Episode 204: Take Action and Transform Your Business with Jay Scherr

Intro:

Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, where food bloggers come to get their fill of the latest tips, tricks, and insights into the world of food blogging. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll provide you with the tools you need to add value to your blog. And we’ll also ensure you’re taking care of yourself, because food blogging is a demanding job. Now, please welcome your host, Megan Porta.

Megan Porta:

Hey, awesome food bloggers. Do you struggle with knowing exactly what you should be doing to move the needle forward in your business? And do you struggle with knowing what to focus on next? If so, if this sounds like you, I have two solutions for you. Number one is mastermind groups. There is so much power in getting people together and helping to solve each other’s problems. At Eat Blog Talk, we have put together our own mastermind groups and we are hosting these weekly. You can join at any time. You can try it out for a month or you can sign up for a quarter or you can go all in and sign up for an entire year. Come join us, see if it’s a great fit for you. And this will really help you to solve those problems you’re having in your business and give you clarity about what you should be doing next to move your business forward.

The next solution is the Eat Blog Talk membership. I have spent all of 2021 so far putting so much value inside of the membership. It is such a supportive and wonderful place to be for food bloggers. We are learning so much from each other. We are joining together in monthly intensive calls, where we focus on very specific parts of food blogging in order to grow our businesses in massive ways. We also have guest experts come in and join us very regularly to talk about really specific parts of food blogging and we get one-on-one access to these experts such as Matt Molen from email crush, Casey Markee from Media Wyse. So many great people are joining us in these sessions and they are super valuable. There are so many reasons why you should be in the membership. I could not even start touching on all of it. If you’re tired of wandering around aimlessly in your business and not knowing what to focus on, give the membership a try for free for two weeks. Go to eatblogtalk.com. You can sign up for the masterminds there, and you can also start the process of getting into the membership for two weeks, just to check it out. The rest of us can’t wait to see you inside.

I wanted to quickly preface this episode and let you know where it came from because it’s a little bit of a unique episode today. We initially recorded this interview inside of a zoom call that happened inside the Eat Blog Talk membership. A couple of times a month, we host guest experts. We bring them into the membership and all members get access to zoom calls with these experts who join us. This expert, his name is Jay Scherr, and I will allow him to do his own introduction because that will happen in a little bit. He joined us recently inside of a zoom call and it was such an incredible, inspiring, and I must say slightly unexpected call or interview that I just had to repost this, republish this on the podcast. I want you guys to hear how amazing he is. I want you to hear his inspiring words.

I also want to give you a glimpse inside what we experienced weekly inside the membership, just so you know what awesome things happen in there. I’m just giving you a little snippet of an exclusive piece of the membership. So enjoy this and I will allow Jay to introduce himself. So thank you for taking the time for this. First of all, Gina, doesn’t Jay have the best voice ever? It’s the perfect radio, everything voice podcast, voice, and you have a podcast. I’m sure you’ve been told that your whole life, right?

Jay Scherr:

Once my voice changed. Yes, but it has gotten progressively lower as my number in years has increased as well. Believe it or not, many, many years ago, when I first started playing music professionally, I was one of the singers in the band and I actually used to sing Journey songs and took the lead vocals. If you can believe that.

Megan:

Wow, that’s crazy. I love that. That’s funny. Well, welcome. Najah, how are you today in Panama? Najah joins us from Panama, so she’s the farthest away. Jay, remind me where you are located.

Jay:

Sure. I’m in Florida in the Daytona Beach area. So on the East coast, about an hour South of Jacksonville. And hi, Najah good to meet you. I’m Jay. A pleasure.

Megan:

So Jay is awesome. He was going to talk today about taking action, which is something that I know I could use a little motivation and inspiration on. So this is one of your areas of expertise, Jay, right? Why don’t you do a quick little intro to yourself. Who you are. You can tell a little bit about your podcast and then we can dive into taking action.

Jay:

Sure. I’d be happy to. So my name is Jay Scherr. I own a business consulting and coaching business called J Scherr Business Consulting. I spent 32 years in corporate America working with a number of different companies and left that role behind in 2016, very briefly, went to work for a tech startup company and left after I realized and they realized that it wasn’t a good fit. Then I started my own business. It was the right time to take action, which we’ll certainly talk about. So I did that and I focus primarily on helping businesses achieve better outcomes, better results. You’ve heard of the Better Business Bureau. I’m actually the Better Business Builder. So those businesses that are looking to achieve greatness, that are looking to really achieve much better outcomes and generate better legacies for themselves and for their families. Those are the types of businesses that come to me.

