Episode #814
Are you tired of watching opportunities pass you by? Ever wondered what inaction is truly costing you, not just in business but in life?
In this episode, Doug Holt dives deep into the concept of the “cost of inaction.” Using compelling anecdotes and expert insights, he examines how failing to act can detrimentally impact various aspects of your life—from your relationships to your business ventures. Doug discusses how hesitation can be the biggest threat to progress and offers practical advice on how to evaluate and confront the costs associated with inaction.
Whether it’s the potential loss of business, the emotional toll of a failing marriage, or missed personal growth opportunities, this episode will make you reconsider the true price of staying in your comfort zone. Learn how to take decisive action and avoid the pitfalls of stagnation, ensuring you’re not the one left with regrets. Join us for a candid discussion on making proactive choices that lead to a more fulfilled and successful life.
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Transcription
Doug Holt 0:00
So I can tease my wife and kind of make fun of her playfully a little bit when we’re in a great joyful space. However, if the account is low, just like a bank account, my teasing and joking can almost seem like an overdraft, the needy place to constantly tease and try to regain the Alpha status in the relationship. She knows if you’re being playful and flirty versus playful and trying to do something with your wife, it’s much different. She has billions of dollars in marketing telling her everything that’s wrong with her and to have her husband doing it to her as well. That’s the worst. That’s what makes you the opponent. You’re the person that’s actually tearing her down.
Doug Holt 0:00
Look at the cost of inaction. If you don’t take action, what is it going to cost you, I see the cost of inaction, taking tolls on marriages and men’s businesses etc, you’re totally stagnant. So the worst place to be, right, it’s hesitations, the killer, what I want you to do is just grab a piece of paper, write down what it would cost you not to take action, right down the costs of being the guy in the rocking chair saying, oh, you know, when I look back on my life, relationships, that’s the number one thing for me, but I effed it all up and focused on business where you’re not taking massive action. If I’m you, I’m pushing all my chips in on that area, everything I’m going in.
Hey, guys, welcome back to another episode of the TPM show. And today, I want to talk to you about the cost of inaction. And this came up from a conversation I was having with a buddy of mine, and he is a high-level consultant. And he goes into companies and fixes them, basically. And we were talking about it and asked him what his price structure is, because I was just curious, you know, I do consulting for equity at times, I was curious what his price structure was. He said, Doug, it’s really simple for me. He said, People don’t realize the cost of inaction and asked me Oh, tell me more, tell me what you’re talking about. Because I totally get that because I do it in my coaching. And every day, I see the cost of inaction, taking tools on marriages, men’s businesses, etc. And he said exactly, he said, Here’s what I do is I go up to the person, I say, Hey, if you want me to come in for your business, and he does this just with businesses, but you know, to give you context, and he says, what I want you to do is he says this to the person he’s pitching, what I want you to do is grab a piece of paper, write down what it would cost you not to take action, right? In other words, what is this problem costing you? So if it’s, let’s just say, as an example, I’m gonna make a very simple one. That’s not what he does. But if it’s if your leads are down? And if they stay the same? What’s the cost of not getting enough leads for your pipeline? What’s that cost you right? Do you have to fire salespeople? Do you have to, you know, hold payroll? Are you going to lose the lease on your building? Lose your business? What is that going to cost you and lawyer fees and all the things you’re paying, write down the economic cost for you. Now, as an example, if this is your marriage, just and I’ll tell you the rest of his formula here, you might want to write down what the cost of divorce is, like 50% of your assets, right? What’s the cost of the lawyers? What’s the cost, all the other hidden costs within divorce, let alone the emotional toll, I invite you to write that down. And then when he does, he says, Look, I’m gonna write down my number, what I think my value is what my fee is. And if my fee is higher than what you believe this is the problem costing you, then we don’t do business.
That doesn’t make any sense. However, if what my fee is, is lower than what this is costing you and your business, and there’s a Delta there, then we do business just makes common business sense, right? If the delta is a decent size, right, you don’t want to wash it, he says more often than not, he has the owners do this, and he has him spend time with it. Because he’s a high-level consultant, the owners he’s working with are usually very, very experienced, and they probably have a team around them. And they calculate all the costs. And people don’t think about all the hidden costs, let alone opportunity costs. And he says more often than not each of these guys charges a lot of money. There is a big, big delta between his fee, which is seven figures, and they’re up their costs right there. And they look at that and say, Well, this is a no-brainer, if you can actually fix this. And he doesn’t guarantee that you can fix it but you know, you want to bring somebody in early on to do so. And I was thinking about this as he was talking to me about it. And when I was talking to him I just got off what we call a pack call, if you will in these PAC calls, where we have different groups coaching groups come together and we bring them in together and there are a lot of there are a lot of fun, the sense that you get a lot of great guys together and sometimes the guys are in tough situations. And I always hear the same thing. always hear the same thing. Man, I wish I would have done this sooner. And one guy said I wish to have done this three years ago when I spotted that there could be a problem let alone two years ago and again to that man, if he’s listening to this is what’s that cost for you right now he’s obviously taken action. But for you that isn’t in a program like The Activation Method apart from me and while US relationships will go through other areas. What is it costing you if you fall into divorce? What’s it costing you not only financially so let’s go over the financial ideas here. So first of all, you have the lawyer fees. Second of all, chances are you and her are spending more money. You have to get another place to live or she does right so you have dual houses, the food costs go up your taxes go up, right?
