[00:00:00.250] - Brandon
Wow.
[00:00:00.580] - Chris
How many of you have listened to the head, heart, and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reacts, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the head, heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:11.370] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:00:21.070] - Chris
I'm noticing that, and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:00:24.120] - Brandon
No, I I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it. Hey, all, thanks so much for listening to the show. Hey, if you're not already following, please do so. And ultimately, share. Right. Like, the coolest currency that we have in terms of supporting this is share it with a friend, share it with somebody, a colleague, a peer, one of your downline team members. Let them be able to take advantage of the information you're already leveraging in your favor. And finally, guys, if you hear a show that really moves you, that really moves the needle, will you please leave us a review? Those five star reviews help us a ton.
[00:00:58.290] - Chris
Right on. And listen, if you're trying to grow your business, you might consider checking out Floodlight's business opportunity audit. It's free. We provided it at no charge. It's actually what we use to assess new clients as they come in. It's 110 point assessment for your business, and we've now decided to give access to the general public for it. So go and take our business opportunity [email protected]. It's going to help you identify the biggest gaps and opportunities in your business right now. And at the end, it'll assign you a health score to let you know exactly where your business stands right now. So go check it out. Floodlightgrp.com audit. And take the boA. It's a great way to get a pulse on your business. Yo, what up? Oh, you know, man, I'm feeling pretty good today. Yeah, I am.
[00:01:43.550] - Brandon
How's that?
[00:01:44.220] - Chris
Things are really great between my wife and I. That's a page turner. That's a huge one.
[00:01:49.000] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:01:49.250] - Chris
Had a nice time with a couple of business buddies around the fire on my back deck last night. That was enjoyable. Nice. And I think I'm finally kicking this thing, this nose and throat funk that I've had going.
[00:02:00.040] - Brandon
Yeah, we have, like, three episodes where it sounds like you've got TP.
[00:02:03.340] - Chris
I'm sounding better, though, right? My normal voice is starting to come back. I am shocked by how long I've been under the weather with this. Yeah.
[00:02:10.410] - Brandon
Hung on.
[00:02:12.330] - Chris
You don't get sick very often either. But with as much as we travel and stuff, we almost never get sick. But then I got sick.
[00:02:19.630] - Brandon
Knocking on wood. Yeah.
[00:02:21.400] - Chris
I think maybe I started to become prideful about that, the fact that I never get sick.
[00:02:24.980] - Brandon
You got knocked down and then I got hammered. You got just down hammered by it.
[00:02:28.620] - Chris
So, anyways, I'm feeling better. I'm on the mend.
[00:02:30.420] - Brandon
Excellent. Excellent. Glad to hear that.
[00:02:32.020] - Chris
Going to the gym today for the first time in.
[00:02:34.140] - Brandon
Yeah, that's good. I got an interesting topic I want to get into, man.
[00:02:37.860] - Chris
Okay.
[00:02:38.130] - Brandon
Yeah, it's funny. It's a lot of times what drives the topics that we end up jumping into are what is going on in our world. Right. Like, it's pretty consistent that even though we have a bit of a recording schedule, it is proactively engaged. There is a lot of times where we will put some content together just based on our real life and what's happening right now.
[00:02:55.660] - Chris
Yeah, man.
[00:02:56.200] - Brandon
Well, one of the things, I've got older kids, for example, and they're at this age where they're really beginning to explore kind of the first few layers of their, kind of like professional development, their careers and all those kinds of things. And they're beginning to face a lot of the challenges that even at 47, I feel like I still have moments where I'm wrestling with these similar challenges. It's so much easier to look in on their life, though, and see where the impact is. But anyways, kind of a theme that's been rolling around between us recently is this idea of trusting themselves, building real self confidence, right. And I think one of the things about my relationship with my kids is I lost track for a lot of years that that was one of my primary responsibilities. Like, I got really keyed in, right? I got really keyed in on life lessons and discipline and accountability and all these things. And it's like now I kind of look back and I go, but how good of a job did I do as a dad helping build in self esteem and confidence in my kids, knowing the value of that.
[00:03:56.490] - Brandon
But as we've been having these conversations, one of the things, this theme that kept coming up for me was at the end of the day, and I think this is an ed Milette thing, actually, where I heard it the first time, is real self esteem, real, true self confidence, non ego driven self confidence comes from a place when yourself has learned to trust yourself. Right. And I think what's interesting is that I watch people to include me spend a lot of time and energy looking for exterior affirmation, exterior inputs to direct our self confidence. And it's funny, it's like the bigger our business gets, the bigger the brand gets, the bigger our team gets. I'm no more self confident than I ever was, right? Like, if anything, I think every time our business moves into a new trajectory or a new element of growth and.
[00:04:46.990] - Chris
Expansion, you're moving out again on the edge of your comfort zone.
