 When you make a bad decision or you make a bad play or you have a bad day, it doesn't mean that it's okay, but you need to give yourself some grace and move on to that next play and don't constantly beat yourself up over it. I would like to see high performers celebrate the little wins a little more often than they do because I think that makes life much more enjoyable. So whoever's listening to this or watching this, it's okay to celebrate your little wins and it's okay to give yourself some grace when you mess up because you're going to mess up a lot. If you think about what's changed, I think the world is moving so fast with social media and technology and I think it's the rare individuals that understand how to separate the two, that understand the importance of human touch and relationships which will never be replaced by technology, it'll never be replaced by a computer, are the ones that are going to continue to create this distance and then people say, how does it like, I don't understand why what's so special about that person's like, well, they understand how to have a conversation with somebody. Absolutely. You know, I mean, the whole world is moving towards automation, digitization, AI and you're 100% right. It's the people that make the time for face-to-face contact, that make the time for little gestures of gratitude like handwritten notes. Even little physical gifts these day and age can go a long way since everything is automated and digitized. I mean, even, you know, how many people actually hand out handwritten birthday cards anymore? Like, you get something that people post on your Facebook while happy birthday and some people won't even do that. They just put HBD and an exclamation point. Like, you couldn't even make the time to say happy birthday. So I'll tell you something interesting about you saying that. Every time I send something to somebody where I'm thanking them or saying you're welcome, I always spell out you're welcome and I always spell out thank you. I don't put T-H-X. I'm like, are we really so busy in the world today that we can't actually say thank you to somebody? Well, and I think in summary, like when we look at all this, no matter what business someone's in, they're in the relationship business and that's because of two things. One, whoever's on their team, their colleagues and their coworkers are human beings and whoever they're selling to, their clients and their customers or their members, their patients, they're human beings and those two things will never change. So relationships are the key and one of the most important ingredients to relationships is caring. Caring matters a lot and how do you show someone you care? You give them your time in the present moment. You hand write them a thank you note. You make the time to set your phone face down and have a conversation with them. Even if it's only for three minutes, those little things send a very powerful unconscious message and that unconscious message is you are important to me. I value you and nothing is more important in leadership or in business than being able to do that. That's where I think you do go back to some of these old school tactics, you know, obviously my entire philosophy is built on fundamentals and on the basics but if the whole world is gonna zig, then you have a chance to stand out by zagging and if everyone is going to just put HBD on your Facebook wall and you actually make the time to call someone and leave them a thoughtful message or here's a way you can actually use technology. What's wrong with about taking a video of yourself saying, you know, hey, Ben, I just wanna wish you a happy birthday, man, I really appreciate your friendship. This is gonna be another rock star year for you. Appreciate everything you do for me, brother. Love you, talk to you later. Took me 20 seconds to do, completely impromptu and I can send him that video so I'm using technology and yet he's gonna get the customized personal feel that goes well above and beyond the thousand friends he had that all write HBD. See, and I think what that does is it makes you unique and I think the highest performers in business and in sports, they typically do things that are unique, people understand, oh, there's something different about that person but typically what makes them unique to your point that you're always talking about it, it's something basic. It's actually a basic action step that they take. It's not something that costs millions of dollars. Oh, well, you're talking about a professional athlete. You have to have money to be able to leave a video message like that. It's like, you know, you just have to choose to take different action. Absolutely. And I think to take it a step further and this is what the best leaders I've ever been around understand is that you have to learn how to speak the other person's language. You have to learn what's important to them and that way you can make it even more customized. So perfect example, you know, we were joking earlier off camera that I'm not a coffee drinker. That's just not my thing. Which means if you gave me a Starbucks gift card as a birthday present, ultimately what you're telling me is you don't know me very well. And while the gesture is there and it's noble and it's a bit, I would still appreciate it, you're basically planning an unconscious message that you don't know me as well. Whereas now, you know, if I go and buy you a monster tank top, because I know you like monster drinks and I know you like working out, now you'll know there's some thought behind it, especially if I include that in the note. Right. You know, Ben, you are a monster