July 2, 2025 • 42 mins
Guest:
Skye Michaels
Founder of With Heart Coaching | Former Head of Coaching at Compass
LinkedIn
Host:
Melissa Aarskaug
Executive Connect | Website
YouTube: @ExecutiveConnect
Episode Overview:
What if your team’s resilience could be rebuilt in just 10 minutes a day? In this episode of the Executive Connect Podcast, Melissa Aarskaug sits down with Skye Michaels, founder of With Heart Coaching and former Head of Coaching at Compass, who has coached over 30,000 professionals on the inner game of leadership. Skye shares his powerful, people-first approach to building resilient teams in a chaotic world. From identifying how ego undermines growth to leading with compassion without compromising performance, this episode delivers a blueprint for thriving in high-stress environments without burning out. We covered:
00:00 – Skye’s leadership journey and mission-driven coaching philosophy
01:09 – How teaching, real estate, and COVID reshaped his path to coaching
04:28 – Why ego kills growth and how humble, confident leadership builds teams
10:49 – Strategies for thriving under ego-driven leaders using the 80/20 rule
14:56 – The overlooked power of leading with heart in a results-obsessed world
19:34 – Why continuous improvement beats hustle culture and how to apply it
25:10 – How to prioritize what matters when the world feels like chaos
29:43 – Fueling yourself first so you can lead with energy and clarity
37:03 – Reclaim your mornings, your mind and your leadership power
39:31 – Skye’s message to burnt-out leaders and where to connect with him
Connect With Us:
Podcast Website: https://www.executiveconnectpodcast.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ExecutiveConnect Social:
Melissa’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-aarskaug/
Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-executive-connect/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@melissa_aarskaug
X: https://x.com/melissaaarskaug
Skye Michaels
Founder of With Heart Coaching | Former Head of Coaching at Compass
Host:
Melissa Aarskaug
Executive Connect | Website
YouTube: @ExecutiveConnect
Episode Overview:
What if your team’s resilience could be rebuilt in just 10 minutes a day? In this episode of the Executive Connect Podcast, Melissa Aarskaug sits down with Skye Michaels, founder of With Heart Coaching and former Head of Coaching at Compass, who has coached over 30,000 professionals on the inner game of leadership. Skye shares his powerful, people-first approach to building resilient teams in a chaotic world. From identifying how ego undermines growth to leading with compassion without compromising performance, this episode delivers a blueprint for thriving in high-stress environments without burning out. We covered:
- Why ego creates fragility and how humility fuels real strength
- How to stay centered as a leader in the face of chaos
- The 80/20 rule of thriving under tough leadership
- A 10-minute daily ritual to reset, recharge, and reconnect
- Why kindness + accountability is the ultimate leadership combo
- How to lead with energy by fueling yourself first
00:00 – Skye’s leadership journey and mission-driven coaching philosophy
01:09 – How teaching, real estate, and COVID reshaped his path to coaching
04:28 – Why ego kills growth and how humble, confident leadership builds teams
10:49 – Strategies for thriving under ego-driven leaders using the 80/20 rule
14:56 – The overlooked power of leading with heart in a results-obsessed world
19:34 – Why continuous improvement beats hustle culture and how to apply it
25:10 – How to prioritize what matters when the world feels like chaos
29:43 – Fueling yourself first so you can lead with energy and clarity
37:03 – Reclaim your mornings, your mind and your leadership power
39:31 – Skye’s message to burnt-out leaders and where to connect with him
Connect With Us:
Podcast Website: https://www.executiveconnectpodcast.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ExecutiveConnect Social:
Melissa’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-aarskaug/
Podcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-executive-connect/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@melissa_aarskaug
X: https://x.com/melissaaarskaug
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Any leader out there that leads people in leads a team, you have to have a high confidence level with a low ego.
(00:06):
And you're very effective.
And the reality is, the best leaders build other leaders.
And to build great teams, each person on the team needs to have the capacity to make mistakes, as long as they're learning lessons from them.
The reality is that we all are going to make mistakes.
And when you're afraid to make a mistake, you become really timid and you become really guarded and you become really calculated.
(00:29):
You should be talking 20% of the time and listening 80% of the time.
So if you're a leader and you notice that you're the only one in the room talking, you probably have a little bit of an ego problem going on.
Stressed about keeping your team strong and a chaotic world, meets Sky Michaels.
(00:51):
On today's Executive Connect podcast, we're going to meet him.
He's coached over 30,000 pros and built a heart-driven approach to leadership that's all about you.
I'm locking resilience, boosting morale and growing 1% better every day.
(01:11):
Stick around as we discover how kindness and accountability can transform your team and your life without the burnout.
Welcome, Sky!
And thank you so much for having me on. I'm thrilled to be here.
I love it. I'm so excited to dive in and I'm already scrolling, but my personal motto is 1% better every day.
(01:33):
I love it and I can't wait to dive into it.
So let's talk about your career journey.
First of all, remarkable.
You've led coaching efforts for 30,000 people at Compass, while launching with Heartcoach.
Can you tell us a little bit about that journey?
And what inspired you?
(01:54):
For sure. I'll give you really quickly to my background.
I graduated from Syracuse University as a division one athlete.
I was a high school history teacher.
And I very quickly, once I started teaching, realized how poor I was.
And so I got into Real Estate just as a side gig.
And over decades of selling Real Estate, it really grew into this career-erows coaching and training agents.
(02:15):
And I leveraged my teaching background inside of Real Estate.
And in 2018, I helped Compass launch in Philadelphia, the PA New Jersey Delaware region.
I sort of was a managing director and helped launch it.
And I don't know if you remember this, but we had this little thing called COVID hit in 2020.
(02:36):
Yeah, remember that?
And so we all got shut down.
And I remember I was like leading my region.
And I was so frustrated by the end of March because I was drinking, eating, watching Tiger King.
And I was like, what was in the reality TV shows?
And I'm like, what am I doing?
(02:56):
Yeah, that's what I was doing.
Oh, God.
And it was one of those situations where I sort of said, fuck it.
Like, I'm going to get up at 6am in the morning and I'm going to invite people that I coach
or I manage to do it with me.
So I formed a group called the Six Ambers.
And very quickly it started to spread all across the country.
And in addition, I formed coaching at Compass, which mean 10 other sales managers.
(03:23):
And it was our effort at delivering coaching and training while everyone was in lockdown
at home.
So is the first time where I was able to get really national exposure and then luckily about
a year later I became the head of coaching all across the country for Compass.
So I was traveling around the country and I was delivering a lot of programming virtually
in person individually.
(03:44):
And we had 30,000 agents that we were coaching and training.
And it was such an amazing experience, but I also really, you know, I have two young kids,
not young teenagers now.
And I knew at the end of the day that I'm really a born entrepreneur.
And at the end of the day I was feeling that burnout that you mentioned in the beginning
(04:05):
of the introduction.
And I was just, you know, those days where you just don't feel passionate anymore and
you just feel like you're sort of checking the box off.
And that's not how I'd live my life.
And I knew I needed to make a change.
So at the end of 2023 and into 2024, I made the decision to leave Compass and form my own
(04:26):
coaching company, which is called with-heart coaching.
So that's what I'm doing right now is I'm running this amazing coaching company and delivering
again, coaching virtually and in person and doing speaking engagements with this company
right now.
Yeah, first of all, I do remember those COVID days and I do remember so many of us became
(04:47):
or did things that we weren't super proud of like mindlessly scrolling through whatever
TikTok and watching too much TV and drinking too much alcohol and laying around.
But I think the interesting beauty of that is we opened our mind up to what we should be
doing when we turned off all the distractions.
(05:08):
And we really got focused on what is our life mission, where are we driving towards.
And so one of the things I want to talk about, I love the word resilience.
I don't know why it should spend my word over the last few years.
And I feel like it's such an important word and it's such an important place to building
(05:31):
resilient teams, especially in the world we live today with changing political systems,
changing technology, what's correct on media.
It's really just a unique time to teach people what and how to be resilient.
So can you talk a little bit about how you help leaders cultivate resiliency in their
(05:52):
teams while still maintaining empathy and growing the employees?
