How Leaders Think with Kenny Lange

Kelly Clark [00:00:00]:
I want my grandson at some point in his life, to point to my life and say, pawpaw did it right. I want to do it like he did it because he did it the right way. He built margin. He didn't sacrifice his family. He didn't sacrifice his marriage. He didn't sacrifice time with me as his grandson. He built in intentional times for those things. And yes, his business was important, and his business is what helped provide for the family financially.

Kelly Clark [00:00:27]:
But ultimately, do I want to sacrifice my legacy to my grandson on the altar of being busy? I don't think that's where I want to live.

Kenny Lange [00:00:43]:
Welcome to the how leaders think podcast, a show that transforms you by renewing your mind and giving you new ways to think. I am your host, Kenny Lange, and with me today is the Kelly Clark. He is the founder, owner, and business coach extraordinaire of Brick Street Coach, LLC. By the way, he is the coach that meets you where you are. He knows the daily grind of running a business and that it drains small business owners of their time and their energy, which is precious and nonrenewable, I might add. He believes that small business owners are the lifeblood of their communities, and they deserve to have the time and energy needed to focus on growing their businesses, along with their personal lives and all the other things that matter to them. Right. By using proven frameworks, he helps small business owners find that time and regain their energy so they can pursue those passions and grow their business and contribute to their communities.

Kenny Lange [00:01:42]:
Welcome to the show, Kelly.

Kelly Clark [00:01:44]:
Thank you, my friend. Kenny. Man, it's so good to be here. It's such an honor to be in the presence. You call me the Kelly Clark. I feel like I'm in the presence of the Kenny Langee, and so it's such a treat to be here, man. Thanks for inviting me.

Kenny Lange [00:01:59]:
I appreciate that. Not taken away from the encouragement that you just gave me. And my head may be too large to get out of my office after this is done, but I actually have a couple of social media handles that say the Kenny Lange, because Kenny Langee was already, um. Now it feels like that. I feel like I stepped off in it.

Kelly Clark [00:02:23]:
One thing we did not, that just proves that you're smarter than me. Because when my Twitter handle wasn't available or when my instagram handle wasn't available, I just did the old fashioned underscore. And if that didn't work, I did underscore, underscore. So, like, my Twitter handle is Kenny. Underscore, underscore Clark. Because I wasn't smart enough to add the v in front of you. Just.

Kenny Lange [00:02:47]:
You created a dramatic pause in between your first and last names, like, my name is Kelly. Go on. Just wait for Clark.

Kelly Clark [00:02:56]:
That's right.

Kenny Lange [00:02:57]:
Oh, okay. Now I'm with you. The one thing your bio is clearly missing is that you are a Metallica fanatic. I don't know if Metallica fanbase has a name like metallic heads or something like that, but it's probably worth starting. I don't think they have a unified fan base or anything. You might could start that. We're going to start it right here, right now.

Kelly Clark [00:03:26]:
Okay, I'm in.

Kenny Lange [00:03:29]:
All right.

Kelly Clark [00:03:30]:
Well, if that's the direction the podcast is going to go today, we can have this conversation. We might need to do several episodes, because I can break the Metallica anthology into different segments, and I can talk about each one of them for massive amounts of time.

Kenny Lange [00:03:46]:
This is going to be a very special bonus series of the how leaders think podcast. How leaders think about Metallica. We're going to have special guests coming on. Kelly and I will be co hosting. I hope you enjoy it. Well, Kelly, as we kick off every episode beyond some banter, tell us what is on your mind.

Kelly Clark [00:04:09]:
What is on my mind? Man, wow. That's such an open ended question. The thing that comes to my mind first is I just came out of a meeting earlier today that I got an invite a week or two ago to attend the generosity Tyler fall event or whatever. I'm not even sure what the official name of it was, but because they sent me an email, I accepted and registered for the event, and I went out there, and the whole morning was about basically applying the biblical framework or the biblical worldview to the world of nonprofits and what that would look like and how that would flesh out and how you treat your donors as a biblical brother and not just a transaction and those kind of things. And so it was very interesting, and I left that meeting. Like I said, I wasn't sure why I was there, but it feels like, kenny, that God is starting to do something in my life where I'm going to be more and more involved in the nonprofit world. I don't know what that looks like, but when you say, what's on my mind today, at this moment, that was the first thing that came to my mind. But I think that generates from a heart within me that God has always given me.

