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[Music]
hello scout up nation trace blackmore
here the host
of your favorite water treatment podcast
scaling up h2o of course where we
learn something new that will not only
help us avoid scaling
our customers systems up but help
us in maybe another area in life
folks we learned so much on this podcast
i know we’re
very technical sometimes to teach
something about industrial water
treatment
but then we’re also people we have to
figure out
what are some things that we can learn
so we can be
a more productive a more effective
and let’s face it just a happier person
and it’s my hope that i have done that
with all the different
guests that i have brought on over the
almost
four years that this podcast has been on
and i hope that you see a theme if we
get better as a person
we’re going to roll that into
our professional life if we get better
in our professional life
hopefully we are going to improve the
industry
and that’s why you always hear me say
a rising tide raises all
ships it really does when you look out
how you can help yourself how you can
help
other people it is amazing
how things can change well today
we’re going to be talking to an
individual that i met
from my good friend and coach tim
fulton as you know i spoke at tim
fulton’s small
business matters conference a few years
ago
that was episode 92 halfway through this
year
somebody wrote in and asked me what my
favorite episode i’ve done so far
was and that was very hard for me to
pick but what i did pick was episode 92
because that was my complete reflection
of me getting invited to this conference
preparing for the conference delivering
the speech
at the conference and everything that
happened after
and just sharing that experience on this
podcast
made that one of my favorites that i
ever did
so if you want to hear that that’s
episode 92
but at that conference i met who we are
going to
talk to today his name is john
fenton and he was the speaker
that was right before i
was going on stage and folks i think i
shared during this episode
i normally don’t get nervous when i
speak in public because i do it so much
but because
this was such a different format
i was a little bit nervous so i think i
tell john in the interview
that i probably didn’t hear everything
in his speech
but i did hear some things that i
actually
used when i went on stage
just a few minutes after well since that
time john and i have spoken a couple
times we’ve gone to lunch
he is just a phenomenal person and i
knew that you would enjoy
hearing from john on the scaling up h2o
podcast so if you will please welcome my
guest today
john fenton my lab partner today is
john fenton john thank you so much for
coming into the studio
i have been looking so forward to this
interview how are you today i’m great
trace thank you so much for inviting me
it’s great to be here
well awesome well i want to let the
scaling up audience know that you and i
did not know each other until about a
year ago
and we both met through the courtesy of
tim fulton and his small
business matters conference they were
you were both speakers there and got to
meet each other there and uh well not
only were we both speakers but
i had uh the privilege of following you
so you really set this high bar and then
i had to come in
and and do what i did thanks for that
well my
yeah my pleasure and you you did great
job man you’re very you had a great
delivery it was very it flowed very
easily it was very comfortable
and used great humor had great slides so
you did a great job
so that was uh that was a great
experience i really enjoy speaking
and and you and i speaking like this it
doesn’t bother me in the least
but i don’t mind telling you that doing
that ted talk
style format only having 15 minutes
um doing it in in that presentation
style
i might have looked calm i don’t know
what i look like but i was anything
but calm and the thing i remember most
was when you were speaking
and we’re going to talk about this but
you’re you’re a tai chi person and you
shared some tips with the audience and i
don’t know if i told you this but i was
in the ready room
and i was doing exactly what you were
telling the audience to do
and it really did center me i was like
you know what i i feel better about this
i’m going to go out here and do this
thing
it’s great i actually talk about um
centering yourself
centering the leadership from the center
which is a double entendre double
entendre
of i’ve actually played center in
college right so i had a different
perspective of what was happening during
the game
but also centering ourselves and being
the best best leaders we can be and the
best really the best human beings we can
be
and and that’s essentially what you’re
doing now you’re coaching people to be
better human beings and i love the the
tagline that you gave me as we were
talking earlier
the ceo sensei that’s just cool
thank you i it means a lot to me i don’t
know if it means anything to a lot of
other people but to me it really is
about my core essence about just
delivering
value to my my clients most of my
clients are ceos
executives entrepreneurs and leaders who
really just want to have more in their
life enjoy more of their success and
make sure they’re on path to really have
this you know enjoy the success that
they have and leave a legacy and that
sort of thing and
i just i just love that being able to
connect with those people in that way
are also their teams i work with their
executive teams
i’ve done retreats and workshops and
keynote speeches and all that stuff
and when i when i discovered someone
mentioned to me i think you’re like
you’re like the ceo whisperer and i said
well you know tony robbins uses that
and so i said and i thought about it for
a bit and i came up with
i started doing some research and i came
with ceo sensei and to me it just landed
for me as
something that really speaks to who i am
i love it i think it’s great so if you
have not
done a trademark on it you that’s yours
you need to go out there and i need to
get on that
absolutely john i can’t wait to
talk about what you said at small
business matters because that’s what i
want to talk about here today
uh but before we get there do you mind
telling the scaling up nation a little
about yourself
absolutely thank you trace um i’ve had a
lot of great successes in my life i’m a
retired i was a managing partner
one of the top cpa firms in the world
managing partner two different offices
so i worked my way up the ranks as a cpa
and a managing partner
and so i worked a lot with ceos and
leaders in business for many many years
a lot of different industries and
before that i was a collegiate athlete i
actually got to play at a very high
level played for the university of miami
hurricanes
and jim kelly mark richt a lot of
o.j anderson great nfl players you know
hall of famers um
and uh it went to nursing miami on a
scholarship and
i keep backing up a little bit before
that i was not an athlete before i got
to high school
i was not involved in any kind of
athletics really i started to touch on
it in junior high
i share a little bit of my story in my
book the five-minute mastery
which i wrote was an amazon uh
best-seller number one new release in
2018.
