“You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”― Winston S. ChurchillHi, my name is Brad and I’m addicted to distraction in today’s modern-day tech world.Hi Brad, welcome, we’re glad you’re here!So, I’ve built up a lot of bad habits and over the last couple of years working for myself, or for ourselves, that was just eating my shorts, in terms of actually getting creative productivity done towards the business.How many of us can relate to this? Whether you’re a creative entrepreneur working from home or in the office, how many of us have slowly built up the habit of being distracted? Let me check my email one more time, reply to text messages, get up to buy a coffee, go to the bathroom, walk away from the desk, and actually move out of the flow… In this age of connection, it’s easier than ever to become a master of distractibility and kill creative productivity!During today’s podcast, we’ll be sharing some of our biggest time stealers and what you can do to increase major creative flow in your workday by increasing your focus. If you’re interested in creating more grace and ease in your business, then check out the podcast episode in the resources below. One of my biggest time stealers is the multiple browser tabs that I reference while working. But I always had many more open than I needed, ad-free music, and we can always talk about that some more another time. We have Amazon Prime, so if you have Prime, you have Amazon music. It’s not the one with millions and millions of songs, but it has quite a bit…I want to share something with you that’s been working for me to improve my productivity: When you increase focus … you increase productivity.Okay let’s dig into this a little bit, and I can introduce starting out with 10-minute focus blocks. We can all commit to spending 10 minutes of time focused on a specific project or task, which is why I like working with this block of time. What’s worked well for me is starting out with a couple of 10-minute focus blocks in my day–not jamming my entire calendar with a gazillion 10-minute focus blocks. The intention is to begin with something that’s achievable and start building the habit of focus. Minette and I share more on this in the podcast, so we’ll see you over there! Take the Unique Productivity Style QuizOnce You Know Your Productivity Style You Can Learn The Best Way To Become More Productive In Your Creative Business.Take the Quiz today and get your results! IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:the secret formula for increasing creative productivity (hint … does not require doing more, faster)the magic of using 10-minute focus blocksthe major work themes that Minette and I have in our creative businessLINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:The Art of Manliness focus series of blog posts5 Reasons Why You Should Try Mini Work Blocks blog postFocus blocks theme cards templateEpisode 84: Slow Down to Speed Up: How to Bring More Grace & Ease into Your Business podcastThe Unique Productivity Style quizhttps://youtu.be/lkpw5sP1iRMYou can also subscribe to this podcast on our Youtube channel.  TranscriptShow Transcript (4,908 More Words)Brad Dobson: You get to that point, and it’s a critical point where, “Oh, I’m stuck on this.” And, you know, you’re a five-year old and you want to kick the can and walk away, or whatever. And it’s just as easy to look at your phone or just as eazy to pull up a browser tab and look at Facebook, whatever it is. That’s the part that you’re retraining your brain to stop doing.Minette Riordan: Have you ever said to yourself, “I don’t have enough time.”Brad Dobson: “I am so overwhelmed.”Minette Riordan: “I need more clarity.”Brad Dobson: “I don’t know how to do this.”Minette Riordan: “My to-do list is miles long.”Brad Dobson: “I’m exhausted.”Minette Riordan: “There’s got to be a better way.”Brad Dobson: Hi there, I’m Brad.Minette Riordan: And I’m Minette. Not only have we said all these things ourselves, but we’ve heard our community of creative entrepreneur say them over and over again.Brad Dobson: That’s why we created the Structure and Flow podcast. I’m structure.Minette Riordan: And I’m flow. And this is the Productivity Podcast for Creative Entrepreneurs.Brad Dobson: We believe that doing more and working harder are not the solution to your productivity challenges.Minette Riordan: We believe in more play, more fun, and more profit. Join us as we explore the interplay between structure and flow so that we can bring more grace and ease to your creative business.Minette Riordan: Hey everybody, welcome to episode 99. Hard to believe. [crosstalk Brad Dobson: 99th. Like Agent 99?Minette Riordan: Like Agent 99? I don’t know who Agent 99 is.Brad Dobson: From Get Smart. You don’t remember Get Smart?Minette Riordan: I do remember Get Smart.Brad Dobson: With the shoe phone?Minette Riordan: Yeah, well. It’s a good thing we’re talking. [crosstalk Brad Dobson: Yeah.Minette Riordan: But it is one of our secrets [crosstalk Brad Dobson: