Episode 29
In this episode, Doug and Tim discuss how to make sure your business serves your life instead of your life serving your business.
First, we need to know the main WHY for the business and if it still serves its purpose. As leaders and business owners, we sometimes lose ourselves in the hustle and forget why we do it in the first place.
Second, we need to pay attention to our own stress levels. We should not be sacrificing our own happiness, hobbies, or personal relationships to build or run an organization. Our energy should be managed in a way that allows us to enjoy our lives still while doing our jobs simultaneously.
By doing something meaningful in our business, we also gain fulfillment and a sense of purpose in life.
If some things are not working, take a pause, take ownership and make a change. Figure out what you really want and make a plan on how to make it happen. Take drastic actions, be bold to do things on your way because ultimately, you must decide how you will live your life, not your work or business.
In this episode you will learn:
1. Balancing work and personal life
2. Finding the purpose of your business
3. Importance of managing energy
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Episode Transcript
Tim Matthews 0:00
Men do not know what they want for the most part, and that’s okay. They often follow the models of the people trained to make them fit that world, and you’ve got to find your way. But I figure out what you want, not what anybody else wants, and be bold enough to have the courage to do it your way and then receive it along with it. If you are constantly going and giving and never getting anything in return, what does that mean? Empty.
Doug Holt 0:30
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man show. I am your host, Doug Holt, with my co-host, Tim, “The Powerful Man” Matthews. Tim, how’s it going? Brother?
Tim Matthews 0:43
Great intro, so like a wrestler. Tim “The Powerful Man” Matthews.
Doug Holt 0:49
I picture you in tights, bro.
Tim Matthews 0:51
Yeah, it’s going well.
Doug Holt 0:53
Good. I’m glad to hear it. Well, Tim, today’s topic is poignant. Because we talked about it earlier today. Today’s topic is making your business serve your life instead of your life serving your business.
Tim Matthews 1:12
Very poignant.
Doug Holt 1:13
It is very poignant. And you and I, I worked out this morning on the way back from the gym, I was leaving you a Voxer about this topic. And not knowing we were going to talk about it, and then you called me and us, we talked about it for quite a while because it was pointed out some of the things that are going on in the organization, as well as some of the men that we’re working with right now. But you put this topic on our list because we’re preparing now for these calls, but this topic on our list yesterday. So what do you want to talk about around this?
Tim Matthews 1:44
Okay, so to give this some context, there’s a couple of talking points. But again, to provide you with some context, I’m going to start from the beginning. As some of you may or may not know, the guys come to us, the men we work with when they come to us. The Activation Method and The Alpha Reset has been designed to get the men on-chain on the stock. So they can start to know who they are and what they want. And it isn’t until we get into The Brotherhood that we peel the curtain back on their business. And we conduct some audits, as you know, Doug, and part of those was their organization chart. The KPIs within their organization, the communication hierarchy that they use, how they conduct their staff meetings, and basically how the company leader has visibility over the company so that they can lead it. We always find with the men that they very much got into the business by default. It’s usually been out of the need to get out of some pain and thrust themselves into the business into work, just the need to make money, and that pain could either be a lifestyle situation they’ve got to make money, or it could be the pen to prove themselves.
That’s often a common one—the pain against significance, which ultimately is love and belonging, and so forth. But where I’m going with this is what this culminates in is a very chaotic business. When we ask them to submit their organization chart and KPIs and communication hierarchies and all those things, they often don’t have them. And this isn’t anything against them. It’s just that they’ve not ever led their company in that way. Because their business has been set up in a way whereby their life is all about their business, and not their business about their life. As you’re aware, the first thing that we do is clarify what their two-year vision is? Personally, first and foremost, how they want to be living, how many hours a week they want to be working, where they want to go, what they want to do, what it looks like for them to live their best life. And then what amount of money does that require every month, and this will include savings investments the whole picture. And then what we do is we like to back off their business into it. We do this by plugging their take-home number and the number of hours they want to work per week into their monthly net monthly gross revenue rather, for the company. And as a result, then look at the organization chart.
