Episode 028: Ego vs Impact: Stop Doing What Looks Good

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: This is the Founders Catalyst. Hello and welcome into the most recent installment of the Founders Catalyst, me and Lee Povey, we're back again to discuss the idea of effectiveness as leaders. And Lee, this was inspired by something that you saw online recently. So I want you to really introduce the, uh, idea of this episode.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I saw a post from Chris Williamson, the host of the Modern Wisdom podcast, and he asked, or he said he likes to ask himself two questions every year. Question number one is what is something that he's doing that he thinks is effective but isn't and he's doing too much of it and he needs to either stop or do less. And question number two is the reverse. What is something that he's not doing enough of that he, he thinks isn't effective, but actually is and he needs to do more of it. And I thought it's a really interesting way to stop and kind of look at what we do and are, uh, we being as effective as we think we are. And you know, I know there's things that I can do to be busy that don't really have an impact and there's things that I avoid because they might be a little bit more challenging or take a bit more energy, but it can be really high impact. And yet I'm avoiding them or I'm in my mind minimizing their impact so that I can avoid them.

Speaker B: And it's, it's funny, we're piggybacking off an episode where we talked about who you want to be as a leader. And for me this is yet another prime example of how we can just practice awareness. It's a consistent theme now across a couple of episodes. Um, um, and it, it, what, what I love about this is it, it's this is, this is when we get into the, the practicing of, and how we use our time and, and you know, you literally shared this quote and this idea, these questions with me no more than five minutes ago. And so obviously I've had five minutes to prepare for this. Um, and so I feel like it's

Speaker A: a world class answer then. Stacey.

Speaker B: 100%. 100%. And I would expect nothing less of myself either. Uh, but for me, the part of this that immediately I'm drawn to is are we able to drop this sense of that the ego component. The ego component really kicks in for me here. It's just like the adamants that you have. Like this is something I have to be doing because I've always done it this way. And then on the flip side of that it's like, we don't need to do that because I don't see the need for that. And we're being very fixed minded, very closed off to this idea that, no, there could be an argument to be made that we're doing too much of something that is not serving effectiveness and we're not doing enough of something that could be serving effectiveness. And as a leader, we just simply need to be able to say, like, hey, is it possible that what got us here won't get us there, so to speak? Like, can we entertain this as a notion? Can we just at least explore the possibility even?

Speaker A: Are we being performative? Right. Are we doing this because of what other people think? Or we think it's going to get us liked or, or admired to follow on from last, last, uh, time's episode. Uh, for those of you that are listening to us on a, um, podcast instead of watching us on YouTube, which you should do because Steve's a very handsome bald man.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Very, very handsome bald man.

Speaker B: He's going to accept it and not return the compliment.

Speaker A: Good, good.

Speaker B: I like that.

