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May 22, 2026

The CEO's Strategy to Lead Yourself First with Dusty Holcomb - 109

Ready to take charge and lead with confidence in your health and business?

Join us as Dusty Holcomb, a seasoned executive coach, shares insights tailored for business owners, entrepreneurs, and driven men.

Dusty offers practical advice on self-leadership and aligning your actions with your goals. Hear how a CEO overcame fears to become an industry leader.

Learn to set standards for discipline and use strategic thinking to accelerate your progress.

Main topics include:

Leading yourself to lead others.
Overcoming personal challenges.
Creating effective daily plans.
Managing energy and routines.
The role of purpose and commitment.

This episode is packed with actionable insights for improving business performance, health, and personal growth. Dusty’s expertise in helping leaders achieve their best will provide you with the tools you need to succeed.Ready to take chasrge and lead with confidence in your health and business?

Join us as Dusty Holcomb, a seasoned executive coach, shares insights tailored for business owners, entrepreneurs, and driven men.

Dusty offers practical advice on self-leadership and aligning your actions with your goals. Hear how a CEO overcame fears to become an industry leader.

Learn to set standards for discipline and use strategic thinking to accelerate your progress.

Main topics include:

Leading yourself to lead others.
Overcoming personal challenges.
Creating effective daily plans.
Managing energy and routines.
The role of purpose and commitment.

This episode is packed with actionable insights for improving business performance, health, and personal growth. Dusty’s expertise in helping leaders achieve their best will provide you with the tools you need to succeed.Ready to take charge and lead with confidence in your health and business?

Join us as Dusty Holcomb, a seasoned executive coach, shares insights tailored for business owners, entrepreneurs, and driven men.

Dusty offers practical advice on self-leadership and aligning your actions with your goals. Hear how a CEO overcame fears to become an industry leader.

Learn to set standards for discipline and use strategic thinking to accelerate your progress.

Main topics include:

Leading yourself to lead others.
Overcoming personal challenges.
Creating effective daily plans.
Managing energy and routines.
The role of purpose and commitment.

This episode is packed with actionable insights for improving business performance, health, and personal growth. Dusty’s expertise in helping leaders achieve their best will provide you with the tools you need to succeed.Ready to take charge and lead with confidence in your health and business?

Join us as Dusty Holcomb, a seasoned executive coach, shares insights tailored for business owners, entrepreneurs, and driven men.

Dusty offers practical advice on self-leadership and aligning your actions with your goals. Hear how a CEO overcame fears to become an industry leader.

Find Dusty here:

www.myrulesofengagement.com

https://arcq.us/DustyHolcombGuest

Learn to set standards for discipline and use strategic thinking to accelerate your progress.

Main topics include:

Leading yourself to lead others.
Overcoming personal challenges.
Creating effective daily plans.
Managing energy and routines.
The role of purpose and commitment.

This episode is packed with actionable insights for improving business performance, health, and personal growth. Dusty’s expertise in helping leaders achieve their best will provide you with the tools you need to succeed.

Want help applying this to your own health, weight, energy, or lab numbers?

Coach Brian Parana offers Health Hot Seat coaching segments for men who want a clear next step with nutrition, fitness, weight loss, blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, or daily consistency.

Learn more about The Call To Rise, a 100-day coaching program for driven men over 40 who want to lose weight, improve their health, and rebuild confidence:

www.thecalltorise.com

To connect with Coach Brian:
brian@brianparana.com

Disclaimer: This podcast is for education and coaching support only. It is not medical advice. Always work with your physician before changing medication, treatment, or medical care.