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(06:14):
And I can't agree more.
I mean, there's never been a time where resiliency is more needed and more necessary in business
leadership and entrepreneurs and anyone that's out there trying to build something big.
If you are not resilient, you will crumble in this day and age.
And it has never been more important.
So for me, when I'm trying to teach people about resiliency, one of the biggest things that
(06:37):
we start with is ego.
And I have a line that I use in my coaching and my training, which is ego is the enemy.
And ego is one of the situations where when our ego rages, it really makes us so incredibly
fragile.
Even when on the outside we may look like we're this big bad, you know, leader and yelling
(07:00):
and screaming and all this stuff and I'm right and all this things.
And the reality is that any leader out there that leads people and leads a team, you have
to have a high confidence level with a low ego to be very effective.
And this is the first step in building resiliency because of the fact that if you have a really high
ego and your ego is raging, all of a sudden you're going to be running a team that is
(07:26):
just waving in the wind and trying to just please you as this egotistical leader.
And the reality is when you're the best leaders, build other leaders.
And to build great teams, each person on the team needs to have the capacity to make mistakes
(07:47):
as long as they're learning lessons from them.
And when you're working for a really someone who has a really big ego and their ego is raging,
what happens as someone on the team, you shrink and you're afraid to make mistakes and learn
lessons from them.
So when I run teams or I'm coaching people who are running teams, the first thing we need
(08:09):
to do is we need to check our ego and make sure the decisions we're making were making
with a really low ego and a high confidence level.
And what that does, it creates an environment for people where they can actually elevate
their game and start to do things at a at a at a greater level because of the fact that
they have the capacity to grow to become the best version of themselves.
(08:34):
And they're not afraid of making a mistake and learning a lesson from it.
The reality is that we all are going to make mistakes.
When you're afraid to make a mistake, you become really timid and you become really guarded
and you become really calculated.
And when you think about someone who's really resilient, they don't have those attributes.
(08:56):
A resilient person is not timid, right?
They're very bold and they make decisions and they move forward.
They constantly get one percent better.
They constantly strive for improvement, right?
They're not afraid to voice their opinion, you know, and have their voice be heard, right?
(09:16):
And again, so that the resilient team leaders or people that are leading people, you have
to start with checking your ego at the door and owning everything in your world.
And when you start to do this, this is one of those big pieces that I think resiliency
and ownership go hand in hand, right?
(09:37):
Because of the fact that if I'm a leader and I have a low ego with a high confidence level
and the people around me know that.
All of a sudden now, they are gaining this idea that they have a lot of ownership in the
process and they're going to elevate above what's required and do more than what's required.
(09:58):
So those are the two things that I think that I start with is number one, let's check
where is your ego?
Where are the issues you're having?
Are these issues being caused by your ego and are these issues being caused by you shutting
your team down because you're raging up here, right?
It's not about you, it's about us.
(10:19):
And then we go back into ownership, right?
What is it?
You have to be any problem on the team is my problem and I own it.
And if every person on the team adopts that mindset and that mantra, you will have the most
resilient team that can withstand anything that's thrown up them because of the fact that
every single person on the team has an ownership mindset and that problem is attacked at all
(10:45):
levels and it creates that resiliency that you want as a leader.
Yeah, 100%.
Let's talk a little bit about what you like mistakes.
I know younger in my career, I was petrified to make a mistake and I would be recovering
perfectionism kind of person.
(11:07):
So I would make sure I was always on point, I didn't make any mistakes fast forward to today.
I personally love mistakes because every time I make a mistake, I'm learning what I did
wrong and what the right way to do things.
And so I've kind of built up that confidence muscle over the years in my career and I wish
(11:28):
I had gone back earlier and been more confident in being comfortable with making mistakes or
asking questions, not out of fear of being judged.
So I love that you mentioned that.
I want to talk a little bit about, like I love that you mentioned the egos.
I think all of us have been around very egotistical, ego-driven people.
(11:52):
So let's talk a little bit about, let's say somebody who works for somebody who is very
egotistical and like the example you gave, they're kind of shrinking in their role.
What are some of the things they can do to work through that?
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Yeah.
The first thing you want to do is you apply this 80/20 rule of, you should be talking 20%
(12:43):
of time and listening 80% of time.
So if you're a leader and you notice that you're the only one in the room talking, you probably
have a little bit of an ego problem going on.
When I'm leading great teams, I actually want to be saying, "Oh, very little."
And I want to be listening to other people talk because now I know that other people are
(13:06):
actually going, "When I do talk, it's going to be extremely powerful and effective."
And I know that other people have a voice in the room and feel heard and seen.
And therefore they're going to be striving and working harder for me and towards the goal,
whatever the goals are, objectives we're trying to accomplish.
So the first thing you want to do is ask yourself that 80/20 rule.
(13:27):
Am I talking, I should only be talking 20% of time and I should be listening 80% of the
time.
So your next team meeting almost do like have a little in the back of your mind, have a
mental check or if you have a great operations manager who you trust, you could even say,
"Hey, let's record this meeting."
And you know, you don't need to do this scientifically, but just sort of keep track of how much
(13:50):
I'm talking versus how much I'm allowing other people to talk.
And it's a really great way to sort of test this egotistical theory and see if you have
this going on.
The other thing is if you notice that you are constantly frustrated by other people and
the actions that they're doing or not doing, it could be because of the fact that you
(14:15):
have an ego or an ownership problem as well.
So if you notice you're going home at the end of the day and your partner or your wife,
your husband or whoever it is at home and all you're doing is complaining about the people
you work for, often we need to look in the mirror and say, "Wait a minute, what am I doing
to contribute to these problems?"
(14:35):
Or what am I doing to actually not create a powerful environment where again, I'm allowing
people to make a mistake but not make a mistake and be punished for it, make the mistake
and grow from it.
And that's it, I think the key thing we need to start to think about.
And these are some of the signs you need to look out for as a leader is am I frustrated
(14:59):
because people aren't doing something?
Most likely, it's a you problem, not a them problem.
You either didn't explain it well enough, you don't have the right systems in place,
there is an environment that you have created that's not collaborative, right?
Or whatever it might be.
You don't know the exact circumstances but you always as a leader needs to be looking
(15:21):
in the mirror and double checking yourself.
And I actually keep a piece of paper with me at all times, it's a Roman parable.
So in Rome, when the military leader, the emperor would win a military campaign, they would
put a parade back into the city of Rome, they would put a slave in their left ear, whispering,
(15:45):
"Ego is the enemy, ego is the enemy."
As a reminder that no matter what you do, you always got to make sure the real enemy is
your ego and you always have to be checking it.
And that's the real key to growth and the real key to success is actually creating a world
where you are really, really confident and really, really low ego or really humble.
(16:07):
And it's a really interesting dichotomy to sort of walk down when you can create that.
Yeah, I love it.
It made me think my mom always to tell us, "Is kid you have two ears in one mouth?
We got to use them proportionately."
And so that always runs in my head.
I want to talk a little bit about leading with the heart and really the power of kindness
(16:29):
and accountability.
I know you've often spoke about leading with heart and balancing kindness and accountability.
How can leaders incorporate these values while driving results for their organizations?
It's one of my favorite topics because I think we've been fed a little bit of a lie in business
(16:49):
and in our leadership environments that you need to actually be hustling and grinding
and doing things that you see this on Instagram or YouTube, right?
All these, like, ultra-masculine messages around like hustle grind.
And this hustle and grind culture, I think, is actually when you are in that hustle and
(17:11):
grind culture.
It's actually accomplished way less than when you are in a culture of kindness and empowerment.
And it's a really, again, it's an interesting dichotomy, right?
Because you can't, kindness is mistaken for being walked over or like being a pushover.
That's not what kindness is.
Right?
(17:31):
Kindness is being able to lead and make the people around you feel and know that they matter
to you.
And that is like, if we define kindness in that way, all of a sudden now, your power and
your influence over people is multiplied tenfold as opposed to you pushing people to their
(17:54):
breaking point where they feel like they don't matter and the only thing that matters are
your KPIs, your objectives, your goals, whatever it might be in hitting those things.
