What nobody told you about creating better habits.

Episode Transcription

 

Den Lennie (1s):
Good day guys, Den here with episode 222 of the How to Scale a Video Business podcast. And today we’re talking about the power of habit and how hard it is to develop good habits and how easy it is to fall back into old habits that may not be serving you. That may be negatively impacting the outcomes in your business. So I want to anchor this in the fact that I’ve mentioned before I’ve been getting fit and fitter this year. It’s not something I’ve ever prioritized to the degree it should be. And this year turning 50, I was late, right? That said, I want to start getting healthier, but it wasn’t easy.

Den Lennie (45s):
And that’s because there’s 50-year-old body has been eating and drinking too much of the wrong stuff for the best part of 30 years. But I noticed this morning, something interesting happened at the gym. So first of all, at the end of our, it’s like a kind of CrossFit type fusion fitness. It’s not CrossFit, it’s an evolution of that. And, but basically in each session we do probably 20 minutes of weight training for strength. And today that was like weighted squats, weighted back squats. And then in the, what they call drop sets, which is the sets in between.

Den Lennie (1m 26s):
So we were doing like five sets of five weighted squats. And then in between times we were doing RDS, which should just give you a hold the weights and you sort of drop them down to your ankles. And back up again, the strengthens, your read of your legs session called Metcon every session, which is like the kind of, I guess it’s the, what’s the word I’m looking for? Cardio part of the session. And everyone was doing like 200 meter run and then some weighted back squats again. So do a lot of squats in this training actually. And, but that’s by the by so I can’t run because I’ve got the injured ankle that I picked up back in 2001.

Den Lennie (2m 11s):
So I’ve got arthritis. So for a long time, I didn’t train because I thought I couldn’t, but actually I saw an Instagram ad pop up for training in your forties. And I was like, okay, that’s me. Let’s go. And I’ve just discovered that I’ve been going now for 15 weeks solid. And so I wanted to talk about the power of habits and some of the resistance you will feel when you try anything new and this is tied so closely to business because so much in business takes you out of a comfort zone. And you know, if you’re a freelancer looking to build your business, then for the longest time, all you’re interested in doing is getting work, getting more clients, more work, more clients, more work until you reach a point where you suddenly drone under the capacity of being able to do all the work.

Den Lennie (3m 3s):
You know, you’re doing all the work yourself. You’re winning work, you’re getting paid, but you’re doing all the work yourself. So you’re exhausted and I’ve seen this happen again and again. And it’s definitely a cycle you go through until you get to a point where you realize you cannot do it on your own. And you have to understand that you have to spend some of your profits to employ a team or contractors, and that’s going to involve less profit initially, but it’s going to increase your capacity longterm so you can do more. And ultimately you will be more profitable without killing yourself. So anyway, back to the session today. I’ve been away for the last week and a half. I did one session last week.

Den Lennie (3m 44s):
We had our anniversary the week before. So I had a bit of a break, Buffy, breakfast, you know, eating and drinking all the nice stuff did our session last week quite enjoyed it. But this is when I got back into it a day. Now two things, one is when you take a break from something, you start to lose your habits and you start to slide back into old ways. So it’s just an awareness of that. The second thing is your body actually retains a lot of muscle memory. So it doesn’t actually take that long to get back up to speed. So I was in the session this morning and at the end of the session, we were supposed to do this like that. It was a 200 meter run and there, I think it was 15 sets of dumbbell, weighted squats, back squats.

Den Lennie (4m 29s):
So normally on the roar, I double whatever people are doing on the rum. So everyone’s kind of finishing up this morning and I’m like, the coach comes over to fingers, oh, you’re doing 400 meter roars. You only need to do 300. So what was interesting was I had convinced myself, I had to do 400. So I did 1600 meters of rowing when actually I only had to do 1200, but what was fascinating was I believed I had to do 1600. So that’s what I did. If I taught myself, I had to be 1200, I would have done 1200, but I did 25% more output than I had to just because I taught my brain.

