How Leaders Keep Success From Turning Into Complacency

You have a team that's hitting their numbers, winning contracts, no fires to put out, and somehow that's the problem. Because somewhere between good enough and great, something quietly disappeared. The hunger, the edge, the willingness to go after something harder than what they know they can close. This isn't a motivational problem, it's a drift problem. And drift doesn't announce itself. It shows up in next year's pipeline when it's too late to do anything about it. Today's conversation is about how to spot it before it costs you and what the best leaders do to pull a high-performing team back from comfortable into hungry. I'm Susan Drumm, and this is The Enlightened Executive, where your personal evolution sparks your leadership revolution. Each week, we spotlight cutting-edge strategies to help executives and entrepreneurs grow in leadership and in life. My guest today is Jake Thompson, founder of Compete Every Day. He's a speaker and a 4-time author who's delivered 500 programs for organizations like Deloitte, Pfizer, and Titleist Golf. Jake started his brand in 2011 by first selling t-shirts out of a trunk of his car, which are now worn by leaders in over 62 countries. Jake's work has been featured in Forbes and Inc. magazine, and his Compete Every Day podcast has been downloaded over 2 million times. Jake, welcome to the show.

Excited to be here. Excited to hang out, Susan. Thanks for having me today. Yeah.

So tell us a bit about your work and who it's for.

Yeah. So I am the founder at a company called Compete Every Day. We work with leaders a lot in sales teams and sales adjacent organizations and then trade organizations on how we battle drift, however drift shows up. Uh, a lot of our trade, construction, manufacturing clients tend to have more challenges on the leadership side. And so we, we typically refer to that as busy drift or comfort drift. And on the sales side, it's victory drift. We typically don't work with newer organizations but with organizations that have had success. And we know that the most dangerous thing for a lot of teams and leaders is success because we tend to take our foot off the gas, we tend to relax on our standards and all of the things that made us successful in the first place. We kind of feel like we're past that. And then we get to a point where we look up and think, crap, what happened? What happened to our organization? We were so far ahead because we got so comfortable that we eventually drifted off course. And so we do a lot of work around helping those teams and organizations from a keynote standpoint as well as from a coaching and training standpoint.

Got it. So what is driving that phenomenon that happens? Because it doesn't happen to every leader. I know I work with some leaders who always keep raising the bar, and they're so impressive, and yet others don't. So what is the distinction?

There's a few things, right? Biologically, we are hardwired that if we don't have a target, we're naturally going to drift. And so as you talk about high performers, what I love about— it sounds like the people you work with, and a lot of the clients I've had to work with is there's not really a finish line that they're pursuing. Simon Sinek famously talked about playing the infinite game or the finite game, and the finite game is one we typically get caught in from a business. If we can just get this funding, if we can just reach this sales number, if we can just get this distribution, we tend to think that that's going to be a tipping point that changes everything. And so we put metaphorically all of our eggs in that basket and then we reach it and we're not very fulfilled. And we find out that that wasn't more than just a mile marker along the way. And so naturally, kind of the way our brains work is we're looking for almost a point to where a lot of us, we feel like we've made it. We feel like our company's made it. We've gotten there. And there's no real point. What, what we find is in the people you work with, work, the ones that are constantly growing are really obsessed with being their best over the best. And there's a small distinction in that. We are raised and taught like the idea of being the best. We want to have the biggest business, we want to dominate our industry, want to have all these things. But then we reach it and we reset back to zero, or we never get there. We compare ourselves and we consider ourselves a failure for not having got to some point that we think we should. The idea of being your best— all of the research backs when you are consumed with your constant growth and improvement, that there's not a finish line. You're just looking for, honestly, how do I get a little bit better today than I did yesterday? How do I help my team? We experience far more resilience. Grit, and we found more fulfillment in our work because it's not hoping that a magic finish line somehow changes everything for us. This dopamine high is going to get there, but we actually fall in love with the chase and the growth and the curiosity of what we can learn. And so what happens to a lot of leaders is we just get caught up in benchmarks and finish lines and looking at someone else's game more than anything else because of what we see on social, what we see in our networking organizations. And the ones who continue to keep showing up, who don't get caught off course, they just keep setting markers of, okay, how do we improve this? How do I get a little bit better? And they've got those systems and targets and standards. And that's what we would essentially say. If you think about it in sports, legendary football coach Nick Saban always would say that you play to your standard and not the scoreboard. The scoreboard is the lagging indicator. If you're up a lot, typically people take their foot off the gas. If they're down a lot, they think we can't win. What's the point? They only play well when it's close. But when you play to your standard, you say, what are the standards and expectations I'm gonna hold myself to every day as a leader? How am I gonna carry myself? How am I gonna show up? How am I gonna pour into my team? Then you find that that person's consistently growing in the long term.