So that’s the work that I do. Then I also have a podcast which has quite frankly taken on a life of its own. That podcast is heavily focused on business. Although quite frankly, it’s about the human experience. So I have guests from all over the world. You name it, very well-known influential guests. I have New York Times bestselling authors, top psychologists, business leaders, influencers, and the whole objective is to share insights, to help to inspire others, but to share insights that are going to help other business people, but not only in our business lives, but in our personal lives as well. So I thoroughly enjoy doing that. And I started that right around the time of COVID. So this would have been early March of 2020, and I actually pivoted another idea, something else I was doing, where I would meet in different locations with groups of business leaders.

Basically we would sit around and mastermind and talk about challenges in their businesses, pain points. We would discuss those challenges, and every business leader would walk away with some nuggets, something tangible and actionable that they could apply immediately in their business to start solving problems and really to start to see better results. It was a great opportunity for me to facilitate those discussions, to connect with others, to build meaningful relationships. Then when COVID hit and we could no longer meet in person, I said I have to do something to be able to give back and stay connected to a larger business community. That’s really when I began the podcast.

Megan:

Can you tell everyone what your podcast is called?

Jay:

Certainly thank you for that. It’s called Business Minds, Coffee Chat.

Megan:

Cool. I’m going to add that. I looked it up on the app, but I need to add it to my list because everything you just said is right up my alley. It’s something that I believe so firmly too. And that’s the reason I have this community is because it’s not just about getting the information. We are heavy into SEO and building up our Google juice and making sure we make an impact on Pinterest. We have all of these fact driven topics that we dive into, but it’s so important to get to the other side and just to make sure that we are mentally healthy, we’re taking care of ourselves. That in my opinion is just as important as the other pieces of it. There are people who discount that and they’re like, I just want the facts. I want the information. You can do that, but you’re going to be so much more successful if you really dig into it. What does it take to take action? What’s your morning routine? What are your goals? Are you actually taking downtime on the weekends and all of these things? So it’s this huge, big picture that’s so important. We get as entrepreneurs, small business owners, we get lost in that. We forget it. And I think that’s so sad.

Jay:

Well, you are so right. I couldn’t say it any better than what you just did. You gave a very good overview of what truly is important. I’ll share with you that in my coaching business, a big part of the time that I spend coaching business owners and entrepreneurs is around mindset. It’s about being able to do and prioritize the things that are important that are going to allow you to grow, not only a profitable business, but a sustainable business. And if you aren’t able to show up and powered, if you’re not showing up as your best self, if you’re not showing up healthy and vibrant and setting a good example for not only yourself, but your team, if you have one or your family or your community or the rest of the world, then you’re not accomplishing the best that you possibly can.

Again, I’m going to go back to thriving and sustaining. I mean, I’ve been through different periods in my life where I haven’t been as healthy as I knew I could be to where I am today. I’m in my mid fifties. I’m quite frankly at the healthiest point in my life than I’ve ever been. So much of that is because of how I choose to show up. It is a choice, those choices that I make throughout the day, starting the day, ending the day, a certain way, and the investment that I make in myself. That investment goes beyond just exercise. It’s around who I choose to spend time with. It’s the food that I consume, what I put into my body, the types of content that I read and, and where I spend and invest my time. Those things are so incredibly important. When you start to look at your life and your business through a very different lens, through different optics, and you start to look at where and how am I having challenges and why am I facing those challenges? It doesn’t always point to what’s happening on a spreadsheet, right? Nine times out of 10, the issue is you. That’s a tough one to face, but it’s a reality.

Megan:

Oh my gosh. I’m writing that out. Nine times out of 10, the issue is you, says Jay. It’s so true though. It’s hard to admit that to yourself. It’s hard to say, I’m the problem. I am the common denominator, and I need to fix myself before my business moves forward, but it’s so true. So how do we, how do we get ourselves to see, maybe what’s holding us back with mindset. Do you have any tricks for that? What if we feel held back? I’ve felt held back in my past. There’ve been times when I’ve just been, I know there’s something holding me back and I know it’s me. I just don’t know how to figure out what it is.

Jay:

That’s a deep question that may be maybe deeper than what you had intended, because we’re all different, right? Each and every one of us, although we’re all human beings, we have similar operating systems, the thoughts and what we’ve been surrounded by the biases that we carry, our environment, our upbringing, all of those things are different, which we all have different data points. So the first piece of that is looking at our belief systems and really trying to uncover what we think about ourselves, how we see ourselves. When I say, see, I’m talking about what is the picture that we have of ourselves, of how we show up to the world? What do we feel we are good at, what we can accomplish, where we do not show up as our best selves, where we tend to fail. All of those things are important data points.

