Episode 7 - Burn the Boats | Leadership Ignition

Speaker 1

the boats were burnt no one's leaving their only choice was to survive you talk about burning the boats and i know we're going to get real deep in this episode and like you said can you imagine and look on them old boys' faces. I mean, I guess my point to this is easy for humans and us, it's easy to say that. Yeah, burn the boats, burn the boats. These dudes burned the boats and they either were victorious or they were dead. They were playing with life and death stakes. Fortunately for you and I, we don't have quite those stakes, but if you peel that onion back far enough, realistically, there is a little bit of life and death involved when you talk about burning the boats in certain areas of the F-bombs, which we'll cover a little bit later. You know, there is a reality to that. But when you talk about that decisive decision to burn the boats, what does that mean? Talks a little bit about how we want to tackle the word transformation. Okay. Transformation can be a lot of different things. Physical fitness, leadership, how you lead your family. You know, there's tons of different words or things we can put parameters around that. But we talk about transformation in leadership and in relationships and in health or finances. It all starts with that decisive moment. Like it all comes down to enough is enough or I need to do better in this, this and this. We have to make that realization before we can make the change. And then it develops into how big of a change we want to make. So the moment where you say, I'm not going back, I think that to me is where the, you know, the human turn, let's burn the boats. And then what, that's what it means to me. I'm not going back to Shane 1.0, Mike. I'm going to, I'm going to be Shane 2.0 and try to keep climbing the mountain to Shane 3.0. Speaker 3 Yes, sir. I'm not going back to those dudes.

Speaker 1

Those boats are burned, man. So you cut the exit strategy off. There is no other strategy but forward. We talked about this in some previous podcasts. You ripped the rear view mirror off. So now we're moving forward. So stop giving yourself that emotional escape hatch. Because if you have that, guess what? You're going to use it. You're going to use it. And that, my friend, is when you do that, when you remove the emotional escape hatch, you're going to stop playing defense and start playing offense with your own life.

Speaker 2

Well, that's the whole reason I created this group, Shane, was to help people figure out what we figured out, which is burn the boats and move forward. Because when you have the opportunity to go backwards and to rest on the comfort. We've talked about comfort. We've talked about all these things, but this one really solidifies it for us. The idea is that once you make a decision, you've got to move down that path. And that's, go to my website. That's what we're here to do. We're here to help folks figure that out. - So, Mike, let's talk a little bit about

Speaker 1

how each one of the F-bombs, and how this applies to each one, right? We know we have the four F-bombs. What have you burned to serve your family better? You know, let's start there. What have you burned to serve your family better?

Speaker 2

- Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. And I come back to so many things that I've tried to do to improve family life. But when I think about burning the boat, the one that I really had to figure out was, I used to get so busy at work and I would pour myself into every single moment of the job. And once email became a commonplace thing for us in our lives at work, man, I was on email 24/7. I'm still not great about it. I still do engage when I shouldn't, but not when my family's around, right? I'll engage when I'm sitting in a movie theater, I'll engage when I should be paying attention to something else. But one of the things that I had to figure out is that 92% of the time, whatever was coming across the email or the text or the cell phone call, I didn't absolutely have to solve that problem at that moment. And so I was realizing I was taking a lot of time from my family by doing that. I would react immediately and it built kind of my personal brand at work, which is this guy responds super fast. No one can read emails as fast as he can respond to them. And that kind of felt good, that little endorphin rush that people thought about me in that regard. But what I realized it was a stealing time for my family on things that really weren't important. So, you know, I can't remember exactly how the conversation started or how it happened, but I'm pretty sure my wife said to me at one point in time, you need to knock it off when we're here together as a family. You don't need to be on your phone all the time. I would try to defend myself saying, oh, my job needs me. I've absolutely got to do it. But eventually I realized, man, they just don't need me that much. And part of that was just maturing and growing up and realizing how important family was, finances were important too, and the job was important, but I was building that already without having to do the, the, the extreme things I was doing and I was neglecting my, my family, my home team, my kids, my wife in ways that I should not have been doing. So once I got my head around that, I burned that boat. Now I've got dedicated, we go on a vacation trip. I've got dedicated time that I'm going to be doing emails and phone calls. I tell people what time of day that's going to be. Everyone knows exactly what, when to expect to hear back from me. And if anything's urgent, I say, follow these steps and I will respond to it immediately if necessary. But otherwise I'm engaged in my family, you know, and that was just one boat that I absolutely burned as it's made a huge difference in our relationships.