Kelly Clark [00:05:26]:
And it's probably why I'm a business coach today, is that I feel like part of my passion, part of my personality trait, part of my makeup. However, you want to define that spiritual gift, however you want to define it. Part of my character is I just want to help people, and I want to find ways to do that. And if I can get paid for it, even better.

Kenny Lange [00:05:46]:
Right? Yeah. I mean, in that a little bit of the holy grail is do something you love, you're good at, and can be compensated fairly for. Well, that's really intriguing. And obviously, you and I have conversations outside of this live recorded one for quality assurance purposes. No, I'm just kidding. But you and I have talked about just our work in ministry and having that shared passion to help people and even helping people in the nonprofit space really get a hold of these business systems. Right. Because they're out there to make an impact.

Kenny Lange [00:06:27]:
And a lot of times, though, they have the best of intentions, but maybe don't have the systems to scale that out and some of those things. So that's really exciting and probably going to lead to several more conversations, including our one coming up here in a couple of days. But tell me, as you're processing through what you feel like God's doing and where he's guiding you right now, what do you see in the marketplace as the prevailing wisdom or just the current thinking about how nonprofits are treating the different stakeholders that they have? Because it is a unique place to be in when you're in that world. Right. Because it's not just, we have some customers, we provide value, and in exchange we get some cash. Right. There's a lot more to it. What do you see? Or maybe even what did you hear at this meeting is the common wisdom?

Kelly Clark [00:07:30]:
Man, to be honest, I'm so new to this world and this line of thinking that I don't know that I know what the prevailing wisdom or common thinking is. But I will tell you that I liked what I heard this morning. One of the things that really stood out to me was one of the speakers talked about how, generally speaking, most nonprofits will, when they're approaching a potential donor or potential sponsor or supporter or whatever, they will always start with the what, what they do, and then they go to how they do it, and then they share why. And then she flipped that on its end, and she started with, this is why we do it. This is how we do it. And the what was last. And as I think about what I do with my customers or with my clients, I really thought that fit really well within the story framework that I talk a lot about. Just wrapping your mission around a story.

Kelly Clark [00:08:33]:
And she used the example, I think, of habitat for Humanity, and the what is we build houses. The how is we do it with excellence and modern conveniences or something like that. And then the why was because low income housing is hard to find for some people. I can't remember what the why was. That's how unimpactful it was. Right. But when she flipped that on its end and started with the why, it was like, everybody deserves to have a comfortable place to live. Well, that's a story right there that you can get engaged, you.

Kelly Clark [00:09:07]:
And it made me think of the Simon Sinek book. Start with why. I think it's. Was it Simon Sinek that wrote that? Okay. Yeah. I couldn't remember if it was him or Malcolm Gladwell, but I'm a fan of both.

Kenny Lange [00:09:17]:
But if you guess either, you're likely to stick the landing on most good books, right?

Kelly Clark [00:09:21]:
Exactly. And so I'm going to go back and reread that book. Start with why? Because I think starting with why is what we do in just about all of the frameworks that I. Well, that's not really where we start, but it's kind of how we position telling the story. We typically start with the problem, what is the problem that you're addressing? And then why or how are you going to address that problem? But the why gets to the kind of the emotional aspect, the aspirational aspect of that. And so when she did that, I was like, yes, now you're telling a story. Your supporters are going to be much more engaged. And then when you get down to the what, you don't have to ask for money.

Kelly Clark [00:09:59]:
It's more about how would you like to be involved or how would you like to help. And then you're not asking for money, you're just asking them how they want to engage in your story.

