James Whittaker - Entrepreneur, Speaker & 3x Best-selling Author | How to Win The Day

Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network They have great podcasts you should go listen to but they also have great technology that can help your business The big reason why more than 300 of last year's unicorn startups use HubSpot is because there is no other software that keeps you better Connected with your teams and your customers so you can crush all your business sales revenue marketing goals The new HubSpot sales hub brings you that power of an easy-to-use platform designed for today's top entrepreneurs Today's top sales teams with 360 degree deal management and real-time reporting You get accurate windows into every inch of your business and with AI power tools like their new chat spot You'll have a dedicated assistant that knows your business inside and out chat spot enables your team with one-stop access to a ton of time-saving Functions like pulling data tracking calls managing leads scheduling emails So trade cold calls for warm leads because when it comes to scaling sales your software should be smart and the solutions It should be simple and get on track for your best Q1 yet check out HubSpot sales hub at HubSpot dot com slash sales One of the biggest defining moments for me was growing up in Australia I reached a point in my early 20s at the age of about 22 where I realized that all of these decisions that I was making in my life Were on autopilot and it was very much the antithesis of the thinking grow rich mentality I was thinking and growing poor in everything that I was doing. I didn't care who I was hanging around I didn't care what food I was eating. I didn't care about what conversations I was having I wasn't reading books or doing any of those things I had no real positive intention for my life and the one thing that had shadowed me for about seven years before that Like up until that point was this debilitating anxiety disorder anyone who's been through anxiety knows how crippling it can be And it reached a point where I basically had a complete breakdown And I looked at myself in the mirror and just said I can't live like this anymore And that was the most defining moment for me because that was the very first time 22 years on the planet But I really planted a flag and said to life. You know what? Here I am come and get me nothing is going to knock me off course And that's what started this journey that I've now been on for about 17 years of consuming everything that I could find on peak performance It's trying to do everything that I can to upgrade my relationships and just do everything I possibly can mentally physically spiritually all of those different aspects And let me ask you something do you feel because what you're describing in your life is a is a reality that many people experience where they're just doing and they're on this path and they don't really have a defined goal for themselves And maybe the path was you know Put on them by their parents or their peers or it just happened to be the easiest thing they got after they graduated high school or college or university And then they progress like that and some people progress like that for the rest of their life It's an easy trap to fall into Do you feel like the anxiety that you had in your life was Not just a curse but also a blessing because it forced you to realize that you can't actually live like this It's not sustainable and I feel like the two were correlated Definitely there was a there was a huge contradiction for me That was something that I could never really compute which contributed massively to the anxiety that I came from a A good background and and most of the people that you talked to these days who were personal brands they they talk about Some really difficult dark things and there are the great majority of people haven't been homeless There's a lot of people in that middle ground who came from good families and had a good upbringing Yet struggled with so many different things So that was a situation that I found myself in I couldn't understand how my older brother was doing so well academically and in his life I couldn't understand that I had a successful father I couldn't understand that I went to a good school grew up in a country like Australia And none of these things seemed to be clicking for me at all and I could see that with my With the people that I was friends with some of them were really high achievers And I was like why do they have it so easy yet everything so seemed so hard for me And a big part of that is recognizing the attributes that you have there's it's just like I interviewed a navy seal recently He was talking about cars some people are Ferrari some people are A jeeps and the Jeep can do things that the Ferrari can't do and the Ferrari can do things that the Jeep can't do But you need to figure out what you're working with and when you're ready to follow that path That's when the world can really start opening up for you and where that change for me was that Focus on continual education at the same time as relationships those two elements Which of course thrust me out of my comfort zone on a very consistent basis led to this trajectory Which of course wasn't straight up it was a bit like a stock market graph the things were we're getting a lot better over time And like it through your career So walk me through what that actually looks like when somebody is is Doing something you don't like to do and they have this This moment is awakening moment and they realize that they would like to change your life around and I think that the things that you mentioned are are kind of When you start to go down the personal improvement self-development you start to read more I mean, this is this is not new now It's not it's something that people would always go into but for most people read a couple books their life does not dramatically change Let's be let's be candid you you want the change, but you're not getting it I mean a lot of people spend their wheels for years and then it's depressing and then it's it's stressful and frustrating You kind of just default to where you were at before so Walking through your career journey like your story What did this like evolution look like because I think that there was probably stages that this is well I read you know you you were not always an author speaker podcast or you had career milestones that you hit But then there was also so I think there was