Unlocking How To Crush Productivity With Bobby Dutton

Skot Waldron (00:00.078)
jacked up, you know, it's still doing that thing on your side and my side. So just, just let it roll and then make sure you don't go anywhere after let it upload. And, but if you have no idea what I said, if it's like I cut out or something weird, just say, Skot, I have no idea what you talked about. So.

Bobby Dutton (00:04.354)
Gotcha. Okay. Or I'll do the old PR trick and answer the question I wish you'd asked me.

Skot Waldron (00:20.394)
You can do that too. You can do that too. I always tell people just make it up or you can just ask me what is it? You know, so either way, I don't care. It's less work for me if you just make it up. So that's cool. But whatever you want to do. And then my other question is how best can I serve you today? What's what's the thing I can do for you?

Bobby Dutton (00:26.828)
Yep. Okay. Got it. Sounds good.

Thank you for asking that. really appreciate it. The speaking business is a major new focus for me this year. It's going great. I'm very confident in my ability to dominate a 60 minute keynote speech of any size. What I can't do is make people know who I am and want to pay me to do it. So the goal is to get the word out as a person who can crush a keynote speech and is worth paying for and flying into people's conferences.

Skot Waldron (01:02.734)
Mm-hmm.

Okay. Cool. Well, I want to, we shouldn't, we should talk more about that. speaking is a big push for me this year. it's been going really great past two years. It's been scaling, scaling, and now I need to scale it more. So, you and I should trade ideas and share some thoughts and ideas if you're cool with that. okay. Super cool. Well,

Bobby Dutton (01:13.635)
That's the move. Okay, cool.

Nice. Yeah, cool. Sure, that'd be great. Absolutely.

Skot Waldron (01:43.522)
Anything else we're talking about promoting right here? Look, podcast, anything.

Bobby Dutton (01:46.062)
No, other than that, I'm happy to do kind an organic conversation. If there's areas you think are particularly relevant to your listeners, let's dive into those.

Skot Waldron (01:56.634)
Okay. Cause you start talking about your events business on here. Um, do you want to hit on you? Is that a big push right now?

Bobby Dutton (02:04.984)
Sure, I mean, I guess to be blunt, we don't need tons of new business on that front, but if someone heard and said, my God, my college is doing a concert, we totally need a partner to help make it awesome. Absolutely, that would be great. But yeah.

Skot Waldron (02:10.362)
Really?

Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, all right. Well, we're just going to kind of talk about the stuff. the show really is, um, the audiences leaders, leaders of teams, um, everywhere from C-suite to HR people to, you know, managers, directors, VP kind of thing. So, um, it's a lot of those people and so it's really about unlocking the potential of our people. So if we can just talk on that angle.

Bobby Dutton (02:24.29)
Okay. Perfect. Okay.

Skot Waldron (02:48.664)
I'm assuming that's kind of what you can talk about. I'll bet you do. I'll bet you do. Okay, man. Well, let's,

Bobby Dutton (02:51.886)
I've got some good stuff for that. That'll be good.

Skot Waldron (03:00.804)
Let's rock this thing here.

All right, cool. You ready to go? All right, we go about 30 ish minutes or so. All right.

Bobby Dutton (03:09.677)
Ready. Okay, perfect.

Skot Waldron (03:17.454)
Bobby Dutton, this is going to be probably way harder than killing a keynote speech for 60 minutes. Cause we got to put all of our brilliance into 30 minutes. You going to be able to do that? Okay. I bet you can. All right. This is cool, man. I'm excited to talk to you. Not only because I'm fascinated by aviation, but, I'm fascinated by the fact that I don't really know if you're a pilot, an engineer, or a DJ.

Bobby Dutton (03:25.56)
You. Okay, let's try. Absolutely.

Yes. Yeah.

Skot Waldron (03:47.138)
So, you know, all of those things. Tell me about how, like, what, like, where did that come from?

Bobby Dutton (03:53.518)
Sure. Well, I think the common thing is I'm that curious kid grown up that needs to understand how everything works. And then once I understand how something works, I want to deploy it in a way that has an emotional impact. So I've always kind of thrived right where the engineering tech world overlaps with creative art and happiness and emotion and that sort of thing. And that is common through all of the things that have kind of put me in my wheelhouse. The DJ piece was one of the first times I felt like I was doing what I was born to do. And it was because after a childhood trying to do everything, which is great, but not sustainable, I realized that I could be the tech guy pushing buttons and the performer choosing music and the entrepreneur trying to figure out how to get paid to push those buttons and make it a career and pay the rent.

