1618 – Giving Up on Everything in Your Way with Byron Morrison

0:28Hey there, thoughtful listener. million in revenue. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you.

1:00With us right now, Byron Morrison. Byron, you are the author of the book, Maybe You Should Give Up, Seven Ways to Get Out of Your Own Way and Take Control of Your Life. And Byron, you are a mindset and high-performance strategist. You're found on the web at byronmorrison.com. Byron, thank you for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me today. I'm excited to be here. Congratulations on the launch of your new book. It's not your first book. You've written some others, but excited to kind of dig into that. But why don't we start by just talking about what you do professionally today? Yeah, so my main focus over the last decade has been helping CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business leaders become who they need to be to break through to the next level of success.

1:50At this point, I've worked with people in 15 different countries, ranging from founders to tech CEOs to seven-figure agencies and billion-dollar unicorns. And our focus is all on helping them take control so that they can maximize their time, lead with confidence, and ultimately grow a business without losing their sanity. Yeah. And so tell me about, obviously, the book, Maybe You Should Give Up. It's a very compelling title. So what are you saying when we say we should give up potentially here? Yeah. So Maybe You Should Give Up is not about giving up on your goals and dreams. it's about giving up on everything that's standing in the way of the life that you want because I found with working with so many people across the board that there are seven mental blocks that every single one of us struggle with in one way or another whether it's fear comparing ourselves to others being too hard on ourselves putting off our happiness all of these causes to get stuck in our own head and they stop us from really reaching our potential so it's not about giving up on going off to one it's about giving up on everything standing in the way of actually making it happen.

2:54Wow, that's interesting. So I suppose you could do that, you know, kind of, it's a good reframe, right? Because it's really interesting. I was talking about this with my wife, I last year, kind of just really buckled down and got serious and dropped about 25 pounds. And, you know, it wasn't so much about what I did, it was more about what I didn't do, right? And so, you know the idea was that i can do nothing and so that the way that that looked is okay it's nighttime i'm watching the program uh i should go get some snacks or i could just do nothing and uh you know and that it was actually super positive it sounds kind of like similar to what you're talking about professionally yeah the book is like positioned in a way that sounds really negative because it draws you in but really it's a book about empowerment it's about helping you get out of your own way so that you can take control of your life.

3:51And just looking at the people listening to the show right now, I know from working with so many business owners that the one thing stopping people from getting to that next level, in a lot of cases, fear. It's that fear of what if you're rejected? What if they get judged? What if they aren't good enough? And that's why one of the powerful lessons I break down in the book is reframing that. There's an example I give of a client who he just kept procrastinating, picking up the phone to call potential clients. And when we started diving into it, the reason being is he'd heard so many no's, he just couldn't take any more rejection.

4:22So we had to break through that by reframing it of what happens if he doesn't actually put himself out there. What happens if he reaches the end of his life and he looks back never having achieved his dreams? What if he reaches the end of the month and he can't provide for his family? What if in six months his business goes under and he never impacts and helps people? By making the fear more painful of what he's going to miss out on than if what could go wrong, then it became easy to take action. Once he started facing it, he realized it wasn't that big a deal, but we all build us up in our head into a far bigger issue than it is.

4:52It's all about recognizing where it's coming from and then giving up the control that has over you. Yeah. Fear of sales could be one or not making those calls or not doing that outreach because of fear or rejection. What are some other things that you see that are pretty common among top level leaders where they get in their own way. So one of the biggest ones, I think that pretty much anyone listening to this, I could bet can struggle with is being too hard on themselves. Because when you have such high standards expectations. You don't say, yeah, sorry about that. It's a fantastic motivator.

5:27But the problem is, no matter what you do, you're always going to be able to do a little bit better. And if you're constantly in that mental space where you beat yourself up over what you got wrong, the mistakes you made, what you didn't do, you're never going going to be happy. And that's why for me, the thing I always aim to interject into people is, I'm not saying lower your goals and ambitions, but you have to develop self-compassion when you can look at the outcome and know that you gave it your best. And yes, you might've made things wrong, but you can learn from that for the future and really just getting into a mental space where you can find that fulfillment.

5:59Because otherwise you're just going to spend your life constantly questioning your self-worth. And it's going to reach a point where you're just going to lose your confidence and it's going to stop you from showing up as the best version of yourself. Yeah. What about things like, you know, when you're talking with someone and the, you know, the leader or the executive, they're just burnt out. They're like, I don't want to go to work. I just, I'm just exhausted. Is there, what questions might you ask or, you know, what, how might you steer that conversation to kind of evoke a little bit of curiosity to see what might be triggering that.

6:39Or maybe they are just, you know, kind of living in an unsustainable way. Yeah, burnout is something that I've personally experienced a lot over the last decade. And that's why it's a core part of what I help clients with. And I found that because it's getting so much mainstream attention, a lot of the advice to deal with it is actually pretty terrible. Like most people just say, if you're burnt out, you need to take a break. And that might help momentarily. But as soon as you get back into it, you're going to be set back into the same situation. And that's why anyone who's struggling with burnout, I found that ultimately you need to do three things.

