Dave Braun
00:00:00
Well, welcome everybody to the HireMyVA Team and Business Building Podcast, where we help YOU to reclaim your freedom through hiring and thriving with virtual assistants without breaking the bank, without breaking your bank. I’m Dave Braun and I’m here with my partner and good and great friend, Larry Broughton. Hey Larry! There’s a difference between both man!
Larry Broughton
00:00:24
Dave, it is good to see you again. This is part two of this podcast, but before that, thank you for being my friend. Thanks for being my partner, man. I just, honestly, I was telling a friend this the other day, I can’t imagine life without you in it these days. You’re one of those most loyal people I’ve known through thick and thin. So thank you so much, brother, my life is better because you’re in it. So there you have it.
Dave Braun
00:00:49
Yeah, the same goes for me, man. And Larry, you wouldn’t even believe how many, and I don’t think I tell you this, but just being on the podcast with you, I’m learning things every time. And our Wednesday night meetings, I’m not the person today that I was years ago and a lot of that’s due to you.
Larry Broughton
00:01:08
Thanks. All right. So enough of the Love Fest. Yuck!
Dave Braun
00:01:13
Well, let’s keep going with the Love Fest. That’s our theme for 2021!
Larry Broughton
00:01:17
Yeah, that’s right. All right. Well, my friends, thank you for joining us here on this. This is part two of a podcast that we started earlier. We’re really reflecting on 2020. What are the lessons that we learned there? And so if you’re kind of just finding this one, go back and listen to part one of this, but this has to do with the Whole Health Spider Graph, a tool that I developed a bunch of years ago, that Dave, once we became partners, business partners, it really helped me hone and develop and really flesh out to this great, amazing tool that it is today. And what we realized is that measuring “success” on eight different spans of life, help us have a more balanced, rewarding life than just focusing on what’s my bottom line look like, because truly life begins beyond the bottom line. Right?
Larry Broughton
00:02:13
So the eight spans that we talk about here are physical, financial, professional, leisure and fun, that’s grouped together, mental, spiritual, family and friends. In part one we talked about physica,l financial, professional and leisure. And I think we hit a lot of really good elements. And what I hope is people will go back and listen if they’ve not heard it. But what I’d like to do, Dave, is talk about what are the lessons we learned in 2020 in the categories of mental, spiritual, family and friends. And like I said, in the earlier podcast and part one of this is, I’m not one who likes to look in the rear view mirror, but if we’re going to set smart goals for our future, and whether you’re somebody who sets, this is the time of year when people are setting goals for the next year, whether you’re one of the people who sets annual 12 month goals, or one of those people who sets micro goals for the next 12 days, or you’re somebody who does 12 weeks, 12 week goals, you can’t set effective goals if you don’t at least do some reflection on the trends that have happened in the past. Right? And so we’re going to take a little bit of time, talk about what are the lessons we learned in 2020 and how can we improve just by analyzing, staring at our navel a little bit, what the next year might look like. Anything you want to add on to that Dave before we jump in?
Dave Braun
00:03:35
Other than just, like you said, reemphasize, please go back and listen to the first part of this episode, the beginning part, for sure, where Larry, you explained real well what the spider graph is like and the balance, how to figure this stuff out.
Larry Broughton
00:03:52
And for those that are listening, we actually show, and if you’re watching, we actually pulled up what a copy of the spider graph looks like. So Dave, let’s kind of jump into this, the next, the, I guess this would be the fifth span, is that right? Basically the fifth span of the spider graph would be mental health. Because again, we’re trying to measure the whole health being, right? Because we’re not just a financial being or a physical being. There’s a financial element to our life. There’s this, our professional life. Gallup says that most people are disengaged because they’re not being professionally developed. Leisure and fun is important, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, you know, according to the shining. We just lived through that. But then the next span is mental health. So what is a lesson you might’ve learned about mental health in this past year?
