The Ryan Leak Podcast - Intentions to Be Greater Later

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Today's episode is tackling chapter 12 entitled Don't Wait for Monday. We've all got intentions to be greater later, but we should become today who we intend to be tomorrow. Join the conversation with Lacey Stenson and Ryan Leak as they unpack what it means to not wait for the ideal time to get started on your goals. You can also get your copy of Chasing Failure at ryanleak.com. If you'd like to receive encouragement from Ryan every single week, text "Followership" to 469-809-1201.

Ladies and gentlemen, in today's episode, we're talking about the last chapter in my book Chasing Failure. It's called Don't Wait for Monday. Don't wait for Monday. You know, Mondays are the days where we feel like, well, it's motivational Monday. This is where we've got intentions to be greater later. But hey, in the event that you're listening to this podcast on a Wednesday, well, guess what? It's a really great day to change. Yeah, don't wait for the ideal time of the year, time of the week to get things rolling. No, no, no. If you're going to have some intentions about being a better version of yourself,

today is the best day to get started. So go ahead and check out this conversation that me and my good friend Lacey had about Chapter 12. All right, Ryan, you strategically, I think, ended this book with a really big call to action. and I'm so excited we can kind of close out this series of podcasts. We're talking about what do we do with all of this knowledge around bravery and courage? And of course, when should we start? So I'd love for you to kind of kick us off on the behavior you see from people. When do people come to you and say, look, great message.

You rock my world on stage. I'm going to start change when? they usually are they're waiting for either the beginning of a year next quarter or obviously motivational Monday and so there is this you know start to the week of you know you go on a trip and you think I'm going to start eating healthy when I get back and the first thing Monday morning and we're always going to start a new workout regimen, you know, first thing Monday morning. I always like to think, like, I think any day is the best day to start something new, to start moving in in that direction that you've wanted to go in all along.

And so I think that there, the phrase I use a lot in a lot of my keynotes is, don't wait for Monday. because if you do, you'll never do it. Because Monday is going to come and something, something is going to come up. And then you're just going to keep pushing it Monday to Monday to Monday. And then I always think about eating healthy from cheat meals. I used to have this cheat meal, cheat day thing going back and forth. And there was always an excuse not to eat healthy.

It was always, oh, it's your birthday, man, come on, let's go out. Or all, it's the holidays. I'll have some people over and grill out. It's Christmas, it's Thanksgiving. It's like at some point, you're going to have to make a decision about your lifestyle and how you want it to be different. So I think the best time to change is right now. That's good.

You have this thing that says we all have great intentions of becoming greater later. and I think I've just grown up of hearing you say that. And it just reminds me of our followers who are out there. I think in that stage of your career, we're so guilty waiting until the next performance review cycle, whether that's a one-on-one or if your company or organization does OKR, as we wait until the next OKR cycle to reset and get our goals right. And if you're a leader, you wait until the next promotion

or the next cycle of a CEO change who's going to demand more out of you, what kind of coaching do you give folks? It's got to be similar to kind of the weight loss stuff and the healthy living that you're talking about. What's your advice to listeners who are waiting more for more of a commercial regime change or some sort of protocol in place to change? You think we have to wait for that season of life?

I don't think you should. I like to think of it like this. if we were to ask any listener right now, did you give your absolute best of your job over the last year? Did you give 100%? Give 90, do you give 85%? Or if we were to say, hey, the very best, there I use the word, greatest version of you,

if there is this like amazing version of you that you could be who are you waiting for to come help you be that person in other words if if there is this massive potential that each and every one of us has and we're settling for the status quo well then I think we're selling ourselves short And so as much as we could wait for that next review, that next one-on-one, while we could wait for that, if I'm you, I wouldn't. Like don't, not only don't wait for Monday, I kind of have this idea of like, nobody's coming. nobody is nobody is nobody's coming to to to to help you reach your fullest potential they may be able to and again we sat on the other side of the table of plenty of leaders

who do one-on-ones and i can't tell you how many times i sat with team members and say hey how did you one-on-on-one go. And it was underwhelming. They didn't really even give them anything to really help them go to go to the next level. So when I work with, let's say,

a professional sports team, and let's say we're working with ticket sales, and they're having to basically do cold calls, or call people who've gone to games before and try and get them to buy more tickets to games. So when I talk to them about their job,

they very much spend a lot of time thinking about their quote-unquote leadership training. And I'm just like, hey, like, if you're waiting for your leader to come tell you how to talk to basketball fans, well, if you really want to be really, really good at this job, you should talk to basketball fans. and ask them about their experience and how it could be better. And if you've mastered that, well, by the time your leader comes, you already started moving towards your potential long before they come. So before you've got that next milestone, so to speak, man, I'm reading books.

