Start With A Win - Mind your Mindset with Michael Hyatt

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's killing your ability to succeed? Standing in the way from your happiness and growth? Let's talk about that today. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we talk franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. Hey everybody, Adam Kantos here at Start With A Win headquarters. I have an amazing guest with me today.

Starting point is 00:00:23 Michael Hyatt is the founder and chairman of Full Focus. He's scaled multiple companies over the years, including a $250 million publishing company with over 700 employees and his own goal achievement company that has grown over 60% year over year for the past four years. Under Michael's leadership, Full Focus has been featured in Inc. 500 in their list of fastest growing companies in America in 2020 and 2021. I mean, he's rocking it. The company was named also to Inc.'s best places, best workplaces list. He's the author of several New York Times bestsellers, Wall Street Journal bestsellers, and USA Today bestsellers, including Living Forward, Your Best Year Ever.

Starting point is 00:01:12 This goes on and on. He's also written Free to Focus and his newest book, which I want to dive in today, Mind Your Mindset. Michael's been married 45 years to his wife, Gail, and has five daughters and get this 10 grandchildren. And I've been following Michael for well over a decade. He's just a great guy. Michael, welcome to Start With A Win. Thanks, Adam. As I was listening to you say all that, it made me feel old, but thank you. We're not old, Michael. We're experienced, right? That's right. We're getting better. Awesome. Hey, you know, we really appreciate you being on the show today. Tell us a little

Starting point is 00:01:48 bit more about yourself that we haven't heard in this intro. You know, you've been out in the entrepreneurial space and helping people grow their business for so many years. Help us understand what you've been up to. Well, I spent most of my career in the book publishing industry, most recently as the chairman and the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, which we sold to HarperCollins in 2011. And then I made my exit. And so I started this company, Full Focus. And basically, we're a goal achievement company.

Starting point is 00:02:18 You know, we help entrepreneurs, small business owners really achieve their biggest dreams from a career perspective, but not at the expense of their personal health or their most important relationships. We call that the double win, where you can win at work and succeed at life. And that's what it's all about. In this most recent book, Mind Your Mindset, is really kind of the prequel to all of our work.

Starting point is 00:02:41 And that is that if you get your mindset right, if you get the thinking right, that takes care about 90% of what it takes to really make meaningful change. I love that. We always hear this term, it's the stinking thinking. Yes. I remember Zig Ziglar used to talk about that. Yeah. Zig had a lot of ways of unpacking things in their most simplicity. And then you actually get into the science that shows success starts with your thinking in your book. Unpack that for us.

Starting point is 00:03:10 Yeah, well, you know, the brain is a really interesting thing because it's designed to enable us to survive. So it's always scanning the environment, looking for threats, looking for things that could derail us, things that could attack us. And so as a result of that, then it informs our body and the rest of us to take the necessary actions and that delivers a certain kind of result. And that's certainly helpful in certain

Starting point is 00:03:37 contexts, but it can get in the way of other contexts. And I think that what we unpack here in the book is that there is a fundamental difference between the facts and the meaning that we assign to the facts. So, you know, you see something appear in your environment that looks like a threat. You've got the choice. You can see that as a threat and make it mean something that it doesn't have to mean, or you can make it mean something that's really empowering. So give an example back in the great recession, you know, this was about 2009. I was at that time, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. We were struggling in our business. Like every business was at that time, our sales had fallen about 20% in 12 months, which for a business at our scale was catastrophic. We had to lay off a bunch of people

Starting point is 00:04:25 and all the rest. Well, as we were kind of in the middle of that, I had an executive coach who flew into Nashville where I reside and where Thomas Nelson is. And she would meet with me one day every month. So for a full day, and it was partly business coaching and mostly psychotherapy. And so she said to me, she said, like, this was in August, she said, Okay, how did how did last month turn out? And she meant from a financial perspective, you know, do we deliver the numbers all the rest? And I said, Oh, it's kind of disappointing. She said, What? She said, What happened? I said, Yeah, we were off about 10% on the top line. And, you know, we basically broke even last month. And she said, Well,