Den Lennie (5m 11s):
I had to now halfway through, I got a bit tired, but I’m like, I’m only halfway through. And there was a girl next to me, Stacy, and she was finishing. And I was like, why is she finishing well, nevermind. You know, she’s much better than me, so that’s okay. Anyway, I kept pushing through. So on one hand there was an accountability because Stace was, was finishing before me. And I was like, ah, go out, mama. I need to work harder. So a bit of accountability that kept me pushing farther and gave me the motivation to keep going. And then the coach was like, oh, you’re doing like more than you need to good on you may as well do more. So, what I learned from that was if we applied that to business and you said, well, my goal is to make, let’s call it 10 grand a month, for example, or 20 grand a month.

Den Lennie (5m 54s):
Let’s be ambitious 20 grand a month if you’re just starting out and you’re currently 10, so 20 minutes double. But what if you said, I need to make it 30? So it feels like it’s out of reach and you know if you’re doing 40, make it 60. If you’re doing 60, make a hundred, just, you know, apply the same knowledge, the same did sort of their process, which is what if you just made the number bigger. What if you focused your attention on getting to a bigger number, do you think that would that kind of impact, would that have? Why would you get there? Maybe, maybe not, but if you pushed for a bigger number, do you think you get farther than if you pushed for a smaller number?

Den Lennie (6m 37s):
So let’s say you’re doing 10 grand a month. Just know this for argument’s sake and you’d like to do 20. Well, what if you put the target at 25, do you think there’s any more work involved really in doing a 20 grand’s worth of business are 25 to think it’s that much more, or do you think it’s a mindset I want to tell you it’s a mindset. And now the key to all of this was I, I told myself I had to do 1600 meters and I did 1600 meters. And I still had energy in the tank, although I was tired, but I could have done 1200. So, I kind of could have shortchanged myself twenty-five percent.

Den Lennie (7m 17s):
And I, I really believe that all of us have at least another 25% of the tank. Now the truth is you have a lot more than you realize, but it comes down to habits and building the habits around, doing something consistently. So, you know, I, in 15 weeks, haven’t dropped tons away and look radically different, but I’m stronger. I’m leaner. And when you consider those like 30 years of what let’s call it, abuse, you know, eating what I want, drinking what I want carrying extra weight. That’s not going to disappear in six weeks.

Den Lennie (7m 57s):
So understanding the journey is going to take longer than you think. But if you’re disciplined and consistent, and you have structure and accountability, then you’re going to get to your goal faster than if you try to do it yourself. And here’s something that I see a lot is people will say to me, are look, you know, I’ll just do it myself, and they win a job or two, and then they go quiet. And then they’re like, oh, Hey dad, I need some help. The people that I see having the greatest results, the people who are the most consistent, who tend to stay with us the longest in the VBA are those people who are doing big numbers, but they never ever, ever take it for granted.

Den Lennie (8m 45s):
And they’re always looking for an edge. They’re always looking to learn something new. And sometimes people will say to me, oh, look, you know, you know, I could just let you know, I think I’ve got enough to get on with it. And he’s going to implement it for a few months and I’ll maybe come back. And I was, no, this is not the process. The process is ongoing continual improvement. It’s like the Kaizen process from Japan. You can never, ever assume that you’ve got it figured out. I learnt this from Sony as well. Working with Sony engineers on multiple projects is like they never stop innovating. They never stop thinking. We can do this better. and they never stopped asking the question. What else can we do?

Den Lennie (9m 25s):
And I think that is a very, very powerful attitude to have in running a business, which is what else could we be doing? What could we be doing better? Could we be doing something more efficiently? And that in itself is a really powerful process. Now, the reason that habits are so important is because we have embedded bad habits and it’s very hard to change them and changing anything is hard. It’s uncomfortable. And whenever we’re trying to change a behavior or a pattern of behavior or a mindset, our subconscious fights ferociously hard to avoid it.

Den Lennie (10m 13s):
The brain wants comfort. It doesn’t want stress. It doesn’t want anxiety. It doesn’t want hardship. It wants easy, but Robin Sharma who’s a very inspirational author, sums it up beautifully. He says, change is hard at the beginning, changes a messy in the middle, but changes a beautiful at the end. And so I was talking to my coach this morning, just saying, you know, I was actually looking forward to coming to the gym. I was craving it. And that’s because for 15 weeks now I’ve been going three times a week solidly. And so I’ve built a habit where my body, no, I was in bed by nine o’clock last night, I was awake at 4:00 AM. I leave the house at 5:00 AM to go to the gym for 5:30, I’m recording this at five to five to eight in the morning, I’ve already done my workout.

