Byron Morrison: Breaking CEOs Free From Stress

Oct 26, 2020

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As a business owner, stress comes with the territory. Today's guest is a best selling author, speaker, and is here to get you out of your own head so you can break free from that stress.

Please welcome Byron Morrison.

2:32 - Setting the Expectation
4:11 - Working with CEOs
6:42 - The difference
13:13 - Strategies
17:29 - Slow and Steady

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Byron Morrison. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. How are you? I'm really good. Thanks. Thanks for having me on today. Yeah, so you and I, we've kind of connected on Facebook and engaged a little back and forth, so it's nice to actually have an opportunity to chat and dig into digging deeper into what you, what you work with and you know, how you help people.

Yeah, it's amazing how this kind of social world, especially with the lockdown at the moment as connected to me, just so many new amazing people I've gotten to speak to that probably wouldn't have had the opportunity without it. So while there's a lot of kind of obvious negative stuff coming on, I think it's important to look at the positives and how this is kind of bringing a lot of us together as well.

For sure. Yeah. I've talked to others kind of on that topic. And I think that, uh, you know, looking back in time, hopefully at some point there's, uh, an equal amount of positives and things of evolution that come from this that we can kind of look at, you know, there's obvious downsides, but hopefully we can kind of look back on this time with, uh, some big positives.

Yeah. I was actually having a really interesting conversation about this earlier. Sorry to kind of go off topic, but if you can try to be relevant to what we'll probably talk about today, and that is, I think one of the big wins and positives coming out of this is it's going to completely change kind of working lifestyle for a lot of people.

If you look at like the companies before that were saying, they couldn't do remote working. They very quickly had to find a way to give people that flexibility. I think, long term, it's going to improve a law's quality. Of life for people in very different ways that they can be more around for their kids and focus on their health and enjoy themselves more.

So hopefully that will be one of the positives know, I've, I've kind of joked with other guests about how, um, you know, I've talked on other podcasts about, you know, setting expectations with your clients. Cause the majority of microbes I've largely worked from home. And so a lot of people said, well, you know, how do you run an agency and manage being at home and maintain that professional image?

And I say, okay, I don't. I said X, I said X . And you know, I tell as long as you're proactive with your clients and you say, Hey, I'm at home today. So if you hear my kids, that's why then it's not so weird when they actually do hear your kids. But if you don't say anything and all of a sudden there's a zoo that comes running behind you, then it's weird because they were expecting the office environment.

So I actually kind of joked a couple of times how now it's much more easier to present that because people get it now. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think it's kind of setting the expectation and now that's one of the kind of, I hate to use the term that the new normal I'm so used to just having that background noise in the destructions and humanizing people in a lot of ways.

So they, cause there's less of that kind of front of looking like you have it all together. Cause everyone's kind of in the same boat. Yeah. All right, well, let's do the usual two questions. So question number one is what are you an expert at and what are we going to potentially learn from you today? So what I do is help CEOs and business owners really Uplevel their way of thinking so that they can make better decisions that you can execute without are you thinking, and they can handle the new levels of stress and pressure that come along with running that business.

Okay. And we'll get dig into that here in a second, but not until you answer question number two, which is what do you suck at? I'm honestly terrible at anything to do with manual labor. Alright, DIY, are you repairs? Luckily, my girlfriend seems to be very good at that sort of thing. So she kind of takes control of anything to do with the house, but I'm not allowed to be used power tools or habits in case of emergency injuring myself.

That's funny. I'm surprised we haven't. That's a good one. We act, we haven't had anybody say that before, but that's a totally legit one. Okay. So let's talk about, you said the term you used as you help Uplevel, you know, CEOs. So give, give us some examples of how you work with the CEOs. Yeah. Sure. So the CEOs that I work with with are generally at a point in that business over the last few years, they've built it through passion, hard work and perseverance.

They've taken it from idea to development, and now they're facing this big kind of area of growth. But with every new level of success comes a new level of problems. Because now it's not just about the idea and growing it. They also have to manage a team. They have to keep stakeholders happy. They have to pitch to investors.

