Life Beyond the Briefs

The Power of Consistency: CJ Flood's Approach

October 10, 2023 Brian Glass
The Power of Consistency: CJ Flood's Approach
Life Beyond the Briefs
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Life Beyond the Briefs
The Power of Consistency: CJ Flood's Approach
Oct 10, 2023
Brian Glass

Embarking on an extraordinary journey, we connect with CJ Flood, an entrepreneur, leadership and consulting coach going to great lengths for a vital cause. CJ's ambitious endeavor of running 60 kilometer (37 miles) every day in November to raise $100,000 for men's health, is a testament to his tenacity and commitment. CJ lays bare his transformation from being in a state of physical and mental pain, struggling with weight issues to successfully running a 10 kilometer race in under an hour. His story is a fascinating testament to the strength of the human spirit.

CJ shares wisdom on breaking through mental and physical obstacles to achieve one's goals. His philosophy centers around the power of consistency, rest, and incremental progress. One of his key strategies is to become 1% better every day to build positive momentum. The importance of balancing rest and sleep with business and family commitments is another crucial aspect he shares. He takes us into his world, revealing how he manages to weave in 150 days of rest into his busy calendar while collaborating with a recovery lab for his physical recuperation.

Towards the end of our conversation, we move into the realm of his work as a business coach. CJ's approach is holistic, focusing on health, mental health, and emotional wellbeing. His military background has instilled in him the value of hard work - both physically and mentally - and their symbiotic relationship. In this captivating narrative, CJ inspires us with his personal journey of transformation and undying passion for promoting health and wellness.

____________________________________
Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.

Want to connect with Brian?

Follow Brian on Instagram: @thebrianglass
Connect on LinkedIn

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Embarking on an extraordinary journey, we connect with CJ Flood, an entrepreneur, leadership and consulting coach going to great lengths for a vital cause. CJ's ambitious endeavor of running 60 kilometer (37 miles) every day in November to raise $100,000 for men's health, is a testament to his tenacity and commitment. CJ lays bare his transformation from being in a state of physical and mental pain, struggling with weight issues to successfully running a 10 kilometer race in under an hour. His story is a fascinating testament to the strength of the human spirit.

CJ shares wisdom on breaking through mental and physical obstacles to achieve one's goals. His philosophy centers around the power of consistency, rest, and incremental progress. One of his key strategies is to become 1% better every day to build positive momentum. The importance of balancing rest and sleep with business and family commitments is another crucial aspect he shares. He takes us into his world, revealing how he manages to weave in 150 days of rest into his busy calendar while collaborating with a recovery lab for his physical recuperation.

Towards the end of our conversation, we move into the realm of his work as a business coach. CJ's approach is holistic, focusing on health, mental health, and emotional wellbeing. His military background has instilled in him the value of hard work - both physically and mentally - and their symbiotic relationship. In this captivating narrative, CJ inspires us with his personal journey of transformation and undying passion for promoting health and wellness.

____________________________________
Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.

Want to connect with Brian?

Follow Brian on Instagram: @thebrianglass
Connect on LinkedIn

Speaker 1:

We came in and we did a little bit of work in the marketing stuff, made her feel a bit more comfortable about where that was heading. And then we increased prices, we increased the number of all the way that she was getting the leads and then we decreased the amount of time that she was working. When I first started working with her, I think it was about 500 jobs for the year, Then the next year it was like 420 around that, Then last year it was like 50, it's dropped right down, but her revenue went up and her time off went up dramatically as well. So it's like this process of implementing more rest, more recovery, as you say, into a person's life and stripping down the things that are super complicated.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Time Freedom for Lawyers, where the goal is to become less busy, make more money and spend more time doing what you want instead of what you have to Bringing together guests from all walks of life who are living a life of their own design and sharing actionable tips for how you, too, can live the life of your dreams. Now here's your host, Brian Glass.

Speaker 3:

Hey guys, welcome back to the show Today. All the way from the east coast of Australia, I have CJ Flood, who's an entrepreneur, a leadership and consulting coach for high level, high achieving business people, and CJ is getting ready to run, in the month of November, a 60K, which is 37 miles every single day, in an effort to raise $100,000 for men's health. Cj, welcome to the show, hey man.

