EP43 Success and Balance with Dr. Troye Wallett

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Mike Scott (00:01.368)
Hello guys and girls, welcome back. So today I've got a guest with me who I think is going to become quite a regular feature. It's Dr. Troy Wallett. Troy is a very good friend of mine. We spend probably too much time together. Troy is a medical doctor. Troy is a successfully exited founder of a very interesting business in aged care. Troy is also a world-class triathlete. And if you're looking at the video in the snippet, you'll see that with the bikes and the medals and the hoodie.

and the helmet and he's a total triathlon nerd. Troy's a high performance guy. He's also a husband to a lovely wife, a father to three very well-balanced kids who I happen to know quite well. And he's also the co-founder of my new venture or our new venture, should I say, the Intentional Leaders Network, the ILM. And today we're actually pretty unprepped. We're literally just gonna have a conversation where Troy's actually gonna, I mean, we're gonna use the word interview, but really just, I don't know, poke and prod.

and push and we're just gonna have a conversation. We have a broad theme, which is around success slash performance slash a bunch of stuff, but we'll see where it goes. So welcome Troy, good to have you on.

Troye (01:13.39)
Thanks Mike, it's super kind words. The funny thing is that everything you talk about, I look up to you as someone who's just one little step ahead. You're the person that pushes me to do all of those things. In fact, I think it's a collaboration. I think we work together really well to push each other, which all be good to riff about today.

Mike Scott (01:37.818)
It will. I think something that's just come up right now is, you know, we are very, very different. I'm the youngest of four boys. So I'm the little youngest guy with everything to prove all the time and trying to get some airtime. Troy is the oldest in his family that is way more calm, way more measured, way more confident. And why I'm saying this is I think, you know, we're co-founders now and this is the duality of the duo that I think is really powerful in a business when you can find it is these counter forces.

healthy conflict, push each other, but deep value alignment and deep alignment in where you're going in a business. And the older and uglier and grayer I get, the more this phrase is just coming to me. And it's, care less and less about what I do and more and more about who I do it with. So yeah, let's see where this goes.

Troye (02:27.052)
Yeah, that's, that's, I mean, that's pretty cool. I feel, I feel very similar. And I think this links into kind of what we're talking about when you're talking about that success and performance thing. it's intriguing how you can focus on your business and you can get everything sorted in your business and you can be very business oriented, but in the end, just becomes about people, mixing with people, people doing people things and work and as a co-founder and, and.

That's kind of what you were talking about is that it's these all areas of your life sort of feed into each other like a massive Venn diagram. so having success in business is one thing, but my assertion is that you can't have success or the best maximizing your success in business without maximizing and having success in other areas. And that was what we wanted to talk about. And that's what I'm keen to hear your thoughts on what success.

Looks like, mean, you've got a podcast called moderately successful, which I think is really amusing cause, you're moderately successful, I think is highly successful for some people, but there's always a continuum, right? So you're moderately successful will be like super really successful for some people and only mildly successful even like not even that successful for other people. So that's where you sit on the spectrum. So I'm actually quite intrigued about like, what does success mean to you when you think about it?

Mike Scott (03:53.819)
Yeah, it's a weird, know, such a common question. And I get asked this question pretty often and I don't have a great and succinct and inspiring answer, which kind of makes me more interested in it is we really, so to the audience, we didn't do any prep for this, right? So I haven't thought about this at all. So it might be clunky and ugly, but that was the point of what we're doing here. So if you say to me right now, what does success look like? looks like the word that pops into my head is, is balance. But I think balance is different for everybody. And I also don't think that that means that there's

Troye (03:56.385)
Ahem.

Mike Scott (04:23.595)
separation. So balance, maybe a better word for this could be integration. So what does that mean for me? I don't need huge amounts of material things. I don't really aspire to having an enormous, many tens of millions of dollars mansion or multimillion dollar cars. But I do have a lot of hangups around the fear of financial scarcity or the fear of financial destitution, huge loss aversion. So the one area of success for me

is the absence of probability of catastrophe. That's one thing that I sort of think about. The other part of it is that, you know, I have young kids and I have a wife that requires a lot of work. It does require a lot of work. We all know this sort of choose your hard thing and cultivating a healthy marriage over a long period of time requires a lot of work. It's work that I'm happy to do, but it's work. Raising good, well-balanced kids requires a lot of work. It's work that I'm happy to do, but it's work. So I think

Success for me boils down to an aspirational feeling of calm or peace. But this is very interesting for me because you love to ask the question Troy, what are you optimizing for? It's a great question everybody. It really is a great question because it's not what you want to be optimizing of, it's what are you actually optimizing for? And if I look at my life with a brutal honest,

lens, I am not optimizing for calm and I am not optimizing for peace. want to be optimizing for calm and I want to be optimizing for peace, but I'm not. I'm effectively running four very intense streams in the business world. I'm doing a lot. I put constraints in terms of not working nights and weekends. We moved to Australia with not a single solitary person that we knew huge financial implications.

