The Circuit of Success Podcast with Brett Gilliland

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Aug 7, 2023 • 40min

Unlock Your Vision and Achieve High Performance: A Conversation with Jeff Eschliman

On this episode of the Circuit of Success, Brett Gilliland interviews Jeff Eschliman, a veteran of 30 years of combat and corporate experience. Jeff shares his story of how his upbringing and military service shaped his leadership style and how he uses his mindset to overcome fear and anxiety. He also shares his tips on how to create a life of harmony in a chaotic world. https://youtu.be/ltbAofDwM9o Brett Gilliland: [00:00:00] Well, to the circular of success, I host Brett Gil, Gil, and today I’ve got Jeff Esman with me. Jeff, how you doing? Outstanding, sir. Awesome. Well, it’s good to be with you today. Where are you? Where are you calling in from, from again? I forgot to ask you that. At Phoenix. Phoenix. Just got the phone, uh, CL client in. Yes. The desert’s covered today. Don’t I warm? It’s, I bet it is warm, man. It’s crazy, crazy there. I know, but they, but they always say it’s a heat, right? Jeff Eschliman: High heat. It is. Definitely that so Brett Gilliland: is another. Exactly, exactly. Well, you are a guest that I’m excited to have on, on here today. You got, uh, uh, 30 of experience, experience from, uh, combat in Iraq. Uh, all the way corporate board boardroom, you’re a sought laughter X for building and scaling results driven teams, uh, and your leadership style characterized by as bi personal development can, [00:01:00] can see and uh, tenacious work ethic, which I love. Uh, uh, so I’m excited to talk about that. But that, but if we can’t, let’s start with, what I always start with is what’s made you the Manan you are today? No. You don’t just, just go to Iraq in the boardroom and room and all the things mentioned, uh, without a backstory. And so I’d love to hear that. Right. Jeff Eschliman: It, it really starts, you know, from a pretty, I was pretty fortunate to have a great upbringing, folks that had instilled really good core values in me, but I was a little bit of a, a wallflower, uh, before going into the service. And when I went into the service, it was really, really life-changing for, for me. It took, you know, all those fundamentals that I’ve learned from my folks. And it really, it really shaped who I was going to be and then ended up being extremely pivotal through my entire leadership development and career. It, it, [00:02:00] it was really back to my, my father was a house here locally and so I grew up residential home job sites here in the valley and that’s really where. I think those core values came into play with the leadership skills that I learned in the military. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Did you know you wanted to go into the military an early age, or what, what made you join the Milit military? Jeff Eschliman: I, I just referred to it as a calling, so I, I felt something in, in my heart that said I wanted to serve and I, I didn’t wanna do the typical four year stint. And so anything that you were gonna sign up for, at least in the Army in the era when I joined, had to be combat related. And my dad was a a US Marine Vietnam era, even though he didn’t go to Vietnam. And he always told me either go in the Air Force or go in the Navy, cause he’ll teach me something. And so [00:03:00] of course I joined the army. Because it was the two year stent and I figured, you know, I would, I would get what I was expecting out of it. Well, obviously I ended up getting, I ended up getting way more than, you know, what I had bargained for. But that, those experiences, Brett, that that was like the, The forge, right. Of shaping who my, or what my personality and characteristics would. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. You know, I’m always fascinated. I, I love the military. I’m actually, in fact, I, I can look right now from my view, my view here, see Scott Air Force Base, I can’t see it cuz of the trees, but no, right where it’s at. So we, so we have one of the, the biggest, best, best air forces in the country right here, up the road from my office and, um, But, but, but what I’m sitting there with, with, and I’ve talked to military people cause the problem growing up, you know, my kids growing up in a mil military, bay town as well as well, that you get really good friends and then they leave you, [00:04:00] right? They leave you about every third or fourth year. And it’s tough. It’s tough. And so I always, I always joke when I’m military guy or guy, I’m like, I don’t wanna be that friends with you because you’re just leave me again, again in three years. And so we joke around about that. But my point to this is, I, I love the goal military. From what, from what I’ve learned, I, I draw the wisdom that they share with me. From a businesses standpoint is military. There’s, there’s clarity. We know the mission, we know why we’re going there. So there’s clarity. There’s a plan, right? We show up, show up, game plan on what we’re gonna do. We practice a game plan. Plan. Oh, by the way, oh by the way, we game plan again, and then we execute. And, and, and I think you can take that, that from, to your point here, the, you know, from Iraq to combat to, to the boardroom, always. The things I like to draw parallels to is that they’re so clear on where, where they’re going, right? They know, they know the plan. And what if, what if I do a business standpoint, no matter what I did for a living, if I had cl there was a plan, I [00:05:00] practiced, I practiced and I executed it. How would life look, look for me as a business owner. Jeff Eschliman: Absolutely. And, and then I think the piece that I would add to that, that was really pivotal for me was the teamwork piece, right? And so the military gave me two different things. One, it gave me an inner confidence that there was nothing that I couldn’t, that decide that I could accomplish personally and then do it. And especially the physical part of. But it was also mental, right? Because a big part of any physical journey is the mental piece, right? If you’ve ever ran a marathon, anything like that, you know about mile 19, it is no longer physical. It’s, well, it is physical, but it’s mental as well as physical, right? And the other piece would be the teamwork and seeing teams work together in that fashion and at that level. That is another thing that I was able to take [00:06:00] into my corporate life that really made me successful in the very beginning stages. Even being a superintendent out on the job site where I was literally running work before I became an executive, and I was getting all these folks that showed up on the job site to play at a higher level. Yeah. So Brett Gilliland: when you talked mental and. What, what came to my mind when you were talking, talking about that, is fear and, and the, the min is, I can’t imagine being on that airplane lying, knowing I’m gonna war. Right, right. Because you’re in the marathons and I know in a marathon I’m gonna run. I’m, I’ve never ran a marathon, but if I did, I did. I could run, I put my preparation in. But at the end of the day, this not my mentality, mentality, but hey, I could, could stop if things went south, right? But in military, I’m getting dropped, dropped off to a world war. You can’t just be like, oh, sorry guys, not feeling it today. I’m out. Right? I’m going, where are [00:07:00] bombs blowing? There? Are there are guns being fired? Walk us through that mint side for you on that, that plane, and knowing where the hell you’re going. Yeah, and Jeff Eschliman: I’ll, I’ll take it even one further than the plane flying over. It was, I, I drove an armored personnel carrier, so I crossed across the border from Saudi Arabia in Iraq, and that was literally the most terrifying experience I’ve ever had in my life. And my biggest fear heading into that, Brett, was that I was gonna fail. Right. I was worried that I was gonna fail my team. So there was me and three other people on this armor personnel carrier, or the broader team being the United States Army, or the broader team being my country that had sent me over there on a mission. And so what I tell people about the experience, or just this experience in general is I had to be [00:08:00] bigger than I was capable of being individually. Right. And that’s where you get that lift up. When you’re a part of a team or you’re a part of a mission that is well articulated and important, and I’ll tell you how that translates into my life after I got out of the service, and we can go there if you want, but you know, I, I’ve had a period in my life where I wasn’t making very good choices and I had to fix a lot of things. One of the things is, At one point in my life, I was more than a hundred pounds overweight. And the the reason I tell you that is to tell you that I used running to fix as well as my mindset to fix that problem. Huh. So I ran, I don’t know, probably six, seven or eight marathons. I ran one ultra marathon. Wow. And my mindset going into any one of those, Is that I will never, right. Not a, I mean I’m not a big Goggins fan, but you know, like that mindset [00:09:00] about you’re going into a particular situation and it does not matter what your mind tells you that your body is capable of. I’m not gonna stop that. I think that Marathon was boy. But it’s a, it’s a knowing. That’s what I refer to it. That, yeah. Like, I’m not gonna stop. And, and that was a really early seed of that, was that military experience. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So how do you do when you’re, you’re, you’re going Saudi Arabia, Arabia, Iraq border. You’re, you know, you think about, you said you know your team. That’s, that’s with you. You’re in the military, you’re to country. It’s a lot of weight. Right? And so talk to the man listening to this as that’s walking to the boardroom room right now. And they’ve got those fears because of this presentation. They’ve gotta gotta give or they got that client, client or whatever it may be. Like how do you actually get through that though and still, still perform and, and still actually the mission and even you’re scared, [00:10:00] right? Jeff Eschliman: So I would equate what we’re talking about here. I mean, it’s really similar, so, I’ve given a lot of Toastmasters, speeches, speeches or presentations in front of a board, things of that nature. And the number one, I don’t know if it’s the number one, it’s probably in the top three tools that I use, is something that I call, I’m excited, right? Instead of labeling that feeling that I’m having as fear or anxiety or any of the other thing. Any of those other emotions that are. Detrimental, right? If you name it something different, like, I’m excited, and then you go into that opportunity and, and here’s how. I think it’s the same as gratitude, for example, when you put your focus on something outside of you, so if you’re going into that boardroom presentation or you’re going into that meeting with, you’re thinking about the customer. [00:11:00] More than what you’re thinking about you or how am I gonna show up? Or how am I gonna come off? If you can put the focus on the mission of the organization when you’re given the presentation or the value of what you’re gonna be able to help that client with me, that is the most, again, probably top three most powerful things used to. Over overcome those feelings, right? It’s, it’s basically just, Brett Gilliland: well, it’s if you’re focusing on others versus, you know, you can’t focus on yourself. That, that’s where’s where fear and fear and anxiety stress comes in. And then now you are, you know, you know, thinking yourself. You’re not, you’re not on your mission. That’s most important. You know, our mission here is to help people achieve a future greater than past. And going into, into this think out. Oh my gosh. I hope, hope I don’t mess, or I hope I don’t, I don’t do this. Yes, that comes with, comes with experience time. But man, I, I gotta focus on the mission, mission of helping that. So [00:12:00] I’m getting ready, getting ready to set down with Exactly, exactly. Um, I know you’re in, in creating a life of harmony and, and when you hear me say that, what comes, comes to mind? How do we create, create life of harmony with, with the crazy world that we live in today? Notifications and tea and media and Yeah. And all this stuff. How do we do it? Jeff Eschliman: Be intentional. And so what I mean by that is, well, first of all let’s I, for any good conversation in harmony, we’ll start with goofing a little bit on the term work life balance. And I, I started with saying that that was a myth, but where I’ve evolved to is just saying, Like, are we supposed to believe that we’re supposed to put, like, work in one of these? Like think about an old apothecary scale. Are we supposed to put work in one bowl and anything else from our life and the other? And then [00:13:00] somehow they’re supposed to balance out? Like, that’s not how life works. So what part of me, for me is, is these intentional practices that I employ Brett, and I have a, I have for example, what I call my one page plan for. I have everything that is my core values, my core competencies, my purpose, my goals for the year, my goals for the month, live on document that I call my one page plan, and basically this is a direct list from what I use in business to run a successful organization. But you know how life works. Just as soon as you have. Great. Let’s gonna start doing. Brett Gilliland: Yeah, throwing your balls, right, right. Jeff Eschliman: It’s gonna start throwing your curve balls. It’s gonna start throwing your left hooks and maybe sometimes it throws you straight out gut punches. Right? Right. [00:14:00] Think about a global pandemic. And so you have to have, I believe you need to have an effective process in place that I call my day. And so I take a day. And the first half of the day is a wholesale reflection of what happened in the previous month. I just shot a little video here about a week ago that said when I did my day of Zen at the end of May, and I said, Hey, are you the kind of person that says, wow, where did May? Right? Like I never, with a capital never. Say anything like that because I don’t let months sneak up on it, right? And the entire second half of my day is in, is planning out a plan to crush that next month. And so when I finished May, I had 32 things on a list that went well in May and I had six things that I wanna do different, which is code for better [00:15:00] in June. And I built a plan to make that happen. And then the third part of my intentional process I call carpe, right? So obviously Latin for seize the day, but it’s a very intentional process that I use to what I call Brett operationalize what’s on my one page claim and make that come to life today, right? Is may, or pardon me, juneteenth thousand 23, and we’re only going. Yep. What we do every day matters way more than people give it credit for. I’m talking about how well we sleep, how well we eat, how well do we do our nutrition? Are we grateful for what we have? You know, I, I could go on and on. Love that Brett Gilliland: man. It’s so, it’s so, it’s funny how, uh, in line we are. So, I, I, I pulled out here my, you know, one [00:16:00] pager, pager, my plan, you know, my, and I call ’em connected goals for 2023. Three. I wanna be connected, right? I wanna be, I wanna be connected with goals. Goals. It, for me, it’s my after the sixth power, my, my faith, my family, my, my fitness, my firm, my, my finances, right? I list all those goals in the background. You can see ’em here when you, when you’re looking at it. There’s picture’s. Pictures of my back here, right? There’s our, our vision, visionary logo, our future greater in your logo. Like, like these important to me. And every day I keep it in my journal. It’s right here. I pull out, I look, I look at it and I start, I start to light the ones that we’ve done. You know, cause I think that’s important. Right? And, and then I, it’s funny, funny because here’s my, my podcasting journal. It says card harp day dm. Isn’t that funny? And that’s what you, you, uh, mentioned there, so I couldn’t agree more. How, how do will we do that? So what’s that pro process look like for you? Let’s get into detail more on this zenday. Where do you go? How do, how do you do? What’s it look Jeff Eschliman: like? Like, yep. So the tagline for my day is then I [00:17:00] call checking out so you can check in. So first of all, what are you checking out? Basically what you’re checking out of is your day-to-day life. So I’m really good at training people in my life how to treat me, and that includes, you know, spouse and children and business and coworkers and things of that nature. So everybody knows on the day of Zen, they’re not gonna get ahold of. Right. Unless it’s an emergency, you don’t get me. And so you have to break the cycle of what you do every day, day to day routine. So you don’t do this at your home, you don’t do this at your office. I am a big fan of the outside. I love going the places that are bigger than me that are inspirational. I love driving up to the Grand Canyon or Sedona, or just out in the desert to reconnect with. Something bigger and something slower than my day to day life. Yep. And again, I mentioned.