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THIS is the Secret to High Performance with James Laughlin · Age Defiantly with Mark Young

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  Our skill set, our mindset, and our heart set.
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  If we're not in alignment with the three things that I think are most important,
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  then we start to feel irritated, frustrated, pissed off, beliefs,
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  shape our attitude, and our attitude dictates our behavior.
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  What if high performance wasn't just about doing more, but about doing the things that matter most consistently?
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  Today on Age Defiantly, I'm going to welcome my friend James Loughlin,
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  who has an entire history steeped in training some of the most high-performing people in the world,
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  actually become better at what they're doing by finding consistent habits and alignment in everything
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  they're doing. Because what if being a high-performer wasn't about just stacking the deck and
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  doing more and spending more times, but doing those things that bring refinement. Too many people
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  are looking for significance by doing more and more and more. And James is here to talk to us
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  about how that may not be the answer we're looking for. So please welcome my guest,
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  James Loughlin. James, it is such a pleasure having you on Age Defiantly here today.
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  Mark, absolute pleasure to see you. I'm beyond the pod.
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  I know, right? I was a guest on your podcast. You're coming on mine. I love it.
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  I love that kind of reciprocity and it helps your audience get to know me and vice versa here,
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  both ways. 100% share the love. James, I got to be honest with you. So I need to start off in a
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  really strange way here because I've read all the notes and we've talked before and I know
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  the story of how you coach high-performing people and you coach business leaders and you do
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  these types of things. And in my show notes that were delivered to me, one of the things I'll read
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  you the note is that how did drumming and competition impact your identity? And I kind of laughed
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  when I read that because I was like drumming. Was he like a rock star? What's going on here?
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  And then you explained to me that this was Irish drumming, Scottish bagpipes and drum core
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  kind of competition, which I find absolutely fascinating having Scottish family as we had
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  discussed. But what I found more fascinating about that was the irony because I thought this
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  is really interesting that a man here in the States, and I don't know if that's the same for you,
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  but we actually have a colloquialism talking about someone who marches to the beat of a different
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  drum. And marching to the beat of a different drum sounds like your entire career and life
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  story. So I found it interesting that you were shaped by following everyone else who was drumming
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  right along with you. And I thought like this is probably the guy who was only drumming on the
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  updates rather than the downbeats when everyone else was playing. Like this can't be synchronous.
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  I love it. Now, honestly, Mark drumming changed my life and I grew up in Northern Ireland.
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  So for any folks that can remember back to the 80s, 90s, 2000s in Northern Ireland,
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  a lot of conflict, essentially a war zone of sorts. And so drumming was my way out, thankfully.
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  And so very competitive, very driven young fellow and wanted to become world champion.
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  I was very fortunate to win the world championships. 13 again at 14. And that's when
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  opportunity started popping up in New Zealand in Vancouver Canada. So I ended up leaving
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  in my mid-delete teens for Vancouver and spent six and a half years traveling between Vancouver
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  and New Zealand, summer to summer. And that really opened my eyes. But the only thing I was trying
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  to do was win the world championships. For me, it was simple drum all day, be as good as I could,
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  be ready for the world championships in Scotland in August every year. It was a very simple life.
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  And then as soon as you were done with the drumming, you immediately started beating to a different
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  drum. Is that when the different drum came later? I love it. It's interesting. I got really burnt
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  out. Like drumming was a passion. It was a hobby. It was everything. And then I ended up teaching drums,
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  performing as a drummer, selling drums, traveling the world, talking about drums. I got sick of it.
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  So you know, lit 20s, I'm starting to think, what else is there in the world? And here in New
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  Zealand, we have a game called Rugby, which is the rugby mad here. And so our team is one of the
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  world's best. They're called the All Blacks. And some of the All Blacks professional rugby players
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  had approached me to say, hey, what are you doing with that drum line? Why are they winning the world
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  championships from New Zealand? That's very strange. Anything we could learn. And so I started
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  chatting to these guys and I didn't think I had any business in sport. They started getting
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  some really great results. They were playing in local professional teams. And then the corporate
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  sponsors of those teams were going, hey, what are you doing with these guys? Like the stuff you're
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  doing with these, these local rugby players is seriously working. Could you come and talk to our
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  businesses? And I said, look, I've got no business talking about business. Like, no, no, no, talk
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  about this mindset, skill set, heart set thing you're doing with those guys. So I started doing
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  that and all of a sudden market just started taking off. Harper Collins and Penguin both approached
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  me about writing a book and I said, geez, I'm not a writer. I'm a storyteller. I don't write
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  books. And yes, it's been very unorthodox, rather unplanned, lots of it, and a lot of fun.
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  That's absolutely amazing. And I'm going to tell you, and we're in the middle of our conversation
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  right now. And we always record the intros at the end, but I may introduce you as Ted Lasso.
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  Like I love Ted Lasso. And Ted Lasso is amazing, but like you sound like the Ted Lasso of rugby
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  turned, turned business. I absolutely love that. So like maybe the title of this entire podcast
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  can just be believe. I'll get above the door. I'll put it above the door. It'll be perfect.
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  I love that, James. Well, James, here's the question. I want you to kind of unpack. And I know
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  you've got published works. You coach large businesses. You do performance. And here on our
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  podcast, like we talked mostly about things related to health and performance because I think all
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  of that stuff goes together. But what I really want to spend some time with you on, and I think
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  there's just such a great story here for our listeners is alignment. And I'm just going to say
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  that because today you asked me earlier, like, how's your day going? I'm like, you know, some days
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  I would just soon scratch off the calendar and start off tomorrow. And I've had, and truthfully,
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  it's funny that we're talking about alignment right now. And I'm grateful for it because I think
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  timing is very often opportune because I need an alignment right now because there's been some
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  circumstances today that just everything was in alignment until suddenly it wasn't. And it's,
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  you know, allowing negative energy from some people or just negativity in general to creep into
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  a conversation. And then it kind of bears down on you a bit. And I really want to have you talk
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  about that for us because a lot of the coaching that you do really involves a, I'm going to say
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  psychological but spiritual alignment where a person needs to be in synchronicity, not just with
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  their goals but with themselves. 100%. It's interesting. I'm working right now with a leader of a country
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  and he has got his own challenges and he's got the heat of the world focused on what he's doing,
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  his actions, his responses. He's got the weight of a nation on his shoulders. And I look at him and
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  he's no different than your eye. And for him, I talk about spinal alignment. And he needs spinal
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  alignment. You know, alignment with the people that are in charge of finance, people in charge
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  of making decisions around defense, people are in charge of decisions around security. He needs
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  alignment with his MPs, like all of these different layers. And if that's not in place, he can't perform.
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  Now you and I aren't running a country. And the listener arguably we won't maybe have too many
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  presidents or prime ministers listening in who knows. If you are my email adoption. 100%.
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  But we're all running our own version of a country, which is our life, which we wake up and we have
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  to run and perform and deliver. And some of us are parents. Some of us are running small companies.
