Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Good morning, LinkedIn community. Thank you for joining us for another episode of coffee with Jim and James. It is post-Christmas. I guess James, I can get rid of the hat now. I've been wearing it for a week. I think so. But anyways, today though, we want to bring it back around. We've done a few episodes of the seven habits book, and this is now our third episode and James, uh, has lived seven habits for years. Teaches it and such. So we're excited to bring this back. I know a lot of our audience James has really wanted us to do this. So we thought fitting for the holiday season will bring up this one, which is chapter number one being proactive.
Speaker 2 00:00:50 Yeah. Um, yeah, for those that don't know, uh, energy world that we are very passionate about the book by Stephen Covey, the seven habits of highly effective people. Um, there's different versions of it. This is one of my older copies. Um, there's actually a newer version. I liked this one. I had a lot more notes in it after all these years, but, um, it's, uh, it's an awesome book. It's a business fundamental. It's a life fundamental, uh, element I think, uh, definitely recommended from, for, for business. And I think as you start to read it, you'll realize that it transcends business for sure, but EWN is, has always been passionate about this and focused on kind of teaching these habits internally. And so, uh, we have initiatives built around that, that bring new groups through all the time and Jimmy, I think you're living it right now.
Speaker 2 00:01:48 In fact, probably by the time this airs, we will have graduated, uh, goodness, this class was seven habits. So it's been a, it's been a passionate journey, a lot of awesome people involved in this habit that, um, we're excited, super excited, uh, to bring another class there. So that's, that's kinda what we do. It's honestly, it's our common language at energy world that we talk about that all the time. There's a couple of books and a couple of principles that, that we pull into everyday life, and this is one of them. Um, so, uh, that's kind of this high level, Jimmy on what, what this initiative about, uh, you know, it was kind of you and I were talking one day about bringing this to our group, you know, our, uh, our audience, the coffee with Jim and James audience. And so, um, you mentioned it, but a lot of good feedback so far from the people that are watching and don't think,
Speaker 1 00:02:44 Well, I think we've had some great feedback. Uh, I can't tell you countless hundreds of different, uh, uh, correspondence in regards to that. Uh, but James, you know, that's some of the, the, the interesting part about this is the personal aspect of it. And, you know, it's really easy to hear about, you know, bringing into the corporate world and such like that. But, um, uh, what about, you know, you, you personally, you know, how has it affected you where where's abroad?
Speaker 2 00:03:12 You, let me get a new dog today. It's good. It's this is life. Jibo just roll with it. Bring that pretty dog in here. Hold on. Let me get, I think everyone should see this stuff. Uh, I believe it's, uh, Jimmy Jimmy Hill tell us what this dog is. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:03:34 This is a cat, a hula leopard, um, she's 18 weeks old. Her name is Khaleesi and, uh, she's, uh, she's a puppy. She is a very vibrant puppy.
Speaker 2 00:03:49 So shout out to, uh, game of Thrones reference. We may get more viewers just from the Khaleesi reference. Um, but, but Jimmy, you said personal experience from, uh, from being proactive. You know, this is a hard one for me, and it's a fundamental one for, for the seven habits. The reason that is, is the first habit is really to get you in that proactive stance. And, and it's a battle, um, you know, on the, pre-show generally we're talking about, you know, that it's a journey, you know, that being proactive, you think you flip a switch, just like anything once you can. Um, and just immediately everything you're going to be able to be proactive instead of reactive. The problem is, is there's all this programming that has went on behind the scenes already for however long that you haven't been proactive. So some things are going to knock you over the head, right?
Speaker 2 00:04:48 I mean, some things are going to roll in and knock your legs out from under you. But the difference is that taking a kind of a post-mortem of that and saying, okay, so the garage door broke again. Um, this time I'm going to grease it, you know, like, and that's a silly micro example, but the, one of my favorite kind of analogies on it is let's use the garage door either way. You're going to have to grease that garage door. You can do it proactively, or you can do it when it shuts down because it can't function. Right. So all Covey is saying is you're going to do it either way. Why would you not do it, you know, right away out of the way. Yeah. So it's a hard one. I, and I procrastinated a lot of my life. I'm not so much that person anymore.
Speaker 2 00:05:45 So I'd say that's been the biggest impact for me. Um, but I'm a work in progress. I mean, uh, because there's some things I'm not very good at. I've never been a calm, unless I'm a dude and I'm going to say this, I've never been a car maintenance guy. Just, I don't know, I didn't grow up in a household where I was involved in that part. Right. It just happened. It was a black box. Um, Nope, not a problem, but now as an adult, I, I don't even know half the time, what I don't know about a car. And so I'm probably getting all kinds of hate mail about that, but it's true. Um, but, but going down that path and starting to understand that I realized there should maintenance and some things that can be very proactive about that in past, in my past life I had, so again, very small example, but, um, it, it works across the boat,
Speaker 1 00:06:44 But don't you think that by, you know, as we evolve and, you know, if we set our bar not looking into the future, so to speak, like what we want to be in a year or five years or 10 years, but actually looking at us yesterday in, in your example was a good one, you know, your yesterday, whether it be 10, 20 years ago or yesterday, um, it is, uh, what's the word I'm looking for. It's, it's a, it's a milestone and then things change. So now in your life, you have kids, you have family and such. So when you look at your car, don't you have a different aspect on it.