So that focus on the journey versus the end goal, there's a paradox there, right? We wanna have goals because as you said, you need to have that. If you don't have those targets or goals, you start to drift. And at the same time, if you're solely focused on the goal and not that journey, then you won't actually have the sense of fulfillment that you think you're going to have when you hit that goal.

Yeah, the researchers call it the hedonic treadmill. All of the research on happiness and fulfillment shows that no matter how high the achievement, you reset somewhere. It's a couple of days. You talk to Super Bowl champions, they've won the biggest game of their entire lives, and within 48 hours the high is gone like it's out the window. On the same side, it can take up to 6 months, but we eventually always reset. And so the difference is not the people who have goals, who don't have goals. Goals are, we consider, like North Stars. They give you a direction. They're the things we're aiming for, but we're not expecting them to fulfill us. We're expecting them as, oh, that's great, what else am I capable of? I look at them more as mile markers, as if you were running a marathon. Goals are mile markers that are moving me in the right direction toward an ultimate goal, a career goal, a thing I want to have, places I want to go. But I'm not expecting them more than just to be grateful to have gotten there versus for them to fulfill us.

Interesting. So tell us a little bit about how you came to this, like this work and why this topic.

Yeah, so it, it's really interesting. My journey is very different from a lot of people. I started my company selling t-shirts out of the trunk of my car 15 years ago last month, honestly. I was a marketing consultant living in Dallas. I thought I wanted to be Jerry Maguire's sports agent, spent a few years in that industry, realized that's not what I wanted to do. And it was 2008. Couldn't get a job. I had an MBA. I had non-traditional work experience in the sports industry. And so I built a consulting practice through word of mouth and referrals. And I got to a point where it was going really well, but I was incredibly unfulfilled. I've always been a junkie in learning. My mom is a teacher. And so I credit/blame her of like, I'm always reading psychology, leadership, human behavior, all of the things that, man, I wish I knew when I was younger. And so in 2011, I started Compete Every Day with the simple message of what happens when we stop comparing ourselves constantly to everyone else and start competing with ourselves. And at the time it was just t-shirts. And then over the next 5 to 6 years, as the brand grew into customers in 62 countries now, people would ask me to come speak and they're like, talk to us about how we actually compete. Like, it sounds really cool. It's a cool slogan, but how do we get our people to show up and compete every day? And so working with clients, continued research, testing things with teams, we started to build frameworks that actually worked with organizations. Now here's where it got interesting. Over the last year, the speaking space is incredibly crowded, as we've kind of laughed off air. Like, there's a ton of people who speak. There's a lot of speak and say deals and organizations around leadership and high performance. And what I wanted to do was dive into the data of what gets us booked, rebooked so often, but more importantly, what our clients say about us that's different than anybody we might go up against for gigs. So you're trying to find your competitive advantage. And so we went through every one of our conver— sales conversations that led to gigs, the ones that didn't lead to gigs, of why they found us. We went through testimonials post-events, we went through post-event interviews, and the thing that kept coming back for all of the research were twofold. One, you helped our team bridge the gap between knowing and doing. Like, we knew we shouldn't take our foot off the gas, but we still did it. We figured out how to battle it. The second is when our team was really comfortable, you gave us some frameworks to keep everybody accountable and still moving. And so what that signaled to us is, man, most of our work is with teams that already do really well. They already know how to win, but we're all guilty of drifting at some point. And so drift is where we started to put language. We've all heard the phrase drift, We all talk about it's the slow decline into a place you don't want to be. But when we started to name the different types, that's really where the IP started to take a life of its own. So Victory Drift is the idea that you win and you take your foot off the gas and then suddenly you lose. And we do it all the time because we've had this client for the last 3 years. Why wouldn't they rebook with us? Well, they're deciding, do I still want to do business with me or have we taken you for granted? Right. Busy Drift is, is one that's dangerous for a lot of leaders because Feels really good to get our inbox first thing in the day or to scroll LinkedIn, and we check boxes and we delete emails and we do all of this stuff that feels productive. But then we look at our goals and we look at the things that we need to be working on as priorities, and we did none of it. And so busy drift is that day where it's like you wake up, you hit the ground running, and you get to the end of it and you are exhausted, but you didn't get anything done that you needed to, right? Because we were distracted. And so busy drift is that one that catches us. And that one, I just want to pause on that one.

