Fast Five for Friday: Be a Meaningful Specific, Master Your Calendar, and Why Proximity Matters

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop. And it is time, my good man, for Fast Five for Friday. You ready to go? Let's go. Take it away. All right. So we're kind of going backwards this week. We're going to, we're going to kick off with a quote from a book I'm reading. And so I've, I've been recalibrating my morning routine. And so one of the books I'm reading is called, uh, meditations. So of, of Marcus Aurelius. And so there's his stuff. I don't know if you've read any of his work. I think I'm sure I actually know you have. Uh, it's kind of piecemealed all over the place cause it's a lot of his journal inscriptions, but they've organized this book in a way that it's clustered more efficiently as best the way I can say it.

1:26 So, but what I've been doing is I've been like feeling guided to whatever page I go to and just reading an inscription and just sitting with it and pondering on it and seeing how it applies and then putting it into play. And this particular inscription is. I'm not going to lie. It's kind of fucked up my world for the last three weeks. So here's what the inscription is. Super simple. It's literally one sentence. So it's free yourself from distraction. Walk the path in front of you. And so when I sat with this, I just got real honest with myself. I'm like, I'm not a distracted person. And I'm like, am I? And it got down into literally the nitty gritty of everything of like, do I allow things to distract me when I'm driving, when I'm on the phone with somebody, if I'm on a Zoom with somebody, is my office set up for it?

2:13 Is my house set up for it? Is my day set up? Like, I just started to kind of open Pandora's box. And it was like, holy come to Jesus moment. Like, I have a lot of distraction in my world that I needed to put on some blinders and recalibrate. So, yeah. That's a good one. That guy kind of knew a thing or two. He's kind of a big deal. He's kind of a big deal. Yeah, Marcus Aurelius, freaking amazing stuff. I feel the same way. It was a similar vibe around here over the holiday season. So number two today is... The universe responds to specificity. And this is one in particular that, you know, we as we get around this time of year and everybody is doing their their goal setting and, you know, their their vision casting and all of the shit that we do this time of year typically.

3:06 Yeah. More often than not, we don't get specific enough about our goals and really what we're asking. We hear about manifestation and law of attraction and things of that nature. And we're doing things like saying, okay, this is the year I'm going to be healthier. Great. What exactly does that mean? This is the year that I'm going to level up my sales. Great. Great. Buy exactly how much, you know, and I think it's one of those deals where I go back to, I go back to the old sports analogy of, you know, aim small, miss small. I mean, sports and obviously marksmanship, aim small, miss small.

3:51 You know, if we have, and here's the truth, like, let's just go beyond the woo woo for a second. And if we purely look at an outcome, if I have a broad outcome or a very unclear outcome, it's much harder to hit than if I have something that's very specific. And the truth is that oftentimes we look at this and I feel like we think it's safe to have a broader outcome. Like we're scared to say the real thing that we really want and all the specificity. And in truth, we end up further away from the thing that we really want, the specific thing that we really want, when we declare it in a broad way.

4:36 I think there's a, there's so much magic in this and B anytime we're in a space of scarcity and we're setting goals from that space, it can be dangerous. Right. And I, I liken it to like, if you're out in the middle of the ocean, you're like, Oh crap, we're going to, we're going to starve if we don't find land and get food. And we make the goal. I want to find land. And then we find Antarctica and we're like, crap, I should have been a little more specific, right? It's a little cold here. And that happens a lot, I think, in terms of our goal setting. If we're writing those goals or those vision, you know, vision casting from a place of scarcity, you really have to be in a space of what do I really, really, truly want? So, yeah. Amen.

5:17 All right. Number three. Yeah. So thanks to Marcus Aurelius, time management. So again, distractions. I got to be honest with you. In November, I was melting in terms of just my energy level. And when I stepped back and looked at where was I being distracted? What was going down? My calendar was... I buckled on my rules. I started taking meetings at 6 a.m. to accommodate other people's schedules. And I started taking meetings the same day at 6 p.m. And I couldn't figure out why I was melted for the next day. And there's just a lot of pieces as it related to my calendar and my time management that I just let slip through the cracks for the sake of being accommodating.

5:58 And it was hurting me at the end of the day. And so I did something and we could probably do a full episode. We could actually do a full training on this. I leveraged chat GPT. and my time management and my calendar and like, dude, My world is so sick and I've been running the last two weeks using my new schedule. And I cannot tell you how much freaking energy I have. I feel an alignment and my day is set up based on priority and it's gangster. So I know you've been recalibrating too. I have been. And I think you just said a really important word that I'll hit on very briefly, which is alignment. When we get exhausted because of our calendar, it's because we're out of alignment. We have lowered our standards.

