Episode 231: Perform in the Top 1% with Dr. Greg Wells

Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Dr. Greg Wells. Let me just tell you, this is one of the most amazing podcasts that I have done. I learned so much in this, and maybe I'm just kind of become a health and peak performance geek. I'm certainly a self-professed business geek, but I really enjoyed this conversation. And for Dr. Wells, He too has had like health and peak performance are his personal and professional obsessions. He's written 5 different books. In fact, one that just came out, which is called Powerhouse, we talk about during the podcast. I think if you're wanting— you're listening to this, you want to be able to grow your business, you want to be able to get the most out of your career, be able to be there for your family, and be able to just to show up as your best self so you can look back on your life and be able to say, you know what, I got the most out of everything that I could. I think this is going to be an awesome episode. We talk about all things personal health and performance. I think you're gonna get a lot out of this conversation. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Greg Wells.

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Dr. Greg Wells, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

I am so psyched to be here. Thank you for having me on the show. Really, really grateful for this opportunity.

Pumped.

Well, we always start with background and origin stories. Just simply, can you give people kind of your background, how you got to where you are today. I know you have a fascinating story about your journey.

Sure. So competitive swimmer growing up and on track for the Olympics type, you know, level. And I was down in Florida on a training camp when I was 15 years old, playing in the waves with my buddies. Got picked up by a wave, dropped on my head, broke my neck, did 3 months of rehab, neurosurgery, all that sort of stuff. And over the course of a year, managed to get back to being functional and eventually swam on all the way through college, which was absolutely incredible. But that sparked me to take kinesiology because I was so fascinated by the human body at this point. I sort of planned on doing business, but I ended up in kin and I was so fascinated by health and wellness and human performance that as soon as I left university, I started a consulting practice and my first client was a big bank in Toronto, Canada. And I started working with all of their executives straight out of university. And that led to your research and doing a master's and a doctorate and consulting and books and speaking. And here we are today. So that's how it all started.

Well, as before we hit recording, uh, hit the recording, I mentioned to you that I first came across you in looking at the book Lead You. And I had shared that, you know, in my 5 principles, lead yourself first is principle number 1. But can you just speak to the importance just holistically? And we're going to dive into a lot of— I mean, you've written 5 different books. We're going to lead into your most recent book, but specifically the one that caught my attention was around Lead You and this idea of self-leadership, of becoming the best version of yourself and how that is transformative for your family, for your business, for your team, for really everything else. Can you just speak to that?

I think that— excuse me— I think that If you're in this industry, if you're listening to this podcast, you're doing everything you can to take care of your clients, right? That's our goal. And by making people safe and secure, and that's how we care for people, and that's what we do, and we work really, really hard at it. And the more successful you are— that we are, the harder that we work. And that often leads to putting everyone else first. And as a result, you might be hyper-successful in your career, but maybe your own health and wellbeing could be up, upleveled a little bit. And so I believe in healthy high performance. I believe in trying to match up the ability to perform at a world-class level while also upleveling your health and wellbeing. In fact, I don't believe you can separate those two things. When we're performing, performing at the highest level, our health is optimized. When our wellbeing is optimized, that opens up the possibility for you to be at your best consistently and sustainably. So I've worked with Olympic athletes, Special Forces soldiers, CEOs, and executives in, in financial and professional services firms. And honestly, the more and more and more we get people to understand that by putting yourself first, taking care of yourself first— it's not selfish, it's selfful— and that's critical to enabling us to then create organizations and teams that then make the world a better place. So that's kind of the philosophy there and what I'm all about.

You know, as you mentioned, if you're listening to this podcast, you're already a growth mindset type of person that you are pouring into it. So many of our listeners listen on a weekly basis to all the different guests that we have on. There's a book written by Jay Abraham that I've never actually mentioned on this podcast before, but if nothing else, the title alone has resonated with me, and it's called Getting Everything You Can Out of Everything You Got. And I think to myself, I want to look back on my life personally and professionally and say, yeah, we— he got everything he could out of, out of what he had, right? Like, I reached my potential. That, that's kind of the thing. And so with this, obviously I want to start diving into some of those specifics for you and take it from kind of theory and high level down into, okay, well, what are some of the practical things that we, we can do But I think that everybody— I mean, we're 4 months into the year or so. Everybody started out this year and said, this is going to be the best year we've ever had. This is going to be the best year. But yet not everybody is going to end up having the best year they ever had or even having a year that they even meet their goals. Where do you see— where have you seen in your research and in your studies and all your years the difference between those who are high performers and, and the ones that aren't?