The idea that actions equal output, not all the time, right?

Not all the time.

So many leaders that they're so exhausted, they're so busy, and I'm like, well, where's the tracking of the outcomes though? We're tracking activities, not outcome, you know.

Instead, how many emails did you answer? That's a terrible activity to, to respond to, right? So let me, let me, let me give your audience something really helpful right now. So what we say is the way you fight busy drift is with great review. Because if we think about it, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result. Yet how often do our work weeks mirror that definition? And so the way we turn effort into progress instead of a broken record is with a healthy review system. And so for us, we teach our teams every Friday to do an exercise called Start, Stop, Continue. It's very basic. I learned it years ago in a mental performance program, but you just ask yourself 3 questions. What's one thing I did not do this week that if I did next week would make me more productive, a better leader, more present, right? What's one thing I did this week, if I'm honest, I probably should stop doing to be more productive next week. And what's one thing that I'm doing well I should continue doing? One to start, one to stop, one to continue. Now, what I love about this is it's 3 little bitty targets. It's super simple. You do it once, no big deal. You do it every week, you've now— every week you're competing against the previous week, right? Our brain is compete every day. It's always about with yourself. So how am I competing to get better? But it also makes sure that you're checking, what am I working on to make sure I'm working on the right activities? And if I'm not working on the right activities, up Next week I need to start time blocking an hour a day where I don't have meetings, where I'm not on calls, where I'm working on key things, versus hoping we find the time or just continuing to repeat week after week after week and never really making progress, and then wondering, where did my year go?

Yeah, and you know what I love about that is you could really use AI now to enhance that process, and I'm sure some of your clients do, where if you just start a thread with these 3 questions where you're answering them every week and going back to it, and then start to look at the themes and patterns, because everything we talk about is around the patterns that follow you. It gives you that ability to zoom out and see exactly what do I notice over time? I keep doing the same thing where normally when we're on autopilot, we don't notice that. Right. And I think asking these 3 questions and leveraging a tool to be able to see and have it show you your patterns in that could be really powerful.

Super powerful. And it, it also takes it up a level. One of the things we used to do before AI got to the point it is now is when friends, friends in the industry would just need accountability. I'm like, listen, I can't get on a call with you every week, but here's what we can do. If on Monday you will text me what are the 3 targets you need to get done this week, and on Friday I want you to text me at end of day, 3 for 3, 1 for 3, whatever the case may be. I'll hold you accountable and follow up with you. But it's very simple. Well, you can now automate some of that with AI, right? Because you can have your prod— your scheduled task every week of, hey, Monday morning, What are your 3 priorities for the week? On Friday afternoon, it's scheduled. Hey, what's our score for these? And then you add your start, stop, continue. Now you're getting a snapshot week over week that every month, if you've built a project correctly, if you've built that custom GPT to be your thought challenger, to say, hey, identify where my holes in my game are. Help me see. I put this in my stop every week, but I keep going back and doing it. What could it be? Ask me questions that'll help me uncover or pull at the thread to figure out what in my behaviors, my environment, my habits are leading me to continue failing at this. And so I think that's where leaders can be really helpful, because the change that we want to see is the result of little bitty choices. Like, the decision to not start your day in your inbox is a small choice with massive repercu— repercussions for your productivity in the long run.