Speaker 1

So to that point, Mike, the advent of the cell phone, wonderful device, wonderful invention, but man, it's a distractor. It's there, it buzzes, it does all these things. So two things that I know that you've done well to help burn the boat and strengthen that relationship with your family is A, you schedule family time in your calendar. You make it a point to have that time set aside and that is uninterrupted time. Like you tell me, "Hey brother, I'll be off the grid. You know, I won't be available like it's not just work like you isolate yourself away from everything and everybody to spend time with your family and there's power in that because Go to a restaurant Go to anywhere. What are what are both people doing that are sitting there at the table together?

Speaker 2

embarrassingly having a date night staring at their phones looking at their Facebook

Speaker 1

People can't help it because it's sitting there It's just drawing them in but my point to all that is you have made it a point and I witness you doing it and I'm proud of you because I still I Still keep my phone and will reply to work. You know, I'm still guilty of that There's something that I need to do better and I like your example there that you're setting like this is I'm gonna burn the boat meaning I'm not going back Like they if if people really will respect me They'll understand and respect me more because I have delineated that time to be a stronger family man. So to me To segue onto that Mike is if you want a stronger family a deeper marriage Those things don't happen by default Right, you can't just mail. You can't just check a box You can't mail it in You have to be a what you have to be where your feet are like we've talked about before for, and then you have to have a fiery commitment, meaning you got to have a burn the boats mindset to your family, which is what you were saying. How passive are we with our children and even our spouse at times? You know, you don't want to be bothered or, "Honey, to the kids, I don't have time right now. I've got to get this project done." And you're missing a lot of opportunity because you will know soon they're all out of the house and you're wishing you had that time back, right? So what if you stop saying, I'm going to try to be present and instead say, I will be present. No matter what text I get, no matter what email I get, no matter what alert comes through, that's when your relationship shifts. That's when trust starts to get built from your family from the floor up. One last point on this, Mike. It's a key word there. It's not, I'll try to be present. It's I will be. Your to be list. This is one thing that you can add to that to be list is with the F mom of family. I will be more present this week. See what a difference that can make because I promise you I struggle with this sometimes. When I go through these notes, I'm like, I have to be better at doing this because I'm not as good as I should be. So I appreciate your thoughts on that. So, you know, let's kind of lean into a little bit more, Mike. Did you have any points back on that?

Speaker 2

Yeah, I would just say, you know, as you were talking, I was thinking about the fact that I have boundaries from work to family, but I've also got boundaries from family to work. They know that when I'm working from home, and I do that every Friday, you know, I'm in the office in Atlanta most Mondays through Thursdays, but Fridays I work from home. And they all know that when the doors close in the office, that's work time. That it's not time to see if dad's got five minutes to answer a question or to do. Now, if I come out for a break, whatever I'm free, I'm fair game. And usually they're, they're usually out there waiting for me to, to, to do something. Right. But they know while I'm in there that that is protected time. And so again, it's, it's about the idea that, that you can, you can do all four F-bonds. You just have to create structure and rules that you're willing to commit to. And you will do on both sides of that equation. And then it's, it's successful. But look, I think we've had good conversation around family. Let me ask you a question. You know, talk about burning the boats, man. I've seen some people do some crazy stuff, but what you did to move from your career to being an entrepreneur and running your business was impressive, scary for me. And so I want you to tell us more about that, Shane. How'd you make that decision and how's it treating you now?