success there Then there was also something that was not Maybe fulfilled in that financial success because you had massive like in terms of like Revenue and building a business. I think you had something. What was it managing two billion AUM or something like that's incredible a lot of people would love to be that decision, right? So they're looking at you and I think that that was probably a little bit later on in your life as well So that was that was a point where I just felt like that the part that was the path that I should be on I bit like what you said about some people they find themselves doing a university degree or I'd lunch with a friend This morning today and she was talking about how a lot of the neurosurgeons they work with They're just ended up on that path because they happen to be smart And that was the path that they found themselves in rather than having intent around that What I really did was I sort of cut the invisible strings that will hold him you back And I think most people read a book and it never changes for them is because I've got these invisible strings that link them to the excuses They have so the stories that they tell themselves are the reasons why they shouldn't do something Why shouldn't we do this why shouldn't I do that and it's fear that holds them back It's it's the short term fear rather than worrying over the long term About like the thing that I worry about the most is I don't want to be in the same place in six months time in five years time in ten years time I want to see how far I can push it in terms of realizing this potential from this one extraordinary life that I that I have And that what encourages me to get out of my comfort zone So at the age of 28 I reached a point where I just said look I'm just done with financial services I enjoyed it, but the challenge for me was time I didn't feel like I was growing mentally. I didn't feel like my network was expanding particularly well And I wanted to challenge myself in an entirely new Sphere so I moved from Brisbane Australia over to do an MBA that was nine months in Boston and three months in Shanghai and China So really a really Like you went full in Like there was like nothing it was like comfort and and and things were just sort of you know Steady on course that everything was sort of going the way that it's always going and all of a sudden You're just like you push yourself into this massive 180 of a Your whole life changes, right? Exactly, and that was where I was exposed to for the first time entrepreneurs people who were my age and younger Who are coming up with business concepts? They were raising money They were getting out there and standing there at a booth at an event and talking to strangers and I thought wow The balls on these people to be able to do that like how cool is that? And I naturally gravitated toward those people who had their own business It's just something that I just I love to talk about because these people just like the opposite of who we spoke about earlier These people live with purpose because they knew exactly what solution they were bringing to the world They were living with intent because they had a clear business plan and you what step they needed to take next So I just love the confidence of those people and that's when I got involved in a whole bunch of of different businesses And now I've launched products and and companies and just about every industry that you can think of I was even involved in being the executive producer of a movie about thinking crow rich the best selling self-help book of all time With zero experience in the entertainment world at all apart from the fact that I loved watching movies At the time and it was so weird for me that I could end up in LA this kid from Brisbane Australia without any I barely knew anyone in in America How quickly that all sort of opened up But I was only on that path and the work that I do today is all about helping people win the day Because I reached a point recently where I said to myself Have you know having two young kids helps you prioritize what's most important in your life And I said to myself my next career move I want it to be something that I do for the rest of my life I'm done shopping and changing. I just want to do the one thing Forever because I'm really interested to think about the harnessing and the concentration of one direction How effective could that be and I started to look at some of the traction that I was getting on Social media and different platforms like tiktok when I went all in on that win the day Message but I could only get to that point and I'm I'm 39 years old now. I'm about to turn 40 I could only get to that point Through getting out of my comfort zone and trying my hand at all of these different things and I realized now It's a bit like the Steve Jobs quote when he says you can ever connect the dots looking forward You can only connect them looking back. I realize that all of the different pursuits that I've been involved in all of the different ventures All of the different relationships have meant that I have a really strong foundation for this next phase And a lot of the right skills and the work that I'm suited for helps unleash those attributes for me Which means I am much more likely to be successful It's a bit like if you were going to be a parent at the age of 18 if I was going to be a dad at 18 I would have been a horrible father which would have been really sad for my my family and my kids I am the 36 when I became a dad for the first time I'm a very different human a very different parent as a result of that But the people who stay in their comfort zone in their own home Never going the extra mile to create these relationships and get out of your comfort zone You just you cannot put yourself at an intersection to find your purpose Or have a good lever that you can call on to to generate you into bigger things until you take those steps Interesting so There's a few things that I want to unpack. Well, we'll understand like the win the day philosophy But before we go into that because that's the the current thesis that you've come to understand it's sort of help people the most But you derive that thesis from the people that you interacted with when you uprooted your life And you went all over the world for your MBA and you worked with all these entrepreneurs So what is the difference? What is the I mean there's like probably unlimited differences that you can pinpoint What is that