Work Smarter, Not Harder: Unlocking Your Competitive Edge in Business

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Some people think nature is like this, but actually it's like this. That's why Colombia everything we make for anything nature can throw at you.

Columbia Engineered for Whatever High performance isn't, you know, a successful business model. And sometimes successful business models are actually what's burning them out in high performance if they're not doing it in the right way.

On today's show, we'll talk about how you can increase your competitive edge while getting more done in less time. This is the Launch youh Business Podcast because we know starting a business is challenging, but it doesn't have to be confusing. Each week we'll give you the tactical advice and the necessary tools to scale your business without feeling burnt out. I'm Terry Rice, business development consultant and staff writer here at Entrepreneur Magazine. Let's dive in. Hey, in case you didn't know, I have a free course on LinkedIn learns called Developing a High Performance Entrepreneur Mindset. And during this course, I share the actions and routines that allow me to run my coaching business, partner with Entrepreneur magazine, and maintain my gym schedule, all while raising four children. So I highly encourage you to take it. You can search for it on LinkedIn again, the name is Developing a High Performance Entrepreneur Mindset and I'm also going to give you a link to it in the show notes. But look, it's important to note that high performance has nothing to do with burning the midnight oil or constantly pushing yourself to get more stuff done. In fact, it's quite the opposite. For me, high performance is all about getting extremely clear on what matters most. Eliminating distractions and then developing systems and processes that allow you to increase your output with a decreased amount of input. In short, get more important stuff done with less time and effort on your end. That's why today we're joined by Amanda Faust. Amanda is a certified high performance coach who helps success driven business people just like you develop daily habits and a growth oriented mindset so that you can reach your highest potential and operate at your peak performance. And I'm excited for today's show because we're going to talk about the five categories of high performance. How to avoid burnout as a high performer, and how your strengths as a business owner can become your strengths in your personal life too. Let's hop into it right now. Hey, Amanda, how's it going today?

It's going great. Thanks for asking. What about you?

I'm good, I'm good. I'm glad we're chatting today because people often talk about being a high performer and having a high performance mindset, so and so forth, but I think we need like the actual mechanics for how to do that. So without giving too much away, do you mind sharing more about your background?

Yes. Okay. So I'm a high performance coach and it's actually funny because I started coaching high performers before I even knew what that term was like. I just organically was coaching people who exhibited high performing characteristics, but I had no name or concept for it. I just was like, I'm seeing patterns in the people I'm coaching. So as I was trying to figure out, well, what kind of life coach am I? I was noticing this pattern of working with these like, top leading CEOs who were just like going through my content like crazy. Like I would present it to them. And the next week they were like, okay, I applied, I implemented. What's next? And I was like, oh, okay, I guess we'll move on to the next thing and doing the same thing over and over. And I was like, okay, these people are ready to go. They're activating, they're clear on what they want to do, they're productive. And then all of a sudden I started hearing the word high performer and I was like, oh, okay, so this is a thing. And I was like, I think I might be a high performer too. And So I kind of dove into the term high performer as you brought up and tried to figure out what does that look like? And, and what do these people need? Because they're obviously not perfect people. They're trying to hire a coach, but they seem to be operating at these higher levels. And so I ended up studying under Brendan Burchard. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he's a top high performance coach. And just learning his concepts and applying them into my own life and seeing the difference, being able to actually have material to give my clients who are seeking more and more on a regular basis and then having the tools and like the actual terminology to be able to coach these high performing people.

Let's unpack that a bit. What is your operational definition of a high performer? What does that mean?

Yeah, so it's just people who are operating at peak levels of performance, but they're also. It's not just like in their business, it's in their entire life. So their health, their personal life, their just. Their whole approach is seeking higher levels of fulfillment and wanting more and more out of life. And in a way that is from a place of abundance, not a place of lack.

Got it, Got it. Yeah. And I think you hinted at this. It's not just your work, it's your life as well, your personal life as well. And I think it has to be unique to the person. Right. Because for some people, being a high performer is like working all weekend and getting that big project done. For me as a parent, being a high performer is, you know, giving my kids a childhood they don't recover from while also hitting the gym on a regular basis and getting my work done as well. So I just want to just open up that definition for everyone else who might feel like, gosh, I'm too busy to be a high performer. It's contextually relevant to yourself in pulling the best out of yourself. So if we can kind of further unpack that, I mean, what are the first steps we should even consider when pursuing this, this route of high performance?

