364: The Disaster of Delay: Why Avoiding Hard Things Leads to Accidental Mediocrity

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Ever notice how everything people want in life comes from doing difficult things (that very few people are willing to do)? This is often because you can’t tangibly see an impact right away.

From growing up on a small Oklahoma farm to leading the Walt Disney Paris expansion and the Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World Resorts, Lee Cockerell has navigated through one challenging situation after another (after another).  

Lee suggests that giving visibility to the toughest problems in all areas of your life and dealing with those problems daily until they are resolved is a far more successful way to approach challenges in life or work

ABOUT LEE COCKERELL

Here’s a guy who knows how to make things happen!  As Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World Resorts, Lee Cockerell oversaw 20 resort hotels, 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, and a lot more! He created Disney Great Leader Strategies, which has now trained 7,000 leaders at Disney World.  Now, he’s turned his focus to speaking and writing on leadership. His latest book is called Time Management Magic.  You can also get a quick dose of leadership wisdom on Lee’s podcast, Creating Disney Magic: Lessons in Leadership, Management, and Customer Service!

Lee’s accomplished all this AND managed to earn the title of “Grandfather of the Year” too!

From working on a farm as a young man to running a commercial kitchen and throughout his career at Disney, Lee noticed a recurring theme.  Facing the hard work, handling the tasks, and making the decisions that he LEAST wanted to deal with, and doing those things FIRST and foremost made all the difference in his career and in his personal life.  It never pays to put those things off.

He encourages everyone to ask themselves, “Am I doing things now that will pay off later?”  Go to the gym today to reap the benefits of good health down the line.  Move into more affordable housing or give up dining out so often in order to prepare for your future financial wellbeing. 

Evaluating your situation regularly and taking action on what requires attention will keep you from getting “stuck”.

Ask yourself…

  • What don’t I like about my life?
  • What don’t I like about my health?
  • What don’t I like about my job?

Now, ask yourself “what am I going to do about it?

Lee’s advice:

“If you don’t spend a lot of time planning the life you want, you’re gonna spend a lot of time living the life you DO NOT want.”

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN 
  • The importance of having balance in your life.  From finances and career to health, faith, and family, it ALL matters equally.
  • How to set yourself up for success by tackling the “hard” stuff FIRST.  Give visibility to the toughest problems in all areas of your life and deal with those problems daily until they are resolved.
  •  How being mindful of where you currently are in your life and in your career and thinking carefully about where you want to go in order to make the right moves is key to your success.
  • How your words and your actions affect those around you, whether or not you are aware of it.  Understand this and you’ll be better able to leave a positive impact.
  • The questions to ask yourself so you can set your priorities in line with what you want to achieve in life.
LEE’S BOOKS:

Time Management Magic: How to Get More Done Every Day and Move from Surviving to Thriving – simple time management strategies for work and life

The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service – how to improve service in your business or organization

Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney – on leadership at work and in life

YOU CAN ALSO FIND LEE HERE:

LeeCockerell.com

Creating Disney Magic: Lessons in Leadership, Management, and Customer Service – Lee’s podcast on how you can create magic in your organization!

Thrive 15 – Thrive15.com is “the world’s premier online education platform that helps entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, and “in-trepreneurs” (entrepreneurial-minded people who work within an organization) learn how to start or grow a successful business.” Thrive 15 offers an extensive library of training courses, and Lee has given us a promo code good for 1 month of the service for free!  Sign up with promo code “magic”. 

For more information on defeating debt and aligning your finances to fit your goals:

For more information on finding the time to do what matters to you:

GET IN TOUCH WITH LEE!

Email:  Lee@LeeCockerell.com

Twitter:  @LeeCockerell

YOUR TURN:

What are YOU working on right now?  What can we help with?  Tell us in the comments below!

WANT HELP FINDING THE WORK THAT FITS YOU? 
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Lee Cockerell 0:03
They're learning that things have to be done, hard things have to be done and you got to go out in the 90 degrees, mow a lawn, man. And one day you wake up and things are not hard for you because you've been there, you've done it. A lot of people have too easy.

Introduction 0:22
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what it does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change. Keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:46
Have you ever noticed how everything people want in life comes from doing difficult things? That very few people are actually willing to do. Now, this is often because you can't tangibly see an impact right away, which is part of what makes it difficult.

