Episode 4 - Clarity Through Essentialism

Welcome, everyone, to Episode 4, which is actually Part 2 of our previous podcast of the Leadership Ignition podcast, brought to you by the Leadership Ignition team, where faith, family, fitness, and finance unite to help you level up your life. I'm Shane Beckham. And I'm Mike Hough.

both owners and coaches of the Leadership Ignition Team. And we are super excited to continue on our mission to help you get lit. Ready to go, Shane? - Ready to go. Let's rock and roll and dive right back in, man.

- Here we go. - We've established what clarity was in the F-bombs in a very rudimentary way. So let's take that to another level and say, okay, how can you be essential in the four F-bombs? Because those two things tie together. So let's start back with the first domino and then start back with faith, okay? So how many of us have a safe space that we have in our homes, in our offices, in our vehicles? So my point is create a safe space for faith. What does that mean? Have somewhere that you can go that you feel vulnerable. You feel like nobody can bother you. You're in a safe place. You can talk to your to the Lord above or whoever it is you believe in. You can pull your journal out and not be interrupted. You can write a page in your journal. You can open a book, you can open the Bible, you can read without distraction. So number one is when you want to be essential in faith, find a safe space and let that be your spot to where you can learn and do that quality. You know, to me, moving on, sorry, I got a little distracted there with the faith. To me, we're going to move into family from there. So this one hits deep. Again, you've heard me say it. I've struggled with this a little bit. So here's my essentialist approach to this. Rip the rearview mirror off. Okay. Don't keep looking over your shoulder. How many of us do that? Man, I wish I did that better. I wish I'd have done that different. If I could only, if you know, you can, you can do that to death. Rip the rearview mirror off. You can't change what you said. You can't change what you did and you can't change the outcome of what happened. I don't care who you are, how you are, you're not going to do it. So the quicker you learn to rip that off and not look back, it's okay to reflect, living in the past is dangerous, it's poisonous. Stop doing it. Alright, let's talk about the future. Guess what? There's only one person in my opinion that controls the future and that's a good Lord above. You can set yourself up for success like Mike does with his schedule. However, you can't control what happens the next day. Zero control. So guess what? Should you worry about that? Absolutely not. So we're not looking behind us and we're not looking too far in front of us which means what? When it comes to family, the most important thing you can do is Be present. Be present. All your kids want is time. Play a board game with them. I'm guilty of this. I gotta work. Gotta do things. Spend 30 minutes playing a game. That's a core memory. It may not feel like much. I promise you, I think about my grandmother and I often. It's a core memory of mine. She taught me how to play Yahtzee. I sat in her living room and we played Yahtzee, or her kitchen, I'm sorry, and we played Yahtzee over and over again. I don't know why I suck so bad at math because I can do that math on those dice really quick 'cause it was as natural to me, right? It's a core memory and it came from such a small thing. So be present with your kids, go play with them, spend time with your wife, spend time with your family. That is how you be as fitness. I wanna talk about a baseball metaphor here. I say this when I'm on the mic at the gym all the time. If you come to one of my classes, you're gonna hear me say this. Stop trying to hit a home run every time you get to the plate. You're going to fail. You're going to strike out and you're going to get disappointed, depressed, and guess what? Eventually going to happen. You're going to quit. Instead, let's hit singles. What's a single? I got out of bed this morning and I came to the gym. Or you could really tie that into more of a micro level. Say I got up, I had my gym clothes out. I put them on. I got my vehicle. Then I drove to the gym. You've just stacked three or four wins together. Guess what? You just hit three singles. So the next time you when you're actively working out, You just scored a run. So that is how you habit-based stack wins and you start winning long-term, right? You start winning the long game because you are stacking up those singles and you're winning. The scoreboard's lighting up. We know how that goes. That is clarity in action. Last thing I'll say on that is motivation will fade, discipline won't. We all get excited about something in fitness when it's, you know, "Hey, I'm gonna start a new fitness program. Come check this out." I see that all the time. Motivation is going to fade. You're going to get tired of it. It's not going to be as fun. It's not going to be as new. It's not going to be a fresh. That's when that discipline comes in. That is when the 1% change starts to happen. That's when your consistency moves in. That's when you rise to the level of your goals instead of falling to the level of your systems, right? That is the difference. That's how you make that 1% change. Finally leading into finance. So let's get real with the finance. Shiny object syndrome, Mike, I have it. And sometimes I even drag you into it. Like you got that dangling carrot over here, man. That would sure be cool. That'd be fun. But the society we're in now has trained us to be that way. We're impulsive. We want things immediately. We want things right away. Think about how disappointed you are when you go on Amazon right now and you don't get it till tomorrow or the next day. What, it's going to take two days to get this? Think about that, right? How guilty we are of that. So when it comes to finances, if you want to be essential, you have to be clear, you have to be full of clarity. My man, Mike, gave me this quote the other day, you have to be maniacal about your numbers. That means you're in the weeds every single day being essential with what you spend and how you spend it and how you handle all those things. Meaning, when you start to lose control, what do I do? I pull the e-brake. You have to pull the e-brake because like you said earlier, if not, you can massage things however you want, it's not going to get any better. In fact, it's only going to get worse. When it comes to finances, you can't let it get too much worse. Or guess what? You can't get blood from a turnip. You're going to go underwater. You're going to drown. Okay. So being very specific, being clear, being maniacal with your numbers, that is how you get it done. Discipline leads to destiny in all four of the F-bombs. And both the book, "Essentialism and Atomic Habits" show us that if you'll start small with these things, You can be successful. You don't have to hit home runs, man. Hit those singles, get on base, and let's score some runs, Mike. You've been a master at a lot of things. One of the things that I give you the most credit for is your financial ability and the way you've navigated that. I love that. So kudos to you for being successful and teaching me some things in that as well.