in three categories and three different
categories that’s right and so i
played football in high school i played
a lot of different sports in high school
and
and i um just excelled and it was highly
recruited
and had plenty of universities
recruiting me and i chose to stay closer
to home i grew up in south florida and
uh went to the university of miami
played center
um and uh so i tell people they see a
picture of jim kelly with a university
of miami uniform chances are it’s my
rear end in the picture
got my accounting degree my business
degree and my mba
there got married started a family
living the american dream right
and got into into practice of public
accounting and consulting and
really thrived in that and grew i was in
four different offices of the firm i was
with the last office
in georgia atlanta georgia and we just
we grew the practice exponentially
i mean we had transformed the business
doubled our size in less than five years
and really changed the face of our
practice um with our clients and the
people that worked for us and everything
and i was always trying to be the best
leader i could be
um and along the way um i discovered tai
chi
and meditation which really helped
ground me and really helped me to be
even more successful you know i carried
my book of business as a part i was
still
actively as a partner and had clients to
serve and and uh you know it’s carrying
that load also managing the business and
responsible for the whole responsible
for the whole team
uh to make sure we’re on the right path
and doing the right things we were one
of the top 10 offices in the firm
and had great success but with that
success also came a lot of stress
a lot of stress and there was one point
i share a bit about this in my book
where
you know i’d come home late at night my
wife would meet us at the
meet me and she met me the driveway one
time my wife was always very supportive
very loving very caring and she met me
in the driveway and she was pounding her
fist on my car and i won’t do it here
for your listeners
pounding her fist on my car like why
aren’t you ever home why aren’t you ever
home so i was missing out a lot in our
life and
um had an event that happened while i
was working uh
had a stress test and my heart was
racing really fast and they stopped the
test and rushed me to a hospital
and brought me into the heart
catheterization lab into the operating
room heart catheterization
to see if there’s any blockages or
damage to my heart
and i hadn’t nothing it was beating
really fast tachycardia they call it
and so i’m in the operating room and the
doctors are doing the
the scope the catheterization and i can
hear one of the cardiologists say oh
pristine so no blockages and i passed
out
i woke up a little while later in the
hospital room and it was my wife and my
daughter
and it struck me it struck me that you
know i wasn’t worried about the business
i wasn’t worried about the clients i
wasn’t worried about profitability or
the bottom line or
sales or any of that stuff i was really
just focused on i wanted to be with my
family with my wife and daughter
and that was a wake-up call for me and
so i had been kind of toying with the
idea of maybe taking early retirement
and i did about within that next year i
took early retirement
to follow my path to where i’m at now
and so i’ve been you know collegiate
athletic
excellence we played very high level and
i got i actually started three years a
letter four years and that was really
cool
and certainly my career in business i
have 40 plus years business experience
and leadership experience and financial
acumen
so i bring a lot to the table from all
those experiences
and along the way i was always aware of
leadership
or lack of leadership i’ve seen both
sides right
i’ve seen the good the bad and the ugly
in terms of leadership
and it really just was something i was
passionate about about helping other
leaders but be the best they could be
and to live their life by their design
and to enjoy their success now and so i
began a path of being an executive coach
and a leadership coach and trainer
and i my path meandered a bit i actually
ran a yoga and tai chi center for a year
and a half
well i don’t think i knew that and i
decided that’s not what i wanted to do i
started the practice had closed and i
was asked to reopen it i did and
stabilized it brought back the members
and they were able to sell it as a
franchise and they wanted me to keep
doing that and i said you know it’s not
for me i just don’t want to do that
because i wanted to be out in a
broader scale to more people to be more
people hence the reason why i’m here on
your podcast
to reach more people with my message and
my experience
and all around leadership and just being
the best leaders we can be
and so i had learned some great lessons
i had some great failures and some great
successes along the way and i think
really as you’re probably aware
probably tell your listeners that
failure is a great it’s feedback
that’s the best teacher out there best
teacher it is feedback it’s just
information right
so here i was i wrote my book in 2018 it
became a
bestseller in amazon you can find on
amazon five minute mastery
it was really based on my life
experiences and different things that
happened in my life and
around leadership and team building but
also taking care of ourselves and
focusing
on something i call the five-minute
shift to ground ourselves and doing some
of the practices you did
for your speech and i teach that to most
of my clients almost all my clients
and anyway so i wrote that book and it
was successful
the launch was successful and about two
months later i had another incident
happen
and that incident was here i am i’m
living my life’s dream
i’m in my zone of excellence dr gay
hendricks talks about this and other
people talk about dan kennedy talks
about it
and my zone of excellence of just
pushing beyond my my self-limiting
beliefs and
being out there helping executives and
leaders and
i’m in a meeting with a client and all
of a sudden i just pass out
this was december 2018. and he nudged me
a little bit to see if
he thought i was joking i didn’t move he
ran and got help they brought in the
facility director fitness director
and he got into the room saw was
non-responsive they got me on the floor
ripped open my shirt and began
administering cpr
and this gentleman’s name was scott and
he worked on me for about 25 minutes
during that 25 minute period they
brought in the defibrillator the aed
machine it was on site and that machine
went off about five times during that 25
minute period to revive my heart my
heart had just stopped
and i was unconscious and about halfway
through all this the emt
showed up the first nine minutes when
someone has a heart attack i didn’t have
a heart attack but someone’s heart stops
the first nine minutes are most critical
i kind of skipped the heart attack which
i’ll mention in a moment and the first
nine minutes are most critical to
get circulation to the brain and what
happened was i wasn’t getting oxygen to
my brain so i passed out
my heart stopped beating just so
happened i was in that building
at that time in that day and i normally
would not be meeting in that facility
it’s not where i live and it’s a
multi-purpose facility and in another
part of the building my wife was at a
luncheon with the holiday luncheon with
the women’s club