And that was fantastic. And that's what got me started in events. now fast forward 25 years and I'm running an events company that's just crushing huge college concerts and having so much fun. And it's grown beyond the DJ thing into all the technical design and lights and lasers and stages and huge artists. And we just have so much fun doing it. And it's all about making people happy. So perfect example of tech deploying for emotional purpose. And then

The airplane thing has always been my passion on the side. I have not done it professionally as my job, just because I am nervous about taking something I love and finding myself a disgruntled pilot that's doing it for the work. And I want it to be magic. So I've always held onto that, but it's nice to have a contingency plan. And in the pandemic, when events weren't going so well, at least for a little while, I used my passion for aviation to just level up. stay focused, learn, grow, improve. And I ended up getting my commercial license and my certified flight instructor rating and my advanced ground instructor rating. now I can fly planes. I've been a private pilot for years, but now I can teach people and I can understand the mistakes people will make as they learn and why those mistakes are happening, how to teach them those fundamentals and correct those mistakes. And it's been a fascinating journey. And now as a speaker, kind of putting it all together and taking a step back. I'm letting my team lead without me. And I'm looking at how pilot thinking, which is something I've developed kind of for fun, has totally changed the way that I manage my time, the way I lead my team, the way I communicate with people. And it's been an absolute game changer. Now I'm excited to get out there and teach people about that.

Skot Waldron (06:42.65)
As a fellow keynote speaker, I am always jealous of the pilots or like people that have like climbed Mount Everest 1200 times. I'm going, dang it, I need one of those things, you know? So give me your pilot spiel, man. how, because you know, leaders are listening to this show right now and they're going, okay, this is cool. Like I get another pilot analogy, but I want to hear like, what is the

Bobby Dutton (06:46.198)
Really? Yeah.

Skot Waldron (07:11.546)
core of your message to leaders and teams out

Bobby Dutton (07:16.718)
Great question. And I would say the most relatable thing for all of us is we're familiar with feeling stressed or overwhelmed. Everyone I ask at any conference in any industry, if you say, are you? They say some version of so busy or man, just like crazy, you know? And they think they're telling me it's good, but I'm not hearing that. I'm hearing you're overwhelmed and you're not sure what's important right now. That's bad. Pilots would call that a dangerous scenario, right? Imagine if your pilot got on the PA before your flight and said, ladies and gentlemen, super busy up here. There's like a trillion buttons. I got to push all of them in the right order. The tower says there's restricted airspace. There's a thunderstorm out there. That wouldn't be comforting. So when I hear business leaders telling me how busy they are, I say, oh no, you need some help. And so that's what we can learn is how to prioritize. Pilots sound bored because they're focused, because they know the one button they need to push next and why. And if it doesn't do what they expect, they know exactly what to do about that. That's why they sound so calm and bored. Now, I don't think we should all be aspiring to sound bored as business leaders and innovators, but I do think we could learn something from that, that sense of control, that sense of I've trained for every version of this scenario and I'm ready to comfortably lead 500 people through it, even if there's a crisis.

It's my job to keep people safe and I know how to do this. So when people ask how I am, I'd rather say, I'm great. I'm doing stuff I'm good at. I'm doing it well. I've spent time developing the skills I need to do it better. I know what information needs to get to which people at what time. I know what I'm going to be doing in a half an hour. And on Friday, if I get some downtime in the afternoon, I'm not going to feel buried in a thousand emails that are all competing for my attention.

We need to remember that we can't multitask as well as we think. It's a myth. We can do one thing at a time well. And that's what we need to learn from pilots.

Skot Waldron (09:26.564)
That, the whole, was just flying back from Phoenix yesterday and doing a training for a team out there. And oftentimes when I hear the pilot get on the thing, like I hear the flight attendant get on and it's totally audible. Like I can hear what she's saying, he's saying, I can like understand, but I get on, hear the pilot and it's like, and I'm just like, what did he say? I really want to know what the pilot is saying here. Like can somebody, you know?

Bobby Dutton (09:44.609)
You

Skot Waldron (09:56.602)
And so if, then I just go, it's fine. But the one time that I did experience a pilot with a little bit elevated, volume was we were, I was coming back with one of my employees and granted here at Bobby, I love airplanes. think they're fascinating. It makes no sense to me how they fly, but if you're really thrust and lift, I'm like, shut up. I don't care about any of that. But the whole thing is, is we're flying over the Rockies.