When people feel like you, they matter to you and you are leading with that kindness or
heart or care, they'll do anything for you.
(18:16):
They'll push so hard for you.
And that is one of the key factors that we need to start to adopt in business culture
is we need people to feel and know that they matter to us.
And it's not that we're not going to have standards.
It's not that we're going to hold people in standards.
It's that we are going to allow them to become the best versions of themselves because
(18:37):
of the fact they do feel like they matter.
And you can relate this, think about your family, your family, you would do anything for your
family, your kids, your husband, your spouse, your parents, etc.
And the reason is, they're family, but they also matter to you and they know that.
And when something matters to you, you will work so hard to strive and achieve that.
(19:01):
So I think a lot of leaders that are out there listening to this, you got to ask yourself
the question, do do my people know and feel that they matter to me?
And it can't be, if you just go in and say, hey, you matter to me, great job, everyone.
It can't just be this verbal, you know, diarrhea that you're spewing, right?
It actually has to be done in actions and in feelings and in like the policies you implement,
(19:29):
the way you run meetings, the way that you talk to individuals, right?
If you look and you know nothing about an individual's life, most likely your team is not
functioning at its highest level, right?
Because at the end of the day, we need to know that people, people need to know that they
(19:50):
matter to us in order for them to start to really work at their optimal level.
And again, it really, really goes back to that ownership kind of a principle as well.
So when someone knows that, yeah, I agree.
And I think people realize when it's transactional, right?
(20:10):
They realize that, you know, hey, Sky, how's your day going?
Okay, so what we got to do now is get started.
Like they know that we're just checking a box, like there's no boss and we're bulldozing
to the next thing.
I think in a culture and a world that's so get it done yesterday, you know, what are you
(20:30):
doing for me today and transactional when you're not leading with your heart, people can tell
that you're just kind of showing up.
And so I, first of all, I love your shirt.
I always feel like I'm personally under construction.
So I love this shirt.
I need to get it.
I want to talk about continuous improvement and kind of what I said at the beginning,
(20:53):
the principle of one percent better every day.
I love that.
How can, let's talk a little bit about breaking that out and what it means and how can organizations
create a culture of continuous improvement and becoming better while driving results?
Can you share a little bit about how companies can do this?
(21:16):
Well, I think, and again, going back into sort of this shift we've seen inside our culture
of we only care about the results.
We don't care about the process and the systems that got us to those results.
A lot of our companies, a lot of our leaders, you know, when you're only focused on the
results and you don't focus on the small, tiny, atomic steps that it just gets to these
(21:40):
results or what you strive to get to, what happens is you're creating a situation where
people feel that what they're doing does not matter and that they're never going to be successful
in anything that they do.
The key to this concept of accomplishing really, really big results goes back into almost
(22:03):
ignoring what the result is and only hyper focusing on the moment.
There's a line I use that I try to teach people.
I call it, "I didn't create it.
I heard this.
Be where your feet are."
If we imagine life or anything we're trying to accomplish as a mountain that has no top
that you're just continually climbing and you think of this world where we live in, a
(22:24):
lot of people have so much anxiety about getting to the top or getting to the result they're
striving for that they have no idea where their feet are and they trip up and they get
so messed up in the moment.
And then they look behind them and they say, "With regret and judgment and all that stuff
and the real key is being where your feet are and then telling yourself, I'm just going
(22:45):
to get 1% better today.
What is the smallest thing I can do today or in this moment that will move me one step forward
and one step closer up this mountain knowing that it's never going to end.
There's never a top to the mountain because the minute I achieve the result I'm striving
for, what am I going to do?
I'm going to create another result.
(23:06):
I'm going to create another goal.
I'm going to create another destination that I'm striving for.
So the idea of 1% better every day really goes into finding joy and enjoyment in the journey
not in the destination, right?
Not in the results.
And the reality, like we all get obsessed, let's just take health, for example, like,
(23:27):
hey, I want to lose weight.
Well the reality is if we lose 10, 15, 20 pounds, that will be achieved that result.
That was an effort of months and months of little, small, tiny decisions we made to
get there.
It wasn't the result that mattered.
It was the decisions in the moment that mattered.
And that whole concept of being where your feet are and accepting that where I am right
(23:52):
now is exactly where I was meant to be.
And what is this 1% thing that I can do that is going to move me forward towards a goal
that I want to achieve, right?
And that's a key.
I think that's so great.
I started this three years ago, this kind of, at the time, I'm like, this is a goofy practice,
but I want to start writing more, like handwriting.
(24:14):
And so I started writing every day, something I learned that day.
It could be something I learned about me and something I learned about my family or the
kids or my neighbors.
And it's crazy when I go back and look at the 1% better, how much we are just learning
(24:35):
growing, experiencing beings, just trying to do a good job while being light.
And so I think when you chop things up in 1%, like you were saying, the gym is a perfect
example.
And I thought early in my career, I had to eat that, that elephant, one bite in one big bite.
(24:56):
And I'd go out at my day and I'd go after that one big bite and I couldn't do it.
I just, no matter how many hours I worked and how hard I tried, it wasn't happening.
But when I took it, like you were saying, 1% better, it was amazing how easy it was to
do the things when you look at it in smaller segments versus the full bite.
(25:22):
I think the other thing to add on top of that too is that we often don't celebrate our
wins enough. And when you only celebrate the result, right?
Once a year, we're going to celebrate the award ceremony.
Are we hit the sales goals?
And that's a once a year celebration.
But the reality is we were born on this earth to be happy and joyful and have fun and
(25:44):
wake up and be excited about our day.
So when you can also add a small level of celebration into that 1% accomplishment, that's
another big thing.
I'm not saying like every day you get a trophy, right?
But if there's something you can do that celebrates the fact that you improve that day, it allows
(26:05):
you to really experience the joy of the journey into the goal in this every day kind of a
way.
So you writing down your one win is a real, that's a form of celebration that, you know, it's
such a powerful thing because you actually are acknowledging what you did that day that
got made you better.
(26:26):
And that's so huge.
And it again, it allowed you to celebrate that accomplishment 365 times in a year, you know,
that's so great.
Yeah.
And you just funny to go look back at some of this stuff.
I'm like, wow, was that that hard for me back then?
Yeah.
And today things that were, you know, the hardest things back then are like the easiest things
(26:49):
now.
Yeah.
I want to switch a little bit.
I feel like right now in the world, everybody is uncertain.
They're not confident.
They're struggling with what's going on with the economy and politics and all the M and
A activity.
So the world is rapidly changing.
There's a lot of uncertainty.
(27:12):
Leaders are navigating really tough times and uncharted waters.
So how can we prepare leaders effectively to lead their teams when all they can do is
they can focus on is, you know, the stock market or who's in the, you know, the White House
or whatever else is going on around them.
(27:32):
So how do we keep morale high at the same time?
Oh, so such a great question.
I know one that I'd probably help people deal with every single day.
The very first thing we need to do is we, we as a culture have become obsessed with the
urgency, right?
Like, what is the most urgent thing that is flashing across our plate?
(27:52):
And I think, you know, again, I'm holding myself on for anyone that's listening, right?
I pull up my cell phone and there's all these beeps and blinges and notifications and I
click on it and all of a sudden I'm in this black hole of like politics or social media
or a comparison.
So the first thing we need to do is we need to understand that really great things are not
accomplished when we're in the urgency mode.
(28:16):
Really great things are accomplished when we hyper focus on what's important.
So as a leader in these times when things are so uncertain, you have to constantly be surfacing
and talking to your team about what is important in the big vision in the picture and then how
does that relate to today in a non urgent manner?
(28:39):
So I'll just use Real-Sea as an example, right?
So in Real-Sea, you know, it's really, really important for you to maintain deep and meaningful
relationships with your past clients, but it's not urgent.
So as a team leader, you know, if I coach many Real-Sea team leaders as an example, one of
the things that you need to do is you need to instill very small practices every day that
(29:03):
allow people to refocus on the big rocks, the important things in their business that
don't have an immediate result, will not produce immediate gratification, but produce very
long-term gratification and extremely big results.