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  Some of us are working for others. But if we're not in alignment with the three things that I think
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  are most important, then we start to feel irritated, frustrated, pissed off, angry at the world. We
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  don't want to get out of bed in the morning. So these three things are skill set, our mindset,
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  and our heart set. Now the first two, you're easy. We all know like we've got to have good skills,
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  we've got to be learning, we've got to be listening to your podcast, like we've got to be leveling
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  up. Secondly, mindset under pressure, we've got to have some mental skills. So often when I'm
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  working with athletes, whether it's golf, tennis rugby, mindset's everything. But those two things
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  alone are not enough. Heart set is the thing that we all need to spend more time on, focused on.
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  And that's the sense of self-belief, the emotional quotient, self-awareness. And to me, Mark,
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  that's where most of us blokes get it wrong. We're so busy, being busy, and aggressive, and let's
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  fix things. How about we slow down and tune in, tap in? Yeah, and that heart set, I always use the phrase
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  mind-body spirit, that mind-body spirit only needs to be in alignment. And one of the things I
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  talk about is I'm a weirdo with advanced degrees in education. But I always talk about like we can't
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  focus on one of those areas without the other. And my answer, my question, I suppose perhaps,
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  like when I asked questions, I'm very surprised. And so much as I ask questions back,
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  you know, and I'll get the area, you know, well, what should I focus on first? And my
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  responses, well, what area is it that's giving you the most challenge? And then when given the answer,
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  well, I really, my body is out of the great. In what way is your spirit, or in what way is your
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  is your emotion, you know, leading into these physiological changes? And if a person is
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  physiologically challenged, I mean, I'll laugh and tell you, I mentioned I sold out earlier and
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  said, and this is how weird I am. I sold out earlier and said that I've had a day of misalignment,
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  like I woke up this morning and just felt off. And I've been on my game for quite a while now,
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  like, you know, you go through those seasons. And I'm like, I'm just so laser focused right now.
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  And it dawned on me before I even got out of bed that I ate a cookie last night. And it is
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  crazy. Is that sounds like I have had zero sugar in me for quite a while. And I'm like,
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  and literally just having a cookie like, is that what threw me off? Like, did my physiology by
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  having sugar introduced to my gut? Ro me off to the point that my emotions started getting wrecked.
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  And when bad news came early this morning, it knocked me off my kilter. And I thought, wow,
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  this is an absolutely an alignment issue. And before I even drove to work today, like I was late
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  even getting in because I'm like, I need to try to stabilize this before I even go approach my day
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  because this is just not okay. So when I'm asking questions about alignment, often it is
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  I'm being approached with physiological questions, you know, a person says, I can't lose weight or
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  I'm really struggling in this area. I'm really tired lately. And my first deep dive is usually the
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  other two categories. So you bring me a physiological problem. And I typically tap into the more
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  spiritual emotional side because I want the upstream things that are taking place. If you bring
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  to me an emotional or spiritual issue, I'm normally asking you things about diet and exercise.
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  Like I'm literally looking in the area that you're not often because I believe that there is a
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  some of the obvious answers are right in front of us, right? If you can't lose weight,
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  somebody asking you what you've been eating is a pretty obvious, you know, starting point.
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  I think people have already explored that before they started asking questions.
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  Do you find that true when you talk about your three areas that if a person is out of alignment
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  with one or the other that I mean, you say that the the heart set is the one where people struggle
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  most. But do you find that there's a misalignment in skill or a misalignment in in in goals?
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  Always. When you look at let's say a performer who's struggling with skill set, like a specific skill
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  that athletes are easy to kind of take as an example, someone who's struggling to serve in tennis
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  or to drive the ball at the 18th green at the masters. The struggling on a skill set thing,
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  but often it's not the skill they've done it millions of times. They are capable of it. Then I
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  start to focus on is it mindset. So hey, what are you thinking right now? Where's your focus right
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  now? What are you saying yourself right now? And often it sits in there or it sits in the heart
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  set place and vice versa. So I think Mark you and I are full of BS, right? We're full of belief
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  systems. And in my book, I talk a lot about BS and how to supercharge your BS. So there's a very
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  simple model and you're probably very familiar with it. But for the listener, I want them to think
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  of the acronym BAB and stands for beliefs, shape our attitude and our attitude dictates our behavior.
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  So often what we do is we go straight to the last B. We want the quick hacks, the quick fixes,
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  the quick supplement, the quick mental thing, the behavior. We want to just get that. Give me the
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  five things the Elon Musk does to make a billion bucks. Like well, that's not going to work for us.
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  How about we go back to the start? What's the belief set? So let's get our beliefs right
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  around our health, around our love, around our wealth. Whatever the thing is that you're struggling with,
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  let's rewire the belief and that will shape the attitude. When the attitude's right, the behavior
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  reflects that. So your day, you'd believe this morning would have been something. Actually,
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  let's just do what did you believe when you woke up this morning? Well, I'll give you what I normally
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  believe when I wake up in the morning. My normal belief system when I wake up is that I am going to go
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  crush today. And I get out of bed. Typically, I wake up six, six, 30 in the morning and kind of
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  acclimate myself to the day before I even get moving. But I'm usually urgently getting in the shower
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  to get to work because I'm eager to start my day. Awesome. So that belief, how does that shape your
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  attitude? It means that the minute I walk in the door and my laptop is plugged in, my fingers
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  are to the keys. I'm not a hang out in the lounge and fill my coffee cup. And this, I mean, I'm
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  going to come in, go to my office at best wave as I'm walking past people because I'm down to
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  business. Like I'm getting in the business of business as early as possible and uninterrupted.
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  Especially I'll say on a day like a Monday, which we're recording this on a Monday.
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  Mondays are my flex days. Like I don't put meetings. I don't put standing meetings on my calendar
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  on Mondays because those are my Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays. Thank you strategic coach.
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  But Monday, Mondays are my focus or my buffer days where I'm allowed to pick up and catch things
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  that I didn't expect and unexpected meetings can pop up or podcast recordings like this,
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  like that sort of stuff has allowed to creep into my Monday. This morning, I woke up and did not
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  feel that I slept more than I typically sleep, which is not a bad thing. I was physically, I
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  would say tired and sore from an exhausting workout yesterday. But I will say I checked my email
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  and received a couple of disappointing emails and allowed that to start reshaping my beliefs
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  about what today was going to be like. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that and being vulnerable
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  and honest about that because those of us and we're all human who wake up and respond to the
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  digital device right away and check our emails, our socials, the news, God, there's nothing good
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  on there. That means we're waking up to reactivity. We're wiring our brains for stress and reactivity
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  for the day. When you did that this morning, what did you believe about yourself or the day ahead?
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  When I read the email and I will say that we've had a particular project,
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  that a book project actually that has been going swimmingly well and I received an email with
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  very ugly feedback and it was almost like getting a review and it was 80 to 85% of everything
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  we've received has been everything has been amazing. It's not published yet, but it was early
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  input and one person made comments and it started to make the entire project feel vulnerable
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  and I didn't like the feeling of vulnerability because this was one of the project. I think we all
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  have areas that are softer than others in our lives. This wasn't one that felt soft. So when a
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  soft area gets affected, you kind of have already, I would say that I already have defense up
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  in those areas. When an area that I didn't see as being vulnerable, got penetrated, that stung
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  and I think part of the reason it stung is it made me feel vulnerable not the project.
