On this episode of the Circuit of Success, Brett Gilliland interviews Jeff Eschliman, a veteran of 30 years of combat and corporate experience. Jeff shares his story of how his upbringing and military service shaped his leadership style and how he uses his mindset to overcome fear and anxiety. He also shares his tips on how to create a life of harmony in a chaotic world.
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Brett Gilliland: [00:00:00] Well, to the circular of success, I host Brett Gil, Gil, and today I’ve got Jeff Esman with me. Jeff, how you doing? Outstanding, sir. Awesome. Well, it’s good to be with you today. Where are you? Where are you calling in from, from again? I forgot to ask you that. At Phoenix. Phoenix. Just got the phone, uh, CL client in.
Yes. The desert’s covered today. Don’t I warm? It’s, I bet it is warm, man. It’s crazy, crazy there. I know, but they, but they always say it’s a heat, right?
Jeff Eschliman: High heat. It is. Definitely that so
Brett Gilliland: is another. Exactly, exactly. Well, you are a guest that I’m excited to have on, on here today. You got, uh, uh, 30 of experience, experience from, uh, combat in Iraq.
Uh, all the way corporate board boardroom, you’re a sought laughter X for building and scaling results driven teams, uh, and your leadership style characterized by as bi personal development can, [00:01:00] can see and uh, tenacious work ethic, which I love. Uh, uh, so I’m excited to talk about that. But that, but if we can’t, let’s start with, what I always start with is what’s made you the Manan you are today?
No. You don’t just, just go to Iraq in the boardroom and room and all the things mentioned, uh, without a backstory. And so I’d love to hear that. Right.
Jeff Eschliman: It, it really starts, you know, from a pretty, I was pretty fortunate to have a great upbringing, folks that had instilled really good core values in me, but I was a little bit of a, a wallflower, uh, before going into the service.
And when I went into the service, it was really, really life-changing for, for me. It took, you know, all those fundamentals that I’ve learned from my folks. And it really, it really shaped who I was going to be and then ended up being extremely pivotal through my entire leadership development and career.
It, it, [00:02:00] it was really back to my, my father was a house here locally and so I grew up residential home job sites here in the valley and that’s really where. I think those core values came into play with the leadership skills that I learned in the military.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Did you know you wanted to go into the military an early age, or what, what made you join the Milit military?
Jeff Eschliman: I, I just referred to it as a calling, so I, I felt something in, in my heart that said I wanted to serve and I, I didn’t wanna do the typical four year stint. And so anything that you were gonna sign up for, at least in the Army in the era when I joined, had to be combat related. And my dad was a a US Marine Vietnam era, even though he didn’t go to Vietnam.
And he always told me either go in the Air Force or go in the Navy, cause he’ll teach me something. And so [00:03:00] of course I joined the army.
Because it was the two year stent and I figured, you know, I would, I would get what I was expecting out of it. Well, obviously I ended up getting, I ended up getting way more than, you know, what I had bargained for. But that, those experiences, Brett, that that was like the, The forge, right. Of shaping who my, or what my personality and characteristics would.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. You know, I’m always fascinated. I, I love the military. I’m actually, in fact, I, I can look right now from my view, my view here, see Scott Air Force Base, I can’t see it cuz of the trees, but no, right where it’s at. So we, so we have one of the, the biggest, best, best air forces in the country right here, up the road from my office and, um, But, but, but what I’m sitting there with, with, and I’ve talked to military people cause the problem growing up, you know, my kids growing up in a mil military, bay town as well as well, that you get really good friends and then they leave you, [00:04:00] right?
They leave you about every third or fourth year. And it’s tough. It’s tough. And so I always, I always joke when I’m military guy or guy, I’m like, I don’t wanna be that friends with you because you’re just leave me again, again in three years. And so we joke around about that. But my point to this is, I, I love the goal military.
From what, from what I’ve learned, I, I draw the wisdom that they share with me. From a businesses standpoint is military. There’s, there’s clarity. We know the mission, we know why we’re going there. So there’s clarity. There’s a plan, right? We show up, show up, game plan on what we’re gonna do. We practice a game plan.
Plan. Oh, by the way, oh by the way, we game plan again, and then we execute. And, and, and I think you can take that, that from, to your point here, the, you know, from Iraq to combat to, to the boardroom, always. The things I like to draw parallels to is that they’re so clear on where, where they’re going, right?
They know, they know the plan. And what if, what if I do a business standpoint, no matter what I did for a living, if I had cl there was a plan, I [00:05:00] practiced, I practiced and I executed it. How would life look, look for me as a business owner.
Jeff Eschliman: Absolutely. And, and then I think the piece that I would add to that, that was really pivotal for me was the teamwork piece, right?
And so the military gave me two different things. One, it gave me an inner confidence that there was nothing that I couldn’t, that decide that I could accomplish personally and then do it. And especially the physical part of. But it was also mental, right? Because a big part of any physical journey is the mental piece, right?
If you’ve ever ran a marathon, anything like that, you know about mile 19, it is no longer physical. It’s, well, it is physical, but it’s mental as well as physical, right? And the other piece would be the teamwork and seeing teams work together in that fashion and at that level. That is another thing that I was able to take [00:06:00] into my corporate life that really made me successful in the very beginning stages.
Even being a superintendent out on the job site where I was literally running work before I became an executive, and I was getting all these folks that showed up on the job site to play at a higher level.
Yeah. So
Brett Gilliland: when you talked mental and. What, what came to my mind when you were talking, talking about that, is fear and, and the, the min is, I can’t imagine being on that airplane lying, knowing I’m gonna war. Right, right. Because you’re in the marathons and I know in a marathon I’m gonna run. I’m, I’ve never ran a marathon, but if I did, I did.