I'm listening to podcast. at I'm trying to get better every single day. And so our agency reaches out to every client that I speak for and says, hey, you know, how do I do get some feedback, so on and so forth. I'm not waiting for that feedback to get better. Like we're always talking about, oh, well, this process and how we got this and how we ended up doing this keynote versus that one. There's a constant dissection, if you will, of the industry, the event, how we work with

the production crew, what we were told on the front end versus the back end. And all of those interactions matter. And I'm dissecting it on my way to the airport and taking down notes and hitting up and going, all right, hey, next time when we do this, can we, make this adjustment and can we because here's what i would love and if you're listening to tony robbins man i would love to hang out sometime it would be awesome if if there is was just this person who has accomplished everything that i want to accomplish in my life and was like hey here's here's how you can get better and this like yes that would be amazing if

that was a reality for me. Guess what? It's not. So, but I can't wait for that moment to start getting better. Does that make sense? And there's, there have been plenty of days where, yes,

I've got some amazing mentors in my life for different things, but not for everything. And so there's plenty of times where I find myself going, man, I really just don't know how to navigate this client conflict

or navigate this contract or navigate this event or plenty of scenarios I found myself in over the past few years that I found myself just scratching my head. Nevertheless, I didn't let it like stall me. Does it make sense?

It's like you have to keep moving forward. I believe that failure loses its grip when you just keep moving forward. And so there is this, the fear will hold a person back and they'll talk themselves out of so many things.

But I think there is something powerful about a person that says, okay, even though I don't have all the answers, even though I don't have all of the ideal circumstances around me, I'm going to make a decision to keep moving forward. I love that. I think you're right on, and that's what I love about the spirit of this book of chasing failure, and especially that you just said, is sometimes I think we mask our fear

in, like, the word organization. We want our leaders to be more organized. We want the full game plan, you know, kind of like we were joking about before you take a class or open your Bible or start a new project. It's like you want the highlighter and the notebook. Like you can't start things until Amazon delivers your two-day shipping of like your organizational supplies. But we wrap it up saying we need to be organized.

We need to know the whole plan before we start. And I love that your message really is progress is better than waiting for someone to come or write some box on your porch to get you organized to go. Even one step in the right direction is a healthier tomorrow. in so many ways. Well, the other thing that I love, how you end the book, is really just the central question of never knowing who's waiting on you, who's waiting on you to get started on the other side of your dream. That's going to be radically different if you pull it off. Can you talk to us just a little bit and close us out on this concept of maybe who's waiting

for you to get that dream out there to get started? Yeah. I think all of us have a, like if I were to ask you the question, what are you waiting for? I think a lot of people would answer to that question or could figure out an answer to that question. It could be they're waiting for funding. They're waiting for things to finish changing at their job. There's a lot of organizations are experiencing a lot of change. They're waiting for something to fully transition. They could be waiting for a raise.

they could be waiting to finish a degree. There's a what. And that is something that is quantifiable. However, who's waiting on you is a question you may never know the answer to if you never make a move. And so you just may never meet that person. And I like to encourage people with the thought that there is, is somebody that has a particular destination that they're supposed to get to in life.

And they won't get there unless you are you. Unless you step into your fullest potential and start crushing it in a role that you are in, they may never believe that they can. And so for me, I really do take my job so seriously. And I absolutely love my job. And I take my job seriously for a thousand reasons. Okay. One of them is because I have faith in Jesus.

I feel like I represent Christians in the marketplace. So for me, I'm thinking to myself, man, you know what? Like, if I'm the only Christian that this company is exposed to, I want them to have a good experience. And I want them to, because you think about like the brand of Christianity, it's not great. So like, you're like, man, we love Christians. It's like, you know, but I would, I hope that I would be the kind of person that models Jesus like behavior. and everything that I do. And so it's like, man, I want to put my best foot forward.

I want to bring a level of excellence to it. Providing for my family is another reason that I'm like, man, I really want to model this for my kids. I want them to see hard work. Another thing that gets me out of bed is the fact that I am a young African-American that is doing this. part of that for me is I was talking to

I was on a coaching call earlier today with a black female executive I'm in a pharmaceutical company she said something that just really moved me she we did some video work for their company and created some training videos and she said Ryan I've watched it several times

and I played it for my son and I played it for my son because I wanted him to see what is possible for a black man to pull off that's different than what he's been exposed to and I could make some assumptions as to what he's been exposed to maybe he thinks that that's sports related

or maybe that's entertainment related but for her she's going you know what this this means something not just because you're good at what you do and you work really hard to do what you do, but it means something for somebody that that looks like you,

or somebody that's on the outside looking in and it's going, all right. And so I just, I think all of our stories matter. I think someone's going to connect to your story and we could easily have a podcast about your life, Lacey, and your background and there's so many people with that kind of background and that kind of story that kind of family history and that kind of everything that would go, oh, I didn't, I didn't know.

