Is Your Phone Robbing Your Future?

Is your phone robbing your fortune? Many of you don’t know this, but I don’t shoot these videos on my phone. I have this, if I could show you what it is, it would be helpful, but I can’t because I’m using it to shoot. It’s a really cool handheld camera. It’s called the Osmo Pocket. It looks like a Pez dispenser. But that’s not the purpose of this video. The purpose of this video is to discuss whether or not your phone is really helping your business and helping you achieve your dreams.

Removing Social Media From Your Smartphone

I recently deleted Facebook,  Instagram and LinkedIn off my phone. This is kind of odd considering that Instagram this year alone has probably generated $200,000 in revenue for us. LinkedIn over the past four or five years has generated close to about the same. Obviously Facebook is a huge component of what we do. So why would I remove them off my phone? Because, quite honestly, I’m not saying I don’t use those platforms, because we do. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that we’re publishing great stuff several times a day. Same on Facebook, et cetera.

But what I decided is that I don’t have to have those platforms on my phone in order for us to serve people. I recognized that what was happening for me personally is that my true genius, or whatever … I really believe if you are a creative, if you’re a leader, a visionary, your genius is not to spend your time DMing people. Yes, there are ways and we teach our clients ways to attract clients using direct message and Messenger. I think that’s amazing. But you get to a point where you will run yourself into the ground if you do that all day long. What I recognized for me is not that I spend a lot of my time doing that, but just even having those platforms on my phone was distracting me from my true genius activity, which was thinking, creativity, and idea generation.

Too Much Time Consuming Instead Of Creating

Let’s just be honest. When we go to the bathroom, we probably take our phone. We look at our phone. What are we doing on the toilet? I’m just using the toilet as an example, but this probably happens if you’re sitting on a bench, in traffic, who knows? We’re never creating. We’re consuming newsfeed. We’re not in a productive state, so we’re just consuming and consuming and consuming and nothing productive is coming from that.

Now, what I recognized, my tendency at least, as much as I try to be aware of that, is that that was pretty much happening more often than I liked. I decided, you know what? Even though those platforms have been super helpful for our business, I said, “You know what? Screw it.” I’m going to have other people on our team run everything on those platforms. I’m going to have zero input. I’m going to have nothing to do on Instagram. If someone sends me a direct message, someone else will deal with it. Because I realized that even though, yes, it is important to have these conversations to grow our businesses and serve potential clients, the true benefit for me, and I think for you, is not there. It’s not there. It’s to have the time without your phone. It’s to force yourself into space, to think, to allow your true genius to come out.

You can’t do this when you’re constantly sucking at your phone. It’s like the adult blankie. We feel so weird without it. I want to challenge you to at least, at the very minimum, turn your phone off for more than half the day. When I’m working during the week, my phone doesn’t even get turned on. I don’t answer phone calls. I don’t check messages. I don’t do any of that stuff, and even more so now that I don’t have those social platforms on my phone. Listen, if you are somebody who wants to do big things in this world, spending time on your phone is a fricking waste of time. You have to be honest about that. I don’t care if you’re saying, “Well, Yuri, I generate clients through Messenger.” Hey, that’s great. I think you should do that, up and to a point.

Why Your Phone Is Robbing You

You will get to a point in your business where you’re tapped out. You can only have so many conversations in a day. You can only spend so much time screen sucking and you can only get so far in life by doing that. The true leaps and bounds in your business, in your life, in helping you achieve your dream, is going to come from the creativity that comes only from space. That space is required. I’m taking my dog for a walk. I don’t have my phone with me. I’m not listening to anything. Sometimes I go for a walk, I’m listening to podcasts, I’m listening to audio books. But a lot of times I’m just doing nothing. I’m letting my brain do what it needs to do. I’m getting out of consumption and I’m just allowing that space for whatever to happen. Listen, I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life, but if you want to really do big things in this world, it’s not going to come from spending a lot of time on your phone.

Just in the past couple of days before shooting this, I’ve had two massive breakthroughs in my business that are, number one, going to serve our clients to a much greater level and potentially generate several more thousand, sorry, several more million dollars I would say in the next 12 months. The only reason that I had the opportunity to come up with those two ideas, is because I sat on a bench looking into the distance with no distractions and I just let the process unfold. If you are walking around with your phone like life depends on it, I promise you it’s robbing your future. It’s robbing your future and it is robbing you of the fortune that you could be making by truly serving this world in a bigger way.

I’m not going to get into the details of, how do I stay relevant on social? How do I do all this stuff on social without having those platforms on my phone? Listen, I’m not going to talk about that in this video. There are ways to do it. But I just want you to think about this now. The less time you spend on social media, on your phone, the better off you’re going to be. Let me know what you think in the comments. If you think I’m full of nonsense, hey, that’s totally cool. It’s all good. Everyone has to live their own life. But this is what’s working for me and I thought it might help you as well.