Speaker 2 00:07:24 Oh, sure. Sure. And, and even unless like, um, you know, if we talk about that, you know, I mean, you're, you change as a person over the years, obviously your priorities change. But if we go up to the level that Covey talks about, um, and we talk about putting these principles in place, like being proactive, it transcends those types of things. Cause that's what he even says in that chapter. If you remember, um, is that people and things and places, and you know, all those things change. They're chaotic in nature, right? They, they add levels and levels of complexity, different things. So if you go up a level and say, okay, I'm not going to say I'm going to do really well about getting my kid to school or you instead build a principle that says I'm early to everything.
Speaker 1 00:08:20 Right, right, right. I can't control
Speaker 2 00:08:22 The school necessarily one day or the people that screw up my morning or whatever. But as a rule, I'm going to say, I'm going to wake up earlier and leave her in your every single day to be proactive and not catch that traffic. Right. That's, that's, that's the principle based approach to it where you go up to that higher level. And that's, that's the confusing part sometimes for people is they go, okay, I'm going to work on being proactive. I'm going to do this very specific task. We're saying, yeah, well, that's great. But really what we're meaning could you go up a level and schedule more things? You know, maybe scheduling is a very proactive task for some people, Jimmy, we use it all the time. Right. I mean, if we have an idea, we go ahead and put something on the board. If, if, even if it's just a placeholder so that we can get together and discuss it more and that's proactivity. Right.
Speaker 1 00:09:20 Right. And, and you're, you're, you know, there's a feeling to James that when you do that, I don't know what the feeling is. If it's a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of relief, something, you know, it gets back to whether you said the car or whatever. If I feel that I've done something where I'm not behind the eight ball, but I'm ahead of it. You know, I put the grease on the, uh, garage door, you know, I quit the thing on the board. We're going to talk about it. We have a placeholder, you know, we're going to strategize about something. It just is. It's just, I don't know. It's, it's a very good feeling. You know, the problem with me though, James, is that it can go, you know, like in cycles where all of a sudden, like, I feel like Holy buckets today, I didn't do anything proactive. I was behind the eight ball the whole day. And again,
Speaker 2 00:10:06 Yeah, yeah. It's easy. It's easy to fall in those ruts and those old habits. That's the old habits creeping back in as all. And, and the results that are still coming from not being proactive two years ago or earlier in your life earlier in the week. Like I, again, you're, you're trying to gain momentum. And those, those swings on those ebbs and flows are definitely that momentum starting. And then those old habits kicking back down, and then the momentum starts again. So it's, it's the low-hanging fruit in the situation is so powerful because it can gain that momentum for you to just blow through the bigger things. And that feeling you talked about, that's the other end of that spectrum. Right. So we've got, you know, on one end, we've got that feeling of when something, you have to be super reactive, you know, when something knocks your legs out from under you, and then you've got that feeling when you scheduled something so proactively, and that's that spectrum that we're on. And we're trying, you know, we're trying to move that needle towards, you know, where it needs to be, but it's, it's a battle. It's a journey, you know, you said it earlier, it's a journey. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:11:18 Yeah. Um, help us to, you know, give us some tips that what would be your recommendation? You know, we, we need somebody at a trade show and they come up to us and say, I'm so far behind, you know, blah, blah, blah, what are some easy tips that we can give them?
Speaker 2 00:11:39 Um, you know, w I think Jim, we can use our situation. Um, I'm going to use coffee with Jim and James as a, as a example. Okay. So from the outside, you know, we just hop on, hop on a show, record, it done deal. Right. But in order to make sure we have content and episodes, and, um, they're released on a timely manner. Um, no matter if we're on vacation or wherever, it might be, there's a lot of pre-planning that goes into that. Whereas if we were flying by the seat of our pants, scheduling people on the fly, uh, the first time one person canceled on us, our world would combust and burn into planes. Right. Right. So, so, so what do we do where we get a very agile and proactive stance, right. And we say, okay, um, we need to look ahead. We need to look for the gaps.
Speaker 2 00:12:40 Funny enough. We're talking about that as, what are we doing, Jimmy? We're recording an episode right now. Uh, it's December 15th and this thing will air over the holidays. Right. So, uh, hope you had a happy holiday, but that was that's being proactive because we can sit back and got to that week and called each other and had to work during the holiday. And it's still a good time, but you get what I'm saying. Like, that's, again, a micro example, but getting ahead of it, scheduling people, scheduling, building the workflow, um, managing the workflow, you know, you just keep adding to it, but how did it start? It started with man. We need, we need to think ahead. And what happens when we can't do an episode or a guest falls through, uh, what's our backup plan, you know, those types of things. That's very much proactivity emotion.
