The power of time and timing and your life's journey

My desire, my wanting, my believing that that was something that I needed to make me whole. Ooh, dang. Gone. Anyway, I wanted to fulfill that peace. And because I rushed into it, it did end up into three years of my life that ended up in a divorce and somebody that I couldn't trust and just a corrosive, like, part of my life that I've honestly had to forgive her for and forgive myself for so that I could move forward in a healthy way with my current wife, Kelly.

Welcome back to beyond the Default. I am your host, Liz Moorhead, and as always, I am joined by George B. Thomas. How are you this week?

I'm doing good. You know, I got to go to a Jason Mraz concert over the weekend. I got all the feels as I was listening to the slow melodies, got to relax a little bit, which we all need to do because we have to take time for ourselves. We have to take time for our families. We have to just take time to unplug and relax. And so for me, this weekend was that. And so I'm excited to get back at it this week.

I love that you basically said the theme of our episode, what, three or four times there. I love how you warmed us all up on that.

There we go.

Because that is what we're talking about this week, right? We're talking about time, and we're going to talk about time in all aspects today. I think sometimes when we're thinking about goal setting and achieving our goals and getting after it and going out there, I think our default is to think about, oh, time management. We have to think about time management. We may touch upon elements of that today, but there's a greater conversation that I know you believe needs to exist here about time. Correct. When we think about what it means.

To live beyond our default, yeah, I definitely want to touch upon different elements of this, but I think the big one for was a lesson that I learned at a very young age, and that is time is precious. We only have so many hours, days, weeks, seconds, however you want to measure it. And what we choose to do with that time is completely up to us, by the way. We have the ability to make decisions that allow or not allow us to go in directions that we feel we should or feel we shouldn't. And so some of that time we might feel as wasted. Some of that time we might feel as lessons. But at the end of the day, it does come back to we have just precious, precious moments. And what's really weird, too, before I, you know, we dig too deep Into Liz. The story that brought me to this, like, understanding around time is that time is a really weird thing because it can go so dang slow, but it also can feel like it goes so dang fast. I'll never forget when I was a young whippersnapper and my grandparents would be like, the older you get, the faster goes. And I'd be like, yeah, that's something that old people say. But I'm not even old. I'm only 51. And I'm like, who? Where is it going? Like, it is flying by as we're recording this.

It is August.

Yeah.

Where has this year gone?

Yeah, we are literally weeks away from me turning. Well, let's say maybe two months from. From me turning 50. And I'm like, how did I get here?

Well, let's talk about it. How did you get here? No, we're not going to go that esoteric, that big, that broad, this early on in the episode. I'll get you with that later. I do want to drill into. What you've alluded to is that from a very early age you learned the lesson of time being in many ways the most precious resource that we all have. So tell us that story. What happened?

Yeah. And it's funny because I think this lesson, it's twofold. It's time is the most precious resource we have. And timing is everything. So when I was 17 and a half, and if you've listened to the starting lines episode, you know, when I was 17 and a half, I ended up becoming a high school dropout. I talked to my parents. My dad had been in the military, my grandpa had been in the military. And so I had my parents sign me into the United States Navy. And I went through boot camp. By the way, there's probably a great story that we could tell about boot camp, about never give up. Because 84 people came to my company and 29 of us graduated. We might have to circle back around on that.

Yeah, yeah.