Speaker 1

- Well, you know what? You don't know what you don't know. So if you don't know to be frightened or scared were running with crazy. You know, I tell people all the time, you know, do you miss what you used to do? Sure. I miss what I used to do. I had a good time doing it, but there's a lot of it that I don't miss. I can promise you that. But because if I did, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be on this podcast today and still be doing what I was doing. So clearly that wasn't my passion in life. How many people do you know that say, I wish, I wish I wish I wish I could do that. I wish I would have done that. What the hell is stopping you? I'm living proof, dude. You want to do something. You got to really grow some, but you can do whatever you want to do. And I'm not always saying that. I would have, if I could go back in time, Mike, I'll say this. I would have done it a little bit differently. I would have been a little bit more prepared. I thought I was a lot smarter than I was. But I do believe if you ask any entrepreneur these same questions, they'll give you a lot of the same answers. You don't know what you don't know. And that is a uncharted water for many of us going from corporate America, which I was, into the vast unknown of brick and mortar running a gym. Like two totally different things, you know, but to me, when it comes to the actual statement of burning the boat and how I did it. It was a true decision of, there is no plan B. And to this day, I have no plan B. Everything I own and have owned and will own is in this business. I have nothing left anywhere else. I cashed it all in to do this. And every day, I try to remember my why. And I think about those guys that were trying to take that Aztec empire and burn the boat mentality. There's little pieces of that I can pick up. Clearly, this is not a life or death situation, but it is life ruin or life success for me. That's the stakes that I'm playing with. I had a fantastic job. I had good money. I had a lot of fun. We were taking trips. we were doing all the things. All that comes to a screeching halt and you go from still working a lot to working a whole lot, but you are the one that's making all the decisions now. So the boats had to be burned for me, meaning there is no off ramps for me. Like either the gym is successful or I fail. Mike, when your back is against the wall with that type of issue, When there's no one there to pour water on the fire but you, when there's no one there to throw you a rope when you're drowning, you learn how to swim. And you learn how to swim like Michael Phelps 'cause if you don't, you're gonna drown. And that's the reality of the situation. But here's what I'll say to that. So many people get caught up in the what ifs. You can't have any of those thoughts. You go, you move fast and you figure it out. Every boat's burned, every life jacket's cut up and tossed. So the only way you have to move, Mike, is forward. And if you're moving forward, if you're truly moving forward and you're doing things with that kind of conviction, guess what? It's hard to fail. And if you do, what's someone gonna say to you? You put every ounce of your life into that. So what? You know, life goes on. I don't expect to fail. I'm just saying that if you have that mentality that nobody's gonna beat you, nobody's gonna take this away from you and you're gonna die succeeding, then you're probably gonna succeed. Because how many people you know have that attitude? Like you have it as an entrepreneur. It's a different attitude, but you have it. It's just when you step into the world of going from the comfort of knowing that paycheck's gonna hit the bank to just the blind unknown, which is what I did, I had no experience doing any of this brick and mortar. Like what is, you want me to pay? What's triple N? What, what are we talking about, man? I don't even know what you're talking about. I didn't even understand the language. Like, well, here you go. Here's your rule book. There's a rule book. And I don't, anyways, a lot of good and vast experience has been learned from this, Mike. And I get very passionate about this. But at the end of the day, the only way forward is to burn every bolt possibly burn. And some of them are not going to feel good burning. You know, unless you have a spouse that may not have the same vision as you. Okay. And you've got to burn the boats anyway. And you got to find a way to carry her yet or whoever it is, right? You have to find a way to keep them on your back as you're swimming to the shore. Not that they need it, but you're taking a big part of their life away that they're used to. Les is very non-risk. She's risk adverse. And I'm like, jump in the water, baby. Let's go for it. So you've got all of that going. So you have to be prepared, but you also have to have somebody by your side that's willing to eventually say, I trust you. You know, Mike, I trust you. Let's do it. You know, so hopefully that kind of gave you a little bit of an insight about where I am, who I am and why I did what I did. But at the end of the day, Mike, here's the results. Like, there's no denying I had a very rough start to my business. You know, that's a whole nother episode that we could talk about how you started gym the right and wrong way. But I didn't stop. And I've had to ask for help for some people. Like I had no choice. Like you find ways to survive when you're running out of oxygen, you'll find air. And the more I work, the more I push, the more I dig, the more I grind, and the more I put all of my heart and soul in that business, I can finally see that little bit of light hit me in the eyeball at the end of the tunnel, man. The challenge is just finally getting through it, but then it doesn't stop there. That's just your next little area before you start the next climb, which is what I love about it. What I love about this process is you've got every valley has a mountaintop and every mountaintop has a valley. But until you're willing to experience that life, and I took a very extreme approach, there's other ways to do this. It's just different, man. So I appreciate and cherish every morning. In fact, I told you recently to hold me accountable because I was doing a little bit of complaining. And now I don't know if you've seen my texts, they're very pointed and they're very positive. Yes, sir, they are. And that's the way I want, you know what, I can't go back. And I was starting to slide back, right? Poor, poor, pitiful me. No, you asked for this big boy. So let's get it done. Shifting what? You know what, you're reframing Mike. So I'm gonna get out of the way, man. I love to talk about that. But I appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit about that. know, I know you also had some things you wanted to talk about in this same premise. So I'm going to, I'm going to kick it back to you there. So appreciate that one.