Speaker A: I like that. Um, uh, you would have seen me smiling massively as Steve immediately went to ego. Because, uh, as, as I introduced the concept, that's what I'm thinking a lot about is so much of it is about ego. Are we doing things to look good? Are we doing things to be effective? And I think a lot of us struggle with that. A lot of us struggle with knowing the difference. If I think of myself, things that are effective, connecting with people on LinkedIn and doing 30 minute connection calls were probably more effective than I thought last year. I have absolutely met super interesting people, um, that become my friends. I've met people that have introduced me to really interesting clients. I've met a bunch of therapists that have supported me and introduced men to my men's groups and, you know, maybe we'll talk about that at some point. That's, uh, something I really want to increase. I'm very passionate about supporting many being the healthiest versions of themselves and what probably I've done a lot of. And this is going to sound hypocritical as I talk about this on a podcast is I've been on a bunch of other people's podcasts and, uh, I think there's some ego in that about, uh, people like having me as a guest. I'm eloquent. I'm a good podcast guest. Yeah. Were they the right audiences for my message and are they moving my needle forward of Getting to the right people to help the right people be more effective and uh, being kind of a little bit chooser about the right kind of podcast to be on that are going to change the game for the world. And let me be more impactful rather than being on the podcast because somebody's invited me on the podcast as a guest.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I love that you've given a personal example. And immediately my mind goes to, again, thanks to the 8 and a half minutes of preparation to come up with something here. Um, for me, my mind immediately goes to this idea that when we get curious in these two questions, it can sometimes bring us back to something that was once working, that we've slowly allowed to go by the wayside and. Yeah, so when I think about my business, what we live in, we work in a, in a world where if we want to build a completely virtual business, we have the capacity to do so. And for me, I'm just a, I'm such a human, like appreciator of human connection. Like, and it really, I really enjoy being in rooms with other people doing the work that I get to do. And it's not that I need all my business to be like that, but I certainly need some of it to be like that. And when I first started my business, boots on ground around Baton Rouge, Louisiana and even a few places around New Orleans and things like that, shaking hands, kissing babies, the whole nine yard, like doing everything that you're supposed to do to build a business and network, network, network. And lo and behold, Steve created some traction. Like he got some clients, he got some business, he started to build a reputation, dare I say it, in the local community. And then I got busy. Then I got busy and I'm like, well, this would be way more convenient if I could just get on social media and just hammer social media and tell people what I'm doing, but do it way more conveniently through mass emails and things like that too. And that's kind of where I went over the sort of second half of my four years. Um, you know, I really peaked in terms of networking at the two year mark. And then as I got busier, the networking started to go down and the desire to be present on social media and post every single day went up. And it's funny, it's now become one of my biggest pieces of advice when folks reach out to me about building a coaching company and building, starting a business and all this kind of thing is I go, let me tell you the biggest lesson that I've Learned in my 4 years is that never assume that there's one way of building your business. Like there are so many ways of doing it, and you have to find the right one. But the only way you find the right one is by trying all of them. You know, you have to find that balance. And for me, once I drop my ego, because I do want to have a business that works with clients outside of the zip code where I'm based, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I'm. And I'm building that, but that's going to be a slower build for me. And on a local level, I was allowing myself to take for granted the work that I'd done and the reputation I was building on a local level. And so when I go into 20, 26, right now I've made this commitment already before even seeing these questions, but it allows me to answer questions. It's like what I'm going to do more of that I was doing too little of recently that was 100% effective is get my butt in front of other human beings on a local level to, to go to networking events and do it more consistently and strategically identify ways that I'm in the right room with the right people at the right time, etc. And then on the flip side of that, what can I be doing less of that I'm doing probably too much of is really giving a crap about how I show up on social media. Like I say that kind of tongue in cheek, but honestly, spending hours a week thinking and obsessing about like these tiny details here and these tiny details there, like it's not really serving me

Speaker A: and it's wasted energy and nobody notices.

Speaker B: No, no one's noticing. And the amount of, yeah, the amount of mental energy I'm putting into something that really isn't giving me the return that it needs to and, or, you know, will do probably ever. Um, and again, that's all ego. That's all me in my brain just being like, now you want to be known, you want to be this, you want to be that. And it's like, it's not that I don't want to be those things, it's just that there's ways that I can do it in a way that are so much more effective.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love where you went with, ah, that. Uh, if you're listening right now, you're listening to episode two of season two. Go back to listen to episode one about authenticity because I'm going to tie that right back to what Steve was just saying. I'm the opposite of Steve. So for me, I don't do well in networking events. I'm quite introverted. I can be quite awkward when I don't know people to the point that mine and Sara's relationship is. She does everything with people that we don't know, like order food from somewhere that I haven't spoken to before. That's sarvage job.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because I don't enjoy it. I, I really find small talk uncomfortable. Um, I'm terrible at selling myself in those kind of environments. Obviously I'm not as good looking as handsome Steve, so you should be watching this.

Speaker B: I'll take my shirt off if you need me to. It's getting strange.