In another episode. But let's fast forward. I made it through boot camp. I made it through a school. I was on the USS Cunningham. It's a missile guided destroyer. And this is right before Desert Storm. And we were out doing test ops. I started breaking out in hives. And I mean, just really bad hives. They were putting me on Benadryl and massive doses of steroids. And. And this wasn't just hives, like on your arms or your back. Like, these were hives. Internal too. Like I would have a rapid heartbeat. It was hard to breathe. And they had me on so many steroids and doses of Benadryl that one morning they tried to wake me up. Which by the way, I was a cook in the Navy, so I was everybody's friend. Especially when I was the night baker and we were actually in port and people would come back from the club and want some donuts at about 1:32 o'. Clock. Anyway, everybody's friend. And one morning they tried to wake me up and they couldn't, they couldn't wake me up. And so when I finally did wake up, they sent me to my chief petty officer, little Filipino guy, hilarious as I'll get out, nice guy. And he was like, george, we can't have this. You got to be able to get to work. So he sent me to the ship doctor. And the ship doctor, I'll never forget, he was checking me out. He's like, george, I can't figure this out. Which by the way, it wasn't George, it was semen apprentice Thomas, because literally its last name, if you're military, you know what I'm talking about right here. So he goes, not that this would ever happen, but if there was a fire aboard ship, we wouldn't be able to wake you up, we wouldn't be able to get you out. And so this isn't safe, so we're going to send you to a transient personnel unit. And so helicopter comes, I packed my sea bag, they take me to shore. And the last words the doctor was like, hey, we're going to get you figured out, we'll get you back on, you're going to be good to go. I get to the shore, of course I do what every good naval person does. When I get back to shore, I go out to the bar that night, have a few drinks, you know, I'm back on shore. Woohoo, let's go. And I come back, I fall asleep, I wake up the next morning. This is literally about 13 hours later, Liz. Everybody's like huddled in the main area on the couches and the tv and everybody's kind of leaning in. And I walk in just in time to hear the news announcer say, USS Cunningham, missile guided destroyer GDG 17. Number one boiler explodes. 18 injured, one person died. I just stood there. It was almost an out of body experience. Because here's the deal, 13 hours earlier I had been on that ship. 13 hours earlier, they weren't able to like wake me up in the morning to go do my job. Where I would have been sleeping was located right above the number one boiler that exploded and so at that point in time, I realized, man, holy crap, timing is everything. I'm 13 hours away from not being on this planet. Time is precious. I was literally like 19 and a half when I learned this lesson. I'm like, you really need to pay attention to what you're doing with your time. And the funny thing is, I, through a roundabout kind of circumstances, ended up getting a medical honorable discharge. I ended up trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. And it was right after this realization of time is precious and you need to do something with your life and you're on this planet for a reason, that I actually went and worked at a Christian camp for three years teaching kids how to ride horses and about Jesus, because I was like, I need to pay somebody back.

Well, I want to dig into this a little bit. You know, you're talking here about timing is everything and knowing how and when to make the moves. But I know that we all encounter times in our lives where it can be difficult to distinguish between am I in a moment right now where waiting is key, or am I in a moment where movement is key? How do you tell the difference?

That's a really interesting question. I'm really bad at one of those and really good at another, by the way.

Care to elaborate on which one?

Yeah, I'm really bad at waiting around. Now, what I want people to realize is there's a difference between, like, waiting around and being patient. I feel like I'm pretty good at being patient. I know that things take time, but just waiting around or pausing for something, it's really difficult for me to do. I'm usually a guy in motion, right? I'm usually the guy who's like, I'm going to at least do something to advance one step, 1%, into at least the direction that I feel like I'm going to. But I'll tell you where my brain goes when you ask that question is that one thing that we do need to do is we need to take time to pause and reflect and think and contemplate. And I think this is hitting my brain when you ask that question, because it's historically something that I've battled with. It is historically something that I've done. But I think the travesty is there's so many people that are out there that can't turn off the radio, can't turn off the tv, can't turn off the social media. Like, when's the last time you went out into an open field, sat against a tree with a blank notebook and just started jotting down the things that you want to think about or the places that you want to go. And I don't mean, like, you want to go to Greece or Italy. I mean, where do you want to go in your life? And what's interesting, too, I'm. I'm reminded that, Liz, before I started the business, I took half a day. I happened to be on a cruise ship, so it was really easy. But I took half a day with a notebook and a pen and a beverage, and I sat and I jotted out all of the goods, the bads, the dreams of like, hey, I'm about to embark on this journey. I'm about to make movement in a direction of no longer being an employee, but maybe potentially one that will employ other humans. For sure. Employ myself. And I took a half a day and just sat. Now, that's what I would call about as much waiting as this guy can do. Because, again, I am a big advocate of at least be moving a little bit in the direction that you believe to be heading, because you can always pivot when you're moving. A body in motion tends to stay in motion if you sit too long. I worry. I personally worry about getting complacent if I stop too long.