And it goes on and on and on and on. That is not someone that's optimizing for peace. That is someone that is optimizing for ambition. That is someone that is optimizing for gain. That is someone who's optimizing for growth. So as I'm talking through this, success for me is a feeling, but this is actually becoming a confrontational conversation, a monologuing conversation, because it's made me realize that it's actually not what I'm optimizing for. And then that gets a little different for me. Let me stop there for a second.

Troye (06:45.325)
Good job.

Mike Scott (06:52.587)
What does success look like for you? Because you're in a different, a bit of a different life stage in certain areas than me.

Troye (07:01.358)
I was expecting to not answer any of questions here, but let me go for that. success is nebulous, right? it's, one of those things that's you kind of, you've got it right now. Like no matter where you are, you're successful. We were talking about this whole thing, about it being on a, on a continuum. and I've got a beautiful house. I've got a beautiful bike. I've got a beautiful wife. I've got beautiful kids. I've got a business that's.

moderately successful. And, and if you look at all of that from a gratefulness and an abundance point of view, that's like, that's awesome. But it's like, you know what, I don't optimize for success. It's funny. I don't actually often think about what success looks like for me. However, if you had to push on that, I would think about it as like a temporary thing. It's like a goal. It's like a, what would success look like for you now?

And the question I wanted to ask you, which I'll ask and then answer myself is like, where are you successful right now? Like where would you define that area of success? And I would say, I'm probably successful in my physical health. Like I feel very happy about that. Doesn't mean I can't get more successful or move even further. And then the other thing to look at in the other area of life is where would I like to be more successful? And that would definitely actually...

funny enough, in business. I'd love to be more successful in business. And it's interesting to know what that would take. So I'm going to flip the question onto you. what do you, actually, where are you successful, Mike? Like, where do you see yourself? Where do you feel? Because you're that feeling body kind of thing. Like, where do you feel successful in your life? And knowing you, I think this might be challenging.

Mike Scott (08:49.196)
It will be challenging and I'm going to just say something first and then I will come back to the question. I don't want to avoid it, but just an observation or something that I thought about is that I do a lot of one-on-one coaching with small and mid-sized business owners. Very few of them can articulate what it is they actually want. And that's what we're talking about here. Like very few can I go, hey, client, what is it that you actually want?

Troye (09:09.293)
Hmm.

Mike Scott (09:15.628)
I can think of one actually, only one that can articulate that very well. And that's an interesting thing because how do you define success if you haven't defined what you actually want? Right, so that's just something to think about, right? And then the work becomes defining that clearly, which is a hard thing. And Troy will know one of our sayings we like in the ILN is you can actually have everything you want in life, you just can't have it all at the same time. So what is it now that you want? coming back to answer the question, where do I feel successful? I feel successful...

in again, physical health. So I'm training, I'm doing a lot of weight training at the moment, which I haven't done for years and I'm absolutely loving that. I've removed all the friction. So I built a proper gym at my house and every single morning at half past five, I roll out of bed straight into gym and I'm just, loving it. I feel like a, I feel a bit like an 18 year old again, looking at my bench press, my bench press weights, you and they're actually going up and up and up and I'm feeling strong and I'm feeling healthy. And Peter Atiyah is in my brain telling me that muscle is the best defense against glucose.

as we get older, et cetera, et I'm feeling successful in.

Mike Scott (10:24.481)
Sure, not many other places, if I'm really honest. I don't, yeah, you haven't asked me where I feel like I'm failing and that's a much easier and longer list, but that's my unfortunate, scarce mindset. At times I feel successful with the coaching work that I do, which is interesting because I am never not getting compliments. I'm never not getting referrals, yet that doesn't shift the feeling.

of success and I guess this is imposter syndrome, right? Imposter syndrome is literally to me defined by like, everyone just hasn't figured out how crap I am yet and they're going too soon and when they do, it's all gonna come crashing down. The weird thing about that is the more I say that out loud, the more credibility I seem to get, which just doesn't, it blows my brain, right? I tell people how terrified I am of just adding no value and they like laugh and go, and of course you'll add value. So where else am I feeling successful? Not many other places.

to be completely honest. And this is an interesting thing that you touched on earlier because I really do think that it is about what you are measuring yourself again. And I use that word measuring, not comparing, because I don't think I compare myself directly to too many people anymore so much, but my measure of success subconsciously is really, really hard to stand up to. So if I look at like, I don't know,

cardiovascular or like, like, like, like, let's say like VO two max, like to me, my VO two max at the moment is, I don't know what is my VO two max. My VO two max is, I think it is, I can't see it here. I'm looking at my watch. think it's about 52 or something, but to me, that's not good enough. I want it to be like 60 to some, but what

Troye (12:13.856)
I hate you so much.

