I had a great time talking with Purdeep Sangha about fostering faith in yourself and how to recognize and overcome the fear of change.

We discussed how to overcome negative thinking to achieve creative possibilities, going from negativity to a situation perspective, Purdeep's morning routine and incredible framework to asking better quality questions.

We also talked about tapping into the force within and some of Purdeep's productivity hacks. It was a great chat and I'm sure you'll get a lot out of it!

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Amin Ahmed:

Hello and welcome back to the Be Well, Do Well podcast.

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Amin Ahmed: I'm excited today to have a conversation with a world class entrepreneur that teaches men how to live completely Purdeep Sangha is the bestselling author of The Complete Man and the TV show, host of Mind, your Own Business. He's also an international entrepreneur, speaker and podcaster, and he's also a fellow Canadian, which I'm really excited about.

Pradeep, welcome to the show.

Purdeep Sangha: Hey, thanks for having me. Go Canadians, .

Amin Ahmed: Yay. I don't speak to many Canadians and when I do, it's always nice that they, they know where Edmonton is or they know where Calgary is, so that's pretty cool. .

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah, exactly.

Amin Ahmed: first thing I'm curious about is your journey that you took from having a successful corporate career and moving into what you're doing now, which is coaching and consulting.

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah, sure. So I think, my original goal was to be a CEO of a major corporation. I was very driven. I was on my path. I was doing very well. I was very well known in the industry for what I was doing. but at the end of the day, can remember it like it was yesterday. I walked in, it was around Christmas time and I walked into the executive table.

There was a boardroom and I was just sitting there listening to all the exec, other executive. And no, no offense to executives or corporations or anything like that, but I just sat there and I just totally zoned out because I was like, I can't believe we're just having these conversations because they're just not very progressive.

And I was tired and I, at that time, I was ready to move on to being a CEO and I just made the decision. I said, I'm done. And it was a culmination of things too. I'd spent a Sunday, Sunday is my personal development day. . And so I was going through a whole bunch of books and readings and it was just like this storm was building up inside of me.

And I just let that storm out and I told my wife, I'm done, I'm quitting. And she looked at me like, what the heck are you doing? Yeah. you're doing great in the executive world, you have aspirations. But she knew inside, she's like, I can see it in your eyes. This is what you wanna do.

And I said, yeah, absolutely. So then I started my firm and went from there. and after I left, I, I literally just, how I quit was I walked in and then I basically said, I'm done. And everybody looked at me like, what's going on? ? Did you have some kind of early midlife crisis? some people thought I got into an accident and hit my.

or that I got fired or something, but all these stories, but I just was tired of it. I needed a change. And then I started my firm and at the beginning when I first quit and a couple weeks after, I was like, oh my God, did I just do that? did I just, that was 14 years in the making of being very strategic.

Now I'm going out on my own. What is it gonna be like? And, it wasn't . Exactly easy at the beginning, but I just continued to move forward and it wasn't a straight path either. I started off in a specific area of business consulting and business advising. And because of the skillset that I had built up, it really morphed to combining business advising.

Consulting with the personal performance side, because that's one of my passions. I've been studying that for 25 years. Neuroscience. Neuroscience and neuropsychology of performance because when I was working with some, an individual, it was more about them and less about the business strategies. The business strategy part is the easy part.

It's really how well you execute as a human being, as a person, as a leader. and that is my, passion. So I combined my passion with my skills and brought it all together. Where now we are one of the only firms in Canada that actually does this. Where you can come to us and we can help you grow your business, and business leadership skills, but also on the personal performance side.

So help you structure your business and your personal Crushing it as a spouse, as a parent. and we predominantly work with men. 90% are of our clients are men. So we kinda lean towards that way. but really just crush in all areas so that you are what we call feeling complete. and that's why I wrote the book, the Complete Man.

But that's essentially where we're at.

Amin Ahmed: That's interesting. It sounds like you had to let go of something in order to fill that and become complete yourself.

Purdeep Sangha: Oh yeah. I definitely had to because the corporate world was what I knew. I was always an entrepreneurial spirit, just doing investments here and there and doing other things.