And so where should you start your day?

So I'm always big on your priorities. I'm big on planning tomorrow tonight. So one of the things that I always recommend with people is like, building this habit is difficult because our first inclination when you wake up, you want to reach over, you want to grab your phone, you want to check notifications, you want to check email, and you get into a defensive in responsive mode all day, and it's really hard to go from playing defense to playing offense. And so it's something as simple as take a sticky note, and at the end of today, as you're listening this, just write, what are my 3 priorities for tomorrow? You know them, they're probably on your computer right now, they're on your desk, they were unfinished, but you put them right on your computer screen. And so we'll literally take a sticky note, put it on your computer screen, or right now I have this thing called a Desk Board Buddy that has a big white erase board on the front that I can write it right here on my desk. And so I see it. So the the first thing I do when I sit down is look and say, what are my 3 priorities for today? How do I start working on number 1? And some days for me, number 1 is dive into my CRM and do follow-up with certain clients, right? It is outreach in that regard, but I'm not getting into my inbox to say, ooh, let me delete these 10 emails so I feel super productive in how I start my day, but I really haven't done anything that actually helps me. And so I found that process of planning tomorrow tonight and writing your 3 priorities for the next day, putting it somewhere super visible before you get into your inbox, helps you with that process.

Well, I like the, the structures that you put in place with the whiteboard and keep using it and you see what happens. What about the fact that, you know, priorities change during the day? Something comes in, I better check my email first thing because it might actually set my priorities for the day based on what's coming in. How do you think about that?

Yeah, so I mean, everyone's different, right? There's no one-size-fits-all on anything. However, I would argue that 1% of the emails we get set our direction for the day. Now, there are emergencies and there's things that happen, but part of that is also communicating with our teams of, hey, if it's a crisis or emergency, you need to call or text. Like, don't send an email. Like, here's my response time based on email versus everything else. And so there are instances, but what I would say is how it's almost like getting on social media. If you ever gone on social media and you went to make a post, but then you started scrolling, and then you looked up and it was like 25 minutes later and you've watched 15,000 reels and you thought, I really need to get off of here. How did I spend this much time? Because you went to do one thing and then you got sucked in.

Yeah.

Versus what happens if I set an alarm for 2 minutes, I go on social media, if I make a post and I start to scroll, the alarm is gonna go off in 2 minutes to jog my attention, right? You're setting a boundary or setting an accountability to make sure you don't go down the rabbit hole. The same has to apply to your inbox. You need to set up structures in place to do it. It's one reason why, you know, they recommend like if you work from home, Don't have your phone in your office with you because you're going to get notifications that will distract you. Or just the fact that it's sitting next to you, it still has this pull that, oh, I need to check my phone, I need to check my phone versus what is the task at hand I should be working on. And so you're looking for little ways to set yourself up for success. And it's not big moves. That's the thing. It's little bitty adjustments that— that's so stupid. You put my phone in the other room. Try it. Hey, try it for a week, see what happens. It's not telling you to not check your phone, but you could go in there. And then there's people I know who, they know their behavior with email, and so they have autoresponders that say, hey, I check my email at 11 AM and 4 PM Central Standard Time. I'll get back to you during those periods. If it is an emergency and you need an immediate response, please text or call. That's how they approach it very intentionally, because our attention is one of the most important things we have as leaders. Our time and where it goes determines how productive we are and how effective we are at leading our teams.