One of the first things that I would do, in my experience, would be to start to map out what my belief system looks like. Sometimes working with someone to help ask good questions, deeper questions about yourself, can help to start to extract that type of information. What I’m trying to accomplish there is to build a mental map, a map of who I am and the story that I tell myself. Because I’ll share with you how important this becomes as we continue to want to, to grow and change and improve and become better. If you look at, and I’ll give you a fairly simple example, although it’s really not that simple, individuals that are on a weight loss journey. You see so often that they’re on that roller coaster ride, right? Where they start to get into a rhythm.

They subscribed to some plan, no matter what it is, I won’t name names, but they start to lose weight and they start to feel a little bit better about themselves. Then they revert back to the way that they were doing things before and the weight starts to come on, right? That’s that roller coaster, the ups and the downs. We all face seasons in life, right? We all face those ups and downs. But the one thing that hasn’t changed about those weight loss programs is the internal belief and the way the person sees themselves. It’s an amazing psychological aspect and the psychological impact that that belief in that vision has on who we are and everything that we do in life. I’ll give you another great example. There’s a book called Psycho-Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Baltz. It’s a classic book, and it’s been around for many, many years.

There’s an interesting point in that that Dr. Maltz talks about. He was a very well-known plastic surgeon, and he worked on patients who had had birth defects, or were in an accident. Things like that. Not necessarily cosmetic type surgeries. People would come to him and let’s say someone had a cleft lip, or something that needed to be that they wanted to have corrected. He would correct it, right. He would do amazing work. After the surgery, the person would come back and they would say, I don’t feel any different. Here they had this amazing surgery. They look incredible, but they didn’t feel incredible because they didn’t change the internal view. Only the external changed. We see that going back to the weight loss side, if you don’t see yourself as a healthy weight, vibrant, fit person, then no matter what you do, you are going to circumvent that. You’re going to fall. You’re going to cause an issue. There’s going to be a gap somewhere down the line. So we work on the inside first, then we can become that person and we can accomplish magical things. Does that make sense?

Megan:

It does. I love that so much. So how do we begin that process of changing how we perceive ourselves, because that is not an easy thing to do. I mean, you can say the words, but how do you actually get yourself to believe the words and the thoughts?

Jay:

Yeah. So let’s go back to the mental map, right? Really trying to uncover what are the beliefs that I have, what are the potential limiting beliefs that are holding me back? An example for me, and these are things that I had to work on myself and continue to work on because we’re always a work in progress, but it was using the words, “I can’t do X”, or “I’m not good enough to do Y”. So I had to reframe the language that I used to change the I can’t, to I can, or I’m learning too, or I may not be able to yet. So the language was an important piece, right? That helps to change the mental image and the internal image of who we are. Then also a lot of visualization. So I would visualize myself as a very successful business person or as a successful musician, whatever it was that I was trying to accomplish and whatever it is I’m trying to accomplish.

I start to paint the picture, a visual in my mind of who that person is, who I want to become, what I look like, what I feel like, the thoughts that I have, the more detail you can get on that, the more tangible you can make it, the more realistic it becomes. Our mind doesn’t know the difference between something that we are making up, if you will, right? We’re not there quite yet. And something that is in the outside world. So when we start to create those mental images and those changes and we reframe the storyline that we’ve been telling ourselves, that’s when the change starts to happen. But you want to do this incrementally. So I would pick one particular area that you want to work on. So if it’s, let’s say as an example, I’m trying to overcome a traumatic experience.

Speaker 3:

Let’s stick with that. Overcome a traumatic experience. The first thing that I need to do is I need to recognize where those feelings are coming from and acknowledge those feelings, right. Start to change. I don’t want to come across as woo here, but just pay attention to me for a moment. If this doesn’t make sense, just let me know. As human beings, we are storytellers. We think in pictures, okay. We don’t think in words, we think in pictures. The words are important, but the pictures are incredibly important. So if you’ve experienced some sort of trauma, you can take that mental image that you see, pertaining to that trauma. You can start to change the optics of that trauma, just like you would with a camera. You can change the lighting. So right now, a traumatic experience, if it affects you in a very powerful way, it’s because it’s very big and it’s very bright and it’s very loud, right?

That’s because it’s got all those emotions tied to it. If we can start to change that and reduce the lighting in our mind. Start to darken it and it starts to shrink the size of the image that we see. This is a process that you go through. We start to do that. So we’ve changed the size of it. We’ve changed the lighting. We change the volume, in our mind, of the sound that we hear when we’re telling ourselves, when we tell ourselves the story of that traumatic experience. When we can do those things, we start to change the emotional impact that that thing has on our lives. If you do that with consistency, what you’re doing is you’re building new habits, right? It’s like working out in the gym. You’re building the mind muscle, and you’re changing the association that you have with that thing now.