so she was brought in so she witnessed
everything she was there for the whole
event
they got me to a sinus rhythm scott did
not give up on me
got me to a hospital saint mary’s in
athens and um
i was put into a hypothermia coma and i
woke up about three days later
in icu and i said what the heck happened
and sitting there with my wife and my
daughter at my bedside
about three weeks later i went back to
see scott to acknowledge him for not
giving up on me
and scott said you know john i i’ve done
this over 100 times i’ve administered
the cpr
i know what i’m doing and i could tell
you’re fighting to get your breath back
i can tell you’re getting good
circulation and so i wasn’t going to
give up on you until you got to a sinus
rhythm and he said oh by the way the
only person i’ve never broken their ribs
now i’ll tell you i was super sore super
sore for about two months but
that’s okay that was an easy price to
pray and so that’s
that happened to me and it you know
people ask did you see a white light or
anything like that and
and no i didn’t i can’t really describe
what i was experiencing other than i
felt like it’s almost like you’re in a
dream and you’re sleeping you’re trying
to get your breath and that’s what
scott sends that and since then for
obvious reasons scott and i are good
friends yeah
anyway i i just felt that i’m here for a
purpose i have a purpose in life
that this message is even more
significant now even though i wrote
about it in a book two years ago
it’s even more significant now it really
brings home the message of enjoy your
success
now you know i love that and you know
we’re all so
focused on getting goals achieved and
i’m very goal-oriented yeah and the
thing i love about your story
is it’s it’s not that we don’t have
goals
but we have to be aligned to get to the
right place
really good point so i’m very i was very
good at so you know a college athlete
right off as a lineman so i was very
good in the red zone like i could
see the end zone like i’m like i played
my best in the in those
last 20 yards right and so i i
kind of like blinders on right and just
kind of zone in on what we got to get to
the end zone
and kind of forget about everything else
right the reality is
you know as human beings our bodies are
always
giving us information and we have to be
in tune with our bodies what’s going on
i wasn’t in tune with my body i was so
focused on all the goals that i’d set up
and also i think too that some of the
things i was doing
kind of falling back on past experiences
or past practices which
these things kind of get ingrained in
our habits right and it’s easy to fall
back into those habits
but i wasn’t listening to my body and i
wasn’t really aligned as you said i
wasn’t aligned with my real purpose
and so basically december 2018 my body
in a very pronounced way
said stop stop what you’re doing
so i did yeah i mean i i can’t
i can’t think of a bigger wake-up call
body’s saying hey
we’re we need to change things so
how are things different now well i
it’s a great question right i’ve really
thought about this a lot
so i made my number one goal um and i’m
a big follower of jack canfield the
success principles i use that they call
the white bible some people call it that
i use that with
most of my clients and i follow that
religiously and i’m actually
being in the process of being certified
as a trainer under jack canfield’s
methods
really was about focusing on what is my
big goal for 2019
and my number one goal my breakthrough
goals i call it was to
recover my heart health so i really
focused on that so what did i do
i made sure i got lots of rest sleep is
so important
and so underrated i had a client once
tell me
um she said she goes you know as we get
older we don’t need that much sleep
i’m going to call bs because you need
more sleep and at least seven to nine
hours right and everybody’s every day is
a little different
but at least seven to nine hours because
your body needs rest your brain
demands it requires that you have
downtime
and there’s different ways to do that i
love naps maps are a great thing
my wife my wife thinks naps means i’m
weak
not true i used to i took naps when i
was an athlete in between practices and
class and practices and stuff
so naps are really useful i’m not saying
sleep all day right but take a nap when
you need to you can feel it in your body
i can feel in the back of my head
so plenty of rest make sure you’re
hydrating well you know drinking enough
water and sometimes we forget about that
and you’re certainly in the
h2o right about water and uh really
taking the pressure off of myself so
what i had to do was shift my mindset
and i’m so
big on mindset and when i look back at
my past successes in life
i would set a goal and i had a i had a
mindset
i’m going to achieve that goal so i
believed
in myself that i could achieve that goal
even going back to junior high school
where i had no athletic experience at
all
and i set a goal to win the president’s
physical fitness award
and i was at the bottom of the bottom i
failed miserably all the tests the year
before
i shared a little bit a little bit about
this story in my book as well
but it was a pivotal moment in my life
because i chose to go for that goal
and when i did that i chose to be
different to act differently to take
different actions
i began running near the front of the
pack in phys ed at school
i practiced we had an obstacle course
and i would practice every weekend on
that obstacle course
and literally at the end of that
obstacle course was a literally a green
wall
and i when i first when i first got to
junior high school i didn’t know how to
get over that wall and i couldn’t get
over that wall i didn’t know how
and didn’t have the confidence to do it
didn’t know how
and but i kept practicing every weekend
my goal was to get over that wall and to
win the president’s physical fitness
award
and you know a lot of times in pushing
nowadays we’re all conditioned for like
instant gratification right right if i
set a vision i’m gonna get it in a month
or a week or a year whatever
took me almost two years to win that
president’s physical fitness award but i
never doubted
that i would get there that that
experience
in junior high as a 13 and 14 year old
made all the difference
set me on a trajectory of my life that
enabled me later to be
one of the top recruits in the state of
florida highly recruited was one of the
blue chip prospect
espn rankings didn’t exist back then got
a full scholarship
played at a very high level earned a
starting position
didn’t give it up until i got hurt and
then earned it back again my last year
because i just accepted that i’m going
to do the work
the day ends it’s frequency and
repetition frequency and repetition is
so important in everything we do
and the success habits right and i
learned those lessons early on
but i didn’t put pressure on myself to
get to that goal it wasn’t like the
world was going to end but i was putting
pressure on myself later in life
you know in the business world i’ve got
to hit these numbers i got to have this
goal i got to achieve this
you know i thought whenever a book came
out that i’d just be blind super success
there’s still a lot of work to do right
and so what i learned to do was to
really
step back it’s kind of funny because i
teach all my clients to do this
step back what i say is still five
minutes take
just five minutes in the day i recommend