But, inside I knew that I wanted to do something different for a while. , but it wasn't easy because when we get used to a particular path and we have that path kind of projected, and we've spent so much time and effort trying to get there like that's what I did. It was 14 years, like I said, of just strategically working my butt off.

to let go was hard, especially when you have other people saying, what did you do? Like my parents looked at me and said, you just threw away your life. what? What's wrong with. My mother-in-law thought I got fired and thought I was a loser. Like all of these kinds of things were just coming up so the other thing I realized was, man, I thought people were on my side and they weren't necessarily on my side.

And so a lot of this journey I had to do by myself.

Amin Ahmed: Yeah. Interesting. most men like you and me, and I have a very similar journey to you as well as,my wife was expecting our first, and we were married, and literally the same thing. I walked into my boss's office and I was like, all right, I'm done.

And he is what do you mean? And I was like, I can't do this anymore. I need to, make a shift. So very similar. Now when that happened to me, just like you, my wife was are you sure about this? She was supportive, but she was like, are you sure about this? And she lent an ear and she said, yeah, I'll listen to you.

I'll hear what you have to say. But I didn't feel comfortable going to my male friends, and I don't even have, I didn't at that time have a big circle of male friends that I could trust and go to and talk about this.

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Amin Ahmed: How does that work for you? When you focus with men? You're working with men specifically, but when you left your job, were you scared to share and be vulnerable and open with your male friends and get their feedback about this?

Purdeep Sangha: yeah. I had, I was lucky enough that I actually had a couple of good friends that. we're just like, yeah, you can do this. You got this right. Just keep going. It's not like we talked about any of the intimate details of what I mean by that. It's, I never really talked about my fears and stuff like that, because I was typically the person that they were going to for advice And so I had always. Had to be the tougher one and the stronger one. because a lot of people were dependent on me and not just, I'm not talking about financially, I just mean from an emotional standpoint. So I felt that way. Not that it was necessarily that way, but I just of felt that.

but I was lucky enough that I had developed enough skills to be

able to manage my own emotions. So that was the difference, was that I knew how to get through this challenge myself. Not that it was. because there were some friends that actually turned on me. I had some really good friends in the corporate world that literally just turned their backs on me, and I was just like, what just happened?

people that I actually depended on and I felt like even to this day, my wife and I were talking the other day and she's yeah, what happened? And I'm like, I don't know. Like. Bridges got burned, but I'm not the one that burned them. And so it was tough, but it was a big realization as well in terms of, and I'm a firm believer of this, and this is an old saying, is that, we come into this world alone and we leave alone.

and just because we're on a path by ourselves doesn't necessarily mean that other people aren't looking over us, or someone greater is not looking over us. and having faith is in yourself and your own ability. And is very important. And I think that's one of the core part of our teachings is when you have complete faith in yourself, anything is possible,

Amin Ahmed: Right.

You say that some people turned on you, right? And these are people that you probably trusted, had good relationships with. if somebody is in the pre-Purdeep situation before you left and became who you are today, They're working a corporate career and they have that feeling inside of it's starting to feel a bit empty.

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Amin Ahmed: How would they even know that the associates around them, the friends, in, in quotes, the friends around them are going to support them. and is that even important?

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah, so there's, I think there's two parts to that. There's always going to be people that will support you and people that won't support you, and so it's really identifying who the two groups are and who fits in each group and not taking it offensively because there will be people that don't want you to go, that don't want you to leave that circle.

because there's a comfort zone for them that you're part of their group. And this is just human nature in terms of how society works, is that there's a fear factor for a lot of individuals. Sometimes people feel, and I think this is the case for the individuals that I'm talking about in my life, is that they felt abandoned.

They felt, like they were left behind or that they were betrayed, which is not necessarily the case. Forgiveness is very important as well, and understanding that people will have a sense of fear if you decide to do that and you just decide to leave. But it's nothing against that individual because perhaps, and some of these people I've had conversations with, they wanted to go out on their own.

They just didn't have enough strength to do so or didn't know, or didn't identify the path to do. and even a couple of individuals did leave after a couple of years after seeing my success. So it was, it was a positive moment from that perspective. And maybe they felt, I don't know, intimidated or whatever it might have been.

Everybody has their own reason of feeling that way. I think it's important for us to not take it to heart. So I don't know if it's super important to identify who is in what camp at that point in time, because there's always going to be people in each camp. You'll find out after, as soon as you make the decision who's in which camp.

