ProductiviTree: Cultivating Efficiency, Harvesting Joy

ProductiviTree #25 From Dishwashing to Deal-Making - Jake Smolarek's No-BS Blueprint

• Santiago Tacoronte • Season 1 • Episode 25

Share episode

In this conversation, Jake Smolarek shares his journey from arriving in the UK with limited resources to becoming a successful entrepreneur. He emphasizes the importance of resourcefulness, vision, and the ability to learn from failures. Jake discusses productivity myths, the significance of daily progress, and the necessity of delegation. He introduces his Vision GPS framework, which includes setting clear goals and having a flexible planning process. The conversation also touches on emotional discipline, the balance between routine and spontaneity, and practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Takeaways

  • It's not about resources, it's about resourcefulness.
  • You have to have a vision to guide you.
  • Failure is just feedback, not the end.
  • Daily progress is crucial; aim for no zero percent days.
  • Remove distractions to maintain focus and productivity.
  • Knowing what you want makes decision-making easier.
  • Delegation is essential for scaling productivity.
  • Think big; your dreams should scare you.
  • Create systems that work for your business.
  • Don't create a job for yourself; build a business system.

Thanks for listening to ProductiviTree! If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share.

🟢 Spotify

🟣 Apple Podcasts

🟡 Amazon Music

🔴 YouTube

Connect with me:

Have questions or suggestions? Email us at info@santiagotacoronte.com

Jake, welcome to ProductiviTree Thank you very much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. You arrived in the UK with just 150 pounds. How did you stay productive with zero resources and no clear plan? Well, it's not about resources. It's all about resourcefulness, you know, so you have to find a way and we as human beings we always find a way if we don't have any other choices. It happens to all of us. If no one is growing from comfort, we all grow from actually being uncomfortable when life will push us to the edge and we just don't have any other choices. I just find a way, know, like I only had like 150 pounds which is equivalent to about 180 dollars, but I have a massive dream I really wanted I always wanted to be successful. I didn't know what success mean at that time I just wanted more from life and and I knew that I will never give up I might change my mind, but I will never give up. I will always find a way to just achieve my goals and achieve my vision How does success have changed for you since then till today, Jake? It changed a lot to be honest with you. I remember when I met my first mentor when I was about 20 years old 20 years ago and I told him like hey listen I want to be rich and he asked me straight away what's rich you know how much money do you want to make and I was like oh I don't know 50 000 pounds a year so that was my meaning of being successful you know like obviously that changed quite a bit especially today, know, £50,000, especially like living in London, that's not a lot of money. You can barely survive on that. But you have to start somewhere, right? My mentor looked at me and he kind of smiled and said, well, you have to start somewhere. So yeah, definitely my vision from 20 years ago changed completely. Yeah, it's a completely different vision. do you keep momentum in the face of failure and uncertainty? Well, that's a good question. I would definitely go back and say you have to have a vision. You have to know what is it that you want to achieve in life. Because this is something that will push you when you have a bad day or when you have a failure. I often say that we actually use the wrong F word. It's not failure, it's feedback. Every single time you try something and it doesn't go the right way, or let's say you failed, It's not really a failure. It's a feedback. You you're learning from it. The only the failure is when you stop trying, when you try something and it didn't work out and then you stop trying and that's a failure. That's real failure. You just gave up. But if you you if you failed and then you get back and try again, it's not really a failure. It's getting feedback, getting experience. But to to actually keep going, you have to have a vision, not just goals, you know, we probably going to talk about the vision GPS in a few minutes, but you have to have that North star. You have to have a vision. have to have that destination, which will push you during the bad days. What is one productivity myth you believed early on in your career and that you had to unlearn in order to be really productive? uh Probably that I have enough time or that I can do everything myself I believe there's a lot of people out there and I call them I call it a superman or superwoman syndrome, you know people try to do everything themselves especially entrepreneurs and especially at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey, they try to do everything themselves and we only have 24 hours a day and I always say that the best productivity tip is to start delegate things. Especially these days when we have AI and chat GPT and all other tools, we have to start delegating tasks to other people and only concentrate on the crucial things that are the most important one. Like the 80-20 rule, know, like you only concentrate on the 20 most important tasks on your, 20 % of tasks on your list. If you have 10 things to do, probably two out of 10 are crucial. That's why you have to concentrate on those. You talk about no zero percent days. It's your rule. What is it all about? Yeah, so it's like a framework. I always say to people and it's partly based on a Japanese way of thinking, which is called Kaizen, that you're getting better every single day and then no 0 % days is similar. It's all about that. Make progress every single day. Do something that take you closer to your vision or that destination, whatever that... you want to achieve, do something every day that tells you closer to that vision. No, no, don't miss a day. It's like in English we say an apple a day keeps the doctor away. You know, it's the same like with this. Do something every day. You know, don't eat 10 apples nine days from now. It's an apple a day. Do something every day. And it, you know, it's, very difficult to, to work on a hundred percent every single day. Right? No one can do it. Yes, you can do. few days on the 100 but then you're going to have a bad day or something but even if you're having a bad day do something send one email read one page or write a page a day do at least something because tomorrow you'll be happy that you did at least something and obviously you know I'm not talking about that like hey only send one email I mean if you have a really bad day then yes but try to do something sometimes I say to people like if you don't feel like going to the gym you know, exercise, then just go to the gym, don't exercise, just go there and go back home because in most cases if you go to that gym you'll be like, okay, I will do at least something, one exercise and then you maybe end up exercising for five, ten, maybe even fifteen minutes but five minutes is way better than nothing. How can someone, we live in the age of overwhelm, overwhelming formation, work. How can someone go from overwhelmed to consistent without burning out? I would say remove distractions. We have too many distractions in our everyday life and people, yes, they overwhelmed because they just have too many distractions rather. They don't have the laser focus and they should actually focus on doing those important tasks. But the problem is we have so many distractions. There's Facebook, there's Instagram, all social medias. don't