like one thing that that the person who has intent that is building something that has their purpose in the world What allowed them to do that at a certain age or At any capacity that you originally didn't have that the person who's listening to this Knows what an entrepreneur looks like, but they're like that's not me. I've never done that What is that one thing that differentiated you? I think there's really two traits that this comes back to thinking garbage talks about yeah If I can be permitted to have to Thinking garbage talks about 13 principles of success But the two that if you had to really break it down I just I don't think you can have success without these two things And I think you can have extraordinary success over the long term when you have these two attributes And these are the most important things that I want to have with my clients that I want to have with my children that I want to have with my friends The first one is resourcefulness meaning that you can acquire anything that you want and the second one is resilience Meaning that when adversity inevitably strikes that you will keep moving forward I think if you have those two things then the the sky is the limit to to what you can achieve And when I look back at the person that I mentioned at the start of our chat today who was in his early 20s I didn't have resourcefulness really. I didn't have any resilience. I was busy blaming other people But the fact that it reached a point where to me it was literally life threatening If I had gone down that path I have absolutely no doubt how that would have Unfolded zero doubt in my in my mind Then it's why I'm so passionate about helping people to have a similar realization in their lives I love that so let's talk about let's talk about how you codify The all the principles all the lessons that you've learned into that one sentence win the day because there's win the day and then there's Like extreme focus and intent and a word that I picked up on your website actually is clarity which I love So when the day to me I want to understand that because when the day means like I'm winning today And when I think about winning today that's great But it doesn't in my mind immediately make me think tomorrow or the next day or six years for 10 years or 20 years from now It's literally today. So walk me through I winning the day is important for the long-term vision the focus and the clarity Well the whole where I first got this from it was when I was reading and rereading and rereading thinking Graybridge by Napoleon Hill which was part of my role of writing the book thinking Graybridge the legacy I needed to know that text inside and out also as a producer of the film and there was one passage that kept standing out to me And that was that Any mind that is not preoccupied with being success conscious will automatically be overtaken by the poverty conscious And I was like wow that is so interesting and it kept it kept coming back to me And then I was like well how do I say that in a way that people can understand and then I thought well Each day if you do not make the decision to win you have automatically made the decision to lose And then it was like huh win the day if we can focus on winning the day And then I started thinking more and more I brainstorm more and more about this concept And that's what I thought about where do people's anxiety and fear and worry and stress live They don't live in the present They live in the future worrying about something it's about to happen Or they live in the past when they're freaking out about something that they might have done a year ago or Or yesterday or five years ago and none of that stuff can help you There's no point dwelling on any of those things or worrying about what's to come But if you have an idea of who you are in terms of things like your values And where you want to go in terms of goals in all areas of your life rather than just a financial goal Or a fitness goal or a business goal or a family goal or a travel goal It's important to think about all of those things holistically in a comprehensive manner And once you have the foundation on who you are and where you want to go You can focus on putting one foot in front of the other You have completely alleviated yourself from everything that's going to happen in the future Because you already know how the story ends because you've written it You just need to do what the character in the book would be doing today that's going to help you get there And some of those things as part of that win the day routine I think the very first part of that is coming up with an awareness Because you mentioned something a little bit earlier along the lines of That how do we motivate people who don't want to help themselves And you can't really, you can only John Asura from the secret told me that he only works with He said help the people who want the help not the people who need the help And that can be very tough when you want to go out there and help everyone But if you help someone who isn't ready for the help They're not going to change and you're going to end up really frustrated and depressed And burn out in the process So giving someone the ability to have that awareness of the trajectory that they're on Is that happy for them? Is that a good thing for them to hear? And do they recognize that change needs to occur And then are they willing to embrace that change So coming from that foundation of awareness is very very important Then we can look at things like purpose What do you put here to do? I have a for me personally, I have a career purpose And I have a family purpose They're very different And it's important that I live both of those things And that I live that I list out both of those things And then from there we can focus on things like Goal setting and then your daily routines And your environment and your relationship with stress And your mindset around reframing adversity All of those types of things And so let's say you're working with somebody And I love that the fact that you work with people Who are motivated and who do want to change I think that's a huge huge I mean that transcends somebody who's just a A coach or somebody who's advising a founder Or somebody who's looking to grow in their career That transcends to CEOs To executives that are trying to upscale people on their team And even it even is a great It's a great thought when hiring people Are you looking for people that actually do