- Well, look, there's no such thing as perfect success. Speaker 3 There's a lot of strikeouts along the way for all of us.

So, but it is all about, you know, how do you just stay disciplined when motivation wanes? It's not fun sometimes to wake up and go do the same thing that you did the day before. It's just not fun, but you gotta do it anyway. So I love that part of what you just said and so much of this, Shane. So a couple of things for me in the same topics. When you get discipline as a key priority against that objective, that is where the magic happens. When clarity hits all four F bombs, your life moves in harmony, man. If you can get everything lined up and you can stay on that path, that's where the magic happens. So for me, you know, let me talk about my essentialism and my rhythm on these topics and see if it helps round out some things. I'm trying to be super succinct here. You already covered them exceptionally well. I always attempt to have a 10-minute block every day to re-engage with my beliefs and my spirituality. We think about these things totally differently. I think about the way I want the world to work and the things that are important to me in the way that I want the things to move forward. Truth is, some days it doesn't happen, and I always feel a little off in those days. And the reason it doesn't happen is because you can't control everything, as you said. My calendar may be totally perfectly calendarized, but sometimes some things don't happen. And so, like you said, I don't look back. That's cool, that was yesterday. What are we doing tomorrow? We're gonna do something different to try to make sure it all happens tomorrow. My family talked about this already. My calendar reflects my values on that. It's not on there, it doesn't happen. So I make sure I put it on the calendar. I schedule time for my family, time for events, time for outings. I show up on purpose in those sessions. And one of the things that you said about, was it related to family? We're gonna talk about this again in a bunch of sessions, I'm sure. But it's the idea of be here now. It's true in business too, but it's so critical with your family, with your friends. It's so easy to get pulled into your device and check Facebook when you're watching. So we were talking about this last night about little shavers in the family who just wants you to watch a show with them. Who wants to watch "Leave it to Beaver" again for the four millionth time? So you get a little bored and you pick up your phone and the kid looks at you and said, "Don't bring your device next time, right?" How, slap in the face. Just when you're with your family, be with your family. Be here now, be where your feet are is what you always say. And I love that. I think that's perfect. So be in the moment with your family for sure. And in fitness, don't wait for motivation anymore. I used to, I've got systems, I've got a process, I've got programming laid out weeks in advance. You and I both, we know what we're doing for the next six weeks in our programming. I've got a nap that every single day I open it up and it tells me what I programmed a couple of weeks ago that I'm gonna do today. And I'm gonna do it. It doesn't matter what goes on in the rest of the day. That's one thing I'm not giving up. I don't care what happens in the day. I've got clearly defined strength goals I want to attain. And despite your guidance and stress to pull me away from them, I'm gonna get those goals. I've got my meals planned. I protect my sleep. I got my supplements lined up and it's just the discipline to get it done. And finance, I check the numbers daily, whether they be personal or business. You know, it's funny. I mean, there's, there's this program that we built at work. It's, it's our, we call our DLP tracker, direct labor percentage. And it's, you know, what percent of labor versus revenue are we month to date? Speaker 3 And because our team has to enter those numbers in every single day, it's real

