- Hi this is Lea Woodford with Between the Lines
and I am in beautiful Las Vegas
with R. Shawn McBride new author of It's About Time.
How are you Shawn? - I'm going great, how about yourself?
- Really good.
I loved your book.
What a different spin on time management.
- Yeah, we really took an examination,
we started from a different point.
We thought about the end and what the goals are
and what people are really trying to accomplish
and from there building a time management system
rather than just having people doing
what they're doing faster and faster.
Which is so much of what the current advice is about.
- Well it, yes, and it feels like
we're just stuffing so much
and they seem to be one-sided.
It's all about business.
I love how you integrated your personal
life into time management as well.
- Right, there's gonna be a lot of talk
about it rather than work life balance,
work life integration.
And that's really what we're talking about is
what are you goals, what are you trying to do
and how do you blend work
and life together in a way that works for you?
And accomplish the the goals and the dreams you want.
- Well you know one of my mentors told me
that if your life is balanced you're standing still
and you're not moving and I love that because,
- Right and well so much of the current thinking is
about work is here, personal life's here
but never is that fully true because you're always gonna
have, you're gonna live in a certain location
because you're families there.
You're gonna work in a similar locations
and you're gonna have time where you're off work
and not at work.
There are always interplaying with each other.
So lets just face the facts that work
and life interplay with each other
and build something that really works for the professionals.
- I love that.
Now what was your inspiration or writing the book?
- We got a request from a conference.
My co-author and I, Shannon Gregg,
were going to speak at a conference
and they said we really want you
to do a module on time management.
We hadn't really thought about how much time management
played into the work that both of us
were doing in our professional lives,
working with our clients.
There was a great opportunity to jump in
and examine something that was at the foundation
of all the legal work and the strategy work I do
and the sales consulting, sales productivity system she did.
Everything had a time management
component that was so critical to it.
So it's a foundational tool that allows people to
do more of what they want to do with their lives
and their businesses.
- Now you're a corporate attorney, so is this how you kind
of run your law practice and then speak and consult?
- Yeah, well time management's
always been critical to my life.
I do a lot.
I'm one person that loves to be active and,
- You're a road warrior.
- I'm a road warrior, I traveled.
My laptop has everything I need to be productive on the road
and I keep going from city to city.
It forces me to be good at time management
but then when I work with my clients we
need to think about how they're managing their time
and what their priorities are.
That's one of the most important discussions we'll have
with our legal clients is what's most important to you?
How do we build a strategy that gets things you want
to get done with your business and your life?
Time management always sits there at the center.
It just wasn't until that conference reached out to
Shannon and I that really opened our eyes to the fact
this is something we can help a lot of people with.
Since we wrote the book things started going forward
we have helped a lot of people with it.
So it's been a great journey.
- Great.
Now what was your biggest challenge writing the book?
- The biggest challenge was getting what was
different thoughts and ideas about time management.
I certainly have my systems,
the center place for all my other business strategy work.
But getting it into the form of presentation
and then a book.
And so we had to take knowledge
and reformat it in a way that it would be valuable
and useful to readers.
It was just thinking about how to get
the information conveyed in a good form.
- Now how did writing this book impact your life?
- One things amazing about writing, you know?
This is my second book, first book I co-authored.
It really makes you examine your knowledge of material.
It really makes you think about how
do you present it to other people?
It's one thing to have an expertise,
it's another thing to explain your expertise to someone.
- Right?
And you see all of the holes in your
system too when you're writing.
At least I do.
- Yeah, you have to do an examination, right?
It forces you to do that internal examination
of have I fully explained this?
Have I explained it in a way that the vast majority
of readers will understand it?
Has sufficient depth with sufficient background.
It really does force you to sharpen your expertise in a way.
It's really a great exercise to make
you think about your material.
- Well one of the things that I loved about it is
you know, you didn't write War and Peace.
- Right.
- It was easy to digest and pretty easy to implement too.
- That's right.
A lot of people that read it
love it because it's a quick read.
Generally you can read it in less than hour.
- I love that.
- Yeah, less than an hour and you're changing your thinking.