Speaker 1:

thanks for so much for having me on, brian. I really appreciate this. I'm super excited to be here. I'm looking forward to chatting to a fellow entrepreneur and athlete and I guess I call myself a wannabe athlete. I'm really looking forward to being here, so thanks so much for having me on.

Speaker 3:

I call myself like an accidental ultra runner, so we were talking before we got on. I ran marathons and then I found I wasn't getting any faster and said well, okay, if I can't go any faster, how about if I just try to go longer? And so next thing I knew I was running 50K, 50 miles, 70 miles, 100 mile race. So how did you get started with this sickness of ultra marathon running?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it really is a sickness that plagues you a little bit. But look, I think for me I didn't start out looking at that, I started out. My journey actually started a couple of years ago where I was in a place in kind of the middle of this COVID pandemic, the way I was looking forward at my parents who were struggling with and health conditions and things like that. My mom called me and she's I need you to come down because I got to have brain surgery. I need you here to support me through this. She's got no one else. And I was just a real of what life could look like. And then I had my nine year old son who's saying hey, dad, come play with me. And I'm like, buddy, I can't jump on the trampoline because I'm too heavy.

Speaker 1:

At this point I was like 290 pounds, I was overweight, I was struggling, I was in pain. Everything hurt, but not just physically, also mentally and emotionally too. So it's like I had these two perspectives. And then I ended up getting humbled enough by my wife. She was like just ask for some help, and I ended up doing that. I reached out to my Facebook, of all places, and a buddy of mine tagged a guy that he would work with. And then I ended up training with him and we're just doing it online at the time and I was just like started seeing some results, started losing some weight by focusing on the simple things.

Speaker 1:

I was still a dad, I'm still a husband, I'm still an entrepreneur. Life was busy and it was just a little bit by little bit and then that was in the September of January 20, september of 21. And then fast forward a few months like I'd lost 50 odd pounds and I was feeling really good, like things had started to turn pain, like I wasn't in as much physical pain. I finally was able to kick like the painkillers because I was eating ibuprofen, like it was nothing, just to try and get through my day. And then I was like I saw this race one day and, yeah, I was like what, if I could just do that, if I could just go and do that race, I feel like I would be back at where I was before this whole downward spiral started.

Speaker 3:

How far into the journey was that that you saw the ad for the race?

Speaker 1:

So that was in February of 21.

Speaker 3:

Okay, four or five months in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, five months in, yeah, I'd lost about, you know, probably 50, 50, 60 pounds at that point and I was just like I've got to do it, even if it takes me all day, can I get through it. And it was just like this, because it was a 10 kilometer race or a six mile race, which is a real milestone for me to get back to that point, because that's what I was running prior to my second ACL reconstruction, my second knee reconstruction. So I was like, if I can do that, I feel like I'd be back to where I started. And it just became this kind of like milestone for me and I spent the next couple of months just not too hard training but like just doing the little things, losing a little bit of weight, going to slowly increasing my little bit of running, bit by bit, and that way that race happened in about this time, which is like August of 22. I went and did that race and it just completely opened my mind to what was possible. I was like if I could run the whole thing, I would be so excited. If I could get under an hour, like I'd be blown away, like that would be absolutely amazing If I could get like close to 50 minutes. Oh my God, like what else become possible? And I ended up going out there. I ran, I did the 50 minute mark like I hit it or I can't say I hit it because I missed it by nine seconds I'm so filthy on those nine seconds but it just showed me that, wow, this whole process of working with my trainer losing weight was all about this consistency. And it wasn't about the days that you did super great, it was about making sure that you didn't have too many days off. It was about maintaining that ultra consistency.

Speaker 1:

And that was a new concept for me, because in the past I'd always been like let's go and do all this stuff and let's go and go crazy, and I'd go and build a business in a month and I'd try and explore it, and it just never worked. Instead, I dialed it back down and got consistent with this stuff and it just changed the whole concept of it. So that was where it started, fast forward from August of 22. You know, I came back a couple of weeks later. I was like can I run a half marathon? Yeah, it turns out I can. I knew nothing about long distance running no hydration, no, no nutrition or anything like that took me hours upon hours and I was sore for days. And then a few weeks later I was like, ok, great, let's see if we can do this again.