You get a discount in the US if you’re married. You put If you’re gonna have to bring in a cleaning person or somebody else or both of you’re gonna have to, you’re gonna have to childcare, what are the additional costs there, let alone now look at the cost of splitting. In most places 50% of your assets 50% are about your business, you might lose your business you might be forced to sell. If you don’t have this all written down, what are these actual costs for you to be in not inaction? Right? Look at those costs. And then now let’s take an emotional toll. What’s going to feel like if it doesn’t work out, what’s gonna feel like it to feel like you failed, or you’re focusing so much on the marriage, that you’re actually your businesses isn’t working, it’s not thriving, I can tell you from my personal experience, that when my marriage wasn’t working, my business was suffering, I throw myself into the business, but I wasn’t as effective as I could have been. And when my wife and I are on point, I can work literally an hour, two hours a day, and do be more productive than I was when we were fighting. It is easily said, and the business works better. Now, if I work for hours, you know, then it’s even better. You get the idea. So you want to look at this and this calculation of inaction of what you’re really taking, what’s the opportunity cost here? Do this in your health as well. Right? What’s it costing you to not act and not hire the personal trainer, a lot of guys will go I don’t need a personal trainer, I don’t need that expense, or join a gym or two gyms. I know guys that have memberships to like five or six gyms. Because they’re investing in their health. And when you ask these guys, hey, why do you have five gym memberships? They say well look, you know, sometimes like to go to this gym for this reason, this one for this reason, or whatever it is. But the cost of ill health is so much more expensive. You know, when you’re bedridden, and you can’t work, you pay almost anything, right not to do that or you’re injured, your shoulder hurts or whatever it is, you pay an exorbitant amount of money to get it fixed. What if you just didn’t do that? What if you just kept things maintained?
What if you kept things at a high level? Right? There’s, there’s an opportunity cost there and you get to choose, I’m not saying you need to join five gyms or even work out for that matter, right? But you get to make that a as a choice. And one way to do that is by looking at the cost of inaction. Right back to my consultant friend, right? He has his sales pitches, basically, looking at the cost of inaction. If you don’t take action, what is it going to cost you? If you take action and hire me, him in this case? You know, what is that opportunity there? So look at your area, look at your life and the five territories. So we teach the powerful man itself. So about yourself taking care of yourself? Are you investing in yourself? Are you doing daily practices of mindfulness for 10 minutes a day or more? Are you taking care of yourself by getting a massage every once in a while you taking care of yourself by making sure eating good food or for you? Maybe it’s your spirituality? Maybe it’s, you know, going to church? Maybe it’s reading the Bible? Maybe it’s reading something? Something positive, you know, what is it you’re doing for yourself that you love to do? Right? So we have self then health? You know, what are you putting off in your health? Are you putting off your workouts you putting off eating good food you putting off going to like getting your bloodwork done to see what’s really going on with your cortisol levels? What are you doing there? And what’s the opportunity cost? Right? What are the medical bills that you’re gonna have to pay? Or the missed time at work? What’s the revenue miss, that you’re gonna have if you if you fall into ill health? And I can tell you is somebody who really seeks out mentors for myself who are much older than me to get advice. 100% of them would, you know, when they fall into ill health give away all their money to be healthy again, all of it. So, you know, doesn’t it behoove us to start working on your health even incrementally, I’m not saying you have to go nuts on it. But when you look at the cost of ill health versus, you know, what it costs to actually get there is a huge delta. So we have self-health and about about wealth. Now wealth can be money, spirituality, whatever you want to do, then you got relationships will come on, look at all your relationships, like what’s the cost of divorce, that’s the easiest one to look at. But you have relationships and other areas that you have costs to? And then, of course, business, right, like my friend I was talking about, you know, what’s that cost?