[00:04:50.020] - Brandon
Yeah, I'm back out on the outer limits of what I know, what I'm confident in. And again, that external environment falls short, helping me create self confidence. Right?
[00:04:59.230] - Chris
Don't you think, too? I mean, as your world becomes bigger, whether that's more employees, more locations, more income, more friends, all of those things. As your business grows and we find success and stuff, I think in some ways, there are so many external points of affirmation available that we look internally a lot less because we have so many outside forces. I was talking about this with the boys last night around the fire. Man. It's so easy to start to live off of that external affirmation. But the thing I always have to remind myself, I first went through this when I was a state farm agent, and I had billboards out. I was doing big community events and things, and people tell me how great I was, and, oh, you're the coolest state farm agent. All this kind of stuff. And it did feed me. But the thing that I realized back then, and I continue to see this in myself, is that those people, and it's just like anything else, those people don't really know me. I have to remind myself of that. They don't know all my warts. They don't know the irritating and frustrating things that my wife experiences from me or my kids do.
[00:06:03.700] - Chris
They don't know about my inner turmoil and behavior patterns and just this real shit. But by kind of living off of that affirmation, it's almost like you're only actually getting, like, 50% of it because, you know, they only know so much about you.
[00:06:16.630] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:06:17.100] - Chris
They're making their judgment off how cool you are based on such a small data sample. And I found that then I would go home to my family who really knows me. And when they don't think I'm rad, I feel this inner turmoil, frustration. I feel small. I feel inadequate. I have all these inner kind of demons that kind of get activated because they're not telling me how rad I am.
[00:06:39.380] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:06:40.350] - Chris
And of course, some of you are like some people listening might be like, well, yeah, I'm not that shallow and immature. It was like, well, the inner monolog may be different for you, and maybe it's not you latching on to people saying you're rad and everything, but it's you just looking at the metrics in your business and saying, wow, I'm killing it. Because we grew by this much. Our EBITDA is this. Our GP is this. My team is this big. We added three locations this year. Maybe that's more your inner monolog of you're deriving your value based on your achievements. Right. The external things that people see and, man, it's actually caused a lot of problems for me. Yeah. Over the years.
[00:07:20.000] - Brandon
Yeah, I think you're right. I think the challenge with it, at least, this is kind of the mindset that I've been in recently, is it feels so weak. Like, in the sense of it doesn't take much of a shift, good or bad, in my external environment for it to throw me off guard, throw me off my game. Right. And I think that that's part of one of the things I'm seeing in my kids, as an example, is their mindset about their environment can shift so abruptly that from the outside, it seems kind of silly. For heaven's sakes, it was 24 hours, and now you feel x. Right? And yesterday you felt like y. But when I honestly look at that and assess my own experience, I have moments where I don't go an hour without shifting in my confidence level. And I think that's a testament to when you build that self confidence, that self esteem on external environments, you will always be susceptible to a shift in the.
[00:08:14.780] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:08:15.390] - Brandon
And one of the things I think that Ed Milette talking about, the fact that it's really built more so on the back of learning how to trust yourself, I think the shift is it becomes so much structurally more sound. It's like the environment can shift on you. It will shift on you. That's human existence. But the confidence that I have in my ability to lead the team, to develop what is necessary to advance my skill set, to move into the next level of demand, stays much more static when what I'm building that self confidence on is a repeated cadence of showing myself I can trust myself. And I know that some of you hear me say that, and it's kind of like, wow, that is really navel gazing. But think about it. Think about the way the kinds of conversations, and for some of you, this shoe will not fit. And you know what? If that's your case. I'm so happy for you. Cool. Don't put it on. But for the rest of us mere humans, it tends to be a shoe we can put on.
[00:09:12.510] - Chris
Right?
[00:09:12.940] - Brandon
But think about it this way. How often do we get in a space where I've been telling myself, I'm going to work out five days a week for put a number on it, like, think about your own world. And we're not going to hang in the workout pocket. But it's just one of those examples where if Monday after Monday shows up and it's another Monday, I'm not starting a routine that I have told myself it's important. I want to start this thing. You need to realize this internal person has its own. This is weird, and I'm sure there's science to back some of this up. But this internal monolog, this internal person is a separate being from you. To a certain extent, it is this reality that Monday after Monday, if the me self hears me say, next Monday, I'm going to start, next Monday I'm going to start, and next Monday, I'm going to start. We need to be very clear on the fact that the most important voice in our world knows you're full of shit. And that's you. Right. I think that that's where I'm wrestling more, is that I get lots of impostor syndrome when the internal me doesn't believe what I'm saying externally to somebody else.