Speaker 1:

By that time we're into November and I saw an ad for a race to raise money, or, sorry, an event to raise money for the men's health organization here in Australia called Movember. Normally everyone grows a mustache I'd go such a great mustache, but I was like I can run, let's see what this looks like. So there was a 10 kilometer, a 30 kilometer and a 60 kilometer race event. I know I'd done 10. I'd done a half marathon. I was pretty confident to get it at 30. I was like, what if I could do 16? Now, 60 kilometers is just some random number. 60. Yeah, exactly, it's a. It's the number that you're.

Speaker 1:

Around the world, we lose 60 men an hour to suicide. And to me, having come from a very dark place at the start of 21, 2021, going through this process and looking around, looking forward at my parents' life, looking back at my kids, and, oh my God, I need to do something, otherwise I'm going to live this life for the next 40 years and I just didn't want that, having come from that, I was like that's what I want to do. I decided to sign up and do the 60. And that's where it all kicked off Went out to the 60. I had a bunch of people come and join me along the way. My dad drove up and he was following me in the car for down the middle of the road at 3 am Because in November it's it's hot where I live I started running and it was 90 degrees. I started running at 3 am and it was 90. Wow. So you spend the next 10 or 10 hours running and getting through. It gets real hot, real fast.

Speaker 3:

You're learning a lot about hydration and electrolytes and nutrition when it's 90 degrees and you're running for 10 hours.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So that's where that all started. From there I did some more events. I did the Spartan Ultra Race with Six Weeks Notice and a couple of friends. That was my first Spartan and that was a great experience as well.

Speaker 1:

And, like this whole time, I was just. I was building the person and the mindset I wanted to become my entire life. I realized that I wasn't going to just become it. I had to build it. I had to build that from the ground up through results, and the only way that I could get those results was having a little win and a little win and a little win.

Speaker 1:

When I started training with my trainer, my huge win for the week was I walked 5,000 steps for seven days in a row and then two years later, like here we are as we get ready to run 37 miles for 60 days a day for 30 days. So this whole time it's been like this compounding effect of results has just been like what else can I get? Where else can I go? What else can I develop?

Speaker 1:

And there's obviously been a huge shift in my entire life. My business grew astronomically even though I was training and running and spending more time with my family and all that sort of stuff. My relationships got deeper and more thoughtful and more loving. I am now a role model for my boys. That a role model that I'm happy with. I train my coach, my train my son's basketball team. He's just moved because my eldest son was living in another city in Sydney. He's just moved and he moved up here to where I live and he's dad. I want to move so that you and I can train together because he wants to, he has aspirations to go professional with basketball. So it's like this whole time it's just been this enrichment in all areas of my life.

Speaker 3:

So I want to come back and talk about all that bleed over, because I know that the mindset of the mindset pours over into the business and the family and the relationships. But I'm curious how you got there in the first place. So I know you have an army background and you've had two knee surgeries and what I'm curious about is how you got to 290 pounds. Is it you had knee surgeries because you were that big, or did you have the knee surgeries and then at that limited your exercise and then you got a crew? Exactly how did you get?

Speaker 1:

there. So how it happened. I joined the army when I was 17,. About 18 months into the army I had a shoulder reconstruction and I used to work my way back from that. And then I blew up my knee playing football and then I had to have a knee reconstruction and like a major knee reconstruction, I damaged all the ligaments in my knees and everything like that. And then that was actually it what they deemed an unsuccessful surgery. So it didn't stick the way that they wanted it to. So I had to go back five years later and have that second surgery done on the same knee. And this is all before I was 25. So about three reconciles.

Speaker 1:

All before I was 25, I got medically discharged out of the mountain because I could no longer do that, and then when they did that second knee surgery they did is they actually took hamstring from my good leg and put it in my bad leg or my bad knee, and then they were like great off you go. They sent me off and about and now all of a sudden I'm on crutches. I couldn't walk around and that means I'm on the couch. I was 25. I didn't know what I was doing, so I kept eating the same and I was in pain, I wasn't moving, so I put on a little bit of weight and now that little bit of weight compounds, puts more pressure through the knee joints, more pain, less movement, more food, and it just snowballed and over the course of five years just kept getting worse and worse.

