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many times people will come to me and they'll say something like John I would like to spend a day with you I understand that thought I understand that comment they're really saying John you know I'd like to see what your day is really like and um you know every day has a lot of things that are different about it but I did that question and that thought brought me to a lesson I kind of want to teach you today called five things that I do every day and the five things that I do every day I would say um are The Secret of My Success I I've often said that uh your daily agenda what you and I do every day determines the level of our success you let me you let me spend a day with you and I just need to hang I really don't need to interact with you I just need to watch you if you gave me one day I I could Promise You by the end of that day with pretty good accurac pretty good accuracy I could um tell you how successful you're going to be because there are certain things that you you just pick up from spending a day with I mean if I have a day with you I'm going to pretty well figure out what kind of attitude you have if I if I spend a day with you I'm going to figure out how well you prioritize if I spend a day with you I'm going to figure out if you're disciplined or not I mean it doesn't take long to find the things the ingredients that make people successful so when people say well John if I spend a day with you you know what would I see well it depends some days I'm writing some days I'm speaking some days I'm in the studio like I am today so my days are different but but there are five things every day that I do intentionally now these five things here's the good news these five are so simple every one of you can do these this this is not complicated it's not hard it's not difficult they're all simple but they are all powerfully successful if you do it the the key is action you you've got to do them so let me give you the five things that that I intentionally do every day number one is is is I learn every day I have a capacity and curiosity to keep learning I never have gotten to this place where you know some people have this kind of I've Been There Done That kind of a Minds oh I've been there I've done that well I've been a lot of places and I've done a lot of things but been there done that doesn't do anything to provide any kind of a growth for tomorrow you see the only guarantee that I have that tomorrow's going to get better today is that I'm growing today and the only way that I can grow today is by learning my my mentor John Wooden had a great statement he he would look at me often he' said John it it's what you learn after you know it all that counts and what coach wood realized is there's a whole bunch of people that they they get stuck on know it all they get stuck on the fact I've been there and done that and all of a sudden they they cease to be hungry to learn they cease to have a desire to perhaps uh uh stretch in their capacity and so just never lose that that desire to read and to listen and to learn and and and and and and it and to grow I I um I fun story I was in Minneapolis Minnesota and I was speaking for a large company and the CEO I was in his office and he had to leave the office for about 5 minutes and I said I'll just sit here and wait on you and I looked up at his bookshelf and he had a lot of my books and I thought oh my gosh I'm I'm thrilled he has my books he reads them so I thought I would surprise him and you know so I I would maybe sign a few of them so I reached up and picked one of them up and opened it up to sign it and I soon as I opened up I thought wow this book hasn't been opened before he hasn't read this book so I thought I'd have some fun and I just put his name there and I just wrote the words please read me and and then I signed my name I stuck it up pulled up pulled out another book opened it up I thought oh this isn't has mid rad either so I'm put his name and I put please read me also and I signed my name and stick it back up and you can see where this one's going I pck pull down the third book off the bookshelf and it hadn't been open it hadn't been read and so now I'm getting a little more desperate so I put his name and I said uh please read me also and then I put when you do call and I put my cell phone number in there and I signed it and put it back up and he never called me okay now here's a person who was in a high position but he stopped learning there came a time where he somehow thought wow I I I know enough I am enough and I just want you to know that we don't know enough so every day every day I learn every day number two is I I I reflect um you know reflection turns experience into Insight so when people say experience is the best teacher that's just not true yeah it's a common statement but it's a stupid one to be honest with you if experien were the best teacher everybody as they had more experience as they got older they get better and most people they're getting older they're not getting better they've got more experience but they've never evaluated the experience you see it's not experience that's the best teacher it's evaluating the experience it's out of the EV you know what did I learn from what I just did that really brings the fruit so when my children were growing up every week we would do different experiences and they knew that I'd ask them two questions if I asked my children this question once I've ask him 10,000 times as they grew up we'd finish the experience I'd look at him and say hey what did you love what did you learn what did you love what did you learn for a kid they can tell you what they love a lot quicker than what they learned and so I always ask it that way and when my grandchildren came along I've asked them now thousands of times what did you love what did you learn what what am I doing I'm teaching them to evaluate their experience because awareness is huge listen you have to know yourself to grow yourself and and one of the great mistakes we make in life is the fact that we're unaware and so every day I reflect so I can increase my wordness every day I I so every day I reflect every day I learn every day I write you say of course you write every day John you're an author you're a writer no no I I I write every day because writing does two maybe three things for me that are essential for my development uh one is I write I when I whenever I get a good thought I write it down in fact today I was doing an interview and a podcast and the person I was Interview fact it was Don jger he he he said something was very important so right in the middle of the interview I'm getting my iPhone out and I'm writing down his thought as quot because I don't want to lose it so I write to capture the thought I also write to clarify the thought um writing brings Clarity to a thought much better than just listening and there's something about when you see it um that it just becomes more clear and I also write to create the thought because what I found is once I start writing a thought down many times it leads to another thought you know a great idea is an accumulation of several good ideas and so every day I write I I I write so I can capture the thought clarify it maybe even create another thought every day number four I share it's very important for you to take what you're learning and pass it on to others and it's very important for you to talk your thought out um there's something magic that happens with sharing your thought uh one 1+ one equals if if you have a good thought and you share a good thought with me and I have a good thought and I share it with you okay the natural thing to say we have two good thoughts but usually that stimulates another thought you know 1 plus one equals three in Sharing there's a compounding that once that we begin to verbalize and so there's beautiful thing about sharing that that thought and then every day I also I not only share the thought I sustain the thought I every day I I work on continually thinking about what I learned uh the true experiment they put 10 people in a room and they give them a thought they give them an idea and they said we want you to we want you to take that idea and and maximize its potential an hour later they go into the room with 10 and and they've taken the idea and and obviously they they're sharing and and it's gotten better and then they remove five it doesn't matter which five they remove doesn't matter at all could be the smartest five the dumbest five I don't care and they give those the last five one more hour to think upon that idea 100% of the time at the second hour the idea has gotten better why is because it's been sustained it was held on long enough to really develop so every day I sustain my thinking every day I share my thinking pretty much every day I write my thinking every day I reflect my thinking and yes every day I learn so I have something to think upon simple isn't it you can do that in fact for the next 30 days until I see you next month practice this and see what happens we're always anxious to improve our circumstances we're always anxious to to fix the things around us but so many times we're not anxious to improve ourselves and and fix ourselves and so the whole teaching of this is is that when we start in life we you probably start off like I did and that that is with with goal setting and um well let me just tell you a story Kirk CM when I was in my early 20s asked me what my plan for growth was and the bottom line is I didn't have a plan for growth I didn't know that I was supposed to have a plan for growth um he was the first one that kind of made me aware that John growth is not automatic if you're going to grow you have to grow intentionally and uh so I I said okay I'm going to grow intentionally but but I didn't know how to grow I mean no one ever you know just one thing to ask yourself if you have a growth plan but I didn't have a growth plan and I went to my friends and I asked them if they had a growth plan and none of them did and so I I desperately began to say well how do I grow myself how do I develop myself and so I brought something very personal to me today uh because I'm holding in my hand the where I started my growth plan this is the Dynamics of personal grow goal setting and it's personal success planner and it was by Paul Meyer success Motivation Institute and this is where I started this is this is my first I in fact paid $799 for this okay and when I paid $799 for this uh that year I made I I was I started off as a as a p that year I made $4,800 so this was huge this was a a lot of money and and I had to save up for it I did have that kind of money and so really 6 months of of trying and saving we we finally got to this and so this is where I started and and uh it it's just very important it's very special to me but but I started my personal growth plan with a goal setting teaching and it's got cassette tapes in here and it's got workbooks and I worked it through and I really went through this personal growth plan three times you know the first time I I got it I throw it back to get some more and it took me so I went through it three times but the reason I brought this with me today is is for a couple reasons one is is this is when people say what's the best investment you've ever made in your life the best investment I ever made in my life is right here the $799 I paid which was an awful