First, I didn't know that about Lacey too. Okay, so there's there's hope for my story. And I think that's what people need. I just speak to so many people who just find themselves so hopeless. And so that's why I encourage people to go crush it in their, in their field, regardless of the color of their skin, regardless of their gender, regardless of their religion, regardless of their political beliefs. I believe that each and every one of us is paving away for the next generation. And a lot of them just need hope to see that, okay, I've got options in this world. And so I absolutely love that my son travels with me because, number one, I never know what I'm going to end up doing.

And so. Right. So are we going to church? We're going to business. We're going to MBA team. We're going in pharmacies like that. What in the world do you even do? Where do we go?

and all he knows is my dad helps people. Dad helps people. And so watching him kind of learn what I do, what I want him to know is like, hey, in this world, you have option. You're not limited to one lane. You're not, you don't need to do what I do. I just, I want him to, by the time he's 18,

to have seen the world, both of my kids to have seen the world and to go, hey, we have an option. We've been exposed to so many different cultures and options and that they would, that they would be able to make a difference in the world. So I think that there is somebody on the other side of that, of that who and we may never meet them if we never reach our, our full potential.

So. Good. So that's what I think about the who. Well, let's do this. Why don't you tease us out here at the end? Can you give us just a little taste of what you're working on or what kind of the audience can expect to see from you or kind of content that you're starting to roll out

or the next book you're writing? Anything that you can safely tease out for us would be great. Yes. So if you haven't heard the announcement, already. My new book comes out. First week of December, we need everybody to buy at least a thousand each. Need every listener to just give what you can. It's called leveling up 12 questions to elevate your personal and professional life. And I am so stinking excited about it because part of what I try to do

in every single avenue that I get to work in, whether it's church or marketplace, I just try to help people go to the next level. That's just my mindset.

My mindset is consistently like, okay, how can we help this person, how can we help this company, what can we do to help somebody go to the next level? and not settle for the status quo. So that's one thing that we're working on that I think is going to be a lot of fun.

I think we're going to help some people take their personal and professional development to the next level. Here's what's interesting. It's personal and professional on purpose because so many people will pay money for professional development and kind of let their personal life fall apart. And so a teaser for more content on leveling up is it is when writing this book was so interesting for me because it's kind of my executive coaching in a box, if you will. And so as I was sitting with different people over the course of a pandemic, we couldn't help but go personal.

There was just no way they're doing this stuff from home. And so instead of office drama, it was household drama. And so there was this, it was, and they couldn't separate the two. And I realize, I'm like, I don't know that we ever really separated the two. And so all around the world, there is this discussion about work-life balance. my issue with work-life balance is whenever we talk about this balance, work always gets on the scale first. Think about it. Nobody says life's work balance.

It's going on, no, no, no. Let's put my career on there first and then let's deal with my life. But I would argue until your life is in balance, it's going to be very difficult for you to balance that out with your career. or so. So we go through 12 questions that help you bring balance to your work and in your life. And I think these are, these are, it's my favorite book because if I'm honest, and if the whole world is honest, I think Kendall came out with their statistics a few years back. they said 85% of their readers never get past page 60 of any book. I believe it.

I believe it. People don't finish books. And so anytime I'm writing a book, as soon as I hit like page 70, I'm kind of going, well, I should have put my good stuff in pages 20 through 40. 55, yeah. And so you're like, oh, man. So the great part about this book is you get to go to the chapter index page, and you get to pick the question and just go there. You pick your favorite question.

You can start anywhere with this book. There may be some things like little breadcrumbs. Like I mentioned, hey, back in chapter three, when we talked about this stuff, there's a few sentences like that. but for the most part, if there is a question that resonates with you more than another, you can just go there. There's no rules with this book of like, hey, you have to read it traditionally. It's like, hey, leave it on your coffee table, revisit it, print out the questions, leave them on your desk.

These are, I think if a person is consistently asking these 12 questions, they will always find themselves growing in one way or another. So that's going to be fun. We're having lots, lots of meetings about trainings and courses and curriculum and how to help companies, large, small leaders, followers. You know, we're trying to help as many people as we can. but we're not in like a crazy hurry to do it. And so we're trying to pace ourselves.

But yeah, there's going to be some fun stuff that comes out around the book. And I think it's going to be a great book for people to get for their family and friends for Christmas to kind of kick off the new year and all of that. Hopefully I'm under a few trees in December. Hey, thanks for joining us today on followership with Ryan Lee. I would love to keep you encouraged each and every week. And I actually have a group of people that I text weekly to keep them inspired and motivated. If you want to be a part of that community, text the word podcast to 469809-1201. Again, text the word podcast to 469-809-1201.

And this will put my contact information directly in your phone, and you will start getting a weekly encouraging text for me. If today's episode added any value to your life, I would ask you to do me a favor and leave a comment, share with a friend, and don't forget to subscribe.