Amin Ahmed: So making that decision, taking that leap first step.

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah, because I think here's a danger if you identify someone that's not gonna be supportive of you, and I've seen this happen before, is people will not make the decision to do something. And so you are gonna stunt your own growth because you are asking for other people's feedback.

There's nothing wrong with getting feedback to say. , what's a constructive way of doing this? But if in your heart you wanna make a decision to move forward and like most people know there's a longing for something. We just mask it with either fear or or social acceptance, or lack of social acceptance.

But we know when we need a change and when we wanna change, we just justify not making that change based on fear, based on circumstances, whatever it is. And a lot of those people that may want you to stay. , will, reaffirm some of those reasons why you shouldn't move on. So it's important. It's important to make that decision on your own.

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I do that every year because I wanna do it without anybody else's influence. Yes, I'm a husband. Yes, I'm a father. I had the choice of taking my family with me, but I didn't want that to sway my mind. I wanted to completely clear mind in terms of what I wanted personally, and then secondarily what my roles are in life.

I'm a human being with my needs and desires first. If I don't meet those needs and desires, I'm not gonna be effective as a husband or as a father. And so if I identify what the path is, then I can think for myself. Then I can identify how can I be a better husband, and how can I be a better father? . But a lot of people, we muddy all these things together and say, well, I can't leave my job because I have kids that are dependent on me, and my wife is dependent on me.

Therefore, I'm gonna continue to do what I'm doing. And that doesn't always work, and a lot of times it doesn't. So being true to yourself and having that mental clarity is very important.

Amin Ahmed: I love that perspective. I love that perspective. I know Bill Gates does that as well. he takes off and goes and spends time in his cabin alone.

No electricity, Just a bunch of books. And he just, learns, thinks, gets insights from different places. I had a conversation earlier today with another entrepreneur and He spent some time at an ashram in India where Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs had also spent time, and that's where Steve Jobs had the insight of, oh, apple.

we're gonna create this company and change the world. So taking that time away is amazing. Now, the perspective that you have, how does that lead into the possibilities that come from that perspective?

Purdeep Sangha: Sorry, could you clarify a little bit?

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Amin Ahmed: yeah, so what I'm asking is that you had this idea.

I'm not happy at work. I need to make a change. And you saw your life from a different perspective, that there is another possibility, but you also mentioned that sometimes people think that they can't, and they use that word, can't leave their work because they have kids or a wife. So they're looking at it from a different perspective and

They're seeing that possibility.

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah. and it really comes down to one of the things, it's, are you a creator or not a creator, and that's ultimately in life. So I always talk about creators, and this is a concept I talk about in the book as being a mindful alpha male and the whole term about alpha male, the mindful aspect is different.

You have to have the combination, but it's about creation, right? the letter alpha is the first lot of the Greek alphabet, which is the beginning, right? it's a state of creation and so that's what we all need to be. And so constantly, one of the things that I'm always doing is, How if this opportunity is not available, how do I create an opportunity or another opportunity or options?

So when it comes to anything in life, the most successful people, one of the most common characteristics, there's two. One is optimism. That's definitely necessary. But the second one is the ability to be creative because we all come up against stumbling blocks.

We all come up against roadblocks. We all come up against challenges. It's our ability to create options and opportunities based on those challenges that actually allow us to move forward. So my background's also in creativity and innovation. I went to school for, and I had studied. Innovation academically.

and I would say I'm a little bit thankful for that because I learned how to utilize my mind to be always thinking about solutions and always thinking about coming up with opportunities. So that part, I think every person has the opportunity to tune into that part of their brain. First of all, you have to have enough energy.

. And what I mean by energy is there's mental, so cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual energy. Because it's a combination of perspective, but having enough energy behind it because there's brilliant people out there that don't have enough energy. to be able to drive their ideas. And what I mean by that is they may be super smart and intelligent and creative, but they just burn themselves out.

And then they just can't think creatively because they just don't have enough energy to fuel it. And what ends up happening is when we're in a negative state, or we're thinking about all the worries or all the reasons why we can't do something, there's a threshold, as soon as you hit that threshold of going from optimism to neutral to negativity, you shut off all your creative option.

