When’s the last time you sat down, mapped out where you wanted to be by year’s end, felt genuinely fired up about it, and then quietly stopped mentioning it by March?
We’re bringing this episode back because the conversation hasn’t aged a day. Goal-setting fads come and go, but the reason most plans die is the same one it’s always been: not enough clarity, not enough follow-through on the how. This episode with David Horsager, business strategist and author of the national bestseller The Trust Edge, laid out a system simple enough to actually use, and it’s just as true now as it was the day we recorded it.
Because it’s not that you don’t want to change. It’s not even that you don’t have a plan. The real problem is you’re working in a timeframe too long to hold your focus and a level of clarity too vague to act on, so you stop the moment an idea sounds good instead of the moment you actually know what to do with it today.
If you’ve got a goal sitting untouched on a sticky note, or a “we need to communicate better” line from your last team meeting that never turned into anything, this one’s for you.
Why 90 Days Beats a Year Every Time
David has a bias, and he’ll defend it: a year is too long for most real change, and 21 days is too short. That “21 days to build a habit” line you’ve heard a hundred times isn’t even true. It came from research in the 1950s and got mangled by motivational speakers looking for something fast and easy to sell.
Ninety days is the sweet spot. It’s long enough to get more done than most people get done in an entire year, and short enough that you can’t lose the thread of it. David’s team runs personal and team 90-day quick plans every quarter, and the process takes 30 minutes per person.
The Questions That Force Real Clarity
The plan comes down to a few simple questions. Where am I right now? You already know, whether it’s your health, your marriage, or your sales numbers, you can put a number on it without a spreadsheet. Where do I want to be in 90 days, not a year, not five years? Why do I want this, strongly enough to survive day ten when the motivation runs out?
Then the real work: How am I going to get there? David asks this three times minimum, sometimes seven. Most people, and most teams, stop way too early here. They say “we’re going to communicate more” and think they’ve arrived at a plan. They haven’t. Keep asking how until the answer is something you can actually do differently tomorrow morning. For his own weight loss, “eat less, exercise more” wasn’t clear enough. Asking how, repeatedly, got him to something concrete: stop drinking his calories. That one specific, doable shift moved the number on the scale, not the vague intention behind it.
SEEDS: The Foundation Underneath Everything Else
Before you can move any big goal forward, David says you need your seeds planted: Sleep, because nothing sustains long-term on empty. Exercise, because you pay now or you pay later. Eat right, which for David meant one standard: four green vegetables a day, no matter what else happened. Drink water, at least a gallon a day. And Source, something beyond yourself that you’re drawing life from.
That last one is where he got most direct. He’s sat next to CEOs, senators, and team owners with nothing beyond themselves, and watched how fast they fall when things go wrong. Without a source outside your own performance, there’s nothing left over when the performance dips.
DMAs: How to Never End a Day Empty-Handed
David’s team calls it a DMA, a Difference Making Action. Every morning, before touching a to-do list with 300 items on it, everyone writes down five things, numbered one through five, on a Post-it note. The filter spells FUN: it has to be a First priority, tied to You and your key objective, with a Number attached. Not “clean my desk,” but “clean two drawers.” And a DMA never depends on what someone else does. You don’t control whether someone picks up the phone, but you control whether you dial.
The One Thing Worth Remembering
When David talked about what he’d tell a younger version of himself, it wasn’t about strategy. It was that the little things, done consistently, are the whole game. He spent ten years paying himself less than $35,000 a year while building his business, and what changed things wasn’t one big break. It was the accumulation of small, repeated decisions, which is exactly why this episode is worth another listen: the tactics still work because the problem they solve never goes away.
Throwback Episode 156 | Interview with David Horsager
Welcome to The Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Well, folks, we have a great author on the show today.
David Horsager is a business strategist. He's a Keynote speaker in and he is also the author of the national bestseller The Trust Edge. I know a lot of you have heard or read that book as well.
He's been featured in Fast Company, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and he's worked with some pretty cool companies like the New York Yankees, which is a fun company to work for, I'm assuming, Goodyear, Wells Fargo, and also the Department of Homeland Security.
So I want to actually kind of know about that. So do me a huge favor. Welcome David Horsager to the show.
David, so glad to have you on.
Chris, it's great to be on with you. Thanks so much for the privilege.
So I do have to start with that. I have to know Department of Homeland Security, are you making us better? Are you making us more safe or what's the deal?
Well, funny, because most people know, you know, the bulk of my original research, from back to my graduate research over a decade ago, it was around trust.
And sometimes I would get introduced for a while, days work with everything from FedEx, Wells Fargo, the New York Yankees to the US Congress on trust.