Mike Scott (12:16.101)
But this is, and this sounds like bragging, right? It's a shitty conversation, but it's like it genuinely doesn't feel successful, right? What do you wanna say, Troy?

Troye (12:19.469)
No.

No, it's just like, I've trained so hard. I've got to tell you guys the story. So I trained so hard and we go into a race and Mike's like, yeah, I put a bit of work into this and I'm pretty good and my VO2 max is whatever and we're chatting away and I've been putting a lot of work in. And then we go race and he beats me by like miles. It's just, I love it. And this is what we're talking about. It's like, it's that where's your success because it's irrelevant to.

Like the world that about like where you come, who you beat, who beats you. It's, all internal, right? It's like, it's this whole sort of this feeling. I mean, if we're coming back to your, your podcast title of how to be moderately successful, that's a feeling. And I think some people, what they do is they go, if I don't feel unsuccessful, if I don't feel like I'm losing, and I'll just going to shift that to wherever I want to be, I lose my ambition. I lose my drive.

And so they sit in this place of kind of, have to keep on pushing. have to keep on looking ahead. And I just wonder if you can do that without the anxiety. I wonder if you can bring down that sort of, that energy into this place where you are still moving forward. This is relentless sort of moving forward rather than this whole idea of like, I'm like our internal monologue often goes to like, I'm rubbish. I'm useless. I'm terrible.

In fact, it happens to me and this is what I wanted to say from a sort of a place of vulnerabilities. You mentioned all this cool stuff in the beginning that was really kind about where I'm at and what I'm doing. But the number of days I sit there and I go, man, I'm so like I'm failing at so many things. Like it's just, I just can't, I didn't go for my swim today and I'm sort of ridiculous. That's not what athletes do.

Troye (14:18.094)
The engagement with my kids was rubbish. I'm the terrible father. And I'll put this out there in place of vulnerability and it's not arrogance again, but sometimes I think if people say that I'm good at all this stuff, what are people that are like, if I'm not good at the, if I don't feel good at the stuff, if I'm good, then like, how do other people even cope? How do other people even do what they're going to do?

Mike Scott (14:42.635)
Yeah, well, this is the thing, right? I don't know if they do. And this is one of my constant slightly negative musings or mental ramblings. But I reference a friend of mine who's ultra successful, incredibly smart, just yeah, like a very successful person. And I remember talking to him once and he just sort of said, know, Mike, think I've said this to you many times, Troy, but he just sort of said, I honestly think that

Troye (14:45.326)
Ahem.

Mike Scott (15:11.787)
most of us are just barely holding our shit together all of the time. Yet you look at this guy's life from the outside in, and you'd be like, this guy has got it waxed from a commercial, family, health, fitness, money, everything vibe. And unfortunately, I do think that's true, you know? And listening to you speak and thinking about this as we're speaking, I think more and more success for me is a feeling. It's a feeling of enough

contentment, calm, whatever you want to call it. And there's a book called Power Versus Force. And I have read it, but I actually can't even remember what it's about. But I do think a lot about that phrase. Like, it power versus force? And my sort of take on this is that force is mostly how I've lived my life. I will force it. I will make it happen. will, Troy, you talk about it to me all the time. It's like, Mike, is this level of intensity necessary kind of thing, right? And I don't think it is. Power, on the other hand, is a greater...

Now we're gonna get language confusion here, but is a greater force, but it is a, you allow it to happen. And we talk about things like flow. We talk about things like flow state and in your groove and zone of genius. Those are all power things, which generally yield better results. Force is when we're pushing really, really hard hustle. These are things that are not maintainable. And I think, I think ironically, we think that the harder we force stuff, the closer we get to success.

but actually the harder we force stuff, the further away we get to success if we don't know what success is, because then success gets drilled down to the lowest common denominator, which is usually money or status. So like to round this whole thing out for me.

It actually starts with that question. Like the practical thing is sitting down and writing down what is it that I actually want. And my brain has to go to practical things about what you can do here. I can't resist it. So like in terms of the like, what do we do about this? I sort of pictured what I'm gonna do about this and what should be doing about this and probably will be doing about it. But it's almost like, there's a thing called a life wheel.