[00:10:23.060] - Brandon
Right. And the reason that the internal me doesn't agree with me is that I spent the last six months lying to it about XYZ topic, okay? Relationships. Like, it shows up everywhere. How many weeks am I going to go telling myself, man, my family is really important to me. My kids are getting older. They're not in the home anymore. I need to come up with a consistent cadence where I'm reaching out to them. That's my job. I'm dad. Well, guess what? I've never penciled into my calendar yet. So how many weeks of me telling myself, you know what I'm going to do and then I don't do it. You know what I'm going to do and then I don't do it? When I get into a situation where I am presenting, selling, negotiating with an external environment, a partner, a sale, it is going to be really hard to convince myself that I mean what I say when I just spent the last six weeks lying to myself about a very clear topic that was important to me. Right? So it's funny how social media and all these things we get so good at presenting.
[00:11:22.470] - Brandon
The reason we all feel so fucking hollow inside is because the real person who matters, which is ourself, knows the bullshit. We've been slinging on the same topics for however long. And so the external environment can shift, and one moment we're in the juice, and one moment we're not. But it's because myself doesn't believe me. Right? That's where that's stemming. And what I've seen is I get traction. I get moments where my discipline aligns with my priorities, and I do the things I say that I'm going to do. And those are those places in time where I can look back and I can say I was the most confident in my capacity. I don't mean know it all. I don't mean smartest guy or gal in the room. I don't mean because I'm the top paid person. None of that. It's just legitimate self confidence, because I trust myself.
[00:12:15.160] - Chris
Yeah, it's this trust that if I choose to do something, I can do it, or I'm going to do it, man. Well, this has been a theme for you and I for a while now. I think as we've been growing, I think both as our company's been growing, the team's been growing. You and I have been dialoguing about this a lot, man, of what kind of person do I need to be in order to create and produce and build the thing that we want to build? Likewise, like you talk about with your kids, man, we've been talking a lot about family, and you and I have made a commitment with how we're building and creating floodlight. We're like, hey, we are not going to sacrifice the important relationships around us to build an empire. We want to build an empire, but we're not going to do it on the backs of our key relationships. Right? And I think it's very convicting to me, like, what you're saying about your kids, because I have the same feelings, like my daughter. I really want to have a strong connection with my daughter, and we're starting to build one, but establishing some kind of priority, I can't say I've done that, man.
[00:13:19.040] - Chris
And I think, too, I can just think of all the areas in my life where I'm saying something either to myself or I've said other things to other people, and I haven't taken the extra step of really committing that, like committing that to my calendar or to my finances or some other commitment.
[00:13:36.930] - Brandon
That's really where the rubber hits the road, right? When you begin to do that, I think the ability for us to walk into unknowns and be like, we'll figure this out, increases exponentially the more consistent we are with fulfilling promises to ourselves. Social media. Mark Watley. Watley's been on LinkedIn, maybe LinkedIn or Facebook. I don't know.
[00:13:58.750] - Chris
Yeah, he's on LinkedIn. Yeah.
[00:13:59.850] - Brandon
And he's been really kind of hosting his experience so far, doing 75 hard. And I think what a lot of people misunderstand from a program like that is they think it's really based around physical fitness, and it actually has very little to nothing to do with physical fitness. They leverage physical discomfort and a commitment to an exercise routine. But really, what it's meant to do is to teach your mind to be far more disciplined, far more self confident, because what you ultimately end up doing in a program like 75 hard is that you have to commit to this cadence of activities on a daily basis, and they are non negotiable. And as soon as you miss one, you have to start over. And that's the challenge with it. And a lot of people never complete it because it is very difficult to do the handful of things every single day, seven days a week, doesn't matter. If it's a holiday, doesn't matter. If it's a weekend, doesn't matter. The weather, traveling weather, doesn't matter. You have to do these things 75 days in a row, and most people can't make it. Yeah, right.
[00:15:02.400] - Chris
Well, it's an interesting way to say that. Right?
[00:15:04.600] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:15:04.920] - Chris
Most people can't make it.
[00:15:06.580] - Brandon
Most people choose.
[00:15:07.670] - Chris
Most people choose. Most people choose. They do. We all choose.
[00:15:11.240] - Brandon
Oh, yeah. Right. And I think it's been fun watching Watley. Obviously, he's really excited about the physical transformation he's experiencing, which is awesome. But you know what? I'm dying to ask that guy. What's going on in your head? Where's your self esteem? Where's your self confidence? He's already a confident dude, but what's going on in his head? I think here's kind of where this has really been hitting me recently, is as our company matures, we get exposed to newer ideas, concepts, relationships. And these are the kinds of relationships that open up all sorts of doors for lots of really cool things. And ultimately, what I am being faced with on a real personal level is I is disciplined, as I am in many ways, in the context of the average person walking down the street, in context of what it demands from me, I am not close. And in order for us to take advantage of the relationships, the friendships, the trust, the opportunities in front of us. It is going to require that I iterate again in the near future in order for me to even be the caliber of leader that the demand will have on me.