Bobby Dutton (10:21.548)
You

Skot Waldron (10:26.22)
And all of a sudden, like the plane is going, right? And it goes, it just like dips to the side. It just drops, right? And I was like, what? And then, and then it dips again to the other side and drops a little bit. And the pilot gets on the intercom and is like, hold on, hold on everyone. I do not want to hear that from my pilot ever.

Bobby Dutton (10:34.636)
Yeah. No.

Skot Waldron (10:51.77)
So we start, we stabilize a little bit. Everybody's kind of freaking out a little bit. Like, whoa, what was that? And he goes, Hey everybody, you know what? I'm going to turn on some earth, wind and fire to help kind of chill everybody out. was like the word fire. I don't want to hear that either, man. So, you know, I was like other every other time it's like the mumbles, but that time I got a little, little excited.

Bobby Dutton (11:13.506)
Yeah, well, it's interesting to think about where updating passengers falls on the priority list of a pilot, right? And that's the reason it sounds like an afterthought is because it is. Getting you safely to Chicago or back to Atlanta, they have a lot to do besides letting you know what's going on. So updating you is pretty far down on the list and maybe they sound a little bored when they get to it, but it's because they've organized, right? So pilots say, aviate, navigate, communicate. So first I gotta fly this airplane. I gotta manage my airspeed. I gotta deal with the immediate situation and be fully present and intentional. Then only once I've done that well, then do I have to ask the question, where am I going next? What's my next GPS waypoint? What's my next restricted airspace? What's my next frequency change? What's my next weather decision I need to make?

Let's get ahead of that as well. So it's not a surprise when it gets here after I've aviated and navigated. Now it's time to start communicating who needs what information right now. And guess what you, the passenger and 3d back there, you're not even the first person that needs an update right now. Air traffic needs an update. The co-pilot needs an update, right? Maybe you need to get some weather information. Maybe you need to tune in your frequency to the tower. You're going to talk to in half an hour. So that's lined up now. Finally,

All right, they want to know what's going on. We just got a jolt from the mountain updrafts here. So all right, hold on. Hey, guys, listen, it's fine. We hit a little air. We'll be in Chicago in a little while. Like, that's not their job. That's number 10 on the list. It's fascinating to look at that. Even like the one of the things I cover in my keynote is like a crisis, because that's when everything's magnified.

And you go down the like 15 steps of what to do when your engine fails, when you only have one engine and you better make good choices fast. And people are always guessing that the first thing you do is panic and say, mayday, mayday, mayday, I need some help. Is there a place I can land? Can someone tell me how to get my engine working again? Passengers, I'm really sorry. Everything's bad. That's all great, but none of that helped improve your situation. So that should all go on hold. And first you've got to say,

What can I do to manage this crisis properly? Where do I have to land if I have no power? What's my best option? Let's get pointed in that direction right now. And that's where Navigate comes in first. And so the communication stuff is important. And I'm a stickler for communication just like you. But if we're communicating before we're flying the airplane, we're not doing it well.

Skot Waldron (13:58.724)
So how does that, how do you tie that into what you would suggest for a leader? got aviate, navigate, communicate, tie that in for me.

Bobby Dutton (14:06.648)
So AVI8 means we need to be better at being present. We need to learn, we're only focused on one thing at a time and we need to be crystal clear on which thing we're focused on at what time. And anytime I see people getting notifications, right? Like if right now my phone buzzed in my pocket, even if I didn't look at it, that's gonna take a tiny fraction of the energy I'm trying to give you that I should be giving you. So my phone's not gonna vibrate right now, because I've already ruled that out. Some people it will, and now they're... less than 100 % present. So they're not aviating quite as well as they should be. God forbid if they can see their screen or they're unable to resist the urge to pull it out and it says, oh, there's a 30 % off sale at Pottery Barn this weekend only. Even if I'm not going to Pottery Barn, if I let that be what I was thinking about for two seconds, I'm just chipping away at my ability to be here, to fly the airplane. So being present and being aware of how your attention is getting hijacked all the time, is step one for thriving as a human on the ground. Navigate, I think is best illustrated by great calendaring. A lot of the people that tell me how busy they are or legitimately feel so busy, I doubt their calendar reflects their actual day. I bet their calendar has a bunch of things that should get done today, but I bet they also let their inbox dominate their time and steal their attention and reroute them into a whole bunch of different tasks because everyone else told them they were important. Whereas I'd like to see those people have a really dialed in calendar that says, know when I need to sleep, I know when I need to drink some coffee, I know when I need to eat lunch, I know I need to take the dog out to go to the bathroom. These aren't amazing, productive sounding things that belong on a calendar, but if that's what I need to be doing, I might as well plan for it. And that helps me navigate through my day, through my week, through my life.