Dave Braun
00:04:47
So one of the things that I had done before, of course the pandemic, is I was pretty clear and mentally on what my sanctuaries were. And I would define sanctuaries as, as how most of you would, is that places where you feel safe, that energize you, that when you have maybe tough things happening outside of those places, you can go back into and recharge. They’re a source of comfort for you, familiarity, that kind of thing. So I think it’s important for us to identify what those are. And then, one of the things I did is I’d had defined three of them: one was church and the other one was the gym. And we talked a little bit about that in the other episode. And the third one was my home. And we had worked to make my physical home…
Dave Braun
00:05:42
And of course the environment we’ve created, something that is a good and safe place for us. And of course, my overall faith, Larry, you and I are Christians, my faith is a sanctuary in a way that can’t be taken away from me. But these other sanctuaries are kind of like, physical in a way, right? The church, what I mean is the physical building where we’d go to worship and the gym is physical and my physical home. And what ended up happening though is when the pandemic started is, closed the gym and closed the church. So all the worship had to be done online. And so I lost two of my three sanctuaries, but the great thing was, is I still had my home. So I think that was a lesson that really got embedded in me is that, I’m glad I had those three sanctuaries, three different ones because those other ones could…the chances are, you’re not going to lose all of them at once. But it’s important to have multiple ones that you can rely on and fall back on, to help when things are going crazy, at least from a mental perspective.
Larry Broughton
00:07:00
Well, I liked that you intentionally identify them. And isn’t amazing, you guys did this beautiful renovation on your home just prior to this.
Dave Braun
00:07:10
Yeah.
Larry Broughton
00:07:14
That’s a great thing. Imagine, trying to struggle through all these other things, anyway, so that’s good.
Dave Braun
00:07:24
So that was one of them. Another one related to that is, I mean, you can see my office in the background. Part of the renovation was my office. I got my bookshelves, my patents up there, like my little wall of fame and you know, it’s over here, I got my whiteboards. And so I have a nice office environment that I enjoy being in. So that’s a lesson, and I’ve worked since then to make sure I clean it up and do a couple of things to make it as best as it can be. That’s an important thing is to make sure you’ve got a good environment that you’re working in. That you want to go in. Because there are times when you’re just going to be like, I just don’t want to work.
Dave Braun
00:08:06
But if your environment is inviting and you want to go there, it really will help. So that would be the second thing. And then the third thing, and we can talk about this is I got into the cycle like everybody else probably did that started watching and reading the news all the time. I take a break, I work in try to work in 90 minute chunks and then I’d take a 15 minute break. I’d be spending my 15 minute breaks, checking the news. And it’s like, oh my gosh, that was just killing me. So that was one of the things that I learned is, it’s important to watch the news and whatever sources you want, but make sure you limit it to an appropriate amount. If you’re on it constantly, we had some friends who were watching, one of the news channels, like two or three hours a day. And it was just, they just had to almost do a fast from it. And I think Larry, you had talked about, you were doing a fast from any of the news stuff for awhile.
Larry Broughton
00:09:11
I am. Let me jump into that then. Yes. I think we have to protect our mental health like we’re protecting our home or a family member. I mean, with diligence, like willing to put your fist up, to protect it, because the garbage that goes in can get in there and ferment and get even worse. So yes, I’ve been on an intentional news fast for months at this point. And I’ve got a couple of friends, one leans one way politically one leans the other way politically. And they’re always sending me, I’m just gonna use the word just to be dramatic, garbage. And so it always felt tension. Now in my old life, I loved that. Some of you folks know that I went to school for political science. I studied political science at one point my life.
Larry Broughton
01:10:12
Some of you know, I’ve been kind of drafted, people wanted me to run for congressional offices before I used to feel like I had to be the first person who knew the news. I always was the guy who people were coming at, you’ve done this, used to ask me, what’s going on politically? What do you think about this? So that was a very hard thing for me to break through. But I realized several years ago, Dave, when I got involved in doing these flashpoints, from one of the books that you and I worked on, is that one of the flashpoints that I sent out years ago, and I don’t even think it made it to the book, talked about the negativity that’s in our brains all the time. About if someone else talked to us the way we often talk to ourselves, we’d slap them.
