Business Innovators Radio - JM Ryerson: How to Lead Your Team to Peak Performance

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

JM Ryerson is a Leadership & Performance Coach, International Speaker, host of the Let’s Go Win podcast, and Best Selling Author of the books “Let’s Go Win”, “Champion’s Daily Playbook”, and “Upgrade”. JM has been building companies and leading sales teams for over 20 years, and is the founder and CEO of Let’s Go Win whose mission is to increase leadership and help teams achieve peak performance. JM’s passion is to inspire people to become open to what life has in store for them, and to provide others with the tools needed to overcome their self-limiting beliefs.Learn more at: letsgowin.com.Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogdenhttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/rebelpreneur-radio-with-ralph-brogden/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/jm-ryerson-how-to-lead-your-team-to-peak-performance

Your Resistance is future. The revolution has begun. We're listening to Revelpreneur radio, helping you break the rules and build the business you need for the life you want. And now, broadcasting his pirate signal

from somewhere beyond the status quo. Here's your host, best-selling author, marketing and media strategist, Ralph Brogden. Hello and welcome to Rebel It's the show that helps you build the business you need so you can live the life you want. I am Ralph Brogden. I'm always interested in having people on who could help us with peak performance, especially for you solopreneurs, anyone who is in a startup or a scale up situation, trying to get more with less.

Because the very nature of your business is that's what you're always trying to do, to maximize and to optimize every single operational. not just professionally, not just in your business, but in your own self. Because as the rebelpreneur, the extent to which you are optimized and maximized reflects on how well your organization performs, whether it's just you as the solopreneur or whether it's an entire team that you're leading. So I'm really happy to have today's guest with us who is going to help untangle that and dig into it for us and with us. J.M. Ryerson is a leadership and performance coach.

He's an international speaker and host of the Let's Go Win podcast. I love that. That's a wonderful name there. He's a bestselling author of the books Let's Go Win, Champions Daily Playbook, and Upgrade. J.M. has been building companies and leading sales teams for over 20 years, and he is the founder and CEO of Let's Go Win, whose mission is to increase leadership. and help teams achieve peak performance. J.M., welcome to Rebel Bernouwer Radio.

Oh, brother, thanks for having me, Ralph. I appreciate it, man. This would be a lot of fun and just what an awesome intro, man. That's perfect. Well, just reading your introduction is enough to be motivating and inspiring. So tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got started with all of this. Yeah, so I'm originally from Montana, and I ended up graduating and landed in California somehow.

About three years after working in corporate, I decided I didn't like people telling me where I had to be, how much money I could make. So that led me into being an entrepreneur. And I built three companies along with some other folks, obviously in the financial service world. I don't know anything about financial services. So we're clear,

I was good at building teams and leadership. and it was great, man. I mean, literally I got to work on leadership and performance and mindset, but I was really focused on building teams because that truly is my sweet spot. But what happened is I wrote the first book, Let's Go Win, for my two sons, 17 and 14-year-old boys that my wife and I have. And the whole idea is I didn't want them to skin their knees as many times as I did. Well, the lady I was working with said, man, you're selfish.

And I said, what are you talking about? She said, if you only share this book with two human beings, yourself. All right, lesson learned. We've published it. And it sent me on this path, man, where I get to work with people to inspire them to live their best lives, working on their dreams. The podcast came along, more writing. And just every day, Ralph, I get to work with people on them truly working on achieving success.

So I'm blessed, man. To write the book for it to come out the way it did, it's been an awesome journey. Who is your typical client and how do you find them? When they come to you, what's the problem that they're trying to solve? Yeah, the typical client recently has really been executives. I was working with professional athletes for a while on performance and mindset, and that's awesome. But it's really gone to executives that are crushing it financially. but the big problems they have is their relationships are garbage or their health is not in a good place.

And what I've really developed is a system that leads to work-life balance or work-life harmony. I go back and forth on the two words. But really, it's trying to make sure that they're not just focus in business because I was there myself. You know, I was separated from my wife for a year because I lost sight of what was truly important. I was almost 300 pounds and my, you know, my health was a mess. My relationships are garbage. And so I'm coming from a place of I've been through this. Let me see how I can help you to really be fulfilled, not just in business, but in your

relationships and your health. So that's really what I've been spent a lot of time with is those executives and teams. Yeah. That's interesting that you said that because I've talked to others and I've read. some other people's opinions. And this whole thing of work-life balance, for some reason, it causes angst for whatever reason. And some want to get rid of the concept altogether.