Such a great question. I love the book reference because ultimately, like, human potential unfulfilled is so painful, right? And so, and we've all got different levels of human potential in various different things. I'm not making the NBA as a basketball player, but I'm pretty darn good at public speaking, right? So that was, that's kind of like where I'm, where I'm putting my efforts, energies, and attention. And so in terms of consistent things that I've seen amongst world-class performers, and you know, I've worked with 200 Olympic athletes and a dozen elite operatives in the military, special forces, and people that have set world records on expeditions, climbing mountains and running across deserts, as well as a host of, of CEOs and executives. Then there's a few really interesting things that you observe very quickly. And that is once someone's top 10 in the world at something, you typically see that they are enormously curious. So I'll never forget sitting down at a dinner table with a couple, with a group of people, and they were sort of ranging in 100 to, you know, to second in the world. And I happened to be sitting next to the person who was second in the world, and straight away they started asking me questions, whereas many of the others weren't. And I was like, I figured out who it was afterwards and I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. The person who's ranked the highest was asking the most questions. They want to learn, they want to grow, they want to be better. So that's a fascinating characteristic. Whereas actually when you're at the 100-ish zone in the world, you probably think you know everything right at that point. You actually, but then you realize actually, no, I don't. And you, there's a lot more to learn. And that's the reason why Serena Williams has a coach, a tennis coach.

Yeah.

You know, we continuously have to grow and get better. The other really interesting thing is that it's not complicated. You might think that people that are top 10 in the world have all of these hacks and all of these tricks and all of these tactics that they keep secret. And of course there's a tiny bit of that. You can get a little bit of an edge here and there, but the reality is they just show up. They show up very, very consistently. They do the basics extraordinarily well and they, build resilience into their routines, their rituals, which are sort of routines plus meaning, their habits. And it's the consistency that wins. And it's a holistic consistency. It's not just what you do on the tennis court or in the gym or in the pool. It's also considering yourself as a 24-hour athlete, which is what I also love business people to think about too. Because what you eat for breakfast determines your performance in the morning. Whether you go for a walk at lunch determines your performance in the afternoon. Your meditation practice determines the quality of your relationships. And so when we look at it very holistically, we layer in consistency and add curiosity, which opens up growth. That over and over and over again is the pattern that I see amongst world-class performers.

Okay. I got so much to unpack with that one. Okay.

Let's do it.

All right.

Let's dig deep.

I really want you to help me to find the thread, the needle between consistency and curiosity. Okay. Because this, this is, this is, oh, I'll be consistent. I'm gonna have blinders on. I'm gonna state this is what we're focused on this quarter. This is what we're gonna do. Yet I enjoy listening to this podcast. I enjoy reading that book. I enjoy watching that YouTube video. It is helping me to acquire new skills that I don't currently have, that if I acquire new skills, I can go to the next level. So where's this kind of yin and yang between— no, you're flip-flopping, you're inconsistent, you switch all the time, you switch this strategy, now you switch another strategy, now you say you're going to do this, now you say you're going to do that, you start something, you don't ever finish it. You see what I'm saying? Like, where's the balance? Of that between, I hear what you're saying, they're consistent, they show up, they do the same thing, yet at the same time, they're not myopic in the fact that they're not, they're constantly growing. I think that these two things kind of get like, it's hard to kind of, you know, I don't know, thread the needle between them.

That's such a great point because, you know, the reality is, is that as high performers, as, you know, exponential leaders, as entrepreneurs, it's like even if you're a micro entrepreneur, you have a small team, we're all sort of entrepreneurs, even, you know, leaders within any organization, lead without a title, we get distracted. Like there's literally a squirrel on my deck as I'm looking out over my right-hand shoulder here and I'm like, oh, that's an interesting squirrel, right? I'm the first person to get lost in something new and shiny. However, let's sort of go back and consider this year as a perfect example. It's April of 2023 when we're recording this. I set a bunch of very specific goals for the year, some of them personal, some of them professional. I had it all mapped out. And I, I'm very detailed with my goal setting, so I'm as methodical as I can possibly be around that. And then 6 weeks ago, ChatGPT becomes a thing. And I realize that unless I know and understand artificial intelligence, I will not be able to compete in the world that I operate in, which is as, you know, a thought leader in and around human performance and health and wellbeing. So I need to know and understand and learn ChatGPT and/or artificial intelligence. So I have been dedicating a certain amount of time every day to explore the new opportunity because I am curious about how it could enable me to amplify my efforts in the future. Yet I still make sure that I am editing and publishing clips for my public speaking engagements, pushing those out on LinkedIn such that I can get new speaking gigs in the future. Yep. And so it's curiosity, but you don't let that overwhelm, and you always reflect it back against the goals and objectives and the work that needs to get done in order to meet those. Having said that, I also may need to make sure that we understand that unless we open up the possibility for curiosity and exploration, you're just going to do what you've always done. And that's also going to guarantee failure, right? So at any of the extremes, you only explore the curious new things, you're never, you know, you're never going to actually accomplish anything, or you might if you're super lucky and you hit a home run on one particular thing. Similarly, if you never explore and grow, you're eventually going to be relegated to the depths of history. So having a balance there and an openness, but not allowing it to overwhelm, but constantly micro-course correcting. I think that's definitely the way that I have been able to do it. And I would submit that a lot of other people and organizations have been able to do so as well.