actually want to progress Which can be a massive benefit Or a candidate there's spots in every career And every job or business For people that actually would just like to do the thing that they're doing And that's also okay too But to identify that is huge Because that could be well placed or misplaced energy Depending on who you're trying to mentor and help So that's a very very smart point Now when you start helping people Achieve clarity and direction What are some of the major roadblocks So somebody is very willing And they're like listen I'm listening to this I hate my job or I'm an entrepreneur And I have five side hustles And none of them are going the way I want them to So what is the what is the major roadblocks you see There's so many A lot of them are there is no balance They've taken the time to define success in one area of their life But they haven't tied that that in So if you don't have an idea of three things that you need to do today That are going to make that day or when Then you're going to struggle I see a lot of people they wake up And they they just work hard They work hard They work hard But if you don't have I always write down three things And they're never all business related There's always one that might be related to family Or might be related to health I'm really interested in those people Who are very mentally strong Physically healthy And strong Financially healthy and strong They're the types of things that we can start to Calibrate Get those things ready Perhaps there's some other relationships That can inspire That can inspire them on their next chapter Because a lot of people reach a point Where they feel like this is it And it can be very daunting for them To say look I'm 50 years old I might have 10 million dollars in the bank But I'm not happy day to day So what needs to happen Well that's when we move away from money And we can focus on first of all Restoring balance And getting clear Again on who they are and where they want to go And then we focus on impact Like how do you want your children to think about you How do you want to How do you want to turn up each day Like when you wake up in the morning And you just take a moment to think about Who is Scott And how does he go through the day What are the standards that you're willing to uphold How do you What food are you putting into your body What conversations are you initiating Where are you allocating your time Once you can start to bring all of those things in together That's when you can give someone very much a renewed passion And sometimes it means they need to say Farewell to the certain phase of life that they're in They might have a business That could have served its point It's like it's just died It just led to like a natural conclusion And that's fine that the business can move on With some people who have the excitement And you can move on to doing something that frees you up Mentally it creates all that space for you Which in that time of having six months For like a mental reset And allowing your intellectual curiosity To go to wherever it needs to be That's a lot of the times that I found with clients And really highly successful entrepreneurs They had that time off To figure out their next move And the next move is something they went all in on And it was generally something that they were Really excited to do After the day was done An example of that is a guy called Michael Fox Who created a good friend of mine He created the world's first female custom shoe company So you could go on a shoes of prey If you're a woman and you'd order whatever shoes you want Completely custom made for you And they would send them out to you a week or two later But he realized that he wasn't coming home from work He didn't want to read magazines and articles about women's shoes So eventually after that business That had raised more than 30 million dollars And partnered with companies like Nordstrom Had some really high profile investors He took six months off And then his next venture is called Fable Food Code Which is doing massive things now All to achieve his mission of ending industrial agriculture Very different than that business that he was in But he is on a huge trajectory with this thing And he actually really loves to do it Which never would have happened If he didn't give himself that six months off I just want to take a quick second And tell you about one more podcast You have to check out if you're a fan of success story It's sales evangelist Hosted by Donald Kelly Brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network Each week, Donald interviews the world best sales experts Successful sellers, sales leaders and entrepreneurs Who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now He brings on Jeffrey Gittermer Jill Conrath, Bob Burr, Guy Kawasaki They share actionable insights and stories That will encourage, challenge and motivate you to hustle your way To more revenue for your business If you're somebody who's looking to take off in your sales career If you are an entrepreneur Who's looking to sell more I think all of us are Go listen to sales evangelist Wherever you get your podcasts But you know how hard this is Like we're talking about you know how hard this is I can point out five instances in my own life Where I'm actively not listening to your advice Even though I know I should be Because you're in something And you're building it And it's not going horrible But it's not going great And you have to know when to retire that thing I think you know the thing like Take it behind the shed and shoot it Like you got to eventually get rid So how do you help somebody find out when that time is What is the amount of time What's the what's the percentage of growth Is it two years And it's profitable Or it's three years and not profitable Or it's you know what is that metric What it really Yeah it really depends If anyone who wants to figure out the way to unclutter their mind You don't need to talk to me Go and grab a book called The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer It's a fantastic book and it will tell you Some of the things that you can do because if you're making big decisions Based on some of these negative emotions It can be really it can be really tough And that's sadly when most people make their decisions Just like you look at the stock market It's driven by fear and greed That's what a lot of people's lives run on So I think there's also some other things that you can do