Mike Scott (17:23.306)
It's really just looking at the different areas of your life and you rate them one to 10 and you say, what are you going to do about them? And it's just, it's a nice visual to sort of see the whole life picture, but it's sort of about, I think it's about writing down like, what does success look like or feel like for me in every area of my life over what time period? So over the next year or five years or what have you. And that's kind of like the easy part because that's a wish list, but then to look at that and say, okay, which one or maybe maximum two really push it three.

of these areas do I want to be optimizing for now? Because I can't be optimizing for all of them. You know, I speak about this quite a lot. Like I've realized that I can't be optimizing for more than about three areas of my life at any given time. And unfortunately, or fortunately, the three areas that are not negotiable to me are my family, health and fitness, and business. Because I'm in the phase of my life where I'm still accumulating. I'm still trying to grow from a business perspective. And

When you look at that though, there's some stuff that's missing there, right? There's social that's missing. There's maybe community that's missing. But I can't do more than that. So then it actually just becomes a care, well, how do I integrate this into my life? Which is actually how Troy and I even became friends. It's like, okay, well, my social life then has to either be when I'm doing health and fitness stuff or when I'm business stuff. So now basically the only time I socialize is if I'm on a mountain bike riding with someone or like this morning, if I'm hiking up at five o'clock in the morning up Mount Lofty Summit.

because I'm clear on at least limiting those areas of optimization. So the practical takeaway for anyone listening, if this is a bit too kind of, I don't know, theoretical is like list the different areas of your life that you care about, rate those areas one to 10, say where you want to get those areas to over the next X number of years, and then do the hard work of saying,

Which areas am I going to be optimizing for? And really what you're saying there is which areas am I not going to be paying attention to because we can't do everything all the time.

Troye (19:23.35)
Yeah. So there's got to two thoughts. The one is, favorite saying of yours is the antidote to overwhelm is clarity. And I think that a lot of the time we end up thrashing through life and we just don't know where we're going. And thinking about the life wheel thing, I sometimes think, well, what's quite cool is to let's, what's 10 out of 10? Who's the, who you, who's like,

The best at something. So if you look at a triathlete, like Matt Hauser has just won the world champs. Like he's the best. I'm never going to get there. Like I'm never going to be running at sub 30, 10 K like I'm 48. I'm just not going to do that. However, if I put him at like 10 out of 10, and then I put another avatar of like this sloth guy from seven, the movie who's sitting on his couch all day and just like.

That's not out of 10. Where do I sit on this? And the question here is, I'm just going to then go, okay, well, I want to, I maybe I'm five out of 10. How do I get to six out of 10 or where on the scale do I want to be? Or does it even matter? But I'm going to be aiming towards getting a little bit better, a little bit faster, a little bit, whatever. and no matter how you think about him, like Elon Musk is.

Like the entrepreneur of the OG best in the world. mean, no matter what you think about him, he's launched a hundred million things. If that's the best you can be, like what does five out of 10 look like? What does six out of 10 look like? And so sometimes it's quite fun to do that. However, what, I mean, I don't know anything about Matt Hauser, but I'm sure his business is pretty rubbish. Not that I know anything about him just because he's not doing a business. And I'm pretty sure that Elon Musk can't run, even finisher.

triathlon, let alone anything, let alone any, no, no. And so, and so what does this whole life wealth look like? Cause I think actually, you know what I've realized what success looks like for me. I think success is having this whole life wealth being fit enough to be like, have fun and enjoy things. Having a business that's bringing in enough that is

Mike Scott (21:17.255)
Not in his current state, no. I don't think so.

Troye (21:41.934)
to support my family and my lifestyle and where I want to go. Having a social life or a family life or a spiritual life that's just there, that's just enough so that I can wake up every morning and still feel inspired to move on, to do something, to be energized and to do the next thing. So yeah, I think that's where I see success is that whole life wealth.

and their life will as a way to measure it.

Mike Scott (22:12.54)
Yeah, 100%. And I think, you know, if we're speaking about sayings that we like from each other, you know, one of the things that Troy says a lot, which I really like is that I'll probably get it wrong, but upstream from success, and this is in your business, is a healthy mind and body. And just think about that for a second, right? Upstream. In other words, it needs to come first. That, I mean, I'm shifting gears a bit here, but that's okay. Like, but what we're saying here is like we...