know, children, dogs, whatever. There's so many excuses out there. But if we remove all the destruction and suddenly we can have a laser focus and we focus on tasks, first of all, we're going to do them much, much quicker. And for me, when people say like, oh, I am overwhelmed, it means like, okay, you probably don't know how to prioritize. And second, you don't know how to uh delegate tasks. Because if you know how to delegate and you know how to prioritize, you're not going to be overwhelmed. How do you know when and what to prioritize? Well, it all depends. It's very individual thing because I don't know what are your priorities. You don't know what my priorities are, but it's very important to sit down and ask yourself a question. What is it that I want? What is my vision? And because once you have a clear vision, then you can start making decisions. When you have a clear vision, it's so much easier to make decisions. Have you noticed that a lot of problems A lot of people these days, they have a problem with making decisions. They procrastinate all the time. And don't take me wrong, I was very good. I'm still procrastinating, but I was so good at procrastinating that I could teach it. I was so good. But then I realized that we all procrastinate. It's just successful people procrastinate on not important things and unsuccessful people, they procrastinate on important things. You talk about progress over perfection. How do you stay productive without falling into the perfectionism trap? Again, it is a very individual thing, but I always say there are things that they need to be done in a very good way. But there are also things and tasks that you don't have to do on 100%. They just need to be done. And that's it. Big problem is a lot of people, they minor in them. They major in minor things. You know, they do a lot of things that they do not need to be done. That's why they probably overwhelmed. Hmm. eh So yeah, it's just you have to know again, if you have clear vision, you will know what is important and what's not important. The big problem is most people, don't know what they want and they kind of floating around and they have no idea what's important and what's not. And they have no idea how to prioritize. But once you know what you want to achieve, it's so much easier to prioritize and to make decisions. Because it's very clear, if I do these things it will take me closer to my vision, or if I do this thing it will not, which means I cannot do this. What is the biggest productivity killer for entrepreneurs trying to scale up their businesses? I would have to go back to delegation again. You know, they're trying to do everything themselves or they concentrate on those minor things. You know, they're doing things that they shouldn't be doing. They should only concentrate on the most important things. And usually when we talk about running a business and scaling the business, if you want to scale the business, you have to generate leads. You know, when you're building a business, everything is up to lead generation. If you you know, getting uh clients, new prospects. This is the most important thing because if you want to grow, have to have, you have to have more customers. That's as simple as that. How do you help them? How do you help these entrepreneurs to stop doing everything and focus on what actually brings revenue, which in the end is what helped them scale up the business? Well, again, we have to prioritize. I had a Zoom call with a potential customer, client, who actually just signed up for coaching today. And we were talking about, he was talking about scaling his own business. And then he was saying that he's working from seven o'clock in the morning until 10, 11 at night. And it turns out that he's just trying to do everything. And I asked him like, why wouldn't you delegate? And he gave me loads of excuses. And about 20 minutes later, he said to himself something like, my God, those are just excuses. I could probably easily delegate half of my things, probably more, but I'm just trying to find excuses rather than finding solutions on how to do it. He was so, a typical thing about an entrepreneur being busy, but not being productive. Jake, can you break down your Vision GPS framework? 100%. So first of all, you have to know what is it that you want and that's your vision. I sometimes call it that that's your destination. This is where you want to end up and you and think big. There's too many people who think too small rather than start thinking big. And I always say try to think so big that your dreams are basically scaring you because if they're not scaring you, then they're not big enough. So ask yourself, what is it that that I want. What is it my vision? What is it that I want to achieve? What kind of life do I want to create for myself and my family and my kids? And you have to be clear about that. Obviously, you're not going to end up, you know, having a vision in 10 minutes or even one day or a week. It takes time time to develop that, you know, clear vision. But again, don't be a perfectionist. know, takes for some people take years to, you know. come up with that vision but you have to know what is it that you want. That's the first step. And then the GPS, it's an acronym from goals, planning process and systems. you have to have goals, long term, short term, mid term goals. You have to have them and those goals, they have to be smart goals. We all heard about em smart goals but only a few people actually using smart goals. I always say to people because sometimes I have people coming to me and they said like oh I want to have more money so I'll take five pounds from my pocket I'll give it to them and like there you go now you have more money and they will be like no no you don't understand I need a lot more money so I will give them ten pounds and it will be like hey now you have a lot more money and they will be like no no you you completely don't understand I need a lot a lot more money so I'll give them 20 pounds it was like there you go now you have a lot a lot more money And they'll be like, no, you don't understand. I need a lot of money. But a lot is not a number. You have to give me a number. You have to be very specific. know, so so goals are important. You have