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  There we go. And how has that impacted your mental attitude about today?
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  Today it has put me in a sympathetic overdrive because I have felt my need to control things that
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  are not mine to control and it has actually caused me to be lax about things that I ought to be
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  controlling because I told you it's my buffer day, but in that buffer day, it's actually caused me
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  to be reactive to a lot of things rather than proactively dealing with things that have a much
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  greater output. I'm over focusing on my serve when in fact, that's my strength. I have no reason to
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  worry about that. But again, I get it, obviously I get where you're going. When I'm dealing with
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  people particularly in the areas of health and longevity, I let you finish that thought process
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  because I've got another thing I want to mention, but go ahead. What you've shared is gold,
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  and I know the listeners going, yeah, that was my yesterday or that's my today. I'm doing that.
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  So you shared perfectly your belief, your attitude, and then your behavior. You shared two different
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  days, your normal day and then today, your normal day, I would say looking in high performance operator.
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  Today, I would look in and say mediocrity is starting to prevail, and that's not you're not
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  happy with that. You're agitated, you're frustrated. So what I'm going to suggest you think about
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  is super simple. And for the listener as well, is piece of paper or your journal. Hopefully you've
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  got one of those. I'm sure you're you write things down from time to time. Draw circle and write
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  locus of control. And so what can I control? So with athletes and business owners, I will say control
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  you are controllables. Super simple. What can I control today? I'm laughing because our podcast
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  producer is in the room here with me right now. And she's heard me use the words control the
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  controllable so many times that she's nodding along. We're talking. Literally, that is my go. Look,
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  you know what? This feels control the controllables. I love it. So good, right? I'm picking to
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  someone that preaches this to others. I love it. We're in alignment. Good. I love it. And it's
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  yeah, I think sometimes we're so busy being busy helping others that when we do have these feelings
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  come up a frustration or whatever it might be, we struggle to go back to the tools. So pop everything
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  in that circle. What can I control? And actually identify the things you cannot control. You cannot
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  control the fact that you had a cookie last night. Tonight, you can control that. But last night,
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  that's gone. That's being like enjoy it and brace it, move forward. So I'd love you just to
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  think about what is controllable today. You've got maybe another about five or six hours of the day
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  left. What can you do today to really finish strong? And yeah, just be kind to yourself.
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  Love it. I absolutely love it. And I will say that's the same conversation that I have with people
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  that one of the one of the phrases I use, I'm an effort, you know, I'm at the gym all the time.
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  And I love that. And I always use the phrase that I'm not here to punish myself for what I
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  ate. I'm here to celebrate what I can do. That it's not that I'm here because, you know, I had a
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  cookie last night. So I need to go work out twice as hard. It literally as a matter of like I'm
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  celebrating that I can do the things that I'm doing. And I think that mindset for for overachieving
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  people is amazing. So I want to pivot us just a little bit because one of the correlations
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  that I find and I work very often with people in the longevity space and most of our conversations
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  are focused on people who are looking for those tips and tricks and everything else in longevity.
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  And funny enough, the last podcast we recorded, I actually had my dad as a guest.
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  And which was actually kind of interesting and he's a very successful entrepreneur. He's also a
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  health and longevity nut. And my dad at 16, he'll be 69 next month. And at 69 years old, he has
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  he set a Guinness record for being the oldest rookie year race car driver in his class. Like just
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  crazy stuff. And the conversation I always have with him is mindset, you know, that the future
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  must always be bigger than the past kind of mindset that there is no winding down. There's only
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  winding up. And you know, this whole mindset shift, but what we talked about was you deal with
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  entrepreneurs, you know, heads of state clearly, you're dealing with people who are in powerful
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  positions. And I find that entrepreneurs are the longevity buffs. And it is, it is the same
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  thing and the same way that you found a correlation or other people found a correlation between
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  drumming and rugby. And then there was a transferable skill that went from rugby into business.
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  The same is true of an entrepreneur moving into longevity because I use the word gamify because
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  I like it. But the reality is is that the entrepreneur's world is fine to problem,
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  diagnose it, solve it before anyone else solves it. Like that's literally the way an entrepreneur
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  works. It's, it's a life full of can't yets, not can't. And 100%. And, and, and I find that people,
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  and that's a very weird mindset to share with a person who doesn't share the mindset.
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  I find there's an incredible alignment between entrepreneurship and longevity.
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  Yeah, because I think it's the same core skill set.
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  100% and I think one of the, if we kind of simplify it right, Don,
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  you've got to stay in the game long enough if you want to dominant it. If you want to be the best
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  in any industry or any sport, whatever, like, what do you call paid in manning, right? One of the grits,
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  Tom Brady, one of the grits. And rugby, it would be Richie McCaw, right? These guys stayed in the
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  game longer than anyone and performed everyone. Entrepreneurships no different. And life is no
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  different. Like what's the point in dying at 72 because you didn't take care of yourself,
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  your mind, your body, your spirit. I was, um, weirdly, I was done in Antarctica about six
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  weeks ago. Then someone does. Yeah, weird, right? Weird place. But I'm sitting around the table
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  in the canteen and the topic of conversation, longevity. That's all we're talking about. And these
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  are scientists, entrepreneurs, leaders, army technicians. How can we have a better life,
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  better health span, life span? And my suggestion was we've got a ditch mindset and we've got an
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  embrace mind flex. And so when I think of mindset, it's like you're sat in your ways. And we,
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  we can't change that. But mind flex is I'm curious. I'm a problem seeker. People often go, I'm a,
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  I'm seeking pleasure. I'm seeking a win. Well, that's, what's the point? Look for problems.
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  Chase them. Dine. Find the solutions to them. It will give you purpose. You will live longer.
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  The research shows people with any level of purpose, have a better life, better health,
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  live longer. It's neuroplasticity, a sense of curiosity and novelty. Yeah, you got it.
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  So let me ask you, I mean, because I find this, this huge correlation between entrepreneurship
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  and longevity as I said in the conversation with my dad again, longevity, not entrepreneur.
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  And this mindset, and again, mindset, you're calling it mind flex now, but that's just a matter
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  of nomenclature. It's the same, you mean the same thing. How would you, how would you correlate
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  that to a person who feels stuck? Because you deal with business owners that just feel like they're in
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  the mud or heads of state that feel like they're just in public scrutiny or everything. And I'll say
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  that they're often as a paralysis that takes place in that. And it's not getting into politics,
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  but as an example, like one of the things that I find very strange is Donald Trump as an example
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  looks anything but calculated on camera. It's almost to the point of whether you like him or
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  whether you don't, you just gasp half the time because you just can't believe that somebody says
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  those types of things, which means I don't believe that he often feels stuck or paralyzed.
• 26:42
  Do you see those types of patterns in successful people by and large? Is it that paralysis?
• 26:50
  Yeah, I think that if you're human, there's going to be times when you feel stuck. And
• 26:55
  often when we feel stuck, our reaction to that is the work harder, work faster, look for more
• 27:00
  solutions, pick the pace up, get more ideas, go on to chat GPT nowadays and brainstorm.
• 27:07
  The best thing we can do is to change our brain wave state. And what do we do to do that?
