220. 7 Things I Know About Business at 42 I Wish I Knew at 32

Ryan Hanley: I do not think that we should criticize ourselves. I think we should be self-reflective, meaning understanding and thinking through whatever psychological principles were dictating our life, whether we were actually implementing them or not, and how those principles, habits, mindsets, et cetera, impacted whatever happened.

Ryan Hanley: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. What's up, guys? Welcome back to the show. Today, I'm going to discuss seven things that I know about business at 42 that I wish I had known at 32. And over those 10 years, I have worked at an independent insurance agency. I've worked for a large national technology company that we built a media company out of that was also a lead generator. I've worked for a large aggregator slash technology company in the insurance industry. I worked for a fitness franchise, started my own independent agency, and now have my own consulting firm in which I work specifically with the insurance industry. That's Finding Peak. And more to come on that at the end of the show, I'll share a little bit more detail about Finding Peak with you. But I want to get into these lessons because I find that being self-reflective is one of the most important aspects of career development.

Ryan Hanley: I think in wins and lessons, right? I don't try to think through failures or losses. I try to think wins and lessons, and that's not my original idea. I don't know that anyone else packages it up exactly like wins and lessons. I'm sure people have, but this concept is not mine. However, I do believe in it, that if we look at experiences as failures, then we oftentimes, we don't take them as moments to get better. We take them as low points in our life or our career, which, frankly, you could have something that feels terrible in the moment be one of the most important and positive things that could happen to you. You may just not see it, right? And, you know, when in doubt, pull out, good life lesson in general, the farther you get away from something, the more you pull back, right? You look in a little microburst of time and something could seem tragic, but you get farther away from it or you kind of pull the camera lens on your timeline of your life back and you look at it in the broader sense. And oftentimes, these, you know, quote unquote, low moments can really be incredibly positive, but you have to be self-reflective.

Ryan Hanley: And I've talked in the past and other episodes of the show about being self-reflective versus being self-critical. I do not think that we should criticize ourselves. I think we should be self-reflective, meaning understanding and thinking through whatever psychological principles were dictating our life, whether we were actually implementing them or not, and how those principles, habits, mindsets, et cetera, impacted whatever happened, good, bad, ugly, et cetera. If we can think through how that works, then we can use those moments as opportunities to pivot if need be. And in some cases you may say, Hey, that mindset that I had there is who I am. And this organization, this person, this deal just didn't align with that. And that's going to happen, especially if you do live by a set of principles or standards that you feel very strongly about. That's absolutely going to happen. And frankly, as we're going to get to in one of these seven items, we're going to see that that is most likely the way we should live.

Ryan Hanley: So all that being said, I think that the dynamism of my career has allowed me to learn in a rapid way, right? A 10 year period, a set of lessons that I think it may take others a lifetime to learn. And what I want to do is put those lessons in front of you so that you don't need to take a lifetime to learn them. Hopefully some of these you can either relate to you've experienced, or if you haven't, you can have in your mind and be ready for so that when moments present themselves in which one of these lessons could be useful, you have it at your disposal to use.

Ryan Hanley: So with that little diatribe there, let's get on to the seven things that I know about business today at 42 that I wish I knew at 32. And I was working this, I was like, should I think back all the way to when I was 22, right? So sometimes when you see pieces of content or, you know, put together in this format, it'll be like, you know, what I wish I knew at 22 when I was 40. I was a dummy at 22. I think most 22 year olds are morons. I think that they know nothing about the world. And that's the point, right? They're sponges. They should be dummies bouncing into things, trying things, making tons of mistakes, thinking they have all the answers and having to get knocked down because they don't. You're a dummy at 22, as you should be. You don't know anything about life. Granted, there are exceptions to that. But most of us are in those moments are supposed to be learning, are supposed to not have the answers, are supposed to be sucking things in.