in the morning
and again in the evening focus on some
breathing
and just really connect feel your body
and just and then think about you know
focus on what are you grateful for
gratitude is so important so every day
it was
really amazing when i went through this
process of nearly dying
i mean literally clinically i was dead
for 20 something minutes
and what happened was in our community
the community rallied around and the
family rallied around
right and there’s outpouring of love and
i believe in the power of prayer
and so there’s an outpouring of love and
people were so
like people couldn’t believe what had
happened right because i’m pretty
generally you look at me i’m a pretty
healthy guy
i’m not supe not over i’m overweight but
not like i’m you know obese
and could lose something to lose 10
pounds right and i always kind of ate
well and always exercise and all that
kind of stuff and practice tai chi and
meditation almost every day and
and people were really shocked by that
and it pulled our community together
and uh and so that outpouring of love
and so just stepping back and just
appreciating
that right appreciating
my wife who’s my my wife vicky is really
my
she’s my guard my guardian angel she’s
very strong
she was there for me every step of the
way she went she was in the ambulance
on the way to the hospital there every
day my daughter’s
the same way she lives close by and she
was there as well and
just appreciating what i had in my life
right
and just finding a way to get through
just to survive it and get through it
and the doctor said i beat the odds i
mean i had a five percent chance of
survival having gone through what i went
through
and by may i pretty much had a full
recovery and i still see the doctor and
i take medication in that
but just stepping back and appreciating
more what i had in my life
and then really big epiphany for me from
a business perspective and what i do now
is
i teach people it’s kind of funny but to
really believe
in myself and hence that’s how the term
ceo sensei came up was really just
believing in who i
am that i have something to offer people
one-on-one
in their teams and their groups and i’ve
led
three-day retreats with 30 executives
that kind of thing or one-on-one
or smaller groups and one-day workshops
keynote speeches just being who i am and
being connected with
my true my true self if you will and
being that leader that i always knew i
was
and to be the leader and to be the
leader for other leaders to help model
for them and really bring to to bear
um all the things that i’ve learned in
40 plus years i mean for almost 50 years
really since high school
right before in business all those
experiences that’s valuable
right and all the ups and downs and the
trials and tribulations right
but you know what i’m still here
well something you said that i
absolutely love and you learned it at 13
was you had to choose to be different
and i guess when you think about it the
default of not doing that is staying the
same
right and then the things that you were
doing your body
said eventually okay well buddy you need
to do things different we’re going to
give you a wake-up call
i can’t help but think there’s so many
listeners out there
that can relate with what you’re saying
but they haven’t had
that experience that you just shared
with us
what advice do you have for somebody to
start choosing to be different how do
you do that
when they’re and to go further there’s
just so many demands on us to stay the
same
right oh yeah yeah well it’s very
comfortable to say the same right
if i go back to even when i was 13
someone made a comment
you know sometimes people will make
comments or you’ll get some information
feedback
and it may not feel good right you may
not agree with it
but if you listen to that feedback
somehow this this
there was a phrase so i’ll tell you a
little bit of the story so we were a
bunch of boys in phys ed and we had
platoons
based on how we performed in the
president’s physical fitness award the
year before
the top of the class were the gold
t-shirts we had different colored
t-shirts based on performance
at the very bottom of the class were
white t-shirts and that’s where i was in
the group of white t-shirt kids
and one of the boys in the gold t-shirt
said to us boys in the white t-shirts
you’re nothing but a bunch of cream
puffs no i love
cream puffs i love pastries right in
that moment i looked around the other
boys in the white t-shirt group
and it wasn’t that i was any better than
them but i said that term meant
you’re weak sure you lack courage
whatever
actually creampuff is an antonym for
courage i looked it up recently
so you’re not courageous and so i looked
around those boys and i said that’s not
that’s not me that’s not my essence
right you boys in the gold t-shirts you
really know better than i am
in that moment i just and i used to run
way in the back of the
pack and running would make us run a
mile to warm up and i would complain and
whine and i just chose
to do diff be different because i had a
goal and that goal was to win that
president’s physical fitness award to
prove that i was just as worthy as
anybody else i mattered
right and that really drove me and i
think in life
we get feedback from different sources
sometimes it’s a
just an innocuous comment so be being
open to that feedback and then
choosing you know where do you where’s
your life at and where do you want to go
in your life so looking forward
go five years out 10 years out 15 years
out to retirement age what do you want
to do with the rest of your life
you know sometimes we in society we get
kind of in this treadmill we get this
mindset
this is the way it’s supposed to work
right what i did right go to college get
a degree get married have kids
work till retirement retire what does
retirement mean
right we’re living longer as human
beings we have so much to give as human
beings beyond age 60 or 62 or whatever
i’m not the type of person to sit on a
porch and play golf every day and drink
cocktails
i do maybe twice a week or three times a
week but not every day
and i live in a great lake and golf
community so i have that availability
but i never see myself just sitting and
not doing something meaningful and not
for
it’s meaningful for me it helps me
obviously but by helping others i’m
helping myself
right and so having that sense of
purpose and sometimes we lose purpose
i’ve had clients that
are very successful and they’ve got a
great business and they get to like
certain age and they go what am i doing
this for
you know i’ve lost my i call i lost my
mojo
right um and so it’s just reconnecting
with
what’s your purpose and why do you do
what you do and
what fuels you what’s the why what’s the
why right
and and connect reconnecting with that
sometimes we lose track of that because
we have all this material
success and all these things but that
doesn’t really fulfill you
the material things and the money and
things that we make they’re
evidence of the energy that you share
and the energy you receive i
totally believe in energy it’s it’s real
and it’s you know quantum mechanics is
all built around you know really trying
to explain how energy works
and everything is energy you break
everything down every atom
all the way down to nanoparticles
everything ends up being energy
and we exchange energy constantly like
we’re doing today
and so money and material wealth is just