Speaker 2

Yeah, man. But I think that's such a powerful example of somebody who's truly burned the boats to, to, to, I mean, you look back on the shore and they were all a flame and there was no going back and, and you have continued to, to drive into, into inland to figure out how to get through the path and navigate that new empire and you're doing a hell of a job. So don't stop. We're all behind you. Not everyone's a superhero. We've talked about this before, but we all have needs within the world of finance to burn the boats. And one way to do that in a little way is to think about if you've got credit card debt piled up or you don't have an emergency fund, or you're not investing in your retirement, you know, it takes sacrifice to take care of those things. It takes doing a little less going out, doing a little less, you know, renting a movie or whatever you spend your money on in ways that you know is wasteful and putting off what you want today for what you want more. Right? So one way to burn the boats is to say, I am going to save, I'm going to have a safety net of $10,000, pick a number. The only way I'm going to get that is I can't save $1,000 a month, but I can save $50 a week. And the only way I'm going to save $50 a week is if I stop going to Starbucks or I stop doing God knows what that we waste your money on, but you can't start that process and then really want a Starbucks two weeks from now. You have to burn the boat. You have to pretend Starbucks doesn't exist. You have got to commit to these targets that you've set and act like there's no way back. Act like there are no boats. We'll give you some other examples of things to do as we get to the end. But, you know, Shane, let's move on to the world of fitness. You know, you and I both have coaching clients. You've got a whole gym full of them. We both have coaching clients at the leadership ignition team. You know, what do you see about our clients and those that burn the boats and those that don't and their level of success in the world of fitness?

Speaker 1

So, you know, you see all kinds, right? We see male, female, different shape, sizes, different ages, but everybody has the same typically overall goal, right? They want to get healthier and they want to look better in the mirror. You know, that's the reality of the situation. Now, when you break that down, they want to get more fit, they want to get more tone, but typically a lot of it comes from just like you, you know, like many of us like, I don't like the way I look anymore. That is usually what draws somebody in. The thing is, what I've seen out of clients, both men and women, Mike, and kick it back to you after this, is that they're not the smartest and maybe not the most fit, but here's the thing that they are. They are the most decided. Meaning that they decided to burn the boat of maybe, and they started to take a chance on themselves. They went into that gym for the first time, which is the hardest thing you'll do. It's the unknown, right? That is the boat you have to burn. You have to get up, get your shoes and stuff on and drive to the spot because 90% of people don't make it that far. They talk themselves out of it. The ones that do come in, they have started the process, right? Maybe they're not standing at the shores with the boats on fire yet, but you know what? They're in the boat. They're to fight. So they want to be who they're supposed to be. They want to be that lighthouse. You know, now is their chance to come in and step in and do that. So about, you know, you can see those people coming into the gym and they're scared, they're afraid, they're nervous, they're anxious. But at the end of the day, as long as you have someone that's willing to lead them successfully and show them the way, that helps them create that path of leaving the old version behind. Before I kick it back to you, I'll say, but that's where the problem normally occurs. When the motivation wanes and discipline has to kick in, can you stay away from the cookies and ice cream? You know, can you continue to set that alarm for 4.30am if you're in the morning and have to get up and do it then? That's where you, that's where the decision, Mike, has to be made. Now it's time to get off the boat and it's time to follow Cortez's order. Because if you don't and you give yourself that escape hatch, I'll go tomorrow. I'll make it up tomorrow. Guess who ain't making it up tomorrow? You ain't. You know, personal story, I