lot of money for me the $799 I paid has been worth millions of dollars for me the return is incalculable and and the reason I say that is because I'm going to challenge you in a personal growth way to invest in yourself in fact if you wouldn't invest in yourself why should anyone else invest in you I'm always amazed at people who want me to scholarship them want to you would you you know would you could you kind of give me a give me a a free lift and my whole process no no if you and I don't bet on ourselves why should anyone else bet on us the first bet that I ought to pay is is on myself and so so this is my first kid and and so I brought it with you today to say that I literally started my growth my whole growth life goal setting and isn't interesting I'm talking to you about how do you and I leader shift how do we shift from from being a a a goal Setter to a person that just really works on growth because here's what I here's what I realized when I started in my growth plan what I realized was this the goals I achieved were not as great or as important as the growth that I was receiving in my life that yes I was setting goals and and I was stretching towards those goals and it was a good thing but but it was there was something happening in in internally to me that was more than than places I wanted to go and numbers that I I wanted to reach and I I I experienced two what I call growth changes that I want to give to you because I think that when you get on a growth Journey that's intentional you'll discover these same changes also and the first one is very simple and that is that I went from growth in everything to growth in essential things when I started off of my growth I just said well I want to learn everything and so I just read and and studied and and listened to tapes and I just did everything I could to grow and and I I was just grow growth grow and one day it hit me that that was never going to get me to where I wanted to be that I had to go from trying to grow in every area and everything to to grow get get get essential what are the main things that that you just need to grow in now for me in my 20s I came to the conclusion that if I could um if I could be successful in relationships if I could be become successful in training and equipping people if I could have an incredible attitude that would help me be an overcomer and if I could learn to lead and and and increase influence if I could do those four things relationships equipping attitude leadership if I could grow in those four areas that I probably could be successful and so I committed that these are the areas I'm going to grow in and so I I began to eliminate a lot of stuff so that I could grow in what I would call for me the main stuff and I would say to each one of you and all of our sites and here locally that that what you've got to do is when you start your growth plan becoming intentional you got to ask yourself what are the areas I'm going to grow in you can't grow in everything you don't even want to grow in everything but you but you got to grow in the essential things for me r l relationships equipping attitude and Leadership and later on I I added communication because I knew that I would spend my life as a connector and a communicator and because I am a person of faith faith and pretty much for 40 plus years these have been my six Essentials learning how to connect with people learning how to train equip others having an attitude to help me overcome learn how to lead and expand influence learn how to communicate well and and and then become the person of faith that the that I really want to become this this has become this is where I really spent my time the second change I had in the area of growth was I went grow from growth with a timeline to growth without a Finish Line now this was an amazing experience that I had because when I started my growth journey I I I thought in terms of well okay there'll be a a Finish Line somewhere there'll be a time when when I accomplished that there'll be a time where I have achieved this there'll be a time where I have arrived and so I so I had I had a timeline out there and I heard Earl Nightingale say that if you spent an hour a day every day on a certain given subject now that's back to the essentials re e a l that stuff if you spend an hour a day every day on a on a certain given subject for five years you could become an expert on that subject now that really excited me because at this time I'm falling in love with with leadership I'm buying into the idea everything Rises and falls on leadership and so here we go I I'm excited and I said okay I'm going to spend an hour a day every day for five years to become an expert on the subject of leadership and that's what I did now back then there were not a lot of leadership books out they were M management books if you go back in the if you go back in the 70s and ' 80s you go into book stores you didn't find leadership books you found management books and so I read some management books and it it it kind of got me going in the in the right way but I would talk to people that were leaders I would try to do leadership experiences an hour every day and and every day every week as I would go through this process I'd ask myself this question how long will it take well Earl Nale said it' take five years well so I so I'm now I'm I I'm not only reading and studying and learning and experiencing guess what else I'm doing I I'm counting down I I I I think I'm Mr cap canaval and I'm going you know five you know wow four you know wooo free and I and I can I can smell it I it's out there I'm I'm getting close that there's going to be some light in this tunnel pretty soon and I was about halfway in this fiveyear run of countdown until something happened it wasn't anything I read it wasn't anything that somebody came and set aside me and and mentored me on or or kind of gave me some thoughts or advice about halfway in this journey the inside of me switched I was receiving so much value from my personal growth I was rece I was learning so much about leadership I I was I I was growing so much internally that I stopped counting and I I left the question how long will it take and I picked up the question how far can I go go I would love to talk about this idea of daily agendas from your perspective John but then certainly to you James and then again John go for it with your questions but let's talk about daily agendas and their impact on long-term success James what Mark is talking about there is I I I wrote a book called today matters a long time ago and the basically the thesis of the book is that I can if I could spend a day with you I could pretty much at the end of the day tell you how successful you are because the secret of our success is to determined by what we do daily it's it's the daily habits and and so I've talked about that a lot and I think one of the reasons your book connected so much with me is that you have a terrific way of expressing and teaching that is very um practical but every time I read one of your illustrations or or your next principle it was like I'm thinking I've always I've thought this but James just wrote it it it was like you clarified it I it was like okay inside you're agreeing with that but on the outside you visually with with the written word just I think really bring the aha moment to the person that's felt it but never quite expressed it as clearly as you have yeah thank you for saying that I actually think that's one of the best compliments that I can get as a writer which is you know I've always kind of thought this or I this matches up with my personal experience but I've just never quite heard it put that way and I think a lot of what I try to do kind of try I try to hit that Mark or hit that Target and um I'll have readers come up to me and they'll say you know hey I have one guy come up he say I'm training for the Boston Marathon like I've been doing so many of the things in this book I just never realized it or didn't really think about it that way and um a lot of this really resonated with me because I've been doing this stuff for years and I thought wow what a great proof of concept you know like that made me feel really good about the book like here's somebody who's getting real results in the world and they're like yes this is exactly what's worked for me I just didn't have a way of a language for it I just didn't have a way to express it and so uh to a large degree I'm not really saying anything new I'm just trying to find maybe a different line of attack or a slightly different explanation or a story that kind of brings the concept to life I'm just trying to take these things that have been true for a very long time and useful in many different contexts and put them in a way that's easy to understand and easy to apply and so my real job is the distilling of the idea or the principle into something actionable rather than coming up with something brand new and you did it well and if if you don't mind I'd like to talk about the Ice Cube for a moment okay because I just I mean it is it's such a beautiful illustration of our work is stored up before it shows up and I think I think a big Miss for a lot of us James is that in the stored up stage of our life we get discouraged and and we just say well you know i' I've been working on this nothing is happening which we know things are happening but we don't see it so and of course then use the the same illustration basically as the hammering the The Rock and you know on the thousand hit all of a sudden it breaks and cracks in the process so I'd like you to teach this because I just feel it is so encouraging to people that are trying to get some good habits but sometimes they the stored up stage just kind of is a little discouraging for them because they're they're they're looking for something tangible to see well one of the great challenges with building better habits is that you show up and you do the right thing and then you feel like you don't have anything to show for it you know like take my parents for example they like to swim and one of the challenging things about swimming is their body looks exactly the same when they get out of the water as it did when they jumped in right like they have no physical evidence that that workout was worth it it's only months or maybe even years later that you get kind of the physical results you were hoping for or ever we can all think of like work projects maybe you have a team meeting you know you're meeting every week to work on this feature to ship this product and it's six months in and the thing is still a mess you haven't shipped it yet or you know I'm sure John you've had this before with book manuscripts I know that I had this with at Tomic abits I've been working on this thing for a year and a half and it's still unfinished you know and like it's very easy to get discouraged in those moments because you're like I thought I was doing the thing I'm supposed to do but I still don't have the result I was hoping for and I like to encourage people to think about this kind of metaphor of an ice cube you know imagine you walk into a room it's cold you can see your breath say it's like 25 26 degrees Ice Cube sitting on the table and you slowly start to heat the room up 27 28 29 Ice Cube still sitting there 30 31 and then all of a sudden you get to 32 degrees and it's this one degree shift no different than the other shifts that have