Starting point is 00:05:03 gosh, you know, you were so optimistic. When I was here last month. What happened? And I said, well, we're in the middle of the Great Recession. You know, we didn't call it that at the time, but we're in the middle of this big recession. And, you know, foot traffic at retail is really down. Consumer confidence is down. People aren't spending money. So the economy is really a problem right now. And then social media has kind of disrupted everything because all the traditional marketing that we were doing that was working is no longer working. And we quite haven't figured out social media. And then in addition to that, you know, it seems like the whole publishing industry is going digital with, you know, the onslaught of the Kindle and all of that. And we're not sure what that's going to do to our business. So she paused for a moment. She said, okay, I get that. But what was it about your leadership that led to these results? I didn't like that question, Adam. I didn't like it at all. And it kind of ticked me off. And I said to her, what do you mean, what was it about my leadership? I just explained to you that the problem, it's the economy, it's social media, it's digital publishing.

Starting point is 00:06:08 She said, oh, I get that those are factors, but what was it about your leadership? And I just, you know, kind of like doubled down and gave her the facts again. She said, okay, clearly, I'm not getting through. Let me ask the question a different way. If you could go back 30 days and change anything you did in the way you led the company, would you have changed anything? And I said, oh, absolutely. She said, well, like what? And I said, well, I would have met with the sales team, probably just a short standup meeting every day to make sure that we were tracking toward our goal. I probably would have went on that big call that we had with Walmart, our quarterly meeting, and I feel like I

Starting point is 00:06:45 could have influenced the outcome. They would have bought more product. So I rattled off three or four more things, and she said, okay. She said, so what you're telling me is that it was about your leadership. And I went, wow, you're right. Because in my paradigm, the problem was out there. So the facts were we missed our budget. The meaning I assigned to it was it wasn't my fault. It was the environment. When I changed the meaning of that story to where it was at least partially my fault, it was the way that I led, suddenly I got all the power back. All of a sudden, instead of ceding power to the environment, suddenly now I could make a difference because I could lead differently this next month. And I did. And that was kind of everything. So I think, you know, that's where the brain is enormously

Starting point is 00:07:35 plastic. We can change the way we think, but we got to become self-aware and then we've got to, you know, change our thinking. So I always talk about leadership as awareness of self, others, and business and overlapping the three of those. This is what I'm hearing from you is, I mean, so reflective of that with respect to it's, you know, out there's the numbers, in here is how we get to the numbers.

Starting point is 00:08:05 And it's fascinating. What causes us to get to that point? Because I I've had, I've had six business coaches, you know, a business coach in a professional environment for everybody listening, like what Michael talked about, they do work on not just the business results. They work on your whole life holistically, Because if they get the person right, they can get the business right. But we always forget that. So, Michael, why is it that we disconnect these two things? Well, I think, first of all, for business owners, entrepreneurs, high achievers, we have an action bias.

Starting point is 00:08:39 If we don't like the results we're getting, we just double down on the action. We just think we can brute force it. You know, we can redouble our efforts and we can make a difference. And that's partly true. You can make a difference if you hustle and if you work harder, but that has limited ability. And usually the breakthroughs come when we change our thinking, because our thinking is what affects our actions and our actions are what deliver the results. So you've got to go further upstream than just the actions and think about your thinking. But most of us are not aware of our thinking. And all of us, we talk about this

Starting point is 00:09:17 in the book, Mind Your Mindset, where inside of our heads lives this voice that we call the narrator. You know, it's like a professional football game where you've got the color commentary on what the plays on the field actually mean. And particularly, our brain is always trying to project what it means going forward so that we can kind of stay one step ahead of the threat. Well, the problem is we've got to become self-aware or we got to think about our thinking if we're going to change it. And we've got to become self-aware or we got to think about our thinking if we're going to change it. And we've got to realize that that voice inside our head, that narrator is not us. You know, it's just your brain trying to make the best sense out of the facts that it has.

