Are You the Only One Who Actually Cares? (Welcome to Hardcore and At Ease)

This show is powered by others over Self. Hit that subscribe button to keep training your brain. Others over Self. It's Hardcore and at ease. A show about people who are keeping their edge without going over the edge. I'm host Shelly Rud, and welcome to our live launch. If you've listened to episodes one through four and you're realizing, you know what? I am tired of being the only one who actually cares about excellence, well, you're exactly where you need to be. Today we explore the foundational mindset, transforming individual intensity into exponential impact. Benjamin Franklin knew about this. You'll discover the others over self Positioning that makes sense. Excellence magnetic instead of exhausting. This is hardcore and at ease. It's Thursday afternoon, and you're in another meeting where you're the only one asking the hard questions. Everyone else seems content with good enough, and you're just over here thinking, man, this could actually be exceptional. You walk out feeling like you're carrying the weight of everyone else's standards on your shoulders. Later that day, you're reviewing work that technically meets the requirements, but you know, you can see exactly how it could be so much better. And you're wondering, am I the only one who actually cares about doing this right? If this is your daily reality, you're not alone. And more importantly, you're not stuck. Here's what's really happening. You're operating from a completely normal human default. When we feel like we're running out of time, when there's a deadline approaching, a project behind schedule, we're trying to get the kids in the car and we're late for church again, we automatically shift into survival mode. It's not selfish, it's instinctive. But in that moment, we start to unconsciously devalue the people around us because we're focused on saving time instead of investing it wisely. The compound effect isn't just your exhaustion and your family's exhaustion. When we operate in survival mode, trying to save time by doing everything ourselves or pushing people faster, we actually create more work downstream. You already know this. People become hesitant to bring us ideas. They wait for these perfect solutions instead of collaborating, and we end up actually having to redo work because the foundation just wasn't solid from the start. You, you've probably tried time management systems, productivity hacks, checklists for checklists for checklists, maybe even delegation frameworks that promise to save you time. But none of that addresses the real issue. When you're operating from survival mode, you're optimizing for speed instead of accuracy. Others over self actually saves time because when you implement it into every action, you're setting up a stronger foundation for more accuracy with every every effort. This means better positioning, which means more bullseyes, which means less rework. Amazing. What I've discovered across military and civilian leadership environments is that this pattern shows up everywhere. The most driven people become accidentally isolated in their drive. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why others over self saves time through better accuracy. And you'll have the foundational position that helps you hit the target first time instead of creating expensive rework cycles. This is what the entire hardcore and at ease approach is built to solve. Let's talk about why this problem has existed for as long as humans have been trying to accomplish great things together. This isn't a new problem. Throughout history, the most effective leaders have discovered that serving something greater than yourself is not weakness. It's what makes intensity self sustainable. Benjamin Franklin wrote extensively about this in his autobiography. He was brilliant, driven, absolutely committed to excellence. But early in his career, did you know that he was known for being argumentative and dismissive of others ideas? I feel pretty convicted about that actually. He realized he was right about many things, but wrong about how to lead people. Franklin developed what he called the art of virtuous self interest, understanding that your personal success is directly connected to the success of those around you. When you're serving something bigger than just your need to be right, people actually want to help you achieve excellence. What I learned from my time as a broadcast marketing executive is that the show literally could not go on without every single team member present. As the head of the production crew, from the camera operators to the producer and the director, I discovered that individual star performance meant absolutely nothing if the team wasn't functioning. If my camera operator called in and no one could cover, then my audio guy had to physically run down the studio stairs during the show and move the cameras around. If he didn't, then our viewers only saw one or two angles throughout the entire broadcast. And that's a big deal. Especially if it's Friday and the Humane Society is the guest and they bring those puppies. Oh well, we love those puppies. And if they don't get their airtime, that is a tragedy. The point is that my audio guy understood that he was serving the show. He wasn't just doing audio. So when your team operates from others over self serving the mission instead of protecting their individual job descriptions, amazing things can happen. Now I know what you're thinking. That's not in my job description. It's a very common phrase and a very frustrating phrase that we hear. But here's why this ancient insight feels impossible today. Because we're rewarded for individual performance. It's measured on personal metrics. It's taught that leadership means having all the answers. And so this system seems designed to make leaders like you feel like you really do have to carry everything yourself. Modern leaders are managing remote teams. We're dealing with shortened attention spans, always on their phones. And we're expect to deliver results while also being collaborative. And sometimes collaborative doesn't actually mean collaborative. But you are still expected to have these exceptional