• 27:13
  Slow down. Go and get a great meditation or an NSDR, like non-sleep deep breaths, do that for
• 27:20
  30, 40 minutes, then start thinking. Go for a long walk in nature. And you're going, James,
• 27:26
  this is common sense. And I agree, but it's not common practice. We do our best thinking not
• 27:31
  around the boardroom table. We do our best thinking when we're slowing down our thinking.
• 27:37
  So I think someone like Donald Trump, whether you love him or love him, he's got a lot coming at him
• 27:44
  all of the time. Incredibly high expectations placed on him. I imagine incredibly high
• 27:50
  expectations he places on himself. So for us to expect him to be radically clear in his thinking and
• 27:56
  decorum and communication, I think it's possibly unreasonable to do so. Again, whether you like
• 28:03
  him or love him. But for us, slow down. And there's three questions I always ask the client.
• 28:11
  And I'll give you an example of this so it kind of makes sense. Again, with you sport a lot,
• 28:15
  I would say five to 10% of what I do is with athletes, the rest is in the business world.
• 28:20
  But athletes are easy to think about. So a young athlete came to me and said, James,
• 28:26
  would you be my coach? I want to be the best I can be. I could. I'll meet you next week and we'll
• 28:31
  see how it goes. So he pays his invoice, rocks up the next week and we sit down. And I say,
• 28:38
  what do you want? And he goes, what? I said, sorry, probably my Irish accent. What do you want?
• 28:46
  And he says, I just cool. I'll see you next week. He says, what? I love it.
• 28:54
  I just paid you a small bloody fortune for this coaching session, which is one hour. And you're
• 28:59
  telling me to come back next week. We're like 10 seconds in. I was like, yeah, I'm doing your
• 29:02
  favorite. I'll see you next week. I'll even give you a refund. I'll see you next week.
• 29:07
  So he leaves shaking his head. He's a bit pissed off. Surprisingly, he does come back the
• 29:11
  following week and he sits down. My first question, what do you want? He looks me straight in the eye.
• 29:20
  He says, I want to be the greatest rugby player of all time. There's no on this time. No,
• 29:27
  for those of us that go when we're thinking about how much we want to earn, what kind of
• 29:33
  relationship we want, what success looks like in five years, that means we don't know what we want.
• 29:38
  So stop scrambling, stop working hard, just slow down, answer the question clearly. Once you know
• 29:46
  that, I go to the second question, I said, okay, you know what you want. Now, awesome. Why do you want
• 29:50
  that so badly? And he looks at me again. He knows if he says, army's getting kicked out the door.
• 29:56
  He looks at me pauses. He goes, my grandfather was one of the greatest sportsmen of all time.
• 30:04
  And I want to honor him and honor my family and make them pride. It's great. You know radically
• 30:09
  clearly why you want to do it. Okay, final question that we're done for the day. And he goes,
• 30:13
  mate, I have paid you a small fortune. I'm going to remind you that again. And we're done six minutes
• 30:18
  in. I said, promise you, there's no need for us to have any more conversations after this.
• 30:22
  How much are you willing to suffer to get what you truly want? And he went, James, that's a terrible
• 30:31
  bloody question. I don't want to suffer. I say, okay. Is it your next week? If you want to be the greatest
• 30:37
  sportsperson, yes, you next week, if you want to be the greatest sportsperson of all time,
• 30:42
  I suggest you go and play tiddly winks because you're not going to be the greatest rugby player
• 30:47
  at all if you're not willing to suffer. Now, Mark, you and I are the same. We need to know what we want
• 30:52
  in life. We need to know why we want it so badly. And we need to be willing to suffer. And if
• 30:58
  people don't like the word suffering, change it for sacrifice. You need to be willing to sacrifice
• 31:02
  something. Could be beers with the boys on Friday night for him. That's what it was. It could be
• 31:07
  blobbing out in the couch, watching Netflix for three hours a night. You know, get yourself
• 31:12
  the couch, move it, study, learn, upgrade your mind, your body. But those three questions to me
• 31:19
  are what help people get unstuck. No amount of coaching, no amount of books, no amount of Netflix,
• 31:27
  master classes are going to fix that. What do you want? Why do you want it so badly? How much
• 31:31
  do you want to suffer? I love that so much. It reminds me. So I did a Tony Robbins conference
• 31:39
  not too long ago. And I'm not like Tony Fanboy, but, but I'm always willing to give credit where
• 31:44
  credit is. And those exact same type of hard questions are at the core of anybody excelling
• 31:50
  at what they do. It's, why do you want it? And what are you willing to sacrifice for it? Because
• 31:56
  you will sacrifice for it. And everyone sees the output when it works. No one sees what it
• 32:02
  took to get there. I had a, I laughed in an old boss and mentor of mine. My career has been
• 32:10
  anything but normal. And I say that it's, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. So even when I
• 32:15
  just had jobs that paid me on Fridays, I always had this entrepreneurial mindset because I didn't
• 32:22
  know any other way. So I treated everything I did as if it were my, my business. So it didn't
• 32:28
  matter if I was working for you. It was treated as if it was mine. And I was just chatting with him
• 32:34
  one day. And he was like this master Yoda. Like he very, very rarely said words. And I over
• 32:40
  communicate. So conversations were probably 90, 10. And I was just telling him like, oh yeah,
• 32:47
  you know, I did this, this, this, this, this. And so and so blah, blah, blah. And it was this
• 32:51
  all my, all my life must be so glamorous, blah, blah, blah. And he looked at me and he went, yep.
• 32:57
  Harder I work, the luckier I get. And and I just kind of laughed because like that is stuck
• 33:05
  with me for probably 15 years now that the harder I work, the luckier I get because everyone
• 33:12
  tastes the sauce when it's done. And nobody sees the hours that you slaved in the kitchen.
• 33:18
  Like so don't you? Nobody nobody sees what goes in. Everybody wants to celebrate the story.
• 33:24
  And I say this for entrepreneurs specifically because I spend my life on telephone calls with
• 33:31
  entrepreneurs day in, day out. You know this. My listeners know this. Like my primary business is
• 33:38
  I run an advertising and marketing agency. So I'm dealing with entrepreneurs all day long
• 33:43
  who are bringing me their dreams and shattered pieces in a box and wanting to know how to put
• 33:49
  them back together, right? Like you're dealing with the people who, you know, how do they impact
• 33:53
  their teams and everything like often I'm dealing with, you know, how do they put together their,
• 33:57
  their business again because Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall. And and so often those conversations
• 34:07
  feel unheard. Maybe that's the word I want to do that I realize that anytime I'm talking to a client
• 34:16
  or potential client on the telephone who's in a bad place, the first thing I have to do is let them
• 34:22
  understand that I'm an entrepreneur too. And I've also worried about making payroll on Friday.
