In this episode of the Leadership Ignition podcast, Shane Beckham and Mike Hough engage with Byron Ovenstone, who shares his transformative journey from a professional athlete to a successful entrepreneur. The conversation delves into the dangers of comfort and how it can lead to stagnation in personal and professional growth. Byron emphasizes the importance of embracing discomfort to acquire new skills and achieve success. The discussion also covers the significance of rest, identifying comfort traps, and strategies to break out of them. Listeners are encouraged to create non-negotiables in their lives and to be mindful of their environment, as it plays a crucial role in personal development. The episode concludes with a powerful reminder that everything worthwhile is on the other side of discomfort, and that striving for excellence is a continuous journey.
Welcome everyone to the fifth episode of 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 Huff.
We're both owners and coaches with the Leadership Ignition team. And today we are joined by an incredible guest, our friend, our former coach. He's an entrepreneur, he's a financial advisor, he's a fitness expert, and his greatest role is he's a father and a husband. If you know anything about Byron Ovenstone, those are probably his two most favorite things. So Byron's got a powerful perspective on something we all struggle with at some point, and that's comfort, and more specifically, how comfort destroys success.
Byron, my man, welcome to the show, dude. We're fired up to have you here. Just wanted to kind of set the preface before we turn you loose with a little bit of our background with you. And I know me personally and Mike probably as well, you hold a very special place in my heart, not to be corny, but you know, it was, it was you, you know, that I first kind of re acclimated myself to the battle ready program and where I finally clicked the pieces of the puzzles together to ignite the change in my life. That was the missing piece of the puzzle for me to pull Shane 1.0 and start trying to grow to that 2.0. So, a lot of respect for you, brother. I know Mike and I both met you in Battle Ready. That's just one part of your life which you've kind of transitioned away from now. And we love to hear your story and it was a big part of, you know, one of the reasons, essentially, you know, when you and I jumped on the initial call, you know, it was, you were real, you were raw and I appreciate that about you, brother. And, uh, just love to love to hear a little bit more and let the listeners hear about who you are, where you've been, where you came from and, and where you're going, brother. So we're going to flip it over to you, my friend, and, uh, see what you've been up to today and in the past as well. Speaker 3 Thank you, sir. Oh man, this is pumped. I'm, I'm excited to be here, guys. I appreciate you taking the time and having me on. Yeah, I mean, so out the gates, I was a professional athlete. If we reverse the clock right to the beginning, I was gifted and very talented in sports. With that came a lot of discipline that my dad kind of instilled in me. By 21, 22 years old, I thought I was untouchable, as you do at 21 or 22. Turns out I wasn't bulletproof. I fractured my back twice in two places, so I literally went from someone to no one overnight. have a whole hell of a lot of financial literacy back then either. So every single dollar that came in went out just as quickly, if not faster. And, yeah, I did find myself in a bit of a situation where I was like, man, I don't have a network. Everyone that I was associated with was sports related. So it was like we were rebuilding ourselves from the ground up, like we're nobody again. So went on to Google, highest paying job in London. Financial consultant came up. I was like, man, I know how to count. I'll figure out the rest. So similar to like what I did with sports and I've done it ever since is just reverse engineering everything. So what does it take to be a very good financial consultant? What does that look like? You need more degrees in a thermometer, you need to do this, that and the other. Okay, cool. I had no qualifications, so came out to the US for just shy of 10 months, drove heavy hauling trucks from Texas to Montana, moving mining equipment. That was allowed me to like kind of squirrel away a bunch of money. I used that money to pay off my first degree in full, miscalculated how much it was going to cost to live in London, so ended up sleeping in a car for like eight months or so while I was kind of navigating student hood and all that good stuff. Long story short, got my degrees, did all that good stuff, like climbed my way up the corporate ladder within a career company, went from just driving packages around to being customer service to helping them scale their business. Got into consulting, realized that it was awesome. They paid really well, but the company that I was working through was paying me 150 bucks a day, but charging me out at 500. I didn't like those numbers. I was like, we're now going to reverse engineer. How do I set up my own consulting firm? So did all of that, made the right networks and connected with all the right people and stuff, set up my own consulting firm. scaled that to seven figures within a few years, but really didn't enjoy who I was becoming. So I was the fat cat banker. That's literally what I used to tell everyone I was. I'm the fat cat of banking. And I literally looked like a fat cat as well. So it got to the point where I legit looked in the mirror and I hated everything about me and everything that was looking back and realized that something had to change. Obviously, there was a bunch of other stuff, like if you guys want to dive into how we came to that realization, we can, but I just want give you like elevator pitch for now. I came out to Malibu for a long weekend. It was actually closer to 10 days. By about day 7, I decided I was done with consulting in general. I didn't like the trajectory I was on. I didn't like the people I was around. So I went back to the UK, shut it all down, moved to California like literally 10 days later. Started again, got into fitness and nutrition by accident. Turns out I was really good at it. So we started battle-ready, battle-ready blew up. It was awesome. We made mistakes along the way. We merged with another company. That was a bad idea. That was when the wheels kind of started falling off. And it just progressively got worse and worse to the point where I was like, again, I had that, "Would the 7-year-old you be proud of the man you are today?" kind of conversation with myself. And I just didn't like the trajectory that I was on. So we put a hard stop to that. I exit stage left. 2 or 3 months, I was kind of just kicking around, figuring out what's next. Someone reached out to me on LinkedIn. I hadn't been on LinkedIn for 5 years. Said, "Hey, we think you'd be good at like financial advising." I was like, "I know I'll be good at it," because I scaled a 7-figure business in the UK doing something very similar, and skills are transferable. Stepped into this seat, I've been here for 11 months. This is my 11th month. Broken pretty much every single record at the company. And now we're just like, yeah, just having a good time changing lives and helping people really build wealth and establish themselves. Because the fitness and nutrition was great. I help people live a lot longer. I mean, I've cured hundreds of people of type 2 diabetes and all sorts of other weird and wonderful stuff. But there was always that underlying thing of like, I'm helping people who live longer who can't necessarily afford to do so. And now I can kind of, I can do both. So this, this fills my cup. And I love what I do. I mean, it's probably the hardest I've worked in a really long time, but it doesn't feel like it, if that makes sense.