Welcome back to Driven for Health episode 109. The CEO strategy to lead yourself first is going to be one of the main things we're going to talk about here with Dusty. And today we're shifting our focus from the obviously physical exercise, nutrition things that I do. And I want to bring on a lot of other guests that incorporate a lot of other areas around being a man.
And especially in today's on-the-go, fast-track, busy lifestyle with all the demands that you have in your life. And today we have an incredible guide and mentor, Dusty Hogan. He's an executive coach who works with lots of CEOs, lots of businesses, and executives that are working through some major inflection points in their business, in some of their lives.
And these are where Dusty performs most excellent at is recognizing patterns, behaviors, and being able to change things up in a way that creates next-level type performance. So, Dusty, welcome to the show. Happy to have you. What is one key takeaway you want everyone, all the guys listening in, to hear from our show? Hey Brian, thank you so much for having me.
The one key takeaway that I want everyone thinking about when they finish the show is what is the one area where I am the bottleneck for the next-level performance that I know I'm capable of. I I have a bigger dream, I have a bigger vision. I've gotten to where I am because I'm good at what I do, but I recognize that in order to get to the next level, I need to change.
And in order to do that, I'm going to have to learn to lead myself. And I will tell you that when you do that, and you do that well, you unlock an unforeseen until now capability that will help you propel to the next level, and then the next level, and then the next level. It's like you're peeking in on me here or something. Goodness sake.
Are you calling me out? Is that what's happening here? Uh You know, I'm calling myself out, man. I you know, the the most important coaching I ever do is on myself and man, I need a lot of it. Yes. Yes. And so, just even that opening statement resonates with me so much because I am really good at what I do. I am regularly in my men's 100-day program, The Call to Rise, I get guys to lose 25, 35 lb in 100 days and do it with general ease in a sense because I have done thousands of conversations, but to the degree of which I'm able to
level up in a sense and not just be the sole proprietor and and solopreneur in a sense of this program is is is my bottleneck. You know, where do I hire? Do I bring in Yeah, I have 100 podcasts now published actively now and there's so many clips that I can post, but I can't post all of them because it's just me and I have four kids and I'm struggling all these things.
So, I'm really excited to boil into some of these like nooks and crannies on getting to that next level because I almost think sometimes like, "Wow, am I would I actually be a better boss or manager type person in a sense if I were to allow myself to get into that not just play coach all the time. All right. Oh, I'm so excited.
This is going to be a lot of fun. Now, let's start off with fitness, right? That's a easy connection point for you and I both. We're both endurance athletes, right? So, Iron Man and and triathlons and and let's open up there. What is some of the history around your exercise and and all that? Yeah, I you know, I've always been a person who, you know, didn't handle it particularly well when someone said, "Hey, you can't do this.
" And so, like I got into endurance sports, you know, if I'm being really really honest, because it was hard and because someone said, "Well, you know, I'm not sure if people who are built like you, you know, 6' 4" 220 lb, I'm a linebacker, not a, you know, your typical triathlete, "can't do that." And I went, "Huh. Well, you know, hold my beer. Watch this.
" Like and so with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, but I love fitness and I recognize that my ability to perform at an exceptionally high level professionally was purely dependent on my ability to balance the personal health life domain. And I'm not always good at it, you know, I'm always working on it.
>> Right. There's always tension, right? You know, we we It's not It's not just balance, but there's balancing. I got into doing endurance sports about 15 years ago cuz I got tired of going to the gym, maybe it's longer than that now, 17 years ago, just going to the gym to work out. It's like, "This is nice, but it's it doesn't do the thing.
" And then I did a sprint triathlon and I went, "Well, that was fun." Uh-huh. And the next day I signed up for an Ironman because, you know, my 0 to 60 speed is really fast. Like, "This was fun, then the Ironman must be like 10 times this amount of fun." Right. Right. And and and that is in the eye of the beholder, right? Yeah.
>> [laughter] >> I think what we're establishing here in the very, very beginning is maybe I'm not that smart. It wasn't necessarily the wisest decision I've ever made, but it was certainly one of the most fun. Right. Right. Right. I have not done an Ironman. I am sad to say that I think the entrance fee at age 22 at $500 or something for to get into the race was like, "Wow, that's like two weeks pay.
" I just I can't afford this right now and because I was super fat. I was running marathons at multiple. I've ran over 12 or so, Boston included, and I've done even a half Ironman, but that Ironmans elude me. But, my son has challenged me to a the Akron Marathon in September this year, and I've been actively training for it since January.
I have about on my computer, let's see here, give me a second. Hold on. Got to get the the right 165 days to go. I've got a little countdown square on my desktop. That's what I was looking for. So, uh I've been running a little bit, but I got a little bit of glute issue, and you know, for I've a 25-year-old brain and a 43-year-old body, and you know how that goes, right? The aches and pains are a little bit more, and so I've been biking like a madman almost 2 hours a day on a bike indoor desk setup that has been transformative to be able to get in some
easy zone two, mild zone three stuff, and just keep the the uh metabolic and and the aerobic conditioning machine getting built here while I start running again. But, who knows? Maybe an Ironman is around the corner if my son does it. Now, I've got [snorts] my bike's hanging up in the back there, and then Oh, let's see if I can stretch this enough. Almost, almost There we go.
There's a picture of me if you're looking on the video, but that's me back when I was 20 Shoot, what? How old? 20 four-ish or so, and my older son 16 raced in that jersey with my bike at the same course that I did, and it was deja vu. And I was so jealous. That's so cool. That's that's a really great legacy moment there. I like that. Yeah.
Very much so. So, and and one thing that you said is that if you can do hard things with exercise and overcoming those, then you can do hard things in other areas of life. And that's one of the key components that I keep coming back to with exercise. If I come out here in my gym and do hard things here, so that I can manage all the other hard in life.
Because life is always going to be hard. It's choose your hard. It is. An employer is hard. Being an employee is hard. Being a parent is hard. Being a non-parent is hard. It doesn't matter. Everything in life's going to be difficult on some level. And everyone's busy. And those are some undertones of what we're going to be talking about today, too.
So, now let's talk about that tension and excuses and I don't have time because I think you and I both can resonate with that being one of the key things of everyone comes to you say, "Dusty, I'm busy." And I mean capital B U S Y. Always busy, right? So, let's jump in there. Yeah, let's go there. So, like everybody's busy.
The question I always ask, and I ask myself the same question. Am I busy doing the right things? Are the things where I am spending my time or the the you know, the leaders I work with, are they aligned with the outcomes that you were trying to create? So, let's talk about this from an Ironman training perspective.