And I would say, obviously I'm not very good. I mean, there's all kinds of work.
The great thing about what I do, both the new book, the Daily Edge work of these productivity tips, and we'll get into more of that. And the bulk of my overall research around trust is it's very broad.
So the fun is I get to work with everything from John Deere to sport, pro sports teams, global governments. I mean, it's really fun because trust affects everyone more than anything, I believe.
And really a lack of trust is the biggest expense of an organization, a person, an entrepreneur. So it's fun, the broadness, everything from those government organizations. But see, trust is everywhere. People say, oh, trust, that's such a timely topic, isn't it?
Hey, it's also timeless and it's everything of value is built on trust, from financial institutions to any great relationship you're in, every great government, every great organization.
So, and Congress is only going to do what you can. They're only going to take your information and make their choices of what they're going to do with it. So really can't throw that on you.
So, all right, we already know they're going to make their own decisions.
Don't we? Yeah, let's be honest. The new book which is just newly released is the Daily Edge. Simple strategies to increase efficiency and make an impact every day.
So the thing that I always ask every author that I have on the show is tell me what the book is about and why did you decide to write this? Well, there's really three reasons.
Basically, the book is about productivity, ideas, efficiency ideas, effectiveness ideas in one to four page interactive infographic, pictures, bullet point takeaway ideas, ways you can do it to mark 35 ideas that changed my life and the lives of those we serve.
Powerful ideas. The 90 day quick plan, the way I lost 35, I lost 50 pounds in five and a half months. The DMA strategy, the way you can have a day where you never again have a day where you say, I worked really hard but didn't get anything done.
How to have 10 or less emails in your inbox. These tips and strategies. But the reasons are everything comes under trust for us. And so I still believe a lack of trust is your biggest expense.
I believe trust is the greatest asset you can have as an individual organization.
But the way you build it, the eight pillar framework, the way we build trust from the original work, the trust edge, some of those pillars of the eight pillars, Consistency, clarity, contribution, getting daily results.
So they came down to these simple, not easy to do always, but basic ideas that I can do today to move my organization forward, that I can do today as an entrepreneur, a leader, that I can do today.
And so these little ideas, people kept asking me, how do you do this, how do you do that? How do you have so much efficiency? How do you have that effectiveness?
So that it was born out of people asking me, how do you do these in a real actionable way? Not theory, but actionable. It's so easy to read. It's so engaging.
Secondly, there's a lot of productivity books out there that are 300 pages long and I would read 100 pages and I wouldn't get to a productivity idea.
And I'm like, what the heck, I need an idea right now. So. So it's different than any other productivity book in that you jump in on page one, you have an idea that can save you millions of dollars, or at least by page three, you have a way you can triple sales.
You have simple, actionable ideas. Thirdly, a lot of the productivity and efficiency work that we'd seen out there was just be productive, be efficient, and we don't care about people, we'll run over everybody in our way.
I only have five minute meetings, smash everybody on my way. But I get a lot done. And I saw this gap of, you know what, people are our business, relationships are our business.
So it is worth being effective and efficient, but not at the expense of relationships. And of course, trust is everything we're about. And trust has a few sides as we know. One is the way we treat people is trusted.
The other is we've got to contribute and get things done to be trusted. So this is being effective and efficient, but not at the expense of relationships.
So there's a few uniquenesses. And you pick up the book and you see that actionable uniqueness immediately and how easy and quick and actionable those 35 tips are. And I think that's what I like so much about the way that you've laid this out is exactly that.
Like you're saying you read a book on productivity or you read a book on whatever and it takes forever. There's a very large book out there. I won't mention who it's from.
But I have been in this thing for so long and I'm still going, I have nothing. And I finally just sit down, I'm like, I'm never going to pick that book up again because there's nothing there.
The first, if I remember correctly, it was like the first 50 pages were selling me on why I should read the book. Yeah. And at that point, and it's a well known author and so I'm like, you see it all the time though.
I mean it's like the best sales tool is to give them something great that works and then they might want more. And to be fair to The Trust Edge, even though there's a-- That book is three times the word length. But it came out of research. People wanted to see the research.
But even in that book, this book, if you got used to that book and love the tabs and the bullet point takeaways, this has that simplicity and clarity and bullet points, but on steroids because it's that much simpler.
It's only a third the size. It's actionable right off the bat.
No, you know, kind of none of the big research. It all's come out of research out of our firm for, you know, over a decade and it goes back and comes under that trust work.
But it's so actionable and that's what people are loving about it. Now you've got 35 tips in the book. What are. If you were to pick your two favorite, what would you pick? Boy, today I will pick 90 day quick plan and seeds.