Den Lennie (10m 60s):
And this podcast will be recorded. Normally I’m weeks ahead. That was one gap where I hadn’t filled it. So I’m doing it today for that. We’ll be going out on Thursday and, and I’m pumped. I’m like, I’m really motivated. And I’ve got a bunch of things to do today, but our plan to, you know, to wrap things up early, in fact, I’ve got to, we’ve just, we just put a deposit down on a motorhome that we’re going to turn into a production vehicle. So I’m going to sort that out today. So that’s exciting. So I’ve got these other things to do, but really what I want to talk about is, you know, you can’t control time, but you can control energy. And what I find is by going to the gym, first thing in the morning and boosting my energy.

Den Lennie (11m 46s):
So implementing a change in mindset and habits, it takes energy. So you’ve got to find that energy from somewhere. And I observe a lot of different people in the people I work with. And the ones that I see are like, oh, you know, it’s been a tough week. And, you know, I think so hard, fast as the people who are like yet, they shopped to every call on time. They take notes, they implement, they come back the next week, wanting more. There’s a big difference between those who succeed and those that don’t and those that succeed and do exceptionally well. And those that don’t, and what’s interesting is oftentimes they are on the same calls at the same time in the same group, but why is it that 20% of the group always excel human nature, but it’s all to do with habits and belief systems and implementing change.

Den Lennie (12m 34s):
And I love this analogy of, you know, how hard, you know, it is to get things off the ground. So there’s a space shuttle analogy when, and it goes something like this. When the space shuttle launched, it used 60% of its fuel in the first 90 seconds of flight, just to get off the ground and push against gravity. It then used 30% of its fuel to push up into high orbit. So once it jettisoned the rocket boosters, that once it was in zero gravity, the remaining 10% of fuel was all, it was required to run the entire mission.

Den Lennie (13m 18s):
So the energy required to change a habit is a willpower will power. I will power through this think of willpower as a battery that depletes throughout the day, it has more charge first thing in the morning than it does at 9:00 PM at night. And so you need to rest to recharge it. Now we’re taught some pretty dangerous shit at school. Okay. And without awareness, some of that stuff stays with us for years. And it’s only when you begin to read and study the mind that you realize just how damaging some of that early programming is to how you think stories that we learn for your school family, as we’re growing up, it forms the cord, that programs, how you think and process information.

Den Lennie (14m 13s):
Now, I learned this from a mentor Karen Ray, about three years ago, and Karen suffered three brain injuries. And so as a result, I studied the mind in great depth. So, think of the stories were told about growing up around money for any of these sound familiar money is the root of all evil money. Doesn’t grow on trees. You know, two of three marriages end in divorce because couples fight about money. So the stories running around them, that little voice in our heads are cording our brain and directly affecting our subconscious performance. So think about this. If you put bad cord into a computer, what happens?

Den Lennie (14m 56s):
You get a virus and it starts to mess with the performance of the computer. It slows down. So if you’re allowing negativity, bad news gossip junk into your brain and subconscious social media junk, then what kind of impact is that having on your performance? You know, do you need to change the algorithm here? Do you need to change what you’re consuming and how you’re consuming? You may have been listening to the show for some time and you may be implementing some of it, but every single week, I invite you to come and have a call to discuss if we can do it faster.

Den Lennie (15m 36s):
And I know that at least 80% of the listeners of this show never do that. Ask yourself, why are you scared? I want to try and sell you something. Well, here’s the thing. If I think I can help you, I will. But here’s the thing also that’s business. I will only offer to sell you something. If I think it can help you. And I guarantee that if I think it can help you and you’ve got the means that won’t cost you a bin because it will replay, it will return on your investment. At least 10 times that far it’s a no brainer, but fear stops us from doing a lot of different things.

Den Lennie (16m 18s):
So what kind of impact are negative thoughts having on your brain? You know, the sooner you realize that what you feed your mind is directly related to the level of success in your business, in life. Then the quicker you will start to see higher levels of productivity and success. Now, admittedly, I used to watch a lot of TV. I still enjoy Netflix. Okay, it’s my downtime. Now I worked in the television industry for 20 odd years. And so I justified my TV habits. I said to myself, I need to see what’s going on in the industry. See who’s doing what? And the truth is I was a bit lazy. I knew that a better use of my time would be to read, but I had a lot of internal resistance.

