Living The Red Life - #1 Lifehack to Happiness (Having Hard Conversations)

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

How can you be a better leader, communicator, partner, and boss – and get more results out of everyone around you? Having hard conversations is one of the core values that Rudy ascribes to as an entrepreneur who's always looking to improve. Welcome to 'Real Talk With Rudy'!Rudy is giving us his #1 Hack to Happiness with the rationale you need to kick things up a notch by making healthy confrontation part of your habit and routine. Whether it's with the missus or your staff, sometimes you need to clear the air, get an idea of each others' expectations, and work out a healthy compromise from there.It's part of our evolutionary process to do better and to be better. And with Rudy's instructive formula on the 'How To' of having hard conversations, hopefully, you too can think of those people in your life that you need to sit down with, and hash it out with them in a healthy way, and grow from there. Show someone you care by having that hard conversation. Welcome to Wonderland. "I really do believe that one of the best things you can do for people is have hard conversations." ~ Rudy MawerIn This Episode:Why conflict is important Understanding that it's part of our evolutionary process to be betterWhy having that hard conversation is a way of showing that you careHow society has turned constructive criticism into a bad thingHow to pick what's urgent and affecting your quality of life to challengeWhat happens when you have that Hard ConversationGetting into the habit and routine of having hard conversationsWhy it's okay to have different expectationsGetting rid of 'the trash': a Call To ActionConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/rudymawer/Instagram - www.instagram.com/rudymawerlifeFacebook - www.facebook.com/rudymawerlifeTwitter - www.twitter.com/rudymawer

If you want to adapt, grow, thrive, and be the best version of yourself, then you have to do what? You have to work on that every single day, and you have to have hard conversations with yourself on a regular basis, not once a year. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderlandland and change your life. What's up guys, welcome back to another episode of living the red life. Today we're going to talk

about hard conversations, how you can be a better leader, how you can be a better communicator, how you can be a better partner, how you can be a better boss, how you can be a better co-worker and how you can get more results out of everyone around you, okay? And this is one of the biggest things that I've stayed focused on in the last year. It's one of the biggest things I focus on with my exec team. It's one of the biggest things I focus on with my relationships, personal relationships, family. And it's one thing that I think will change your life if you adopt this core value, okay?

And it's called hard, I call it at least hard conversations. And in my company, I call it at least hard conversations. And in my company, I call it real talk with Rudy. And we do these sessions every month. So what it is, is a 15 minute session with my exec team. This isn't the whole thing, but this is one thing where we have real talk and I have a hard conversation with them. And I put this in place, and this is just one example, because I realized that hard conversations were missing in life. And I really believe that, and then we adopted this into other areas of the business, and I adopted it into my personal life and everything like that. So I really do believe that one of the best things you can do for people is have hard

conversations. Now, the problem with society, the problem with most people, problem with myself and with you and with everyone out here is we don't like conflict, okay? We don't like, you know, some people more and less than others. I actually don't mind it. I don't love it, right? But I'm okay debating. I've always liked debating and whatever. But most people avoid conflict. And this is a big weakness of society. It's a big weakness, major weakness of most of my employees. It's a very big weakness of personal relationships, friends, family. So pretty much it affects all of society. And if you look at a lot of leaders and strong entrepreneurs, they don't mind conflict and having hard, awkward conversations

because they know how important it is. But I'm constantly having to remind my team, my exec team, my staff, and then have hard conversations with them, make sure they're having hard conversations with their staff under them. And then I'm having hard conversations with people around me, right? My wife a lot, probably the most, not because it's needed, but because I I mean, it's so beneficial. And, you know, to kind of recap, right, why is this so important? Well, over time and time and time, we've all obviously as a society become so conscious of people's feelings and positivity,

which is great. I think you should be positive. But what happens is we're so conscious of people's feelings, people's emotion, that it's actually took away from one of the most important parts of evolution, right? Which is being better and getting better. We're only here as a species because we've evolved, right? It's called evolution. And how do you evolve? Well, you have to know your weaknesses, right? If you look over many years, we evolved as a species to counter our weaknesses. We evolved by taking away problems, right? We had a problem of being cold in the winter, right? Ice ages and people dying from hypothermia. And as we evolved through these ice ages and the cold winters and people were dying, well then what happened? We had to figure out how do we evolve through this? How do we survive? We have to go and create, right, fire. We have to figure out, we rub two sticks together, we have fire. That gives us heat and we can survive. We have to go and create coves. We have to kill animals to create fluffy jackets,