Okay. And I go into both of them and they'll, they'll. They would be valuable. We can get into some actions right off. Sounds good. 90 day quick plan.
Well, actually, let's start with seeds for the fun of it here because we can get through it a little quicker. Seeds. You know, people go away and they get all motivated, then they get all excited. I want to, you know, do this big thing or accomplish that big thing.
And then they get back to a regular day. They get back from the compass, they get back from whatever. It's like they lose it.
I started seeing this over and over and over and found that if you don't have your seeds cultivated and planted, it's hard to move forward on anything long term with consistency. So seeds is an acronym. S E E D S.
S stands for sleep. It turns out that we need it. And people used to brag about, I only get four hours of sleep a night. Only. You know what? You get enough sleep, you have a better weight.
It's part of the reasons I'll talk about on the 90 day quick plan how I lost the 50 pounds, very briefly, but you got to get enough sleep to do anything. Well, long term, you lose sleep forever.
All of a sudden, you can't get up and do the most important things. The first E is exercise. You heard it before, but you pay now or you pay later.
And maybe if people would just think about what they can do. What can you do today? What can I do today? I'm not going to go run a marathon like my wife, but right now I'm standing up talking to you.
I burn a lot of calories because if I'm in the office, I stand or I walk or when I'm not having to type, I'm up. And it just makes me feel better.
And I'm way more active than I used to be just by standing, just by doing what I can do. And I give some ideas on that. In the book, this second E is is eat right. For me, when I started tracking in my back pocket exactly what I was putting in my mouth all the time.
And when I started just making sure I would eat four green vegetables a day, I could handle some ice cream, no problem. But I just made sure I had that input of four green vegetables a day.
The D stands for drink water. Turns out we're made out of water. Mostly, we need more of it. Best drink least advertised. If I make myself drink at least a gallon of water a day, everything changes.
And so, you know, this is what you run on. Think about it. The S stands for source. And, you know, I see people, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and their source is all about themselves.
And if you don't have a source beyond yourself, you know, for Lisa and I, my wife and I, it is God. But if you don't have a source, source of light, where you get your life from, in family and friendships and in a faith beyond yourself, it is hard to last at anything.
You think of Landry. Tom Landry, national television, legendary Dallas football coach. The reporter on national television sticks the mic in his face and says, what is it with you, Tom Landry?
After a game on a Sunday, most coaches, when they lose, they're swearing at us, yelling at us. When they win, they're all happy. You're the same every time we interview you. What's wrong with you?
And Tom Landry, if any of you remember back so even keeled, but on national television, he said, I don't know.
I think it's because I have my priorities in order. For me, first comes God, then comes my family, then comes my friendships. If I lose on Sunday, I got a whole lot left over.
And I see business leaders, I see entrepreneurs, I see people on their way up in sales, and they don't have anything beyond themselves, and they fall, and they really do fail because they don't have those that have something beyond themselves.
They have a chance at failing and failing forward, Right? So, you know, it's a long. I sit back next to so many top CEOs, senators, congressmen, leaders, you know, heads of state, and they.
If they don't have something beyond themselves, it's. It's amazing how fast they fall. The president of a pro sports team, I was just next to recently watching the game with him alone in his booth, and I could just see he had nobody beyond himself, nothing beyond himself.
And he makes great money today, but it's empty. And I just. Man, I pushed this one because, yes, for me, it's important to faith beyond myself.
But I'm telling you, playing in life and in business, people don't last well unless they have a source of life beyond themselves. So just a simple hack.
When I start thinking, boy, things are out of whack or, oh, I'm not making it very well, or not last, I just think, am I sleeping well?
Am I eating right? Am I exercising? Am I drinking water? And I got my source in the right place here.
So one quick consideration just in life, before you're going to move any big rock forward or grow any big business, I cannot stress that enough our audience, that that is something we talk about a lot. And that is that there has got to be. Now, there is no true balance.
We've got a ton of entrepreneurs, we've got a ton of leaders and a ton of people that want to be one or the other. And there is no true balance according to percentages.
There isn't a 10%. 10%, 10%, 10%. So trying to find that balance is almost impossible. It's a balance according to what you're doing or what you're putting out in life.
But you're so absolutely correct. If you do not have the God part figured out, I don't know how you make it through all the other struggles, how you make it through the difficult parts.
It is great to have God on your side when you're doing, when things are going well. My gosh, I sure need him in the times when things are tough.
So it is so funny to hear somebody say, what's wrong with you? Why aren't you acting like everybody else? Yeah, well, I can tell you it's because I don't think the same way as they do and I don't experience life the same way being.
And you're so absolutely correct on all of these. Sleep, exercise, eating, drinking water. If you can't take care of the health side, how can you possibly take care of the business side in the long run?