Speaker A: He's a former elite swimmer, so, you know, strange now you know who, who wouldn't want him to take his shit off? Um, and I'm awkward in those situations. It doesn't feel good for me yet one on one virtually with people I meet, I'm brilliant. I love it. I get to really put a lot of attention to them. I'm very curious and learn about them and I kind of have a real depth of conversation that uh, most people can't create in five to 10 minutes. And that's where I feel like I shine. So knowing that about myself, I've been pushing myself the last few years to be in these entrepreneurship groups, to go to these networking events and I never enjoy them. And if I'm not enjoying it, I can't imagine that somebody else is enjoying me being there either.

Speaker B: Exactly right.

Speaker A: And, and they were good from the point of view that I learned some things about it, especially learning about other people's entrepreneurial journey, which helps me with my clients and seeing people file and be successful and they really help with working with clients. But I wasn't enjoying it and I wasn't. My business wasn't benefiting from it. I wasn't building my business from it, whereas I do with these one to one connections. So I, I'm doing outreach on LinkedIn and if you're listening to this, you want to chat to me, send me an email. Let's talk. Um, I really like meeting new people in that environment where, where it suits me, not in those larger environments where I don't like it and I feel like I have to perform when everybody else is performing and I judge everyone else for performing and I just don't enjoy it. And conversely, the social media aspect, as soon as I let go of how many people like my social media posts or interact with my social media posts and I have a close friend who's fantastic at marketing and has his own marketing consulting company. So if you're looking for a marketing consultant, let me know, I'll happily introduce you. Um, and he said something like 10% of the people that look at your stuff actually interact with it. So he said, Remember there's 90% of people reading what you're posting. It can be having an impact on them, but they don't press a like and they don't comment. And I've experienced that multiple times where people have reached out to me and said, oh, I've been reading your post the last couple of years and I've now I'm ready to speak to you now. And I've never heard of them, I've never noticed them like something, never seen them comment on it. So for me, with social media letting go of uh, the performative part and the transactional part and all my social media now is me sharing the things that I want to share. And that's why I do this with you, Steve. I do this because we get to talk about things where I learned from the conversation where I have to think about what it is that we do. Hopefully out there it's impacting somebody and that's enough for me. That's, that's what I want. Yeah.

Speaker B: And to bring it back to the uh, the topic of this episode.

Speaker A: Being effective.

Speaker B: Yeah. The idea of effectiveness, it's really. Effectiveness starts with what works for you, right? Um, yeah, it's a huge part. For me, there's an effective with effectiveness. It's not just about the result, it's about the approach too. And like what, what is the energy? What is the effort we're putting in on the front end? What is the benefit? What is the outcome on the back end? And, and, and uh, I think even in that we can explore that a little bit too because I'm not sure whether folks see it like that. Sometimes it's just like, what am I getting? If they're thinking about the outcome, they're so focused on the outcome as to whether or not it was effective. And it's like, yeah, but there's um, going back to the authenticity component of the previous episode, if it's all about the outcome, then we really put ourselves in danger of like what the cost is at that point. And so like the effect, we have to consider the approach and the outcome when it comes to being effective. And again typically that's when the, I actually think the ego kicks in when we over focus about the outcome, when we get so caught up in like how? Like again, we've used the example of social media, like how many likes, how many comments, all this kind of thing. There's a version of that in however you answered these questions, there's some version of that. When it comes to the first question, it's just like, what are you doing too much of this really, you should be doing much less of. And chances are it's because you're getting too caught up in the outcome. And on the flip side, what I like about the second question is it forces us to really get curious about, well, how can we actually better use our time? How can we be way more effective in our approach, knowing that there will probably be a better outcome, but we're allowing our ego to get in the way of us not doing it that particular way?