Yeah, I think the same thing could be true of team meetings. There are so many team meetings where I don't see time-bound based on topics, but I also don't see what's the question of essence. Like, what are you actually here for? And do you keep coming back to that, or do you end up going off on tangents? So I call them outcome-based agendas versus topic-driven agendas, but it's the same thing. It's this idea that you might get sucked into a rabbit hole, and if you— that more likely than not, and then where is your productivity gone?

Very much. The joke is what? There's so many meetings that could be an email. It's just true. There's also a habit we have. The larger our teams are, the more we have meetings with people who don't need to be in the meeting. Like, there's no relevance to them, to the out— to your point, to the outcome. But we feel like, well, we got to have everybody in this meeting versus, hey, listen, here's what you're coming, here's what I need from you, here's what I need, here's our goal, here's the outcome for the meeting, versus, oh, we just have a standing money meeting and everybody kind of bring whatever and, you know, kind of go with the flow. One of our coaching clients, she was trying to do a really good job of making the emotional relational deposits with their team and having the team meetings. And so they'd have like a, you know, what was good over the weekend, what's going on. And she kind of felt like the meetings were just dragging on. And I was like, I'm all for making relational deposits in your team. I think you have to know your people to get to their head. You have to go through their heart. But I said, what if we structure that on a Thursday and Monday morning meetings everybody has a clear agenda? Here's the outcome, here's what we're going through, everybody knows what you're responsible for, what you need help with, here's our goal for the week. How much more effective? And she talked about like 2 weeks in, she was like, I mean, our meetings are like 25 minutes, everybody starts the week strong, like we're ready, and we have this other one. She's like, it's just a whole different attitude versus I'm gonna walk in and we have this like 60, and sometimes it's a 90-minute Monday morning meeting, and Monday I gotta get— I'm proud, I feel productive, I feel like I got to do something. And so just those little shifts, and to your point, the outcome-based, are so helpful in getting us moving in the right direction.

Yeah, so much. Well, every person doing meaningful work has had to confront something in themselves along the way. So I'm curious to know, what was the pattern in how you were leading? What the pattern, let's say. What was that for you and how you were showing up and what needed to shift?

Yeah, you know, the biggest one I always go back to for me is, is kind of an ongoing battle, which is why, you know, the crux of my latest book is around it. But it's just the unhealthy relationship with comparison and living in this state of like trying to placate my ego of, oh, we're doing better than them. Oh, we're, you know, how does it look? Oh, we're not as good as that person. It was just funny because One, it got me into trouble growing our apparel business because I tried to make us look bigger than we actually were. We took on financial capital and debt because we— I worried more about the appearance than the actual growth. And I think we all fall into that trap in some, some regards, right? We join networking groups where, you know, an EO or we're YPO, and we walk into a room, it's all about how we measure up with everyone else. And oh my gosh, that group got funding, and I'm in a business, we don't really need funding because we're doing like— and we compare ourselves even though they're building a different business. And I laugh, I was like, you know, it's like the single mom who's raising 3 kids, holding on a full-time job. She works out twice a week for her own mental health and sanity. Going on Instagram and comparing herself to a 24-year-old with no kids, works from home, works out 7 days a week— like, you're going to lose that battle because you're playing two very different games. But we do it in so many senses, and, and I did it. And so I have to be very mindful to check myself of it. And also, the more I've gone in business, similar to you, Susan, the more I realize, like, how much we see online is not reality. Like, the people that look like they're thriving, a lot of times they're struggling. The person that suddenly got 400,000 followers on Instagram, bought a bunch of them. Like, there's so much fakeness out there that the more we get caught in the comparison trap— we call it— there's 3 of them. We call them the why bother. This is— psychologists call this the what the hell effect, which is one of my favorite things about it. It's like when you see somebody who's so far ahead of you or appears to be so far ahead of you, you're like, why bother? What's the point? Like, I can never do what they do. The second trap in the comparison is the always behind. When I finished grad school, started Compete Every Day, you know, was doing the consulting, I'm selling t-shirts out of the trunk of my car. I'm hustling, I'm driving across the country in my truck. I've got friends who are doctors and lawyers. Like, they had real jobs, they had mortgages, they had marriage. Like, and if you grew up in the South and you're single in your 30s, like, everybody thinks something's wrong with you. Like, so like, you feel like you're always behind. And so for me, I could never take a day off. I would be on a vacation in a beautiful setting, feet in the sand, and I had my work laptop because I felt like I can't take a day off.