Den Lennie (16m 59s):
I was telling myself, I’m not a reader. And you’ve heard the phrase. Poor people have big TVs, wealthy people have big libraries. Now, Warren Buffett, who’s one of the world’s richest men. And look, I’m not saying that that material wealth is the indicator of success because it’s not, but the modern world sees wealth as a kind of aspirational goal. But Warren Buffet is someone who is incredibly wealthy, but lives a very frugal life. He loves the game of business, but he spends 80% of his time reading, learning, thinking. He says, I insist on a lot of time being spent almost every day to just sit and think that is very uncommon in American business.

Den Lennie (17m 46s):
I read. And I think so, I do more reading and thinking and make less impulsive decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life. When mark Zuckerberg was asked how he spends his time at Facebook, he answered, I spent much of my day thinking about how I can make Facebook better for his users, elite athletes, train to perform at the highest level, but they rarely do it without a coach. Elite performance in any field requires a conscious effort. You know, society promotes healthy eating. Yeah, you are what you eat. Society promotes exercise. Yes. Walk every day, move your body, get your heart rate up for 20 to 30 minutes, at least three times a week.

Den Lennie (18m 29s):
Yet very little is made of looking after the mind. Let’s say you have an F1 race car worth a million bucks. Would you raise that car around at 200 miles an hour, 24 hours a day without stopping to let the engine cool down? Probably not. Because if you run that engine optimum levels, it needs to cool. It needs time to rest to be lubricated and shouldn’t. So if you want to hack your mindset and the habits, the easiest way is to build habits around programming the mind with some mindfulness and some meditation. Now I use an app called Headspace, or I used to I’m much better at meditating now kind of just on my own, but in essence, simple meditation, simple awareness and mindfulness.

Den Lennie (19m 16s):
It’s just breathing, closing your eyes and taking somewhere from five to 20 minutes out of your day and focusing on your mind. And if it feels weird, that’s okay. But trust me, and work through it. Remember, change is hard at first, messy in the middle, while you figure it out and beautiful at the end, once you get into meditation, you can literally meditate anywhere. And it’s probably the single best habit you can build to prepare yourself for some of the steps you’ve got to experience as you grow a business. So, you know, it’s very simple. Get an app called Headspace, get comfortable, close your eyes, breathe. It’s really that simple, but it takes practice to quiet the mind.

Den Lennie (20m 1s):
And it used to be believed that, you know, you could change a habit in 21 days, but recently an article by James Clear, who’s a photographer and writer on topics around behavioral psychology and habit formation and performance improvement. He summed up some research that you found from a guy called Maxwell, understanding the journey is going to take longer than you think. But if you’re disciplined and consistent, and you have structure and accountability, then you’re going to get to your goal faster than if you try to do it yourself Malts. He was a plastic surgeon in the 1950s, and he started noticing a strange pattern amongst his patients. So this is a threat quote when Dr. Waltz would perform an operation like a nose job, for example, he phoned that it would take the patient about 21 days to get used to seeing the new face. Similarly, when a patient had an arm or leg amputated, mouth noted that the patient would sense a Phantom limb for about 21 days before adjusting to the new situation.

Den Lennie (20m 47s):
Now, these experiences prompted Malts to think about his own adjustment period to changes and new behaviors. And he noticed that it also took himself about 21 days to form a new habit. Malts wrote about these experiences and said these and many other commonly observed phenomenon tend to show that it requires a minimum of about 21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and grow a new one to gel. So in 1960 malts published that quote and his other thoughts and behavioral change in a book called Psycho-Cybernetics and the boosts went on to become a massive blockbuster, hit selling more than 30 million copies.

Den Lennie (21m 28s):
Now that’s when the kind of real problem started because the decades that followed Malter’s work in influenced nearly every major self-help professional from Zig Ziglar to blind trip, Brian, Tracy, Tony Robbins. But, but here’s the thing it’s kind of how long has it really tick at the 21 days is it’s a little bit of a myth because actually it takes somewhere between 21 and 66 days to form a new habit. And there’s some research was done by Phillip Lally. Who’s a health psychologist researcher at university college, London, and this was published in the European journal of social psychology.