I love that. That's a good answer. Okay, next one I have. I was prepared for this one. I wanted to ask you about it. All right. So I'm going to give— I'm going to name two people respectfully who I look up to, have learned a ton from, from their books, from their podcast, but they kind of come at it from two different places. Okay. And so I want to help you to kind of get us to how do you think about this? So there's, there's a lot of people out there that talk about the importance of a morning routine, that talk about the importance of meditation, nutrition, having an evening routine, a shutdown ritual. And one in particular, Michael Hyatt, Michael Hyatt and Company, they talk about the importance of a morning routine. There you go. Full Focus Planner. Yep, yep.

I might ask Love what they do.

Love, love everything they do. And as a matter of fact, I'm not even gonna give my opinion of this. I'm teeing you up for a question on this. Okay. And then the other side, you've got a guy who's a business, business guy, Alex Hormozi, and he says, I wake up in the morning, drink a cup of coffee and get to work. Like, I don't spend 3 hours on a morning routine. Some of you need to stop the morning routine crap and you just need to get and start doing work. It's like, woo, those two things flying in the face. Cuz you could hear that and go, that makes sense, right? Like, just get to work. The other one that says, no, actually my, my sunlight on my fa— I, I could even go Huberman on this if we wanted to.

Yeah.

Like sunlight in the morning, don't drink coffee for 90 minutes. All of these kind of things. It's like, man, it's information overload, Dr. Wells. Like we're, how do we determine what actually works?

It's almost like you got Huberman on one side of the scale and Elon Musk on the other side of that scale, right? So it's, that's sort of like the, and over and over and over again, you can find people on either extreme there. And so what I think that, let's take Huberman for an example. What I think Andrew Huberman, by the way, Stanford prof, neurophysiologist, love his, his work. I really think he's done a great job of, yeah, helping to popularize physiology and deconstruct science that people can know what to do. I think that where morning routines, evening routines play a huge role is creating this balance between and structure around health and performance. So yes, you've got work to do, and if you only care about getting your work done, then for sure, wake up and get to work and get it done. However, if you adopt that approach, I would respectfully submit over time, your health will deteriorate because you're not doing the meditation, you're not doing the nutrition, you're not doing the physical activity. On the other end of the spectrum, if you have a 3-hour morning routine, then you're going to spend a very large amount of time in your health and wellbeing. You'll have an awesome tan, you're gonna sleep fantastic in a 6-pack, but your business may not do exactly what you want it to do unless you're Richard Branson and you have a massive team to implement every idea that pops into your head. Yep. But even Richard Branson, having hung out with him a little bit, you know, carries around a little journal to make sure that, you know, he does his thing and he's got his morning routine and he, you know, he has a very structured structured routine, um, from what I gathered in my very limited interaction with them. So I think that the morning routine is awesome for you to make sure that you do what you need to do to start your day so that you feel fantastic. If that means that you are super psyched about work and you do your best work first thing in the morning, you're clear, you're sharp, you're focused, right? You're, uh, um, you're an early riser. Physiologically, then by all means, get up and have a cup of coffee and get to work and dominate the morning. Then maybe your workouts happen in the afternoon. Maybe your meditation happens in the evening. Maybe that's when you connect to your family. If however, you have an, you have an objective to improve your fitness as you maintain a world-class business or build a world-class business, then definitely I think the morning routine will help you because if you have that morning routine, you will have the water. You will have the coffee, you will do your meditation, you'll go for your walk, you'll look into the sunlight and you'll sleep better, you'll move better, you'll think better. Your physical health will improve, your mental health will improve, your emotional resilience will improve, and overall you'll be better able to balance it consistently over the long term. I actually think some sort of a, an intersection there between, between Huberman and Hormozy. I think I pronounced his last name correctly there, is probably the way to go, but really defining that for you. So I have a pretty structured morning routine, but my afternoon's very fluid, depends on how I feel. But I know that I'm an early riser. But Tim Ferriss, for example, is an even a night owl. He does most of his great work from what I understand from his podcast in the evening. So he, you know, he is not a morning routine guy, he's an evening routine guy. So it, it really depends on us building that out for ourselves. Around what you care about the most. If your priority is fitness, you have to have that routine built around when you feel your best during the day, and then go from there to construct everything out to explore and, and, and develop what you, what works right for you.

What a great answer. That was a tough question.

That was a tough question, but yeah, I punted it kind of by saying it's both, but the reality is that I think it actually is a bit of an intersection of those two things.

No, I mean, more than likely it's things like that are not binary. I agree. I mean, it's, it's either, it's either it can be, it's not one or the other. It's really probably a combination of the both. I'll give you one example and you can kind of comment on this. One thing that unlocked for me about 4 years ago, I had never considered doing certain things at the times that was best for my energy. So I always was just putting things in to be convenient for everyone else versus, no, I actually don't like doing it, doing it at that time. In fact, I just moved one, a longstanding meeting that I've had every Monday morning at 8:30 for 10 years. I woke up a few weeks ago and I said, I don't like this meeting at 10:30. I won't, I'll go into a Monday. I need that first. 4 hours of a Monday. I am, I've got so much on my brain coming from the weekend that I need to get out. I am not ready to be in front of, in front of the team. I don't want to do it. And guess what? I moved it. I moved it. And it's been so much better since because I challenged my own assumption of that. Can you just speak to just doing energy and doing things at the time that's best for you?