Let's keep it in the fitness genre, right? So, when you sign up for an Ironman, you typically do so a year in advance. Like you know, that's about what it takes, right? And if you're going from zero, it's going to take you about that much time to prepare for the race. So, you you when you commit a year out, it's scary, but it's so far out that it's not like terrifying.
Right. >> But along the way, you have to start making decisions. Like if I want to be successful on that day, then what I need to do is I need to train. And so, now how do I plan my week? And so, what I would always tell folks and you know, coach myself on is my ability to be successful on the day of the race is 100% contingent on my ability to execute the work that's in front of me today, whatever that thing is.
I'm going to be busy on the thing that I've already decided is important. And [clears throat and snorts] I think that's the thing that many people really get wrapped around the axle and don't do well. We're busy, but we're not busy on doing the things that are aligned with the outcome that we're trying to create, the identity of the person we're seeking to become, the business goal, the whatever that is.
And so, like for me, I always said, "All right, my goal for this Ironman race is three things. Number one is an A time goal. Like if everything goes perfect and things are, you know, the stars align and there's angels singing >> it, right? You got We got to complete the thing, no matter what. >> my C goal. Yeah.
First My first goal is always my best possible outcome. >> Act. >> Second goal. So, I'm starting my A, my number one is ideal. Number two is a, you know, something changed, but I'm This is happy. Like this is my floor. So, the number one's my ceiling, number two's my floor. And then And then the the third goal was always don't drown, don't crash, don't die.
Like, you know, finish the race. Finish race. And real quick, let's let's go through some of that hierarchy. That's really excellent cuz a lot of people would just say, "Oh, I just want to finish the race." But when you believe and you set your mind to something, then you can work that, reverse engineer that blueprint on what the training needs to be to be successful to that degree. Yes.
>> we roll the dice on that day to be the best outcome and the chips fall where they may because of temperature, wind, all sorts of different degrees, especially in a 140-mi race. You're going to end up coming across a little adversity and challenge, but Yes. this is really important, people listening in, is how he decides where his goal needs to be, which is excellent.
It's And And then you deconstruct it and you say, "I want to do this on that day. What needs to be true today to move me myself towards it." So, you build a plan. Plan your work, work your plan. And you're busy. We're all busy. We're always going to be busy. There are more demands on our time, attention, and energy today than there has ever been in AI and all the like all these things that are built to trap us.
What we're not good at and what we must advocate strongly for is a decision filter that allows us to say, "Is this investment of energy that I'm about to make aligned with my goals, my A goal, my B goal, my C goal, whatever that is?" And then empower yourself, give yourself permission to say no. That is how you navigate tension.
You give yourself permission to say no to those things that are not aligned with what it is you're trying to become. What are some of the the major tensions that you end up seeing in a lot of the the people you work with? Yeah, so I think there's this fallacy that if we're going to be good at work, that's all we have to do.
Or if we're going to be good at fitness, then that's always all we have to do. It's not that at all. So, these tensions that I navigate these all the time myself and every leader I work with navigates these is how do I be good at what I do and be healthy? Like I can go work 80 hours a week and you know, I can be obsessive or I can be, you know, I love what I do. So, I have to say no.
In order for me to be good at that work, I have to take care of my body. I have to take care of my mind. I have to take care of my family. I have to have, you know, a faith component. And so, therefore I'm going to make intentional decisions about time. And maybe this week it's 60% work and 40% you know, other areas are you know, I always changing these things along the way.
But you have to decide in advance. And I think that that is fundamentally one of the most important things that I work with on leaders and I think every you can work on this for yourself is you have to decide in advance what's important and then give yourself permission to say yes and no. And the health one's a great one.
I did some of my best work professionally when I was actively racing Iron Man because man, I needed to be really good at time management. Like if you're training 20 hours a week and you're working a 60 hour a week job and you have a family and you like all these things, you got to be really, really good. I'm not going to say that at any point when I was doing long runs in preparation for a race and I was waking up at 3:00 in the morning on a Thursday to get in a 20 mile run before work cuz I'm not fast that I liked it.
But that was aligned with what I wanted to accomplish. And so it was necessary. And you have to do the work. Right. There's an acronym that I hold is PPA, plan, prepare, act. And if you plan it out, then it's easy to be more prepared and it's easy to act. And that's a that's that has been a long Brianism in a sense to my clients for decades now. PPA.
So what what we're listening to here everybody is a framework, a system, a process you know, how Dusty approaches the thought of what is going to keep him busy in the day cuz he's already determined he's going to be busy. And then he knows that he needs to juggle time, energy, effort with of course the main some of the main priorities of obviously work and providing is important, but then also your health, but then also relationships. I've got four kids.
I got my wife. If I don't If I don't foster those, then it I could be the richest man in the the world and I will still be poor in many aspects in relation to that that that failed relationship and we don't want that. You don't want all the money in the bank account and your your belly rubs the steering wheel of your sports car.
Awesome. I'm glad you're running around in a Ferrari or something, but your body doesn't match up in that that alignment there. No, it does not and you and you have to break the fallacy that in order to give myself time and energy to allow myself to be healthy, I've got to get this degree of success or I have to have this in order to get that.
It's not that way at all. You just have to make decisions about what's truly a priority and health and wellness makes you more successful professionally. Makes you more successful for your family. I you know, I had to learn or maybe unlearn some biases years and years ago where I felt that leading myself, taking care of myself was selfish and I learned that it's actually the opposite that in order to be my best self for my family, my best self for my team at work, you know, to run the organization well, I needed to take care
of myself. And so like if I need to get up at 5:00 in the morning to go do a ruck or to go, you know, sit in the sauna and do a cold plunge, whatever it is, Right. >> I'm going to do what I need to do to because that's it's an investment of time to make myself better in an area that's really really important to me.
And you have to make these decisions. Very much so. As we go into the next part of of roles, leadership roles, self-expectation, how do we define a a leader? Your role as a leader as we've gone through some of these I'm busy and I need time management, but how do we further develop this idea of of who we need to step into to be our best self? One more side note is I've always thought for me that I have this idea of Brian 5 years from now.
