Start With A Win - Discover the Secrets to Unlocking Personal & Business Growth + Winning Happiness

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

Want to find ways to grow and be happy? Do you feel like you're losing in life or business?  Are you looking for a way to identify and create wins?  The conversation between CEO Adam and Coach JM unpacks winning mindsets and strategies from these two business and leadership coaches on one podcast!  What losses should we look at?  How can we interpret how we feel in life? JM Ryerson is an International Speaker, Mindset & Business Coach,host of Let’s Go Win Podcast, and Best-Selling Author of "Let's GoWin, The Keys to Living Your Best Life" and “Champion’s DailyPlaybook”. He helps high-performing leaders define and executetheir individual leadership styles in order to grow the impact andprofits of their businesses. His passion is to help others succeed atwork, at home, and in life by offering simple tools that provide awork/life balance. Main Topics01:38 Be YOU!05:04 Our Insecurities and where they start.09:34 When leaders are insecure.11:25 Inspire Your Team!12:55 Why limit yourself…Raise your Bar!15:25 A person in wrong position at your company.18:23 You can’t hire & teach integrity…hire their values that align with companies.18:56 Be better in personal life, be better professionally!21:39 How you do one thing is how you do all things!Connect with JM Ryerson:http://www.letsgowin.com Connect with Adam: http://www.startwithawin.comhttps://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcontos/http://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/  / @leadershipfactory   Listen, rate, and subscribe!Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle Podcasts

Welcome to Start With A Win, where we talk franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. And coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. Have a great guest on today, J.M. Rearson, mindset and business coach. J.M. is actually the let's go win guy. I'm the start with a win guy. This is going to be a lot of fun. Let me give you a little bit of background on JM. He's an international speaker, mindset and business coach, host of Let's Go Win podcast and bestselling author of Let's Go Win,

The Keys to Living Your Best Life, and also Champions Daily Playbook. He helps high-performing leaders define and execute their individual leadership styles in order to grow the impact and profits of their businesses. JM, welcome. Thank you, Adam. Thanks for having me, brother. I appreciate it. And I love the fact that we're going to be talking about winning. It is truly one of my favorite things to discuss. So this should be a lot of fun. Yeah, this is a blast because you know, what's interesting is we see so many people go through life and they're just kind of in this doldrum. In fact, I just had an interview on with my good friend, Andrew Sherman, and we were talking about disengagement and actively disengage people, things like that. And it seems interesting

because we don't even just see employees that are disengaged or that are, you know, let's use air quotes here, losing at life and are just freaking miserable. But we see a lot of leaders that are that way. Also, you talk a lot about showing up as you and the success formula for leaders to win. Unpack that a little bit for me. Yeah, man, show up as you is basically just it's not basically it is it's being your authentic self. And so what's fascinating about what you're talking about with these leaders, and I was definitely one of these at a point in my career, where I was trying to act a certain way, look a certain way. And brother, it takes so much energy to do that. So you're spending all this time and energy to look a

certain way instead of just being that true, authentic self. And once I decided to just be, I'm a kid from Montana, I'm a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy, just like I'm wearing today. That's who I am. And that's where I'm comfortable. And it takes no time, no energy to be that. And when that happens, people see you for who you are. And what do you know, your leadership lid continues to expand and get better. So it's amazing that we have to almost teach ourselves to just go back to just being you be comfortable with who you are. People will accept you and appreciate you. But so many people have been lost along the way. And I think it starts in about middle school or so where you start to compromise a little bit, try and fit in. You want to be liked. And the truth is, man, the authentic you is the best version of you. And so that's really what I coach my clients on is let's just be you.