outcomes, right? Whether that's an internal pride of yours or if it's coming from an external expectation. Leadership advice tells you that you have to choose between driving results and serving others, between maintaining standards and being supportive. But that's the false choice that's keeping you exhausted. And not only that, it's holding back everyone's performance. In episode six, I'm talking with Andy Matthews, a professional golfer turned entrepreneur. He discovered a performance secret that landed him in the top 10 of the Canadian PGA. He had a competitive advantage that he didn't want anyone else to know about. But once he started looking beyond himself and actually sharing what he was doing, he started elevating so much more than just his own performance. Listen live to the interview and you'll hear that exact moment where Andy realizes that his work right now is elevating the entire game of golf. And that kind of impact can only be made by looking beyond ourselves. What actually hits the target is understanding that the highest standards and the deepest service are not opposites. They're the same thing. When your intensity serves something bigger than your need to be right, everything changes. And it's not easy. It's really not easy to tell me that I'm not right. Just ask my husband. This is the foundation of Others over self. It's not about being selfless or sacrificial. It's about understanding that your greatest impact comes when your pursuit of excellence serves the mission and the people around you. Here's the framework that makes this possible. Others over Self helps ambitious leaders raise the bar and go further. Together, we do this using the hardcore and at ease framework for everyday excellence. It's a simple three step process. You ready for this? Shoot. Move. Communicate. This framework is how you do life. Others over self is the mindset of why. The why versus the how. Today we're focusing in on the why because. Here's what most leadership training gets wrong. They give you the tools and they give you the techniques and we're all focused on saving time, work, life, balance, but we don't actually address the positioning that creates accuracy. Others over self isn't just a nice idea. It's the mindset that creates the strongest foundation. As a former competitive 22 small bore rifle shooter, I know that you have to have that strong foundation if you ever want to hit that bullseye, especially if you want to be any kind of good shooter and hit that bullseye consistently. When you're positioned correctly, serving something bigger than just getting through your to do list, every action becomes more precise, which means fewer missed shots and definitely less rework. I learned this the hard way when I hired a contractor. So she was given strict parameters about content design plus historical documents from our previous lessons. The deadline was clear, the audience was defined, the deliverable, totally specific. But instead of checking in with me during development would have taken five minutes at any point. She waited until the deadline to present what she thought was a nearly perfect product. It was beautiful. It really was. Unfortunately, it was very obvious that she completely overlooked the historical document because the stress lesson that she created included a lot of the same elements from our most recent lesson on stress and we were giving it to the same audience. She had wasted weeks of time and then double that because the work still had to be completed. Had she just positioned herself to serve the project rather than try to impress me with a polished presentation, she would have hit that bullseye instead of missing it entirely. She's fully capable of doing excellent work, but she was operating from self over others, wanting to look impressive rather than actually serving what I needed. Others over self means that your pursuit of excellence means something deeper than just getting through your to do list efficiently. When your actions come from this foundation, you're not just moving fast. Oh, I'm so busy. I got so many things to do. You're moving with precision. And time is not saved by rushing around. It's saved by hitting that target the first time instead of having to recalibrate and shoot again. I mean, how amazing is it when you give a client a graphic and they say, good, send it. It's beautiful. You don't have to redo it. There's no typos, the boxes aren't the wrong colors. Shift it one pixel or another in a certain direction. They just say, do it and you're done. You can move on. And that's beautiful. It's all about precision work. Now, it is common for people to think that the phrase others over self means putting yourself last or lowering your own standards to make others feel comfortable. But that's completely wrong. It means your high standards serve the mission and the people you lead. It's not just your reputation. What I've discovered in working with ambitious people is, is that the leaders of us who appear effortless, it's not that they aren't working hard. They're just working from a different foundational standpoint. In the hardcore and at ease framework, the first step is shoot. I know it seems like, wait, how can we shoot? Part of shoot. The very first part of shoot is establishing your position. Before you can hit any target, you have to know exactly where, where you're aiming from. And this means a total and absolute audit of your position. Conscious and unconscious. Sometimes we have a split second to do it. And sometimes we've got a lot of time on our hands to figure out, where am I? I learned this through my own journey of starting and growing this company. When I left broadcast television, I returned to my passion of serving people. And I did it in an area where I perform very well, and that is the fitness industry. I was really great at my job, but after hundreds of coaching conversations, they rarely were about caloric intake and daily habits, my clients nearly always went deeper, sharing about how their life felt out of control because of an over controlling boss, or about how their spouse had an affair and they wanted to leave, leaving them with this jarring possibility of needing to start dating