Does that get to shift and change to fulfill the services you will sell to hit the increased revenue? Do you get to bring on more staff? What does the organization chart look like? What are the KPIs? We get to dive into that part of the conversation and then support them to implement that. We’ll get into the strategy in the house. Now, the reason why I bring this up is that transparently, we’re in The Powerful Man, the organization itself is growing quickly over the past year at forex, and it’s set to do at least the same again this year, which then means that we then get to revisit our desires personally and professionally continually. Our organization charts our KPIs, and the people within our organization, how we are leading them. And again, transparently, no point hiding anything here is there. In the past few days, I’ve been a little bit off; as you quite rightly pointed out, it’s been my energy that has been lower than usual. And what I’ve come to realize over the past few days is that I have been just working too much. And to put this into context, we still live a great life meditating every morning, going to the gym, eating well.
Travel goes away a lot to events with Amelia date night. Everything still is happening in a great way from a lifestyle perspective. But my enjoyment of it hasn’t been there as much because I’ve been doing things. My energy has been lower because I’ve been having such an output within the organization. So then not being able to refill my cup as much and receive the moments that I have been having in my life. And then that led to our conversation, and I said to you, “Doug, look, I’m not willing to sacrifice my life to build this organization, I’m just not going to do it, I don’t believe we need to do it all” between the hours that I put in each week, you put in the rest of the team puts in, there are several hundred hours per week that go towards building this business and organization. And I said, look, I’m not willing to sacrifice my relationship, all of my other hobbies or things I want to do, to get there faster, not going to do it. Not going to do it. And you then came back with an amazing now, and I was very grateful for you, very grateful for the way you took a stand for me. And I love how aligned we are in our vision and outlook on business. Business is there to serve our life. Yes, we get to do something meaningful in the world that also gives us fulfillment and purpose. And we get to do it in a way that serves our life. That’s like an absolute must for you. And one of the reasons why we do well, in my opinion. So when I brought this to you, obviously, you completely agreed. And your response was great.
You said, “Tim, take Wednesday off. I’ll take one day off during the week, work on Wednesday”, cuz I came to you and said, “Doug, I’m working 12 till six. I’ll do anything after that. In the morning, I could do my morning routine for the first five hours, meditate, work out, eat, chat with Amelia, hang out, and I’ll get my tasks done. My main tasks are done from 12 until six. After six, do not do anything. I’m going to invest that time and energy into myself for my hobbies and my life”. And he said, “That’s awesome, do it, and why don’t you take a day off during the week. Take Wednesday off”. And it’s funny because I’ve been planning on taking Wednesday off. Amelia and I have been discussing me taking Wednesday off, and then you say take Wednesday off. Um, and then he said, oh, but you can make it up on Saturday. No scrap that you don’t need to make it up on Saturday take Wednesday off work for four days, get your stuff is done; it’s all about the outcome. Now we get to lead this company; in a way, what we are doing is just a new level of new devil every time this growth occurs. Like I said, revisit the org chart KPIs, leadership, that kind of stuff. Again, I wanted to bring this up with the listeners because I think two things: one, as men, as leaders, as people who love, I love building this organization. I love it. And it’s the type of thing I do for free, which I’m very, very grateful for, and as leaders as men as business owners, because we often love what we do, we can sometimes lose ourselves in it and forget why we do it in the first place.
One of the main reasons for this is, yes, contributing to the world and being fulfilled and on purpose and having a particular lifestyle. There’s a reason why I chose to have an online business. I can work from anywhere in the world. There’s a reason why I chose to partner with certain people. There’s a reason, and so on. As business leaders, we can sometimes forget that and lose sight of why we got into this first place and allow our businesses to become, allow our lives rather than to become all about the business. It just doesn’t work. I speak; I’m the one that makes a lot of enrollment conversations. And I speak to men every day that has gone so far down the path of letting their life serve their business, to the point whereby the relationships that are completely suffering in health are non-existent, that happiness is not there. And they’re just running on fumes, and they’re running on empty. And it doesn’t have to be that way at all. And one of the reasons why I reached out to you when we partnered together, is because like I said a moment ago, you very much live by this philosophy. And I admire it in a lot of ways how you have set your life, open your businesses up, so that they give you space and the freedom to do things like travel across the United States, with your amazing wife and son, to be working a few hours a day, as you’ve said, your businesses grow better when you’re not there. Because people have the freedom to be themselves, come up with ideas, solve problems, and don’t mean you don’t have visibility of what’s going on. It’s just a different type of leadership.