And who is he going to evolve into? And I am not just going to wait for that version of Brian to show up in 5 years. I'm going to get my cowboy out and throw a lasso around him and start pulling that version toward myself to evolve, to level up, to learn the skills, have different expectations and and roles and all these things.
That's that's been my idea of this. So, I'm interested to hear yours dealing with some high-level folks of what a leader is, self-expectation, all those things. I love that and I'll just double-click on something you just said. I have a coach. Like I work with, you know, because Coaches have coaches, yep.
Yeah, you got to get better at what you do in your game. And one of the things that my coach works with me on is this this idea that you cannot wait until the 5-year person is ready to start acting like that. You need to start acting like that person right now. And what is the decision that person would make? What is the behavior that person would demonstrate? What is it? And when you decide that, then you just do it.
And, you know, one of my favorite quotes and uh this comes from Tools of Titans. Uh I don't remember the page number it's on, but I've got it literally on a screen print out on my >> right? >> Yeah, Tim Ferriss. I've got this on my uh desktop right now. On one level, wisdom is nothing more than the ability to take your own advice.
It's actually very easy to give people good advice. It's very hard to follow the advice that you know is good. If someone came to me with my list of problems, I would be able to sort that person out very easily. >> heartbeat, right? In a heartbeat. So, let me answer your question. What is leadership? And so, I like as a first principle of thinking to use John Maxwell's quote, "Leadership is influence.
" Nothing more and nothing less. The reason I like that because I think in common worlds we start thinking about leadership through roles or titles or all these things. And that's not the case. Leadership is influence. And yes, I typically am working with a CEO or you know, key executive suite. And and they'll lead with that.
They'll say, "Well, I want to see you know, no, no, no, you're a leader. How are you influencing others? What are the behaviors and results that you want to influence? Now, let's work on how you create >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. first principle, if you want to lead others well, you got to lead yourself first. Because everything we do is leadership. Because everything we do is setting an example into the world. And people will see and emulate or see and choose not to emulate. And they will see and they will sniff out the BS if you say one thing and you do another.
I think they will. >> Leadership is behavior. >> Yes, radar is very high these days, right? >> Oh, it's incredibly high. And everything. Holy molly. Yep, it's incredibly high. So, leadership is the ability to understand that what you're doing is creating influence. And the first person you have to influence change upon is yourself because you recognize that it's your behaviors Mhm. that are teaching.
Saint Francis of Assisi, you know, supposedly said, "Hey, it's no use in to walk anywhere to preach unless your walking is your preaching." So, leaders, leadership is not a role. It shows up in all aspects of life, self, home, family, faith, community, social, work. >> And the I see greatest Uh, it's very the greatest unlock you can ever make is to understand that in order to be the person that you want to be at the 5-year level that you were talking about, you've got to change who you are today.
And then when you do that, when you lead yourself first, everything else starts to follow and the influence you're creating on the lives of others begins to shift. Right. Right. I have a coach, Lori is her name, and the fun part's over. Like, the meet and greet and now it's the work. And the internal friction of getting me to do the things that I know need done and allocating proper time toward the busyness that needs to be done and realigning the branch.
She's like, "Brian, you have like eight things. Like, what's going on? What are we doing here?" So, from the outside looking in, I'm not sure. And And so, we have to realign the say the brand and the image, the identity, and and all these things I naturally do well, but Brian needs a Brian.
Brian needs someone to guide him, to lead him on those most important things because at any given time, you know, my wife We just got back from Peru for 2 weeks, which was amazing, and I was so much jealous of the Incas. They just had a very simplistic life. And learning about the Inca Empire and how they went about it is very easy and simple, and our life is convenient, but it's not simple.
That's a a human trap that I think that we are in for sure and where majority of people are overweight or obese or dealing with some level of chronic illness. That's a big challenge for us, and and it goes beyond what Then, it's my wife's in Croatia, so I'm with my kids now for a week, and I have to juggle work and doing something with them and not just letting them just to the left of their own devices, like literally and figuratively, devices.
And because they don't know any better and they're getting trapped by attention, by the screen, and all that, so I have to find ways to to to to engage with them in a meaningful way that is not as exciting as swimming with sea lions or biking next to alligators in Miami Everglades or something, but to to be able to engage and create meaningful interaction and relationship with them so that they have fun memories and and legacy of well, my papa was a healthy fit guy and he always looked after us and I have really fun memories
spending time with them. There's a phrase that we talked about in our pre-interview was what can I expect of myself? That one stood out to me of going through all the things that we are talking about here. How do you use that maybe on yourself or in your coaching? Sure. Yeah, I think there's Sorry, I'm so excited here.
I just want to jump right into it. Most folks spend a lot of time and this is my experience reacting to the environment around. And one of the things that what we need to do and as a sports person and I think this will resonate if anyone's ever played ball sports or martial arts. There's this mindset where if you're on your heels, you're going to lose, right? Mhm.
You need to get on the ball of your feet. You need to be positioned to move forward and take energy. You know, my my kids uh play football and they you know, they they will tell me hey, the coach will always say watch the hips. The hips don't lie, right? If you're on your heels, you're reacting to the world around you.
Go to the balls of your feet, you're moving forward. And so what I like to talk about is defining what you expect of yourself. So that when you make decisions and you will fail, you have set a standard of expectation for yourself that you that you're that's aspirational in some ways. You're you're not there every day.
But you can get better. And so I I use this actually in in our leadership work where we create a and I do this with every leader I work with. We create a playbook called the rules of engagement. And what it is is it's meant to codify their thinking about how they show up as a leader and how their team can expect them to show up.
And and the judo move for I'm a former martial artist, so I love this judo metaphors, but the judo move here is once you've created this, you can't unlearn it. And so whether or not you deploy it or teach it doesn't matter. You've defined it for yourself. The second section is what do I expect of myself? And I use that language very very intentionally because when you say, I have done deep work and I expect of myself a certain standard, you're and and you then you communicate that to others, you give them permission to give you feedback when you fall short. And
