 The course of the last couple days that this year's conference seems to have like a little extra celebration about it because we didn't get to be together last year because we were virtual so we got to share a virtual time but not hugs which you all know doesn't work for me very well. I existed in the world without hugs during the stay at home orders for about two weeks before I just started asking people like can I please hug you and then it was like next level happy dance if that was permission. Pandemic's purpose and profit so if you have your phone if you want to grab your camera and just take a picture of that QR code that's my business card you'll have all my contact information in your phone so you have it with you if you need me for something. We're going to hit some big high wave tops there's obviously a lot of nitty gritty behind all of this conversation but we're going to get through it this morning so mindset always wins perspective matters I'm going to give you an example we love it when people say to us have a great day it makes us feel good right we are excited but if somebody says to us enjoy your next 24 hours sounds a little foreboding it's not doesn't sound as fun as have a great day so we have to be aware of our mindset always the first thing we're going to talk about obviously is the elephant the room pandemics you have more control in this environment than you think you do right it's easy to get caught up in everything that's going on in the river trying to pull us in all these directions but you're the captain of your ship purpose how vision clarity and passion drive us and what we can do to balance and then profits again you drive the bus and there's more facets to that than pricing so we're going to talk about that too but first I always stand up for a minute this is one of the things I know about high achievers and one of the things that we're terrible at is because we're so constantly forward thinking we forget to think and reflect about where we've been and how we got here so arms out wide if you've made it through the last year and a half or two years give yourself a hug tell yourself you're proud of you this is not something that we do right we're constantly thinking forward but this last year has been crazy and you have to be ferocious and courageous and steady and kind and in it to have gotten right here today to celebrate with us I'm proud of you I'm proud of you for making this a priority to get here you can stop hugging yourself anytime good long hugs are important but I want you to think about talking to yourself like you would talk to your best friend okay we don't we don't look at our best friend and be like like you're good it's fine today's today we'd probably look at our best friend and be like you're a force to be reckoned with I can't believe the things that you have done in the last year right so why don't we talk to ourselves like that we need to raise our own energy and acknowledge all the hard work we put in our resilience the days we didn't feel like going to work that we got up and went to work right so be mindful of that reflect on that spend spend a little bit of time sometime today thinking about all of the things that you've conquered in the last year all right on with it how high achievers weather storms so there's three pieces loose pieces to this there's obviously plenty more but steadfast goals and flexible methods we have to be clear about where we want to go we have to have definitive goals because we can't get where we're going if we don't know where that is right we're just getting up and going through the motions we're not actually trying to get to a defined place but we have to be flexible about the journey we take to get there I was talking with my good friend Jeremy Jacob who owns float in San Antonio a couple weeks ago and we were laughing together about how tired our collective teams got with us in the last two years about oh we're doing this now we're changing this we're gonna do this differently we can do this better and it was a constant movement and evolution that had to take place to navigate the business scape that we were in so you have to master the pivot right my goals didn't change my goals weren't any different than they were before but I had to get down in the nitty gritty about how I was gonna accomplish those things with the way that the world changed to the drawdown that's this is arguably my favorite when things happen when business gets interesting when global pandemics just show up out of the clear blue sky we have to get really radical about our priorities things that were important that we had intended to do don't necessarily make it in the top three list but we have to be mindful about the energy that we have to give things and projects and people we have to be mindful about budgets right there was a lot that happened this year and trying to reduce costs and increase sales and all of those pieces that took up a lot of bandwidth in our brains and so we have to sit down and be like okay what are the things that I need to do that are gonna get me where I need to go right now and then we have to just put the blinders on and stay in that space it's the only option otherwise you're gonna burn out in 10 seconds especially again in a business landscape that looks like it does right now three network support look around this room make friends while you're here these are the people that get it these are the people when you have a hard week that you need to call okay because people working in the nine to five people working in corporate America they just aren't thinking about the things that we have to think about every day so they have their own stresses I'm not saying anything's harder than anybody else's job it's just very different so we have to rely on the people that get it that get where we're coming from and congratulate yourself often if you guys want to hear my champagne theory I'm not gonna tell it on stage today but I will tell you about it in the hallway there's a whole theory about it so let's talk about purpose quickly three big pieces to this vision clarity and action vision why why are you even here why do you have to own a float center have you written that down have you mapped out your why have you dug deeply into that why to unfold it and where do you want to go right why do we get up every day and do the things we do this vision statement is really important my vision statement for float spa x is three pages long I wrote it before I opened the doors on the first float center and I'm constantly checking my actions every day and the people that I hire into my organizations against that vision statement I look back at it all the time and I'm like is this person going to be an extension of the brand that I built are they gonna be an outlier over here trying to force us into something else we have to be clear about those things clarity what is what does this vision look like in the physical form clarity is important in every facet of our lives and our finances and our businesses and our personal lives again we can't get where we're going if we don't know where that is but we also can't get there if we don't know where we are right now right you can't draw a map from I don't know where I am I don't know where I'm going there's you can't there's no action steps you're just getting up and doing some stuff okay it doesn't work we have to clearly define our own role we have to figure out what our wheelhouse says and we're gonna talk more about that every interview I've ever done I've asked people what their weaknesses are and if their answer is well I really don't know or my favorite I don't have any I'm excellent like cool well one you're a liar too you need to sit with yourself and get get really clear because we can't leverage our weaknesses if we don't know what they are I know what mine are it may shock you guys to hear that I'm not real organized in a traditional sense right I'm a pilot I keep piles of things I'm not a filer people with the filing cabinets I think it's incredible that people are into that it's not it's not for me so what did I do I hired a librarian have a librarian that works on my teams and she she she brings traditional organization to to the float centers I like the jellyfish the jellyfish is one of my favorite examples I say