It's so easy when you're your authentic self. That's interesting because people feel judged. And that, I think, really drags people down as that weight of carrying around the judgment on their shoulders. And they're there. It makes them worried about how other people feel. And you're right. It totally makes them uneasy. It's fascinating because, you know, like if you're like say you meet it and this is a weird analogy, but I mean, I have two German shepherds and when somebody, when they meet somebody, if this person is trying to be somebody, they're not the dogs get upset. Do we, do we notice that as human beings also? I mean, is, is that what causes people to get more judgmental or to attack people? Or, I mean,

take me through that when you're not showing up as you, what happens? Yeah. It's, I mean, people can feel it 100%. And you can just put yourself in those shoes. When you see somebody that is truly authentic, truly vulnerable, that is someone that you are attracted to. That's someone that you're like, yes, I trust you. Or if you see someone that's kind of fake and you know it, you get that gross feeling where you're like man i feel like i need to go take a shower so we actually know what it feels like but it is fascinating when our ego gets kind of you know uncomfortable that we're gonna put on this facade and it's why it's just

so easy and freeing when you just show up as yourself and people that have done it when they really discover this is who I am I'm totally comfortable with it like oh man it's so much easier why have I been doing this other thing for so long so it is an interesting thing Adam and the dog thing is really interesting for you to bring that up because again, they're not trying to show anybody any different. That's they love unreservedly. They also protect unreservedly. And that's really, um, you know, for us, the same thing is we know deep inside. So let's be truly who we are. And I promise you the wrong people will go away. The right people that you want in your life will show up. Have we built this insecurity section of society or something, this insecurity? I don't know if it's a desire, if it's like a predetermined notion of I'm going to be insecure

about how people think about me. I mean, what happened? When did we not become ourselves and we started to be fake? I mean, and I hate to use the word fake, but that's really what it is. You're trying to be something you're not. What happened? Why are we there? Traditioning, it happened so early in life. The first time that you have somebody tell you you're not worthy, you're this, and you're taking on their insecurities as well. I'll give you an example. I have two of the most amazing parents I think this planet has blessed me with. I mean, truly, they're incredible. However,

they had their own fears and insecurities, and I adopted so many of those. And that's where the whole thing starts. So for instance, for me, it was about money. Okay. I remember the first time that I ever made seven figures in a year. I felt terrible. This should be something that should be celebrated. Congrats. It's that pinnacle, blah, blah, blah. I felt terrible. And the reason is, is when I look back and I really dug in, my dad would be driving by and it was for the pretty people. It was the people that drove this. And there was always a negative connotation around it. Well, it's silly. If you think about it, money is just an object. You get to do great things with it when you, when you make it. But I had such a negative feeling towards it. So those

were insecurities that I had adopted from my dad who had adopted it from his dad who adopted it from his dad. And what's crazy is we, these are people that were going through the great depression and this conditioning has continued to go down and down until that cycle finally stops. And so for my kids, we talk way differently about money in this case than I, my dad and I did. And so that's where I think we really adopt it, man, is we take on other people's fears and insecurities. We make it our own. That's our story. When the truth is, is that even true? Why do I think this way? And is it serving me? Yes or no. And when you answer those three questions, you're like, oh, it's not true. I'm just taking on somebody else's insecurities. I don't need to

anymore. Right. What happened if we didn't have our, you know, that space in our brain taken up by that? I, let's call it jealousy, ego, whatever you want to call it. It is, it's a fear response. And I mean, it's interesting when you see people like yourself, myself that live without this care. I mean, I don't, frankly, I don't care what other people think about me. I don't care. And, you know, I've been a police officer. I've been called pretty much every name in the book. I mean, the reality is you look at it and you go, hey, wait a second.

What if I didn't care about this? And then you realize if I don't care about this, there's nothing that can stop me because that's not in my way. What do you think about that? Well, the truth is, as you know, Adam, it's none of our business anyway. Right. For instance, I can't control how you feel about me. I have zero, like zero control of it. I hope that people like me. I do. I genuinely want that. But if you don't, it's none of my damn business. And when you finally figure that out, when you take that control away to say, I have 0% responsibility of how someone feels about me, if I'm showing up as my true and, you know, purposeful, you know, intentional self, people will like that. And if they don't, that's okay. Because here's the other thing. We are not everyone's cup of tea. Just get that through your brain. Some people are going to like you. Some people aren't, and that's okay. That's the way the world works. Just like you like certain people and you don't like others, but it's none of our business. So it's such a

freeing feeling, isn't it brother? To just be be go through life in this abundant mentality and just know that look, not everybody's gonna like me and that's okay. Bam, that's it's funny. You said it's such a freeing feeling. I was just gonna say the word freedom, freedom, losing this desire to matter somehow to other people who really you don't even care about what, you know, nor should you, is freeing. So it's fascinating. And it's interesting because, you know, you always, you coach and talk about how leaders should feel this way. Leaders, tell me how this brings down organizations because you have leaders who are so insecure that they just crush their organizations. What happens there?