[00:18:00] From what I typically tell people that I’m trying to achieve, you know, it seems like a lot, and I don’t, I don’t, none of my clients follow my program chapter and verse. I share what I do. I offer ’em the tools, I walk ’em through. Most of my clients do have a process of zen in their life where they’re taking either a whole day, a half a day, or at a minimum they’re taking, you know, three or four hours at any given. So review through their previous and then build that plan. The other thing, Brett, in addition to just reviewing and reflecting, I like to think of the day of Zen as a chunk of time where I can, I can just focus on something specifically. Cause we all know how this works, right? And life is dealing us changes and that’s what life does. Like I said, just as soon as you have your great one page planned, life’s gonna start throwing you, you know, [00:19:00] curve ball. Yeah. And so the day is great. Time review and reflect on two. One, if life is given me a curve ball, then I mean to reflect. Say that’s a child that’s all of a sudden, you know, struggling in school. For a parent that seems like they’re gonna need a different level of care going forward. In our day-today, life, we don’t really have the white right to. Or you can use the Day of Zen and I do this like throughout the month, I’ll start adding things to my agenda for that day that I wanna think about proactively. Right? And so I started this new, you know, entrepreneurial business venture for myself and I’m, you know, busy in the, the effort of, you know, doing podcasts and with clients, marketing plan and all. But if I don’t carve out [00:20:00] time to intentionally think about specific elements of this, of course that could be any time during the month. How about a time that you have carved out where nobody’s gonna get ahold of you? It’s a perfect time to do that. Brett Gilliland: I love it. I absolutely love it. I do quarterly, um, about my strategic, strategic time and my little retreat for myself. And I’m with you. I go someplace inspiring. We, we don’t have the mountains and everyone’s, and everything you have in the Midwest and in St. Louis. You know, maybe going to Forest Park, you know, beautiful views in there. Maybe go going into the Forin lobby, maybe maybe go in the ton lobby, maybe going on a nice golf course on their back deck deck, and just dreaming and thinking, thinking and just, it’s, it’s me, my bernal and, and thinking. And, and if I could add one thing and, and, and maybe you just or not, but, but. I love at the end of each quarter, I look back at the last 90 days pictures. I’m a, I’m a big pig guy. I write out or I write out all the pictures that I’ve taken, taken and we’re thankful for, for amazing. When you actually, when you actually can physically look at that picture in your, your phone. On, on how that [00:21:00] fills and, and, and it takes off right back to that moment. And, uh, it allows me to think, think about the experiences, but it allows me then that next step is what’s the next 90 days gonna be and what experiences can, can we create family, right? Take some prep work. So, Jeff Eschliman: and a wholeheartedly agreed to the exact same thing. I call that taking stock, right? So I do it in two ways. I, I create a folder. I have a folder for each month of the year and I collect, and, and I’ve been doing this since 2009, where I collect, you know, sometimes it could be a, a, well, here it’s June, right? So it’ll be a Father’s Day card from my kid that’s 12 now a Father’s Day card from when he was three years old, right? Oh. And so I collect things like that that rewarding to me, and so much like those. It’s a place to go back and reflect on the good things that had happened in life, and it, it en, it encourages me to do even [00:22:00] Brett Gilliland: more. Love it. That’s, that’s solid, solid advice right there. Um, how, how important to you as reading? Reading? So, I’m, I’m a big, big reader as in April of six 16. As I was the king of like, Hey, I get a book, somebody hands it to me, read 30 or 40 or 40 pages, and then it kind of just starts to collect dust and then all of a sudden it’s, it’s in a cabinet where, and I, and I said, you know what? Enough is, enough is enough. I’m going to start reading 10 pages a day. So 10 pay pages a day, and as resulting in about 22 to 25 books a year. There’s people that read a whole lot more than that, that I understand that. But for me it’s a, it’s a big deal. And now I’ve kind of created a fake page, uh, for those that like to read and wanna, wanna share and be around like, like-minded people. It’s called 10, 10 pages. Get out on Facebook, join the group. But how important, if, if at all reading to you, you and Weiss, would you have around, have around that Jeff Eschliman: critical. And so I actually used, and I’ll just call it personal development, is the key to that change that I needed to make. I actually referred to now the [00:23:00] year 2008 as a year that I had an awakening, right? Because as I alluded to before, I had a handful of things that weren’t going so well in my life. My career was an example of good thing. My relationship with my kids was a. I was about divorced after, you know, being married to somebody, the wrong person for 17 years and about be, you know, bankrupt and Brett that. I was able to start listening and better information from better people, and most of that came by way of look and audio tapes. And so I started my personal development journey in 2009, and I have never, again, with the capital M, never. Stop learning. And I constantly read, I think it’s the key, like, you know, good leadership, just like reading a good life is [00:24:00] just like the analogy of climbing the mountain because just as soon as you’ve gotten to the top of the mountain, you’re gonna, you’re probably gonna find another mountain, right? Yep. Yep. And way up mountain through engine followed by action, right? Yep. And that there was. You can’t just, you can’t just read the 10 pages, you know, how do you apply those the next day? That’s right. That, that’s another big thing. That, and that, you know, oftentimes when I’m working with my clients, that’s the biggest part of the equation is, again, I use that term when I was talking about my, how do you operationalize what you want? Brett Gilliland: So what’s, it’s the one book if you had to re recommend If, if, if I read it and I said This is terrible, you’d pay me a hundred bucks cuz you know it’s so good. Jeff Eschliman: Well, there’s pro, I have, I have a list of recommended reading that probably has a hundred books on it [00:25:00] and it’s broken down by category. I’ll tell you the one book that I get weigh the most. And I give away a, i, I buy a lot of books, 50 or a hundred at a time, built to give away. Wow. One book is the book that I give to kids that are graduating from high school, kids that are graduating from college, and then I also give them, you know, gift cards, something. But I. It’s what call, it’s what I call the most densely packed 30 minutes of personal development in history. And not that I’ve read everything history, but read most, and it is the most densely packed minutes. Yeah. And here, here’s the way. Read it every or listen to it, right? It’s 32 minutes on on YouTube [00:26:00] every day, every week for a month. Every month for a year. Only 32 minutes long. If that doesn’t change your life. You’re not doing it Brett Gilliland: right. I love it. That is a solid book and I’ve got it in my office and I need to read to read it cause I’ve it in years. And, uh, you’re right, it is, that is a game changer of book. So let’s take a turn here and talk about culture. Um, obviously culture is, is, is important, whether it’s in bus, business, sports, the locker room, it’s really important to have the great culture for a winning team. Um, how, how do you help and what advice would you have for creating a just a top level next Jeff Eschliman: cult culture? Yeah. Cult culture is the people game, right? And whenever I talk about people, I use two words. This is long game and you gotta play small. When I said before, like what [00:27:00] you do on a day to day basis matters, it’s super important, right? And so I’m into the small things I’m into first. You’re allowing people, you know, whether that be a sports team or corporation. Like being very specific and having a high bar is table stakes. I can’t tell you how. Founders that I work with that don’t even have job description for the people they hire, much less a crystal clear vision of who they’re about to put on their team. Next is onboarding. If you do a very thoughtful onboarding, whether that’s hanging in the dirty in the locker with the teammate name on the back of it, Or how you line somebody up with a battle buddy or somebody to be with their first. I had an old boss that used to say, every time they [00:28:00] put somebody in this organization the first week that they’re here, just like back in grade. Right? It, it is, it is almost the same that them up making ’em feel welcome, but not just making them feel welcome, equip them with the tools that they’re going successful in their job. And then once you have team members on your team, whether it be new or the existing, what is your frequent communication and how, you know, are you using ppi? Are you, how often are you getting together with your team communicating the message? Because with culture, just like setting the high bar with people as a leader, Always, and I mean, always should be reinforcing the message of what the vision of the organization is and what our core values and what do we want our customers to get outta this and how do we about each other.[00:29:00] And playing the small game with people, having a feedback loop to constantly give them feedback on their own performance. And how their own performance is weighing into the performance of the overall culture of the company. Those, all of these things are critical if, if you’re, and I was always on the journey for operational excellence, right? Performance in every metric that could be measured. In your group or subset, right? Yeah. And people, people is the name of the game. Like, you’ll win or lose with the people you decide. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Well’s. What Starbucks talks about, they’re in people business, not, not the coffee business. Right? Create the experience whether you like ’em or not. They, they’ve, they’ve built a pretty business. Um, we think about that. Uh, everything. You just, and I, I agree. We agree with. How about feedback? How important is it even feedback up to the leader? Leader and, and I say, say that because we’ve [00:30:00] had a, uh, meeting for years now. We call it three three twenty four. We were founded on, on March 25th. That was the day, the day we were found 2014 here at Visionary. And so we got to lit, let we meet my business partner, Tim Ham, and I sat in front of the room. There’s no agenda. There’s no paper, there’s no, there’s no pre messages. It’s been a game changer meeting for us as we go there and we just, the feedback, like my philosophy on that is I don’t want the water cooler talk to, to turn into a much, much bigger deal. So about every, on, every eight we get together with locations, you know, the ones that are close to here or we in person other than others, we, we in the phone and stuff. But how important is that to get feedback from your people, so small things to your, to your place? Small, that smaller things don’t turn into bigger things. Yeah. Jeff Eschliman: You’re of that process you just mentioned getting together almost like, Brett Gilliland: right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Eschliman: I think again, I’m gonna go, you know, you need to go small. [00:31:00] You need to go small here. When I say small, I mean you as a leader, like how do you keep your ego in check, right? Because how you act every day, how you show up, how you interact with your employees, your team. Like do you, are you the, and you have the parking that’s, you know, closest front door. Or do you give that to the person who works the hardest, you know, each month and you let them have that space and you walk from the outside? Right? Simon Sinek wrote a book called Leaders Eat Last, right? Yep. Which is a book that he wrote after shadowing a general in the military, right? And so these are good core principles, right? If you’re, if you’re much of your own, I hate, or if you’re using too much of your own product, right? And your ego gets too big. You’re not gonna be able to hear the method of the team. Yeah, Brett Gilliland: I like, like that. Very solid. Solid. So [00:32:00] do you do that from a standpoint of, I mean, help mean, help your kind of go-to, um, you say crystal clear Vin, you’ve got your one-to-one pager. How do you articulate that and how often do you do without feeling like, like you’re saying this thing over and over and over a team. So it, Jeff Eschliman: I, I believe it’s, um, you need to have a pattern of structured communication, right? And so the one page plan for me is where that information lives. But then as you mentioned, having like aqua, well maybe you were mentioning your, your course. We used to run a, a plan where we had a quarterly meeting with the entire organization. Right. And so we would do a quarterly leadership retreat where we would assess our quarterly goals and build out the the next quarter’s plan. And so we would use that quarter family business right. We we’re not a family, we’re a business. We wanna [00:33:00] treat each other as much like we can like family, but at the end of the day, it’s a business. So we need to speak frankly, like a good family. We don’t stuff problems. We talk openly if there are problems, and then we celebrate successes, right? And we celebrate milestones. And that’s great on a quarterly basis because if those together, right? Four quarter is like four, four quarter miles. A mile run. And now how do you break it down beyond that? So we would have a, a monthly KPI meeting, so everybody would like call in virtually and we would do a, a KPI meeting. We were testing on all the vital metrics from the organization, and this is the leadership team and senior leaders reporting out to the rest of the group. This was our job to report out on. Now, obviously it was there individual performance that we’re making up, but it’s the leadership team’s job to [00:34:00] supply the metrics and how the team is doing, including the individual feedback, and then you break it down from there. I’m also a big fan. I don’t know if you’ve done daily huddles, but I’m a. And it is super powerful, Brett Gilliland: dead out. We don’t do, we don’t daily huddles, but we certainly huddle it all talk throughout the, the day that, that’s good. Um, last couple questions here. Habits and rituals as I ask you, or if I follow around with a cam camera every day, what are those? No miss items. I’m gonna see the, Jeff is doing day, day in and day. Jeff Eschliman: So I’ll go, I’ll turn to my Carpe Diem and my Franklin planner here, which kinda dates that I’m a little bit of an old school guy, and so I, I’m gonna get up every morning and I’m gonna meditate. I’m gonna turn my coffee pot on, and I’m gonna meditate for 18 minutes. I bump that up [00:35:00] from 2022 to 23. From 1511 burpees every morning. Whether I want to or whether I don’t. It doesn’t matter what I wanna do. I sit, I’m gonna live to, I’m gonna live to at least three years old and doing bur, which I think is one of the best exercises now, not the easiest right? But’s exercises you can do for your, your body. So why 11? Heroes do more. Most people would do 10. Okay. Brett Gilliland: All right. I like, yeah, I love it. Meditation. Are you use meditation app or do you use that in the quiet, quiet room and then breathe? Jeff Eschliman: Quiet room and breathe. I do six minutes where I do follow my breath. I do six minutes where I do a mantra. And then I do six minutes where I call Sending Love. [00:36:00] So I pick, this is from Darren Hardy, so I pick three different people every day and I virtually send them love with my thighs. And then I’m gonna write in my gratitude journal, I’m gonna fill out my carpe and I’m gonna get to get, and at the end of the day, make sure that activity, like right now, I have a goal to make sure I get at least 6,000 steps every day, and so I take stock at the end of the day. I believe. I believe a lot in PM and pm They’re your day that you have the most influence over. Brett Gilliland: Love it. Love it, man. Love that, that, that, uh, that’s what the question, I’m always interested in what great people are doing and, uh, and I, I agree with those things. Uh, last question for you. So fears, a lot of people put fears in our minds. Um, but, but how many fears there’s, or, uh, beliefs, these fears you’ve put in your mind, and how many of them blown up to the mag [00:37:00] magnitude you’ve been your, in your mind to be less than 3%? Yeah. Tell me more. Yeah. Jeff Eschliman: Our brain is really good at protecting us. It’s overly good at being able to protect us. It keeps us, it, it’s, it’s reticular activating, right? Whatever we’re telling ourselves it, and if we don’t tell ourselves something positive or where we’re going, Then we’re gonna listen to the thought that come up naturally and, and our human mechanism is built to keep us safe. Right? It’s, there’s that little part of our brain that still protecting us from a sea tiger, you know, jumping outta the bushes to eat us when we were a caveman, except we’re not caveman anymore, right? And so I, I actually have tool.[00:38:00] And so the percentage of time that you should spend in the past, again, this is Jeff’s idea, is 3%, and think about how much waiting time you have in a day and the time that you should spend in the future is 5%. Spend that on, you should spend that on your vision. You should spend that on planning 5%, the rest of the 92%. What we’re gonna do today, I like Brett Gilliland: it. Clear. Be where, where your feet are at. That’s right. Especially you got clarity around where you’re going. You’ve got your one page pager, you’ve plan you, you show G morning. Spot on. Jeff. Appreciate Jeff Eschliman: it. When I get together with my clients, nine times out of 10, it’s not, show me the great plan. It’s show me how you’re Brett Gilliland: working. Yeah. How you work. You’re working the plan. How you executing Jeff, this has been awesome, my friend. Where, where do we find review and, uh, we’re listeners, uh, and go connect with you [00:39:00] at Jeff Eschliman: Absolutely. The best place to find me is on my website. It’s my name, so I’ll spell it out for you. F F E S C H L I M A n. So jeff eshleman com. And on my website you can take a quick assessment to find out how much harmony you have in your life. I’ve got video to break down these three main tools that I shared with you today, or people can hit me up the chat. Brett Gilliland: Awesome. Well, Jeff, thanks, thanks so much for on the circuit of it’s, uh, awesome having people like you, you in our world, thank you for serving our country and what and what you did in Iraq. Greatly appreciate it, my friend. You can probably see my American flag right here. Jeff Eschliman: Thank you so much. So,