And answering that email about a client needing to drop off a check or answering, you know,
(29:25):
someone texted you about what's the lockpots code, right?
Like even though that feels so urgent, all of a sudden what we're doing is we're getting
into this loop or there are a tornado of urgency.
And what happens is the important things, the big rocks we need to move in our business,
get pushed day by day by day, week by week by week, month by month by month and then year
(29:49):
by year, we never do the important things.
So as a leader, the biggest thing you need to do is simplify down what are the one, two,
or no more than three things that are so important to our business.
And then what's the smallest thing we're going to do today to move forward towards these
important things and then we're going to focus on the urgent stuff.
(30:12):
But if you start your day with important things, eat the frog first, the big rocks, right?
Whatever it is that you, whatever analogy works for you, you have to as a leader be constantly
resurfacing, the important but not urgent things that need to be worked on and then create
a hyper focus on them.
100% and I think that goes back to leading ourselves, right?
(30:36):
I'm talking about the big rocks.
I don't know, like you were saying, I get thousands of emails, all kinds of text messages,
constant calls and pop-ups and this and this and this.
If you're always replying, you're really lost in leading yourself.
And so I want to switch gears and talk prioritizing self-care and your wellbeing.
(31:01):
I know I am somebody who prioritizes healthy selfish habits every single day because I can't
help others if I am not centered in me.
So I know you encourage people to prioritize their wellbeing without feeling guilty.
(31:23):
So how does that impact leadership performance?
It's everything, everything and you use a term I love, healthy selfish, right?
We need to reencil this mindset that it's actually, the word selfish as long as we use it
with healthy, it's actually self-loved and you have to love yourself first or else everyone
(31:47):
else that you're trying to take care of will suffer.
Even if you don't recognize it and we often will use the excuse that we are responding
to the unspool for other people and therefore they have to come before us as an excuse
to not take care of ourselves.
And this happens all the time for business leaders where they're so burned out and so
(32:09):
depleted because all day, every day they're just pouring all this energy into other people
and they forget how important they are to the success of the whole organization.
And when you are a leader and you're fully depleted, your team is going to suffer.
And when you run a family, you're your parent and you are depleted, your kids are going
(32:32):
to suffer.
But when I wake up early in the morning and I fuel my body and I take care of my mind and
I infuse my spirit with energy.
The minute those kids wake up, they feel the full force of me as a parent.
The minute I show up to my team, my team feels my full force of energy and when you do that,
(32:53):
you don't even need to speak.
People will feel you.
They will feel the energy just pouring off of you when you show up in your most powerful
self.
So for everyone on this call, you have to take care of yourself in order to achieve anything
big and use the term healthy selfish.
I'm going to be healthy selfish right now and I'm going to go work out in the morning
(33:17):
or at night or whenever at my day.
And yes, for me, because my business and my schedule, my family are really important
to me.
For me, that means I need to reprioritize my morning and I'm going to wake up early before
anyone else gets up and make sure I start my day in a powerful way.
And it means that at night, I'm not going to binge watch TV.
(33:40):
You know, I'm going to get to bed on time so I can wake up in the morning because I know
the fact that when I invest in myself in this really, really powerful way, bursting in
the morning, the trickled down effect to the people around me is, I can't even tell
you how powerful it will be for the people that surround you.
And I think there's a really passionate right now about really trying to coach people away
(34:05):
from being addicted to cell phones because of the fact that I think if you're listening to
this and the answer is yes, if you sleep with your cell phone right next to your head, there's
a very high likelihood that you are addicted to your cell phone.
And we don't recognize that billions of trillions of dollars have been spent to create a device
(34:26):
that is actually making us unhappy and unhealthy and disconnected.
So my challenge to anyone listening to this is take all your notifications off your phone.
You don't need them.
You don't need to be reminded.
Put your phone across the room at night and challenge yourself to give yourself a little bit
of space in the morning before you dive into text, email, social media because in many
(34:51):
you open up text, email, social media, you're toast.
You're already injecting stress and anxiety and overwhelm and comparison mindset.
So for me, one of my goals is to not have any electronic influence for at least 30 minutes
of my day before I get my day going.
My cell phone is across the room.
(35:18):
I use an alarm clock.
I don't use my cell phone for the alarm.
I wake up.
I've heard it hit it off.
I go downstairs, drink my coffee.
I meditate.
I read.
I get ready to work out.
I go grab my cell phone.
I'll go to the gym.
And this way it allows me to have some space to connect spiritually and emotionally and intellectually
myself.
And then I do use my, you know, I go to the gym and I'll have my cell phone with me.
You know, but at that point, I'm like working out and sweating.
(35:40):
You know, I can deal with anything that's coming in on that cell phone, you know, because reality,
only thing the cell phone brings, 90% of it is bad news.
It's not good news.
So why am I going to wake up in the morning?
And if my kids came to me and said, Hey, dad, should I wake up in the morning, stressed out and overwhelmed or happy and motivated?
And I'm going to say happy and motivated.
(36:02):
But 95% of us, maybe 99% of us are waking up and taking up a device that is making us unhappy.
So if you're listening to this challenge yourself, just do it for a day or a week, right?
And just see if there's an impact.
Turn up all your notifications.
Dedicate yourself to a healthy, selfish routine and challenge yourself to have even if it's a minute or five minutes of space before you pick up and open your cell phone.
(36:30):
I guarantee you're going to see an impact in your life.
More importantly, you're going to see an impact in the lives of the people around you.
I love that. I think there's so much in that.
It's an addiction, right?
It's eyes open and grab the phone.
What happened?
What do I need to do?
And when you open it, the instant reaction is there's all kinds of pop-ups.
(36:53):
So you're already starting your day, like fight or flight, anxious.
And so your wires are scattered, right?
So as hard to maintain focus, the smartest, most brilliant discipline people can't do it.
So if you don't start from a place of control and leading yourself through your morning, I think of the mornings like I'm a super Mario fan.
(37:20):
So I'm going to correlate it to like the star and the mushrooms and supercharging my day, like a battery.
I look at it like a battery. I have so much battery life in my day.
And when I'm constantly in a place of anxiety or reaction or stress,
(37:41):
the battery is depleted quicker and faster.
So true.
So when you start your day, like what you said, where you're leading yourself, you're centering yourself, where do I have to do today?
How am I feeling? Oh, my knee hurts today. Okay, maybe I shouldn't do deadlifts.
Maybe I shouldn't go running. Maybe I should just walk and do upper body.
(38:04):
Now, if you're starting your day in a place of reaction, would you even notice that your knee hurts?
Probably not, because you're focused on what you're doing, not checking in with yourself.
So it's spot on. It's it's healthy selfish and it's self less to be there.
And I love kind of this dialogue because I think so many people, I've gotten into my own obses and doing this during a high stress time in my life.
(38:36):
And so I've done the like litmus test to how I'm feeling without that morning phone versus with the morning phone.
And it's unbelievable the difference.
Crazy. And and and you will feel your initial feeling will be, oh my god, like anxiety, because it is an addiction.
(38:58):
And if it helps, picture your cell phone as a six pack of beer.
Would you wake up and open a beer the first thing? No, no, no one would. But what do we do?
We actually wake up and that's what we're doing because the dopamine hits that they've designed, you actually get a dopamine hit.
When you get a notification and you answer it, it actually is triggering the same thing in your brain as if you were drinking or doing a drug or right like doing something that hits your dopamine.
(39:26):
Now, unfortunately though, the reality is answering that or opening that notification does open a floodgate, but it gives your brain that dopamine hit.
And that's why it's so hard for us to do this because our brain is constantly craving that right?
So it wants to answer the notification. So that's why you take all your notifications off and it gives you a little bit of an ounce of control where you're making a conscious decision to go into text message or email or social media.
(39:55):
You're not you're not battling your own brain because it sees that Instagram message pop up.
You know, post from, you know, whatever your CNN or whatever it might be and you click on it, you know, and all of a sudden now you're in this net, you're reading this news and the stuff that has no impact in your life.