just come before but suddenly you hit this phase transition and the Ice Cube melts and a lot of the time working on your habits or trying to get better results in life is kind of like that you know you you show up and you keep making these small improvements and nothing happens and you just have to wait until you hit the phase transition for that kind of moment to occur and that work that you were putting in it wasn't wasted it was just being stored you know kind of like complaining about running for a month and not seeing a change in your body for example is sort of like complaining about heating an ice cube up from 25 to 30° and not melting yet it's like well you just haven't hit the phase transition um and there are a lot of things in life that are like that and I think that doesn't necessarily mean this is going to feel easy all the time but knowing that that is a reality and that that work is often stored um and you have to wait for to get to that moment where it's revealed just knowing that is true puts you in a slightly better mindset to handle the difficulty of showing up again and needing to continue banging on the Rock before it it finally sures yeah I just love the illustration it makes all the sense of the world and I think that uh again for many of us the stored up stage we it we we have to understand that the real work is done in the store stored up stage as much as it is in the showd up stage it's just we don't get visually rewarded for it and so therefore we get a little bit discouraged um another thing that you said that I would love for you to talk about um well you talked about grow uh goals and systems sure okay and and in the in the goals and systems the way you said it was better than the way I said it but let me just give you a little background I when I started off as a young leader I set a lot of goals I took goal setting seminars and you know did goal setting practices and then one day I I began to understand that I would hit a goal and then I kind of look and say well what's next and and I felt felt that there was a missing piece and so I kind of shifted from being goal oriented to growth oriented still had I still had goals in my life but I said I want to grow in this area I want to grow in the leadership Lane and so but when I saw that you talked about the systems which are the processes you know it's the process I love that because I I felt I felt when you spoke of that that this is a big Miss with a lot of people that they are kind of outsid directed with with the goals and and and and they don't have that process that system that allows them to to Really longterm sustain and continue to go be go beyond your because I say if you're growth oriented you'll hit a goal and you'll say that's nice but you just keep on going because it's bigger than that if you're goal oriented sometimes you say what do I do next okay pick up on that one and and and take us to a new level James well I mean first of all this is coming from someone who was very goal oriented for a long long time you know I think in a lot of ways everything I write in atomic habits is actually a little reminder to myself you know I make all these same mistakes that everybody else makes and so I kind of am coming up with these ideas because I need them but I came across this sheet of paper a couple years ago and it had a list of goals that I had written out to myself like maybe 10 years prior and it was kind of interesting looking through them uh with that much distance from them because maybe 30% of the list or something were things that I had accomplished and then the rest of the list were things I hadn't and and my first thought looking at it was well clearly writing the go down wasn't the thing that made the difference you know like obviously if I would that would have been the the secret then I should have just hit them all and um what I realized looking at it was the ones that I made progress on were the ones that I had some kind of system around and you know we often tell these stories about Behavior change and habits and how hard it is to build new habits how difficult it is to change your behavior and and all of that and one of the stories that we will tell is something like well maybe if you really wanted it maybe if you had better goals maybe if you had more discipline maybe if you had more grid and you know I don't know that that's quite right you know certainly those are important qualities in life but I think many people certainly most people like listening to this conversation right now genuinely do want to improve genuinely do want to perform at a high level so what I would say is if you're struggling to improve the problem isn't you the problem is your system we don't change not because we don't want to change but because we have the wrong system for change and I think we can even go a step further and say listen you don't rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems you know so often in life we're told you need to be more ambitious set a bigger goal think bigger 10x your vision and thinking big ha has its place like I consider myself to be someone who thinks big but the truth is setting the goal is kind of the easy part you know like I I'm an author right like I can set a goal to sell 100 million books you know it took me three seconds like the goal is not the hard part it's building a system of behaviors that executes and Carries you toward that outcome and so what I would say is um if I was going to put a little finer point on this language what do I mean by goal and system your goal is your desired outcome the target the thing you're shooting for what is your system it's the collection of daily habits that you follow and if there is ever a gap between your goal in your system if there's ever a gap between your desired outcome and your daily habits your daily habits will always win you know almost by definition your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results so whatever system you've been running whatever collection of habits you've been following for the last say six months or year or two years it's carried you almost inevitably to the outcomes that you have right now and that's kind of one of the great ironies of life you know we all so badly want better results we also badly want to make more money or reduce stress or be more productive or get in shape but the results are not actually the thing that needs to change it's like fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves design a better system create a better collection of daily habits and you'll be carried kind of naturally to a different destination and that's why sometimes I'll say like goals are for people who care about winning once systems are for people who care about winning repeatedly you know if you want to get results again and again then it's the system that drives you forward so um that's kind of my little take on systems and goals I love what you just said there that was great I'll I'll I'll write that down and give you credit somewhere ound great so let's stay a little bit kind of in that same territory because one of the things I loved about Atomic habits James it makes sense it just makes sense when you read it you not only can understand it and apply it it makes sense and when you talked about the difference between becoming outcome based or identity based on goals and and and and where you're going when I read that whole section I thought that is right and reasonable and you know I I've got a cigarette habit I'm trying to quit smoking versus I don't smoke I mean that I felt was just very impacting so take us there a little bit would you please well I think this is pretty natural I certainly have done it many times before um a lot of the time when you want to change something or get a better result you'll sit down and first you start thinking about what do I want to achieve so what what outcome do I want and then if you go a little bit beyond just dreaming about the outcome you say okay well I need some kind of plan I need some sort of process for this and so you might say just as is an example I want to lose 40 pounds and so my plan is I'm going to go to the gym four days a week and I'm going to eat this new diet and so on and usually it kind of stops there and the implicit assumption kind of behind all of this is if I can fall this plan and get that result then I'll be the kind of person that I want to be or I'll be happier with who I am or I'll be more satisfied with my results or something like that and what I encourage in chapter two of the book is let's maybe flip that on its head for a minute and just say hey why don't we just start by asking ourselves not what do I want to achieve but rather who do I wish to become and then you can build your habits around that identity and let that process kind of carry you forward and then whatever results happen to Bubble Up along the way are the results that come along the way and so I sort of think of it like kind of like the layers of an onion the outermost layer is your outcomes one layer in is your process and then the the core of the onion is your identity and um what I found is that and I think many readers have uh would agree with this the concept of trying to build identity-based habits of starting with who do you wish to become is more resilient for them because they can kind of carry it around from situation to situation so for example one reader she had this concept of this identity of what would a healthy person do and then whenever she walked around she would just ask herself that question that question all day what would a healthy person do would they order the salad or order the burger and fries what would a healthy person do would they walk you know five blocks the next meeting or would they catch a cab or you know whatever and they can walk around uh all day long with that kind of identity in their mind and that gives them a lens to make their daily decisions and they start to feel more aligned with becoming the kind of person they want to be now my big takeaway for this and I think the way in which it ties into all the concepts and atomic habits and the strategies for building small habits and getting better is that your behavior provides uh evidence of your identity and so every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become so no doing one push-up does not transform your body but it does cast a vote for I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts and no writing one sentence may not finish the novel but it does cast a vote for I'm a writer and individually those actions are small things but collectively you start to build up this body of evidence for the type of person you are and what you stand for and ultimately I think this is the real reason that habits matter which is they provide evidence for who you are you know we often talk about habits as mattering because of the external results they'll get you hey they'll help you make more money or reduce stress or whatever but the real reason they matter is they shape your sense of s that kind of shape that narrative that story that you have about who you are and what you do and habits are not the only things in life that influence that picture or that story but by virtue of being repeated day in and day out habits provide the bulk of the evidence they they play a really significant role in shaping the way you see yourself and so once you start to believe that you're that