Smiling is good.Minette Riordan: … productivity to batch record these episodes … hint, hint, hint.Brad Dobson: And keep it fun.Minette Riordan: And keep it fun. There’s lots of giggling going on and lots of cat distractions. But the truth is, we have something really exciting to share with you. And this is something that Brad came up with that has been working so well for him, in terms of increasing focus. When you increase focus … you increase productivity.Brad Dobson: Yep. So this is using focus blocks to get your productivity back on track. Because of my nature, I’m not going to toot my horn too much-Minette Riordan: I will. I will.Brad Dobson: [crosstalk Brad Dobson: Let’s start with the quote, though.Minette Riordan: Okay. Do I get to read the quote?Brad Dobson: I think she’s going to read the quote.Minette Riordan: This is an awesome quote. “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.” Winston Churchill. So, I want to know why you picked that quote. Because Brad picked the quote today.Brad Dobson: Well the, “throwing stones at every dog that barks,” thing is relevant directly to your phone and the internet and social media.Minette Riordan: Squirrel.Brad Dobson: Those are barking dogs. Every time you stop and look at your phone, every time you stop and look at your email, your time, if you’re like me, you’re on Reddit or Facebook or Instagram or whatever your social media Du jur is. That’s a barking dog that just distracted you and you’re not going to reach your destination, because you’re off looking at that silliness. As much fun as it is, as much eye candy as there is in Instagram, as much as you love to see the little like button or the happy button on Facebook, you’re wasting a lot of time by doing that. And the distractions alone kill you, even if you’re not engaged with them, it takes you out of flow.Brad Dobson: what we’re all about here is flow. We want to be able to get into that flow state, whether it’s straight up creativity or writing … well, writing is creativity. Whatever it is-Minette Riordan: Or programming, right?Brad Dobson: Exactly.Minette Riordan: Or finishing a project. In our last episode, when we were talking about the creator, we talked about how creators are great at starting and not finishing projects. One of the challenges of being an entrepreneur, especially if you’re a solo-preneur, working from home, then you wear a lot of different hats. I found that Brad was really struggling with all the different projects that were going on at the same time that he was responsible for. I feel incredibly lucky I get to share my business, right, that I’m not trying to do it all by myself.Minette Riordan: But the two of us, even dividing the hats, there’s still a lot of freakin’ hats.Brad Dobson: Right. And a little bit more backstory here; I worked in software for 25 years and I built up a big habit of getting distracted, whether that was on the internet or with my phone, or whatever it is, run off to get coffee, go to the bathroom, walk away from the desk, and actually take myself out of flow. Sometimes that can be, whether you want to admit it or not, it’s a lack of desire … It’s the same reason that people don’t want to meditate. They don’t want to be quiet and alone with their thoughts, which is not necessarily thoughts with the flow state, but alone, just working on one thing.Brad Dobson: So, for me, it was quite a bit like that. I built up a lot of bad habits and over the last couple of years working for myself, or for ourselves, that was just eating my shorts, in terms of actually getting work done towards the business. So, I finally just did some searching on the internet, ended up on a blog, which I like, ’cause I’m a guy, called, The Art of Manliness Blog.Minette Riordan: I can honestly say I have never visited that blog.Brad Dobson: It’s really quite good. It’s long-form pieces on … well, maybe your husband will like it.Minette Riordan: It wasn’t a judgment statement.Brad Dobson: They had a great series on … we’ll put that in the show notes. They had a great series on focus. And I poked my way through it and, like an un-focused person, I just scanned through a lot of the stuff. But there were some things that really, really hit home about how to improve focus.Brad Dobson: What I did was, I said, okay, I know a little bit about creating good habits from my athletic work. What I’m going to do is start with just ten minute focus blocks. Literally, “Brad, you’re 50 years old. You can sit there for ten minutes and focus on one task.”Brad Dobson: So I set some structure around what that would be. That was going to be no notifications on my phone. No notifications from my browser or on the desktop. It was going to be one browser tab only opened.Minette Riordan: The one you were working on, correct?Brad Dobson: That’s right. And a lot of what I do involves a lot of browser tabs a lot of the time. But I always had many more than that open than I needed, ad-free music, and we can talk about that some more. We