work. And what happens when we have those ideas and they are brilliant ideas, aren't they? If we don't capture them, they are gone, never to be seen again. And what brain toss does is just allows you to capture it wherever you are, voice memo, type it out, take a screenshot, take a photo of a book, whatever you're learning, capture it, put your thoughts down. It will then email that to you with a summary. When you're then at your desk the following day or even three days later, you get to read that and go, well, that's a terrible idea. What the hell was I thinking? You haven't wasted any time executing on that stupid idea. Or you read it and you go, my God, that's a brilliant idea. I need to do that. Most of the ideas in this could do list folder are brain toss printout because I've brain tossed it to myself and gone, yes, that's a good idea. And let me flesh out. Let me add some ideas and plans to this. Stick it in the could do list and when it is time to execute on that idea, it will make it to the top. I think Haley, you mentioned earlier about the kind of, you you've got too many things on your plate, how do you choose what to do? It is really tough because... one of the habits and the routines I think you need to accept is you will never ever get everything done that you want to get done. You have to accept closing the laptop, shutting the door, walking out of your premises and going, still got stuff to do. But I've done enough today. I'm gonna re-energize, I'm gonna recharge and tomorrow I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna attack our biggest problem, our most leveraged opportunity, fresh and ready to go again. I'm not gonna. power through, you can power through. I'm in the middle of a big sprint. I've just launched a book. I've got an intake of our coaching group going on at the moment. I've got Betting World. It's the Cheltenham Festival this week. So there's a bit of a sprint going on. There's a lot of stuff going on, but four weeks time, I'm gonna be in Tenerife with my feet up, not checking emails, not answering phones, not doing any work whatsoever. I am gonna be recharging and ready to come back at the end of April. We've got a live event. There'll be another sprint. I will. power through for a day, for a week. What I'm not doing is what I used to do, which is powering through every day, seven days a week for about 14 to 16 hours. Someone once said, how many hours did you work when you first started your business? All of them.

speaker-0: I think to summarise the way that I would, the way that I suppose I've heard it, is it's about having a nice conversation with yourself first and foremost. And it's about trying to bring yourself back to the focus things that actually need to be done that actually make a difference and not let yourself get lost. in all of the other stuff that goes on in our head. But also what's been great about this conversation is we've also talked about an outlet to capture some of that noise that at some point in the future you can revisit as and when the time is right. And I think what's been really great is that bit at the end because up until that... some of it sounds perfectionist, like this is how I do it, I do it like this, I'm very disciplined and I know I am probably the most least disciplined person ever. So you sort of sat here thinking, well, my goodness me, that's all wonderful, but I know I'd never be able to do that even if I tried to make myself do it a hundred times over. But actually then what you finished off with there was the sprints and how actually sometimes life happens, but you bring yourself back to it. And I think that's a really important takeaway. It's been a really great conversation. So before we finish, What? us a shameless plug about who you're looking to work with, how people get in touch with you, and I know that you've got another book. I don't know whether it's out yet or just about to come out, but please share about that also.

speaker-2: Thank you, yes. Yeah, my book. So I've got five books out now. My books are aimed at, I use this phrase called ambitious lifestyle business owners and that came out of this hospital visit, which ultimately I came out of there saying, right, I need a lifestyle business, but that's not very ambitious, is it? And I really struggled with that because it was at the time that like Dragon's Den had just started up, Peter Jones used to really look down his nose at lifestyle business. He'd be there in his pinstripe suit and his stripy socks going, ⁓ this is not a real, you're not a real business. This is just a lifestyle business. And when I walked out of that... in hospital feeling, right, I need a lifestyle business, but that's not ambitious. I really struggled. So I just kind of put the two together and said, well, I'm gonna have a lifestyle business with ambition. So I work with business owners who have ambition. They have drive. They've got big goals. They want to achieve things, but not at the expense of their health, not at the expense of their family, not. at the expense of their mental wellbeing. And I talk often about kind of ambition and lifestyle as like a pendulum from one end to the other. And I spend probably six, seven years at that ambition end and pendulums naturally want to pull back, they want to oscillate. So I needed lifestyle. And now, you know, what we just talked about, sprints. From ambition, I am in a sprint right now. I'm being ambitious. I'm powering through to lifestyle and doing nothing. Back to ambition. If I have a couple of weeks sat by the pool, I am gonna be itching to get back to this desk and get back to work. So I work with those kind of business owners. Normally I would say small business owners, micro business owners, a lot of sodapreneurs. Normally my best clients are those people who have kind of gone through a similar journey to me. They've grown their business. They've grown their business to the perfect size for them. And then they've kept growing their business until it's massive and it's Frankenstein. monster and it's starting to affect their health, their relationships, their lifestyle, their headspace. It's taking over their every waking moment and I actually help those people focus on lifestyle a bit more. I can also work with lifestyle business owners who need ambition but the people we tend to have the most success with are established business owners. They're probably doing 100k plus probably got a couple of members of staff, but they're not trusting their members of staff. They're not letting go. So the best place to kind of start with any of stuff in my world is probably Google my name, John Lamson. Hopefully as long as it's, as long as you spelled it right, it will be on the, on the show title and everything like that. You can find my books. They're on Amazon. They're on Audible narrated by me. So as long as you've been able to cope with my brilliant Plymouth accent today, you will be able to. enjoy my dulcet West Country tones on the audiobooks as well. yeah, quick Google on my name, John Lamerton will bring out everything about me, bring up my website, my podcast, my books, coaching platform, absolutely everything like that. you very much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure.

