#30 - Using the Fear of Regret with Hans Struzyna

In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Hans Struzyna about doing the hard things, growth by finding the right mentors, using the fear of regret and  more. 

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Ryan

Hey guys, it's Ryan real quick. So my mission with the morning upgrade blog and podcast is to raise the awareness of morning routines and personal development. And I now have two products that are also helped me with this mission. The first product helps you start a 20 minute morning routine. And the second product is a book that outlines how to use personal development upgrade your life and business. You can get full details on both products over at morningupgrade.com. Thanks for letting me share and now on to the show.

Announcer 

Welcome to the Morning upgrade podcast with Ryan cote where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.

Ryan 

Hey, everyone, this is Ryan cote with the morning upgrade podcast and today I'm very excited to be speaking with Hans Struzyna. Hey, Hans.

Hans 

Hey, Ryan, man, thanks for having me on. This is awesome.

Ryan  

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you. Why don't we start off by you telling everyone you know what you do and what your interests are?

Hans  

Yeah, and so currently a realtor partner with the number one real estate or residential real estate team in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the top producer except outside of the founding members of the team on that real estate squad. And that has got a lot of my attention, as well as being a co founder of a podcast post production companies called streamlined podcasts, which has been a lot of fun that we started since COVID. But in a former life, I was a full time athlete, some might call it professional, my bank account certainly wouldn't agree with that. But I definitely put in the time that a professional would. I was in the sport of rowing for 12 years and ultimately, capital or kept that time of my life off with a birth on the US Olympic team in Rio de Janeiro.

Ryan 

Nice, definitely want to talk about the real estate business and go into the Olympics. What are your interests right now?

Hans  

We just bought a house. And so some DIY projects are getting a lot of our attention. Our Pinterest boards are going crazy. And my wife are having a good time with that. But as far as actual interests are concerned, man, I gotta say like I'm, this is so timely that I'm on the show because I really started to dig in on meditation in the morning as part of my morning routine. And a lot of personal development. And frankly, like addressing some of the negativity or some of the unresolved issues that I had from earlier in childhood and trying to bring those back into the fold. So I can start to unlock potential that is has been locked up for a long time. So that's got a lot of my attention outside of the kind of day-to-day of life.

Ryan  

You gave me too many questions to ask I try to keep these episodes to 15 minutes. So let's, let's dive in. So the first question I want to ask you is about your real estate business. What does it take to get to number one>

Hans  

It was a culmination of all of the stuff that I learned as an athlete as just a young person trying to grow and get better. And then actually, obviously, a lot of determination and hard work and putting in extra time. The number one thing I can say that has helped me above everything else is there are two things that kind of go hand in hand one is being able to find a rocket ship if you will find a mentor, find somebody who you can get in their slipstream and see that they're doing it at a high level and go try and add value to them and learn from them. So that you can kind of shortcut the path to success. And then number two is once you find that person, being an absolute sponge and trying to apply everything they teach you, as soon as they teach it to you, those two things undoubtedly have gotten me to where I'm at. I mean, there's all the hard work and all the other stuff, podcasts, books, all the stuff that I can talk about there. But above all of it is that

Ryan  

Yeah, I love that you mentioned mentorship. I don't think we've spoken about that yet. On this podcast, my friend Seth, who's also part of my mastermind, he's writing a book on finding a mentor. How did you find yours?

Hans 

Honestly, they kind of came to me through various people in my life. These particular mentors, David and Andrew, who are my team leaders and business and real estate mentors, for sure, and frankly, life mentors to some degree. They were introduced to me by a client of my wife who is a personal trainer here in our city, and weeks, we got to know these people, the two of them socially because they knew I was in real estate. And we both were rowers. My wife's also an Olympic rower, and then their son was getting into the sport of rowing and they're good at real estate so they kind of connected the dots over a dinner party. We got together on an email thread and then we went for brunch. A week or two later, nothing changed. came of it at that point. But you know, a couple of months later, it was kind of rolling around in my head like these guys know what they're doing. And they're pretty cool that and they have presumably a cool life and like, let's see if I can get in their world a little bit. And so that's really how it started. And then from there, I cold emailed them, basically saying, I've got hustle, I've got the drive, I'm coachable, I can bring blah, blah, and blah to your real estate team. And you can potentially, you know, start spending more time with your kids and you guys can like, start to like, unwind or take some of them, you can be more choosy with the clients you work with and spend your time with and phrase the whole thing and what it means to them and how it can benefit them. And they really, they liked that. And so that sort of kicked off this whole interview process. And almost three years later now, here I am.

