speaker-0: Humans are not washing machines. We are emotional beings. We have feelings. We expect outcomes, but we don't work towards those outcomes. We're really just focused on the what, and we're not really focused on things like our story, things like our state, our emotional, our mental state. Intentional living essentially is trying our best to live in alignment with the things that we value most.

speaker-2: How can we actually move them from the page into day-to-day behavior change and action?

speaker-0: You absolutely need to have low seasons where you can actually refuel your creative juices. Just promise yourself do one thing for your business every day.

speaker-2: Today's guest is Ryan Fehey. Ryan is an author, speaker, and consultant who helps people make clear decisions about their values, work, well-being, and energy. In our conversation, we discuss a new approach to setting goals that can help you actually achieve them just in changing how you set them and how to identify the values that should guide your decisions. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Ryan Fehey. Ryan, thank you so much for being here.

speaker-0: Ian, thanks for having me on your show. For everyone listening in, this is gonna be an exciting conversation. So thanks for spending some time with us here today. Happy to be here.

speaker-2: Absolutely. I was super excited in the prep that I was doing for our conversation, just going through all of your work, the the years and upon years of work that you've done in this domain, in this arena. You've built up a wealth of knowledge on a subject that really matters and I think a lot of people, including myself, need to hear and learn more about. But so Ryan, your work, as I mentioned, operates in the arena of values, energy, and living with more intention. And most people, including myself, probably have a sense of what matters to them, right? Like I care about my health, I care about my my happiness, inner peace, but our daily lives still do not reflect those values. So why do our lives so easily drift away from what we say matters?

speaker-0: Yeah, it's a great question. And you know, I f I first should say I'm still learning as I go too, right? Like life is always kinda coming at you and changing and it's busy. but I think, you know, one of the b biggest reasons why we kind of drift away from those things is just we struggle as as a society with self awareness. You know, when I when I deliver workshops, I actually create space. For attendees to actually investigate and have time to kind of explore things like their energy, things like their core values, which we'll get into here in this conversation. And a lot of the feedback I get from folks is that they never really had time or they never really dedicated any time to actually sit and go through that process. And we live at a time where we have all the information we need, but sometimes it's actually about kind of closing that out for a minute and just kind of focusing inward. And doing a a bit of an assessment of where is our energy where is our energy going? What is it we truly enjoy? What makes us actually happy in this moment, in this chapter of our lives? And again, it's always changing too, right? So I think that's a big thing. Another piece too, Ian, is the fringe hours of our lives have shifted. So if you went back three decades ago, four decades ago. You kind of had your nine to five, most folks did, or they had ran a business or whatever that was. But the evenings, the weekends, and the mornings, those fringe hours were often spent with things like family and community, eating together, you know, socializing together. And the game has changed. That that is very different. We live in time in a time where, you know, the rapid pace of technology has given us the opportunity. To have side hustles, to have a second job, to have a business that requires us to constantly kind of be on. And that's that's fine. But what ends up happening is that we get kind of inundated in those fringe hours versus taking time in those, in those hours to actually maybe sink into the other pieces of our lives that we do value and the things that make us happy and fulfilled. So I think that's another one. A final one I'll note too, Ian, is this is something that comes up Quite a bit. One of the things I try to talk about as well is like eighty percent of New Year's resolutions fail every year, or over eighty percent. And typically those failures happen by March. And that doesn't mean we're bad people. It just means that we're really just focused on the what, and we're not really focused on things like our story, things like our state, our emotional, our mental state. So I kind of break this down into the three S's our state, our story, and our strategy. And resolutions go right to the right to the the strategy, but they fail to neglect those first two. And that's why so many of us fail at our goals and so many of us fail at our resolutions. So what I try to actually do is create space to investigate where is our mental state at in this moment, in this day, and what is the story that we're telling ourselves? Are we telling ourselves that we need to work harder, work more, work longer hours? Or are we telling ourselves that we're enough today, that we have accomplished what we set out to do today, that you know, we can wait and put this off until tomorrow. And so sometimes having that moment to really go through those three S can just allow us the space we need to make more mindful decisions around that.

speaker-2: Yeah, that is a new insight. I haven't heard the idea of your story and the story you're telling yourself being an essential element of accomplishing a goal, right? I think you hit it right on the head that most people when they set goals for themselves, and I'll use myself as exam as an example, when I set goals for myself or for my business, it's all just focused on the strategy. So why is the the story, those other two S's so important in achieving and accomplishing a goal?