Speaker A: I'm being more thoughtful about our approach. You know, lots of us busy for the sake of being busy. We talked about this in the last episode. Like that leader that's always, I'm so tired because I do so much. Stop doing so much. Stop being more effective.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I want to tie this back to our, uh, previous careers in elite sport. And I'm sure, I guarantee that you're going to feel the same way. And you had the same process. When I looked at an athlete and we sat down at the beginning of the year, we would have goals, right, where do you want to be at the end of the year? And we'd establish the goals and then we would work backwards from those goals and right, where do you need to be halfway through the year, which you need to be in three months time, where are we starting now? And then we would not look at those goals again until we got to the end of the year, pretty much. Because what we would focus on is the process of what do I need to do today? And if I do that and execute that, all of these days of good processes, the result takes care of itself. You can't actually control the result or you can control is the process of what am I doing today? And I think what happens when founders are like, I want to have an exit. Great, you want to have an exit. That's a goal. However, what do you need to do today? We need to have a really well functioning company that somebody wants to buy. And, um, what does it mean for your company to function well and your company to be an exciting prospect for somebody to buy? That's where your focus should be, not on getting an exit. The exit will come because you have something sellable. If you keep focusing on the exit And I see people do this, that you don't develop your company enough because you're like, oh, we need to be really lean so somebody to buy us. And then, um, you don't grow as fast as you should do. It's focusing on what is the process, what are we doing today to be effective that will. The outcome will take care of itself. And when people have that flip and realize that it is all about the process. The process is what you can control. What am I doing today that has impact, then not worrying about the outcome takes so much stress off of you because you can do the process. That's something you can do. An outcome is not something you can do. It's out of your control. Only the things that, uh, are in your control should be all that you think about and focus on.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's one of my favorite stories that I get to tell in my keynote. Raise your floor. Why your outcomes. Why your outcomes are distracting you from the standards that allow you to achieve them. You know, it's right there in the title. Um, just pitching myself a little bit, too. But, um, I'm here.

Speaker A: I want to hear it.

Speaker B: You want to hear the. You want to hear the whole keynote now. But the story. The story that I love telling is this athlete that I guided to the U.S. uh, Olympic team, and Brooks Curry. And, um, one of the stories I tell is. And it's always gotten responses from audiences after I speak is there was this moment where Brooks was wavering and he wasn't quite committed to the process. And I just looked at him one day, I said, has the goal changed? Remember where we started? Has the goal changed? He said, no. I said, well, in that case, we keep going, and we keep going the way that we committed. And it's just, uh. And it was just this m. Crystallizing moment for him. It's just like, why am I questioning what the work that we have to do when the goal hasn't changed? Because to your point, it's like, once we've set the goal, just put it in the drawer. It's all good. Like, we know where we're going now. Now we get present. Now we get focused on the process. Now we get curious about the way in which we do what we're doing and how we can do it better, you know? And, like, for me, listen to you there, I just immediately. I love that you brought this back, uh, to, uh, our previous life in sport. Like, for me, when I think about that, these kind of questions. These were the kind of questions you could pretty Much ask at the beginning of every single week to an athlete. I mean, these would have been phenomenal questions. Like, every sing Monday, you come in and you have a response to both of these questions, you know, and like, that would be a phenomenal guide for any athlete. Listen to this. But I think any leader, any founder, like, imagine if you started your week and you said, based on last week, based on last week, what's something I can do less of that I was doing too much of, what's something I can do more of that I wasn't doing enough of when it comes to being effective and like that, like, wow, never mind. The beginning of the year, do it weekly. Uh, and in doing so, in doing so, we are training ourselves to get way more curious and cognizant of the process. If you are someone that gets distracted by outcomes, this is a phenomenal tool, Phenomenal tool that can help just simply change the way you're looking and approaching things, but also protect you. Can protect you from doing what it is you need to do and operating how you need to operate, you know, from one week at a time.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. Um, both of our, uh, stories about what we think we could do more of around connection, and we're just leaning into the type of connection that suits us as human beings. And I think one of the things that leaders don't do enough of, you want to be more effective, be more connected with people. So, uh, we've spoken about it before and I think it's worth sharing again. The Gottman's bids for connection that everybody around you that is, uh, working with you, that's in a relationship with you, whether it's a friendship or romantic relationship, they are putting out these bids for connection. And you have three ways to respond to them. You can turn away, you ignore them. That's the most damaging response. No, relationships work. Business romantic can withstand a lot of ignored bids. Nobody likes to be ignored. The next is to turn against. So you respond, but it's a negative response. You know, why are you bothering me? I know you don't care about me and you don't really, you know, you, uh, you don't really care enough, even though you're asking me. And then the last response is to turn towards. So somebody makes that beard and you, you turn towards them and you're curious and you ask them questions and you listen to them. And I think leaders don't do enough turning towards their team to stop, to listen, to be curious, to ask questions. The more I see leaders do that, the More impactful they are, the more their teams feel supported and the more effective and the higher output their teams have.