There's no such thing. It's, especially now that we're working from home or we're not connected to a physical location as much. But I like this idea of work-life harmony. And I'm wondering, maybe you sense the same thing that I sense that people are kind of getting skittish about work-life balance. In your mind, what's the difference and why are people kind of backing off of the work-life balance? Why is work-life harmony more of a way of putting it? Yeah, I think people, when they're trying to balance, they're like, it's a scale.

So, you know, give X amount of time here and then you balance it out this way. look, it's never going to be a perfect formula. But what I would say is when you're doing work, so like you and I are doing this show. And Ralph, you are my entire world right now, brother, nothing else matters. And I'm going to give you 100%. And then when you and I are done and I go be a dad, I'm going to give 100% to that. And then when I'm done with that and my wife and I are going to be 100% there, that is really the harmony that I'm looking for because often what happens is somebody does work and

then they bring it home with them. And now they're on the couch doing emails with their kids and they're talking about over dinner. It's like, that's not balance. That's not harmony at all. That's just doing subpar work afterwards. And you're not giving any real attention to your wife or to your kids. And so it's really figuring out, hey, how can I have true balance or harmony by being present 100% while I'm doing my job, be 100% present as a dad, be a hundred percent present as a dad, be 100% as a husband. And that is a possible. And it's really just making sure that you're filling those buckets, each one of them,

and not just doing work and letting life happen haphazardly, which is what happens so often with executives. And it's sad to see because they work so hard to have an amazing life. And yet they don't get to fulfill that because they're so scattered and they're not. really intentional about what they're doing. Yeah, yeah. That's a, that's not a good place to be when you're at work and you're feeling guilty about something that's undone at home. And then you get home and you're thinking about all the problems you left behind at work

and what you've got to do the next day. You're never there. You're never in the moment. So it sounds like this mindfulness, this focused intention, maybe that's the first step. in creating this amazing life, amazing business. I think that's really critical for rebelpreneurs, self-employed people who technically they never get a day off. They never leave work because work is where they are.

So when people are struggling, it affects every area of their life. It affects their health, affects their relationships. What are some of the ways that you take someone. where they are, you begin to lead them in a path towards better fulfillment, better relationships, better health. Is there a kind of an all-encompassing paradigm that you have to instill in people before you can get them to that next level? Actually, your intro kind of summarized exactly what I would say, which is taking care

of yourself first before you take care of anyone else. And what I mean by that is literally, as a leader, you have to lead yourself first. first before you wake up and you start taking care of the kids or the email or the job or the house or you have to take care of you because if you don't, then you can't show up as the best version of yourself. So the most basic former coach and I do with everyone is take care of your mind, your body, and your soul before anyone else. Now, my process is almost two and a half hours long.

I realize that's a little over the top. But what I would ask is 15 minutes, just five minutes, take care of your mind. Read something, listen to a podcast, grow your mind. Everybody knows to move their body. You need to be active. It's important for not only physically, but mentally. And then the soul part so often is forgotten about, which is, I don't care if you read the Bible, you walk on the beach, you take a hike.

For me, it's meditation. And really give yourself that time so that by the time you show up as an important, employer as a husband, as a dad, you're showing up as the very best version of you. Those are the most basic fundamentals. And people have heard that before. It's not the first time. But are you actually taking action and giving yourself that gift to take care of yourself first? Yeah.

So what they tell you on the airplane, right? In the event of atmosphere compromise or whatever, if the plane starts to crash, put your mask on first before you try to help others. So that's that's really interesting. You mentioned, and I'm going to circle back to, you said your process is two and a half hours. I thought you, at first I thought you meant your process of explaining what it is. But no, I think what you're saying is your morning ritual, your morning process is two and a half hours. Yeah, it's become quite substantial.

Well, that piques my interest because mine's at least that long as well. And I'd really be curious. I think it would benefit our listeners and make it really practical. If you wouldn't mind sharing, what do you do for two and a half hours a day to get you in peak shape? Yeah. So the first thing I do, before my left foot hits the ground, I say three things that I'm grateful for. I always start that way. If my wife's awake, I'll verbalize it.