[00:16:21.290] - Brandon
And I'm realizing that I have reached a point where my own internal self confidence is not strong enough to take me to the next tier. And it's because I've only committed to certain levels of discipline. And if I'm honest, in the context of me personally, I am not making a statement or a judgment about anyone. This is, to me, my context, my internal voice. It kind of knows that the level of discipline that I've deployed has been enough, but it hasn't challenged me. Right? Like, at the end of the day, I'm doing enough. In context of certain groups, it may look like a lot. And the honesty, like my internal voice goes, you're capable of a whole lot more, bro, and you're not doing it and you know it. Right. And again, that's not a self judgment. Like, this is not a negative voice for me. It's a bit of a voice of reality. And so I think, okay, do I need to do 75 hard? Do I need to commit to something where I am going to force myself to leverage disciplines and have to make commitments to myself that really stretch me? And will that level up the capacity I have for personal discipline?
[00:17:33.390] - Brandon
Will that level up the ability I have to walk into pain and discomfort knowing that there's value in that experience? And so my gut says if I choose to do that, it is going to level me up and it will make a huge impact on my personal self esteem and self confidence because it's going to require me to keep promises to myself, and they won't be easy promises.
[00:17:56.090] - Chris
Right.
[00:17:56.580] - Brandon
So this is this, like, I'm just trying to think through this and I'm trying to voice it or talk through it in a way where people can go, wow. Yeah, I have similar. This is a live mental battle that I am currently in, where I am faced to make a choice in the next several weeks. Otherwise, there's just a reality of, I didn't take action, I didn't do it, and I already know I have to. Right. Like, I've been know to a certain extent. Yeah.
[00:18:19.700] - Chris
And I think we all hear different voices and we all respond to different voices. I was talking to somebody about this the other day. I can't remember if it was Wayne or somebody else, but somebody was kind of talking about how Rogan talks about Joe Rogan on his know, he's very oriented around this kind of stuff. Like, he's cold plunging and does ICE boxes and crazy workouts and whatever. And at times, well, it is kind of a normal conversation he has. He talks about conquering the inner bitch, right? And he talks about when he cold plunges every single morning in a 37 degree cold bath. And he talks about the fact that every single morning it's hard. Every. He approaches it, he's removing the lid to the cold plunge. And every single time he describes his inner bitch is trying to get him to not do it that day. And so he has really forceful language, like internal language of shut the f up. I'm doing this, we're doing this. It's kind of that get your shit together and do the right thing kind of language. And some people I've talked to are really put off by that.
[00:19:25.350] - Brandon
My wife wouldn't be motivated.
[00:19:26.930] - Chris
Yeah, neither would mine at all. No. And more and more, I think the conversation inside me is, I realize every time I do those things, cold plunging. All right, so I recently, three days ago, I bought an ICE barrel 500. I bought an ICE barrel 500. It's one of those roto molded. It's kind of like a yeti, but it's a cold plunge, so it's insulated and it's got steps up to. It's really sweet and it's made for tall people, so you can just dunk all the way in. It's pretty neat. I'm super stoked. It's too bad it takes like four weeks to deliver because it's 100 pounds. Anyways. Liftify.com bloodlight you've heard Brandon and I talk a bunch of times about the importance of Google reviews. Maybe you even heard our episode with Zach Garrett, the CEO and founder. Recency, consistency, two of the most important things when it comes to maximizing the benefit from your Google reviews. Why not use an outside partner? Liftify is targeting 20% to 25% conversion, right? So if you do 1000 jobs a year, you ought to be adding right now 200 to 250 reviews a year every single year.
[00:20:30.570] - Chris
If you're not doing that, you owe it to yourself to get a free demo from Liftify.com, see their system, see how it works, see how affordable it is. I promise you, you'll thank us.
[00:20:40.080] - Brandon
Liftify.com ludlight we spend a lot of money and a lot of attention trying to get that first call. And one of the things that we do once it happens is sometimes we leave it to chance, right? Who picks up the phone how do they respond? How do they walk that client into a relationship with us? Well, one of the benefits of partnering with a team like Answerforce.com is we can systemize that. We can make it more consistent. We can also have backup for when our teams need that help, right? Somebody goes on vacation, somebody's out sick, we get a storm surge, we get cat event. All sorts of things can have an impact on how we receive that client. But the most important thing is they need to know that they've chosen the right team. And so answerforce.com can support you. Be a bolt on partner to help you consistently produce an awesome onboarding experience with that first call with yourforce.com forward slash Bloodlight sounds great.