Lee Cockerell 01:04
I always tell parents, make sure your kids are getting an increasing responsibility. Make sure at every age, they have responsibilities they have to fulfill and next year, give them more responsibility more and more and more and more, you're doing them a big favor, because they're learning that things have to be done, and the hard things have to be done.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:22
That's Lee Cockerell. From growing up on a small Oklahoma farm to leaving the Walt Disney Paris expansion and being the Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World resorts, Lee has navigated through one challenging situation after another, after another, after another. At Disney, he oversaw 20 resort hotels, four theme parks, two water parks and a whole bunch more. He ended up creating the Disney great leader strategies which has now trained something like 7000 plus leaders at Disney World. Now, he does much more in relation to speaking and writing on leadership. That's how we spends his time now, but Lee suggests that giving visibility to the toughest problems in all the areas of your life and dealing with those problems daily, until they're resolved, in a far more successful way to approach challenges in life or work. Now, listen later on in the episode where Lee shares more about how to do this. However, since he's a proud Grandpa, I actually began our conversation by asking, if you ever spend any time talking with his grandkids, about what their careers could be, or would be?

Lee Cockerell 02:32
What I do and maybe other people could think about doing this, I take them on a business trip with me alone, one at a time for two or three days. So I went to speak to the navy seals and I took my grandson to Coronado, California. He thinks I'm the best grandfather ever lived because the seals let him do the obstacle course on the beach with the nets and ropes and he spent three days with me and we got to know each other, we talked a lot about the things that he thought he want to do. And what he saw, he might end up being a seal. He's got it, he's the crazy one in the family, he's got a lot of courage. And, yeah, I took my grandson and we talked a lot about what he was thinking about doing. He's studying Biomedical Engineering at University of Miami and ended up getting him to spend a couple of days at Walter Reed Hospital with the head of orthopedic surgery and get at. And I took my granddaughter this summer, went for an hour, went out in the middle of the desert in California to speak to the troops. And she and I were gone for two days. And just, you know, when you ride in a car for six, seven hours, you really get to know them and she's decided, she may want to be an industrial engineer. And we started talking about that, what they do and how organized, disciplined you have to be, to be in that profession. And, of course, Disney has probably the best industrial engineering department in the world and...

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:50
Really?

Lee Cockerell 03:51
Able to give her a lot of feedback. Yeah, I mean, we study everything to Disney because of the lines, you know, everything, you got to move quick, it's got to be efficient, it's got to be a work. And so we have a great industrial engineering department. Yeah. So at Disney, seconds count, you know, if you do 8000 lunches in one restaurant, seconds count. They help us get the procedures correct and how to do it quicker and how to move them and how to, when you need to open another line and when you need to close one and many things. I think Disney's probably got every job exists in the world. It's such as like a city out there. But yeah, it's great travel with the kids. And they... I learned a lot from them, too, because they can help me with my technical needs.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:33
It's mutually beneficial then. So, as some of those business trips, I love that, first of all, but I'm starting to understand how this grandfather of the Year award came about.

Lee Cockerell 04:43
Yeah, well, you know, it's very interesting. Their perspective. They see things totally different. They remember everything. You think they forgot something when there were three or four that you did for them or a time we're together and they don't forget it. It's unbelievable. So yeah, that's kind of one of the good lessons I teach. Don't underestimate the impact you're having on people when they, you don't even realize they're watching you, and are you being a good role model? Because listen, everybody's watching, judging you all the time, and especially children, they are very aware of what's going on.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:15
So I see that in my own kids, and I think I've underestimated that, as well. I have a little kid. So I've got a seven year old little girl, you know, six year old little boy, or will be six in a few days here. But then, you know, a four year old little boy so they're all, you know, they're all pretty young. But, I mean, they remember and vividly recall different situations around, you know, even when they were three or whatever it is, and wow, I can't believe that you remember that. And two, they talk about it like it's been such an impact. So I totally understand what you're talking about, just from a different lens.

Lee Cockerell 05:50
You better be behave yourself.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:51
I know...

Lee Cockerell 05:52
In front of them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 05:54
No joke. So I'm curious about a couple of different things here, you know, as I kind of went through and learn a little bit about the couple of books that you wrote here and, you know, what you're all about. One of the things that kept popping up is you seem to have this worry about how disorganized people are, both in their careers and at home. And just in general, and I'm curious, first of all, what do you mean when you say that? Because you've said something similar, numerous times, whether it be on the podcast or, you know, in your books, and so on and so forth. So, you know, what do you mean, what's your worry about the disorganization part? And what do you mean by that, first of all?