Speaker 1:

And in that time that's not to say I didn't try doing things I spent 20, 20 plus thousand dollars like trying all sorts of different diets and trainers and physios and gyms and this and that, and I tried just about everything you could think of and I was really at the point of giving up until my wife really humbled me enough to ask for help. And that's where it all started. So, yeah, it was an injury process, not a, not a because it was a result.

Speaker 3:

It's both, though, because it starts with the injury process, but then it's the downward physiological spiral it feels good to eat and it hurts to exercise. So you eat more and you exercise less, and then it feels better to eat and it hurts more. So yeah, of course. And then, as you started to come out of it in September of 2021, like, when you first started with the trainer, did you have a set of goals of here's where I wanted to get to, or did you ever? I know that you never envisioned I'm going to run 60 K for 30 days in a row, but, like, what was the success metric when you first made the appointment with the trainer? What did that? What did you think the big win was going to be?

Speaker 1:

I just wanted to. I felt like I had all this negative momentum and it was just pulling me down and I just wanted to overcome that. For me at that time, at a measurable level, was it about 10, 10 kilos, so about 20, 20 inch pounds. I felt if I could get over that because everything I'd done prior like I'd have five kilo or I'd have 10 pounds, 20, 15 pounds, eight pounds and I tried, but I could never quite keep over. So it was really just about getting over that.

Speaker 1:

And then, once I did, I was like, oh, that was nowhere near as hard as I thought it was going to be, because for me I every time I did stuff, I was like I went all out with it, I went crazy. It's like a race, right, you go out hard, you go full tilt and then all of a sudden, in a very short period of time, you gas that, you cook. You can't do anything extra. That's where I would reach. But I would get to that place in two, three weeks, sometimes maybe a month. When I first that conversation, I said first had with my trainer he's look, I just want you to do this and I was just like focus on your steps, tell me what you're eating. That's all. That's all I want you to do, and I was like mate. It can't be that simple.

Speaker 3:

It's not that simple, yeah, but he's listen. Here's where your baseline is right. It's not that simple, but these are the first two things that we're going to fix.

Speaker 1:

Exactly and like for me, it was just like it can't be that simple, and we just did that, and I didn't step foot in a gym for the first kind of or the September it wasn't until January, you know that I really stepped into a gym, and then I'd go like once, maybe twice a week. I wasn't spending hours and hours in there, and it was just focusing on the little things super consistently, though, and that was where that mindset really started to shift and like wow, this is, anything is possible with enough time and enough consistency.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and is that something that you picked up or is that something that your trainer taught to you? That it's? Listen, it's really not about hitting the home run on any given day. It's about hitting enough singles or doubles to stay in the game. Yeah, so actually to use a baseball metaphor which may or may not resonate in Australia 100% it does A little bit about.

Speaker 1:

It was like a little bit of okay. Through my own experience I had that discovery. But where the real light bulb moment came from me was actually out of a book that I was reading at the time called Atomic Habits by James Clear, and that's obviously a mind blowing book. And I was reading that as I was listening to the audio book, sorry, as I was going for my walks, and in that one part I still remember where I was, what it looked like, and it was like I still remember it to a T where he had.

Speaker 1:

He went through this concept of it doesn't matter if you go out and you'd have a great day one day, if you do nothing the next, it cancels out. It's about doing a little bit every day. And it was this whole concept of getting 1% better every day that really just blew my mind. And when I could liken that to a compound interest type thing and could see the physical representation of that scale, I was like, oh my gosh, I see where I've been going wrong because I've been going all out, and then I would have a day off, and then I go all out and then I have two days off and it was like this whole process where it went against me and I could never gather any real positive momentum until I dialed in that consistency. So it was a combination of my results, what the trainer was saying to me, plus that book from James Clear.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, given that, what is the role of rest in your exercise and in your business regimen right now? So, because rest and obviously sleep are like super important now, but it's five in the morning in Australia while we're having this conversation. How do you mentally get over that hurdle and make sure that you're building in enough rest and enough calories and taking care of your body on that end?

Speaker 1:

There's a couple of ways to break this down. One is first, obviously there's business and family and relationship and everything like that. Like to me, that's. That is ultra important. I think to any father, any man, any person, those things are really important. In my business we run off a slightly different financial year, do you guys? We go from like June July through to June July. I went okay.