And how quickly did your team adapt to that?

Oh, same day.

Yeah. Like they were like, okay. So we, we build this up as something that's super important and when we change it everyone's like, yeah, okay, it's cool, carry on. Like it's, it's none of the impact negatively that we think that it might if we change things up. My wife was the same, she has a chiropractic practice and she needed to move her schedule around. She was super worried about all of her clients and she moved it and everyone's like, okay, and they were just rescheduled and it was not an issue whatsoever. Yeah. Okay, so let's break down our performance. So first things we need to be aware of is when roughly during the day you have your highest energy levels. Let's say it's morning, afternoon, or evening. Once you know that, ideally we put the most important type of work in those times. And it doesn't necessarily need to be work, by the way. It could be your fitness, it could be your relationships, whatever is most important to you. Then if we break that out a little bit further, we can then think about the broad categorization of the types of work that we need to do in order for us to be at our absolute best. And we, there's a few different types that we can think about. The first one is beta brainwave mode. If we define it by neurophysiological characteristics of the way that the brain operates, we have beta brainwave mode. This is a type of activity that we can measure inside the brain. The hertz or cycles of electricity through the brain is around 16 to 30 hertz per second. So it's very active, very, you're lit up, you're full-on activation mode. This is hustle, focus, execute, just get stuff done. I am in full-on beta brainwave mode right now answering this question because I'm thinking, I'm operating, I'm, you know, flying around doing my thing. This is your to-do list, this is a sales call, this is blasting through your responding to emails, right? We are very, very activated, just tick, tick, checking stuff off of the to-do list. Beta brainwave mode, super important. Ah, slow down just a touch. Excuse me. You enter into alpha brainwave states. This is when you can learn, you can do strategic thinking, you can plan, and you can read. It's metacognition if you care about the technical term for it. It's about half as activated in terms of cycles per second inside the brain as beta brainwave mode. So sort of like 50% down. And that's when you can read a book and take the info in. That's when you can map out the next 3 months. That's when you can plan. That's when you can deconstruct. That's when you can journal, right? When we figure all of that out, that's alpha brainwave state. That's a really important state for anyone who's in a leadership position.

Hmm.

If you slow down even further, now you're like on the edge of sleep. Like you're really chill. You're daydreaming at this point. That's theta brainwave state. That's creativity, innovation, problem solving. You don't typically, believe it or not, come up with a brand new solution to an old problem if you're sitting at the table going through your email. You know, you discover that when you're out for a walk and you forgot your phone at home.

Totally.

And you're just flowing through, your mind is wandering, and then boom, you have that eureka moment. You put two and two together and you've got the solution. You run back home and you implement it. So that's theta brainwave state. The final one is gamma mode. Gamma mode is one of the very few states in which the vast majority of the brain functions at a high level all at the same time. And that's flow, peak experience, the zone. I get into that state every once in a while when I'm doing public speaking, which is my big thing. I definitely get into that state when I'm doing sports, specifically rhythmic repetitive ones like paddleboarding or swimming or something like that. We've all had those moments when we're in flow, when we're in the zone. So that's a, a beautiful gamma state where the electrical activity sweeps from the back of the brain forward. So those are the 4 general types. Beta brainwave mode, hustle, focus, execute. Alpha mode is learn and strategic thinking. Theta is creativity, innovation, problem solving. And gamma is the zone, flow states. And if you can determine which of those is the most important to you and defend the time when you are at your best for those types of activities, That is a radical opportunity. Radical, meaning complete and thorough opportunity to completely alter your ability to perform at a world-class level at what you do. By the way, this also improves mental health, helps to alleviate depression, anxiety, and other mental, mild to moderate mental health challenges, which is important because about 25 to 40% of our population right now is struggling with depression, burnout. Overwhelm and, and anxiety. So we really need to work on that as well. But that's how we break that down and implement that.

Dude, that was amazing.

That was amazing.

Mic drop right there. That is worth the price of admission. That was absolutely unbelievable. Do you talk about this and break this down in, in some of your books?

I do. That's in Rest or Focus, Recharge. So that was the one that I wrote that came out on March 7th, 2020 in the Beginning of the pandemic, right, as every bookstore in the world closed. So that one has been, is now doing really, really well, but it didn't when it launched. So that, but of course, with everyone struggling with depression and burnout and overwhelm, just this high stress, high anxiety world that we're in at the moment, that book has exploded. But it's called Rest, Refocus, Recharge, and that just describes what I just talked about.

That is unbelievable.

Okay.

