Joe Casabona [00:00:00]:
When I was a kid, I would say things like, I won't forget, or when I'm a dad, I'm not gonna lose my patience and get mad or I'm bored. But as you get older and life puts you in various unforeseen situations, it's easy to get blindsided and react in a way you hoped you wouldn't. I think about this a lot when I consider what's changed between turning 20 and turning 40. And there's a common theme that has cropped up. Pruning. Letting go of what doesn't work. Letting go of those small slights you perceive that really have nothing to do with you. Letting go of where you used to spend your energy because it wasn't worth it, and making more space in your life for the things that matter.
Joe Casabona [00:00:46]:
And I thought that there was no better person to bring on to talk about this than my friend, fellow freelancer, and fellow father, Austin L. Church. He's a deep thinker, committed family man, and he wants to help people. We cover a lot of ground in this episode. Actually, we're coming into this interview mid-conversation because it got so good before I even hit record. I had to do it midway through our pre-conversation. But it all comes back to one thing. Prune what steals your energy so you can put it into the things that matter most.
Joe Casabona [00:01:23]:
And we start with something we're both passionate about. Good books. If you're overwhelmed by a chaotic business that's stealing time from your family, Streamlined Solopreneurs is for you.
Hey, everybody, my name's Joe Casabona, and I've been there. And on this show, I will show you how to turn chaos into clarity so you can stop checking your email at the playground. So, like the last business book I read, which confirmed how I feel about business books, is Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. I don't know how you feel about that book.
Austin L. Church [00:01:56]:
It's a good book for people who need a paradigm shift. It was a book that when I got to the end, I kind of shrugged because I thought, Oh, I've been doing this for years. And I don't think that meant the book has no utility, as much as if you've already gone through the paradigm shift, then you don't need the book. But when I have coaching clients who are still locked in that paradigm of, well, I can't afford to hire a VA, and I think, well, you can't afford to hire a VA because you haven't hired a VA, and so they're chasing their tails in their thinking. Then I'll hand them that book. And there are a bunch of books I've read that I shrug. I think that's going to be a good recommendation for the right person that I encounter. But it's never going to be in my top five or top ten.
Austin L. Church [00:02:58]:
I don't know, maybe I'm cantankerous now and think. I just don't want to waste time on a book that is like a B minus or C plus or whatever in its category. Like, what is the best book in that category? Go read the best book in the category or the subcategory or whatever or. And this is kind of where I've been recently. Go read old books and find the ideas that I've started calling them long ideas. As in long-lasting, as in durable, as in halfway through a generation, they seem to be forgotten, and then the next generation or two generations later finds them again. And it's new to them, but it's actually quite old. And so I love looking for those because I think, well, the ideas that tend to resurface once a generation or once every two, those might be the ideas worth building your life on and your business o,n versus whatever is hot, right?
Joe Casabona [00:04:04]:
Yeah, absolutely. We don't want the pogs of business ideas. Right.
Austin L. Church [00:04:09]:
We want the Pokémon. We want the Pokémon keep coming back around.
Joe Casabona [00:04:14]:
That's right.
Austin L. Church [00:04:16]:
Yeah. I haven't seen them in a while.
Joe Casabona [00:04:19]:
No, no, I haven't thought about them in any real way, shape, or form since 1998. So like, you know, or 1996. 98 might be generous. Oh wow, this is really good. Right. Because, like what you said about buy back your time is perfect. I feel like it should have been named How to make your first hire. I understand that that's not like a sexy book-selling title, but this is really my problem with business books, right? If you read five, you've probably gotten all of the ideas out of them, right? Like if another, if, if another book I read mentions the Checklist Manifesto, I'm just going to lose it.
Joe Casabona [00:04:54]:
And it's not because the Checklist Manifesto is bad. It's. It's because every business book feels incumbent to mention that. Or like atomic habits, like, yes, if we're reading your book, we've probably read that book. Or like if it's your first business book, it's a good business book. And those are not the books I'm trying to read.