So this idea of not failing, of not knowing the answers, of not having all of it at the tip of your tongue, it's like, guys, they don't know everything. And in fact, they're, they should surround themselves with really smart, intelligent people that are all working towards one goal. That's when the team really takes off. And so when leaders are truly able to be vulnerable, and I know it's been kind of a big word over the last 10 years, but Brene Brown really made it popular. And now it's like, hey, we're starting to talk about it. That's when I think true leadership starts to take over. Because again, if you're sitting there modeling that we don't show our failures, how terrible is that for an organization? I celebrate with my team. I'm like, I want to see how many times you can screw up in a week. If you're doing

that, I know that we're actually working towards becoming bigger, becoming better than if we're just sitting there always winning. That's the funny thing about the word win and lose. People are like, oh, so your company's all about winning. I'm like, no, it's all about setting yourself up to win every single day. It's not about wins and losses, because I promise you, I have failed more than most people I know, because I'm not afraid to. In fact, I embrace failure, because that's how I learned the most. And anybody that was an athlete, you know, you learned way more from your losses than you did from your wins. And if you didn't learn from it, that's truly the only failure that there is.

You talk a lot about teams and leaders. How do you empower and inspire a team in these circumstances? I love this question. And thank you for asking it. When you truly empower your team, when you give them the autonomy to go be great. That is when your teammates when the people you're surrounded with really take off. And here's the example. If you set an expectation for somebody to do a task, and then you let go, that doesn't mean that you don't check in, right? I coach on teams to check in and make sure to celebrate the wins. Do they have the support they need? Is there anything I didn't see? But I'm not micromanaging. I'm letting them know like, hey, here's the expectation. You own it. Here's the outcome when we want it to be done by go. That letting go of control is when teams really take off versus the traditional micromanager who's telling you how to do it, what you're doing wrong. This is, you know, all the things that you see these micromanager who's telling you how to do it, what you're doing wrong.

This is, you know, all the things that you see these micromanagers do. And it's like, why even hire the person to begin with? Let them go do it because they're going to do it differently. We all have a different lens. And that is the beautiful thing is when you hire somebody and they come from a different place than you would have, they're probably going to do it even better. And that's okay. And you should celebrate that. That's an incredible statement. they come from a different place than you would have, they're probably going to do it even better. And that's okay. And you should celebrate that. That's an incredible statement. It leads me to my next question of, you know, when we say, go do it, go exercise your, your skills and things of that nature. And you talk about, um, self-limiting beliefs in those cases, because when we turn

people loose to go do things, they've set the bar someplace in their head. And it's risky when you get near that bar. How do we empower people to overcome those self-limiting beliefs as a leader and help them not just find the bar, but find where the possibilities are. Raise the bar on a regular basis because that's where they truly find personal success and that fulfillment. Tell me about overcoming those self-limiting beliefs and raising the bar. Yeah, this is really why coaches and leaders and mentors are so important in everyone's life because when you look at people, you see so much more potential than they do. And it's my favorite thing about why I coach today, when you have somebody and

they limit themselves, or they've been told they're only x amount, and you show them that no, I believe you can do anything, they will rise to the occasion every single time. So as a leader, you're lending this confidence. You're giving them this superpower that they have inside of them, but they're putting that limit on themselves because of whatever conditioning, because of whatever background that they have. So as a leader, your job is to inspire them to say, you know what, Adam? I know you're amazing. You know why? Because I see it. You may not see it. You may not see it.