Kenny Lange [00:10:09]:
I love that. That's fantastic. It reminds me of part of the work I do with system and soul. We have a piece that brings in a why. Like what you were describing is this long term destination. It's like we're going to do what big thing buy when, which a lot of systems and frameworks have. And then we talk about a why. And when I talk to clients about it, I tell them it's like this has to be compelling all the way around.

Kenny Lange [00:10:39]:
It can't just be to the senior leadership team or the board or the owner or the founder or whatever it happens to be. And I'd be curious to your thoughts is I think, what and how are far easier to come by because they're tangible, we can see them, we can touch them, smell them, maybe. But we see that as the work and that why sometimes can be very personal to that person, very unique. But I do think that there's a shared why. I mean, one of the things in a lot of my presentations I think I had shared with you previously was we need to cast a vision where everybody finds their role in the story. And what I hear you saying from this presentation was, if you can flip some things, like maybe you even discover it, what, how and why. But when you talk about it, go the opposite way, and it allows that potential donor or volunteer or board member even to find their place in the story. Is that accurate, or is that fair to say, or do you think that there's a different approach here for that?

Kelly Clark [00:11:50]:
No, I agree with that. Because ultimately, whether we're coaching a client or you're raising funds for a nonprofit or you're teaching a Sunday school class or preaching at church or whatever, whoever you're speaking to, you want to invite them into the story that you're telling. Otherwise, they're not going to pay attention. They're not going to be interested. You and I are sitting here telling each other stories right now because that's what communication is built on, right? We've been doing this for millennia. However you say that word, millenniums, thousands of years is an easier way. We've been doing it for thousands of years, long time, telling stories for thousands and thousands of years. That's how people communicate.

Kelly Clark [00:12:35]:
And so when you learn to wrap your business around a story, it's easier to communicate. And it's so much easier to invite people into that with you, whether you're asking for money, if I'm trying to sell something, and it's transactional in nature. Let me back. So the only reason you've ever bought anything in your life except the candy bar at the checkout register on your way through at the grocery store, which was an impulse buy. But just about everything else that you bought in your life was because it solved a problem. And the problem was probably positioned around a story. This jacket will keep you warm and keep you looking classy when you're whatever other than this jacket is made of cotton and fiber and polyester and needs to be washed at 300 degrees once a week, nobody cares about that. But if you can wrap a story around it and then present that to your customers or your audience, then they're going to engage with you, just like you mentioned in the opening.

Kelly Clark [00:13:37]:
My mission statement, if you will, the why is kind of the middle, the middle part of my mission statement says, because I believe that small business owners are the lifeblood of their community. That's why I do what I do. Because I have a heart for small businesses. The what is teaching frameworks that are proven and that work and that use the element of story and the how is. I'm not even sure how I do things most of the time, so I made me need to work on that piece.

Kenny Lange [00:14:04]:
You just show up and let the Lord work through you. That's really intriguing. And of, um. There's so many different podcasts that you and I could go through, all the Simon Sinek and Malcolm Gladwell interviews, but a bunch of other people who talk about story as the vehicle in which we convey meaning about things, about ourselves, about our lives, about whatever it is that we're doing, we communicate that way naturally. So why is it when we start forming a nonprofit, an LLC, a startup, or whatever it is, and we start as leaders to build something with the intent to help people, to serve people, to solve a problem? Why aren't we wrapping that in story? Why aren't we talking about that? I mean, to go back to the example of your jacket, which is a fine jacket. No, I loved it. It's perfect. It was clear, and better to be clear than clever, right? But they go in and they're talking about how the thread count and the washing and this, and it'll keep you warm.

Kenny Lange [00:15:26]:
It can withstand 32 degrees fahrenheit, Celsius, whatever it is. So why is it so difficult for leaders to take what they're doing, which oftentimes, I believe, to be a noble endeavor, nonprofit or not nonprofit for profit doesn't matter. I still think leadership is a noble and courageous endeavor. But why aren't we bringing story into that intentionally? If what we're doing is noble, if it is a good cause, if it is helping people to. I love the term you used. Invite them in, whether it's employees or customers. What's the roadblock?