speaker-0: Yeah, it's a great, great question. And strategy is kind of what we're taught, right? We're taught that in school. we're taught that in university, we're taught that in a society that forms that that values kind of performance metrics and productivity. And that's okay. But what's not valued so much in society are the, you know, what is what are the inner workings of our mental state? And what what are those kind of stories that that we might be telling ourselves? And so I think that they're absolutely critical because if you wake up in the morning and on a scale of zero to five, five being I feel optimal, and zero being I don't feel great at all, if you're a one or a two, it's gonna be really, really hard to kind of feel optimal that day. Maybe a three for you is what you're kind of going for. But if you're not aware of where that you're where your state is, you can kind of have these unachievable expectations when you start your day. I should be up here. I should be here. Well, why am I not here? Well, it's actually, you know, it's where I'm at today. And so I think we get into kind of comparing sometimes too, right? We all know what a f a a level five kind of day looks like, right? In terms of productivity, in terms of outputs and energy and all of that. But that life happens. And sometimes we're stuck at a one, we're stuck at a two. And we need to acknowledge that that's where we're at. And we need to just work from that place. And stories are interesting as well because unless you have mentors and you have other kind of business people in your corner that can support you, you can, you know, slide into a story that potentially you need to stop telling, or you may not be even thinking about the right story. And so that can be limiting, right? It can limit what you're capable of. And I've experienced this in my business as well. And it's important to have those people that kind of thrust us forward. And lift us up to kind of elevate those stories, re examine those stories and re examine what's possible. Hard to do, I will admit, but it is critical. And so I think everybody out there, if there's one takeaway, find that business mentor that's maybe two, three, four steps ahead of you, get a cup of coffee with them, have a human to human conversation and really investigate, talk about the stories that they had along their journey as well.

speaker-2: Yeah. So this is really interesting. So every goal, let's say, just to use a simple term that we set for ourselves should really be complete with three elements, right? It should be clarity on the state that's going to be required in order for us to, you know, execute and do the things that we need to do, just an awareness of our state. Then the story that we're telling ourselves in route to achieving this goal, and then also the strategy, like the actual tactical thing that we're gonna go execute the things that we are gonna do in order to achieve this goal. Is that right?

speaker-0: Absolutely, Ian. You summarized it perfectly. Well done.

speaker-2: Love it. Okay. Sweet. So going back to that initial question then. So we have, you know, we start the year, we set new goals, we start a new quarter, we set new goals for our business, for ourselves, whatever. Whenever you're setting goals for yourself, most of the time, you know, a reason that we drift off track after we've set these goals is because we haven't completed the goal, right? We've only clarified the strategy. We haven't taken the actual human, you know, ourselves into the equation on like what else is required in order for us to operate. The way that we need to in order to execute that strategy and then ultimately achieve that goal, which is the state and the story. So kind of a part of the getting off track is incomplete goals almost. And then you also talked about this idea of the fringe hours being hijacked, right? And I think that is such a important insight because any goal that you set yourself is going to be for the most part like some element of yourself or your business improving. Right. And that is what I like those tasks and that kind of work is what I would put into the Eisenhower matrix of like tier two work. Right. This is the important but not urgent work. Right. Tier one is like the stuff that we do on a day-to-day basis, right? It's just the day-to-day things that are on our calendar that have deadlines that have to get done. And then tier two work is the important things that, hey, this will make a meaningful change. This is an important thing to do, but it's not urgent. There's no deadline. Right. So we have to create our own artificial. There's a lot of strategies around accomplishing tier two work, but I think that tier two work, that important but not urgent, those tasks that are related to accomplishing our goal and moving us forward, improving, are those things that we have to make time for during those fringe hours. I would think it's just like that extra time. I mean, if I look at my own day to day week to week, the fringe hours, I mean, you were pretty generous in saying that, hey, a lot of people might be using their fringe hours for like a side hustle. But in reality, like if I look at myself, I feel like a lot of my fringe hours are spent just like watching YouTube. Just kind of sitting around not doing anything. So how can we is it just like an awareness thing? Like how can we take control of those fringe hours again and maybe put them to more productive? Maybe it's not doing work, but it can be creating that space for ourselves to just kind of reset and recover.