Den Lennie (22m 8s):
And they figured out, you know, how long does it actually take to build a habit? So they studied the habits of 96 people over a 12 week period. And each person chose one new habit for the 12 weeks and reported each day on whether or not the behavior did in fact become automatic. And when did it feel automatic? Some people just chose simple habits like drinking, a bottle of water at lunch, others chores, more difficult tasks like running 15 minutes before dinner. And at the end of the 12 weeks, the researchers analyze the data to determine the, how long it took each person to go from starting a new behavior to actually doing it. So do you, I know the answer.

Den Lennie (22m 50s):
Well, on average, it takes more than two months before a new behavior becomes automatic. They claimed 66 days to be exact. Now how long it takes to develop a new habit can vary wildly, depending on the behavior of the person and their circumstances. So in Lally’s study, it took anywhere from 18 days to 254 days to people to have to form that new habit. So the reason I’m sharing this is if you want to set your expectations appropriately, the truth is it’ll probably take you anywhere from two months to eight months to build a new behavior in your life, not 21 days. So interestingly, the researchers also found that missing one opportunity to perform the behavior did not materially affect the habit formation process.

Den Lennie (23m 35s):
In fact, in other words, it doesn’t matter if you mess up every now and again, building better habits, isn’t an all or nothing prod process. And if I look at my 15 week gym process, you know, the last couple of weeks I’ve done about three sessions and two weeks, normally I do three sessions a week, but I got back into it today. And I immediately was in think, cause I’ve been doing it for 15 weeks. So whatever habits you want to change, it’s important that you’re realistic about the time and effort required to change them effectively. And so when you look at your business, the thing that I see and observe the most, in video businesses is it’s very hard to break the feast and famine when things are going well, everyone tends to take the foot off the marketing gas and, and be like, Hey, everything’s great.

Den Lennie (24m 24s):
And then they go quiet and they start to panic and saw that the conduit to that, or they’re the antidote to that rather is to build a habit around your marketing effort, which means reaching out every day to 20 people on LinkedIn. You know, making sure you are consistent, not just with your connections, but also your messaging. What kind of posts are you putting out? You’ll notice that we put out two podcast episodes a week. We’re on episode 222. That is a habit. We put them out every week. We do a shorty on a Tuesday we do a main episode on a Thursday, and we’ve done to overturn an episode 222 episodes.

Den Lennie (25m 7s):
That is a consistent output. I record the podcast, my team do everything else. They post it on social. They send out emails, they send it to the copywriter who writes amazing show notes. And Kelvin does an incredible job of summarizing each podcast and making it more interesting for you to read for you to listen to the episode. And so, you know, we have an incredible team that supports us to put this content out, but it’s absolutely, we, we are deliberate and our consistency, we took a month off last August and it really affected our consumption, and clients would say to me, oh, where was the podcast? So we are committed to doing two episodes a week. So we keep this message front and center.

Den Lennie (25m 50s):
And the other thing we like to do is maintain the same message, which is you cannot build your business alone. You need support. And if you want to operate at an optimal level, you have to invest in some kind of guidance. So you’re accountable and you feel that you are moving in the right direction and you can course-correct along the way. And that’s why we have our weekly coaching so that every week there’s a touchpoint. So guys I’ll see you soon. Thank you for listening. Ask yourself this. Has owning your own video business, been everything you dreamed it would be when you first got started. It might be hard to admit, but think about whether you’re genuinely achieving everything you set out to?

Den Lennie (26m 32s):
When you made that decision to grab the camera and go it alone. Are you really working less? Are you really earning more? And are you really in control? Chances are you’re bloody good at what you do, but you’re having to work like a dog 70 plus hours a week, whether it’s filming, editing, marketing, or any of the other jobs that come with being the big boss of your own video company. When you’re managing projects constantly searching out for new clients and worrying about cash flow, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture or make real progress. Let’s face it. That stress is the last thing you need. When you’re trying to run a profitable company that supports you and the people you care about.

Den Lennie (27m 12s):
Truth is a business that provides financial professional and personal freedom really is achievable, but maybe you’ve got that nagging feeling that you’re overworked, lacking stability and struggling to get to where you really want to be right now. It could be that you just don’t know how to make a positive change on your own. So I created the video business accelerator coaching programs to really supercharge your video business with these unique coaching programs, you’ll learn all the tools you need to get complete confidence in the success of your video business. You can take the first step on your journey to a successful business that doesn’t control your life. Let me show you how head over to denlennie.com And click on accelerator.