I'm always behind.

Like, I got to catch up. To some mysterious finish line that I think is out there. And then the last is the inferiority trap. And this is the one where we get, especially with social media, we just feel like we're less than because we don't have what someone else has or appears to have. And we tend to talk ourselves out of starting altogether. And so for me, it's learning in that and how that shows up, especially when it comes to the workplace, is we become insecure leaders. And when we're insecure leaders, our teams don't feel connected to us. Our teams don't trust us. Our teams then start competing against each other because they're playing the ego game like we are. And instead of being a collaborative organization and culture. We're a competitive one, and I'm all for competition, but the best teams collaborate together, compete with themselves, and then are more competitive externally. But it doesn't happen if a leader is so consumed by their ego and their insecurities to do that.

Well, going back to when you got— this is fascinating. I love the different types of comparison, and absolutely, I see it. I'm— as I'm listening to you, I'm seeing it in a couple leaders I'm coaching right now on how that showing up. But for you, was there a specific moment or experience that really cracked that pattern open for you that allowed you to see it?

I mean, so it's, it's funny because I feel like a lot of our struggles, they're constant. You're constantly battling. You just build better frameworks and barriers. And I always think back to when I started speaking. So I started shifting our business in, in early 2017. I was working with a coach who's worked with some of the biggest names in the industry And I was kind of talking to him that day because I felt like I could be pretty good at this, but I was comparing myself to these household names. And I was like, I've never been homeless, never had a drug addiction, didn't go to jail, didn't lose a limb. Like, I don't have any of these crazy stories. I'm a pretty regular guy, just started a t-shirt company and like to encourage people. He finally one day was like, I have very high expectations for you. But he was like, all of these things you're talking about that you don't have, how many people in your audience do you think have them? I don't know, a few. He was like, maybe Maybe he's like most people trying to figure out how to lead a team, how to not get a divorce, how to raise healthy kids, how to deal with stress. Like they're dealing with the stuff you've dealt with. So worry less about what you don't have and how you compare to these other people with these crazy stories, because the audience can't directly relate to those stories either. They can't imagine what it's like sometimes to be a pro athlete. They can't imagine what it's like dealing with credit card debt because you try to grow a business the wrong way and now you're embarrassed and you're struggling with it and you're having to let people go and have tough conversations. Like they can relate to that. So let them can relate to that. And I remember that of like, I need to play my own game. And so it really started the journey as we were kind of growing the space of what's the game I want to play, what are the rules, and then how do I just play it to the best of my ability instead of worrying about what everybody else is doing.

Oh, I love that. So now what would you say the edge of that pattern is? What are you still actively working on, on yourself today?

