Ari Meisel productivity machine is all about doing less and being more

Ari Meisel is the best-selling author of several books including The Art of Less Doing and The Replaceable Founder. He is a self-described Overwhelmologist whose insights into personal and professional productivity have earned him the title, “The Guru’s Guru.” He can be heard on international stages speaking to thought leaders and influencers, and for those who prefer the written word, Ari’s blog posts offer immediate and actionable advice for entrepreneurs seeking replaceability

Show Notes

02:02 – The philosophy behind “Less Doing”

  • The idea came from Ari’s ordeal with Crohn’s Disease and went from working 18 hours a day to an hour a day
  • The extreme time restriction became the new way of being productive
  • The idea is to optimize, automate, and outsource everything in your life and business in order to be effective

06:40 – The end goal of making yourself replaceable

  • People have an incredible ability to grow, but people cannot scale
  • The bottleneck of the bottle is the top of the bottle, just like in business
  • We want businesses to grow beyond the founder

08:00 – How to switch to the mindset of letting go

  • The assumption of just because you started the business, you’re doing it right is false to begin with
  • There’s a myth that a founder and business is unique.
  • Founders should be able to leave the business, explore, learn, and bring those contributions back to the business

10:02 – How to ensure that the tasks delegated are done properly

  • Most people on business leaders are not great at communicating
  • A leader may be good at setting a vision, but conveying it is a different way
  • In Ari’s company, any decision that has a monetary value of $500 does not require any approval

18:43 – The right way to hire the right people

  • Ari prefers seeing someone fix a mistake rather than how they make something new
  • One of the question that he asks people is “Tell me about the time you screwed up at work and how you handled it”
  • Another question is “If we don’t hire you, why do you think that will be?”

20:33 – What “Overwhelmologist” means in Ari’s language

  • There are so many ways that people feel their overwhelm and ultimately the worst kind is when people get into situations where no matter what they do, they feel like they’re going to disappoint someone
  • There is no such thing as work-life balance

27:03 – How Ari manages to be a coach by “Doing Less”

  • There are two coaches who works for Ari.
  • The people who joined the program for the last 6-7 months hasn’t even met Ari
  • Ari offers selective 1 on 1 coaching but even that is done over Voxer app
  • The key is to take your ego out of the picture

Connect with Ari Meisel

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