of a coach. I love your energy and I know how important working out is, flex those biceps in this new tank top, appreciate you brother. Like, I mean, we're just making this off of the whim but that's something that would solidify a friendship or solidify a business relationship and this stuff is not that hard to do. I've got a friend, her name's Neen James and she's real big into being present in the moment and she has something she calls Systemized Thoughtfulness and Systemized Thoughtfulness is she takes one hour a week and blocks it off and for that one hour she does nothing but send customized individualized notes to the people that are most important to her and she doesn't let anything get in the way and she's just got this long list, whether it's family and friends or clients and customers and the cool part is she's systematized it on her end where she's gonna make sure that those notes go out but the person receiving the note, it never feels systematized to them. They feel like, man, Neen stopped her whole day just to write Neen note so that's something I slowly started to incorporate in what I do. You know, if I'm at an airport somewhere and say, okay, who are some people I haven't reached out to in a while? All right, let me send Ben a video message real quick or and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with text. You know, there's mediums that we need to be using but I think the more we can zig when the rest of the world zags, the better off we'll be. Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins was a life-changing book for me and I think so often times, I mean, I had a morning routine. I had, you know, all these areas where I was pushing and challenging and reading but that book mentally took me to a place where I said, man, I have so much more capacity and every month now every 30 days there's a different challenge, there's a different push so that I can keep that throttle down. And that's one of the things that I admired about David Goggins and I think so many people read a book like his, they choose to take no action because they say, I'll never be him. I can't run a 200 mile race. I don't wanna run a 200 mile race. I know that I will never be David Goggins but he has helped me push to be even better and he's helped me push to say, hey, I've got more. Yes. So when you see somebody like that it's not about trying to be them, it's about trying to emulate some of the traits that they have that then you can apply to your life. So by reading his book, putting it in action, you're now getting more out of yourself and that's what all of us should do. I'm a huge standup comedian fan and one of my favorite working comics today is a guy named Sebastian Menescalco who just broke the record for selling out Madison Square Garden four nights in a row, never been done by a comedian and he was talking about his struggle with the success he's having and many people think he's an overnight success. He's been doing this for 25 years. I mean it took 25 years to sell out Madison Square Garden four times. But he's talking about now that he's got this success that he struggles with balancing enjoying the moment and enjoying the success and what he's doing and kind of being fearful and anxious about when it's all gonna stop and that's something I've struggled with before myself is not getting complacent or content in the present moment but taking a moment to enjoy going out to a sushi dinner with a friend and not feeling like we gotta be grinding 24 seven. So that's something I've been more conscious of is trying to enjoy the journey while I'm still on the journey as opposed to waiting and saying, hey, when I'm 70, I'm gonna look back and think everything was great because there's no promise I'll even make it to 70. So let's enjoy the ride while we're on the ride. I challenge people to give themselves the same grace and compassion that they would give a friend or a loved one. I find that high performers in particular are usually way harder on themselves than they are on those people in their inner circle and it's important for us to give ourselves some grace. When you make a bad decision or you make a bad play or you have a bad day it doesn't mean that it's okay but you need to give yourself some grace and move on to that next play and don't constantly beat yourself up over it. I would like to see high performers celebrate the little wins a little more often than they do because I think that makes life much more enjoyable. So whoever's listening to this or watching this like it's okay to celebrate your little wins and it's okay to give yourself some grace when you mess up because you're gonna mess up a lot. When I shared the stage a few years ago with Ray Lewis and one thing I'll tell you about Ray is one of the most misunderstood individuals. He's a guy who made mistakes but has always accepted responsibility and one of the things just in the behind the scenes and we spent hours just talking was for him it's greatness is a lot of small things done well. And it's the repetition of the things we know we need to do over and over and over and over again and it's when you have the opportunity to hear from Ray Lewis. And I always love asking people what makes you great and like the answers are typically the answers that we would expect would be the easy answers but it's their philosophy around how they showed up to perform the action around what those easy answers were and he talked about just you do it Monday and then Tuesday and then Wednesday and just never complacent but it's greatness is a lot of small things done well and now one of the things that we talk about at the