How to Fall In Love with Your Work Again

When did your work stop feeling like play?

In this solo Maven Monday episode, Brandon revisits a quote that has shaped the way he thinks about business, leadership, and life. This one's about remembering why you started, and what the big dream actually is.

In seasons of stress, growth, and uncertainty, it’s easy to slip into maintenance mode. To become reactive. To grind without joy. But what if the problem isn’t your workload, it’s your alignment?

This episode is a reset for founders, visionaries, and operators who feel the weight of responsibility and want to fall back in love with their craft.

Because when you pursue excellence in how you show up in your leadership, your health, your learning, and your purpose, work stops feeling like something you endure.

And starts feeling like something you get to do.

If you’ve been tired, distracted, or disconnected from the bigger vision, this one’s for you.

#MavenMarketingPodcast #MavenMonday #EntrepreneurMindset #BusinessOwnerLife #LeadershipDevelopment #WorkPurpose #VisionAndValues #PersonalGrowth #WorkLifeBalance #SmallBusinessOwner #MondayMotivation

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Host: Brandon Welch
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy

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Transcript

The Mastery Manifesto

Brandon Welch 0:00

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion, he hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he's working or playing. To him, he's always doing both. Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I'm your host, Brandon Welch, and it's just me and you one more time. Caleb is organizing some wonderful, incredible things going on inside Frank and Maven, and that is what brought me to this uh exact moment where I wanted to share the words that I opened up with. This actually happens to be sort of the manifesto, the uh the quote that has nothing to do with marketing that I put uh at the very front of the Maven marketer. And this is something I go back to uh during moments of of growth, of change, of frankly, distraction. And uh I want to ask a simple question today of you, um, and that is are you living the life you want to live inside your business? In seasons of growth or stress or change or uncertainty, uh, it is so easy for a visionary or an operator of a business to just become distracted and to miss, I think, what the big point is for all of us. And I came across this quote by James Mishner a number of years ago, and it just rattled me. Uh, so much so I put it at the very front of our book, and I go back to this um multiple times a year as just a checkpoint, and I want to maybe offer that to you today. Uh, the master in the art of living, James Mishner says, makes little distinction between his work and his play. When was the last time your work felt fun? When is the last time um you saw through the tactics and the stressors and found the joy in your work? When is the last time you helped your people see that? When is the last time you reminded yourselves as a team, um, man, this work is important. And I don't care what you do today, I don't care if you're making cardboard boxes, if you are putting roofs on, um, if you are feeding the hungry, if you are doing law services for families, there is something bigger than the work that you are doing uh together. And it is your job as the visionary. If you do not remind people of what that is and why that is, um, you really are all just employees, even all the way up to the owner. You're just answers to things that need to be done on a list. And so Mishner says, the master in the art of living. Living is an art. Living well is an art. Very few people live well. We talk a lot about living well on this podcast, living well within our businesses, growing our businesses, doing it for the right reasons, having the right vision, values, and vows that means something. And I know you have that. If you're listening to us, I know you have that somewhere inside of you. And I'm just asking you and me, um, when's the last time you played in your work? And uh I'm not talking about kumbaya, I'm not talking about um pizza parties and and foos ball tables and all of that stuff. That's not culture, that's not play. When is the last time you saw your work and you helped your people see your work as an art form? As maybe not the thing you do is is all that special or unique. Maybe it's uh maybe it's a commoditized thing, but how you do it, how you smile, how you look, how you show up, um, the gratitude you carry, the light you shine on people. When's the last time you did that? Bishner goes on to say, his labor and his leisure. Uh, we all know the quote um do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. Let's get back to that. Sometimes we need to push, sometimes we need to grind. We are certainly in a season of that at Frank and Maven. Um, but it's not about the grind or how many hours you worked, it's about alignment. If your labor feels disconnected to who you are, you're either not doing it right or you need to be doing something different. I think that there's no magic day where or or business or practice. Uh I love what I do more than anything I could possibly imagine. And there are just there's a tough day every week, there's a tough week every month, and it's not about that, but it is going, what is it for? And are you keeping that in sight? And I will repeat this if you are the leader, if you are the visionary, if you are the commander of your army, it is your job to remind them what the battle stakes are. And when we do that, and when we're all going in the same place and we're all making meaningful work, and maybe as a means of doing that work and making abundance and profit and those sorts of things, we all get to live better. Um, make sure that you're getting back to that often, like at least weekly, uh, hopefully daily. Uh when you're pursuing excellence, even hard days can feel meaningful. Uh, even the grind, even the staying late till seven o'clock, like Nate the camera guy, has been doing, um, it can be meaningful, uh, but not if you don't stop and remember to make your labor your leisure. The third is his mind and his body. Last week we started uh an annual tradition here at Frank