You know, we're talking through the lens of being a business builder, a business owner, yet we're talking about all the stuff that seemingly has nothing directly to do with business. But upstream from success in business is a healthy mind and body. That doesn't mean that we can't be successful unless we have a healthy mind and body. What it does mean though, in my observation, is that if we don't have a healthy mind and body and we're over indexing for business success, it's a net loss. And we see that all the time in ourselves. We see it in other people that we know and love.

We see people getting very unhealthy, very overweight. We see marriages breaking down. We see relationships breaking down. We see mental health declining because building a business is extremely isolating and extremely lonely. So the antidote to that or the work then becomes upstream. So first we work on the healthy mind and body. The result of that is being a business better operator. And it's not airy-fairy. Troy's a doctor, so he can probably

get me right, correct what I'm about to say here, but just very simply, like when we are mentally well, when we are rested, when we are not living on adrenaline and cortisol results, when our dopamine levels are steady and not depleted, when our endorphins are in a good state, we are literally just making better decisions. I remember Troy telling me once that like you have a few bad nights sleep and your cognitive ability is literally the same or worse than being inebriated, than being drunk, literally, not even figuratively. So.

This is where it gets interesting, right? Is that it doesn't seem to be a choice like it used to be. You know, I love to say that self care has got nothing to do with you. It's got to do with the people that rely on you and that shift thing. So it's no longer, oh shit, I feel guilty for going to the gym in the middle of the day or starting work an hour later because I'm exercising. No, it's actually your obligation if you have people that are relying on you. that, yeah, go for it Troy.

Troye (24:34.562)
Yeah. Yes, sorry. I've seen this so many times. Like I had a person I was working with, like, if you don't look after your body, your body just says, nap and just stops you. Like it just stops you straight away. Back pain will come in and you won't be able to move. You'll get shingles. You'll get pneumonia or a cold will come in. Like your body will just tell you, it'll be like, nap, I'm done now. If you don't look after it.

And so you can sprint, and I think this is key, sprinting is awesome. But the reason why you need to look after yourself is that when you sprint, you sprint, but then you need to rest afterwards. You need to let your body recover and have those moments of not sprinting. And in those moments, you work up to the point where you can sprint again.

Mike Scott (25:24.655)
You know, I remember reading, I remember reading or listening to a podcast and there was a, I think she was a neuroscientist, I think. And she was talking, she was being interviewed and she was talking about the clinical definition of resilience. And I found it really fascinating. I'm going to botch the exact words here, but the concept was pretty clear to me. She was saying that most people think of resilience as like the ability to just keep going and push through and hustle and push. And she's like, that's not the full story. Actually in the clinical definition of resilience, there's a big part of it, which is the rest component.

And this light bulb just like went off for me. was like, it's literally, it's a key part of resilience is the rest part. Without the rest, you are not being resilient, you're being stupid. And, know, Ryan Holiday has written a bunch of books. One of them is called Discipline is Destiny. I'm rereading it now. It's really excellent. And he's speaking about this awesome conflict between being incredibly, you know, you don't quit, you don't give up, you don't...

You don't say no, you don't lean into too much comfort. You do what has to be done. And he's talking about a baseball player that played like a ludicrous amount of games back to back through a broken leg, through pneumonia, through this, through that. Yet on the other side, he's talking about sleep and rest as a discipline that needs to be created. It is a discipline. It is not a nice to have. He's talking about the special forces that built in sleep and sleep quality and quantity as a discipline. These are not nice to haves. Right, these things are critically important.

So, you we've slipped off a bit with success, but what it looks like, but not really, right? Because, you know, I think as I'm talking more and more and more is we used to have this phrase in the software business, which was we need to find a pace that is infinitely maintainable. So yeah, you got to sprint at times. And I agree, you've got to sprint at times and you've got to slow down at times. Unfortunately, most of us don't live like that. It's kind of like, it's too far on the left or too far on the right. And we need to be able to come a little bit more back into the middle.

Chad, we're just gonna take this out in a second. Troy, it's 27 minutes, so let's start. Okay, cool, just hold on, let's clap again. All right, Chad, so just take that part out.

Troye (27:20.973)
Yeah.

Troye (27:26.51)
I'm about to wrap it up.

Troye (27:31.552)
yes. So what I'm, what I'm, Mike, I know that you like action. it's like we talk about all these sort of philosophical things. I'll go deep into philosophy anytime one day to ask me about the speed of light. I love it. but do you like actions?

Mike Scott (27:44.504)
Hahaha

I just want to stop something quickly. This is how much of a nerd Troy is and I just love it. One day I phoned him, we're about to have our daily huddle and I'm like, hey Troy, how you doing? And he just goes, I've been thinking so much about the speed of light. And you can see that he's just been thinking about the speed of light. I just love that shit. Anyway, Troy.