7:10The first is you need to reconnect with what you're doing and why. Because when you're running a business and you're stuck in the trenches and everything's firefighting and dealing with problems, you can just be so focused to get through the day that you forget why you started. And that's why I'm such a big advocate. If you need to figure out what excites you and makes you want to get out of bed in the morning, you need to find that why and purpose behind it. The second thing you need to do is focusing on developing the right routines. You need to go in with the mentality of what's taking energy away from you.

7:38What do you need to do to allow yourself to feel good, to make sure that you're prioritizing your health and finally balance. And then the final thing is you have to set the right boundaries, not just with other people, but with yourself. Because as business leaders, we're our own worst enemies. We're always connected. We're always on our phones. We're always trying to cram in more. So you have to know when you're getting diminishing returns and when to hold yourself to the standard of you have to take time off and step back. those three things are really going to have a big impact on recovering and preventing burnout.

8:07Yeah. You know, and I want to go back to this when you're talking about these high standards, right? So high standards, you know, I'm not the type of person that feels comfortable and just phoning it in. Like that's not how I want to show up in work. And so that's really led me to, I think, achieve some pretty big things. But, you know, kind of getting back to what you were saying, And, you know, this idea is those high standards can be very helpful and productive. However, you know, it's like just because, for example, I might say, well, our client didn't follow through. You know, I see myself doing this.

8:47Right. So the client fails. And it was kind of I mean, it's pretty much outside my control. Like at that point. Right. I can't control everything in their life. But when they are frustrated or disappointed that something didn't work out, but then it's like, well, I mean, it's not really it's not my fault. Right. But yet I still take ownership of that. I find myself doing that. And that's unhealthy. Like, especially if they're frustrated, because I don't want anyone to be frustrated, especially if they've, you know, kind of, you know, bought into, you know, our relationship dynamic. But I find that that's a common pattern for me.

9:22And sometimes also this feeling where we want something more for someone else than they want it themselves. I know that these are things that I struggle with from time to time. Yeah. The piece of advice I can always give on that is it's all about shifting your focus from the past to what you need to do about it going forward. Client example being a perfect one. Like, yes, the standards weren't met. Things weren't delivered properly. It's a highly frustrating situation, but you can't change what happened. so instead it's shifting the conversation and the focus to be like okay what do we need to learn from this and what do we do next time to make sure this is actually in place and in your case it sounds like it's a conversation that needs to be had if we need the right accountability in place to make sure that you guys actually show up and do what you're meant to do what do we need to learn and what process do we need to instigate so this doesn't happen again so it's very much future focused it's not dwelling on things that can't be undone and that's why standards is such an interesting one because yes you want to hold yourself to them but you also need to be able to reflect backwards and be like did I do what I needed to here and if it is a case why am I then beating myself up over it because a lot of the time these standards don't actually exist we're just holding ourselves to some level of perfection and we're like but that's not real and that's why no matter what the outcome it always could have been a bit better and that's why we never find happiness and that's why one thing I always say to clients when you're going into a new project before you begin, set what I call an at-peace outcome.

10:49So it's you thinking in advance, what is the outcome that if it happens, I can be at peace with? Not going to be perfect, but it's going to be good enough. It's going to be my best work. It's going to be great. And then when you actually get there, you're like, this is what I aimed for at the beginning. Whereas if you just go in, you're then just focusing on perfection, which isn't real. Yeah. You know, Byron, I was talking to my, I'm very blessed and grateful. I have a pretty smart wife. She's a family therapist. So we get to talk about some heady things every once in a while. But, you know, to your point, most self-imposed deadlines are fairly arbitrary.

11:28Like it's, you know, it's like, well, who said that? Who said, what is the consequence really of not getting this email out today? Like, you know, if things came up and it's not going to happen, is it really the end of the world? And so sometimes, like, I found that when I do that, and I asked myself those questions, like, well, who set that deadline? You did. Okay, well, big deal. I mean, it's like, it's not the end of the world. Like, you can move a deadline. Like, it's going to be okay. Sometimes, yeah, does that mean you're going to potentially disappoint somebody or something's not going to work?

12:03Like, it's okay, right? Like, we're the ones that are setting these arbitrary deadlines. yeah the one thing i'd love to add into that is making that shift is all about foresight because a lot of ceos that i work with they have a tendency to overload themselves they just have this huge to-do list so many things to get done and then it feels like no matter what they do is never enough and that's why i always encourage people that when you go into the day the first thing you need to do is figure out how much available time that you have because let's say you're going to do an eight-hour work day but you've got five hours of back-to-back meetings things if you've got like 20 tasks there's no way you can get through it so you've got to be a little bit more realistic with how much time and bandwidth you have because you're never going to catch up whatever's there as soon as you have things done more things are going to be added so if you keep overloading yourself you're just putting so much pressure that is coming from you and that's why one of my favorite questions to ask is going into the day it's looking ahead like what would need to happen today for today to be a success and then you can reverse engineer it you can figure out the key priorities and then use that to guide your planning.