Lee Cockerell 06:32
The biggest worry I have is I think people don't do the right things at the right time and start early enough in their lives to get the right things going, that'll pay off later in their life. And then they underestimate that they could have had a really great life and they didn't pursue it because they didn't know how. And I think at the end of the day, you know, time goes by pretty fast and next thing you know, you should have, you know, I always say things like, "if you don't save your money when you're young, you're not going to have a good retirement. If you don't exercise, least when you're 30, start. You're going to end up with in a wheelchair when you break your hip or have osteoporosis or worse, I mean, heart bypass surgery or, and I just think people, a lot of people just don't realize that there's not just your job. There's other things, there's 10 or 12 things that I always think about, I even put them on the back, I put them on a clock. One for each time, 12 o'clock, you know, your face, one o'clock your job, to treat your savings, your children here. And are you spending time on those subjects in a balanced way? And are you thinking about time every day what you should be doing? Where do you spend your time? It's one of the most important things you can think about. Where do you spend your time? Where don't you spend it? Where should you spend it? Why aren't you spending it in the most important places? And you look around and one of the problems is people to keep wanting to do the easy things. And when you do easy things, life gets harder. If you don't have those tough conversations with your boys at work, they're gonna, their performance not gonna get better. If you eat too much, you're going to get overweight and you're going to be in bad health, you don't save your money, you're not going to have a retirement. If, you know, it's, if you do hard things, life gets easier, if you do easy things all the time, life gets harder. So you got to start getting at this concept in your brain that, what are you doing hard this week that's going to pay off down the road? Are you having those discussions with your children? Are you, you know, are you spending the right amount of time with your kids? Having dinner with him at night? You know, just things that just slip by and, you know, I said, you know, I've been married 46 years, how'd that happen? And I got a 45 year old son, where'd he come from? I mean, this is how time flies by and people, all of a sudden you've been working 10 years and you're not doing the right things and you get bad habits and that's how people get unhealthy. That's how they end up not getting their power of interest and savings working for them. So it works out over 40 or 50 years that they have a nice retirement and they can enjoy their life. And so there's a lot of concepts in this book, "Time Management Magic" how to get more done every day because a lot of things, the reason we don't do things in life is because we just haven't thought about it. And a lot of people have no way, nobody's learned a system in high school or college about how to approach your day, how to work on the priorities in life and how to get things done. And it's like any other lesson, you can learn how to do this. It's not a lost cause when you're born. And that's, I hope this book really catches some people's attention and gets them doing the right thing. So they have a better life and they are going to have the way they're working now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 09:44
So I really want to talk to you about some of those principles and lessons. But before we get into that, I really want to ask you, you talked a lot, you know, just a moment ago about how doing the easy things, you know, often won't lead to necessarily where you want to go. And I'm curious, first of all, you know, if we go back a couple of years, where has that happened for you? Or where did you first learn that lesson the hard way?

Lee Cockerell 10:16
I think sometimes, you know, parents have the biggest impact on that ability for people to do hard things in your life, you know, I grew up a little farm in Oklahoma. We always had jobs, we work. If you have a farm, you work. It doesn't matter how old you are, you have something, you have to do, you have to clean the barn, you have to do something. And then my brother and I always had jobs, you know, when I was in high school, I worked in a lumberyard. I'm loading boxcars, same at sheetrock and I drove a delivery car. We had jobs. My first two years, I was in college, I worked in the kitchen. And it was just the way it was and I think, when you learn early, it's not like punishment, but it's just the way it is, it becomes who you are. And I always tell parents, make sure your kids are getting an increasing responsibility. Make sure at every age, they have responsibilities they have to fulfill whether it's just taking the trash out or feeding the dog or taking the dog for a walk or babysitting or something. And next year, give them more responsibility more and more and more and more, you're doing them a big favor, because they're learning that things have to be done. And the hard things have to be done and you got to go out in the 90 degree and mow the lawn, man, you know. And one day you wake up and now things are not hard for you because you've been there, you've done it, you know, a lot of people have too easy. And so I think a lot of it starts early on are just getting better habits. And I think that's one of the ways people need to think about it. So...