So I, I was in my mind thinking, am I in beta? Am I in alpha? Am I theta? I'm not in gamma, I know that. And, and am I in beta? Maybe not. I'm probably more in like, uh, probably more in beta to alpha, somewhere in there. One of those two.

But you have a photo of football on the wall behind you for anyone that's sort of not watching the video but just listening. And like, just think about like the epic drive, right? Like the 3, 4, 5, 10-play drives You're in gamma mode there for sure. You're, everyone's just in a flow state. They're in the rhythm. They, they're just executing. They're not thinking. They know exactly where to be, right? That's a gamma, that's a gamma state. Um, theta mode would be the team figuring out new plays, not necessarily in the game, but, you know, experimenting with a new, with a new play. Uh, Alpha states when you memorize the playbook, right? That's, that, that's, so this is the different states that we can be in to enable us to do what we need to do.

So the question is, is people would, I, I want to know how do I get, how do I, how do I get myself more, especially in the gamma mode, you know, that's the whole idea is like, how do you get yourself in like, yeah, flow peak state. Yeah. I want to do that. How do I just get myself into that?

So in peak state, the way that we try to teach people to get into that state on demand rather than just randomly, we've all had those moments. Yeah. Can we do it repeatedly on the mo— at the time when we really need to? And in that case, we ask people to think about the last time that they were in flow or in the zone or had a peak experience moment or a magic moment, or they were just performing at a really high level. A sales call, a presentation, an incredible dinner with your family, a great workout, right? Anything like that, that was occurring. And in that moment, in that time, reflecting back on that experience, we need to think about our emotions, our thoughts, and our actions. So act, think, feel. Physically, what were you doing? What was your physical state?

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So for me, let's say it was a speech I did about a month ago for a big drug company, as a launch for a new cancer med, because I do cancer research. So it was cool for me to be on stage with those 600 people that had been involved with that particular project. And I was on fire. I was amazing. I was connected with the crowd. It was absolutely phenomenal. Such an incredible experience. I was absolutely energized. So I know that for Greg, me to be in flow. I am in a high energy state. That's the body. That's the act, right? High energy. Then we get into think. Was I thinking? I was super focused. No distractions. My phone was not even on my body. I was delivering the content that I had memorized. There was no thinking forwards, backwards. What am I supposed to be speaking about? I was in sync with my slides. Laughing through the stories, right? I was 100% focused, no distractions. So that for me is my cue from a thinking perspective. And then feel the emotion. I just love public speaking. I love it. It's what I, you know, I'm— I adore doing it. I love doing these podcasts as well. It's so fun. And so for me, it's a state of love. Have to be positive. There's no negativity there. There's no anger. Anytime that I deviate towards frustration or anger, I instantaneously drop out of any sort of a sensation of flow. So that's it for me. But if you want to ask yourself, act, think, feel— what was I doing? How was I thinking? What was I feeling? Make some notes around that. You'll see what your flow state is, and you will see also very clearly how you can get into that state, because those are all actionable things.

That's such a good— you can tell, like, I mean, for those of you that may be watching, watching on YouTube, but, you know, you can tell you're smiling, the energy is good, the body language, etc., is there. You're, you're actually enjoying it. And not everybody I have on the podcast enjoys doing that. They see it more as a chore. They see it as like, you know, I had to— this was on my schedule. And admittedly, some of that just may be the day that, you know, it could have been what happened the hour before they jumped on, etc. In fact, could you go back even to that, would you go reverse engineer and say what was, I don't know what time you went on, what time did you go on stage that day?

Yeah, no, that's a good point. So it was around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, which is not a normal good time for me. So actually in that state, I knew that given that it was not in the morning when I'm naturally at my best, I did not do a morning workout. I actually waited.

Oh, I see.

I did my morning workout at 10:00 AM and it was really hard. And then I finished that one and I ate a little bit of food, not very much. And I did a double, very strong double espresso at around 12:30 to make sure that I was like seething with caffeine when I stepped onto the stage. And I also went for a walk outside before I stepped on stage and it was like very cold 'cause it was in Montreal, Canada. It was like very well below freezing. So I, you know, sort of shocked myself into awareness through that preparation, but it took a lot to get there. In order for me to be in the zone that I needed to be in. And I just absolutely crushed it and had a great time.

So I'm, and then you would also, it's definitely something you gotta work at. You would also even probably go back the night before and think about like, what time did you go to bed? Did you have a glass of wine the night before or not? Did you get a good night's sleep? All, like all of those things led up to that, don't you agree?

100%. I did not drink. I went to bed super early. I traveled early, so I would be at the hotel at around 5 o'clock so I could grab an early dinner. I do not drink when I, the night before. Before I speak. I fill the bathtub full of water because I know that in hotel rooms it's super dry. And if you fill up your bathtub with hot water and you leave it there overnight, that's like a humidifier. It flows out in the room. So I wake up, my voice isn't a mess, right? So yeah, there's all sorts of little hacks that you put into play to enable you to perform at a high level. Like, high performance isn't an accident. It happens because we implement strategies, tactics, And we refine our routines. And if your routines are related to something that's meaningful to you, it becomes a ritual.