Yeah. So there's five things that are under fall under high performance, and it's clarity, energy, productivity, courage, and influence. And so those things, as to your point, it's not about like, how many hours are you working or how, like how successful are you or anything like that. It's a lot more to do with like, what are your levels of clarity, like, what are you working on the most important things when you're working. So not just productive in terms of like, I get my checklist done, but are you actually moving the needle forward on the things that are most important to you, to your point, your family? And then, you know, having that. Right energy, being able to not just wait around for energy to hit, but be able to generate energy on a regular basis. Like when you are finding yourself feeling low energy, it's not just, well, I can't perform, it's okay. How do I need to generate the energy? I need to do the tasks that I want to do to keep moving the important things in my life forward and then having courage to take risks. Courage. Courage is a big one for high performers. They're the ones who. You watch them and you're like, how. How are you taking all these risks? Like, how are you not afraid? Well, they are afraid. They just do it anyway. And they flex that muscle of courage and then influence as well. Like, every single person on this planet has influence. But how are you utilizing that influence? High performers are really intentional with that influence and making sure that they are representing the type of influence they want to make in the world.

Let's. Let's go deeper on the part about energy, right? Because again, if you have stuff going in your life, maybe you have a family or, you know, whatever it is, it's hard to summon that energy. And on my end, I mean, I have a little trick I play on myself. If I have to be on stage and I'm tired from traveling or whatever, I'll say to myself, look, you can't be perfect all day, but for the next hour, you gotta be perfect. After that, take a break, do whatever you need to do, take a nap. That's how I get myself into the zone. But I'm assuming that might be unique to me. So for anyone else out there who's listening, they're saying, I want to be a high performer, but I'm just tired sometimes, you know, just from. From life in general. What are some other things we can do to give ourself more. More energy?

Yeah, I love how you said that. Yeah. I do something very similar, actually, is I'll say something to myself, or I'll say, how would the best version of myself show up to this? Or how would the best version of myself respond to this? Because often our best version does have the energy we need. Maybe you don't right in this moment, but the best version of yourself would. And so like you said, it doesn't mean it's forever. It just means in certain. Certain circumstances, require certain energies. And so being able to understand how the Best version of you would show up is really important. And also being able to identify, like, what types of energy you need for what types of situations. So whether it's like me being a mom, my energy level is going to look different. Being a mom as sitting at my computer doing a project. Right. Like, I need focused energy on the project, but being a mom, I might need more physical energy moving around, that kind of thing. So just knowing what the situation calls for and being able to adapt your energy accordingly and being the best version of you.

Now, I'm going to keep on probing here because it sounds like there's some deep work required. Because for you to say, all right, become the best version of yourself, you're going to have to document that at some point in time before, before you need it. So do you have a process for that as well? Is that your vision exercise? Like, what would you do in order to have that idealized version of yourself?

Yeah, so something that I work on with my clients is like, in those five habits I named, we always start with clarity, because it's really hard to do any of the other four without clarity. And to your point, you might say, you might ask yourself, you know, how can I be the best version of myself for energy? But if you don't define what the best version of yourself is, how do you answer that question? If you, if, if you say, well, I want to be productive in the right things, not just busy. Like I said earlier, you have to be able to have clarity on, well, what are those right things? And if you want to have courage to take risks, well, what are the risks you should be taking? So everything kind of comes down to clarity and really defining, like, you know, who you want to be as a person. What I usually do is take my clients through an exercise of choosing three words that define them as a person, how they want to represent themselves to the world. I also have them define how they want to impact others in three words. So that can be different, you know, maybe how you want to represent yourself just for you and who you want to be can be different than how you want to represent yourself to others and the impact you want to make. And then also to define, like, what are the three biggest things I need to focus on skill set wise in order to move the needle forward. So define what those three skills are. So it's like three, three and three. The self, others, and skills. And those are the things that I usually start with. Of course, there's like, way more to it. But that can be, in simplest terms how to find clarity. And then energy usually circles around that, right? Like if you have defined who you want to be, your energy can match that. If you define how you want to represent yourself, your energy will match that. And then whatever skill sets you are working towards developing, you have to have certain energies for that too.

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As well, yeah, no, I. That's a great question. I love that question. So I feel like one of the biggest ways that you can start realizing you're facing burnout is when you're pursuing this idealized version of yourself, as you mentioned, out of a place of like, I'm not good enough or I'm never going to measure up, or that kind of thing. You're going to really hit burnout when that's your pursuit. But if your pursuit is simply like just being curious. I love the word curious. I use this a lot. It's like, just get curious, like, why are you behaving a certain way? Or why are you thinking a certain way? Or why aren't you at these levels that you want to be at? And just stop looking at yourself from like a judgment perspective. Because that's when burnout can hit and more just like, I wonder why I responded that way, or I wonder why I'm not as far as I'd like to be in this area and just, yeah, get curious. And then you can start to, I guess, mitigate burnout because you're not being so harsh on yourself and you're, you're growing out of a place of excitement and abundance and not out of a place of lack of.