Doug Holt 11:34
Well, absolutely. I mean, there’s so much to unpack there, but it is a different type of leadership. And it’s a paradigm shift; you got to remember the idea of taking Saturday and Sunday off came from an old paradigm. It doesn’t apply today. Right? It doesn’t apply to today’s business market or today’s world. And for some reason, most people, probably most people listening to this, work a typical eight to five or nine to five or whatever, eight to six type of job. But why have they stopped and asked questions? Why? I’ve gone through this as well, too many of the things that we don’t want to make this a Tim and Doug love fest, but you do a great job reflecting. When you know something’s not working for you, you stop, you take pause. And instead of blaming someone else, as many people do, I am one of them. You take pause and take ownership of what it is and find out what’s working. And you seek counsel. You go to someone to talk to. And I think what’s important here for a lot of the men to know, and we get messages all the time where people are like, “Oh, well, you guys got it all figured out?” Well, we got a lot figured out because we’ve been through it, we know the path, but we also coach each other, right? Everybody in the leadership team with The Powerful Man has already, and we’ve already attained a certain level of success in our lives one way or the other. And we coach each other, and we help each other along the path. And when one of us dips, the other person steps in and picks that person up. And I think that is key. And when we talk about making your business serve your life instead of your life, serving your business, I think the question becomes for the men listening to this: is your business serving your life? Or are you serving your business? And then how can you tell, right? A couple of ways you might tell are looking at your stress levels and energy levels. And like you said, you’re like, I got to work all these hours. And to our credit, when you 4x a company in such a short period of time, and then you 4x it again, and you’re on pace to 10x. And that’s not just some term, but we’re doing that. When you look back less than a year ago, it’s already 10x what the movement was and could be, and we had to make some serious changes to make that a reality—and doing that. So often, that becomes a comparison, but you want to ask yourself, look, am I working to work or my working to serve a greater good, right? What are the purpose and the outcome? And I think that’s the point you came to Tim, and why you did such a great job of it is you’re saying hey, “What do I Tim Matthews, what do I want out of this movement? That’s called The Powerful Man.”
Tim Matthews 14:33
Yeah. And thank you for saying such nice things. I kind of like this being a little fest.
Doug Holt 14:45
Well, it’s mutual respect. I mean, you and I know each other. Look, here’s the deal. You’re in the UK, and I’m in the US. But we know love and respect each other, and we get to communicate a lot, and we both have a passion for helping men achieve their better selves right stop being average, stop sedating sitting on the couch, and do all the things we’ve been through. And we’ve pulled hundreds of men out of this darkness, this abyss. We share that in common. So having a lovefest, it’s straightforward for me to do that with you. Because what we’re talking about making your business serve your life instead of life serving your business, I get to witness you help men achieve this daily. And so there is nothing but respect.
Hey, guys, I want to interrupt this episode because I want to talk to you about something important. We put together a case study on how almost 300 men have taken control of their lives, their 4x in their business revenues, and they’re having more connected intimate sex, all without sacrificing their relationships or their health by using The Activation Method. Now, many of you have contacted us, and they want to know how they’re doing it. We put together this short 11-minute case study just for you. So you can see how these entrepreneurs are achieving this level of success. To get this case study, all you have to do is go over to ThePowerfulMan.com/bonus, and you can get the case study right now. All right, it’s only 11 minutes, and it’s going to show you exactly how these men have done it. Alright, let’s get back to the episode.
Tim Matthews 16:28
Yeah, as I was doing some reflecting yesterday, I remember when, how many years ago was it? Five or six years ago, and in an office, not a base in Leeds, actual office space, but a fitness business, fit as a franchise. And we had potential franchisees come to the office space in Leeds, usually once a month, where I would then present the franchise opportunity to all these fitness professionals. And people would come on board and train them up and implement the systems and so on. I reached a point then; back then, my life was all about my business. My business was not set up in a way to serve my life. I was working, leave the house at 6 am. Go work out, get to the office by about eight at 9 am. Sometimes I do not leave the office until 7 pm. Get home at about 8 pm. my then-girlfriend at the time was a nurse. So she worked shifts. So the days that she worked shifts, that was an excuse for me to work even longer. And then pick her up from work. And I was in that pattern for so many years. And it caused so much friction between her and me, and it wasn’t the main reason we didn’t work. But it did cause friction and was a major complaint about her. And when I went through a period of change in my life, one of the things that changed was the business, and I got rid of all the franchisees.