I want to dig into this a little bit more here because on the one hand, I do see your point, right? Like, making those small incremental movements forward every day. But when I think about myself personally, and I'm sure there are listeners out there who may feel the same way, sometimes we can make movements prematurely. I'll use a metaphor that a friend of mine uses quite a bit that I. That I've taken quite an affinity to, and that is being a cake in the oven. Now, sometimes what can happen is, like, this is the joke, right? Don't tell the cake. It's the cake in the oven.

Like, don't.

Don't let the cake know. Because what will happen is the cake will go, oh, I'm a cake. Let me out. You're not done baking yet. You think you know all there is to know. You think you've seen all there is to see, but you still are in this moment of baking, so to speak, before you're actually ready to move forward. So how do you keep yourself walking that fine line right, where you're taking the right, maybe small movements forward, you know, preventing that outright stagnation and not prematurely moving yourself through phases? Because I'm sure you've also had moments in your life where you're like, man, I was rushing to move forward. I was rushing to move forward. I was rushing to move forward. And then a certain experience or a nugget of information came to light, and you went. And that is why I was waiting.

Well, yes, There was a moment in time where I was like, well, that didn't work out. No. It's funny because ever since I was, like, 16, 17 years old, I would always tell my parents, like, I want to be married. I want to be married. I need to be married. I need to have. Have kids. Like, I want to be married. And that caught up to me in life, right? So I've been with my current wife for 20, almost 23 years, if you're counting. Like, maybe longer, if you're counting dating. But my first wife, I really ran into the situation. I didn't pause, I didn't reflect. The cake was not even baked. As a matter of fact, it wasn't a damn cake.

It was still wet and dry ingredients.

On account it might have looked like a cake, might have smelled like a cake, but it wasn't a cake. It was a pile of. And I'm just gonna tell you, but I ran into it, right? Because my desire, my wanting, my believing that that was something that I needed to make me whole. Ooh, dang. Gone. Anyway, I wanted to fulfill that peace. And because I rushed into it, it did end up into three years of my life that ended up in a divorce and somebody that I couldn't trust and just a corrosive, like, part of my life that I've honestly had to forgive her for and forgive myself for so that I could move forward in a healthy way with my current wife, Kelly. I will say that that was a life lesson of, like, hey, there are times in life that you should probably slow down. When I started dating Kelly, it was. It was pretty slow. We knew each other as friends. First we started dating, we dated for a good while, and then we finally got married. And so I do believe, Liz, there are different types of people. I believe that some people out there listening to this, the lesson is you should probably pause more and think more, and you should be more strategic in life to when it is time to zig or zag. I believe on the flip side, you might be listening this and you're like, man, I wish I could hashtag gsd. I wish I could do more. I wish I was in movement more. And I think the lesson for you is, then start moving more. Make it just part of your daily ritual, your habits, you know, your goals, like I have these goals, so I need these habits which mean I need to at least move this much each day. Which, by the way, if you program out, I need to move this much each day. You should be able to program. And in that, I'm going to sit still this long and think about these things that I'm about to move on. There's probably a whole morning ritual that you could put together that is a little bit of a pause and go, pause and go, pause and go. So you're covering both bases that we're talking about.

Well, let me ask you this just to put you on the spot.

Oh, gee, I love when you put me on the spot.

If you were to challenge yourself right now to look at your life in its current state and think about an area where you're doing a lot of movement, where maybe you could afford to slow down a little bit, no matter how macro or micro, where would it be?

Interesting question. First of all, let me just preface. My life is pretty darn okay right now. I like where I'm at. However, if I was to slow something down, it would probably be my business a little bit or the amount that I'm putting into the business now, not the amount that I'm putting into the clients of the business, because the clients deserve to have my best. But there are times when I know I'm working on stuff that is next phase. We'll get there, but do we have to get there as fast as I want to? You know, I'll give you a great example. One of the podcasts I do is for marketing profs. B2B marketing podcast. Liz. We have almost every episode shot for the rest of the year and edited. We've got like maybe four slots left and it's not even the end of Q3, and we're almost done for the year now. I didn't. I didn't have to go at that pace. We're sitting here and we've got a business and we've got a community that we're putting together. Community.hubheroes.com Last week I did 12 videos for a forms course, six videos for an email course, and four videos for a sales enablement course that is a body in movement. However, you got a few stuff.