speaker-0: Thank so much for joining us. So John was an absolutely incredible guest. There were so many, I've got so many things buzzing around in my head, not just about the one thing, but just about so many little snippets that he included within there. What did you think, Phil?

speaker-1: Huge for me, exactly the same. I saw a lot of characteristics that I see in myself. from finding role models and almost trying to pursue life as them to look to get those goals and then realizing that maybe they've had the look of the draw, maybe they've got different characteristics and they're able to perform in that lifestyle in that way. I think the huge takeaway for me was, and this almost sounds a little silly, but writing things down on different colored paper to really keep them in mind. And I go through phases of writing down to-do lists and working out what's important, keeping that consistency and having a physical piece of paper, which for an IT person is very anti what I'd normally think. But I think that's so powerful. That's maybe something I'll implement with the staff as well. The staff with my staff, with my incredible team, I should say. How about yourself, Haley?

speaker-0: For me, think it was that, because it sounds incredible, doesn't it? Just being the one person doing one thing in your business and that's your one job. Wouldn't that be amazing? And I think at first I was a little bit apprehensive about where the conversation was going to go. But I think the takeaway for me is that it's about not being perfect, but keeping the focus on the things that will actually move the business forward and not getting lost in everything else, which is so easy to do. And sometimes it's actually hard to step back and know what those things are. So I really like, again, like you said. I like the idea of the list and just getting it all out of your head. And that is actually something I do a lot, you know, quite often once a week or I don't know, once a fortnight, once a month, whatever, I would just sit and write all the stuff that's in my head down on a list. And you are right. It does make you feel better and it makes it more real and less. Less intense, think is how I would describe it. So that was the big takeaway for me. think the one page marketing plan, can't, I'm just going to go and find that in his book and read that. Cause that's how was like an absolute something I needed in my life.

speaker-1: And I think the concept of printing out that one marketing plan every day and, know, Greta Thunberg wouldn't thank us for it, but printing it out, put it on your desk and then ticking through it. And I really liked the idea of you then. put that into a folder or wherever you like so that you can look back in a month, three weeks, three days and see that success that you've had and know that you've been keeping that consistency. That's maybe something where in my to-do list that I tend to put onto Word documents and stuff like that, there's no easy historical way. And even with Microsoft to-do and other programs, I think having that physical that you can feel, you can flick back on, you know, two weeks and have a look through is so much more how we're wired as humans than having a digital copy.

speaker-0: I think it's interesting because you've said the word consistency quite a few times and in the episode we talked about discipline quite a lot because that's what really that's what it comes down to in trying to pursue that. think that is a challenge and that's the challenge for me from this episode is because I can have all those good intentions, I can do it for a week, well maybe not even a week sometimes but I can do it for a bit but then and I don't know about you just mentioned a few different things there but I've got like I have a paper notepad then I have my remarkable then I have you know Microsoft planner tasks, I've probably got motion somewhere and I flip, you know, one month I'm like this is the best thing ever I'm going to use that, then I'm going to use this, then I'm going to use that or what I like. But it's like how do you keep that discipline to keep the focus? I think that's the challenge for me. I think it will be interesting to just see.

speaker-1: ⁓ I think the discipline is actually in printing that out every morning, which is a fairly simple discipline, it? Because I think the issue we've both got, we're working off an Excel spreadsheet at the moment to do our what one thing and keep each other accountable, but that's not in front of you all day. It's only there when you open it up and when you get that app open and then when you read it and you have to remember to open the app. So then you set a calendar appointment to remind you to open it. Whereas if you print something, especially on the coloured paper, then it's physically in front of you all day. And if your mind does drift off task, as John alluded to, that post-it note is still on your screen or that bit of paper is still in front of you. So you're drawn back. Whereas the tab in a sea of 54 other tabs is not so easy.

speaker-0: Yeah, it's a, just then would get up one morning and I'd be late and I wouldn't print it off and then that would, it would go down the pan. So it's, yeah, it's really interesting. Well, thank you so much for listening to this week's What One Thing. We hope that you have found something you can take away and implement in your business.

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