We only have one vehicle in life with which we traverse all the terrains we encounter: our body. Making sure, that as a CEO or owner, you take care of yourself is instrumental to your day to day business operations. Whether it’s the physical body, the mind, or the spirit, being in tip top shape is an asset. As Jason Loeb likes to say, “The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.” Being healthy is a great starting point because it means you have energy. When you’re energetic you’re better able to motivate your team, multi-task, control your emotions during high stress situations, and travel. Building a business, operating a business, scaling a business, and growing teams (whether building leaders or closing partnerships) requires fuel in the tank. We’ve all been there, where if even one of these elements (the body, the mind, or the spirit) is off or missing, we lose our emotional control, our ability to handle stress, our clarity, and we can no longer motivate ourselves or help in driving others. Good health and a sharp mind allow you to retain your clarity for any difficult decisions that may arise. Good health and high energy are a must in effectively achieving your goals.
A healthy mind lends itself to more sound decisions in real time
You start by focusing on a clear mind so that you can concentrate on your goals, stay consistent with your progress, and reflect on your lessons learned. Meditation or walks in nature are both great places to begin. Your internal monologue is a close second. Always make sure to stand guard at your mind’s entryway (it may be you or those close to you, that accidentally fill it with negative thoughts). A positive mindset is instrumental to growing or building anything, especially a business or close relationships. People can feel your state of mind, and if it unfolds down a less than optimal pass for too long, it can reflect in your work, you style of dress, your expressions, as well as your actions. Aim to surround yourself with positive and happy people so that you can continue to grow and show up in your most optimal form ready to contribute towards helping others.
With diet and exercise, you set yourself up to be primed
Diet and exercise; this is a popular one that’s often advertised, but how can you get there? You’ve got to be organized. You’ve got to have a plan. If you plan your days in advance and set a schedule that is optimal for you, you can integrate exercise and a healthy diet into your day to day. Just like with business planing, you should be taking care of your body’s needs throughout the day to ensure your energy levels stay high (this will lead to success in your endeavors). Get a head start on each day, be lenient with yourself when you have the inevitable lapses, and stay the course. The better you know yourself, the better you can plan, and the better you plan for lapses and habits in your patterns of behavior, than the better you can stay the course.
Focusing on health, and being in tip-top shape, puts you in a prime position to excel. Running a business can be difficult and obstacles or problems can arise quickly so you need to be able to handle anything that may come your way, fast and efficiently. CEO’s are not only leaders but they are operators. Making decisions, setting an example, motivating others, closing deals, selling a product or a service, de-escalating situations, and making an impact are all the bare minimum. What a CEO is really doing is creating something out of nothing, taking the initiative to fulfill a vision, brining people together, improving lives, and contributing to keeping the enterprise of what has come to be known as capitalism going. Providing goods or services, that have value in the marketplace, while ensuring the hard work is paying off in the tangible impact seen while putting smiles on people’s faces.
Compartmentalize your focus and guard your mind from negativity
As a CEO, you have a lot of questions to answer (often from all of the departments). Problems in business flow up to the decision-maker, and everyone on the team will be looking to the leader to set the example, provide the approach, and make the call. If your mind is elsewhere, your focus is clouded, or if you’re not feeling great, then it can be easy to lash out with misdirected frustration, not quite thinking an answer or solution (to a problem) through to it’s logical conclusion. Surrounding yourself with the wrong people can be an energy drain that compounds the difficulty level in such endeavors while surrounding yourself with a curated and trusted group of positive like-minded individuals can be a boost. Always ensure you choose the right leaders to surround youself with and built a solid team that embody your principles (so when you are off your game, or have the occasional off kilter day, those that you’ve entrusted with the business will have your back). It is more effective to have multiple playmakers, and independent leaders, at multiple levels of the business (who understand the brand and the flow of operations) than it is to have one sole decision-maker at the top. Consistency and sustainability, in planning for a long term run of successes and wins, is key.
Vigilance in business is a must and for Jason Loeb, “being in the people business,” means finding people and meeting them where they are. An entrepreneur that’s inclined to share secrets with industry peers and to build within an industry all together, Jason surrounds himself with entrepreneurial go getters that always stay healthy (abound with high energy). Positive states of mind are not only abound within the Sudsies culture inherently, but employees constantly nurture and feed each other (as a unified team) to keep the mission driving forward. A high energy state allows you to always know what your purpose is, who you’re talking to and to what end; be cognizant of the impact you want to make on others and put your health and energy first so that you can’t miss in achieving your goals. Prime yourself to be able to take action so that you can execute effectively, when it matters most. Foster positivity along the way.
Learn to say “no” if you need to and rest when your body demands it. This will not only ensure your endurance in the long term, but it will also eliminate unnecessary mental dissonance (allowing you to focus on what matters most, when, and on what urgently needs your attention, with the “why” in mind). One crack in a wooden door can lead to the whole door splitting into two, so ensure that not even the smallest of signs goes unnoticed or unattended to. By catching problems proactively when they’re small we prevent bigger problems down the line (and this is especially true in health and energy). Take action early and often, and use momentum to build the foundations of your routine.
Good health is a journey that never ends
Stay up to date. Energy levels change, as do diets and best practices. By being ahead of the curve on new developments and knowledge, you won’t run the risk of plateuing. What worked in the past may not also work today, and so we have to continue to innovate. Be open to necessary adjustments, learn how to track and analyze key metrics, and be quick to pivot when a change of course or in your approach is required. Finding new approaches may not only get you results faster, but it may also build stronger habits in effectiveness as you strengthen your proverbial toolbox. Discover what the things that cause you to become distracted are, and set up your environment so that they’re not even around. Any hacks you can use, to automate as much of the health journey as possible, will only serve to make you a better version of yourself (and a more optimal and effective CEO). Live the healthy lifestyle.
3 Take-aways for good health and high energy, as a CEO:
- Mind, body, and spirit need to all be optimal because “how you do one thing, is how you do everything.” Like cylinders in a car, these three elements of good health and high energy need to work together and fuel each other. By having a synergetic approach to health, diet, and business, you ensure that no element goes missing in supporting the whole endeavor. Acheiving goals is something that happens when cylinders are firing on all fronts, and not just one. Just like it takes a team or a village to grow any endeavor, it takes a team effort to be set up for success (that’s mind, body, health, environment, habits, support, and adjustments if need be). Chronicle everything and work on maintaining what is optimal, while reducing what is not.
- The energy, improvements, and education you pour into yourself will benefit your business and those around you. Think of yourself as an origin point. Make it so that all that is good, impactful, and helpful starts inside of you and finds its way into being shared with the hearts and minds of others. By inspiring and elevating yourself to a positive disposition, you set yourself up to lift others and spread the findings. Success is growth and by enforcing consistency in your own day to day, you become an example of success that is driven by good health and high energy. The learning should never end.
- Momentum lends itself to doing good through actions. Negative energy can not only demotivate a person but also a whole room, and bad health does not only stop time, it could also reverse progress that you’ve previously achieved. Be proactive. Strive to get ahead of things and to squash problems when they’re small. Reduce the momentum the obstacles you face have and increase the momentum you exhibit as a force for greater impact. If you are in the habit of taking care of yourself daily, then when the need arises to take care of another that’s in need, you won’t hesitate. Momentum is a pattern that breeds consistent action and with time, you set yourself up to automatically strive towards making a bigger and bigger difference in the world. Make success automatic and good health a requirement.