not like this red one. I didn't kill a red fluffy animal. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you're not, then I'm wearing my big red fluffy jacket that most of you probably know. But the point is we had to figure out on how to evolve. And we had to have a hard conversation at one point and said, hey, you got to go kill that massive animal over there that may kill you because we need the food from it and we need the skin from it to stay warm and make blankets and survive the ice age, right? Or the cold winters. So for our life, we've had to evolve and adapt. And you can only evolve and adapt by understanding weaknesses and understanding areas that you often have to do things. And what I've

learned in life is generally the things you need the most are the hardest things to swallow. Generally, the things you need the most are the hardest things to swallow. Generally, the things you need the most are the hardest conversations to have. And generally, the things your staff, friends, peers, people around you in your circle, the things they need the most are also very hard pills to swallow. And because they're hard pills to swallow, you don't have those conversations. And here's the biggest takeaway to start and to understand is, if you don't have those hard, awkward conversations, you're doing them a disservice. So if you care about your staff, if you don't have those hard, awkward conversations, you're doing them a disservice. So if you care about your staff, if you care about your family, if you care about your spouse, if you care about your children, if you care about your exec team, if you care about

yourself, right, because you can have these with yourself as well, you have to have hard conversations. And if you want to adapt, grow, thrive and be the best version of yourself, then you have to do what? You have to work on that every single day and you have to have, grow, thrive, and be the best version of yourself, then you have to do what? You have to work on that every single day. And you have to have hard conversations with yourself on a regular basis, not once a year. If you only try and lose weight once a year and go to the gym once a year and eat healthy once a year, how great do you look a year from today? Not very good because you only did it one day a year. If you want to be the best version of yourself and keep pushing to be that best version,

then you have to do that every single day. It's not, you can't do it once a month. So you've really got to understand and take away from this that hard conversations and expectations and telling people, you know, their weaknesses is a really healthy, good thing. And the society has made it into a bad thing. Society's tried to go all positive. But, and you know, there is a really healthy good thing and the society has made it into a bad thing society's tried to go all positive but and you know there's obviously some people joke about these partition participation trophies and and i'm not here to try and get into the

politics of where society's going and stuff right now i'm here to just get more to the meat and potatoes that in business at least which most of you are at some capacity and if if not in your personal life, you're avoiding hard conversations. I know it to be true because I meet hundreds of people and I have, you know, nearly 100 staff. You're scared to have them. They're awkward. You don't have them. You avoid them. You don't have them with yourself. You don't have them with your spouse. You don't have them with your team members. And then what happens is all this resentment builds up, right? And these problems build up. And you don't ever fix these problems. And it's kind of stupid because if you had water dripping on your head every day from a burst pipe, you wouldn't just sit there all day working on your computer while water dripped on your head

because you'd be sick of it. You know, it's a problem. You've got to address it. And what would you also know? It's going to probably get worse over time because that that leak can get bigger and bigger and bigger and if there's a storm and the water flows in from a storm then that pipe might you know burst and then you get soaked with water and your house gets flooded right that is logical common sense problem is you don't apply that common sense into this you don't go hey there hey, there's a problem here. I'm sick and tired of this person doing this, or this performance can't last, or how they're tackling this project won't last, or how they are presenting this data to me won't last, or how they're doing this, going out every Friday night, you know, spouse without telling me and leaving me with

the kids won't last. And them doing this and this is a major problem. And of course, you have to pick your battles. I'm not saying you have hard conversations about everything, right? But you have to go, this drip is now a big enough problem that I have to have a hard, honest conversation and tell them it has to be fixed and address why and obviously be logical and fair. And obviously, you have to pick your battles, like I said, right? If there's a little bit of dust on something,

you probably can live with that, right? If you didn't dust the top of a TV, you can't live with something dripping on you all day, every day. So you have to pick what's urgent, right? What's important, what's affecting your quality of life or your output in business versus a little piece of dust, right? On the TV. And it becomes like a kind of catch-22 if you have a big problem about everything then it's like you have a problem about nothing right because now they're all this bit everything's big that's not how this should work either so first thing to accept is what and I want you to think about this for a second you can pause the podcast or the episode and I guarantee there's at least three to five conversations and people right now.