You may not feel it, but I see it and I know it. And every single time, Adam, people will rise to the occasion. I've never met one person that ever wanted to show up and suck at their job. I've never met it. I'm not saying that some people don't, but that's due to leadership. In my opinion, it's not due to them wanting that. They don't want that. They want to leadership, in my opinion. It's not due to them wanting that. They don't want that. They want to be great, but as a leader, you need to inspire them. Right. It's funny because you're not the first one I've heard say, I've never seen somebody show

up and say, I want to suck at my job today. But it's fascinating because when you look at active disengagement and the Gallup polls about the levels of engagement, things like that, and we see like 20% of people are actively disengaged, which means they're miserable. They want to suck at their job and they're telling everybody that they're miserable and trying to share that misery. Literally, their self-limiting beliefs are how far down can I drive myself instead of how far can I lift myself. Let's say we have somebody who's in this really crappy, horrible mindset. Two questions. One, is it worth saving? And two, what do you do? Do you cut them loose? Do you talk to them? Do you give them another chance? How do we as leaders help? We don't want to enable people's misery.

We want to empower them to get better. So what's your recommendation as a coach on how to unlock their potential and move them forward with those things? Yeah. You really want to come from a seek to understand what's really going on. Maybe they have a sick child at home that you're unaware of. Maybe they are battling cancer. Maybe they have something so far in their way that they can't show up. And misery does love company. So when you're not feeling like your best, you want other people to be a part of that. And so it absolutely can be worth saving. And actually, a group I worked with about a month ago, everyone told me how bad this guy was like, Oh boy, he's the worst culture killer. He's not

competent. I mean, I didn't hear anything positive about the person. And my first impression, they nailed it. This guy was toxic. He was kind of a snide jerk. And then I started asking some questions. And here's what I came to find out. He was a single dad, taking care of a daughter, had a lot on his plate. And by the way, he's not even doing the job that he was hired to do to begin with. So he's not happy. Once we put him in the place that he was a marketing genius, you should have seen it was like a whole different human being. He's smiling, he's happy, He's getting everybody together. And so this, this person that everyone wanted to let go, it made sense. The truth was,

he was just in the wrong place. And there's a quote that says, and I've always, this sticks with me. People don't care what you know, until they know how much you care. The moment I showed his name is Justin. I won't say his last name, but Justin, when I showed him that Justin, I care about you. I want to know more about what's going on. This person inside this authentic Justin is incredible. We were just getting a shell of who he was. And so absolutely, Adam, it is 100% worth exploring. And look, there are some people that maybe they have the wrong culture. Guess what? Let them know I'm going to do everything I can to find another position for you. If it gets to that, Justin was not the case. And now he is thriving in his

position. Do you think we put a lot of people in the wrong positions all the time? It all the time. And we don't mean to, we just were plugging holes at some point. We're so busy working in the business instead of stepping back and saying, hey, Adam, what's your superpower? And Adam says, I'm great at communicating. I'm excellent at organizing whatever your superpower is. And then you find that position with them. Because here's the thing. You cannot hire somebody and teach them integrity. You can't hire somebody and teach them honesty. You can't hire them and teach them hard work. You can teach them all the skills of a job. So when you're looking to hire, look to hire the values that are in alignment with your organization and then teach them the skills later. Awesome. So you mentioned Justin and his personal life. I want to dig into this briefly because we see so many people, you know, that, that are challenged at work and they're challenged at work

because their personal life sucks or because they're out of shape and their health is terrible. They're not sleeping. Maybe they're dehydrated. Maybe they drink too much or they're really conflicted in something going on in their personal life. Who knows what it is? But I would submit to our audience that nine times out of 10, somebody who sucks at work sucks out of work first. And that is something that we as leaders, we look at their work product. We're like, all right, I'm going to give you a personal, you know, your annual evaluation or your monthly review or quarterly or whatever it is. And we don't get into the fact that their marriage is falling apart. Their kids hate them. They go home every night and they cry, yet they come to work and we expect them to perform at 100%. I mean, talk to me about the, you know, the signs you're not living your best life. And what can we do to hold up the mirror and realize that we need to do better personally

in order to do better professionally? Yeah, I mean, the way you broke that down is beautiful. Look, we spend 33% of our lives at our job. That's why people don't want to suck. Now, if we are not taking care of our lives at at our job that's why people don't want to suck now if we are not taking care of our health right that typically is the the tipping point of every of everything because if you're not feeling well now you don't want to work out now your relationship starts to suffer now you don't have the energy to be great at at your job so when you really dig in and take