Speaker 1:

When I really got this concept, I was like for me to be the best entrepreneur and do the best work that I do in my business and be the best coach and things like that, I need rest to be creative and create space. So I implemented 150 days of rest no work, no nothing, just bang. That was the first thing that went on my calendar. And then I worked backwards from that, which isn't that much. It's only an extra day a week, really. So that was that part and that kind of creates enough space for me to be able to do the things that I love and spend time with my family, go away on holidays, things like that.

Speaker 1:

In as far as running goes, rest is optional. At this point, it feels it's what. Wednesday morning here at the moment, I ran a marathon. On Sunday I did you know? 5ks on Monday 22. Yesterday. I got another 18 on the books today. But at the same time I'm doing that, I'm also taking rest and recovery very seriously. So rather than having a full day off, I'll break down my days to chunks. So the mornings is very restful, very relaxing. I don't wake up early and get out the door. I got a 4-year-old son, a beautiful wife, and I love to spend time with them in the morning and be there as a family, so they get to leave and then I go about my day. So that's a little bit of rest and recharge for me personally in my relationship.

Speaker 1:

From a physical perspective, I have more foam rollers and cork balls and massage guns and all that sort of stuff laying around my house. They're literally all scattered around me at my desk here than you could imagine. But also, too, I get very serious. I work with a what's called a recovery lab here in town as well. I go in saunas, ice bars, hot bars, compression boots, things like that. But probably the biggest thing is focusing on my sleep and focusing on my maintaining good sleep, heart rate variability in particular, and measuring that through my garment and understanding that right now, when I'm running. I'm not running for pace, I'm not going out, I'm not doing threshold runs and I'm not doing speed workouts. It's all zone 2. It's all chill, it's all about just kilometers ticking things over. So that's how I manage that. And then, from a calorie perspective, that's something I quite haven't figured out yet. That's tricky at the minute because it requires quite a bit of experimentation.

Speaker 3:

But forcing that stuff and then what I found is when you get to the end of that cycle. So I shared. I ran really my last true ultramarathon about six years ago and I gained a little bit of weight afterwards because I was eating like somebody who was putting in 40, 50, 60 miles a week, but I wasn't putting in 40, 50, 60 miles a week. So just be mindful of that. On the back end, you're going to be super hungry all the time. But you've really given yourself another full-time job preparing to run 210, 220 miles a week for 30 days, 30 days in a row. Geez, I can't even do the math in my head. I don't know what that looks like, but I'm curious about your 150 days of rest. So you just you pulled out a 365 day calendar and just started chunking things off. So for you, does that look like a bunch of three-day weekends, or they're big weeks or two-week long trips in there? What does that look like?

Speaker 1:

A little bit of both. So this is a concept actually from Dan Sullivan and from Strategic Coach. I got this out of the book. 10x is easier than 2X. Really great book, highly recommended to any entrepreneur. But it was this thought process around.

Speaker 1:

Doesn't matter how you have your rest, you just need it. There's three ways or three times. There's a rest and recovery time, there's a preparation time and there's a performance time. Think about it an athlete right. Whatever sport you follow, they're not rocking up every single day to play a game. They're not rocking up every single day to train at the level they would to play a game. They have rest periods, they have off seasons. They have things like that.

Speaker 1:

Now these guys are some of the most physical and elite level people in the world, so they look a little bit different. But also there's seasons of our life that follow this as well. We obviously have retirement, which is very much a rest mode. We have our 20s and 30s, which is very much about work. 40s, even 20s, is probably more preparation.

Speaker 1:

So it's just identifying this time slots a little bit different, looking at time differently. So for me, I'm still very much in the building stage of my business, so it looks like a lot of three days, a couple of four, maybe five, but I'm not taking two weeks off to go do XYZ. That's more a down the road where the business is at a level that I can leave it alone for a little bit. Right now I can't leave it alone for two weeks and have everything be okay when I come back, but that's part of the work phase of that business. So it's just understanding time a little bit differently and making it work for you. However, that looks for you personally and that was a really cool concept that I learned from Dan and something I implemented. Almost immediately. I was like this is cool.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I similarly did Jesse Itzler's calendar club a couple of years ago and it was the exact same idea. Before you put any work events or travel on the calendar, let's put all the personal stuff. Let's put the vacations with the families, lock out as many days for you first, and then we can backfill with all the other things that are maybe not as important to your life holistically but are important to your business, and then build all the other meetings and things around that. But, like, priority number one is to make sure that there's enough time for you and your family, because otherwise what are we doing any of this for? I'm curious about the business, the leadership, consulting and the one-on-one coaching. So is the business you, or do you have other coaches in your business?