And then finally, communication comes down to the way we communicate. For me, it's primarily email. And I think that's a classic one where people have 70,000 emails in their inbox and the red number and the badge on their email icon on their phone is terrifying. And if you've got 70,000 emails, heck, if you have a hundred emails, none of them are serving you because you don't know what they are. You can't be aware of a hundred things at one time.

And so I'm a big fan of the inbox zero plan. I know exactly what's in my inbox right now. And I'm really big on getting in there every day. I'll see every email within 24 hours. That's my commitment to my colleagues and people that communicate with me. But I'm not promising I'll respond to them or do the things you ask. I get to choose when that is. I'm the captain. So if you need me to do something that takes an hour,

I'll find an hour that feels like the right time for me to focus on that, that fits organically into my plan, and I'll put it there. And then I'll either let you know, I'll do this on Tuesday at 2 p.m., you'll get an answer from me after that, and now the email's gone. If I just leave that email in my inbox, I've got this stack of other people's priorities for me with no particular order, and if I don't delete those or process those or get rid of those, that's the equivalent of walking out to the mailbox pulling out a fat stack of spam emails, bills, Christmas cards, family stuff, kind of looking at all of them, feeling overwhelmed, putting them back in the mailbox, closing it and walking away and letting them continue to drag me down. And that's just no way to navigate life. So that I think is the communication piece is processing on your terms, communicating intentionally and making sure the right information is getting to the right people at the right time on your terms.

Skot Waldron (17:52.549)
Okay. We're going come back to that one. Cause I, I, got a little, I got a little challenge for you on that one. Okay. So based on what I hear and what I think a lot of the people listening to the show are also going to be thinking. Okay. About this thing. Okay. Okay. Let's go back to at aviate real quick. So be present. What's your, what's your top tip for like how to be present? How can I be more present with the people that I'm leading and maybe work?

Bobby Dutton (17:54.232)
Okay. Ooh, okay. Okay. Okay, bring it on.

I think it really is just awareness of how pulled in different directions we are and being proactive about it. So ironically, the first thing you got to do about that pottery barn notification is spend more time on it to make sure it doesn't happen next time. I want to know if I want to know the pottery barn deals, fine. But I need to choose proactively when I get that, how it's allowed to talk to me. If I choose to sign up for their email list, that's fine. And I'll

Get it when I look at my personal email later, and it won't be when I'm having a conversation with somebody. So awareness and action, even on the small things. Take a week to unsubscribe from everything you don't want. It'll take time. But once you do it, you start to kind of feel that exponential growth of, I can see all the emails in my inbox now, and they're all things I do want to think about today. And they start to line up with the calendar I've set out for today. It's all happening. There's less noise and more productivity and yet I'm feeling more relaxed. And that's the dream.

Skot Waldron (19:22.49)
Okay. So making the effort now so that later I'm not experiencing all that distraction. Cause I will tell you, man, like it drives me. Like I'll be sitting there. Okay. So my, my, my daughter will get like, I don't know, 4 million texts a day from all of her friend groups. Okay. So it's like huge. Okay. Uh, she's 14 and she's getting texts after texts, after texts and

Bobby Dutton (19:42.165)
Ugh. Yeah.

Skot Waldron (19:50.594)
I will be talking to her on the phone and her phone might be sitting on the desk, but I can hear it vibrate through the phone when I'm talking. So if you have a phone, you probably maybe you've heard this before. You can hear their phone vibrate. I am hearing every five to 10 seconds, it vibrates. Like while I'm trying to talk to her, is so annoying. And to me, I sit there and go, like, I'm talking to you on the phone.