Oh.

And that's when you end up with exponential good performance. And if you look at world-class performers, like there's a reason why athletes are obsessive about what they do before a game.

Mm-hmm.

Because it never changes. Because if it changes, they're out of control. Mm-hmm. And so that's the same for all of us. What do we do? Great questions for you to deconstruct. Outside of this is what do you do before you do a sales call? How do you prepare for a team meeting? What do you do to transition from work to home so that you're calm, cool, and collected for your family? Right? There's all of these little opportunities for us to build protocols. And I don't mean we need to be like checklisting through our life, right? But just like opportunities, to do better and to do such in a repeatable way. And so that's what a lot of this stuff is all about.

So in other words, the cell phone up to the ear, walking in with a backpack on a sales call is not the ideal thing to walk into the family like, one more, one more, one more.

Hold on one second. Yeah, yeah. We, we stay on the phone outside the house. We finish the phone call, we do a walk around the block, we decompress, take a breath, stare at some trees. And then you walk in and funny, like on that note, I made a huge mistake on that. I was, so I do cancer research at a children's hospital in Toronto. This is probably 8 years ago now. And I, there was a bad day at work. Figure out what that means. I was super upset, really angry. I was devastated and like pissed off in the drive on the way home. Yeah. And walked straight into my house and my kids were there. They were young and that did not go well. Mm-hmm. So that's when I was like, I need to do the transition ritual a lot better. So now if I've had a day like that, doesn't necessarily have to be that bad, but a day like that, we all have good days, bad days, whatever. And I'm, I'm driving home, I will listen to really chill music. I will park the car and if I'm still activated, go for a walk. I will call Judith, my wife, and be like, Yeah, not an awesome day. So gonna go for a walk. I'm gonna go hang out at the park. And she's like, yeah, you will take your time. See you in like 2 hours, whatever it takes. Just don't ever do that again. I was like, cool.

Cool.

So yeah, these, these learning that we can do usually around mistakes is fine and it just ends up being better as long as you sort of acknowledge it and move on and do something a little different next time.

Thanks so much for your vulnerability with that. I mean, we're, we're humans, right? I mean, you know, and so to be able to speak to that, I really appreciate.

All right.

Two questions, if you're okay for 5 more minutes.

Let's do it. No rush.

So two questions. Can you define again? Because I wanted to ask you this and you mentioned it a minute ago, but I want to bring it back. A lot of great work out there about habits. Okay. Atomic Habits, obviously, James Clear, etc. Just a lot of people have written about habits. But you, you kind of gave a different definition. And what I've, I have really over the last year myself is try not to use words interchangeably, be very specific with what words mean. Meaning a ritual is not a habit. Like, this is a habit. These are habits. This is what a ritual means, et cetera, versus like, for instance, blueprint, roadmap, plan, all of these kinds of things. We just use them interchangeably. It's like, no, no, no, no. That means this. That means that. So that's number one. Can you define rituals and habits? And question number two is, I wanted to ask you, what are some of the things that you've heard that you believe are kind of myths around high performance? You hear this and it's— you hear it on another podcast, you hear it, read it in a book, and you're like, no, I disagree with that. That, that sounds good. That actually does not work.

Yeah. I mean, there's a there's a lot of that. I don't, I don't like to like quote unquote debunk stuff that kind of bothers, bothers me a little bit to some extent. So what I will say though is that there's an entire field called biohacking, which I'm sure many people have probably heard of. That's, then there's some, there's some many different things that you can do to improve your health. So biohacking would often be someone like doing the cold plunges, which I do. Or figuring out some specific combination of nutrients that, of, that improves brain function and improves memory. And fair enough, they might do that. But the one thing I would say about all of the things that I'm talking about is that there's no shortcut. These are practices, these are systems, these are consistent ways of operating that we need to implement in our lives and be consistent with over a long period of time. So for me right now, the biggest thing is like, if anyone says that there's a, a rapid-fire shortcut to, you know, lose 25 pounds and get a six-pack, there isn't. You just need to eat really well and exercise a lot and get a lot of sleep over a very long period of time, and you're gonna end up in an incredible place. So consistency and repeatability, and that's the game with everything that, that we're talking about. So that would be the one thing I would sort of push back against.

Okay.