I completely changed the business model and moved it all online to run it from anywhere in the world. It wasn’t an overnight transition, of course; we’ve turned around and employed many franchisees to deliver the boot camps across the UK. And we ended up delivering boot camps from down south in Syria, up to Scotland. The point being with this is that it took me maybe about 10 to 12 months. And the thing with this stuff is always an epiphany isn’t there. And my epiphany came when I met one of my great friends Tom Crawshaw George’s brother. George and I just thought I wasn’t supposed to go out on this one Saturday night, as randomly last minute went out that Tom got introduced to him by a friend of a friend who was younger than me, working his business online, working fewer hours helping more people earning more money because I Oh my god. This is like the life example of everything I knew that was possible. By everything I knew. It was like black and white. He was there happy, free, making more money; I had a smile on his face. And I was like, over here just working like a dog. I work in so many more hours, not getting anywhere near as far ahead as him. Whenever I just stood there looking at this as I looked in a mirror, and I thought, what the hell am I doing? And that was a real catalyst for me to change, make the shift really to my business, serve my life, and as I said when we then restructured the business model and moved everything around.
And again, fast forward to today. It is purposeful that we have this online business with The Powerful Man so we can run it from anywhere in the weld, and we can work anytime we want and all these great things that we get to do. With this still growth, it gets to occur we don’t have everything figured out; we have a lot figured out, but we’re always growing, which always means we get to find solutions. We always don’t know the answer to certain things with seeking counsel. And with a growing company so fast, I think the terminology for a company like a gazelle, I think, with a growing so the fast company, is key to knowing where you’re going. And for us to always come back to, why are we doing this? Yes, it’s for the men. That’s one side of it. It’s not all about the men, and it’s, there’s no point just saying that it’s all about the men because there will be a charity is a huge part of it is about the men. And the other part of it is about us as well. Everybody gets to win, and the men get to win, get to win, we get to win, the world gets to win, everybody gets to win. For us to win, Doug, you and I personally, and your wife and your son and my partner and our future kids and your future kids, and so on, the guys in the team we get to keep reminding ourselves of why it is we got into this in the first place. And where it is, we are going.
Doug Holt 21:21
So true, man. And so taking this back, Tim, I mean, back to the topic at hand is that’s the key step. Why are you doing it? So if you’re a business owner, why did you get into the business? What’s the most common thing? I want more freedom? Right? Do you have it? And if you don’t, why don’t you have it? Most people never take the time to look at it. They realize they’ve been running their business for 5, 6, 10, 20 years. And they have a job, and if you have a job, then it is your job serving you. Right? Does it serve you to its highest level for The Powerful Man as a movement, and one of the reasons I got involved besides just you, of course, was because of the mission you look at suicide rates? It’s just not talked about in the top 10 all around the world. For men, it’s just ridiculous. And it’s not a conversation topic. And part of this is, is taking time to reflect on what it is you want? Now, what society tells you you want, not what you’re supposed to do, but what is it you want? And if you’re a business owner, you have a particular advantage, and you get to dictate many of the rules. Do you get to decide if you’re going to take Wednesday off? Or make it up on Saturday, or why do you have to work 40 hours? Who said that? Who said to make your business successful, you had to work 40-60 hours? As Gary Vaynerchuk said, you had to grind it out more than the other guy.
No disrespect to him. I have nothing but respect for him and what he’s achieved. I’m just saying, as an example, you got to question these things. And the first question we asked them, we asked the men, and this happens all the time. And I’m sure you could tell a million stories about this. But what do we ask them? We ask them, “Hey, what do you want?” And I would say nine times out of 10? The guys don’t know. And these are extremely educated, well-versed men. I mean, they really are. And yet they don’t know what they want. Because no one’s asked them. like truly asking them, not the kind of like “Hey, how are you doing?”, “I’m doing good.” But really, what is it you want? And then try and take the time to figure that out? And then, if you’re a business owner, how do you make sure your business serves those needs? Right? How do you make sure they do it? Coming up in a couple of weeks, you’ll be flying out here to the States. You and I already talked about going to treehouse breweries rated one of the best breweries in the world from something I read, and we’re going to go check it out. We’re doing that during the workweek; we’ll get stuff done. Well, we’re entrepreneurs. So we’re always in entrepreneur mode.