You know, when we first released the book we,
Shannon and I spoke at a conference and we gave out
free copies to people that attended the conference
just to get people to know the book existed.
Then we had a number of sales managers
say I read that on the plane ride home and it's amazing
and I want to start working on this with my team.
It's the kinda thing where in an hour you can be moving
in a direction and start implementing rather than
having to say well when am I gonna have time to read
that then work your way through the book and then have
this archaic thing where I don't know where to start.
People are reading this in an hour
and then starting to change their organizations.
- I think that's what I enjoyed most about the book.
And I'm an avid reader.
But finding the time to read, especially really big novels,
I don't have that luxury anymore.
- Right.
And sometimes we don't read books and even good books.
I've read a lot of the business books.
They'll say something and then they'll go through five
or six stories that reinforce the point
and then they'll move onto the next point.
In today's world sometimes you don't
need to hear the same thing three or four times.
You need to hear it once, directly, have it already
shaped for you to know what's important
and what to focus on and take out the extra clutter.
- You know, it was very, very,
I don't want to use the word minimalistic,
but just streamlined, easy to implement
and kind of a fun read.
- Right.
- You know, and great to back to.
- It's the type of thing you can go back and revisit.
A lot of people are using it for
conversations within an organization.
So if you have multiple in a company
it is a framework for discussion.
If your whole team reads the book,
you can start thinking about how
do you prioritize saying no?
How do you think about what's really important to you?
And the other interesting thing because it talks
about both personal life and business life,
it opens that discussion up at work
because a lot of times when you're having
friction at the office or somebody isn't making
their goals because they have a personal concern
outside of life or they have personal goals.
When you start looking more holistically,
you can be more realistic about
what the overall objectives are
and get to good solutions that work for the company
and peoples personal lives.
- So Shawn, you had a lot of fun chapters in here.
Which one was your favorite and why?
- There's a chapter in there about saying no
and really picking what's important to you.
We found that, when we wrote it it
was a powerful concept of saying no.
And as we were working with our clients
and bringing forward the ideas in the book
we're finding that's one of the most powerful things
is getting people to start saying no actively
and building the no muscle.
Practicing saying no to things.
So that you can really do things that are important to you
and that's probably the most life changing chapter
of the book because when people start saying
no to the things that aren't important,
that don't get them to their 10 year
goal or their visions and dreams,
they start opening up time to do
the things that really matter to them.
- You know, and I have to be,
I have to be completely forthright.
I am one of those people that says yes
and then I'm panicked because how the hell am I
gonna add this to my schedule, you know?
- And that's so common today with so many professionals.
As you start getting stature
and start having success in your business,
more and more opportunities start showing up.
One of the biggest struggles most of the people are working
with is starting to say no and shut things down.
When you have clear visions
and dreams of what you want to do with your life.
What your number one and number two priorities are.
It does become a lot easier.
I tell people test everything that comes to you
in terms of does it further your 10 year vision or dream.
And with that framework a lot of people are able to say
no to a lot more things because they see something
and they're like, that's a nice fun project
but does it help me get to my 10 year goal
or dream so I can say no to that.
- Well one of the things that I really liked
about this book so much is it is perfect for the
solopreneur or the mom and pop or anyone just starting a
business or trying to take it to the next level
because as an entrepreneur, I mean, there is no real manual
and you're just trying things
and you're hoping if it works do you keep doing it?
If it doesn't work,
but I haven't had that time management strategy.
I've used it, - Right.
- But for sales.
You know, back in corporate America
there isn't, this is the first time I've seen something
really kinda tailored for entrepreneurs.
- Yeah, it works great for entrepreneurs,
it does work for the sales teams too
but what's different is we ask each person
to think about what's important to them
and build their time management system.
And that is what really changes it.
Rather than coming in and saying
I've been successful because I manage my time this way,
and really be authoritarian
and tell people how they have to live their
lives we present different ways you
can do things, different options.
And we say you have to pick the options that are right
for you based on your circumstances, your life demands.
And that's really more realistic because
everybody's got different personality styles,
everybody has different experiences.