Maybe a few of you don't because you're like super good at this and super successful, but pretty much all of you will have three or five people right now that you've been putting out of having a hard conversation. And I want you to pause and think who that is, right? Or think of it probably sprung up instantly in your head. Okay. I guarantee. What about you, Ali? Do you have someone right now? He sat across me filming this that you know you should have a hard conversation with. How many people? Okay. At least three people, right? I might go around my whole office and ask. And I promise you, I want you to go and plan this hard conversation. And 90% of the time, listen, and I'll tell you why it's only 90. 80, 90% of the time, listen, and I'll tell you why it's only 90,

80, 90% of the time, it will be liberating. It will be great. It will be a little awkward for five minutes, then it won't be, okay? You will be supporting the person. They will probably appreciate the conversation. You will feel a weight has been lifted off your shoulders when you have that conversation and your relationship will be better. You'll be more aligned. Okay. There's a hundred different benefits to why you have this, but you're just too scared to have it right now. You're putting it off and it's okay. That's human nature. We all do it. That's why I'm filming this episode today. Okay. And I have to stay disciplined to do this every day and every week. It's like the gym, right? It's not some

people it's like supernatural. Most people it's like they enjoy week. It's like the gym, right? It's not some people, it's like supernatural. Most people, it's like they enjoy it. It's natural. They know they need it, but they still sometimes wake up tired and they're super busy and they make it happen. That's kind of how it is for me. Sometimes it's natural, but I still have to fight to get it done all the time. And I still occasionally slip and I'm like, oh, I really need to have this conversation. I've been weak. I've been putting it off. You know, what am I doing, Rudy? Come on. And then I'll like pick up the phone and ring them or I'll text them right away or I'll send them a voice memo. So I'm pretty disciplined about it. But I promise you, you'll get all those benefits from having it

and you'll get into like a routine. So like the first time you do it, like at the gym, it's hard, it sucks, it's weird, it's alien, and then you get better and better and better at it, right? And the conversation will go well. It'll be a bit awkward the first few times or for the first few minutes. And like I said, 80, 90%, there'll be tons of benefits and it'll go great.

And you'll go, oh my God, how silly was I for not doing this this whole time and putting it off for two years or a month or two months or whatever, right? And then, like I said, the 10, 20% of people and it will go, you know, it might not go great. And I'm just being transparent here. So most of them just have no ownership. They're not conscious of their surroundings or the environment, conscious of when they're doing a good or a bad job, conscious when they're not meeting expectations.

That's part of it. So some people you can't help them and it's not your fault. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription grows the podcast. It allows

me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more time and money into this podcast to bring you the latest and greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business, and giving you all the greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business, and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge, and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor, if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far, or any previous episode, or any of the content I've done, it would mean the world to me if you hit a five-star review, give us your feedback on the show, the episodes,

and subscribe and download. Plus, if you do that and send me a screenshot on Instagram at RudyMoreLife, I will send you a bunch of my free training, marketing courses, sales courses worth $499. Yes, $500 worth of courses for a simple 30-second review. It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode.

I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in. Now there is a percent of the population or people or conversations you have where they don't like the conversation and they're not aligned. And that's actually okay, right? So that's not their fault. You're, and this happens with me and some of my staff, me and my wife sometimes, like their expectation and my expectation is off. And they might give me this, you know, hey, this is a, you know, real talk or conversation or big problem or not even big, just like, hey, we need to fix this, but I want to be honest.

And I'll go, actually, I don't agree. And this is still healthy still healthy okay it's not the exact outcome of hey this is everything i need you to do and obviously it depends on your role right if you're the boss of a company you're gonna have way more like hey this is this is how it's gonna be this is what needs to happen blah blah blah if you're the most junior person in the company you probably can't have upwards conversations like that with your execs, even your CEO. So obviously, it just also depends how many people you're managing and stuff. Now, sometimes, like I said, there'll be some people with low ownership. They just don't get it.