Kelly Clark [00:16:11]:
That's a great question. The first thing that comes to my mind is I just think that we get so caught up in the transactional side of things that I'm not sure it's my fault, because you asked me what I was thinking, and that's how we landed on nonprofits. And so I'm not speaking from an area of expertise at all. So I'm going to kind of shift back into the business world. When a person starts their business, let's say they started that business because they had a passion for a product or a service that they wanted to bring into the world to make the world a better place. And then their passion and their energy and their drive is what helped them get that business started. Well, then all of a sudden, you figure out you're running a business. Whether it's a for profit business or a nonprofit business, you're running a business.

Kelly Clark [00:17:11]:
And then everything seems to shift, probably because we get busy and we don't give ourselves the space to create the story, we get busy. And so in an effort to be efficient, if you will, in an effort to be efficient, we condense everything to just the transaction to I'm going to give you this. You're going to give me money. And that's how the relationship is going to be. But if we have the time, and that's why I love what I do, is because I try to help business owners find time and regain the energy that they need. Because when we move from working out of our passion into actually running a business, and most small business owners that started their business, and this is not meant to sound condescending, but most of us got into business because we had a passion for a product or services that we wanted to bring into the world, not because we knew anything about running a business. And it's our initial drive and passion that gets that company started. Well, then you got a business to run.

Kelly Clark [00:18:17]:
You got a company to run, and you get caught in what I call the daily grind. You get caught on the hamster wheel and you get caught in the daily grind, and now you're just trying to keep that thing moving, and you don't have time to think or to work on your business. And so you get wrapped up in the business. And I think when we do that, I think the natural response is to do what is quick and easy rather than what is know. Abraham Lincoln was quoted as saying back during the civil war, he was writing letters to some friends or something, and he wrote a long letter to one of his friends, and he said, I wish this letter. Could he close this letter by saying, I wish this letter could have been shorter, but I did not have the time.

Kenny Lange [00:19:04]:
Yeah, if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

Kelly Clark [00:19:08]:
Right? That's so true, because it takes time. Something you said a minute ago. It takes time to be clear and concise. It doesn't take a lot of energy to be cute and clever. We can rattle off cute and clever pretty easy, but to take the time to be clear and concise, I don't think as business owners and as leaders, this was a long winded way to answer your question. But to get to the answer, I think what I'm landing on now is business owners and leaders don't build in enough margin in their daily schedule to give themselves time to work on condensing that message so that it's clear and concise so that they can invite their customers or their audience into the story.

Kenny Lange [00:19:56]:
Wow. All right, everybody just rewind the last like three or four minutes and keep it on a loop because there are so many good things in there. So when we think about that busy business owner or founder or nonprofit executive director, whoever it may be, right. I think you said it well, is they didn't get into business to be an owner. I mean, they probably wanted the freedom that comes from it. Right. But they had a passion about something. But sort of the administrative things take over all the things to keep the machine running so you can keep doing the thing you like, which increasingly feels like less and less of your job.

Kenny Lange [00:20:35]:
Unfortunately, that's one of those two edged swords there. So what happens to that leader? Because it's in your bio. I'm pointing over here because I have it up on the screen, make sure I get it right. But you talk about energy and about time, and I made a little quip about those are like our only two non renewable resources, right? We can sell more things and get more money. We can build other businesses, we can make more other things, but we can't make more time or energy. So what's happening in between that? I got busy. Which soul be a sign of success, right? And to some extent you wear it as a badge of success, but it's sort of that law of diminishing return. At some point it becomes harmful and damaging.

Kenny Lange [00:21:27]:
Right?

Kelly Clark [00:21:28]:
Yes, absolutely.

Kenny Lange [00:21:30]:
What's happening in between that as it squeezed out, and now we suddenly we have this gap between what we wanted out here, this destination, and where we end up, which is at the peak of Mount busyness. How do we come down off that mountain so that we can, as you said, like regain energy so they can pursue their passion, grow their business, contribute to their communities? Because I know a ton of small business owners are civically minded. They care about the communities, whether it's their faith community, in their church, local community groups, other nonprofits, maybe that hit close to home, like my wife and I are passionate about the foster and adoptive space. Right. That's important to us. And we want time and money to invest in there. And that's why we're jumping out doing this coaching business. How did people start to cross that gap.