Kansas State football program is stacking days. We just got to stack days and if we stack days Saturdays are gonna take care of themselves. A college athlete gets super eager like oh we got a big game on Saturday. Well if it's Monday like we gotta take care of Monday like there's no snaps to be played in Saturday's game on a Monday or on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday. So you gotta continue to get obsessed with the details live in the details hammer the details get obsessed with that improvement sprinkle in a little what Ray Lewis would say is you gotta get pissed off for greatness sometimes but it's a lot of small things done well. I love that. I would agree with that completely and I even say greatness is simply the consistent pursuit of being your best self. So whatever it is that makes you your best self and that's where we've talked before about not playing the comparison game because I think you can be great wherever you are. You might be the overnight building service person. Your job is to take out the trash at IBM and you can still take pride in that and you can still be great where you are and do that to the best of your ability and do that as a means to provide for your family and then go home and be present with your family. You know I don't think sometimes I think we assume that greatness is only for the elite athletes that win Super Bowls or the people that win Oscars. You know that's a recognition of their excellent performance but every single human being has the opportunity to be great where they are. If they do the little things, if they are where their feet are and they're constantly trying to be the best version of themselves and that's really all any of us should ask of ourselves and be in pursuit of is how good can I be in these different areas of my life. Being around people that fill my bucket. Being around people that push me and challenge me to be the best I can. People that give me new ideas but then also give me the support to implement those ideas. Yeah I always try and surround myself and that's one of the beautiful things with technology. I mean if I'm not mistaken this is only the second or third time you and I have met in person and yet we've been friends and colleagues for several years now because your daily infusion of what you put on social media is something that continues to motivate and inspire me so you're having a hand in my success even though we only see each other average once a year and to me that's what keeps me sharp is continually trying to raise my level of the people that I surround myself with in person and digitally. And then of course I want to be that type of person too. I want to be the type of person that other people want to be around because they feel that I feel their bucket. So to me yeah if you can always surround yourself with people that push you and challenge you and hold you accountable you'll have to be sharp nothing else is even possible. Coach, I like to teach realistic disciplines that are hammered home over time but then become part of your way of life. And I think far too often people say oh well I'm not eating right and I remember there was a I was part of an NFL transition program for former guys and one of the old players comes in he's an old lineman and he was 360 pounds. His goal was to get the 315 pounds and I said to him I said well how are you eating? Tell me about your eating routine. And he's like well he goes every night I have a second dinner after dinner. And I said every night like you do is every night. He said yeah he goes I have seven extra dinners a week. And I said okay I said I got really good news for you. And he goes you have good news for me. And I said yeah I said for the first week we're gonna go down to six extra dinners. And he goes you're serious. And I said absolutely and he looked at me like you gotta be crazy. And I said no I said if I say to you right now no more you're not doing that anymore. It might last two or three days you're gonna revert back to the old behavior. I said we have to slowly build these disciplines. I said that after week two we can go down to five. Week three. We had a check in call 30 days in and we at that point were down to three of those meals. By the three month mark he was 315 pounds. Absolutely. Sent me a picture of him going to a wedding where he had to buy a new outfit, new belt the whole bit and he looked incredible. He was back to his playing way. He lost all that weight by reconditioning how he was showing up and getting rid of it but slowly over time. And so many people want that fast result. I started diet well three days in I didn't lose anyway. Well what the hell are you doing? You've been on this diet for three days of course. Lose anyway your expectations are so far out of whack. Yet if the expectations and the goals are in alignment with the pursuit of strong daily habits that's how you achieve success. And you know I mean this is not a trick question by any means but I mean how do you build a brick wall? Brick by brick. You just you set one brick down and you make sure that you lay that one perfectly and then you go and you get another brick and then you set that brick down and as long as you lay each brick perfectly the wall will more than likely take care of itself and it's the same thing but you know because I would imagine that that gentleman was eating some pretty hefty second dinners. So even removing one of those dinners a night is gonna start to create that caloric deficit. So he might not have thought it was doing a lot but it actually was and those little things absolutely make a huge huge difference. So it's the