Man, I think that's awesome. And one of the things that you said throughout that entire, the thing that sort of so through the entire conversation is every time you got a little comfortable, you did something different. Right. Yeah. That's your message here, I think is exactly what people need to hear, man. So, you know, last week on socials, you posted a series of topics about comfort and we tried to encapsulate that. the title of this podcast, which is Comfort Destroy Success. But man, I couldn't agree more. That's where I was when I met you. It was very comfortable, great family, lot of money, great job, everything was going great, except I was fat. And so I needed you, man, to help me figure out what was broken in that aspect of my life. So as Shane said, we're very thankful for the elements that you fixed us there. But tell us more about what you were conveying and that sort of comfort messaging that was in that series. Speaker 3 I mean, I just, I'm a massive advocate of reverse engineering, right? And like everything I do is process and system orientated. But like you kind of, like you touched on and what I was trying to convey in that post was that like, you get to a point where it just gets too easy. And if you don't keep manufacturing some kind of discomfort, you don't keep getting, like, if you think about like gaming, right? Every single time you met with a new boss in the game, you have to learn a set of skills, and then you break through that level and you go to the next level, and you have to learn new skills to break that level. I just think about life in a very similar kind of lens, and I look through it in a very similar way. And it's like, if I'm running into the same problem over and over and over again, and I can't crack it, I'm at like a plateau, and I need to acquire new skills. And in order to do that, I have to get uncomfortable, I have to do some hard stuff, and really figure out like, if I want to really make the most out of this game called life, I have to keep acquiring skills, I have to keep getting out of my own way. And the moment that I get settled and I get comfortable, that's when that complacency kicks in. And I've got a very, very big self-destruct button, guys. So like, I just, I can't afford to touch it. I've got a wife and two kids who are incredibly dependent on me. Like when my wife and I got married, I told her, you'll never work another day in your life unless you want to. Like that's what I took on. So I can't afford to be complacent because the moment that I do, like I let her down and then I let the kids down and now all of a sudden I'm having to say no to stuff and the real justification behind it was, "Sorry guys, dad was just too lazy. He just couldn't be bothered." And I just, I can't sleep well at night knowing
that. It's just unacceptable to me. So I wanted to bounce in here and one of the things, you know, I tell the clients all the time at the gym is, you know, some of the stuff going back to battle ready, is if you don't put yourself in uncomfortable positions, you'll never learn how to be comfortable in them, right? So you have to create that uncomfortable position, live in it, sit in it, understand it and know how to navigate through it. And to me, I feel like there's a lot of society and even being guilty of it with my own children is, man, look at the paths we're creating. We're not making life very difficult anymore. And I think there's some translation of that coming into now. And I'm not saying this in a negative way, but a lot of our men that are becoming men, 18, 21 year old men have had a hell of a lot easier path. Listen to what you said to us. You're being a bit modest. You're over there, professional athlete. Think everything is clicking like it's supposed to be. And all of a sudden, one thing happens and that is gone forever. Like it's over. So everything that you've been banking on your entire life ends immediately. So what do you do? What, how can I be the most successful SOB at this? And I love that. And this was before chat GPT. So you actually had to go and do your homework, right? So, so what do you do? You come to America and all right, how am I going to make ends meet? Freaking load up the load up the trunk boy. you put on the cowboy hat and start hauling equipment across the country. You know why? Because you were you were making ends meet, but you were making yourself it was uncomfortable as hell. You know, I know I'm not speaking for you, but I can imagine like some of those things were uncomfortable, but it started to forge. Right. And going back to when we started working together, you know, when you taught me a lot of things and one of the things we talked about a lot, and this goes into the next point, is you need that challenge. you need that, that goal, but you can't get lost in it. But the thing is, is once you reach what you feel like is, is that goal, you have to have the next one, because that's when people fall off the cliff. Right. You chase it. And I see this happen all the time. Clients, they work their butts off for that summer vacation. Then they go on vacation and guess what? That's when they never come back. And I'm like, you work so hard. Why? Well, you hit my goal. So they and so my point to all that is, why do you think people in general choose comfort, even though they know that it can lead to stagnation? You know, why are people so willing to say, okay, I know what I need to do, but that's uncomfortable. So I'm going to stay comfortable and not do it. Do you think is there anything that comes to mind? Speaker 3 I mean, yeah, I think you literally you get to a point where you convince yourself that it's good enough. And I was there, man. I had a seven-figure consulting company and it was good enough. But then you fast forward and you say like, okay, well, if this is good enough, this means I've peaked. And for me, that's terrifying. Like, okay, so 26 years old, you make a million bucks and now you're done. That's as good as this gets for you. That's when you take your foot off the gas and you're going to live the same life for the next 50, 60 years thereafter, that to me is just terrifying. So I think I'm also, I'm probably wired a little bit different to the average human where like, I just refuse to accept that this is as good as it's ever going to be for me. Um, so I have to constantly just push the envelope and, and see what's capable. Like I went to the project to see if I could be broken in 75 hours. Turns out I couldn't be. So I was like, okay, so we, we haven't found our breaking point yet. But even just in that experience, it showed me like where I was leaving so much in the tank because when I thought I was tired, I still had so much more go in me. And prior to that, it was like, okay, well I'm tired. So now I rest. And then I realized like, dude, you still got 60% in the gas tank. Like, let's just push this a little bit and see what happens. And then all of a sudden you just unlock these new levels and what, dude, the, this, the stuff that I carry today would have broken me a decade ago. And today it's Tuesday. And it's like, that's just a standard Tuesday, a standard Friday, whatever it is, it's just, this is the new norm. But you just had to get to a point where you just get out of your own way and you realize that settling is toxic and it's incredibly poisonous. Because if you settle here, the rest of the world just keeps going and now you're no longer where you were. And it's like, even if you just look at it from like a dollar perspective, oh, I got a million bucks today, well, next year it's not a million anymore, bro. the buying power of that million decreased. So you're not actually a millionaire anymore. Yeah, it looks cute on paper and you can flex your bank account, but you're still falling behind. And once that all clicked for me, it was like, okay, dude, you're on this hamster wheel and this is this game and you're gonna keep moving whatever cost. And man, I wake up at three o'clock in the morning and I'll be lying to you guys if I said every single day my workout is killer. It's not possible. But it's the best workout I can do that day And if I'm only firing on 20%, I give my 20% that workout and I get everything I can out of it. And then I go about my day and I do my stuff. But I just refuse to settle for good enough. And I think we've got to a point in society where good enough is now the standard and is acceptable. And it's really not. Like, when you look at the average human being today, everyone will tell you that they don't aspire to be average. but then their actions will show you that average is good enough. And like, for me, I just, I can't have that. It's just not, it's not acceptable. There is nothing average about me. Like I talked about this on another podcast. I was the only baby that lived in the entire ward when my mom gave birth that day. Everyone else lost their baby. And I'm going to sit here and just like kick it back and go, this is good enough. Like there's a higher power, whether you believe in God, the universe, whatever, like whatever you believe in. He kept me around that day. And for me to then spit in his face and just settle for mediocrity is just unacceptable. So, that's kind of like my viewpoint on it. And I think too many people have just got to the point where it's like they get struck with just a little bit of adversity and then they look outward. It's everyone else's fault. But it's no one else's fault. You made the choices that ended up getting you to where you are. And I say this all the time. You have the freedom of choice, not the freedom of consequence. And most people want to have the freedom of choice, but they're not to be accepting of the consequences. It's like, dude, you made poor choices. Now you have poor consequences. When I was 300 pounds, borderline kidney failure, liver failure, all that good stuff, I had to look in the mirror and go, I created this monster looking back at me. So I also have the power to create whatever I want. Now I just have to figure out what I want, put a line in the sand, and then run the play.