Like assemble a group of people that you really trust Egos left at the door And you say look I'm just entering this next phase of my life Where I just I feel like this is not it And sometimes if you can place a question into your conscious Your brain has no choice but to answer it I had something that happened to me last year I was lying in bed Question just popped in my head and said This is is this your path for a business that I had And the answer before I could even process it consciously Said no So I had the question and the answer Because I had started to create a little bit of space And I had that It was very much like a spiritual contradiction I think we all have this intuition That just gets slowly Dulled over time with the more stimulus And exposure we get to different things But when we can start to quieten that Or it reaches a point where we're very stressed And we're like wow is this it Is this really something that I want to do for the rest of my life That's when we can just try and get in tune Try and connect with the frequency of those answers And if you can do that Then you're going to make moves Then you're going to make decisions Very very quickly Dr. Joe dispends a talks a lot about How you can connect with that frequency of your best self In your most optimal state that future you If you can do that think about when you when you had a vision for your life And who you were like Picture that in your absolute best life Ten years in the future Connect with that frequency Write down what that person would be doing today What would what would they be wearing What would they be studying If you can start to do some of those things And all of a sudden your intuition is going to be freed up You can create a little bit of space through that Get a board of advisors To help you I'm not talking about with your company I'm talking about friends of yours Who you really trust You're not afraid to share these feelings with you Absolutely and then you can you can get that done Because that exercise in and of itself is I don't want people to see it as a contradiction to clarity Because there has to be room for slight ambiguity And openness to new things While maintaining clarity and direction On the things that are moving the needle And it's like the yin and the yang It's the balance of both things That is I think like a healthy holistic Full complete person And to your point that's where all in on one thing Is actually that's not the lesson here It's not the lesson so clarity And focus and blinders on for the rest of your life That is not I mean that will get you somewhere But that's still not the end result That you're looking for as to who you are as a person Yeah 100% I mean it's really interesting to think about this As you go through sort of different stages of life Like as someone now who has two kids I've got a daughter who's three I've got a son who's one I have a clearer business direction than ever I have a clearer life direction than ever I also have less time than I've had before As a result of some of these things And what that has created A bit like with the life purpose that I mentioned And my career purpose And now being time time poor It means that I have the ultimate filtering mechanism That I've never really had in my life so much In terms of any action that I want to take Or something that's going to require my time and my energy If it is not 100% related To achieving my professional mission or my personal mission I'm just not going to do it And that's when you can start attracting the right people in your life I genuinely believe that the universe will give you The right signs If you can start just to open up some of your mind And get access to that intuition And trust a little bit more And a lot of this has to do with self-reflection Self-awareness I'm curious if you have Because obviously this is something that's very personal to you And you've built this framework And it's like obviously helped you a lot Something that you probably deploy For a lot of people you work with as well So if somebody's listening to this And they have zero time set aside For self-reflection and awareness What is something simple that they can start to do Without taking six months off Because that's not doable for a lot of people So what's something that can be done Yeah, we'd all love six months off Yeah, I totally get it I would download something called the day one app It's just a mobile app And in the morning first thing in the morning Or not necessarily first thing But before you start your work mode Go outside, sit in the sunshine That's the time to go and grab a coffee Maybe it's 90 minutes after you wake up But it's generally almost exactly 90 minutes for me I sit in the sunshine And I open that journal and I have a template And the very first thing is to think about What's the recap of the last 24 hours And what that's doing is it's helping me understand How have I spent my time How have I allocated my energy And what interesting things have I done As well as what milestones are there for me And my family And if this is a daily journal Once you've done it for longer than a year You can start to see a recap from the previous year It's amazing I love doing the journal But once you get more than a year I'm like wow, this is incredible And I've done about 560 consecutive days now Of this journal So that's the first thing is the recap Then it's the three things that are going to make today A win That's really interesting And then you write down your intention Like how you're going to carry yourself for that day And then you write down a lesson What's a lesson that you have for the last 24 hours You don't need to write down something every day It's something that I would probably include a lesson About 50% of the time And when you do that Like it's really interesting to To just take these things out of your head Because we know that the brain plays tricks on us And it's very easy to forget these important things And get stuck back in the business as usual mode When you start to do that All of a sudden You have this great foundation in terms of What happened in the last 24 hours And how am I spending my time You all you easily know What three things that are going to move Your entire life and your business forward Today You already know how you're going to carry yourself Addictates the standards Body language All of those different things And you have a lesson Something that you're using to turn yourself Into