So that’s a traumatic experience. We can do the exact same thing with a positive thing. If there’s an area that we want to change in our life, if we want to show up as a more powerful person, if we want to be known as an excellent speaker, right. But we don’t have that experience. We can start studying incredible speakers and start to visualize ourselves as incredible speakers. Learn how to speak effectively, learn how to use intention and words and intonation, all of those things that we attribute to an excellent speaker. Is that helpful at all?

Megan:

That’s so awesome. I love how you can kind of manipulate the visualization depending on what you want. So if it’s something traumatic or tragic, that happened, then literally just make it smaller. I’ve never thought of it like that before. That’s such a good way to see it. Then if it’s something you want more of, whether it’s about you or a situation, make it bright and big and maybe think of it more often. I love that. I got goosebumps when you were talking about that. How big of a role do you feel people, the people who are surrounding you and your life, play in that whole process? If you start spending more time with high quality, awesome, smart, driven, uplifting people, isn’t that going to affect you much more quickly?

Jay:

Very, very much so. You’re absolutely right there. You’ve clearly heard the saying before that we’re the average of the five people we spend the most time with.

Megan:

I love that quote.

Jay:

I’ve heard it said in different variations, but I look at that and it’s more than just words. It’s a universal principle in my experience. I’m very intentional these days. I wasn’t in the past until I began to learn the impact of who I’m surrounding myself with and also what I’m consuming. But the people make such a tremendous difference. They can either give you energy or they can suck energy from you. So be very, very intentional because I’m sure we’ve all had that experience before. Where, when we’re around others, who, they’re excited about life, they’re excited about what they’re doing there. They seem to be motivated people. They have a purpose in life. They love to talk about things and challenge each other and help each other grow and support. When you’re around people like that, you feel better, right? You. You’re lifted up. It’s an incredible feeling. Think about the impact that you’re having on the other people that are around you, right? If you show up with your head down and your voice starts to drop, and just Oh my gosh, you know, this day has been the worst,

Megan:

Life sucks!

Jay:

I’ve got all these pains and these woes, the other people around you are going to start to fall to your level. Again, it goes back to intentionality. I’ll give you an example and I’m going to tie it back to the gym for a moment. So I, part of my morning routine is to move my body every day, seven days a week. I choose to go to the gym. Now I have a home gym, but I choose to go to the gym for a couple of reasons, which I can share with you. Because of my insurance program, I can belong to more than one gym. One gym that I go to that I thoroughly enjoy the people there. It’s an older demographic. What I found was that over time, the conversations were more around their doctor’s appointments and their surgeries and their physical therapy and the this and the that.

I started to, I wasn’t feeling as good. It was just a really interesting sensation. I had to extract myself and take a break from going to that gym and move to another gym where it’s really all about the exercising and lifting and really working on your body and pushing yourself. Motivating yourself. I had to do that. Now I go back to that gym, right? But I have to take breaks sometimes because of who I’m surrounding myself with. When you find that you are not showing up the way that you would like to, start to pay attention to where you’re spending your time, start to pay attention to who you’re around most. Start to listen to those conversations that you’re having. If the individuals that you’re with are not supporting your goals, if they don’t align with who you want to become, you have to make a tough decision.

I mean, I’ve had to let people go. I’ve had to not spend as much time with certain individuals because they are not necessarily aligned with me. We grow at different rates, which is totally fine. There’s no judgment there, but you have to focus on you, right? That’s part of self-care. You have to take care of yourself first, so you can then take care of others. If other people are pulling that energy from you, if they’re sucking the goodness from you and keeping you from showing up the way you want to show up, you need to take action on that. You need to do something about it. Don’t let that go.

Megan:

Yeah. It’s a big deal. That’s a really big deal. Who you’re spending your time with is a big, big deal. I was just getting my hair cut earlier this morning. I was sitting there waiting for the dye to do its work. There was a woman – it was almost funny, it was so bad, but she was a few chairs down. She said, Oh my God, my shoulder hurts. My spine has this issue. I literally was like, my shoulder started hurting. Maybe I have what she has, because she was talking about some terrible disease. It started to affect me. I was like, Oh my gosh, I have to get away from this. But it was horrible. She kept on with my daughter, she has this injury and it was just on and on.