So that perspective that you're talking about always has to go from neutral to optimistic. if you wanna have a different perspective in life that's actually more empowering and actually helps you live a more fulfilling life, but also create opportunities as an entrepreneur, as a business leader, it's always to be in the zone of optimism, at least neutral to optimism.

Anytime your in negativity, your creative brain shuts off.

Amin Ahmed: how do you go from negativity where there's no creativity happening? And then bring yourself to the middle before you can go into optimism and have some creativity.

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah. so negativity comes typically from some kind of underlying thought or emotion, and a lot of that time that underlying thought and emotion comes from either the past or the future. It's not necessarily in the present. So it's some kind of rumination of, oh, I screwed up in the past and I made a mistake, and if I try something new again, I'm gonna screw up again potentially and I'm gonna fail.

if you come into the present moment and always try to live in the present moment, which is tough to do, it's not easy to do. It's a practice and it requires exercise to do it. But once you get proficient in being able to do that and be like, At this. No, things are good. I, if I make this decision right now, I don't need to think about 10 years down the road and if I fail or not, I know that I'm gonna be okay.

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Purdeep Sangha: And so being able to go from. Future mistakes. Potential mistakes or past mistakes, and being in the present moment allows you to be into that state of neutrality. So you go from a problem, so this is what I typically show people what to do. You go from a problem situation, which is typically negativity to what we call a situation.

Because a situation is temporary. It puts a different spin on it. When you think it's, Hey, I have a problem, automatically your brain just shuts down. Instead of saying, Hey, I have a situation, I gotta. From that situation, if you take a look at it from a situation, then you can actually shift that perspective to a challenge, right?

for most people, Like challenges if you say, hey, I kind of challenge you to do this, right? Most people will take on that challenge as long as it's not like jumping off the bridge or doing something, stupid like that. But people enjoy challenges, especially men. So if you go from problem to situation to challenge, then you can actually go to the next stage, which is going from, so the challenge is roughly around the neutral area.

Right from the situation to challenge, you're in neutral. Then when you go from a challenge to the opportunity, now you're in optimism. So now you go from, Hey, look, there's a challenge. Now. What's the opportunity that can come outta this challenge? That's when you're actually in the state of optimism.

Amin Ahmed: That's great. So problem, situation, challenge, and. Opportunity. Yes. That's beautiful.

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Amin Ahmed: most people have some kind of morning practice or morning ritual that helps them get into the now, And I know, some people will meditate, some people will exercise, some people will journal.

Do you have something that you do yourself?

Purdeep Sangha: Yes. so my routine is typically when I get up, one of the first things that I do is. have a mix of meditation plus what I call energy practices. And they're ancient, you can say Chinese, qigong So there's traditional meditation, then there's energy practices, and then I'll do my goal setting for the day from the goal setting, depending on my routine, what day it is.

Sometimes my wife goes to work early, and I'll have to take care of the kids, but then it's my workout. So those are the areas that I focus on. And so once I'm done that, then I get into my daily routine because now I've taken care of myself, I've taken care of my mental health, my emotional health, and I've taken care of my physical health.

Now it's basically, it's a platform that I can now perform at a higher level at going forward throughout the day.

Amin Ahmed: That's beautiful. that's a well rounded, it's very complete. If you wanna say , your morning practice. go ahead. You were gonna say something?

Purdeep Sangha: I was gonna say, I gotta practice what I preach, right?

Amin Ahmed: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

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Amin Ahmed: with goal setting and with all these things, Sometimes we get stuck with poor quality questions. we ask the wrong questions, you said something about, using the word problem versus a situation. So from a business context, if somebody is maybe stuck in their business and they feel like, okay, recession, covid, all these things around me are so negative and they're spiraling, you've got customers leaving, can you give us some kind of framework or, a method to asking better quality question?

Purdeep Sangha: a better quality questions. There's actually different methods, right? So people when they take a look at the problem, for example, if you reverse a question, sometimes that can get you in a different perspective. So a lot of people say, why are people leaving my business, for example, right?

Why are customers leaving? Why is the retention rate so high? You can always reverse it and say, why are the people who are staying actually staying. What are the reasons behind it, right? So there's always ways of taking a look at questions from a different perspective. The reason why, when we talk about the quality of, and here's another quality, question, or a good question, is what is the minimum thing that I could do right now that can have the biggest impact?