Speaker B: The idea that we can ask questions like this on a week to week basis. And if we're looking at this through the lens of the founder and the leader, I would love for us just to kind of give people. Now, because you started alluding that to the team part of this and how those that we're leading can maybe respond to this, I want us to now discuss this idea, like, how do we, how do we get people comfortable being this curious, potentially this often and be willing to get to understand that we're not going to rock the boat too much is really where I'm going with this. I think this is a great practice. I think it's an individual practice, but, but I think what we're also alluding to here is like this is not a every day, 10 times a day. It's like getting that, getting curious around what would be enough, like how much would enough of this kind of approach, um, how, you know, how much of this would be enough to the point where we can feel as though, hey, we are practicing curiosity, but we're not rocking the boat too often at the same time. And I don't know, in your experience, like, what have you noticed? Like how often is this kind of questions or these kind of, this kind of work effective?

Speaker A: I think people under index on it and I think it's very hard for them to over index on it. Uh, if I think again, let's take this back to being elite sports people. Uh, in my sport, we videoed everything. We videoed training sessions, we video practices, we video gym sessions. And we were looking at what we were doing and tweaking things constantly to be better, to look at what we're doing. How could you have done that rep better? Uh, let's improve the nest rep. And it wasn't like every single rep and stop and analyze. It was like video training session, see something we don't like. Right, let's point that out, let's implement that or let's improve that for the next session or for the next rep. So I don't see leaders do that very often. I see us continue doing things suboptimally and not stopping and going, how can I do that better? Uh, and the excuse is always I'm too busy. Well, if an Olympic athlete can do it, who are training as hard as they can possibly train and put in as much effort as they can possibly be into being the best version of themselves, you Dearly, the friend can do it too. And it's the difference between working in your business and working on your business. And very few people work on their business as much as they should. They work too much in their business. Especially leaders that don't give themselves the room, the gravity, the height, to look at their business from that elevated level and go, are we being effective right now or are we being busy? And m. This kind of comes back to a lot of leaders think that being busy is effective. They're not the same things. In Japan, they did a study a couple of years ago where certain firms worked four days a week instead of five days a week. Productivity didn't drop. They were just more effective. Yeah, um, and we can always be more effective. And I think we over index in American society on hard work, because that's part of the American dream. We work hard and we'll get what we deserve. And we under index on, are we actually being effective? Is what we're doing having the impact that we're looking for it to do, or we just being busy?

Speaker B: I'm so glad that you took it this way, because for me, I. I've. It makes me think immediately of just like something I say. I've found myself saying often, you know, going back to these networking events, I'm obviously going more to now. You know, I can imagine that's kind

Speaker A: of good for you.

Speaker B: Um, but one thing I've started telling folks when I'm talking to them, it's just like, yeah, most of the time people know why they're hiring someone like me, someone like you. And I agree to it at the beginning, but I always know that I'm not being hired for the reason why they think I'm being hired. We're gonna. We're gonna reveal many things. We're gonna reveal many things down.

Speaker A: I get hired because leaders tell me there's a problem with somebody else that they want me to sort. And then we're like, okay, and how about you?