Let's stick with this too, because again, I'm sure a lot of people are listening, are like, okay, this sounds amazing. You know, I'm going to be a high performer. I'm going to avoid this burnout as per the instructions you just gave. But where else do people somewhat self sabotage their pursuit of high performance? And how can we avoid that as well?

Yeah, so one of the biggest factors, and I kind of mentioned this at the beginning of how I had thought at first when I worked with high performers, they were these like, on paper, successful people. And so I was thinking, well, these people are at a level I'm not even at yet at the time. And, you know, why would they come to me? They're so successful, they're so this and that and actually underneath, they might have been successful on paper, but they were lacking complete fulfillment in who they were outside of their work and who they were within their family system. And so I started to realize really quickly that high performance had to be all across the board. They could take their skill sets that were like those natural high performing tendencies in work, and they needed to apply them to their personal lives as well. And so I realized that, you know, people, they weren't coming to me necessarily for how to grow their business at the time. I Mean, I since have developed into that a little bit, but in the beginning, it was like, no, I just want to know how to get along with my wife or my husband or how to have relationships with my kids when I'm only home a few days a week. And. And so we were learning that, like, okay, high performance isn't just a successful business model. And sometimes successful business models are actually what's burning them out in high performance if they're not doing it in the right way. And instead, they need to be able to take those qualities I mentioned in clarity, productivity, energy, courage, influence, and apply them to their everyday life. And when they have fulfillment there, then so much of the other areas just kind of naturally fall into place, like, they had to look at themselves as a whole person. And so I would say when you mentioned what other things to warn people about is like, don't just apply high performance principles to your business. Apply them to your entire life.

It's interesting because as you were speaking, I was like, okay, I know the theme is high performance, but it really sounds like high fulfillment, if that is a term. And I know it's not as cool as high performance because no one, you know, thinks about fulfillment first, but it's like, you can perform very well and still be miserable. So the fact that you're looking at all these other aspects of it, I think is important. And I'm wondering, can you share an example of someone that you help? Doesn't have to be their name, obviously, but just an example of someone who came to you and they're like, hey, look, I had this issue, you know, can you help me? And just the results of partnering with you.

Yeah, absolutely. So I had worked with a pretty big movie producer at the time. He had gotten, like, all these different awards, and he had, you know, what, What Most people would hear and think, oh, that must be the ideal life. And I remember him calling me. He had read an article I had written for Huffington Post about why you shouldn't hire a life coach, when really, of course, there was a spin on words, because I. I was telling them why they should. But he hired me. And I remember being like, again, I was still in that phase. It was. It was my early years where I just assumed that business success meant overall fulfillment. And so I was kind of curious when I saw him giving me all his accolades and all his things. I'm like, okay, why did he hire me? He seems to be doing just fine. And then he was like, I live away from my family half of the year, and I Don't know how to have a relationship with them when I'm home. I miss so much of their lives. I don't know how to integrate back into life with them. And I don't know how when I'm away from them, to feel good about myself and to not have that guilt and involved. And so it was a really beautiful thing because we were able to be like, okay, well, how did you get the success you have in business? And we were able to really dive into, you know, his strengths of conflict resolution and with. With these people that he was working with in his movie production business. Like, okay, well, how do we apply that conflict resolution to your family when they're feeling, you know, disconnected with you and things like that? How do we have those conversations with them? How do we. How do you have those conversations internally with yourself when you're feeling in conflict with you? And just being able to really help him be able to mend a lot of those relationships and be able to move forward with more fulfillment and also to be able to find a greater work life balance because, I mean, come to find out, a lot of what he was doing wasn't necessary as far as being away from his family. It was more so that he didn't know how to be with his family. So he found ways to not be. And so he ended up having a completely different schedule, completely different approach to life. And it was just a really beautiful transformation.

