Sep
02, 2020

EPISODE 14 – Massive Life Performance Hack!

By mick | September 2, 2020

Welcome to another episode of Builder’s Business Success Podcast!

 

The purpose of the podcast, if this is your first time listening is to get rid of as many of the pain causing issues in running a building business. The majority are caused by just those building industry norms. And so they’re not that difficult to change apart from everybody does them. So some of these things are gonna be quite challenging.

 

To most people when they’re listening to it, because that’s what they’ve been doing for a long, long time. And we’re sort of pushing the envelope with thinking about things in a different way, but that’s how we create change.

 

The Interview

I’ve got a terrific conversation with a buddy of mine, his name’s James Swanwick. In fact, James is a repeat offender, which means he’s been on the show before, not that long ago where we were talking about the Swannies glasses and the benefits. While I was talking to him, I spoke to him about a program that he’s doing all about giving up alcohol.

 

This episode is all about you. It’s all about the change and the improvements that we can make to our business just by changing what we do and what we think, because we’re always looking for improvements for our business, but we tend to look outside of ourselves at systems and procedures and how to make our team better and all that sort of thing. But we never really look inwards and go, Well, what can we change?

 

Here’s the scoop folks is that there is nothing more powerful, nothing more high leverage toward the success or otherwise of a business, than the business owner themselves.

 

We’re gonna have a chat with James Swanwick, about changing some habits. And I think you’ll be pretty perhaps confronted, but interested in some things that he’s gonna talk about that perhaps you didn’t know.

The Regular Segments

 

We’re doing a book review and this is gonna make a whole lot of sense, as far as the theme for this episode is concerned.

 

I’m gonna answer a really important question. As the question I get asked most by most builders and the answer again, might surprise you.

 

And of course, we’re going to do the, What’d I say? Because the cameras were rolling and I did say something worthwhile this week.

 

Links

James Swanwick & his services – https://www.jamesswanwick.com/

 

The Power Of Habit – https://charlesduhigg.com/the-power-of-habit/

 

Contact James’ Email – [email protected]

 

*Transcription of the show*

 

Hear my conversation with James Swanwick!

So as I mentioned, our guest in this week’s episode is James Swanwick, repeat offender. He’s the man all about these glasses and Swannies. And he’s been on the show talking about those before.

 

In this episode, I’m talking to James about his alcohol program and the massive benefits that you can gain by at least eliminating, if not giving it away completely, as I said, it’s probably a little

confronting for some people and they’ll go, no, no, no, don’t take that away from me.

 

Folks, it’s all about choice. All we want you to be is informed. So he is one of the leading experts in this area to be able to help people get that out of their lives and be able to enjoy the benefits from it.

 

So I had a chat with him, and I began by asking, how did he get involved in this journey?

 

– Well, I was a societally acceptable drinker growing up in Australia, in the sense that I’d have a couple drinks each night to wind down from work. On the weekends I might have a few more, very rarely did I get drunk or do anything stupid. You know, I was just like, you have a couple drinks, have a few drinks here and there.

 

What I found when I got into my mid thirties was that my sleep was starting to struggle. I’d put on about 25 pounds, probably about maybe 12, 15 kilos over the course of about 18 months or so. I just felt lethargic and tired, I wasn’t clearheaded. I kind of felt foggy and lethargic.

 

To make clear, I wasn’t rock bottom. I certainly wasn’t an alcoholic. It was just that I felt like my life was just kind of blah, you know, it’s just like average. And then 2010, I woke up one morning and only had two gin and tonics the night before, I had been in Austin, Texas at the South by Southwest festival.

 

– Yeah. And I had gone out to an industry party. I had two free gin and tonics from the open bar, went home to my hotel, fell asleep, woke up the next morning. And I looked in the mirror and I just went, “Oh man!” I could taste the gin in my mouth, the fat roll was kind of like hanging over my pajamas. I was kind of like, “Oh man”. And I had crow’s feet and like, my skin was all dry. And I went through this, IHOP next door to the hotel I was staying in. IHOP is like International House of Pancakes.