Larry Broughton
01:10:54
And that’s how militant I want us to be about looking at this negativity that goes in into our brain. And so I went on a very intentional, fast, I didn’t want negative people or negative stuff going in here. And part of the yoogozi program a while ago, it’s been a couple years now, you and I shot a video on what we call brain flushing. The way to get the negative chatter that’s in your head out is by putting, replacing it with positive stuff. This is why we wrote flashpoints. This is why we believe so strongly in a morning routine. Before you check email, before you get on social media, you put good stuff into your brain, beautiful music, great reading, some meditation, because the truth is, particularly in this difficult time that we’re in right now and going through is that suicides are way up and not enough people are talking about it.
Larry Broughton
01:11:53
Overdoses are way up. People who have been clean and sober for a long time have fallen off the wagon. We hear, I think it was 37% of people who had some level of sobriety, have lost their sobriety in the past few months. So I think it’s really important that we take mental health seriously. Now, whether that means that you find an accountability partner, a prayer partner, a meditation partner, hire a mental health professional. One of the great things that have come out of this is that online mental health, you can get now, right? You can do zoom. It’s not the same as being in someone’s office necessarily, but it’s the next best thing, there are secure video conferencing that you can do with a mental health professional.
Larry Broughton
01:12:58
There really is no excuse anymore. And finances aren’t even an excuse anymore because so many people are doing pro bono stuff. But it’s the way that we look at our mental health. It has to be a priority. And for me, Dave, it starts with gratitude, absolutely starts with gratitude. And it’s kind of a biblical thing, I suppose, but no matter what is going on, even when the storm is raging, there are things to be grateful for. Sometimes we have to search for them, for sure, but saying them out loud or writing them down and getting intentional about making, being aware of them, is so helpful. Our morning stand-ups in our companies, every person has to say what they’re grateful for before they talk about what their goals are for the day and what they accomplished the day before that, to say what they’re grateful for.
Larry Broughton
01:13:53
Because the truth is gratitude and anxiety cannot live in the same space at the same time, gratitude and anxiety can’t live in the same space at the same time. So I think that we have to focus on gratitude a whole lot more. I have been in some really ugly shit in my life, but a lot of it is right up here. Some of the ugliest stuff is right up here between my ears! Listen, the entrepreneurial journey is one of the most difficult journeys you’ll ever be on in your life. It just, that’s just the fact. If we’re easy, everyone would be doing it. So make it a priority, Okay? Go to YouTube, type in Larry Broughton brain flushing, you can go to our yoogozi.com store store, there’s a book there called flashpoints. Go to wherever you buy books, whether you go to Walmart or Amazon, it’s there. The importance of brain flushing,
Dave Braun
01:15:05
On yoogozi.com, wearch for flushing right in our search box. And it pops up and it’s a nice transcript here as well, but you can watch the video here. We recommend watching the video because it’s a really good visual.
Larry Broughton
01:15:20
So I think Dave, that is mental, anything else on mental before we switched to the spiritual?
Dave Braun
01:15:28
No. Other than, I guess there’s one thing, it just popped into my mind. One of the things that I started doing is, you know I’ve done over the years, a bunch of business books summaries, right?
Larry Broughton
01:15:40
Yes. Oh gosh. They’re good ones by the way.
Dave Braun
01:15:43
Yeah. And they’re, they’re kinda more than summaries, right?
Larry Broughton
01:15:47
Yeah. Yeah. They’re more like a novellas.
Dave Braun
01:15:52
But they’re in my Evernote and I got a new Kindle, I’m thinking, can I get my book summaries on my Kindle? And so figured out a way to do it, just create a word document and you can, there’s an app. You can download it, essentially have them on the Kindle. And so in the evening, what I’ve started doing for going to bed most nights, is I’ll bring up one of them and I’ll just start thumbing through it, one of my summaries to kind of remember some of the stuff that I’ve learned and filling, before I go to bed, my brain with some good learnings and positive stuff.
Dave Braun
01:16:32
And it’s made a difference. It really has.
Larry Broughton
01:16:35
Right. And the way the brain works with that stuff that you have just got through reading it’s filing and processing that while you sleep. This is why you should not be watching movies like Full Metal Jacket before you go to bed! You should not be watching the news before you go to bed. Okay?
Dave Braun
01:16:50
What happened last night, I watched Alien and Terminator.