a sign or evidence of
i’ve given someone some value and i’m
receiving value in the material form
that’s great but is that all you live
for you know what do you what’s your
real
purpose in life and you know i think
some of the two most precious things we
have in our lives are relationships
and our time so how do we use our time
so i
when i coach people when i do speak
keynote speeches i did that ted talk
format
my call to action was steal five minutes
i had an executive tell me oh i can’t
find five i cannot find five minutes in
a day
i said really let’s do the math that’s
five out of however many minutes that is
right
so it’s a real it’s less than 4.4 or
something of the day
and so just taking the time to spend
that five minutes
to really just breathe focus on your
breathing
relax into your breathing and focus on
what you were grateful for
over time that’s a starting point sure
right
i mean i’ve been i’ve been fortunate
enough to have gone on meditation tours
and retreats and i’ve done week-long tai
chi training
in sedona and south korea and other
places colorado rockies
i’ve literally been to the top of a
mountain with the leader of you know
this
very you know i don’t call him a guru
but this spiritual leader
about meditating with this person right
and
i’ve done hour-long sitting meditation
for an hour you know i’m not done i’ve
not gone to a buddhist temple or
or an ashram to spend a whole month some
people do that too or a week
but this is clearing your mind of all
the clutter and we get so much
information
there’s so much information coming at us
so we were talking earlier i firmly
believe and i coach all my clients
information fasting
right not all information is useful most
information is not useful
so you have to be very selective about
what information you listen to
and absorb and yeah and that’s hard
because it’s all around us
absolutely it’s all around it’s constant
24 7 right
back when i was growing up you had three
tv channels maybe four and they all shut
down at midnight
right and so it’s just what do i what do
i want to focus my energy on
and sometimes we get all caught up in
all this information we start wasting
our energy we lose connection with
our body and our you know connection
with our breathing
and all of a sudden we end up with some
significant health issues or we lose
track of why we do what we do we lose
our way
so um you know i think just really
focusing on your breathing stealing five
minutes five in the morning five in the
evening
is the starting point of really creating
the life that you really want to have
and enjoying your life now now i can’t
help but
think uh you probably got the same gift
tim fulton after we spoke at his
conference he sent me
a copy of the five minute journal i’m
assuming you got a copy as
as well as a gift it sat on my desk for
months i didn’t do a thing with it
and then i i read a book and it talked
about the significance
of really appreciating what you have and
i started looking at that book and from
that point on i started doing it
and when i started looking at the things
that
i was grateful for and what i could do
to make things even better which is what
that book forces you to do
in less than five minutes i might add my
attitude started changing my patience
became more abundant and i decided at
that time
that i wasn’t going to listen to the
news anymore that i was going to choose
where i got my news
and i didn’t wake up with the news i
woke up with that book
and i enjoyed it so much last december i
started telling the audience about the
five-minute journal
and so many people in the scaling up
nation have told me how much
that has helped them this there’s just
so much power giving gratitude
really because it changes your mental
state and also changes your vibration
right and when you’re in a state of
gratitude even though we have
we want to achieve like i’m a big
believer in achieving more success
not from a greed standpoint but i’m
driven to be the best that i can be
to make the biggest impact i can make in
the world so
what that means is but if i’m always
trying to get that
so there’s a thing called the law of
attraction whatever i’m focused on that
i don’t have
i’m gonna get more of what i don’t have
okay like follows like that’s
very simple just like follows like so if
i
if i keep focusing on what i don’t have
i’m gonna have more of what i don’t have
or don’t want right
so when i’m in a state of gratitude i’m
appreciating everything that i have
it sets me up to accept even more
gratitude and more good things
as i strive to achieve my goals
you know mindset basically it’s you know
what do you choose for your life
so a lot of people live in sort of a
negative kind of mindset they complain a
lot they blame others they never take
responsibility
jack canfield’s one of his success
principles one of the first ones is
accept you know take 100 responsibility
so if you’re in a relationship like
people come together in a marriage right
really both parties need to bring 100 to
that relationship not 50 50.
50 50 leaves a back door right so the
same thing in all things in life bring
100 percent of you take 100
responsibility it shifts your mindset
not that you caused it
but how do you respond to whatever the
event or whatever it is that can change
the outcome so mindset is so important
and and and so there’s different ways to
achieve mindset
right i think number one is connect with
you know what’s your
passion and purpose in life with your
business or whatever it is that you’re
passionate about
connect with that and then take time to
really
very simply just focus on your breathing
it just starts with your breathing
you know your body like i said before
your body gives you a lot of information
the one function that you can control in
your body is your breath
everything else happens automatically
your breathing happens automatically
but you can control it by controlling
your breathing you’re stimulating
something
little science to sympathetic and
parasympathetic nervous systems
so when you inhale you want to inhale
through your nose
that stimulates the sympathetic nervous
system so when you do that you’re
bringing energy
oxygen and energy into your body
you’re also stimulating fight or flight
which is the sympathetic nervous system
and you exhale through your mouth slowly
you’re stimulating parasympathetic which
is rest and digest
now as human beings you know what eons
ago right the first humans
fight-or-flight was a really useful tool
right because you’re going to get eaten
by this
saber-toothed tiger or whatever it is
you’re going to be in danger you need to
either fight or flight
some people freeze not good fight or
flight
well that’s great but now in today’s
society we don’t have the same physical
risk now if you’re in a car accident you
definitely are going to go into
you know fight or flight and that’s
totally you need to do that right to
survive
but the same thing happens when we get
an email we don’t like
or someone makes a comment or there’s a
deadline or something in our work
environment where we get this all wound
up and we start to get into this stress
mode
a lot of stress in our society even
grade school kids now a lot of stress
and so what happens is our brain does
not recognize whether it’s a physical
threat
or non-physical threat it’s just a
threat so you go right into
fight-or-flight stress mode and our body