Bobby Dutton (19:54.766)
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Skot Waldron (20:19.0)
And it's like somebody's constantly just tapping on her shoulder. Tap, tap, tap. And I see the tap. She feels the tap and it's very distracting. so I say to Lula, like, why can't you maybe just like silence, do not disturb, put on, do not disturb while we're talking on the phone. And she's like, okay, good idea. She does that. And that's fine. she, she can go away and come back and there's like a hundred unread text messages, which

Bobby Dutton (20:47.918)
Wow.

Skot Waldron (20:49.494)
increases her anxiety. And then she's like freaking out about not responding. All these people and her being the feeler, she wants to respond to everybody. So I'll tie this back to leadership. And I'll say that while we're trying to be present, our inbox is dinging, dinging. Maybe we know it's not like audible, but we know it's piling in the back of our mind. going

Bobby Dutton (20:56.842)
Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Skot Waldron (21:13.946)
I'm gonna go back to my desk after this conference. I'm gonna go back to my desk after this block of meetings, this all day training. I'm gonna have a hundred emails in my inbox. And that's crazy. Cause now I have to do them at eight o'clock, nine o'clock tonight. You know? Okay. What do I do instead? Cause tomorrow it's just gonna pile up again. If I try to catch up on all that, like what am I doing?

Bobby Dutton (21:27.998)
Mm-hmm. Well, maybe. Yeah

So I I hear this question a lot and I think the reality is like, we can only do so much, right? Like if you're committed to work 40 hours a week or 50 or 60 or less or more, we can't just cause we get 200 emails doesn't mean we have to do them all. And if I have a boss that is authorized to demand that I do those 200 things, I'm allowed to feedback and say which ones are the most important because you know even if I work at 9 p.m. like long term over time I'm not going to work 80 hours for you indefinitely and continue to be successful or do the work at the level I want and the level you expect so it's it's more about being realistic and you know as far as the the emails piling up right now if I know I'm gonna get 100 emails and I'm not gonna have a chance to look at my inbox today because I can see my calendar because my calendar is really reflecting my time. I'll think ahead and have two hours tomorrow morning or four half hour chunks tomorrow that just says inbox. I don't know what I'm gonna have to deal with but I know I need four hours tomorrow to catch up. And if I don't have time to put that four hours, that's okay but I need to decide which things get my time tomorrow. How much time am I gonna commit to work tomorrow?

Which things get that time? When am I gonna stop for long-term sanity and in turn, long-term productivity? And as a result, when people email me, now they can expect Bobby's got this. He's gonna do it at an appropriate time. He'll read it at an appropriate time and he'll do the thing or respond thoughtfully with his full laser focus of attention when it's right. And I think now I get more done in a day than I used to in a week just because of organizing that system of prioritizing and that's been been a game changer.

Skot Waldron (23:32.794)
Yeah. So you, you, you do the work now again, you do the work now so that you're not paying for it, paying for it later. And I will also say, cause I'll talk to talk to leaders a lot and it is the, a lot of the people that will wake up first thing in the morning, check their phone and that's, and they're immediately responding to the fire from somebody else's night before. And it is, and maybe it's a global.

Bobby Dutton (23:54.424)
Sure.

Skot Waldron (23:58.432)
You know, global company. So there there's time zone things. There are people that during their day that they're having to respond to, or maybe it's California and the East coast where, you know, you got California people at 9am and you got East coast people that are, you know, 12 o'clock it's already lunchtime, you know? And so you're trying to navigate this idea and they wake up and they feel that anxiety immediately. And I said, I said, do you like that? Do you like the first feeling you feel in the morning to be anxiety?

Bobby Dutton (24:20.92)
Totally.

Skot Waldron (24:28.602)
to be fear, that what did I miss? Or am all my bosses gonna get mad at me because I didn't respond to this enough? Because you've trained them to believe that that's the first thing you're gonna do. So what are you training your people to do? And then also, what are you teaching the people on your team that come after you? You're teaching them that you wake up every morning and respond to emails, so now they're expected to wake up every morning and respond to emails.

Bobby Dutton (24:41.208)
Right.

Yeah, and listen, if as a pilot, back to the metaphor, if my engine's on fire, doesn't matter what time it is, I gotta deal with that right now. If my engine's on fire every morning or four mornings a week, I've got a bigger problem. I shouldn't be trying to fly this plane this way, because it's clearly not working. So if it's really that urgent, yes, you gotta deal with it, but you also need to take systematic steps to minimize the fire, take better care of your engine.