Or whatever aspect of what it is that you're trying to accomplish? So completely agree with you on that.
Now, let's say somebody wants to become more efficient in their tasks at work. What is one of the common mistakes that people make when trying to improve in this area?
One area is not clear, not really having clear. People think they're clear when they're not. And that's where I want to get in. I know this will take a little time, but I think it's worth it to your audience because this 90 day quick plan is one way.
And we get to a very specific way that helps people. This is the way I lost 50 pounds in five and a half months.
But we've had people use this exact same strategy to triple sales in 90 days. Should we go there? Absolutely. 90 day quick plan. It's one of the 35 ideas. Let's do it.
So first of all, I have a major bias for 90 days. Then we'll get into the plan, which consists of six questions. 90 days. First, yes, you've got your MVP or mission, vision, values and priorities.
Yes, that strategic plan can be important, although it's not clear in many cases, and I ask audiences, is it easier to have a 100 page strategic plan or a one page strategic plan?
It's a lot easier for people to have 100, but 100 page plan, they're full of garbage. Nobody knows what to do. No clarity, no action. It's difficult to have a one page plan.
That's the work of clarity. You actually get to something you're going to look at, use and apply and hold people accountable to. That is powerful. So I want to get down to the place where we see the least clarity but the most promise.
And that is 90 days. Think of a year. A year is too long for most change.
Unless you know, if you're building a university, building government infrastructure, yes, you have to think longer term, of course, but for most change, it does not.
A year is too far out, if you don't believe me. Journal of Psychology says, what New Year's resolutions, 2% of the people actually might keep them.
It's very little a year. There's a lot of clarity issues. Number one, people have too many. We agree with Collins, who says if you have more than three priorities, you don't have any.
And I think it was less than 100 years ago that priority was even a plural word in Webster's dictionary. It was supposed to be just a priority. That's all there was. So we screwed that up.
But you can't have more than three anyway. And what do people do? They say, oh, I'm going to learn five languages and I'm going to clean the garage and I'm going to lose 30 pounds.
Pick one. You've got to get clear about something, right? Especially if it's really challenging and difficult. So the other problem with New Year's resolutions is it gets to February, like, oh, I'm still going to get to that.
It's June, I'm still going to get to that. And they never get to it because it's so long of a time frame for personal change or real personal action. It's very difficult.
A year is too long, but there's a time frame that's too short. And you've heard this one, I bet, Chris, you can change a habit in how many days? Well, yeah, the old adage is the. Is it 21 days or 29 days?
21 days. 21 days. There you go, Chris. Nailed it. And I'm telling you, I talk to people across North America and I can say that in the whole audience. 21 days, 21 days. 21 days, 21 days. Not true.
And in fact, it goes back to the original idea came out of the 1950s research and then a book, Psycho Cybernetics in 1960. But that's not even what it said.
But some cheesy motivational speakers took it, skewed the evidence and shared it across America. And Americans bought it because they wanted to be fast, quick, easy. They loved that buy in.
But 21 days is not long enough unless it's highly addictive, maybe drugs or something. But 21 days is not long enough for most real change.
90 days we find to be the sweet spot, powerful. 90 days is long enough to get more done than most people get done in a whole year and short enough to stay absolutely focused.
I had a mentor one time that said, David, I want you to try something for 90 days 20 years ago. He said, David, I want you to try not complaining one time about anything, even the food you eat or the weather for 90 days.
I want to complain about the idea, but I took the challenge, didn't complain for 90 days. And it didn't just change my life, it changed the trajectory of my life. 90 days is absolutely powerful.
So first of all, I want to really push the 90 day quick plan as a time frame. And we do this personally and we also do it in our company and the companies that we serve.
Every quarter people do their personal 90 day quick plans and team 90 day quick plans, 90 days. 90 days. They don't think about how in a year they think every 90 days.
Now let's go to the quick plan six questions. These are the questions of clarity now.
Well, let's just start with number one. Number one, where do I want to be in 90 days in any area of life?
So you can think of this. By the way, we only give an individual 30 minutes per quick plan. So 90 minutes every 90 days they get 30 minutes per quick plan.
If you're doing it as teams for your organization, we give you up to an hour per quick plan. But that is the max. Because what we found is you don't really need to do a whole long strategic planning process for this.
You don't need to do a SWOT analysis, a pest analysis and a pistol analysis. I've done them all and there might be a place for them in bigger strategic planning process.
But you know where you are. Just think about this. In any area of life, if I say, how you doing with your spouse?
You can give yourself a 1 out of 10. Right now you have a sense, a feeling of how you're doing with your spouse. How you doing with your oldest kid. You know where you are with your oldest kid. How are you doing in your finances?