Austin L. Church [00:05:14]:
I mean, to your point, a lot of good thinking around business is built on first principles. And so if you understand first principles, like the basic building block of building blocks of problem solving, which include an understanding of human psychology and even some just like design principles that seem to be present in the world, like reciprocity, is one. You know, the idea that if for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. Or. Or Twain said it, and I'll paraphrase, if you pick a cat up by its tail and swing it around, you'll learn a lesson you can learn no other way, which is mistreating a cat and that it's going to claw the crap out of you, right? And so it's like, sure enough, in business, it's like, if you bring in this fundamental ethic of fairness, you will tend to be longer lived in any business venture and as a business leader as a whole, if you're not just mistreating people every step of the way, it's like, do we really need a business book to say, hey, golden rule, you learned it on the kindergarten playground. You know, treat other people the way you want to be treated. Do we really need another business book? And I would say I could say no, because this is obvious. I could also say yes, and maybe this is me contradicting you or pushing back, right? People tend to be very forgetful, specifically my children, specifically when it comes to hanging up wet towels or not walking around the house eating food.
Austin L. Church [00:07:01]:
Just get a plate and pick one place, and you post up. And then mom and dad don't have more messes to clean up. But we're forgetful. And so I think that's why business books come out that get on your nerves. Because if you know what the fundamentals ar,e and there's a book that comes out and it's about some fundamental. You're like, did this really need to be written? So that's the first part, and then the second part is. And did it really need to be 283 pages long? But that's the book industry for you. You can't write a book that's 37 pages long.
Austin L. Church [00:07:37]:
You can't get to the end of the idea and say, that's it. I call them fluff sandwiches, where you have an intro where you introduce the idea, you have the conclusion where you repeat the main idea, and then everything between is just examples and anecdotes. And here's another place this idea has shown up. You could have just stuck with the intro and the conclusion, but that wouldn't be a book. What do you think about fluff sandwiches?
Joe Casabona [00:08:07]: Dude, that's like, I mean, there's a reason that Blinkist exists. Right.
Austin L. Church [00:08:11]: I think a big part of the problem that we see with business books now comes down to like, how easy it is to self-publish. And I love that. On the one hand, because the gatekeepers can all go away. On the other hand, there used to be some editorial process that would force people to create a book instead of just producing a manuscript. Because a manuscript and a book aren't the same thing. A manuscript can be this patchwork quilt of blog posts. But if I. And that's kind of what I did with my book's free money.
Austin L. Church [00:08:53]: I had this manuscript, I handed it to my developmental editor, Amanda, and she didn't say This is garbage, but she said, I think we've got some work to do on turning this into a cohesive book that takes readers on a journey. And so, yeah, I think the publishing industry, as it has evolved, it's become easier to publish books that don't feel and act like books. And by ac,t I mean take you on a journey. And then, yeah, I think different people have different goals with books. So if my only goal is to say that I'm a published author, I'm going to go on a long walk, I'm going to speak my book, I'm going to pay somebody to clean that up, and then I'm going to publish that. And it's like a stream of consciousness sort of word varmint, varmint, word vomit kind of is a varmint. But you get what I'm saying. It's like, okay, cool, now I get to say I'm a published author and that will help me get speaking gigs and then I can be the rainmaker for my whatever company.
Austin L. Church [00:10:03]:
I just. A lot of books that I've read over the past several years don't seem. The authors did not seem to have a lot of respect for their readers. And I think that changes or the reader's time maybe. How much do you respect your reader's time? If you don't want to waste readers time, you're going to write a different book.
Joe Casabona [00:10:21]:
Yeah, this is exactly right. Like this. And this is like why, you know, I think buy back your time. Maybe it's because it was routinely recommended to me and I thought, oh, this is great, like a bunch. And like I read it and I'm like, this is not, it's not for me. Like that's a nicer way to put it. But like I didn't feel it was great, to be honest. Right.
Joe Casabona [00:10:39]:
Dan Martel is also kind of on My list right now, because I don't know if you saw his LinkedIn post about how six weeks ago he told his team that if AI wasn't doing 92% of their work, they were going to fall behind. And now he's done it and it's great. And I'm like, six weeks, you're telling me you changed your whole business in six weeks and now your team shows up 8% of the time and it's been great. And there's no way that that's true. And I just think that's disrespectful to other people's time. Right, because you're selling them a promise that can't possibly be true. That, you know, is not true. But it's getting 2,000 or 3,000 comments on.
Joe Casabona [00:11:11]:
On LinkedIn. Right?