kind of person you have every reason in the world to stick with the behavior you know like especially once you take pride in it I you know I always joke like if you take pride in the size of your biceps you never skip arm day the gym you know and once you start to take pride in a certain habit it becomes easier to stick to it like the person who views themselves as I am a runner they don't have to motivate themselves to go for a run in the same way that somebody who's just getting started might you know it's kind of like no like this is just part of what I normally do it's part of who I am and so ultimately I think that's where we're trying to get to now it's hard to flip a switch on day one and just change your identity overnight it usually doesn't happen that way it's a gradual thing it requires the casting of many votes to continue that metaphor and building up a body of evidence but um but I do think it's possible and a lot of the other tools and strategies in the book maybe can give you the short-term motivation that you need to get to that long-term place of kind of reshaping your story or shaping your identity I do want to dig into your new book leveling up because I've now heard you talk on chasing failure and uh it's one of the best talks I've heard on this subject matter but before we do go to leveling up today in the podcast I do want to just step camp out for a minute on chasing failure talk to me about your journey and and how that brought you to become a scholar of failure I don't know if that's a compliment or not man you're a scholar on failure but uh let's talk a little bit about what led to your great Insight on failure yeah you know I I grew up believing that failure is not an option until I started meeting meeting successful people and realize well they've all failed so apparently it it's an option and uh my wife and I uh we were we got to go on a couple different TV shows because she told a friend that she thought it would be cool to get engaged and married on the same day I had no idea what that meant so I guessed and began planning a wedding behind her back over the course of two years and so June 7th 2013 I get down on one knee I say Amanda will you marry me she says yes I said just kidding will you marry me today open up a loung room door about 85 of our family and friends standing in there with the sign that says today we were engaged for a good 11 hours uh made a documentary about it it went viral so we get on a couple of these different TV shows in the on the Queen Latifa show and my wife surprises me by getting me connected with Kobe Bryant and I absolutely lost my mind and and I played ball in college and and so huge NBA fans fan huge Lakers Kobe fan and so I get an opportunity three months from the recording of the Queen Latifa show to to meet Kobe Bryan and so I'm like man if I'm getting ready to meet Kobe I need to be getting ready to get in the league and so there was this you know well Ryan you're 6'3 you play ball in college but there are levels to this thing and so can you really you know make an NBA Squad can you make a g-league squad so for me I just thought man you know what I I probably can't so why don't I just hang that up and just go meet Kobe and be be a normal person but then I thought man here we are doing the thing that leaders do all the time which is talk themselves out of their best ideas and this was a day I said you know what why don't I talk myself into being brave today and so that day I started a second documentary called chasing failure where I said man what if I get in the ring with failure let it give me Its Best Shot I'll give it my best shot and let's just see what happens and so I reached out to about five NBA teams and just said hey would you let a complete stranger work out for your basketball team I'll probably fail but what if I don't there's only one way for us to find out and that's for you to let me try 63 200 lb and looking for failure sincerely Ryan Lee it's like what do we have to lose you know it's like we just think like you can't do that and there's all of these rules and expectations that are put on us that I just love to stop every now and then and go who's who who's making the rules of your life who's making the rules of your leader ship how how how who's governing this it sometimes it feels like we've got this Middle School principal that's following us around telling us what we can and can't do but they're they're really self-imposed rules and so I said if they put their emails on the internet they must want to get emails from somebody so why not me and the first four team said no the fifth team said yeah we'll give you a shot and that was the Phoenix Suns so I go to Phoenix and I try out for an NBA team it was one of the most incredible experiences of of my life and I failed at a very very high level but what I realized when I got there was wait a second how in the world did I get here there's so many rooms that I could be in at this point but as I'm failing this try out I realized that chasing failure took me further than chasing success ever did because chasing failure led me to an NBA practice court and I had been in a lot of rooms up to that point in my life but never an NBA practice court so that just emboldened me to try things and so now you talk eight years later that try out was about eight years ago D we're just constantly trying things you and I before this podcast we going we don't know what we're doing on X but guess what we're gonna give it our best shot that's exactly right we're going to research we're H how how are we going to to to grow our our coaches how are we going to go from 48,000 coaches to 75,000 coaches it's like uh we don't actually know the answer to that question but guess what we are committed to doing figuring it out and most leaders are afraid to try things yeah and so I think you can really stand out amongst the crowd when you're just say hey I'm willing to fail I'm willing to take those lessons I'm willing to go get those lessons first so you can come after me second and learn from my mistakes I'm willing to do that but when you're the first one to do it you you get something that the second doesn't which is and so I think the more and more that I work with successful people all around the world what they will tell you that they will never post is I promise you they all use the same phrase I don't know what I'm doing I I don't know how we're going to do that I don't know how we're going to take this company public I don't know like that's the secret sauce I'm going I no me neither welcome to the club and so there is this pressure that I think leaders feel like I have to have all the answers but D the best leaders in the world don't have the answers and so so I just I have this what I would call a spirit of chasing failure and have been on this journey for a long time of going hey let's learn as much as we possibly can from failure so that we can indeed succeed but if we're afraid to fail if we're waiting for things to be perfect we will never move forward in our leadership you know what's interesting so one podcast audience viewers by the way if you're not viewing you need to jump on because Ryan's a good-looking dude right here you're you're missing it if you're just listening and not jumping on YouTube but Ryan you said something right there that I don't want any of our podcast family to miss you said when you are the first to try something you get something that the second third fourth fifth and sixth don't get and that is you get grit and that statement right there cut the podcast off and go do what you've been thinking about doing but you're waiting for somebody else to try it cuz you want the grit cuz the grit will cause you to go farther further and longer than the next guy the next guy the next gal the next gal so let's go uh those of you that are thinking about doing something hey you talk about this chasing failure concept and and you illustrate it on the Journey of personal success so well one things that uh we say on this podcast often John's talked a little bit about about it is Business Leaders leaders look at failure the same way they look at finances they want to return on failure we want to return on investment we want to return on our time we teach and have taught on this podcast that Business Leaders also get a return on failure talk to me about how failure is the source of leadership strength you know I I think that there is something powerful about a mindset Uh I that is okay with failure I often say the most important conversation you're going to have all week is the conversation that you have with yourself and what you tell yourself is so vitally important for for your growth and so some people can sort of wallow in their failures they can start telling themselves a very negative story about what they've done but I think it's important that a person understands that failure is an event it's not an identity some people want to wear their failures instead of just experiencing their failures it's not who you are it's something thing that happened it's not a somebody and sometimes we make that trip of going man I'm a failure no you failed there is a massive difference and so I think for a leader whenever they drop a ball they have to immediately have the correct conversation with themselves because they could say man I've made so many mistakes I've destroyed it all well did you destroy it or do you have the mindset of I'm rebuilding I'm rebuilding it all I'm already making my comeback I'm going to make sure that I took great notes on the mistakes that I made I'm not saying you didn't make any mistakes I'm just saying you need new language for your leadership you need new language for how you're going to start talking to yourself if you're going to be the kind of person that moves forward the the best thing that I've learned from John Maxwell is simply perspective his perspective on leadership and situations and people what impresses me the most about John is the amount of people that other people have deemed failures he's looked at and said I see potential so I'm going to invest in that person I'm going to show up for that person and let's see what we can get out of them what is that it's just a mindset it's all it is it doesn't change what somebody did it doesn't change even who someone is but it does change their mindset of going I want to be the kind of leader that says you know what this is going to be a strength of mine in a managing my failures but then managing other people's failures is where it really gets very very you talk about exponential impact when you when you're able to look at somebody else's failures and show up for them and give them the right language to have I think you're you're stepping into a really great leadership space you know what what I love about you and John is your ability to span different we call them streams of influence or different domains of influence and and so so I mean you you write you speak you you coach you consult you do do films you you make films and by the way if I I said this earlier but if you want to see more about what all Ryan's doing go to Ryan leak.com because you will be impacted just by visiting the site but Ryan you've done that much like John John speaker writer Communicator consultant coach he's done all these things and somehow you two have figured out how to you create a thread of influence impact of messaging that conects all of