 

– Right. And I sat there and I’m like, “Oh man, what am I doing? What am I doing in an IHOP? Why do I feel crappy? Everything in my life is just, feels like a six, six and a half out of 10.

 

So I just said, You know what? “I’m just gonna quit for 30 days and see what happens.” So I did, I committed to 30 days without alcohol. And in 30 days I lost six kilos, my skin improved, I slept better, I got my dream job at the time, I auditioned to be a TV host on “SportsCenter” on ESPN. And I got the job.

 

I had productivity, had focus, had energy. And I was like, “You know what? I’m just gonna keep on going here and see what happens.” And I haven’t drunk since, I haven’t drunk since 2010. About five years into it, after I built two businesses and attracted great relationships and lost more weight and got an energy.

 

So many people asked me about quitting drinking that I actually just created a program to help people to quit drinking, either in the short term or the longterm. And it’s helped about 20,000 people now.

 

– Yeah, it’s awesome.

 

– And people now make more money, feel better, sleep, better, attract great relationships, great peak-performance hack. If you can reduce or quit alcohol.

 

– People always seem to find evidence to support what they believe; whether we should eat meat, whether we should eat dairy, whether we should, shouldn’t do this, blah, blah, blah. We can always find evidence to support what we want to believe.

 

But I think it’s really important to ask and find out about the opposing view to what we believe just so we can make more balanced and informed decisions. So I asked James, what is the latest information that we’re starting to see about the alcohol, either being valuable to our health or not?

 

– Well, the World Health Organization said recently that there is zero nutritional, zero health benefits to alcohol at all. The American Cancer Association about five weeks ago, recommended that people drink zero amounts of alcohol. They used to say, “Oh, it’s okay to just drink sparingly.” Now they say zero.

 

– Yeah.

 

– There’s this famous study that came out in the late 80s, 90s in France that said, “A drink a day is good for your heart health.” If you really go and research that, you’ll see that, that was funded by one of the wine companies.

 

And also that, that has been, that study has been debunked now multiple times as new studies have taken place over time. Here’s the thing; one seemingly innocent glass of red wine or one seemingly innocent beer, at the end of the day to wind down, is all it takes for your sleep to be compromised, for you to be a little bit irritable in the morning, for you to be a little bit less focused, for you to be a little bit more lethargic, for you to make just a few more poor decisions throughout the day, for you to just eat a little bit more poorly.

 

Now you put on a few more kgs, now because you put on a few more kgs. You’re a little bit less confident, because you’re a little bit less confident, you’re now a little bit more irritable. And now the cycle continues, because you now wanna seek refuge in just having a seemingly innocent beer or wine at the end of the day.

 

That seemingly innocent wine or beer, or whatever you’re drinking, is probably costing you at least a hundred thousand dollars a year in your business right now, because you’re not operating at an eight and a half or a nine out of 10.

 

You’re only operating at maybe a seven, maybe a six and a half out of 10. So if you can remove that alcohol; you will sleep better, have more clarity, more focus, more energy, make better decisions.

 

And that will result in hundreds of thousand dollars more in business revenue, the loss of unwanted fat, the improvement of your relationship with your husband or your wife or your children, or whoever, your colleagues, your staff, people who work for you. It’s just a game changer in terms of peak performance.

 

Yeah.

 

I don’t know about you, but changing things and perhaps using the good old, new year’s resolution style of trying to create change, makes things really difficult. And it doesn’t last very long.

 

So I asked James, what are the challenges? What are the roadblocks that get in front of us when we’re trying to change something that we want to change? We know it’s not good for us, but we still don’t make the change.

 

– Yeah, well people… Because society has indoctrinated us into believing that alcohol is something fun and desirable. When we are depriving ourselves of alcohol, we think that we’re in a prison, right? And so what do prisoners wanna do, they want to break out of prison and be free.

 

– Yeah.