You know, I, I think it's just catching myself, catching the internal dialogue, right? It's hard not to be engaged as a speaker. A lot of friends are speakers. You go on LinkedIn, we post about our business, we post about where we spoke. And it's, it's super easy to go on LinkedIn and see somebody post and think, oh my God, I'm not speaking today, they're speaking today. It's a very visible business. Yeah. And I laugh because I was telling a friend this the other day. I was like, June is always my slowest month. Like, one year out of the last 7 have I had multiple gigs. Typically June is the month I vacation. And so we know it, we plan it. This year we didn't plan a trip because I'm doing a big mountain challenge here in the weekend, but I just No, that's it. January, February, I'm always booked. And so I laugh of like, man, I see these people always booked and what's wrong with me? And I have to catch myself in my dialogue. And then I have a friend who, we've got a mutual friend who's just blown up this year and done a lot of gigs. And I see her post everywhere. And I was like, man, she's just crushing it. And the friend was like, well, she should be at X fee. And I was like, oh, we're playing different games. Like I'm comparing myself in a different game. And so for me, it's just constantly catching it. It's reminding it. It's every day I write, gotta give a shout out to Charlie Smith, who's a mental performance coach, but just every day writing my identity statement down. I got into the habit of that earlier this year and just reminding myself, like, my measuring stick is in the mirror and not my feed, right? Here's who I am, here's what I'm trying to do. And it, it's really helpful for me because when I do get off track, I can catch myself with my identity statement. I've got friends and coaches who remind me, and I just realized how much of a waste of energy and effort it is because we don't see the real picture. And the full And, you know, some leaders listening to this, they want to build a great business, but they also never want to miss one of their kids' soccer games. And there's other people listening, they're like, they don't really care. Like they want to build this game-changing industry. And that's okay on both. But the problem is when we try to play someone else's games or we compare ourself to someone playing another game, we start to limit ourselves. And so for me, it's having the frameworks mentally to catch myself and say, hey, why am I comparing myself? Is this really reality? Is my ego being threatened or am I inspired by it? And what can I learn from it? And once you start to reflect back and catch yourself, catch that protocol, it's like, okay, move on. Like, what's the game? What am I doing today? What am I doing to grow after my goal versus stewing on this?

Yeah. So instead of, you know, I love the phrase compare to despair. Like, the more you're gonna look externally and compare yourself, the more you're, you'll probably get off track from what you really need. And those things can get in your way and stop you from moving forward that you mentioned before, like the why bother, or I'm always behind, so I have to be in frenetic activity, which I just am working with a leader now who who's doing that, like always frenetic activity because he always feels behind. Well, he's not actually doing the right strategic work that he needs to do. It's the, let me just be in action and hopefully I'm gonna catch up one day, right?

Yep.

But there'll never be a day that he catches up.

That's the thing. There is no finish line. There is no magically— everybody listening, you will die with your to-do list. I hate to tell you, you will die with a to-do list undone.

So what's a frame or a tool or something that you want leaders to take away or something they you could do tomorrow that would help them get out of the drift trap or the comparison trap?

Yeah, so on the drift side, I would say this: if you're having success and you feel yourself starting to pull back, it's not that you're— I'm all for taking breaks, but you think about an athlete. An athlete has an offseason, but there's a start of an offseason and there's an end of an offseason. There's a deadline. And drift happens when we don't set a deadline. Hey, we're going to celebrate this week that we just had our best quarter ever, but next week we're back at it. So if you notice yourself justifying taking your foot off the gas or relaxing standards of— I used to hold them accountable on this one activity, but you know what, they're doing really well, so I don't need to as much anymore— you're really starting to be susceptible of drift, right? Especially victory drift. Now, busy drift, we talked about, just implement a simple start, stop, continue on a Friday so you start reflecting back on your activities. That's a huge piece of the puzzle. Comparison— what you want to do is a few things. The first step is not even having to do with comparison, but it's have to do with the person you see in the mirror, and that's getting ultra clear on what game am I actually playing. Like, you want to understand what's the game you want to play, because here's where that becomes valuable. When you're confident in what you're trying to do, everything else becomes data to learn from instead of measuring sticks of where you fall short. And I say this very specifically, uh, Glen Powell, who's a famous actor, was in, uh, Top Gun 2, Running Man. He's been in a lot of stuff. He went out for the main role in the latest Top Gun: Maverick, and he wanted to be the lead, and he didn't get it. They gave it to Miles Teller. And so Tom Cruise and, and Bruckheimer, the director, still wanted Glen in the movie, but Glen was like, I don't want to be in the movie. I want out for the main role. Like, I wanted the main part. I didn't get it. So like, no. And they're like, come sit and meet, meet with us. Glenn goes and sits with them. They sit him down, and Tom Cruise, super megastar, has movies that have done $12 billion around the world, says, Glenn, what do you want for your career? And Glenn was like, you. I want to be you. And Tom Cruise smiled and he said, how do you think I did it? And Glenn was like, you took leading roles in great movies. Like, that's what you did. And Cruise laughed and he said, no. He said, I joined great movies and made my role great regardless of what what it was. I controlled what I could and did the best in that moment. And Glenn said it changed his perspective on how he approached work because it no longer was like, I have to have this perfect opportunity if I want to be at the level Tom Cruise is. His input, the behavior, the thing that's 100% in my control that he did is he made every role great, and I need to do the same. And the beauty of that is Glenn Powell understood the game I want to play is be a movie star, but he was comparing himself to the wrong point. He had the wrong data. But once he got clear of like, what do I need to do? I need to be great at this, that's all he started focusing on. And so we think about our leaders, if you know the game I want to play— hey, I want to build a thriving culture where everybody in my organization is personally and professionally fulfilled, and I get home to see my kids play soccer every week— then you get in your calendar my input, and you block off every one of those soccer practices. And then what you do is you block off time every week to have FaceTime with the people on your team to make emotional deposits into them, to get to know them. That's how you play the game. And then it doesn't—