You know where you are. How are you doing with your sales? You know, you could give yourself a 1 out of 10. You could feel it.
How do you think when I lost my weight, you think I had to go to the dunk tank and do a BMI test, go to the hospital? No. I could look down, jiggle my belly, and I knew exactly where I was. So you know where you are.
Number one is where do I want to be in 90 days? Oh, I'm sorry. Number one is where am I right now? Okay, where am I right now? You got to know where you are right now.
Then number two is where do I want to be in 90 days? So not a year, not, you know, five years, but where do I want to be in ninety days? First is where am I right now?
You got to know where you are to know where you're going to go. Where am I with my spouse? Where am I with my weight or health or finances or anything?
Then where do I want to be specifically in 90 days? For me, I knew I couldn't healthily lose 50 pounds in 90 days, but I could lose 30. And of course, I just got focused on that, a way to do that.
And then I lost 33 pounds in that 90 days. But it's important to take them in 90 day chunks.
Okay, so the third question is why? We found if you don't have a strong enough why, you will not last 10 days. You got to have a why that is strong.
As we've seen the Simon Sinek work and much other work today on the why, there's a lot of people think the why is the most important.
I will just tell you. I think it's critical. I think it's important. It is not my favorite question that's coming up soon.
The why still is important if you have a strong enough why. Of course, you don't need a perfect strategy. If a building over there is burning that I'm looking at and my kids are in that building, I am going in. Because my why is so strong.
The why has got to be there. I can remember going to Larry King's home. I was invited. After the first book took off, kind of. And Beverly Hills, 20 leaders sitting around, I got invited. Very unique situation.
And of course everyone else more brilliant and certainly better off than me. It was kind of a crazy deal. I was nervous. I didn't know.
What am I going to ask Larry King, the greatest journalist in the world at the time most known journalist in the world and in journalism, known for being the greatest question asker, which is the greatest attribute a journalist can have.
What do you ask the greatest question asker in the world? Right. I didn't know. So I'm sitting next to this guy and he pipes up, Mr. King, what's your favorite question to ask? Why didn't I think of that?
I'll never forget sitting there and thinking, but that was a brilliant not just question, but answer. Because I remember Larry King looking at the guy and saying, why? Which is the answer.
Exactly. He stood there, but then he got with the answer a little bit. He said, why is my favorite question. Because why motivates people, why inspires people, why unifies people.
You gotta have the why to move anything forward. And he talked about this interview with the President. He said, look at what I did with this interview. And he showed a little clip. So this interview is supposed to last 30 minutes on CNN.
They left it on for two hours because they could tell from the ongoing Nielsen readings that people were sticking glued to their TVs. But watch what I do, Larry said.
And what did he do? He just said, why did you do that, Mr. President? Huh? Then why did you do that? Oh. Then why'd you do that? Oh. All he does is ask why? And we watched all these interviews, Justin Bieber and everything else.
All he does is ask why any of us could do it. He's the most known journalist in the world. But just shift of thinking for me was, wow. The why is compelling, unifying, interesting, inspiring.
The why is powerful. It's not my favorite question. It's critical. But number four is my favorite. Number four is the real question of clarity. The fourth question of the 90 day quick plan is how am I going to get there?
The fifth question of the 90 day quick plan is how am I going to get there? The sixth and final question is how am I going to get there? Let me ask you, David. Why? (laughs) I'll tell you why! Hey, this is your fun.
Because people don't get this. And please listeners, listen for this next 90 seconds because this can change your life. How? How? How? Whenever you ask how, from now on, ask it at least three times.
It might take seven, but get in the habit of asking at least three. How are you going to do that? How are you going to do that? How you can do that, you get in your team, people stop too early and they don't ask how.
And until they're clear enough to do something differently today or tomorrow, you've got to keep asking how until you or your team is going to do something to solve that problem, move that objective forward today or tomorrow, and everybody can do it.
We work with the biggest organizations in the world. They think there's no way we can get to something that clear. And they sit there in their teams, they. And they ask how?
Until they can do it differently. Tomorrow or today? Today or tomorrow. So you hear this all the time. We want to have a better culture. My question how are you going to do that? Oh, we're going to appreciate people more.
How are you going to do that? Oh, we're going to say nice things. How are you going to do that? We're going to start writing notes. How are you going to do that? And I ask how?
Until they get to something they're going to do differently today or tomorrow, and it changes the organization. You see this all the time. People stop too early and they think they're clear and everybody goes home from the meeting and nobody does anything.
Let me give two quick examples to make this stick and then we'll get through a lot of other stuff, but I want this to stick. First is a corporate example.