Kelly Clark [00:22:25]:
Wow. I think the first part of your question is, what happens when our time and energy start to wane and we find ourselves trapped in the business? And I allude to it in the bio that you read, is that that passion that we had when we started? That's what we lose. We lose that first, or maybe not first. We start to lose energy probably first, because as time expands into running the business, I think our energy starts to dwindle because we have tunnel vision on what we're working on, what's right in front of us. And so we start to lose energy for things outside of that. And then that starts to rob us of our passion. I don't know that we lose our passion, but it starts to rob us of the passion because we do have this vision of what the world is supposed to be like or what our world, what our life is supposed to be like. If we started our own company and if we were doing this thing and we were managing our own schedule and all of that, right? We have this vision because we know better, right.

Kelly Clark [00:23:32]:
We have that vision of what that life is supposed to be like. But you hit the nail on the head, man. I think when people do not build margin into their life, there's a diminishing return on the amount of time that you put into what you're trying to accomplish. And every book that I've read on leadership, on rest, on how many hours you're supposed to work in a week, all of those kind of things. Most people that have put any kind of effort into studying this will tell you that after someone works anywhere between 30 and 50 hours a week, the amount of return you get on any work after that, or the effort that you put in after that, really goes downhill fast. But when we continue to work and we rob ourselves of adequate rest, of adequate exercise of time with our family, the other things that are important, church, all of those other things that are important in our lives, we just get exhausted. And I think when someone is living out of exhaustion, they're not pursuing the passion that God had given them to start that business in the first place. And so I am not perfect at this, and I'm still learning, and I'm sure you can relate to this.

Kelly Clark [00:24:51]:
As a business owner, I tend to think about my business all the time, and so it's hard for me to rest. But I think when we rest, when we build margin into our lives that can be viewed and soul be seen as an act of faith, that if we take this hour or we take this day to use the biblical example. If we take this day and we rest on this day, if we use that as an act of faith, let me finish my statement and then I'm going to use it. I'll say something else, but that rest should give us the energy to propel us for the next six days. But society has reversed that and now we kill ourselves for six days and we say we're going to rest for one or how many songs we're working for the weekend. Kenny, thank God it's Friday. All of those things that exist in our society is because we got it backwards. We work first and then we try to rest to recover from the work, where if we reverse that and we rest first and then we produce second, you're automatically building margin into your life and that is going to give you more energy.

Kelly Clark [00:26:10]:
It's going to allow you to make better decisions as you move through the week because you know that you're resting to work, you're not working so that you can rest. I don't know if that makes sense or not. What's the word I'm looking for? If you read the Bible, God created the world in six days and then he rested. And so maybe that's where we got that from. But I really think rest should be first and then work should be after that. And when I embrace that mindset and I truly rest, let's say on a Sunday, for example, if I truly rest on Sunday, I'm so much more productive Monday through Saturday than if I reverse that. And I'm killing myself Monday through Saturday. And I can't wait for Friday to get here because I'm ready for the weekend.

Kelly Clark [00:27:03]:
By the time the weekend gets here, I'm no good to my family, I'm no good to my church, I'm no good in any other area of my life. And so I think it's important to find a way to build that margin into your life. And whether it's as easy as when you send out calendar invites, instead of sending them for an hour, send them for 45 minutes. And Google actually has a feature now where you can do that automatically and a lot of calendaring features, but the default is generally 30 minutes or an hour. We'll make that 20 minutes and 45 or 50 minutes instead of an hour and start building and start. And then when you build in those ten minutes and 15 minutes of margin, by the end of the day, you've built in an hour or hour and a half where you're not really working and you're not running from meeting to meeting, and you're not living in exhaustion. And if we could build that in on the weekends, even better.

Kenny Lange [00:28:02]:
That is phenomenal. And also, to quote somebody, a Facebook friend, that was rudely accurate for me. So, yeah, we should definitely talk more.