[00:21:36.190] - Chris
CNR Magazine we're friends with all the folks at Cnr. Michelle and her team. They do a great job of keeping their ear to the ground and reporting all the important information from our industry. Right? You want to stay up on all the m a activity and what the latest best practices are for selling your company successfully. She's got that great articles about all the four quadrants of our business. CNR is constantly pushing out great material and leveraging great writers and subject matter experts in our industry. It is the water cooler of our industry. So if you're not subscribed, go to cnrmagazine.com. Follow them on LinkedIn. Follow Michelle on LinkedIn. Trust us, if you're trying to stay on top of everything happening in the industry, your best destination is cnrmagazine.com.
[00:22:19.870] - Brandon
You guys, many of you have already heard about actionable insights and the training and the technical expertise that they bring to the industry. But how many of you are already leveraging the actionable insights profile for xactimate? That's the game changer. It's essentially an AI tool that's walking alongside of you as you write your estimate, bringing things to your attention that should be added that could be considered. All of them. Items that increase our profitability, increase the effectiveness and the consistency of that scope. And it can do anything from helping a new team member assimilate some estimating best practices. And it also helps the grizzled vets add back that few percent that we've just forgot over time. So, actionable insights getinsights.org floodlight and take a look at what the actionable insights exactimate profile could be doing for you and your team.
[00:23:15.390] - Chris
I made the move. I have a perfectly good metal farm trough thing like steel deal that a buddy actually gifted me, which was rad. I'm going to be regifting it to another friend who wants to get started in cold plunge. But I made that investment as kind of a force function to. Except you're going to spend $1,500 on a thing that holds cold water. There's at least some extra motivation to use it. And I've been trying to get myself in the mornings to do cold plunge every single day when I first wake up. And because when I cold plunge, I notice that I feel good about myself. There's this feeling of kind of conquering that mental resistance that feels very empowering the moment that I get my whole body underneath that cold water and I've succumbed to it. There is this incredible sense of personal power that I just tapped into. I don't know any other way to describe it. There's also this deep, deep sense of relaxation, which is like the opposite of what people would presume you'd feel going into a sub 40 degree tank of water. And yet it's been consistent for me every single time.
[00:24:26.050] - Chris
And so there's a part of me that I feel a little self conscious. Like we're always talking about us working out and cold plunging and all these hip things that the influencers are doing. But this is one of those things where it's like every time, and I've probably done it now 15 times, maybe 20 times, to where literally every time I feel those two things in spade. And I think I have a theory, because it's not the only hard thing I do, and I know you do hard things. I mean, exercise and workouts are one example of that. But I find the harder the thing that I do on purpose, it grows my sense of confidence in myself and my courage that I can do anything I have to. That's really the predominant feeling that I feel the moment. I'll tell you, the 3ft, or the three and a half seconds it takes from setting my timer on my phone and setting it down on my Adirondack chair 3ft away from my cold plunge. The three and a half seconds there are the hardest three and a half seconds of my day to get myself to step into that water and then to force myself to sit down into it.
[00:25:35.160] - Chris
But the moment I'm underwater, I feel this incredible sense of if I can do that, there's nothing today I can't handle. Nothing.
[00:25:44.130] - Brandon
And that's the principle, right? Like, regardless of what your inner voice is, regardless of what the thing is you choose to take on, maybe it's not even exercise at all. This has nothing to do with the thing. No, it has everything to do with the fact that you're making an intentional choice to place yourself in a position where you are going to be forced to follow through on a commitment or a promise to yourself. And the fact that when you do it right and then there's varying degrees of what we get from it. So, like example would be maybe the start is just getting up in an appropriate time on a consistent basis, but the impact of that is just as meaningful, it's just as empowering as somebody who. Maybe they've got that part on lockdown, but they're working on an ICE bath kind of environment, whatever, it doesn't matter the what. It's absolutely just this commitment of, I've said I will and now I'm going to put the things in place to commit to it and to follow through on it. And every time we do it, and I think this is the part that sometimes we can lose sight of, is that we really are pretty easily rewarded.
[00:26:54.470] - Brandon
It's literally just bite size wins are good enough. It's mounting them, it's piling them on top of each other. So for me, kind of like the first handful of tears, I guess, or things that I began doing is I'm really committed to getting up at a specific time. And I literally just do it seven days a week. Do I have days where I don't need to do that? I sure do. Does my schedule look exactly the same every freaking day? Kind of, but it doesn't have to. But I've just found that when I commit to that thing and I say, hey, every day, I'm going to be up by Xyz time. For me, it's 05:00 a.m. It creates a consistent commitment. And myself, every time I do it, it's so subconscious, I never think about it. But it's just like, you did it again. You did it again. You got it, you did it, you did it. And that builds trust, right? Follow through, follow up with people. To me, that sets a stage where it's like I grow more emboldened and more confident, the more consistent I am with that, because it has nothing to do with the outside audience.