They have all of these new responsibilities, which is a lot for them to take on, especially because in many cases they're completely unprepared. So they find themselves in this situation where they're pulled in multiple different directions. They don't know what to focus on. They find themselves. Really struggling to make the big decisions.

They overthink what they need to execute on. And many days, yes. And pressure will push them to the point where they're not showing up as the leader. They need to be in that business. So that's really where I come in getting that focus away from what they need to be doing business wise and instead putting it on themselves and helping them grow and evolve.

So you don't necessarily focus on actually saw solving their logistics problems, but what you do is you help them with the mindset to stay sane. So then they can properly solve them on their own. Yeah, exactly because I'm not a business coach. And at the end of the day that the CEO, for a reason, they know their business better than anyone.

So it's not my job to come in and give them new strategies. Instead. It's about getting them out of that mentality, where they stuck in the tunnel vision of what's going on and getting them to really understand. What actions are taken on a day to day basis, how they're managing that team, how they're already processing all of these ideas and also giving them an external kind of sounding board.

Cause a lot of the times they need someone who can create a safe and judgment free zone, where they can openly talk out the challenges they're facing. They can bounce around ideas that they may not want to talk about with their team and allows them to really disconnect. In a way that they may not be able to do with people directly involved around them.

Is it, is there the ability for you to give an example, because it's interesting, you say, you know, I'm not a business coach. And so for, I imagine some of the listeners are going to say, well, what are you then? And so can you help them understand the difference between a business coach and what you do?

Yeah. The easiest way to summarize what I do is mindset and high performance consultant. So I'll give you an example. I've got a guy at the moment came in, he's grown his startup. They have just hit that biggest ever month revenue. Things are going fantastic in that sense, but he feels completely overwhelmed with the fact that he's spending his days putting out fires, solving other people's problems.

He's stressed to the point that he's barely sleeping and he feels like if he carries on down the path that he's on, he's going to become burnt out. So it'd be my job to come in to really do the mindset, work with him, to get him to understand what he needs to focus on. What's his zone of genius and what needs to be delegated or outsourced during the kind of up-level brainwork to get him to be able to manage and let go of his stress levels and also set the right boundaries.

So he stopped sacrificing other areas of his life. So you can actually exercise, you can spend time with, because partner and actually catch up on sleep, which is something that has been giving up a lot. Yeah. What, okay, so somebody comes to you and says, Byron, I'm a mess. Uh, like you said, uh, I anticipate I'm gonna burn out soon.

So where do you start with the people that come to you like that? How do you start to identify how to solve this problem? The Fest thing we really need to do is get them clear on where they are now and where it is they want to get to, because if we can understand, okay, this is who you're showing up as on a day to day basis, and this is why it might be counterproductive.

And if we get them clear on who it is, they really need to be, to show up as the better leader, better communicator, better manager. We can then reverse engineer that journey. We could really focus on, okay, what actions do you need to take in order to close? And from there, it's all about evolving, who they see themselves.

Because if we think about it, every single one of us, we have our own identity. We have this vision in our head about who we are, what we can and can't do. And so often that identity can hold us back. And that's for the first step in working with any client is getting them clear on the identity of who they need to become.

Because then we can really evolve it, getting them to step into that non-negotiable actions, behaviors that beliefs on that future version of themselves to that they then stopped acting upon showing up on every day. What, what is the bigger problem? Is, is it usually the CEOs have too much going on in business and so they have business problems or do they have personal problems that are becoming business problems?

It's generally a mix of both, because that may be at a point where that's so focused on their business, that. They are in a tunnel vision of what's going on and also on the side of that, because they're so in that business, that relationships in that health and everything else is suffering and they're so interrelated, especially when you're running the business.

So when I come in, it's very much taking a holistic approach and looking at everything from how productive are you? Because often I'll speak to people and they'll back. Like I'm working 60 hour weeks, but when we really break it down, they might only be doing about 10, 15 hours of actual productive work.

The rest might be time spent procrastinating, focusing on tasks that don't matter overthinking or essentially as being stuck in their own head. We also need to look at, are they actually giving that home life, the attention it needs? Because if their wife is constantly on their case about the fact that they're never present, then never home.