Kelly Clark [00:28:21]:
I'm not perfect at this either, and I still get it backwards sometimes.

Kenny Lange [00:28:25]:
Yeah, I get it backwards a lot. That's actually something that I've wrestled with for years. Now that this is my second go round of running a business, I'd like to think I'm a little better, faster, stronger, whatever it is. And in some regards I think I am. But that high drive, which most entrepreneurs, leaders, founders, they have that high drive. And like you said, we're thinking about it all the time and it's hard to switch that off. One thing that has helped me and slowed me down that may be helpful to others is I started thinking about professional athletes. Not that I'm a professional athlete, but I think about how seriously they take their schedule of most of the time.

Kenny Lange [00:29:16]:
They have anywhere from 90 minutes or an hour all the way up to football game can take 3 hours or more, something like that. But they have this small window of this peak performance during the week. They have practice where they're exerting a lot of energy, but they actually have structured days time sections of days for there's rest and then recovery, which are two different things. And they build those in so that they can hit that peak performance again and again and again and again over a long duration of time. And so one thing that did help break me out of that was starting to think, okay, well, where are my peak performance moments? Where am I building in intentional rest and recovery if I start treating my mind? Because to be honest, I do think if you jump out and you start a business, it really is no different than attempting to be a pro athlete, except with your brain.

Kelly Clark [00:30:21]:
Right.

Kenny Lange [00:30:22]:
And I'm not calling athletes dumb, I'm not saying that. But there's a clear exertion of physical energy. But when you don't see it because it's in the four inches between your ears, it can be perceived as well. That's not an effort, that's just thinking, are you kidding me right now? I have cried at my desk because I couldn't figure out how to price something in a way that would feed my family. That's hard work, right? But it looks like I'm staring at a whiteboard or a wall or something like that, or I'm listening to an audiobook. Right. So I really appreciate you sharing those things. And I hope whoever you are listening to this, turn left.

Kenny Lange [00:31:10]:
No, I'm just kidding that you.

Kelly Clark [00:31:14]:
When.

Kenny Lange [00:31:15]:
I get an email about that, it's like the guy on the podcast said, turn left. That's how your car ended up in a creek, but that you are hearing something that can reframe that drive and that hustle that you feel compelled to maintain or maybe have even been encouraged. I mean, Lord knows there's enough motivational clips, Kelly, I'm sure you get targeted on some social media stuff. I think every fourth video on mine is David Goggins asking me who's going to carry the boats. Don't get me wrong, I love me some goggins, but it can start to wear you out entire your mean, Kelly, the end result from the clients you work with and just people you've talked to and maybe even the reasons why you got into this business. If these leaders don't do this, if they don't take this time to make margin, what's the end result going to be? Where are they headed? It may not be today, tomorrow or the next day, but paint a bit of a picture of where do they end up if they don't bake in that rest.

Kelly Clark [00:32:33]:
Yeah, so I think that's one. That's a great question. And I think that it's a multifaceted answer because I think that it's going to hit in a couple of different buckets. I think personally you're risking burnout was the obvious answer. But then underneath that is you're risking depression, anxiety, potential disease or sickness or illness because you're just wearing your body out, you're going to age faster. All of those things are impacted by how you live your life. And if you're living your life with no margin, then your body physically is going to suffer. The other thing that I think is at risk is if we buy into what society wants to tell.

Kelly Clark [00:33:28]:
You mentioned it earlier, we kind of wear this badge of honor. When you're talking to somebody, how quickly do you hear how busy they are? It's usually within the opening minutes of the conference. Man, how's things been going? How's life? Man, I'm so busy. It's this badge of honor. But what's not being said when somebody says that is the sacrifices that are being made, either intentionally or unintentionally. And some of those sacrifices include, we talked about it a minute ago, the small business owner desires to have an impact in their community, but when they don't build margin into their life, they're limiting their impact and their potential impact in the community. A lot of times they're sacrificing their families. They're sacrificing their marriage.