You got a few things in the.

Fire, a few irons in the fire.

There we go.

Thank you. Yeah. Metaphorical ninja. Yeah, if you will. Like, I've just. I don't know. That's part of my love. Language is like analogies and metaphors, like, they're just I don't know. That's the way that my brain is programmed. But here's the deal. At the same time that some people might hear that and go, this. This dude is on fire. I beat myself up because I'm like, yeah, but I haven't been keeping up with my HubSpot certifications. Yeah, but I could be reading my Bible more. Yeah, but I could be spending more time with my family. Yeah, but. Yeah, but. Yeah, but. And see, what we have there in my own brain when I start to hear a lot of yeah, buts out of myself is that I'm not paying attention to what I know. I want to pay attention in the future because historically, I've said 1% better each and every day. I want to come up with a rubrics, a matrix, if you will. And if you're listening this, hopefully you come up with a rubrics, a matrix, or if you have one, I swear to God, share it with me, because it'd be helpful. But I think using time to move forward 1% in professional, in spiritual, in financial, in whatever the buckets need to be, I want to get a really good way of visually, and I feel like the listeners to the podcast should think about how can I get a very dope visual way of the buckets that I want to pay attention to. The amount of time that I'm spending to move myself 1% better in each of those. And even maybe, where is my time for strategy? Where's my time for sitting down and thinking, where is my time for pause in each one of those areas? And by the way, time of pause for each one of theirs going to look dramatically different. Right? On finances. Time of pause might be just giving you time to research the type of investments that you might make spiritually. Time of pause might literally be that field in that tree with your flipping Bible and no other sounds or people around you. Right? Time of pause for family. It's whatever your family likes. They might want to go to movie, they might want to play a board game, whatever it is. But, like, how can you come up with that matrix or rubrics for pause and time in each of those areas of your life? This is what I am to the point where I'm like, I need to work on this moving forward. Just be 1% better each and every day got me here. But I don't think it's going to get me to the next level.

What you started with isn't necessarily what you're going to grow with.

No, I don't think so. I think we reach a point where, and hopefully we can, we can all feel this, but we reach a time in our life where we feel like, man, I'm doing all the stuff, but I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the terrain got a little bit more treacherous, the mountain got a little more steep, so it might be time to change tires and add a little bit of an engine that you might not have had before to get the rest of the way.

Well, let's dig into that a little bit. What you're talking about is a moment of self reflection, the ability to self diagnose where you're at, what's working, what's not working, and how are you going to get to where you want to go.

Yeah.

Or at least your ability to see as far as you can. Whenever I think of moments like that, I realize those are moments where I need to ask myself some really laser focused self reflection questions. So I'd love to ask you what are some of the questions folks who are listening should be asking themselves as they are trying to develop this rubric or matrix or at least just understand for themselves. You know, maybe they're in a similar position. What got them to this point today? Listening to this episode, listening about time. That same mental model is not going to get them where they want to go. So what should they be asking themselves?

One, let me just say self awareness, by the way, is so key. And that's probably just the idea or concept of being self aware or how to be more self aware is probably a whole nother episode. But to get to your question of like what questions or how do you reflect? I think it comes down to a couple of things. One, you have to fundamentally decide what is going to be important in life. Once you get that first draft, I'll call it of this is what's going to be important or what needs to be important in life. My second question would be some type of challenging question, meaning, are you sure? Is there anything missing? If you allow yourself to dream and time or money was of no issue, would there be something that you would add to the list? Is there something historically that you thought you didn't need and you still are in the belief that you don't need it, but you need to second guess that and maybe it is. And again, this could be something on the spiritual realm for some folks where they had historically been turned off, but now it's time to turn it on. It could be something of friends or family or like for you, it's it's going to be different things. But I would say you have to figure out what's important in life, what directions you want to go. You're going to challenge yourself before you head in those directions. But then fundamentally, I'm always asking myself, is this really important? Am I doing what I feel like I'm put on this planet to do? And by the way, there are many days where I'm like, well, I shouldn't have done that, because that's not why I'm on the planet. But I pick myself up, dust myself off, and I continue to move on and do the best I can, because, trust me, I'm not. I'm not a person. Perfect human. There are no perfect humans. But I think when you can literally have at least a road map, because I feel like, by the way, no judgment in this. But I. I do look around and I. I wonder if some people have forgotten to download their GPS app because they just seem to be going in circles and circles and circles. Or sometimes you'll hear this, yeah, Bobby, he never grew up. Bobby never grew up. And it's like, well, did he install his gps? Did he or she know where they were going? Had they diagnosed the different routes? Did they understand the places that they needed to stop along the way? Because, listen, if we go back to this original thing, when I learned that time was precious, I also learned that this is a. I almost swore there, this is a journey. This is a journey that we're on. And you can either circle around your block 500,000 times or you can make it around the world. It depends. I don't know if that's helpful, Liz, but I do know that I'm always asking myself, does it matter? Here's the other thing, too, that I feel like I want to share. Here is my gps, my journey. The time that I spend doing things dramatically changed probably about six years ago as well. Because when I was a younger lady, my destination was success. The older I get the destination that I'm trying to arrive at. Which, by the way, I think is a major catalyst for this podcast. My final destination is significance. And there's a major difference in the choices you make, the questions you ask yourself, and the journey that you take when you're chasing significance over success.