same thing if you're thinking about waking up right. So people they'll hear the time that I wake up and they think that I'm crazy. Well this didn't happen. I think it's crazy. It's just for the record. It didn't happen overnight. It happened by 30 minute increments. And what I realized was most of the time the next level of our success is a math problem. And if I could give everybody an extra day a month most people would say I'll take it to heart. Well that extra day is 30 minutes every morning. You take it back. Five days a week is two and a half hours. Since four weeks in a month is 10 hours that's an extra day a month, 12 days a year. And some people go I'm just not a morning person. Okay well then the three hours at Netflix you're working you're watching at night. Let's go down to two and a half. You're still gonna watch a lot of episodes of your shows. But in that 30 minutes one of my mentors and friends and coaches Dr. Selk wrote a book called Organize Tomorrow Today. And take 30 minutes and organize your next day. Be ready for what's coming. And so a lot of times just building those habits. And with habits you know I give a tremendous amount of credit to my buddy James Clear that wrote Atomic Habits. Cause that is I think the best resource on habits. That book's really good. And most of what I teach in habits I've taken from James' teaching so I always wanna make sure I give him credit. But yeah if you get some singular focus on the one thing you wanna change you stick to it long enough that you can start to see some change and you surround yourself with people that will hold you accountable to making that change. The odds are stacked in your favor that behaviors are gonna start to shift. And one thing I also like to do is make a list. To make a list of let's just say you wanted to lose weight. So make a list of the things you need to start doing to lose weight. But then also make a list of the things you need to stop doing to lose weight. And then look at those two different lists and just circle the one thing that you believe would be most impactful on either side. So just one thing and just focus on that first. And cause like you said with your friend the guy that was losing weight he didn't add a whole bunch of other stuff didn't change a bunch of workouts. All he did was take off one dinner that he was having his second dinner rather and still was able to get those results. So I think people over complicate things. Now this one is really, really cool because I got my buddy Alan Stein. He just flew in today. We get an opportunity for us to spend time together. We may have to have some special videos for you guys or just some conversations we've been having cause that iron sharpens iron. You guys know that I believe in that mentality. And you talk about iron sharpening iron. Alan is a man who spent 15 years as one of the top performance coaches in the world on the athletic side in the world of basketball. Some of these guys maybe you heard of doing training with Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, just some guys who occasionally saw the hardwood. And he not only became passionate about the game of basketball but really became passionate about the opportunity to be the best he could be in all areas of his life. Raising three beautiful children, twins that are nine, a seven year old daughter. So it was all areas of life. It was about balance. And he probably didn't know that I was gonna mention this in introducing him. But that's one of the reasons why I think we get along so well is because it's not just, hey, look at these great stages I was able to stand on or the hardwood. It's the balance that he has in his life. It's slowing down. It's the concept of being where your feet are. And then now taking that into the corporate world. He is one of the most sought after speakers now, which I gotta make a comment about that cause it's unfair. I've been pounding away at this for almost 14 years. And he's just gone like through the roof. But he came out with a book called Raise Your Game. A lot of you have seen, I've been doing a lot of reading this year. It was one of the first books of the year that I read because you sent me a copy and I absolutely loved it. I actually recommended it to Alabama football and Alan ended up sending it to the Alabama football program coaching staff. So it is making its way around the world. And as you'll see when you pick up the book, right? I'm not gonna talk a lot about the book. We're gonna talk about his burn. But definitely pick it up. Cause one of the things that is so consistent in the conversations Alan and I have, it's daily disciplines, it's habits. It's the little things that'll cause you to be successful. And I couldn't be any more excited to have you on. We've been talking about doing something like this in person. We've had some in person interactions, but to do this and to really get to spend this much time together is awesome. And what I would really love to hear is from a standpoint of when you hear me say the burn and all these episodes that we've now done hearing people's underlying white hot reason why they do things, which then lights that purpose and why on fire. For sure. Here's what I want people to hear. How in the world do you go so fast from being one of the top performance coaches in the world saying, you know what? I want to get into the corporate space. What is that burn that caused you to be just intentional in the daily habits to do this corporately as you did when you were in the sports world? As you know, these things have such high utility. So I can take everything that I learned through the game of