Whether Business Is Good or Bad, It’s Because Of These 3 Areas

What's going on guys. Greg Hickman here and in this video actually want to bring you behind the season to a video that I shared with our clients. Every Monday I hop into one of our private client Facebook groups and I kind of share a little bit of a training on performance mindset, things that I think like that I'm seeing in the community of our clients just in my everyday life. As you know, we're trying to build our business and be at our best and perform. So in this video I break down, um, this notion of core four that I learned from Russ Perry. It was designed by Garrett J white of wake up warrior. And it kind of plays off the idea that [inaudible] where you feel the kind of the discomfort and the challenge and the maybe the, the friction in your business, likely the area that you need to work on and fix is not actually in your business, but one and possibly two or three layers above that in another part of your life....

And I've seen it work time and time again in identifying, Hey, like where do I really need to be spending my time to kind of improve and make things better without burning myself out without impacting the relationships or the relationships I have with my family, friends and loved ones. And so if you feel like things aren't going exactly how you want in your business right now, it's hard and maybe you've doubled down because things aren't so good or maybe you've doubled down because things are good and you don't want the momentum to stop, then definitely check out this video. And, uh, let's just jump right in every Monday I kind of hop in here and share a little bit of wisdom, little nugget, little thing for you to think differently about what's going on in your life and your business. And, um, something that I've talked a lot about recently with a couple of our clients that are in Academy as well as, um, a couple of really close friends and peers of mine.

A couple of people were asking. Um, you know, I've been posting a lot on social media, a lot of kind of organic posts like I like, like I teach many of you guys in here just kind of demonstrating leadership, sharing lessons from the trenches each and every week. And um, one of them, one of my friends who I'm really close with, she has a seven figure business and she was saying like, dude, like your contents been really good. Another friend was like, dude, your posts have been awesome. Like you need to like make a book. Um, and uh, in kind of talking with these folks, we were chatting a little bit about, um, what has changed for me and what I want to share with you today is something that I've been thinking a lot about since really November of 2018 and applying and not just thinking about applying.

And I've talked about this in ways, um, you may or may not have heard of this. You have watched our podcast or anything. And also, by the way, I don't know what the heck happened underneath my eye. And my wife said, woke up this morning. She said, what happened to your eye? I'm like, I don't know where this Mark has come from, but they're with it guys. Um, and if you're watching, please do drop a comment and say what's up. I'd love to see who's hopping in on these calls. See if I can see, um, see if I can see the comments. Yeah, comment. I want to see if the comments actually show up for me. If you come in here and if it shows me who's commenting, but I digress. So what I want to talk about, and you know, obviously you came here, uh, if you're in this group or in our world to, to grow your business, to streamline how things are done, to get your time back, to create, make more money, have more impact, more predictability, all of those things, all those things and the reasons why we start a business.

And one thing I've noticed that I think often entrepreneurs will neglect, I know I did, um, is the importance of, you know, or maybe this notion of like work life balance and how all of these things are very integrated. And if one area of your life is off, it can very much impact another area of your life. And so what I want to do is I want to kind of hop on the iPad here and kind of draw this out for you because Mmm. I see it in a lot of people's businesses and I want you guys to pay attention to this because look, a lot of you guys are in this program. Uh, we have a short amount of time together unless you kind of continue on in our world and Academy, which we would obviously love for you to do, but we want to get stuff done.

And typically I, that can lead to like pushing harder than you should. Um, and the thing is if, if you have to push super hard all the time in order to get a certain result, you're going to burn out and that's not sustainable. So while we do have limited time together, I'm again, assuming you don't continue on into Academy, you should still try to operate through this experience together with a little bit of push and pull, like go hard for a week, kind of pull back lightly for the next, um, or go hard for two weeks, pull back lightly for the next and really just keep focusing on as you're optimizing your calendar and focusing on certain things that you're not neglecting other areas of your life. And so, um, you probably have heard me before talk about, um, a program that I went through, um, called wake up. I should tattoo it in tech late. It didn't go through wake up warrior, but I went through a version of wake up warrior, um, with the founder of design pickle Russ Perry. And we learned this thing called core four. And core four is kind of like, has become like a way of life for me. Um, while I'm not 100% consistent with it all of the time because I'm human, it is a way that I operate. It's a part of my morning routine. Um, it's a way that I, I, I've really kind of in a gamified way approach my morning routine, but it's bigger than that in that core four is this notion that we have, um, we focus on four areas of our life. It's like becoming four dimensional human beings. And the first area is actually, sorry, I started writing. The second one is body. You know, how we treat this vessel that we operate in each and every day, week, month and you know, comes down to fitness and nutrition and um, you know, all of that stuff that's obviously important. And so we have this area of our life where it's focused on like being the best us.

Okay. Physically. And then we have our being, which this is more of like the spiritual, spiritual side of your life. I don't care what, uh, uh, whether God or whatever you believe in, but the, the spiritual out like you being in touch with yourself and your beliefs and all of that part of your, your world, right? So we have our bod body as the, the physical structure. Um, our health, what we eat, what we do to stay in shape, can we have our been like tuning our mind, um, and staying on point there. Then we have, um, our balance, which is our relationships with our spouses or partners or close family and friends, children. And then lastly, we have our business [inaudible] and the point of this conversation, and I found myself in a place a few years ago, I mean a year and a half ago now where things weren't great in the business. Um, Ailsa what's going on? Yes. So glad you're talking about this. I'm glad. Um, and so these are like the core four right in our life. And I can go deeper on this with any of you if needed at some point. But these are, these are the things and there's activities that I do every single day that tie to each of these, um, which I'm not necessarily going into right now. There's two activities that I do every single day. But the point here is that these core pillars stack on top of each other just like this. And oftentimes, um, you know, for myself speaking, you know, transparently is like, I would feel like, man, the business isn't where I want or need it to be.