But we get to do that because we just said, Hey, this sounds fun. Let’s do it. You’re flying out. And here, we’re going to go, and we’ll talk about business. We’ll talk about how we can move better. We’ll talk about the men that we serve. And then we’ll have a beer together for fun. Not getting out of hand, not doing anything, but we choose to do that. Because that’s our life. And I don’t know about you, Tim and I say this all the time. I think it bears repeating is I was never guaranteed a second life. I don’t know if you were or anybody listening to this had a guarantee like, yep, you get a do-over, get a mole again, right? Just do this one cruise through it. The next one counts. Now, this one counts. You get to have it all or at least worth having it all today, and if your business isn’t serving you now today, at this moment, you get to decide to make a change. Hire a coach, join a program, make a plan to leave your job. I’m not saying quit your job if you work at a job right now or exit your company by walking away and making a strategic plan to make it happen, but take a drastic change in the moment of decision and take drastic action. And right now is that time, if you’re listening, and this resonates with you, I’m officially calling you out.
Tim Matthews 25:24
I love it. And you know what, in my opinion, one of the reasons why suicide rates are so high right now is because of this fact. Men do not know what they want for the most part, and that’s okay that they often follow the models of the people trained to make them fit their world. And you’ve got to find your way, you’ve got to figure out what you want, not what anybody else wants, and be bold enough to have the courage to do it your way, and then receive it and land with it. If you were constantly going, going, going, giving, giving, giving, and never getting anything in return, what does that mean? Cops empty, which then leads to those feelings of depression and isolation and failure, and so on. And you’re so right; if you’re resonating with this, I call you up too. I call you forward, change it; you may not get another shot at this life. It’s just now is the time. When is now a good time? Some people like to say.
Doug Holt 26:32
Yes, some people, right. So gentlemen coming out of this conversation, first of all, I hope you got a lot out of this. There’s a lot to unpack that Tim said, but if any of this serves you, or any of this comes to you of this rings true in your heart when something’s true when you feel it, right, when you can put yourself in that place, I invite you to step forward and take action, whatever that action may be, find a mentor somebody or program or whatever it is, that has that lifestyle that you want, that life that you want, and emulate them, right, that’s the best way to leapfrog results, is finding people who are already on the path a little bit further ahead of you or much further ahead of you, and emulate them and do it now. And make that investment in time and money and yourself. And part of that could start by just sitting down, pen and paper in hand, and asking to put it right at the top of that paper. What do I want? And then just let that free flow. Let that come out of you. Nothing’s wrong. Don’t make anything wrong. No judgments, what is it you want? What is it you desire in life? And go back in that and look, and we look at that? What is it in your life that you’re doing? Are you doing those things? Right? Do you love those things? Are you able to take Wednesday off like Tim will hang out with your significant other to play guitar? I’m not sure what you’re doing, Tim, but you’re doing one of those, I’m sure. If you don’t, if you’re not able to do that, and you want to, now it’s time to make a plan to get your results. Tim, anything else you want to leave these guys with?
Tim Matthews 28:13
Yeah, one other thing, if you are stuck on this, too, and you are in The Activation Method, Facebook group, post something, ask us, we’re in there, we’re active in there, ask a question, we’ll happily help you out. This is such an important point. So often, we speak to men that have lived for someday, waiting and hoping that someday in the future, it’s going to change when they get to a certain point, that’s when they’ll change everything. But sometimes, either that point never arrives or arrives too late. And before you know it, your wife or significant other is handing you the divorce papers and your relationships over, and you handle them fast. Do not let it get to that point. Do not let it get to the point of no return before you then realize that you’ve got to change this; catch it early. You’ve got the support within the group or join a program or whatever you get to do right at the top of the paper, answer the question, whatever. But if this is resonating with you, then do something.
Doug Holt 29:17
Amen. All right, gentlemen, that’s a wrap for us for today. And we will see you next time here on The Powerful Man show.