Yeah, that's interesting. So I think people often will focus on their controllable. Right. And sometimes that is work, you know, how to execute your job, and in this case, even like, you know, negotiate relationships. But instead of using that as a transferable skill, this person chose to use that as a distraction, as an excuse to be away. So I'm glad you're bringing this up because I feel like a lot of people who are consider high performers, they're doing it at a cost. And sometimes the cost is their family and their personal relationships. So I appreciate the fact you're showing, like, hey, like, you can have both, but don't like, over index on one and under on the other because you shouldn't treat, you know, strangers in a boardroom better than you're treating your family or else that's. The high performance goes out the window. At that point, you're not even a good, you know, family member. You may be familiar with Fiber, the talent marketplace that connects freelancers to companies all over the world. What you may not know is that Fiverr has a business friendly offering called Fiverr Pro Gain. Access to the very best freelancers for your projects through Fiverr Pro's curated catalog of exceptional talent. Streamline your workflow with their user friendly dashboard where you can organize projects, track progress, save talent lists and collaborate effortlessly with your entire team. Designed to handle projects of any size, Fiverr Pro is the ultimate freelance solution for your business. And the best part, there are no hidden membership or subscription fees. To get started, find help with your next project by heading to pro fiverr.com that's P R O dot F I V E R R dot com so I know you have a lot of resources to help people just structure this life, this more fulfilled life. If they were to go to your website right now and download one thing, what would it be or what should it be?

Yeah, so I do have an introduction to high performance of just like, you know, being able to see how to be a high performer if that, if it's something that you're not, or maybe you think you are, but you kind of want to see and test the waters. I have a freebie on my website for that. But as far as a tool, I would recommend it's a low dollar tool, so I'll share it as well. It's my highest potential planner. And the reason why I recommend that for my website is because that is a tool that so many people are using to not only be able to plan their day, because obviously we want to have a plan for our day, but to be able to set intentions for your day and be able to get in the right mindset to approach the day. And so I was like, you know what, I recommend planners all the time. I've used so many different planners, I might as well just create my own planner. And so a few years ago that's what I did and I tested it out on a lot of my clientele. And it just takes five minutes a day to really get clear on how, what success looks like for that day, how you want to approach the day, and also be able to measure your progress along the way in high performance.

Just like a true entrepreneur, you solve a problem for yourself and then deliver to other people as well. So I dig that. But let's dive deeper into you and your business. And I love asking this question. What is one thing about entrepreneurship that you wish you learned sooner?

Yeah, I feel like one thing, and I kind of touched on this a little bit throughout our conversation, but I used to think that eventually when you hit a certain level of success, which I don't even like that terminology, but I don't know how else to put it, but I felt like when you hit certain levels, the struggle would go away. Like, you don't struggle anymore and everything works out and the struggles are just, you know, in your early years. And then as I, you know, have hit almost a decade of entrepreneurship at this point, I'm like, oh, okay, so struggles don't necessarily go away. They just change and they morph. But what does get better is how you handle the struggles. And so I think I put way too much energy in my early years trying to avoid struggle and trying to ignore struggle. And instead, I've realized that it's a lot more beneficial to work on how you want to respond to struggle and how you want to bounce back from struggle. And so that's something that I wish that I knew early on in entrepreneurship, is that it's going to be ups and downs all throughout your time as an entrepreneur. And so work better at yourself and investing in yourself and how you respond to the struggle and spend less time trying to avoid it. And just get curious. Like I said earlier, we're about curiosity and learn from the struggle so that maybe you can avoid that particular struggle in the future and handle struggle better as you go.

Yeah, I like that response just because I find people often waste energy trying to go around a problem they need to go through. So it's like, hey, this is a real thing. You can't just go around it. And I actually like struggle because that tells me other people are going to drop out. So I'm like, hey, if I just have to, like, work a little bit harder to beat everyone and out compete them, cool, as long as it's, you know, there's a clear outcome there. So I think we're aligned in how we. We appreciate struggle these days. But before we let you go here, you mentioned some great resources, but we didn't get your website. So you mind letting us know how we can learn more from you and how we can follow up with you afterwards as well?

Yes, absolutely. That would be helpful. So you can go to www.highperformanceinsider.com and then that's where you'll be able to find everything.

Awesome. Cool. And your socials, real quick, just in case.

Yeah, so my social, I'm on Instagram @amandak, which is k a y foust f o u S T. And then you can find me under that name pretty much anywhere.

So cool. Amanda, this has been amazing. Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. And I'm sure everyone listening does as well.

Thank you so much for having me.

And that's our show for today. Again, if you want to take my free course, just search for it on LinkedIn. It's called developing a High Performance Entrepreneur Mindset and you can learn more about amanda by visiting highperformanceinsider.com thanks again for listening and I'll catch up with you next time. Apply what you've learned on today's show. You'll find the show notes and more resources at Terryrice Co Podcast. Again, that's Terryrice Co Podcast and the best way to support this podcast is by subscribing, telling a friend and leaving a review. Also, you can get more tips by following me on Instagram terryrice or follow me on LinkedIn. This episode was produced by Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio and edited by Dan Lardy. Special thanks to my wife Dominique for keeping our kids relatively quiet as I recorded. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.