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:42
So you got some of this stuff early on then. Has it always been, and this is gonna sound like a funny question. But you know, has it always been easy for you to do some of the harder things in comparison to most people? Or did you have some of those times where you stumbled and fell? And I'm curious, what one of those times would be?

Lee Cockerell 11:59
You know, yeah. Now, I did. I was not good at a lot of things, I was very insecure, I was kind of this introverted young little kid. And as I grew up, I didn't like confrontation. And I remember I had a chef who worked for me at one of the Marriott Hotels, I brought him with me. And he wasn't performing. I didn't have the guts to deal with it. And my boss called me in one day, and he said, Lee, either you deal with the chef or I'm gonna deal with you. And that was eye opener. And I just kind of started after that. And, then I went to the time management class in 1980, I was in my early 30s then. That's where I learned about, really learned this concept of write down every day in your day planner. Make sure you got hard things in there. The biggest personal problem you have in your life ought to be in there and your biggest business problem ought to be in there and make sure you work on it every day till it goes away. And I started putting hard times have that hard discussion. You know, I got a guy working for me. He's not performing, I'd write on Wednesday deal with Joe. Fix Joe today, all in and have that tough conversation. And you know what, after it's over, he feels better and I do too, because we're on the same page and he already knew he was in trouble. And now we've talked about it and our goal is to getting turned around. But if I don't have that hard discussion, I'm going to end up firing him and it's not even going to be... it's going to be 50% my fault because I didn't deal with it. You know, it's like your kids, if you don't deal with kids, when they do inappropriate things, they grow up and have all kinds of problems. You're gonna have to take a big part of the blame. And so yeah, it's... I've had a lot of things that are hard for me, you know, I mean, I've been exercising a lot but there's been periods when I was working, I gave it up and gained 10 or 15, 20 pounds and I get back to it, because when you... when I take it easy, the couch, you don't lose a lot of weight on the couch.

Lee Cockerell 13:50
I know how that works, right?

Lee Cockerell 13:52
No, you don't. The couch can win too. So I schedule my workouts and I walk about 50 miles a week now. It's better on my knees and I have a trainer where I work out with weight training twice a week. So to build bone density, so I don't fall and break my hip and end up in a wheelchair or walker for the next 20 years. That's when you got to start to think about, are you doing things now that will pay off later? Exercise now, pays off later, you know, save your money, it pays off later. Don't eat so much pushback from the table, you won't get overweight, and which creates 10 problems with diabetes and all kinds of problems and start to think about the hard things you're not doing and what impact they're having on your life. And this is a concept that can help people dramatically.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:38
So I love the, you know, now getting into tactics a little bit, I love what you said about, Hey, I just take that hard problem or I take what the, you know, most difficult problem is for me at the time, or the biggest problem or whatever you want to look at it as and then I'm literally writing it down in my day planner, so that I'm forced to, I think it does two things for you as I'm thinking about it, one, it forces you to define what the problem is and what you need to do about it, it seems like. And then two, it really seems like it, once you write it down or commit to it in some way, then you've got a much higher likelihood of actually following through on it. So I love that as a technique or tactic.

Lee Cockerell 15:22
Oh, it's staring you in the face when you look down at it in your planner. And by the way, if you don't know what your biggest problem is, ask your wife.

Scott Anthony Barlow 15:31
You know that's so true. Alyssa is my wife and she helps me understand my biggest problems on a regular basis, in a good way. But...

Lee Cockerell 15:40
Yeah, I tell people at work you know, you don't think, if you don't know what you should be working on, ask your boss. He will tell you. You know, if you got, if you're confused about what's the most important thing to be working on, ask your boss, "what would you like me to be working on and get finished in the next month?" And that's what you ought to get work on. Don't sit around trying to cover up, man, you know, a lot of us are just insecure about admitting we don't know something, let me tell you, that's mean you don't know something's the beginning, the good move forward. And once you know, my boss tells me something, I get it done likelihood in my career is gonna go a lot better. And so don't be bashful. Because, by the way, we don't always know we are always, we always think we're all great, we always think we know everything, and we don't. Ask people around you, they'll tell you, ask your direct reports, they know what you're not doing very well.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:32
It's usually, I don't know, in my experience, it's kind of funny, because usually everybody around you knows. Same way, you know, you might know and you might be very aware for somebody that you work with, or somebody that reports to you or somebody that you report too. But often that communication never seems to happen.