someone And an improved more effective version of you That you can execute better on that day And when you start doing those things It's it's incredible So that would that would be it for me It could take you five minutes It could even take you three minutes if you want For me it takes about 10 minutes to do that morning journal And it's truly life-changing It's a free It's a free app It's a paid version If you want to go and have it backed up Which I do because you can upload photos And it's nice to have those memories But I would highly recommend it The day one app I love that And another thing that you you alluded to earlier We spoke a lot about Goals and figuring out what those goals are And aligning them And that alignment is key So when you look at your life And your kids and your job How do you end your job Your works Use me and the brand that you've built And you do a lot I mean you're writing a book Your coaching clients Your podcasting all the time Like it's like a lot of different things You're taking on plus You know you have your family So every You have all these different things That you're building up But obviously There's goals for each one of them That align with your future self That you sort of thought through And I'm curious For somebody who's Again a lot of this stuff Is very personal But there has to be some Lessons that you can teach over to people That are listening About setting goals Like how did you set your goals As a case study So that they align with Where you want to be in 10 or 20 years from now Because everything I'm sure is very purposeful Yeah it's a great question So I actually have something called the success plan template It's if anyone wants it You can click on my link in my bio An Instagram or a search for James Wouldn't it success plan template Yeah it's just free download It's amazing you can just have it as a google doc Or a google sheet Whatever you want And before you use that That there's very detailed And comprehensive instructions On the second page of that When you go and get it But what I do is I I actually use the notes app on my iPhone And just anytime I think about something That I want to experience Or a goal that I have I just write it down there So it's a bit like a freestyle thing Because I find that when you force yourself Like you're sitting down in front of something It can be very difficult to try and force that Often these goals and experiences That you want to have Happen when you're like in the shower And you just started washing your hair And you're like Damn I've got to go and write this down So that's why I like having a phone Something that where you can document that And then at least once a year That's the time when you allocate a couple of hours Just to sit down and go through the success plan template Where the first thing you do is You write down your purpose Or your purposes And then you write down what your values are And it's very simple to do that Then you take the things that you have listed And this is this is literally my entire process I'm happy to share it here I'm going to show you You give away the free stuff And someone's still going to come by Because you know what I was going to say It's amazing I appreciate what you're doing I really do appreciate it a lot And that it makes for a good podcast But you know this But you also know that like the number one thing Is always accountability And that's I want it I want to walk through like To make it very real for people Like some of the people that you work with Maybe Redact the names But walk through like what After we will keep going through this But after I'm super curious It's to walk through like the before After of working with somebody that holds someone accountable Because I'm a big I'm a big fan And believe her in that But I think that's sort of the secret in Working with somebody like yourself Or like others that sort of The teach and coach and mentor But yes Sorry Continue Yeah, yeah So once you once you take that So once you open up the success plan template And you've written down your purpose Or your purposes And you've written down your values That's when you take the brainstorm list of things that you have And when you look at this template You're going to find 90 days, one year Three years And then the ultimate destination of Really why you're doing this type of thing And then you just insert those brainstorm things Wherever they need to go Maybe it's a holiday that you want to take as a family Maybe it's YouTube subscribers that you want to have Maybe it's a number of A revenue goal that you have for your business Whatever that might be And then you simply extrapolate that Across the road so every cell is filled So an example of that might be If you want a million YouTube subscribers In three years time What does that look like in one years time What does that look like in 90 days And once you've created that entire That entire map of your success plan The next and most important step of that Is where you look at your 90 day column And you think about what would that look like If these were all individual actions To help me achieve these in the next 90 days And then you put them in the calendar And whenever you're ready for something It's just going to pop up with a little reminder for you And that's when you get it done And every 90 days That's when I review my quarterly plan And then once a year I review my annual plan Being a success plan where You redo it and you start the process All over again I have done that with special forces people I've done that with people who have been I have a three-time gold medalist Olympic gold medalist Who I helped through that And a lot of these people might be very successful In one particular domain But once they move that domain And go into something else It's very easy for that self-doubt To start to creep in So what we do when we go through a process Like that success plan template Is we move away from the motivation Because motivation can actually put you In the wrong direction If you're going all this energy And running very hard in the wrong direction And we focus on process What's the process Where we don't need to worry so much About evaluating our self-worth in the present We didn't know the reps that we're going to take Today and this week That eventually you're going to compile to those 90 day goals Which will achieve our one-year goals Which will achieve our three-year goals Which will make all of those things come true