Ryan 

And I'm glad you mentioned that everyone listening, it's a huge takeaway is find a mentor. That's why I'm in the mastermind, I've got my whole group, you know, they're all mentors for me, and, and I try to be a mentor for them. But also you can't find someone you know, there is a way you can find a mentor in terms of just finding someone that you resonate with their message, and then just consume everything that they put out YouTube videos, podcasts, books that they read that they've written it's not as effective as what you're describing, have had some success with doing it that way as well.

Hans  

Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to learn Instagram right now. And there's a realtor out of New Jersey called Ed Stewiacke. He's got like almost 50,000 followers, and he's got, he's like the millennial real estate agent he's getting he gets tons of press. And so I'm constantly looking at his stuff and like, What is he doing? What can I learn? What can I apply to my Instagram stuff? Like, what do I like? What do I not like about what he's doing? And long story short is whether you know that person or not, you can still learn a ton from them, especially with podcasts and YouTube and Instagram and all that stuff.

Ryan  

So I know, I didn't know your wife was an Olympic rower too. If you guys have kids, they’ll have crazy genes.

Hans  

Those are terrible expectations. We'll try and keep those at bay as much as possible. But yeah.

Ryan  

That's funny. So next, I want to talk about the Olympics. Yeah, the morning free podcast is about personal development. I like to talk about habits and mindset. And both of those, I assume you tell us but I assume both of those ties in very well are very connected with getting into the Olympics. So my first question is, What habits did you have that helped you with rowing and you're getting into the Olympics?

Hans  

When I was training, I had a really strong morning routine. And it involved fuel-like eating like creating this ridiculous smoothie, that would be enough sustenance for most people during their entire day. And I was knocking that out before practice. But then also, you know, a little bit of stretching, you know, drinking water, some of that basic stuff, but then also visiting my goals. And I would literally as I was drinking the smoothie in the morning, sit down, and I was at the time using the 10x, the Grant Cardone’s tax planner. But you can do it with a notebook if you want a case, the paper doesn't matter. And writing out my goals. And I would write out at the peak of this, I was writing out that I wanted to be Olympic gold medalist and that I wanted to be the best to seat in the entire final. And so that one was sort of like this team goal, this big, big audacious goal that we wanted to hit. And then the second one was more in my power, it's like I want to be the very best person on this team that I can be. So that I know that I haven't left a stone unturned. And I was visiting that every morning but physically writing it down. And I was doing the same thing at night. And then I was looking at, you know, the schedule, the training schedule for the day planning out, you know, when I'm going to eat when I'm going to go to the Cairo and the PT all that kind of stuff, just so I had a very clear vision for the day. And then, on the way to practice, I was almost always listening to podcasts, or book on tape, something like that. And usually, it was sort of mental. You know, I was listening to a lot of Michael Gervais at the time, but I was also listening to the rich role as listening to Bulletproof Radio. I was listening to some business development and sales development stuff as well. But just something to kind of get me going in the right direction, mentally about what I was kind of thinking about, and then you know, you show up to practice and you're kind of dialed in ready to roll.

Ryan 

Yeah, sounds like a lot of structure, which doesn't surprise me. When you're competing at that level. You probably need it. You mentioned mentally as well as what is the mindset looks like when you're struggling through practice or in a race? Did you have any like tricks or I don't want to say hacks but do you have any money Set tricks that you defaulted to in those moments?

Hans  

Yeah, simply put, I regretted the whole point of that I was driving home every single day whether and this doesn't necessarily mean in the midst of a race once in a while it does. But also, you know, the outcome of practice and the outcome of a big event that you've been training for. I was thinking, man, if I'm done with this piece I'm done with this day I'm done with this week, or this race, or whatever, or I'm done with my career. And I'm looking back and I can't go back. Because, as an athlete, you have a shelf life. And there's a certain point, you just physically can't compete anymore. And if I look back on what I'm doing right now, or what I have done up into this point, am I going to be satisfied? And every single time the answer was no. And so I knew that I had to keep going, I had to go another season, another, you know, I had to dig a little deeper, a little harder. And I had to figure out where that next half a percent was somewhere else in there, and go find it and go get it. And frankly, that thought of like, when I'm 40 Am I going to like think back and be like, yeah, I really just choose it for all it was worth and I got everything out of it, or am I going to be like holding back on that one thing or that one session or whatever, and, you know, ultimately have that regret that I can't fix. And I didn't want that. So that's really what kept me going. Yeah, I

Ryan 

love that you're using regret, or the possibility for regret to fuel you. It resonates with me because when I was in high school, I was a sprinter on the track team. And not that I was ever going to make it to the Olympics, but I was I've usually placed in the top three. But I look, you know, years later, I remember thinking to myself, I've had this thought many times, what if, you know if I hadn't committed myself to practice? Could I have done better? And, you know, so that's why it resonated with me because I've had that thought many times, like, what could I have done. And I think that's a powerful message, you know, what will your future self think about this moment if you quit,