Larry Broughton
01:16:54
Exactly….let’s shift gears here and go into the spiritual span. What have you learned spiritually in the past year, David?
Dave Braun
01:17:06
You know that we are built for community, right? God created us to be in community with other folks, and this pandemic just kind of tore that apart. And so what I learned is even more so now, but to always push to be in community and you may have to create it or recreate it as needed, and to be diligent on it. So I think Larry, maybe we can talk a little bit about our men’s group, but that’s one of the things that you, me and a couple of other folks got together. It was in the fall and we said, man, we’re just missing some guy time together. And so we recreated a community that had fallen apart and we created it in a new way, a better way, but we recreated it because we were all missing it.
Dave Braun
01:18:08
And I tell you, Larry, since doing that, it’s made such a difference. So where we get together, as guys, once a week. And so I think that’s the lesson that I learned is the importance of community, and to almost kind of force it in a way, set up a system or environment where you’re forced to be in community, if that makes sense. Because, as we talk about, we are creatures of isolation. Left to our own devices, we’ll just isolate, especially man. I know I will. And if you’re that kind of person, you’ve really got to gotta force it.
Larry Broughton
01:18:49
And the forced part, I think one of the re one of the lessons I’ve learned and had to learn over and over again, over the years, since I’ve become a Christian, is that leading up to our Wednesday group, I don’t want to go! I come up with a million reasons why I don’t want to be there. And then I get there and realize, this is exactly what I needed. Now, listen, Dave, you’re a Christian, I’m a Christian. Do I wish there were more Christians? Of course, but I want you to have a spiritual walk, whoever your creator is, whether you use the word Gaia or God, or Yahweh or whatever it is, I’ve been in enough recovery programs to know that we have to surrender our lives to some higher power.
Larry Broughton
01:19:36
Listen, we are a speck on the darn timeline of existence. And when we realize that we really can’t control it all…that was a hard thing for me, coming to faith and just getting so clean and sober and is realizing I can’t control everything. There are some things I just have to let go. Which has been a very difficult thing for me during this pandemic, Dave, is that I know that, we’re busting our humps, but I want to control everything. And surrendering is a very difficult thing to do. I used to think that surrender was a sign of weakness. If I let somebody else deal with this stuff, I’m surrendering and giving up. But surrender is like vulnerability. It takes courage to do this in the right environment. And knowing that things are going to work out, that the universe, God, Gaia, is conspiring for greatness for us.
Larry Broughton
02:20:44
I have to remind myself of that every day, several times a day. Because I’m in the business arena with people who are dealing with multi-million dollar assets, tens of millions of dollars worth of individual assets. And so pressure, the temperature is high, and it’s easy to get into the weeds and think that, well, if I, Larry, can just control the situation, I’m going to make it better. But sometimes the best thing we can do is to say, I can just do the best that I can do and surrender, everything to your higher power. But I think, the good point, that was my learning thing too, Dave, is that if we can do that, first of all the surrender, accept that there’s a higher power out there. For me, it’s God and my Savior. But get intentional about surrounding yourself with people who are going to be on that journey. In our group, we call it a Silas, somebody who’s going to go on the journey with you. Because it’s a tough journey. It is a tough journey. And so let’s go on it together. There’s a saying that says, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with a team. I’d rather go far, like live the marathon.
Dave Braun
02:22:13
I agree. Some of these things in these areas are just, like you said, not going to be easy and we have to really push to do it. And it helps when you’ve got other people traveling on the journey with you.
Larry Broughton
02:22:29
So Dave, at this point we’ve done physical in part one, we have financial, professional, and leisure in part one. We’re now in part two, we’ve talked about mental and spiritual. We’re hitting the halfway point. Now we have family, then we’re going to do fun. So what’d you learn about family during the past year?
Dave Braun
02:22:45
What I learned about family was, oh my gosh, I think everybody is going to identify with this is you got to understand that if you talk politics with your family, you need to understand if they can handle it. Otherwise do not, because there’s lots of folks out there. this is kind of friends too, but it’s even more so with family, because you can choose your friends, but you really don’t choose your family. You got to understand if you can really talk politics or not, or bring that stuff up because otherwise do not, as a lot of people can’t handle the disagreement. We’ve got some friends who are on one side of the aisle and they’re brother and dad and all that are on the other side of the aisle. And they now, they just don’t hardly talk to each other.