Let me ask you this, though, and I say this not only as someone who knows you in the capacity of hosting this. I say this also as someone who has the pleasure of knowing you as a friend. When you say significance, what do you mean by that? Because I think it might be Easy for someone listening to say, oh, so he's looking for glory for George, he's looking for himself. What do you mean when you say significance?

To me, when I say significance, it's that. And I'll break it down to its simplest form and then I'll. I'll go from there. When I meet somebody, my ultimate goal is how can I leave them better than I found them? How can I. If they were sad, how can I leave them with a smile? I think when I say significance, it's tied to less of what's in it for me and what's in it for them. And when I think of significance, it's like, how can we put just massive amounts of value. Terrible marketing term, Great word, though. How can we put massive amounts of value into the world? Not noise, but value, things that people can use, things that will help unlock whether it's professional, personal. And the other thing that I have to throw out here now, this is just me. This is me. But when I think of significance, it's not my glory at all, but it's his glory, right? I mean, this isn't a religious podcast, but I firmly believe in God. I believe in the principles in the Bible, and I believe that being a servant to those around you, I believe that finding the Sumerian on the path of life and being the person who, like, picks them up, dusts them off and gives them that hand up. I believe in being a blessing bomber, right? When you're walking around and you've got the ability, either with time or your money or whatever it is, to make somebody's day better. And by the way, if you haven't read the fish philosophy, it's great. Make their day is a point in there. And so when I think about significance, it's like, how do you live a life where that's what you're focused on, making people's day better, making people themselves better, making the businesses that those people work in better, it's less about you. And I've got XYZ in the bank, and I've got XYZ cars, and I've got. Not that toys are a bad thing, because I think, by the way, when you become very significant, like, the other stuff just comes. But too many times we, me included, we're chasing success first. Success comes with significance, by the way. That's. That's the way I believe that this all works. And so for me, it's about his glory. It's not really about me, but it is about all the humans that I get the Ability to meet and talk to and just kind of give a little touch, if you will, as we.

Have this conversation right now. You are a little over a year into your journey as an agency owner. I would be very curious to hear from you how your relationship with time has changed in that year. Whether that's perspectives or difficult lessons learned or anything else that comes to mind.

It's an interesting question. It's a very good question. First of all, it feels like a week. I'm gonna let that set in for a minute. It's been over a year, but it feels like a week. Time has been flying by and we've, we've been super blessed. But another lesson around time that I have learned is it's real to go back, can't go back in time. We're talking specifically about the business here. When you say, hey, I'm gonna do xyz, especially for other humans around you in the organization, can't go back. It's real hard to go back. So make sure you pick the right things. Take that time, by the way, maybe to contemplate before you tell people that you want to do something or you're going to give them something or you want them to be in charge of something because you can't go back. Time is always moving forward, at least for the foreseeable future until they develop a time machine in which then this all will make sense of why there are cell phones in 1920. I'm just kidding. I'm not gonna go there. Not that type of podcast, but those are the big things is, first of all, it has been hyper accelerated and to the lesson of you can't go back. If you have made a decision, you have made your bed, now you need to figure it out from there. I'm a big fan of rebooting. In life, you can reboot if it only involves you. It's real hard to reboot when it involves other humans.