those domains or all of those sphere of influences talk to us we've got podcast listeners that come from all those different domains how did you create a thread that connected all that you do what a great question I believe something that I learned a couple of years ago I was at a conference I was listening to a speaker that I didn't think was very good I didn't think I actually thought it was boring I I didn't just think it wasn't very good I I actually thought it was very bad if I'm being honest but yet there were people in the lobby that were going that was the best speaker I've ever heard in my life and I went we need to get your ears checked what is happening like how in the world could you think that was I'm like you just may not listen to a lot of speakers I don't know what it is but but I realized something that day everybody is somebody's cup of tea everybody is somebody's cup of and what it allowed me to do was to encourage anybody to say hey be yourself everywhere and you go you might be afraid to be yourself you may be tempted to be more like John you may be tempted to be like the person you read about you may be tempted to be like somebody you follow on social media I encourage people to be them selves because what people can sense regardless of the room that you're in whether we're talking professional sports seite Executives Health Care Finance political sphere you name it what all of those people have in common is they can smell a phony coming a mile away and when you can genuinely just be yourself there is something powerful about that that people go I trust this person people trust John when he walked through him it's like John's gonna be John John's not trying to be Tim he's not trying to be Mark he's not trying to be Ryan he's just John y so for me it it took me a while to get comfortable in my own skin to be able to say okay I'm I'm going to be myself everywhere it took it was a journey but I think that allowed me to just be authentic everywhere I go I just did a talk this past week for a good friend of our bars Conway Edwards this was the first time I was speaking for his organization and so I'm thinking all right man chasing failure here we go he's like no I I don't want you to speak on chasing failure okay we can move on to my next book leveling up he's like nope I'm like well what about one of my old books unoffendable like this is my first time in front of your audience of 12,000 people and he said nope I want you to talk on parenting Conway why why why can we can we talk about this he goes no I I think you'd be excellent at it he's Jamaican right so he's got his Jamaican accent going I think you'd be Creed I'm like Conway can we dude there's so many other things that I have expertise on that I would love to share with this rather large audience but there's something powerful about talking about your weakness yeah to be able to to stand before an audience you go hey I'm not here to give you um parenting expert advice I've got an 8-year-old and a four-year-old which means I'm at about halfway point of their adolescence for my eight-year-old so hey I'm not here to be the expert but I'm going to tell you what I'm learning as a parent right now and you'd be surprised how well a message like that is received where it's not a hey I'm this know it all and you all need to listen to me it's more of a I'm one of you yeah I'm trying to figure out how to raise two men of God that honor the people in their life that do business the right way that treat people the right way that treat women the right way that operate their finances with Integrity all these are things that I'm consistently navigating versus hey let me give you three tips on how to be a better parent because I'm a amazing so what it does is it allows me as a leader to step into a room to go let me first ask questions and let me empathize with people in the room to say hey I do have a vast variety of experiences with global leaders however it does not make me a know- it all and so I found that when you ask questions first it puts people in because people can kind of have their armor up with who's this guy who does he think is but when there's a genuine hey I'm really trying to get to know you I'm not just rinse and repeat I'm not just going to do the last talk that I did before no I want to know about your audience and I want to know what they're struggling with and I want to know what you're struggling with and I want to make sure that I'm able to add value to what's happening in this room and I'm not going to assume this room is just like the last one so I think that is the thread that is going to be the same everywhere like Ryan's G to be human when he walks in the room whether it's a boardroom or a locker room I'm coming in with my full Humanity not my hey hi I'm Ryan and I'm an expert and you all should listen to me you know what I what I love about your and I'm going to stay with Chason fure one more question and then I promise you I want to move to leveling up but um one of the things I love about your story is you show chasing failure really could be also chasing opportunity what you did with Kobe what you did with your wife all of us want to send and sees an opportunity like Ryan Leak everyone of us just listen to Ryan he's going to make you find what could be and probably should be and probably will be to be honest with you failure he sees it through a lens of opportunity but your message is much deeper than that Ryan because also there is a reoccurring theme in all of your chasing failure that is about resilience and I and before we leave chasing failure you're you're brilliant in your resiliency and I'm tell telling you I work with corporations all around the globe I work with leaders right now postco that are dealing with the fact that people are not resilient anymore so before we leave chasing failure how do we turn adversity into a transformational force by allowing resiliency to drive the leader day I I think that was very well well said resilience is absolutely required for the future there is no version of our future that does not require resilience there's always going to be a setback the world is constantly changing are you are you adapting with those changes or simply getting mad that it changed you can't do both you need energy to do one or the other and so I've just decided as a leader I'm moving forward the good old days are gone 2019 isn't coming people love the Glory Days the BC days before covid yeah it's they're gone and so at some point we have to move on there are economists that are predicting a a global depression in 2030 um election season is is around the corner here in America all of these things can shake somebody's Foundation but I think the most important piece about resilience isn't just having it but planning it wow I've already planned on being resilient in an election year regardless of how an election goes excellent I've already planned on what my mindset is going to be in the future because I'm not going to be caught off guard by people being mad at each other in an organization like some people allow chaos to take them by surprise and they're like oh my gosh and so now you're being a reactive leader so there's a fire oh let's go get the water hose no proactive leader hey let's make sure we've got hoses everywhere hey let's make sure that people are fireproof that people are ready for things to burn you want to know why cuz that's called life and that's just how the world works and so I plan on being resilient because I know there are going to be setbacks yes uh they are some people say that another pandemic is coming which means as a person that does live events that could change things for me I'm not going to be surprised by that I'm simply going to be prepared for it when you're prepared for chaos you don't have to be scared of Chaos so for us we're just prepared we are literally planning resilience for the future and it's very important as a leader that we continue to be the adult in the room because kids are going to freak out whenever there's chaos but there ha the leader has to be the adult in the room that says hey we're going to be okay sometimes we're going to take some hits but we have to continue to get back up there will be budget cuts there will be times where a staff member tells you they're there for life and then they leave the next week prepare for it now prepare for people to lie prepare for people to to steal these things happen but I've already made up my mind what kind of leader I'm going to be in the future before it happen I want to jump into this quote you have in the book that says if you see yourself as a loser you won't play like a winner if you see yourself as a winner you won't play like a loser what advice do you give to someone having a hard time seeing themselves as a winner how do how do you get them first to see themselves as a winner so they can start playing like a winner yeah so the concept is this to start success is an identity process and you'll never outperform the way you see yourself and so one of the first things we want to do is to update our identity just like you update the software on your on your iPhone you want to update your own personal identity the tell people you are not who you are you are who you were born to be and you are also not what you did you are what you repeatedly do we all make mistakes but you can update your identity and create new habits new patterns new thought patterns so I'll share a quick story of a dear friend of mine you want to know it's interesting mark this dear friend of mine his name is haime Molina lives out in Southern California one of the sweetest men you'll ever meet the last time H and I were together by the way was in Orlando at a at uh the the C ification for the John Maxwell coaches that's we actually have a selfie with him together last time we were together so he's a he's a an avid John Maxwell fan as well the only person sweeter by the way than haime is his wife Rona they're they're very devout in their Catholic faith uh haim's in the financial services industry uh he has four beautiful daughters you would want your daughter to marry haime haim's one of those kind of men just a good man so one of the things he does is he works with a troubled youth in his in his community and he tells these the youth about a story about a man named e400 e400 was born on a Border Town with Mexico in the states in Texas El Paso at age 8 he was introduced to alcohol at age nine he was sexually abused and became sexually active at age nine at age 14 he got into hard drugs at 15 he became a mule for the cartel at age 24 he was convicted of 11 uh Federal felonies and served multiple years in San Quinton now Mark you don't want to serve prison time anywhere but you definitely don't want to serve prison in s Quinton this is a really really really terrible place where the harshest rapists and the harshest murderers go to serve their time so haime asked the students he says let me ask you a question what do you think happened to e400 like Mark if we were doing a poll right with our listeners we do a poll hey is he is he is he an alcoholic is he on drugs is he in prison is he out is he dead is he living his best life like what are the odds of these different things remember at age eight he is introduced alcohol nine he becomes he gets abused and becomes sexually active 14's on hard drugs 15's a serves in San Quinton through all of his 20s what