Ryan Hanley: So I don't actually want to speak to, if I could go back, the 22-year-old version of myself because I want that person to make all those mistakes. That's when you should be making mistakes. However, at 32, you should be starting to create a set of standards and principles for your life that are going to dictate what can be a high growth time period. Your 30s can be an incredibly high growth time period, both growth as an individual, growth in your career, your family, if you're a parent, et cetera, growth in the relationships you have, depth and meaning in your life. And I think that there are some aspects, if I could go back to that 32-year-old, that I think I did very well and I'm very proud of. And there's other things that I really wish I had what I had today, which are these lessons that I'm going to give to you right now.

Ryan Hanley: So with now for a second time, no further ado, let's get on to the seven things that I wish I knew. The first is that competition is not a dirty word. Now, for me, it never has been. I believe in competing. I believe that we are all competing against each other all the time, constantly in every aspect of our lives. We compete against our spouses. We compete against our children. We compete against our parents and our friends and the people we work with in our company. and we work, we compete against everybody. It doesn't have to be a bad thing, right? It doesn't mean that I'm going to step on you or hurt you or deceive you or, you know, subvert you in some way. It means to me, competition is about, is about striving for more than what's there.

Ryan Hanley: And, you know, the competition, so let's take the idea of competition with your spouse, right? I think Most of you, when you hear that, you might say, oh, that's disgusting. I shouldn't be competing as my wife. We love each other and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, sure. I will tell you, I think the competition there, when positioned in a positive way, is very much about how can we work to be heavy, deeper, more meaningful, more connected, more understanding, more caring, more thoughtful relationship, where we, you know, more accepting and at the same time, more challenging, right? Like I constantly want to be challenged. It doesn't mean I want to be criticized. Criticizing and challenging are two different things, especially when we think of it in terms of, say, a peer or somebody you're working with or a friend or your children. I want to be challenged by my children. I want them to ask me tough questions when it seems like maybe something I'm telling them doesn't pass the sniff test for them.

Ryan Hanley: But in this aspect, we are constantly competing to be the best versions of ourselves. And what we've started to do in our society today is act like somehow competition is a bad thing. Like anytime you compete or if you're ambitious or if you want to be the best or win or if you want to be number one, that somehow that's toxic. That is insanity. It's absolutely an utter insanity. And if I could go back and talk to the 32-year-old version of myself, I'd say compete more. Right. Patrick Bet David just wrote an incredible book called Choose Your Enemies Wisely. There's also if you want to read more about enemies, you can read The Prince by Machiavelli. You can also read 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, which is easily one of the best books I've ever read in my entire life. and all of these speak to the concept of power games and how having enemies is important.

Ryan Hanley: Now, you don't want your wife to be your enemy. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying that thinking through the lens of competing, of growing, of building, of challenging yourself. And again, this competition might just be you versus you, but do not feel like you need to accept mediocrity to fit in with society. Do not feel like wanting to be the best is a bad thing. Standing out, being the best, being on top of the hill is a great thing. Now, I do think that you should do it morally. I'm a Christian. I believe in God. I wear a cross. I have a cross tattooed on my arm. I have a tattoo that says faith over fear right up my sleeve. I believe in doing this in a moral way. But compete. Engage. Allow yourself to win and to lose and to learn and to grow and to feel what it feels like to get beaten by somebody and to feel what it feels like to win and be the champion and compete and focus on competition and make it an important and integral part of your life. Competition is very important. And I do not believe that this socialist idea of we all should just kumbaya and get along and hold hands is I don think we built for that To me it a scheme It a it of control Because oftentimes the people who would have you feel bad about wanting to be the best are the ones who want to be the best. And their way of not allowing you to get there is to make you feel bad about wanting to be that. So compete, my friends. 32-year-old Ryan, compete. Get after it. And don't feel bad about it. That's number one.