Kelly Clark [00:34:16]:
They're sacrificing the legacy that they say they want to leave to their family, their kids and their grandkids. One of my motivating factors now that I'm a grandfather is when I reach the climactic scene of my life and the credits start to roll and is has gone off into the sunset and I'm living with Jesus, I want my grandson at some point in his life to point to my life and say, pawpaw did it right. I want to do it like he did it because he did it the right way. He built margin. He didn't sacrifice his family. He didn't sacrifice his marriage. He didn't sacrifice time with me as his grandson. He built in intentional times for those things.

Kelly Clark [00:35:00]:
And yes, his business was important, and his business is what helped provide for the family financially. But ultimately, do I want to sacrifice my legacy to my grandson on the altar of being busy? I don't think that's where I want to live. I think there's physical, personal risk. I think there's personal risk that you're sacrificing when you live from a place of exhaustion and a place of being too busy. All the things that I just mentioned. And then I also think your company is not going to be the company you hoped and dreamed it would be. When you don't build intentional margin into your life because your company is not going to have. Remember when you started your company and you had this passion for this product or service that you thought was going to come into the world and make the world a better place, well, if you can't do that because you haven't built margin and rest and recovery, as you said, into your life, if you haven't intentionally made space for that in your life, your business will not have the desired impact that you wanted it to have when you started it.

Kelly Clark [00:36:02]:
So those are the things to me that are at risk by living your life that way.

Kenny Lange [00:36:07]:
Wow. I don't know that I would have anything to add. I think that is a powerful picture for anybody who's considering that. And I appreciate you sharing that and even sharing personally how you're framing that up for yourself. So as someone's listening and maybe they're saying, yeah, that's me. I went off the hamster wheel, as you called it. But it can feel like, well, I don't know another way. I don't know how.

Kenny Lange [00:36:44]:
I've only ever known going. When people ask me, it's like, how are you doing? Instead of just saying busy, I go, well, I'm going mock Jesus with my hair on fire. It gets a little chuckle, but probably does point to some stuff. I need to go see a therapist, but if somebody wants to get off and they're not sure where and how to start, and maybe they don't feel like they can start with a whole day. Right. A Sabbath rest sort of thing, where would you tell them to take a baby step that they could take in the next 24 hours after listening? That would allow them to get started on that path?

Kelly Clark [00:37:24]:
Yeah. So the first thing that I would probably do is, I kind of alluded to this earlier, is look at your calendar tomorrow and is there an opportunity for you to shorten one of your 1 hour meetings to 45 minutes and then take that 15 minutes that you just gave yourself back and instead of doing what you would qualify as work, maybe take a walk, maybe open your bible, read the daily verse out of the day, the verse of the day out of you version, and just meditate on that for a couple of minutes. But do something that you wouldn't qualify as work. And it could be as simple, Kenny, as getting up and walking across the building to where the refrigerator is and getting a bottle of water and instead of coming straight back to your desk, maybe walk around the building. But the longer answer to that, that's something they could probably do tomorrow. The longer answer would be maybe this weekend when you're resting on Sunday or Saturday, whenever you find your time to rest and truly sit down on the couch and maybe even have your daytimer out so you can say you're working. But I would go back to something you said a few minutes ago about operating out of your best moments of the day. I can't remember exactly how you framed that, but everybody knows their internal clock, if you will, or how you like.

Kelly Clark [00:38:53]:
I know for me personally, I'm a morning person. I don't get up out of bed singing and whistling and I'm not in a good mood when I first wake up. But I love the mornings because they're quiet. I love the dark. I love getting up and having coffee. But I know that for me the best time of day is generally between 06:00 a.m. And about one or 02:00 in the afternoon. And so I'm going to do my front stage work, my primary work, I'm going to schedule my appointments, I'm going to do all the heavy lifting on my day, I'm going to try to schedule it between those hours and think after 02:00 that's when you can do some of the other things that maybe it's cleaning up email or scheduling your day for the next day or the next week or whatever, but do that in your off peak hours that doesn't require as much brain energy between the four inches between your ears that you referenced earlier.