Interesting. Let's dig into this a little bit. So what are the things that you find yourself thinking about where it's like, oof, can't go back in time here?

Yeah, I just think you have to, you have to be cognizant of a couple things. The people that you might be bringing into your organization, the amount in which you start them at, as far as finances at your organization and the amount of ownership, not from like a percentage of owned business, but the things that they own, how much they can take on versus how much historically you might have been able to do. You, the person who have been Hustling, grinding, and finally started a business. You cannot be the litmus to what other people can achieve. And since this is about time, you can definitely not be the litmus to what they can achieve in the amount of time that you could have achieved it. There's a reason you have become a master at your craft and you have to realize it's going to take time for them to become, well, probably 17 steps before even being master. So let's talk about that patience piece, right? I just have to be real patient knowing that part of my job as a business owner is to grow those people. And I can't wave a magic wand and believe that, poof, they're just going to be great at what they do. I can't wave a magic wand and be like, poof, they're just going to be like super dedicated. But what I can do is I can water the business every day. I can try to put as much sunshine on the business every day, which, by the way, my inner badass nickname is Sergeant Shine. Just gonna throw that out there. We'll play with that later in a different podcast. But if I can water and I can put some sun and I can have metric butt ton of patience, I know that I can grow those humans into who they need to become their best versions of themselves. And so, you know, like words that are popping up into my brain right now are like expectations of time, the way that they use time versus I use time. So I just think that again, part of this is it's a master class in self awareness. It's a master class in being aware of other people and how they feel about themselves or their job. It's a master class in trying to do the right thing, even though you know you're probably going to screw it up along the way. But one of the things that I try to have around all of this conversation that we've kind of micro dipped into is a level of some, some compassion. Because I know that there have been people that were very compassionate towards me. I mean, when I got my first start in agency life, I showed up in an office in a blue windbreaker with no book to show anything and was this dude who was self taught, but they were compassionate and they gave me an opportunity and that I think those kind of go hand in hand for me. I'm trying to be super compassionate and give people opportunities. And during that time, I have to be able to keep my almost human judgment at bay. How do you roll for and how long do you roll? Like now we're starting to get into questions that ask myself, how long do you roll? Or allow yourself to roll with zero expectations? Because, you know, you're in growth mode versus this person by this time should have grown into a ninja and should be killing it. Which, by the way, here's the other thing is, like, some people just surprise the ish out of you. Because there's some people where you're like, this might take a hot minute. And then you're like, where did this ninja come from?

So when we think about time, I want us. I want us to come back to our core conversation here. Although thank you for taking us on that little tangent there. I was just so curious.

Yeah.

When we think about what we want our listeners to walk away with in terms of their thoughts about time, if they were to only walk away challenging themselves with one question about time, what should it be and why?

I like breaking things down to, like, pretty simple. I'm a. I'm a pretty simple dude. The narratives that I play in my brain over and over and over again, and I've said to people hundreds of times is, hey, and I know there's different beliefs out there, by the way. Let me just preface that. But for me, you got one go around. You got one chance at this. And the amount of years that I just made flip decisions and selfish decisions, feeling like this life will last forever and not realizing with the mindset of, you get one go at this, why would you not make it the best? If somebody told you, let's. Let's pretend for a second that you're a NFL player or a NBA player or tennis player. I don't care what it is professional sports, and somebody looked at you and said, this is gonna be the last time you're gonna be on this field. You know what kind of game you would play? You would play the hardest game you've ever played in your life because you would want to know that you left it all out on the field. You would want to walk away joyful to the journey that you just took because you knew it was your last time. Here's the thing. We wake up every day and we don't realize it could be our last time on the field. And when you wake up in the morning going back to being 13 hours away from death, when you wake up in the morning and you realize it fundamentally could be the last day that you get to step on the field, you play a little different. And so I would just hope that the listeners would kind of juke their brain a little bit in a good way of, like, every morning, wake up and realize time is precious, time is limited. This may be the last day I get to step foot on the field. Put me in, coach. I'm gonna give it my all.