Speaker 1:

The business me and all it's me and another coach side by side do 8% of the fulfillment on the stuff. Obviously we have a back-end team and do it, but it's myself and actually another coach out there just doing the work. We really come from very different backgrounds. She's a woman, she's a little bit older. I'm a man, a little bit younger. I have come from military background, sports background, understanding around that sort of stuff. She comes from a very business coaching background of all places. She's worked with amazing people I'm talking like heads of state generals, I'm talking All these high level people that you'd be like whoa and the perspective that she brings and the perspective that I bring really balance out in a very cool way when we work together as facilitators for organizations.

Speaker 1:

And then I do the coaching stuff, where I work with one-on-one with entrepreneurs and high performance people, where we really just focus on this kind of holistic side of health, holistic side of success, sorry. So a big part of that is health. There's mental health, there's spiritual, emotional, all that sort of stuff, and then only one slither of that is work. But for most high performers work takes up 80% of where the energy goes, so it's really just trying to bring that back into balance. As you say, what's the point of working so hard that you never get to enjoy things? And just putting that in place and helping people walk through that.

Speaker 1:

Coming from a military background, I've had a lot of hands-on experience around leadership what works, what doesn't work and I never act as a single source of truth, because I'm humble enough to admit that I don't know everything, and I simply act as a guide and I try and be that person to help people walk through the discovery of what they need to work on, and it's a really fulfilling part of my life. I absolutely love it. It's so good watching that shift happen in people's eyes.

Speaker 3:

What have you learned from the fitness and athletic journey that's now carrying over into the business coaching?

Speaker 1:

Little things more consistently. Yeah, most people are trying to overcomplicate stuff. Before I came into business, coaching and leadership and stuff like that, I came from a marketing background and one of my favorite things was to complicate the hell out of everything and have these amazing elaborate marketing schemes and things like that, because it made me feel smart. But when I realized that that doesn't improve performance but it increases work, I was like, oh, and then I started seeing that same trend in nearly everything. So nearly every business out there can deal with stripping down a lot of excess stuff and just focusing on these key areas, but most people don't put in the time.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's going to resonate with lawyers, because what happens with lawyers is that once something is a problem in one place one time, we now incorporate it into the rest of our system.

Speaker 3:

So that's why, when you see a contract and it's 17 pages long, it's because there was a problem one time and so that became a paragraph in the contract.

Speaker 3:

As, as auto accident lawyers, when we're asking questions of new clients on the phone, we're often not listening to what is the problem that you actually need me to solve. We're looking for problems that we saw out there one time in one case and making sure they don't exist in this case. So that that idea of stripping it down and simplifying and removing friction it requires us to be a little bit more humble, because it's we don't feel as smart, right, and every lawyer that's listening is going to go, as has had that experience where you explain something to a client and they look at you and they blink and you're like I shouldn't have said that because now they're not going to hire me because I just identify the five things that might be problems in their case. That and honestly, probably aren't, and so I love that you're hoping people simplify their own lives by taking away all of the extraneous things. Do you have a success story or two that you can share?

Speaker 1:

Probably one of my favorite success stories is from one of my very early clients and she was a small business where she actually worked with painters and they what she did was she created like overlays, so basically like it was a digital representation of what a new color scheme might look like. She was a color consultant and a designer like by background, and that's how she got into that field, but she was always working and life was really hard and things went really tricky and she just felt like she was stuck on this hamster wheel and I came in and I was like, ok, great, when we first started working on some marketing things, because often that's where people think they need to focus Really, not they need more clients and more cases and more money, but that's often not the real problem.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. We came in and we did a little bit of work in the marketing stuff, made her feel a bit more comfortable about where that was heading. And then we increased prices, we increased the number of all the way that she was getting the leads, and then we decreased the amount of time that she was working. All of a sudden we went from an. Over the course of a couple of years she went. She sat pretty steady on the growth side of things, but she's now working at the.