• 34:28
  And I also understand what it's like staring at a financial statement. And I also understand what
• 34:33
  it's like calling somebody and asking for advice on a business that I've run for five years and
• 34:39
  you just learned about an hour ago. And and being able to trust that the person I'm talking to
• 34:47
  knows best. And and I think to your point, the reason I'm able to establish relationship with them
• 34:53
  so quickly is acknowledgement. Like here it is guys like I know what you've done to get how far
• 35:01
  you are. I know why you did what you did. I know that you put everything on sale for the last
• 35:07
  six months to try to turn a transaction. And now you are coming to me because you have devalued
• 35:13
  your entire retail presence because now nobody wants to pay full price for anything because you've
• 35:18
  had it on sale for six months trying to get cash flow. Like I get it. And and I think often for them
• 35:25
  that feels like they almost take a deep sigh of relief. And switching personalities,
• 35:34
  I get the same thing when someone's asking me health questions. Like because people genuinely feel
• 35:41
  I've been working with because I I stand in both of these worlds. And and I've been working with
• 35:45
  this lady for a while who's coming to me going look I can't get answers from my doctors. I don't
• 35:50
  know what's wrong. But I'm having this problem and this problem and this problem. And I connected
• 35:55
  her with a with a lab say it's like a lab intelligence that you upload lab results and it pulls out
• 36:02
  insights using AI and whatnot. And as I was working with her it pulled out a bunch of things that
• 36:07
  she called me crying. And she says mark like I've done everything right. I have followed everything
• 36:14
  that I thought I was supposed to follow. And I still look like a wreck on the outside.
• 36:21
  And it's not for lack of work. And and any doctor I see just assumes I'm not putting in the work.
• 36:28
  And I am putting in the work and she went in this onboarding test that this this platform used.
• 36:34
  It's the first time anyone asked me these specific questions. And to your alignment point,
• 36:40
  she's like it clicked like I realized that there were points in my life that experienced such
• 36:47
  inordinate trauma that I couldn't move to the next level of my health journey because there
• 36:54
  was too much locked up still. And it's like it's just amazing to watch that alignment right. And
• 37:00
  often it's just the question like what's going on. And in businesses I see it in in health journeys
• 37:07
  I see it and I'm correlating this conversation, but you know bouncing back between those two worlds
• 37:13
  intentionally because I think they're the same journey with two different names. Of course.
• 37:17
  They really are. And it's interesting as you share that. And I think about why you're so successful
• 37:22
  about what you do. And hopefully the listener could go, what could I take from Mark that could help me
• 37:26
  be successful is that you answer three questions so beautifully for your clients. And I think if we
• 37:32
  all did this for our clients and our loved ones, we would have much richer relationships,
• 37:37
  better outcomes, more money, better health. So the three questions super simple that you answer
• 37:41
  from what you just told me is do you care about me? Every client when they start working with you
• 37:48
  are good. Do you actually care about me? You do it beautifully. Second question. Do you value me?
• 37:55
  You know, do I matter? Am I significant? And last question is, are you here to help me grow or
• 38:01
  succeed? And literally you do that in the first five minutes of a conversation with anyone,
• 38:06
  even with us, me and you this morning. It's like, I felt that he cares. He values me. And he's here
• 38:11
  to help this be a successful conversation. I think when you do that in life, you have deep
• 38:16
  influence with others. And it's not manipulation. It's not the 48 laws of power. It's influence.
• 38:23
  Well, and let me ask you this because again, with your experience with dealing with
• 38:29
  exponentially larger businesses than probably I am because I don't do marketing for any countries
• 38:35
  that I know of. In that respect, like, do you find that people are looking so Ben Hardy is a good
• 38:44
  friend of mine. You know, Ben Hardy. So Ben actually just wrote the forward to my new book series
• 38:49
  that's publishing this week. And Ben's a great guy and Ben runs the science of scaling.
• 38:56
  Yes. And the question, and I'm going to ask you to answer this specifically because I think
• 39:01
  this relates to health business, all of it in rich relationships, is we always want to scale
• 39:08
  what we've built. And it's the next natural progression, right? It's like, you know, the first
• 39:13
  goals get married. The second one is put more people in the house, right? Like that, that's just
• 39:18
  a moment, right? That's kind of the idea. Like add one person to the house. Now we're expecting a
• 39:24
  series more to show up just smaller. The question, of course, is, is that relationship building the way
• 39:31
  you just described it and said, you know, Mark, you answer these three questions for a client early on?
• 39:38
  What is your opinion on that scaling? And part B, does that scale to everyone else on your team?
• 39:46
  Because that is your expertise is working with the team behind the person. Because if I got to do
• 39:53
  every job at my business, I know what my business would look like. You say it'd be a mess.
• 39:58
  Yeah, probably it would be a mess. But it would be done with incredible precision.
• 40:05
  But the question is, is like, how do you find that scales best to people? And as a practitioner,
• 40:13
  I'll correlate that to even longevity. I know my answers. I get my labs done. And I know exactly
• 40:19
  what to do from a precision standpoint to overcome the things I don't like. But getting other people
• 40:25
  to hear that message and perform to it is an entirely different story. So how do you take that type of,
• 40:31
  I'm going to use the word intimacy and scale that without being disingenuous.
• 40:38
  Yeah, great question. Look, I think scaling is interesting. I think there's certain humans who
• 40:45
  want to scale. For example, go back to the humans who get married. Some want to get married
• 40:51
  and have humans. Yes. And others get married and go, the worst thing in the world would be to have
• 40:58
  kids. We want no kids, you know, at most we might get a cat, but that's it. And so I see the same
• 41:05
  in business in teams. There are two types of people, the people who naturally want to scale
• 41:11
  connection, culture, impact, revenue. And there's the other type of human who wants to go,
• 41:17
  no, no, no, it's good. It's good as it is. I go on a lifestyle and I want this and it's pretty
• 41:21
  cushy. And so I think we've got to understand that not everyone's going to want to scale whatever it
• 41:26
  might be, whether it's intimacy or whether it's revenue. And if you're the leader, then it's about
• 41:33
  making sure you've got the right people as what you call them, Jim Collins. As Jim Collins would
• 41:37
  say the right people on the bus, because if you are a scaling type person, you want more people
• 41:42
  and more love and connection and drive, you need to get the right people off certain seats and
• 41:48
  the right people onto certain seats. So I think it's about knowing your people and making sure that
• 41:53
  you can impact them in an authentic way. We haven't really talked about motivation, but at the end
• 41:58
  of the day, scaling comes down a lot to vision and motivation. And if people aren't motivated to
• 42:04
  scale, then they're not going to do it. So it's understanding we've got both extrinsic and
• 42:09
  intrinsic motivators and really understanding what is it that our individual people need to be able
• 42:15
  to scale with us. That's so good. I love the fact that you just, first of all, reminded me of
• 42:21
  Ben's book, Who Not How. But you talked about getting the wrong people out of your life and a word
• 42:29
  that I use frequently as agency. And too frequently, we have people in our lives that we don't believe we
• 42:38
  can work with or sometimes it's people that are on your team if you're an entrepreneur listening.
• 42:46
  There's people in your team that perhaps you feel like if that person left, what would we do
• 42:51
  without them? Because you don't really understand the whole totality of what they do. And we've been
• 42:55
  through that even recently. We ended up with some turnover recently and it was quite intentional.