I love that. And you posted that in the last couple of days too, uh, that idea that you've got freedom of choice, but you also own the consequences of whatever that choice is. And man, I, it's a conversation I have with my kids all the time. They talk about, you know, my kids are older now, my youngest is in college as well, my oldest just graduated grad school. I've got three, but you know, we talk about that all the time. Every decision you make every day now, that's, that's your call. I'm not, I'm not in that decision at all anymore, but the outcome of that decision is also your call. But you know, look, I don't know a radioactive spider bit you that kept you alive and that day and makes you who you are today. But we're talking to real people through this podcast, man, don't all have your drive, but I want to have at least your ambition. So how do you help regular people think about how do you distinguish between healthy rest and destructive discomfort? People got to rest. But there's a difference. Sorry, destructive comfort. How do you get to the difference knowing this is this is a rest period. This is not comfort paying off. Speaker 3 I mean, that that one's tricky because I think most people will default to the comfort and the easy, the easy road. But I mean, like even when, when I was coaching you guys in battle ready, we gave you, we gave you rest, but the rest was just, you still worked out. You just didn't work out like a savage. You still, you still moved the body. You still drank your gallon of water. You still got up. You did your cold shower. You did your reading. You did all the stuff that you were supposed to do. But it was just not at the same, like, I'm trying to kill myself mentality or like intensity. But the pattern of life shouldn't change. Like my Monday to Sunday, I wake up the same time, I run the same play. But when I'm in my quote unquote rest, I just don't try and PR that day. And I will, it's not like I go through the motions. I still get a good pump. I chase the workouts. But it's not to do anything outside of just move the body and get the blood flow going. And then I go about my day. And if it's a Sunday, I get to kick it with the kids and we hang out and we go to the pool and we do a bunch of cool stuff. But I earn that right by doing the fundamentals for me first, which is working out, waking up, doing my studies, doing all my stuff in the morning. And then the rest of the day is whatever the kids want, whatever my wife wants. But I think what most people do is they'll wake up a little bit tired and then that can be so many factors as well. Maybe you just didn't get enough deep sleep. Like okay, these things happen but it's like you can still move the body, you can still get a workout in. It's not going to be your best workout ever but move the body and just keep building that habit because again like when we had the guys coming in the Battle Ready program, dudes 400 pounds, it's like dude, you don't need to PR every single day. for you, you just need to make some better food choices. If you just move the body a little bit and you make three good food choices a week, you're going to lose weight. So it's kind of like meet someone where they're at, instill a little bit of discomfort, but not too much to where it scares them off and they don't come back tomorrow, but make it enough to where it's like, okay, we earned this today. And then you do the same thing again the next day. And it's that 1% better, the whole Kaizen mentality. I stole that from my degree in university or one of my degrees anyway. But it was like, I really like that methodology of like, I can commit to being 1% better today. Whether it's just read a little bit more, try and get a little bit more discomfort, try and work out a little bit harder. It doesn't have to be across every single facet of life. There's times when I've had to put breaks on the workouts and like take my foot off the gas there, because like I need to spend more time with my wife and my kids, because they haven't got enough energy. So I think it depends, and it's not probably the answer you wanted to hear, but it's one of those where it's like you only have so many energy units every single day and you got to allocate them appropriately. But if I'm going to allocate energy units to working out, I'm going to make sure that that's a good workout. I'm not just going to tick a box and bounce and do the bare minimum.
That's exactly the answer I wanted to hear. We just talked about this in the last podcast, which is, you know, pick something. We talk about atomic habits all the time in this podcast, we've talked about it together for a long time. Pick something and stick with it and then add something else and then add something else and add something else. The first two things that you added by the time you get to the fourth, they won't feel like they work anymore. They're just part of your daily habits, part of your rhythm, right? And the idea that if you set the atomic habit that you put your shoes out at night before you go to bed, so you're going to go to the gym in the morning. Even if you only got, you've only got 20% to give, you're still going. And so that is rest. It's, it is rest, but you know, so don't think you need it. one week break after your sore. So that whole idea of that's exactly what you covered. So thank you for that.