They take no responsibility. They probably shouldn't be in your life. So forget about those people. And then there will be a percent of people where they don't agree. And you'll have to hash it out but the point is that is super healthy and that's super good and it will still end in a positive note because guess what that's going to cause it's going to leave you guys right with clear expectations and it's going to leave you with two perspectives and if you can't agree still after

that then it's okay because human beings aren't supposed to agree on everything. I say that to my team. And even with my COO, like we agree on a lot of things, 10, 20% of the time, he doesn't agree. I don't agree. And I'll say, yeah, I don't. Yeah, it's okay. We don't, we don't agree on that. It's okay. Right. And then sometimes I'll play the rank card with like, I get it. You don't get it. You don't agree. You don't see my side. I do see, I'm trying to see your side. I get it. but this is what i need done for the company and then sometimes i'll empower him where it's like i don't agree with that i wouldn't do it this way but it's up to you right and it obviously depends on the the department the severity of it how passionate i am about it uh my experience and

all those things right so some of the time you guys won't agree. You'll have different expectations. You know, it's okay. It's the first thing I acknowledge. Say, hey, I'm really glad we had this conversation because it made me understand your side. I never thought about it that way. I still feel this way. You feel that way.

And then what you do, and I have to have this conversation with business partners, with clients, with family members, everything like that. You go, obviously we need to address this, okay? So it's like, okay, well, you go, obviously, we need to address this, okay? So it's like, okay, well, you're over here, I'm over here, okay? And if you're listening on podcast, you can imagine me in my big red fluffy coat with one hand over here on the left and one big hand in the air on the right, okay? So I'm symbolizing you guys are far apart. So you're

far apart on this. How do we meet in the middle? Or how do we get more aligned? How do we get on the same path? And then that creates a follow-up conversation, which obviously can happen on the same call. You don't have to like rebook a second call. You can hash it out. And now you can get clearer on like, hey, this is what I would need. This is what I would need. And then you can work together as a team to get more aligned. And alignment is super important. It's great. So like I said, great things will happen from this.

And 90% of the time, I just want you to know when you go through this, it's just expectation. So you say, hey, I need this to be here. And they didn't understand that. So they weren't trying to do something to upset you. They weren't, you know, I don't believe a lot of my staff, even at times when I'm upset about them, I might think this. Most of the time, my staff aren't deliberately trying to upset Rudy, right? Most of the time, they're not trying to do a shitty job. Most of the time, they're not trying to not follow a process. And sometimes they are, don't get me wrong. But most of the time, they don't understand the topic well, they don't understand the training, they forgot about it, they slacked off on it, and they need, you know, a kind of hook kick up the ass, right? So often when we have these conversations, we give them that, we realign, we set expectations, we say

this has to happen. And then at the very least, I come back, you know, I've said this is what I need. And it's one of two ways. And it's very simple. You can either go away and do it, right? And hopefully you have the skills to do it. If you don't, then we need to talk about who could do this. If you're a fit for the role, if you can stay in the company and all those things. And then at least after that,

if they go away and two weeks later, they still didn't do the report you asked for every day. It's a very simple conversation, which you would have left the old conversation saying, hey, we're going to revisit in two weeks. And obviously, just to be clear, if in two more weeks, you're still missing it, you know, then this conversation is going to be even more hard, right? And, you know, obviously, in two weeks, if you come back and you've not done it, we probably need to talk about, you know, an exit plan or taking you out of this department or

changing your role and putting you on a performance review. And obviously, I don't want to have that conversation with you. And I'm sure you don't want to have that with me. And you agree the expectations are now crystal clear and you can do it, right? Yes. Great. OK. And don't get me wrong. A lot of the time they still won't do it. And that's the wrong person for the job.

But at least you gave it your all. You did everything you could as a manager or owner you followed good practices for you know disciplinary and all those things so and the same with family right it's like hey this is what I need from you this is why and then if they agree to do it they're accountable and you go hey remember that conversation two weeks ago well you haven't done it and it's still causing this effect and harm to me. What are we going to do to fix that? Because I can't maintain this. And then you figure out another workaround. And obviously, it's harder with family or spouse or children because if it keeps happening, keeps happening, keeps happening, you have to figure

out a happy medium unless it's a deal breaker. But with staff, generally, you can work around it faster. So that's kind of my overview on one of the key communication leadership skills of life. I mean, it's a key relationship skill. I think it's something that I'll start talking more about because I'm trying to push it towards at least my staff and my circle and my members. And the reason is I'm so passionate about it is it's been one of the best things for me just in terms of relationships with staff and even just my own stress levels because the thing I haven't talked about which I'll end this episode on is what you don't realize is when you bottle it in it's affecting you a hundred times more than the person and think of those three people right now that you