have Amazon Prime, so if you have Prime, you have Amazon music. It’s not the one with millions and millions of songs, but it has quite a bit.Minette Riordan: Enough for a ten minute focus block. [crosstalk Brad Dobson: Exactly.Minette Riordan: Which is like, two songs.Brad Dobson: Exactly. Maybe you pay Spotify, maybe you pay for Pandora, maybe you’ve got a bunch of CDs that you love to listen to.Minette Riordan: Or iTunes on your computer, right.Brad Dobson: As long as it’s ad-free. And I had a couple of our clients said they really can’t work to music with lyrics, but there’s a lot of great stuff and we’ll give you a lot of ambient stuff. We’ll give you some links to that.Minette Riordan: And people are finding some [crosstalk Brad Dobson: Yeah, yeah. On YouTube. So, add-free music, no food, no leaving the desk. You gotta take your bathroom break ahead of time. The phone’s on Do Not Disturb. Have a plan for what’s going to happen in that ten minute block. Maybe take a minute ahead of time, just to have some quiet time ahead of time to get the focus going.Minette Riordan: Were you using a timer for the ten minute blocks, to notify you of when the ten minutes was up?Brad Dobson: Yeah. I put a timer on my desktop. You could just as easily use your phone one. I got one called Be Focused, for the Mac. It was free. It’s real straightforward to use. I started with ten minutes and, you know, ten minutes is really not that scary. I think most people can take that on.Brad Dobson: But, if you’re working right now, or if you’re finding yourself distracted or you’re wondering about it, take a look at how well you’re doing, in terms of not checking your email, not checking another browser tab, not checking your phone. See whether you are actually focusing for ten minutes, really ten minutes. Not looking at another device, not getting up, actually putting all of your focus into one job for ten minutes.Minette Riordan: And what I think I noticed, watching you go through this experience in that first week or two, you didn’t push pressure on yourself for how many of these focus blocks you did in a day.Brad Dobson: Right.Minette Riordan: You were celebrating if you got one or two focus blocks done, so it wasn’t about … Like, every ten minutes, you’re starting a new focus block.Brad Dobson: Right. The habit here is not to … we’re just adding one habit. We’re not trying to add a habit of, how many focus blocks I can get into a day. What we’re trying to do is build our chops and build our ability to focus. So, I did for the first week, ten minute focus blocks. And maybe I’d do a few a day.Brad Dobson: Then the next week, I added ten minutes. So, 20 minutes. So, weekly, I added ten minutes until I got to 60 minutes. The celebrations were all about simply completing a focus block, not about, “Hey, I did two today, or I did five today.” It was just about increasing my ability to actually do this exercise, which is to focus on one think for an amount of time.Minette Riordan: And you weren’t trying to finish a project.Brad Dobson: That’s right.Minette Riordan: So the other thing about the focus blocks that is really important to remember is that you’re just making progress. I know you created a really cool tool for yourself on what to do inside the focus blocks. Can you share about that?Brad Dobson: Yeah, definitely. What I realized, once I reached that 60-minute thing, was that what I desired was to be able to engage more with what the work was that I was doing. I think this is something … whether you take on these focus blocks or whether you have some other approach, we want everyone to connect with their big “why” when they’re doing their work. We’ve talked about big why before, I’m sure we’ll talk about it again.Brad Dobson: But the ability to work on a focus block and have that in the frame of your mind, “Hey, this is gonna do this for my business. This is exciting because of this.” Or maybe it’s not exciting, but “it’s an important for thing for me to do a great job on this, because this is this part of my business.” I know that’s kind of general.Brad Dobson: If you’re on YouTube, you can see these. I’m also going to give you a template that you can look at. I made these little squares of paper.Minette Riordan: And of course, Minette had a super cool tool, a binder clip, and an awesome hole-punch.Brad Dobson: I identified major work themes that I have in our business. One of them is just normal dailies, where I’m looking at financials and email and thing like that. Another one is, customer engagement. Another one is improving one of our feedback funnels. So, each one of those gets a sheet of paper. And I’m going to have the focus blocks or partial focus blocks associated with each one.Brad Dobson: And then, there’s just a few sentences that say, this is why this is important, Brad, this is why you should be excited about this. As a reminder that I can look at before I start the focus block.Minette Riordan: Can you give a really specific example and maybe read