Lee Cockerell 16:52
Well, it depends what position here and too, look at Brian Williams. A lot of people do but they didn't tell him. And next you go, you and the higher you get, and you get become more successful and all you start to kid yourself, you start to think you're hot stuff. And once you get your hot stuff, you go down the wrong path, and you think you're bulletproof. And then you need somebody to be straightening out occasionally. And that's why it's good to have a nice, honest wife or a nice honest boss, or somebody who will tell you the truth. This is where people get in trouble. They don't know the truth. Because what they dream up is not always the truth.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:29
This is true.

Lee Cockerell 17:30
Many years, I thought I knew everything.

Scott Anthony Barlow 17:33
I still have to resist that urge daily. I'm a couple of years younger than you but I find myself, I don't know, falling into those patterns and having to actively resist that. But you know, so you mentioned you know, going down the wrong path and you mentioned, you know, knowing what the truth is or, you know, discovering the truth. And I'm curious, this is something that's challenging for people about their careers. And a lot of the folks that listen to this show, you know, they really struggle with knowing whether or not they should be putting their all into pursuing different work than what they're currently doing, versus sticking it out where they're at. And you know, what is the right path? And what, you know, what is the truth there? So I'm curious what advice you have for that, or maybe how you did some of that, throughout your career?

Lee Cockerell 18:27
I'd say the number one most important thing is, if you wake up every morning, excited about what you're doing, you know, and you want to do it, you know, and I was lucky I got fell into a career which I love my work. I mean, are there hard times? Sure. 911 was it fun? Hurricanes are not fun, recessions are not fun, but on balance. I love my work, and I loved what I was doing. I talked to a lot of people every week that are stuck. You got to be careful where you get stuck and don't, you got to make those changes early in your life before you get a two kids mortgage salary that you can't replace.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:01
Okay, well, let me break in here really quick then and say that, you know, before you get stuck, or even if you're already stuck, you know, let's make those changes early. And one of the ways that you can do that is our free eight day course, eight day email course that helps you figure out what it is that you want to do. And all you have to do in order to make that happen is text, HTYC to 38470 and then just follow the text and then we'll set you up and enroll in the course that's, HTYC text that over to, to 38470

Lee Cockerell 19:35
People call me say they want to go to Disney. And go calls "I'm making 100,000 or I want to go to Disney and I'm 32 years old" So we'll forget it. They're not going to hire you, they got a lot of people inside, they're going to promote befor they get you. You should have done this when you were 22 because if you want to go to Disney, you're gonna have to go 40,000 and you can't do it because now you're stuck. Be careful where you get stuck. And this is what happens to most people they get stuck in the wrong town, the wrong marriage, wrong life. They get stuck in the wrong job. And then it didn't take them too long. 10, 12 years after you graduate from high school or college, you can be stuck if you're not careful. And I tell people today, if I was young, I would not buy a house, I'd rent. I would keep trying till I get the right job where I love that profession and don't get locked in too early. Because then there you are, and then what are you gonna do about it? So you gotta love it. If you don't love it, you're gonna be miserable. And how can you imagine doing something for 40 or 50 years that you hate? I mean, and that you don't like, you don't feel appreciated, you're not excited, you're not passionate about and it's hard for a lot of people because a lot most people lead a good life. You know, they have a good life, they pay the rent, make kids eventually get to college, maybe and they put food on the table, but they could have had a great life. And they settle for good because hey, you know, it's not as much risk to have a good life as it is to have a great life. You got to take risks, you got to change jobs, you've might have to do different things. You know, I always tell people, the reason people change is either education they learn there's a better way or really, they're the other reason people change is a crisis. And there's only two reasons to change in life. And hopefully, it's not because of crisis. So yeah...

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:21
So then I see a lot of people not taking your advice. Let's be clear about that.

Lee Cockerell 21:27
Right. I sell more books elsewhere.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:30
So there's, I don't know, job security or author security, or whatever you want to call it.