time, and I'm probably the first person who looks at it by station every single day, we've got 80 operations and I'm looking at it by station. And I'm sending out my notes and I used to send them all the way to the frontline GM. And my COO would say, "That's my job. What are you doing?" Right? And I'd say, "Okay, but I don't know that you sent it yet because I'm not sure you're as maniacal about this as I am." Right? And so, "Are you sending the notes?" So he started copying me on his notes now. So I stopped sending stuff to him and I just sent them directly to him. But again, I look at that every single day. I do the same thing at home. And you talked about this, right? You can't run a spreadsheet. You've got to run reality. We've had that conversation. is actually going in and out of the bank every single day so that you can drive the outcomes that you need versus what are you planning. So that's what a budget is. A budget is great, but what's actually happening? Here's the other thing that we, from a finance perspective, a super micro issue that we can all do, check your subscriptions. Check them once a month. You end up signing up for stuff, you think you're going to cancel it later, you don't. Just check your subscriptions. You'd be surprised at how much money you're just throwing out the window and stuff like that. Like that extra music account you haven't listened to in three months because you really You like the other music account better, get rid of it. Think about this, Shane. Every dollar has a job, man. Every dollar has a job. What job are you giving each of those dollars? Clarity is not a feeling, it's a framework. And when you build that framework around what matters, the noise fades and the mission gets really, really loud.

- Love that framework you just put around that. Every dollar has a job. Because if you look at it at that approach, And then again, to your point, not to get too deep in my own personal weeds, but just taking a deeper look into some financials that I'd kind of let get away from me a little bit, man, you really, you see it and you're like, I, you know, this is very specific. Like what is this $13 charge? And you know, you start looking at it that way and you'll really uncover some weeds there that you need to pull. There's a lot of weeding you need to do in the financial garden, my friend. Then you got to water it, right? We got to water it. So let's talk a little bit about how we want to tackle and approach this. There are some essentialist hacks that we use every single day. I want to talk a little bit about that with each one, just kind of cover a few points. And then we're going to go into the part four is some of the hacks we use every day. part one is faith. Again, find your safe space, schedule your silence. Journal, read, and then ask one hard question. That needs to be done daily. I try to do my best with that. Family time, just like you just said. Phone goes away at dinner, or you schedule a tech-free hour or hours in the evening with your family. That's a simple thing that you can do immediately. All these can be done immediately. And if you don't want to do them all, pick one. Pick one and do it and then come back and do the second one and start stacking. You know, fitness, 30 minute workout versus 60 minute guilt trips. I love that. You don't have to work out for four hours a day. Trust me, do 30 minutes. You know, it can make a big difference in your physique. Finally, your point. I think I've been saying this word wrong. Let's get some clarity here. It's maniacal. But I love how you say it. What were you saying? I mean, I've been saying maniacal. Maniacal is awesome. But it is maniacal. When you said that earlier, I thought, "Wait a minute. I'm taking the word maniac and I'm just making my own country plural version of this."