Starting point is 00:09:56 But it has to be challenged. But you've got to become aware of it at first and just ask yourself the question whenever you're encountering any result that you don't like, I don't care what it is, if it's at work or in your family, to stop and say, wait a second, what is the narrator saying right now? Like, for example, the narrator might say to you something like, you know, you're not very good with technology. And I get this a lot of time from my clients. Well, that's a story based on a very limited fact set, your own experience, right? You know, I've got my 89-year-old mother who is on Facebook every day. She knows how to get on Zoom. She knows how to get, you know, the basic things around her computer. So she's not inhibited by technology. So she has a different story than a lot of people have about technology. I went through a heart attack last September. So that was something

Starting point is 00:10:49 completely unexpected because I'm very fit and I take very good care of myself and I have for two decades, but I had this genetic predisposition toward this. I kind of knew it. We were working on some of the genetic factors, but I had a heart attack. Fast forward, cardiac rehab. After I had surgery, I'm sitting in cardiac rehab, and the nurse asked all my fellow patients and me, we're sitting at a big table, there were eight of us, and she says, what does your heart attack mean to you? Now, this is really interesting because all of us had the exact same experience. We had a heart attack. We had a subsequent surgery. Some got stents, some got bypass surgery, variety of different outcomes. One guy even had a transplant. But she said, what does your heart attack mean to you? The guy right across from me, get this, Adam, he says to

Starting point is 00:11:34 me, he said, well, here's what it means to me. My life as I know it is basically over. He said, I'm just, you know, my best days are behind me and it's going to be kind of a slide, you know, into I'm going to eventually deteriorate and die. And I mean, it was like really dejected, really downcast. So then I told this story about my doctor calling me after I got out of ICU. So I'd only been out of surgery a couple of days. He called me and he said, he said, look, I know that you're going to be very tempted to scrutinize the past and kind of dwell in the land of coulda, woulda, shoulda. You know, if you'd only done this, if you could have done that. He said, forget all that. It's history.

Starting point is 00:12:15 There's not a thing in the world you can do to change it. But he said, here's the thing. You just got a giant reboot. Your best days are ahead of you. And clearly, God's not done with you yet. So I mean, that changed everything. Like now all of a sudden, I have a positive, optimistic outlook on life. And so I shared that with my cardiac rehab. So those are two different stories based on a very similar set of facts. So this is interesting, because, you know, you talk about with the narrator, and the narrator's telling us these stories. It's fascinating. I used to be a SWAT team commander and we called it party with the beast because you'd be standing outside the door about to make entry.

Starting point is 00:12:59 And you know there's somebody in there that is trying to kill you. And you don't know whether or not you're better at this than they are. And so you start telling yourself those stories. And I think we're, you know, it's like what you're talking about. We get to make this decision of what story we tell ourselves. Do I want to go fight with the beast or do I want to party with the beast and enjoy myself? Which opens up this free flow in life and allows us to, as you said, find those greater successes. So this is coming together really well in my head. So thank you for sharing that. Do you, I mean, this seems like it's, we're genetically predisposed to look for, you know, the biggest danger and then we over-convince ourselves of that. Is that, is that true? Or is that just

Starting point is 00:13:42 something we're making up? No, no, no. That's true. That's how we've survived as a species. And it served us well for most of our existence as a species. But in the modern world, there are very few existential threats. Now, there are threats, and there are occasionally existential threats. And by that, I mean they threaten our existence, but it's rare. And most of the times our brain is over dialing the threat and not seeing the opportunity. And so, you know, it has an impact on a nervous system and all of that. And unfortunately, and this is part of the brain science, is that neurons that fire together, wire together. So when you have, for example, for years, I had this tremendous fear of money. And I know where it came from. It came because I was raised in a

Starting point is 00:14:32 lower middle class home where we never had any money, where there was this kind of a scarcity mindset and money became for me a trigger. So anytime we talked about money, I didn't want to talk about it. Anytime something there was, you know, like a financial reversal of some sort, then, you know, that would set me off and I would overreact to that. But the beauty of the way the brain is made is I didn't have to accept that kind of version from my narrator. I remember a friend of mine said to me one time, only reinforcing the old narrative, he said to me, he said, you know, you're not very good with money, are you?