 

– So when you’re doing like a 30 day challenge or a 90 day challenge, and then you’re thinking all, you’ll be able to go back to drinking on day 90.

 

You’re looking at alcohol as something beautiful and desirable and fun and like something that under normal circumstances, everyone just wants! Everyone wants this beautiful thing.

 

Here’s the thing, all it is, is attractively packaged poison. That’s all it is. And I work with business owners I work with entrepreneurs, I work with top level executives.

 

A lot of the business owners who come to me will say, “Oh, look up, I know that your program is helping people quit for 90 days, but I kind of want really to reassess a day 90 and probably go back to drinking, but at a much more reduced rate.

 

And, I say to them, I say, “Well, just give me 90 days, if you feel like you want to drink on day 90 day 91, I will feel like I have failed you. I’m gonna rewire your brain for the next 90 days.

 

So you stop looking at alcohol as something desirable, something that gives you stress relief, something that helps you relax at the end of the day.

 

And I’m gonna start having you choosing to sleep better, eat better, drink non alcoholic drinks, have fun, do business deals, get clients, all alcohol free, and you are gonna love it, and you’re gonna see a massive upturn in your business, in your relationships and in your health and in your happiness, quite frankly. And most, if not all of those people get to that point.

 

And then they’re like, “Oh, I see it now, I see the light”, but you know, look Mick, cultural conditioning, starts when we were little kids and our mother or father says, “Oh no, you can’t drink. You can only drink when you’re older.”

 

– Yeah.

 

– And now we’re like, “Oh, I can’t wait to get older, when I can finally do it, do an adult thing.” Right?

 

– Yeah

 

– And then it just continues. It’s it’s like the, I call them smiling assassins. It’s the waiter who goes, “Hi, can I get you started with a drink?” Or it’s your friend, who’s hosting you over for dinner, he goes, “Hi, can I get you a drink? Would you have beer?” ‘Cause they’re trying to be a great host, right?

 

– Yeah.

 

– But they’re killing you with this attractively packaged poison, nonetheless.

 

– Yeah. So our internal beliefs and thoughts, aren’t the only roadblocks we come up against when we’re trying to make changes in our environment. The people we hang around with in particular can make it quite difficult to make changes. So I asked James, what are those other roadblocks? And how do we deal with them?

 

– Yeah, so a lot of people feel like they’ll be ostracized from their group, or they’ll be accused of not being fun or a killjoy, if they’re not drinking.

 

It’s a very, very common fear. It’s in fact, it’s the number one fear that I have when business owners come to me and say, “Look, I wanna quit drinking, but I do client schmoozing, you know, to client entertainment, I got a family get togethers.”

What I say to them is this, how you communicate to people that you are not drinking, is far more important than the words that you actually say.

 

– Yeah.

 

– So let me just give you two scenarios here Mick. Scenario one, okay. You say to me, “Hey James, Hey, can I get you a drink?” And I say, “Ah, Mick, no, I’m not drinking at the moment.” And then you say to me, “What, it’s my birthday.”

 

– “Is everything okay?”

 

– “It’s my birthday, what are you talking about? We’ve got all the guys are here together. Come on, just taste, you’ll be fine, come on.” And I’m like, “Ah, no, no. I’m doing this 90 day program with this funny guy called, James Swanwick.

 

And no, no, I’ve only got 27 days to go.” So “27 days to go, go on.

 

You’ll be fine, just have one now, come on. We’ve organized this thing. It’s an open bar, are you crazy?” “Oh no, no, no I could… Right, and so all of a sudden, right?

 

You are displaying to this person, that you are depriving yourself of fun and pleasure.

 

And now the other person is also thinking that you’re depriving him or her of fun and pleasure, because the energy you’re bringing to it is, “Oh, I’m not drinking, I wish I could.” And so now they’re just gonna be on you the whole time, right?

