Welcome to the very first episode of The Achievement Index, where you will meet host, Dr. Apollo Emeka, hear a bit about the journey he's taken in his life, and learn about what The PLE System actually is. This episode is designed to set you up success as you listen to future guest interviews full of actionable takeaways, and you'll also get a sneak peek at some of those interviews today.
On today's episode of The Achievement Index, you will be led by Dr. Apollo Emeka as he takes you through the ups and downs he's experienced on his journey to success.
And if you have no idea who Apollo is, what PLE is, or what this show is about...that's okay! This first episode is made to walk you through all of these topics, answer any of your questions, and give you the context you need to take into our full-length guest interviews.
You will also be hearing snippets cut from each of our first set of interviews. Be on the lookout for these guest appearances:
If you can't wait for more, make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and take the Achievement Index Assessment to find out whether you fall into the prioritize, leverage, or execute orientation.
Brought to you by Apollo Strategy Group
[00:00:00] Apollo: When I was eight years old, I came home from school. I walked in the door and my mom was reading a book and like most eight year olds, I think I was like, ah, man, I hate school. And my mom said, well, you know, your father and I were thinking about homeschooling you. And I said, what you mean next year I could just not have to go to school.
[00:00:24] Apollo: And she said, you don't have to go back tomorrow. And I was like, wow, that seems a little [00:00:30] irresponsible. You know, I have some macaroni art drying in the back of the classroom. I got some things I gotta wrap up. And so I went the rest of the week and Monday rolled around and I did not. Go back to school. My dad, he went down to the library and he bought a couple of used books, you know, a social studies book, a language arts book, and you know, that was gonna be my schooling.
[00:00:54] Apollo: I did almost no schoolwork and my parents, you know, I was just kind of hard [00:01:00] to wrangle and I applied that same. Kind of work ethic to everything that I did. Basketball, soccer, baseball. Be like, ah, man, I don't want to go. And my parents would be like, all right, well just don't. And so I spent so much of my young life just quitting or failing everything that I did.
[00:01:17] Apollo: I did not graduate from elementary school. I did not graduate from middle school, and I did not graduate from high school. Now my life, even as I look at it, just seems a little [00:01:30] bananas because if you fast forward 20 years, I've been a Green Beret, I've been in the FBI, a successful entrepreneur who's built and scaled a company and sold it.
[00:01:41] Apollo: I have a doctorate now, and now I'm raising an amazing family with a beautiful, amazing wife. And now I help other leaders and businesses make the same kind of leaps that I have. But if you look at. The massive gap between where I've been and where I am [00:02:00] now, it could look like a complete and total mystery.
[00:02:03] Apollo: I'm Doctor Apollo Emeka high performance strategist. This podcast, The Achievement Index, is all about unlocking those big leaps. How do you make big leaps from where you are now to where you want to be? See, I couldn't rely on conventional paths to success. I never followed that conventional path. So what happens when you graduate elementary school, you go to middle school and you graduate middle school and you go to high school and you graduate high school and you get a [00:02:30] job, or you go to college, or you go to a trade school, or you join the military, and none of those things were options for me until I got my GED.
[00:02:41] Apollo: I couldn't rely on discipline or habits because all of my habits told me to quit when things got hard. I had passion and aspirations. I've wanted to be in the FBI or be on Saturday Night Live since I was 13, so I always had passion and aspirations, but I didn't have the habits and the [00:03:00] discipline to back them up.
[00:03:02] Apollo: And then, you know, as I entered young adulthood, I didn't have that kind of conventional pedigree to back them up. I could not get a job at Starbucks, but then I achieved a ton in such a short amount of time. We scaled and sold our first business in three years, and I had people asking, oh my goodness, how did you do that so fast?
[00:03:22] Apollo: And it was, you know, a lot of the work that I had done as a Green Beret in the FBI and academically, that helped to give me the [00:03:30] knowledge and the skills to be able to build and scale businesses. And it made me curious about, you know, what's the best and fastest way to accomplish big things in your life and your business?
[00:03:44] Apollo: So I started exploring these concepts both in academia and in my work as a consultant and. I found that success, vibrant success comes down to doing just three things really well. Just three things, and we [00:04:00] have codified those three things into what we call the BLE system. And BLE stands for prioritize, leverage, and execute.
[00:04:08] Apollo: We think about prioritizing, leveraging, and executing through this metaphor of climbing a mountain. Prioritizing is all about choosing which mountain you're going to climb, choosing the peak that you are going to plant a flag on. Leveraging is all about having the right team and the right resources that are gonna make climbing that mountain [00:04:30] easy.