So sometimes you can’t get away from it. But it is so important to evaluate consistently, who you’re spending consistent time with. Recently my husband was like, I noticed recently that you just been peppier and you’ve had more confidence and you’re just on a mission to kill it with your business. So when he said that, I was like, huh, nothing has really changed. But when I thought about it, I was like, wait a second. Something has changed. I’m spending time with you guys. Dina and Najah and all these amazing people in the membership and Jay. I’m spending time with people. We are members. I have really increased the quality of the people that I’m spending time with. So that is the only thing that’s changed. My motivation hasn’t changed. So it was really cool to hear him say that and to make a connection with the people.

Jay:

I love that example.

Megan:

o cool. So I want to hear about your morning routine, because I know you’re big into morning routines. Let’s hear what you do and I would love to just learn from you.

Jay:

Absolutely. I’m happy to share. So understand that, what I will explain to you is uniquely mine. So that doesn’t mean that because I do X, Y, and Z, that it’s going to have the same effect on the next person. Now there’s some general principles at play that do cross over, but just understand that your morning routine, which I would encourage you to develop one, if you don’t, is going to be uniquely yours. You’ll start to see different types of results. So the first thing that I do is I wake up early every morning. So I’m up. I do set an alarm, but the alarm doesn’t wake me up. I have an alarm on my watch, which goes off at 4:30 every morning, but I’m already up before 4:30. I usually get up at about 4:10.

Before my feet even leave the covers of the bed, the very first thing that I do, is I say to myself, I don’t say this out loud, but I say to myself, something along the lines of, this is going to be an incredible day and I cannot wait to get started. So it’s something along those lines. There may be a variation. So I want to start with something positive and something encouraging, right? I’m not going to allow something else that I don’t control, to come into my mindset and change the way that I start the day. So that’s the very first thing. Feet hit the ground. I already have my clothes ready, which I set out the night before, my gym clothes. I immediately am drinking a bottle of water. Then while I’m drinking the water, I have a gratitude practice. I have a gratitude journal that I write in every day.

This happens to be the journal that I use. It could be something as simple as one or two lines. I’m grateful that I woke up this morning. I’m grateful for the air that I breathe. I’m grateful for my family. You get the picture. You write whatever you’re comfortable with. Now, my gratitude journal. I almost filled up an entire page. I could keep going because gratitude plays such an important role in my life today. I will write about that. Then before I cap off the gratitude journal, I’m also writing down inspiring words about myself. So as an example, I’ll write something like I’m worthy of living in abundance. I’m a champion. I am loving and kind things, like that. So I might pick three to five things, and I’m saying to myself, I’m writing these things down.

So every day I’m starting off by reinforcing a positive message and showing gratitude, drinking the water and saying something positive about myself. So after I finished the gratitude writing, then I read every morning from, I love stoicism. I read from a book called The Daily Stoic. This is a book by Ryan Holiday. He’s a very well-known New York Times bestselling author, but it’s a way of helping to get clarity on life and what we experience. I just want to stay rooted in what truly is important and understand the things that I have influence over and the things that I don’t. So that’s why I read from that. Then it’s time to go to the gym and I mix it up in the gym. I go through anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half of weight training, cardio work.

It depends on what I’m working on that particular day, but that’s seven days a week that I’m doing this. I end that with a meditation practice before I come back home. The meditation practice, really, could be anything from 10 minutes to 30 minutes, sometimes a little bit longer. I do, if you’re not familiar with meditation, really, there’s no right or wrong way. It’s called a meditation practice because that’s what it is. It’s practicing. Right? We never reach the end. We just keep practicing it. I do guided meditations because I found for me that if I just sit in silence, it’s a little more difficult for me to get the benefits of the meditation. So a guided meditation helps me focus and recognize my thoughts. The reason that I do this, and this is the main point that I want to share when it comes to meditation, the practice itself helps us understand and helps us listen to when those negative thoughts come into our minds.

It happens to all of us. There isn’t one person on this call right now who doesn’t get that negative chatter going on in your mind. But we have to pay attention to it because if we don’t, that becomes the operating system for us. By meditating, I recognize when a thought comes, I accept it. Then I just let it go. I get back to my breathing. When I’m better at recognizing those thoughts, I can catch them during the day. That’s the power of the meditation practice, for me, is being able to recognize the thoughts. Then I can question the thought, right? So when it enters my mind and there’s some negative thought about myself, I can question it and say, really, Jay, are you really that way? Or are you really a failure? You know, all of the whatever is coming my way, I can question it.

That’s powerful. That space between the thought coming and your choice on what you do with that thought, that space right there, is your power. So that’s the meditation practice. Then I’m back at the house, quick shower. I’m checking in on what my plan is for that day. What my to-do’s are, what did I commit to doing? Ten I start to answer emails, check in on social media, those sorts of things. I do that after that morning routine, because I want nothing to pull me away from my priorities. To pull me away from what’s important in my life. Because if you’re checking in with email first thing in the morning, before you do anything else, guess what happens. You’re going to get pulled into somebody else’s issue. Then all of a sudden, all the other stuff that’s super important to you, it becomes a distraction. So that’s how I start my day.