Shane, you got thoughts on this? Yeah, I had a few notes I wrote down. I think that's clutch some of the points you brought up. But to kind of segue into what you said is, you know, you got to build in your recovery like it's a strategy, right? You plan in your recovery to where you don't get comfortable in it, and you don't need it all the time, but you have to listen to your body. I know it's the same. But, you know, to kind of put that into a statement is say, okay, rest is not a reward. It's a requirement. And a lot of people don't look at it that way. And we can be very guilty of that because when you're chasing that 1% and you're in that higher performer mentality, no day's off, right? That's the mentality that you carry, but you will suffer if you eventually don't, if you, you know, you'll burn that candle too long. And we all know that's when something breaks, you know, that's when you do suffer an injury or have a setback and now you are really fighting a bigger demon than what you needed to. So making sure you structure in the rest is absolutely critical. So I agree with that. One last question in this area of topic is, you know, in your experience of working with people, I know you've worked with a lot of different people in a lot of different fields, you know, what is some ways, you know, if you could say, you know, top two or three ways that you think comfort can creep in on somebody and erode their ambition, right? Because we all know that motivation fades and that's when discipline has to take over. So what's some things that you see typically happening with clients over the years that's crept in? Speaker 3 That's a good one. Damn, dude, I don't have to think on that one for a minute. I mean, I think it's always the same stuff. It will start with like whatever their vices are and then those vices will kind of evolve and they will kind of shift. So like if someone has like an alcohol addiction, right, then that's their vice, that's their go-to, that's like the gateway that allows them to start dropping off and kind of like not doing what they're supposed to do and then it justifies why they're not doing it. It's cause like, well, I'm tired today. I'm hung over or whatever. And then it kind of, it starts that spiral, but I think motivation only gets you so far and you get to a point where it's like the discipline has to kick in. So like if I shared my screen with you guys now, you would see like 3am it says wake up, 3.15 there's a workout at three, at, at four 30ish, I'd have to double check, but it's about four 30. It's like meditate and sauna, five o'clock to six o'clock it's study, six o'clock It's like hang out with the kids and like that's that's the play every day And then like you talked about with the atomic happens every night before I go to bed I lay out my shoes. I lay out my workout clothes. I Make pre make my pre-workout. It's in the fridge. It's good to go. So there's no real barrier There's no excuse for not doing the work So I just don't give them I just don't afford myself the opportunity to have that negotiation when the alarm goes off It's like this is go time dude. We've already set ourselves up yesterday for today run the play and then it's it's just just like most people just need to build that awareness around like the, what their triggers are that start the corrosive behavior of like settling and falling into old patterns. And once you catch yourself and you're inevitably going to fall off the train, man, I still do. It's like the welcome to being a human being, like you're going to do it from time to time. I'm still like, if I've had a rough day, I will circle that freezer like a shark, bro. if there's, if there's, if there's some ice cream in there, it might not be safe. But it's like, if you just build in the right kind of habits and the disciplines, it's like, okay, we'll kick that ice cream habit today. And we'll, we'll, we'll live another day to fight tomorrow. But if I do happen to dive into the freezer and plow through some ice cream, it's like, okay, then we just, we pick ourselves back up and we make sure that the next time we fall off the wagon, there's a longer period between the last time and this time, and you just keep like stacking it like that. But affording yourself like an element of grace, I think is important. Um, but also just building the awareness around like, what are the patterns? What are the things that I spiral over? And then removing yourself from those situations. It's like, if, if, if you've got an alcoholic addiction, don't go to the bar with your buddies, because then you're like, you're putting yourself in the devil's den and you're going to cave. So I think, again, I don't know if I have the best answer for you guys around that But it's just like I just identified really quickly what my vices were, where I found myself getting into hot water and falling off the wagon. And then I just removed myself from those situations or I just built like safeguards around them to then ensure that I just don't find myself slipping more and more frequently.
I think that's a solid answer and one that is very true. One of the things about making new habits is hard for human beings. Why? Because we're comfortable with what our old habits are. And that can mean alcoholism, that can mean drugs, that can mean bad habits. But we look at human nature, where do they tend to gravitate to? When something happens, they go to that habit, whether it's old or, you know, whether it's good or bad, because it's comfortable. Like, they know there's comfort in that, even though the downfall, the razor's edge on the other side of that is probably going to be worse than being uncomfortable in a new habit. but that's just such a hard lane to get people to move into. So I think that was specifically kind of, you know, realizing that the vice is a lot of what goes on. Mike, what do you say we go and move into some strategies to break out of a comfort?
- Yeah, I think it's a good, before we get, one more question on, you know, falling into the comfort trap. You've been in a lot of organizations. By the way, our rooms are all very boring today. We all walk on white walls. (laughing) together. Anyway, you've been on a lot of teams, business teams, organizational teams, etc. This is, you know, this is one of the things that we do is help organizations improve their teams and their structures. What are some ways that you've seen in your experience that leadership teams or organizations fall into comfort trap versus, you know, continuing to push the ball forward? Speaker 3 That's a great question. I think they just get to a point where, again, it just becomes too easy. And it's like, they just fall into that tick-box mentality. And it's like, "Oh, we did 100 grand last quarter, so we're going to bump that by 5% and do 105 grand this quarter." And it's like, no one really buys into the culture. No one really buys into why we're doing it. It's just like, "Oh, someone at the top of the food chain said we're doing this, so this is what we're doing now." And they don't really buy into the human being on the other side. Like, I just brought someone onto my team now, so I've got a head of operations for my company. And like, I gave her the full picture and the full rundown, dude. And I was like, Hey man, this is where we are right now. This is the, this is like the, the grimy, dirty, this is exactly what you're working with. This is where you're coming. This is where we're going. This is what it's going to look like. If you're prepared to come on that journey with me, like you will be heavily rewarded. We'll give you ownership in the business, all that good stuff. But candidly, like we're in the trenches, dude, and we're going to have to fight our way out of this. And I think not enough people spend enough time really like investing in their team and, and helping them understand like what the bigger picture is, like, why are we even doing what we're doing? So like, if I just, if I hadn't done that with Michelle and I had just dumped her in this seat and I was like, here's the 7,000 things you do a day, have at it lady and good luck. Like it will get to a point where maybe for a month or two, she could do it. And then there's like, there's no lights at the end of the tunnel here, bro. Like, why am I doing this stuff that I don't see the value, I don't see the point. So it's like, it's really helping her understand like, Hey, by you doing this, this is the outcome. And then we get to move on to phase two and then phase three and then phase four. And it's like, this is how we build the machine. So when she's in the trenches and she's just taking 500 punches to the mouth on a day to day basis, she's like, okay, but this is what it takes to get us from here to here. And then once we get to here, then we're going to do this. And this is how this moves. and this is how the machine and the organism goes. And I think that's where like a lot of people fail in leadership, is they just don't paint enough of a, like a picture and a roadmap of what good looks like. And that's something I just, I learned through sports. I carried it into consulting. I then carried it into battle ready. Like when, when you guys had your initial calls with me, I was like, What does the end look like for the two of you? What do you want to make happen? Oh, we want to do X, Y, Z. OK, where are we today? We're here. This These are like the milestones that we're going to check off along that journey. And then it