Own Your Mindset: Rion Westfall on Hunting the Right Patterns

Rion Westfall audits companies for a living and has done it in 15 different countries. On episode 94 he brings that hunt to mindset, expectations, and the way a driven man spends his week. Coach Brian pushes each idea back toward food, training, and the hours that vanish from a calendar.

Rion Westfall gets paid to find the few patterns that move a business and to ignore the rest. He has done that work in 15 different countries. On episode 94 he runs the same hunt across mindset, expectations, and the hours a driven man never gets back.

Hunt the Pattern Before You Pull the Lever

Rion opened with the one takeaway he wanted men to hear. He said we cannot tell which levers in life will move our progress forward, so the job is hunting for the ones that do. His frame puts the payoff in weeks and months instead of years of grinding.

Coach Brian named the health version on the spot. Nutrition is that lever. Pull it and the extreme plans men keep trying stop looking necessary.

Rion built a career doing this for companies. He would land inside a business for four days or four weeks and grade what was working. He sorts a company into seven categories he calls PEPSLIM: people, equipment, process, strategy, leadership, inventory, and money.

Disappointment Is Relative to Expectation

Rion watched a family member give years to keeping one person happy and get tears back for it. He is a mechanical engineer by training, so he went hunting for the root cause. He put what he found this way: "this disappointment that you feel is based on unmet expectations."

That is where the lever sits. You cannot control the other person and you can move what you expect of him. Rion says lowering the bar until someone can clear it is a behavior you control, and adjusting his own expectations gave him back what he calls mental real estate.

Coach Brian sees the same math in men in their 40s and 50s. The car and the house and the number in the account all get decided young. A good life can still feel like a letdown when it is graded against a picture nobody revisited.

Brian runs his coaching calls against that problem. He asks what went well before anything else. One man spent 45 minutes defending himself on a call before mentioning he had lost three pounds that week.

The Kid Who Talked Himself Over the Bar

Rion's 13 year old son went into his third track meet of the season expecting the wind to hold him to 7 feet 6 inches in the pole vault. He and a teammate started telling each other they would get eight. He cleared eight feet for a personal record and then took 8 feet 6 inches on his last attempt.

Rion's read on it: "your body doesn't know if you're telling a joke about yourself or you're being realistic. It only hears it and it responds to it."

The 95 Percent You Never Decide

Rion credits John Mitchell at the University of Texas for the number he uses. About 95 percent of the decisions a man makes in a day never reach his conscious mind. Which leg goes into the pants first and what his hand grabs after dinner both happen without a decision.

His analogy lands. If one muscle drove 95 percent of your movement you would train that muscle and take care of it all week. Most men give the subconscious none of that attention.

Mitchell's tool is a 12 minute routine Rion reads through daily and reviews every three months. He says he saw himself thinking differently inside the first couple of weeks. He handed it to his wife, then to his daughter before a national cheer competition.

Rion points at Tom Brady sitting on the bench hours before kickoff with headphones on, running the game in his head. He calls that training the subconscious.

Coach Brian pushed on the 21 day habit rule from the health side. A man who has smoked for 20 years can put the pack down today and be a non smoker today. Rion answered that you cannot reach day 21 without day one.

Price Your Hour and Read Your Week

One of Rion's clients owns a company of about 100 employees doing $40 million a year after 25 years in business. Rion asked what he would charge to be hired for two hours. The man said $500 an hour.

Then they listed the week. Estimating and writing proposals ran 10 hours. Line by line the total reached 73 hours. Rion priced every activity at what the owner would pay someone else to handle it, added the column, and showed him he was working for $127 an hour.

The owner went quiet. They rebuilt the week around what he wanted each line to be and it came to 53 hours. Rion runs each leftover line through automate, delegate, or delete.

One line almost never appears on those sheets. Rion says no founder has ever named thinking about the future of the company as a weekly activity, even though he is the only person who can do it.

Brian ties the same problem to health. He talks about time and stress with clients because both of them decide whether the food and the training happen at all. A man with no hour to think tends to have no hour to train either.

Would You Compete Without a Coach

That is the question Rion wrote down before the interview. He played baseball into the Dodgers organization and had never heard the term radial deviation until a coach walked up to his at bat and explained what cocking the wrist does to bat speed. He had played the game since he could walk.

