The Ryan Leak Podcast - Show Me Your Calendar and I'll Show You Your Future

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Ryan reveals why your calendar is more than just a schedule; it's a scoreboard that lays bare your priorities, patterns, and untapped potential. He challenges you to look beyond the "have-tos" of professional life and identify the "get-tos"—the opportunities for growth, learning, and genuine fulfillment. On the personal front, he calls out the common pitfalls of endless distractions, urging listeners to get "uber intentional" about how their time is spent. If family or personal growth truly matter, Ryan asks, are they making it onto your sacred schedule?Through compelling examples, including a pivotal business meeting he almost skipped and his non-negotiable family time, Ryan illustrates the powerful principle that your life is the result of what you consistently make time for. Discover why his calendar is a "not-so-secret sauce" to success, both professionally and personally. This episode isn't just about scheduling; it's about shaping your destiny. Learn how to transform your calendar from a mere record of obligations into a roadmap for a future you're genuinely excited about.

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Ryan League podcast where we keep things short and sweet and hopefully just what you needed. Today, I want to talk to you about something that I believe is a key indicator of what your future is going to look like in that, my friends, is your calendar. Now, there's a phrase I've been saying a lot lately, show me your calendar and I'll show you your future. show me your calendar and I'll show you your future. I know that sounds like a bold statement, but if you think about it, it's true. You don't even have to tell me your goals. You don't even have to tell me your dreams.

Just let me see your schedule. And I can tell you what your future is going to look like because your life doesn't just happen. It's built one block of time at a time. Your calendar is more than a schedule. It's a scoreboard. It reveals your priorities, your patterns, and, I believe, your potential. If I sat with you and went through your calendar, where would it tell me that you're going?

Most people's calendars, professionally, are full of have-toes, meetings they have to go to, calls they have to take. deadlines they have to meet. But my friend, where are the get-toes? Where are the meetings that help you grow, that stretch you, the blocks of time that pour into you instead of just pulling from you? I mean, we could talk about the personal side of your calendar as well. For a lot of us, our calendar reveals how busy we are with all the wrong stuff. Notifications that distract us, commitments that don't add value, but just simply eat up hours of time. And just think about the amount of time we spend on things that aren't on our schedule. Social media, streaming, but the reality is if you want to grow,

I want to encourage you to be Uber intentional about your schedule because it is a great revealer. You can say something like, family matters. but if they never make the calendar, do they? You can say growth matters. But if you don't block time to learn, does it really? Here's the deal, I know you're busy. I'm busy. But what exactly are you and I so busy with that's actually adding value to our life?

Because what I know about you and me is that, well, we make time for the things we value the most. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. we'll find time for the playoffs. We'll find time for HGTV. We'll find time for golf. We'll find time for social media. But when it comes to our growth,

it's like our schedule has a do not disturb sign on it. But I'm going to tell you this. Your life is the result of what you consistently make time for. It's interesting. We make time for the things we value the most, except sometimes the things that we make time for aren't things that are actually adding value to our actual life. So if you don't like the direction that you're heading at, I would tell you, don't just change your mind. Change your calendar.

Maybe it's time to block out some time for a master class, a course, a book, a conference, a retreat, a weekend that breathes life back into your soul. I asked a friend the other day, is there anything on your calendar this year that you can look at and know that it's going to be spiritually life-giving? And if I'm honest, I had to ask myself the same question. That one question can tell you a lot. I mean, whether you're trying to grow a business or you're just trying to grow yourself, your calendar should reflect what you're trying to grow. about a year and a half ago, I got invited to a meeting that I really didn't want to take, not because it wasn't valuable, but because I was busy. And it was a meeting about research, going deeper into data, insight, and analysis.

And at the time, I thought, this just doesn't really fit my life or business right now. But I took the meeting anyway. And then I took a second one, and a third one. And it's interesting, that decision, it opened the door to creating a whole new arm of my business around research. Now, I've got clients on my calendar where we're pitching research. We're studying people. We're studying change and leadership and pressure and resilience. And now I'm like, man, I'm loving this piece of my business even more than coaching.

And so I'm actually doing less coaching. and doing more research. And it stretched me and it's helping shape my business. And sometimes I'll even tell my team, hey, I'm writing another book. They'll say, about what? I'll say, I've got some ideas. And then we put a meeting on the calendar. And then that one meeting turns into a campaign meeting.

And then there's a book cover meeting. Then there's a brand strategy session. And then a social media meeting. And then we're booking travel to get together to create new ideas together. And before I know it, we've got full momentum. We're making things happen. You see, part of the not-so-secret sauce of success, it's not talent. It's not luck. It's my calendar. Even on the personal side, to travel and speak and to attempt to be a present husband and father is no small feet. And I was asked the other day, hey, how do you do that? How do you show up for your

family and show it for your clients. I said, well, I'll tell you, it's not a secret sauce. It's my calendar. My wife and I do date night every Saturday night. It's on the calendar, period. Our lives are busy, but that space is sacred. In our house, we say every minute matters because it does. We often get invited to a lot of things that we just have to say no to so that we can prioritize our marriage. She also travels with me a couple of times a month. Our kids often come with us when their school calendar allows as well. It is not easy by any stretch of the imagination.

But if you look at our calendars, you'll see that over the next year, we've got a lot of date nights, concerts, games, and trips that we're looking forward to. So when I look at my calendar, I get excited, not because it's going to be perfect, but because I believe two things. Number one, God is in control of my story. Number two, when I look at my calendar, I can already see a bright future.

And yes, there will be ups and downs, challenges, and frustrations. But my calendar has enough on it that I'm looking forward to. So once again, my friends, show me your calendar. and I'll show you your future. You want to have things on it that help you move in the direction that you actually want to go. Thanks again, my friends,

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