Austin L. Church [00:11:13]:
Great at getting attention, for sure. And again, it's like, I've struggled to be controversial on social media. I say struggled. I don't want to be. I don't enjoy being controversial. I don't. I don't enjoy the thought of showing up to comments where people tell me how, what a terrible human I am. Like, and you're going to have trolls no matter what you post.
Austin L. Church [00:11:39]:
But, yeah, I think it takes a certain personality type to just throw up a post like that and know it's going to get attention and then say, cool. That's top of funnel.
Joe Casabona [00:11:50]:
Yeah, right. And there's like, the argument to be made, right? Like, get the attention and then, then you can really help people. But it's just like, it's not a.
Austin L. Church [00:11:58]:
Game I'm willing to play. At least I haven't played it much yet. And the few times I have tried to play it, it's backfired. Because really, I just want to love everybody. I want everybody to be okay. And I'm like, if I'm more of a lover than a fighter when it comes to how I show up online, then it's not going to work very well when I try to, as a tiger, change my stripes.
Joe Casabona [00:12:23]:
Yeah, agree, agree. I just want to help people. Right? This is why, like, I get so fiery when people say, oh, 92% of your work can be done by AI or skip your family stuff, miss dance recitals, as long as you make money. I get annoyed about that because it's not in the service of helping people. It's in the service of attention. In my. In my opinion, people buy into that.
Austin L. Church [00:12:49]:
They do. And I'd say if they do, it's on them. Because I think I've gotten to this point in my life where I see a post and I look through the post to the values behind it. If that person has a high value for getting a certain type of attention, or if that person has a high value for building just a ton of wealth, or if that person has a value for being famous, I don't share those values. And so it has gotten easier for me to at the very least not compare my results to those of other people whose driving motivations and values are at odds with my own. I look at people who don't have kids, and I do have kids, and they're very important to me. And I don't want to miss the dance recital. There was a soccer game that my daughter played in when I was out of town, and I hated that.
Austin L. Church [00:13:52]:
Like, I hated missing one. So it's like, I don't want to miss them. That's what's important to me, is to be there for my kids. And there are other people for whom that is not important. And then I see content that certain people make, and I'm like, oh, okay, we're optimizing for different things. I just need to make sure I don't actually let people into, like, the sort of board of advisors. In my mind, they don't deserve a seat if they're optimizing for very different things, because I could get their version of success and would end up with a failed marriage, estranged kids, a great deal of money, perhaps, but also a great deal of misery. And not to say everybody who has different values than I do will end up miserable.
Austin L. Church [00:14:47]:
But you've got to discern that. Like, you've got to say what drives them. If that doesn't drive me, I need to go find people who actually have the type of success I want. Those are the people I might emulate.
Joe Casabona [00:15:00]:
This is why I asked you on the show, because there's always a lot of wisdom. My brother told me the 9 out of 10 rule. He's like, 9 out of 10 things that annoy you do not matter. So, like, just don't worry about, like, you need to train yourself to not worry about it. And now every time I get annoyed, I think, Is this a 9 out of 10 rule?
Austin L. Church [00:15:20]:
I had this moment where I was driving with old business partner of mine, and no joke, we almost got sideswiped by someone who ran a red light doing, like 70 miles an hour through a residential area. And I said something, I don't remember what. It wouldn't have been kind. And Nathan just goes, I mean, you never know. Like, maybe his wife's going into labor. And I couldn't tell you exactly when it was, but I just. There was this shift where I thought, like, indignation and outrage is one of those. It's sort of like fast food that it feels good to eat at the time, but it just makes you feel a little sick later.
Austin L. Church [00:16:01]:
And I realized so much of my emotional energy was feeding into indignation. And then because, like, let's be honest, the world's crazy, and you could find something to be indignant about every five minutes. All of that emotional energy going into indignation, that trickle charge, constantly keeping the indignation battery charged. Like, all of that, you can't send toward your creative work. You can't send toward your spouse, you can't send toward your kids, your friends. You can't put into a post where you're genuinely trying to help someone. You can't spend it thinking, who would be the next great podcast guest if you're preoccupied by all the people who've been unfair to you or who broke the rules. And it was not that long ago that I finally realized, I think I've had enough of that indignation.
Austin L. Church [00:17:06]:
Like, I'm just tired of being upset all the time. And the number of people doing stupid stuff in my vicinity has not gone down.
Joe Casabona [00:17:16]:
Yeah, right. It feels like it's going up.