Maniacal, baby.

Maniacal. There you go. Maniacal. It makes a lot more sense to me now. But anyways, check your bank account every day. Be maniacal with the numbers. No exceptions, no matter how you say the word.

Yeah, man, the gold is in the little things. Stack them, protect them, own them. One of the things we tend not to do is own our failures. You got to own them so that you can fix them.

Amen to that. Last little bit of work here. So let's land this plane where it hits home for a lot of us, Mike. How to lead better by becoming an essentialist with clarity, right? Those two things are going to come together. So we talk a lot about clarity of purpose but here's the truth. If you don't know what your mission is you're just going to keep adding more and more noise to your day. In your situation schedule right that is how you're eliminating noise and you'll tell me like hey Mike you and I can't this is blocked out. Send me what times you have open right, that way I know and that's gonna go on our schedule because if you spread yourself too thin you run too hard it's gonna show up not only personally, but it's also going to show up to your team. It's going to show up in your family. It's going to show up in your job. It's going to show up in how you lead. The more you burn out as a leader, how effective do you think your team's going to be? So how do you fix that? When you get clear, other people around you get clear and rise up with you. Right? It's a team thing. Talking more about clarity as a leader. So to me personally, owning a gym and coaching clients, it's taught me a lot of things. One, to mirror what you do and to see what you do and how you do it, the best leaders are not the busiest leaders. They're the most focused leaders. They're the most grounded leaders and they're the most clear leaders. Back to our point earlier, you stop doing everything and you start doing the right things. There's a shift in that mindset, right? You have clear objectives, clear missions, clear core values, and you and your team live by that through clarity. Okay? You protect the asset, meaning your time, your peace, and all the things we've talked about. Because if you don't protect it and you go down, guess what? The mission and the team do too. You have to set your boundaries, you have to do all those things. So, here's what I want you to know. Leadership is not about doing more. It's about creating that space. It's about removing the clutter. So what matters will rise to the surface. So tie that back to your family, your job. Stop running from one thing to the other. Get your clarity, because as you step up, your team step up, your family notices, your energy shifts, everything starts to change in your life once you define that clarity and find that essentialism. So, Mike, do you have any inputs on that that as we get ready to wrap up.

- Yeah, let's make that super practical. I think you've given some very clear examples, but audit your inputs. Number one, what's stealing your time? What's stealing your focus? Emails, we talked about social media. Maybe it's TV shows you're following. We all have these shows that everyone tells us we've got to watch. You don't have to watch any of that stuff. Doesn't matter what your friends are talking about. Audit your inputs. Write your to-be list. We talked about this. Decide what that future you looks like. in every way. What kind of car you drive? What kind of house you live in? What does your family think about you? What do your friends think about you? What do the people who don't care about you think about you? Guess what? Doesn't matter. Take it off the to-be list. That's where we spend a lot of our time and a lot of our energy. It doesn't need to be there. And protect one sacred block of time. Just, you know, we talked about doing a lot of things, but for an atomic habit here, pick one sacred block of time that we talked about today, whether that be a daily workout, a daily devotional, or a family dinner and defend it like it's mission critical. Doesn't matter what else you're gonna do in that day, pick one thing for the next three weeks and just defend it. You don't need more hustle team. Right Shane? You just need more clarity. You don't need more things on the plate. You need to scrape the plate clean like we talked about and put back on that plate what fuels your purpose. We say it all the time, Get Lit isn't just a podcast. This isn't just about us trying to be out in the ether. Who cares? We're trying to help. It's a call to step into your purpose, to lead yourself so well that others can't help but to level up too, and that you reach behind you and help pull them up with you. So, a quick recap on everything we just talked about. What is clarity? It is the permission to stop doing everything and start doing what matters most. Why saying no matters, that was our second point? Because every yes has a cost. Don't spend your energy on what drains you. And last, how all these things elevate your faith, your family, your fitness, and your finance. Clarity brings alignment and alignment creates impact. So if you stay super clear and you do the things you're supposed to do, then we will have impact. Shane.