thought of earlier when I asked you right or? Or the five people. So those three, four, five people that you're thinking about, right? They probably don't care. They probably don't know. They might care if they knew, but they probably don't know that you care every day. So something that's a big problem for you with those people that's maybe keeping you up at night or interrupting your workflow and energy every day or every week, they don't even know. So the first reaction is going to for you with those people that's maybe keeping you up at night or interrupting your workflow and energy every day or every week. They don't even know. So the first reaction is going to be like, oh my God, I didn't even realize I'm so sorry. Yeah, of course I'll work harder on this. And then you go, oh wow, I just bottled this up for two months or this has been bugging me for a

whole week and they didn't even know. So it's like, you're the sucker, right? Because you, for a whole month for a week or every time you see them or every Friday night when you hang out with them or every day when they get in from the house at 6 p.m you're like annoyed and upset it's giving you bad energy and they didn't even know they're off on vacation having a good time and you're taking all the stress so it's giving you a lot of anxiety that they're not even facing so that's the thing to note that like it's going to lift a lot of weight off your shoulders by doing this it's going to be very invigorating for you it's going to build better relationships and it's going to get it off your

chest and it's really important to do that because especially as an entrepreneur you have so much stuff piling on you and you're kind of like a scrapyard a scrapyard can only function where it gets scrap and then it burns the scrap and gets rid of it and takes it to landfill. And what you're doing is you're getting all this BS, right? All this trash from all these people, right? The bigger you are, the more you probably get until you put barriers in place

and then it comes back to a realistic level again. But what most of you are in this middle phase now where you're growing as an entrepreneur, getting all this trash, but you don't have your good system to take it to landfill and to burn it so you're just getting piled on and you now feel i'm just getting more and more and more shit right so you've got to figure out how do i get out of that and one way you get out of that obviously there's a lot of ways delegation team saying no blah blah blah but from a mental relationship standpoint and expectation standpoint, what I

taught you today is going to really help with that. So I want you, I'm going to be proud of you, and I would love to see some of you messaging me, finish this call, okay? Be an exception. Finish this podcast and make the call, I mean. So finish this podcast now, make the call today for at least one or two or three of those people. At the very least, text them. OK, I would sooner you call them because you're going to get it done right away. Some of you, if you text them, if they reply in a day, you'll have lost the momentum of this episode and then you'll go, oh, it doesn't matter. OK, so don't be that person. What I would love for you all to do is ring one of them now and say, hey buddy, right,

or hey wife, hey son, do you have five minutes because there's something that's been bugging me and I want to ask you about it. And they go, yeah, yeah. So this daily report you're supposed to be doing every day, I just wanted to ring because I've been really stressed and annoyed and confused as how you've not been doing it every day. And, you know, obviously if they're a staff member, you talk through why they have to do it and you ask them, is there a how you've not been doing it every day. And, you know, obviously if they're a staff member, you talk through why they have to do it. And you ask them, is there a reason you've not been doing it? Oh, I didn't even get trained on that.

And you go, oh my God, you didn't even train on it? It's been freaking bugging me every goddamn day. So I want you to pick up the phone now and have that conversation. At the very least, text those two or three people. And it can be a positive thing. Like I said, you can even say it's nothing bad. Just wanted to jam on something for five, 10 minutes. I promise you it's going to

be good. I promise you it's going to be healthy. And please then message me. I want to see some messages on Instagram. I want to see, you know, if you're on my mastermind or anything, please let us know how it goes, right? I'm going to have to have a expectation talk and a hard talk with my dog who's disrupting my whole episode right now at the end because he misses me so much. But and you'll see that if you're on YouTube. But yeah, please have those conversations. Please message me. Please tell me how it went. Please tell me the outcome. I would love to hear some of your feedback because it will push me to train this and teach this more to the general public. And it will make me feel value that I added value to you in this 25 minutes or so. So there it is. There's your homework for the week. Please go get it done. Please message

me. Please tell me about it. Please tell me how that conversation went. As always, if you've not, please leave a review that helps me keep doing these and reach more people, hopefully with good messages that can make their life better. And and remember the red life is not just about money it's about building your dream life and a big part of your dream life is relationships and it's energy and it's who you spend your time with and i gave you one hack tip trick today that will make those relationships way better it'll make you a better boss a better leader a better husband wife a better parent i believe time will tell because i don't have kids yet, but I believe this parallels across everything and I'm excited for you to implement it. I'll see you guys very soon.

Take care. Keep living the red life.