to write down what is it exactly that you want. But goals are not enough. And there's a beautiful book by uh James Clare, Atomic Habits. He's talking a lot about goals, but he's also talking about that goals are not enough. Because they are not. It's great to have goals, but they're not enough. You also need to have a planning process in place. Now, I call it a planning process, not a plan. And sometimes people ask me, what is the difference between having a plan and having a planning process? So the P in my Vision GPS is partly based on a book called The Art of Work by Sun Tzu. When you are at war, you have to observe what's going on on the field. You have to watch what the enemy is doing all the time. you see, plan is fixed. The planning process is very flexible. For example, when the pandemic hit, a lot of people with a fixed plan, they failed. They didn't know what to do. They couldn't follow the plan because the plan didn't work anymore. when people with a flexible plan or planning process, They quickly adapt and they've been making progress very, very quickly. So planning process is crucial. And then you need to have systems. Some systems are complex. Some systems do not have to be that complex. again, coming back to James Clare, who was talking about like, if you want to go to the gym tomorrow, prepare all the clothes, prepare everything and put it in the middle of the living room. So it will be ready. It's a simple system, but it works. More complex systems are for example like I run digital marketing agency. So we do Google Ads for example or Facebook Ads. Google Ads are a system that works 24-7. You sleep and they work. Or search engine optimization, SEO. It works even when you sleep. So once you have a vision and then the GPS will work exactly like the GPS in your car. you know when you're driving somewhere you have your Google Maps or have your GPS you put like hey I want to go from London to Edinburgh you put Edinburgh and even if half of the roads are closed the GPS will still get you there no matter what because that's how GPS works GPS is not judging you if you make a mistake is not telling you that you are stupid or something is just recalculating the routes over and over and over again and that's that GPS works exactly the same that GPS will take you there no matter what obstacles but you have to have all the components you have to first of all you have to have a destination the vision you must have goals so you know especially small goals because it's so nice to tick off a goal every single day you have to have a planning process in place and you have systems if you have all of that you'll be successful guaranteed Wow. Let's stay with systems for a minute. You run three businesses. Which systems do you use to being effective with all of them? Well again, you know like to get new clients we run ads. I believe every single business should run paid ads because especially these days uh you see people there's something called uh downbar numbers. Have you ever heard about downbar numbers? Okay you probably have uh So one of the most famous Dunbar number and it was discovered by Professor Robin Dunbar. He says that we only remember about 100 and properly remember about 150 people in our lives. Yes, we remember more of them, but we properly remember the names, surnames, what people do for the living. The number is about 150. Another interesting number that Professor Robin Dunbar came up with was that people they need to spend with us about seven hours with us, our personal brand or our brand as a business brand about seven hours before they will trust us. Which means it's like if you traveling somewhere, if you're flying somewhere, if it's a bit longer flight, let's say seven hours and you sit next to someone and you start talking at the very beginning of the flight and after seven hours you like that person, you trust that person. because it takes us about seven hours to build that trust. And I believe that having systems like for example, Google Ads is so important and a search engine optimization and just making sure that people can see your brand everywhere, almost everywhere is so important because if it takes seven hours and it's proved by science, then you want to make sure that those people will see your brand or you as a personal brand. oh Those those they will spend with you seven hours. It could be a podcast. It could be a YouTube video It could be a blog or anything and that is also proved by Google Google also did a massive research because they have loads of data and they proved that People need to have about 11 interactions with you So in addition to those seven hours, they often to have those about 11 interactions. I think it was 10.7 to be precise So now we have 7 hours, we now have around 11 interactions. In marketing we know that it is anything between 7 to 14, sometimes even 20 times they need to see your logo or your face to again trust you. So you see, when I run my businesses I am making sure that people see my logo everywhere. You know, it has to be Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Google. including chat GPT. Beyond Google Ads, is there any lead generation hack that consistently worked for you? Well, there's plenty to be honest with you. uh I like creating a waiting list. Sometimes if everything is available all the time, people, don't really care. But if suddenly something is not unavailable or your product or service, I love to create waiting lists. When I will create a list, it could be a WhatsApp group, it could be an uh email or something. that people have to wait because we love things that are not available or they're not available straight away. And creating waiting lists, it's an amazing technique that actually help grow businesses. And it's very simple and it's actually free. Jake, m if a listener wants to grow a business while still working nine to five, a full-time job, how they should start, how they should spill it that time. Well, I've got quite a few uh clients who I help building businesses from zero to at least one million turnover at least once having a full-time job. And again, it's all about learning how to delegate from the very beginning because it's very difficult. Yes, a lot of people... often argue with me that like