His take on that moment: "when a coach comes to you and tells you things that you don't know, that's a good thing. That means you have permission to improve."

Rion puts the small business failure rate at 96 percent inside five years. Four out of a hundred are still standing. The number that worries him more comes from Mitchell, who puts the share of people who hear all of this and act on it at 2 percent.

He also coaches a man who retired from the NFL after five years and started a business the day after the letter went in. That client had been eating 6,000 calories a day to hold 275 pounds. The training and the eating lost their purpose in one afternoon and the identity went with them.

Coach Brian has bought coaching himself. He had not sent a marketing email in 10 years and has sent thousands of them in the last 18 months. This podcast did not exist before that hire.

You Cannot Push a Rope

Rion draws a line between leading and managing. "you can't push a rope," he said. You move people by pulling them toward where you are going, and the example you set is the rope.

He calls the result a revenue culture, where everyone carries part of the responsibility for the health of the business. Revenue is his word for the blood of a company. The lungs and the liver and the stomach each support the blood in a different way, and a team works the same.

Coach Brian hears his own coaching in that. The successful men he works with already know what to do and are not doing it, so the job is finding their patterns and pointing them somewhere useful.

What To Do This Week

• Write down what you would charge a stranger for two hours of your time.
• List every activity in your week with the hours next to it. Rion says owners usually land between 60 and 70 hours.
• Price each line at what you would pay someone else to do it, then add the column and compare the two numbers.
• Pick one line to hand off this week and one to delete outright.
• Book one hour to think and defend it the way you would defend a client meeting.
• Name the health lever you have been ignoring and move that one first.

Cross-episode links

• Episode 130: The Energy Debt Every Successful Man Is Paying
• Episode 126: Your Self-Talk Is Ruining Your Health with Pat Smith

Call to Action

If you want a first step that takes three days, the free Lose 3 lbs in 3 Days plan gives you protein first meals with a daily water target and a step target. Get it at thecalltorise.com/lose3lbsin3days.

When you want that audit run on your health, The Call To Rise is Coach Brian's 100 day program for driven men who want their body at the level their career is already at. What is included:

• An individualized meal plan
• An individualized training plan
• Weekly round table calls with the group
• 1:1 calls with Brian
• A client site holding every resource in one place

The average man who works with Coach Brian for the full 100 days loses 20 or more pounds. The guarantee is one sentence. Lose 20 or more pounds in the 100 days, or Brian keeps working with you until you do. Apply at thecalltorise.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Rion Westfall?

Rion Westfall created Own Your Revenue and coaches business owners on revenue and leadership. He is a mechanical engineer by training and has audited companies in 15 different countries. He joins Coach Brian on episode 94 of Driven For Health.

What is the 95 percent rule?

Rion credits John Mitchell at the University of Texas for it. About 95 percent of the decisions you make in a day are subconscious, which means most of your eating and training runs on defaults rather than choices.

How do you train your subconscious mind?

Rion follows a 12 minute daily routine from John Mitchell and reviews it every three months. He says he saw himself thinking differently inside the first couple of weeks, then handed the routine to his wife and his daughter.

What does "disappointment is relative to expectation" mean?

Rion uses the phrase to explain where the weight of disappointment comes from. The feeling tracks an expectation that went unmet, which makes the expectation the piece you can move.

How do I find out what my time is worth?

Rion asks an owner what he would charge to be hired for two hours. Then he lists every weekly activity, prices each line at what someone else would be paid to do it, and compares the two numbers.

Do I need a coach to get results?

Rion asks whether you would compete at a high level without one, then asks why so many entrepreneurs do it in business. He says the right coach turns three years of hard knocks into about two months.

How long does it take to change a habit?

Coach Brian calls the 21 day rule a fallacy. A man who has smoked for 20 years can put the pack down today, and Rion adds that you cannot reach day 21 without day one.

What is The Call To Rise?

The Call To Rise is Coach Brian's 100 day program for men over 40 who want their health at the level their career is already at. The average man who works with Coach Brian for the full 100 days loses 20 or more pounds.

Listen to the full episode of Driven For Health.

Read the companion article on brianparana.com.