speaker-0: Yeah, great great question. And I think it's it's highly dependent on environment and individuals. So, you know, there's a a great quote actually from Matthew McConaughey. Prepare to have freedom.

speaker-2: What I mean by that.

speaker-0: Freedom calling audibles. Hey, I'll wing it. It's all a good notion. But we need preparation to have that freedom. Find out the structure of the situation. Know the rules of the game before you go play it. The more you prepare, the more when you are in the so-called game of life, you can call your own audible. You can improvise. You can riff. Because you know your plays. And they become instant. You're not even to think about them at the time if you're prepared. And, you know, you you have to be structured. Like we need it as humans, right? We need to, okay, we're gonna, you know, do these tasks in the day. These are the important ones, these are the urgent ones, just like you talked about. But what happens sometimes is we kind of erode into feeling like we need to do everything all the time, especially early entrepreneurs, right? Everything feels important. But if you create that structure, and I do this with my business business by doing what's called context scheduling. And this is an idea that I picked up from a gentleman named Inkotin Tank is his name. He's on X, he's on Medium, a great writer. But it was borrowed from him. And essentially, what it is is you block a certain amount of time in your calendar and be generous with that block in terms of how much time you you block off. And then you plug in. the tasks that you need to do in that time. But don't you you don't do it in like half hour increments, 15 minute increments. It's like three hours or two hours. And so what ends up happening is then you're in less meetings because your calendar is blocked. But also you tend to complete those tasks earlier, especially if you're quite productive and efficient. And you can actually give yourself some creative space in that time to maybe explore Something else with your business or explore this thing that maybe came across your desk the night before. You wanted to take some time and just investigate it. But what it does is it gives you that expanded window of time in the run of your day. The other thing that I do is that when I'm done, I'm done. And this is actually something I think I borrow or I I learned from Tony Robbins going to one of his events was, you know, you do what's in your calendar and then you're done for the day. And I learned that lesson hard going through burnout in my life. But it's really, really critical to kind of evaluate, okay, have I done what I needed to do today, even if it's just one thing, maybe it's ten things, whatever the number is, and then you know, physically and psychologically changing your environment so that you can turn off and be present with those other things in your life. One other thing I'll add here too, and this is for folks at work in remote settings, is you want to have what's called a psychological cue. Yeah, a psychological cue. And so whatever that thing is that allows you to turn off at the end of the day, you want to replicate that each and every day. So for me in my home office here, I actually have a lamp on my desk. It's my psychological cue is at the end of the day, when I turn that lamp off, that's it. Like I'm done. And for others, it may be something else. It may be closing the laptop. It may be setting an alarm on your phone. Whatever it is, finding that important psychological cue and then just putting it in your environment every single day will just allow you the space to not burn out and to kind of manage your energy if that makes sense.

speaker-2: Totally. And the effectiveness of that little psychological cue kind of rhymes with an idea that hit me when you were talking about the most goals are only set with just the strategy, like one of the three S's that you feel are required to set a complete goal. Where the psychological cue, the lamp, the kind of the indicator that, hey, the day is done. I can now transition into whatever it is that I have left for my day that the thing the other things that I care about outside of just work. As soon as you were talking about the idea of how most goals are only set with the strategic lens and like that's the only clarification that's made. It kind of rhymes with this idea that's come up in a in a few conversations recently here on the podcast where most of us really believe that we are just logical, rational beings, right? That if we just think things through, we have this logical game plan on how something's gonna be accomplished, it's gonna get done. Right. We're just And it's hit me again. I'm going back through and watching the Century of Self documentary series. Highly recommend if anybody hasn't watched it, I'll link in the description of this episode. But it's really eye-opening to how irrational we can be as humans. And irrational not in like a bad sense, but there's just like a lot of subconscious things that are taking place that really govern our action that we don't really take into account. But I think most of us really assume that we're just completely logical, completely rational. If I just set this game plan, I'm gonna be and this is me included. If I just think things through, I'm gonna follow through. But there's a lot more that goes into it for us as people, as us as humans, in order for us to kind of go and accomplish something.