basketball and everything that it took to get to the top of basketball from a training standpoint and then apply that to the corporate speaking. And of course with a learning curve, it took me three times as long to build my basketball business because I had to learn a lot of things the hard way. And thankfully I've been very blessed that even though I make tons of mistakes, I don't often make them twice. So I was able to learn from a lot of the mistakes I made in basketball training and not step on those landmines in the corporate world. And then of course, you know, people like yourself that have knocked down doors and created opportunities and mentored and helped show me the way. You know, I don't think any of us get anywhere by ourselves. So your learning curve of what it took in 14 years, you've been kind enough to pay that forward and share some things with me that again allowed me to sidestep some pitfalls which will then make it happen quicker. And like yourself, now I'm a big believer in paying that forward to others. So whether it's a young and up-and-coming strength and conditioning coach or someone that also wants to be a corporate speaker, you know, I do my best to go out of my way to share things with them so that they can get there even faster than I have. And I know you're big into quotes and to sayings and one that I think epitomizes the coaching world is that a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. And it's not a cutthroat industry. You know, me, you lighting my candle doesn't take anything away from yours. In fact, I think it makes yours shine brighter when you help someone like myself. And then I go and do the same thing for others. So that part's been, it's been fun. And it's kind of like a Rubik's Cube to figure out, all right, what lessons can I pull from the game of basketball and how can I apply them to my life now? And the reason I love it is I try to see how those apply in business, in speaking, in parenting, in social media. I mean, any area of my life that I wanna have high performance, I can draw on these lessons from people that I've learned. So I love the fact that you took action, right? In order to get the results that you're getting. And I say this very humbly, but you know, I have people who reach out, right? Now emails and questions and things like that. And I'll always give, I'll always respond whether it's phone call or whether it's an email. But what I love about you, I mean, you just went after it and got it. And I know that, you know, John Gordon has been there for you and so many individuals. And I think that's so unique that there's so many people who have a burn. And I, gosh, I wanna go make something happen. But then they get scared. There's the fears, the doubts, the uncertainties, past pain, right? Past rejection. So they have this big dream, but then they're held back. So I know that there's fears, doubts and uncertainties. You make a leap from a wildly successful to now. How often have you had to connect to that burn and how do you really silence those fears and doubts and uncertainties? Because it's unique. I mean, because you didn't take a little bit of action. You've taken massive action. It was a massive leap. And, you know, one of the things I think that made it easier was, you know, I was a commission-based, self-employed business owner in the basketball space. So then all I was doing was replicating that on the speaking space. I think it would have been a much harder leap had I worked a corporate job for 20 years and a set salary working from nine to five. And then going out on my own, I probably would have been much more fearful then. But I didn't really see it as anything other than just changing my audience. Instead of being in a gym talking to players and coaches, now I'll just be in boardrooms and on stages talking to people in suits. So I didn't look at it as that big of a difference. I also believe there's a difference in fear and being scared. I actually think fear keeps us sharp. Being scared is what paralyzes us. So I do my best not to ever let fear creep over into just being scared and paralyzed, but knowing that that fear is healthy. You know, if right now, if in your beautiful backyard, if I were to set up a tightrope from this gazebo to your house and ask you to walk across it, the fear is what's gonna keep you on the tightrope because that's what's gonna keep you dialed in and focused. If you weren't afraid of falling and you just went willy nilly across that tightrope, you'd fall off and probably to your demise. But the fear is what keeps you dialed in and keeps you sharp. And even now with speaking engagements, I don't use the word fear, but I get a very healthy excitement. I still get the butterflies before every speaking engagement. And I'm really prepared for those. This isn't a fear of they're not gonna like me or fear of I'm not prepared. It's a, I wanna do the best I can to serve these people and I want this to hit the mark and I still get those butterflies. So I try to find ways to use these fears and insecurities which I'm riddled with just like everyone else and have the awareness to know how can I use those to still move forward? And thankfully things are lining up, but it's experience is what helps us get over those things. And the only way you get experience is by cutting through the fear and actually giving these things a try. And know that all this stuff that you and I talk about that one of the things I mention all the time is there's a difference between basic and easy. Most of the things that we tell folks are very basic and principle, but they're not easy to do. I mean, I know what