And so it's about your biggest bang for your buck in business. And so that, that's another way of taking a look at it and having the right people around your team or in your team that can ask quality questions as well is very important. And there's nothing wrong with asking questions that are geared towards a negative side.

You need to do that. One of the biggest challenges businesses have is they don't have proper risk management and that can stray from. Someone that's on your team, or no one on your team that actually challenges you and actually brings up the worst case scenarios. what if this happens?

What is, what are we gonna do about this? So it's important to have a variety of questions from different people. The important thing there when you ask about quality of questions is you need to have a strong facilitator, and that facilitator can be in your own mind if you're sitting there with yourself and you need to be able.

Stop the momentum of questions, which is very important because typically because there's a negativity bias, what ends up happening is when you ask one negative question, there's a spiral effect, and it becomes a whole series of negative questions, right? And you need to be able to stop those questions.

There's nothing wrong with asking negative questions. but you need to know when to be able to stop them. And it's not a science. Questions are not necessarily a science, but one of the important things to do with questions is always write them down. Because the biggest problems that we have as human beings is all the questions are in our head and we ruminate over those questions.

and we may not even find an answer to a question, then we'll go on to the next question. And so if you write those questions down, that's what we find is the best approach. Write those questions down, put them in words, because then when you put them in words, you can actually wordsmith them. You can change questions around.

so another technique that we use, and it's part of an innovation technique, is, if you wanna attract more clients, you can use an analogy. and say, okay, what's an analogy for attracting clients? it could be how do we catch more fish? And so what do you do to catch fish?

You gotta have bait, you gotta be in the right pond. Maybe it's the right time of year, right season. So then you start to think differently rather than being stuck in your own particular mindset. So having different perspectives it's an absolute, a valuable skill to have at the table when asking.

Amin Ahmed: the analogy of, the pond is very timely for me, specifically because, I have a rental condo and I listed it on Facebook Marketplace and on Gigi and all these places. And one was getting 99% of the leads from one source. And Wow. And that made me think from a business standpoint is that a lot of.

Businesses, small businesses will think that, I'm not comfortable with, let's say social media. I'm not comfortable with TikTok, so I'm just not gonna go there yet. all the audience that they're looking for is on TikTok and they've got a few little stragglers on Facebook or on Instagram or wherever it might be, or the other way around, right?

They're not looking at LinkedIn, which is where you and I met, and they're looking elsewhere, but they're not making those, good quality connections and then they don't end up having success, and they think that they are the failure. But it's actually the process that's failing or their approach or their strategy that's failing.

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah. it's,the strategy or the systems that they're using , that's typically what ends up happening. we also talk about the state of the individual as well, because what state you are in. So if you're in an optimistic state, you're gonna think differently than if you're in a negative state.

for example, I don't make any decisions after seven o'clock in my business. at all. because I made some really bad mistakes over the years. I made some horrible, real, I shouldn't say horrible, but just some not smart real estate decisions back maybe 10 years ago. . And it wasn't because I didn't know anything about real estate, it's because I just wasn't in the right state of mind.

And I went back and I said, why did I make, like, why did I make these decisions? I was just so confused and then it just struck me. . I just didn't have enough energy in the evenings. I'm tired. Yeah. I've changed my approach now. I'm not tired as much as I used to be, but I'm tired. I'm low energy and I'm just not thinking as clearly, so I can't make those decisions at that time.

and the same applies to business is timing is very important as well. When are you actually making the decisions for your business or actually analyzing the things? If you're doing it in a low energy state, you're gonna get low energy results. So ensure that when you're doing anything important for your business, you're in a high energy estate as well.

Amin Ahmed: Yeah. We tell our kids not to make decisions or not to respond if they're either hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. So just HALT, wait. And that applies to business as well, right? if you're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, just don't do it right now. Just wait, hold off.

Purdeep Sangha: That's a really good one. I like that.

Halt . Yeah. That's awesome.

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Amin Ahmed: There's a quote that I read on your website I read it a while ago and it just stuck in my head, and I'd like you to elaborate on it. I'm gonna read it right now. It says there's nothing on this earth that can stop a man who's mastered himself and unlocked his inner force.