when it does that certain things happen
physically in your body that your
hormones change cortisol increases
um heart rate you know increases blood
flow changes in your body all these
things are happening to protect you
your body is very efficient when we but
if we step back for a moment
i’ve got this deadline i’ve got this
issue with a client or customer
whatever it might be that’s bothering
you causing stress
take a step back and breathe into that
discomfort that feeling
focus on the breathing as i mentioned in
through the nose slowly and gently and
out through your mouth slowly a little
bit slower
that can really kind of settle you down
bring you back to the present moment
right bring you into a present state
that calms your brain activity down
and it takes practice it’s not going to
happen overnight many people their
brains are
just constantly going people have
trouble sleeping at night because their
brain’s constantly working
so it’s like it’s like building a muscle
right it’s like building a muscle
to take a few minutes to really focus on
your breathing to center yourself and
ground yourself
so that you can make better decisions
yeah the military teaches that combat
breathing exactly
exactly and so it’s really about
settling yourself down so you’re not
panicked
a lot of talk about panic in today’s
society really want to settle yourself
down and be
more calm more more um more centered and
grounded so you can make better
decisions
respond better into situations sometimes
we
we’re in a conversation and we anxiety
builds up our anger builds up or some
emotions building up
and then we blurt out something we
didn’t mean to say or didn’t want to say
for example i used to simply get an
email and i’d read it one way
and i could be really pissed right and
smartme would say
i’m not going to respond to that right
now and i’d go back to it later or the
next day and i would read it and it was
totally a different message when i read
it that’s why email’s such a
poor way to communicate because it’s
always misread with misread right and so
i said oh that’s what they really meant
so i didn’t have to take
i interpreted something i’d read the day
before
you know earlier when i stepped back and
took a step back from it and then came
back to it i actually read the message
so i could respond in a more thoughtful
way and not just blurt something out
that was going to cause more problems
than not
i think that’s great advice for
everybody listening uh i i can’t tell
you how many emails i wish
i should have waited on instead of
hitting send
well you shared an exercise when we were
at the small business matters conference
now we have a lot of people driving
right now
so i want to start this with pull over
first before you do this
but do you mind sharing with the scaling
up nation what that exercise is
so um yeah if you’re driving you please
pull off to the side somewhere safely
this only takes a few minutes maybe even
five minutes
so if you’re sitting in your chair or
your seat wherever you might be
make sure your your back is erect and
spine is straight
if you can place your hands on your
knees your palms facing up
and i want you to close your eyes and i
just want you to focus on your breath
i want you to breathe in gently through
your nose
slowly exhale through your mouth
breathe in gently
exhale slowly a little bit longer than
the inhale
breathe in
exhale slowly
continue at your own pace inhaling
through your nose exhaling through your
mouth
and as you continue to breathe feel your
body notice what you feel in your body
you feel some tension do you feel some
do you feel tired
do you feel energized do you feel some
pain
just notice you feel some heat just
notice what you’re feeling in your body
connect with that feeling don’t avoid
that feeling
actually just breathe into that feeling
and just be with sit with that just sit
with that for a few moments
feel everything in your body as you go
through that process of feeling your
body
and you become comfortable relaxed
i’ll add one thing focus on what’s one
goal you’d like to achieve this year
what’s the one thing would be a
breakthrough goal that if you
achieve this goal everything would
change in your life and what if 2020 was
the year
that everything changed for you and your
family for the best
focus on that breathe into that begin to
visualize and see that goal
see achieving that goal see yourself
achieving that goal what’s happening
around you
what are you experiencing when you
achieve that goal what are the feelings
associated with achieving that goal
and just continue to breathe into that
that experience
and when you’re ready you can slowly
open your eyes and breathe in deeply
and exhale breathe in deeply
exhale breathe in
and exhale so
if you have a moment write down what
that goal is write that down
write down the words the feeling words
of what you experience
when you’ve connected with that goal and
every day when you do your five minutes
of morning and five minutes
in the afternoon or evening five minute
shift i call it
and i have a free gift for your
listeners too that they can get that
gift very easily
it’s a little pdf that kind of guides
them it’s also based on
a section of my book the five-minute
mastery
in the morning and evening write an
affirmation for yourself on what that
achieving that goal looks like
and just simply when you write it to say
i am so happy and grateful
that i now am whatever that goal is
and so it’s in the present tense as if
you’ve achieved it today
and and recite that to yourself in the
morning and evening when you do this the
centering
breathing technique and and just see
what happens
see what kind of things happen in your
in your life see what changes
well as i said earlier i did this as you
were having
the audience do it when i was getting
ready
to follow such a an expert presentation
so i was a little nervous and that truly
centered me
and i remember i have a friend that’s an
attorney
and he told me that if you were ever
getting
questioned in a court of law to always
put
palms up so there’s got to be something
to that what is there is
so it’s okay chinese medicine or
acupressure points
right western medicine doesn’t really
fully embrace
acupressure but i think it’s very useful
and it’s very valuable
and it’s valid so there are acupressure
points in your body
okay and there are certain pressure
points so there’s acupressure points in
the center of your palms
and when you turn your palms up like if
you go to church and you pray
sometimes you raise your palms up right
so you’re opening up the
energy channels if you will you’re
opening yourself you’re opening your
body to receiving
a good energy basically is what you’re
doing
well i i want to say that he said it’s
impossible to think in a negative
mindset with your palms up and that’s
why he advised you do that if you were
in that situation well think about it if
your palms are down
palms are on your knees and you’re
clenching your knees or your arms are
crossed
you are blocking yourself so your body
and brain
are very much connected and so by those
physical things your body
registered and your brain registers as
okay withhold
can you know control withhold hold back
when you open your palms
you become vulnerable i totally believe
in the power of vulnerability i think a
lot of people have a negative
connotation when they hear the world
word be you know being vulnerable
what it really is is a place from