often don't be a jellyfish jellyfish do not have muscular structures they go where the ocean tides take them they don't really swim anywhere purposefully you're not a jellyfish don't just go where the tide takes you especially not right now the tide right now is not a great one to be caught in and you are far far too powerful for that so you can set your own course hire in the gaps of your weaknesses again hired a librarian I've hired a lot of people that fill my gaps which creates a win for everybody because they are working in their strengths and I'm not beating my head against a wall trying to get good at something that I'm not that good at right which means I have more energy and time for the things that I am good at and where I can make the most impact in my businesses the drill down in this is you can literally design and live the life you want to be living as long as you know what that looks like I had to get very purposeful in this last year there was some business opportunities that I would have loved to take there were some events I would have loved to attend and the answer had to be no because when I checked those things about against what they were going to do to my big picture goal what I wanted my life to look like they were going to take me away from that instead of towards it so when we're clear about where we're going it's very easy to make decisions action actions obviously very important we can dream all day but if we're not doing we're not going anywhere one of my favorite things is this first question up here when we think about the issues that we're having in our businesses what is the one thing that needs our attention and focus right now that will solve as many problems as possible at once so fairly typically that's sales right sometimes that's money sometimes it's staffing sometimes it's failing equipment right what's the thing that you're beating your head against the wall every day and it's taking you away from the things that you should be doing you should be able to put your energy into what's the one thing you can do right now to make everything in your vision statement and clarity exercises come true what's the next stone that you need to step on to get to your final destination if your chapter 35 looks like this and you're in chapter 7 what's chapter 8 look like write your book right if I'm here and I want to get there what's what's the next what's the next step that I need to take so we can be very clear about these things micro goals and action steps are the things that will get you where you're going but we need to be mindful about when we meet those goals to if my goal is to make ten million dollars but I'll celebrate getting to two million dollars then all of a sudden I'm gonna get to ten million I'm going to be like this isn't good enough for me and I'm gonna be chasing this proverbial carrot and I'm gonna miss the fact that I'm in exactly the place I wanted to be whenever I wrote that goal right so we have to be mindful about what we're doing every day profit so I'm gonna touch briefly on this profit is interesting because especially in a business scape like we're navigating right now we tend to we tend to get to a place where we're like oh well we just got it we need to run a special we need to drop our pricing but that's only part of it okay pricing is arguably only one-third if that of the money strategy so this is more what we're looking like persistence is interesting on here got a little excited about the p words persistence is more about education and continuity of messaging right are we out there all the time talking about what float does in a way that people understand it and in a way that's consistent and are we showing up consistently to talk about these points but the other big piece aside from price is people it will always be cheaper to keep a client that it will be to attract a new client always so if you have the wrong people in your centers and your messaging online isn't in alignment with the experience that people are having when they get to you there's a disconnect right and we know that when new people come into a float center they're already confused right we don't want to give them hurdles that they have to overcome when they get there because we already know when they get to look at the float tank they're gonna be like oh it's just the way it is it's a natural inclination to respond that way to something we've never done before they're processing a lot and we don't want to create disconnect where it doesn't need to exist so it's continuity we need all of these things to be working in alignment together to increase profit or maintain profit or whatever your your goals happen to be I recently I'll tell a bit of a personal story just a couple weeks ago I again like these are activities that I use in my everyday life and so I was sitting and reflecting and I was like man I feel like I've just been beating my head against the wall for months and I can't figure out like what the thing is can't put my thumb on the issue and I realized that I had staff in one of my float centers that was misaligned with my brand so I had to make hard choices I had to go in that float center and say okay we're all done we're gonna build a new team here I've got to build a new team here I don't have a choice because how we got here won't work for me and in the weeks that have come since then everything has calmed down quite a bit right every I have a team that aligns with what I do every day I have a team that understands the way I communicate and I have a team that resonates with my vision statements and my brand and they're killing it they're doing an incredible job don't be afraid to say I did it wrong don't be afraid to say I made a mistake I need to start over because that's how you're gonna win when you get real with yourself about the fact that for whatever reason my in my particular instance those hires had been made in a little gap where I was a little bit desperate to get people in the float center so that we could run the hours we needed to since then I've paired down the hours a little bit I closed one more day a week than I typically am so that we can scale the staff properly in the direction we need to go and it's made a massive difference fortunately I have a lot of friends that are a lot better at a lot of things than I am and the converse is true I'm grateful that I can call a number of colleagues some in this room and some that are not that there's a massive energy exchange we can brainstorm together and I can troubleshoot problems and say this is what I'm having issues with and they can do the same and we get off the phone and we both have action steps to take and those conversations matter right because I'm one person with one perspective I need outside opinions I need people to say like hey I appreciate the way you're thinking about that but it's not gonna work and here's why it's not gonna work and I love that I love it when people tell me I'm wrong it's fantastic it makes me a better human I hope you guys enjoyed it this morning I'm so grateful to share this time with you I'm looking forward to all the hugs the hug contest is on for sure if you need that again that's here for you if you want to save my contact information I will leave you with this float center owners are notoriously terrible about float time which is silly right we have the best tool on the planet for stress and anxiety reduction but here we were in the middle of a global pandemic and like everybody lost their heads all of a sudden we stopped using the tool that we tell everybody will navigate them through stress and anxiety dedicate a time for yourself to get in a float tank at least once a week do it when your staff is there set up a time make set expectations with your staff my staff knows when I walk in for my float time it's on the schedule they'll call me if it's not when I walk in for my float time they know I'm not there for business and please don't talk to me about the client that just left all the towels and like not today this is my time let me disappear for a minute I'll be back and they're really great about holding that space for me so I'd encourage you guys to do that schedule your floats and go get in a float tank give yourself one more hug it's so great to be with you I'll see you guys later thanks