Ryan Hanley: Number two, preparation is the key to all success. There's this incredible clip from Derek Jeter. You hear athletes talk about game speeds up, slows down. Well, it slows down when you're prepared, speeds up when you're unprepared, right? So every time you're in a situation, I've already gone through it in my head. I did not understand this until recently. And this comes to practice. It comes to mindset. It comes to visualizing things. It comes from taking 10 minutes before an important call and putting yourself in the right mental framework and thinking through what someone might say and how to react and getting your emotions in check. It comes to preparing for a presentation, you know, days or weeks ahead of time so that when you get in the room, when you're standing in front of the audience, when you're on the phone for that sales call, everything slows down. You're not scrambling to try to stay on top of the conversation. You're there. You're in the moment, exactly in that moment, living it, enjoying it, embracing it, and reacting to it because you're prepared, right? When you're unprepared, it feels like the world is moving at 10,000 miles an hour. Like you can't keep up. Like you're out over your skis. Like you've lost your balance. And the only way to kind of get into, you know, some call this flow state. If you're a baseball player, you would call this the zone. I think basketball players use that as well. You're in this moment. And I actually took a class in college called Death, Dying and Beyond. And I don't know why I did this because at the time it wasn't something I was necessarily interested in. But I had this – when you play baseball and you are in the zone or you're in flow state, and this goes for many other things. I'm sure musicians feel this as well as athletes in other sports, et cetera. But baseball in particular for me, out of all the sports that I played, there would be moments where the pitcher could be throwing the ball 85 miles an hour from 60 feet away. But the ball would look like it was coming in at 10 miles an hour. And it was the size of a beach ball. And you could literally read Rawlings as the ball tumbled in the air. And I took this class in an effort. I didn't get the answers that I wanted necessarily. But at the time, again, my dummy 19-year-old self in college was trying to find answers to why does that happen? How is it possible? And the answer is preparation. When I was the most locked in, when I had taken my swings, when I had done my preparation, I had found my routine before I got into the batter's box, I could slow the world down. And that's preparation. Same thing goes for a really important sales presentation, right? If you've looked through your numbers, you've looked through your documents, you've researched the client, you've researched the individuals that are actually going to be in the room, the company, et cetera, your pitch, you've done your pitch a thousand times. You're prepared when you actually engage with that prospect. It feels like you can't say the wrong thing. And every corner that they try to. What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode. But as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show. Subscribe if you're not subscribed. and I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy it listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. Ping you behind. You can navigate around because you're prepared. So I would 100% go back and tell 32-year-old Ryan, Prepare, prepare, prepare, prepare your mind, prepare your body, prepare your relationships, prepare every aspect of your life for the success that you want to have because only through preparation can you be the best version of yourself. That's number two.

Ryan Hanley: All right, number three, leadership comes at a cost. If you want to be a leader, you're going to have to make sacrifices in your life. You can't be the best of everything or at everything and leadership takes a toll on your life. and you're going to lose friendships. People in the company who maybe used to want to go out to lunch with you won't, or people who used to dislike you may try to suck up to you. And there's all kinds of weird feelings and insecurities that come with it. And it takes a toll on you. And you have to prepare for that. And in the first few times that I was thrust into leadership positions, I wasn't. And there are decisions that I made, things that I said, opportunities lost because I hadn't prepared myself, going back to number two, for the cost of leadership. And if you're not willing to pay that cost, one of two things is going to happen. You are going to be a horrible leader. People are going to actively dislike you and your life is going to be miserable. or you're going to have other aspects of your life fall apart at the cost of being a leader. So it doesn't mean you can't have a great home life and be a leader and have people at your company like you, but there are going to be things that are not gonna be the same when you take a leadership position. People are going to question your judgment. People are going to take shots at you. People are gonna undermine you because they're going to want that position and you have to be prepared for that stuff. You have to be prepared to lose friends. You have to be prepared to find out that people you thought were your friends or maybe solid work partners or colleagues aren't actually there for you. And those are tough lessons to learn. And you just have to understand that leadership comes with a cost. I did not know that when I first started – when I first became a leader. Learned it the hard way a few times. But once you know that, then you know how to navigate things. You put less expectations on people. You don't take things as personally. You learn how to swim in that environment. And if you're willing to engage and, again, be self-reflective, wins and lessons, leadership is a wonderful position. It's just not what most people think that it is. And if you are a leader, you think you'll understand what I'm saying.