a holistic approach and start to say you know what what, what is going on, Adam, is there something I don't know? And once you find there's no problem too big for most leaders to say, hey, I know someone or I know a solution for you. If you're willing to walk through that door, most people feel lost because nobody said, Hey, I would love the chance to work with you. I want to help your marriage. I want to help your marriage be the best that it can be when somebody does that. And I've done that with many of my clients through the years where it's like, look, if we solve this one thing, your health, now your relationship is better. Now your job is better. So are you willing to do, you know, intermittent fasting? Or maybe are you willing to work out? Are you willing to whatever it is? And almost every time Adam, they're saying, Yes, I want that. I just don't know how. So as a leader, it's time to just dig in and say, Hey, man, I care about you as a person, not you as a worker, as a doer, because we're

human beings. We are not human doers. So really dig into the bean part and know what's happening in your in your world. Awesome. I, I use a quote a lot that I think fits into this because I live my life this way. I know you do as well, J.M. You're into fitness, you're into health, you're into relationships and your family, faith, friends, things like that before your business. And it truly shows the high performers in this world focus on a holistic life. And I use a quote called how you do one thing is how you do all things. What does that mean to you? Yeah, man, it's, it's, it's a beautiful quote, because it's absolutely true. The way you show up in one thing is the way you're going to show up in everything. So for instance, my kids,

I talked to them about pride, right? And so when we go to, I don't know, let's say I took them to Dunkin Donuts. And we talk openly about, hey, do you see the person behind how she smiled and what a beautiful personality she had? Do you see the pride that she takes and what she does serving that donut and coffee versus the other person that's thank you, bye, you know, that that very curt a hundred percent, you know, the way you show up in your relationship is exactly how you're going to show up in your job is exactly how you're going to show up as a parent. And so when you unlock that pride, when you unlock that purpose, whatever that purpose is for you, that's when you get to see the beauty and the abundant mentality. That's really the one that unlocks so much for people

because scarcity, anxiety, fears, that's all from coming from a place of scarcity. So if you can let them know, look, this world is abundant. You have so much to offer when people adopt that. Now everything in life starts to become that much better. Awesome. I love that statement, abundant mentality. And you mentioned that the opposite of that is living in scarcity. And people, I would encourage you, how do you feel right now? Do you feel abundant or do you feel like you're living in that scarcity mindset? Because when we're feeling scarce, we live in

fear. And what causes or what are the outcomes of fear? Fight, flight, or freeze. And all we want to do is be miserable and argue or fight about something or just ignore it and run away from it. So where do we live, folks? I have to reflect on this all the time. I have a lot going on in my world running multiple businesses as does a lot of the people that listen to this podcast. So just take a step back and consider where are you living in that abundance. JM, you have some amazing material out there. Where can people find you online? Give us a couple of your websites and where we can find you on the socials. Awesome. Thank you, brother. Yeah, let's go win.com. Let's go win podcasts.

And then let's go win 365 on any social media platform. So everything if you look up, let's go win, you've probably should see my face. And I would love the chance to interact with any of your audience members. I really appreciate that. Awesome. And make sure you check out JM's books as well as his podcast. Make sure you like and subscribe and leave him a five-star rating. Those things certainly help us podcasters out there. And he is dedicated to doing that and helping people. And don't forget, this happens on his dime. So please help him out with that. JM, I have a question I ask all of our amazing guests on Start With A Win. And being an incredible leadership and business coach and somebody who lives in an incredible winning lifestyle, you got to have an awesome answer to this.

How do you start your day with a win? So the first thing I do before my left foot hits the ground is I say three things I'm grateful for. So if my wife's asleep, I say it in my head. If she's awake, I say it aloud. And look, I say that left foot thing because man, I drink a lot of water, I need to run to the bathroom. But before I allow myself to do that, what are three things I'm grateful for? And that starts me off on this just amazing journey of a day. So that's how I started this morning. And that's how I'll start tomorrow morning as well. Awesome. Jam. Thank you so much for being on start with a win. It's great to see you, my friend. And thank you for starting

with a win. Thanks for joining us on start with a win. Be sure to like and subscribe to this episode and share it with your friends. Also be sure to check out Adam on YouTube at Adam Canto CEO, as well as on all the social media platforms. And don't forget, start with a win.