Austin L. Church [00:17:19]:
Yeah, it feels like it's going up. Especially post-COVID. It's like, while driving, I'm like. It's like, did none of these people were they never taught how to drive? Right, right. But these days, when I don't get sideswiped, I do find myself thinking, well, I'm really thankful I did not get in a car accident just then. That would have been really inconvenient. And, you know, might even pray and be like, I hope that person can make it where they're going without harming themselves or somebody else. And again, this is new territory for me, but I think I like it better.
Joe Casabona [00:17:55]:
You know, this is really timely. I don't talk about my personal religion on this podcast very much. I just don't think it affects who I am. But I am Catholic. I went to confession last night for the first time since getting married, where my wife wasn't, like, telling me I should go to confession.
Austin L. Church [00:18:14]:
I just went, you really ought to go. Believe me, you should go. You should go.
Joe Casabona [00:18:21]:
No, we should go to confession. I just don't like admitting I'm wrong. Right. So, like, it's basically what you do at confession keeps you humble, though, and it's funny you say it that way, because the priest, our new pastor at our church, actually is the one who said confession, which was also weird to me because I'm also the president of the Home and School association, so I have to work closely with him. And so it's just I feel weird confessing my sins to him.
Austin L. Church [00:18:46]:
Understandable.
Joe Casabona [00:18:47]:
Yeah. Right. But his framing was very similar to what you said. Right. I didn't get sideswiped. He said, instead of thinking about it as like, you versus sin. Cause you'll always lose that battle, think of it as you with God. What can you do with God?
Austin L. Church [00:19:10]:
Yes.
Joe Casabona [00:19:10]:
He's like, does that make sense? And I'm like, it makes, I think, the most sense I've ever. Like a priest has ever made to me.
Austin L. Church [00:19:18]:
Yeah, I mean, you know, with kids, they're always doing stuff that doesn't serve. Serve them, that doesn't serve the family as a whole. Certainly doesn't serve you and your wife. And again, to use that word, indignation. I thought indignation can only have as much room in my heart as there is an absence of love. If my heart is so full of love and kindness, there's no room left for indignation. And I think about that with my kids, where if my heart is so full of love and gentleness, there's no room left for harshness now, correction is always necessary. It's like nothing could be more obvious to me than that kids need to be corrected a lot.
Joe Casabona [00:20:00]:
Right?
Austin L. Church [00:20:00]:
Right.
Joe Casabona [00:20:01]:
Yes.
Austin L. Church [00:20:01]:
But, like, that's what's so crazy about when we're grown up and we're just mad at what other people are doing. Our anger or our indignation does not change them, but it changes us. And we carry it around with us and then we dump it on other people we encounter. And like, what a loss that is. Like, what a pity. Because if instead I could just shrug it off and no joke. Now, Joe, in my mind, I will say after somebody does something stupid, like, I was in an airport last week, twice. And I'm like, nothing makes you question humanity's progress like being in an airport.
Austin L. Church [00:20:43]:
But when things happen, I will say, I'm never going to think about this again. So I give myself a rule where if I don't want to leave room in my heart for indignation, then the rule is, then don't dwell on it. Don't ruminate, don't think about it. Like, how does it benefit me when a woman who's got no particular place to be, but she stands up in the aisle while everyone else is still seated. There's always that person on the plane, the people who stand up and then inevitably they go before their turn. What that means is the people who are hurrying to catch a connection can't act like. There are so many ways that you could say this is not fair, this is self centered, whatever. But what if you just said I'm never going to think about that again? It frees up all this mind space to say, man, I'm excited to see my friends or why am I anxious? You know what I mean? So all the things that become available to us when we're not constantly eaten up with indignation and anger, I think we need to be pulled forward by a vision of more time spent on those things.
Austin L. Church [00:21:57]:
Kind of like that idea of with Godness rather than it's like what am I moving toward versus what am I reacting against?
Joe Casabona [00:22:05]:
You know, I think what you mentioned here is really good. Earlier in this interview you mentioned going back to old ideas, right? Like reading books that are basically old ideas. And I heard a great interview with Ryan Holiday a few months ago. He was talking about how like things don't. Well, the interviewer said like things don't seem great. How do you not get consumed by the news? How do you maintain stoicism in a world where every headline is supposed to elicit a reaction essentially? And he said, why would I read a news story that's going to be forgotten or obsolete in a day? Instead you should read books that have been around hundreds or thousands of years because those books persist, they keep coming back. And as you were talking about like letting go of your indignation, it made me think about how a lot of this has to do with our ego, right? Like it's very, we are the main character in this story. Why would this person slight me? Or I care so much about other people and this person doesn't when it's really focus on the things that like actually do affect you and don't worry about other people unless you're in eminent danger or you can help someone who's in imminent danger.