Ryan Hanley: Number four, discipline is destiny. Discipline is everything. I did 75 hard this year, which if you're unfamiliar with that program, just Google it. You'll find out what it is. It's a mental toughness program. It's not a fitness or health diet program, although those are aspects of it, mostly from the standpoint of what this program teaches you is discipline. And for 75 days, you do two workouts a day, 45 minutes at minimum per workout. One of those workouts has to be outside. No alcohol. You have to stick to a diet. No cheap meals. You got to read 10 pages of a book. You have to take a progress picture every day and you have to drink a gallon of water. and all of those things are just meant to be things that you don't necessarily want to do, and you have to make time for every single day for 75 days, or you have to start back at zero, and it's teaching you discipline. That's what the program is teaching you discipline, and what I've found, because by nature, I am not a disciplined person, but I want to be. What I have found is that through practice, preparation again, through being thoughtful and intentional in my actions, the discipline is really the key to making all our wildest dreams come true. If you can be disciplined in the habits and actions that produce the types of results that you want in your life, you'll get them. You'll get everything you want. You'll get absolutely everything you want. And sometimes I like to take this out of the strictly business format just because I think it's easier. Sometimes these examples are very cliche, say in the business world. So let's take our relationship with our partner, spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. If you want to have a great relationship, then you need to be disciplined about listening. You need to be disciplined about showing up when you say you're going to be there. You need to be disciplined about thoughtfulness. Don't forget to get the person a present on their birthday and then pass it off as like we don't do those things. Buy your fucking wife flowers. Let her, let him know that you care. Those things are tough because we're also in our own lives, right? But we have to be disciplined if that's important to us, right? For business, this is much easier. If you want to hunt and you're a hunter, you like to cold call, you have to make X number of calls every day. Just have to do it. You're not going to want to do it, but you're going to have to do it. If you want to be a great content creator, you have to create content every day. If you want to be a great leader, you have to do the things. You have to reach out touch points follow et cetera meet with people figure out how to support them and do that on a consistent basis You have to live the type of culture that you want in the company and be disciplined to that You can't show up at 835 and then yell at one of your teammates or one of the people that work for you because they showed up five minutes late for work, right? You have to be disciplined and discipline is everything. Ryan Holiday has a tremendous book on this, Discipline is Destiny. I highly encourage you to read that book if you're interested in a topic of discipline. I can give you a ton more books if you're interested. If you are, just leave something in the comments of the YouTube version of this or just hit me up on one of the socials. Happy to recommend books. I'll have a couple linked up in the show notes in the description as well.