speaker-0: Yeah. 100%. I I read this somewhere and I forget the author, so I apologize. But it is basically just like humans are not washing machines. Like we are emotional beings. We have feelings, right? And so we're gonna have an off day, we're gonna have a sick day, we're going to have a day where it's just hard, or life is hitting us hard, or something is changing, kind of at the macro level that's really impacting our state, right? And so We have to just be aware of that, that productivity gets us so far, but we, you know, just want to be as consistent as possible. And that consistent one day may feel a little bit different than the consistency you show up with the next day, but you show up. And this is one thing I was talking about a f a few years ago. Someone asked me what advice you have for an early entrepreneur. And I was like, just do one thing a day. Like just promise yourself do one thing for your business every day. If you do that, That's three hundred and sixty five things you do for your business in a year. So it's the compound effect. And oftentimes we're doing way more than one thing a day, but it kind of gives us a little bit of perspective on kind of what's the baseline we should be thinking about. Right? It could be just a quick email on this day, and then you're present with family and friends for the remainder of the day, right? But you did one thing. And so consistency showing up and not kind of getting overwhelmed with everything, I think, is important too. Yeah.

speaker-2: Absolutely. Start small because you have to start and if you try and pile way too much on in the beginning, you're just not gonna be able to s consistently follow through. And then as soon as you have like a few off days where you just didn't did nothing, where you were just overwhelmed by doing too much, you just do nothing, then you kinda start that downward spiral of again that story that you tell yourself. If you keep it small but consistent over a long time period, you're gonna start to build confidence, right? 'Cause confidence I think this was Ed Milette said confidence comes from keeping the promises that you make with yourself. Right. If you just start small, stay committed, do that consistently over time, you're gonna build up your confidence. And that story that you start telling yourself is gonna change. Meanwhile, if you try and take on way too much early on, you can start to, at least in my experience, when I've done that, I can start to have like a downward spiral. But I'd love to double click into this idea of stored because this is something that's new to me this year. Again, just through conversations with people that I've had here on the podcast is what made me aware of this idea of the story you tell yourself and how important that is. Can you maybe just to drive this home for listeners and for myself, like what is the the story that you tell yourself or like how does that story again play into the the goals that you have yourself? So if we could see your example and what you say to yourself, we might be able to better understand and, you know, apply that to our own.

speaker-0: Yeah, great question. So, you know, when I started out as an author, I started out to make an impact, to change one person's life. And, you know, I I I feel like I've done that as an author. But I come back to that story a lot. You know, it comes back, it comes out a lot in my business when I'm consulting, doing one on one work and coaching work with clients. You know, how can I be at my best so I can deliver some form of high value to my clients that they would never get without me. And so I think about that a lot. I think also for me, faith goes into that. So, you know, I have kind of have a higher purpose in my life. I'm now a dad. So I think about, you know, what is my legacy that I'm leaving behind versus the resume that's in front of me. And so I kind of change how I approach some of those decisions and conversations. And I'm always kind of thinking as part of my story now of, you know, what what is my daughter going to think about this when she grows up? What is she going to say about this? Is she going be proud that her dad did these things, changed these lives, helped these individuals? Or is she going to say, you know, he wasn't present. He wasn't around. I don't know him. You know, that we know these stories exist. And so Being mindful of that, I think, has definitely shifted my perspective on things. So I think a few things there. I think, you know, I always come back to waking up every day, you know, with the goal in mind of making an impact in someone's life. That looks different, whether it's a reader that reaches out, a client that reaches out, if I'm delivering a talk, you know, someone coming up after saying, you know, this was incredible. Thank you for this one specific thing. Those things fill me. And those things really I think are important to me. But I I think one of the one of the biggest things that I've recognized coming out of the pandemic, and I I live by this too, is the story of the home. So I work from home. I'm blessed to be able to do that. But wellness really starts in the home. And so how I show up in the home, you know, how am I at my optimal self for my family, for my clients, for my work? How can I juggle all of that in this environment? How can I create an environment? That just allows me the space to feel like that's peaceful, that's calm from the storms of life and the noise of the world. And I think we've done a really good job of that in our home. It's very, very hard to do. But I think about that a lot as part of my story. You know, am I are these actions adding peace and well-being to our home, or are these actions and decisions taking me out of the home, removing me? Maybe I'm on the road traveling, things like that. So it really forces me. when to say yes, when to say no, and when to be mindful of what needs to be done when. Hopefully that makes some sense. But I do I do feel it's a it is a little complex and it is a little unique to each and every one of us. But hopefully that helps someone out there to think a little bit more about the stories they may be telling of themselves and in their home as well.

