Mike Hartman- Motivational Story- Start At The Bottom

Mike Hartman, performance mindset strategist. This is Develop the mindset of a Champion with former Stanley cup champion Mike Hartman. Welcome to another episode. Today I'm going to talk about performance, but before I get into performance, I'm going to start with the story. So the story goes like this. One of my clients owned a business in Charlotte, North Carolina, without sharing his name. Might be a personal story to him. And he built a very successful business in the Carolinas. So what he did was he started off having his son work for him, but he had a son started working from the bottom up. He wanted his son to learn the business from the entirety. So what he did was he took his son and he says, listen, I want to teach you the business, and one day this business is going to be yours, but you're going to have to start at the bottom and you're going to start small. Sweeping the floors. So he shows up one day and he's sweeping the floors with no energy. Looks like he hasn't slept. He looks terrible. He looks like he doesn't care. So his father reaches out to me and says, I really need help with my son. He's really not focused. He's not doing what he's supposed to do. He really doesn't care. He says he wants this, but he doesn't put any effort into this, and he believes he should start at the top. So I talked to him in our first meeting. We meet at a coffee house, and I said, listen, I really want to help you. Your father wants me to help you with this performance mindset strategy program. And he quickly turns to me and says, I don't want to be here. I hate what I'm doing. I don't believe I should be sweeping the floors. And I said, I beg to differ with you. I believe you should start at the bottom. It's like an athlete. We use athletics a lot, and a lot that we do. And it's the same thing. You start at the bottom and you work your way up. A lot of us have to start at the low minor leagues and you work your way up to the big leagues. But it takes effort, it takes time. So he looks at me and he leaves. So I call his father. And I said, listen, I don't think this is going to work. And I don't give up on people, usually, especially businesses that I work with. But he said to me, you know what? This isn't going to work. He has a bad attitude. I even said the same thing. And surprisingly, I get a call, like, the next Day that his son wants to meet me, he says, I'd like to give it another chance. So I end up meeting him at a coffee house in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we sit down. I said, listen, let's just talk. And the whole purpose was I loved working with somebody through stories. Now, the story with his father is his father started at the business in the same industry that he was in. I don't want to give it away. This is his personal business. So he started at the bottom. He worked his way up in New York, moved to Charlotte, had to start all over again, and really built up a big business. And I said, look what your father did. Listen to his story. Let's help you. Let's you create a story. So we help him. And the first thing we talk about, though we go all the way back, was performance just doesn't start with, hey, I'm going to show up and I'm going to. I'm going to work hard. It really starts with your mental health. It starts with your mind, your body. It starts with fitness. So the first thing we talked about is, I really want to help you within your work, but I want you to go on a fitness program. So he did. He went on a program, he started lifting weights, he started taking care of himself. I said, I don't care what program you go on. Make sure it's a safe one. I talked about this with Cheryl Buckley on the show. My program is, I don't believe in weights, but that doesn't mean that it's good for you. So I wanted you to start with the fitness. He says, what does this have anything to do with the industry that I'm in? I don't really like sports. I'm not into sports. I said, listen, I want you to take care of your body. Fitness is important. I want you to start walking. I want you to do the basics, do 10 minutes a day. So it comes out. He followed the plan. He took it upon himself, and he said, you know what? I'm going to exercise and I'm going to do it. So we started with that. A week later, I talked to him, and he's looking better, and it looks like he was exercising. He says, I'm doing this program. I'm starting to enjoy it. I feel better. I said, great. And instead of putting too much onto him right away, the next thing I talked about was his diet. And I'm not a dietitian, like I said. We have one, Cheryl Buckley, she's our dietitian. She has a plethora of Information for people. But at that time I said, listen, I need you to find, you know, I have somebody for you, or if it's not her, why don't you find somebody that could help you, you know, have a proper intake of food, take care of your body. Your body's like a machine and it's, it's going to break down if you don't properly fuel it. He says, I don't see how that's going to help me get to where I want to be in my father's company. And I said, you have to listen. Yes, it will. We have to take care of that. It's a big part of what we do is managing ourselves. And if he wanted to manage people, I said, well, if you can't manage, manage yourself, how are you going to manage others? So he took it on and he went on a good program. He started eating well. I don't know if I agreed with what he was doing, but he took major steps in taking care of his food intake and he was eating well. Then I met with him another week. So I didn't want to throw too much at him. When you throw too much at somebody, they get overwhelmed and the last thing you want to do is create more stress. So I meet with him again a few days later. We had a follow up and we talked about sleep and we talked about this on our show a little bit too the other day. Why is sleep so important? And he was only getting two to three hours of sleep. He really wasn't focused. I said, sleep is everything. Even as a professional athlete, we knew we had our sleep a day of a game. We were sleeping from two to four, no matter what, unless you're nervous, you have a lot in your mind and you can't sleep the night before. Says everything. Sleep is everything. Came back with the same reply, oh, I don't know how that's going to help me. And I explained, you always want to be fully present. Well, I'm only cleaning the floors right now. I'm starting, I'm, you know, 22 years old, just got out of, I don't even think he went to, I don't think he went to even college. But he, he says, you know, I'm not in school. I graduated from high school a few years ago. I'm still sweeping the floors. Why do I have to be alert? I said, you always, no matter what it is in life, if you're selling real estate, you want to be fully present. If you're an athlete, you want to listen to your Coach, you want to be fully present for your team. If you're sweeping the floor at where you are, you want to be fully present. Now let's take this back. I'm going to take you back a little bit. This was about, this was five years ago when, when we were, when we were doing this coaching with him. So fast forward the clock. He says, I'm getting more sleep and I'm thinking a lot. I said, what are you thinking about at night? Well, I'm nervous about a lot of things, a lot of personal things. So I said, well, there's meditation, there's breathing. So we got into all that. So the first part, I want to share with you why it was so important