Ryan Hanley: All right, number five, incentives dictate action. I did not understand this concept when I was a leader at the beginning. I don't think, I'm not a drill sergeant. I'm not a micromanager as a leader. Anyone who is watching this, who's ever worked with me or for me knows that I'm not like that bang you over the head type of person. But I was never intentional about aligning, properly aligning incentives with the actions that I wanted out of my people. And oftentimes I would become frustrated because I'd be like, look at this amazing culture and environment that I've created for you. Why aren't you X? Why aren't you doing X? And the answer was always because, yes, the person may enjoy the culture, may enjoy working for me or for the company, et cetera. But their incentives weren't aligned to the actions that I wanted. I mean, that's literally everything in life. Right. Like if you want something right, if there's if you want somebody to do something, you have to create an incentive for them to do it. Right. If you want more attention from, we'll go back to the spouse thing again. If you want more attention from your spouse, right? You want your spouse to pay attention to you, to care about you, to ask you about your day, then you have to create an incentive model for them to do that. If you're a jerk and leave crap all over the house and don't take the garbage out and make that other person's life harder all the time, what is their incentive to reach out to you and make you feel good? There's no incentive there, right? Same thing goes for your team. If you want your salesperson to write more new business, then you have to incentivize them to do that. You can't just say, well, I pay you a salary, do your job. Life doesn't work that way. I'm sorry, guys. Telling somebody that because you pay them a salary, they need to do their job. That is not the way life works. Set your incentives up for the actions that you want. If you work in the insurance business, the clearest example of this is commission splits for producers. If you want more new business, bring their new business retention, bring their new business commission percentage up and drop their renewal commission percentage. If you want them to be more account managers, drop the new business commission percentage, increase the renewal commission percentage, right? The way you set that balance up quite literally dictates what they will do on a day-to-day basis. It's pretty much that easy. Did not understand this. It makes complete sense when you think about it, but it was not something I understood at 32. This one is the one I alluded to in the beginning of the video. And that was number six is tell the truth. This is something I do by nature. And every moment in which I haven't done this, I have regretted the outcome. So I can't actually in thinking through this one, And I couldn't think of a specific example in which I've ever lied. I don't lie. And everyone would say that, that, you know, it probably, why would I come on here and tell you that I'm a liar? But, you know, I think we all have moments that we're not proud of. More often than not, when I say this, tell the truth, it's more like holding back our feelings is, in my opinion, the same as not telling the truth or glossing or whitewashing something to make it seem better or different than it really was. And in every time that I wasn't completely honest about my feelings, about what I wanted out of a situation or a relationship, I've come to regret that. Because even though it might be easier in the moment to just say, oh, I'm easygoing, right? In general, I'm an easygoing guy. So how this would manifest for me is I would not want to do something, but I also wouldn't want to make the other person unhappy. Or I thought that by being easygoing, I was making the other person happy, right? So I thought that just by going along with the other person, I was, you know, being a good, you know, a good business partner or a good, you know, colleague or a good, you know, spouse or partner, whatever. And that, And in those situations, now I'm not getting what I want. And they think that this other person was just trying to be nice too. And then no one gets what they actually want. And instead, and at 42 years old today, now I very much do this. I just tell people exactly what I want. Here's what I want. This is what I want out of this situation. Now, here's the drawback to telling the truth. You're not always going to like the outcome. When you tell the truth, you're not always going to like the outcome. And this is the problem with our politicians today is they all just want to win so bad that they don't tell the truth. And I think that's why we all have an icky feeling about politicians. Well, that same thing happens when we don't tell the truth in our everyday lives. We're just not up behind a podium lecturing to the entire country, right? When we don't tell the truth, we don't get a real outcome. We operate outside of reality. That person who you did not tell the truth to is now responding to something that isn't what you actually want. So tell the truth, and then reality happens as it should. Now, unfortunately, that could mean that somebody disagrees with you. You may have to have an argument or a conversation, or they may do something that you don't like, or they may disagree with you. Or you might not actually be good partners. You might not actually be good colleagues in business. This person might not actually like you because when they now know who you are exactly and what you believe, they might not actually like that person. It's why I've had – I'll give you a good example of it in the framework of this show. I've had many people comment on the fact that I comment on politics, that I will – I like to make jokes because I just find things funny. But I tend to be today – in today's version, kind of middle-right person. I tend to have more Judeo-Christian – I do have Judeo-Christian values. And in today's environment, that's seen as right of center or conservative. And I certainly don't agree with a lot of what happens on the left in kind of Western culture, American and even European politics. I share that with you because it's who I am. I have no problem with people having liberal or left values. I think it's insane, but I have no problem with it. If you have a problem with my values and that makes you uncomfortable and you don't want to watch this show or listen to me or don't want to engage with my content or work with my company because of my societal or political values, that's perfectly okay. You have that right. And I would rather that you didn't. I wouldn't want to work with somebody who the whole time was uncomfortable with who I am as a person. right? It just, I would rather work and operate and live my life and engage with and be friends with people who are okay with a hundred percent of who I am. And that is me at 42. At 32, that was not me. I would not have shared those things. I probably would make jokes in general because I find politicians to be insane and crazy, all of them. But, you know, I probably wouldn't have shared so much my personal feelings on certain situations, but I just, I've not telling the truth hasn't gotten me to where I want to be. So I've embraced telling the truth. I'm going to live in reality. Let the universe give me whatever the result is of telling the truth and operate in that world. Because at least then I don't have to play through some filter. I can be a hundred percent who I am. And I wish that the 32 year old version of me embraced that because I probably could have navigated through a few situations that I handled poorly or did not like the outcome of those situations because I didn't. So tell the truth. Okay.