you will. And that's okay because you should set a standard for yourself that is better than you are today. And then recognize you will fall. And there days when I go, you know, I didn't do very good job with my diet today or I didn't do a very good job with that workout. I could have you know, could have done more.
I have a better standard of myself. I once saw a video years and years ago about fitness cuz I bought into this false belief that if I couldn't have a great workout, it was better like I'm not even going to bother. I can literally remember telling people, well, you know, if I can't go run 10 miles, I'm not even going to bother because you know, like that's just that's all it's worth, you know, worth doing.
And I had to unlearn that negative behavior pattern which is, you know, what the world will reinforce. We reinforce the outlier. We reinforce the exceptional and say, well, if I can't do 10 miles, what is my minimum expectation? What is it that I expect that I will do? You know what? I can go walk 10,000 steps today or I can do 100 push-ups.
Like I have a minimum physical threshold and I expect of myself to hold that. And it's my floor and I will not go below my floor. So, using the language to say, here's what I expect of myself. When you share that with others that you give them permission to hold you accountable, to give you feedback, and then you get better at it every single day.
And that's what keeps you moving, Brian, towards that five-year version, that 10-year version. That's the key here. You're making a mental shift to elevate up every single day. Yep. Getting the right people on the bus, having the right people on the team to be able to help catch you when you do fall and stumble and trip. And you're going to do that no matter what, even in any conversation I have when in the realm of health, it's uh what I call the shoelace moment.
I'm going to teach the person how to double knot their shoes so that it is less likely to come untied, and it still will. Take my second son, Everett, he's 6'4", but he's 130 lb. So, you can only imagine how string bean he is, right? Compared to where you're at, right? But he wanders around with his Chuck Taylors on and shoelaces are flapping around and the parent in me is like, "Hey, you should tie your shoe.
" And he looks down, maybe he says, "Yeah, it's a long way. I'm not bending over to do that." And then he's just like he shrugs and he keeps walking. And sometimes you get away with not tripping at all, it's not a big deal, but then you step on a shoe and you stumble, or you trip, or you fall, or you face plant.
And that that becomes a a challenge. So, the Dusty and I, we coach our people to double knot their shoes to manage those opportunities that will show up to create a fall, a stumble, a trip. And because you're not perfect, you never will be, and it's just it's a fact of life. Mhm. Only person There's only one perfect person, and what does humans do to him? Yeah.
Yes. >> Yes. So. I believe you coined it as minimum good. That was the phrase [clears throat] that you used earlier. And that that is really powerful cuz it just it's just two words, and it's really easy to remember. What's the minimum good that need to do today? And so that ends up being the floor, as he's saying.
And of course, we have our aspirations of what we really want to accomplish. Yeah, and if you go back to how we opened, right? My minimum good is finish the race. My best defined ceiling is, you know, my A goal. And I don't want to start with my first goal as the minimum, you know, good in like when I'm aspiring to something.
I want to aspire to something good, but then I'm going to accept a minimum good and know what that is. I was I spent this past weekend at an author's retreat with another author. We're both working on our books, and we started every day with what's our minimum good? What is our floor for our work today? Right.
>> And And what like if everything goes perfectly, what could we achieve? But what's our floor? And we crushed our floors. In fact, both of us achieved our A goals for the both days, but it was because we established it. >> and accountability and setting that, speaking it out into the world, and having a body, a friend, a coach, a mentor, preferably not your spouse, right? The The There's that that person is in a different role for you, a loving relationship role, not the don't eat this food, or you should write in your
your book today. Like don't put them in that role. That's not why they are there. No, not at all. That causes damage, but you know what's really important here? It's not that you have a minimum good, it's that you've taken the time to define it. Like that's the mindset shift when you have given yourself the clarity so that you can align your actions to create the results you want.
But if you don't take the time to set a minimum good, if you don't take it the time to understand where you're going and what good looks like, what great looks like, then you are going to be on your heels, you're going to be reacting to the environment, you're going to be busy because someone else is controlling your energy, controlling your attention.
Minimum good is the definition of having spent and invested the time to create clarity so you can align your actions to making that happen. Excellent. Man, I'm going to put you on the spot. I'm going to put you on the balls of your feet and you'll easily accept this challenge. And And you talk about execution gap as well.
Let's talk about a story of either yourself or a client where they came to you and then they have evolved and they found that say five-year version of themself in two years because you literally can collapse time when you have a map, a massive action plan, and you can head in the direction where you want.
So, I'm going to put you on on your toes here a little bit. Tell us a story that the guys listening in can like be inspired, encouraged, and be like, "Okay, I need to take some action." Yeah, I'll tell you a story. And there's one that comes to an immediate mind and it's a a client. She is the CEO of a very successful company in the construction space.
They're doing uh 250 million-ish in revenue, 1,000 employees. >> It's a bit They're They're very successful. And she is just a next-level performer. She's amazing. And when we started working together 2 years ago you know, I asked her what was terrifying or what was the most important thing we needed to solve in the next 90 days.
And she she shared with me, I have this investment company board meeting that I am terrified by. And so like okay, let's deconstruct that. Let's focus on this thing. Let's figure this out. What do we need to do? And now like we fast forward 2 years like 2 years later, she's not even thinking about stuff like that.
They're thinking about acquisitions and strategic expansion and she's now you know, bought a big piece of the company and I look and we were just talking about this a few weeks ago. Maybe that's why it came to mind. 2 years ago, we were talking about a transactional fear of being able to articulate to a board our value conveyance and now she's out there changing the way the industry works, changing the way the world works.
She's not thinking at transactional level about being feared of afraid of speaking or fear this board meeting. She's making acquisitions. She's shifting culture. She's doing all this cool stuff. And oh by the way, the company is crushing it. They're growing double digits. Their EBITDA is growing double digits.
And what I love about that transformation for her is we didn't spend all of our time fixing transactional things. What we spent our time focusing on was the identification of the goal and then what needed to be true or necessary in order for that goal to become a reality. Like that's my favorite question to ask and so I you know, your audience can can take this and use this question on themselves.
What would need to be true or different to make this goal this thing an absolute reality without any consequence or failure right now. Yeah. Do it. Ask yourself that question. You know these answers in many cases. But you don't take the time to think about it. If I were to put myself into that answer of that, I do need to elevate.