well yeah but then you have to pay people which means like yeah if you have to pay make sure that you're making enough money because money is not the most important thing in life but I believe it's still close to an oxygen but money for the business is number one thing however you're going to to argue with that sometimes people say like no people are the most important in the business yeah but if you don't pay them for six months they're going to leave which means You have to make sure that you can make money from that business. You have to make sure that whatever you are selling, there's a good profit on it. That's why I believe having smaller but premium businesses, know, premium services or premium products are way better than not premium. At least this is my opinion, because straight away you can start creating a margin. Now, so you have to find your niche. Don't try to sell to everyone a lot of entrepreneurs or people who would like to start a side hustle they make that Big mistake that they do not know who is their client. They think like anybody can be my client Well, if everybody is your client, no one is your client. You have to be very precise You have to know exactly who is your client So you can precisely find those clients if you know what I mean Jake, you have faced health scares, depression, and business collapses. What kept you productive during your lowest points? First of all, I have to say my vision so even if my vision wasn't 100 % clear It was there and it was basically pulling me or pushing me during those bad days At the same time I remember like today when my first mentor told me that a proper entrepreneur is the entrepreneur who had failed at least three times when bankrupt, know have to close the business and When he was saying this to me, I couldn't understand. And then when I lost my first business, when I have to close my first business, I called Patrick and I said like, oh my God, Patrick, you know, we just lost everything and more. And he said, oh wow, congratulations, you know, like now you have two failures to go. I thought like, he could be a little bit more, you know, nicer here. He could be little bit more helpful, but it was good because he said like, hey, don't worry. You have to know that you're going to fail and knowing that you're going to fail is easier to deal with failures because he's like, okay, we just fail. We have to start all over again because that's exactly what I did. You know, I failed with my first business and Patrick told me, yeah, just start, start again, which I did. And in six months we have rebuilt that business and it was Actually, fun! It was like, after six months we were laughing, like, okay, we failed and then we start all over again and it's all good! When do you know when to declare failure, side hustles, people that start things? When do you know that eh it's a defeat and you need to move on and go for the next thing? Again, it's probably a very individual question to ask. uh It's probably different things for different people. uh But to be honest with you, I usually say any plan or planning process can work out if you stick to it long enough. Most people give up too early. I've got another interesting framework that I don't think I have shared with you in our emails or conversations. It's called 10 80 10 and it's the first 10 percent and the last 10 percent are very exciting you know at the beginning there's excitement new things going on there are hormones around your body you know jumping all over place it's so cool that the beginning is so cool we love starting new things and then the last 10 percent when you're already winning when you're already succeeding when you when you won It's also very exciting. The problem is the 80 % in the middle, that's where, that's the messy 80%, that's the messy middle. And most people, when they go through the phase of the first 10 % to the first half of that 80%, it's very dark. You don't even see the light at end of the tunnel. You don't even see the tunnel. It's like because it's work. You have to... do the work. If you want to be an athlete, you want to win a championship, you have to go to the gym every single day, seven days a week for the next, I don't know, three, five, maybe even seven years. You have to repeat and repeat. It could be boring sometimes, but this is how champions are made. This is how you build a success. Every single overnight success usually takes anything between three to 10 years. How do you acquire emotional discipline so that you have long-term success? Well, I have people often ask me like, how do you do that? That you so discipline and I say like, well, listen, it's not that I have a discipline shake in the morning and I drink and I'm suddenly discipline. It doesn't work this way. This discipline work is like a muscle. If you want to build muscles, you have to go to the gym and the first day you go, you're not going to have muscles. You know, the second day you go, you're not going to have my even for a month or two if you regularly go to the gym you're not going to see a lot of results. It's only after about 6, 8, 12 months when you go to the gym you know five times a week and you eat properly this is how you build muscles and with discipline is exactly the same you're just doing the damn thing even if you don't feel like it. That's why I always say motivation comes and go. Motivation is overrated. When you are motivated, that's cool, that's amazing. with motivation it's like with having a shower, you have to take it every single day. But discipline you have to learn, you have to push yourself. And again, having a vision, knowing why you're actually doing this at the very first place, this is the most important. Because you're going to have bad days, you're going to have bad weeks. And vision, vision is something that will actually push you. Why am I doing this? And you have to have a very good answer because if your vision is not exciting is not big It's not something that you really want to do you're going to give up and I'm not going to blame you You know, that's why it's so important to have big scary vision You are big on routines Jake, what is the role of the other part like improvisation and breaking patterns to break free and stay creative? How do