speaker-2: Yeah. Yeah, that a hundred percent makes sense. I think from what I took from that, the story might be the most enduring part of those three S's. The story is kind of this enduring, rarely changing filter that you can use to kind of run the strategy, the goals themselves that you set for yourself through. Like, does this fit with the story that I want to live? The story is the idea of the impact that you'll have on others, what others are gonna say, you know, about What you did, right? What is the story that other people will tell about how your work impacted them, whether that be your daughter through the lens of her as your father or your clients through the lens of them, of you as a provider of a service to them. But the story seems like the more enduring piece of those three S's, where you have this story that you almost want to play out and then live and the tactical, kind of more strategic of how-tos and what's. are going to be the the parts that change, but the story seems like the more fundamental, enduring piece of who you are.

speaker-0: Yes, you're absolutely right. And our stories shift through our lives, right? It does endure. Absolutely. Different stages of life, you know, demand different things from us, but also give us the opportunity, right? You know, I think John C. Maxwell's big on this. I like it, but I kind of take it a step further. He c talks about like learn, earn, and return. And so we live our lives in those three phases. We spend the first third of our life learning. We spend the second phase of our life earning and the third phase of our life returning, giving back. Now I like to think about those constantly happening because I'm always learning, always thinking about ways of giving back. But I think that's where story fits in really nicely, right? Is what am I going to do to make the world a better place as I learn, as I earn, and what can I return? Yeah, it just came to mind as you were you were mentioning that, Ian.

speaker-2: Yeah, so story is so much more than just self-talk, right? It's a lot deeper than just self-talk, which is kind of what I had taken in as face value. So I'm glad we explored that idea a little bit deeper there. So let's pivot into something where if a listener, somebody's listening to this, again, including myself, this conversation who, you know, maybe does feel a little disconnected, a little bit off track from, you know, these things that I say I care about, right? Like these goals, strategic goals that I have for myself and, you know, I see for my future that I want to achieve. I feel disconnected, maybe a little bit off track. Where should somebody in that situation start in your opinion? Like to kind of get back on track, regroup and start moving in a more positive direction.

speaker-0: Yeah, so this is where we can get into values. So I kind of teased that earlier in the conversation. Values kind of guide everything. And this took me a long time to figure out. You know, research kind of shows that we we need to really have three to five core values. Any more than five, and it gets to be too much. And you could do less than three, but most humans, once they start the process, it's hard to find less than three things you value. So three to five tend to be kind of the the magic sauce there. So clearly identifying what those are. And again, we're not taught that in school. So where does someone even start with that? Well first it's really about okay, well, what do I enjoy? What fulfills me? What makes me happy? What do I like spending my time doing? When you start to think about those things, you'll start to see some common threads emerge, especially if you're using a journal. And from that you can start to kind of pull out what those values are for you. And so Again, this took me a long time, especially in the business world. Okay, well, I feel like I should be doing this, but it's a little bit outside of what I'm passionate about, but I'll do it because the client's paying. Well, it doesn't really align with my core value. And so I'm getting better at saying no to those things because it doesn't really align with with with my core values. But for me, mine are what I call the five F's. And they're in no particular order, but it is family, food, fitness. finances and free time. I love free time. And so when I start to think through those, and I have a whole workshop on this, so it's hard to really get into, but those are very clear for me. So what I do is when demands come in, when there's a new client, a new opportunity to speak, whatever that thing is, I look at those five F's and I think about, okay, how will that decision impact those values or how does it align with those values in my life? Is it going to contribute to our financial well being? Yes. Is it going to take me away into a remote community where I can't work out anywhere because I don't have the infrastructure and it's minus fifty because I live in Canada? Okay, well, that's something to consider because it's a value of mine. So once you start to really be clear with those, you can run decisions through that values filter and it starts to weed out the things that maybe you can say no to, and that's okay. Again, this takes a lot of work, but I think if someone were to start, it would just be to write down those things again that kind of fulfill you, make you happy, bring joy in your life, and then start to kind of pull out what are those breadcrumbs telling you? And that may be where you actually start kind of figuring out your values.

speaker-2: I love it. And then those become the practical day-to-day filter for for what you do. So you have those values. How do they really truly become something? Because I've done similar exercises, not as intentional, as clear, and as thoughtful as what you had just laid out. But I've done those things where I've, you know, written it down, kind of gotten this clarity, and then, you know, they just kind of stay on the paper, right? They stay on the page. So like how Can we actually move them from the page into day to day behavior change and action? Is there anything that you can shed light on there?

speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. So I love this. This is where we get into intentional living. Before we get there, though, one of the great things about values, there's a really good book on this by Brad Stauberg. and I believe it's the Art of Groundedness or something about groundedness, but values really are grounding. So it's basically setting the foundation for you, setting the foundation for the decisions you make, the things that you do. And so That's why they're so important because they do ground you. This is where we kind of get into intentional living. And so intentional living essentially is trying our best to live in alignment with the things that we value most. That's essentially what it is. What happens in many of with many of us is we expect outcomes, but we don't work towards those outcomes. So If we so for example, I value fitness. Well, if I don't do it, if I don't practice it, if I'm not intentional about it, it's just not going to happen. If I, you know, value financial stability, but I don't create the mechanisms for that to be possible, I don't put the work in to make that possible, it's probably not going to happen. And so we have to be intentional about it. And I speak a lot in the wellness space too, and this goes back to those. New Year's resolutions, right? We think that wellness can just happen. And we kind of live at a time where, you know, we have all these devices that can track heart rate and calories and all that, which is fine, but you still have to put the work in. And there's no shortcuts to that. And so that's really what you want to be thinking about now in our lives. I have a kind of a a framework here, but it's like we kind of a lot of us live on this side where we somewhat live with intention. And then we're in the middle, oftentimes, in life and work, where we we oftentimes live with intention, but not fully. But where we really want to be is on the far side of that continuum, which is fully living with intention. And when we do that, basically, if you picture yourself a robo with a team, everybody's rowing in the same direction. Right? It is very clear where you you are going. your energy is aligned, and you just feel it. And so If there's one takeaway there, it would be to focus on living with intention. And sometimes we don't even realize we're doing it, right? My wife and I were just having a conversation about this the other day. She said, You know, Ryan, I feel like I'm just being pulled in all these different directions right now and life feels very heavy. And I came back to, okay, well, what are your main priorities right now? Like give me your top three priorities right now. And so she told me those. And I said, put your energy into those three areas when you get up tomorrow morning. Be intentional about being perfectly present in those areas. Remove the distractions, remove the phone. And she had a much better day, because of it. And so sometimes we we need those guardrails and and sometimes we just lose sight of it and it's important to come back to.

speaker-2: Yeah. And in that example that you gave, sometimes we just need another person, right, who's aware of the thing that we're trying to do and can kind of help us in the journey of doing it, right? Which is the value of working with somebody like yourself. And this is a good opportunity to listeners know that if what you're what you've heard so far is something that you're interested in exploring more and would want somebody to kind of guide you through this process, you can check out the links to all of Ryan's work in the description and all of the resources. I checked out your website. You have an incredible amount of resources available to people. on that website. So definitely go check that out. We'll have the link in the description. But I love that. I think that is probably where I have struggled the most is and I I don't think I'm alone in this, especially in, you know, the young male demographic of somebody who's trying to go out and, you know, start build a business, is trying to do it on my own. Not really having anybody in my life to be a standard bearer, I guess, for myself, like kind of help me To kind of talk it through and kind of bring me back and almost slow me down in a way. Because I think, again, it's my tendency to all right, I have these five values clarified. This is how I'm gonna live my life. Every single decision, every action is gonna kind of run through this filter. I'm not gonna make any mistakes. I just jump way too big into it, or that's in my brain. It's like, okay, I'm gonna start immediately living this way right away. And the moment I I don't. I just kind of it all kind of crumbles and I forget about it and I just don't even think about it anymore. It's like all or nothing kind of mentality. Right. So I guess maybe going back to the idea that we mentioned earlier is just trying to start small, give myself some grace and like patience with myself in the journey. Is that something that you should probably expect or just kind of set as an expectation for yourself? Cause it it sounds like this is gonna be a big transition.

speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. You are spot on Ian. Again, we are emotional, right? And and life happens, right? Like there's there's days where, you know, I don't get the workout in. There's days where I don't eat as great as I should be eating. There's days where I don't sleep as much as I sh should be sleeping according to the recommendations. There's days where, you know, I I, you know, chose or I needed I felt like I needed to do this and I a sacrifice was quality family time. And so it's it's a constant kind of journey that we're on. And yes, you do absolutely need to give yourself grace. Because the other thing too that's interesting is and what we might get into this is this idea of seasonality. So I talk about this too because a lot of times the work that we do kind of ebbs and flows in different seasons, right? Like I started my career in the school space. So August and September pretty much until November were crazy with professional development, resource development conferences, whatever. So I knew in July every year that this this season coming up was going to be busy and require a lot of me. And it would be the same in the corridor between kind of February to May. But then I knew that kind of June and July again and December and January were a bit bit lighter. So if you understand this seasonality in the work that you do, you can kind of look at those values and say, okay, there's gonna be some friction here. There's gonna be some friction coming up because I'm gonna be on the road or this this task like building my website or, you know, scaling my business is going to require, you know, 60 hours from me for the next three weeks. And that's okay, right? As long as we're aware not to live in that season forever, then we can embrace it. And if we can communicate that to folks that are around us too, That are maybe worried about us or wondering how we're doing, they kind of know, okay, you know, Ian's in it for the next two weeks or next two months. And so that's again taking me a long time to figure out. But I think seasonality is absolutely critical. And what if we if you're in the space as an entrepreneur where you're doing creative work, you absolutely need to have low seasons where you can actually refuel your creative juices so that you can come back to the project, come back to the client, come back to you know, whatever it is that you're doing and have even more creativity. But we will run out of that if we don't take the time on a low season to just be in that low season and rejuvenate, if that makes sense.

speaker-2: Yeah. It's a not a formula that's gonna have equal weights the entire time as you go through life. It's gonna be an adjustment as you navigate the different seasons of life. Well said. I love it. So with our conversation here, I have one final question for you, Ryan. I really appreciate your you taking the time here. we called this out a little bit earlier, but before I get to that final question, how can people get in touch with you?

speaker-0: Yeah, great question, Ian. I really love LinkedIn. So you can find me on LinkedIn. Just search Ryan Foy. Looks like Feihy F A H E Y. send me a DM on there. I also have a website, just Foy Consulting dot org. I'm sure you'll put it in the show notes. So people can just there's a little widget on there, you can contact me through there as well. And happy to have the conversation with folks on on how I can support

speaker-2: Yeah, absolutely. We'll have the links to all of that in the description in the show notes of this episode wherever you're listening to this podcast. Ryan, thank you again so much for the time. My final question for you is a recurring question that I ask every guest. But Ryan, if you had a giant billboard with one message to the world that everybody could see for ten seconds, what would it say and why?

speaker-0: The goal is not more. The goal is more depth. And I think we need more depth. And so that would be what I would say on that billboard. Yep.

speaker-2: Yeah. Yeah. I th I would agree. That's very timely. Like I think, again, in my own experience and kind of operating in this ecosystem, not to blame it all on the ecosystem that I that are or the environment that I operate within. But it is very like just, I'm gonna do this for ten seconds, I'm gonna do that for another five minutes, and then it's just like kinda jumping around all these different things, like so many shiny objects. Well, you talked about earlier when we were talking about the idea of fitness, there are so many, you know. widgets and gadgets and things that you can kind of distract yourself with are just, you know, so many shiny objects to get caught up in that can prevent you from one getting started and then two, just staying consistent and doing the boring stuff for a long time, right? Which is what creates that depth. Yeah. Well said.

speaker-0: Thank you.

speaker-2: Sweet. Ryan, thank you so much for the time.

speaker-0: Thanks for having me, Ian, and hope our paths cross again soon.

speaker-2: Thank you for listening. The main thing I'm taking away from my conversation with Ryan is that results requires depth. Right. And I have a tendency sometimes to get distracted by shiny objects and other opportunities and doing a different thing. But really success or results, whatever you want to call it, requires doing something long enough to get good enough at it to be worthy of the result that you desire, if that makes sense. Right? It's just depth over Activity, right? Don't just do things to do things or just don't do things to feel busy and then mistake that as doing stuff. Right. You have to focus on a few things, prioritize, take that seriously, and then just kind of do the boring stuff of just continuing to do the same thing over and over and just keep getting better at it. If you want to get connected with Ryan, you can find his website and LinkedIn in the description below. And if you're a coach, author, or course creator and you want to make it easier for your clients to get results and engage with your ideas, download the free program execution system toolkit in the description. It'll show you how to install what I call execution infrastructure, which essentially is just a library of AI tools that will help your clients do the work and kind of guide them through the process of engaging with and completing the work in your program. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you all in the next one.