DEFINING THE DOUBLE WIN: Win at Work and Succeed at Life

0:28Hey guys, welcome to The Double Win. it's amazing because we get to come and learn alongside with you. So in this podcast, we're not the experts in the way that we have been. I mean, we're experts on some things, but we're also learning because we, like you, are always trying to optimize our own double win, winning at work and succeeding at life. And so we're bringing guests on the show who are subject matter experts in each of the life domains. And I mean, we just don't want these conversations to end. No, and we're so excited about the double win. And I think that maybe the place to start is with a story.

1:03As our friend John Acuff says, sometimes you take a mess and it becomes a message. And that is exactly what happened in this situation. Because I was in a situation that probably a lot of you guys find yourself in. This was about now 25 years ago, where I had been very successful at work and I had turned around this division. and I was so proud of myself. And I just knew that my wife, Gail, would be excited because I got a really big bonus check as a result of turning that division around. So I got home, I showed her the bonus check and she was kind of nonplussed. You know, she just wasn't that excited about it, which was very atypical for her because she's very enthusiastic, kind of the cheerleader, always positive.

1:47And probably disappointing to you. It was disappointing to me. I mean, you expected like, you know, the pom-poms to come out. Exactly. And then when she said to me, she uttered these words that I just hate to hear, which is, honey, we need to talk. You know, and she said it in a way that I just knew like, uh-oh, you know, I'm kind of in trouble here. And I kind of knew what it was. You know, there was this knowing in my heart that I kind of knew what she was going to talk about. So we went in and sat in the den and she began to kind of tear up. And she said, honey, I want to start by just saying I appreciate everything you do.

2:19and I don't want to seem ungrateful. But honestly, you're never home. And even when you are, you're just not present. Your head is somewhere else. And these girls who are at this point, teenagers, my daughters, they need you now more than ever. And then she began to just cry and say, honestly, I feel like a single mom. And that really cut deeply into my heart because that's not what I was going for. I'd always said my family was a priority and that was the first thing. But as a practical matter, it wasn't that at all. Yeah. You thought you were making us a priority by providing. Right. But that was really only one part of what that meant.

3:06Yeah. Because I wasn't giving the time. Well, I felt like I was faced with this impossible choice. I could either choose my work or I could choose my family, but I couldn't do both. And it just felt like they were competing priorities and there just wasn't enough of me to go around. So I embarked upon a quest. I said, well, what if these things weren't in opposition? What if I could win at work and succeed at life? I didn't have a clue how to start. And so I hired an executive coach. We began to work on this. And literally over the next couple of decades, I really focused on how could I have this ambition to really be successful at work, not give that up and really develop myself professionally, but at the same time, give my other priorities like my health and my family, my friendships and all the rest of life, the attention that they need and deserve.

3:57And so we've become passionate about that because we see so many high achievers, so many professionals, so many business owners who are just struggling to make it all work. And they think it's not possible. And they suffer as a result. They go through health crises, they go through relationship crises, and it doesn't have to be that way. Well, and I kind of come to this conversation about the double win, winning at work and succeeding at life a little bit differently because I come to it as a mom of five kids now. But at the time, I had four children. We had just adopted our two middle boys from Uganda.

4:38And little did we know that we stepped into an incredible, and I mean that not so much as amazing as the scope was incredible. What have we gotten ourselves into? Yeah. A healing journey as a family because any children that are available for adoption have been through a tremendous amount of tragedy and trauma. And what I quickly realized as I was working with you at that time was that my children needed me and I felt the tension of that and our business was exploding and you wanted me to be the COO at that point. So this is, you know, years and years ago. And I said, I want to do it, but I can only do it if I'm not working on the weekends, if I'm done by three o 'clock to pick them up from school.

5:18I can't be out a lot at night because how well they heal is largely dependent on how present I am. And so that became kind of my mandate of how do I figure out how to do eight or 10 hours of work in six, because that's the amount of time that I've gotten. And so you and I come at it from different angles and with different purposes in mind, but I think one ultimate vision. And it's really become our mission. Our mission is to help you guys, our community, to get the double win. We actually want to go so far as to say we want to make it nearly impossible for you not to get the double win. That's how much we want this for you.

5:57And that's what we wake up thinking about. And that's what this show is about. Okay. So let's talk about how we're going to do it. Here's what the podcast offers. We're going to focus on the nine domains of life, body, mind, spirit, love, family, community, money, work, hobbies. And we're going to invite to the podcast some of the most amazing guests that you've ever heard. We're going to offer their insights, their wisdom, and the practical tips and tools for you to get the double win. What's been really fun is that we have done many of these conversations now. So this is kind of what you do when you start a new show is you record a bunch of your episodes in advance, which has been amazing because what we have discovered is these people are experts in their individual areas, things that we are not expert at, that we get to bring expert wisdom to you and kind of alongside you as fellow learners, which I have just loved.

6:55You know, we've had conversations with people like Chris Carr, Patrick Lencioni, Rory and A.J. Vaden, Will Gadara, Donald Miller. And, you know, that's just to name a few because we've actually had many conversations at this point. It's just so fun. We have. And I'm so often sitting in those conversations thinking, I cannot wait to share this with our audience. And in fact, a good sign to me, as I said, I can't wait for Gail to hear this or I can't wait for my family to hear this. Because it's so powerful. And I've learned so much in terms of motivation and inspiration, but practical advice and strategies as well.

7:29Well, and part of what's unique about our show is that we're not just asking people, for example, about the book they just published, which a lot of shows, you know, they're just interviewing people about their book. We're really talking with these people, many of whom will be very familiar to you about what it's like for them to get the double win. So these are questions a lot of times they've never been asked before. and certainly we're digging into their subject matter expertise, but we're also using it as an opportunity to say, okay, what does the double win look like for you and how are you getting it?

8:00And it has been amazing to hear what they have in common and also the diversity in their answers. We've got a bunch of guests that we haven't recorded yet that are upcoming that we have booked. People like Arthur Brooks, who has a new bestselling book with Oprah Winfrey called Build the Life You Want. We've got Mastin Kipp, Reclaim Your Nervous System, John Acuff, which by the way, we did record this morning as we're recording this and it was off the charts. It was so great. So fun. He's just got a great sense of humor, but incredible wisdom. He gives parenting advice for parents who are talking about goals with their kids.

8:34So if you love our goal achievement content, you're gonna love that conversation because there's a lot about it that'll be relevant to you. We wanna ask you guys to subscribe to the show and join the conversation. Megan, any final thoughts? Well, this is gonna be a host of great conversations. I think if you've listened to the show for a long time, or if you're a new listener, new to our community, this is a fun, entertaining, energetic show where you're going to hear our kind of natural, authentic curiosity just roll out, you know, like we can't contain it. You're going to hear us laugh a lot.

9:07You're also going to hear us in real time having aha moments that you're probably also having as we're having breakthroughs in these conversations. So it's a lot more intimate than previous iterations of our show's been. Now, we want to encourage you guys to rate and review the show. That will help us tremendously in terms of expanding the reach and having more impact on more people because our goal is to get more people to live the double win, to win at work and succeed at life. See you soon.