be where your feet are

Summary

this is the talk I gave at the PT Biz Live mastermind in Dallas. the title is a phrase a friend of mine, Talon, taught me years ago: be where your feet are.

most entrepreneurs spend their day three weeks ahead and two weeks behind. they’re worrying about a deal that hasn’t closed, replaying a conversation that already happened, and missing the meeting they’re actually in. presence is the antidote.

the framework:

1. be where your feet are. physically and mentally in the room you’re standing in. not the room you’re worried about next.
2. the closest alligator to the boat. when problems pile up, the only one that matters is the one closest to eating you. solve that one. ignore the rest until it becomes the closest.
3. worry is useless unless it leads to action. if worry produces a plan, it’s planning. if it produces a knot in your stomach and nothing else, it’s just suffering.
4. planning is the cure for anxiety. the second you put the worry on paper as a step, your brain lets it go.

the test: next time you’re in a hard moment, ask yourself what your feet are touching. start there. solve that. nothing else.

Transcript

resiliency and entrepreneurial stress

All right, we’re going to get right into it. I won’t take up a lot of time. I’ve just been tasked with talking to the group about resiliency. That’s been the theme of the event and hopefully take something away. But what I do when I prep for my remarks, my midday remarks this time, is I kind of have an idea of what I want to talk about, but ultimately I have to get the rest of it from talking to all of you over the last day and a half, two days, finding out what’s going on, what you’re struggling with, what reality looks like for each one of you.

And I feel like I got a pretty good pretty good example from a lot of people, especially last night. I really enjoyed those conversations. So, quick show hands. How many of you stress about your business? Okay. How many of you are anxious about the future? That’s a lot of us. Me, too. Me, too. I really struggle with both of those things.

obsession with self development and growth

So, let’s uh let’s take it back. So, I uh I started as an entrepreneur in 2014. uh I mean officially 2011 but full-time full-time everything depends on me was 2014 and what I wanted to do is I had become obsessed absolutely obsessed with self-development and I’m talking about in every capacity like I wanted to take supplements that made my brain work faster I wanted to do breathing exercises silent meditation retreats I wanted to read the books I wanted to take the courses meditation didn’t matter I wanted to do everything because I found that link between making myself better actually did improve the business and make it grow faster.

So I became obsessed with it and I wanted to start a podcast about this very topic. So I started a podcast in 2014 called the Better Humanology Podcast. And the only thing I knew for certain is that I did not want to do this podcast alone. So I called my best friend at the time. His name is Talon. And I was like, “Man, you want to do this uh podcast with me?” He’s the only person on earth who I knew would be a good fit for this.

And he’s like, “Yeah, let’s do a podcast.” What are we talking about? Like, we’re talking about getting better. He’s like, “Let’s do it, man.” But the thing you need to know about Talon is he and I were just amazing friends, like brothers, but also incredibly competitive with one another. You could go back to my podcast right now. I haven’t archived any of those episodes. I want all the mess and the anxiousness and everything that I’ve ever published to be out there for all time.

So, you can go back to those episodes. You can listen to me and Talon hash it out and argue about what it takes to become better for our families and for our businesses. And I met Talon when I was uh at Texas Tech University my freshman year. I went in and I was doing ROC and I wanted to be the best. I was not there to mess around. I wanted to be number one because I was the only person who was going to be a fighter pilot was the person who was going to be number one.

where “be where your feet are” began

So the first day of PT, very first day of RTC, um, physical training started at 6:00 a.m. I was like, “Cool, I’m going to show up at 5:00 a.m. I showed up at 5:00 and just stood there and there’s one person standing in the corner who got there before me. He showed up at 4:00 and that was Talon. So this was the guy that I was roommates with all throughout college. Uh, he was the best man in my wedding.

I was and his and we just had a really great relationship. And so we fostered that and then went on this new journey of building up this podcast, this audience. And one thing that Talon told me all the time, cuz I was like many of you, the anxious type, stressed about the future. Talon was the opposite of that. He was always here now. And something he told me all the time was, “Be where your feet are. constantly reminded me, “Be where your feet are.

Be where your feet are.” And I remember as the podcast started to grow, there was uh I was kind of the head guy still, like I was still the face of the podcast, even though Talon was doing it, people were always reaching out to me specifically. And so, one person who reached out to us when I launched my first book, Garage Gym Athlete, was Aubrey Marcus. And Aubrey wanted to have me on his podcast. And I was like, “Okay, cool.

Let’s do that.” Now I was my pants. Like do people know who Aubrey Marcus is these days? Like I don’t know if that’s a that’s a thing. Like he was really big back in the day. He owned the company. Have you heard of On It, the supplement company? Yeah. So he owned that. He sold it eventually. Had a massive podcast. Very intimidating for me because at the time he was like at the top of the food chain in the health and uh fitness industry.

And so I was driving down, he was in Austin. I was up in North Texas where I’m at now. And I was driving down and I was just like so nervous. So, I give Talon a call. He was always my go-to guy to talk about stuff like this. And he’s like, “Hey, man. You know what I’m going to tell you? Be where your feet are.”

applying presence to high stakes opportunities

And for Talon, he didn’t he always used this in a more crisis scenario. It wasn’t just like be present with your kids. Be where your feet are. That’s not what he meant. He’s just like the only way you can deal with anything that’s difficult is to be here right now cuz you can only solve a problem one step at a time. So, that’s what he told me. It really grounded me. I went into that interview and that interview really had to go well and the reason it had to go well is because Aubrey could launch the book and the podcast and everything to this new level and we were just like scraping by making enough money to do anything.