I do need to bring other people on to be able to grow the business cuz I'm over here with the chicken with my head cut off doing all the things. I'm I'm the marketing department, the tax department, the the selling department, the fulfillment department, and I do pretty good job, but also there's always three things that aren't getting done really well >> Mhm. as a result of it.
And it's probably the first most immediate one I probably would say would be getting for me getting someone on the the social media, the front-facing piece of the business to build the brand, to to create opportunity for people to engage to then fulfill on getting 100 guys in my program and to fulfill on changing their lives in much bigger better way.
And that ends up being the I would say probably that the immediate constraint that's going on here because I can't post all day, every day. If I want to do that, Alex Hermosi he's posting every other hour or something. Yeah. I don't have time for that. I drop my kids off. I'm going to pick them up.
And the whole just even driving kids around and doing dinner is going to take upwards of 3 hours of my time to be participating with my kids. I'm not working then. And it's important that [clears throat] I'm not working then, that I'm engaged with my kids at that time. Yeah, it is incredibly important. Well, let me jump in here, Brian, because I think this is an really important topic.
Everything we're talking about, we're talking about through the lens of how do we improve ourselves. The application works in business strategy equally well. In fact, what I've really focused on is how do we take the best of business growth strategy and apply it to our personal lives? How do we take the best of our personal growth and apply it to our business lives? What would have to be true or different in in to make this business reality an absolute certainty.
What has to be true or different to make this personal reality an absolute certainty. And you've already articulated. What I heard you say is there are things that I am doing that only I can do, be my dad, you know, be a dad, do all these things. And so I can't outsource that. No. And it's not the best use of my time. So, I need to identify those things that can be done by someone else to a degree of efficacy that meets the goals of the business and then do it.
I need to make a decision. So, my question to you is what is a decision you can make or what is a commitment you can honor within the next 30 days to move this ball forward. So, where it today as we record this, it's early April. Right. 30 days from now, early May, what's the decision you're going to commit to doing to create the reality you want because you know it's the right thing to do.
I need to find someone to manage the social aspect of my business. The social aspect All right, let me let me interrupt. I'm just going to interrupt and live coach you on Two things. Remove the word need to. Change it to will. >> [laughter] >> Remove an ambiguous statement. >> finger on me here. Don't do like this is the same thing you're doing though when you're coaching people on health, isn't it? >> agree. Exactly.
You're just Brian on to Brian's clients right now. Exactly. >> Right. So, change the ambiguous language that gives you an escape hatch to I will and then what I would next say is give me a commitment to an action you're going to make. And this is the same thing I do when I'm coaching CEOs or executive leadership teams. We'll say, "Well, this is hard.
" Well, no no no duh, Sherlock. What are you going to do? Right. This is activation. So, what is it that you will do and what is the date you will do it by? You know, one thing I always like to tell people is I want to hear the what by when. I will do this thing by this day. What is a what by when? So, I'm going to ask you this question.
Brian, what is it you're going to do by when to make this an absolute guaranteed certainty of outcome? I will find a qualified person to take over my social media marketing position in my company so that I can alleviate that need to post all the time in a sense. I have endless content already developed. I just can't post it.
I've got 100 podcasts. I I have five plus clips per podcast that I can post. I can't do that if I'm fulfilling and selling and and nurturing and fostering and and all that and being a dad and even more importantly making sure I'm a good husband, too. Cuz I've I've burned that bridge a little bit sometimes here and there, right? Cuz you know, work work work and it's like my wife's like, "Hey, What about me?" out some point? So, yeah, exactly.
So, that is the thing I need to do within a 30-day time frame. So, it's April 13th. So, by May 13th, I need to have I will There we go. I will have someone in doing that on to to help me with front-facing content because they'll do it better than me cuz Well, I love it. And so, when you make that commitment to yourself, then you get to solve different math.
You get to go, "Okay, well, what must be true in order to make that happen? I need to go do this revenue or I need to go find this person or I like you get to solve problems that you can't solve until you've committed to an outcome. I agree. I think that's honestly the act of committing to finding that person has just been the thing that's slowly killing myself in a sense of always being busy and doing things that I probably shouldn't be doing.
I'm I'm confident at them. I can post content and all, but my video video editing skills and abilities to then create content that is actually even more attractive is less than because I have 5 minutes of possibly unbroken undistracted time to create this thing, but it actually takes 20 minutes to be able to fulfill on this particular activity.
Well, and what I find in work with companies, work with CEOs, with leaders, everyone's going through this. We're all going through these same exact journeys and navigating these inflection points. We just we have to break through the thing that got us to where we are and do things differently.
And so, you you're do you just said it. Hey, I'm going to have 5 minutes to do it. It actually takes 20. And you're probably doing it to a degree of 60 or 70 80% quality. And it could be better. Good. It's good enough, but it's not great enough to then probably attract the attention and the clients and the followers to then create more opportunity to have conversations with people to then see how I can help them to then actually change lives cuz me spending time on a video isn't changing lives.
And spending [clears throat] time talking to someone just like you do with your clients is where the rubber meets the road and where I have excelled for 20 years. It's literally standing in front of people having thousands of conversations. It's it's where you get to actually inject that God-given gift that is a true insertion of an inflection point in thinking for them.
And then that's what you need to do, right? Every every minute you're spending that isn't aligned with that is a sunk cost and it's it's a it's a choice. It's a choice though, right? And so this is what I always tell leaders like, "Hey, it's it's a choice. It's a is a um an intentional choice even if we don't know we're making it because we haven't decided in advance what's really really important.
I could go on this topic for hours. This is so incredibly powerful. This is really good. And that's why I love having guests on that uh excel in different areas and I'm very aware of of my situation and I would say the whole point is the next step of now being financially responsible for yet another human being cuz I'm already responsible for five.
And I have five pets. So I have 10 living beings in my household alone that require time, effort, energy, and money. Bringing someone else on and then like, "Well, I have to then pay them money and then go find a client just to I got to find two or three clients to pay them a reasonable fee and and wage to do great work, right? I can't just like, "Hey, come on for $0." And Right.