Troye (28:01.614)
It's crazy.

Troye (28:05.368)
Dude, there's a speed limit in the universe and physics. It's bananas. It's just because it's so massive. Anyway, what I'd like to know, and in fact, use me as well, if you'd like, because I love hearing my blind spots, but like, let's define you as successful because you are, and you obviously, we've spoken about why you can shift that. What would you say are...

three things that I could do tomorrow, that people should do tomorrow that would help them become more successful. I'm gonna make it hard for you. I'm gonna say not sleep, cause that's obvious, not exercise, cause that's obvious. And I'll tell you something here. I find it so amusing. Every time I read about any pathology, any problem from a medical point of view,

The causes are basically smoking and alcohol and the cure or what fixes it is sleep, exercise, mindfulness. It's just like everything that everything comes down to that. If you want to prevent dementia, if you want to prevent heart disease, if you want to prevent depression, anxiety, whatever, it's bigger than that, but those are all the common denominators. Anyway, so I'll take the three easy ones. What practical tips?

Mike Scott (29:32.897)
Yeah, firstly, I'll say you're a bastard because now I've got to really think about it. Okay, so you're really putting on the spot here, which I love. The first one, it's gonna feel like I'm cheating, but I'm not. The first one, I'm not gonna say sleep at hours because that's a given, right? What I am gonna say is wake up earlier. Now, there's just this interesting thing. It's not that if you wake up at 5 a.m., you're gonna be more successful, but it's strangely odd.

how many very successful people do wake up at 5 a.m. So just think about that for a second, right? It's like causation, correlation, whatever, but it's, there is something about the discipline, the consistency, and what it means to get up earlier in the morning and what that means, Because you don't, remember, we've said you have to sleep. So to not go to bed at one and wake up at five, that is not a good thing.

But if you wake up at five, you've got to reverse engineer your days that you go to bed at nine, which means you've got to eat dinner earlier, which means you've got to shift your day better, which means it's just, it's a whole thing. So that's one thing. Wake up earlier. I also want to challenge people when they say I'm not a morning person, bullshit, like rubbish. Everyone's a morning person if you're setting up your day correctly. So that's number one. I would challenge people to experiment with shifting lives to wake up earlier. Okay, now I've got to think. Number two, if I'm not allowed to say exercise,

I would say...

Do three things first thing in the morning that are constructive or healthy or useful and difficult. Now there's a book called The Happiness Workout, which is not written by a medical doctor and I don't know how based in science it is. I don't really care because I like things that even if they have a placebo effect, but she talks about this, like why it's so important to do difficult, useful things in the morning. And it's got to do with your dopamine stores. If I understand this correctly.

Mike Scott (31:30.924)
So if you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is you look at your phone, the second thing you do is look at your phone again, the third thing you do is have a cup of coffee and you've snoozed four times, then you don't make your bed because you just don't feel like it, then you eat a big pastry and then you get on your laptop and you stare at blue light for eight hours. You have depleted your dopamine stores before you've even started the day, which then makes hard decisions harder.

It makes any sort of disciplined action difficult. If I understand this correctly, the reverse is also true. If you wake up and your alarm goes off and you don't snooze, you do a hard thing, you get out of bed. Then you make your bed, which I hate making my bed, but I do it every morning. Then you do a workout. I'm not cheating and saying exercise, I'm just saying a healthy, difficult thing. What you're actually doing, and you haven't looked at your phone yet.

Troye (32:06.03)
you

Mike Scott (32:20.982)
you're increasing your dopamine stores. You're actually creating dopamine to be able to use throughout the day, which makes every hard thing throughout the day, every frog you've got to eat makes a little bit easier. I don't know if there's science behind this. I don't really care. Since I've been doing this, it really works for me. So that's number two. Number three, if I'm not allowed to say meditate.

Mike Scott (32:43.884)
Think number three.

Mike Scott (32:48.354)
Look, it's a version of meditation, but number three is whether it's through journaling, whether it's through meditation, whether it's through a conversation with someone that you trust, is to, my dad calls it self observation, is to take a second and be like, what am I doing with my life today? And it's not about a victim. It's just like looking in. You know, we talk about an unexamined life, like the Stoics used to talk about this, an unexamined life is a life not worth living, but no one stops to examine their life.

So this is just being put on the spot. I don't do this every day, but I should. And it's to just look in, hey, from the outside in, within my values, how am I living my life today? How am I showing up? Am I giving my family leftovers or am I actually giving them like the real energy? Am I showing up with authenticity or am I being a prick? Am I doing the hard things that I should be doing, et cetera? So you've already put them in the spot. So don't know how useful those are gonna be, but those are my three. What are your three?