 

Here’s scenario two, right? Mick you’re offering me beer, “Hey Mick, how are you doing? Hey, you want a beer? You want a wine?” “Oh no, I’m out, I’m good you got a soda water or something?” “Soda water, What are you talking about?” It’s like, “Yeah, I’m gonna get drunk on this soda water tonight.

 

Watch me swing from the rafters here. Yeah, and I’m actually taking a break for awhile.” “What is he talking about?” “Yeah, and I was just drinking a bit too much and I’m actually experimenting with 90 days and then I might actually even keep going.

 

I’ve been feeling pretty good. I’ve lost a bit of weight, so yeah, I’m on the sparkling waters tonight, but let’s go crazy. I’ll go toe to toe with you. You drink a beer, I’ll drink a soda water and everything will be fine, all right, great, cool.”

 

So in that second scenario, and by the way, you don’t have to like roll out a script like I did, you can just change it whatever’s appropriate.

 

But do you see how the energy is lighthearted, it’s fun.

 

You’re confident you don’t care, right? That people are like, “Here have a drink.” You’re just like, “Ah, no, I’m good.”

 

And when people see that, the people see that you’re having fun, then, they drop this like insistence that you drink. And even if they make fun of you, you then make fun of yourself.

 

You go, yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand that, I’m the guy who’s not drinking at the one year. You know, catch up crazy, isn’t it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, whatever. And then it just becomes this lighthearted thing.

 

So the way in which you communicate to people that you are alcohol free, must be light, must be confident, must be playful. Have a little grin on your face, versus, “Oh yeah, no I wish I could guys,” kind of “Geez, I’m embarrassed, I should no.” I’m sure you’ve tried to give up something.

 

Whether it might be chocolate or smokes or something, particularly if it’s something that we consume, we often get cravings and that makes it super hard to maintain the change.

 

Even though we want to, we know it’s good for us. It’s really, really difficult to maintain that change, because of the craving. So I asked James, how do we deal with cravings?

 

– Yeah well, people tend to have to navigate their cravings, right? Because just because you start and say, I’m not gonna drink for the next 90 days. Doesn’t mean you’re gonna wake up on day one and not have a craving, right?

 

So dealing with cravings, it is one of the main things that we help people with. And here’s the thing you don’t really want to drink to relieve yourself of your stress and anxiety.
You just want to be relieved of your stress and anxiety. You don’t really want to pop a champagne bottle or open some beers to celebrate.

 

You just want to celebrate.

 

So when those cravings come, because you’re craving a beer for stress relief, you’re craving a drink because you want to celebrate, what I walk them through is some very, very simple breathing exercises, some very simple timeout exercises, some very simple, like just grabbing and chugging, a glass of water, breathing in for 30 seconds, reminding yourself while you’re doing this, we come up with like a hundred different ways in which you can relieve your stress and anxiety at the end of a long day.

 

We come up with a hundred different ways that you can celebrate that doesn’t involve alcohol.

 

So to answer your question, a lot of the initial struggles in the beginning stages. What do I do in that moment, Where I, for 20 years of my life, I’ve been having a drink. How do I like, what do I do instead?

 

And again, we just go through all of those lists. And again, a lot of it’s to do with the energy that you bring, as opposed to, “Oh, I’m freaking out, because this is like so worrisome.”

 

We’re not, not drinking, rather we’re stepping into what do we get to drink? How do we get to be? How do we have fun? It’s not like depriving yourself of fun. It’s stepping into how do we have fun, while being alcohol free?

 

– Yeah.

 

So I hope you’ve got some good value from what James said, but if you want to follow up, if you want to start to consume James’ information, perhaps get in touch and ask some questions.

 

I asked James, what was the best way to do that?

 

So if you want to just message me directly you can, just literally email me. My personal email address is just, [email protected], Swanwick is how it’s built here, S-W-A-N-W-I-C-K.

 

– How many people walk around with their surname printed on their tee shirt? That’s what I want to know.

 

– Yeah, I’m trying, I’m a, I love it. What’s your name? It’s on my tee shirt.