[00:04:30] Apollo: An execution is all about charting a path up the mountain and then actually following. That path. So we say with prioritizing, you're making it big, planting the flag with leveraging, you're making it easy, and with execution, you're making it happen. In my work with leaders and teams, I wanted to provide people a way to measure that in themselves.
[00:04:53] Apollo: And so I created The Achievement Index, and in this podcast, everybody that joins has taken [00:05:00] The Achievement Index and has received their score. So myself, I am. 84% prioritize. I love looking at mountain ranges and deciding which mountains we should tackle, where we should plant the flag. I'm 8% leverage and 8% execute, and yet I've managed to accomplish a lot of things that require leverage and execution.
[00:05:23] Apollo: Our guests are no different. They all have different combinations of orientations of prioritizing. [00:05:30] Leveraging or executing. So we invite them onto the podcast and we talk about how those orientations have influenced or led to their success and maybe how they've held them back from achieving even more.
[00:05:45] Apollo: So you two can take the achievement index to identify how you prioritize, leverage or execute, and then you can follow along our guest journey and learn from them. And learn from the pitfalls [00:06:00] and the successes that they have experienced as amazing founders and leaders. So here's a little preview of how that prioritized leverage execute orientation has played out for some of our guests.
[00:06:16] Apollo: Starting off with the prioritized orientation. Now remember, This is all about choosing which mountains to climb and planting a flag. Prioritizers must be aware of the environmental [00:06:30] threats. Think about the weather that you might encounter on the mountain and the limitations of the organization and the team climbing that mountain.
[00:06:38] Apollo: They have to develop the prerequisites and the guarantees for success. So here's how some of our first guests have thought about. Prioritizing. You know, when you think about
[00:06:51] Muhammad: really good marketing teams, you know, as a leader, you do have to set outcome, right? Give them an outcome of where we're trying to get to, who we're trying to talk to, [00:07:00] what needs to feel like, right?
[00:07:01] Muhammad: Some parameters to work inside of and let them do their thing. Let them create something that's really. You know, amazing and innovative. And while a boundary or kind of guardrails are important for a creative, you can't get too specific to them or you actually box them into
[00:07:16] Chinedu: a corner. A lot of those bigger decisions that you have to make, you have to make it on your own.
[00:07:21] Chinedu: You have to go spend time on your own and then come back to your team and then talk to them about where you've landed. [00:07:30] Because that ideation process really can throw people off when they are focusing on leverage or they focusing on the task at hand, they can
[00:07:37] Apollo: get lost.
It
[00:07:38] Jen: really helps to always go back to the mission and get people energized around, okay, why are we here?
[00:07:42] Jen: What are we trying to accomplish? And we're all really excited about the end goal. So that helps me get everybody on board. And then I've learned to just do a better job of linking each task with how does this fit into the bigger picture? How does this all fit [00:08:00] into the end
[00:08:00] Brian: goal? Some days I'm recording a podcast, some days I'm running a nonprofit.
[00:08:03] Brian: Some days I'm running a venture capital firm, and so trying to make sure I stay focused, you know, I certainly have priorities of those three things. If anything is on fire at Collide, it's being taken care of before takeoff, which is being taken care of before Rhoda Untraveled. But there's still days where, you know, there's just not enough time to do
[00:08:18] Apollo: everything.
[00:08:19] Apollo: So as you can see, there's no one way to prioritize. Moving on to leverage. Leveraging is all about building out that base camp at the [00:08:30] base of the mountain, leveraging technology, information, people, and systems to make that climb to the top of the mountain or achieving your business goals to make that easy.
[00:08:41] Apollo: Now with leverage, it's easy to over-engineer, leverage to rely on technology that may actually introduce more. Confusion and busyness into your organization to create systems and processes that are complex and convoluted. So leverage is all about finding that right balance of [00:09:00] people, of technology and systems that are gonna make that climb easy without bogging your people Down.
[00:09:07] Apollo: Here are how some of our first guest. Have approached leverage,
[00:09:12] Chinedu: so relationships have been very helpful. The length of time and the depth of those relationships have been very helpful to sort of do more with the same or even less amount of resources than I would normally require for one venture. And then, I think the most important [00:09:30] thing has been figuring out what systems that I can use with people to identify early on things that are tracking or trending well, and then quickly identifying when things are not trending well, cutting those things off, and moving on to other opportunities or moving on to.
[00:09:51] Chinedu: Other ways to solve the same
[00:09:52] Jen: problems? I think it's really just a function of, as I take on more of a leadership role, having to [00:10:00] constantly remind myself that I have a team of people at my disposal, and that I end up carrying so much of the effort myself when we would probably be more successful if I delegated more.