you know what would be the odds well one day he says to the to the students he says let me ask you a question he goes you guys remember me tell about e400 they go yeah he goes I got a special guest here today and they're like what and he goes e400 came here he goes let me go grab him in the hallway and grab him walks out shuts the door behind him the kids look around like the guy this is that story of this man he's told us about so Hy walks in but it's just Hy shuts the door walks to the front room they're thinking where's e400 and he says I am e400 and my friends haime Molina you are not what you did you are what you repeatedly do and you are not who you are you are who you were born to become e uh haime is not e 9400 e 9400 was his Prison number it was a six-digit prison number that was his identity that's who he was that's how he was known for many many many years of his life that's not who he is who he is is the person he was born to be which is he was born to be haime Molina the father of four the man that runs you know Financial Services business the man that's a devouted uh husband the man that's devouted in his faith the man that's devouted to his friends that's who he was born to be that's so you start saying who am I really you know and you start updating this so James CLE I'll give you an example James clar wrote the book Atomic habits I know he just spoke I think it was uh was that Liv to he just spoke at he was at IMC in August he was on the podcast about a month and a half two months ago so he tells a story in inic habits about two boys one stole the candy and he says to the first child did you steal the cany this little boy said I didn't steal it they said to the second child did you steal the can the little boy said I don't steal I didn't steal is an action I don't steal is an identity you can update this stuff and say who is the person I was born to be and start acting as that one today so I I just gotta pause I am thoroughly and I will tell you this when we're done I am so thoroughly enjoying this I want all of you that listen and we have a lot of people that work out drive commute while they're listening you said two things that cannot be overlooked and I don't have time to teach them Justin has just killed it in teaching them but one is update your identity and every one of us need to update our identity even if your identity that you're holding is pretty good if it's stale you need to still update your identity I don't care if it's good I don't care if it's great I don't care if you're living in yesterday's success it's time to update your identity and then this state that you said that you're not what you did you're what you repeatedly do that is Mike drop brilliant it is incredible that is the kind of things that Justin is talking about in the book be the one be the one you need to pick it up let me go to uh something else you say in the book you say high performers can State what they want to achieve and why it matters to them without delay unpack that a little bit for us yeah yeah so this is an important there's a 3D Vision formula that I teach in the book and this is very very important particularly in today's world you know we're in a tough economy uh inflation's highest has been in 40 years interest rates are high we're either in a recession or heading a recession depending kind of how you want to look at it a lot of businesses are down we're having a lot of layoffs it's a challenging time so what do you how do you get through challenge how do you get through challenges in your marriage how do you get through challenges in your business how do you get through those personal challenges that you're feeling in your own heart your mental health your own in your own life and the answer is you lead with vision so let me share with a 3D Vision first thing is you define your vision so defining your vision is creating Clarity so brenon bashard wrote a book called high performance habits it's the largest study of high performers in human history and he says if you were to tap a high performer on the shoulder and you were to say to them what's your latest dream what's your latest goal what's your latest vision for your life a high performer can answer that question seven to 10 seconds faster than the rest of the population why it's because they've defined it it's a dominant thought your dreams in the back of your mind mind won't motivate you they have to be on the tip of your tongue one of the things that I've seen from John Maxwell from behind the scenes so this is stuff that I didn't see on a book or listen to on an audio or even from a stage I watched him behind the scenes he's in his 70s and he has more passion than everyone else in the room I've never seen anything quite like it you say why what is it just because he's super human it's because he has such Clarity on the def definition of his vision what he's looking to accomplish so your vision pulls you through a hard time so number one you got to Define it number two is you got to declare it you declare the vision right you don't keep it in you want the vision to be declared one of the reasons why is because it it allows you to line up your private integrity and your public Integrity public Integrity as you know is what everybody gets to see how you act privates when you're just all by yourself how do you act who are you when no one's watching when we declare our vision we tell people here's what I'm looking to accomplish here's what I'm looking to do I remember saying to Mark Mark I'm GNA go home and write a book well man that now holds me account accountable to Mark I don't want Mark to say how's the book coming I'm like oh crap now if it's if it's only on myself I might let myself down I might you know not even you know hold myself enough accountable to it even though I try and keep my word but to yourself it's sometimes easy to break but when you hold you declare it to other people then that leads to number three which is you dedicate your life to it you dedicate your life to your vision you define it you declare it you dedicate and remember my friends Vision answers a very important question it's a question that's a subconscious question that your people that are following you as a leader that they're all asking during tough times that your children they're all asking during tough times that your spouse they're all asking during tough times whenever times are tough people are asking this question they're asking the question will it always be this way if the answer is it will always be this way then people make very different decisions moving forward than no it will not always be this way things are going to change the sun's coming up in the East There's Hope the vision provides hope the vision provides a destination that it's not always going to be what we're going through right now in other words we're willing to people can get through really really challenging times if there's what if there's Vision that's why one of the there's an old Bible verse that says where there is no vision the people perish and one of the reasons that's so true is if it's always going to be this way no one wants to keep pushing but man if it's not always going to be this way if there's some hope there's some Vision there's some life ahead of us then we're willing to move through it so the way you get there is you define it you declare you declare it to people and then you dedicate your life to it brilliant brilliant I've got to get into one more segment of content before we run out of time because you you talk about the three C's to success and I can give you the three C's because it was profound to me it was very helpful but I'm gonna let you give the three C's talk a little bit about that unpack it for us yeah it's one of my favorite things so the first C is confidence so it's a it's a success Loop they Loop together like this they just you can spin these they Loop and you'll notice you can create momentum with these this it's a success Loop the 3C success Loops the first one is confidence the foundation of your success is believing in yourself it's hard to get everyone else to believe in you if you won't even believe in you it's hard to get everyone else to see what you see if you won't even see success in you so you want to say to yourself I've been through some hard things I've overcome some challenges like I have some confidence in myself when my spouse looks across me at the room and says through with her eyes I love you things providing a great great life for me I appreciate you there's reasons you should have confidence that should give you confidence when your when your children tell you hey Mom hey Dad I love you you know when you're when the teams that you build and that that you lead these organizations that you lead when they say hey thank you so much for the great work you do the value you provide that should reinforce the confidence that you should have in yourself so the the foundation your success is beli in yourself number two is commitment where there is no confidence there is no commitment think about it this way how how committed are we to things we have no confidence in so it's like I know my confidence level is a zero% we're going to win well I'm not that committed to this and my friends there's no lukewarm winners you're either in or you're out and if you're going to be in be all in if you're going to be out be all out you know uh Zig Ziggler once said most people have the commitment level of a kamakazi pilot on their 47th Mission I mean the point is they're just kind of in and out and out and in build the confidence I'm going to go for it I believe in myself and then get fully committed go all in and then the commitment leads to competence so what is competence competence is our skill sets competence is improving growing one of the reasons I love John and one of the reasons I love you listening to John because you and I are Kindred Souls yeah our commitment to want to grow and what growing is is we're building skills above our talent your talent's your floor your skills are your ceiling and I use the example in the book about Michael Jordan so my brother and I I was doing a personal development event in Orlando this is last year it's in September my brother calls me he says are you still in m in uh Florida I said yeah I was in Miami I was in Miami Not Orlando I'm sorry I was in Miami and he says to me um come over to Tampa for the the um the the Florida to Gainesville part me the Florida Gators the swamp yeah and he said I'll meet you there because my beloved University of Utah youths were playing there so we go to the game My Assistant buys us tickets and she gets us literally front row 50 yard line on the gator side right on on the Florida side so they call it the swamp and this place is an iconic you know place so um one of the things that hit me though as I I'm there enjoying the game is the Florida team and I'm talking trainers coaches uh players they have all have the Jumpman logo the Michael Jordan Jumpman logo so on their on their shoulder pads on their pants on their towels on their shoes you know and the shoes are cleats and I just thought to myself huh how interesting is this Jordan played basketball not football Jordan was for his professional prowess not College prowess necessarily Jordan played 30 years ago here's all these kids and it's cool to wear the Jumpman logo and I thought why it's because Jordan is the goat what made him