 

– Exactly. Yeah, you can email me directly [email protected]. If you are just wanting to like, flow with the idea of this and you maybe you wanna just start with a little 30 day break, then you can go to 30daynoalcoholchallenge.com.

 

And if you’re a business owner or you’re an entrepreneur and you wanna potentially quit for at least 90 days, but possibly for good, or at least live in mostly alcohol free lifestyle, after 90 consecutive days without alcohol, I would certainly you either email me or you can go to jamesswanwick.com/guide.

 

And I’ll send you a free book there, which outlines my methodology for entrepreneurs and business owners and top executives to quit drinking, with or without my help.

 

– Yeah, that’s fantastic. So appreciative that you put the time aside to talk to us about this. You’re a repeat offender on the show.

 

I’m sure we’ll get you back again and talk about other other stuff, because you’re absolutely kicking goals all over the place and all sorts of areas and love your energy.

 

I love the way that you’re reaching out and helping people in all sorts of ways, with all sorts of health hacks, with the Swannies, the glasses, the alcohol thing, a great role model, great information.

 

So I can only wish you well for the future. And thanks for being on the show. And I hope we’ll get you back again at some stage.

 

– Okay, thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate it, Mick.

 

– That’s it, thanks very much. Bye for now.

 

What’d I Say?

 

– If you try and get all of the work done to make space for a holiday, it never happens. It’s the same principle. It’s “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur”. That’s Mike Michalowicz, which his first book, great book to listen to.

 

And it’s all about the whole psychology, of when our backs up against the wall, we are really, really good at coming up with solutions, but the way that most people go about things is that they try to set it up, so it is sort of convenient or I don’t experience the pain to do it.

 

Like what’s happened with a lot of businesses through COVID, is they’ve had to learn how to change their business, because their back was up against the wall and much of what they’ve learned through that process, they’ll be able to keep, when things go back to whatever the new normal is gonna be and their businesses will be better for it.

 

Because if we don’t do that, it’s kinda like going to the gym and lifting weights that are easy to lift. Nothing happens; We don’t grow, we don’t change. We’ve got to go to the gym and lift weights that are hard to lift.

 

That’s how we develop the muscle and the strength to be better in the future. From a principle point of view, this is the way you improve things faster, is make it challenging for yourself.

 

And it’s kind of like jump off the cliff and figure out how to put the plane together on the way down.

 

The Review

 

So we’re talking about the benefits that we can create in our own businesses, by the shifts in our thinking and our behavior in our actions. And it’s all about habit as we’ve just spoken about with our guest James Swanwick.

 

So it made sense to talk about a book that was a support or it fitted in with the theme that we’re talking about on one of the best books on habit that I’ve ever read, is this one here, it’s called “The power of habit”. It’s by Charles Duhigg.

 

And the reason I like this book is, ’cause there’s a ton of books out there that really give you really wonderful motherhood statements about how you can change habits and so on and so forth.

 

But the beauty of this is, there’s a lot of science, there’s a lot of research.

 

There’s a lot of study that has gone into this and the way that Charles explains it, it’s really easy to understand.

 

And you can see how this science and how this works in your own brain, in your own feelings, in your own thinking, and in your own actions and behavior.

 

So I’d really encourage you to go grab a copy of “The power of habit” by Charles Duhigg.

 

You can get the audible version which is the one that I consume.

 

So I love listening to it while I’m driving or anytime when my hands are busy and my mind is not…

 

I get it on audible.com.au, and you can just listen to it multiple times, while you’re driving or doing other activities. I find that really valuable.

 

Get yourself a copy and start to figure out why we do or why you do, the things that you do in both your personal and your business life, and be able to figure out some simple and effective ways to be able to change that and begin to enjoy the benefits of those changes.

 

Q & A

 

Okay, Q and A time. The most predominant, I’ll start again. Hi, it’s Q and a time.

 

The most predominant question I get asked, when people reach out to me for help is, “Can you help me get more leads?” Sometimes they’re saying, “Better quality clients.”