becomes like it's a no-brainer. You're not shocked when you get punched in the mouth by a cold shower at three o'clock in the morning. Speaker 4 It's like you expect it. Well, the first day of the year. Speaker 3 Yeah. The first time you're like, "This guy, why am I doing this? This guy's a – he's not a good human. He's just a mess." But after a period of time, it's like, "Hey, this is what we're doing and why." The mental resilience, the negotiation of getting into that shower on day two and turning the cold tap on, you know it's like it's there. And now we're going to front that and we're going to be ahead of it and we're going to understand that we have to overcome this and this is why, this is what we're shooting for. And then the rest of the day gets easier because we've already fought a lot of demons at three o'clock when the water's ice cold. And it's just like, I think a lot of people just don't take enough time to really like build out that trajectory, build out that plan and then really just get the buy-in from the team. Like if you can do that, I think it solves a lot of your problems and leadership becomes way easy then. I'm not, I don't manage Michelle at all. She knows exactly what she needs to do and I just leave her to it. And then when, when, when something's on fire, she comes to me and I say, what are your three solutions? And then if the three solutions are one of the three that I would go with, I'd be like, which one do you think I would pick? And I give her the autonomy and the, and the ability to think outside the box and bring solutions to me. And if I hate all three, I'm like, Hey, you might need to go back to the drawing board on this one because you're missing the mark, but I also like empower her to make choices and make decisions, because otherwise she just becomes an extension of me and now she's relying on me for everything. And then I'm not leading her, I'm managing her. And it's very, those are very different things. And you'll burn out your team if you're constantly, quote, unquote, "managing" them, versus if you're just leading them, you give them autonomy to kind of make decisions and make movements. And then it's just like, hey, I'm just putting up the guardrails so that nothing really does end up on like out of control. But I mean, I think, I think that would be like the main thing around that leadership piece specifically.
Yeah. Yeah. We talked about it all the time in my organization, which is it's a hell of a lot harder to manage people than it is to lead people. It's harder to become a leader than to become a manager. Right. But once you move from management to leadership, the world gets a lot easier. talked about that sort of essentialism. You don't need to do all the things. You need to figure out what the most important things are to be done and inspire people to do them. So I love that. That's that's a great, great topic. Shane?
Yeah, so great, great points on that. I know I've learned a lot of that the hard way. Even still, every day, I find myself, you got you can't be the bottleneck, you know, what we talked about last week in leadership, and it becomes uncomfortable as a leader to let go of the bind. It really does, because in your mind, you do this better than anybody else on your team. You're the best at it, right? That's what you're going to say and what you probably should say. But at the end of the day, if your team is doing it 80% as good as you, you're hitting home runs. I mean, but that's the challenging piece, is finding a way to train them, lead them and navigate them into those positions to where it doesn't feel like they're being managed to the point to where they are leading the ship. They're out in front leading and you're the captain standing on the hill and your army's going to war, right? That's where we all want to get to. So one of the things we want to talk about now, kind of segwaying into that next part of the conversation is just some strategies to break out of the comfort zone, excuse me. So let's just say some practical steps that you could give somebody, you know, for this week, say, okay, if you start to do this thing this week to kind of disrupt their comfort zone and re-engage their growth, what's something that comes to mind? You could say, okay, if someone asked me, what can I do to, to, to make a change, to get out of this rut I'm in, you know, what's the first piece of advice that might come to mind? Speaker 3 So, so for me, it always would boil down to like, again, being very, very aware of where you are currently, like, what does it exactly look like? Like, where am I? So if you, let's say you have an issue with your bank accounts or you have an issue with your physique, like take some time and actually reflect over it and see exactly what is going on. If you don't like your physique, what do you not like about it? Like when I was 300 pounds, 40% body fat, measurable, like I stood in the mirror naked and I had a very straight up conversation with myself. Like, hey dude, this is unacceptable. This is what you look like. We can't have this going on anymore. And then it's like, okay, well now, congratulations, you beat yourself up for 15 minutes. Like, that's not healthy, but it's like, it's also bringing yourself to an awareness of this is exactly where we're at, 'cause I think a lot of us sugarcoat and lie to ourselves frequently, and we pretend like we're okay with certain things that we really aren't okay with, but we justify it because it's comfortable and it's easy. But once you kind of bring the awareness to it, it's like, okay, I now know exactly where I'm at, where do I wanna go? I wanna end up over here. I wanna be 180 pounds, 8% body fat. Okay, if I wanna do that, what are some of the things I'm doing today that got me where I am? And what do I need to do to make some micro shifts in those habits? Because all of us have habits. And it's like, you're either, if you're eating five meals a day, you have the habit of eating. That's not a bad habit, it's just you're eating the wrong stuff. So it's like, how do I reshape that habit now to take me in the direction of where I wanna go? in a way where it doesn't create a lot of overwhelm and stress. Yes, there has to be a level of stress, but it can't cause overwhelm to where you basically become debilitated. So, like for me, when I was 300 plus pounds, it's like, okay, dude, drinking 24 cups of coffee a day is probably not the best solution to your problem. Let's maybe sub out like six glasses of that and make it water. So we'll have 18 cups of coffee, six cups of water, And then we'll make like two good food choices a day. So we're not gonna have pizza every single day and have DoorDash deliver us donuts, like bagels, they could probably stop too. Let's make some good food choices. And then you make those micro shifts and all of a sudden 30 days later, 60 days later, you look in the mirror and you're like, man, I'm down 30 pounds and I really haven't done a hell of a lot difference. It's just been a little tweak here and a little tweak there. I feel pretty good. And now you make another little tweak here and a little tweak there and all of a sudden it happens. So like, it doesn't really matter what the situation someone finds themselves in. Each one of us, even on this call, like I think we're all, we would all consider ourselves to be winners and we're doing good stuff, but there's an element of each one of our life where we're like, we could probably be a little bit better in this regard. It's bringing the awareness around that. And then it's like, okay, well, I'm already committing X amount of energy to this area. How do I just make that energy allocation a little bit more efficient? And I like, candidly guys, me and my wife had to do this not too long ago, where she was like, "Dude, you're building this empire and it's great, but like, when you get to the top of the mountain and you're alone, is that what you want? Because that's where you're headed." It's like, you have to put more energy and effort into the family unit. You can't be working 16-hour days and then us never seeing you until a Saturday morning. And then like, we get half of you because you're so beat up. Like, it just doesn't work. It's like, man, okay, well, I keep telling everyone I'm doing this for my family, but if they don't see it or it's not in a proportion that makes sense to them, I need to rethink my entire strategy and I have to reallocate energy tokens and I have to do some other stuff. And that's where it was like, okay, well now we wake up at 3 o'clock so that I can get my gym done and everything while everyone else is still asleep. But that's like, once you've brought awareness around it and you can have that honest conversation with yourself and realize where you're dropping the ball, it's just micro shifts, like micro shifts here and there to just optimize and tweak. I think most people stay comfortable and complacent because it's easy and they think that it's going to take too much to move the needle. It's like, oh, if I want to retire with a million dollars, I have to save five grand a month. I can't possibly do that. But you could probably save a hundred and fifty bucks a month. You probably find a hundred and fifty bucks under your sofa. So it's like just start with the 150. The 150 becomes very comfortable. Then we go to 250. Then we go to 500. Then we go to 700. And we just like chip away at it over time. Every single area of your life, you can do exactly the same thing.