Troye (33:46.67)
No, I think that's great. And I'd like to reiterate that waking up and looking at your phone first thing in the morning is a disaster for so many reasons. And I'm not even going to say anymore. If people want me to talk about more about that, I think they should put some links in the comments about what we want to talk about. And we can talk about these things forever in a day. Sleep is one of the things that I'm obsessed about. If you come and see me, talk to me, I'll talk to you about sleep in five seconds. I think what leads to success

is having a very clear, exciting, and I'm use the word goal, but I really don't like the word goal. Something you're working towards is probably better, but that's a, maybe that'll be an acronym, something you're working towards, sowu-tu, whatever. It's awesome, isn't it? But having an exciting goal is just so awesome, something you're working towards. And being clear about that.

Mike Scott (34:30.186)
Rolls off the tongue.

Troye (34:44.226)
And then breaking that down into like, what am I going to be doing this quarter? Like, you know, this in your business, like what are your rocks? Like, what are you doing this week? What are you doing today? Like, what are your habits? Being very clear on that, I think that leads to success. I think if you, and it stops thrashing. So I've been doing a bit of work in swimming, right? Because of triathlon and swimming is super duper hard.

It's not like you can go out for a run. Running is hard too, but running, you can just sort of sit back in your mind and go elsewhere. With swimming, you have to think about your catch and you have to think about your body position. It takes a lot of work. And the funny thing is when I have to do a 10 out of 10, 25 meter or 50 meter effort, my time is exactly the same as when I'm doing a seven out of 10. And it's because I start thrashing. And if you thrash in life, you go nowhere or you go somewhere.

really slowly. And I used to think that every day, so once a week, I'd often set my week up and I'd do this whole thing. I love it. I freaking love a planning session. I love it. Like I want to do this and this is my goals. And I thought, you know what, this is just me like treading water, like doing all the stuff. It's not the actual work. and I spent a lot of time doing it. And then I stopped because I was like, this is just being stupid. Like I'm not getting anywhere.

And what I found was that everything just became so much more challenging. Like I didn't know where I was going. didn't know what I was doing. I just didn't do anything. So I've gone back to doing that, all that stuff. So I think in summary, having a clear idea of where you're going and sort of having a look at that every day, every week, every month in a kind of structured way, I think that leads to success. Both for your business, you know that because every business operating system in your business just

revolutionizes it. But having some kind of personal operating system, I guess you could call it, which is what we're doing with ILN. You know, this was my last idea. Is very useful. So I think that's, mean, that's, that's not three, that's one or I guess three all makes a protein, eat a whole bunch of protein. We don't get enough protein in our diets and it's got a mood enhancer.

Mike Scott (36:53.811)
Yeah, give me two more. Give me two more. Give me two more.

Troye (37:05.518)
element to it if you have a high protein diet in the morning that you're not craving stuff all the way through, and it stops frailty. so protein I would think is another one, but that's for body success. And I'm going to...

Mike Scott (37:20.041)
But upstream from business success is a healthy mind and body. So it's the same thing.

Troye (37:23.726)
Well, I think it's it's a Venn diagram. I think that I think that success leads to success leads to success Or it's a choice I think you can put all if you think about your energy as 10 out of 10 You can be like Elon Musk and put 10 out of 10 energy into your business and be the best entrepreneur in the whole freaking world But you and your family lacks and I think that most of us are not superheroes like Matt Hauser and

Elon Musk or whoever else you want to talk about. We're not superheroes like that. And we actually want balance. And I don't mean to judge those guys, but we want to have balance. And my assertion is that when you're not sitting at work guilty about your neglecting or your family, maybe it's not even neglect, maybe if you, if you're, you, then you work better. If you're at home and you've worked really well and you smashed out your work, then you can be present at home.

If your body feels good, you've got the energy to achieve in all of those different areas. If your mind is good, when I'm depressed, life is a sludgy, horrible world. So it all links and in the middle of that is success to flywheel.

Mike Scott (38:32.99)
It's a flywheel, it's a flywheel, right? It's what Jim Collins speaks about with a flywheel and a flywheel is not a process. It's not do this, then do this, then do this, then do this. A flywheel is if you do this, then the next thing becomes almost inevitable. And then when you do that thing, the next thing becomes almost inevitable. The reason we say a flywheel is because it has its own momentum, right? And that's what I'm hearing from you. And what's the third one, Troy? So we've got protein, we've got have a plan, follow a plan, look at a plan every day. What's the third one?