Megan:

That’s amazing. I’m so impressed that you do that consistently every day. All of that, you do all of that, seven days a week. That’s so impressive.

Jay:

Seven days a week.

Megan:

Do you feel like it’s an established habit and how long did it take you to get to the point where it was consistent every day?

Jay:

Yeah, that’s a great question.

Megan:

Or have you always done that?

Jay:

No, not at all. So is it a habit? Absolutely. It’s a habit now. That habit is a result of behaviors. So when you start to look at the things that you do on a consistent basis, and you’re paying attention to them, you start to realize where those habits come from. So I made a commitment to myself that I was going to change certain aspects of how I live my life. I didn’t do everything at one time. I picked one particular area. So I’ll give you the example of working out. So in my corporate days, I was traveling all the time. I was on an airplane multiple times a week, entertaining clients, eating unhealthy food, eating big meals, and enjoying some drinks from time to time. I was 35 pounds overweight. I didn’t feel good. I was sluggish.

I was having some heart palpitations. I just, my stress level was up. I was sweating profusely. I just didn’t feel good. I tried to fake it as well as I could, but it just wasn’t who I wanted to be. So the very first thing that I decided to do was I’m going to start to change how I move my body. I decided I’m going to go into the gym and I’m really going to do this incrementally. I’m just going to take baby steps. I’m going to see how many pull-ups I can do or how many pushups I can do. Can I do that day after day after day? It was a process getting there because I didn’t want to judge myself. I didn’t want to shame myself for not showing up one day, but I wanted to also celebrate the win if I did go, or if I did get up early and I thought about going, and then I took that necessary action.

I got in the car. Sometimes it’s the simple things that make the big difference. I mentioned to you that I put my clothes out the night before. I do that because I’m trying to remove as much friction and I want to make it as easy as possible to get to yes. When I see those clothes sitting there, and I know that I already put them out the night before, I don’t have to think about it the next morning, because if I have to think about it, I may say, Ooh, you know, there’s something else that I’d rather do. When I started to do that, it was baby steps, right? One day, then the next day, then the next day. It did take some time. I mean, it took a good couple of months or so until it really, I didn’t have to think about it.

It just became more, it was a habit. I had ingrained the habit and it became a positive behavior. Just like most things in life. When you start to do something for yourself, you start to feel better about who you are. It creates a ripple effect. Guess what? You start eating better. You start having different kinds of conversations. You start to pay more attention to who you’re around. All of that stuff is a, it is a ripple effect. I mean, you’ve heard the saying before that a rising tide lifts all boats. It’s like when you do something that helps to lift that tide, all of a sudden the different areas of your life and including your business, start to change. I like to use the saying that if you want to grow a thriving, sustainable business, you’ve got to grow you first and growing you means taking the right actions. It means being responsible and accountable for what you do in the morning, how you show up your health, your what you, again, what you put in your body, all of those things make a difference.

Megan:

Oh my gosh, this is so speaking to me. I 100% agree, and this is the message that I love delivering to food bloggers because food blogging is crazy, Jay. We have so much to do. Everything is changing all the time. Right guys. I mean, you get one thing down and then, Oh, wait, Google has a core update coming out. Everything’s different. So I always preach that if you’re not taking care of you, you are not going to be able to grow this crazy business ever, like ever. I mean, you can for awhile, but it’s short term. If you want it to be long term and sustainable, you’ve got to take care of yourself. So thank you for all of that. That was Whoa, awesome stuff. Then I wanted to talk about action because I’ve had a thing rolling around in my head lately about action and just those people who have plans and ideas and goals, but they never actually move toward them.

Why is that? Why are there people whose actions come easily to? So I’ve come up with this thing. A little Megan formula, but it’s discipline plus consistency equals I don’t know what action and progress. I think those two words, those components, are so important because like you were just saying Jay, your morning routine, that requires discipline. You’re not going to want to get up at 4:10 every morning. Then that combined with doing things over and over and over and over and over, eventually you can look back and say, Oh my gosh, look at all of the things I just did. So what are your thoughts on all of that? Am I missing anything in that formula? Is there something else that should go in there? What do you think?

Jay:

So, I love your formula. The only thing that I would add to that, cause I completely agree with you about the discipline piece and about the consistency piece. There has to be the purpose piece in there. You have to have a driving reason, a purpose for doing the things that you do. If they’re important enough to you, if they’re meaningful enough, if you have established the goal the right way, and you’ve created the mental picture and the things that we’ve been talking about up to this point, if it’s strong enough and meaningful enough to you, by taking action, that is where the fire happens. So I look at everything that I do when I’m working with a client as an example, and helping them build a solid foundation for their business. In getting the pieces right that allow them to grow effectively.