Joe Casabona [00:23:24]:
But just like the slights, the perceived slights that happen day to day, right? Everybody who doesn't make a full stop at the stop sign near my kid's bus stop, I shouldn't be mad about that. I should be mad if someone does 60 through the stop sign, right?
Austin L. Church [00:23:37]:
I think about like a long planter with soil in it and they're just seeds lined up. And each day I can walk up and down this planter and I have agency or I have a decision to make about where I pour water. And the water is my time and attention. And so everything we do nourishes some seeds and not others. And when I think about how much time I spent watering indignation in the past, I just think, well, what a loss. But now I think, okay, for me to dwell on what is true and what is good, and water, the things I actually want more of in my life with time and attention, that in my mind is a much better way to live, a much better use of time and attention. And note that I'm not advocating for obliviousness. I'm not unaware that terrible things are happening in the world.
Austin L. Church [00:24:50]:
I grieve those things. Right. But we're talking about the little nicks and cuts that just happen when you're going throughout your day and you read an email or like you said, you come to the four way stop near your kid's school and somebody does something that serves them and serves no one else. And maybe they even break traffic rules in the process. Are you okay? Is everyone else okay? How quickly can you move on? Because the faster you move on, the better off you are. The less water you pour onto the seed of how dare they. The better off you are. And I guess I think in pictures a lot, just to have that picture has meant a lot for me because I can just say, what am I watering right now? Is that really who I want to be? Is that how I want to show up? And often the answer is no.
Austin L. Church [00:25:42]:
And it's just that awareness that I think can precede change.
Joe Casabona [00:25:46]:
Yeah. You know, it makes me think of, you know, you think in pictures. I immediately make pop culture references. Whenever I think about this. I think about the line from the Billy Joel song Angry Young man where he says, soon the angry young man will become the angry old man. Right. And it's just like.
Austin L. Church [00:26:06]:
Cause you've fed that your entire life.
Joe Casabona [00:26:09]:
Right. And I see it with, well, older adults in my life who complained a lot and now they are just kind of morose all the time. And it's easy for me to be like, well, you know, I'm. I'm fighting for something and this is really important. But honestly, it's not going to be important after a minute. You know, the person who runs the stop sign and didn't hit a person.
Austin L. Church [00:26:36]:
Yeah.
Joe Casabona [00:26:36]:
And to continue with your plant analogy here, because this is really good. You posted on LinkedIn today as we record this, that you've made a bunch of pivots in your career, you have a newsletter in a community called Freelance Cake. But I think you speak to something that lots of solopreneurs, freelancers, small business owners do. And it's get the itch to pivot or pursue a new idea. And you say any pivot must start with pruning. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Austin L. Church [00:27:08]:
Yeah. It seems obvious for me now that if you want to go a new direction, you can't have time and attention for that new direction if it's net new. Right. Hey, I think I'm going to start a podcast. Do you already have a podcast? Well, no. Okay. Where's the time for that going to come from in anyway? If you want to pivot, that's fine, but most of the things that we try to do that don't end up going well, don't go well because we have too many competing priorities. So even if the new direction or the pivot could have been really successful, you can't get full time results from a part time effort.
Austin L. Church [00:28:04]:
And so I think when we don't get the results we want, we think, well, maybe that was the wrong direction or maybe I'm just not cut out for this and we make it an identity thing. Like it's, it's about me. I must have made some big catastrophic mistakes. More often than not, it's no, you just didn't cut out enough, you didn't subtract enough strategically to make room for this new thing. And if you had made more room and freed up more time and attention, you're smart, you're capable, you're talented. There's no reason to think your podcast couldn't have taken off. But you started the podcast and that took a lot of time. But what about marketing it? You can't just put something out and expect people to show up and care.