(40:16):
Instead of waking up, meditating, praying, reading, working out, whatever your self-care routine might be, it doesn't matter what it is, but you have to practice it.
You have to.
It's 100%. It's a practice. It is not something that happens overnight and you know, the busiest people in the world if they can figure it out. I promise you can figure it out.
(40:45):
I want to just thank you so much for being here and I want to get any final thoughts or anything you want to leave with our listeners that we may not have touched on.
Yeah, the final thought I'm really passionate about this right now is you are if you're listening to this, I literally want you to say these words out loud like you are enough.
(41:06):
Right. We're constantly being told messages of word not, you know, we're less than comparison. I'm not achieving enough. I'm not doing enough. I'm not, you know, and I really want everyone to just take a really deep breath and pause and just know and say the words like I am enough.
Everything I need I have and recognize that you are the most powerful creator of your own reality. And you can accomplish anything you want when you get really present, really calm.
(41:38):
Practice healthy self-experience. And I just really want to encourage anyone that's out there that's struggling to reach out to someone for help myself.
You know, anyone that's out there in the world that don't sit there and allow yourself to go into this burnout mode, seek help, make yourself better.
Again, to put bring up all circle, just get 1% better every single day.
(42:03):
I love it now. Where can our listeners find you? What's the best way to connect with you on with heart coaching?
So my website is with heartcoaching.com. So nice and easy. That's a good spot. But I also am very active on Instagram. I post, you know, motivational messages or clips.
I try to put a lot of positivity into my social media. So my Instagram account is at sky Michaels SKY E M I C H I E L S. And that's a really great spot.
(42:36):
I answer all my DMs there. And if you want, you can also email me at sky@withheartcoaching.com.
I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your time with us today. That's the Executive Connect podcast.
Any leader out there that leads people in leads a team, you have to have a high confidence level with a low ego.
(00:06):
And you're very effective.
And the reality is, the best leaders build other leaders.
And to build great teams, each person on the team needs to have the capacity to make mistakes, as long as they're learning lessons from them.
The reality is that we all are going to make mistakes.
And when you're afraid to make a mistake, you become really timid and you become really guarded and you become really calculated.
(00:29):
You should be talking 20% of the time and listening 80% of the time.
So if you're a leader and you notice that you're the only one in the room talking, you probably have a little bit of an ego problem going on.
Stressed about keeping your team strong and a chaotic world, meets Sky Michaels.
(00:51):
On today's Executive Connect podcast, we're going to meet him.
He's coached over 30,000 pros and built a heart-driven approach to leadership that's all about you.
I'm locking resilience, boosting morale and growing 1% better every day.
(01:11):
Stick around as we discover how kindness and accountability can transform your team and your life without the burnout.
Welcome, Sky!
And thank you so much for having me on. I'm thrilled to be here.
I love it. I'm so excited to dive in and I'm already scrolling, but my personal motto is 1% better every day.
(01:33):
I love it and I can't wait to dive into it.
So let's talk about your career journey.
First of all, remarkable.
You've led coaching efforts for 30,000 people at Compass, while launching with Heartcoach.
Can you tell us a little bit about that journey?
And what inspired you?
(01:54):
For sure. I'll give you really quickly to my background.
I graduated from Syracuse University as a division one athlete.
I was a high school history teacher.
And I very quickly, once I started teaching, realized how poor I was.
And so I got into Real Estate just as a side gig.
And over decades of selling Real Estate, it really grew into this career-erows coaching and training agents.
(02:15):
And I leveraged my teaching background inside of Real Estate.
And in 2018, I helped Compass launch in Philadelphia, the PA New Jersey Delaware region.
I sort of was a managing director and helped launch it.
And I don't know if you remember this, but we had this little thing called COVID hit in 2020.
(02:36):
Yeah, remember that?
And so we all got shut down.
And I remember I was like leading my region.
And I was so frustrated by the end of March because I was drinking, eating, watching Tiger King.
And I was like, what was in the reality TV shows?
And I'm like, what am I doing?
(02:56):
Yeah, that's what I was doing.
Oh, God.
And it was one of those situations where I sort of said, fuck it.
Like, I'm going to get up at 6am in the morning and I'm going to invite people that I coach
or I manage to do it with me.
So I formed a group called the Six Ambers.
And very quickly it started to spread all across the country.
And in addition, I formed coaching at Compass, which mean 10 other sales managers.
(03:23):
And it was our effort at delivering coaching and training while everyone was in lockdown
at home.
So is the first time where I was able to get really national exposure and then luckily about
a year later I became the head of coaching all across the country for Compass.
So I was traveling around the country and I was delivering a lot of programming virtually
in person individually.
(03:44):
And we had 30,000 agents that we were coaching and training.
And it was such an amazing experience, but I also really, you know, I have two young kids,
not young teenagers now.
And I knew at the end of the day that I'm really a born entrepreneur.
And at the end of the day I was feeling that burnout that you mentioned in the beginning
(04:05):
of the introduction.
And I was just, you know, those days where you just don't feel passionate anymore and
you just feel like you're sort of checking the box off.
And that's not how I'd live my life.
And I knew I needed to make a change.
So at the end of 2023 and into 2024, I made the decision to leave Compass and form my own
(04:26):
coaching company, which is called with-heart coaching.
So that's what I'm doing right now is I'm running this amazing coaching company and delivering
again, coaching virtually and in person and doing speaking engagements with this company
right now.
Yeah, first of all, I do remember those COVID days and I do remember so many of us became
(04:47):
or did things that we weren't super proud of like mindlessly scrolling through whatever
TikTok and watching too much TV and drinking too much alcohol and laying around.
But I think the interesting beauty of that is we opened our mind up to what we should be
doing when we turned off all the distractions.
(05:08):
And we really got focused on what is our life mission, where are we driving towards.
And so one of the things I want to talk about, I love the word resilience.
I don't know why it should spend my word over the last few years.
And I feel like it's such an important word and it's such an important place to building
(05:31):
resilient teams, especially in the world we live today with changing political systems,
changing technology, what's correct on media.
It's really just a unique time to teach people what and how to be resilient.
So can you talk a little bit about how you help leaders cultivate resiliency in their
(05:52):
teams while still maintaining empathy and growing the employees?
Ready to lead smarter and invest wiser?
On the Executive Connect podcast, we unpack executive strategies for wealth and influence.
Hit the subscribe button now.
Don't just watch acts.
(06:14):
And I can't agree more.
I mean, there's never been a time where resiliency is more needed and more necessary in business
leadership and entrepreneurs and anyone that's out there trying to build something big.
If you are not resilient, you will crumble in this day and age.
And it has never been more important.
So for me, when I'm trying to teach people about resiliency, one of the biggest things that
(06:37):
we start with is ego.
And I have a line that I use in my coaching and my training, which is ego is the enemy.
And ego is one of the situations where when our ego rages, it really makes us so incredibly
fragile.
Even when on the outside we may look like we're this big bad, you know, leader and yelling
(07:00):
and screaming and all this stuff and I'm right and all this things.
And the reality is that any leader out there that leads people and leads a team, you have
to have a high confidence level with a low ego to be very effective.
And this is the first step in building resiliency because of the fact that if you have a really high
ego and your ego is raging, all of a sudden you're going to be running a team that is
(07:26):
just waving in the wind and trying to just please you as this egotistical leader.
And the reality is when you're the best leaders, build other leaders.
And to build great teams, each person on the team needs to have the capacity to make mistakes
(07:47):
as long as they're learning lessons from them.
And when you're working for a really someone who has a really big ego and their ego is raging,
what happens as someone on the team, you shrink and you're afraid to make mistakes and learn
lessons from them.
So when I run teams or I'm coaching people who are running teams, the first thing we need
(08:09):
to do is we need to check our ego and make sure the decisions we're making were making
with a really low ego and a high confidence level.
And what that does, it creates an environment for people where they can actually elevate
their game and start to do things at a at a at a greater level because of the fact that
they have the capacity to grow to become the best version of themselves.
(08:34):
And they're not afraid of making a mistake and learning a lesson from it.