This is how men experience complete victory. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah, sure. most men have felt this at some point in time in their life, whether it was when they were a young boy and for women as well. some period of time where you just felt like you were just crushing it.

there was some kind of inner feeling inside of you where you just felt like you were conquering whatever it was. Maybe it was a sport, maybe it was something in academics, whatever it was. Maybe it was a small project, but that is the force that we have within us. . We lose that force over time, and it's, when I say we lose it, we just forget that it's there.

We forget how to tap into it. But when we tap into it consistently, it's when we're able to, a lot of people talk about it. we talk about it as being in the complete zone because now you're in a state of creation. Now you're in a high energy state. So when people are talking to you and you're making a business deal, the people around the table could feel your energy.

like I was in an, an event, two days ago when I was speaking about the work that we were doing, for men. And, I had a number of people come up after saying, wow, that was so energized. That's because it was my inner force coming out. Nothing special, but what I was saying. But I just had this energy that was coming out as a result of.

My passion and purpose, which is a big part of our inner force, right? There's other aspects to it as well, but when we align everything in our life, and when I say align, it doesn't have to be perfect, but at least we feel like it's 80% there. Like it's at a good state. then it's like this battery, right?

This is the analogy that I use, is if you have some. Whether it's a remote control car or whatever that you're operating and you have eight batteries in there. if one battery is dying, the other batteries have to work that much harder. And so when all eight are actually working are at an optimal level of energy, then all the areas like it, it's like you're supercharged.

And that's essentially what you're like as a human being is when all the areas of your life are actually working together, it's this battery's charging inside of you , right? And now you can expel that energy and you will know, you'll come up with creative ideas. You'll look at a challenge and look at a problem and be like, before you'd be like, oh man, I don't know if I can do this.

You're like, okay, bring it on. I got this. your wife will look at you and say, wow, there's something different about you. And she'll be more attracted to you because that energy will. Your kids will be like, oh, that's super dad. there's, I, there's something about my dad that just gives me confidence and security or whatever it is.

And it's not that it's gonna happen 110% of the time, but the more consistently you can operate within that realm of utilizing your inner force. , you're gonna be more successful, you're gonna be more fulfilled. You're gonna take life on rather than feeling fearful about it. And that's essentially what it is.

the other thing too is when you align yourself with other people that are in that state, that just creates an exponential effect. . And so surrounding yourself with other people that are able to tap into their inner force, will help everyone. Excel at a completely different level.

We've seen this happen in business over and over again. When you have people that are just, energized with what they do, that business just takes off. There's something about it that takes off. Obviously there's the mechanics, there's the strategy, but there's so much energy buzzing around that people just want to be part of it, right?

And people just get, just are gravitated towards it. Both team members, employees, but also customers, and clients .

Amin Ahmed: Yeah. and I can feel your energy when you're talking about this. You're obviously very passionate and excited about this as well.

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Amin Ahmed: Now having all that energy sounds really good, but sometimes also as entrepreneurs, we also get very, explosive in different directions rather than channeling it, we're in all different directions.

So do you have any interesting or different productivity hacks or tips and tricks that you use to keep yourself, facing in the right direction when you may start to wander off a little bit? .

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah. Lots. First of all, you gotta have a big vision, whatever that is. And so that big vision, doesn't have to be grandiose, it's just big in your, it's your ultimate vision in life, whatever it may be.

Whether it's helping people, be, building a business of whatever size they might be, having a family. and then all your sub goals. There should be some kind of alignment to that. and. You should have. an annual goal, and when I say an annual goal, you should have a driving, like what I, it's what I call a big goal.

and it's a breakthrough, inspiring goal, and it's a single goal for the year. And then you have three maximum five sub goals throughout that year. And anything that doesn't fit within those sub goals, you just don't do. It's not that you don't look at them or you don't entertain them, but you're like, okay, if this doesn't align with my big.

then I gotta park it for next year. That's very important because when you say a lot of entrepreneurs have energy, I think I take a look at that and I would agree to that. to a certain level. I think what ends up happening is it's not necessarily energy, it's grit because that drive isn't necessarily from the energy, it's more from,

I gotta do something. It's almost like it's a, and not everybody, this is a complete stereotype, but it's almost like it's a sense of desperation. I gotta make something work here. typically, this is what I find the best entrepreneurs are laser focused. Someone comes to them with an idea, they're like, thank you very much, let's put this on the back burner.