Hans  

and when you stack those on top of each other, because obviously, sports is a good analogy for this. Because it's physically uncomfortable when you're in the race and your legs hurt your breathing and your 180 beats a minute your hearts going out of your chest and all that stuff, it's in your nature, your body's telling you to stop. And then having that sort of mind over matter. Battle constantly is something that you is important to win more often than not, you know, I think that separates anyone good at anything is do the uncomfortable thing. You know, which is part of why I do things like I take a cold shower that you know, in the morning, like four or five times a week, because I want to do what's hard. And I want to tell my body to do what I tell it to do. So that way, when I get in an uncomfortable conversation with a client, I just have it as opposed to not, and you know, that will hopefully help me be a better agent and be a better business person and all that sort of stuff. When I'm starting to practice it on those little things like that.

Ryan  

And it does work. I've done cold showers as well. And when you're about to get into the shower, cold shower, your mind starts to try to talk you have it pretty strongly actually. And when you overcome it, it's a very satisfying feeling. And then you do that, you know, week after week, it does start to stack up for sure.

Hans  

Yeah, I mean, this morning, I popped in, I put it on warm, just I wasn't even thinking I got in it was warm. I was like, wait for a second, hold on. And I like cranked it over to the cold side. And eventually, it got cold. And then I was but I was in it. And I was like got out and I felt better afterward. And that's the thing is like when you do the hard thing, generally speaking afterward, you feel better. And if you do the easy thing you let yourself off, you feel worse. I think we've all had that to one degree or another. So, you know, practicing that as much as you possibly can, I think is helpful. 100% agree.

Ryan 

So Hans, why don't we wrap up, you had mentioned meditation as part of your morning routine, and you started to get big into it? Can you end with just a recap of how you meditate on what you do? What are the benefits that you see from it?

Hans  

I've had the privilege of having a couple of really cool guests on my podcast, you being one of them. But we didn't talk about meditating on you, on your episode, I had a couple of other guys who did. And I learned a ton from them. And I grabbed one of their books and read through it. And, realize that like through meditation in the practice of mindfulness, simply sitting in silence, you can throw a little music on or in silence and just listening to your breath and just focusing on the in and out of it helps you build that muscle of being mindful, which then can help you deal with unresolved, you know, trauma issues that you had in your past or a really hard situation that you're going through right now and today. And so what I do is, I have this app called Insight Timer, it's free. And it's more of a platform for people to create meditations on it. So people, you know, you can find anything on there you want, from yoga meditation to stress relief, to sleep aid to whatever. And you can have these guided meditations for 10 or 20 or 30 minutes, go and use through headphones or earphones in and you follow along. Or you can create a little timer for yourself with gongs and waves or a river running or whatever, and just have some nice calming music and sit there yourself. And I've been doing a combination of both most of the time, actually, the last week or so I've just had the timer going for 20 minutes and, and just trying to focus on my breath and stay very present, see how I'm feeling, feel the air in and out and all that stuff. And it's really been fascinating what, how, how much more mindful in my life, and how I feel differently through the rest of the day and how I view things differently when I just start to practice that for something as short as 20 minutes. And occasionally, then I'll throw in a guided one to try and learn something from someone else, you know. So I guess I do that combination. But I think that's critical. First thing I do in the day before I read or any of that other stuff. That's what I try and hit.

Ryan  

Yeah, it's a game-changer. I use the Insight Timer app as well. And everyone listens, it's a game-changer. And you got to stick to it. You got to commit to it for a while to see the benefits. But yeah, I agree with you. It's first thing in the morning. It's a great way to start your day. Well, we went longer than I normally go because I enjoyed this conversation. There's so much we could talk about I feel like we could have kept ongoing. But if people want to learn more about you or continue the conversation with you, what's the best website? What's the best way for them to reach you?

Hans 

Yeah, you can go on to Hansstruzyna.com It's just hansstruzyna.com. You've got my podcast, my real estate stuff, and a contact form. And then if you're on social media, I'm on Instagram, that's where I'm most active at chief SMA SMA h which is Hahns backward, so you can go check me out over there. And I post pretty regularly and DM me and want to chat I look at all of those and try and respond as quickly as possible.

Ryan  

Awesome. And we'll link up your website and we'll look up your Instagram in the show notes. Appreciate you Hans, and I enjoyed talking with you.

Hans  

Thanks, Ryan. appreciate having me on.

Ryan 

You're welcome. Take care. Thanks, everyone for listening.

Ryan  

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