your morning routine is, how early you get up and how you spend the first portion of your day. It's very basic. Like my children could understand what you do every morning, but anyone that's tried it will tell you that what you do every morning is not easy because if it was easy, everyone else would be doing it. So I think it's important for all of us to have the humility to acknowledge that the fundamentals will work if you're willing to do them. That's why I've been so fascinated with everything you've done at Alabama. And you know, Coach Saban is one of the kings of mastering the fundamentals and basics and doing things right every day. And all of a sudden it just adds up. And you know, you see your performance shoot through the roof. Well, you know, Coach Saban always, and I appreciate you saying those things. And Coach Saban always says, you know, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And I think sometimes people think to raise your game, it's some magic pill. Like, Alan, I'm so glad you came from working with the highest performers ever in the world of basketball to now the corporate world because you can give us those magic pills. And it really is those daily disciplines and habits. So what I'd love for you to speak to when it comes to raising your game for the person listening right now who they know what the basic is, right? But they're choosing to not do it every single day. That's the key word. So how important is it for them to connect to that burn, that underlying fire inside of them? Because if you know it, it's one thing. But I believe that you have to understand what's going to cause you to do it. Absolutely. And you have to connect the knowing and the doing. That's another thing. I tell audiences quite humbly, I'm not going to tell you anything today that you haven't heard before or that you don't know intuitively or intellectually. However, I'm going to say a lot of stuff that you're probably not doing. Just because you know doesn't mean that you do. And that's what's called a performance gap. And that is a gap that all of us have in some area of our life. And the key to improving performance is closing that gap, doing the things that we know we're supposed to do. You know, like yourself, I'm an avid reader. I devour podcasts like the burn. I'm always trying to get new information. But I'll even say using myself as an example, if I didn't learn another thing for one calendar year, if I didn't input one more nugget in my head for one year, all I did was put into action everything I already know. Oh my gosh, my performance would go through the roof. And I probably have more narrow performance gaps than a lot of other people. That's how much all of us as human beings leave on the table. I mean, go through any silo of your life, whether it's your marriage, whether it's your children, whether it's your business, whether it's your health and fitness, whether it's your finances. And I guarantee in any of those silos, there are little things that you know you're supposed to do and you just don't do them. And I don't mean you personally. I mean, us as human beings. And the key is being able to close those. And once we start closing those and doing the things that we know we're supposed to do, then our confidence starts to go up. And as confidence starts to go up through demonstrated performance, now performance starts to raise. And that's where many people derive their self-value and their self-worth and their burn is on how they perform in these areas of their life. And I still want to continue to learn new stuff. But I have coaches tell me all the time, I'm looking for a new tool for my toolbox. I'm like, you're not even using the tools you have. Like all you're doing is lugging around a heavier toolbox. How many hammers do you need? If you need one and it'll get the job done. So don't be so in a hurry to find that new hammer when you're not even using the one you're doing. And one other point, just because I know how close you are to the NFL with all of the guys you work with. Inevitably, a team's gonna lose two or three games in a row in the NFL. And the coach will come on in the post-game press conference and will say something to the effect of, on Monday at practice, we're gonna get back to the basics. Which in football, of course, is blocking and tackling and throwing and catching. And I always laugh. Not because I think I'm smarter than an NFL coach. Those guys are geniuses. I laugh because if their solution to the problem is to get back to the basics, then why did you ever leave them in the first place? That's why the Nick Sabans and the Coach Kays and the Bill Belichicks have had such consistent success because they never leave the basics. A portion of everything they do is based on the fundamentals. And they block off a little bit of time every single day to work on those things. So they never leave them. So there's no getting back to the fundamentals because we preach the fundamentals. And as you said, the details every day. And to me, the key is being able to fall in love with that. As Kobe once said to me, never get bored with the basics. So no matter how good you get, you have to fall in love with the monotony and the routine of things that need to be done every day. And as I've gotten older, I think I have a better appreciation of that. When I was younger, like many people, I was always chasing the next secret, the next shiny object. I was trying to figure out what's a hack or a shortcut that I can raise my game. And I realized that there really aren't any. Everything you're saying, it's the reason why we get along so well. It's just, it's that alignment