Let's, we could take a look at the six months or a year. The ones that are struggling in some way, shape, or form are the ones that are trying to find a big hit somewhere. And their energy is spread in a number of different areas and that doesn't really work out that well. So it's not necessarily that they have a lot of energy.

They're just trying to see, okay, where do I put my eggs in my basket that I can get a big hit? And the way that I relate, to, and again, it's analogy that I use is, If you take a look at an octopus has like multiple tentacles, right? , and that's great. That's how a lot of entrepreneurs actually operate.

they have tentacles everywhere, but that doesn't mean it's actually effective because now your concentration and your energy is being diluted into multiple areas, right? If we think about this, if we have a hundred units of energy in a day, which we do, they're called calories, and our brain uses calories.

actually up to 25 to 30% of our daily calories are used by our brain, and we are trying to spread it around, let's just say 10 different ventures. now each venture is only getting 10 units of energy. But now if you take two ventures or one venture, now you're putting a hundred units of energy in that one venture.

which one do you think is actually gonna work out better? And so that approach is very important. So entrepreneurs, and when you're talking about a hack, it's simple. Have a goal. Focus on that goal. Anything that distracts you from that goal, put it on a back burner, put it on a piece of paper that says parking lot.

And it's not that you should always re-look at your goals every few months and see if they're still aligned with what you want, but you don't get distracted. The other thing that I tend to do is, when you're talking about productivity hacks, is you should have weekly goals and a daily.

And then block out those times again. and this is just human nature is if you have time where you're blocked out that's specifically dedicated to your goals, you'll actually get it done. And I find that although people talk about that, it's not common practice. one of the exercises we get meant to do is show what's their calendar over a week if they even have a calendar.

and, when I say that is, yeah, what are you doing? and then we'll take a look and say, okay, you spent four hours here, five hours here, six hours here. Your goal is this. How many hours did you actually put towards that goal? And they'll find out like, holy crap. It was only two hours throughout the entire week.

one of the hacks here's our approach. It doesn't always work for every single person in every single way, but it does work a lot for a lot of. As Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, majority of your time there should be put towards your goals. Like those are where you schedule anything that's aligned with your goal, stuff that's not aligned with your goal directly.

Then you schedule Thursdays and Fridays, so stuff like it might be admin work or other meetings or whatever that might be, but at least you know that the beginning of the week that you've actually spent, if you can't do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, then at least Monday or Tuesday for some people it's just a Monday.

because they find that in, let's just say corporate environment, this is, this can be difficult for people because they are stuck because of other people's meeting schedules or recurring meeting schedules. And so having a particular day is important. Here's another hack that we do is schedule an entire day to get out.

Amin Ahmed: Okay. Get outta the office.

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah. Get outta the office and actually work somewhere and focus on one particular thing. , whatever that might be. You're gonna notice, and we have the studies for this, that a, an eight hour day of focusing on one particular day is almost equivalent to 20 hours of work, right? Even more.

And why? Because it's what we call momentum and startup energy as well. I'll give an example. Sales people, sales individuals, a lot of them have what, let's just say an hour of call, time schedule. Every day, Monday to Friday. So that's five hours of call time. Boy, guess what?

That first half hour, you're probably just starting to get set up and get some momentum going. it's only the last half hour that you're actually productive. So now you got two and a half hours of startup energy where you're at 25 to 50% productivity and two and a half hours of. potentially 80 to 90% productivity.

But if you scheduled an eight hour block, guess what? Now you've got 30 minutes of startup energy and you've got seven and a half hours of where you can bang it out and be productive at a 95% or even a hundred percent level. So these types of hacks,can go a long way for productivity and being focused.

Amin Ahmed: Yeah, I love that. So what you're talking about really is like deep work, right? When you contact Switch, you lose productivity and then you have to come back and you, It's so deep work. Kel Newport has a great book called Deep Work and he did a interview with, trying to think of his name right now, the guy that wrote Atomic Habits, James Clear.

And those two together, it was such a treat to listen to because one is talking about habits, one is talking about deep work, and in the end if you can make a habit of doing deep work, you're the top 1% of producers. . And it was a really cool conversation.

I highly recommend you listen to that if you haven't already. I'll put it in the show notes for this, episode. But it was really cool getting things done by habits, by building good habits and then making deep work. One of those habits was awesome. It was such a Yeah, interesting revelation from that episode.