And then in terms of habits, super important. Charles Duhigg's book, The Power of Habit. Awesome. James Clear, Atomic Habits. Love it. 1% Gains, big principle in the Ripple Effect book that I wrote about around health and wellbeing. So I'm a big fan around habits, which are important for us because they enable us to get through our days without thinking about what we're doing, which frees up mental energy to allocate towards other things. For example, you don't need to think about your route that you take to route that you take to drive to work. You just simply the follow the pattern that you always do every day and relieves some mental energy. So that habit of the route that you take to get to work is really good. Brushing your teeth in the morning, it's a very good habit. If you elevate that just slightly into a routine, that is something that you do consistently that enables you to improve your health and wellbeing. So for example, your morning routine, you wake up, drink a glass of water, brush your teeth, go to the washroom, come downstairs, read, make a cup of coffee. That is a, that is a routine that you have crafted deliberately or unconsciously in some cases, but that is now your morning routine that can be adjusted with some effort, energy, and attention. Rituals are, from my perspective, routines that are deeply meaningful. Hmm. So for example, that could be how you, how I prepare for a speech. That is my rituals that I do to get ready for something that's important to me. That might be your birthday celebrations for your family. How do you celebrate birthdays? That's not just a routine. Right. You might do the same thing every time. Technically it's a routine, but because it's meaningful to you, it elevates. And so I would encourage everyone listening to think about what are the critical aspects of your life that are difference makers for your ability to do your job or your relationship with your family or your, or your, the closeness that you have to your friends or your health.

Fantastic. That's great.

It's super cool, right? Like, it's an easy thing to think about, but it's— if you journal about it and figure it out, you're like, oh yeah, no, I need a, I need a ritual around that.

Yep.

And then when it's meaningful, oh my gosh, it's completely transformative because you absolutely commit to it. My daughter just turned 13 yesterday, and we had a really cool experience that we set up for her, and it was deliberate because I believe in transitions and phase changes throughout the course of our life. But that's, that's a game changer and it's meaningful. She'll remember it forever.

So yeah, that's great. That helps me so much because I was thinking around— so we've talked, mentioned a lot around morning routines, but I have an evening routine that I like to unpack the, the bag from, from, from the day, you know, change clothes and, and then I immediately go and get the clothes that I'm going to lay tomorrow night out. I repack the bag, pack up, repack the workout bag. I clean the coffee maker, make the coffee for tomorrow morning. Those are not deeply meaningful to me, but that is definitely a routine that helps me so that the morning I'm not in a frantic rush of like, oh my goodness, I just walked downstairs and I don't have coffee. Like, the day is ruined. That happens. But You know, like there are some things I do in the morning. I'm a person of faith. And so there are some deeply meaningful things that I do first thing in the morning before I dive into it that I've had to— it took me some effort and energy, so it was more routine-based. But now it's like, no, this is something that means a lot to me that I'm going to stick with it. And I have a kind of a streak around how long I've been doing that for, etc. So that really actually helps because I had not even differentiated between Well, does everything just lump into a habit? Like, is this just one big habit? So I'll just call everything. So that's the best definition of habits, routines, and rituals I've ever heard. That's good.

And think about that, like your morning, and I'm, I'm not a person of faith, so forgive me if I mess this up. I'm, that's to quote Tom Hanks, not a gift that I have yet received. But let's say that you have some time that you take every morning to pray or to connect. That's not a habit. That's a ritual because that's deeply meaningful to you.

Yep.

Right. Anyone listening who has tea or coffee with their partner before they start the day to connect for a few minutes, that's deeply meaningful. Reading to your children at night, that's deeply meaningful.

Yeah.

Right. So there are these opportunities in our life to connect to that higher meaning. And that's, that's a ritual. That's what makes life worth living. That's what you look back upon. That's what is transformative, right? That's what we're talking about. And that's magic.

I think, okay, I transitioned from— I was in beta, now I'm in gamma. I'm in flow just talking to you. I can't believe 100% going at it 45 minutes. I told you we'd be on here for 30 and here it is.

This has been great.

Hey, speak to, um, you just released at the time of this recording, obviously this will drop in a few weeks, but time of this recording, you just dropped your 5th book. So tell, tell us about that. What was just a kind of the brief, like the, where did that come from? What was the inspiration around, around that book? And I love the title and where can people pick it up?

Right on. Thank you for giving me a chance to talk about it a little bit. So about 18 months ago, the world is what it is. I'm looking around, everyone's tired, everyone's exhausted, everyone's burned out. It's been a rough couple of years for everybody. I was like, okay, so everyone's tired. What's, what's the opposite of tired and burned out? Energy. Fair enough. How do humans create energy? As a physiologist, I go back to my knowledge of how the body works. That's my mitochondria. Might have remembered that from grade 10 biology, but you know, that's the structure inside your cells of your body that creates energy, breaks down the foods that you eat. You breathe in oxygen, you mitochondria use that to create energy. We use that to think. And move and problem solve and connect. Everything that we do revolves around these little structures inside of our body. Turns out when I started looking into it a little bit more, they are highly adaptable. They grow, they get stronger. If you do things like meditation, exercise, healthy food, saunas, cold showers, those sorts of things all dramatically improve your mitochondria. Unfortunately, they're also hypersensitive to Things that are not good for us. Unhealthy foods, inflammatory foods, stress really causes problems. Poor sleep really damages our, our mitochondria. Physical inactivity really damages our mitochondria. So there's a huge opportunity for us because they are hyper-adaptable. And the reality is they're connected to every single thing that we do depends upon energy, but they're also at the crux point. For almost every single chronic disease, cancer, heart disease, dementia, Alzheimer's, even depression. So if we don't take care of them, things don't go well. If we do take care of them, things can go fantastic. And the great news is they're hyper-adaptable based upon lifestyle tactics, many of which we've already been discuss, dis, um, discussing. So the book's called Powerhouse. If you wanna check it out, I would be deeply grateful. My name is Greg Wells, so it's all at my website, drgregwells.com, and I would be honored if anyone wanted to check that out and gather a little bit of insight on how we can optimize ourselves moving forwards.