you add these components to routines and consistency? Well, yes, routine is a key to anything. Because if you want to be a champion, yes, you have to train for 10 years and suddenly you become a champion. Yes, there's always a room to be a little bit spontaneous. There's always a room to do things, but you cannot skip the routine. You just cannot do it. I would say, again, it's like a Pareto principle 80-20 rule. 80 % routine and 20 % room for being a little bit crazy. Let's do some rapid fire questions, answering 30 seconds. Number one, what is the best productivity habit most people ignore? I would have to again say delegation. It's number one thing if you want to do more and be more productive. And again, doing less. A big mistake that people do. They have this massive list, to-do list, and they try to achieve it and they will do half of the things and they feel disappointed at the end of the day. Rather than actually reducing it, you know, only have a few major things to do. and finish those and then you feel so good at the end of the day. Number two, one thing you got from your schedule that made everything else easier. I follow my schedule. I put everything in the schedule. Sometimes when I ask people like, what do you like to do? And they would say, I love traveling. And I would ask, how many travels do you have booked for the next 12 months? And they would say like, well, nothing. Well, it clearly shows to me that you do not love traveling. because I'm so busy, I cannot fit it to travel, which means like traveling is not the priority for you. If the traveling would be priority, you would schedule traveling first and put work around your travel. This is how you work. First do what's important. First schedule what's the most important thing. And remember, be master of your schedule. Don't let the schedule be master of you. Number three, is hustle culture helping or hurting entrepreneurs? It depends to be honest with you. Yes, you have to work hard, but at the same time you have to be very smart on how you work. Listen, working 16 hours a day, is it healthy? Obviously it's not. It depends what the priorities are. If you're starting a business, yes, you have to work very hard, but you you have to work smart. You have to have enough sleep. Probably one of the best... If you want to be productive, one of the best productivity tips would be have enough sleep. Go to bed at the same time every single day. Sleep those 8 to 9 hours. Because if you keep uh sleep, you're not going to be 100 % productive. And some people say, no, I can just sleep 4 or 5 hours. No, you can't. No one can. You are the same human being as any other. You're not going to be 100 % productive if you only sleep 4 or 5 hours. Number four, morning routine to jumpstart your day or evening routine to wind down. Which one is more important? Again, very individual thing. I know people who are very successful who wake up 4 o'clock in the morning and I know people who are very successful who wake up 7 o'clock or even 9 a.m. in the morning. It doesn't matter. What matters is you have to do the things that you have to do. That's the most important thing. If you're going to do it at night or you're going to do it during the day, is it morning or is it evening? It doesn't matter. You just have to have the routine. And if it's morning or evening, it doesn't matter, just stick to the routine and do it your way. And number five, which book changed the way you work? many books. I'm a reader and I believe in reading books, but at the same time I believe in actually doing things. But if I have to pick up one thing, one book, I think it would be uh the E-Myth, revisited by, uh remind me the name, uh Michael Gerber. So the E-Myth is one of the best books, but again, the E-Myth is talking about delegation. quite a lot is how to make business automatic. Because the E-myth is actually a shortcut from the entrepreneur myth. Because most entrepreneurs, they don't really run businesses, they just have a job. And instead of working from nine to five, they have to work from seven o'clock in the morning until 11 at night. And that's not freedom at all. That's a very interesting concept. Jake, let's give one final piece of advice to the audience. If someone is willing to be more productive or start a business eh today or tomorrow, what's one practical action they can take? You know, listen, if you want to do something, just do it. Most people think about it and they overthink. They want to do something perfectly. I always say, probably the first business that you start is not going to be the last business that you're going to operate. You know, you're probably going to fail uh because it's not about the business. It's all about the business skills. So if you're thinking about starting a business, doesn't really matter. what it is, what kind of a business it is. I started a construction business because my mentor told me to do so. I knew nothing about construction. But I remember like today when I was sitting with Patrick and he said to me, if you want to make a lot of money, you have to start your own business. And I was like, what business? And he just looked around, he saw a scaffolding somewhere and he said, construction business. And I said, I know nothing about construction. don't, I know how to use the hammer, but that's it. And he said to me, don't create yourself a job. Create a system. Build a business and hire other people who are going to do the work. Don't create yourself a job. And I remember this like today. I think this is one of the best advice I ever had in my entire life. Jake, where can people connect with you, follow your content, or hire you? Just go to my website jakesmallarec.com or just simply google me or chat GPT me if you want, you know, and you will easily find my website, my socials, some other podcasts and yeah, just do it like this. Jake, I want to thank you for a advice pack session. Definitely, I live with it with a lot of energy and willingness to do things. If I'll need to pick up something, I'll probably stay with progress, not perfection. And if you want to do it, do it. I love this piece. Jake, thanks a million for being with us today and we hope to talk to you soon. Thank you very much for having me, that was great.