And so, you know, we'll call it, it's in the red zone. Like things aren't going great. And so what do we do when something like that happens? Well often and I find, but also in other areas of her life, we would like double down on this area. So I start working more nights and I start working, um, you know, weekends and over time. And because if it's not going well, well if I just give it more of my time and attention, that's what's going to be needed in order to flip it on its head. And the reality is that if you feel that the problem is in your business, so now we're talking about symptoms, right? If we, if we're experiencing symptoms that point to the problem being in our business, what I will tell you is more likely than not, the actual problem is one layer up.

And I see this to be true time and time again. And so while we might really feel it, you know, again, the symptoms in the business zone, by doubling down in there, we actually continue to Rob ourselves of the real solution, which is likely in a completely other area of our life, which in this instance would be balanced. And I can tell you that for me, this was me. I was doubling down. Hey babe, my wife is named Sarah. Hey Sarah, like things aren't going great right now, but like if I just can put in a little bit more time tonight, uh, that'll be great. And guess what, that time was robbed from here. I also then realized that because I was again doubling down, putting all of my capacity, you know, 100% down here, while there really wasn't any left for any other area and it really just started rising up, right?

Like my health went out of whack. I like lost touch with myself and my relationship was, was no bueno. I'm on top of that. We had, you know, Cole, who's our son, who you know, was a year and a half old and we had our own issues there. And so it kind of becomes this issue where it's like, okay, well I'm gonna fix this so that this can be better and really all we're doing is making this worse and each level above it worse, which actually has the negative impact on the thing that we actually are focused on, which is our business. And it isn't until we start solving the problems that are really, you know, at the, the core of all of this, which are likely to be one of these three areas, and Garrett J white, the creator of core four did this intentionally like business is the fourth one.

Because as entrepreneurs, we're all going to, we love what we do, we lean into it, but the reality is the is health is very much dependent upon the relationship, our relationship health, our spiritual health and our spiritual and mental health and then our physical health, right? If you yourself like can't make it through a day physically or mentally, how are you supposed to show up for anyone else in your life? How are you supposed to show up for your spouse, your kids, your close family, your partner, your teammates, your clients. This is why the analogy of put your mask on first is one of those things that they say on the airplane and it's become like an analogy of like business. You got to take care of you first and you gotta take care of your body first. You gotta take care of your mind, you gotta take care of your relationships and you gotta take care of your business. But it actually all happens in that order. So I've had clients, I've had talked to some of our clients in the Academy program that they're having issues around their business. And literally I started asking them questions about their relationship and they're like, what? What are you talking about? I was like, when was the last time you went on date night? Like once last time you guys took a vacation. Like you're, you're actually dating your partner. What do you guys talk about? Non-business stuff ever. And it's like all of these things literally have impacted. Like they're always thinking about business. They're always talking about business. They work and eat lunch at their desk. They don't even get up. They're barely working out. They wake up and they're just instantly taking care of clients, not themselves. And so when we operate daily in the core four, I actually, sir, I actually go through a motion of this process.

I serve my body first, then my beam. I balanced my business. And again, if you're feeling symptoms of man, maybe my relationship is off, right? Guess what? If your relationship is off, it's likely has nothing to do with your business. It probably has more to do with your own mindset and you taking care of your own mental health. And if you're feeling like that is off, it's probably because you've been neglecting your body, the foods you eat, the, the exercise you either do or do not have, it all stacks up on top. So if you're struggling in your business or you're feeling, you know, uncomfortable or obviously no one uncomfort is a part of your growth, but don't overlook the fact that if something is going on down here that the solution has to live in that same area. So if the, if the area of pain is in your business, you doubling down on business at this very moment might not actually be the solution to the problem.

Most likely it's something in these other three. And the first place to look would be the one layer right above it, which would be your balance. Um, so hopefully this, this serves you and I want you to really think about, um, how this might be impacting you and your life. Because I know for me that when things things, and the funny thing is when things were shitty and like we were having a tough time in business, I doubled down in business, right? I got to fix this. If I just get this done this weekend and X, Y, Z will be better. But on the flip side, when things are good, you're like, I don't want this momentum to stop. I got to keep going. I got a double down. And the same thing applies. So it's like if that's the case, if things are good and you double down on business and things are bad and you double down in business, you're always going to be neglecting the layers above, right? Because there's only so much time in a day. And so you gotta be taking care of your relationship with your spouse, your partner, and then your kids. If you have them or close friends and family, be making those daily deposits and you know, being sure you're present in those moments versus you know, out with your family and you're on your phone, like still doing business. Like that's not, that's not you working on balance. That's you robbing from balance. And so, um, I know some of you guys are going extra hard. I see some of your posts, they're like late at night. Um, make sure you are balancing, um, how much you're working with, how much you are dedicating to the other areas of the core four here. Because I can tell you, if you only focus on business, these are going to suffer. Um, yet it's, it doesn't work equally the other way around.

If you focus on a lot of these, in many cases, in most cases, your business will actually start to thrive. So, uh, think on that. Leave me some questions, comments if you need, uh, would love to hear what you think about this topic as it relates to you, your business, and your body being in balance. And, uh, you guys enjoy the rest of this week. Super pumped. Have a good one. And we'll talk soon. If you want to launch a group consulting and coaching arm to your agency, I put together a step by step training to show you how you can add three to 10 clients paying three to 10 K in the next 90 days. Visit all agency.com forward slash hybrid and register the free training today.