and Maven called Five to Thrive. And that's where we take a reset and look at what we're putting in our bodies nutrition-wise, what we're how we're nurturing ourselves with sleep, uh, how we are stretching ourselves with a reading goal, um, how we are moving and exercising and and exerting energy today so we have more tomorrow. Um we are doing those things because the health of your mind and the ability for you to operate is directly correlated to the health of your body. Your ability to produce excellence intellectually is directly tied to your excellence physiologically. And just a little bit of movement, you move your body, you change your mind, you change your ability, you change your energy equation. Uh, you feel better, you want to do better. And so what are you doing? Um it is not enough. There are few, few, few, few days left for you, and few, few, few days left for me. Um, we cannot go through this emotionally numb, physically numb, and we cannot go through this as a victim of um happenstance to what we put in our minds and bodies. The master in the art of living looks at his mind and his body as one and the same. The master is integrated. No compartmentalized excellence, he shows up as a whole. And we know from James Clear, we know from all of the behavioral studies that just a little bit every day is the thing that gets us to where we want to be. Information and recreation. Are you a steward? Are you a student of the talents you've been given? Or are you simply falling to your most natural abilities to improvise and therefore not have to put in the hard work? Your information and your recreation. If you're listening to this podcast, I know one thing is true about you, and that is that you are excellent at something. You have an exceptional amount of talent. Uh, everybody in in this building has an exceptional amount of talent, and we can get far with that talent, but we cannot get to where we actually want to be. We cannot get to our greatest potential. Um, so what are you doing? Are you consuming things? Are you making your craft and your um your calling, your thing, your vehicle? Are you making that part of your recreation? Do you get a little bit excited to read the nerdy stuff about what you do? Um, or how you do it? And let me just say this leadership is a craft. The information about leadership is a craft. If you're not listening to leaders who have paved and forged the way before you and you're not learning from them, you are missing out. You are being numb, you are being passive. James suggests that's not the master in the art of living. We want to be the master in the art of living. So what are you doing? What are you consuming? Um, if you find yourself scrolling to escape, if you find yourself numbing uh in social crowds or people who aren't pulling you up, that's probably a sign uh that you are not making your recreation uh as productive as it could be. Getting out of a rut sometimes just means saying no to the habit and uh and forging a new one. So I'll ask once more what is your vision of excellence? Uh what are you pursuing? What are you consuming? Lastly, James suggests that we pursue our vision of excellence at whatever we do. This is the line. No hustle, it's not about balance, it's not about optimization, it's just excellence. What does excellent look like? What are you the best in the world at, or what could you be the best in the world at if you just got an alignment? Nobody wants to be average. You don't want to be average. Um but excellence really is just a choice. It's a choice of how we show up every day. And this is this is the hard thing. It's the choice to choose the slightly better thing. Um there's struggle on both sides. There's struggle on being average and there's struggle on being excellent. And just which struggle do you choose? And finally, what if the people around us looked at our work and said, Wow, I want to be like that? That person encouraged me. That person is living the dream, as we say on the on this podcast, um, leaving others to decide whether you're working or playing. If if your people feel that about themselves, if their family, if their spouses, if their circles look at the work they get to do inside your company and they go, wow, that looks like a cool place to be. Don't you think that attracts the type of customers, the type of team members, um, and the type of life that you want to live. How do you want to show up every day? Do this in such a way, do this with such a joy because of the country you get to live in, because of the freedoms you are guaranteed on birth, um, because of the money that is falling out of the sky, that you just simply have to find a bucket and stand under it. Do it in such a way that you carry joy into your work. Do that for your people, do that for yourself, do that for your family. Last week we talked about who's waiting for you to show up. These two things are connected. When we make our work our play, when we make our mind and our body treated one and the same, when we treat our labor as our leisure, people are wondering whether we're working or playing. Man, isn't that what we all wanted when we went to work for whoever we decided to go work for? Whether that was ourselves or the clients we choose, isn't that what we all want? So uh James Missioner said it best. You don't need a new tactic, you might need a new renewed vision, but somewhere along the line, maybe today, maybe right now, stress is going to replace uh the purpose if you let it. Uh maintenance is going to replace the mastery if you let it. But you can come back not by doing more, but by deciding I pursue excellence at whatever I do. And I'll leave you with a quote one more time. The master and the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence and whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he's working or playing, because to him or to her or to you, you're always doing both. That's what we have for you. We will be bringing back marketing tactics, but I somehow feel this is more important. How are you living? How are you showing up for your work? If you get this right, man, the marketing becomes a heck of a lot easier. And we'll be back here every Monday talking about that because marketers who can't teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.