The Fountain of Youth World Summit with Will Pemble, expert on success systems, former web.com CEO and founder of pemble.com.
Kevin: You’re big into self image. I noticed. Tell me a little bit about what self image is and where you were influenced by it.
Will: Well, the important thing to remember, I think about self image, is that you will and there are a bunch of different ways to describe this, but basically, I have a saying that I have developed which is that, “Your body listens to your brain and your brain listens to your voice.”
Kevin: OK.
Will: And your brain, just to kind of square this away, think of your brain as your self image, your set of operating instructions for your life, so if I were to ask you, Kevin, “Complete this sentence for me, Kevin, I, Kevin, am the kind of guy who...”
Kevin: Gets things done.
Will: Gets things done. OK. You’re the kind of guy who gets things done and you didn’t have a moment’s hesitation in answering that question. So, part of your self image is that you’re a guy who gets things done.
Kevin: Gotcha.
Will: And you know this about yourself and you’re comfortable with that about yourself.
Kevin: I guess it would have come out.
Will: Right, it would have come out. No. And if you were the kind of guy who didn’t really know what kind of guy you were, you would have stuttered, you know, you would have been like, “Ahh...” you know, I don’t really know what kind of guy I am. So, a good exercise when you want to try to start learning a little bit about your self image is to complete that sentence, “I’m the kind of guy who...” you know, and I’ve got a bunch of those. I’m the kind of guy who is a fantastic father. I’m the kind of guy who is better at being married than he is at doing anything else.
Kevin: OK.
Will: I’m the kind of guy who has all the money he needs for anything he wants to do.
Kevin: OK.
Will: I’m the kind of guy who makes his own schedule. I’m the kind of guy who helps other people make their own schedules.
Kevin: A ha.
Will: I’m the kind of guy who is useful and kind and engaging and helpful in everything he does. I’m the kind of guy who tells the truth. And I’m the kind of guy who tells the truth because it’s practical, not necessarily because I’m the kind of guy who is just a wonderful guy, it’s just practical, so the thing about this conversation with Kelly, which was just a nothing conversation, right? I had this conversation, she melted down, I fixed to the business problem by solving, you know, getting done what needed to get done and then I also gave Kelly this little snippet of information about my life that I had never really given a whole lot of thought to and then a couple of minutes or hours or however months it was later, I was driving home in my Porsche and I started thinking to myself “wow” I’m the real deal. I came from pretty much nothing, you know, a fairly humble beginning, you know, in high school, I was just kind of a pot smoking, beer drinking, pain in the butt, sort of a guy and I would never be voted, you know, most likely to buy a playground for his hometown...
Kevin: Right, right. [laughing]
Will: When I was in high school and...
Kevin: Most likely to burn down the playground.
Will: Yeah, most likely to burn down the playground, but certainly not most likely the violent.
Kevin: Right.
Will: But here I am. I do what I want. I have as much money as I want. If I see something I like, I buy it. If people come to me and need something, need help, need encouragement, need advice, people know that I am rock steady and they can count on me and that doesn’t necessarily square up with how I was raised and it doesn’t necessarily square up with how my brothers and sisters live their lives and they lived, you know, they grew up in the exact same environment that I did, so what gives? That was the big question and one of the answers that came out of it was the self image answer, but I started to study that because of my conversation that day with Kelly, because of this nothing conversation, you know, an unremarkable, which she probably doesn’t even remember.
Kevin: Right.
Will: Alright. If you were to ask her about this, she would be like, “Huh, I don’t know. What are you talking about?” Alright, it was a very potent conversation to me and it changed everything because at that point I got this question why? You know, what gives, how do we explain me?
Kevin: A ha.
Will: Because you know me and, you know, we’re friends and we hang out and you know that if there’s ever anything that might be fun to do, I’m available.
Kevin: Right.
Will: Alright. And yet, I run three companies and, you know, I get a lot of things done. I’m the kind of guy who gets things done too.
Kevin: Right, right.
Will: So, those were the questions that I came up with. Why did I end up this way when so many other people in exactly the same situations or even in much better situations than mine, end up miserable.
Kevin: Right. And is it just self image?
Will: It’s self image. It starts with the idea of the kind of guy you are and then it gets to learning or creating or adapting a way of doing things that’s consistent and efficient.
Kevin: OK.
Will: You know, I have created this saying somewhere along the way where I tell myself and the people around me, you know what, don’t just do it, just get it done.
Kevin: OK.
Will: And so...
Kevin: What does that mean?
Will: Well, just get it done. If you think a little bit about your week. You want to plan your week and you’ve got a number of things. You are the kind of guy who gets things done, which means you’ve got a lot of things to do because whatever you are good at, you get more of to do.
Kevin: [Laugh]
Will: Right. So...
Kevin: You may need to change that self image. [Laugh]
Will: [Laugh]. Right. So, one of the things that I learned early on was this idea of the 80 20 rule for example.
Kevin: Yeah.
Will: Where eighty percent of the things that you do, eighty percent of the work that you put forth really develops twenty percent of the results that you get.
Kevin: Yeah.
Will: And on the other hand, twenty percent of the work you do get you eighty percent of the results that you get.
Kevin: Yeah.
Will: And this was developed by an economist long time ago, a guy named Pareto where he discovered the eighty percent of the land in England was owned by twenty percent of the people.
Kevin: OK.
Will: And so, the 80 20 rule applies to very nearly anything, but mostly what the 80 20 rule applies to is the fact that twenty percent of the work that I do today is going to get me eighty percent of my results.
Kevin: OK.
Will: So, if my mission for today, for example, is to be useful I am going to spend about twenty percent of the time I am using today in this conversation and then the other eighty percent of my day is going to be spent doing other things, but I promise you that at least eighty percent of the usefulness I delivered today will come from this phone call from this twenty percent of my time.
Kevin: OK.
Will: Think about that for a second and then you think, OK, so I have got five days of work to do in a week that’s a hundred percent of my time. If I were to just to figure out which day was the day that was going to get me eighty percent of my results. Couldn’t I just blow off the other four days and do a better than average job at my job and that’s what got me thinking early on in jobs that I had, it’s like OK where? Oh, where is the twenty percent, because I don’t want to do the other eighty percent, I want to blow it off, I want to not do four times as much work to get the same result.
Kevin: Wow!
Will: So, where is the twenty percent? How can I work for two or three hours in a day and get the same or better results than the guy who is working eight or ten hours in a day?
Kevin: Wow!
Will: So, what if I have five full time jobs? Can’t I run five companies? If I just identify the twenty percent and then either blow off or leverage which is another very important concept, leverage the other eighty percent? So, that turns out to be a very important concept if you want to have the life that you want to have because anybody or very nearly anybody if you say, you know, describe for me your perfect life, having time as your own ends up being very important part of most people’s perfect scenario, you know and then, and one of the problems especially for people who are in business for themselves is most people get into business for themselves to do what they love because they love it and why wouldn’t you want to do what you love all the time and so let’s say you love fitness, you love being a personal trainer, and that is the thing that you love and you want to get into that business because you like energizing people and teaching them how to use their bodies and teaching them how to get strong without hurting themselves and how to eat right and all of the things that you do for so many people.
When you get into business to do that thing that you love, the first thing you usually do, is you go to some website and you create a little corporation and then a couple of weeks later you get a half inch thick envelope from the Internal Revenue Service.
Kevin: Sure.
Will: Welcome to the other eighty percent of your life.
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