- So I wanna say one thing about what you said earlier before we go into the call to action. It was talking about your three points, audit your inputs, write your to be list, protect one sacred block of time. Taking that into the Gino Wichman book, That's what you write on your list and on your whiteboard. And if it's not essential, you kill it. If it is, you keep it. And I've tried to start applying that to daily tasks or weekly tasks. Sometimes it can be more long range, but to me, that found a lot of vision and clarity is, okay, is this a killer key bottom for my day to day? And you may not kill it forever, but maybe it goes to the next day. Because that's me. My problem, Mike, is I'll write 432 things down my to-do list and then it overwhelms me and how many things do I actually get done? Very small percentage. I have a hard time looking at that list and clarifying what's more important, what's not. Clarity has to be found for me and that's why I've started writing less and then I even still go through the killer key process and I'll draw a line through it or I'll go to the next page of my book and say Tuesday you're going here because I know I'll get lost in this task and lose a ton of time. So just reminded me of that killer key point. So call to action. There's a million different things that we could have set you down the path on to do. But one thing that Mike and I love to say and love to do is out of the four F bombs in your life, pick one or pick all four, doesn't matter, is what is my to be list in this area. We have the to-dos I just talked about. What is my to-be? To be a better dad, to be a better boss, to be a better friend. That's the line of areas that we want you to think about. To be more proficient with my faith, to be more willing to give, to be more willing to say the word no. That's where we want to challenge you. What is your to-be list? Who do you want to be in your faith? Who do you want to be at home? Who do you want to be with your personal appearance? and who do you want to be and how do you want to handle that financial bank account. So again, we talked about a lot of books. I just want to reference a few that we talked about the most. Essentialism by Greg McCowan. Love that book. Atomic Habits is one that I have on repeat. You know, that's written by James Clear. Highly recommend that book. Outwitting the Devil is one I read once a year. I go back to it and I read it once a year by the great late Napoleon Hill. a lot about drifting man and it means a lot to me. It speaks to me a lot. I want to do an episode on drifting as a matter of fact. Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. I have not read that book but now I will. Thank you Mike. And the Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. So Mike hit us with some final

reminders here. Yeah I'll just I'll comment on the Let Them Theory and this is the one that that brief point I was making is you know you probably all heard the meme hey they they think that you're not good enough, let them. They think you can't get it done, let them. That's what that's all about, right? Who gives a crap? What you wanna do, they think that you're working too hard, let them. What you wanna do is establish your vision, your mission, your clarity, and execute it.

Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about that.

So just some final comments here is subscribe. We wanna see 1,000 subscribers on this list. So the more people we can reach, the happier we'll all be. Follow us for upcoming episodes with tools, stories, and powerhouse guests. Shane, maybe the next one we'll bring guests on. It's amazing how many folks have reached out after our first couple of podcasts here and said, Speaker 3 hey, how can I be a part of that?

So we'll start talking to those folks and getting them on the call with us. And if you're interested in coaching or early access to leadership integration team content, reach out. We've got a website should be up soon. We've been talking about this for weeks. I think we're on the final phases. We'll have clear ways to reach out to us there, but our current website is active and can still reach us and help us find some good things. So Shane.

Well, Mike, I think it's time to put a bow on this one, my friend. It's been fantastic spending this time with you on these episodes. Thanks for everybody for listening. Thanks for trusting us. Speaker 3 And in all ways, stay focused, stay fierce. And let's get lit, baby.

Until next time. Bye, everybody. See you.