Ryan Hanley: Number seven. And this one I've shared on the show many times. I believe in this. Obviously, if you follow me on Instagram, you know that this one is incredibly important to me. And that is health is a competitive advantage in all aspects of our life. Everything is about our health. If you don't have your health, if you're not physically fit, if you're not eating a healthy diet, and this goes mentally, so what you're feeding your brain, what you're feeding your body, how you're using your body, if you are not actively participating in your health, you are at a disadvantage. And, you know, look, the, sorry, the average American, I saw this stat the other day, this is also shared on Patrick Brett David's show, which is a wonderful podcast. If you can tolerate me at all, you'll absolutely love him. Uh, the average American is, um, divorced, obese, and has less than $5,000 in the bank. Right? So if why we allow ourselves to get into this position is crazy. I'm 40. I've said this like my own time. I'm 42 years old. I deadlifted 455 pounds yesterday 455 pounds I can bench 265 My squat kind of sucks I can only squat like 300 But my point in telling you that is like I live a healthy life I still have cocktails once in a while I still like to have cocktails I love cocktails I still you know I just took my kid for his birthday to a Boston Celtics game We eating chicken fingers and French fries And we had, you know, they got ice cream and stuff after the game. And, you know, I had I think I had like a beer back at the hotel and we're hanging and like, you know, I still like enjoy my life. But 80 plus percent of the time I live very, very healthy. And the reason is not to like I'm not like obsessed with it. It's because I want to be fit so that I can show up and do this and have my brain firing on all cylinders. I want to be able to negotiate. I want to be able to work, put in a 12, 16-hour day if I need to. When I'm up on stage on a speaking gig, I want to be able to bring 100% to that audience, which is what they deserve. I want to be able to engage life. And when you carry extra weight, when you eat shitty food, when you're not reading and filling your brain, when you're not properly hydrating, when you're not properly supplementing, you are not operating at 100% yourself. And I guarantee that if we are competing and you're not at 100%, I'm going to take your lunch. That's a fact. You, it is your responsibility in my opinion. Not to me, not to society, not even to your family. It is your responsibility to yourself to live healthy. And it doesn't mean you have to be psychotic or cut every ounce of sugar. or cut everything, every bit of alcohol out or whatever. If you like to smoke pot, it doesn't mean you have to stop. All right. It just means 80% of your life. You have to be very, very healthy. And if you can be very healthy for 80% of your life, you can enjoy that other 20%. And I'm telling you, you're not going to miss it. You're in the way you feel the energy you have. You know, I was just talking to my buddy, Sean Fitzgerald, who is going through 75 hard. And we were kind of going back and forth because I had just gone through it. And he was asking me stuff. And I said, bro, it is barbarian energy when you are healthy and obviously 75 hard is taking it all the way right I don't know that I would want to live in that realm you know all year long some people do I don't know that I would want to uh but and I don't want to but you can feel it you know the thing I hated about 75 hard was that I felt oh I felt like I could run through a brick wall you know your sexual drive is through the roof. You're energized. You're motivated. You just want to crush work and just, just work out. And you want to be with people and laugh. And you just want to do stuff because you have all this freaking energy because you're treating your body the right way. And okay. So if that's the crazy all the way version, well then dial it back just 20% and get to the version of you's who's, who, who can be, you know, if that's a hundred percent of you, I don't think you have to – I think you can be at 95% and only – and still – and do the bad stuff 20% of the time. 80% of the work will get you to 95% of your best self. And that 95%, I believe, is good enough to make all your freaking wildest dreams come true. I felt it. I feel it every day. Back in 2017, I weighed 20 more pounds than I weigh now. I wasn't myself. I wasn't fit. I wasn't strong. I wasn't, I wasn't able to do the things that I can do today. I wasn't able to, you know, elevate 2017 killed me. I was like on the floor drooling afterwards because I just didn't have enough energy. And it was that event that I said to myself, this will never happen again.