Jul 3, 2023 • 54min

Unlock Your Peak Performance: Optimize Your Day with Tony Castillo

On this episode of Circuit of Success, Brett Gilliland interviews Tony Castillo, an elite sports and performance dietitian. They discuss the importance of hydration and electrolytes, the benefits of having snacks that don’t get your hands dirty, and the importance of eating every third hole while golfing. Tune in to learn how to optimize your performance and live your best life! Unlock Your Peak Performance Brett Gilliland: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Circuit of Success. Back again with another great guest. Tony Castillo is with us. Tony, how you doing? Doing great. How are you doing, Brett? I am great, man. It’s, uh, good to be with you. You’re down in Florida, so it’s a little warmer probably. We, we, for some reason we cannot get this warm weather to stick around here, so it’s in the mid fifties to low sixties, I think today. So, but we’ll get there. We’ll get there. Oh yeah. And Tony Castillo: I’m excited. And since we mentioned before this, you went to go watch a spring training game this year, right? Brett Gilliland: I did, I went to see a little, uh, St. Louis Cardinals. We’re not doing so hot right now, though. Tony Castillo: Well, how do you feel about the pitch clock? That’s been the big thing this year, Brett Gilliland: right? It is. You know what, man? I like it. It, it, uh, the game we went to, it went pretty quick and it’s, you know, it’s like my attention span for going three and a half, four hours at a baseball game anymore. Just, you know, doesn’t, doesn’t do it for me. So I like it. I think it’s gonna be good. And it’s funny when you see some of these guys. Get called on it. Right. And they get a strike against him and nothing’s even happened or vice versa, ball. But it, uh, I think it’s neat. I [00:01:00] think it’s great for the game, don’t you? Tony Castillo: Oh, I absolutely loved it. I remember when I was working in ball, a lot of the players had challenges with it. And from a nutrition standpoint is how do we keep them fueled? Cause it’s a lot quicker. And how do we Oh yeah. Stop them from being injured because now you have someone pitching a lot faster than he was and you have someone batting a lot faster than they were previous. Yeah. So it’s really like you have to lock into the game. So some of the challenges we heard about it, but I absolutely love it. It helped make the game go way faster. I went to one with my brother-in-law. And I just said, I think we’re two hours in. He is like, oh my gosh, we’re already through middle of sixth. Brett Gilliland: And I was like, whoa. Yeah, it flies by it. It’s funny. So when we were sitting there, I said, Hey, the ownership of all these teams, they’re gonna have to figure this out because you know they’re gonna wanna sell beer longer because you, it used to be, it was three and a half hours. We get to stop in the seventh inning. Well now the seventh inning, maybe only two hours. Right? So you’re losing an hour of beer sales, which that’s millions of dollars probably by the end of the year. So, It looks like some of the teams are making a change and not waiting until the seventh inning to shut her down anymore. They’re going, they’re going a little longer, but that’s all right. Tony Castillo: Yeah, [00:02:00] I didn’t even think about that, but that’s so true. Brett Gilliland: Yeah, right. They gotta make that money and they gotta pay those salaries. That’s Tony Castillo: right. And you gotta sell the beer. Cause that’s the highest ticket item Brett Gilliland: they got. Exactly. Best 12, $15 you can spend in the whole stadium. So, well listen man, you all elite sports and performance. You’re an elite sport and, uh, performance dietician and, um, and you worked with the Blue Jays, uh, for what, a, a couple years in, in baseball in the University of Florida. Um, and so, uh, again, an elite nutrition expert. You specialize in sports nutrition and, and helping athletes and business leaders all over the country. Uh, really live their best life, is the way I would say it, right, is how to optimize, uh, the things that they’re doing and so we can all be better. So I think our listeners will like that because we’ve had a lot of performance people on here before, but we’re all like-minded, you know, hard charging folks no matter what we do for a living. And so it’s good to see how can we work at our peak performance. So you ready to chat about that? Oh, Tony Castillo: Brett, I am so stoked, especially after listening to a couple years, and I mentioned this prior, you know [00:03:00] what you do with the first 90 minutes of your day like you have in your journal and F to the six power, like those are just things that I talk about with my clients, but I love to hear how some of those things cross paths, right? Because one F you forgot is food. So you might need to change it to f to the seventh Brett Gilliland: power. F to the seventh power. That’s a good point. I guess I put that in my, and shame on me for that. I put that into my fitness type, you know, cuz it just happened to be where, uh, the F worked there. But, but you’re right man. Cuz that’s some really, really important stuff and uh, you know, garbage in, garbage out. Right? Tony Castillo: Absolutely. And we can even just dive right in, right? Talking about garbage and gumming out. We’re talking about supplements, but we’re also talking about the food we put in. And how we’re brought up, right? Because I’m sure you’ve been on the golf course and someone’s grabbing a Gatorade. Do they really need a Gatorade at that time or what should they be having? Right. These are just some of the simple conversations talking about with some of the bus business leaders I’ve worked with, like should they be having something like a, a lower sugar product? Versus that full sugar Gatorade, which is for someone who’s running a marathon. And as much as I love golf, even if you’re walking [00:04:00] and not taking the cart, you probably don’t need that Brett Gilliland: full sugar Gatorade. Yeah, right. That’s a good point. Yeah. You’re not losing that much that you gotta replenish. Right. You know, it’s funny you say, so I, uh, I don’t even where I saw this, but somebody interviewed Tiger Woods and they said, what’s. What’s one piece of advice that you would have for the amateur golfer out there? Right. And I’m thinking he’s gonna say something about the drive or the putting or chipping, whatever it may be. And he said, I would focus, if I could do anything, I would make sure I focus to eat on about every third hole, you know? And so it’s crazy, that little thing I have found that does actually keep me in the game. So I keep, you know, little snacks or orange or whatever it may be in my bag, and I do find that. And so then it also then carried that into the business life. Right. Having those little baby snacks throughout the day, having my water here in this amazing cup that my son made in his ceramics class in high school, cheers to Drew. Oh, that’s awesome. Um, but that stuff matters, right? So, so walk us through if you can, I want to, and we’ll go back in a little bit to what’s helped, uh, make you the [00:05:00] man you are today, which is the way I normally start. But walk us through some of the no miss habits that we need to, to do day in, day out, uh, to live our best life, uh, as business leaders and, and family leaders. Tony Castillo: Well, even going back to what you just mentioned, Brett, what do you eat on the third hole when you are golfing? I’m, I’m curious now. Brett Gilliland: Yeah, so I do like a, uh, like peanut, um, sunflower seed, raisin little, little piece of chocolate mix. I love that stuff. It’s got a little bit of everything, you know, and so I’ll do that. And then, uh, I, I don’t know, they call ’em Cuties at our grocery store. Yep. Like the little, like tangerines or whatever they are. Uh, I’ll carry two or three of those in the bag. Um, so I’ll just do that. I’ll have a couple bags of the, the peanut mix thing, and then I’ll have a couple, 2, 3, 4 cuties throughout the day. And then I have a lot of, uh, a lot of water. Tony Castillo: Oh. Brett, I love it. One of the big things I talk about is hydrate or Hydrate, so we’ll jump into that. But when we’re talking about, let’s just talk about golf and then at work, as you mentioned, but when we’re talking about golf, when I was at the University of Florida, as you know, in Florida, there’s a lot of golf courses. We had a really good golf team [00:06:00] and working with business leaders, golf is something that we talk about. So I always want to find snacks that you don’t get your hands dirty because I don’t know about you, but if you saw Tiger Woods licking his hands on screen, you’d be like, what is Brett Gilliland: he doing? Yeah, that’s a good point. Tony Castillo: Yeah, so I always think of things such as fruit, as you mentioned, those cuties. I also like bananas cuz you can just peel ’em and eat ’em and not get your hands dirty. The same thing’s. Another one with an apple. I also like beef jerky. It’s a nice source of protein to help that muscle building going on, and it’s very easy for you to rip and you can eat it versus having to stick your hand in anything. So just what are things that you can have that are portable, that are not gonna get your hands all sticky and even, I’ve worked with players where they even have sandwiches, pretzels. It really depends on what their goal is. And the reason I say pretzels, because we talk about electrolytes, it’s hot outside and the the four main electrolytes we lose are sodium, potassium, magnesium, and chloride. And it’s in that order. And many sports beverages out there, they start with potassium. One thing I always hear with business leaders is they’re like, well, I’m trying to stay natural, Tony, so I’m gonna drink coconut water. Unfortunately, coconut water’s dehydrating you [00:07:00] really, because it’s full of potassium and it has no sodium. So when we have too much potassium, if you know anyone out there that is taking a. Uh, uh, medication to lower blood pressure. It’s most typically high in potassium because it attaches to that sodium so that you urinate it out. So if you’re someone who drinks coconut water, you definitely want to add sodium. So that means adding salts to it. And I know that sounds a little weird, but it’s the best way to actually stay hydrated. And you didn’t even know how many dieticians I’ve had to say that message to because when you don’t work in that performance side, you don’t understand what happens inside the body. So talking with business leaders, they’re talking all day, they’re moving all day, they’re making moves. They’re breathing and when you breathe out, we’re losing the sodium, potassium, magnesium, and chloride. So we tend to have them have those either low sugar sports drinks or find a way to get those sodium, potassium, magnesium, and chloride in their way to eat. Right? So going back to that golfer, that’s why you have pretzels with salt, right? So I that eating every third hole is something I truly believe in, whether we’re on the field [00:08:00] or on the boardroom. Right. We’re trying to build our business, right? So Brett Gilliland: pretzels are good. Tony Castillo: Oh, it depends on what we’re doing. So pretzels are good cuz they’re that quick source of carbohydrate or energy that gets us through. So if you have a meeting that you want to go to and you’re looking for a quick pick me up, I’d rather you choose that pretzel, which has the salt or the sodium that’ll, yeah. Maintain water inside. So we have that better performance, better mental clarity. Because typically if we are dehydrated, our mental performance drops from anywhere from seven to 10%. And then you want the carbs that’ll keep, keep, give you that energy you need right before that meeting. So I always like having that as a good snack. And then I always like to pair it with protein and as we were just talking about a moment ago, every third hole, a good rule of thumb I like to mention is eating protein every three to four hours. Okay, because there is a muscle building switch you have in your body, Brett, and it’s called mTOR. It’s lowercase m than all capital t o r. And it gets turned on and off every three to four hours. And the way it gets turned on is when you have a palm of protein. So that’s anywhere between 20 to 30 grams of protein, depending on the size of your palm.[00:09:00] Just as a good metric. Yeah. Don’t use your, your wife’s palm. Don’t use one of your four kids’ palms. All right? Yeah. Make sure you use your palm Brett, and you wanna keep that muscle building switch on and what they showed in the studies, Brett. Is that after 16 weeks, the people that ate protein every three to four hours versus having an in unequal protein distribution, which is the standard American diet. So to put it to you this way, let’s say someone has an egg for breakfast. They might have a chicken breast for lunch and then dinner. They might have a nice steak. Well, you have an unequal, unequal protein distribution. So what happens is that muscle building, which never got turned on until the nighttime, versus those that had it, uh, equated throughout the day, they actually built 10% more muscle after 16 weeks. And I know that sounds crazy cuz that sounds like almost a steroid like level. Yeah. But that’s what the research showed. And as much I don’t up and that’s by, that’s by doing what? Brett Gilliland: Eating. That’s by doing three to four hours. Okay. Okay. I thought you meant that. But the morning, noon and night, you’re saying iss just, there’s too much gap in between those. Is that, is that true Gap Tony Castillo: and quantity because one egg doesn’t have anywhere near 20 to 30 grams of [00:10:00] protein. So what do you Brett Gilliland: get if you’re, what do you, what are you eating in? Uh, let’s say it’s my three hours is up right now. Which it probably would be close to that. Um, What, what should I be eating if I don’t have time to make an egg or, you know, I don’t have a kitchen here in my office. Right? Or our studio here. So what, what, what’s a, what’s a form of stuff that I can have laying around the office to get my 20 to 30 grams. Tony Castillo: Love this. Are you a sweet or savory snacker, Brett? Ooh, Brett Gilliland: boy. I don’t know. I like a piece of chocolate with caramel. Tony Castillo: Oh, okay. Do you like, there’s two things that come up in my head immediately, but do you happen to like Greek yogurt. No, Brett Gilliland: no, sorry. Greek yogurt fans. I do not. Tony Castillo: I’ll toss it out the window. There’s this drink. It is called Core Power. Uh, you can get them at most stores and you can keep that in your office. And the reason I like, it’s because it is not a supplement. It is actually made for milk and it’s shelf stable, and it’s what we used at the pros. Now, why am I shearing away from [00:11:00] supplements? Well, when we talk about a supplement, there’s two things I really want us to think about. Is it third party certified? Which, so third party certification, so there’s two websites. Yep. One is called NSF for Sport and the other one is Informed Choice. So that tells us what’s on the label is in the bottle. And what’s in the bottle has no banned substances got, so there was someone I was working with, we sent a sleep supplement to this third party certification. And Brett, what do you think they found in the sleep Brett Gilliland: supplement? Probably something that would allow me not to play Major League baseball. Tony Castillo: Methamphetamines. So I don’t know what your experience is with methamphetamines. Hopefully none. Brett Gilliland: None. But, uh, none. None. Tony Castillo: Yeah. It keeps you awake. So think about that. Why would you take a sleep supplement to keep you awake anyways, back to the snack? I’d recommend. That’s why I wanna stay away from those supplemental drinks, which we see at the grocery store, because those protein powders that they put in there could have a banned substance. And yes, you’re not getting tested, but everyone I work with, I like to treat them like that elite athlete, and I don’t want them taking anything. That might have things that they’ve also found as cocaine, right? Again, [00:12:00] I don’t want you having that in your system because you don’t need it. You’re not using it for that tool, whatever that may be. So we wanna stay away if it’s not NSF or sport certified or informed choice. So snacks that core power, it actually comes from milk and it’s shelf stable, meaning that you can just have it at room temperature. However, I definitely recommend you chill it cause it just tastes a little bit better. Yeah. So that is, what are some of your go-to to, or if you like any protein bars, Brett Gilliland: Dude, I, I literally don’t do anything like that. I mean, I go, I, uh, and this is one of the things I wanna chat about today too, is you can, you can, I could have 10 people like you on there or, or go to Google and ask 10 different questions, right? And I’m gonna get 10 different answers. And that’s why I was looking forward to our conversation, because this is what you do for a living. All day, every day. But it, you know, and I didn’t do this because of any reason, but I’ve always been like, what they call an intermittent fasting. I didn’t, I just did it cuz of nerves as a, you know, growing up. But now it just has become a habit. But, so I’ll eat dinner at, you know, whenever I can before or after a game for my kids, and then I won’t eat again until lunchtime. And then, so again, [00:13:00] that’s, from what I hear, I’m not getting them every three to four hours. My protein, uh, and maybe, maybe I should and I’ll hit the golf ball a little bit further, but, um, so I don’t have those snacks, man. I’m this boring guy that goes, and I’ll have, you know, like, uh, and if I do have my, my morning breakfast, it’ll be like some wheatgrass that I get from a, from a guy that I know, right? Some wheatgrass or, or a green juice. And then that’s it. And then I’ll eat my lunch and then, uh, water throughout the day. And then I’ll probably have one of those, the bags of nuts, raisins, and chocolates on the, on the way I leave the office. I usually eat it on the way home. And then I’ll eat dinner tonight, and then that’s it. Like, I’m not a snacker. I don’t set around and eat power bars all day. I don’t eat snacks. I don’t, you know, sit down and grab some chips. I just, I don’t do that. And, and so, um, I don’t know why, but I just, I just don’t. Tony Castillo: Well, Brett, you sound like many of the people that I’ve worked with where they come to me and they fast, and the research on fasting is this, it can improve testosterone if you do it once a week. If you do it every day for long periods of [00:14:00] time, it has actually been shown to decrease testosterone levels in the long term. Hmm. So if we’re looking for more mental clarity, the first thing you do is eat more. And then a very simple analogy, I love using Brett. Let’s say you’re gonna drive down and visit me. You’re we’re gonna I, I’m gonna invite you to a spring training game and I’m gonna give you the options of two cars. Brett, the first car is completely full of gas and I give you a key to it. The second one is completely empty, and I still give you a key, but you have to push it down. Which one are you taking to visit me? Yeah, the gas. The gas, right? So, so many people do this fasting because they think it’s just easier cause you don’t have time. My goal is to help you find what are some of those quick and easy hits that you can eat if you do have time, right? And when you don’t have time. So you could easily do, let’s say, oatmeal with some sort of protein powder in it. That’s a great way to get carbs and a great way to get protein, right? That’s just an easy, simple way. And I promise you, Brett, it doesn’t take more than two minutes. Right. I’ve even done a challenge where I lined up a bunch of baseball players and I had to make PB and j’s, and when I made it a [00:15:00] competition, they made 25 PB and JS in a minute. So I’m pretty sure everyone has a couple seconds to make. That’s right. Worse. A PB and j. Brett Gilliland: I like it. That’s true. Tony Castillo: Absolutely. And we always go fault. Like, oh, we don’t have enough time. Well, what are we prioritizing? Are you prioritizing being your best self? Are you prioritizing being the best self, not only for your family? But for the people you work with. So many, so many entrepreneurs I’ve worked with and small business owners, one of the first things they tell me two to three weeks in is that their wife says, you’re not grumpy anymore. And I’m like, what do you mean you’re not grumpy anymore? Well, it’s because they start eating and they didn’t notice this, but their spouses notice it, that they come home grumpy cuz they just want dinner. Uh, they haven’t had anything to eat all day. And then they go do, as you said, their kids’ events. Imagine you’ve just taken an empty car, you filled it up, once worked, and then you’ve gone to see your kids’ event where you’ve literally had no more fuel. So now you’re pushing your car, pushing your body, and things will make you crankier quicker and you don’t even notice it. And people think that’s just dad [00:16:00] normally versus what’s dad look like when he feels his best. It’s not just looking your best, which is part of it too, Brett, I’m not gonna lie here and say aesthetics are not a piece of this, right? But what happens when you feel your best. Sometimes we lie to ourselves because we don’t have enough time and we hear that fastening works. I’m here to tell you fasting can work in the short term, but it’s not a long-term nor sustainable approach to being your best self per research. Now change. Brett. I’m open to it. I’m open if for research comes out. Brett Gilliland: But it does make sense. And you hear that, you know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And then you’ve got all the people that research it, say, fasting’s the best thing you can do since sliced bread, you know? And so, so again, you got the, you called it, uh, core power drink. What else am I putting around the office? Sitting around in my, you know, my desk or something like that, my table, so I can, uh, I can get my protein in, but I don’t have time to make the eggs, the chicken, and the steak. Tony Castillo: So if you don’t have time to make eggs, they sell hard-boiled eggs that you can keep in your fridge and you can swap em out. Yeah, [00:17:00] I’m not doing Brett Gilliland: that either. Sorry. Tony Castillo: Hey, no. I’d rather you be honest with me, Brett. Right, right. I love problem Brett Gilliland: solving, and I shouldn’t say our listeners will probably do that, but for me to, to, to buy hard-boiled eggs in a, in a grocery or a gas station, sounds disgusting. Tony Castillo: Well, what about beef jerky? That’s always one of my favorite. I, I’ll Brett Gilliland: do that. I can buy some beef jerky. Beef Tony Castillo: jerky is probably one of my easiest ones to keep at the office cause it doesn’t go bad. Some other options, which I bet you don’t like, but I’m gonna say it anyways. Cottage cheese. Okay. Nope. Brett Gilliland: Yeah, that’s, Hey, Brett, I’m telling you my dad loves cottage cheese, but I, yeah, no, not me. Tony Castillo: I’m with you a hundred percent on that one. That’s a tough one. Uh, I even, but I like to give the options. Yes. Not, not something to think about. Another one is tuna packets. Again, a lot of people don’t like that because the smell. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. I’m striking out here. Tony, I’m sorry. Tony Castillo: Hey, don’t strike out. This is just an area of opportunity that we can look at. What are some other options. Now, one thing, um, I meant to ask you, [00:18:00] so do you use any sort of supplements? I do Brett Gilliland: not. I, I do, um, a vitamin D, uh, you know, like a pill for vitamin D. My blood works as I’m a little low on vitamin D. So I do that. I do some fish oil and uh, I do a multivitamin. That’s it. I do that and then I wake up every day and I eat like some sort of chicken and french fries. Terrible. I know. Try throwing a salad most of the time, but it’s usually today. I, I went to this place here in town. I won’t name the name in case we go. And say how bad this is for my diet. But I had a, a, uh, buffalo chicken sandwich and an order of fries, you know, yesterday, yesterday I had a burger and a salad. Tony Castillo: Yep. Well, I love that decision you made yesterday, and I love the decision you made today because we also have to go back, Brett, that sometimes what we grew up eating, we’ve been told we can’t have. And a lot of people see that as their culture being an obstacle versus it being an asset. This is where the foods you love, how do we fit [00:19:00] them in and keep them, because that’s how we make the sustainable diet plan, right? Without that, nothing will work. You will keep going to the drawing board because we’re not figuring out a plan that works for you. We’re figuring out a plan that just works for someone else. So that’s one thing I’ve seen that’s been a big barrier. Now back to the snack dilemma. Yeah. Because I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna let you go unless we, we come up with at least three snacks. So one, we said the core power, that was you. Yep. Beef Jerky was the second one. That’s right. Trail mix. I like, but here’s, uh, people say peanuts and peanut butter are full of protein, but you would need eight tablespoons of peanut butter to get the amount of protein you need to make a true impact on that muscle building. Wow. Which we were talking about earlier. Now, Brett, I’m, I’m sure it’s a lot of peanut butter. That’s a lot of peanut butter. So for sure, we definitely want you to do have those two options. Now, here’s some other ones on here. I’m gonna, I’m gonna throw them out. Uh, deli meat. Yeah. String cheese? No. No. Alright. Hey, see, [00:20:00] I, I gotta throw ’em out, right? Um. And then the rest are the ones I mentioned earlier. Those are the ones that come off the top of my head that I have on this list. So, hey, Brett Gilliland: deli, meat, pork, but this’s good. Most people listening to this are probably not as picky as I am, so they’ve got something already. They’ve got a nugget. And, but I, I do think having a good source of some, uh, you know, almonds, whatever it may be, pistachios, things like that, uh, it’s, it’s probably better for you than not eating. Uh, I would say I agree. And then, but the, the, uh, the beef jerky and the, and the, uh, core power I can get behind and I’m a boring. Guys so I can just, you know, edit, copy, edit, paste every day. I, I can eat the same thing all the time. Doesn’t ba doesn’t bother me. Brett, Tony Castillo: you sound like a lot of the people I work with. You’re not picky. You just know what you like and that’s important, right? Yeah. And being able to have it, cuz you said you have another location down here. So what I always like to tell people I work with order a case and just leave it at that office. That way there is no excuse, right? Yeah. It’s there. And as I said, they’re sha shelf stable, meaning that they can get warm. We want them cold. But that way when you get to that office, you can just throw ’em in that fridge and if not, [00:21:00] you have some under, under your desk that you can just, yeah, pop in. So do you Brett Gilliland: think the beef jerky you see, like at grocery stores, like is that not even grocery stores, I’m sorry. But like at a gas station, you know, you see like there’s a whole wall, like sidewall of beef, jerkies. Like are those healthy? Are those, you know, I always wonder like what in the hell do they actually put in all that stuff? So then it like makes me not eat it. Cause I’m thinking I’m probably getting worse stuff. Even though the package says real big, you know, 40 grams of protein or whatever. And so, uh, we go there, is there a website for find out what beef jerky is safe or what do you recommend? What kind? Tony Castillo: I like the 1 37 rule. So the 1 37 rule is when you have one ounce of protein, you want it to be under three grams of fat and over seven grams of protein. Brett Gilliland: Okay. So, so I’m one ounce of protein, three grams of Tony Castillo: what? Under three grams of fat and over seven grams of protein. So we, we have one ounce of beef or beef jerky. You wanna make sure it has under three grams of fat and over seven grams of protein.[00:22:00] Brett Gilliland: All right, so ev, for every ounce of protein, it needs to have seven grams of protein. Of protein, yes. And then less than three grams of fat. Tony Castillo: Correct. So if you look at a beef jerky, it should say that right on the back cuz they label it by ounce or two ounce. So if it’s a two ounce serving, then that means it needs to be under six and under 14 and above 14. Okay. Yeah, very simple math. Brett Gilliland: I like that though. See those are good nuggets to take away that when I’m in the grocery store, our listeners in the grocery store, they can say, okay, the 1 37 rule. And look at that and say that one’s better than that one. And then from a health standpoint and preservatives and all that stuff, like how do we know that it’s a quote unquote clean beef jerky if there is such a thing? Tony Castillo: Yeah. So we, we wanna look for the, the minimal ingredients. That’s really it. And that’s gonna be tough, right? Yeah. If you can get someone that can make beef jerky locally and you can find it. So typically when I go in a gas, a gas station, sometimes you’ll see like a local beef jerky, and that’s typically gonna be the best [00:23:00] option because it’s. The closest made to you, you’re closest to, to that farmer where that was well cut and dried. Yeah. Versus something that’s made now. If you’re in a, in a food desert or a place, you can’t reach that, then just go for really any beef jerky that’s out there that has that one through seven rule and has the least amount of ingredients. Right. Okay. Because they might put a lot of added sugars that you may not need. Yeah. Okay. I’d rather get something with less added sugars because you don’t need that extra energy. Going back to that Gatorade we were talking about earlier. Most people don’t need that extra energy to push you through, Brett Gilliland: right? So what, so let’s talk about that. So that’s good. All that stuff is great. We’ve got our snacks now, but what, what are the things that we need to be doing for the mind? Cuz I think the food’s important. The mind is obviously really important. How do you marry those two together in your world? Tony Castillo: So let’s just talk about something I like to call the carb to fiber ratio. Okay, so when we’re talking about carbs, it has a bad wrap, Brett. People always want to demonize carbs, especially most recently with some of the bigger diets we hear out there. So this is called the [00:24:00] carb defibrillation. So I want you to imagine we have two carbs. We have a Lamborghini, and we have a Toyota Corolla. If we put premium gas in Lamborghini, it’s gonna run really well. Now, Brett, what happens when we put regular gas in that Brett Gilliland: Lamborghini? It’s gonna, it’s gonna, over time, it’s going to, uh, not do as well. Perform at its Tony Castillo: best. Absolutely. Now in the Corolla, what happens when we put premium gas in it? Brett Gilliland: Not much changes. I wouldn’t think. It may run a little bit more, uh, more performance, but, but not as much because it’s a Corolla versus a Lambo. Tony Castillo: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. But it will get a little bit more miles per gallon. So, uh, I’ve driven acro in the past, so I have nothing against them, but we always know we’re probably gonna put that regular gas in. When we’re talking about our bodies, we wanna put that premium fuel in. So when we’re talking about that premium fuel in, I’m gonna talk about that carb defi ratio. So when you look at any sort of carbohydrate product, so that’s gonna be rice bread, any sort of grain, even chips, you wanna take the total amounts of carbohydrates, so the grams of carbohydrates. And [00:25:00] divide it by the total grams of fiber. So one of my favorite examples to use, and you might have heard of this product, Brett, it is Special K. Have you ever heard of it? I have, yes. It’s probably one of the most well known quote unquote diet foods out there. Now, if you look at their carbon fiber ratio, it’s somewhere about 30 to one. So I haven’t even told you what the parameters are. The parameters of the carbon fiber ratio is you want it to be five to one or less. So anything that’s 10 to one and above means it’s a regular carb, meaning you’re gonna get a boost in energy, but also a crash in energy. It’s gonna do the same to your blood sugar. So that energy spike and that energy crash, where you might have is when you’re eating some of these regular carbohydrates. The premium carbohydrates will give you sustained energy throughout the day and will also monitor your hunger and your energy. So you want anything five to hundred or less. So that special K when pe, they had this two week diet that people were doing and they always felt. Lulls and highs of energy, it’s because there was no fiber to sustain it, so it helped the mind. If it has more fiber and because of that you’d have brain [00:26:00] fog doing these two week diets. So what are some products that actually have that carb de fiber ratio? One of my favorites is the Dave’s Killer Bread. Those definitely have some of those. Um, I’m not sponsored by them. Uh, let me just clarify that. Uh, now some other products that I really like are those, if you are someone who likes chips, the ESE chips, they actually have a really good carb de fiber ratio. If you are looking for something like that as a salty snacker. Then of course any fruits, vegetables, and whole grains will typically fit that range. But I always like to say it’s always good to check, right? So anything five to one or less is something you wanna reach for. And it’s been shown that you can have that steady state energy. And when I was working in baseball, I had a strength coach say, so you’re saying if I have a Snickers and a Metamucil, my energy’s gonna be sustained. You always get the call. You know what I’m saying, Brett? Well, right. I dunno if you’ve heard of these continuous glucose monitors, but it’s to monitor your blood sugars. And I wore one for three months, Brett, and I tried it out and I said, you know what, I’m gonna test out his theory. So I had a Snickers and a Metamucil. And what do you think happened? [00:27:00] Brett Gilliland: I would say you crashed, but I don’t know, maybe I’m not intelligent enough to figure this out, but I would say you probably crashed, uh, even though they were quote unquote hit the, hit the numbers. Tony Castillo: I actually didn’t, I actually sustained my energy, but it was not a snack that I wanna recommend because no one should be pairing Metamucil, right, with a, with a Snickers bar. But what it did show me is that having that fruit, which would be fiber, having some sort of fiber source in there is really gonna be helpful to maintaining those blood sugar levels. And using this carb defi ratio that I just shared with you is something that people can use today. The people listening to this. They can use it and go in the grocery store and see any of the options they have or any gas station. As you mentioned, Brett, they could go in and they can use this carb. Now remember, this is only for carbohydrate products. This does not count for things such as fats or proteins, which some people will send me, oh, what about nuts? I love nuts. But that is a fat versus a carbohydrate product. Okay? So that carbo fiber ratio will help you with your mind because now we’re not having those peaks and valleys. We’re getting that steady energy throughout the day because we’re getting enough [00:28:00] fiber throughout the day. Yeah, and not only that, Brett, The gut-brain axis, we keep hearing about gut health and how important gut health is, and we hear about all these supplements coming out, right? If we don’t eat enough carbohydrates, 95% of the serotonin or that happy, happy, uh, neurotransmitter that we have and our, and our gut is made. Yeah, from carbohydrates. So when we restrict carbohydrates, we’re literally restricting our happiness. Brett Gilliland: That’s why I love spaghetti then, I guess. Tony Castillo: Right. And there are some good carb de fiber, fiber spaghetti brands that I’ve worked with Italians, and they told me this is actually pretty good. One of them is called Za Pasta Bon, and it has bon some really good carb de fiber ratio. Brett Gilliland: Yes. Za pasta writing it down. Yeah. Tony Castillo: There you, you gotta let me know how you, if you like it or not. I will, Brett Gilliland: I will. Um, so what about, what was my thought Just gonna be, so the, um, So, I mean, how, how are you on the standpoint of like, for literally peak performance and which is what we want, right? People [00:29:00] listening to podcasts usually want that, but at the same time, we have our guilty pleasures of like today, again, my, my buffalo chicken and my fries. And, and and how much, how important is it to, to, to decrease that? Obviously the, the, you know, zero would be great and perfect maybe, but. But realistically, how much can we maintain peak performance and still have a subpar diet long term? And I think that’s me for 22 years, by the way. But, Tony Castillo: but as Brett Gilliland: I’m aging, as I’m aging, what, what do we need to be thinking about? Tony Castillo: So we always wanna make sure we focus on protein, but to give you numbers, because the people are listening, um, such as yourself, are numbers, people. Yes, we always hear the 80 20 rule, but how does that actually apply to meals? If we think about how many meals we have, which are breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that’s 21 meals. So 17 of those meals need to be in line with what your goals are with the other four being whatever you want. Now, if you have a high point of competition, now when I say [00:30:00] competition, it could be for an athlete or someone like yourself. Let’s say you have a very important deal that you’re, you’re closing or something’s going on, that’s when you want to be 95 5. That means you are 95% compliant with a 5% wiggle room. There should always be wiggle room because if not, it could lead to that binge restrict guilt cycle, which we want to avoid. So for you to have a buffalo chicken sandwich with some french fries, I dunno if that fits in your 5% or your 20%. But the important part is that hopefully fits in those percentages because anything over that is when we tar start to see noncompliance or we start to see the the drop in Brett Gilliland: performance. Got it. Okay. So 17 of my 21 meals need to be the, on the healthy side of how we would define healthy based on my goals. Tony Castillo: Yes. Love it. And I think the great way to, to do that is a plate method, which is something I teach, uh, to the people I work with. So it is one palm of protein, as we were mentioning earlier, your palm, the same thickness and the same size, not counting your fingers. You wanna have one fist of carbohydrates [00:31:00] and you wanna have two fists of fruits and vegetables. Combined that is the plate model. You should be looking for about 80% of the time with the other 20% really being whatever you Brett Gilliland: enjoy. So one palm of protein. So I eat chicken, Turkey, whatever, where I’m getting my protein, and one fist of carbohydrates, Tony Castillo: carbs. Okay, so that’s gonna be the breads, pastas, um, potatoes. Those are the things that click in my mind first. Yep. Brett Gilliland: Okay. 80% of meals. That’s right. Okay. Good news is I like fruit. Tony Castillo: What about Brett Gilliland: veggies? Yeah, I got, I got a love hate relationship with them, but, but I’ll, I’ll eat some asparagus, I’ll eat some broccoli and, uh, that’s about to the extent of my, I some peppers, I’ll eat some peppers. Uh, but that’s about the extent of my, uh, relationship with veggies. I get mine from, uh, much better. Tony Castillo: What’s that? That’s a [00:32:00] much better relationship than most people I’ve worked Brett Gilliland: with. Okay. I, but you know what’s crazy is I don’t like, but I love like green juice. Like I love green juice in the morning, like pheno, you know, it has a bunch of kale in it and lemon and apple and whatever else they’ve got in it, um, where I buy it and it’s uh, it’s amazing. I love it. And I feel like that’s probably pretty good for me, at least in my mind. It is. Do you want the real answer? No, cuz you’re gonna tell me it’s not good for me. Tony Castillo: Well, Brett, just going back to that car de fiber ratio. Yeah. I want you to look at what that green juice’s, carbohydrate to fiber ratio is. Ugh. Brett Gilliland: So what do I do instead of my green juice? No, no, no. Tony Castillo: You can have the green juice. I’m not negating the fact. Right? So that’s that carb source, so that’s gonna give you energy. Yeah. So I’d love for you to add some sort of protein in it, because as we’re aging, Brett, We might hear that people at the older age group, they typically fall and break their hips, not because they’ve lost balance because of something mentally, but it’s because they’re losing muscle mass. They don’t have that core strength anymore, and that’s because we typically [00:33:00] tend to stop eating as more protein as we age. And protein’s what helps keep muscle on. And that muscle building switch I was mentioning earlier. Got it. So if we’re looking at that longevity piece, how can we add a protein to that green juice? What’s something that you not, you don’t have to add it in it, but what could you have next to Brett Gilliland: it or beside it? Yeah, so even as simple as that beef jerky, you know, getting some good beef jerky that’s clean in, in the morning. I’m having some grass fed beef jerky and my green juice. You’d like that. Or if I did a little avocado toast with some sort of maybe almond butter or peanut butter with some avocado on top and, and, and that with my green juice. Is that all right? Tony Castillo: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And okay, real quick, on Grassfed beef, all beef is grassfed except for the last one to three months where they might be fed some sort of grain. And I learned this because I went to go talk to Cattleman and do this for a living, and I thought that was very interesting because we’re all fed, yeah, this data on grassfed, but it’s typically the last one to three months that they might change what it’s being fed. Brett Gilliland: Okay. Interesting. Yeah, I’ll have to talk to my father-in-law. That’s where I get my beef [00:34:00] is, uh, you know, the Williams Farm over there in southern Illinois. So hopefully he’s doing, ask him. I love to hear for, I’ve only been eating it for 25 years almost. So. Um, so talk to us about, uh, alcohol. Like, uh, you know, this isn’t a question for me. I’m sure somebody’s riding in right now as we’re speaking. They wanna know. So we’ve got, we’ve got beer, we’ve got wine, we’ve got tequila, we’ve got vodka, and we’ve got bourbon. Is anyone quote unquote better for us than the other? Tony Castillo: I always like to ask Brett, what are your goals? So if we are talking about someone trying to optimize fat loss and build muscle mass and help with that peak performance, I want you to think about in your house, if we have a leaky faucet and a fire, which one will you attend to first? The leaky faucet or the fire? The fire. The fire. So anytime we drink alcohol, it’s like there’s a fire in the house. Look, I drink alcohol, Brett, so lemme be clear. I’m a big bourbon fan myself and I know what happens. So yeah, so what happens is the [00:35:00] body’s gonna try to get rid of that alcohol as quickly as possible. It’s gonna try to put out that fire because losing body fat and increasing muscle mass is like that leaky faucet. It’s gonna be the last thing the body’s gonna wanna do or attend to. So alcohol, it actually. Depletes our muscle glycogen. So in our muscles we have these storages of carbohydrates, which is called glycogens, and we drink alcohol. It actually reduces those stores by 50%. So if someone drinks and they wake up the next day to do some sort of workout, you will feel much more tired. And the other thing with alcohol, it actually increases our cortisol or stress hormone. So anytime someone has a nightcap, it’s