Right? And that's where it comes in. It's easy to feel buried by the fires you're seeing, but if they keep happening, maybe you need to take a step back and address the root cause. And that gets into, you you asked the question how to manage the team. And I think that's really important. So my events company, which is, you know, the day job for the most part, we track metrics. And just like an airplane has an engine that needs to be maintained,

You can look at an engine tab and see this, all these green gauges and you know, you look at the needles, if everything's green, you're good. The engine's performing and will probably continue to do so. I don't need to say, let me check the oil pressure and the cylinder head temperatures and the exhaust temperatures. Are they within an acceptable range? No, I just look at the gauges. They're all green. Nothing's flashing red at me. The engine's good. I can focus on the next thing. I want it to build the same dashboard for my team. I want it to get a sense of my team status as they're the engine for the company. So every week, anybody who's getting paid this week as part of the conditions of getting a paycheck on payday, they have to submit their metrics. And their metrics are how happy are you from one to five? Five being ecstatic, one being miserable. How stressed are you from one to five? Five being I'm freaking out, one being I'm totally cool as a cucumber and

Third utilization, which is how full is your plate? Five being, can't possibly take on another thing right now. One being, I have no idea what to do with my time. And those are just numeric data. And then there's an open format field that's like, anything on your mind, give me a little sense of what's going on with you. And this is tracked. And so once a week, I go in and look at the dashboard, just like the engine tab. And if it's green, everybody's fine. If it's red, I look at why. it's, a red condition would be, if stress exceeds happiness, that's an unsustainable engine and we need to do something about it. If utilization exceeds stress, that's also a problem. needs to be happiness is the top of the three numbers. Utilization is the second of the three numbers and stress is the lowest of the three numbers. And if that condition is true for everyone, the team is healthy and will continue operating. My engine will keep flying the airplane. And when it's not, we do something about it. That's when the engine's about to be on fire. It's not on fire yet, but there's something that could be dangerous. So we're gonna talk about it now while we can do it as a calm conversation after coffee, not a freak out, my God, get the fire extinguisher to get these passengers to safety. We're gonna stay ahead of that. And that is hugely important. And I do a similar thing for my own kind of personal analysis. I use three different metrics. How am I feeling every week, personally, professionally, and physically? And that just gives me a more targeted way to address my own sustainability as a human and as a leader. And if I'm feeling a little down for whatever reason, now I can analyze it and say, I haven't been outside in three days. I'm going to take the dog for a long walk tonight after work. And that's going to put me back on track. Maybe it's that simple. Whereas a general feeling of I'm not great, that's not actionable. So I need to get some data to figure out where to focus.

Skot Waldron (28:45.562)
That's really good. That is almost like the most engineering nerdy leadership thing I've ever heard. So that's really cool. That's really cool. like it. So taking care of your engine is really cool. Yeah, man. Keep tying it back to the aviation stuff. love it. So calendaring, is there a calendaring hack that you teach people? Like, I know we talk about hacks all the time, right? But like, what do you suggest? What do you see the biggest problem with people's calendars?

Bobby Dutton (28:49.71)
Yeah, thank you. Sure.

Skot Waldron (29:12.132)
And I think part of it was what you said. It's like, we have all the stuff on our calendars, but then other things take quote unquote priority and then those things don't get done. And then we either just disregard them or, what I mean, the biggest problem you see with calendaring is what, and then what do you think, what's kind of like your, your advice here, you're kind of like, here's what I'm thinking I wish could happen or be.

Bobby Dutton (29:20.91)
Mm-hmm. Sure.

There's three things I think, or maybe more. Calendar hacks, first of all, where to start is often people's question. And my best advice for where to start is it's easier to calendar yesterday than it is to calendar tomorrow. So start by looking at yesterday and ask yourself, how did it really go? When did I start working? Did I go to that meeting on time? Did I take longer than I expected to drive there? Correct it. Make a retroactive calendar that's perfect. Use that to inform your strategy for your calendar and the hypothetical future, because then it's going to match reality, which is huge. And that's the thing that most people are missing. I'll also say everything takes an hour. So if I had a meeting that should only take 20 minutes with the team, it takes an hour. It gets an hour on my calendar. That way, when it only takes 20 minutes, then I have a chance to go to the bathroom. Then I have a chance to grab another coffee, see the fire email that might have just come in, decide.

where that fits in my plan, and then I'm still ahead of things. Pilots talk about staying ahead of the airplane, and that's when you're dealing with the next problem. So when they come, you're ready for them. And by putting everything as an hour instead of squeezing these 15 minute things when they really take 20, that's just gonna cascade into getting buried. So better to stay ahead. Another key thing is you need time to calendar.