Austin L. Church [00:28:56]:
You have to promote the thing. And so that's what I wrote about today, and that's what I've been thinking about for a couple of years. In fact, I'd probably trace it back to when I read what was a quite good book, which is essentialism by Greg McCown. But speaking of just recycling old ideas, his book is mostly about a design principle, Less but Better. That came from a German industrial designer named Dieter Dieter Rams. So Dieter Rams's whole design philosophy or methodology was like, take away everything that isn't essential. So his like form and function, you know, less is more. Like a lot of that stuff that we just say as though it's so obvious now was like pioneering during his time when products would just have all these extra features, all this extra stuff that wasn't essential to the function it served.
Austin L. Church [00:29:57]:
So in my own business, I can just see so many new things that I wanted to do that were less successful because I didn't have the courage or maybe didn't see the need to prune things back and make room and say how much time and attention are really required for this to be an experiment that truly has integrity. Oh, I really ought to be putting 10 hours a week into this. And right now I'm putting four and a half. Oh, I. I shouldn't just be shipping episodes. I should be spending at least as much time sharing the episode. You know, forming strategic partnerships, like becoming the person who knows everybody else in my little niche. Like, so it's not a new idea, it's a very old idea.
Austin L. Church [00:30:58]:
But growth by subtraction is something I've become obsessed with and think about all the time. Precisely because I see so many examples of it out in life and precisely because it's counterintuitive, it's difficult, it's messy, and you really struggle to see the value in it until you're a couple years in, I think.
Joe Casabona [00:31:21]:
Do you think we're like similarly aged? I might be 40 by the time this episode comes out. I'm trying to figure out if it's that hustle culture was kind of at a height when we were in maybe our late 20s, early 30s. Maybe it's that like hustle culture was at its height. Maybe it's because when you're like a 20-something-year-old who's starting their own business, you have a lot more time.
Austin L. Church [00:31:48]:
Yes.
Joe Casabona [00:31:48]:
Then you do as you enter your late 30s, early 40s.
Austin L. Church [00:31:51]:
That is definitely true.
Joe Casabona [00:31:53]:
That is definitely true. I'm wondering if, like the idea of this growth by subtraction, do less thing is an idea that's coming back around because we're sick of hustle culture or just that we are in similar lots in life, and so we have made room for the things that are more important to us.
Austin L. Church [00:32:11]:
I think there's that. And if I'm like going to be really honest, part of my arrival at some of these ideas came from looking around, seeing people that I, speaking of ego, would consider less intelligent and talented than myself, get the results that I want. And when I look at what they have going for them and what I have going for me, I think there's really no reason I shouldn't be in that position. Except they stayed very focused. And when I had some new venture that didn't go well. I'm like, maybe it was a, like, fatal flaw in the venture itself. And again, I didn't have that perspective that, oh, there's nothing wrong. Like, lots of people have a successful course business or a successful podcast, or lots of people turn a single book into a speaking career or whatever, right? You see people who've done something similar and they get a lot further down that road and you think, what's wrong with me? Maybe it's nothing, except they did one thing while you were doing seven.
Austin L. Church [00:33:30]:
So hustle culture. I've always had high capacity. And by that I mean I've had pretty good physical health, I've had pretty good energy, I've had the sort of usual mental health challenges that anybody else has, but probably fewer than many other people. I've had a lot going for me coming from a stable family, right? So high capacity, High capacity. But what it meant is if you have like a quantity of 80 in terms of effort to put forth and someone else has a quantity of 50, just having more effort that you could put forth doesn't mean you're stacking up all 80 in the one lane that matters the most. So if someone else they've only got 50 and they stack it all up in one lane and they're like, I'm going all in on the podcast if Joe has a hundred. But Joe has four different things and each one of them gets 25. Someone who has who's less talented or who doesn't work as hard, but they put everything into the one channel and essentially twice as much.
Austin L. Church [00:34:52]:
Well, no wonder they've gotten twice the results. I do think there's a correlation between effort and outcome, if only because the more effort you put in, as long as you're paying a little bit of attention, you can improve your strategy over time. And so part of me getting into my 40s is realizing that trying to do a whole bunch of things all at once is just a bad strategy. It doesn't matter if I'm high capacity or not. Doesn't matter if I'm like older and my energy is changing. Fractured focus is a bad strategy. And I don't know why it took me so long to just figure that out. I made so many excuses.