If she's not, I'll say it in my head because I want to start my day off in the most optimal state. Once I get out of bed and get going, now I'm going to start to work on my mind. So I typically do some brain games just to get some action going. Then I start by doing a physical workout, whether that's yoga, doing the tonal, whatever workout I choose to do for the day. Then I get into my meditation affirmations and my breathing. And that's about 30 minutes in itself. after that, then I start to fuel up with, you know, the coffee and the MCT oil and things that I do for

myself. After that, then my kids, I'm probably helping get them going off to, you know, their various, you know, school or whatever they have that morning. After that, now I can start to focus on, you know, being, you know, whatever role I'm wearing at that time. So when you piece it all together, it ends up being about two and a half hours. Now, I would love to shrink it a little bit, maybe, but it feels so good. So good when I get through that routine that I don't know what to cut out, man. So it's just, it's part of my every day and it just means waking up a little earlier. Yeah, yeah. I love it. Well, that, that to me is, is the critical foundation. It's easy to do the right things when everything's going wrong.

So long as you have made that a habit, that becomes your ritual. It becomes your daily practice. And, hey, maybe your routine doesn't take two and a half hours like JM's does. It doesn't have to be hours and hours. But the key is to figure out what are those elements that are going to refill you, recharge you, rejuvenate you, get your mind in the place. needs to be, get your body moving where it needs to be. And whatever that is, whatever that looks like for you, it doesn't have to be the way I do it

or the way JM does it. Man, that puts you in a power position right from the beginning. So is it hard to get executives on board with that? Or are they more, because I don't work with executives. I'm like you. I was in that world for a while, decided, didn't want to be in that world and wanted to come out of my own. And I'm just curious if you get a lot of pushback on your work or if by the time they come to you, they are just open for anything. Just curious how that dynamic is with the executives.

Yeah, well, that's a great question. And I do. I get a ton of pushback for sure. But that's why I wrote the third book, which is upgrade. because it's interesting. I, for 20 years, I tried to change people. And it was just the wrong thing because people don't like change. They resist it.

But here's the difference. People love to upgrade. So when I present it as, look, brother, I'm not trying to change anything. Let's just consider an upgrade because I'm no longer saying there's something wrong with you, but are you open to an upgrade? And if you think about it, when people go to an airline and they're like, Hey, Mr. Ryerson, you're going from your coach seat to first class. It's a change, but it's an upgrade, and you're fired up.

Yeah. So when I start to really position it that way, people are like, oh, yeah, I could do that. I could upgrade myself. But if I say we're changing anything, oh, fire alarms go off and I'm just the devil. But if I say, you know what, Ralph, how about we consider an upgrade? All of a sudden, Ralph's like, yeah, man, that sounds good. I'll upgrade myself. I'm overdue for an upgrade.

Yeah. Wow, that's some powerful psychological positioning. So you've done that twice now. You did it by shifting from work-life balance to work-life harmony. See, words are so important. Words create pictures in our minds. Words trigger beliefs and beliefs trigger behaviors. So work-life harmony.

And now, instead of change, everybody dreads change, I was like, upgrade. Oh, yeah, upgrade. I deserve an upgrade. That's really powerful. Really powerful. Tell us about the Champions Daily Playbook. I love that title as well because I create my own playbooks. And I haven't read your book, but I'm curious what your approach to that is if we're on the same page.

Well, when I started this company, I wanted access for everyone to be able to work with me. Now, I know when I look at my hourly rate, I'm like, oh, that's really not feasible for everyone. Right. But that's why I decided to write Champions Daily Playbook. I'm like, look, this is exactly the coaching that I would take you through. Just the difference would be I would be there as an accountability piece with it. So for whatever it is, 10 bucks, 15 bucks on Amazon, you literally, any goal you want to accomplish in 90 days, if you follow it through, you will hit it. I feel that confident because I've watched client after client after client. it's not that there's anything remarkable in the book. It's just the practice of doing it.

Just the practice of really setting your intentions, saying three things you're grateful for, you know, observing how your day went. How is my attitude and activity? And when you do all that 90 days straight, it's amazing because you've created a habit. And so that's why I wrote the second one is I was like, look, I want everybody to have access to this information. what's the best way I can get it out there. And that's how that one came about.