The reality is that we all are going to make mistakes.
When you're afraid to make a mistake, you become really timid and you become really guarded
and you become really calculated.
And when you think about someone who's really resilient, they don't have those attributes.
(08:56):
A resilient person is not timid, right?
They're very bold and they make decisions and they move forward.
They constantly get one percent better.
They constantly strive for improvement, right?
They're not afraid to voice their opinion, you know, and have their voice be heard, right?
(09:16):
And again, so that the resilient team leaders or people that are leading people, you have
to start with checking your ego at the door and owning everything in your world.
And when you start to do this, this is one of those big pieces that I think resiliency
and ownership go hand in hand, right?
(09:37):
Because of the fact that if I'm a leader and I have a low ego with a high confidence level
and the people around me know that.
All of a sudden now, they are gaining this idea that they have a lot of ownership in the
process and they're going to elevate above what's required and do more than what's required.
(09:58):
So those are the two things that I think that I start with is number one, let's check
where is your ego?
Where are the issues you're having?
Are these issues being caused by your ego and are these issues being caused by you shutting
your team down because you're raging up here, right?
It's not about you, it's about us.
(10:19):
And then we go back into ownership, right?
What is it?
You have to be any problem on the team is my problem and I own it.
And if every person on the team adopts that mindset and that mantra, you will have the most
resilient team that can withstand anything that's thrown up them because of the fact that
every single person on the team has an ownership mindset and that problem is attacked at all
(10:45):
levels and it creates that resiliency that you want as a leader.
Yeah, 100%.
Let's talk a little bit about what you like mistakes.
I know younger in my career, I was petrified to make a mistake and I would be recovering
perfectionism kind of person.
(11:07):
So I would make sure I was always on point, I didn't make any mistakes fast forward to today.
I personally love mistakes because every time I make a mistake, I'm learning what I did
wrong and what the right way to do things.
And so I've kind of built up that confidence muscle over the years in my career and I wish
(11:28):
I had gone back earlier and been more confident in being comfortable with making mistakes or
asking questions, not out of fear of being judged.
So I love that you mentioned that.
I want to talk a little bit about, like I love that you mentioned the egos.
I think all of us have been around very egotistical, ego-driven people.
(11:52):
So let's talk a little bit about, let's say somebody who works for somebody who is very
egotistical and like the example you gave, they're kind of shrinking in their role.
What are some of the things they can do to work through that?
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Yeah.
The first thing you want to do is you apply this 80/20 rule of, you should be talking 20%
(12:43):
of time and listening 80% of time.
So if you're a leader and you notice that you're the only one in the room talking, you probably
have a little bit of an ego problem going on.
When I'm leading great teams, I actually want to be saying, "Oh, very little."
And I want to be listening to other people talk because now I know that other people are
(13:06):
actually going, "When I do talk, it's going to be extremely powerful and effective."
And I know that other people have a voice in the room and feel heard and seen.
And therefore they're going to be striving and working harder for me and towards the goal,
whatever the goals are, objectives we're trying to accomplish.
So the first thing you want to do is ask yourself that 80/20 rule.
(13:27):
Am I talking, I should only be talking 20% of time and I should be listening 80% of the
time.
So your next team meeting almost do like have a little in the back of your mind, have a
mental check or if you have a great operations manager who you trust, you could even say,
"Hey, let's record this meeting."
And you know, you don't need to do this scientifically, but just sort of keep track of how much
(13:50):
I'm talking versus how much I'm allowing other people to talk.
And it's a really great way to sort of test this egotistical theory and see if you have
this going on.
The other thing is if you notice that you are constantly frustrated by other people and
the actions that they're doing or not doing, it could be because of the fact that you
(14:15):
have an ego or an ownership problem as well.
So if you notice you're going home at the end of the day and your partner or your wife,
your husband or whoever it is at home and all you're doing is complaining about the people
you work for, often we need to look in the mirror and say, "Wait a minute, what am I doing
to contribute to these problems?"
(14:35):
Or what am I doing to actually not create a powerful environment where again, I'm allowing
people to make a mistake but not make a mistake and be punished for it, make the mistake
and grow from it.
And that's it, I think the key thing we need to start to think about.
And these are some of the signs you need to look out for as a leader is am I frustrated
(14:59):
because people aren't doing something?
Most likely, it's a you problem, not a them problem.
You either didn't explain it well enough, you don't have the right systems in place,
there is an environment that you have created that's not collaborative, right?
Or whatever it might be.
You don't know the exact circumstances but you always as a leader needs to be looking
(15:21):
in the mirror and double checking yourself.
And I actually keep a piece of paper with me at all times, it's a Roman parable.
So in Rome, when the military leader, the emperor would win a military campaign, they would
put a parade back into the city of Rome, they would put a slave in their left ear, whispering,
(15:45):
"Ego is the enemy, ego is the enemy."
As a reminder that no matter what you do, you always got to make sure the real enemy is
your ego and you always have to be checking it.
And that's the real key to growth and the real key to success is actually creating a world
where you are really, really confident and really, really low ego or really humble.
(16:07):
And it's a really interesting dichotomy to sort of walk down when you can create that.
Yeah, I love it.
It made me think my mom always to tell us, "Is kid you have two ears in one mouth?
We got to use them proportionately."
And so that always runs in my head.
I want to talk a little bit about leading with the heart and really the power of kindness
(16:29):
and accountability.
I know you've often spoke about leading with heart and balancing kindness and accountability.
How can leaders incorporate these values while driving results for their organizations?
It's one of my favorite topics because I think we've been fed a little bit of a lie in business
(16:49):
and in our leadership environments that you need to actually be hustling and grinding
and doing things that you see this on Instagram or YouTube, right?
All these, like, ultra-masculine messages around like hustle grind.
And this hustle and grind culture, I think, is actually when you are in that hustle and
(17:11):
grind culture.
It's actually accomplished way less than when you are in a culture of kindness and empowerment.
And it's a really, again, it's an interesting dichotomy, right?
Because you can't, kindness is mistaken for being walked over or like being a pushover.
That's not what kindness is.
Right?
(17:31):
Kindness is being able to lead and make the people around you feel and know that they matter
to you.
And that is like, if we define kindness in that way, all of a sudden now, your power and
your influence over people is multiplied tenfold as opposed to you pushing people to their
(17:54):
breaking point where they feel like they don't matter and the only thing that matters are
your KPIs, your objectives, your goals, whatever it might be in hitting those things.
When people feel like you, they matter to you and you are leading with that kindness or
heart or care, they'll do anything for you.
(18:16):
They'll push so hard for you.
And that is one of the key factors that we need to start to adopt in business culture
is we need people to feel and know that they matter to us.
And it's not that we're not going to have standards.
It's not that we're going to hold people in standards.
It's that we are going to allow them to become the best versions of themselves because
(18:37):
of the fact they do feel like they matter.
And you can relate this, think about your family, your family, you would do anything for your
family, your kids, your husband, your spouse, your parents, etc.
And the reason is, they're family, but they also matter to you and they know that.
And when something matters to you, you will work so hard to strive and achieve that.
(19:01):
So I think a lot of leaders that are out there listening to this, you got to ask yourself
the question, do do my people know and feel that they matter to me?
And it can't be, if you just go in and say, hey, you matter to me, great job, everyone.
It can't just be this verbal, you know, diarrhea that you're spewing, right?
It actually has to be done in actions and in feelings and in like the policies you implement,
(19:29):
the way you run meetings, the way that you talk to individuals, right?
If you look and you know nothing about an individual's life, most likely your team is not
functioning at its highest level, right?
Because at the end of the day, we need to know that people, people need to know that they
(19:50):
matter to us in order for them to start to really work at their optimal level.
And again, it really, really goes back to that ownership kind of a principle as well.
So when someone knows that, yeah, I agree.
And I think people realize when it's transactional, right?
(20:10):
They realize that, you know, hey, Sky, how's your day going?
Okay, so what we got to do now is get started.
Like they know that we're just checking a box, like there's no boss and we're bulldozing
to the next thing.