Austin L. Church [00:35:35]:
I'm multi-passionate Joe. I'm a multi-potentialite. I don't want to do just one thing. Who said you have to do just one thing? But you also can't do 17.
Joe Casabona [00:35:46]:
So I'm not going to put this person on blast because they're a Friend. But they released this thing that I thought was so good, and I was ready to hand over money to it. And then like, 30 days in, they were like, all right, I think this is feature complete, and I'm going to move on. And I'm like, how do you expect people to keep using this if you're going to do other stuff? Right. And the argument in those situations is I'm making a lot of small bets. Except you're not. Right. It's really like you're playing a bunch of different games and you're making one bet in each of those games.
Joe Casabona [00:36:26]:
You can't play Texas hold' Em and Omaha separately and expect to, like, have your full attention in both.
Austin L. Church [00:36:36]:
Yeah, you can play both of those games. And even if you are incredibly sharp, if you're playing two games at once, you will still underperform someone who's not as sharp, but they're fully focused on Texas hold'. Em.
Joe Casabona [00:36:53]:
Yeah, you're miss. You're going to miss a tell in one of those games. You're going to forget where you are and make a wrong bet because you.
Austin L. Church [00:37:00]:
Your attention is divided, your focus is fractured. And so I used to work in my garden with my grandmother growing up, and she taught me to pinch off suckers in the crooks of the vines on tomato plants, you know, and there'd be these sprouts, and if you don't pinch them off, then the plant will send them more resources. And if you have the resources going toward all the suckers along with the main stems and branches, you don't get as many tomatoes from that plant. So, good gardeners know you have to prune in order to increase yield. It's not negotiable.
Joe Casabona [00:37:45]:
This has been great. I want to end on this. Both talked about our kids wanting to be present for our kids. How do you find that balance? Right. I'm doing a social media challenge, and one of the challenges for me is not getting sucked into those comments. And I feel like this therapy session slash interview has been really helpful. But I broke one of my cardinal rules, which was logging into a social media app on my phone. And I was with my kids.
Joe Casabona [00:38:15]:
And so, like that, I have reset my system to make sure I don't do that. And it's, It's. It's great. I immediately made a change. But, like, how do you make sure that you remain present when you're with your family? Because very similar. And I find my mind wandering about work and business and ideas.
Austin L. Church [00:38:35]:
I mean, I'm not great at it. I mean, I think it's a constant battle when you're an entrepreneur, solopreneur, freelancer, and you already know the things to do and you just don't do them. And I'm kind of that way too. Right. So I can tell you that it helps for me to have a morning marketing habit. Social media is a part of that. And once I'm kind of done with it, I don't actually just return to social media throughout the day on most days because I know that it's a distraction for me. Like, if you think, what are the things that really move the needle in my business? Like, cruising social media isn't one of them.
Austin L. Church [00:39:22]:
Right. So the principle there is like, what is important? And just that helps with me and my kids. Right? What is important? The other thing kind of along the same lines in terms of what are the principles or the beliefs that I constantly anchor myself to again and again throughout the day. One of them is really simple. These are like the golden days or these are the good old days. And so that helps me when I'm with my kids, even when they're whining or even when they're doing what humans do and making things unnecessarily difficult. But like, how does your perspective and your attitude change? If you say to yourself often throughout the day, in the moment, these are the good old days, like you're going to the grocery store and the kids make grocery shopping take a lot longer than it needs to. But what if future you came into the present said, buddy, listen up, these are the good old days.
Austin L. Church [00:40:27]:
Like, stop what you're doing, put the phone down and go throw the ball. So I think you have to have that belief that you are smack dab in the middle of the good old days with your kids. And if you believe that, I can never track down the original source. But it said, the idea is that discipline is remembering what you want. And if what I want is to fully soak up the good old days while I'm in the middle of them, I have to keep returning to that throughout the day, have the discipline to remember that's what I want. And then it actually becomes easier to sort of pull away from the inbox or pull away from the screen or leave off what I'm doing and say, let's go do that. So that's not tactical, but I found that the tactics get easier if I'm just deeply connected to. I want to get everything I can extract as much as I can out of the good old days because I'm.
Joe Casabona [00:41:37]:
In them thinking about in the moment, like, how mad would future Joe be at me right now if I don't?
Austin L. Church [00:41:44]:
Go throw the ball right where he is.