Lee Cockerell 21:36
It's exactly what it is, it's security.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:39
Yeah. So I think that's what's causing people to not make some of those choices to some degree. But I'm curious, so, you know, I, you know, you know a little bit about the show now, but really, the people who are listening to this are those that have already started to go down that road where they're starting to get stuck, or they already feel stuck. So they've already made some of those wrong choices. And I, you know, I've been there too. I, you know, part of the reason I do what I do now and the reason I have Happen To Your Career is because I've been down that road and, you know, I've been in a job where I wasn't excited to get up in the morning and determined that I was going to change that. But that's not an easy thing. So, since there's so many people out there that are flat out not taking that advice, and quite frankly, it's really, really difficult. You know, what would you advise people to do just to get started when they're already in that kind of stuck place?

Lee Cockerell 22:40
Yeah, you know, I think the big reasons people get stuck is they have a mortgage. Then they got really stuck in the last few years because couldn't sell your house and it was underwater. So I would say if housing come back, I'd get out of as much debt as I could. I'd work on that first to get unstuck with a lot needing so much money that you're earning. And kids don't care where you live, by the way, they don't care. We moved 11 times, our son's moved all over the world. He's totally normal. He's totally well adjusted. Kids make friends much quicker than adults do. Don't say I'm not moving because of the children. Children are great. As long as they have a loving family and it's safe and you take good care your kids, they'll go, they may be, when they're teenagers and you move on, they'll yell at you over the weekend, because they're mad, but they'll get over in two weeks, so have more friends than you do. So I think you just got to get yourself in a position, I don't, maybe have to go borrow money from your family, I don't know, you've got to get you just got to work on it, you got to figure it. And most things people are stuck is economics. This is why they can't make the move to go try something else, you know, and when I got my own career, I had a few problem but we didn't have a house till we were in our 30s because we just rented apartments and when I got fired, it's no big deal. I quit, it was no big deal, we could just pick up and move, I didn't have to go to all that trouble. And so you got to get yourself in a position where you can survive for a while to try something new or/and a lot of people don't have that kind of courage, they just can't do it, or your wife won't go along with it or, and so you end up and you lead a pretty average good life, which there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that the difference between good and great is so big, it's unbelievable. And I... that's how I think about it every day. I mean, like when you have surgery, you want to have a good surgeon or a great, you want to have good children or great children. You wanna... so, you know what great feels like. You want to have great children, you're going to do whatever you have to do, right? You're going to do whatever you have to do for them. And we've got to start thinking about that better. And hopefully we can hit kids earlier so that they don't get stuck so often, you know, maybe some part of us get stuck and a lot of people are not wired to take risk either. Some people are just so insecure, they just are paralyzed. Some people are not gonna be able to do anything but maybe we can give some advice to people about here's some other alternatives or maybe you got to get your wife's, got to take a job now when she's not working, and she has to work, so you can go do your thing and build your career over two or three years. And then, you know, it's not so important what you make in the first few years, what's more important is what you're making in those last 10 years. So a lot of people get too stuck too early with not a lot of income, but they think it's enough and it works. So you got to just dig down deep, you got to go try to get help, you got to get counseling and got my father in law.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:36
All those hard things, right?

Lee Cockerell 25:37
Yeah, it's hard. It's very hard. And I mean, we sold our house in Springfield, Massachusetts, and took a loss. I had to take a check closing, you know, that was another good lesson. I knew I was only gonna be there a couple years, I don't know why I bought that house. You know, cuz everybody buys a house. You got to be careful about doing what everybody else does.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:57
I did that exact same thing. They did that exact same thing. We, I literally have a photocopied picture of the two checks for a total of $72,000 that we took to closing. Because we made that exact same mistake. I have them available right here in my studio reminding me never ever to do that again. But...

Lee Cockerell 26:20
It's true. That's sucking sound your hear is when you own a house, and takes all your money. To maintain it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:27
So I don't think people are thinking about it that way though. But one of the things I just realized listening to you, you know, listen to it, tell I guess some of those stories and stuff is that what you talked about just a little bit earlier about even the simple, you know, simple tactic or technique of no defining what the biggest problem is that I need to deal with today. And then writing it down so it's staring you in the face, like it really seems like that's a, amazing way just to get started with that because, you know, I'm sitting here thinking and you know, I'm thinking about it from the lens of careers and everything like that. But you're right,, you know, so many people do get stuck because of those economic, you know, economic motivations. And...