So for me, it's like Monday, I'll take an hour or two to get caught up, process the emails. The next thing I do is calendar for like a half an hour. What do I have going on this week? What's the shape of this calendar? What's coming up next week? I got Friday off, interesting. Let me see if I can take that person to lunch I've been meaning to catch up with. Or if I am gonna be in town here, maybe I should see if I can get another meeting with this other client that's nearby. Strategically, calendar and consider that a task which takes time. One other thing, and this is my favorite, color coding on a calendar is interesting. A lot of us do personal work, the kids, the family, these colors, you know, give us a general sense of how we're flowing through the day. But if you're just one person, okay, yeah, you're gonna focus on a personal thing and then a work thing, but it's just you going through. So why does that color change really serve you? I'm not sure that it does. What I like to do for color coding is, get a glance at the calendar and understand which things must happen at these specific times. If I've got a team meeting and people coming over to sit down at 10 o'clock on Wednesday morning, that's locked. can't move that, I can't skip that, I can't miss that, I can't go somewhere. But there's lots of other things that do need an hour. This afternoon I've got to do a marketing proposal for something and it's gonna take an hour, because everything takes an hour. But it doesn't have to be at two o'clock. It could be at four o'clock if something important comes up at two. So the color coding I use tells me I've got eight or nine hours of stuff I want to do today because of my intentional plan. These things are at these exact times and these ones are fluid. These I could shove around. can adjust if I want to. I can move them to tomorrow. and that is huge because it still tells me I'm trying to do this much stuff today. And this is realistic for my list of things I want to get through today, as opposed to all day appointments or things on a list that just say, at some point, I need to do this thing. Great. But what if there's 15 of those things and they'll take an hour? Are you going to work a 15 hour day? Maybe. Probably not sustainable. But this way I can look at my calendar and say, what's my capacity? This week I'm at about 80 % capacity. Next week I'm about 60. And if it fills up and it's the blocks are full and I can't move them unless I move them out of the week. Then when somebody says, hey, do you have time for a meeting? Of course, if it's a critical meeting for a client that wants to do a huge project and needs to talk today, I'm gonna figure out how to make time for it and that's okay. But otherwise, I'm the only person I know that can say, ah, you know what, tomorrow I'm at capacity. No offense, but your thing's not worth shaking up my calendar. But next week on Tuesday,

I could move some stuff around, no problem. Would Tuesday at two work for you? And I love that intentional communication strategy of just, instead of someone saying, hey, can we chat sometime? And I'm like, yeah, we'd love to get together. It's like, how about Tuesday at two? That fits my world. I think it's a good response to what you need and when you need it. And now we have real actionable action in a sustainable way.

Skot Waldron (34:26.81)
When you're going through this with people, what's the response? Are people like, sure, Bobby, that's great. That works great in your world, but my world is not like that. Or are they like hopeful? they like, oh, that would be so nice. Maybe, maybe that'll work for us too. You know, like what's the response you get?

Bobby Dutton (34:33.39)
You. Yeah.

They're always hopeful. The sticking point that worries them is always somebody else controls what they're supposed to do. And they lack the freedom to go in and make these bold changes. And that's fair. And I'm lucky enough to be my own boss and control my own time. But I would argue that the reason I'm my own boss and control my own time and have financial freedom is because I've crushed productivity for over 20 years because I'm good at it.

There's something to be said for that. And so the response I encourage people to consider is to tell your boss, like, give them the airplane metaphor. Like, I need to make sure I'm effective with a working engine that's being taken care of long-term. I want to take care of my team. I want my team to thrive. I want them to be high happiness, low stress, high productivity. And I want the same thing for myself. And so that's the force behind the message. If I were to tell my boss, hypothetically,

No, I can't do that tomorrow. Is it critical? Which other thing is less critical? Because I've got a full day. And if this is the one time a year you need me to work till midnight, that's fine. I believe in the company. I know you wouldn't do that to me every day. You know I can't do that every day or every week. But sure, I'll like burn the midnight oil and hustle. But hustling is not the goal. Long term engine performance is the goal. Getting to the destination safely is the goal. And that's what we're trying to do. And that's what we have to help our boss understand.