So it was a big deal. The stakes were really high for me not, you know, doing awful in that interview. So his advice grounded me. It was a great interview and it launched the book and it did really well. And I’ve told this story, but it’s been years. Like, the only reason I’m here at PT Biz, and the only reason Danny and I know one another is because of that book, Garage Doom Athlete. I wrote it.

Uh Danny uh when he was doing the Dock and Jock podcast, found me, interviewed me, and so it’s just a big deal. You know, how many things like the web that gets weaved as you go throughout all these things, right? But I’ve seen Talon give other people this advice is a few years later after that Aubrey Marcus interview. Uh we had another good friend that we knew in college. He was in RTC. He served with us and his uh his mom passed away very suddenly and we were both within an hour of this friend in town and I dropped everything we were doing immediately to go be with his friend and he was not taking it well.

It was not it was a very unexpected death. Not that any death is ever easy. It just it was completely unexpected. Um, and I was not the best in those situations. Like I’m not the most emotional guy. Like I don’t do the best. Talent was always better in those situations. And I was surprised he gave the same advice to him that he had always given to me. He’s like, his name’s Jeff, the guy whose uh whose mother passed away.

And he was like, Jeff, just be where your feet are, man. Right now. We can just do like one moment at a time. We’re here with you.

supporting others in crisis with this mindset

Let’s just do this one second at a time together. And that really helped Jeff in that moment. And uh I think about those words all the time, but the hardest time I’ve ever had to use those words were at Talon’s funeral last year. I just had to be where my feet are. And I was actually staring at my feet at his funeral trying to get through that. And I was just telling myself, be where your feet are one moment after the next.

And it’s really difficult to be resilient in those moments when you start to have family members or friends pass away. It starts to tone down the rest of life. Things aren’t as bright. Music isn’t as loud. Doesn’t doesn’t work as well. You know, things are different.

using it through personal loss

But that’s the only way that you can get through it is to be where your feet are. So, I want to explain what that means a little bit more to me because as Talon used it, like I said, it wasn’t like be where your feet are, put your phone away, and be with your kids. That’s not what the lesson is that he was trying to tell people when he would tell us that. We had something that we talked about in the military all the time.

So, when you just are going to be where your feet are, it’s the closest alligator to the boat. I tell this to entrepreneurs all the time because people come to me, they’re stressed out, they’re frustrated, they don’t know what to do next. The only thing that you can worry about is the alligator that’s closest to your boat that’s about to sink it. We can’t worry if there’s a 500 alligators in this, you know, river and we’re worried about getting to shore.

We can only focus on the one that’s about to take us out. You can’t focus on the one that’s 2 years down the road or 15, you know, alligators down. We can only focus on the one that’s directly in front of us. And that was a theme that I was getting last night when I talked to a lot of different people about different issues you’re facing or struggles where you’re worried three or four steps down the road when it’s completely unnecessary.

Okay, let’s just focus on the next one cuz you signed up for a contact sport. You know, a football player doesn’t put on his pads and go out there and be like, “Why are you hitting me? It’s what they signed up for.” And entrepreneurship along with life is going to punch you in the gut.

the “closest alligator to the boat” principle

And that’s just how it works. That’s what we signed up for. There’s a lot of upside to being an entrepreneur, but sometimes there are really tough conversations we have to have, tough decisions we have to make. These are just things that we have to do. do.

why worry is useless…logic your way out

These are the things that we signed up for. The second thing it means is worry is not a helpful emotion. It’s just not. If you can do something about it, don’t worry about it. You have to logic your way out of worry. That’s the only way I get out of it. I have a lot of anxiety and the way I deal with it is ridiculous overpreparation and planning. I thought for a long time that meant I wasn’t an anxious person or didn’t have an anxiety problem.

I just found a ridiculous way to deal with it to where I’m prepared for end of the world scenarios at my house. It’s mild prepper over here. I’m prepared in business for the absolute worst case thing that could ever happen. Savings accounts that have emergency funds that have emergency funds. Like these are how I these are the ways I have chosen to deal with my anxiety.

planning as the cure for anxiety

But I always logic my way out of worrying about things because I can just be like is there something you can do about this? Yes. Okay. Let’s move this in a direction towards action as opposed to just sitting around and worrying about it and stressing out cuz I can do all the breath work in the world, right? But at the end of the day, the problem’s still there. I might feel better, more relieved, but we still need a plan of action.

And that’s the last thing that be where your feet are means. You have to make a plan. You have to make that plan. That’s why the 13:30 is so important. Feel like I end up talking about it every time I do my remarks is the plan is the most important thing. If you have a shitty plan, make a new one because that’s the only thing that’s going to alleviate the stress and the anxiety. Every hand was up in the room when I asked those questions.

The only thing that’s going to alleviate that is a really, really good plan.

final challenge: be where your feet are

So you have to be where your feet are at every moment. Doesn’t matter what happens. Bring yourself to this moment. Okay? As entrepreneurs, be where your feet are. If you want to take that to your family and put your phone away and be where your feet are and be more present, that’s great. But when it comes to the hard conversations, you need to be in that moment, not somewhere else. when you are trying to make an employee better or you know have a spot correction or be the leader that you need to be, you just need to be where your feet are, not be somewhere else.

Because the only way you can deal with any of these things that make you more resilient is to be 100% present in that moment. We are all so scattered. We have a lot to do. I think this time, this day and age is just we’re all over the place. We have incredibly demanding schedules. All of us throw kids in the mix, it gets worse and the anxiety goes up even more. But the only way we’re ever going to deal with it is we’re going to be where your feet are each and every single day.

Have a good plan and execute. All right, that’s it. Thanks.