again. I went through that and that's horrific. So eventually my desire to engage in these deeper and more candid conversations became paramount and I was faced with a vocational quandary. I don't want to stay here in the fitness industry, but where do I go? A fellow parent that I knew had just moved on from working for Tony Robbins and she launched her own coaching business. She had me do an exercise that I found so much value in. I'm having you do it this week. When we look ahead to the impact we want to make that plan, when we try to put it on paper, it can often be blank for a very long time, for years. Or the opposite can happen and maybe we're in a really good place of plenty of resources. And that's almost worse because we can have so many possibilities that we can't actually figure out what's the right path for me. And so instead of focusing on what you want to do, she had me set a timer for five minutes and as fast as I could, write down everything that I don't want to do. Okay, that list came out really quick. Number one, I don't want to work with kids ever. I have kids, I love my own kids. I don't want to work with anyone else's kids. It's not in my nature. I also don't want to be head of a family physical, church or a business. There's just something about being tied down to a building that really bothers me. And also on my list, I don't want to be a stay at home mom. I was raised by a stay at home mom. She is definitely the emotional foundation of our family. Not for me, never has been. And this exercise really helped me realize that I was spending energy trying to fit into these roles that weren't authentically me. I was leading kids crossfit classes when I really didn't have the heart to do it. It was a lot of fun. I mean, I'd tell them to run sprints and they'd run down to one end and come back and they were supposed to pick up a rock. And at one point a little girl came back and she held up a potato. It was very weird. The kids classes were fun, right? But when I went home at the end of the day, I just felt like I'm meant to do something different than this. And this inner audit process, this is really what establishing your position is all about. It's about getting brutally honest about your inner voice. It's about recognizing what you find valuable, not what you think you should value. Are you pursuing excellence because it serves the mission or are you feeling this need to be the smartest person in the room? This foundation is not a one time exercise. Building it is going to take a while and it's something that we need to revisit every year. Because you are not the same person that you were five years ago. You're not the same person that you were 10 years ago. I'm not the same person I was. I mean, if that was the case, I'd still be doing keg stands. But thank goodness I'm not. What we're doing is building a position so that every other element can be built upon it. And if we need to lift and shift throughout our lives, then that's exactly what we do. And we're not wasting time in the process. Because when you know exactly why you're pursuing excellence, when you're so clear that others over self is driving your actions, then everything else comes so much easier. Now let's take a quick break and when we come back, I want to talk about the changes that you're going to see once this gets put into place when you shift from self over others to others over self. Three things happen immediately. First, your intensity. I know people tell you you're a really intense person, right? Is that just me? Well, what's going to happen is that your intensity will lose its edge and it's actually going to become magnetic. People, including yourself, are not going to have quite so much exhaustion dealing with you all the time. The second thing that's going to happen is that people start bringing you SOL instead of problems and they want to talk them out and they still want your input and they want to know which direction to move in. And third, excellence becomes a shared value instead of just your personal burden. And that's priceless. The reason this creates exponential impact is simple. When your pursuit of excellence clearly serves something bigger than yourself, other excellent people want to be part of what you're building. Instead of carrying the standard alone, you become the person who helps others discover their own commitment to excellence. Now, unfortunately, I've seen brilliant leaders stay stuck in this trap of themselves for years and they wonder why their teams can't keep up with their drive. They don't realize that people are not being motivated by intensity. They're being motivated by understanding how excellence contributes to something meaningful. Now let's take time to make this practical. We're going to dive into how to establish this foundation for yourself. And we'll be right back after this quick message. All right, it's time to make this practical. The difference between leaders who create exponential impact and those who just burn out, it's not talent and it's not work ethic. It's whether they understand that others over self is the mindset that makes everything else sustainable. You are part of thousands of mission driven leaders. They're out there, I promise, and they've figured out how to keep their edge without going over the edge. This isn't about being someone different. It's about discovering what happens when your authentic intensity serves something bigger than yourself. The same mindset shift that helps me work with contractors and my team members positioning to serve the outcome rather than impress each other. This is what I use with executives and entrepreneurs and even nonprofit directors. It's the same intensity, but a completely different foundation. Do you remember that contractor that I mentioned? So here's what shifted when I started requiring regular check ins on products. I mean, it felt really good to just delegate and then come back to me in two months, right? But instead of letting people work in isolation all the way up until the deadline, I started positioning myself, my team My contractors to serve the final outcome rather than trying to impress each other with polished presentations. What this looks like is