Joe Casabona [00:41:46]:
Doesn't have somebody to play catch with, or where his kids are too busy because they're going out on dates tonight, and they don't want to go to the grocery store with him. Like, how mad I'm going to. Oh, my God, I'm going to start crying. So I really love that framing of, like, these are the good old days. I think that's such a powerful picture. Right.
Austin L. Church [00:42:06]:
You know, you mentioned you have two old men. One of them's super cranky. It's like, angry young man became an angry old man. And then you have another old man who's just so kind and wise. And what's funny is, you see people with young. Young or youngish kids, their kids are the exact same age. Their kids. Neither group of kids has great behavior, and yet one parent is responding in an entirely different way.
Austin L. Church [00:42:40]:
Why? You realize I have a choice. And this is coming from a guy who's sort of, like, consistently grumpy. I just was like, I don't. And I told my wife this. I was like, I don't want my kids to remember me as being grumpy all the time. That's a me problem, not a them problem. I have to change my mind. I have to change my attitude.
Austin L. Church [00:43:03]:
I have to change my behavior, and I'm going to. And I'm on that path. So just realizing when kids misbehave and you respond to it with harshness and with anger, with frustration, like, that's a you problem. Kids are gonna be kids.
Joe Casabona [00:43:19]:
One of the hardest things that my wife has ever said to my face.
Austin L. Church [00:43:23]:
Go to confession.
Joe Casabona [00:43:24]:
Go to confession. One of the hardest things to hear it is we're talking about how, you know, she told me that I've been reacting too harshly, and. And she just looked at me point blank, and she said, The kids are constantly afraid that you're gonna get mad at them.
Austin L. Church [00:43:42]:
This is your wife and not mine, correct?
Joe Casabona [00:43:45]:
This is my wife.
Austin L. Church [00:43:46]:
Okay. Just. Just needed to double check.
Joe Casabona [00:43:49]:
Throughout this conversation, I started to wonder. I'm like, are Austin and I the same person?
Austin L. Church [00:43:55]:
Southern version versus New York version?
Joe Casabona [00:43:58]:
Version. New York version. Yeah, absolutely. And, like, since then, I have been counting to five and reacting better and not as angrily. So much so that my oldest has noticed. And she is as expressive as I am and as bad at hiding her emotions as I am. And so, like, one day, she thought I was gonna lose it. And she was like, Wow, I thought you were gonna get mad at that.
Joe Casabona [00:44:24]:
And I'm like, well, meet the new me.
Austin L. Church [00:44:27]:
What you just said about counting to five, it's like there are actually a rather small number of little practices and beliefs that act like a rudder on a really big ship. That's one of them, is just to say it's okay to be mad, but I'm going to wait because I can be mad without blowing up. Imagine that. I can be disappointed without actually using that word because kids don't know how to unpack that I'm disappointed in your decision versus I'm disappointed in you. They don't differentiate between the two.
Joe Casabona [00:45:07]:
Right.
Austin L. Church [00:45:07]:
One is shaming, one is not.
Joe Casabona [00:45:09]:
But yeah. And it's our job to teach. Like, they're not going to be better unless we teach them constructively.
Austin L. Church [00:45:16]:
And they can't teach if they can already tell that you're red with anger. Right. Like, they can't teach. All that comes through is the emotional outline, not the content. And so if you really want to get the message through, you have to self-regulate first. Imagine that we're always telling them to self-regulate.
Joe Casabona [00:45:36]:
Yeah. Well, Austin, we've covered the gambit today. Gamut. Is there not a B in that gambit is like a bet. We've covered the gamut, which is the whole thing. Okay.
Austin L. Church [00:45:47]:
Yes.
Joe Casabona [00:45:47]:
What people don't know if they're not watching this is that you're wearing a shirt that says books. And so I thought it was very apropos to talk open this conversation about books before moving into time management, emotion management, and parenting. This has been great. If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?
Austin L. Church [00:46:05]:
Come say hi on LinkedIn. Code words, growth by subtraction.
Joe Casabona [00:46:10]:
I'm going to include a bunch of stuff in the show notes today, maybe even some books that we both like and recommend. Austin's book, for sure. But Austin, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
Austin L. Church [00:46:19]:
What fun. Thanks for having me, Joe.
Joe Casabona [00:46:22]:
Always a pleasure. And thank you for listening. Until next time. I hope you find some space in your week.