actually probably one of the worst things you can do for bed because it’s gonna increase that stress hormone. Right. Meaning you’re gonna wake up in the middle of the night and go pee and you might not be able to fall back asleep. And it’s because of that cortisol being raised. And typically after a night of drinking that next day, you probably want a nap in the middle of the day. And that’s because you were never truly able to get that deep sleep. Brett Gilliland: Got it. Okay. Yeah. So, uh, favorite bourbon, what is it? [00:36:00] Tony Castillo: Oh, it is the Blanton’s, straight from the barrel. Mm, Brett Gilliland: some good stuff. What about you? I like Blanton’s, but I’m a big, I like Weller. I like Weller. I think the best, my favorite story in bourbon is, is Horse Soldier. And I’m dying. I just got a bottle, a bottle autographed by one of those guys. Are, are you familiar with the Horse Soldier? Tony Castillo: That’s the one out of, um, St. Pete. Is it not? Brett Gilliland: There is, there’s, they have a, a horse soldier restaurant there. Yeah, they, they make it up here in Kentucky. Um, but do you know the story? No, what’s the story? So they, you know, the 13 horsemen that rode in, uh, to the mil, like in the, um, to Afghanistan started to war off September 11th. So I think it was four of those guys when they were done with the military service, they started a bourbon company and they called it horse Soldier cuz they came in on the horses, right? And they sourced, uh, and I’m not an expert on this, so I’m, I’m going off of what I’ve learned and read and, and watched YouTube video on, but they sourced the steel to, you know, you gotta make your bottle formation right? So every bottle. Was made in steel that came from the World Trade Centers on September 11th. [00:37:00] It’s unbelievable. So every single bottle that you touch has touched the World Trade Center. So it gives me chills, uh, just thinking about that. So it was pretty cool. My wife’s cousin got to go meet one of the colonels, uh, that’s one of the four guys that made it and, you know, got to meet him and get an autographed bottle and all that stuff. But I just think that’s awesome, man, for our country and what they’ve done. And, and so now to have that bourbon story, I think every bourbon’s, you know, there’s a lot of bourbons that are great, but I just love the story behind it. Tony Castillo: I did not know that. What a great story. And I, I felt some chills as you were telling me. I was like, oh my gosh, I wanna go buy it. To just show respect, like, thanks for what they did, Brett Gilliland: right? Yeah. Yeah. So they’ve got three different kinds. You know, they got the, the lower price, the medium, and you know, they’re 52, maybe 72 and 92 or something like that box. And uh, they’re all phenomenal. All great stuff. So, uh, anyway, we could talk bourbon. That’s a whole nother podcast. Maybe we’ll create the Tony and Brett bourbon show or something. Um, I Tony Castillo: love that. We could talk about Pappy’s. I’ll bring Brett Gilliland: them out. Exactly. I like it. Um, so talk to us about exercise. [00:38:00] Obviously you being a nutritionist type stuff, or dietician I should say. Um, but exercise is critically important with our food intake. So for you, are you focused on strength like weight training? Uh, flexibility, mobility, cardio, like where does that fall in those, what I would call the big three. Tony Castillo: I always say, what can you do for the longest amount of time? A lot of people now have been going towards pickleball, actually, that I’ve seen. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They found it to be very enjoyable and I found that a lot of people I’ve been working with are getting more injured from it because they’re not used to those explosive movements in that short distance. Yeah. So it’s always taking care of the body because the body’s constantly breaking down. So real quick, I think I would say whatever you can do long term, but they show that strength training is probably one of the best ones. And I’d be an advocate for, yeah. However, I am more about personalization. Meaning what do you like to do for the long term? What do you actually enjoy doing? Not. Hey, you should go run a marathon because that’s what’s gonna help. It’s like, well, what’s gonna keep you longer is what you can do the longest and enjoy doing. [00:39:00] Yeah, Brett Gilliland: that’s a good point. That’s a very good point. Yeah. So how do we, um, we probably talked about some of this stuff, but some of the notes I, I wrote down is, uh, what one of the most common dietary deficiencies, uh, that you see out there, and how do we address those? So you Tony Castillo: mentioned earlier in the background, taken them. Yeah, my daughter just came home from school. She really wants to see her dad. Brett Gilliland: I’m sure you can tell her to come in and say hi. I’ve got four kids. Yeah, I know what it’s like. All right. Hold Tony Castillo: on. Yeah. Lemme see if she wants to come in. All right. Gimme a second. Amaya, you wanna come Brett Gilliland: say hi? We’re gonna get a new, uh, a new podcast guest here? Yeah. Oh, she Tony Castillo: what? She just bumped her head. Oh, she bumped her head. Amiya. You wanna come say hi? No. No. She Brett Gilliland: said no, dad. I do not. Yeah. She’s like, she just bumped her head. Oh, well that’s awesome. That’s, uh, well, hopefully she’s okay. And I’m sure mommy will be out there fixing that. Yeah. And she wants mommy more than you anyway, right Tony Castillo: now. So that’s the way it goes, Brett. We know how it goes as much. That’s, and my wife is pregnant with number two, so, and it’s a boy. [00:40:00] Oh. Oh, congrats. I need some tips from you. Thank you. All right. What to do. Cause this one is, that’s awesome. It’s a girl, so I’m excited for a boy. Brett Gilliland: That’s exciting. Well, congratulations. So, yeah, so the dietary deficiencies, how do we address them? Tony Castillo: Yes. So you spoke about vitamin D. You spoke about fish oils. So two questions I have for you. You said you did taste test your vitamin D, and that’d be one of the supplements I would highly recommend, but you have to test it first. So there’s three different levels. We have 20 and below, which means you are deficient and you’re not having enough. So you definitely wanna supplement with that. Anything 20 to 30 is insufficient, and what we found is that most doctors think 30 and above is okay. But in the sports and performance world and what we’re seeing in longevity, it’s actually 40 and above. You want it to be at. Wow. That’s where that key vitamin D is at and that’s where research is actually gearing towards. And then with fish oils, there’s a few things you should look at. So we spoke about that third party certification, but Brett, you also wanna make sure the EPA and the dha, which is on the back of the bottle, add up to as much of the total omega threes there are in it. [00:41:00] Why is that? EPA and e P Brett Gilliland: is what you said. E p, Tony Castillo: A and d H A. D Brett Gilliland: H a, Tony Castillo: okay. Yes. Because you might find at your gas station or local pharmacy a buy one get one free X fish oil and you might buy it thinking, oh, this, I’m getting a deal on it. But it may have a total of a thousand milligrams of omega threes and it only have 200. EPA and DHA combined, that means you have 800 milligrams of garba of crack. Okay. Brett Gilliland: So if it’s a, if it’s a, I’m making this up cause I don’t even know what the numbers would be. So if it’s a thousand omega three s I need the D, EPA and the DHA to have 500 each or whatever the closest Tony Castillo: three. Yeah, Brett Gilliland: yeah, absolutely. Cause that means you need, and I’m sure the source I get it from these guys are the real deal. So it, um, I’m sure mine is perfectly fine, but I will definitely check, check it when I get home tomorrow. Tonight, please double tonight. Tony Castillo: Tonight. And especially cuz you told me you eat chicken and Turkey. I didn’t hear a lot of fish. And being in the Midwest, fish can be difficult to get in source and people probably don’t like [00:42:00] it. So there’s actually a test out there called the Omega Index. And what you can do it, it’s just like a finger prick and you drop three bloods, it’s about $50 and you can order it online. And what this does, it, it tells us, I think it’s called the Omega quant. The, the company, again, not sponsored, just really wanted to push the right information out there. Yeah, you can test it and because you wanna find that omega-3 to omega six level ratio, you have, you want it to be 8% and above and the standard American diet is 4% and below. And the reason it is like that, it’s because a lot of the processed foods we eat, And the lack of omega threes we actually get from our food. So what does this cause in the long term? It can cause heart disease, that brain dysfunction, because we use a lot of those omega threes in our brain. So why is this important and how can we test it using that omega quant test? And then how we can change it is by making sure we get high quality fish oil, and also trying to eat fish three to four times a week. And that simple test, it gives us almost a four month picture of how your red blood cells have been using those omega three s. And that’s how it comes up with that. That’s why you poke your finger and you drop it on there. Yeah. So anytime [00:43:00] I work with someone where they, they tell me they, they feel inflamed. I like to have them actually do this test cuz this will give us the numbers as an inflammation marker. And when they say they have family genetics of heart disease, this will also give me a gauge on things we can work on to help with their longevity and not just their right now performance. Brett Gilliland: Okay. And so let’s speak while we’re talking about longevity, let’s spend some more time on that. Other things that, uh, to aid in being that my, my goal in life is there’s a lot of goals in life, but one of ’em is to live well into my nineties and play golf on my hundredth birthday. Okay, so I love that if you’re around, we can go golfing. My hundredth birthday be November 14th of whatever year that will be. Um, and so, um, what can we do to prolong and, and age well and live well into our nineties? Tony Castillo: One thing we want to do is make sure we eat mostly plants. Okay? So eating those fruits and vegetables give us that fiber and has been showed to keep us around longer. Right. We also wanna make sure we continue with that protein threshold, so we should be having about 1.6 [00:44:00] grams per kilogram. I know I keep pushing protein, but that’s how we keep muscle on. And one other supplement we didn’t touch base Brett Gilliland: on. Say that again For the every, everybody else understood that, but I’m slow. So for every 1.6 grams. Tony Castillo: Per kilogram. So that’s only because that’s what the science says, uh, to convert it to pounds. So let’s say you weigh, let’s just put a number out there, 200 pounds and kilograms. That’s, let’s just call it a hundred. Cause it’s, it’s divided by 2.2, so we’ll call it a hundred. So you need about 160 grams of protein per day in order to meet that threshold. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So if I’m, I’m way 1 65. We can just Yes. Tony Castillo: Divide that by two, just to give it a, a rough number. And then multiplied by 1.6, we’ll call it one 30, give or Brett Gilliland: take. So 130 grams of protein a day is what I would need, is what you’re saying? Yes. Tony Castillo: Approximately. And that 1.6 is that minimum threshold to help with longevity. That isn’t just me taking a number. That’s what the research says. 1.6 is the, the, [00:45:00] the low end, the higher end is 2.2 grams, so that’d be a gram of protein per pound, but you don’t really need that, that hasn’t been shown to have any longevity. Yeah. Or ergogenic effect. 1.6, you’re, you’re doing solid and you’ll do just fine. Brett Gilliland: Yeah, so that’s amazing, man. So, I mean, cuz then I think about, you know, as you age too, it’s like, it’s harder. I’ve been blessed with jeans and I’ve stayed skinny, but like, you know, as I’m getting older, you start to see things that, uh, change more than they did when you were 35 versus 45, right? So how do we focus on not eat, so eat a lot, eat a lot of protein, which could argue that’s gonna make you gain weight, but then, but in, but we need it. So how do we do that? And then stay skinny exercise, right? Tony Castillo: So, Protein is one of the themic effects of food, so it actually burns the most out of carbs and fats and alcohol. So it actually keeps satiated, but it’s also one of the best tools to burn up that extra energy we have. So it won’t cause you to gain more weight. It actually has been shown when they actually do [00:46:00] calorie restrictions, having a higher protein has been the one that’s actually helped maintain the muscle mass. Okay, now, in order to do all this, it’s, it’s a lot to think about, right? So my goal is to make it so that they don’t have a lot to think about. So you wanna have that protein, you wanna have it every three to four hours so that you stay satiated and keep that muscle building switch on for that longevity reason. So how do you not put on the weight? Follow that simple plate method I mentioned earlier, and follow that 80% of the time. Right. Let’s just keep it simple. I, I like to keep things very simple. I love and use things, love we have on hand, which is our hands, right? Most people have two hands and they can measure out their portions just by using their hands. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. And you’re doing this, you’re following, you’re eating your own or taking your own medicine. I mean, the 80% time and, you know, again, you can have your occasional bourbon and all that, but you’re doing the things that you need to do daily, uh, to live the life that you wanna live based on your goals. Tony Castillo: Brett, I do it because I was able to see elite level athletes do it that went to the Olympics, that have been to the World Series because I, I was able to educate them on it and I saw them do [00:47:00] it. Yeah. And it’s not only living my life, but it’s being the best performer I can be for my family. And I wanna teach that to so many others because as we know, we get so many outlets of nutrition. But where is the right source? What’s gonna actually help us live longer, happier lives? So that’s why I use that 80 20 rule, because we need that 20% Brett. Yeah. And sometimes we hear these extremes, these fat diets. And even going back to that culture being an obstacle, right? So many people cut out their favorite foods and then they decide to do a diet that’s not meant for them. Then they end up being unhappy and that’s what causes them to go over and over and over against these diets. Yep. Brett Gilliland: Yep. So let’s recap. So 80% of my meals need to be one palm of protein, one fist carbs, two fists, fruits, and veggies. Um, check the omega threes. It sounds like a lot of people need to be taking omega threes anyway. But you can do the blood work, um, eat mostly plants, and I’m gonna have around 130, 140 grams of protein per day. So people listening can do the math on their own weight. And that’s gonna help. Not only will you [00:48:00] not, I’m not guaranteeing, we’re not guaranteeing that you won’t gain weight here, but you know, that’s gonna help you not gain weight, cuz it’s gonna burn more of the fats and the, the bad stuff that we’re putting in our body, uh, by doing that every three to four hours. Um, so that, that’s a big deal. Your favorite bourbon is some, uh, cast strength, uh, yeah. Blanton stuff, stuff, you know, Blanton’s. Yeah. And so that, that carb to fiber ratio, the 1 37 for the, uh, beef jerky. Take a look at that stuff. The core power drink. Um, if I could, uh, last, kinda last question for me here, Tony. If I could pull one thing away, if, if I was gonna pull one thing away from your habits that you do every day, what’s that one thing like? It’s, it’s the master of them all. What’s the one thing that you hope I’d tell you? Okay. He’s holding up water. For those of you listening, he’s holding up water. That’s the most important thing for you, that if I took it from you said you can never do it again. That’s the biggest one. Tony Castillo: Hydrate or hydrate because so many of us are chronically dehydrated and we don’t know it. So many people, when I start with them, yeah, they start drinking [00:49:00] the correct amount of water, they start to perform better. They start to think clearer. Because we’re chronically dehydrated. Then we have the other end of the spectrum where people overdrink water, where I have these jars of peas on my desk, which I’m gonna show you now. Uh, this one is clear pea. This one is a hydrated pea, which is like lemonade. And finally I have one that is a very dark urine. Of course it’s not actual urine, Brett, but when I was doing a talk to fifth graders, I wanted to keep their attention. When I told ’em I had jars of pee on my desk, they all looked at the same time. So Brett Gilliland: yeah, this guy’s crazy, Tony Castillo: but that clear urine that we see, it’s a great way to, to see if we’re actually hydrated. Means we’re actually not getting enough of that sodium, potassium, magnesium, and chloride we were talking about earlier. So that means you’re not getting those electrolytes and that constant urination, especially if you’re waking up in the middle of the night, probably means you’re not getting enough of the electrolytes to actually absorb the water, or you’re drinking too much at certain points in time. Yeah, because you want your urine to look like lemonade. If it looks like apple juice or clear, you’re doing something wrong. Yeah. So if you were [00:50:00] to take away my hydrated or hydrate as I like to say, that would be the one thing that I think would be a biggest impact on anyone. Are you Brett Gilliland: adding electrolytes to your Tony Castillo: water? Yes, absolutely. Especially being in Florida. You’ve been down here, you know the humidity. Yeah. I’m sweating out like a crazy man. Yeah, Brett Gilliland: right. So what do you add? Like is that like little droplets? Is it like a little packet? Like what do you personally do? I, you don’t have to say the brand if you don’t want, but Tony Castillo: Yeah. I, I like to add an electrolyte packet. There’s a couple out there that I like. Um, one is element. L M N T is a good one. I like, oh yeah, I like the Propel. I like the uh, Gatorade Zeros are some of the ones I’ve been currently using because I don’t need that add added sugar because I’m not training for a marathon. The kind of physical activity I do, I might be able to add a little bit of those carbohydrates, but I’d rather get them from a food source versus a liquid beverage. But again, someone who doesn’t like to have those liquid or like to eat anything before workout, I like to recommend those liquid hydrating beverages. Cause you get a little bit of carbs and you get. The electrolytes perfect for the golf course as well. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So if [00:51:00] I’m drinking and I’m holding this Yeti thing up, I don’t know how many ounces this is. Let’s call it 16 ounces. Are you doing the electrolytes in every one of these? If I drink seven to 10 of these a day, so am I doing that in every one of them or just like in a few of them? Tony Castillo: I would say one to two. Brett Gilliland: One to two of the seven. So if I did seven bottles of, or Yetis a day, um, then I’m gonna do one to two of those with electrolytes in them. Tony Castillo: Especially if you eat a whole food diet because you’re missing out on salt. Right. The good thing about processed foods, which you probably never hear anyone that’s in the food space say, is that it does have that sodium. Yeah. Which helps us retain water. Right. So if you do a whole food diet and you’re not adding salt to your food, you can definitely get it from just adding it into the, your hydration beverage. So what do you Brett Gilliland: think? I take some of my water in the mornings. I’d take a, uh, couple pinches of, uh, salt. I can’t, uh, what’s the salt? I, uh, I’m drawing a blank on what it is, the sea salt type stuff. Mm-hmm. Uh, and I’m putting that into my water. And you like, you like that. Tony Castillo: Perfect. I love that. That’s probably the best way. You don’t have to name drop any brands. You [00:52:00] can have salt to your water and that is the best way to go Brett Gilliland: about it, Brett. Yeah. Okay. So it’s good. So I just keep it right in my little, we have an island in our closet there. I just put two pinches in the morning and out I go and I haven’t finished by the time I get to the office. Little salty, of course, obviously. Uh, but it, but it’s good love. That’s a spice to my water. Tony, this has been awesome, man. What, um, where do our listeners find more of Tony Castillo? Tony Castillo: Absolutely. They can go to nutrition fp.com/cos, which stands for Circuit of Success since I was on this podcast. They can go down Awesome. On that page and they can find three things. The first one is an executive wellness. Assessment so they can assess how well they’re actually doing. The second thing on there is a habit tracker that I give out with the video. It can help you change your habits in 30 days. And the final thing on there is if they found this talk useful, they wanna know more about me, they can schedule a call with me. So that’s three things on there. They can check it out@nutritionfp.com, back slash cos, which stands for Circuit of Success. I love it. We’ll Brett Gilliland: put all this in the show notes, man. We [00:53:00] will send people your way. Tony, it’s been great having you on the Circuit of success, man. Tons of takeaways here. And, uh, I’m gonna go home and coach some sports tonight, but I’m gonna check my, uh, my, uh, omega-3, uh, you know, stuff first to make sure we’re in the right, right direction. Let me know, Tony Castillo: man, I’d love to, to help you and just lemme know what your levels are and I’ll give you some tips. All right, brother. Brett Gilliland: Thanks so much, man. It’s great having you. Same. Have a great Tony Castillo: one.