Ten years ago, working with one of the top healthcare organizations in North America, top bigwigs. They're tanking, they're losing age gap funding and everything else. They said, david, we need to do something differently. We've got all these consultants in.
We haven't done anything differently. So the team leader, halfway through the workshop day said says, we now know after listening to this, our problem is clarity.
They have eight choices, eight pillars. And the CEO stands up and says, oh, we need to be more clear if we want to turn this organization around. We want to build more trust here. We need to be more clear. So I said, how?
He sits down, talks to his team of eight. And they're all in pods of eight, all over these round tables, couple hundred people. And when he's ready, he stands up and says, okay, I got it.
In front of everybody, with a straight face, he says, we're gonna communicate more seriously. Brilliant. He's got PhD. You know, they got the letters behind their name, right? PhD... and ADD. Anyway, so I said, how?
He sits down, talks to his team. When he's ready, he stands up and says, ah, we're gonna hold each other accountable. Exactly. But they don't even laugh.
They don't even can't hear themselves. I said, how are you going to do that? He sits down, talks to his team. Finally, after however many hows, they get to something, they're going to do differently today or tomorrow. And it changed their organization.
Don't stop asking how. One more quick example on the weight loss. I am not a weight loss expert, and I don't want to pretend to be. I'm just going to give my story part, just a sliver of it on my weight loss, because it's really a story of clarity and.
And you can use this in any part of life. So if this wouldn't work for you, don't use this for anything except for to understand the power of clarity in it.
So I started asking people across America, say, how do you stay fit? How do you stay fit? How do you stay fit? When I see people not creepy, how do you stay fit?
But, you know, anybody look fit? Because when I was traveling and what did I hear across America, they all said the same thing. Eat less, exercise more. Exactly. That was not clear enough for me. So I started to ask more.
I asked more specifically, how do you really do how, how, how? And I would ask specifically. I got 115 ideas, of which I narrowed it down to 15 ideas that I asked how until I could do it differently today or tomorrow.
And those 15 ideas I did for 90 days. In 90 days, I lost 33 pounds. 90 more days, I lost the rest. But the point is, I had to get clear.
So I'm going to give one exact idea that is clear enough. It's not just eat less, it's not just exercise more, because that wouldn't work for me, and I'm not going to do what that person's going to do.
And I'm not going to run that marathon necessarily. But I could do this. One doctor said, David, most men in America, they just wouldn't drink their calories. They'd lose 30 to 50 pounds in a year.
They could eat the same, but they just wouldn't drink their calories. I started thinking about this. I thought really, first of all, it was something I could look at and take action on. Right?
I could look at, oh, any calories in that? Nope. Okay, I can drink it. So I thought, I think I can do that.
I didn't think I would lose 30 to 50 pounds on that alone because I don't drink a lot of alcohol, don't drink a lot of pop, don't drink a lot of soda, whatever you have in your part of the world.
But I started to think about it with breakfast. We often, in Minnesota, we grew up drinking orange juice. I started to look at that. There's like seven oranges worth of calories in a glass of orange juice and no value. And I started.
You want to get sick? You want to kill your immune system? You want to catch a cold? Go drink orange juice. I had to have a shift of thinking.
So drink a glass of water, eat an orange. But the point is, I could look at pop. And pop was one of the hardest because I grew up without much money. I don't know about you. We didn't have pop growing up.
Except for the one week where we bicycled up to Hope Chapel for vacation Bible school. That's the one week we didn't have to work so hard at the farm.
We'd bicycle up there with our brown paper sacks, open up our sacks, and the rich kids would have tins with Superman on, Superwoman on. I'd have a brown paper sack. The rich kids would have Coke and Pepsi that week.
Only I got to have something just like the rich kids. Shasta. Have you ever heard of Shasta? Yeah. Nickel a can, baby. That was so special to me. I get on Delta today.
I don't care what class I sit in, they offer me my own can. I cannot say no. So I had to make a shift.
And so for six months, I used to say Coke once a while, even though we didn't drink a lot of pop at home, still. Oh, Coke or Pepsi or whatever. I started getting the habit. Fresca. Fresca. Now, Fresca doesn't have any calories in it.
Now somebody that's listening is going to say, that's a bad for you, too. It's got aspartame or something. It might, but I had to make one change at a time.
And the point of the story is you've got to do something you can do, and you've got to get clear enough you've asked how until you can do it. And for me, it was no problem to shift and say, yes to Fresca, no to Coke, yes to water and an orange, no to orange juice.
But you've got to think of what you can do. If I had to give up ice cream forever, that would be a problem. Giving up chips or potatoes, that's not a problem.
Depending on how you're worried, figure out what you can get clear on and actually do. The point is, I can look at anything I drink and say, no calories in it. Yep, I can drink that now.