• 43:00
  And it was just, we know it's going to hurt for a minute, but it's the right thing because there
• 43:06
  were people that were not going to scale. And you need to make those decisions. I believe the
• 43:11
  same is true of friendships. And this year, one of the, one of the words that I used for my own
• 43:16
  life, because I'm big into New Year's resolutions if you can't imagine. And I used the word relational
• 43:21
  hygiene. We were going to have a year of relational hygiene and the people that are in my life are
• 43:28
  going to know that they're in my life for a purpose. And I'm going to learn to say no to the people
• 43:33
  that I prefer to have on the periphery. And it's not because I don't value you, it's that I don't
• 43:37
  value you the same as the people who lose my attention when I give it to you. And the same is true
• 43:45
  in our health because you talk about what are you willing to suffer? And for some people, it's
• 43:51
  some people you just need to not have the cookie. You know, the book I was even talking to you about
• 43:58
  earlier in the conversation is a book about people that have chosen naturopathic pathways
• 44:04
  to approach cancer as opposed to taking conventional treatment. And is there a suffering that goes
• 44:11
  along with it? Sure. If you want cancer out of you, you either deal with chemotherapy, you deal
• 44:17
  with radiation, you deal with these types of, you know, oncological practices or treatments,
• 44:25
  or you deal with the metabolic challenges that come along with it, which means you cleanse your
• 44:30
  diet, you cleanse your environment, you have to, but in either way, there's something being given
• 44:36
  up. It's an exchange. It's an exchange in one way or another, you're dealing with, it's
• 44:41
  pick your poison. You know, and that's, it's, you know, one of the phrases is, yes, being healthy
• 44:47
  is hard, being sick is hard too. Pick your hard. Yeah. It's so damn straight. Yeah, I mean,
• 44:55
  it's just that easy to me. And it's like in every morning that I don't want to move or every night,
• 45:00
  I don't want to go to the gym or every time I look at my to-do list and it moved on to page two,
• 45:05
  pick your hard. Because yes, it's going to be hard to go get five, six things off this list today.
• 45:12
  And it's going to be harder when it's two pages long. That's really true. And I just keep it
• 45:16
  building. It's interesting like one of the later chapters in my book, I talk about if you don't
• 45:21
  make time for health, you'd better make time for sickness. Yes. And that's a decision. And you
• 45:26
  cannot avoid it. So if you're working your butt off on a hundred hour weeks and eating crap and
• 45:31
  sedentary lifestyle, I promise you, at some point, it will catch up and add in other things like
• 45:37
  vaping, smoking alcohol, whatever you want to add in. It's the same. There's a very simple practice
• 45:42
  I do with myself once a week. I take my meds. So I just do a one to five. How am I going with my meds?
• 45:49
  So mental training, one to five, one terrible five. Yeah, I've been doing meditation each day.
• 45:55
  It's concrete exercise. This last week, you know, I've been traveling this last week,
• 45:59
  Mark, I've probably been a two out of five. D is diet. What have I been eating? I've had a
• 46:04
  couple of cookies this week too. I've been in a couple of airport linings. So I'm probably
• 46:09
  having a free bed all at the same time. I know they're not the tastiest cookies, but my gosh,
• 46:14
  they're free. Hell yeah, keep them coming. And the last one, which is I think the most important one.
• 46:22
  And this one, you mentioned your dad in motorsport. So I was chatting with Alex Casanovas.
• 46:28
  He's the performance coach with George Russell, the Formula One driver from Mercedes.
• 46:34
  And I was just saying, what do you measure? What's the focus this year? What are you really doubling
• 46:38
  down on? He says, James, the most important factor for George's performance is sleep. I said,
• 46:45
  okay, I'm telling you more. So he says, we measure his sleep, you know, with an aura ring and
• 46:49
  garment and we knew certain that you've got your aura on you legend. Well done. Yeah, you've got
• 46:54
  got to measure this stuff. And he says, when he doesn't sleep well, he's a bit grumpy. And when
• 46:59
  Georgie Boy's grumpy, the rest of us kind of suffer a little bit. And we know that in our
• 47:03
  lives too, Mark, when we're tired and grumpy, other people suffer, but also his reaction times are
• 47:09
  not as on point. And so we give naps in the afternoon. We encourage him to meditate. We bring his
• 47:15
  king size mattress to Miami, Abu Dhabi, Melbourne, wherever it might be with his favorite pillow,
• 47:21
  probably his favorite teddy bear too. They didn't mention that, but you know, all these little things
• 47:25
  are important. So I do that once a week, one to five, how am I sitting in these areas? And then
• 47:31
  the lowest one, just just the lowest one, what can I do for the next week to be a little bit better in
• 47:37
  that area? Because that's manageable. We can all be a little bit one percent better in one area
• 47:41
  of our lives. And that compounds 52 days, 52 weeks of the year. So that's just a little tool that
• 47:47
  might be helpful for that intentionality. Now James, I want to ask you, I know we're getting
• 47:53
  towards our time here, but I want to ask you a couple of things because so far the trajectory
• 47:59
  of your life just looks like it started with a drum and just took off and was amazing from the
• 48:04
  word go. But I know that's not the case. So for people who are listening, because I mean, we've
• 48:11
  talked about business failures. People bringing their broken pieces in a box. We've talked about
• 48:16
  cancer. I mean, we've touched on a lot of defeats here, but we haven't really talked about what you've
• 48:21
  learned from those defeats that have helped define you. And what are the moments that, you know,
• 48:27
  your sage on the stage right now? But that wasn't always the case. Like, what was it like during the
• 48:33
  time of your career? And what did you learn during down seasons? Yeah, I've failed a lot. That's
• 48:40
  interesting. If a couple of examples, one would be, you know, as a drummer, yeah, I'm a seven
• 48:44
  time world champion. But I'm also like a 15 time world loser. Do you know what I mean? Like,
• 48:52
  I didn't win the world championships all the time. I'm a real loser. So I lost it way more
• 48:58
  time than I want it. And I learned way more from the losses than I did from the wins. The
• 49:05
  wins were great. Celebrate for a couple of days, hang over and then move forward. The losses I
• 49:10
  would stew on for weeks and months and what went on? Why not? What can I do to be better?
• 49:15
  I actually learned a lot more from failing. There's only two teams, James. There's the winners
• 49:19
  and the learners. That's so good. I'm a world champion learner. That's so good. And then
• 49:32
  personally, like my biggest failure personally in my life was divorce. And I, when I look at the
• 49:41
  word high performance, like the way I define that is consistently exceeding norms while
• 49:47
  maintaining healthy relationships and well-being. Didn't say perfect. I just said healthy, right?
• 49:54
  Now, when people looked at me as the world champion and the guy who had this really successful
• 49:58
  drumming business and traveled the world, and they might have said he's a high performer.
• 50:02
  What they didn't see was my life behind the scenes. I had a really strong relationship with alcohol
• 50:08
  and my marriage was going downhill and ended in divorce. To me, that's not high performance. That's
• 50:15
  picking one aspect of your life, getting obsessively fanatical over it and just winning it all
• 50:21
  costs. That's been the greatest learning for me. And Mark, after I separated, nobody wanted to
• 50:28
  challenge me. Like my dad, my brother, my close male friends, nobody would challenge me on anything
• 50:33
  in terms of, hey, what did you learn about that? Well, went on. But I had an 80 year old mentor.