Jun 26, 2023 • 48min

Finding Clarity and Purpose: A Journey of Resilience and Achievement

Jun 19, 2023 • 38min

Circuit of Success | The Art of Gifting: Leveraging Technology to Win Big with John Ruhlin

This week on The Circuit of Success, Brett Gilliland interviews guest John Ruhlin. John shares his background growing up on a farm in Ohio and his initial plan to become a doctor. However, a mentor’s generosity and the power of meaningful gifting changed his trajectory. He became the top rep for CutCo knives by gifting high-quality knives to CEOs and building strong relationships. The conversation touches on lessons learned during the pandemic, including the value of remote work and setting boundaries. John mentions his strategy of leveraging technology and being selective about in-person engagements. Tune in for insights on John Ruhlin’s journey and the Giftology approach. The Circuit of Success Brett Gilliland: [00:00:00] All right. Welcome to the Circuit of Success. I’m your host, Brett Gilland. Today I’ve got my buddy John Ruhlin. And John, what’s up dude? John Ruhlin: Thanks for having me. How you doing, dude? I’m great. Did you Brett Gilliland: throw up, punch anybody today John Ruhlin: playing basketball? I did. I, I throw, uh, Scotty, so I did. I felt so bad, and then he drained to three and I’m like, I didn’t, I didn’t throw. Chop ’em hard enough. Exactly. Brett Gilliland: Didn’t hit you hard enough, man. Well, uh, you are John Ruland. You are the author of Giftology. You are an advisor, you’re a speaker, man. You’re going all over the world and, uh, you’re making some things happen, man. It’s been fun to watch. Well, John Ruhlin: it’s, uh, I’ve been very fortunate. I got a lot of people in my corner, Brett Gilliland: so. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that doesn’t just happen by accident, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna get that out of you today. I know you’re a humble guy and you won’t wanna chat about it, but it’s my job to make you talk about it. You can, we can go anywhere you want to go. All right. Well, uh, if you can though, man, uh, we, we did this about five years ago, maybe five and a half years ago, right? When I was starting the podcast, God, probably almost six years ago. And, uh, now here we are again, but for those people that don’t know John Ruland, man, give us a little backstory. What’s made you, the man you are today, kind of your upbringing and, and kinda get us [00:01:00] to where we’re at now and what we’ll talk about here John Ruhlin: in a little bit. Yeah, so I didn’t grow up in any, you know, any of the cool towns, LA, Austin, Nashville. I grew up in Ohio Farm kid. 47 acres, you know, milking goats every morning. Uh, so learned what I didn’t wanna do the rest of my life. Yeah. Although ironically, we just bought 40 acres. I think I was talking to you about land early on. Um, and just got 20 chickens and it’s kind of going back to my roots Yeah. Of, uh, of, you know, the farm, the, the, uh, baling hay, all that kind of stuff. And, uh, I thought I’d go make my mom proud and is gonna go be a doctor, uh, chiropractor, do some something holistic, functional. And, uh, God got ahold of my life. I had had a, a mentor who is a law firm owner and he, when you’re poor, you grow up poor. You notice some people are generous, like that just seems weird. And he was always doing things radically, generously. And because of that, he was the most light, trusted and top of mind dude in town. Yeah. Every deal came his way, every referral. And I saw how seeds he had planted 30 years before with no, like, wasn’t like [00:02:00] an expectation or like strings attached, like. He would love on somebody, do something. 30 years later, they’re in a position of, you know, inherited real estate or whatever it was. And who did they call? They called Paul. Why? Because of the relationship. So I was interning with Cutco at the time, desperate to pay for med school, uh, hoping it would last this summer in my fourth appointment, I pitched Paul the knives and, uh, which is, you know, everybody thinks they have hard, like selling insurance, financial services like pro sports, like. Selling knives to your girlfriend’s dad, right. The most weird, awkward, but Paul didn’t make me feel weird. He’s like, John, I, uh, he bought a set for himself and his three unmarried girls, daughters. And then he comes back to me with this question, which, like, who asked this? John, I wanna help your, your goals. What else can I do for you? That’s literally how he led his life. So I rack my brain. I’m like, Paul’s always giving things away. Clients, employees, all of his, all of his clients were like CEOs of million and billion dollar companies, and they’re all into the outdoors. So I pitch ’em, the pocket knives are like a few hundred dollars.[00:03:00] And, uh, so a week later before church. Weird, you know, but he didn’t make me feel weird. He said, John, I don’t wanna wear the pocket knives. I’m like, I, I understand. He’s like, I do wanna order something though. I’m like, What’s that? He’s like, I’m gonna order a bunch of these, you know, the chef knives, the pairing knives, like you wanna give a bunch of CEOs of like million and billion dollar companies, like Kitchen Tool Y. And he said, John, the reason I have more referrals and deal flow and access all these outcomes we want in business is I found out if you take care of the family and business, everything else seems to take care of itself. So that was the lightning bolt moment. I started to, instead of buying beer in college, I was buying knife stats for CEOs of big insurance companies. And Coco’s worked with about 2 million reps in 70 years, we became their number one rep in the history of the company. Wow. By, you know, we call it Giftology, but really it’s, it’s how do you show up in powerful, unique, memorable ways for relationships, whether that’s your employees, whether that’s your clients, your suppliers. And so I put med school on hold and started this little business around it, and that was 23 years ago. Amazing. Brett Gilliland: Absolutely amazing. So now what’s [00:04:00] the, uh, what’s the vision with your 40 acres? What, what do you see there? Yeah, John Ruhlin: well, I mean, it’s, uh, the goal is to slow down. I read a book recently, a venture of mine’s been challenging me to, to shift my thinking. Actually, Matthew’s one of the guys that’s been challenging me to like, Matthew Kelly. He’s like, you know, book’s done well. It’s sold a hundred thousand copies, you know, as a self-published book, multiple languages. Like that’s, you know, average business book sells four or 500 copies, and then it fizzles out. So I’m grateful for that, but he’s like, you’re, you’re only leveraging your IP like 3% of what it could be. Mm. And uh, and then the other book that I read called Becoming a King talks about how as men, we’ve kind of outsourced everything and all we do is think and we don’t get our hands dirty and it’s not good for our soul. And so like, I’ve been like things on a, on a spreadsheet that normally I’d be like out, you know, delegating, like mowing the lawn or picking up a chainsaw or a weed eater. Yeah. All those things I’ve gone back to. And I’ve noticed it connects me to my girls. It connects me to nature, it connects me to like my faith. It’s like it’s been a [00:05:00] shift, but it doesn’t make sense on paper. Yeah, right. And so for me, part of the 40 acres was to be more intentional about slowing down. And everybody says they wanna slow down. Everybody says they wanna be less busy. But a lot of times, myself included, our priorities are not geared towards where I’m putting boundaries in place and shifting things and actually doing the things I say I want to do. I’m just talking about it. Yeah. My wife will call me like, You’re good at talking. Are you like, are you, you really Brett Gilliland: slowing down? Yeah. You’re really good at at John Ruhlin: talking. Like, are you really gonna follow through on these things and actually do the things with the girls? And so we got chickens, but like I drug my feet cuz I was like, man, that’s gonna be time and energy and effort. It’s like, dude, clean up all this stuff. Yeah. If you’re. You know, talk about slowing down and, and getting your hands dirty and then just like talk about it for five years, which I did. I did, I talked about it for a long time, but like once we bought the land and now like actually doing it, I’m like, man, like it feels good. It’s one thing to get a workout at the gym, it’s another thing to go out and freaking work in the sun with the chainsaw. I’ve worked muscles. I haven’t worked in [00:06:00] 40 Brett Gilliland: years. I, you know, I like it, man. I, we have some land as well, but I like being out there and I like my boys knowing how to work a chainsaw and a knife and an ax and all that stuff too. And I think. For me, it is fun to get out there and just kind of take it all in, man, take in nature and, and enjoy that stuff. And I’m sure we could compare stories. You’ve got four girls? I do. I’ve got four boys. You know, Different worlds at our houses. Very, John Ruhlin: yeah. I, Michael Hyatt has five girls and he, and he jokes that he, you know, he consistently has estrogen poisoning. Exactly. And, uh, and so like you have, you know, plenty of testosterone running through the house. There’s Brett Gilliland: there’s plenty of it. There’s plenty of it. No doubt. Let’s, um, one of the, I usually like to ask it at the end, but it, it’s been on my mind a lot lately, is what did you learn from the pandemic Man? We were, you know, we’re shut down for all this time. What was some of the biggest learnings that you had as a leader? You are, and the people you surround yourself with? Some thoughts you can share with our listeners on that? Yeah, John Ruhlin: I, I mean, I think, I mean, we’re fortunate, we’ve been virtual for 14 years, so all of our employees outside of a videographer are out. Inside the area. I’m the only [00:07:00] one that’s here. Yeah. Um, so it confirmed that it’s possible to, to run a business remote and Yeah. And uh, but I think one of the biggest things for me, and I think part of it is just my wiring. I have a fear of missing out and like, I wanna be in the room, I wanna be doing the thing. And I realized I don’t have to be in the room all the time. Like I could say no to probably 60, 70, 80% of the things. And still like, Have a successful business. And so I doing things from afar and, and really, you know, the core part of our agency on the gifting side is I can help somebody hit, you know, 400 cities and one day without jumping on an airplane, without going to a stage. And I knew that, but I, I didn’t always practice, you know, like I would still have that inkling of like, wanting to show up in it. And I’d be in a room and I’d be like, I didn’t really need to be here. And I think that the pandemic got me more focused on, and so my travel’s down from the peak, you know, probably 10, 15 years ago, it’s down 80%. You know, with the video, I look, I’ll take the [00:08:00] same stage I’m on, you know, big stage. I’ll cut it into 40 clips. So it looks like I’m on 40 stages, right? I’m really on like one a month, two a month at the most. Mm-hmm. And so I, I’ve, you know, tightened up the boundaries and I still have some room to go on Yeah. On that of saying no and, uh, and being able to, to leverage being home. Brett Gilliland: So what’s the ultimate vision with that though? Because, I mean, I think it, you still gotta be out there, right? I always say you gotta go play in traffic. Yeah. So you gotta go play in traffic and your business and, and whether it’s my business, financial services, or your business, So how, how do you do that? Stay home more, but yet still play in traffic. John Ruhlin: So one of the things I, I’ve realized is, um, I’m in a different season with my kids being 12 to three. Yep. I’ll, I’ll buy somebody’s plane ticket and fly them to me. Okay. I’ll host them here versus me going to them. I used to just, I’ll jump on the plane. Well, there’s power in being able to say, You know, come, let’s, let’s hang here, let’s do this. Like, I’ll fly, I’m gonna fly you. Or like, so I think there’s ways to get creative about that. And I think [00:09:00] that there’s, um, you know, once I shake somebody’s hand and spend time with them, like, and, and build that bridge, like, it’s amazing what you can do with a text or FaceTime or Zoom once you’ve established that connection. And so I do think that, and picking the right rooms to be in, like if I’m gonna go somewhere, typically it’s gonna be on stage. Why? Well, I’m able to impact thousands, hundreds, or thousands or tens of thousands of people. And the power of the podcast, I mean, I’ll sell more books off of being on a mid-level podcast that nobody’s ever heard of than being on Fox News nationally. Why? Because somebody’s getting to spend 60 minutes diving into and connecting with. I mean, what would you like? A big stage for me would be on, you know, a 10, 10,000 person stage. I. Yep. I mean, there’s plenty of podcasts that have 10,000 Yeah. Listeners and sometimes the right listeners and they’re getting more intimately connected and then they have a follow up to go connect with you on your website or whatever else. So I’ve realized like, you know, there’s a lot of pieces of technology that allow us to scale and I think [00:10:00] most people, myself, at times included, are more busy with all of these leverage points. Like that doesn’t make any sense. Yeah. Like, we should be able to do more with significantly less. And I, I find myself, you know, yeah, I need to play in traffic, but I need to pick the right intersection. Right, right. And then go be really intentional and fricking dominate that intersection and then get the heck out. Yeah. Versus like piddling around and doing stuff that really doesn’t need to be done. Tell us just Brett Gilliland: for, uh, perspective, right? Because being the author of Giftology, the author of Giftology, you, you’ve had some amazing stages you’ve been on where you’ve given pretty amazing gifts. And then you’ve done things that nobody sees that maybe you sent something to somebody and it opened up the door for you to get what you wanted. But I, cause I know the price tag on some of these things and, and I know, but, but you believe enough in gifting that thing, whatever that widget is, right? That, that will you have enough faith that it’s gonna open up a door [00:11:00]that’s gonna pay for that. Thing again that you bought 10 x because of what you’ve done. So walk us through some of those examples so people can get a perspective of what you John Ruhlin: actually do. Well, what’s what’s interesting is almost even small companies will have marketing budgets, biz dev sponsorship, affiliate, Facebook ads. Like if you look at somebody’s like overall sales and marketing and even HR budget to bring in the right talent. Yep. You know, even a small company is probably investing seven figures in that. Like if you have a hundred employees, even your health insurance for your employees. Yeah. Probably is $2 million a year. Yeah. And, and business owners signed that check, they don’t even think twice about it. Yeah. And nobody’s like crying or writing home and being like, oh my gosh, they offer a health insurance and 401K match. Right. But it costs us, as business owners a crap ton of money. We get no upside. It’s table stakes. So what we’ve, what I’ve realized with gifting is it’s really just a way to be the purple cow Seth Godin’s concept of, you know, or a blue ocean. Yep. And. I might not win every time I do. Like, you know, for Vaynerchuk, we did a 40 or 50,000 [00:12:00] art piece on stage at a crisp event. One of the biggest, I couldn’t, it was pit bull’s old stage down in Atlanta. I couldn’t make it from one side of the stage to the other side. It was at the big Marriott Marquis, you know, it was, I bet you they invested just in the stage in the speakers alone, $6 million. And the guy I know that like 10, 10 years ago was operating out of a one bedroom apartment. Like he’s grown this stage incredibly now. So