Speaker 2

was supposed to have gotten in on Thursday evening around 6 p.m. I was going to go right to our gym. We've got a gym in the basement, but I also like to go to the public gym from time to time. I've got a local YMCA that, you know, some old friends there I like to, like to catch up with and, uh, delayed an hour out of Atlanta. Got on the airplane, delayed another hour. Didn't land until nine. Had to, I checked the bags, I'd been gone for almost three weeks. So I picked up the bag. It's, I get the bag at 9 30. I get home at 10, gym's closed. Michelle said, "Oh man, you must be tired." I said, "I am." She said, "Well, is it, uh, is it bedtime?" I said, "Nope, I got to get the gym in." She said, "Are you nuts?" I said, "Yeah, maybe a little, but we, you and I both, Michelle, we made a commitment, that's what we do. And so you don't give up on your commitment just because you're tired. You don't give up on your commitment just because it's 10 o'clock at night. I burned that boat. I'm going to the gym. I didn't get to sleep for another two hours because then I was amped up and fired up right in the middle. But that's just life, man. You got to get it in when you got to get it in. Because if I didn't get that workout in that day, I've already got workouts planned for the next six days. I don't have time to do two a day. Wasn't going to get done. And I could not, I couldn't, that would be going backwards.

Speaker 1

I'm not doing that. And not only that, that would have bothered you. You wouldn't have slept well. You would not have gotten good sleep because in the back of your mind, you bailed on a commitment you made to yourself. And then the all next day, you would have beat yourself up over it. So the sacrifice of a little bit of sleep gave you a lot more peace of mind to be a sharper leader and a better person the following day.

Speaker 2

I think that's it.

Speaker 1

I say this in the gym all the time. Not one person has ever came up to me and said, "Man, I regret coming in today." You know who I hear from? The people that overslept. "Man, I really regret not coming today." That's who I hear from. It's not the people that set the alarm and got up. It's the other way around. And then that throws you off. It throws you off balance the rest of the day, possibly longer. So you make a great point there about what you did. you made a commitment to yourself, aka a non-negotiable, which means you said you were going to do this and you're going to do it. And I think that term, you know, burning the boat and non-negotiable can be tied together because so many people are so loose with the term non-negotiable. It's a non-negotiable. That means you're not negotiating. Like I tell people this at the gym and our coaching clients, the second you begin negotiation with yourself you've already lost. The second you enter into a negotiation with yourself you've already lost because you're going to convince yourself whatever it is you want to believe. Like just like you. I'm tired, I've not been home in three weeks, I just want to lay down, relax. It's okay if I miss a day. You entered into that negotiation and guess what? You just lost. Instead, you never allowed yourself to enter into that negotiation Because you've already burned the bolts and said, I'm not going back to that other person because you know what happens one day leads to two, two leads to three, three leads to a week, a week leads to a month, a month leads to forever.

Speaker 1

And I see people do that all the time.

Speaker 2

Yeah. In fact, the whole drive home, I'm telling myself, can't wait to get in the gym. Can't wait to get in the gym. Can't wait to get in the gym. But that was mental games. I was doing that to myself purposely because I knew if I got home and I, you know, saw the low light in the living room, Michelle sitting there with the decaf getting ready for bed and she's all cozy in her jammies, I'm not I want to go to the gym. So, you know, I had to convince myself that that was what I was going to do, just because that was a commitment I made, you know, Shane, you talked earlier about, um, what you see in the folks that are most successful are those that are the most decided. And it reminds me of an old parable. So let me ask you a question, man. There's three frogs on a log and two decide to jump off. How many are left on the log? This is a trick question. Yeah. Yeah. It was a really trick question. There's still three frogs in a rod. They decided they didn't jump. And that's what we see all the time when people, when people show up in the gym, they decide to sign up for a membership. They decided to, you know, uh, um, sign up for a coaching opportunity and they decided they wanted to get started. That that's great. But then when we asked her to do the work,

Speaker 1

It's like your, your list. Yeah. Like you can, that I didn't mean to cut you off, but it just made me think about your list, your to be list. I think about that a lot, actually, your to be list. It can also be your decided, be decided list. Like there's, there's, it all correlates, you know, a lot of these things we talk about, they all tie together and they're all not hard to do, but yet how many people do them, people do them.