that doesn't work, right? If you want to excel, you need to bring on a client uh a type talent to to really thrive. Yeah, it's it's the same thing that we work through when we're doing corporate strategy envisioning in that we have to break free from this mindset that we need to plan our next 90 days based on where we are. And and I advocate strongly that no, we need to get to our future and work backwards.
We have to go and do future back thinking that allows us to say, "This is who I'm going to be 5 years from now, 1 year now from now. This is who the company needs to be. And what are the three to five, and I really like three, most important initiatives that will make this an absolute certainty. And then you do those things, right? And so once you've articulated, hey, in order for me to be the the have the company I want and do the results I want, what do I need to solve for? You need to solve the revenue problem, you need to solve the growth
problem, whatever that is. Well, then you get to go solve that problem. Uh but you can't do that when you're iterating from your heels, right? When you're going from a reactive state, you've got to go proactive, you have to go future back. And and like that's I'm literally working with the CEO right now on that for their business strategy and the organization.
And these philosophies apply exactly the same way because organizations, companies are a, you know, a gathering of human beings and the psychology of people is in play here. And so what we have to do as a leadership team is we have to articulate where we going? Why does it matter? How are we going to get there? And most importantly, and this is the thing where I find companies and people always fail, is we don't spend nearly enough time talking about where does the person fit in to making the vision a reality, to making the plan a reality, and what's in it for them?
Like when we start doing these things and having these conversations, we start really connecting the dots and getting the activities, the actions that we want that create the outcomes we want. Um but we have to we have to reverse engineer this whole thing. It's uh it's an important part of our of how we build companies.
Uh thinking of that person, I've got a full-fledged media company in my back pocket right now with with all the content and the opportunities to create short form, to create long form, to I have the know-how and the confidence to do it and understand, but I can't think about that and think about all the other stuff, too, getting a person out of the way.
So the the especially in our newer economy, our newer job shift of having a social media manager, a brand manager. I always said Brian needs a Brian. He Brian needs a brand manager to manage Brian so he can just go do these things and this person can manage the other stuff. And then that would be the most useful amount of time and allocating of of money and resources to level up and find leverage in in my own abilities to then the core mission of The Call to Rise and what I'm doing for the next 15 plus years of focused work is helping men change their
lives with their health first, but then even more importantly in the impact that it has on their health, on their their family, on their work, on their circle of influence and then leveling that up cuz so many times I've seen so many great things come because someone lost some weight. A guy A really simple example, he lost 13 lb in the process of like 6 weeks in or something.
He's like, "Brian, I'm going to go look for a job." Like, "Oh, I didn't even know. Cool. What are you doing?" And then because I talk a lot about even work or relationships or a lot of different things because it can contrast with what our goals are as like losing weight. If someone's stressed out about [clears throat] work, hey, you do realize you don't have to keep working there, right? You can go find another job that aligns better with you and then they have the confidence to go do that.
And so this person did a lateral position at another company 65K more in their salary. Pretty cool because they had more confidence just pull their head up and look around. Another client, they moved from Upstate New York to about 45 minutes from Myrtle Beach. They lost 50 lb. And the cons the the leaving a 15 plus year career at a LPN doctor's office situation and having, you know, the mortgage and the day-to-day and whatever to be able to uproot all of that and go buy a house and go change jobs and stuff, that's a tremendous amount of confidence and
commitment that you need to do cuz it's months long and it's a lot of zeros that go along with it and trying to figure out a whole new lifestyle. But, because they had energy and confidence and they felt better about themselves, they did an action that they were never going to do otherwise.
There's no way this person would have moved if they hadn't lost the weight. Now, maybe they would have, but we again, maybe they had a 5-year plan, but because they lost the weight it became uh uh literally it was like 6 to 8 months plan that just popped up out of nowhere. It's like, I think I'm going to move to Myrtle Beach and go be around my family, my grandchildren and stuff.
And and now I get videos of them walking the beach, which is cool. That's super cool. We see these powerful things and if I can do that and if I can help men take better care of themselves and have more energy, then they can show up for the people that really matter, especially their family. I came from a divorced parents and such and I didn't really >> [snorts] >> there's no father figure.
My dad I didn't dad a actual conversation with my dad for I don't know, 20 years. I don't talk with my mom. There's not a lot of family and something for deep for me is making sure that I create opportunities, engagement, and energy for my kids and be the patriarch, the father figure, and lead by example around my health, around business, around leadership so that they are bold, confident people going into their days and can actually have life fulfillment and not needy, job-seeking, overweight, struggle with confidence,
and different things cuz that happens when parents aren't around because they're too busy and kids are left to their own devices, literally and figuratively. Yes. Well, and what I'm hearing you talk about, Brian, is you're talk is you're sharing these things, these transformations occur when we understand and set goals and and we start to understand what what is it costing us? Like this is the thing when I'm working with leaders and leadership teams and companies and you go, what is the cost of an action? What is the cost
of the status quo? What is the cost of not embracing the inflection point? Like if you continue overwhelmed, if you continue to feel out of control, if you continue to feel like everything is running through you you you you're you you're the bottleneck in your business, Mhm.
the articulation that we have to really dig into, the thing we have to really think about is what is the cost. There is a cost. And so, you know, when I'm working with, you know, a CEO, then we'll typically say, "Hey, look, the one single decision will pay for our engagement 10 times over. Like one decision. Like my I remember having this conversation cuz I spent, you know, 25, almost 28 years actually in, you know, corporate leadership roles.
And the last 15 of them I was a president and CEO of company and my coach who was not inexpensive, you know, the very first decision I made paid for that the entire engagement, you know, many many times over because I needed an inflection point. And so, the cost of inaction, the cost of not losing the weight, the cost of not pursuing is is holding you back.
And so, then when you get these transformations and you get these movements forward, what's really cool about it is these unexpected, unintended benefits start to pour in. And those are like the it's it's really 10X. It's a 10X in value return. Like what is the is the the weight loss? It was 13 lb or 50 lb, whatever it was.