13:07But you also have to look at the available time. So often we just take on far too much and you're either going to be able to do a few things really well, many things mediocre and badly. And if you're just rushing around like a headless chick and trying to cram it all in, it's just not going to happen. How can we become better delegators? Maybe sometimes we take ownership of something and we don't give it, we don't delegate or we don't, you know, allow someone else the opportunity because maybe it's not going to be up to our standards. So I see this a lot in SMB leadership, you know, where maybe the founder is still real active in their operations and they've always just done something a certain way.

13:49And, you know, maybe they've tried delegating. It's just like, you know, the other person isn't quite catching their vision or whatever. How do you address that? Yeah. So you first need to figure out what you actually need to delegate. In my book, The Effect of CEO, what I talk about is figuring out what is your zone of genius, as in where in the business does your time have the greatest impact and what can only be done by you. You need to figure out what is your bubble. And then when you're taking on new tasks, you have to audit it through the lens of being like, does this fall into your zone of genius?

14:22And if the answer is no, should this be done by you? And if not, does it need to be done by someone else? Then from there, when you're delegating these items, you then need to figure out what you actually need to communicate. Because I find for a lot of founders, the reason why they get in the way is they just don't say what needs to get done. Because they're all over the place and they're such big thinkers, they just assume that people know what's going on in their head. And that's why they need to sit down and make sure that the person doing this actually understands. I had one guy that I was working with who, because he's just such a creative mind.

14:56And because he's doing such in-depth, technical, data-driven work, he'd explain stuff all over the place. People would then say they understood, go away, make mistakes, and there'll be more headaches for him to have to redo it. So we fixed that with a simple question. When he was explaining something to a member of his team, he would go through and then say to them, okay, I don't want to micromanage you, but talk me through exactly what you need to do. Explain it back to me. And if that person couldn't explain it back. They didn't understand it. And then he could clarify what was going on. That simple shift meant that he knew that they were on the same page and it didn't come back two weeks later then with headaches and more work for him to do.

15:35So it just meant taking the time to get clarity rather than just verbally just dumping something on someone and hoping for the best. Yeah. You know, a lot of what we've been talking about, you cover in your book, maybe you should give up seven ways to get out of your own way and take control of your life. Byron, are there any other transformations that you would expect from a leader? By the way, I already bought your book. It's on, as of when we're recording this, it's on pre-order, so I snagged it, and I can't wait to get through it. But what other transformations might you expect from a leader who undertakes reading what you've put together?

16:15Yeah, so just based on who's listening to this, the one big piece of advice I'll give to any of these founders looking to step up is there is a very big difference between being a founder and being a CEO. As a founder, you can get away with doing everything. You can be stuck in the weeds. You can dive into all of it. But as the business grows and scales, every new level of success is going to require a new level of problems. And that's why it's going to require a new level of you. And that's why you constantly need to be looking at where you're spending your time and what you're taking on. Because growth can actually be a really big trap.

16:47A lot of people think that when you get to that next level, you have more time and more freedom, but actually with more responsibilities, you get more pulled into it. And this is why I work with so many CEOs and founders who are the bottleneck in the business. They're the ones holding up decisions. They're stopping projects moving forward. They're causing opportunities to be lost. And that's why you really need to take that time to reflect of where you're holding things up. Where do you need to start letting go? What do you need to handle? off? Where do you need to get out of the way? These great businesses weren't built by one person.

17:17But if you try and take everything on yourself, you're just going to leave yourself burnt out and overwhelmed. And at times that means pulling off the bandaid, trusting the people that you hired will step up and get it done. Yeah. Your website is byronmorrison.com. Byron, who do you work with and what does that look like? So I primarily work with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. And our focus, I'm not a business coach, so I don't get involved in telling them how to run the business. My focus is on them and how they're showing up in everything that they do. So it's everything from how they manage their time to how they deal with their team, how they bounce back from setbacks, really giving the mindset needed to make better decisions, to lead with confidence and help them become the leader of the business needs now and in the future.

18:06So anyone who wants to find out more about that can check out my website, ByronMorrison.com. And also I do a lot of content on LinkedIn on leadership and being an effective CEO. So that's the best place to follow me for more. Yeah. All right. Brian, Byron Morrison, you can your website, ByronMorrison.com. And of course the new book, maybe you should give up seven ways to get out of your own, seven ways to get out of your own way and take control of your life. You can get it on Kindle, you can get it on paperback, and it's on Amazon and all the other booksellers, which of course is linked to your main website, byronmorrison.com.

18:43Byron, thank you so much for the conversation. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me here.

18:54Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com slash guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free. You can do that by leaving a review on Apple podcasts, or join our listener Facebook group. Just search for the thoughtful entrepreneur in Facebook. I'd love even if you just stopped by to say hi, I'd love to meet you. We believe that every person as a message that can positively impact the world, we love our community who listens and shares our program every day.

19:37Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful entrepreneurs. Hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes each day. Thanks for listening. And thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.