They have different things they enjoy.
So we wanna take people, and entrepreneurs in particular,
entrepreneurs tend to be very creative.
And they're engaged in a lot of things
and they need to build something that works for them
rather than follow somebody else's system.
One of the reason they're entrepreneurs is they
didn't want a boss telling them
exactly how to live their life.
And then they go out read the standard time management books
and those tell them to live their life a certain way.
So it's putting them back into
the cycle that they tried to--
- You know I think that's what I loved about the book most.
It felt like it was something that I could easily implement
but it was flexible for my business and my lifestyle.
- Right and we need to be flexible as an entrepreneur.
Every business is different.
The reason we're entrepreneurs is we're doing something
different than the rest of the world.
- Mm hmm. - And this book recognizes
that business people, successful sales people,
entrepreneurs, are different than the rest of the world.
We need to recognize that difference
and build around that difference
rather than try put them back into
the standard cookie cutter boxes.
- Do you think you'll write another book?
- Yes.
I have a couple books in process actually.
- Wow.
- Some of them spinning off of this book,
this is the first book I co-authored
and I really enjoyed that process.
Working with another expert
and learning about both of our expertise
and creating something that people haven't seen
because we're blending different styles and different--
- Skillsets too.
- Different skillsets.
So partnering on a book was amazing
and which has led me to think about
other projects I can partner also.
I have a couple of those books in creation now
and a little bit of spin off from this.
This is really opened up the door
to a lot of different avenues.
- I really see this being a series.
- Yes.
- Because I, it was such a quick read.
I enjoyed it.
- We're actually working on a book now for
time management for parents because
I'm working with two parents as my co-authors.
So there'll be three of us writing this book.
Shannon again plus another lady
that runs a single parent summit.
We're gonna bring together all that expertise
because one of the things we've been hearing since
we wrote the book is a lot of parents
want strategies specifically for them.
So we're gonna build that into the next book.
- Okay now, you were amazing at our summit on our panel.
And people were shocked to find out that you're an attorney.
First of all, you're such a nice guy
but tell us about that crazy tie.
- Yeah so, you know, as time has evolved
I accidentally went to a couple Christmas parties
and you know the ugly sweater parties
and I put on a full suit that was Christmas ugly sweaterish
but it was a nice tailored suit.
And an amazing number of people came up to me
and they kept saying your just
different than every other attorney.
Which for years as I spoke at events
and worked with people, I'd always walk off the stage
in my standard corporate attire
and people would be like, you're different than every
other attorney but yet I dressed like every other attorney.
It led to the phrase that we've now trademarked,
Do Business Differently.
And we encourage people to think about
how to do business in their unique way.
So the tie, and the other pieces I might wear from
time to time encourage people to think
about how can they do business their way?
- Well I hope you're gonna do a panel with us again.
- I would love to.
- That was so fun.
- I enjoyed that you know and you brought
together an amazing group of people.
I mean two husband and wife teams
that built amazing businesses.
Which is so fun talking to them
and seeing their perspectives.
And the other people all kind of reflecting different
experiences in building their businesses.
It was just amazing to be with that group of people.
- Thank you.
- And I know your audience loved it.
- Thank you very much.
Now how can our, first of all,
can we show your book real quick?
- Of course.
- Guys, this is absolutely an amazing book.
You're gonna wanna go out and get it.
Now Shawn, how can our viewing audience get your book?
- You can get ahold of it at timemagicment.com.
So we've taken time management and changed manage
to magic because we believe that the principles
and ideas that we brought forth really
have a magical effect on peoples lives.
- Now can they get this on Kindle and Amazon Prime?
- Yes, it's available at Amazon as well.
So you can do the Kindle download
or you can get a paper edition,
whichever format works better for you.
Or you can go directly to our website.
- You know, for me guys, I really like the paper
because I can dog ear it and mark it up
and it's a great go-to guide.
So Shawn, thank you so much.
- Of course. - It has been such a pleasure.
- My pleasure as well, thank you.
- This has been Lea Woodford with Between the Lines.
Thanks for watching.