can I stop you there Brett Gilliland: for a second? So, so Gary V you get the deal, you get the, is this the rec I’m speaking? Yeah. Okay. You’re okay. So you’re speaking, you know he’s gonna be there, you know, you want to obviously meet Gary V. He’s, yeah, John Ruhlin: I partnered with Michael. We split the cost on this piece and, um, And so people are like, dude, like 50 grand or even 25 grand, why would you do that? And I’m like, if you wanted to get, you know, if it said you’re gonna hire an assistant, you’ll pay 50 grand a year. Yeah. If you wanted to get Gary as a sales rep for your brand, you could offer him a few million dollars and he’d turn you down. Right. I’ve literally like, like the guy we did, the Brooks Brothers, we did 25 grand for him, Cameron Harold, five, six books. People are like, dude, 25 grand, why did you [00:13:00] do that? I’m like, I can tie back. Over a seven. Over seven figures of deals that have come from that one relationship. Mm-hmm. Show me that’s a 50 x r o r return on relationship, show me another Facebook ad or whatever else like you. There’s no, it’s usually like put in a dollar, get $2 back. But with the right relationships, you put in a dollar into the right employee and you get a hundred dollars back, you put in the right client or center of influence or partner, you get $50 back or maybe a thousand dollars back. Like it’s usually humans. Yeah. And so, so many people are like John, like you’re just being lavish and ridiculous. And I’m like, no. Like I’m actually a practical farm kid. And I’ve seen that this little area over here, because nobody takes it serious. It’s like this redheaded snapshot, like really gifting, like Yeah. Oh, that’s cute. Oh, that’s fun. Like isn’t that the thing you do at Christmas? Like no. Like this is how you show up powerfully to move people to influence. And what do I win every time I do that? No. I might have, I might do that for 20 people and five of them might turn out to be duds, or they might be dormant for a decade. Like [00:14:00] the Cubs took me seven years to land. Dr. Horton the largest builder in the, in the country, seven years to land. Most people give up after, but most people say they’re playing the long game and they give up after seven days or seven months. Right. And so my challenge to people is, is that you say people matter. You say you’re all about relationships, but most people only do things at transactional times and when you can show up powerfully for people, when most people are doing the dinners and rounds of golf and ballgame tickets, which is all fine, but everybody in every industry entertains and loves on their relationships the exact same way. What do you do for your employees? All we offer health insurance. Cool. What do you do that’s unique that makes people tell your story at dinners that they’re at and gets their family to want to come work for you? Yep. Well for us, we pay for house cleaning every of the week. Every employee that works for a Giftology costs us a few grand. That’s the benefit they tell at dinner stories. That’s that at family gatherings and whatever else. There’s a line of people that wanna work for us because we’re showing up differently for employees, clients, partners. And so it’s not about being lavish, it’s [00:15:00] actually about like, I need to be different cuz I can’t outspend my publicly traded competitors. Right. So I gotta be creative. I gotta be thoughtful. Not just check a box, not just give, you know, oh, we, we do referral gifts. That’s dumb. Don’t do a referral gift. That’s transactional. Yeah. Show up for your clients and your employees and your partners and your centers of influence as it just because, so the timing matters. So there’s all of these different things. So, so at Gary V. Yeah. 50 a lot, but there’s, you know, there’s other times where it might be five K or $500. Or $50, right? Like it’s not the dollar amount. It’s like, but it, most people put themselves into a box in this gifting realm and they say the same person they’re taking to the Super Bowl or the Masters for 10 20 grand a person, and then they’re giving them a hundred dollars Patagonia vest with their logo on it, right? One one’s level 10 and one is like a negative three. Yeah. I’m gonna go over in this little negative three area, and even if I just get somebody to be a five, Everybody else is like, it’s just stands out so far and above. So [00:16:00] it’s uh, it’s a fun game to play. Just most people don’t understand the game. You gotta Brett Gilliland: be creative and you gotta have the. You know what’s to do it right? I mean, to spend the 25, 50 grand to go out and do it with the hopes that Gary v gives you five minutes. John Ruhlin: Right? Right. Yeah. And so, I mean, you know, Vayner is a client now. S like, actually they, he was a client before I, I, why not? Because of Gary is because of cmo. Like what we were doing. Yeah. DRock, his video guy liked what we were doing. His president of his, of Sasha, the consulting firm. Yep. Like what we were doing. So, so many times people are like, John, I wanna take care of my clients. We’re gonna do golf, we’re gonna do bourbon. I’m like, I don’t care what the guys or gals like that are the decision makers. What’s their spouse like, what’s their assistant like? So a lot of the things we do are like, to this day, we still do a a crap ton with the knives. Why? Because most people, what do they do when they gather? Whether you make 50 grand or $5 million, you gather in the home, you break bread with loved ones, your inner circle, and you spend time together celebrating. And so 80 to 90% of the things we do in all industries, all sides of the companies, whether employees, clients, partners, doesn’t [00:17:00] matter. They’re humans. Are still kitchen oriented, are still hospitality oriented. It’s silly. Brett Gilliland: You sent me knives probably six years ago and they’re still maybe even longer. Yeah, maybe even longer ago. They’re still in my kitchen. The number one knife used, it’s Brett and Julia Gillan and family. It’s got a visionary logo on it. It, it’s phenomenal. Right. And the kids like the knives. I mean, they’re the best knives you can get. John Ruhlin: I got a call. This month from somebody. They had three partners. They’re one of the larger real estate investment firms. We had worked with them eight, nine years ago and, uh, it kind of fizzled. One of the, one of the partners didn’t like the idea and I get a call from the, one of the other partners he had left. He said, John, I’ve been thinking about you every single day for the last seven years. And as soon as I went out on my own, I partnered with these billionaire guys out of Wisconsin. We’re doing, we’re doing industrial real estate. He’s like, I got a bunch of relationships I need to appreciate and engage. And who was the first person I thought of you? You, cuz the stupid knives. Subconsciously. Consciously, right? I’m thinking you, [00:18:00] you have the one like. The one square foot of real estate on somebody’s countertop. Yep. If you can be like, trusted and top of mind, well, most people might be liked, right? Hey, you’re fun. Hey, trusted. Yeah. You’re good at what you do. Yep. But they’re not top of mind cuz most people are getting bombarded with a hundred thousand texts and tos and whatever else. And so who gets the referral? Who gets the deal? Who gets the phone call? Yep. The person who’s thought of in those scenarios and most people just aren’t thought of. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. That’s crazy. Good stuff, man. What, um, let’s talk about some of the personal side that we can, like from a daily habit standpoint. Yeah. So like, what are the things, I walked in here day, I’m like, man, you’re looking kind of buff, right? So, so what are the habits that John Ruland is doing every day? To make sure you’re living and being there for your, your wife, your kids, your business. What are those John Ruhlin: things? Yeah. I mean, you can’t take care of somebody if you don’t take care of yourself. Yeah. And so for me, um, about five and a half years ago, I, I started, I ballooned up, I was at two 80 and part of it was the travel stress where tear entrepreneur, [00:19:00] all those things, all those excuses. And you go to dinners and like the wines pour and the, and the, the bread. Bread and all that, steaks and pasta and appetizers. And so I was like, man, I’m, I’m, like I say, I’m all about like holistic health and wellness and like, I’m not. I, I mean, I look at, I look at pictures that people will find for podcasts and they, they’ll find the old ones of me in like a suit jacket. Like, no. And I’m like, please don’t do that. Like when we went to Australia, that was the one that they put on the screen and I was like, talk about like eating humble pie and like, just like humility. So for me, like I starts with health. I get up early. Um, I. Either I play basketball a couple times a week or I’ll go to the gym and lifting is big for me. Like I’m not a big cardio guy. I think, um, I have mentors that are in the health and wellness space and like we have a lack of muscle. And as you get older, if you don’t have muscle, like that changes everything. Uh, and so for me, like lifting, um, sauna almost every day, if not every day, and then cold plunge and then fasting and so [00:20:00] like, um, last, last year. I probably fasted 10 times. Uh, five day water and coffee only. Um, for me, like I’m not a moderation kind of person, so like I, I can be like, like the people that are like, oh, I just, I ate a, I ate a subway, a Turkey sub, and I just cut out Coke and I like dropped 40 pounds. That wasn’t me. Like, I had to be like all in, all in and really diligent and, and keto and, and, and really focused on that. Um, and for me, like, I spend a lot of time, you know, reading and, um, and diving into podcasts like I’m a learner. Um, you know, I, I love, uh, being around other people and so I, I do have. Um, you know, some, some, uh, masterminds and things that I’m a part of, but in general, like my day-to-day routine is focused on overall health and, and slowing down enough. And then the last thing I’ll just say is breath work. Um, for me that’s like tied into like almost a meditative state. Um, but the whim hof stuff kind of tied in with the cold plunge tank, um, has been huge for me. It’s a [00:21:00] game Brett Gilliland: changer, isn’t it? It is really? It, the, the, the cold plunge doesn’t get easier. John Ruhlin: No. Brett Gilliland: Are you, do you have an actual plunge? Like John Ruhlin: Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. Mosco. Yeah. It, the, you, um, built friendship with the guys who started the company. They, they, uh, they’re really kind of like engineers at heart. Yeah. And, uh, They the same one that Rogan uses. Okay. Yeah. Um, so it’s not a cheap date. No, but it’s the, the wood kind of more of like Yeah, yeah. Like rustic one. Yeah. Uh, and we’ve actually started to gift those to people, like talk about like a fun gift, like Steve Weatherford, NFL’s fitness guy. We sent one to him with his favorite Bible verses and whatever else. And you know, now it’s a part of his daily practice. Right. But to me, like that’s one of those things that most people wouldn’t necessarily go buy for themselves. But talk about weaving into somebody’s daily practice. Like the Brett Gilliland: whole, so, so again, even go there with that gift to Steve. So, you know, I follow him on social media, dudes. He’s, he’s crazy. Oh, he’s fun. John Ruhlin: Next time he comes through to preach, he pro he preached up in, um, not St. Joseph, two or three, three hours north of here at a big church in the middle of nowhere. Uh, and we had to, [00:22:00] I, I met up with him yeah. Near the airport and we hung out for like an hour. Yeah, he’s a wild dude. But he, he seems like loves. People loves Jesus. Yeah. He’s just a great human. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So what is your hope for that? Obviously you care about people, you love on people, there’s like an ulterior motive there, but like what’s your hope when you send a however many thousands of dollars of Asana to John Ruhlin: Steve? Um, so I split it. So a lot of times the bigger things like that, um, I’ll find somebody else that wants to love on him or bless him too. In this, in this case, probably one of the most radically generous humans I’ve ever met is Joel Marion. He had, he had a company called BioTrust. Okay? It’s a huge podcast called, uh, born to Impact, and I’m born again. Like his, I, his, he feels called to impact people from a faith perspective, but he built a few hundred million dollar, uh, uh, Supplement company and sold it. Uh, him and his partner, um, incredible. But he’s, he was the guy that would like, get all of his competitors together, love on them, and bring ’em together to learn. And he literally, like, we probably have done eight art pieces together. [00:23:00] Like I, if I have an idea, nine out of 10 times, Joel just says, yes, okay. Hey, you wanna split this Cuz that he just, but because of that, And there’s never an ask. It’s not like give something and then like ask for the deal or the referral. Right? Like he’s just planting seeds and kind of the Harvey McKay concept of Dig your Well before you’re thirsty. Yeah. And for Steve, I didn’t ha we didn’t have an ask. There’s a dude who’s out there who’s busting his butt. Yep. You know, dealt with addiction and almost got divorced, but he’s out there like, Crushing life and and impacting people. He’s gonna influence a lot of dudes. Like Yeah, oftentimes, like it might be five years from now, he’ll be with somebody in a boardroom and he’ll connect and say, Hey, you need to connect with Ruland. Yeah. I don’t know what that’s gonna be, but I know if, if I, I identify somebody who’s a leader, a giver, and up to big things, um, you know, You make a deposit there, it’s gonna grow into something. It’s gonna, yeah. And, and if it’s not that it’ll pay it forward Brett Gilliland: to somebody else. And I, I think about, so in, in the circuits of success, hence the name of the podcast, attitude, your beliefs, your actions get results. [00:24:00] But from beliefs to actions, I have this thing, it’s faith. I mean your faith, obviously there’s faith in God, but there’s also faith in gifting, right? Oh yeah. I mean, your faith in the fact, I don’t know. I got nothing I need from Steve. But maybe one day he’s gonna turn around and he’s gonna say my name, and then all of a sudden it’s, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, whatever it John Ruhlin: may be. That’s how God’s wired the world. Whether you believe in a God or not, like a man reaps what he sows. Like, we all know that. Like if you do good, even if you believe in something like karma, like right. Um, like what do you, what is that like if you do good things? It comes back to, and oftentimes not in ways that you like, I’d like to think like I have this perfect script of like, And I do try to play the four 4D chess game, which at some level probably has some selfish manipulation involved. But to me, like when you can give with an open hand and know, like, and not keep score and know that like, Hey, if it doesn’t happen because of you, like something good is gonna come out of that like halo effect. And I think so many people will do that in faith in [00:25:00] other areas. So. Like experientially, but they won’t do it physically, and I don’t know why. I think most people, guys in particular, struggle with gifting, even their spouse, right? Like the idea is to seem weird and woowoo and like, uh, what I might look weird or be uncomfortable, or they, they’re gonna think I want something from them. And so they talk themselves out it right from the start. Um, but I, it’s a universal principle. It’s gonna be Brett Gilliland: tough, man. When you’re the Giftology expert in the world and your John Ruhlin: wife, I mean, oh, my wife calls bs my, like you make business so you’re not Brett Gilliland: either John Ruhlin: business. I can, I can handle gifting for the, the most elite pro sports teams in the world. Yeah. But at home. She knows all my