Speaker 2

Yeah. People decide all kinds of things all the time, right? All make all kinds of statements to themselves all the time, but what they're going to do to Monday or do on Monday or next month or next week or the beginning of the year, but the doing of them is where the difference is. And that is doing of them and burning the boats behind you. Absolutely.

Speaker 1

So you eliminate those fallback options. I heard a podcast the other day and the gentleman was like, you know, everybody's got an excuse. Everybody's got a reason, you know, and Hey, kids come, come, come first. Often. I completely get that, but here's the reality is like when you start using your kids as a crush to not have time, and or you're taking care of everyone else by yourself. He said it in a way that I'm probably going to do very dispoor justice, but he said if you spend all your life taking care of those you love, you're putting them in a position to have to take care of you way before

Speaker 2

they should. It's the conversation we had a couple weeks ago which is a little bit investment today beats the compounding interest of the long-term investment tomorrow. And that's exactly that same mentality, right? It's the idea that if you don't put in the work today, you're going to end up in a place where now somebody else has to do the work for you, or you got to get bailed out or whatever. And the more you invest today, whether that be financially or fiscally or with your family, the easier that becomes later in life.

Speaker 1

In the burning the boat mentality in any of the four F-bombs, it's truly, we can't effectively communicate it in the right ways until you experience some of it. There is no other option. This is the only path that you can go down. If you start your preparation that way every single day, how can you fail? If you carve that time out, even if something happens, exactly to your point, you had that time set aside, life happened. Easy path is to just say, "All right, it just ain't going to happen today." The burn the boat path is, "It's 10 o'clock at night, I'm going to go down here and crank this workout out, then I'll go to bed." So the point is, if you put yourself in that lane, the burn the boat lane, and we see so So many clients that we've had in our men coaching, now we've expanded to take on different clients, but in our men coaching in the past, they never burned the boats. They were unwilling to go all in because it takes a different level of commitment. It takes a different level of flipping the switch. And most often you have to give up something or some things that you love. was drinking beer. I had to burn that bolt. Do I still drink beer every now and then? Yeah, I like a good cold beer, but I don't drink 30 a day anymore. I can't. I would, but I like beer. But anyways, my point is, you can't burn the bolts if you're unwilling to cut every life jacket that you have. And some of those life jackets can also be bad habits. Like you got to cut them loose. It's just like when we go back to the family piece, There may be somebody in your family that's dragging you down like an anchor tied around your damn neck. Guess what? You want your life to get better? You want to burn the bolts and move down the right path? Cut the damn rope. There you only have... Byron said something in one of our episodes that I love. He said you only got so many energy units a day. And if you're wasting energy on something that's not serving you or moving you forward, why are you holding on to it? Why? You're not burning that bolt. I can tell you that much. You're riding it. But anyways, I've gone way off the script there, my friend. It's a little bit of extra, extra spicy nugget there. But Mike, let's talk a little bit about. What we can do as individuals to. Put ourselves in position. To leverage burning the boats to a greater success, we've only hit the tip of the iceberg of burning the boats in the end. maybe we'll revisit this with some of the, you know, deeper into the F-bombs, but what's some simple strategies that somebody can do to put theirself in position to burn the bolts for each one of the bombs?

Speaker 2

Yeah, I'm going to give us four things to think about, one on each of the three F-bombs that we really dove in on today. So first, a simple, it's just a recap of what we talked about. Stop giving yourself an out. If you've decided, like the frog, so you need to make a change, then jump off the damn log. Commit all in and convince yourself failure is not an option. Going back isn't an option. So what's the only option? Achieving that objective that you set. Number two, in finance, maybe you're not ready to do what my crazy friend Shane did. You can take one step to either create a monthly budget and stick to it. Set a plan to get to zero credit card debt or properly fund your retirement. As I said before, small sacrifices now are far more effective than the long-term sacrifice you're going to have to make down the road. 50 bucks a week probably won't kill you. I'm sure you can find it. Number three, family. Create one focus time for either the entire family group or for each member of your family individually or both. If you can make that happen in a week. You got to commit to it together though. You both have to talk about it and put it in both of your calendars. And then you have to protect it with everything you got. That time has got to happen for both of you. So, you know, I've got adult kids now and if we've got our time scheduled, then our time is scheduled. Whether I got something coming up or they've got some other friend commitment, not during that time. We say to those folks outside of that, that, that entity is not going to happen for them because if we got something else we've got to do. Number four, fitness. Choose one non-negotiable action today. Not Monday, not next, well, it's August 1st, right? It's today, August 1st. By the time we post this, it won't be August 1st, but choose one non-negotiable action today. Whether that be a daily workout, doesn't have to be daily. Maybe that's three times a week. You can do something as simple as, I'm gonna eliminate sugar from my diet. I'm not eating sugar. It's bad for us all. Don't eat sugar for Pete's sake. And move 20 minutes. Three times a week, two times a week, whatever it's gonna take. Choose something, one of those things, and take that action. So Shane, thoughts on this episode? What's next?