Troye (38:56.494)
The third one is self-awareness. Developing a sense, it links into the one you were saying at the end.

Mike Scott (39:08.018)
But we spoke about a daily habit, right? We're trying to talk about a daily thing. So what's the thing you do with self-awareness? So I got to the same place, interestingly, I was like, examine yourself from the outside in, self-observation. What's the thing you would do every day to cultivate self-awareness?

Troye (39:24.174)
I'm obsessed with the idea that the story that you tell yourself is 95 % of your reality. And I think from a self-awareness point of view, it's listening to your spending time, understanding yourself talk and realizing that it confabulates, it makes things up.

Mike Scott (39:38.526)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Scott (39:43.251)
You know, just to push into that from a business sense, know, as most of you know, I do a lot of coaching with leadership teams and the system that I like to use these days is called the Bloom Growth Operating System, which is a full business operating system. There's literally a module that we do within that with the leadership team in a full business context, which is literally labeled the stories we tell ourselves, because we know that the stories we tell ourselves do dictate our reality. So this is not...

airy, fairy hippie bullshit. we didn't script this. didn't know what we were going to say. Troy and I come at things from very, very different places. And yet we've landed at very similar places, which is not that surprising actually, because I don't think we're that unique as humans actually, but we can talk about that another time. So I'm conscious of time. We're just about out of time. Troy.

Troye (40:30.51)
What's your one word takeaway, Mike? what's your takeaway from today? This is how we end a lot of stuff. What was your takeaway from today? What are you gonna change? What are you gonna do tomorrow? It's different from today.

Mike Scott (40:33.308)
My one word takeaway or my one takeaway? Yep.

Mike Scott (40:41.182)
Yeah, it's interesting. You you put me on the spot, which is great. And this third thing that I spoke about with this, like this, this, this looking in from the outside, the self-examination, I don't do that much anymore. And, and I'm feeling in my body pretty crap that I don't do that very much anymore. So it's very simple for me, but that, even though I said it, I feel like I didn't actually say it. I felt like you got me there to see that. That's the thing. That's my takeaway is actually

I'll figure out little bit of a process. It'll probably just be a little journal entry to be like, hey, looking in from the outside, how are you living your life today? One or two lines. That's it. I think that's what I'm gonna do. That's my main takeaway. What's yours, Troy?

Troye (41:21.642)
it's similar because we're similar. I don't spend enough time being mindful and meditating and something I've been thinking about and wanting to implement for ages. And I think I need to re-instigate that and do more of that. but mostly because my mind is important and when I'm depressed, I can't do anything and I really need to work on not being depressed.

Mike Scott (41:36.785)
Yeah, cool. Awesome.

Mike Scott (41:44.657)
Yeah. I hope everyone's kind of listening to this, right? Troy is an objectively very successful human in every sense of the word, yet he's talking about depression and he's talking about this. No, more than moderately, more than moderately. You know, but that's the thing is we're all in this and I get to have these conversations all day, every day, one-on-one and it's never what it looks like from the outside. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse, but it's never what it looks like. Troy, you're going to probably be on the show quite often now, but...

Troye (41:52.664)
just moderately.

Mike Scott (42:10.183)
How do you like to be contacted? LinkedIn, email, like if people are listening to this and they're going, Mike's lame, but Troy's great, and they want to speak to Troy, how do they get a of Troy?

Troye (42:20.319)
LinkedIn is probably the easiest. I've got a crazy name because it's Troy Wallet, but it's T-R-O-Y-E and Wallet with two T's. So I'm the only one. You can contact me on LinkedIn. Two L's. Wallet like you've got in your pocket.

Mike Scott (42:30.717)
and two L's. So Troy.

Yeah, what have they got in your pocket? awesome guys, Troy, thanks for coming on. I'm not gonna give you a whole spiel because you're kind of part of the family, but I hope this was valuable to the listeners and I'm pretty sure Troy will be back. If there's anything that you've listened to today and say, oh, I wish they would speak about this thing or I wish they covered this thing or I was expecting them to go here, but they didn't. Let us know in the comments, let us know, there's ways to get a hold of us, check in the show notes and I'm not saying we will cover it.

but it's helpful. This podcast exists to help. So the more direction we get on what you want to hear or what you want to have unpacked, the better we can serve you. Any final words, Troy, before we wrap this up?

Troye (43:18.946)
No, think go and have some fun. Just because it's serious doesn't mean we can't have fun. It's what I bring. It's one of my values. And yeah, I look forward to more of these conversations.

Mike Scott (43:28.366)
Awesome.