Dave Braun
02:23:44
Their relationship as a family is fractured because of that. Now, my family, on my side of the family. I’m on one side, more or less. And then some other folks in my family on another side and every now and then we’ve talked about politics and sometimes it gets heated, but overall, we’ve got this overall arch, overall relationship that’s love. And so we love each other and we forgive each other and we’re good. And we don’t talk very much about it because we realize we’re not going to change each other’s mind, but it’s so important from a family perspective, you gotta understand if you can talk politics with them or not. If you can’t, just don’t bring it up because it’s just not worth it. One of my friends at the gym, his niece. He never even gets to see his grand niece anymore because they’re so divided between them politically. The resentment is there so much. And so that’s one of the things that a big lesson that I learned is just really, really, really be careful when you’re talking politics.
Larry Broughton
02:25:04
You know, to do that, however, and this is the realization I’ve had in this past year, is the realization of the value of a high EQ. Emotional quotient. You can’t do what you just got through saying if you’ve got a low emotional quotient, right. You’ve got to really be aware. What’s an EQ, there’s a book called emotional intelligence, it’s by Daniel Goldberg. He started studying who were all the salutatorians and valedictorians in school, and whatever happened to them. What they found was if they had a high IQ and a low EQ, emotional quotient, they didn’t go very far. They lived these light gray lives of mediocrity, but the people who are out there who are the titans of industry, the people who are change-makers in the world, they were people who may not have had a high IQ, but they got along with people.
Larry Broughton
02:26:06
They could read people. They saw potential in people. They encouraged people. Those were people who actually were making a difference in the world. The great thing is you can learn tools to boost your EQ. And so it’s not like, if you’ve got low IQ, that’s the end of it. You actually can learn just like IQ. There’s somethings you can do about IQ that can give you, add 10 points to your IQ as well. So I’m glad that you learned that ,Dave. Some of the things for me on family is, as silly as thhis might sound, is just the value of family. My parents, both my parents passed away several years ago. I’ve got an older brother who passed away when he was 36. I do have a twin brother, got a couple of siblings, but I live here on the west coast, the rest of my family, quote, unquote, lives on the east coast.
Larry Broughton
02:27:01
With the exception of my children who are here. And so I recognize that like you, you’re probably going to hear a recurring theme here. And that is the intentionality of building relationships with people. With my daughter off at college, early in the year, and then actually coming back home and living with me while she was attending college and university online, was a challenge, for her, which meant it was gonna be a challenge for me because I had to be an encourager. And talk her through things. And I’ve got a 16 year old son. I’m almost 17. The challenges that come with… you were a teenage boy once Dave, wasn’t that an easy road?
Larry Broughton
02:27:50
And so the lesson I learned there was actually, it’s a lesson I applied to any human interactions, but particularly in the family, was this, ready for this? This is a writer downer, okay: Offer grace, patience, and forgiveness freely and often. Offer grace, patience, and forgiveness freely and often, because when I am able to do that with my family members, particularly like these political talks that come up, Dave, when you offer grace and you offer forgiveness, because somebody’s feelings are gonna get hurt, but you operate out of love over and over again, the wounds heal much more quickly. It’s like putting the salve on a wound. I realized that whenever I think I’m going to go into a prickly conversation with a family member, if I go into it with this, reminding myself TFTR, Larry, thanks for the reminder, offer grace patience and forgiveness freely and often.
Larry Broughton
02:28:57
I tend to approach this, everybody. with my arm, hands open and not with my fist up because, don’t you have a family member where you’re like, oh, you’re going to the function. And you know, that family member is going to be there and you can feel the tension start to build in your shoulders. So that’s kind of one of the things that I’ve learned when it comes to family is just love first. How about that? How about we start and love first, because I think the sad part, Dave, and the lesson I realized over the past year, is that it’s easy to get angry with family members or easier to get angry with family members then it is with friends because they’re always going to be there.
Dave Braun
02:29:42
Yeah.