[00:10:13] Jen: And if I took advantage of the skillsets that wonderful people that we hired bring to the table that I myself don't
[00:10:18] Brian: have, making sure that we have someone that's making sure the trains run on time has been super effective in allowing Aaron and I to go and focus a lot more on picking, qualifying, winning, [00:10:30] supporting kind of all the things that come with building a portfolio.
[00:10:34] Brian: And then I'd call it a little bit of Union Yang. So, Now we'll add more on the investing side. We'll go find people who can help us on that side, and then we'll feel good on that side. We'll go back and add to ahead of platform or someone that can help us more on the op side. Then we'll flip back over and say, we don't have anyone on the investing side.
[00:10:51] Brian: You know, so that's part of the firm building exercises, like plugging holes in a proactive manner before they turn into holes. That's just part of my [00:11:00] job. That's what I get
paid
[00:11:00] Muhammad: for. One of the, you know, realizations I had pretty early on was that I loved to build a thing. And I left to scale it up until it was a, you know, operating machine.
[00:11:10] Muhammad: But I didn't necessarily like working in that machine and that's really one of the reasons why I left insurance, right? It really is a big machine process, but once again, if you create the team around you, you also end up with people who love doing the execution. You can depend on them. So I can move on to build the next piece of the marketing stack.
[00:11:29] Apollo: So you can see [00:11:30] that there are lots of ways. To think about leverage from a technology standpoint, an information standpoint, especially a people standpoint and a systems perspective. Finally, moving on to execute with regards to execution. It's always important to identify that clear path up the mountain and define which tools, what leverage are you going to use in climbing that path.
[00:11:55] Apollo: In execution, it's important to establish ownership, to determine who is going to [00:12:00] do what. Buy when and to what standard here are how some of our first gets have approached execution.
[00:12:07] Jen: I'd say my whole career has been focused on finding ways to create a competitive advantage. So as long as I'm able to put myself in a position where I have something that someone else doesn't, then I've been able to get things done.
[00:12:22] Jen: Oftentimes, it's something that I've created on my own where I just say, okay, we're gonna come up with some. Sort of new ninja way of [00:12:30] putting a project together or financial structure or policy pathway, and just by virtue of having something that someone else doesn't, we're gonna get it done. I
[00:12:40] Apollo: prefer editing
[00:12:41] Muhammad: versus writing from blank page.
[00:12:43] Muhammad: This new AI group of technologies have really allowed me a starting point to really let my strength areas shine. Even if I look at it and I say, Wow, this is a garbage paragraph. At least I know why. And I can start typing over it, [00:13:00] and then I feel like I'm in my swim lane, right?
[00:13:03] Chinedu: I feel good. I went and got a law degree, became a lawyer.
[00:13:06] Chinedu: I was an engineer. I went to business school. I did all of those things. So I have subject matter areas where I. Understand what needs to be done, and I put in the work to understand what work is happening and when it comes down to something getting done and finding someone to do it. If people are wasting time, I will get it done.
[00:13:29] Brian: [00:13:30] So as I sort of shift into becoming a leader, wanting to still be the person to do everything, or not allowing other people to take over things for me, that might actually be more bottleneck than it's worth, right? Like even if I might have done something at 97%, there's someone else that could have done it at least 94, and I could've done something else with that time.
[00:13:49] Brian: And so it's actually inefficient for me to be the one doing it. Despite my sort of secondhand nature to just always believe that that's the fastest way and best
[00:13:57] Apollo: way to get it done. And those are just a few of the [00:14:00] ways that you can think about prioritizing, leveraging, or executing. The clips that you just heard came from our first guest, so make sure you hit that subscribe button so you can hear their amazing interviews.
[00:14:13] Apollo: In full. Thank you so much to Chinedu Enekwe, Jen McElyea, Muhammad Yasin and Brian Hollins Join us on this podcast as we explore all the different ways that people can achieve. Take The Achievement Index, the link is in the show notes, [00:14:30] and you can figure out where do you fall. On the mountain, are you more of a prioritizer, somebody who likes to sit back at the bottom of the mountain range and determine which hill to take?
[00:14:41] Apollo: Are you a leverager? Are you in the base camp building out the technology, the information, the people in the systems that are gonna help your organization be successful? Or are you more of an executor? That person that's just looking to charge up the mountain? I have no doubt that the insights and perspectives our guests provide will [00:15:00] be incredibly beneficial to helping you achieve more.
[00:15:06] Apollo: So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast, so you'll be notified when the first episode and every episode after that drops. See you on the mountain.