And then I think most people do think it's too difficult to change. And they start thinking about all the things they got to do, though. I'm like the mountain's so high to climb. Right. And so, you know, we talked about a lot about already, you got to get that, that switch has got to flip. And so I remember for some guys or a lot of guys, switch never flipped. They never got there. It never became a thing they became. It was a thing they did. And so, because I feel like they never got to train their mindset to embrace discomfort instead of running from it. So thoughts, strategies, how do you get people to just, on the average Joe, I got to make a bunch of changes. I know I do. I don't want to, it's uncomfortable. What would you say to somebody like that? Speaker 3 It's one of those where it's like, dude, if you have the no, and it's brought to the front and forefront of your mind, you're obligated at that point. It's like you can't play the, oh, I didn't know game anymore. It's like, if you open your bank account and it says zero, like if you didn't open your bank account, you could pretend you didn't know. But once you open it and you see it's at zero, now you know there's a problem. You need to figure it out and fix it. And then at that point, it's just a case of like, okay, well, what can I do today to make tomorrow a little bit better? So I stopped playing for today a really, really long time ago. I'm playing for tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, buying at 65. So what happens today and the discomfort that I feel today is irrelevant because I'm not playing for today. Today is irrelevant to me. Um, and I think you have to get to that point where you stop being so selfish. I think more often than not dudes remain where they are because they're selfish. And it's like, well, it's, it's uncomfortable. It hurts. I'm tired. Dude, it's not about you. The moment you got married, the moment you brought another life into this world, it stopped being about you at that moment in time. I don't care if you're tired. You signed up, you brought a child into this earth. It's not about you anymore. It's about them. They didn't choose to be here. You chose that. That's your choice. So now you have the obligation to make sure that they have the best possible life that you can give them. And you can't do that by being selfish and being too worried about and self-absorbed, like, just get out of your own way. Stop. Dude. I there's many times I wake up at three o'clock in the morning. I don't want to work out. I'm tired, dude. I'm tired. I'm beat. My wife, this morning, she looks at me. She's like, bro, you're running on fumes. Aren't you? I was like, yeah, pretty much. She's like, you should rest. I said, nope. So it's not about me. It hasn't been about me for the last five years that I've been married. And it's it, once you stop making it about you and you stop pandering to your, your baby boy feelings, like you're a man. That's the reality. Like every single person on this podcast is a dude. The guys that you're speaking to are probably dudes. Like you're a dude. Welcome to the real world. You were blessed with a penis, which means you have obligations and you're required to do some shit that's uncomfortable and you're not going to enjoy it. But welcome to the real world. Like you're not seven anymore, dude. Dad's not here to save you. Mom's not here to save you. You save yourself and you save your family. That's your job. So I don't care that you're tired. Do something.
We talked about last two podcasts about the idea of the to be list. And I think we've talked about that before as well. Right? So in the future, like you just said, you're not working today for today. You're working today for 65, 70, 80. Right. What does that look like for your family, for your faith, for your fitness, for your finances? In order to get there, you've got to take these micro steps today. So you've made that realization. You know that that's the case and you've got enough character, which is what this all boils down to, to go do the damn work. And that's where I think most people fall down is they see what they want to do. They get to an idea of a to-be-List. They probably don't go as deep as they need to. But then they don't have the courage, the character to go after it. Speaker 3 No, because it's uncomfortable. But then everything you want is on the other side of that discomfort anyway. So it's like, you can stay here and you can be mediocre for the rest of your life and you can have a shitty retirement where you're eating cat food under a bridge, if we're going to go with the retirement analogy, or you can do something about it, get out of your own way. Yeah, it means you have to sacrifice a little bit today to have a better thing for later, but it's like the sacrifice and the bill comes to be paid at some points. Would you rather pay a micro portion of it today or do you want to pay a lot of bit of it later down the line? Because compounding interest is real, dude. And everything that I set off today and I'm making it tomorrow or a 65 year old me problem, it's going to compound and it's going to be a problem regardless. I would rather pay it today and pay a little less than pay it at 65 and be stressed out and like bleeding from the gills. So once you wrap your head around that, like the payment comes due, whether you like it or not. So you can pay a little bit today or you can pay a lot of it tomorrow, but it's,
it's coming, you know, you brought up a point earlier and we touch on it real quick. Um, it also kind of ties back to some of the atomic habits. It's, it's also, when you talk about comfort, it's, it's the environment that, that you brought up earlier. You like when I, when I first joined a battle ready and was starting to learn, you know, a deeper understanding of nutrition, you know, between, you and Nate, I would tell you guys, "Well, I still want to hold on to this part of Shane. I don't want to give that up." Like, "Look, dude, you can still put that in your tracker and work around it, but why? Why do you want to do that? You're making it twice as hard." Well, because I was unwilling to get rid of that old habit. So back to the habits. So much of the things that give us comfort is the environment that we create for ourselves. Our homes, our vehicles, we're trained to have the things that go push a button and your floor is getting vacuumed by a robot. Or you don't have to push a button. You pull up an app on your phone and say go, you know, and your floor's