Skot Waldron (36:22.308)
Yeah, you said that, and, and your little write-up that hustle's not the goal, right? That stress is a hazard that, you know, when you're flying a plane, Yeah, hustle's not the goal. I don't, I don't want to pile it up there. That's just like, you know, frantically doing all the stuff. That's a really good, good way to think about it. As you said earlier, it's like, I want the pilot who's just like, things are cool. We're all good. I'm turning this knob.

Bobby Dutton (36:26.476)
Hmm Right. 

Skot Waldron (36:51.992)
I'm pushing this button and then I'm just kind of chill and look at the clouds a little bit, you know, cause it's all good. I'm doing my job. flying. going to get to our destination and it's all great. know, but sometimes your engine might catch on fire and sometimes you might have some crazy dip over the Rocky mountains and whatever. Right. So you're going to have to respond in those times or, and, that's important to know when to do that and how to do it, but be prepared for when it does happen.

Bobby Dutton (36:52.076)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. And if you're the pilot that's in control, that's already thought ahead of all the things they did expect when that engine fire happens, yeah, it's scary, but you're like, all right. I know where my attention needs to go. Good thing I have plenty of it to allocate. And I'm very clear that that's the, that's the priority right now. So, all right, let's get after it. We've trained for this. Let's, let's get, get to work.

Skot Waldron (37:39.726)
Well said, man. All right. I'm sitting here, I'm listening to this interview and I'm thinking, how in the world do I get Bobby to come speak at my event? Like I've got this corporate event, I've got this association thing I'm doing, I've got whatever, but I've got to get these airplane analogies to my audience like right now.

Bobby Dutton (37:59.373)
Yeah, that would be great. I would love to do that. I'd love to speak for you or anybody else that's looking for it. And check out the website, thinklikeapilot.com or check out Instagram for little nuggets at pilot thinking. And I would love to make moves and dig deeper because this is only half an hour. Pilots could talk about airplanes forever and I promise I can always bring it back to relevant stuff for anybody.

Skot Waldron (38:25.4)
Yes, you can. And in case anybody is, can't afford Beyonce, you also have a talk called can't afford Beyonce, which I love that idea. So what's that about?

Bobby Dutton (38:33.23)
Thank you. man, so that was kind of what put us on the map as an events company. We work pretty exclusively with colleges and most colleges have their big spring concert every year. And when you survey college students and say, who do you want for a concert? They don't say, well, let's be realistic about costs what could we probably allocate if we're doing 10,000 people at $20 tickets? We should be looking at this level of artists No, they say I want Kendrick Lamar Taylor Swift Kanye and Beyonce because that would be cool Do it school. That's what I that's what the survey says As you can imagine that's not at all realistic because big artists the artists we all love are not gonna come to our schools and are not in in the price range and that creates a real problem because the music we love is the greatest music in the world, because we're used to having this hyper-connected digital world where I can get Spotify to serve up perfect combinations of the songs that I love from every artist, from every genre in the world. And if a concert can't give me all that, it can't compete. And so our solution to this was we would go to schools that were frustrated with their inability to deliver the artists that students were demanding. And we said, what if we took a DJ show everything that's amazing about the best frat party in the basement you've ever heard of, and then made it bigger than a concert by spending all your money on the show. So now we have all the music in the world from every genre, enough to get everybody on board in the same room, enough to keep them engaged for a two or three hour set because we can have no limits musically. And I love the fact that then we would take the budget instead of buying a $50,000 rapper, we could say, let me show you what $50,000 of lasers look like just absolutely changed the game for college concerts.

Skot Waldron (40:29.114)
$50,000 of lasers. Yes!

Bobby Dutton (40:31.566)
What we need is a keynote with lasers. Then it... there it is.

Skot Waldron (40:36.088)
That's what we need. So we'll give you, we'll give you a grand Bobby to come in $49,000 of lasers, you know? So, yeah, that's awesome. Well, Hey, thanks for being on. I can tell that happiness is a big factor in your life. Like you smile the whole time. People are watching this on YouTube. They'll see you smiling the whole time. I see that I get the energy. So it's really cool. It's infectious, man. Keep it up.

Bobby Dutton (40:44.024)
Deal. Where do I sign? Thank you

Skot Waldron (41:04.954)
Thanks a lot. people can go all your website, get all the stuff, and then they can hire you to come speak and you're just going to crush it.

Bobby Dutton (41:10.434)
Thank you so much, Skot. I appreciate you.