Larry Broughton
02:29:42
Well, guess what? They might not always be there. I’ve lost family members very quickly before, and we’ve seen divorces happen. So don’t think that just because you’re married to this person, that you can abuse them, okay? Love them. Treat them with dignity, treat them with respect, treat them as if they’re someone you actually love. How about that? Anything about anything else about family Dave?
Dave Braun
03:30:14
No, that’s that’s good.
Larry Broughton
03:30:17
So here in part two, we’ve talked so far about mental, spiritual, family. And the last one is friends. This for me is one of the most important ones that I just described. I don’t have a lot of family around me. I have more friends around me than I do a family. So Dave, what’d you learn about friends in the past year?
Dave Braun
03:30:33
One of the things that I’ve learned is that I, I want to embrace more, I want to be more of the person who is the first to reach out and don’t resent people if they don’t. So my mom is 87 and she’s doing okay. But sometimes, she will resent if people don’t reach out to her. And the thing is, people just aren’t thinking about other people very much. They’re thinking more about themselves. And so I can’t be the one to sit back and think, oh, people need to reach out to me, I don’t matter to them cause they didn’t say anything. So here’s what happened on Christmas day. Normally I have a bunch of people that I’ll I’ll text, Merry Christmas to and stuff. And it was about 10 o’clock.
Dave Braun
03:31:29
Nobody texted me. Well, I could have taken the attitude of, oh man, they’re not thinking about me, they must not love me anymore, screw them, f them, all that stuff. But instead I said, I’m going to reach out. And so I did. And then we started having some good conversations with people. So I want to be the person that is the one willing to reach out and not resenting if other people don’t. I just don’t want to go there anymore. I had another friend who, we had talked about in the past, that he’s like, I just don’t know if my friends are any good because I’m always the one that reaches out for the conversations to help and do things. And he was starting to resent that. But I know how rich his life is by him reaching out and initiating the contact with folks because it’s not about that.
Dave Braun
03:32:27
they’re not willing to do it. People just don’t think about it. And it’s kind of what we talked about before. We tend to, a lot of us want to just isolate and we don’t do it for whatever reason. So I’m going to go into 2021 being intentional to reach out more. Also, as you know, my cousin died just recently. And so she was more or less the one, she was the one who reached out to me, we’d been texting each other. And that’s one of the things that, I want everybody to embrace technology because it allows us to stay connected more so than ever before. We just have to be willing to use it right. But she was texting me back and forth. And so we had a pretty good relationship. She was family, but she was more friend and she reached out to me a lot. And I’m so thankful that she did, because you just talked about family being gone, she’s gone now. So there was no way at this point for me to establish that relationship. Thank goodness, and I’m so glad that she did because now I’m closer to her husband. I’m closer to her daughters because of all of that. So I want to reach out more to others, be the first to reach out.
Larry Broughton
03:33:48
That’s a good one. So you reflected, and now you’re getting intentional, you’re going to reach out more in 2021. That’s really good, Dave, you know, one of the realizations I’ve had in the past year, and I know that it’s kind of late in my life to be realizing this, and I know it intellectually, but I don’t always own it. And here ,in the heart area, is that just because someone’s not reaching out doesn’t mean that they don’t love you. The truth is our priorities aren’t the same as everyone else’s priorities. They’re just not. And we don’t know what struggles they’re dealing with that day. It’s not that they’ve not thought about you. It might be that something has distracted them from reaching out. And then, you know, we’ve all had it happen. So this is the part about offering grace, patience, and forgiveness freely and often.
Larry Broughton
03:34:44
Let’s go through life with our friends, expecting that they are well-meaning. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. I think it is a good thing. For me the other lesson this year is I’ve gotten much more selective about who I’m calling friend, who I’m calling brother, and who I’m sharing things with. Because truth be told, I had some folks who I thought were friends, when this pandemic hit, who said some rather nasty things. Even though I offered patience and grace and forgiveness, and I went back and asked them about it, I realized I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life. I want someone who believes in me, who loves me, who sees the goodness in me and not what they can get from me. That kind of was in a way, that was an awakening this past year for me.