being vacuumed. You know, everything around us is modeled around convenience. And it's only going to get worse. It's only going to continue to get worse. So when you have that mentality, and fortunately we were, we were grown, grew up a little bit before a lot of this, so we know what it's like not to have it. But there's a cautionary tale with allowing too much comfort in your environment. So to me, that's where you have to put yourself in a position to find that uncomfortable environment to go live in every now and then. You have to do that. I think most people are unwilling to do that. That's the portion of they're going to say, "I don't have enough time." Then just the analogy, "Well, pull your phone out and open it up." Like we all say, "Now show me your screen time. Don't tell me you don't have 30 minutes. You've got time. It's the decisions is what's keeping you." All of that to say, do you agree with or how do you navigate you know, how do you control the environment or advise other people? You got to keep the sword sharp. And so how do you keep it from playing soft? Like, what do you do? Like, there's a couple of quick pointers to say, OK, you know, that environment is not where you need to be. This is the environment you need to start working towards. You know, what's some advice that you might give somebody in that regard? Speaker 3 Well, I think the first one is like most people are just scared to be lonely. I think we've like as humans, we're very conditioned to be like, Um, what's the word I'm looking for, but it's like we're conditioned to be in a, like a community, right? So if, if, if that's going to be an issue for you where you're, you're going to go to a community that's not serving you, well, the solution is really simple. Just change your community. That's an easy one. It's like, if you, if you hang out with five alcoholics, you're going to be the sick. That's just how it goes. Um, so shifting the community, finding ecosystems like yours, where it's like, dudes are playing for keeps. They want to win. Um, hang out with those kinds of people and, and you'll naturally just through like osmosis, you'll pick up their skillsets, you'll pick up their habits because when, when you start telling them, oh, I'm going to go to the, I'm going to go to the bar and sink six beers tonight, they're like, why? And they're like, you're the outcast in the group because that's what you're doing and no one else is doing that. And all of a sudden it's like, you're like, oh, okay, that's not what we do anymore. Okay, cool. And it's just putting yourself in those kinds of environments and also just being okay with being alone, dude. For a long time, I ran this shit solo. Like it was a one man band. We were lone wolfing this thing for quite some time because I just hadn't found my community. But that's okay too. Like you get to learn a lot about yourself when you give yourself the opportunity to just be alone in some situations and not have to lean on other people to figure out who you are. Like find out who you are for yourself. And then you will naturally, once you've done that for long enough, you get to a point where you're like, okay, these are like my kind of people and you hang around with those kind of people more, and then you start elevating and you kind of go through that. But, I mean, I don't know, I like to keep things as easy and as simple as possible. And the complexity of everything, everyone wants it to be as complicated as possible because then you have a lot of excuses and a lot of outs. When you oversimplify something and you decide, hey man, I'm gonna have X, and you put a flag in the ground and that's what you're shooting for, Now everything else that's not directly correlated to that path that you're shooting for is a distraction and it's a no. And then all of a sudden this game gets really, really easy because, Hey, if I want to make $5 million this year, I have to make 40 calls a day. If I make 35, that's unacceptable. I know the number's 40 or whatever it is. And it's like, you know, you just, you kill all of the excuses. You kill all of the noise. You know exactly what you need to do every single day. And then you just run the play, head down, run the play and have faith that the work will get done for one, but then over and above that, that you will be rewarded for the work because assuming you do the work, you're going to get rewarded for it. But I think what most people do is they kind of half-ass the work and then they give themselves an unrealistic timeline. If I'm 300 pounds and I want to be 180, if I tell myself I'm going to do it in 30 days, I'm smoking something. And it's like, so now all of a sudden I'm like day 30, while I don't have abs, this is not for me. No, bro, you didn't give yourself enough time. You didn't give yourself enough at bats. Like you need to give yourself an opportunity to win. Um, and you can only do that by sitting in that seat for long enough to make that a reality. But I think with the downside to social media these days is that everything is super, like instant, it's gratifying, it's quick. So you see a 22 year old and he's got $17 million in a Lamborghini and buy my course and you can do this too. And it's like, bro, that's not, that's not the real world. Like it's, this is not how this works. You got to, you got to pick a lane. You got to sit in that seat for a really long time and you got to pay your dues. Cause yeah, maybe you do make $17 million tomorrow, but it'll leave just as quick cause you didn't build the habits and the discipline to sustain that. So the acquiring it as easy. It's the sustaining of it. That's actually really difficult. That's why you see so many people lose a bunch of weight and then put it straight back on the moment they get to that goal, because they didn't build the sustainability around making that a reality. And then it's like, well, I got it. So now it's done. And, um, it doesn't stay. Cause I just didn't build the right stuff and they don't have the right disciplines and the consistency and the mindsets and all that good stuff. Um, but yeah, man, I just think social media is great. I like social media, but I also have a massive disdain for social media for exactly the same reasons that I like it. It's because it just gives everyone a very unrealistic expectation of what's real and too many shiny objects. No one sticks with anything for long enough anymore. Speaker 4 It's five minute abs. Speaker 3 It's three minutes to millionaire status. It's all this noise.