I think in a culture and a world that's so get it done yesterday, you know, what are you
(20:30):
doing for me today and transactional when you're not leading with your heart, people can tell
that you're just kind of showing up.
And so I, first of all, I love your shirt.
I always feel like I'm personally under construction.
So I love this shirt.
I need to get it.
I want to talk about continuous improvement and kind of what I said at the beginning,
(20:53):
the principle of one percent better every day.
I love that.
How can, let's talk a little bit about breaking that out and what it means and how can organizations
create a culture of continuous improvement and becoming better while driving results?
Can you share a little bit about how companies can do this?
(21:16):
Well, I think, and again, going back into sort of this shift we've seen inside our culture
of we only care about the results.
We don't care about the process and the systems that got us to those results.
A lot of our companies, a lot of our leaders, you know, when you're only focused on the
results and you don't focus on the small, tiny, atomic steps that it just gets to these
(21:40):
results or what you strive to get to, what happens is you're creating a situation where
people feel that what they're doing does not matter and that they're never going to be successful
in anything that they do.
The key to this concept of accomplishing really, really big results goes back into almost
(22:03):
ignoring what the result is and only hyper focusing on the moment.
There's a line I use that I try to teach people.
I call it, "I didn't create it.
I heard this.
Be where your feet are."
If we imagine life or anything we're trying to accomplish as a mountain that has no top
that you're just continually climbing and you think of this world where we live in, a
(22:24):
lot of people have so much anxiety about getting to the top or getting to the result they're
striving for that they have no idea where their feet are and they trip up and they get
so messed up in the moment.
And then they look behind them and they say, "With regret and judgment and all that stuff
and the real key is being where your feet are and then telling yourself, I'm just going
(22:45):
to get 1% better today.
What is the smallest thing I can do today or in this moment that will move me one step forward
and one step closer up this mountain knowing that it's never going to end.
There's never a top to the mountain because the minute I achieve the result I'm striving
for, what am I going to do?
I'm going to create another result.
(23:06):
I'm going to create another goal.
I'm going to create another destination that I'm striving for.
So the idea of 1% better every day really goes into finding joy and enjoyment in the journey
not in the destination, right?
Not in the results.
And the reality, like we all get obsessed, let's just take health, for example, like,
(23:27):
hey, I want to lose weight.
Well the reality is if we lose 10, 15, 20 pounds, that will be achieved that result.
That was an effort of months and months of little, small, tiny decisions we made to
get there.
It wasn't the result that mattered.
It was the decisions in the moment that mattered.
And that whole concept of being where your feet are and accepting that where I am right
(23:52):
now is exactly where I was meant to be.
And what is this 1% thing that I can do that is going to move me forward towards a goal
that I want to achieve, right?
And that's a key.
I think that's so great.
I started this three years ago, this kind of, at the time, I'm like, this is a goofy practice,
but I want to start writing more, like handwriting.
(24:14):
And so I started writing every day, something I learned that day.
It could be something I learned about me and something I learned about my family or the
kids or my neighbors.
And it's crazy when I go back and look at the 1% better, how much we are just learning
(24:35):
growing, experiencing beings, just trying to do a good job while being light.
And so I think when you chop things up in 1%, like you were saying, the gym is a perfect
example.
And I thought early in my career, I had to eat that, that elephant, one bite in one big bite.
(24:56):
And I'd go out at my day and I'd go after that one big bite and I couldn't do it.
I just, no matter how many hours I worked and how hard I tried, it wasn't happening.
But when I took it, like you were saying, 1% better, it was amazing how easy it was to
do the things when you look at it in smaller segments versus the full bite.
(25:22):
I think the other thing to add on top of that too is that we often don't celebrate our
wins enough. And when you only celebrate the result, right?
Once a year, we're going to celebrate the award ceremony.
Are we hit the sales goals?
And that's a once a year celebration.
But the reality is we were born on this earth to be happy and joyful and have fun and
(25:44):
wake up and be excited about our day.
So when you can also add a small level of celebration into that 1% accomplishment, that's
another big thing.
I'm not saying like every day you get a trophy, right?
But if there's something you can do that celebrates the fact that you improve that day, it allows
(26:05):
you to really experience the joy of the journey into the goal in this every day kind of a
way.
So you writing down your one win is a real, that's a form of celebration that, you know, it's
such a powerful thing because you actually are acknowledging what you did that day that
got made you better.
(26:26):
And that's so huge.
And it again, it allowed you to celebrate that accomplishment 365 times in a year, you know,
that's so great.
Yeah.
And you just funny to go look back at some of this stuff.
I'm like, wow, was that that hard for me back then?
Yeah.
And today things that were, you know, the hardest things back then are like the easiest things
(26:49):
now.
Yeah.
I want to switch a little bit.
I feel like right now in the world, everybody is uncertain.
They're not confident.
They're struggling with what's going on with the economy and politics and all the M and
A activity.
So the world is rapidly changing.
There's a lot of uncertainty.
(27:12):
Leaders are navigating really tough times and uncharted waters.
So how can we prepare leaders effectively to lead their teams when all they can do is
they can focus on is, you know, the stock market or who's in the, you know, the White House
or whatever else is going on around them.
(27:32):
So how do we keep morale high at the same time?
Oh, so such a great question.
I know one that I'd probably help people deal with every single day.
The very first thing we need to do is we, we as a culture have become obsessed with the
urgency, right?
Like, what is the most urgent thing that is flashing across our plate?
(27:52):
And I think, you know, again, I'm holding myself on for anyone that's listening, right?
I pull up my cell phone and there's all these beeps and blinges and notifications and I
click on it and all of a sudden I'm in this black hole of like politics or social media
or a comparison.
So the first thing we need to do is we need to understand that really great things are not
accomplished when we're in the urgency mode.
(28:16):
Really great things are accomplished when we hyper focus on what's important.
So as a leader in these times when things are so uncertain, you have to constantly be surfacing
and talking to your team about what is important in the big vision in the picture and then how
does that relate to today in a non urgent manner?
(28:39):
So I'll just use Real-Sea as an example, right?
So in Real-Sea, you know, it's really, really important for you to maintain deep and meaningful
relationships with your past clients, but it's not urgent.
So as a team leader, you know, if I coach many Real-Sea team leaders as an example, one of
the things that you need to do is you need to instill very small practices every day that
(29:03):
allow people to refocus on the big rocks, the important things in their business that
don't have an immediate result, will not produce immediate gratification, but produce very
long-term gratification and extremely big results.
And answering that email about a client needing to drop off a check or answering, you know,
(29:25):
someone texted you about what's the lockpots code, right?
Like even though that feels so urgent, all of a sudden what we're doing is we're getting
into this loop or there are a tornado of urgency.
And what happens is the important things, the big rocks we need to move in our business,
get pushed day by day by day, week by week by week, month by month by month and then year
(29:49):
by year, we never do the important things.
So as a leader, the biggest thing you need to do is simplify down what are the one, two,
or no more than three things that are so important to our business.
And then what's the smallest thing we're going to do today to move forward towards these
important things and then we're going to focus on the urgent stuff.
(30:12):
But if you start your day with important things, eat the frog first, the big rocks, right?
Whatever it is that you, whatever analogy works for you, you have to as a leader be constantly
resurfacing, the important but not urgent things that need to be worked on and then create
a hyper focus on them.
100% and I think that goes back to leading ourselves, right?
(30:36):
I'm talking about the big rocks.
I don't know, like you were saying, I get thousands of emails, all kinds of text messages,
constant calls and pop-ups and this and this and this.
If you're always replying, you're really lost in leading yourself.
And so I want to switch gears and talk prioritizing self-care and your wellbeing.
(31:01):
I know I am somebody who prioritizes healthy selfish habits every single day because I can't
help others if I am not centered in me.
So I know you encourage people to prioritize their wellbeing without feeling guilty.
(31:23):
So how does that impact leadership performance?
It's everything, everything and you use a term I love, healthy selfish, right?
We need to reencil this mindset that it's actually, the word selfish as long as we use it
with healthy, it's actually self-loved and you have to love yourself first or else everyone
(31:47):
else that you're trying to take care of will suffer.