shared work drives. Let the client in on exactly where you're at on a certain process. And you know what, maybe you are behind on that deliverable. Your client should know that. It shouldn't be something that you're trying to hide from them or keep from them. This is what excellence is really all about. And the reason that this is effective for me is because regular check ins or are not about micromanaging. And we say that up front, regular check ins are about staying positioned to serve the target. We're no longer worried about impressing each other. We're having these same really high standards, but we're coming from a completely different foundation. And when you come from that foundation day after day after day, when you consistently are operating in this others over self mindset, magic happens. Do you remember that audio guy that I mentioned? He was running down to move cameras for the puppy segment. So I gave him his start in broadcast television production. He went on to become a show director under my mentorship. A few years later, after I left the television station, he called me to thank me for my leadership and my input on his career. And just to share the news that he had just won an Emmy award for his contributions to a major national news story. I remember him laughing and saying I don't know what to do with an Emmy. And he's showing it to me. So it's just sitting on his kitchen windowsill. An Emmy in his apartment. He never could have imagined that that moment a few years before was even a possibility because he was just running down the studio stairs trying to move those cameras to get a better close up of those puppies. So start paying attention to the voice inside your head when you're frustrated with others performance. Instead of being mad that that camera operator called out again, go ahead and cover man. Cover down on your buddy. Raise that excellence for your mission. Feel confident in your ability to answer this question. Is my intensity coming from service to the mission or is it coming from my need to be impressive to others? And that inner voice. It'll tell you everything you need to know about where you're shooting from. The really cool thing is that when you start operating from others over self, people start expecting your standards. It's really an amazing thing. And when they look at your standards and they want you to hold them accountable to them, they don't even see it as judgment anymore. They start experiencing your interactions as an invitation. They want to match your energy because they can feel that you're not pursuing excellence for them. It's not just you for yourself, it's us going together. So let's you and I, listener, go together. Over the next year, we're going to deep dive into how this mindset transforms every aspect of your leadership. You'll get the practical tools for building and maintaining that foundation. Remember that exercise that we already did way back in episode three about having that personal mission statement? We do that every year. You're going to get the systems for moving from individual to team excellence and the communication methods that make those really high standards feel like an opportunity instead of a threat. The key to this framework is progressive development. It all happens at the same time and it all happens in three steps. We'll build this systematically. We're going to start with your inner foundation and we're going to take it out to the world and we're going to explain, expand that to create some sustainable excellence that multiplies through others. And we're going to be able to let go of the outcome and have confidence in knowing that greater good is happening. Here's what we've discovered today and here's how you can take the next step. We've gone from feeling like we're the only one who cares about excellence, which you're not. I already told you, there's hundreds of us. We just need to connect. And now we have this understanding that others over self is this mindset that transforms that intensity from feeling like a burden to becoming a magnetic force. You have this foundational understanding now that separates leaders who burn out from leaders who create something lasting and something meaningful. I want you to join us. This is your foundational position. It's necessary for hitting that bullseye consistently. It's going to give you confidence in your direction and it's going to give you ability to achie your mission, whatever that may be. Whether it's owning your own business, climbing to the top of your industry, or just building a greater impact on your own local community, we're going to get you there. If you're thinking this makes sense, but I want help doing this audit work and implementing the others of yourself in my specific leadership context, then that's exactly what I do. With my background in military intelligence, broadcast marketing and business coaching, I help ambitious leaders discover how positioning themselves to serve the outcome create better results with less wasted effort. You don't have time to waste. What you'll get with me that you can't get anywhere else is someone who understands how to position yourself and your team to hit the target the first time instead of creating these expensive rework cycles. So if you want to get to know me more and explore working together, visit join.othersofourself.com to see exactly how this works. And welcome to the Others Over Self community. We are thousands of mission driven leaders who understand that your greatest impact comes when your excellence serves something bigger than yourself. That's all for now. I'm Shelley Rood and you can count on me returning next Tuesday. We're diving into the competitive advantage you don't want others to know about. With Andy Matthews, that former pro golfer turned entrepreneur, he'll reveal why sharing your competitive advantage actually multiplies your impact and how that mindset shift transformed both his golf career and his approach to business. If you've ever wondered if you should keep your secret to success a secret or go ahead and let it out, then this conversation is going to help you make that decision. Until then, stay hardcore, be at ease and trust the process.