Awesome. And then your first book, Let's Go Win, and that is, that's the namesake of your company and of your domain. So that's like the foundational, the seminal piece, the manifesto. Give us the overview of that book. Yeah, the idea was I wanted my kids to have something that they could really learn all these things. And so I'm a kid from Montana that was taught boys don't cry. Well, why is that important? Because I started chapter one on vulnerability.

That's how profound the lesson of being vulnerable has been in my life and in leadership. And I wanted my boys to know, look, it's good for you to be vulnerable. It's a good thing. And I end with transcendence or transcend. It's a really big word because that's overcoming self-limiting beliefs. And like it or not, we all inherit some of these beliefs. And I wanted my kids to know, hey, dad may have given you some crappy beliefs, but it doesn't mean it's your destiny.

You absolutely can overcome some of these things. And in between, there's, you know, communication and simplicity and courage. And there's 12 chapters so that if you jumped on an airplane in L.A. and landed in New York, you could finish the book with three takeaways from each chapter and really apply it to your life. So I'm real proud of all the work, of course, but that one's kind of, I mean, that's my baby. I'm proud of that work. And it's helped a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. Sounds wonderful. It sounds like you've got, you've got a lot of tools in your toolbox and, and superpowers that will benefit and continue to help so many people. What are you working on right now that's

got you really excited? Boy, that's a great question, man. We've had such good, traction with some of the Instagram and reaching people that way. I'm not a huge social media person myself, but I realize how selfish that. Yeah, it's funny. It's like, but I want to reach more people. Well, guess what? There's this amazing tool, Instagram and YouTube and Facebook. And so I finally have to say, look, it's not about you. And that's my leadership philosophy is this is not about me. So I'm not comfortable doing the videos yet that's being selfish. And so I'm really proud of the work that my team and I have been working on to reach more people through Instagram. Let's go win 365.

Shameless plug there for you, Ralph. Yeah. Go for it. You know, so that's been awesome. And then there's a new project I'm working on with hero. com. And Carla White, shout out to her. She's awesome.

This platform is all audible. but for executives that are busy, they have it on the go, all these courses available to them. And that's been a really fun undertaking and just an amazing woman. I'm so blessed to have met her and started to work on that hero.fm. That's hero.fm. H-I-R-O.fm. Yeah. She's, she's brilliant, man. She's such a smart, kind, generous, just salt of the earth person.

And really, everybody needs Carla in their life. Wonderful. Wonderful. Okay. Well, and then your website is let's go win.com. That's probably the best way to reach out to you directly. Find out more about your work and what you have to offer. As well as these books on Amazon, Let's Go Win, Champions Daily Playbook and Upgrade,

all by J.M. Ryerson. So, hey, if you're not motivated at the end of this conversation to at least take a step and go buy a book, go subscribe to something. I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you're just brain dead or something. Because I'm going to go check out these resources. I think anything, anytime that we can self-motivate. Because, listen, the world is all about draining and pulling you away and distracting you

and bringing you down. And you can't rely on external situations to pump you up and keep you where it needs to be. You need to assume that the outward circumstances of your life are all going to conspire against you to try and make you less to hold you back. Life puts the obstacles there. It's how you respond to that obstacle that empowers you to overcome it, go around it, dig under it, blow it up, whatever you need to do. So take advantage of these resources from J.M. Ryerson, his mission at Let's Go Win is to increase leadership and help teams achieve peak performance. So whether you are a team of one or a team of many, go check them out at let's go win.com. J.M., this has really been inspiring for me.

I'm going to go check these things out. Any final thoughts or words of wisdom that you'd like to leave us with? you know the one thing i would say thank you for having me ralph you're awesome as a host but i appreciate it the one thing i would leave everyone with is i hope everyone is able to show up as their truly authentic self take the masks off and just be you because that's the best version of you and i talk about it in the first book for sure because we start layering on these masks masks are meant for parties man and they are not meant for the real world. So I want people to take them off and just be you because that is the best version of you.

And it's so much easier. It's so freeing to do that. That'd be my final comment because I just, I love seeing people in true authenticity. And the more I can help people bring that out of them, the more fulfilled I get. Yeah. Yeah. That's a powerful word of advice. And it's easier to manage your energy when you're not pretending to be something that you're not.

So, yeah, wonderful words of advice from J.M. Ryerson of Let's GoWind.com. J.M., thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate it. Thank you, brother. You've been listening to Rebelpreneur Radio with Ralph Brogden. Download the show notes and much more at Rebelpreneur.com.