Speaker 1

- Yeah, so I wanna go back and visit just a little bit of what you just said there. - Yeah. - So again, we've talked a lot about giving yourselves outs. I think that's a great analogy with the frog. I love that. You know, financially, my current situation was a little bit wilder than what a lot of people do. But I completely agree with you. Like I have made tremendous moves to put myself 10X for the future.

Speaker 2

Yes, sir.

Speaker 1

That's what I wanted. Like I went all in to try to 10X it. Not everybody's going to do that. I respect that completely because you got to be half crazy to do it and I get it. But to your point is taking small little incremental steps and changes in your life to improve those finances. Absolutely great guidance. But what I want to talk a little bit about is mainly your number one point back to the frogs and making a difference. You talk about burning the boats, you get you can correlate this to a lot of things. Well, think about two types of mentality. I'll give you another another cheesy reference, I guess. Think about a swimming pool. You own one. So just think about it when you're a kid versus an adult. And sometimes you have to have a childlike mentality to burn the boat. You know why a child mentality works better than ours? Because they did what I did when I opened. They don't know any better. When you don't know any better, are you near as afraid to make a decision? Nope. Because you don't have all this data roaming around in your head to talk to tell you one way or the other. You got a clean slate in front of you, man. Should I jump this hill or should I not? I'm going to jump it. Right. You've already jumped one, Mike. You know better not to jump it again. But the kid has to learn. Right. So two points I want to make here. Sometimes when you burn the bolts, you get burned. It's not always going to be perfect. However, that's when you reinforce, refocus, and reframe what you're doing. And more than likely, you can get the trajectory back on track. My point is that it's just because you're going to say you're going to burn the bolts doesn't mean a business tomorrow or do all these things without implications. Like you have to be very clear in your plan. I we joke about me. I was prepared just not as well as I thought I was. But my main point on this back to the analogy of the swimming pool. When your kids, I mean, you probably do it like me because your brain works a lot like mine as an adult, you don't really care. But what do you do? You walk up to the pool and you put your foot in the water. You know why? Because you want to see how cold it is before you make the commitment to do what, Mike? Jump in. But then if you take a look at the other person that gets up out of their chair and they don't care what temperature that water is, they're jumping. That's the mentality shift that you have to make to make a difference in your life in these F-bombs. You have to quit worrying about every little detail and quit worrying about what anybody else is going to say. Because I can promise you, there was a, there was a, the group of friends I had was this large. When I made this decision, it shrunk to here. Everybody told me how nuts I was, family included, minus a few. The few real ones that believed in me, because I didn't want to follow a traditional path. So be Be prepared for that if you choose to do this in any of the F-bombs, because even if it's fitness Mike, what happens? You go to the break room, it's a birthday party. Well, whoa, Mike's too good to eat the birthday cake now. Yes. No, I'm not. I just don't want to eat that crap. Why do you care? Right? I used to get so tickled. Like, why does that bother you so much? So be prepared for those type of things, Mike. So jump all in, burn the bolts. I love the analogies that you put together for those last four points. There's no turning back, dude. All heart. It's like I say all the time, you know, move fast and figure it out. All gas, no brake, brother. Let's dive all in. But I think this was a wonderful episode. I could talk about burning the boats all day. You know, when we were talking about topics, this was one of my favorites. You know, I hope we get to come back and revisit this soon. We're going to be having some different guests on our podcast coming up soon as well. Super excited about that. But Mike, what do you say we put a bowl on this episode today? Any final thoughts before I move us into the close?