Larry Broughton
03:35:45
And I decided I’ve always been one of the people who have, I know a lot of people, I do. I know a lot of people, but I have a close group. They’re pretty tight. I don’t mind, I don’t care if that group gets even smaller, but I’d rather have a few deep people in my life then hanger-oners. And I choose not to. I’m going to be much more selective moving into 2021 than I have in the past about who I call friends. Even in this call a couple of times, I wouldn’t call him a friend, we’ve not talked in a long time. We’re more acquaintances or associates or whatever. To me, friend is a very powerful word. Very powerful word. I think we diminish friends way too much. I hear it all the time. Particularly with social media, I’ve got one person in my life in particular, “my dear friend” is like, you’ve met that person once, you got a picture with them, your dear friend…really? So I’m just going to be more careful about who I call friend.
Dave Braun
03:37:00
Larry, that’s good self-awareness on your part to know what you want out of your friend relationships and how you’re built and you want to go deep with a few. Other folks are like, yeah, I want to go deep with a few, but I want to have the wide group of folks as well. And they’re good at it. They’re good at it. But then know themselves that they can be relatively good at.
Larry Broughton
03:37:30
Well, I’ll tell you this: life has been a journey for all of us, but for me, you know my story, Dave, I had to get intentional years ago about if I wanted to change, I used to have a lot of friends and I didn’t have one, not one that I had a deep relationship with. Not one really knew the real me. Friends to me are battle buddies. They are somebody whose got your back and I’ve got your back. So that’s how I’m choosing to look at it for 2021. So with that folks, we hit all eight of these: physical, financial, professional, leisure and fun, on the first part of this, go back and listen to that if you didn’t catch it. On this part, we hit mental, spiritual family, and friends. So I hope that you got some stuff out of this and you were able to reflect on 2020 with Dave and I as well. But now that you’ve reflected, let’s get intentional about what are we actually going to do in 2021. And if you’re part of the tribe and you’ve got access to this whole health spider graph, this is your reminder, TFTR my friends, pull out that whole health spider graph and start measuring your life on this. And what’s measured is improved.
Dave Braun
03:38:54
I would say I totally agree with that. It’s important to do the right balance of looking back, but looking back not to punish yourself, but only to learn and to take those lessons forward. Because I think also, until we learn the lessons we need to learn, we’re just going to have to repeat them. And so you do yourself a favor, if you can look back and see, okay, where am I falling short and what am I going to do about it, how am I going to change? So I think 2020 was just the craziest, the craziest year. A lot of great things happen, but you know, a lot of bad things have happened as well. But I think if I could put my little bow on it, one of the things that I want to do going forward is to make sure I manage my perspective appropriately on everything. Have the right perspective.
Larry Broughton
03:39:52
Perspective is key. We should do a podcast just on that.
Dave Braun
04:40:01
Maybe that’s going to be the next one. Well thank you folks for being with us, Larry and I have talked a long time on these couple of episodes. It’s been fun though. It’s really helped both of us, I think, process what we’ve gone through, and it’s helping us set up ourselves for 2021 even better. But thank you guys for being here with us and remember building a team is the way to reclaim your freedom. It’s the way to really move through these areas of the spider graph. Like we talked about, it can help you make leaps and bounds, if you have a team around you to help you do that. And part of that team is us. We are here to help you. But what we’d love for you to do right now is three things: go and subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already done so. Then number two, give us a rating, preferably five stars. And then number three is go to hiremyva.com for more information on our course and community. Remember even without experience, you’ll learn how to prepare for, hire and thrive with virtual assistants. And Larry and I have helped a lot of folks, we’re helping folks now, we’d love to help you too. So just go to hiremyva.com for more information!
Larry Broughton
04:41:11
And remember, one of the most important parts of this program is the community forum that we have. Go there, dive deep with some of those folks. I know there are a lot of our members in there who love helping other people on their journey. And it doesn’t just have to be with hiring your VA. There are people that are in the program who have said that their lives have been transformed by working with us and working with being in this mastermind, being in this tribe. So it’s a great resource for everybody. But do yourself a favor, do the world a favor, do something truly significant today. All right, folks, go get ’em!