They've got issues in their marriage all the time. That's going to take that folks off their business. If that energy levels are low, they're never going to be able to execute properly. If they're not sleeping properly, it's really getting them to take that stuff back on, looking at where they currently are and understanding what areas of their life need their attention.

Cause it's often the areas that we don't think about, which are being hugely detrimental to where we're actually putting our focus. Yeah. And then one, I imagine just impacts the other and then it creates a cyclical problem. Yeah. How did you get into this? What's your background? So if I take you back a few years, just to kind of show you growing up, I was always one of those people who wanted to make an impact.

I wanted to help others and have my own business, but never really knew what that was. So like a lot of other people, I went to university, got a degree and got a job and I kind of found myself in a situation where. I was in a good career. How is any good money? I was on track to a life that others would deem as success, but I was also very unhappy.

I was overweight. I was struggling with confidence. I was unfulfilled and didn't really know what I was doing with my life. And then my dad got cancer and. During his treatment, he had most of his bowel surgically removed and he spent 25 days in ICU. Most on life support, breathing through a tracheotomy.

And Dow for me was very much the wake up call that I had to do something about my own life. So I set out on this journey to. Turn my own life around to lose the weight, to recover from the burnout, to start feeling better about myself. And on that, I learned everything I could about mindset, nutrition, health, high performance, and the more I dived into it, the more I saw how much my dad's success contributed to him getting sick.

Because at the time he was working 14 hour days, he was burned out. He was barely sleeping. He wasn't looking after himself. And inevitably all of that eventually took its toll. So I took what I learned. I, I became the foundation of my best selling book become a better you. And it was why I started this mission of helping other CEOs and business owners take back control of this area of their life so they can avoid going through what happened to him.

So I think a lot of business owners can relate to the concept of stress, even if they don't necessarily have, uh, you know, the lack of sleep or the lack of exercise. I could just stress just comes with the territory. So how do you, like, what are some practices or maybe some suggestions you can give listeners that that may not be too deep into the large mix of problems, but maybe it's just like, Stress, which is natural.

Like what are some things they can do to kind of tackle some of that? Yeah. One of my favorite kind of strategies, and this is something that. I do myself out with all clients. I really recommend anyone else listening to this really starts incorporating into their routine is a practice to actually let guard release stress throughout the day.

Because what a lot of people don't realize is stress in itself is something that doesn't just happen. It's actually accumulated it's that morning meeting that difficult conversation, that campaign that didn't go according to plan all of these things. Build up throughout the day to eventually something that isolation probably wouldn't have mattered can push you over the edge.

And this is why we need to be actively looking at ways of reducing that stress throughout the day. And one of my favorite practices to do that is at the end of every single task, what I by self and get clients to do is to take a couple of minutes where you stop. Close your eyes take deep breaths into the count of four out to the count of four, allowing you to really calm yourself down and become grounded on the reason why that breathing is so impactful.

Is this actually a technique that they use in the NHS with doctors and nurses, where when they're in a heightened state and forces them to stop, to calm down lower that blood pressure so that they can then think clearly. So by going through that breathing exercise, it's cut out you to reduce your cortisol and recenter yourself.

And from there. Sexual intention. So mentally go through and be like, okay, what do I need to do next? What challenges could I see coming up in this task? What would the best version of myself show up as in order to get this done, play through it in your head so that you know exactly what you need to do.

And you'll be able to proactively as well deal with a lot of the challenges before they come up. And that's going to have such a big impact on your stress levels and your energy by the end of the day. Cause it's going to allow you to unload all of this negative built-up tension and actually be far more intentional with what you're doing with your time.

What about do, do you have any, um, Extreme examples. Okay. So that, that was like the general, the general example, which, which is what I asked for. But what about kind of changing pace? Uh, are you one to, in certain circumstances, recommend cold showers every morning, or just something like that? Many people might find more extreme.

Honestly, there's nothing too crazy that we do is while the culture. Yeah. And stuff like that can be good for like waking up or even kind of helping with some inflammation where if you look at kind of like ice pass and all of this stuff like that, I find for the clients that I work with, we very much need to take it to a foundational level.