Now, I’m not saying you have to hire a seven-figure consultant to come in and help you fix your business. Right? It’s not practical for most people to do. But it works really well for him. He’s got a great business. He’s got a great track record. So he does it. But what is it in your business that costs the opportunity cost of not bringing in a new CEO, a sales team a sales manager, or a high-level CMO just to come in as a consultant? In my former life, I did that a lot. Right? I would be the CMO, the interim CMO, and come in as a consultant. I got paid a lot of money. People say how much you’re going to work. I said, well, doesn’t matter. Hopefully, I work an hour or less a week on your project. And they would look baffled at me and said Look, no you don’t want my time. You want my experience. You want me to help your business grow. That’s what you want. Doesn’t matter how much I work on your business. Just like in your relationship, it doesn’t matter how much time you’re spending in your relationship, it’s the quality of the results that you’re after. That’s the key in all of these areas. So I’ll come in and say, look, it’s a minimum of $10,000 for me to come in, and I’m trying to do less than an hour a week. That’s my goal in this attitude baffled people except for the people that I worked with, and they would rehire me and rehire me and rehire me because the results were what they wanted. So when you look at this, as this idea of inaction, right, not taking appropriate action coming in, really, what you want to do here is look at what are the results that I want to get? If I’m not getting the results I want to get in my marriage or anywhere else? Okay, what’s, what is the opportunity cost? What is it costing me this inaction of fixing this? What is it really costing me? And what is it going to cost me if it continues? And by having this mindset, you can really start to look at this more analytically.
I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, that almost every guy that I work with, in coaching and when it comes to our program, if they come in, you know, we have multiple programs, but they come in to solve the relationship angle, like their marriage, what happens is as a result of the work they’re doing on their marriage or themselves, their businesses take off other relationships with their kids, friends, coworkers, they take off, their spirituality seems to start clicking, all of these other things, their health, all of these other pieces of the puzzle come in. But they don’t look at that cost, right? They didn’t even know that was, that’s just a side benefit of taking action. When you’re in an action, you’re stagnant, you’re totally stagnant. It’s the worst place to be. Right? It’s hesitation is the killer, right? In business. In sports. I remember the coaches telling me that in sports, your hesitations, the killer, and soccer we have a thing called the 5050 balls, right means anybody could get it. And another sport is the same thing. But the guys will get hurt. Who are the ones who hesitated? The guys that would go into a 5050 ball with a mentality that this was mine. That’s not a 5050 ball. That’s a 6040. Because I have the edge. I didn’t get hurt and those tackles just didn’t happen. Because I didn’t hesitate. Guys would hesitate to pull away or wait a second, those guys got taken out all the time. The same thing happens in business, the same thing happens in your marriage. The same thing happens with your health. So you got to look at this. What is it costing you for an inaction? So what I want you to do is grab a sheet of paper, and write down the five territories,: health, wealth, relationships, and business, right? In those five territories? What is it costing you to not take action? What is what is it costing you? And then I’ll throw one further. I want you to sit down or think about you and I sit in a rocking chair. We’re eight years old, sipping some lemonade, or whiskey or whatever it is. We’re reflecting on life. What are you the most proud of? Are you the most proud of your business? Are you the most proud of your health? Are you the most proud of your spirituality? The most proud? are you most proud of the money you’ve made? are you most proud of your relationships? What is it? Nine times out of 10 guys will say the relationships by far, right. Sometimes spirituality is up there too.
But it’s usually relationships. I’m so happy if I reflect on my life, the most important thing was my wife and my kids. I hear that all the time, then where are you being inactive in that area? Where you’re not taking massive action. If I’m you, I’m putting all my chips in on that area. Everything I’m going in, and I’m going to work on that. And maybe it takes some time, right? Good things usually do. But take massive action in that area. And stop taking action and write down the costs. Write down the cost of being the guy in the rocking chair saying, oh, yeah, Doug. You know, when I look back on my life, relationships, that’s the number one thing for me, but I effed it all up and focused on business. Or number one thing Doug is my own personal well-being and I spent it all on something else. Right? Where are you make sure that you are taking action in the areas that are most important to you. If it happens to be a relationship yourself, we’ve got a program that’s proven called The Activation Method, simply go over to the powerful man.com That’s the powerful man.com forward slash apply now, the powerful man force.com forward slash apply now. And you can speak to one of our advisors and see if it’s the right program for you. If it’s not us, nope, no harm no foul, right, go somewhere, though. What I’m saying is go all chips in all chips in on you. And that way you can be the guy sitting in the rocking chair looking at a well-lived life, rather than being the guy looking at and sitting in a rocking chair looking at life with regrets. As always, gentlemen, I’m in your corner. Take massive action. See you next time on the TPM show.