6:40 in terms of our time management and what we're allowing on our calendar, we're out of alignment. That in and of itself leaves us in a place of resentment and exhaustion and all of the things. So it's such a great word. And I can see it in you. I saw it in you last year when it got a little sticky and I can see the renewal in you now. So that's super awesome. And speaking of that... Number four is state over strategy. You know, in so many things that we do and so many of the areas that we consult and coach in, whether it's sales or marketing or, you know, managing a company, um, We oftentimes are really looking for the next strategy and not that strategy is not important.

7:27 Of course it is. But the truth of the matter, and we see this over and over and over again, and it always comes into play around this time of year because everybody's got, you know, at least hopefully some kind of plan for what you're going to do and the entire thing. And they forget completely about state. And we see this especially to be true in the game of sales, where everybody is looking at the different strategic pieces that they can use to get their sales to the next level. And they're ignoring their state. So it's just a reminder that we've got to take state over strategy always. Because if we have the wrong state and the best strategy in the world, it's doomed to fail.

8:09 Yeah. Interesting little connection point. So part of me recalibrating my morning routine was how can I get myself into like the most optimum state? Hence, like, okay, let's go to Marcus Aurelius. I have a whole plethora of other things. We should do a whole session on morning routines too. That could be another fun one. But yeah, like literally in recalibrating my entire calendar, it's for state management through the day. So go figure. Who knew? Who knew? Who thunked it? Yeah. You know, every once in a while, we, we, we eat our own cooking. Like I swear, we really do. Uh, yeah. One of the other things that came up number five, um, this one, honestly, just, just absolutely.

8:49 There's no other way to say it. Just absolute was a total kick in the balls. Um, how much longer are you willing to wait to demand the best of yourself? How much longer are you going to wait to demand the best of yourself? Yeah. And this one really hit me like a hammer. And it was so divinely inspired personally because there's been so much growth for me over the last seven to eight years. But... It was time for the next quantum leap. And I couldn't see it yet. And I was not asking that of myself.

9:29 And man alive, I'll tell you what, and all the reflecting that I did in the last two to three weeks, I came face to face with a mirror of that one in particular. And it was very clear that it was time to kind of make that next quantum jump. It was like anything less than this is absolutely unacceptable. I think it dovetails just with, you know, we get what we tolerate. And it's like, if we're not going for greatness, what are we doing? So, you know, I love that sentiment. And I've seen that in you too, by the way. It's like, I know we've had some deep conversations over the last couple weeks.

10:12 But it's like, okay, great. Like, what are we really capable of? What are we really here to do? Who are we really here to help impact? And like, are we bringing the best of ourselves to the party? Yeah. If we are high five, let's keep it rocking. If we're not like Houston, what the heck? Like, let's, let's level up. And a huge part of that too, by the way, is proximity. So I think this is kind of all, it wraps a bow on it. It's like your environment, like changing up. Like for me, I changed up my office like crazy, like getting time management dialed in, like, like also really looking at like, who are my friendships, where I want to spend time. Like... These things all create the state that we're in, which then ultimately determines how we play, which ultimately determines the rewards that we reap.

10:56 So I love that you had that. And I think it's just a beautiful sentiment to kick into this new year, my friend. Yep, absolutely. And what I'll also say to just to put one final bow, the bow on top of the bow is relative to proximity. You know, one of the things is that when you when when you say to somebody who already, you know, looks at you as a high achiever and and all the growth and all the things and you tell them, oh, my God, no, this is just I this is bullshit. It's unacceptable. I got to get to the next level of myself. And they look at you with a blank stare and go, my God, I don't understand. you're in the wrong room. And what I want to say about that is that it's funny.

11:38 We've had all of this was an amalgamation of the reflections that we've had over the last several weeks. And what I love about it is that we came together. We didn't, a lot of our time was spent in a vacuum away from each other over the last couple of weeks. And we came together and had so many of the same reflections. So that is super cool. And it says something about proximity. So with that said, we ran a little long, but we're allowed to do that. It's our freaking show. Just chill out there. All right. You know, you got a little, you got a little extra bonus minute, but my friend, this was a really good one. And you're, you're in the clear. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's right. This was a really good one today. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast.

12:21 And until next time, be well. Take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.