I drink some calories because I can stay the same. But for six months, I didn't drink a calorie. Right. The point is how, though I'm moving in, how do you sales?
How are you going to do that? Okay, how are you going to do that? Because people are going to make more calls. How are you going to do that? Am I going to do that? How are you going to do that?
How are you going to do that? I'm going to appreciate people more. How are you going to do that?
Until someone says I'm going to write a thank you note every day for the next 90 days, I don't trust them because that is something I can actually do. Clear on? Are we clear?
We are absolutely clear. I love it. It's powerful, man. It is absolutely powerful to be able to drill that down to a place of saying it's not absolute.
Like you said, it's something I can do. Absolutely. And that's such a powerful process. You talked about the DMAs, the Difference Making Action strategies.
So jump into that. Tell us about that. Tell us why should people be making a habit of doing DMAs on a daily basis? All that kind of fun stuff.
What we see is so many people look at their to do list in the morning or whenever and they get overwhelmed because they have 300 things on there, 600 things, really important, right?
So we don't take action on that many things. It's so unclear. And so we have this process called DMAs, Difference Making Actions. We have a to do list online or on some tool of list or whatever, no problem.
But every morning everybody in our company pulls out a post it note. This is highly technical as you can tell. Post it note. We put the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on the side.
That's all. You can't have more than five. And we call those our DMAs. And what we do first thing in the morning is we say DMAs Difference Making Actions.
What are the most important difference making actions I could do in my role? To move our key objective, current objective or priority forward to fulfill our mission. And our mission is developing trusted leaders and organizations. So everybody knows it.
So in their role and we all have different roles, what's the most important thing I could do to move my key objective or key priority forward today? What's the most important thing I could do?
It might be making a call, it might be writing a 10 page article, it might be this, it might be that. Whatever it is for you and anybody can do this. Biggest companies, smallest companies.
But I'm telling you, you start to do this process, you never have a day where you need to get anything done. And we try to make those things fun. F U N by the way.
So The F stands for it's got to be first things first, first priority first, number one first. Then it's got to be you. In the acronym fun, first things first, you is under your key mission and key priority.
And the N stands for number attached. There's got to be a number attached. So you can't say, I'm going to clean my desk. You can say, I'm going to clean two drawers or I'm going to clean for 20 minutes.
You can't say, I'm going to make more phone calls. You can say, I'm going to make five calls or I'm going to write three letters, I'm going to write two appreciation notes, but you got to have a number attached.
And by the way, we try to have these things done by 11 in the morning.
So what we notice with people is many people around the world do everything they can to keep from doing the most important thing they ought to do today to move the organization forward.
And this keeps us from that. We push ourselves, encourage each other in a fun way to do the most important things first.
And we've seen companies take this on in their culture. And the other thing we find is so many of the DMAs and organizations take two minutes, but people don't do them.
It's writing that one appreciation note, but people don't do it. It's making that one or five phone calls and people don't write that, do that most important phone call and tomorrow it's cold or it's less meaningful, or it's less, you know, important.
And they got to do the most important things today. And by the way, DMAs never count on anybody else, only what you can do. So you don't have to say, I'm going to get a hold of five people.
All you say is, I'm going to make five calls. It's not on what they do. We know if we each make the right amount of calls, the right amount of sales will happen.
But if we don't ever make the calls, you'll never get a hold of anybody. Right. That's the simple process.
And if you want to see any of these videos, I think I said I give your audience about $1,500 worth of content and a bunch of private videos.
How to do DMAs, how to do 90 quick plans, just a few short spots. If you email us, if you want to email [email protected] and put Chris in the subject line, you can get access to all this stuff for free.
I love it. I love it. Good stuff, man.
Couple last things here. You also discussed habit changes. What are some tips to break out of counterproductive habits?
Well, this is a good process. It can be a long process. I actually have 15 full steps in the book. Let me just touch on a couple things.
Number one, it's really hard to get rid of a habit. You really want to think about replacing a habit. In other words, it's hard to say, I'm just going to stop.
Let's say you watch too much TV, I'm just going to stop watching tv. It's much better to say I'm going to stop doing this and start doing something else.
Maybe, let's say I would enjoy. Let's say I'm going to replace that with racquetball or I'm going to replace that with a conversation with my kids or whatever.
It's much easier to think of replacing things than just getting rid of things.
So getting absolutely clear about it, looking at the benefits, I mean, some of the questions we think about are what if I don't doing it is going to hurt me within the next five years, and what if I don't start doing it?
It's going to really hurt my future if I don't start doing it within the next 10 years.
If we get really clear on that five years, they're really clear on that. That helps motivate us. But maybe the one quick tip on that one is really think about replacing.