Speaker B: Right? And that's like. And we're both passionate about that. We're both like, listen, we don't want to be a band Aid. We don't want to come in and just fix your problem child, so to speak. Like, we want to come in and partner with those at the top of the organization. And see, coaching is a form of possibility versus problem solving. But that's. That's another time. But the. Where I was going with that is like, rarely do people come and say, we need some executive coaching in our organization so we can Be more effective. You know, that's not really a way that someone's coming in. However, typically around sort of month six or the end of the first year of work, we start seeing the evidence. It's just like, well, uh, are, uh, we actually acknowledging what we need to be acknowledging in this work? We've started very outcome focused, we've started very problem focused, but we're not getting curious towards where we can be more effective. And if we were to, what might those conversations look like, and how frequently do we need to be having those conversations? You know, and what I've loved seeing in people that I've worked with for, uh, more than a year is that you slowly start noticing in our work that the way they approach coaching shifts. When they get curious about effectiveness, they actually start to hold that mirror up more effectively, more consistently, more willingly, because they're thinking more in those terms of like, well, when you first arrived, yeah, we hired you because we've. We're dealing with stress and we're dealing with irritation and whatever it might be, and we're not happy with outcomes.

Speaker A: It's almost always some. There's some conflict, right?

Speaker B: There's some conflict. And then we get a year in and they go, well, a lot of that has disappeared. And yet I'm actually more open to the coaching now than I've ever been, because now I'm looking at it through this lens of possibility. And I think that's what I love about these two questions and the theme of effectiveness is that we're actually leaning into what's possible as opposed to what do we need to fix? Because it would be easy to hear these two questions and be like, okay, yeah, we need to fix a couple things. It's like, yeah, but I want you to actually get a little bit more curious than that. I want you to think a little deeper than that. I want you to look at these two questions as a way to say, how can answering these questions help us reveal what's possible?

Speaker A: Ah, I love that. And you know that that's it, right? So I need to do less in person networking, or I stopped doing less in person networking. Why do I need to do that? Because actually, I'm not good at it and I'm uncomfortable at it, and I find it tiring, and it makes me judge myself negatively. Like, why am I awkward and weird? And why can't I go to these events and be the life of the party? And, uh, part of that journey was learning I was autistic. Like, I wouldn't have learned that without that reflection of like, why is this so difficult for me?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And then I learned that, and then I can shape my world from that understanding so that I can be more effective and I can lean into my gifts, which is being very curious, one on one with somebody. And great, you're connecting one on one. But in big groups like that, exhausting for me. Uh, so I love the way that you frame that of, you know, not only we asking these questions to be more tactically effective and efficient, we're also asking these questions because it keeps us learning about ourselves, which allows us to be more effective on a longer, ongoing, uh, basis.

Speaker B: Yep, 100%. Well, in closing, mate, like, we're right at that 30 minute mark and this typically where we try to close things up. I'm curious, like, you know, we've, we've put these two questions to folks at the beginning and now it's like, okay, well, what are folks, what are folks to do when they answer this? And, and how. Again, we didn't necessarily give them a magic number of like, this is how often we need to do it. And so how might one find comfort, let's say in just knowing, hey, enough. This, this means I'm doing it, enough.