the goat the greatest of all time that he built skill above the talent his he was very talented he could jump he was quick he could run the whole thing but he didn't he didn't rely on Talent he built the skills he one of the most fundamentally sound players ever he was all defense and all offense he built all these new skills above the talent as leaders we have to do the same thing it's one of the reasons I love what John teaches John provides uh you know John Maxwell coaching and so on why because it builds new skills so we don't just have to rely on our Baseline Talent now what happens when our competency increases well man the more competent we become the more confident we become the more confident we become more committed we become more committed we become more confident and it just starts to spin the loop so let me ask one last question before we I'll throw it back to you mark on this one what do you do if today you're not feeling a lot of confidence like you're like hey that all makes sense to me but I don't I'm having a hard time believing in myself right now okay it's still a c-word I'll give you kind of a bonus CW and it's courage my friends lean into your courage Your courage precedes confidence courage is taking the step when you don't have a lot of confidence you know what to do courage is starting the business when you're not totally confident that it's going to pan out courage is saying I'm sorry or I love you when you're not sure how this one's going to work right that's courage Your courage precedes the confidence you lean into courage and that will build to where you can get into the success Loop of my my confidence builds my commitment which leads to my competence which leads to more confidence and you start to spin it but today your home needs more courage Your Business needs more courage your team needs a leader with courage our country needs more people that have courage so lean today into your courage if you don't yet feel that strength and your confidence today we're going to talk about New Year's DEC decisions that that you can think about that you can make that'll help you this year so before we get started I'd love for you to go to Maxwell leadership.com podcast and as you think about the year 24 and as we move forward if there's a way that we can help you in executive uh coaching or facilitation around content we would love to do that well as we reflect on the year past we all go through this we all do it it's a great exercise to do you know we think about what went well what could we have done better what did we learn so all of these lead to then decisions that you have to make and you're the master behind all this content that we create here so obviously you've been thinking about some decisions that are on your heart that you wanted to kind of bring a lesson that maybe you've gone through recently over the last couple of weeks as you prepare for 2024 talk to us a little bit about that yeah this one's personal uh a bit is that you know thinking about are you going to make New Year's resolutions are you going to make set goals what are you I'm a big fan of goals and that sort of thing but um over the last couple of months I started recognizing in me that um you know I think I have the best intentions about what I'm going to do and my goal and what I'm trying to accomplish and but I I realized that um I'm wake I'll give you an example saying are you g to work out today you know and I'm thinking if I wait until today to make that decision and I wake up and I get up early and it's cold and it's dark and it's a chance of rain I I tend to make a decision in the moment based on all the circumstances and then it uh this was just about six weeks ago I remember this teaching from John it's it's quite quite bad in the past but it really resonated with me then but I completely pushed it out of my mind and and the teaching was decide once manage daily decide what decide the big things that you're going to do and then manage it you can't make the decision in the day in the moment I can't make the decision to work out at at 5:00 a.m. when it's dark and cold and rainy I need to have made that decision in advance and then manage it today when it's dark and cold and rainy uh same thing I sharing with you you know we travel and I'm thinking I'm going to eat only eat salads with you know Caesar salad with chicken and then I've had a tough day it's been a hard week I'm on the road and I get into the restaurant and now I'm looking now I'm choosing poor choices you're looking at the dessert menu start bring me the apple pie then I'll make a decision on the rest of the menu and because I what am I comforting myself whatever decide if I decided once I'm going to eat a certain kind of diet then I can manage it daily and so no matter how I feel I've already made the decision I just need to figure out how I'm going to manage it today based on everything that's going on all the circumstances the UPS the Downs the sideways I I just need to manage it I'm going to manage my you know these decisions I need to make so I thought uh first of all I get your thought on that because I know you've been around John a lot know this teaching but also maybe we could look at in the new year what are some decisions leaders need to be thinking about make once and then manage them daily throughout the year you know I love that you mentioned um about just being on the road and traveling right what I've noticed is that if I don't do this if I don't make that decision and then have a plan to manage it man when we get tired in everything in life that's when the guard goes down and you're just like yeah you know what I told myself I wasn't going to open the menu but now we're going to see what do they have and so I love that right because I think not only you know when you're you got the energy in your your aame you're like yeah good I got this I I made this decision uh but when you get tired you got to have something in place that you can manage that I I'm just I'm laughing because you and I were traveling together about I don't know four or five weeks ago and you had made a decision that you were going to fast yeah but we were with a client and they were they were getting all this stuff ready uh had all these snack they even put you in an office with mounds and mounds of snacks and they brought in these custom handmade donuts and they like everything within your face and I just I was so proud of you because you you made a decision and then you managed it through the day unless there was something I didn't see but you managed it through that day to honor the decision you'd already made that's yeah podcast over there you go that's it drop the mic we out have a good year no I'm just Kidd well yeah let me come back to what you said about John because John is Big about this John is a man he is a he calls himself a boring guy he's like no no no I know what I'm going to be doing right and I do it every day and that's what he says the the secret to your success is the determined by your daily agenda I'll never forget I've heard him say if I've heard him say it once I've heard him say thousands of time if I could just spend one day with you I could tell right away whether or not you'd be a successful person and what does that daily agenda look like because how are you managing your time how are you managing your choices and so you got to do it on a daily basis the other thing I love about what he says is he says that successful people make the right decisions early they make them early that make them quick and then they manage them so he has this thing called The Daily dozen you may if you're a maxwellian as we call you and you familiar with John's content um he the the the daily dozen is 12 areas that really focus on one's daily routine some of them are around attitudes and uh attitude priorities Health family finances Faith but they we're going to talk a little bit about that and the decisions you make as we go forward he he really talks about this making the man the decision once I thought you know could we look at some areas um that might increase our Effectiveness as leaders and and learn to decide once what it is we want to do in those areas and then manage daily uh the three areas I just picked out I'm kind of being again a little selfish this is things I'm looking at me going forward but I think it applies to all of us is areas for consideration about you personally so decisions you need to make about you about your team areas that you need to make decisions you need to make and maybe about your business so I'll throw them out maybe get your feedback on but one of the decisions I made under thinking about me was um about what do I need to decide about my personal growth and in the new year I need I can't decide when I get up in the morning am I going to spend a few minutes read I need to decide once and then manage it daily but what's your thought on deciding once about personal growth yeah I think what I love about this is and I would love for you to talk a little bit about this because I I learned this from you um in the irreducible minimums and and I know that even an example with your you know your son or someone that is not necessarily motivated every day uh by personal growth but know that we need to we want to grow so let's manage that decision talk to just quickly for those that haven't listened to us we've done an episode on this in the past just talk about irreducible minimum and what that means yeah the learning was and I got this for myself first but then talking trying to encourage my son on some growth that he was doing that he needed to do I said you know what are you reading I don't have time to read and I thought that sounded like me and uh so the ineducable minimum idea is what's the minimum you could do in an area that you want to grow in that cannot be reduced the minimum that cannot be reduced irreducible minimum and the idea is that I found for myself I love to set big goals tell you what I'm going to read 12 books in 2024 well that's a big leap if you're reading zero to get to 12 so instead of making a goal that's so large you probably won't do it set a goal that's so small you'd be embarrassed not to do it and so instead of having 12 books I'm said could I read two pages a day every day and the and the magic of this is the every day and as John would teach that it it it's consistency that compounds over time my life motto became small things done daily consistently over time remarkable results small things done daily consistently over time remarkable results so if you can figure out what the small things you could do um just decide I'm going to do 15 minutes I'm going to manage it tomorrow 15 minutes I'm going to read something personally I'm going to read something for business and I'm going to write something for me that was kind of mine I love that no and do it in a way um by the way that fits your wiring let me say this right some people are like you know what I'm going to get up at 5: every morning I'm going to work out or I'm G to do my 15 minutes you might not do that if you're a night night person versus a morning person right and my wife and I have this conversation I'm a I'm a morning person but I'm worthless after 10:00 right she is a night person gets a lot of stuff done but doesn't doesn't do well in the mornings and so we talk about this as as your personal growth like when do you schedule it in the day you