• 50:40
  And we're out for a walk. And he says, James, got a question for you. Last time we met, you were married
• 50:45
  four months later. Now you're separated. What was your role and responsibility in that separation?
• 50:54
  Is the only person that had the courage and the care to ask me that question? And that sent me
• 51:00
  on like a three or four month journey of, well, I didn't really necessarily do anything wrong,
• 51:04
  but actually there was, I neglected to nurture that relationship. I didn't live through values.
• 51:09
  I lived from pillar to post and working a hundred hour weeks. So I learned a lot about myself.
• 51:16
  That's the biggest, yeah, to me, that's the biggest failure, but the biggest learning point in my
• 51:21
  life. That's, that's absolutely fantastic. And I mean, world class learners. So I mean, that,
• 51:26
  that makes a big sense, right? I love it. And I absolutely love that you're saying that. And I
• 51:33
  love that you mentioned that you had a mentor that was willing to challenge you because to me,
• 51:38
  like, you don't care about me if you're not willing to call me out when I'm doing something wrong.
• 51:43
  And I mean, that's like an ongoing thing. And I, you know, a story that I've shared my,
• 51:49
  my best friend ever during a, during a very, very low point in my life. I was just mad about
• 51:55
  everything. Like there was nothing you could do. Like I was just mad at the world, if you will.
• 52:00
  And he and I went out one night. And probably the reason I will forever call him my best friend.
• 52:07
  I've got many great relationships in my life. But this dude, like, he caught me off guard because
• 52:13
  of that type of care. And I was just, I was in it. I was mad. We'd gone out, we grabbed dinner,
• 52:18
  whatever. We ended up going back to my house. And I was still just, I'm just, I was just in a
• 52:24
  bad mood. I was mad at the world. And he, and he started laughing at me. And everybody else was
• 52:31
  like, oh, that's all right. Have your moment, blah, blah, blah, like whatever. And he started laughing.
• 52:35
  I'm like, dude, like, I'm literally going to knock you cold right now. And, and he's just like,
• 52:41
  no, I think it's hilarious. Like I'm just letting you have your moment here. And he's like,
• 52:46
  because it's going to be what it is. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's considered it. You know,
• 52:49
  thanks. And he goes, no, he goes, let me tell you why. And got like in my face with it. And he's
• 52:54
  like, because I know you, he's like, and I know God. And he's like, and watching this deep
• 53:02
  moment that you're in. And he goes, I am just so excited to see what's going to happen because of
• 53:10
  it. Because I know the way the two of you are going to turn this into something incredible at the end.
• 53:17
  Wow. And I was like, okay, like I still get, like, get chills when I retell that story. Because
• 53:23
  I remember the, like, it stopped me in my tracks. And it was not the, let's have another beer kind
• 53:30
  of conversation that a lot of buddies would have. It was a, okay, yeah, I hear you. I see where you
• 53:36
  are. Like, and during that exact same period of time, I remember, and to me, I felt like I was
• 53:42
  an absolute failure. Like it was just, I won't bore you with the details. But and I remember a
• 53:48
  family member being like, I'm really worried. Like Mark's not in a good headspace right now. And
• 53:53
  you know, what's going on with him? And their reason was because I got a tattoo.
• 53:57
  So the fact that I got a tattoo was, was literally what was causing me at this downward spiral.
• 54:03
  And it was kind of funny because she brought it to my dad. And, and I remember my dad's response
• 54:10
  that I didn't learn till later. And when she brought it and was like, look, I'm really concerned
• 54:16
  about him. And she meant, well, I mean, often the people who are, you know, in this they mean well.
• 54:21
  Of course. And, and my dad's response was, I'm not worried about it. And she's like, what did
• 54:27
  you, and he's like, I know, Mark. And he's like, give him a minute. I assure you,
• 54:33
  he backed better than he was the day before. Let it go. And it was like, and it was funny to
• 54:38
  listen to because like these were two men in my life who were able to speak truth
• 54:44
  mostly because I want to say during that time of life, James, what I lacked most was confidence.
• 54:51
  And I think especially for men, that's huge. And it was, I felt not down during those moments.
• 55:00
  And two men who I cared about spoke confidence. They didn't, they didn't give me wisdom.
• 55:06
  They didn't give me advice. Neither one of them, you know, tried to debrief what I did wrong.
• 55:11
  And it wasn't that it was, you were confident in me, even when I wasn't. And, and that to me,
• 55:18
  like that cleared my headspace, to be honest with you, like those were steps back towards
• 55:23
  taking over the world again. That's incredible. And what I love about that is a reminder that
• 55:28
  we do need people around us who can interrupt our pattern of thinking. He did that by laughing at
• 55:35
  your friend, laughing. Total pattern interrupt. And you go, I'm going to knock you out, man.
• 55:40
  And that was enough to interrupt your way of thinking. And then he was able to insert
• 55:44
  that, hey, I believe in you. I know you. And then he also mentioned the thing about God.
• 55:49
  So may I ask, were you a believer in God? Did you have faith on that stage?
• 55:54
  He and I were both devout Christians and known each other at that level very well before.
• 56:00
  So he, he spoke biblical truth into my life at, at appropriate times also while still letting me
• 56:06
  have my, my, my rant. But yeah, but in his thing was, I'm grounding you back in truth.
• 56:14
  And it, and I'm doing it in a way that I'm not disallowing the fact that your reality right now
• 56:21
  is real. Your reality is your perception. And I understand what you're perceiving right now.
• 56:30
  And I'm going to bring you back to solid business. And it, it's funny because I'm pulling
• 56:35
  this full circle and saying, when a business person comes to me and says, look, this is
• 56:42
  what we've been doing. We're struggling. We're cash poor. We don't even know if we can afford to
• 56:46
  work with you. You know, usually they're all rookie mistakes. But as you said, three questions,
• 56:53
  right? Do you care about me? And, and so on. It's like acknowledge like, yeah, I know why you did
• 57:00
  what you did. Like I'm not saying that what you did was wrong in the moment. Because what you
• 57:05
  did was an immediate fix, but you used short term strategy on a long term problem. So I love that.
• 57:12
  I'm, I'm going to help you identify where short term thinking hurt you. And as much as this is
• 57:18
  going to hurt, I need to set the bone here. And, and it's going to hurt setting the bone, but it's
• 57:24
  going to heal right. I love that. It makes me think of something Mark.
• 57:30
  Shall I with someone yesterday? And I said, they were, they were thinking about short wins.
• 57:34
  And I said to them, the consequence of short game thinking is long term regret.
• 57:41
  Yes. You're going to look back on this in five years, 10 years, 15 years ago. What the hell was
• 57:45
  I doing? That little win, that short term one, that was pointless, endless. I love what you've just
• 57:51
  said. Yeah, I, sometimes I have to say these things just to remind myself of them. That's good.
• 57:59
  But a self, eventually it becomes likesick on. But, but the truth is, is like, and I think that's
• 58:06
  true of most businesses that I work with. And it's like, you're making a cash flow decision,
• 58:10
  because the bills need paid, even though you know it's wrong. And usually, and I do this with myself,
• 58:17
  when there's things in my own business that I have to ask, am I making a good business
• 58:20
  decision, or am I making a good cash flow decision? Because those are usually at odds.