Starting point is 00:15:15 Well, the narrator had been telling me that for decades. And now to have somebody that I really respected tell me that sort of objectified it and gave it a reality that up until that point, it didn't even have. But I started to interrogate that. And I started to ask the question, is that really true? Because I don't think the guys that are, quote, really good with money are just naturally predisposed for that. I think they've learned that. And I think this is a skill just like anything else that I can learn. So like in the book, we talk about three different steps to take, you know, to have a better mindset. And the first one is to identify the narrator, what's the narrator saying, and then to interrogate the story.

Starting point is 00:15:51 And then third, to imagine a different story. So I began to imagine, you know, well, okay, yeah, maybe I'm not very good with money, but I'm not going to keep saying that to myself. I'm going to start saying to myself, money is a skill I can learn. You know, I can learn to be better with money. And every time I experienced a financial setback or a blip, that's an opportunity that's going to accelerate my learning. So that was a totally different mindset and it made all the difference in the world. You know, right now I'm hearing a lot of this in small business of, I can't get people.

Starting point is 00:16:28 Probably the number one complaint in small business overall. I'm on the board of the International Franchise Association. So we hear it across all sorts of industries in small business. But it's, and National Restaurant Association is saying the same thing. I can't get people. I can't get the right people. And everybody's so stuck on this people thing. Help me, you know, explain this process to us. If I'm a small business owner and I'm saying, Michael, I, you know, and you're my coach, Michael, my problem is I can't get people. Is, I mean, that's me blaming, that's external locus of control. I'm blaming something other than myself for this. How do I fix this challenge? This is a great question, Adam, because these are really dangerous kinds of beliefs because they're reinforced by this social context. So this is not just our story, but this

Starting point is 00:17:21 is a cultural story that we're telling ourselves. And I think, you know, a recession, that's a story that we can tell ourselves and we can choose to opt out. So where I would begin, if I were coaching a client, I do, you know, our business does a lot of coaching, business coaching. And if I was coaching a client, I would say, okay, that's good for you for being aware of your thinking, you know, that you can't get good people. That's a story, right? I mean, you've got some evidence, but it's a limited data set. Do you know anybody that's not having a difficult time getting employees? Well, the answer to that is yes, there are people, there are businesses that are attracting

Starting point is 00:17:59 good people. So then to interrogate the story, first of all, is that true? And interrogate that and say, well, maybe for some businesses, but it doesn't have to be true for me. Now, imagine a different outcome. What would have to be true about my business, about my culture, about the benefits I offer, about, you know, the conditions of work? What would have to be true in order to have people clamoring at the door trying to get hired by my company. Now, all of a sudden, you've unleashed all these creative possibilities. And this is something we talk about this in the book, Mind Your Mindset, but I like to say, what does this make possible? So whenever you have something negative happen, what does this make possible? I can tell you on this hiring front what it's going to make possible. If you're having a hard time

Starting point is 00:18:49 getting good people, this is going to give you the opportunity as a business owner to completely reimagine your culture, your benefits, your work conditions, really the value proposition that you're bringing to an employee. And I say to people, you know, you've got to think of yourself as a salesperson. You are essentially selling people on the opportunity to come to work for your company. And what does that have to look like? When we started doing this about five years ago, we knew we needed world-class talent in order to really scale like we wanted to scale. We literally created a page on our main website that was for careers, but we built it like a sales page. So we wanted it to have all the bells and whistles of a sales

Starting point is 00:19:33 page to sell prospective employees on coming to work for our company so that when they showed up the door, they were already pre-sold. And like I said, clamoring to get in. Wow. Yeah. It's fascinating. I have businesses in my network, the businesses that we own, we have some that are doing nothing but using that, you know, that particular narrative in their head. And then I actually have others who are, who are saying, I can't, I have too many people that want to work here. I have to pick who works here. And it's fascinating. Same business, same brand, same franchise concept.