tricks, all my hacks, all my crap, all my excuses, all my, I see where this is going. Yeah. Like, but you know, there are times where I like, you know, knock it out of the park. Yeah. And like, it’s like a grand slam. And there’s other times where I strike out and she will let me know. Yeah. Um, and so yeah, home’s the hardest. Brett Gilliland: I’m not, I’m, it is hard. I’m, I’m not great at it. But I will say my, to brag on [00:26:00] myself for this, I hit a home run. I interviewed, I didn’t put it out as a podcast, but I had her mom and dad come in. And I interviewed them and it was amazing. I mean, it was absolutely amazing. And talk about their childhood and when they met and having kids and what it was like when they were growing up and now, and see their, their, their grandkids. It’s, it actually made me think about a business idea. I’m like, I need to do that more often. Right. Yeah. With people like John Ruhlin: you read a couple of those interviews and probably turn it into a book. Yeah. That’s a great idea too. Talk about being able to pass down to your kids grandkids, great grandkids like. Some services. Services out there. Huh? Do a gilland ruling book. I mean Yeah, dude. I mean it’s, but I mean, the power of being able to pull the wisdom from them and the stories Yeah. And then put it like, there’s something powerful about it being in, in written form. Yeah. And you know, I think a lot of times people have a story to be told, but nobody’s asking the questions. Right. And they have wisdom to share and Yeah. And, and something that, like, from a legacy perspective, I know there’s companies out there that do it, but to be able to do it personally. Yeah. And, and a lot of the companies that are out there that do books, I. You know, [00:27:00] like Jesus wasn’t out there writing things down. He spoke. Yeah. And most people throughout history didn’t write things down. They spoke, somebody else wrote it down. So you could, yeah. That’s If you had a, you had a couple, you had a couple more interviews with them. Yeah. Like you’d have enough for a book. Yeah. And, and would blow them away. And I think it would be, Impactful for the whole family. Yeah. Brett Gilliland: So let’s, let’s talk about, um, big things right now that you hear all the time. All over the world, right? Chat, g p T. Yeah. And obviously saw yesterday, but Apple Vision Pro. Yeah. The, yeah, the, did you see, I mean, did you watch any of the videos at all? I John Ruhlin: watched one and it’s, it’s unreal. It’s amazing. It’s, to me, it’s like, I think people in general like, are, you know, myself included, like, You know, the phone’s not far. Right? Right. It’s always in our hand. It’s always around. And like the more, like I, I went to a leadership conference and I left my phone in the room all three days straight. Didn’t, didn’t check it once during the day. Wow. Until the evening. It felt weird. It felt weird, but it ended up being freeing. Yeah, like it was amazing, like how [00:28:00]addicted I was, even if it was turned off, but it was in my bag and like, it it like constantly like pinging you in your head, right? Like just mentally like the amount of emotional ed energy there. And so yeah, the, yeah, chat G G P T I think is powerful. I think it’s scary. I think it’s awesome. I think it’s, and, uh, I think that, um, you know, it’s gonna accelerate a bunch of things, like from a, even from a gifting perspective. Yeah. Like you can like type in and like get to know somebody or like if we’re pulling, we started doing these like bigger crazy gifts where like a big 10 K knife set, we might put quotes of that. They’ve said, well, I can get like anybody that’s relatively famous Right. I can get 80 of their quotes of wisdom instead of having to research and have my team research. Yeah. I can pull 15 seconds. 15 seconds and pulls it all up for, for some of these big celebs. So like there are elements of it that are cool, but there’s also like, can you, you might need to confirm that they actually said it, because right now it’s not, it’s not a hundred percent accurate. And sometimes the info that you get back, it’s like that’s what’s on the [00:29:00] surface. But like a lot of times, like in order to get somebody to cry or be moved at a soul level, like you have to get to the 1% of the 1%. Yeah. And. It’s hard to get the essence of a human just by the headlines. You gotta go a little deeper and ask the deeper questions. And I think that that’s the area where there’s nuance that Yep. That, uh, whatever your industry is like, if you have the ability to speak into the 1%, like, I think at least for now, like you, you know, you’ll be able to chop or charge top dollar for that. Yeah, for sure. Brett Gilliland: I, I think what, what scares me about it is the critical thinking that I hope it doesn’t take away from our kids. Right. I, I forget us. We’ve been around long enough, we’re gonna be able to use it, use it to our advantage, but still have those relationships and different things. But are these kids gonna have, you know, I wanna know, blah, blah, blah. And they find out in 13 seconds versus having to, you know, when we were kids, you had to go back and look for the, in the DS or the encyclopedia, right? Yeah, yeah. And now with Google and Chad gpt and all these things, I’m not trying to sound like the old crabby guy, but it’s just, I hope they continue to think for themselves and think [00:30:00] differently. Versus the computer doing it. And then, then we’re not all wearing these goggles that look amazing and do all these things, and it looks like you’re in a movie. That, that’s my fear. And I love technology. I hope it does the right thing, but it, it is a little bit of John Ruhlin: a fear for me. Yeah. Well, when the person walked into the room and she was wearing the, the goggles, they, the person wasn’t, yeah. Like that to me is like super awkward. Right. And they can Brett Gilliland: still see each other. She like waved at John Ruhlin: her. Yeah. Oh yeah. You can see through the, yeah, you can see that person’s eyes, but it’s still like, There’s an element of like, and, and maybe it’s like the phone thing, like you just get kind of used to it. Yeah. Um, but at some level, like there’s something powerful about old school. Like Yeah. You know, you’re not putting it into a, a device. You’re, there’s something powerful about writing it down. They probably see it right Brett Gilliland: over your shoulder. All those, those are some July of 2005, these journals. I mean, there’s power in that man. Yeah. Um, you said earlier, R o r Return on relationships. Yeah. Talk to me about that. John Ruhlin: Well, I mean, I think in, in business, I think gifting and in what we talk about is viewed very much as like an expense, or it’s viewed [00:31:00] very much as like a nice two, not a have to, and in any part of your business you’re, you know, you’re measuring things like operations, finance, marketing, you know, hr, like, Stock market, whatever, like you’re measuring it, there’s metrics there. And I don’t think most people have put a metric to, you know, the power of their network, the power of their relationships, the power of the people that work for them. And I think that to me, there’s no greater return than investing in humans. And whether that’s physically or experientially or whatever. Yeah. But like the investment there and like when you start to think about the businesses that people have created, it typically was a lot of humans that. Allowed them that inve, mentors, coaches, teachers. Yeah, for sure. Like bankers, suppliers, you know, advisors, all of those people allowed them to get there. And I think we undervalue the power of the right people being in our corner. And so, like, to me, RO r is like one of the most powerful tools of like thinking about like, Hey, yeah, ROI on marketing. Cool. But like, are you, are you measuring the relationships and the return on [00:32:00] relationship is, is, uh, To me is one of the, the best things on the planet. Yeah. Brett Gilliland: Well, I mean, ROI in my business, right? Returning investment, but returning relationship with the investment with our clients is, I mean, that John Ruhlin: relationship is huge. Yeah. I mean there’s, I mean, how many financial wealth man, like what people that put themselves in that, that, yeah. That bucket. Half a million. Yeah. There’s Yeah. Brett Gilliland: Hundreds of thousands of them. Yeah. Yeah. John Ruhlin: What, what it comes down to what the hu Like do they know me? Right? They do. Are, are they on my, they care about me. Do they care about me? Like it comes down to an emotional Yeah. Connection, though. You can justify numbers all day long and you’ll actually take lesser performance if you’re like, this person’s in my corner, they care about me and they’re in this for the long haul. For sure. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. I call it Pandora’s Box. My job is if you were a client sitting there, right? I gotta unlock that box and find out what truly matters, what’s important, what makes you tick, what you wanna leave behind. I mean, all those things are, they’re, they’re critically important. So, um, as we close, actually, before we go there, so what, what would you tell the person that’s listening right now that says, oh man, this dude’s talking about [00:33:00] sending $50,000 saunas, or whatever. Right. They have a $500 budget. Right. What, what can they be doing that they’re not doing right now? Yeah. John Ruhlin: Well, what I would say is that what we’re talking about isn’t industry specific or business size specific. Like I have, I have sales reps that, you know, work for technology companies that are reinvesting a percentage of their business and treating it like they’re the owner. So if you made, you know, 200 grand last year, reinvest a tie, 10%, that’s 20 grand. So when people say they have a limited budget, right? I’m like, Well, you, you’re spending, you know, 40 grand a month on Facebook ads, or you’re spending this much to sponsor this conference for a hundred grand. Like I always challenge the numbers, right. Cuz even I have college kids that are like investing $500 a month in this. Yeah. So there’s, there’s always dollars there if you view it to have value. Right. And so to me it’s not so much the dollar amount. It’s like if you don’t, if you’re gonna send something expensive or cheap, if you don’t put a handwritten note with it. There’s no thoughtfulness Meaning context. Yeah. It’s not [00:34:00] one-to-one. So a lot of the clients, like, we’ll work with casinos or insurance companies, and they’re like, yeah, we wanna send this out to a thousand people. And uh, I’m like, and they’re gonna order it from, you know, they’re gonna take our consulting, they’re gonna order it from Amazon. I’m like, you guys might as well just. Stop right there. Yeah. If you are gonna automate it through some technology platform and it feels like a marketing thing, don’t expect a deeper relationship and don’t, don’t expect the r o r cuz it was marketing, right? It’s not relationship. And so a lot of the details around how it’s packaged, even when it shows up, most people do ABC gifting, anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas. They do expected obligatory things. If I do that for my wife, if I show up on Valentine’s Day, I get no credit. Right? If I, you gotta do that, you have to do that. And so if you show up for relationships, so a lot of the recipe isn’t in the dollars spent, it’s in the thoughtful thought. So many people are like, John, I, I spent this money, it didn’t work. And I’m like, you can’t be a douche bag and give great gifts. Like you have to be a person. You have to do the details. Like there’s parts of the recipe that are not just the [00:35:00] cost. Brett Gilliland: Recipe’s a good way to John Ruhlin: put it. Yeah. And so $500 you could do something amazing. Um, $5,000, $50. It doesn’t, the dollar amount doesn’t matter. It’s more around the overall like thought process. Yeah. And put in the odds in your favor where you’re not doing it once like. You’re like, this is a, like, there’s compound interest of like showing up for multiple people this way over time versus I did it once, it didn’t work. And I’m like, that’s not how life works. Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Does not. Let’s, um, I pulled up my phone here. We’re gonna have some fun. We’re gonna go to, uh, what’s your Instagram John Ruhlin: at John Ruland? Brett Gilliland: John Ruland. Have a little fun here. All right. Pick a number between one and 10. Three. Okay. Now pick a number between one and three. Two. Two. Hey, we already talked about this. This is you. If you can see it on the camera or not. This is you picking up Steve Weatherford in the minivan. Exactly. [00:36:00] With the Superbowl trophy. Lamborghini baby. Oh yeah. So let’s talk about that. So I, I like this game and I’m gonna pick another one that’s on that same row. Uh, Sarah Blakely shot you out here. Yeah, that’s pretty cool because of the nice Spanx. So talk about John Ruhlin: that. Yeah, so Sarah, well, she’s an EO person, so eo ypo, so that’s a group that I speak to a lot. Um, you know, it’s CEOs that are leading companies and, and, uh, there’s chapters all over the world. Sarah’s been a member for 20 years. I’ve built a friendship with her and her husband, Jesse Itzler, who’s, you know, stud. Just a stud, stud speaker. Started marquee jets, sold it back to net jets, started zco. Is it Ziko Water? Yeah. Yeah. Ziko Water now. He’s one of the best speakers in the world. Yeah. But I, it, it, over a number of years I built a friendship with them. He became a fan of Giftology Of the book. Yeah. And, um, but I was like, I’m gonna make deposits in, and you know, she has certain quotes. She has her little mugs that she drinks out of. Yeah. Yeah. And, Uh, we sent her like one of these crazy, you know, couple thousand dollars treasure chest. And, but I put a knife in there because I know that she, [00:37:00] she loves Casa Deese tequila. Yeah. And she travels literally with her own fresh grapefruit juice. So I, I sent her a grapefruit knife with, with, you know, her name on it, but the quote, And um, and you know, people send her a lot. These kinda people get things all the time. Yeah. It’s the story and the personalization. And she was using the knife years later and she’s like, I’m thinking about, you know, John rule. I love this knife. And she posts about it, you know, to her hundreds of thousands of people. Same with itzler. Like, you know, we’ve, uh, you know, I’ve been invited over to their house to hang out with their four kids and of course we sauna, steam and cold plunge and do the thing, but. We’ve made deposits in those relationships to where we’re top of mind, we get shout outs, but more importantly, like we, you know, we always want people to, to return our phone call or texts. Like you just wanna be in relationship with them. Yeah. And those deposits help. Yeah. Brett Gilliland: That’s incredible, man. Well, um, working our listeners find more of John Ruland. John Ruhlin: I would say, I mean, if, if, uh, if you wanna avoid the worst gifts on the planet just to like [00:38:00] get into the top 5%, you can go to the givers with an s the giver’s edge and get a little download of kind of like, you don’t have to go by the book. Yeah. Just go like, just go right there. Just start to get like a framework of like what to do and not to do. Um, I mean, at John Ruland on, on Instagram and, um, you know, Giftology Group is the main website to, uh, to dive into Brett Gilliland: Giftology. Yeah. Got it. Awesome man. Well thanks so much for being with me on the circuit Success. Always great to catch up and, uh, great to see you, my man. And, uh, love watching you, what you’re doing. It’s awesome. Thanks brother. So thanks so much.

Jun 14, 2023 • 50min

Invest in Yourself with Dr. Craig Thayer and Brett Gilliland

Jun 5, 2023 • 40min

Golden Minds and Gratitude: Insight from Karen Phelps Moyer

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The Circuit of Success Podcast with Brett Gilliland

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