to take care of your body. Because if somebody says, hey, I just want to get better, well, it just doesn't happen overnight. You have to walk before you run, you have to crawl before you walk. So you have to take baby steps to really want to reach your goals. And we're not going to talk about goals so much. We're going to do that on a different episode. I just want to finish this story. So as we're going on, he's doing really well now. He's fully present, he's alert, he's exercising, he's feeling really good about himself and he's showing up at work on time. That was another thing that I didn't discuss. His father said to me, well, he's not coming in on time. I said, well, do you make him come in? He goes, yeah, but we don't really want him to quit. We want him to keep, keep going with this. So as time is going on, we're moving along a little bit. After six months he gets moved up to a position where he's going to work on the floor, where he's going to get involved with sales within what he was doing. But he had to learn. So he went through a learning program and he slipped a little bit. We all do. Come on, we're not perfect. So he slips a little bit. His father called me and the only thing I told his father is I want to do a six month program just to have him really have that plan, rituals and goals in place which included exercise and eating well, taking care of yourself, being fully present, all the above. So now he's really engaged with this team. And then when I met with him, he was so engaged. He had so much good energy that he brought into our media. And I told his father, I can't believe it. He's not the same kid. He's absolutely not the same kid that, that I met and talked to the first time that quit on me, the first time that I even said I was negative. I have to admit, when we're negative sometime, you know, we get negative. We get. But I said, there's no way this is going to last. And wow, did he just take off? So times going on and he really did well. He's. The sales part, he took. He went through the, the process and he had a mentor at the office that helped him with the sales part. So I'm meeting with him. We're continuously growing. We've had little setbacks. Again, it's not. It's like. It's not a roller coaster or another good example is, I mean, a roller coaster. It's not all the way up and then down. We try to keep it really balanced. And we use this analogy many times. Life is not a marathon. It's many short sprints. So you're going to have days that are good and days that are not so good. You just want to have more good days than you have bad days. So he was doing really well. Now he worked himself up to a good sales position. He took the course and now he's one of the top salespeople. I'm going to fast forward a couple months, many meetings. He's now one of the top sales people in the company. I get a call from his mother and dad who both worked over at this, at the office and said, I can't believe it. He's really doing great. Well, a big part of their business is involving customers. So as we're going on, I'm still working with him. He's improving. His attitude is improving. He has just taken the. He had the confidence because you have to start. If you don't feel good about yourself, you're not going to feel good working with people. So it turns out now that within the company there's two big locations that this, this company had. And. And now he's helping some of the, let's say the elders, a little people, few people a few years older than him. He is now helping them improving sales. And the sales are just taking off because of the good energy. And the report is now he started working with actually customers. And the report that was coming back to the. His father and the person that this young. I don't want to call him a kid. This young man had to report to said the customers have never been so happy. What a fine young man. And they didn't even know it was the owner, son so now he's really took it upon himself to, to get better. I'm going to fast forward the clock a little bit more now. He's in a position where he's doing very well within the company. He's doing. He's one of the top sales professionals in the company. He has learned the, the old again. He didn't like sports. His father's not a big sports fan. Fabulous, great family, love the mom and dad. And now they want me to work with other people within the company, which is great. But I. This is, this is a story that just touches my heart because he did all the little things right. He started showing up early. He started taking care of his mind, body. He started communicating very well. He focused on being present well. The whole purpose of this is he continuously works his way up to the company. He's been consistent. Consistency is a big part of what we do. He's been very consistent in his everyday work ethic. He's been consistent in everyday life. Now he, we're talking five years ago. So now he has a little one now. So now he, he's a father. He's taken on that responsibility and he's done very well just by what, following a plan. And I want to get the message across that all starts with you. It really starts with taking care of yourself. So when we bring on professionals like a Cheryl Buckley, the dietitian or Ali Faber who is a stretch coach or we're going to have many different professionals we had on the show if you listen to them. The purpose I bring these professionals on is to help you with your overall mind, body. Now I bring on an Adam Graves. I bring on professional athletes from New York Yankee baseball players to players that, that were short making it by a day. Graham Bonner, who, who's a really nice guy that just didn't make it. But he's still plugging away and he still has that mindset of improving. And the reason I bring him on so you hear their stories. So that's why I call it develop the mindset of a champion. And we have the stories. So you put your stories in front of that. So stories to develop the mindset of a champion. I love working with people through stories. And the story started with this father. I'm almost, I almost said his name. I'm going to get myself in trouble. I didn't even ask him if I could tell the story. So I don't want to say his name, but I don't think he would care. We still talk to this day, but it started with his father. Told me the story of when, growing up in New York, he had to start sweeping the floors. And then they built up this big business. Let's just say it's automotive. And they built up this big automotive business. And then he went on his own and opened up a really nice business in North Carolina. And how he had to work his way up and he didn't believe his son. So just come right in and start at the top, because when you do that, you're setting people up to fail. You really are. In most cases, anytime you start somebody at the top, they really know. They don't know what has happened at the bottom. Now we can get into leadership for another half hour, which I'm going to save for another episode. The message here is, please take care of yourself if you want to be successful, no matter what it is. If you're a dentist, a doctor, whether you're an engineer, whether you're a plumber, whatever you do, please take care of your mind, your body, listen to the professionals that we have here. And if I could help you in any way, we have motivational quotes. We keep our podcast on our website. You can go to imotivatorsacademy.com you could share your story with us. We would love to help you. So it's the letter I M O T I V A T o r s academy.com.