Speaker 1:

When I first started working with her, I think it was about five, five hundred jobs for the year from memory is how many she invoiced for, and then the next year it was like four, four, twenty around that. Then last year it was like D, it's dropped right down, but her revenue went up and her time off went up dramatically as well. So it's like this process of implementing more rest, more recovery, as you say, into a person's life and stripping down the things that are super complicated. I said to it like you don't get clients through social media, so why are you trying to spend five, five hours a week on social media to grow your Instagram following she's, but that's what everyone else is doing, I'm like so what? Why does it matter? And she's, and it was this whole understanding that every business is different, every person is different. And now we have a mandatory extra day a month where she, like, just has off. We're working towards a second day as well, which was just like she was working weekend, she was working Sunday, she was working when she had her kids, she was working late at night. But we now have a hard finish time. We now have a hard start time, but there's flexibility in that as well.

Speaker 1:

Like myself, I'm up at 5am to do this because I know that this is a good thing for my life, but also, at the same time, later today I'll take an extra bit of time to make sure I have some rest and recovery.

Speaker 1:

So it's about that balancing perspective. So that's on the small business side. And then there's a whole bunch of clients that we have on the larger organization side, where we work with a whole team of people 10, 20, 30 people that they've had great success, and I love watching those events happen, because oftentimes it's like junior managers, maybe even sometimes like just senior entry level people, that step into that world and we come in and we lift their game personally, and then for months and years later, we're hearing about the success that it's had in terms of a deep new relationships. There's one client of ours that we're still working with after 12 months one on one and she's oh my God, I finally see what's been happening with my three kids and it was just this whole ripple effect through people's lives and that's where I just I love that stuff and it's super great, yeah, and I wish I could give you more, but it's yeah, guys, it is a lot of stuff.

Speaker 3:

I love the story about the small business woman, because the reality is she's making more money, she's working less, and those things are true, but she's also probably doing better work because she's freed up to be more creative and to do better work for her clients.

Speaker 3:

So it's not just a matter of you can raise your prices and take Fridays off and magically the work is going to flow to you. That allows you to raise your game and reach to the top of the market and have a probably a better class of clients, right? Because people who are willing to pay you more are the kind of people that complain less, right? The people that are price shopping complain all the time. Yeah, and so we tell lawyers this all the time is, if you're playing at the bottom of the market, you're going to get bottom of the market kind of clients, and so what kind of a lawyer would you have to become and what kind of service would you have to deliver in order to double your prices and take another day off? So I love that. That's the mindset that you're playing in.

Speaker 1:

I love how you phrase that too. Yeah, yeah what do you have to become?

Speaker 3:

It's. Who do you have to become? Okay, you can't do it now, you can't command that. What would you have to do to command that price? As we're wrapping up here, where can people find you? And I know that you're trying to raise six figures for men's mental health, so you must have a website or somewhere that we can direct people to.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, probably, and I appreciate that Honestly the best way to get connected with any part of this story stuff, this journey is just to head to cjfludcom. That's just the letters C and a, j and then flood as in like lots of rain, com and you'll be able to see everything there. We've got all the socials up there and you can. If you want to get involved and donate, you can do that directly through this link there and I really appreciate that we're well underway. It's a big mission and a big goal, but we're making strides towards it.

Speaker 3:

I'll make sure that we link to that in the show description here and follow up with you as we get closer and closer in November.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I appreciate that, man. Look, thanks so much for having me on. It's been a blast. I love talking mindset and the correlation between hard work physically and hard work mentally and what that looks like for people that go to the gym or run or do hard things in their lives and then have businesses or clients that they're trying to serve as well, because they cross over so well. And the more hard things that you do outside of work, the easier work, because I love the phrase the hardest thing you've ever done is the hardest thing you've ever done.

Speaker 3:

I haven't heard that. That's new. Yeah, if you do something really hard at five in the morning, then the rest of your day is a little bit easier.

Speaker 1:

So much easier. But yeah, look, I appreciate the time, I appreciate having me on and hopefully we'll get to chat again soon.

Speaker 3:

Yes, sir.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Brian.

Time Freedom and Men's Health
Overcoming Injuries and Weight Gain
Consistency and Rest to Achieve Goals
Rest and Balance in Business & Athletics
Holistic Health and Business Coaching Success
Physical and Mental Hard Work Correlation