We have to have the right purpose behind each of those. So it goes beyond just the goal setting. So let’s talk about the goals for just a moment, because this is where that purpose and the taking action piece becomes very important. When you go through a goal setting process, I would go beyond, I want to X. I want to earn more money, right? You want to get as specific as possible. So I want to earn $10 million by this date. Get specific on the dollar amount and the timeframe around it. But then to take it a step further, also define what happens if I don’t achieve this. How am I going to feel and what impact is that going to have on my life? Then on the flip side of that, if I do achieve that, how am I going to feel and what impact is that going to have on my life or on my business, if it’s a business goal.

So those help me look at what’s important and the things that I need to take action on. Again, if it’s important enough, I’m going to do it. Just like anything else, talk is nice. Learning is great. I love reading. But if I don’t take the lessons learned, if I don’t take something away from this conversation that we’re having right now and apply it, I’m missing the point. There’s magic in action. That’s something that my wife says to me. There’s magic in action. There truly is. When I first started my podcast, the very end of each episode, I would make that very statement. Don’t just listen to what’s been provided to you today. Actually take something that you picked up, a nugget of information and take action on it, apply it.

Megan:

It doesn’t have to be a huge grand big thing. It can be one little thing, using this conversation as an example. Give me one little piece of what you talked about that you do with your morning routine and starting there. Then just building those habits from there. So I think people get so overwhelmed. Oh, I could never have a morning routine like Jay, he’s perfect. I mean, he spends three hours taking care of himself in the morning, but it doesn’t have to be like that. We can pare it down to a really, really small piece.

Jay:

That right there, I would say is the key. It’s the linchpin to all of this, are those small, tiny steps that you can take. What is the smallest thing that I can do that’s going to move me in the direction of that goal, whatever it is. When I mentioned my morning routine, you’ll remember that I said that it’s uniquely mine, right? I wouldn’t expect anyone else to necessarily spend three hours in the morning or get up at 4:15, just because Jay said that’s what he does. That’s mine, right? Because it’s what works for me. Because I’ve tried other things. That’s what gets me, that allows me to show up the way that I do every day. But for you, no matter what it is you want to do, break it down into its smallest parts. If you truly want to start to build more empowering, more effective habits, that’s how we do it.

It’s by looking at the small pieces, the incremental things that I can do. Maybe, if you’re trying to maximize your time, let’s say, maybe that means getting up five minutes earlier, not two hours earlier, but five minutes earlier. Then let that work into its system. Start to change that. Then let’s see if we can push that back to 15 minutes earlier. Incrementally, that’s how we win. Remember this. We’re playing the long game here. This isn’t about trying to accomplish everything at one time. Because when we do that, we start to sabotage what we’re truly after, because we get frustrated. When we take on too many things at one time, we get distracted. Because we don’t accomplish all of it. We start to tell ourselves those negative stories. They’re not true. If you just take one area and start to work on that, you’ll start to see the changes happening.

Here’s the big piece that’s going to help you, no matter what you’re doing, and it’s called momentum. As you start to make those incremental changes and you’re doing the work, momentum starts to build. When momentum builds, wow, there’s nothing that you can’t accomplish. It’s an amazing feeling. That’s one of the switches. When I see that happen with a client that I’m working with, who’s a business owner and momentum starts to build on all the things that they’ve been doing. To build the business the right way. Wow. You see it in the business and you see it in the person. You can see it in their eyes. It’s incredible.

Megan:

Hmm. I love that. So not only is there magic in action, there’s the magic of momentum as well. You can feel that too. I felt that at various stages throughout my business, as it’s grown, and there is a moment where I’ll just look around and say, Oh my gosh, I’m in that flow of momentum. It feels so good. So amazing. Okay, we have eight minutes left, Gina and Najah. Are you guys just absorbing this? Do you have anything for Jay you want to contribute or ask? I don’t want to hog Jay all to myself. This is so good. I feel like I could do the weekly Jay show and this is amazing.

Jay:

You’re very kind. I’d love to hear from y’all. If you have any questions, comments, feedback, there’s anything you didn’t like that you heard, please share that too.

Megan:

For me, it’s all been great, but you guys feel free to chime in.

Najah:

Well, for me, it has been great. I’ve seen, like, as Megan said, she sees herself in what you’re saying. I felt that as well. I’m trying to see what the things you said I can start doing. Taking the small steps in and obviously start taking action.