Speaker A: I really liked your weekly suggestion. I've got to be honest, I hadn't thought about it in that concept and I like it. Um, as I was mentioning, I don't know. I know most leaders don't take enough of an elevated look at their business often enough to really be effective, which is why we get caught in these patterns for way longer than we should do. Doing things are less effective than they should be before we stop and go, oh, God, I'm really burnt out. What did that actually bring me? So I love, you know, I encourage my leaders to have at least one block a week of unstructured time where they don't take meetings, they don't take calls, and they do something for them. They go for a walk with their dog. And I mean an extended walk. Not like five minutes around the block, like an hour for a walk with their dog or they go to a museum that they want to go to or they go and do something that low cognitive load that gives them room to, to think, to ponder, to be creative, because we need space to be creative. And you know, often when we use creative, people think, oh, you know, like artistically. No, creative as in how we're going to do the things that we want to do and room to really think about them and ponder, am I doing this as effectively? As I can. So that's one tactic from me. Every week you should have some space, unstructured space in your calendar. Personally, I think it should be at least two hours where you don't take any meetings, you don't stress about answering emails. It's not catch up time. There should be a different block for that. This is just room for me to breathe and think. What do I need to think about? And just let it percolate in your mind.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that it's like structured, unstructured. You know, it's just like routine unstructured. Um, otherwise it doesn't happen.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Well, 100. Yeah, 100. I think for me, that is something I'm taking from this episode to preface the need for this. It's like if you find yourself constantly saying to folks, we are busy or I am busy, then that's when you have to say, wait, what? Once I hear myself say the word busy for like the third or the fourth time today, I need to check myself in that moment. I need to say like, why do I keep using this word based on what Lee and Steve are saying here? Like, if I'm telling folks that I'm busy, then I'm no longer being effective. And if, and we need to be, we need to own that. We need to say like, hey, no longer am I going to wear this as a badge of honor. I'm going to own the fact that busyness does not equal productive. And so if I'm going to be productive, how do I get curious in this routine, unstructured time to just give myself the permission to think and be open to like, hey, let's, let's see if I can discover something in this. I love how you put it, like low cognitive time. It's like, it shouldn't be something where you've got this expectation on yourself in terms of what you will get from this time. It's more just open yourself up to it. And hey, if a couple of questions like these that we posed could help get the ball rolling or something like this, then go ahead and use them. But otherwise, I mean, I feel convicted from this episode to actually put these two questions down in my world and either start my week or end my week with something like this because I really am gravitating towards it and cannot help but, uh, get excited about the sense of discovery that come through. It's not always going to be like this huge epiphany every single time that's going to change the course of my life and career. But I Think the more I do it, I'm just going to start to notice these small things in my weeks where I'm like, hey, this will make next week more productive. And if I can achieve that in this 90 minutes, two hours every single time, that's two hours really well spent. To be able to say like, oh, I can see how I can make next week productive because of this time that I spent.

Speaker A: Yeah. Going back to that Olympic cycling, GB Olympic cycling ethos of, uh, the aggregation of marginal gains. I think we, we think, oh, I've spent this two hours, you know, giving myself space to think. I have to have an epiphany. No. If you come up with one thing that makes you 1 or 2% better, but you do that 50 times in a year, that's a huge difference. Rather than I get to the end of the year and I'm like, oh, let's review my year. That's 12 months of doing something ineffectively before you stop and think, am I doing what I should be doing? If you check in with that weekly, that means you've got 50 times more chance to be effective than if you're doing it once a year.

Speaker B: Yep, yep. And you'll notice he even gave you two weeks off there, too. Like 50 times a year, like, have those two weeks holiday. Don't, don't do this work twice a year. Um, I love it. This is brilliant. I mean, I love, I love when we actually come up with concepts that we didn't necessarily rehearse and prepare, and we're just like, hey, this is, this is good. This is good. I like it. And I think I might start practicing it myself.

Speaker A: I look forward to hearing about that, young Steve.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. Well, in the meantime, folks, as always, we appreciate you listening. Uh, we're excited for this season to be off and running. Now, episode two, um, we haven't quite decided what that magic number is going to be every time we do a season, but it's going to be in that sort of 12 to 16 area. And we're going to start to throw in some interviews as well. We did one in the first season, so we've set the bar pretty low to repeat that.

Speaker A: Uh, but we are more coming, Steve.

Speaker B: Right. We are hopeful that every three to four episodes are going to be interviews. So hopefully you can expect somewhere around four interviews, um, from this season. But in the meantime, folks, hey, listen, anything you can take from these episodes, we appreciate, but if you can give us some feedback to bring it on, we're obviously coaches and we welcome feedback. And so if there's ways that we can bring more out of these episodes, if you're looking for more tangible, uh, applicable practices, etcetera, we can certainly do our. Our best to do that. If there's certain topics that you just like, man, I'd love to hear you guys talk about this. Um, bring it on. Let us know.

Speaker A: Thanks.

Speaker B: In the meantime, good seeing you, buddy.

Speaker A: You too, man. You too.