[00:27:54.770] - Brandon
There's impact there for sure. But for me, it's an example of where I can say, yeah, you're doing it, you did what you said you're going to do. Right? Exercise for me has been a mixed emotion. Like, it's one of those things where I have good runs and when I'm in the zone and I'm committed and it's consistent, man. Dude, the self esteem and confidence that comes from that commitment is huge. But it's also one of those spaces often shows up as one of those voices that says, you're kind of full of shit, dude. Because it's very common for me to only get in three days. What do I want to do? Five days. What's my workout routine based on? Five days? How many times a week am I getting? Five days. Very rarely.
[00:28:32.830] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:28:33.220] - Brandon
Right. So it's like, I think really the takeaway, at least, that I want people to key in on is it really has nothing to do with the what and it has nothing to do with the level of the challenge in that what, in terms of external relationships, people, environments, doesn't fucking matter. It's for you. It's about you. And it's a conversation between you and yourself. Right. Yeah. So anyway, we don't need to beat horse.
[00:29:02.260] - Chris
No, but, dude, I think everybody struggles with this at some level. I mean, I think of all of our clients, I think it's okay for us just to plant our flag and say that the physical place is probably a good place to start for everybody.
[00:29:15.510] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:29:15.880] - Chris
The whole thing of whether it's fitness, whether it's diet, whether it's sleep, wake up routines, if you're an old plunge, journaling, yoga, stretching, whatever it is, something feels radically important and universal around physical discipline. And if I could offer something, something that has been helping me get into that, trusting my self pocket with the exercise, because like I mentioned, I haven't been to the gym for the last couple, two or three days. Did I go on Monday? I went on Monday and I skipped yesterday. And what is today? Thursday? Yeah, I've skipped the last two days. I'm going to go in today. But one of the things that I, and I forget who kind of turned me onto this, but just this idea might be Mark Sisson, a dude I follow. He's like, look, have fitness equipment around you at all times. And so if you walk into our office here at floodlight, we were graciously given a chin up and a dip tower in our office by our landlords, which was really freaking cool.
[00:30:13.560] - Brandon
That's awesome.
[00:30:14.260] - Chris
One of these days we're going to have to film a chin up contest between you and I. We'll throw that out on the socials. I've got a kettlebell by my desk. I have a rubber band that I use for just like, doing some exercises. And so one of the commitments that I've tried to make is I, no matter what? I'm going to work. For me, it's four days a week. It's just my standard. If I can get more, great. But if I can't make it to the gym, I'm still going to do something. I'm still going to burn myself out in some way. I'm going to do ten sets of chin ups at home before I start fixing dinner. I can do that in 1520 minutes if I have to, right? If I really am serious, I can do this shit really quickly, you know what I mean? But I still prove to myself that what it is is that atomic habits thing. Yeah, I'm reinforcing myself. I am the kind of person that works out four days a week. Now, I may not get in and do a crossfit workout in the gym and totally blow myself out, but I'm going to do a meaningful amount of exercise.
[00:31:11.570] - Chris
I'm going to get in five sets of twelve kettlebell swings, do three sets of goblet squats and do 50 push ups. I can do something. I feel like that has been a powerful flip for me in the last few years. I still am not satisfied with myself every time. But I just find that that has been an important deal for me in terms of maintaining that view of myself, of I'm a person who trains even if I can't make it to the gym. And of course, you and I have, we've tried to stick to that with our travel.
[00:31:42.820] - Brandon
Yeah, we do a lot of travel and we still find a way to get something done. Yeah, I think let's kind of open up this a little bit in terms of where are all these kind of little places that this kind of stuff can show up. I think to myself how I want to behave around some of our team members. Like there are certain relationships that I'd like to take to a different level or just make sure that I'm proactive in and I don't lose or have see any shift in the kind of relationship that we have, let's say, over time as the team gets bigger and more diverse. Well, then what can I do about that, right? So, like establishing a cadence around how I really manage that or lead that, let's say in your company, maybe it's one of these things where the company has gotten large enough, you're starting to have less relationship with your downline people and you feel some air gap there. Like that's not necessarily something that you want to allow to happen. Well, anything that you can do to create a discipline, let's say, to begin actively engaging.
[00:32:39.320] - Brandon
That thing is going to be profound. Now, are there environmental things that will come from that? 100%. That's the beauty of it. But more importantly, it's taking action in such a way that you have all these opportunities throughout the week to prove to yourself that you do what you say you're going to do, and these things can show up anywhere and everywhere. One of the things I've been thinking more about is, man, I have these evening times, these spots of time in the evening for me that I know could be more productive. I'm not necessarily driven to go home and start hammering on spreadsheets and shit from post dinner until I pass out, but I think there's things that I could be doing with those hours that are more productive, that if I commit to a certain kind of strategy around it, it's just going to keep affirming those promises. Right? So maybe it turns into, I got to get better at just inviting my wife out for a 30 minutes walk in the evening. Why not? You know what I mean? Well, then, what are all these physical or environmental positives that come from it?