Starting point is 00:20:17 And some have too many people, and some are complaining that they don't have people. So yeah, sounds like we figured out something here. So once we understand our narrative, what are a couple of ways that we can kickstart our imaginations to change course? Well, I definitely think one hard pivot is to ask that question. What does this make possible? And, you know, to promote another book that I absolutely love and my is reading it right now, is a book by Ryan Holiday called The Obstacle is the Way. And this is a way of thinking about the challenges you face in your business that is revolutionary. And it comes from the ancient Stoic philosophy, and this is all baked into our book, Mind Your Mindset, as well. But to think, okay, if I encounter a problem, that really is an opportunity. If I think about it correctly, I've got to shift my thinking. Jocko Willings, in his book Extreme Ownership, talks about this as a Navy SEAL, when people would bring him

Starting point is 00:21:17 like these problems that were life-threatening, the first response, he trained himself to do this, was to say, good. Why? Because that problem provides an opportunity to get better. Because whatever problem you're facing in your business is probably not the last time you're going to face it. And if you could learn the lesson from it and not have to take another lap around the field and keep learning what you should have learned the first time, if you can learn from that, you can grow and your business can grow. So I think it's a fundamental shift to start seeing those adversities, those obstacles as opportunities. And it's an important thing to teach your team too. And that's why reading a book together, like Mind Your Mindset or The Obstacle is the Way is a great thing to do to infect your team with that kind of thinking.

Starting point is 00:22:12 Awesome. Where can people find out more about Mind Your Mindset and Michael Hyatt? Well, everything related to me, our podcast, our business coaching program, the Full Focus Planner, which is a paper planner that we've sold over a million copies of, that could all be found at fullfocus.co, C-O, fullfocus.co. The book, we do have a website for the book. And if you buy it at any major retailer and you come back to this site, mindyourmindsetbook.com, then you can take your receipt and redeem it for some special bonuses,

Starting point is 00:22:40 including the audio version of the book. Ooh, I love having the audio version. That's great. So really helpful. Michael Hyatt, great business coach, great business leader, and somebody who really unpacks the ways to success for us entrepreneurs out there in the field. Michael, it's been a pleasure having you on Start With A Win today. I have one final question I ask all of our amazing guests, and that's, how do you start your day with a win? Well, I've really tried to engineer my daily rituals, especially my morning ritual, so

Starting point is 00:23:15 that it sets me up to win the day. So for me, that looks like prayer, reading the scripture, reading a book, and doing some exercise. And journal. And in my journaling, the first question I ask myself every single day is, what were my biggest wins from yesterday? Because particularly as entrepreneurs, we're problem solvers, and it's easy to focus on all the problems, and we forget the wins. So this is why I love your concept for a podcast,

Starting point is 00:23:47 because if we can continue to remind ourselves of the wins, it builds our confidence and gives us the ability to go on and achieve even greater things. Awesome. Michael Hyatt, thank you so much for joining us today. Everybody, make sure you check out Mind Your Mindset and also go to fullfocus.co and connect with Michael. Who knows? Maybe you'll sign up for some of his coaching. He has implanted himself in the business community so well and helped so many entrepreneurs

Starting point is 00:24:15 that I know build their businesses. I encourage you to take a look at that. Michael, thank you for starting your day with a win. Thank you, Adam. 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

Starting point is 00:24:31 and Adam Canto's CEO, as well as on all the social media platforms. And don't forget, start with a win.

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Start With A Win - Mind your Mindset with Michael Hyatt

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