Even if you don't recognize it and we often will use the excuse that we are responding
to the unspool for other people and therefore they have to come before us as an excuse
to not take care of ourselves.
And this happens all the time for business leaders where they're so burned out and so
(32:09):
depleted because all day, every day they're just pouring all this energy into other people
and they forget how important they are to the success of the whole organization.
And when you are a leader and you're fully depleted, your team is going to suffer.
And when you run a family, you're your parent and you are depleted, your kids are going
(32:32):
to suffer.
But when I wake up early in the morning and I fuel my body and I take care of my mind and
I infuse my spirit with energy.
The minute those kids wake up, they feel the full force of me as a parent.
The minute I show up to my team, my team feels my full force of energy and when you do that,
(32:53):
you don't even need to speak.
People will feel you.
They will feel the energy just pouring off of you when you show up in your most powerful
self.
So for everyone on this call, you have to take care of yourself in order to achieve anything
big and use the term healthy selfish.
I'm going to be healthy selfish right now and I'm going to go work out in the morning
(33:17):
or at night or whenever at my day.
And yes, for me, because my business and my schedule, my family are really important
to me.
For me, that means I need to reprioritize my morning and I'm going to wake up early before
anyone else gets up and make sure I start my day in a powerful way.
And it means that at night, I'm not going to binge watch TV.
(33:40):
You know, I'm going to get to bed on time so I can wake up in the morning because I know
the fact that when I invest in myself in this really, really powerful way, bursting in
the morning, the trickled down effect to the people around me is, I can't even tell
you how powerful it will be for the people that surround you.
And I think there's a really passionate right now about really trying to coach people away
(34:05):
from being addicted to cell phones because of the fact that I think if you're listening to
this and the answer is yes, if you sleep with your cell phone right next to your head, there's
a very high likelihood that you are addicted to your cell phone.
And we don't recognize that billions of trillions of dollars have been spent to create a device
(34:26):
that is actually making us unhappy and unhealthy and disconnected.
So my challenge to anyone listening to this is take all your notifications off your phone.
You don't need them.
You don't need to be reminded.
Put your phone across the room at night and challenge yourself to give yourself a little bit
of space in the morning before you dive into text, email, social media because in many
(34:51):
you open up text, email, social media, you're toast.
You're already injecting stress and anxiety and overwhelm and comparison mindset.
So for me, one of my goals is to not have any electronic influence for at least 30 minutes
of my day before I get my day going.
My cell phone is across the room.
(35:18):
I use an alarm clock.
I don't use my cell phone for the alarm.
I wake up.
I've heard it hit it off.
I go downstairs, drink my coffee.
I meditate.
I read.
I get ready to work out.
I go grab my cell phone.
I'll go to the gym.
And this way it allows me to have some space to connect spiritually and emotionally and intellectually
myself.
And then I do use my, you know, I go to the gym and I'll have my cell phone with me.
You know, but at that point, I'm like working out and sweating.
(35:40):
You know, I can deal with anything that's coming in on that cell phone, you know, because reality,
only thing the cell phone brings, 90% of it is bad news.
It's not good news.
So why am I going to wake up in the morning?
And if my kids came to me and said, Hey, dad, should I wake up in the morning, stressed out and overwhelmed or happy and motivated?
And I'm going to say happy and motivated.
(36:02):
But 95% of us, maybe 99% of us are waking up and taking up a device that is making us unhappy.
So if you're listening to this challenge yourself, just do it for a day or a week, right?
And just see if there's an impact.
Turn up all your notifications.
Dedicate yourself to a healthy, selfish routine and challenge yourself to have even if it's a minute or five minutes of space before you pick up and open your cell phone.
(36:30):
I guarantee you're going to see an impact in your life.
More importantly, you're going to see an impact in the lives of the people around you.
I love that. I think there's so much in that.
It's an addiction, right?
It's eyes open and grab the phone.
What happened?
What do I need to do?
And when you open it, the instant reaction is there's all kinds of pop-ups.
(36:53):
So you're already starting your day, like fight or flight, anxious.
And so your wires are scattered, right?
So as hard to maintain focus, the smartest, most brilliant discipline people can't do it.
So if you don't start from a place of control and leading yourself through your morning, I think of the mornings like I'm a super Mario fan.
(37:20):
So I'm going to correlate it to like the star and the mushrooms and supercharging my day, like a battery.
I look at it like a battery. I have so much battery life in my day.
And when I'm constantly in a place of anxiety or reaction or stress,
(37:41):
the battery is depleted quicker and faster.
So true.
So when you start your day, like what you said, where you're leading yourself, you're centering yourself, where do I have to do today?
How am I feeling? Oh, my knee hurts today. Okay, maybe I shouldn't do deadlifts.
Maybe I shouldn't go running. Maybe I should just walk and do upper body.
(38:04):
Now, if you're starting your day in a place of reaction, would you even notice that your knee hurts?
Probably not, because you're focused on what you're doing, not checking in with yourself.
So it's spot on. It's it's healthy selfish and it's self less to be there.
And I love kind of this dialogue because I think so many people, I've gotten into my own obses and doing this during a high stress time in my life.
(38:36):
And so I've done the like litmus test to how I'm feeling without that morning phone versus with the morning phone.
And it's unbelievable the difference.
Crazy. And and and you will feel your initial feeling will be, oh my god, like anxiety, because it is an addiction.
(38:58):
And if it helps, picture your cell phone as a six pack of beer.
Would you wake up and open a beer the first thing? No, no, no one would. But what do we do?
We actually wake up and that's what we're doing because the dopamine hits that they've designed, you actually get a dopamine hit.
When you get a notification and you answer it, it actually is triggering the same thing in your brain as if you were drinking or doing a drug or right like doing something that hits your dopamine.
(39:26):
Now, unfortunately though, the reality is answering that or opening that notification does open a floodgate, but it gives your brain that dopamine hit.
And that's why it's so hard for us to do this because our brain is constantly craving that right?
So it wants to answer the notification. So that's why you take all your notifications off and it gives you a little bit of an ounce of control where you're making a conscious decision to go into text message or email or social media.
(39:55):
You're not you're not battling your own brain because it sees that Instagram message pop up.
You know, post from, you know, whatever your CNN or whatever it might be and you click on it, you know, and all of a sudden now you're in this net, you're reading this news and the stuff that has no impact in your life.
(40:16):
Instead of waking up, meditating, praying, reading, working out, whatever your self-care routine might be, it doesn't matter what it is, but you have to practice it.
You have to.
It's 100%. It's a practice. It is not something that happens overnight and you know, the busiest people in the world if they can figure it out. I promise you can figure it out.
(40:45):
I want to just thank you so much for being here and I want to get any final thoughts or anything you want to leave with our listeners that we may not have touched on.
Yeah, the final thought I'm really passionate about this right now is you are if you're listening to this, I literally want you to say these words out loud like you are enough.
(41:06):
Right. We're constantly being told messages of word not, you know, we're less than comparison. I'm not achieving enough. I'm not doing enough. I'm not, you know, and I really want everyone to just take a really deep breath and pause and just know and say the words like I am enough.
Everything I need I have and recognize that you are the most powerful creator of your own reality. And you can accomplish anything you want when you get really present, really calm.
(41:38):
Practice healthy self-experience. And I just really want to encourage anyone that's out there that's struggling to reach out to someone for help myself.
You know, anyone that's out there in the world that don't sit there and allow yourself to go into this burnout mode, seek help, make yourself better.
Again, to put bring up all circle, just get 1% better every single day.
(42:03):
I love it now. Where can our listeners find you? What's the best way to connect with you on with heart coaching?
So my website is with heartcoaching.com. So nice and easy. That's a good spot. But I also am very active on Instagram. I post, you know, motivational messages or clips.
I try to put a lot of positivity into my social media. So my Instagram account is at sky Michaels SKY E M I C H I E L S. And that's a really great spot.
(42:36):
I answer all my DMs there. And if you want, you can also email me at sky@withheartcoaching.com.
I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your time with us today. That's the Executive Connect podcast.
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