that's your scorecard too.

And that's your scorecard. And then you're not worried about what CEO down the street, or your C— you know, your friend in EO or YPO, anyone else doing because they're playing a different game. Now, if they play your same game, you can ask them, hey, how do you do this? How do you manage to retain your top talent? I'm looking for ways to better build connection, right? Then you start asking questions versus, oh my God, Susan, you're so much better at that than me. I can never be what you do, so I'm just not even going to try. And so that's why I tell everybody, like, most of us have never sat down and asked ourselves, what's the game I actually want to play? What's the future I want to create? We just see what other people are doing, and I think we chase their game partially because I think a lot of us have crossed finish lines and reached goals, and it didn't fulfill us, and we see someone else and they seem happy, they look happy on LinkedIn, maybe if I reach their goal it's going to fulfill me in a way that mine didn't. And all we're doing is playing on that hedonic treadmill.

Yeah. And, and also that there can be a bigger game too. So what, what is it that you want to create for others in the world, not just yourself? That's what I've also seen, that those that have a vision that's a little bit more extensive, that goes beyond them are more fulfilled in the end or along the way in the journey because it's not just about like, what do I get out of it?

Absolutely. Well, you've got— and you've got a more sustainable source of motivation. That intrinsic motivation for something bigger than yourself is always so powerful. I always reference back the book I read when I was building a consulting practice, overweight, just hated life, was a book by Donald Miller called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. And Donald— it was a memoir, but Donald talked about making a movie after his first book, and he said, what I learned is great movies and great stories mirror great lives. He said, you think about Star Wars, Harry Potter, whatever your movie choice, book choice, has a main character who has a mission or purpose bigger than themselves. They're willing to engage discomfort and conflict, and they invite others to join alongside them. And he said, those are the components that make for a great story, and they make for a great life. That book rocked my world, but it applies to our leaders. If you want to be truly impactful, you have a mission and purpose bigger than just filling your own pockets. You are willing to do things that other people won't do. It's uncomfortable to have one-on-one conversations. It's, you know, uncomfortable to put your team above your ego, right? And you invite other people to join you. And when you do that, magic happens.

I love it. Well, where can people find out more about you and your work?

Yeah, best place is our website, JakeAThompson.com. And if you're on social media, I'm active on LinkedIn and would love to connect with you there.

Well, thank you so much. If you like this episode, you're not gonna wanna miss my interview with Jason Miller, who says that in the age of AI, leaders need creativity, judgment, and reinvention. Invention. Let's all lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of The Enlightened Executive.