Kelly Clark [00:39:49]:
Do those kind of things in your off peak hours. And I think just by making that shift alone, instead of this mindset of I have to work eight to five, well, maybe you don't. Maybe your best time is eight to noon. Maybe your best time is from one to four. Maybe your best time. I don't get these people because I'm not one of them. But maybe your best time is from 03:00 in the afternoon until 08:00 at night or from 05:00 in the afternoon until 11:00 at night. Whatever your best time is, that's when you schedule your heavy lifting for yourself, for your business.

Kelly Clark [00:40:21]:
And then in the off peak hours, that's when you want to take those walks or do that meditation or practice your guitar or go for a run or ride your bike or spend time with your wife or go for a walk with your grandson. Those are the moments when you're off peak hour. Not that you don't want to give your best time to your family. That's not what I'm saying. I'm talking specifically about work. The work Monday through Friday. Work week.

Kenny Lange [00:40:49]:
Yeah.

Kelly Clark [00:40:50]:
Schedule your week around your top peak performing hours and then schedule the other stuff in your off peak hours. And I think if you do that, you'll find yourself with opportunities to rest and recover and not be exhausted.

Kenny Lange [00:41:08]:
I love that. You know what's funny is, and I'm opening my phone because I'm trying to remember the name of this app. It's called Rise sleep. I started using a couple of months back. Kenny, enough. It does show two peaks for my energy based on how much sleep I'm getting. And I don't want to get into all in depth into this piece, but you're spot on and it's something I don't think I've paid enough attention. So even now I'm thinking through that.

Kenny Lange [00:41:38]:
It's like I got a couple more days left in this week. I might need to go take this advice and do that after we get off this podcast. Well, Kelly, I appreciate the conversation. I certainly don't think this is going to be the last one that we have for the podcast because I think there's just many more topics that I'd love to pick your brain on, and I think our audience would love if somebody wants to know more about you and your work and what you're doing, or maybe just reach out and ask a question, where would you send them and how can they connect? Sure.

Kelly Clark [00:42:11]:
Absolutely, man. First of all, let me just say what an honor it's been to visit with you today as I'm getting to know you. We only met a couple of months ago, but I feel like we've become close friends already and I'm looking forward to future conversations and future time with you. It's been an honor for me to be on this podcast with you today. Thank you for the invite and I've enjoyed the conversation. Hopefully we're not creating too much work for your editor and he can make sense of some of my ramblings. But see, I did it again. I rambled so long I forgot what the question oh, how to get in touch with me.

Kelly Clark [00:42:49]:
Yes, if you are interested, if you have found yourself on the hamster wheel and my bio that Kenny read at the beginning resonates with you, if you feel like that the daily grind of running your business has drained you of your time and energy and you want to find a way to get out of that, there's two ways. The easiest ways to find me is brickstreetcoach.com is my website, you, soul. Also, send me an email at kelly@brickstreetcoach.com and I am one of these guys that I will respond to every email inquiry that I get on my website. There's also other ways to interact with me. You can schedule a 30 minutes call with me for free. There's a business assessment that you can take to kind of give you a red light, green light on how your business is currently doing, and then we can schedule a call and I review that with my clients for free. Like I said at the beginning, I love to help people, and I don't want to treat every interaction with another human being as a transaction, and I don't want to monetize every conversation. And so a lot of the things that I do, I offer for free just because I want to help people.

Kelly Clark [00:43:59]:
And if we find a way to work together and you feel my services are valuable to you, and you then want to exchange that value for a monetary prize, I'm not against that, and I do look for opportunities to make that happen, but that's how you can interact with me, Kelly clark@brickstreetcoach.com. Or brickstreetcoach.com is the website, and we.

Kenny Lange [00:44:25]:
Also will link up your LinkedIn profile. So we'll have the website, your email address, the LinkedIn profile, and you heard it. He will respond to every email, including spam. How? I'm just kidding. That's how rumors get started. Well, Kelly, thank you so much for coming by and dropping some wisdom on us. To everybody listening. Until next time, remember, change the way you think.

Kenny Lange [00:44:49]:
You'll change the way you lead.

Kelly Clark [00:44:51]:
We'll see.