• 58:26
  Yeah. Because the thing that provides the fastest cash is usually not in your best interest.
• 58:32
  Because it's a long term loss for a short term gain. And that for some people is taking on a
• 58:37
  client that you know is going to be a train wreck. And you do it anyways, because you need the
• 58:42
  revenue right now in this quarter, or, or taking out a loan that's, you know, not necessary,
• 58:48
  but really convenient in the moment, or filling the warehouse, because you know, you're just having
• 58:54
  that struggle, or putting everything on sale for six months, because you need to make sure that
• 58:58
  the bills are paid, because you just bought all your inventory on a line of credit, and the payment
• 59:03
  is due. Like, I get those very, very specific use cases where short term decisions hurt,
• 59:10
  and often where I spend my time with a client is unpacking how those short term decisions
• 59:17
  have led to, to potentially long term issues. And in relationships, I mean, there is no greater
• 59:25
  indicator of how a short term decision can lead to a long term disaster. Yep. You know, and that may
• 59:31
  be, you know, dealing with infatuation rather than compatibility. You know, that that may be
• 59:39
  what feels good right now is probably not best for the relationship, the, you know, or fidelity.
• 59:45
  Yes. You know, all of these things are short term decisions that wreck long term, long term
• 59:52
  stability, I suppose, of the word I would say, but investment savings, business investment,
• 1:00:00
  and again, I can extrapolate that across physical decisions. You know, the diabetes that showed
• 1:00:07
  up at 40 started at 20. Like, you're dealing with the health consequences of a lifetime of bad
• 1:00:13
  decisions, not this afternoon. 100%. I think speaking from stage, I always remind people the one thing
• 1:00:20
  that if the only game, if you want to play a game, the only game worth playing is the long game.
• 1:00:26
  Like, play the long game. And the things that you do, like, is your life. So if you look at days,
• 1:00:32
  your days, your life and miniature, like tiny little days, big compound. And you're right,
• 1:00:37
  what you do at 20 dictates who you are at 40, what you do at 40 dictates who you are at 60.
• 1:00:41
  Absolutely. Take responsibility, participate in your own rescue. It's not fun at times,
• 1:00:45
  but God, that's, that's what compounds to greatness. Absolutely. And again, it obviously takes place in
• 1:00:51
  our bodies. It takes place in our emotional investments and well-being. You know, obviously
• 1:00:57
  making short-term emotional decisions leads to addiction leads to, you know, emotional decay.
• 1:01:04
  It leads to divorce. It leads to, you know, jumping into bad relationships. It's not just ending.
• 1:01:09
  Sometimes it's the beginning of some. And it also leads to spiritual issues for people,
• 1:01:15
  where they make short-term decisions rather than long-terms one. And I think the spiritual side of
• 1:01:19
  things, I really, I overlay things in their like values and living from principles rather than
• 1:01:27
  living from emotions or living from, from physicality. Like, do you run your business from a principle?
• 1:01:34
  Do you run your relationships from the same principle, not a different set of principles?
• 1:01:39
  Do you run your health from that same set of principles? And then, you know, what I heard you
• 1:01:44
  say early in the conversation is, and all three of those need to be wrapped. That set of
• 1:01:50
  principles and values for all of those areas have to be in alignment. James, I'll give you the last
• 1:01:58
  word here, but I think this has been a little bit cathartic for me on a crazy day talking to you
• 1:02:03
  because, my gosh, this I could talk to you for hours. And likewise, minus being a joy.
• 1:02:08
  I think we had the same problem when I was a guest on your podcast. Like, we just kept talking
• 1:02:12
  and we're running out of time. Like, topics kept going.
• 1:02:16
  Well, that's good. No, I think, you know, if I was to just kind of leave something for the listener,
• 1:02:21
  it would be that, you know, there's a great, great guy in the world called Gary Vaynerchuk,
• 1:02:26
  Gary V. And I've been inspired by him a lot. However, there's one thing that him and I strongly
• 1:02:32
  disagree on. He has a thing called hustle and be a hustler and hustle hard. I and the anti-hustle
• 1:02:40
  king. I do not believe hustle is the way we achieve greatness. The high performers that I coach,
• 1:02:46
  work with, speak to, they know that it's not luck and it's not a birthright that you become a
• 1:02:52
  high performer. It's habits. So the one thing I want to challenge everyone to do is to pick habits
• 1:02:59
  over hustle. I love that. And that's so true. Very via. I think he lives right down here by us.
• 1:03:06
  Oh, cool. I don't think he lives that close.
• 1:03:12
  It has been such a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to actually hearing this
• 1:03:16
  episode and staying in touch with you in the future. I'm love to catch up if you're ever here
• 1:03:21
  in the state side or if I make it down in New Zealand at some point. But James, thank you so much,
• 1:03:26
  so, so much for joining us today. I think this conversation about alignment is one regardless
• 1:03:32
  of how you apply this is you've taught us early transferable skills from drumming to rugby,
• 1:03:38
  from rugby to business, from business, even into world leadership and politics, like that exact
• 1:03:43
  same discipline, that exact same the habits that stack up in each one of those verticals are the
• 1:03:50
  same. And then keeping that alignment focused across all areas of our lives because we're not
• 1:03:57
  compartmentalized, we're absolutely integrated beings. And if that integration fails the whole
• 1:04:04
  system shuts down, right? It's like having opposing lines of code in a computer.
• 1:04:09
  That's a great way of putting it. Honestly, it is. Yeah. Do the simple things well consistently
• 1:04:14
  over the long term. And you're almost guaranteed to have a beautiful result at the end.
• 1:04:18
  I love that. My friend, so good seeing you today. And for those of you listening, please go take a
• 1:04:23
  look at James Loughlin's website. What is your website? James, give us that to us.
• 1:04:28
  Yep. So JJLoughlin.com, or they if they want to just go and grab the book, they can get an any good
• 1:04:33
  bookstore or Amazon. And it's called Habits of High Performers. Habits of High Performers by James
• 1:04:39
  Loughlin. And Loughlin, if you're probably looking at the notes here, because all of those
• 1:04:44
  details will be in our show notes, but it's like Loughlin. And I love that.
• 1:04:49
  I love to laugh. So that works out for me. But James Loughlin, and you can actually pick that up
• 1:04:55
  on Amazon. You can look up his website at JJLoughlin.com. Perfect on the.com. All of those things will
• 1:05:02
  be down in the show notes. I encourage you to read the book. I have read it. It's amazing.
• 1:05:07
  And again, just the reminders of the daily habits, as we're talking about these habits now, but
• 1:05:13
  it's the structure that we put into life that kind of guardrails us from getting too far off track
• 1:05:19
  and the things that we're doing that ultimately those habits lead to the high performance that we're
• 1:05:24
  looking for irrespective of what area of life you're looking to improve. So I encourage you,
• 1:05:30
  take a look down at the show notes. James, thank you so much for joining us today. My brother,
• 1:05:33
  it's been such a pleasure having you. Absolutely pleasure, Mark. We'll see you soon.