Speaker 1 00:13:41 Yeah. I don't. And I agree with you, I'm just thinking personally that it, it kind of builds, it may seem daunting at first, but one thing that leads to another leads to another, and an example is, you know, after the wedding, when we got back, I was offered 10 days and I was like, the first day back, I'm like, wow, everybody is going at a million miles an hour and I'm barely out of neutral, you know? And then it took a few, you know, a little bit to get back into the step of thing and then, you know, building a back up and I I'll tell ya, you know, pulling the seven habits, you know, not everything. Cause that was also daunting, but I pulled little things, little snippets, you know, I'm like, all right, I sharpen the saw. So I got that out of the way, you know, and then, you know, you know, putting first things first.
Speaker 1 00:14:25 Okay, okay. I'm back in the swing. Let's make sure I have my list. You know, first things first and they really do help. And the exciting thing, and the thing I love about seven habits is it's just like that. And for, I'll say, it's almost like reading the Bible, you know, you may read this, you may read that you may go through and some days you just need, okay. I feel like I'm struggling. You know, you go through and you read a little bit and you're like, okay. It puts me back into perspective. So yeah,
Speaker 2 00:14:55 I I've been blessed to be on both sides of it, learning and teaching. And I love it because every time through I'll get something else. Right. It's very much like the Bible or some of those iconic, fundamental business books that you can pick up and just write. And one of my favorite parts and we're actually approaching it. Um, I think in a couple of days we're wrapping up this session with seven habits with this group that we're in and it's awesome group. Jim's part of that. And we're doing sharpen, the saw. And one thing we do is we ask everyone what, what hit them the hardest out of this chunk, right? This, these seven habits, which one really made the biggest noise in their world. And that is the most fascinating part because yeah, you'll have some people like, Oh, I just don't put first things first.
Speaker 2 00:15:56 Or, you know, like I got to sharpen this, everybody needs sharpened saw, right. But man, when you hear those little tiny nuggets that aren't even habits, they're moments that are this not, I'm telling you, just knocks your legs up from under view. And all of a sudden you say, wow, you know, I got to get my life together. I'm just kidding. But, uh, you know, man, I, I figured it out. I cracked the case, you know, I cracked the code. It feels like cheat codes kinda when you really get that on minimum and start going. And that's an amazing feeling. That's why we do it and preach it and hope, hope people buy. And also, and that's why we're doing it here. We don't get paid Steven company. Isn't sponsor announced
Speaker 1 00:16:43 That isn't Oh, well, no, it's great. It's, it's a wonderful journey. And it's just that it is a journey and I'm excited to be, you know, I will say this to the audience. I think it's really important that if you're on this journey to have a mentor, a sounding board, like I could go to James and say, I'm struggling with this. And James is, you know, it doesn't give judgment or whatever he goes, have you tried this? Have you looked at this? Maybe this aspect might help. So I will say when you have a team, you know, even if it's another person or two people or a little small group, I would highly encourage that. Um,
Speaker 2 00:17:22 I think that's a really good idea. Yeah. And I like, uh, you said just one more tip. Um, we, I, I was going to say this earlier, but I think scheduling is an easy way to start. Um, it feels like just schedule somethings. You know, we talked about it when we did first things first and sharpen the saw, and then was put some things on the schedule. We have a new year coming up. I promise you for a lot of people that are well not when you're hearing this, you probably won't have a clear schedule anymore, but you know, your February probably isn't booked yet. Start, then start somewhere. Start now, you know, just schedule that first thing at first proactive mode, call it be proactive. Even if you don't know what you're going to do in that time. Um, do it
Speaker 1 00:18:13 Well, how about this people that are watching this episode now, credit yourself that you are being proactive by taking
Speaker 2 00:18:21 That's right? Because this is the first step. Um, Covey says that in his book, there's two creations, the first one, the mental, and then the physical creation. This is the mental, this is how we shaped that by watching things like this and learning about these habits are the things that end up shaping that image that we go after. Right? So we're shaping and building the program later in these other habits, we learned how to run it and reap the benefits and the rewards from it.
Speaker 1 00:18:51 Yep, absolutely. James, I, I think we're going to wind up any more words you want to say or
Speaker 2 00:18:59 Schedule, schedule, schedule meeting with yourself for a February one, unless you can do it sooner, schedule it with yourself that says be proactive and start figuring it out. You'll get better.
Speaker 1 00:19:16 I like it. LinkedIn community. Thank you for joining us today. Uh, it's been a lot of fun. Uh, I hope the holidays are, we hope the holidays are great for you. Uh, if you haven't yet go get your copy of seven habits, read it, understand it, look at it. Even if it's just one page a day, it could help you. So please do that. Uh, on behalf of James and myself, we want to thank you again. Have a great day, again, continue to have a great holiday season and we will see you next time on coffee with Jim and Jane
Speaker 3 00:19:48 <inaudible>.
