Ep. 303 — Rob Dube: The 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing Your Energy

6 min read

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Episode Summary

You have a vision for the business. You have the goals. You have the to-do list living across three notebooks, two apps, and the back of a coffee receipt. And somewhere in the middle of trying to execute on all of it, you wake up burnt out, half-resentful, and wondering if the vision is even worth it. That’s the gap this conversation is built for. I had Rob Dube back on the show, a dear friend and a client who came out of the same copier industry I did, who has spent the last 15+ years intentionally building a company, a culture, and a life with mentors like Bo Burlingham, Jack Stack, Ari Weinzweig, and Gino Wickman. Rob partnered with Gino on the 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing Your Energy, the practical operating system that sits in the back of The EOS Life. We got into why energy (not time) is the actual constraint, how 10-year thinking slows the panic down enough to make better calls today, why saying yes to the wrong board seat erodes trust you can’t get back, and how Rob and his partner Joel installed a CEO so their business could keep compounding past the ceiling the two of them had hit. Real story, real numbers, and the kind of disciplines you wish someone had handed you ten years ago.

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## Top 10 Takeaways
  1. Energy is your power source, not your mood. When it’s blocked, you feel it. When it’s flowing, you float.
  2. Picture your life in 10 years before you set this quarter’s goals. The vision recalibrates every small decision you make today.
  3. Take 130 days off a year and don’t think about work the entire day. Weekends and holidays already get you most of the way there.
  4. The good ideas live three layers down. You only hear them once the surface noise clears, usually around day three of a real disconnect.
  5. Know thyself by noticing your body. The room you dread and the room you light up in are telling you who you actually are.
  6. Stop being a chameleon. People feel the mismatch even if they can’t name it, and the performance costs you energy you need elsewhere.
  7. Saying yes to the wrong thing erodes trust you can’t rebuild. Start by declining 25% of what you would have accepted.
  8. Put every commitment, idea, and promise in one place. Holding it in your head is not a system, it’s a slow leak.
  9. Plan tomorrow before your head hits the pillow. Your subconscious will work the problem overnight if you give it the inputs.
  10. If the work pays $25 an hour, it’s not your work. Delegating it returns roughly 5x inside a year.

Sound Bites

“The key is, how do you manage and maximize your energy along the way so you don’t burn out and you don’t fall short of the vision that you have?” (@TBD) — Ryan Tansom

“Energy is your power source. It’s where you’re doing the things that bring value to this world in a fluid way. It can flow freely, but it can also get blocked.” (@TBD) — Rob Dube

“The two of us realized we’d hit our ceiling. For us to really grow the asset, we needed a better person to take it where we see it going.” (@TBD) — Rob Dube

“When you start to slow down, you actually make better decisions. And what usually ends up happening is you get there faster.” (@TBD) — Rob Dube

“If you’re doing $50,000-a-year work but you’re a $250,000 person, you just understand you’re not doing work at the right pay rate.” (@TBD) — Rob Dube

About This Episode

Rob Dube is the co-founder of imageOne, a Detroit-based managed print services company he started with his business partner Joel Pearlman out of college. Along the way, Rob became a student of Bo Burlingham (Small Giants), Jack Stack (The Great Game of Business), Ari Weinzweig (Zingerman’s), and Gino Wickman (EOS). He’s the author of Do Nothing: How to Stop Overthinking and Embrace the Stillness, a book on leadership and mindfulness drawn from his own meditation practice. Today Rob is partnering with Gino on the 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing Your Energy, a video-based course and community with the goal of impacting one million souls by 2030. This episode is part of Ryan’s mini-series on the Finish Big themes: who are you, what do you want from the business, and why.

Resources Mentioned

  • The 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing Your Energy — Rob and Gino’s course and community. — the10disciplines.com
  • imageOne — Rob’s managed print services company.
  • Do Nothing by Rob Dube — Rob’s book on leadership and mindfulness.
  • The EOS Life by Gino Wickman — The 10 Disciplines mini-book lives in the back.
  • Small Giants by Bo Burlingham — The book that opened up a new world of intentional ownership for Rob.
  • The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham — The open-book finance foundation Rob installed at imageOne.
  • Zingerman’s / Ari Weinzweig — The community of businesses in Ann Arbor that mentored Rob on culture and vision.
  • Finding Ultra by Rich Roll — Referenced for the run-walk pacing that beats the all-out grind.
  • Ray Dalio — Referenced for “the journey is what it’s about.”
  • Essentialism by Greg McKeown — Referenced on the discipline of saying no.
  • The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll — Ryan’s analog system for the “one place” discipline.
  • The Full Focus Journal — A daily planning tool Rob recommends.
  • Remarkable — A digital tablet tool for capturing notes in one place.
  • The Enneagram — Personality framework Rob uses to understand himself (Type 2 / Type 3).

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