one?Brad Dobson: Sure. So, the one on the top is for improvements to our creative business academy, an engagement in the academy.Minette Riordan: Accelerator.Brad Dobson: I’m sorry, the accelerator. I have it written wrong.Minette Riordan: I know.Brad Dobson: It says, “These are our people, treat them beyond great. Anything I can do here means more delighted customers that ascend through our customer value journey,” which we’ll talk about also. But really, you want people to get to the point where they buy from you and then they give you a testimonial and then they buy something even more exciting from you.Minette Riordan: And then they give you referrals and they send people to you, because they become raving fans.Brad Dobson: That’s right. So, the last thing I said was, “We’re helping them!” With an exclamation mark. Those are things that just help me engage with the task at hand. It may be a minuscule part of a larger project, but it’s going to be an hour’s worth of work. There needs to be a reason that I want to do a great job on it and I want to sit there and focus on it for an hour.Minette Riordan: Can I give really specific-Brad Dobson: Finally, the only other thing is, sometimes you’re going to have a work theme that maybe just deserves 30 minutes. Well, you can just put 30 minutes, or you can put an hour. And that’s how long you’re going to focus on it. So I have those in a little binder in front of me. I can actually look at them. I know that’s totally anal, but it’s an effective way to connect with the work that you’re doing.Minette Riordan: So, I want to say two things about that. First of all. A great example of how we spent one of those hours, was fixing our Google Calendar, our public Google Calendar for our different membership groups, ’cause we have two of them. We had people complaining, ’cause they could see meetings for both groups, and they couldn’t figure out how to accommodate this into their own calendars.Minette Riordan: So there was a little client frustration around how things were showing up in the Google Calendar. One of those hours, he spent detaching the two calendars, so that they no longer showed all the activities, but were clear about which activities were for which group. So huge client satisfaction, just from something as simple, even though it was time-consuming, to fix the Google Calendar. That was one thing.Minette Riordan: The other thing I want to say is that if you listen to our four-part series on unique productivity styles, you’ll remember that Brad’s a contemplator. And he actually is really good at details. He’s really good at seeing all the action steps that are required. And it can be kind of overwhelming. Oftentimes, for any particular project, there are many, many, many action steps. Any of you that are doing digital marketing, or creating sales funnels online, know that creating any kind of online campaign requires a lot of steps, completely outside of just the content creation and deciding what it is that you’re offering or sharing with your clients.Minette Riordan: Brad had all these tasks, either in his head, in his to-do list, or in [Gera Brad Dobson: Right. And these are more digestible pieces. They fit in the focus blocks, and it’s uni-tasking. It’s not multi-tasking. This is all about uni-tasking. It’s about just focusing on that one thing and not allowing other work items or other life items to get in the way of your singular focus on that task.Minette Riordan: And you know, this is about flow. Focus blocks are about flow, because I just read a great article in the current issue of Spirituality and Health Magazine about flow. There was a little pop-up box related specifically about multi-tasking. And multi-tasking is not useful or valuable. It doesn’t help you get things done. I’m tired of hearing, women in particular do this, I think more than men, “I’m great at multi-tasking.” Well, actually you’re not. Nothing’s getting your full attention. You’re not getting into the flow state. You’re actually being completely distracted by these different ideas. It’s the same reason why when you have kids and you’re on the phone, and your kids are trying to talk to you, it’s so incredibly annoying, that you can’t split your attention between two conversations.Minette Riordan: He even said the same is true if you’re typing a post on Facebook with the TV on in the background, that it’s not a whole-hearted or whole-brained use of your time and attention. So, that concept of uni-tasking and the concept of flow both work beautifully inside of focus blocks, because Brad has specific rules that[crosstalk Brad Dobson: Structure.Minette Riordan: -set ahead of time. Structure, that he set up ahead time, so he can step into, very quickly, the focus block.Brad Dobson: Right.Minette Riordan: And I think the rules are a really important part of that. Not only understanding what to do with the focus block, but preparing yourself to step into focus, instantly helps you get into flow so much faster.Brad Dobson: Yeah. Definitely. I think, one thing that it’s critical to remember, if you think you’re going to take this on, or do something similar. This is about training the muscle between your ears. This is about brain training. It’s a muscle just like any other. When you start, you’re not going to be very good at it. That’s why …Minette Riordan: Just like meditation, monkey mind.Brad Dobson: Exactly. And that’s why you start with something like ten minutes. Or maybe it’s one minute for you, if it’s a really terminal case. But, it’s interesting because, you get better at it, obviously. It doesn’t matter that you do ten extra minutes a week. Maybe you get stuck on ten minutes for a month. Everybody’s going to go at their own speed. But what this lets you do, in training your brain, it forces you out of those bad habits.Brad Dobson: And you also find that it forces you to push through … what’s the best way to describe this? I come to critical points during work, where I’ll get to a tough spot and I’ll let myself be distracted, because I don’t want to … knuckle down or really engage all the things that I need to do. Like, it’s a tough … it happens with technical things. I’m not sure, maybe the same thing for [crosstalk Minette Riordan: For me, it helped with writing books, or blogs, or content creation. Yesterday, I was mapping out the new content for the Creative Business Accelerator. Every time I would feel really suck and try to think through something, I would go do some research or go check my Facebook.Brad Dobson: Right. I imagine the same thing could happen with drawing or painting or making music.Minette Riordan: Or video editing or all the other creative endeavors that we’re all attempting to do on a daily basis.Brad Dobson: Right. You get to that point. And it’s a critical point, where, “Oh I’m stuck on this.” And, you’re a five-year old and you want to kick the can and walk away, or whatever. And it’s just as easy to look at your phone or just as eazy to pull up a browser tab and look at Facebook, whatever it is. That’s the part that you’re retraining your brain to stop doing.Brad Dobson: That’s the part where you gotta knuckle down. And this is very, very similar to meditation, for anybody out there that’s done that. I hear you out there saying, “I tried meditation once and I couldn’t stand it.” This is the practice part. And it actually takes time. You’re not horrible because you can’t do it to start. But you really have to pull up your big-boy pants and actually get through those things.Minette Riordan: I think we should do a whole episode on the connection between mindfulness and productivity. That would be a really great topic to explore.Brad Dobson: Good one.Minette Riordan: So, let’s wrap this up, and maybe just summarize using focus blocks and why they work, real quickly. And also, you didn’t mention, and I know this was a deeply impactful book, was Cal Newport’s Deep Work.Brad Dobson: And a lot of this journey had come from reading that book, Deep Work, it’s a fantastic book. I suggest it to anybody. I read it, listened to it, said I’m going to do all these things. And then never really did them. But it was the seed for these focus blocks and I think I’ll pat myself on the back for the focus blocks starting ten minutes, because it gave me the opportunity to actually get to what Cal Newport’s talking about, which is longer focus blocks.Brad Dobson: Where am I with this? I set these things up to slowly build into longer focus blocks, where I’m not being distracted and I’m just working on one thing. I’ve got majority themes that I work on, where I can pull tasks related to those and just focus on those. I set myself up a structure around a focus block to ensure that I don’t break out of it. If I start moving past 60 minutes, I might have to give myself the opportunity to take a bathroom break.Brad Dobson: What I’m not good at yet, is doing lots of focus blocks. That’s really where I want to improve. I’m not [crosstalk Minette Riordan: Meaning, many focus blocks during the day.Brad Dobson: Yeah. I mean, the whole point is, once I get good at a focus block, then I want to be able to add more of them.Minette Riordan: It seemed like when you got to 40 minutes, you were great. But when you got to the 50 and 60 minute ones, that the wheels started to come off a little bit.Brad Dobson: Yeah, I think I suffered a little bit from having had success and then backing away from it a little bit.Minette Riordan: I’m wondering if that, as people are working through these focus blocks, that there’s, for each person, that there’s a prime amount of time. Maybe 40 minutes is perfect for you.Brad Dobson: There may be. You know, whatever works for you.Minette Riordan: It’s not about the length of time.Brad Dobson: Right. I’m not great at pre-planning these focus blocks. And I think that really needs to be the next step, because it’s too easy to say I’m just going to work in my old style and not be really engaged.Minette Riordan: When you say “pre-planning,” are