Cause a lot of people look forward to the latest hacks and the seeds and all these crazy things that they overlook. The fact that generally. It's focusing on the basics and getting them right, right. And doing them consistently, which leads to the better longterm results. And it's the people who keep dancing one thing to the next and looking forward to these crazy things, but never sticking to anything who land up struggling.

So that is one of the things I have to battle with clients. It's just like, do you know what? We're not going to go crazy. We're not going to overhaul or push you to do something completely out of your confidence. Instead, we need to focus on what does your current lifestyle and routine currently look like?

What is it? That could be improved and making small shifts that isn't adding more to that to do list or adding more stress and pressure on them. So yeah, no crazy answer for you though. Unfortunately, I know it makes sense because I think that that applies to so many things. I mean, even, uh, just business in general, right?

Have your core foundations. Or health, you know, the new shiny diets only lasts so long because you're not addressing the core issues or even, you know, with my industry of SEO, like people bounce around the shiny new algorithm, you know, the, the hacky strategies and then the new algorithm takes them out. I think we could probably apply that concept of sticking to the basic slow and steady is more sustainable in just about anything.

Yeah. As a prime example, one of the most common sense thing things to do when you're approaching your gay is to sit down in the morning and put together a plan of what you actually need to get done. Like, it seems so obvious, but you'd be amazed at how many CEOs and business owners I speak to who don't do it.

Like they've got a rough to do list and they've got an idea of what needs to get done, but. They don't have the foundation in place of, do you know what I'm going to take five minutes in the morning and plan out what I actually need to achieve today? What are my biggest folks is what has to get done, but they're looking for these crazy productivity hacks and how to get more done in less time.

Whereas the answer is actually really uncovered what you're actually doing and be intentional with it. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Well, Byron, as we get kind of closer to wrapping up, I wanted to ask you one more question. Do you have any examples of like some really big wins or some more extreme before and after success stories of people that you've worked with?

Yeah, one of my favorite ones and a guy sent me testimonial video recently. So it's kind of top of mind is there was a guy who came in, running a business. He was completely stressed and overwhelmed. And I had reached this point where he described as being in a cloudy, mental chaos, where he knew all of the things he should be doing.

But he wasn't doing it. He was spending hours every day, procrastinating. He was overthinking. He was finding, organizing, making the smallest decisions. And we came in and in a very short period of time managed to hone his focus. Got him clear on everything that needed to be done, broke through the procrastination and actually put him back in control of what he was doing.

I in one of our sessions, he came in and he had got more done the day before than it used to an entire week or from just making these small shifts and really breaking through all of the noise and clutter that was going on in his head and getting him really cleared, who he needed to show up as not just as a leader for his business, but also as someone who was going to inspire his team, someone who was going to be there for his family and.

Who was actually happy in himself as well. It was the core problem with him. Was it burnout or something else? It was trying to do too much. Like he essentially had so much going on in his head that he wasn't able to process it. So it's just constantly bouncing around from one task to the next, moving all over the place and being completely scattered.

So it was very much a case of coming in and being like, okay, what is it you actually need to get done? What's the top priority. How are we structuring it? What guidelines and routine can we put in place and getting him out of that overwhelmed state? Because one of the best piece of advice I can give to anyone listening to this is if you're feeling overwhelmed, There's a good chance.

The reality is you're actually under planned. And so often when we get into that heightened state, it's because we have too many racing thoughts in our head. One of the best things you can do is to sit down and actually has to write it down, create a, just a mental brain dump of everything going on in your head.

You're going to get out in front of you. You can have them be able to process it in a clear and cohesive way, and then put together a plan for each of those of how you're going to tackle them. Whereas instead, but try to go through it all in your head constantly. That's what keeps people trapped and essentially getting in their own way.

Yeah. It's always the simple things, the smaller things that causes the big problems. So Byron Morrison, I appreciate you jumping on learning from others. Tell our guests that they can find out more about you. I, yeah, I appreciate you having me on easiest place to connect with me is on LinkedIn. I put out daily videos, thought leadership, posts, guides, and tutorials, and a buyer and Morrison.

I'm also on Facebook or check out bar and morrison.co.uk. Thanks so much by your nurse and everybody.