I mean an example of something I do in a personal sense Is once a year I write a letter to my children I don't give it to them They're so young But maybe in 10 years time Or 30 years time I don't know when it will be But they will have an annual letter From me written out to each of them Detailing how I felt about them A lot of their milestones What were some of the things That we were going through in life Some of the things that I expected them Some of the perhaps criticisms that I have on Maybe I was too stressed or too overwhelmed Or not as present as I would like to have been But above all else Second I know that I've been thinking about them And loving them the entire time Even when they didn't recognize it So that's an example of a personal thing That I would put on the success plan template As well as of course a whole bunch of professional goals too I'm very curious about one thing that you mentioned Which was misplaced motivation Can you walk me through Because I think that That really I've never heard that term before But I see it all the time So does that lead to burnout What does that look like? How does somebody know If there's misplaced motivation in their life And what they're trying to take on It's a bit like the difference between peak performance And optimal performance Peak performance is when you're getting ready for an event Like a super ball Everyone's training For like two weeks to prepare for their best For that moment of when they're playing the game But when we talk about peak performance versus optimal performance Optimal performance is a more sustained effort How we carrying ourselves every single day Through life and that's really the goal We know that motivation is going to wane for everyone You can't be there at that peak performance Mentality all of the time So motivation it doesn't matter who you are You could be the best person in the world At whatever your field of expertise is Eventually you will reach a point Maybe you've got the flu Maybe you got an injury Maybe you're just not feeling it for whatever reason Life knocks you off course And in some capacity Motivation will inevitably go for everyone But if you've trained yourself Through the routine Through the process Of getting up and doing those things Which to be frank that's something that the special forces operators do unbelievably well They just wake up and they They don't I ask one recently Do you consciously focus on winning the day Or have you been doing that so long now That it happens automatically And it happens automatically for them But the parts they struggle with They're very good at shooting And clearing rooms and strapping bombs To ships and all those types of things But when they're entering a business domain Doing those reps If you don't know what reps to do Then it can be very very hard But that's why you got to find the right mentors The right people To help you get to where you need to be Help them Let them help you Create that process and know what those reps are And then you follow it It's a bit like a it's a bit like a cold shower That's a rep that I do Every morning I don't really want to think about anymore I just step into the cold shower It just makes me feel so good for the entire day I love it It's part of my process I don't need to be motivated to do that In fact the times when I feel low on motivation I leave the shower feeling motivated Which is great Do you feel as though when you set I mean we've spoken about balance a lot But what goals do you feel would be too ambitious So I'm trying to bring a contrarian perspective To this conversation What goals do you think would be too ambitious Where you feel as though It is no longer You can no longer maintain a balance across areas of your life What are the things that people should be cautious of When setting their sights on Is there a level of entrepreneurship of building I see high divorce rates with CEOs of large companies And executives You know the second the third wife I've heard this quite often So it's not a jet It's not a success plan I want to have five wives by the end of the day So what is that level What is that What is that The thing that we should be cautious of When we're trying to achieve Or is that a fallacy Is that because the person hasn't set up Those systems and processes Along the journey That that yields a high Negative output in other areas of your life The number one thing to think about Is making sure that your goals are emotionally charged If there's no emotion Like if you actually don't care about achieving the goal That's it why is it Why is it there The one thing that I didn't mention That I should have mentioned earlier about That success plan template process Is at the very end you go through And you remove any one of those goals It's not related to your values or your purpose Because you're doing things It just really aren't aligned with who you are Having those things written down Makes it very very clear for you to figure out What pursuits and what actions You need to take and be involved in So something that's not emotionally charged for you I had a client who said I want to have a million dollars in the bank And I said why And he said I don't know And I'm like well it's not really You're not going to be You know I spoke about resourceful and resilient It's not going to be very resourceful To go and acquire that if you don't really care about it You're not going to be very resilient If three days into the journey You're like oh something knocks you off course And you don't care about it anyway So you don't keep moving forward But what if your mother died from a disease And you wanted to have that million dollars That you could use to raise money To help find a cure for that disease Very very very different story So I think being emotionally charged Would be the most important thing for people to remember With any goal that you're creating Make sure it's something that you actually care about And that's when it actually aligns And that's when you see less negative On the on the other areas of your life Because you know those goals that you're trying to achieve Are they're in sync with who you are As a person regardless of whether or not They're the same as the next person Like that's when you that's when you're happy That's when you're complete Yeah I love that For sure I really like that one I think Yeah it's also so important to I'm a big believer in finding experts In their respective domains It's like if you