strength so think about this you’re in
junior high i was in junior high they
had a dance
in junior high all the girls on one side
all the boys on the other side
it takes great courage to walk across
that
gymnasium floor to go talk to the girl
you choose
absolutely it does to ask that girl
today most people don’t get that far
that’s right they don’t do it
they hold back right that’s being
totally vulnerable
totally vulnerable i like to share brene
brown has a tedx talk she did in 2010
it’s on youtube the power of
vulnerability it’s about 20 minutes
i encourage all your listeners to find
that and on youtube renee brown
from a place of being vulnerable
actually takes great courage
because you’re accepting the chance the
opport the chance that you’re not going
to be successful
but that’s a possible outcome so i was
in junior i was in high school actually
and with my football buddies in high
school and there’s all these upper you
know
girls and there’s a this one girl i
forget her name i can’t remember her
name but i can see her
so clearly right now and she was enough
she was like a senior and i was like a
sophomore right
and i said i want to dance with her and
so i walked across the gymnasium floor
and i asked her to dance you know what
she said
yes yeah you there you go you put it out
there
and we danced and all my friends were
like so blown away right
but sometimes she could have said no
right it’s very possible
so it’s being vulnerable to that
possibility of being turned down
right i think as human beings we all
went you know we’re tribal people really
we want to belong
right that’s how we survived early on as
a human race so we want to belong we
don’t want to be shunned we don’t want
to be
disregarded we want to be accepted right
and so
so that opportunity for someone to say
no to you sometimes can hold us back
and i’ve learned from one of my my
coaches is that you know no
just means there’s a yes coming right
then one more step to a yes right when
you’re cold calling you have to think
okay it’s
one more one and i hate picking up the
phone right but sometimes i have to
send out emails and i’m inviting people
to events and i’m picking up the phone
i just got to believe that they’re going
to say yes and if not that’s okay
right just next yeah somebody shared
with me one time that
it’s not your responsibility to answer
for the person
and that’s normally why we don’t ask the
question is because we’re worried that
they’re going to say no
well that’s not in our control but what
is in our control
is we can ask the question don’t be
scared to ask big
because they might answer big yeah i
like i wrote a meme and i post a lot of
information on linkedin and i share a
lot of content and one of my little
memes that i’ve created is
think big think big um
you’re right it’s don’t we project
ourselves into the conversation
just get to the point where you just ask
just ask
jack canfield likes to say be an
there you i love it all right just ask
and ask and ask and ask until you get to
a yes yeah and i do have a clean lyrics
rating so if you have any doubt of that
re-listen to that again he said exactly
the ask
whole right so uh
so much we talked about during today’s
podcast and thank you so much for
for sharing that with us but i know
there’s some listeners out there
that are thinking all this sounds great
where do i start what advice do you have
for me
well my advice is number one go go to my
website okay
okay that’s one place to go all right so
so what is that yeah john jayfenton.com
okay real easy um
also you can i have you can get my free
downloadable
uh gift uh the five minute shift
and it’s www.bit.ly
so dot l bitlybit.lyf forward slash
the five minute shift the number five
the five minute shift all one word
get a free download it’ll ask you for
your name and email
and you’ll get that free pdf immediately
and uh and begin changing your life so
just you know take that five minutes
steal
my my final call to action is steal five
minutes steal five minutes
take five minutes to reflect on what you
what matters most to you
and what uh what you appreciate most in
your life and if people are thinking
they don’t have five minutes i’m sure
you would say
well i would say this in the matter of a
moment as fast as i can snap my fingers
everything can change so
invest five minutes in yourself you’re
worth it there you go
there you go well i’ve got a few more
questions for you
if you can hang around just a little bit
longer so these are lightning round
questions questions that i ask of all of
my guests
so uh the point values are double in
this round this morning
all right so uh if you could go back
to your first day as a business coach
what advice would you give yourself
to really believe to really own my
um expertise and the value that i do
bring to the table
that i really that what i what i share
and what i bring to the table is really
valuable and to own that
what are the last few books that you’ve
read oh let’s see
um well i’ve read the success principles
i keep reading that over and over so i
read that a lot um
i mean i’ve read some different books
i’m in a men’s book club actually so we
read the
empire of the summer moon which is about
the native comanches in texas and the
west
i love the western culture really a
great book
actually a nominee for the pulitzer
prize
came out a few years ago i’m reading
tony
robbins book the uh giant within i
believe it is
just started reading that and i’m always
i’m constantly reading i mean i
i read probably two or three books at a
time right now i’m reading a barnard
bernard cromwell novel okay which is i
don’t know if you’re familiar with him
but
he writes about um england at the time
of before the
before the first millennium so right
like the year like eight hundreds and
nine hundreds like the eighth and ninth
century
time frame about the um the saxons
saxon england and the vikings uh and
there’s actually a series on netflix
called
um the last kingdom it’s based on his
books
and he’s written a whole series of books
and so i finally picked up one of his
books
believe it or not i was on a barnes
noble recently and picked up one of his
books and started reading that because i
love that period of time
such a pivotal time in the history of
england so i’m so impressed with people
that can read
multiple books at the same time and keep
them straight i am not one of those
people here’s another good one
go like hell it’s the book that the
movie uh ford versus ferrari was based
on oh okay so it’s about you know ford
and
and uh henry ford ii and uh carol shelby
i have a picture of carol shelby i have
a mustang i love
mustangs it’s beautiful it’s in the
parking lot carol shelby
as an autographed picture that carol
shelby and steve mcqueen with one of the
shelby cobras before it was a ford cobra
really awesome and so i just by the
whole experi that whole
the book gives all the background what
was going on at that time in the 60s
with car racing and car production and
all that stuff so it’s pretty cool
i think that movie just released out to
uh dvd didn’t it
probably did probably because it just
came out like a few months ago yeah
right
so uh there’s no doubt about it
hollywood’s going to find out about you
they’re going to make a movie about
jonathan
facebook they might make a book might
make a movie
maybe so so when they do that who plays
john
oh harrison ford harrison you know why