Purdeep Sangha: That's awesome. Yeah, cuz that in itself, you get so much done and you will be in the top percentile for sure. .

Amin Ahmed: Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. So we've learned a lot about you today. You've shared so much, wisdom and insight here. I appreciate it.

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Amin Ahmed: Is there something that your friends or people that know you well would be surprised to learn about you that they don't know already?

Something fun, interesting, that you don't normally share?

Purdeep Sangha: Actually, you know what the interesting thing is? A lot of my friends don't know a lot of the work that. . Okay. they don't know the depth of the work that I do, which is actually really interesting. So a lot of my friends will tell me and be like, oh, have you heard of this concept or have you thought about this?

I'm like, yeah, that's part of core, work that, I do. So people, my friends, the interesting thing is they know me for who I am. I'm the guy that they hang out with and spend some time with, although I have friends that come to me for other things. but what don't they know about?

I don't think a lot of my friends know how much I read. Because whenever they come over, my wife's clean up your books. So it's okay, bang. All the books. Cuz I typically have 20 books on the go. All the books are like, and they're all over the house, right? There's living room or whatever.

cause I have books for different areas, so I basically just put 'em away and I don't think people. how much I read and then how little I know about Sports , because they'll ask me, they'll be like, yeah, did you watch the game? Or, my friends will be talking about a game or players and I'll just be like, left.

I'm like, guys, I got no clue. Sorry, I'm like a non contributor to this conversation. I wish I did know, but I don't.

Amin Ahmed: Yeah, that's hilarious cuz I feel the same way about sports. I read a lot too, but everything for me is on here. And so what I need to read, I pull up Kindle or I put up all Audible or scribed and that's where I read my books.

But, sports. Funny enough, that's been one of my insecurities is not knowing enough about sports. Because when I get together with the guys, all of a sudden we start talking about hockey or they start talking about football and I'm sitting there going, all right. Yeah. can we talk about tech and AI and machine learning

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah. You know what's interesting though? What I found, and it actually works out well for me and works out well for the other guys, is because I don't know much I ask questions. And so rather than having an opinion, . I'm truly trying to find out and be genuine about, okay, what's happening with these players?

What's happening with these teams? And the guys love to talk about it. Yeah, they'll just continue to chat about it because they're like, oh, Purdeep doesn't know. Let me educate him. So it actually works out to be a good conversation piece.

Amin Ahmed: Yeah. that's a good hack in itself. It's just ask more about it.

Yeah. That's very cool. That's very cool.

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Amin Ahmed: Well, you know, I really appreciate your time here and if somebody wanted to learn more about what you do or get ahold of you, where can they do that? the simplest way is you can, check out our website, purdeepsangha.com, or you can connect with me on LinkedIn and my handles @PerdeepSangha.

Feel free to reach out. I'm more than happy to connect, but please let me know that you've, listened to this podcast and, connecting as a result of that. Cause sometimes we get requests and we don't know who they. Awesome. Awesome. And before we started recording,you and I were talking about a bit of a giveaway that we're gonna be doing for this episode.

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Amin Ahmed: do you wanna share a little bit about, what we're going to be giving away to some of our lucky listeners? .

Purdeep Sangha: Sure. Yeah, my pleasure. That's something that I'm passionate, obviously. I wrote a book, the Complete Man, which is all about how to achieve, perform, achieve, and basically be fulfilled in every area aspect of your life.

it's something I'm very proud of. our book did very well on the international stage,it's been great and I'm humbled and, I, I feel very, appreciative of being able to share that with your audience. if there's a number. Members, I think you got some kind of a contest.

I'd love to give a few free copies to your listeners, and hopefully that will, give them some value.

Amin Ahmed: Absolutely. And that's really generous of you. Thank you so much. Yeah. We'll do a contest and then, we'll give away some of your books. They do have to do a little bit of work and listen to the episode to get the, entry to be part of the contest.

But that's, very generous of you.

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah, my pleasure.

Amin Ahmed: Awesome. This has been really fun Purdeep. again, I appreciate your time, your energy, and sharing all these insights with you. Thank you so much.

Purdeep Sangha: Yeah, I greatly appreciate being on your show. thank you for asking me some awesome questions and being a great host.

Amin Ahmed: Thank you so much