Jay:

So let me ask you a question along those lines. What is just one area of your life, whether it’s business, personal, whatever, what’s one area that you know that you’d like to make some sort of change or you’ve questioned yourself on?

Nadja:

Well, I guess my health I guess from last year it started everything’s when like going down and I would like to be as where as when I was like a couple years ago, I felt good, I guess with myself and being healthy. I wasn’t so sluggish and things like that. I don’t want to feel like that anymore, obviously. So I guess that will be the first step in my case.

Jay:

Okay. In terms of health, when you think about that word and what it means to you, does it tie to the food that you eat? Whether it’s exercising? What does that mean to you?

Nadja:

I guess my first point would be exercise because I feel like when I start moving myself more, I feel more energized. I guess that would be my first step. Then my second step will be making or I guess having better food choices. I know exactly what I need to eat, obviously, to feel better and to be healthy. But sometimes it’s not the choice I make. Just being able to make the right choice for me to be healthy.

Jay:

So here’s a suggestion for you. Starting immediately, you can start this actually tomorrow morning. Get yourself a little notebook, something that you can write on each day and write down, I am on my way to being the healthiest version of who I can be. I am on my way to being the healthiest version of who I can be. So start with those words. Then if exercising is a first step for you, which I think is a great starting point, because as I mentioned to you, once you start to move your body more, it creates that ripple effect, right? Where you start to want to attract other healthy areas of your life as well, which means eating more healthfully, that sort of thing. So have your exercise clothes, like I do, out the day before so you see it. It’s a visual thing.

It’s a tactile thing, right? You want to see it and you want to feel it. Then you want to start to visualize yourself working out, moving your body and make sure that you start with an exercise routine that’s good for you. You want to make sure that doing something that’s going to move your body, but not something that you’re not ready for yet. So maybe start with some stretches, but when you start doing it, that’s the action piece. When you start doing it and you’re doing it every day, you’ll be able to do a bit more and push yourself. Congratulate yourself after the fact and celebrate the win. You did it. You took the action and you did it and way to go and high five. So that would be the starting point for me that I would suggest.

Nadja:

Thank you.

Jay:

Absolutely my pleasure.

Megan:

You’ve got this Nadja. I love that too. Like you need to celebrate the little wins, even if they’re little, even if you get up and exercise for 10 minutes. Congratulate yourself and say, nice work, you got up, you put on your workout, clothes, you sweat for 10 minutes. That’s awesome. So I love that. We’re here, Gina and I are here to cheer you on all the time. So yay. Go Nadja!

Jay:

Can I share one thing with you? This is just a parting point that I want to make. Again, it goes back to there are certain things that are universal principles that just work. They’ve been proven time and time again. I’m a student of business. I’m a student of success. It’s just what I love and what I immerse myself in. So here it is. There is nothing, there is nothing that you can’t accomplish when you set your mind to it. There is nothing that you can’t accomplish when you set your mind to it. When you believe that, when you truly believe it, and you have a strong enough purpose for doing that thing that you want to do, you will get there. You’ve got to see it first, then you’ll be able to achieve it. So take action. Do the work and know that you can accomplish anything.

Megan:

Those are incredible words to end on. That was amazing, Jay. I think this is one of the missing components for food bloggers, because there are a lot of spaces where food bloggers get together virtually. I take note of things that they’re saying, and I observe problems, struggles, because obviously I have a membership and a podcast. I want to know what people’s struggles are. I constantly see people saying, I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know what to focus on. I don’t know. I feel like my wheels are spinning. I don’t know where to go. There’s so much to do. I think not having that purpose piece is such a missing piece of the puzzle, because if you don’t know why you’re doing this and where you’re going and where you want to go, then of course your wheels are going to be spinning all the time. So that just gave me a little bit of clarity on that.

Jay:

Excellent.

Megan:

Thank you so much for your time today, Jay. This was amazing.

Jay:

Yeah, it’s absolutely my pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me and for having this platform for your community to come together to learn with one another and from one another ,to challenge each other, to congratulate each other and celebrate and support. I mean, what a beautiful thing. So thank you for what you’re doing and keep bringing greatness into the world. It spreads.

Megan:

Well, you too, Jay. You keep bringing your greatness. Thanks for being here, everyone. Gina and Nadja, thanks for joining us too. We’ll see you around.

Jay:

Thank you all.

Outro:

We’re glad you could join us on this episode of Eat Blog Talk. For more resources based on today’s discussion, as well as show notes and an opportunity to be on a future episode of the show, be sure to head to eatblogtalk.com. If you feel that hunger for information, we’ll be here to feed you on Eat Blog Talk.