Jeff Dudan | On the Homefront with Jeff Dudan #48

Hey everybody, Jeff Duden here talking to you a little bit about my book. The Business Athlete's Regimen for a Great Life Through Better Decisions. I wrote this book originally when I had come to the end of selling a business that I had built for 24 years and 11 months. Generally I write a book when I come to the end of an era and there's things that I want to capture and I want to organize and I want to compile to give to people that might want to go on the same journey behind me that information. So that's basically what I did with discernment. And it is. Discernment is a principled, effective, experience, informed process for powerful decision making. This book contains models of thought who will help anybody who is building a team, leading a team, growing a business, starting a business, selling a business, or maybe someone who just wants to be more intentional with their family. It really resonates with, I found with new business owners or young people who are young in their career and there's excellent information for them to think about these inflection points in their life and realize that here's a chance, here's a place where I need to be more intentional about my decision making. And it also seems to resonate a lot with very experienced, reflective people who maybe are older in their career and they have shared similar journeys to me. So generally I've written two books. The first one was called hey Coach and generally I write a book when I come to the end of a chapter of my life or a milestone. So for example, I wrote hey Coach after coaching 30 seasons of my kids sports. They had all moved on into high school. I had stopped coaching them when they got to the end of middle school or eighth grade, whatever it is for you. And I had really developed a methodology for leading a small team of young people over a three or four month season. And I felt that I wanted to share my experiences, successes, failures, anything that I had learned along the way and organize it in such a way to give context to what somebody else might be going through and really for the purpose of just helping other people. So I wrote hey coach back in 2015 and then discernment in 2019 and again I really just wanted to capture what I could and organize it in such a way to help you. So what will you get from this discernment book and why does it matter? So you will learn. One of the things you will learn is how to use your core values as a primary filter in your decision making process. I share my family values, I share My business values and real life examples about how these contributed to the greatest decisions of my life. You hear people say your values are what you tolerate. That's very popular out there. People say that what I've learned is doing the work to understand who you are and what matters to you. And what's most important to you is one of the first things you need to do. Because you can't be everything to everybody. And you've got to decide what's in, what's out, what people are in, what people are out. One of the things I have come to learn is the first thing you need to learn about people, especially in business and partnerships, is you got to figure out how people make their money. There's lots of different ways for people to make money, and most of them are good. Now it's just a matter of is the way that this potential partner makes their money going to be consistent with your beliefs and your values in the way that you make your money and looking at your values to decide whether this is a business partnership or an investment or something that you want to make, whether that's in or out for you, people will use their values. I like to say it's the vibe that builds the tribe and it's also the vibe that breaks the ties a lot of times in business because people like to do business with companies that they vibe with. And that's all fundamental to values. How you interact with people, how you look at relationships, how you make tough decisions. It always goes back to like, who are you? What do you stand for? And what's core to you? And I'm not saying these are big altruistic things or some super holier than thou. I mean, the values just simply state how you look at opportunities and challenges inside of your business. And when it comes down to making a tough decision like where do you stand on those things? So we'll talk about that. You will also learn how to look at your life like a balance sheet and explore your personal equities on that balance sheet. I have a belief that you got to have the right balance in your life between creation and consumption. You see all over the Internet where people talk about excessive consumption and how it won't make you happy. And there's truth to that. You have to have some meaningful thing that you're pursuing in life, something that lights you up, something that's creation oriented to where you're creating value, and it's something that you want to spend your waking hours doing so. And there's a balance sheet inside of that right. Because sometimes we like to consume. You want to celebrate you had a win. You want to enjoy some material things based on the success that you've had. Nothing wrong with that. But there is a relationship. You can't just. If we were on vacation all the time, we would be sick and tired of it. So you got to balance that out in your life. So what are the equities that go on your personal balance sheet? Number one, relationship equity. Your relationship equity and the deposits that you put in people's bank will get you through tough times, mistakes. Your body of work and the things that you do over the course of your lifetime will sincerely help you overcome challenges with people. It'll get people to trust you in situations where you need to be trusted. And investing in relationships with other people is critically important. And when you see these people say at the end of their life, like, what mattered the most to me, it wasn't that extra car that they had. It wasn't these things. It was the time that they spent with family or the time that they sent with the people that they cared about, the relationships that they built along the way. All of those things really, really matter at the end of the day. So making sure that you're intentional upon your relationships is something we touch on in the book. Your reputation equity is very important, especially in business and in relationships. Your reputation is the relationship that you have with people that you haven't met yet. Get that? Your reputation equity is the relationship that you have with people that you hadn't met yet. So your name travels farther than you ever do. Your work travels farther than you ever do. What do people think about you? What do people say about you when you're not around? Do people refer you and say that they need to talk to you? Or do people say you need to stay away from this person because you can't trust them and all of that. So there's also other equities in terms of your health, your wellness, and your financial equity. We touch on all of those in discernment. You will also gain some insight into inflection points. I will tell you that I have had four inflection points in my life and looking, and those are the forks in the road where I made a decision that got me to where I am today. Good or bad, we are where we are in life based on the decisions that we've made. Our decisions put us exactly where we are today. It's nobody else's fault. It's absolutely our responsibility and our decisions for the things that happen to Us. And the quality of those decisions determine the quality of your life and the velocity of your business. So when I look back at my life, there's been four major inflection points. I talk about those in the book. And just as a clue, inflection points in your life generally have three things. Number one, they involve people. People that you're responsible for, people that you care about, people that you're going to influence, people that you're going to impact, or what you do in this inflection point is going to have a material impact on these other people. The second thing is there is a great adventure at hand. There is an opportunity, if you choose the fork in the road that you will be pursuing, an opportunity that is new, that is exciting, that is bigger, it is some sort of opportunity of gain for you in your life or your business. And the third thing is a risk of loss. Generally to get something. And I know that you can say, well, don't have a scarcity mindset, have an abundance mindset, but generally if you're going for something great, you've got to give something else up. There's only so many hours in the day, there's only so many dollars you have to invest. There's only so many bits of energy that you can put into anything. So those inflection points, people, a great adventure and a risk of loss, all of those things. So we talk about that in the book. I'll also talk about the importance of 90 day planning. 90 days is the perfect cadence in which to set big plans in action and have your 90 day goals, your 90 day plans, take that down to weekly, to dos. And really we talk about, you know, how 90 days, you can change your life in 90 days. You know, people say, how many days does it take to change a habit? Sometimes it's like, well, you got to do it 20 times. Some people say 60 days, whatever, all of it falls within 90 days. You can change your life in 90 days by making a different decision today than you made yesterday about something that matters to you. And the book will tie your decision making process to your 90 day plan so that you can move your business and your life forward. And finally, you'll get a look at my reading list. 54 pieces of content that I reference in the back of the book, categorized by topic, that will round out your perspective and hopefully set you down a path with a few new authors whose work has made a difference in my life. Look, I've gotten such great feedback on this discernment book. I have people that have been in franchising for 45 years and Dr. John Hayes took this book to the beach with him. He runs the Titus center for Leadership and Franchising down at Palm Beach Atlantic University and he said he used a whole highlighter in the book and couldn't wait for us to dig in and discuss it. Asked me to do a keynote down for them, which I did and went through these things. So discernment the business athlete's regimen for a great life through better decisions. You can get it on Amazon also too. If you consume our content and you land on the right piece of it, you will find a link where you can click on a link. Just give me your name, give me your email address. I will send you a free copy 14.99 value but the information in it is priceless discernment. Click on it and we will send it right out to you electronically immediately. My gift to you. Thanks for reading.