of how we think and the action that we take. But here's how I would love to wrap this up for everybody. Sure. I really admired sitting, chopping it up this morning with you. That was so fun. Hearing you talk about your kids and how the decisions you make for taking this speaking engagement or that speaking, some of that, so much of that is in alignment with how important your kids are, which I know is a significant piece of your burn. Absolutely. So wrap it up for us, your mindset on the importance of making decisions that are in alignment with the things that are most important to you. Because I think so many people think in order to have the success you've had in your life, well, you just, you don't see your kids. There's just, you travel and it's this great sacrifice and you just, your kids won't even know who you are. So how do you keep yourself so balanced and present with what's most important to you, which is those three kids? I have kind of this altruistic vision of the man that I want to become, who I want to be. And that's what type of father do I want to be, what type of business owner, what type of speaker. And I've kind of got this vision of who I want to be. And then every single decision I make, including what I chose to eat for breakfast this morning, is I want to make decisions that are in alignment to get me closer to being that man and say, okay, well, do I want to be the type of guy that eats junk food? I don't, I want to be the type of guy that makes healthy, nutritious decisions because I want to take care of my body. Now that doesn't mean I'm perfect and it doesn't mean I won't choose to eat a burger and fries or some pizza, but I try to make most of my decisions in alignment with that. And a big portion of that is, is this decision I'm about to make? Does this take me closer to being the father I want to be? Or does this take me further away from being the father I want to be? And I'm not saying there's a right answer, and I'm not saying that what other people choose, I don't have an ounce of judgment for, but I find that if most decisions that I make in a given day are taking me closer to being the person that I would like to be eventually, then it's only a matter of time until I become that person. And of course, I'll never actually be that person because no matter who I am, I'm gonna always strive to be a little bit better. No matter how good of a father I am, I'm gonna want to be an even better father for my children. No matter how good of a speaker, I'm gonna wanna be an even better speaker. But I find that life gets really simple when you break things down. And of course, I don't have the relationship that you have with him, but I've read and watched a lot of what Coach Saban does, and he's the one that says it takes what it takes. Like if you wanna be a great football player, actually you don't have very many decisions to make. You only have a couple. You know, if you wanna be a great football player, you don't have the decision of whether or not to go out on Friday night because the decision's made for you. You don't because you need to prepare to play on Saturday. And I try to view my life in a very similar capacity. So when it comes to my children, I make decisions that are based, not just on the short term, but also on the long term. And my kids know that I love what I do for a living. And because of that, there will be times where I'll miss a soccer game or a dance recital because I'm doing something that fills my bucket. I'm doing something that gives me the burn, but then I'm gonna do those things sparingly because I want to be present and be around them. And the key is just being open and honest and having a connection with them. You know, Jack, I'm gonna miss your basketball game this weekend, but it's because I have an opportunity to go pour into some people that really need me. But I'll be at every other game if I can. And having that type of connection and honesty, I think is vital. And you know, as a father, I think one of the best gifts I can give my children is to model for them that I have a strong burn for something that I'm very passionate about. And that that's one of my sincerest hopes for them is that they find something they love to do as much as I found what I love to do when they're older. And I think modeling is the key to doing that. Well, I think people get so excited to hear from a guy like you that's had the experiences that you've had and now what you're doing in the corporate world. But I have intentionally paid very close attention to how often you do talk about those kids. Thank you. And pay close attention to the posts about your kids. And those are the ones that move me the most. And I just want you to know how much I appreciate our relationship. And this is definitely iron sharpens iron. Absolutely. I think earlier, I want to clear that up. Earlier, you tried to make it see. No, you. I love it. You're one of those guys who pushes and drives me because I love when there's somebody who's hungry to go and make a difference. For sure. And when you surround yourself with people who are hungry to go pour into others, it makes that fire that much brighter for me as well. So. Absolutely. That candlelight is going on all around. It most certainly is. And one challenge for you, the feedback I've heard from this book and how much I love the book, I can't wait for book number two. Absolutely. It's already in the works. So thanks for coming on The Burn. I appreciate you, brother. And I really, really appreciate how you approach life and you're helping people raise their game and you're making a big difference. Likewise. Thanks, Ben.