[00:33:42.570] - Brandon
Well, they're numerous. You could write a whole list. But again, the most important impact will be, I said to myself, I want to do this. I feel like it's important. And then, lo and behold, I disciplined myself and did it. And that's really what this boils down to, is that I think no matter what, no matter how much success we experience, no matter how well we're doing in terms of business, no matter what certifications I get, job title shifts I make, that internal voice will always be substantially louder and far more influential than anything that will come from my external environment. And the only way I've learned over the years to have an intentional, substantial impact on that voice, I have to learn how to trust myself. And the only way I've found to do that is I have to rack up little wins where I've done what I told myself I'm going to do. And the more consistent I am, the more I pile up those wins, the far more structurally sound, the far more like physically, mentally, and emotionally sound I am to take on all the question marks that I'm inevitably going to know.
[00:34:52.660] - Chris
Yeah, you know what this reminds me of, dude? This goes back to leadership and self deception. The Arbinger Institute.
[00:34:58.330] - Brandon
Yeah, it's a great book.
[00:34:59.570] - Chris
We've talked about it before, but the angle on it that I think is really interesting is it kind of applies this to everything, but it's this principle that all of us, whatever you want to call this influence. Some people would say it's our conscience. Some people would say, if you're religious or spiritual person, maybe it's the Holy Spirit, right. That gives us these moments. But we all have these moments where we become aware of a good thing that we ought to do. Whether it be like you're talking about schedule time to meet with our adult children every week to have a phone call, right. We get these inclinations, like, I really want to be close to my kids and have a consistent relationship with them. We get these ideas. Or I get this idea of, you know what? I really should be more deliberate. Thinking back to our episode previously about Monday.com and me doing my task, me following the processes and procedures. We've done it. But I need to really be better and more intentional about that. We get these positive instincts and leadership and self deception talks about how important it is for us to honor that instinct, that if we don't act on that good inclination, it refers to it as self betrayal.
[00:36:10.550] - Chris
And this is exactly what we're talking about. Right. It's like we all know what I'm talking about. In the past, I've talked about it relative to my marriage. I know that my wife appreciates having a clean kitchen sink and dishes not piling up. And for a lot of our marriage, I'd walk right past a sink full of dishes and do nothing about it. Despite the fact that I would see it. I would know my wife doesn't like a bunch of dishes in the sink, and I would walk right past it without honoring the instinct of, you know, I could take four and a half minutes and put those dishes in the dishwasher. And that's exactly what he's talking about. And there's just myriad of other things that all of us daily in terms of our relationships, our role in our business, our job, whatever, where we get these instincts, I really should, or this would be a good thing for me to do. And we walk past it, we ignore it. And the thing is, we're the only ones aware of that internal dialog.
[00:37:07.970] - Brandon
Right?
[00:37:08.420] - Chris
And that's the power of it. It's the power of it in that every time we ignore it, we're betraying ourselves and we're eroding our trust in ourselves. Every time we honor it, we're building up this trust of. This is part of who I am. I'm the kind of person. It's big that does these things.
[00:37:24.620] - Brandon
Yeah, that's huge. It's interesting because as I'm listening, you say that I'm thinking to myself, okay, what are some of the different ways that we can leverage information like this in our favor as leaders, for example? And I know that many of us, we try to kind of keep this level of separation between kind of our people and some of the emotional kind of social impacts of life. Right. So think about it from this perspective. I was just thinking sales team members, for example, as you're talking, I'm thinking project managers, and I'm thinking to myself, okay, one of the things that I've seen over the years commonly is that I can recognize in a downline team member the negative impact of their failure to be disciplined enough to meet or exceed our standards. And what's hard for me to be able to do in the moment is to convey to that individual, hey, besides the fact that you're out of alignment with what we expect from the role, which there's kind of a whole professional thing that I have a responsibility to commit to there, but it's like, on a personal level, I want to scream out to this individual, half the stress and anxiety that you are surrounding yourself with is coming from the fact that instead of doing the system, following the process, you know you're making shortcuts, you know you're skirting things.
[00:38:41.820] - Brandon
You know, you're doing things outside of the standard, and it's weighing on you. Like you failing to exceed or meet the standard is exactly the same as you lying to yourself over and over straight. And it doesn't matter how I feel about it. It doesn't matter if the data shows that you're missing the mark. At the end of the day, you know you're not. And half of your reason to not be engaged or not be committed or not fully succeed is because you don't trust yourself. It has nothing to do with our system or our process. Right. I think about salespeople. That's a hard role. Right. It's a hard role because you're constantly, especially in our specific industry, when we think about disaster restoration, that sales process is so gray, like, it's hard to know. Well, one of the ways that we've talked a lot about people getting momentum and growing more confident is based on their actions, their weekly activities. What are you doing? And so I think to myself, how many times have we talked with a team member, laid out a reasonable weekly cadence of activities that if they commit to 100% of it, that over time, it will yield a consistent result that will change the level of income that they're having impact on the top line revenue, all the things.