What is the value of walking on the beach with your grandkids because you had the courage and the confidence to make a different decision. It's immeasurable. Immeasurable. But you've got to make these decisions intentionally. And that's that's where, you know, people they get scared or they get stuck or they get happy with the status quo.
And that's not how that's not how change happens. Yep. I I totally agree with you. And that's uh static point for me is is scared and stuck and not taking that next step. Even I had a coach last year, a coaching team, and they did okay. They made me aware of things, but they didn't actually create transformation.
It was a very expensive year-long coaching program that did not foster the ROI that I was hoping for in a a number of different ways. And but they did if I was in it I learned a lot, but the if it was half the cost, I'm like, "Oh, okay. This is a fair trade of value." But what you guys gave me for the cost was not the This was not valuable in a sense.
And and so I'm I'm yet again stuck in the same place I was last year. I'm 100 podcast deeper. I'm I'm so many more different layers deeper than it was cuz I understand the nuance of the game that I need to play, but I'm not any farther forward that has created the outcome that I needed to of [snorts] doing business every day so that I don't just fade away because I can't keep up.
I can't pay my bills. >> Right. Yeah, and I think that as you talk about that, as you say that, then, you know, being able to have that really candid conversation with someone along the way that says, "Hey, we're we're going to we need to make sure this is a value exchange and you're pushing me and I got to do the work, right?" You know, I I tell clients all the time, like, Yeah.
I'll I'll push you, but you got to do the work. And if you don't do the work, you're not going to be successful. Our our leadership impact accelerator, which is our group programs, will run, you know, key executives through these. And I was having a conversation with the CEO a few weeks ago.
He sent several people through the program and he loves it. And, you know, they had one that didn't get great results. And I said, "Well, this is not a place to send people to be saved. If you someone is coming in, they're willing to do the work, they will get the results. But if you don't do the work, you will not get the results. There are no silver bullets.
You have to embrace the opportunity. And you have to be smart. You have to think about things through this lens of return on invested time. What is it that I'm trying to get to? But you've got to do the work. And then, you know, you had someone that didn't push you or it didn't get you the value you wanted, then you need to be able to have that candid, frank, open conversation.
It's not personal. It's just, "Hey, I think there's a mismatch in value return and we're going to make a different decision. Or I need more and this is what I want." Yep. Yep. Yep. Uh that's what I did. So I found someone else to help push and pull me in those areas. So But this is all great because I'm talking to them on Thursday.
So I will send them I will send them a a lovely note today of things that I've committed to and Lori, Brian just getting in his own way. Which she she already knows. She already knows I'm a very driven. I will do the work. Just I'm getting in my own way, making decisions that make impact. Further impact than the ones that already have a lot of strong impact.
So That's what I found. We almost always get in our own way and I am most certainly guilty of that myself. That's why That's why I have to have a coach. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Uh wrapping up, this has been very powerful for me. I hope the people listening have been powerful as well and they have some key takeaways.
What is one or two things that are imperative that you leave with the guys listening in so that they get the ROI on their time. They don't fall into the the business of of day-to-day life. Yeah, I think that the thing that I would encourage is really two things. You need to have time to do the work for yourself to create clarity so that you can build alignment so that you can get the execution in any aspect or area of your life.
And it doesn't have to take tons of time. I often find that people don't want to do the work cuz they think it is going to be massive investments. Oh, I got to go spend a weekend away in on in the woods with a journal. No. One of the gifts that I'd love to give your audience is we've got a resource called my rules of engagement and they can go to myrulesofengagement.
com and it's a leadership playbook. And the the judo move with this thing is when you do the work, when you actually go through the process of just filling out this simple seven-section guide, you're doing it and you're creating a playbook of effect that you can give to your team and you can share with them, but more importantly, whether you share it or not, when you sit down and say, "Hey, what is it that I value? What do I expect of myself? What do I expect of others? How do I show up? How do I expect them to show up? You know, what
is it that, you know, I How do I get feedback?" When you go through these very basic sections and you do so in a sequence manner, what you're really doing is you're giving yourself clarity, which allows you to give yourself permission, and it allows you to communicate and set that minimum floor.
And once you've set that minimum floor and made that a practice, you just level up and you level up and you level up. And it doesn't have to take a lot of time. It typically takes, you know, an hour to do this. >> You just have to make a decision. >> Often times it's a decision. It is. >> and then because you don't need to a weekend away to decide to take action.
You just need to >> do it. No, you don't. You need a timer as a forcing function. It's amazing how much how many decisions you can make if you set a timer for 3 minutes and give yourself a really good question. Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, Pareto's law, right? You give yourself as much time as you allow to be able to accomplish the task at hand.
Exactly. Yeah. That's what I would encourage. Make decisions, get clear, take action. When you do that and you do that well, it transforms every aspect of your life. This is brilliant. Love it. Why leading yourself is the greatest act that you can impart on yourself, but the world around you and the world in general.
Everyone in this world needs you listening in to step up to your greatest self. Why? Because then everyone else benefits from one way or another. It's a trickle-down effect. It's like the pay-it-forward. If one person does good for another, then they feel better and they can do good for another. I think the golden rule of just do unto others as you like to do unto yourself.
If we all adopt that, then we probably be on living in a healthier, happier economy and world and experience around humanity in and of itself. Leadership and engagement and taking the steps forward to be proactive and not reactive is super important. [music] And what can you expect of yourself is a key question that you should be asking yourself on a regular basis.
Why? Because it gets you into that PPA of Pollan and Brian of planning and preparing and be able to act on what's actually important and not get lost in the the distraction or the nuance of I'm busy. So, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of Driven for Health. Dusty, slam dunk guest. I appreciate your time, your insights, putting your finger on me to to make a decision and to move forward to lasso my five year self and pull it in closer to collapse time and it will as soon as I decide and do then I'm like, oh my gosh, right? Why didn't I do this earlier,
right? And that is usually how that works. So, thank you so much, Dusty. Thanks everyone else for listening in. You'll be able to check out in the show notes to get the rules of engagement from Dusty and and to check him out on his website. So, thank you. Thank you, Brian. Love it.