schedule in the day that it fits your wiring in order to continue to have success another decision I think for you on the topic of you that you need to make once and manage daily is this idea about your physical fitness your your health uh I know you've made some commitments on that for and you're following that as a regimen I've I've have this is one of the Comfort areas I had a a knee surgery this year and it's kind of set me back and I've let that be a circumstance that I could still now I'm making it every day when I get up well my knee hurt today no I need to made it once just to manage it manage it within the fact that my knee is hurt uh it's cold dark and rainy what how am I going to handle today's physical fitness but your thoughts they I was in a meeting a couple weeks ago with an executive and we were talking about this I I saw his his personal board as I went into it was awesome right in his office he's like here's my family and uh my my family and personal goals for this year which was you know last year and and one of them was you know weight loss and he was tracking it he just has it out there for every I was like oh tell me about that uh so we started talking and he's like you know he said I decided that I wanted to make a decision and then I needed to walk every single day and I know you big you know tracking your steps and all this kind of stuff and he said man what I found was um the commitment that I made to this then I had more energy it reduced my stress right like but I had to have it scripted and I had to have a plan so I could manage when I was tired and the plan was this in the world of all of these Zoom meetings he tried to get out as many Zoom meetings as he possibly could went back to the good oldfashioned phone oh and he would put his headphones on and he would walk in all of his meetings right the day his greatest steps he had was 50 2,450 steps and I was like say that number again I think the most I've ever had is in the 20s and that's probably when I was on vacation right doing a tour and so he's like yeah like no I made a decision that any meetings that I can move and when I have those meetings that's my trigger that's how I manage I get up and I go walk and he said if the weather's bad outside I get on my treadmill and I walk and so he's like I don't feel like it every day which leads me to this phrase that I've used and have lived by for a while uh with my kids even with me it's like hey you can't feel your way into acting so back to this example you know I can't feel my way into going oh okay I have a meeting where I am on the phone I'm going to go walk no he'd already made that decision and so what you got to do is make sure you act on how you manage that and then oh by the way once you get started you know this once you get started walking man I feel like this is great I want to keep doing that so anyways absolutely need to need to figure out how to do that let's move the topic to things about leading your team and are the decisions you need to make once and manage daily the first one I would throw out would be uh determining proper priorities for the team and for yourself but if you're not clear on what the prior decide once what the priorities are and then manage daily how to execute those priorities I get in trouble when I wake up and start to think what's important today I need to already know what's important today and then manage it today yeah when it comes to this um I well sometimes use percentages of time sometimes I'll use lists but none of this happens let me back up just a minute none of this happens unless you're being very intentional about meeting and connecting and communicating with your team and so what I want to encourage everybody is as you look through this is to make sure that you guys have proper alignment in your priorities is to communicate them back and forth periodically hey what what what do you think your top three priorities are hey what percentage of time are you spending on this we have an initiative right now at Maxell leadership where one of the things it's a it's a big priority for us and so my Mantra is 70% of your time should be thinking about implementing or whatever around this idea if it's not let's have a conversation about let's let's talk about it because I want to make sure that we're managing your time and 70% of it is focused on this and that's kind of the Mantra that we're using and so absolutely I think it's important when it comes to that uh decision four which should be the second one under managing the team I think that you should decide once and manage daily how you are going to build relationships and connect with people on your team I guarantee you when you wake up in the morning and get to work you are going to be highly distracted highly uh pushed there's going to be lots of things coming at you if you haven't decided that connecting and relationships are important and manage it throughout the calendar of the day and the week it's not going to get done and you're going to end up at the end of a a period a month a quarter the year and figure out why my team is so distant why I'm not connected uh so I need to figure out how I'm going to manage that daily one of my uh things I love to do is talk about college football and I have a guy on my team who man it's just been something that we've done for a long time we get together and just catch up in college football whatnot and because my schedule has kind of gotten a little crazy I just we haven't done it and so I literally looked at my calendar and I was like okay that's it and so I was very intentional about how do I manage this right how do I manage it to your point I'm just going to put it on the calendar so I found the first available day put it on the calendar and I man I made the decision I needed to re-engage I needed to re-engage around that we have a lot of fun doing it and so in order to help me manage that one of the systems that I put in place is to just go ahead and put it on the calendar and block it out and protect it so there are little things like that that I think you can do but it's so important to make sure that you're doing that even with your people things right even with that connecting just go ahead and schedule it on your calendar they don't even if it's just the management by walking around right I know we've shared some leaders that they just don't do well with that so they put it on their calendar at the certain time get up for 15 minutes go walk around see what's going on it may be painful for them but they manage it and that's how they work through it but what's cool is that by you putting it on the calendar you've already made the decision this is important decision now cuz something happened on the day when that yes and you've oh yes you have to re but you won't cancel you'll reschedule because now you're managing it in the day not trying to decide how am I going to get it into my day I'm going to manage it in my day because I've already decided it's important let's transition to the final one about leading your business are there some decisions you can make once manage daily I I one of them I suggestion was um modeling how am I going to model the core values of my organization daily I think this is another one that I I get into the the the rush and hustle of the day and then I I may just run right through some stop signs that my core values would say we shouldn't do but if I've already I'm clear I'm committed to I'm making a decision on the core values how am I going to manage those in the rush and hustle of my day yeah remember what you do speak so loudly that your team can't even hear what you're saying and so you need to make sure that you are living those out on a daily basis one of the things that I try to do is I try to use it in my language oh yeah right like one of ours is one of Val's exceeding expectations and if I see something either a team member has done peer-to-peer maybe team has done for the client or whatever I will say hey man I loved when you exceed expectations right here or growth is one of ours hey man man I see so much growth in you so for me the way that I go about it daily is try to use our core values in my common language that I use throughout the day I'll do it in presentations and I just try to kind of put it in there I don't always remember what our core values are right off the top of my head so what do I do to help me with that I made the decision I want to do this so I actually have a little card that sits right next to my computer screen that I can see it that then goes oh yeah yeah I said I want to do this and I'm gonna use this in my language and so let me use this when I communicate to X Y and Z as long as it's authentically uh U tied into something that's happening but I try to use that in my common language finally the second one under leading the business I said that um leaders must make a decision to communicate the vision daily or or on a regular basis I think um if I try to get into the day and I haven't decided you know what is the vision how am I going to communicate that it it be kind of comes halfhazard I don't I'm not clear and so I think I'm going to decide one I'm going to really figure out this how to communicate the vision and then manage it daily through the uh the rush of business to get that Vision in front of people's eyes and ears and let me just add to that because I think you said it extremely well make sure that as you do that you connect what they're doing to the bigger Vision that you're communicating you're communicating the vision of that team while you're also communicating the vision of the organization which they should be an alignment help them connect conect those dots that's the key to that is making sure that you're thinking about hey how does what Jake does right here on our podcast align with the fact that we want to make sure that everyone deserves to be led well what does that mean right it's because we're going out to millions of people because of what they're doing and so how do you how do you communicate that and then make sure that you tie that together well as we wrap up today um man on these decisions we all have we all have decisions we have to make and you maybe you've already you're listening to this you've already made some New Year's resolutions as they call them here and so you made that decision you made that choice now how are you going to manage that on a daily basis because that's that's how they end up failing that's how they end up slipping away that's how they get to a point to where you and I are on the road and re tired and you know what I'm like I'm not having a chicken salad right now chick I'm going to have the biggest burger and fries and milkshake that you could possibly had have little things that we do lead to big things and as Perry mentioned uh in in the in just a little little while ago he said from John Maxwell consistency compounds and so man we just got to do the little things on a daily basis extremely well I have the best of intentions but I when I get into the rush of the moment the the hurry of the day uh the need for Comfort whatever it is my excuse may be I I've not made that I'm making decisions on the Fly it's not [Music] good welcome to the Maxwell leadership executive podcast where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader increase your ability to influence others and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results