 

And I like that second question a little bit more than the new leads, because most people think that if they haven’t got enough work, they need to generate more leads.

 

But the answer really is, the step by step process that you put your leads, your prospects through to become a quality client.

 

And I say this over and over, like a broken record, the secret to this is something that we call “The quality client pathway.” And it’s a series of steps, right from that very beginning phone call, how you change the approach to your prospects, how you treat them. And so they start to think, “Hey, this is different.”

 

I quite often use the analogy of, you go to your favorite restaurant and you open up the menu and the prices have gone up by 20% and that might piss you off.

 

But if you were presented with a brand new menu or brand new eating experience, a brand new lot of ingredients, and it was explained that it’s better for you.

 

The presentation one was better. The service was better. The whole experience was better, and you opened up the menu and it was 20%. It doesn’t even register with you, because you just think, “Well, this is amazing, I’m getting so much more value.”

 

And so that is the process that you need to have in place, Instead of spending time and money and effort generating leads that are gonna go into a flawed process, build the process first, so you can even find a trickle of leads going into this process.

 

We’ll get rid of the time wasters, but we’ll turn an average quality prospect into a great quality client by showing them a different way of doing things, by showing them a different menu.

 

And the feedback that we get all of the time is people absolutely love this.

 

They much prefer it to the standard way that they’ve been treated before, they rave about it and say, “Why don’t all builders do it this way.”

 

So if this is something that you’re interested in, all you need to do is reach out to us.

 

We’re not very difficult to find. In fact, at the end of the show, I’ll show you a way to contact me directly.

 

And I can give you the guide, the step by step guide that shows you how to do this, but please, please, please focus on this before you start putting time, energy, effort, and most particularly money into lead generation, because you’re gonna blow your dough.

 

Takeaway & Summary

 

So what’s the takeaway from this episode, obviously it’s been focused on you, the owner of the building business.

 

And so to me, the takeaway is, the biggest lever for success and improvement in your business is you.

 

And what is the biggest lever that you can pull in you to get that success? In my view, it’s the mindset. It’s all about what you plug into your mind.

 

In fact, many, many moons ago, I used to do a program called “Coach any dummy to succeed, even yourself.” It began as a three and a half hour live presentation, and that’s all we do.

 

That’s all we did, like over and over and over. We’d do it twice a month, and the same people would show up to this same program, three and a half hours with the same information in it, that even had the same jokes and the same punchlines in the same spot and people laughed.

 

That’s what I couldn’t get over. But the reason people kept coming back is that, they understood that the secret to improvement is standing guard at the entrance to your mind. And you determining what goes in, because what goes in, determines how things turn out.

 

The input into your mind has a profound effect on everything and everybody you come in contact with and you have complete control over standing guard to your mind.

 

What you are selecting as far as input is concerned is things like this, the podcast you listened to, or any information you listen to, the people that you hang around, what you read, your own voice, your own internal conversations, all of that is input.

 

You have complete control over what goes into your mind.

 

So that would be my takeaway from this episode, is stand guard at your mind, make sure that you’re choosing the really high quality stuff to put in, because that’s gonna make the biggest difference on how things turn out.

 

Okay, that’s it for this episode, as I said in the Q and A, if you want a copy of “The Quality Client Pathway”, all you need to do is reach out, were easy to find the email is [email protected].

 

If you want to have a chat about, I really encourage you to do so, all you need to do is press the button under this video. That’ll take you to a form, tells me a little bit about your business.

 

That’ll then take you to my calendar. We can jump on a call and I can point you in the right direction and help you do what you want to do with your business.

 

Now, if you’re listening to the audio only version of this, all you need to do is navigate to the website, buildersbusinessblackbelt.com.au. You’ll see a big orange button in the middle of the screen, press it, and you’ll go through that same process.

 

So I hope you’ve really enjoyed this episode of “Builders Business Success Podcast.”

 

I’m Mick Hawes from Builder’s Business Black belt.

 

That is it.

 

Bye for now.