Yeah. Listen, man, today's been awesome. I've got one last question for you. And I, I think that that those distractions that people create are probably the, you And there's one thing that has really stuck with me. So many things that you said during our weekly calls and our discussions together. One thing that has really stuck with me is the whole concept of non-negotiables. I use it in my business every day. And non-negotiable means non-negotiable, right? It's something you said you're gonna do. You put it on the map and you do it. And that's kind of what you're saying about it. I'm gonna set that target and everything towards that target's a yes, everything away from that target's a no, 'cause that's non-negotiable. It's going to happen. We talked last week about how, you know, as you're walking down that path, kind of like what you said, you know, people around you who are still holding on to their comfort and their habits, that they want to know why you're not doing what they're doing anymore. And they start to fall off or they start to judge or they start to say things. And even when you've been on that path, like I have now for three years, you know, I still get comments from people like, why are you pushing yourself so hard? Why are you still going to the gym six days a week? You did what you wanted to do. No, no, I didn't. There is no end to what I'm trying to get done here, kids. And so, if you could give folks one piece of advice, one simple thing to do to start planning a non-negotiable or to live in a non-negotiable way, what would that be? What are the listeners want to hear from you on that? Speaker 3 I mean, so you guys talk about the family, fitness, finance, faith. I would pick one of those lanes because if you try and do all four at one hit, it's probably going to create some overwhelm. I would pick one and I would commit to doing something within it. So if you're picking the fitness, pick I want to lose 20 pounds or whatever and then run that play. And until it happens, you stick on that path and you keep doing the work until it's a reality. And then maybe you shift it and then you do the faith piece or whatever or your family piece and you run that play but while in conjunction with the fitness play. So half the problem that people run into is they will do like a crash diet or they'll do something like that's unsustainable for a very short period of time to get a result, but then it's not that something, like, I like 75 hard, dude, I think it's a great program. I'm a massive advocate of 75 hard, but to sustain 75 hard for 365 days a year, good luck, like it's too much. So for a short blast, it's great, but for a lifestyle, it's not. So I would say like, figure out whatever is a sustainable thing that you can do. And then just like, it's going to sound toxic, but almost tie your identity to it. I now literally, like I think I've told you guys this, I just see myself as like a hybrid athlete and whether I'm sitting in this seat or I'm in the gym, I'm a hybrid athlete and that's how I approach this game called life. Whether I'm doing financial advice, whether I'm doing consulting, whether I'm scaling businesses, it doesn't matter. Like that same mindset is true and I make every decision based around that and it has to be sustainable. And once I've done that, now it's just a case of like, this is part of who I am, this is what I do. So, no, I don't want that because it's not part of who I am. It's not who I, it's, I don't identify as the dude who eats six pints of ice cream a night anymore. I did, and I hated who I was about it. And then when I stopped doing that, all of a sudden I started liking the guy looking back in the mirror. And I think you, you rarely do it. Like when you boil it down, you have to really fall in love with the dude looking back at you in the mirror again. And then realize that like, okay, man, if you don't and you can't, well, there's your first problem. We should probably fix that. And how do we fix that? What do I, what is it going to take to make that a reality again? What's the, anyone that asks themselves that question, there's a few things that'll ping in their head and they'll know why they can't say that they love themselves. It's like, okay, those are the things you should probably address first and make those a priority. And then whether you live by your calendar or whether you use an app to track your daily stuff, whatever it is, run that play and make a little milestone that you can achieve over a period of time and then just keep that in the forefront and run that over and over and over again. And then you just like anything, atomic habits is a great habit. You just, you just bolt on another thing and another thing and another thing. And before you know it, you, you're a completely different animal. You like the guy looking back in the mirror. You show up differently for your family, your friends. Um, and, and everything in this game called life just gets better. The better I get, the better my life gets, the better my wife and I, our relationship gets, the better relationship that I have with my kids, the better my friendships get. Everything just gets better. There's no downside to trying your absolute best every single day, that I can promise you. It's inconvenient and it hurts and it's tiresome and sometimes you're like, even me to this day, I look in the mirror and I'm like, man, was today worth it? We took some hits, but then tomorrow is better. And like, and then I rewind and I look back five years from today and I have all my journals, they're just stacked there, you can see them, like every single one of those serves a purpose and if I flick through them, five years ago today I was dreaming of having this life and I'm now writing about what the next five years is going to look like. But it took me being uncomfortable, it took me putting a marker in the sand and going, this is what we're going to do and we don't stop until we're there. And then the plus side to that is that as I get within a stone's throw, the marker has to move because otherwise I slip into complacency, the big self-destruct button gets triggered and all of a sudden I reverse five years. I was like, I can't afford to do that anymore. There was a time when I could, cause I was single and I was solo and there was no real one that was going to get hurt but me. But now I'm playing a bigger game. There's people who are dependent on me. I wake up every single day and I protect and I provide for those people. I can't afford to go backwards. So regardless of whether I'm tired or not, the work has to get done. So just head down and grind. But it starts with like-
Love that answer. I love that stack in the winds. You know, we talk a lot about that, man. You've, it's been a fun, it's been a fun, fun episode catching up with you, man. If you have dropped some significant go nuggets as always, you know, one of the ones that I do want to, you know, visit with you on sometime. Um, I know the podcast isn't the thing, but I want to challenge our listeners to, to look up a Belgian horse. And then, you know, that was one of my, you know, that part, that was a fire call. That was a great call about the Belgian horse, which probably doesn't make any sense to anybody else listening, but it does to us three. So that's all that matters currently. But man, for me personally, brother, it's great to see you. Thank you for spending some time with us this afternoon and sharing your insight and your thoughts. I know you have a very busy schedule and you took time out to share some of that energy and time with us. So I personally wanted to thank
you, brother. So Mike. Yeah, you've had a huge role in my life, Byron, and thanks for being on
So for our listeners, yeah, absolutely, man. Sorry about that. For, for our listeners, if you've got anything out of it today's episode, which I know you did because it was amazing, share it with someone who needs a wake up call, share it with someone who needs to get out of their comfort zone, because I can promise you, you know, somebody that does, and then sometimes people need a nudge and you know, and we didn't talk about much of that during this episode, but there's always that trigger, right, that trigger in your environment, somebody you see that you aspire to look like or like your point by on social media is dangerous. But if it wasn't for social media, I wouldn't be here because I would have never seen the battle ready ad, you know, and that was the kickstart for me to change my entire life's trajectory. One ad, you know, so it's, it can happen to anyone. So I appreciate all your thoughts on, you know, getting out of that comfort zone and always enjoy hearing your insights.
Yeah. So Tina out there, be a lighthouse as we like to say. Uh, but while you're being a lighthouse, leave us a review, Subscribe if you haven't already. Remember we're on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube. Our website is finally live, Shane. We got it up. That's right. So come, come check out the site. There you can learn how to engage us to come speak to your leadership teams. So, you know, men's, women's groups, churches, we're talking to people all over the country. So we'd love to talk to your group too. And we're on Fitness and Nutrition Clients Daily as a result of the podcast. We've got new folks engaging with us all the time. So, yeah, man, that's it for today.
Yeah. That's going to wrap up today's episode. This week, we ask you to stay uncomfortable. Find that lane. Execute that to be list. And it always. Speaker 4 Does give it. Thanks, Chance.