Lee Cockerell 27:08
I can give your listeners a, you know, on page 28 of my new book "Time Management" there are a few questions says, "ask yourself these questions. What don't you like about your life? Second question, what don't you like about your health? Third question, what don't you like about your job, your friends, your relatives or your salary? What is the biggest problem in your personal life? What is the biggest problem in your work life? And the last question is, what are you going to do about it?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:38
I love those questions.

Lee Cockerell 27:40
And I'll tell you there's one other quote in the beginning that makes people sick almost. This is if you don't spend a lot of time planning the life you want, you're going to end up spending a lot of time living the life you do not want. So you can think about it from that perspective.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:55
So that's an interesting note to start wrapping up here. And I know we're starting to run out of time. I...

Lee Cockerell 28:01
Now we've depressed everybody.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:03
Well, you know, I think there's two ways you can look at it though, Lee. Because I think you can, I mean, if the answer to that is depressing, then that means you have to change it, right? And I know people are listening to this podcast because they want the change regardless of whether you're making the decision to make the change or not, that's a different story but you have to, you know, using some of those types of questions, you've got to be able to commit and make that change even if it's small steps, even if it's just dealing with, you know, one hard thing a day. But I would highly recommend that if you don't have it out there, you know, check it out Lee's book "Time Management Magic" and you've got a couple other ones too, you've got "Creating Magic" as well. Which I apologize, I haven't read that one. But if it's anything like "Time Management Magic" then I'm gonna guess it's pretty darn good. So...

Lee Cockerell 28:52
Well the three books by the way, one, "Creating Magics" about leadership. How to be a better parent, better leader at work, better in your where you worship, wherever in your life, how to be a great leader. The second one is this "Time Management Magic" how to be a better manager, how to keep your life under control. And the third one's, "The Customer Rules", which is how to improve service in your business or your organization. And so I tried to cover those three subjects and yeah, and so that's why they're a little different. But, you know, you got to do all three if you're going to be successful.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:24
Well, Lee, I really appreciate you taking the time, making the time to come on Happen To Your Career, and this has been a fun conversation for me and I only have one other question and that's where can people connect with you. They want more Lee, where can they go and connect with you? How can they reach out?

Lee Cockerell 29:44
I'm the most accessible guy in the world. If you go on my website, leecockerell.com it says contacts and then there's my phone number, my email, my website. And I want to mention one other thing, I'm part of an organization called thrive, thrive15.com thrive15.com. And we've made 5, 600 videos on how to be better, they're 15 minute videos and every five minutes they stop and give you a test to see if you've learned it. And at the end, you get points and you can learn about how to hire, how to fire, how to get a business loan, how to do a franchising, we're going to have 1200 videos on there. And if anybody wants it, they get it free for a month. They put in the promotion code magic at thrive15.com magic. And it's free for a month and go look at all the videos they want. If they like it, they can subscribe to it. If they don't like it, then forget it. But it's become very popular because this is a way people are going to learn in the future, video questions. I think every kid in America go to school in 15, 20 years because they'll be able to go online go to college for free. And it may not be as good as being on campus, but it's better than not having the opportunity and so we got involved in that and we think this is going to be a big way to teach and to make education available. It's really targeted at entrepreneurs who are trying to figure, they got a good idea, but they don't know how to do all the technical stuff. So that's what we're doing with that one. And so that's pretty cool.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:08
Evaluating your situation regularly and taking action on what requires attention is one way to give visibility to the difficult areas that Lee mentioned in this episode. I want to give you four different questions to do exactly that. And to know where to address those difficult areas right away, that we can apply all the stuff that you just learned now. Ask yourself, "what don't I like about my life? What don't I like about my health? What don't I like about my job or my career?" Now ask yourself, "what am I going to do about it?" When you have those answers to the first three questions, by the way, we have so much more for you next week right here on Happen To Your Career podcast. We cover a much requested topic from our listeners, our clients and our students.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:55
So if I go, like on FlexJobs or LinkedIn or whatever different site and I am looking at openings, if they don't say that they're remote, or telecommute or something along those lines that I don't even look any further. I just stopped there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:10
That's what I've been trying to figure out for a year is like, what am I stuck on? Like, for a year, I've been struggling with it. Am I in the wrong role or the wrong company or both?

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:22
Okay, we'll be covering, "how to find companies that match your values and what's most important to you?" All that and more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. Until then, I am out. Adios.

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