this is so funny
my wife and i went to ireland a couple
years ago it was a great trip we were
there about 10 days
we’re in we’re coming back and we’re
still in ireland
so we’re at the airport and one of the
gate agents there’s an older gentleman
he says
there’s irish brogue he says oh you look
just like harrison ford
and i get that a lot and remember like
the cab driver see that i’m really a cab
driver
i saw my wife will say no you don’t but
a cab driver recently
was talking to me or going to the
airport and uh and he said oh you look
like a famous actor i said let me guess
tell me who you think it is because
harrison ford so i need to put a website
up not harrison ford basically but
i think harrison ford’s really cool and
i loved all his characters he’s played
over the years so that would be harrison
that’s a great one people tell me i
sound like tom hanks which i don’t hear
and my wife is very quick to say no he’s
good he doesn’t sound like that
so that tom hanks is good
anyway moving on my last question is you
now have the ability to speak with
anybody throughout history who to be
with
and why there’s two people that come to
mind
one would be abraham lincoln and then
winston churchill
because they were such pivotal leaders
in a period of such
a time of great distress in the world
right
and to make the decisions they made and
how they got to the conclusions they
they did and the things they had to
overcome to achieve what they achieved
in their life and just to understand
you know their perspective um you know
certainly abraham lincoln you know
committed a lot of
young lives to try to keep this nation
together
those had to be really hard decisions
and then winston churchill i mean
he i think literally his famous speech
helped to bring america into the war and
changed the tide of the war in world war
ii
it really did and you know britain a
little island that stood up against nazi
germany was such a pivotal point
all because he believed in the ability
of the british
people to overcome and so that mindset
right he could have caved and he didn’t
right abraham lincoln could have caved
and not stood up against slavery and
that sort of thing and
so to meet with those people and to
understand whether where their mindset
was and
how they got to their their conclusions
and their decisions they made would be i
think really cool to understand them so
well that was today’s talk was all about
mine that’s right so
thank you so much for for coming on you
shared a lot of information with us i
want to make sure that i have the links
that you mentioned
on our show notes page but uh i i know a
lot of people
are going to be pulling off after they
listen to this and trying that exercise
and and folks i don’t know if you think
if that sounds weird or not but i am
here to tell you
that 100 that really helped me
focus and uh it allowed me to
i feel i did a good job during during
the presentation but
you’re welcome yeah it was all you it
was all you
if i didn’t do that i wouldn’t have had
the mindset
and the presence to connect with the
audience so it really does work and
thanks for sharing
everything that you did with us thank
you trace a pleasure to be here in the
lab
scale up nation john is still on me
to try tai chi and i have to tell
you it’s on my list but i still
haven’t done that yet maybe i’m going to
get to the vision boards and then i’ll
do
tai chi afterwards by the way both of
those people i met
at tim fulton’s conference so
let me segue to that when was the last
time
you went to a conference
and you tried to make the most out of it
now
i’m going to give you effort that it’s
hard
to do a zoom conference which is how
most of our conferences
are with our covid pandemic
but even with that when do you try to
reach out
to speakers to people that you met at a
conference
when do you connect your social media
all that sort of stuff
these are the things that i really force
myself to do because i never know
what that other individual has
in their mind that can help me out and
vice versa maybe there’s something that
i’m carrying around
that they are searching for so i try to
make that a mission
to every conference that i go to
how can i help how can i be helped
and again lots of people that you heard
from at least two
from the podcast uh actually i take that
back there have been
three there was alicia butler pierre
that came
on and talked to us about standard
operating procedures that was episode
131 then of course we had trisha malloy
that i just mentioned that was episode
156 where she was talking about her
crave
acronym and some things that we could do
to help ourselves
and today of course we had john
fenton and just a fun group of people to
talk to
john i really appreciate all the ideas
that you gave us by the way all the
tools that you mentioned
are on our show notes page so you can
download everything that john mentioned
from the show notes page
and you can even get to his website from
there as
well so all that to say is i
just urge you to make the most out of
everywhere that you go
because you just don’t know what that
person is going to be able to help you
with
or vice versa speaking of
helping i always need help
with the scaling up h2o podcast as you
know i love to do
pinks and blues episodes those are all
inspired
by the listeners what do the listeners
want me
to talk about what issues are they
having who have they found that they
want me to interview all of that stuff
i would love for you to go to
scalinguph2o.com
go to our show ideas page and send me a
quick note
that way or if you have a question
go to the send voicemail button on
the right side of the home page
and if you click on that a dialog box
will come up you click on that
and you can record right from your
microphone
you asking me your very question
i love doing those shows so please
make sure i have plenty of information
so i can get
those shows to you and speaking of new
shows
of course as every friday next friday
you will have
a brand new episode of scaling up h2o
so i hope you have a safe week in the
meantime
and i will talk with you next week
[Music]
scout nation i know you are wondering
about some of the benefits of joining
the rising tide mastermind
well here is reid hutchinson of hoh
to talk about what he gets out of being
a member
of the group relationships especially
professionally
uh go to another level when you have a
safe group of people that you can trust
with your actual issues and when you
can help others out and also receive
help i just think it really creates a
deep bond and so
so new relationships definitely a key
benefit another benefit of being in the
rising tide
mastermind is getting ideas and insights
from others across the country and
different types of roles or companies
there’s a lot you can learn from reading
but there’s something
that happens when another person knows
what you’re dealing with and can share
from their actual experiences so lots of
ideas
and insights reid thanks for sharing
that there’s so many people out there in
the scaling up nation
that just don’t know what a mastermind
group is and what the benefit
of being a member of a group like that
is
so you sharing that allows people to get
a little insight of what it’s like to be
a member of the rising tide mastermind
if you want to learn more about becoming
a member of the rising tide mastermind
go to scalinguph2o.com forward slash
mastermind
you