[00:39:55.860] - Brandon
And I think what's tough to explain in the moment is, hey, also, if you do these things, you're going to be much more confident that you're headed in the right direction. But when you consistently, instead of doing five by Friday, you do two and you cut out for the week. You've just lied to yourself, really. I mean, everyone's on the same page. They know what we were supposed to be doing and you didn't do it. And honestly, if we just think about it from this perspective, don't even consider it from the perspective of the standard the company is asking you for. Think about it from your own self. When yourself knows, because it's been through the training, that you need to do X in order to win, and then you don't do it. Just understand it has nothing to do with the company. You're lying to yourself, and yourself knows it. And that is the biggest critic in your corner. It's not me, it's not your direct line supervisor, it's not the next employer that you pull the wool over the eyes.
[00:40:50.130] - Chris
It's you.
[00:40:51.280] - Brandon
It's yourself. And yourself knows when you're full of shit or not. It sucks. And it's very empowering all at the same time.
[00:40:59.440] - Chris
It's incredibly empowering. It's very clarifying to just consider these things and look at the ways where I'm currently betraying myself.
[00:41:07.830] - Brandon
And I think it's really useful just.
[00:41:09.290] - Chris
To kind of, like, meditate on it over coffee. Like, where are the ways where I'm walking past? I'm ignoring, I'm glossing over, I'm flaking out. Where am I ignoring these important impulses that I have, these positive things that I know instinctively. They come to me as I'm walking through the office. They come to me as I'm walking through the shop. They come to me as I'm going back to my car after a sales call. And where are those areas where I'm not honoring that? It's been powerful. It's funny, dude. Even as we're having this conversation, there's a part of me that feels a sense of. I don't want to say guilt, actually, guilt is probably the healthier response. Right. Where these things are coming to me in the midst of this conversation that I know are kind of areas where I'm intermittently out of alignment.
[00:41:59.630] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:41:59.980] - Chris
You know what I mean? But I think it's healthy, right? I think it's the only way we make change is when we start to reflect and we create awareness around those.
[00:42:06.390] - Brandon
Areas, maybe that's where we wrap this up, guys, is like if you're listening to the show and some of this is like, oh man, I can definitely see myself in those shoes. Maybe a really fantastic place to start is this week right now. Most of you listen to this when you're driving right around and about. So maybe you're working out right now. Whatever. Think to yourself, two or three things. Don't go any more than that. Two or three things. And start small. Two or three commitments, behaviors, practices that you've heard yourself talk about. Write down in a note, mention to yourself that you want to do. You want to start, you need to. You think you should find two or three and just begin engineering the way that you're using your time so that you can commit to those two or three things and just spend the next several weeks winning. Do the thing. Track it in your mind. Like when you do the thing, say, hell yeah, I did it again and it sounds so silly. But think about it like if we were coaching a young baseball team and somebody's never done that sport before, we're going to walk before, we're going to the MLB, we're going to learn how to take baby steps on our craft and we're going to eventually pile those wins on top of each other with time and grade and experience and next thing you know, we're a pro.
[00:43:25.730] - Brandon
Well, I think this is our opportunity for all of us. Like dial in two or three things that are baby steps that you can commit to, that you know that as you pile up those wins, it's going to encourage you and build your own self esteem so you can take on some harder lifts and then identify another two or three things and just commit to having consistency in those and proving to yourself that you will do what you tell yourself you're going to commit to do. And I guarantee you the environmental positives that spill out from that will be numerous. But more importantly, it won't fucking matter because you're going to believe in yourself and that's what it requires to do hard things, man. So try that this week. You guys see what it does for you. And you know what? Honestly, don't ever be afraid to DM us on LinkedIn or Insta or whatever and talk about the experience that you're having. If you're winning, if you're not, if you're in the fight and it just seems overwhelming, that's okay too. Like at the end of the day, we have moments where we're crushing and we have moments where we're not.
[00:44:21.120] - Brandon
But I think this is something for us to all consider and see what we can leverage in our favor.
[00:44:24.820] - Chris
And next time you see me at an event or a show or whatever, ask me if I've been cold plunging, ask me about it. I'll tell you all the awesome things I'm getting from it.
[00:44:34.230] - Brandon
All right, guys, we'll see you next time. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, heart and Boots.
[00:44:42.870] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show but you love this episode, please hit follow. Formerly known as subscribe, write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.