It's so, yeah, if you're just leaving yourself open with nothing to do. I don't know if people grew up with the old adage that idle hands or the devil's workshop, but if you've already got a habit in place--
That's why so many people that stop drinking soda, drinking or smoking cigarettes, you know, those things that are addicting in their lives when they remove it.
If they haven't replaced it with something that can keep the process going, you know, something that's more healthy, then you're right. You just get...
You get stuck waiting and all you can do is think about the thing that you just gave up or the thing that you just stopped doing.
Well, David, great information. I always ask everybody this question. If you were to go back in time and talk to a young David, what is the one thing that you would tell him?
And it can be anything. It can be anything. I'll give you a couple. Try to be on one, but one is it really is the little things that make the biggest difference. It really is. Those little things make a huge Difference.
So it's never, you know, it's not if I'm overweight, it's because I've had too many mocha lattes or scoops of ice cream over years. Not because I ate too much this morning for breakfast.
No, if I'm a good husband, it's because I've loved and honored my wife over years. Not because I gave her a diamond ring and a dozen roses one time. Not that that wouldn't help, but if I'm a good leader, it's because I'm doing the little things.
You know, we hear it all the time. Well, the leader says, well, I shared the vision at the annual meeting. If you don't share that vision every 30 days, nobody knows it.
Well, I appreciate people by giving them plaques at that thing. If you aren't appreciating people along the way, it doesn't matter. It is the little things in sales, it's the little things in building companies. I was just sharing with my team.
This might be interesting. So, you know, I started my first business in a basement of an 86 year old woman's home. My wife and I lived there.
No windows, no bathroom, no kitchen, black mold on the walls. We lived there for two years because I knew we had to keep our expenses low. And now by God's grace, of course, things have changed in the last six years dramatically.
And my team sees, wow, these offices and this farm and whatever all. And I was just telling my team and showing them basically my Social Security thing where 10 years.
It wasn't until the 10th year of business that I paid myself more than 30 something thousand dollars. That's my wife and I for 10 years. So now to see what's happened the last six people. Oh, just overnight or oh this or oh that.
It's like, no, it's the little things. It's God's grace and the little things done consistently that finally ramped a significant, you know, in spite of me, team and impact and some other things.
But that's where I just go back to little things, little relationships, little this, you know. The second thing I was going to say is just an add on to that and that is don't discount any relationship.
Doesn't mean you can meet with everybody. You know, you can have too many people wanting to call and set up for coffee and everything else.
And you do have to say no to people. I get it. Every choice is a sacrifice. If I'm with my kids, I can't be speaking or doing my job or writing. If I'm Working, I can't be with my kids, so I got to make choices and say no to things.
But relationships are huge. And I used to think, oh yeah, people say meeting people, oh this people have made a huge impact in my life and investing in them.
I thought I just didn't understand a young David, did not understand the value of mentors and relationships and even listening to things like this.
Chris, not to pander at all for sure, but to really learn and be mentored ongoing in life, I did not see how amazingly valuable it would become later.
Powerful stuff, man. So let me ask you, was one of the habits you asked yourself clarity on if this is going to hurt me in 10 years I must change.
Paying myself less than $35,000, that was something. Okay. First year was 9,000, baby. So yeah, I mean if this doesn't change in 10 years, there's a big problem.
I think I took too long maybe, but you know, it took me four years to write my first book and I'm sure glad I took all that time to not have books that a lot of people have out there, but to have something I'm, you know, all that happened to that.
Yeah. Totally proud of. Totally proud of. Absolutely. Well, brother, how can people get more of you?
Trustedge.com is the quickest way. Trustedge.com they can go to my name too. Davidhorsager.com the YouTube channel has over 100 videos on it.
But probably the trustedge or trustedge.com is a great way to see all that we do out of trustedge, Leadership and Horsager Leadership Inc. And boy, I'd be grateful to help anybody.
But remember, for your listeners, if you put Chris in the subject line and say just email us. That's all you have to do for the next week to Ryan r y a n @trustededge.com you'll get access to a whole free private space of tools.
Many of these videos that show how to have 10 or less emails in your inbox or the DMA strategy or all that. Fantastic. Well, folks, the book is the Daily Simple Strategies to Increase Efficiency and Make an Impact every day.
David, thank you so much for coming on. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Chris. Appreciate you.
Well, folks, you need to be putting these things in place.
These are great tips. These are great. The productivity tips throughout the book. It is powerful and again, this is going to make you so much more successful in what you do every single day, not just the long run.
Of course it will make you more successful in the long run, but this will change your every day. As always, we hope that this is something that you enjoy. Take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.