you talking about time-blocking, putting the focus blocks into your calendar?Brad Dobson: Exactly.Minette Riordan: As well as pre-planning what particular project you’re going to focus on?Brad Dobson: Exactly. Just more intention. More mindfulness about what the block will be and when it will be. That might be something you do in your Big Six the night before. Tomorrow, I am going to work on this for this amount of time.Minette Riordan: And we’ll be talking about the Big Six, if you don’t know what he’s talking about. We’ll be talking about that in upcoming episodes and we’ve talked about it in the past. But the secret to this, that Brad hasn’t mentioned that he’s really good at, is planning, the big picture planning as well as the quarterly, monthly, and weekly planning. So, it’s easy to figure out what to do during your focus blocks, because he’s already put a lot of time into planning.Brad Dobson: Sure. I know what task I need to do. It’s just a matter of doing them. So, what’s working [crosstalk Minette Riordan: … gap there, isn’t there. Between knowing what to do and actually getting it done.Brad Dobson: Yeah. It’s [crosstalk Minette Riordan: Kind of like taxes.Brad Dobson: Easy to talk about it, right.Brad Dobson: What’s working, now I’m much better at pushing through that critical point that I was talking about, where I get … it’s easy to be distracted. It’s easy to let myself get called away, because there’s … I can’t quite figure out what to do next. And I really like the addition of these major work themes that allow me to connect more closely with the work that I’m doing. The important part is to just keep coming back to them and keep reviewing them.Brad Dobson: I think that’s all we really wanna say right now. I’m moving forward into tracking time now more closely, so that I can then start to build on that and sort of unify all of these things, but I hope for you out there, dear listener, that next time you’re working, take a look at yourself. Take a look at how you’re working, how much you’re being distracted by the internet. Maybe you’re awesome already and you don’t have to worry about these things. Maybe you’re like me, with a chronic case of distraction, and you need to find a way to get further. Hopefully these will work for you.Minette Riordan: Yeah, it’s so true. And every time he kept saying he was struggling with focus, I didn’t get it. I might struggle with not knowing what task to get done, ’cause I hadn’t done my planning. But once I know what to do, I’m a work-a-holic. I’m the commander who’s sitting there doing deep work. So it was really fascinating to me to see the way that we approach this aspect of our business differently. And it’s been fun watching you work through the focus block concept.Brad Dobson: It’s the contemplator in me, I guess.Minette Riordan: It is totally the contemplator. And the contemplator loves to fix stuff, right. You love to figure it out and put structure around things that create flow. So, structure and flow. We keep telling you guys, you’re going to get tired of us saying it, I’m sure. But it really is a powerful combination, to create structure to increase flow. When you increase flow, you increase not only your productivity, but also your satisfaction.Brad Dobson: Yeah. One other thing, just to riff off of that a little bit. One of the wins that I hadn’t really celebrated is that a lot of times, I’ll get to 60 minutes and be in flow and just keep pushing for another 30 minutes, because I’m in that flow state and I don’t want to walk away. That’s the win, where I’ve set myself up to succeed by setting an environment that allowed me to get into a flow state.Minette Riordan: Awesome. We gotta go. It’s time for lunch.Brad Dobson: Yum.Minette Riordan: But, before we do that, wait, wait, wait. If you haven’t taken the productivity-style quiz, we highly encourage you to do that. Go to PathToProfitAcademy.com/UPSquiz. UPS Quiz. And make sure you find out what your unique productivity style is, and shoot us an email and let us know. Are we a whole community of commanders, contemplator, creators, conductors? Or are we a blend? We think there’s a lot of creators out there. We’re kind of a blend ourselves. It’s a super cool quiz. Go take it. We’ll see ya on the next episode, which is our hundredth episode!Brad Dobson: Oh my goodness! A hundred?Minette Riordan: I know! A hundred times, we’ve sat behind these microphones.Brad Dobson: It’s easy to talk to you, though [crosstalk Minette Riordan: It’s easy to talk to you, honey, too. We haven’t really planned our topic for the hundredth episode, but it will be cool.Brad Dobson: Good stuff.Minette Riordan: See ya later.Brad Dobson: Thanks for glistening to Structure and Flow, the productivity podcast for creative entrepreneur. To find out more about this episode and others, go to PathToProfitAcademy.com and click on the podcast link. The post Episode 99: Using Focus Blocks to Get Your Productivity Back On Track appeared first on Path to Profit Academy.