want financial help Go and find the best financial person that you can If you want to get physically fit Go and find the absolute best personal trainer Or fitness class that you can do If you want to get Your nutrition in shape Go and find like a sports dietitian Like whatever it is A business coach if you want to get your business upgraded Whatever it is Go and find experts in their fields So they can help you in in those different things It's just a massive time saving It might be expensive in the upfront But you're going to save so much time and energy Along the way And you might be running a very successful company But if you don't have say a commitment of Oh 2 p.m. Every Tuesday and every Thursday I go and see my personal trainer Well you know that you're going to achieve those goals Because you focus on the process Not you know what at the end of the day I'm going to take myself to the gym And I'm going to work out by myself for an hour Of course Unevitably the day is going to get derailed And you're not going to go there And then you're going to go home after a long day And crack open a bottle of wine Or have a bit too much whiskey And then you're going to feel crappy the next day And it's just not going to go well I'm curious about what A successful coaching client relationship looks like So if somebody is listening to this They're no doubt if they've built anything Or they've tried to develop and tell us in any capacity They've no doubt been inundated With individuals that are trying to mentor them They've heard about mentorship They've heard about coaches It's such a crowded space And nobody knows what they actually need And nobody knows Oh should I be looking for mentors I can grab a cup of coffee Or should I be working with somebody On retainer And how do I actually work with them And how are they the most effective To actually impact my life It's very confusing For a lot of people Because it's just so much So what does a successful relationship look like How do you as somebody Who helps a lot of people How do you quantify success What is not a great relationship look like What is your role In the lifecycle of an entrepreneur Somebody looking to upskill themselves I want to find someone who has If I'm looking to hire a coach person Which I do I'm walking the walk of all these different These different things I certainly don't know everything So I want to find someone who has the success that I want And I want to pay them to tell me exactly what I should do I don't have the time to be able to think about all these things myself Just tell me what I need to do But if I can't find anything out there About all of these things that you claim on your website Who you are You know you might have sent a rocket to Mars If that doesn't exist anywhere else apart from your website Then I'm probably going to doubt the fact that you actually did that So I think finding someone that you know That you can tell Perhaps through a mutual connection Or some other type of authority piece That you have in your network Who is someone that has the results that you want That's the first thing The second one is making sure that they're more interested in your transformation And the transaction I see way too many people here They're just focused on getting a transaction And then they want to keep your money if something bad happens So I think making sure Someone like Alex Hamosi In his book $100 million offers Talks about a lot of ways that you can de-risk Things like that to make people feel more comfortable So I think that's really important And I think the final one Will be just like you would be hiring someone for your team Just go and have a conversation with these people Ideally on videos So you can see their body language Just get a feel What do they like? Are they asking questions? Because the best person to help you Is going to be someone who asks question After question After question After question And only then When you're ready for it And they have a very clear overview of your situation And what you need Will they present a solution to help you And if they can't help you They should tell you that straight up If you look at someone like a Tony Robbins When he's giving a seminar He's very good at asking question after question after question The people who give advice before they don't have any background of someone's situation They're the ones that you got to keep an eye out for And they're the ones who I just don't trust When it comes to finding experts to help me I love that Okay Before we close this out I just wanted to give you the floor So any last lessons or insights That you want to leave the audience with That we didn't go into The biggest one I think you just need to focus on Is that each day If you do not make the decision to win You've automatically made the decision to lose That's it When you wake up Just say look this day is here to be one or lost What am I going to do What am I going to do about it And that's when you say yes I'm going to win And then the next bit of that You have to prove it How are you going to prove to yourself That you've turned up to win That's for me where I do the cold shower Because I want to prove that I'm here to win the day By doing something hard And it establishes momentum That leads through for the rest of your day You don't need to take a cold shower But find something that you're very resistant to do Or that's very uncomfortable for you So do that Make the decision Prove it And then focus on winning the day Perfect Okay, so where do people connect with you All the links social all that drop Whatever you want to drop Instagram James Whitt My website jameswitt.com TikTok, JP Whitt We're doing some big things over there At the moment And yeah, anything I can do to help Just let me know Amazing okay And I ask everybody this before we close out After your career After the successes that you've had You know You've you've produced movies You've written books You host an amazing podcast as well So I will link all this So people will check it out But after all of this What does success mean to you Success to me is presence And growth For myself and my loved ones That's that's really the big thing for me If I can be there To help my The people closest to me Especially now that I'm a parent To always be there and be present for them And help them grow Sometimes that needs to be from a distance Because you don't want to solve all of their problems But that's Extremely important to me