You have been an absolute powerhouse on this podcast. I've learned so much. I, I literally have 3 pages of notes. This has been awesome. Dr. Wells, hope to have you back on in the future.

Oh, so great. Like, this is one of my favorite shows I've done in a long time, so I, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Oh, you're welcome. You just let me know your Venmo. I'll send you $5 for that.

Hold on. Sounds good.

All right. Thanks, Dr. Wells. All right.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Well, I've got a lot of takeaways from that episode. Number one is when he talked about holistic consistency, and that is the blend of consistency, but also curiosity. That conversation that we had about it kind of being both, I thought that was really interesting to me, the way he answered that. And then number 2 was certainly the beta, alpha, theta, and gamma. I had heard about and really did about 4 or 5 years ago start to change my own schedule throughout the day and throughout the week based on my energy levels. And I did just change a team meeting that we were doing on 8:30 on Monday mornings, because that's what I thought you always did, and moved that to noon. And that has worked out so much better because of I'm in a different state on Monday mornings for that first few hours. And so that, that was really interesting. And I think the comment he made around high performance isn't by accident. That's so true. You don't just fall back into it. We're at the time the NBA playoffs are starting and many of you know, I love basketball, love golf. And, you know, think about Steph Curry. If any of you watched him, if you, if you like to keep up with basketball, he does the same routine every single time before games. Uh, so he's so consistent by that. His high performance isn't by accident. He's not eating McDonald's and Skittles and all of these things. Like, he is training. He's not just trying. And then lastly, the, the— towards the end of the conversation when we talked about the definitions of what do we mean by habits, what do we mean by routines, and what do we mean by rituals, that really stood out to me. I'm sure that that will resonate with all of you. He was fantastic. Go to his website, Dr. Greg Wells, pick up his most recent book, Powerhouse, that just dropped about a week ago from the time that we're, uh, recording this episode. And I'm going to go back and actually pick up his, uh, book, Rest, Recover, and Recharge. Shout out to our podcast sponsors, Club Capital, Autopilot Recruiting, and Coach P Consulting. You want to be able to get a team of A-players with your business, whether they're in sales or customer service, account management, marketing, you know the importance of recruiting on a regular basis. That doesn't mean that you have to be the one that's doing that all the time. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. Let Alex and the team know you heard about them on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. And then also, whenever they come on board, it's important to, uh, develop your team. I talk about kind of the 3 things under team: attract, develop, and retain. How do you attract A-players? How do you develop them once they're on your team, and then how do you, how do you keep them long-term? It's kind of similar, but to customers, right? Kind of follows a similar pattern there. How do we attract customers? How do we get them to pay more? And then how do we keep them longer? Kind of the same thing with our team. And with that, one of the best investments I've made ever is being in the room or at the table with other like-minded people. And being able to pay down ignorance debt. I've heard that just recently, never heard that before, but me not knowing how to grow a business to say $5 million, that is costing me $5 million every year that I don't need, know how to do that. So the key is the acquisition of skills and the best way to acquire those skills is from the people who are already getting it done at that level. And that's a good example of where Coach P and David Peterson comes in. If you want to be able to grow your small insurance agency to a big insurance agency and you want to go from one location to two to three, once you learn from the person who's actually doing it at that level, and that's David, go to coachpconsulting.com. You heard, uh, Dr. What— you heard Dr. Wells on the podcast talk about financial literacy. That's where State Goodness gracious, State Farm.

I can't believe I said that.

Um, you heard Dr. Wells on the podcast talk about financial literacy, and that's where Club Capital is able to help you, to give you the— equip you with not just the skills and like the tools, the financials, but it's what you do with those. And it's having the mindset and the skills to be able to read the financial statements and be able to make decisions. You've heard me say that for a number of years is being able to make better decisions. Well, some of you may say, I don't know how to read the things. Well, Club Capital is going to be able to walk you through how to do that and give you perspective that otherwise you wouldn't be able to get. Like, if you're working with a local accountant, bookkeeper— nothing wrong with those people at all— but they don't have the hundreds of clients, maybe even thousands of clients, that Club Capital has to be able to give you perspective on your financials to say What's normal? What's average for everyone else to be doing? And how am I doing in comparison to those? And it's, it's not— maybe not even comparison, it's really benchmarking against what are other— the, the other top performers being able to do. That is incredible insight to be able to help you to know exactly where to invest, what levers to pull, what decisions to make moving forward. Arden, this is a great episode. Till next time, lead well.