I could run, I put my preparation in. But at the end of the day, this not my mentality, mentality, but hey, I could, could stop if things went south, right? But in military, I’m getting dropped, dropped off to a world war. You can’t just be like, oh, sorry guys, not feeling it today. I’m out. Right? I’m going, where are [00:07:00] bombs blowing?
There? Are there are guns being fired? Walk us through that mint side for you on that, that plane, and knowing where the hell you’re going. Yeah, and
Jeff Eschliman: I’ll, I’ll take it even one further than the plane flying over. It was, I, I drove an armored personnel carrier, so I crossed across the border from Saudi Arabia in Iraq, and that was literally the most terrifying experience I’ve ever had in my life.
And my biggest fear heading into that, Brett, was that I was gonna fail. Right. I was worried that I was gonna fail my team. So there was me and three other people on this armor personnel carrier, or the broader team being the United States Army, or the broader team being my country that had sent me over there on a mission.
And so what I tell people about the experience, or just this experience in general is I had to be [00:08:00] bigger than I was capable of being individually. Right. And that’s where you get that lift up. When you’re a part of a team or you’re a part of a mission that is well articulated and important, and I’ll tell you how that translates into my life after I got out of the service, and we can go there if you want, but you know, I, I’ve had a period in my life where I wasn’t making very good choices and I had to fix a lot of things.
One of the things is, At one point in my life, I was more than a hundred pounds overweight. And the the reason I tell you that is to tell you that I used running to fix as well as my mindset to fix that problem. Huh. So I ran, I don’t know, probably six, seven or eight marathons. I ran one ultra marathon.
Wow. And my mindset going into any one of those, Is that I will never, right. Not a, I mean I’m not a big Goggins fan, but you know, like that mindset [00:09:00] about you’re going into a particular situation and it does not matter what your mind tells you that your body is capable of. I’m not gonna stop that. I think that Marathon was
boy.
But it’s a, it’s a knowing. That’s what I refer to it. That, yeah. Like, I’m not gonna stop. And, and that was a really early seed of that, was that military experience.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So how do you do when you’re, you’re, you’re going Saudi Arabia, Arabia, Iraq border. You’re, you know, you think about, you said you know your team.
That’s, that’s with you. You’re in the military, you’re to country. It’s a lot of weight. Right? And so talk to the man listening to this as that’s walking to the boardroom room right now. And they’ve got those fears because of this presentation. They’ve gotta gotta give or they got that client, client or whatever it may be.
Like how do you actually get through that though and still, still perform and, and still actually the mission and even you’re scared, [00:10:00] right?
Jeff Eschliman: So I would equate what we’re talking about here. I mean, it’s really similar, so, I’ve given a lot of Toastmasters, speeches, speeches or presentations in front of a board, things of that nature.
And the number one, I don’t know if it’s the number one, it’s probably in the top three tools that I use, is something that I call, I’m excited, right? Instead of labeling that feeling that I’m having as fear or anxiety or any of the other thing. Any of those other emotions that are. Detrimental, right? If you name it something different, like, I’m excited, and then you go into that opportunity and, and here’s how.
I think it’s the same as gratitude, for example, when you put your focus on something outside of you, so if you’re going into that boardroom presentation or you’re going into that meeting with, you’re thinking about the customer. [00:11:00] More than what you’re thinking about you or how am I gonna show up? Or how am I gonna come off?
If you can put the focus on the mission of the organization when you’re given the presentation or the value of what you’re gonna be able to help that client with me, that is the most, again, probably top three most powerful things used to. Over overcome those feelings, right? It’s, it’s basically just,
Brett Gilliland: well, it’s if you’re focusing on others versus, you know, you can’t focus on yourself.
That, that’s where’s where fear and fear and anxiety stress comes in. And then now you are, you know, you know, thinking yourself. You’re not, you’re not on your mission. That’s most important. You know, our mission here is to help people achieve a future greater than past. And going into, into this think out.
Oh my gosh. I hope, hope I don’t mess, or I hope I don’t, I don’t do this. Yes, that comes with, comes with experience time. But man, I, I gotta focus on the mission, mission of helping that. So [00:12:00] I’m getting ready, getting ready to set down with Exactly, exactly. Um, I know you’re in, in creating a life of harmony and, and when you hear me say that, what comes, comes to mind?
How do we create, create life of harmony with, with the crazy world that we live in today? Notifications and tea and media and Yeah. And all this stuff. How do we do it?
Jeff Eschliman: Be intentional. And so what I mean by that is, well, first of all let’s I, for any good conversation in harmony, we’ll start with goofing a little bit on the term work life balance.
And I, I started with saying that that was a myth, but where I’ve evolved to is just saying,
Like, are we supposed to believe that we’re supposed to put, like, work in one of these? Like think about an old apothecary scale. Are we supposed to put work in one bowl and anything else from our life and the other? And then [00:13:00] somehow they’re supposed to balance out? Like, that’s not how life works. So what part of me, for me is, is these intentional practices that I employ Brett, and I have a, I have for example, what I call my one page plan for.
I have everything that is my core values, my core competencies, my purpose, my goals for the year, my goals for the month, live on document that I call my one page plan, and basically this is a direct list from what I use in business to run a successful organization. But you know how life works. Just as soon as you have.
Great.
Let’s gonna start doing.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah, throwing your balls, right, right.
Jeff Eschliman: It’s gonna start throwing your curve balls. It’s gonna start throwing your left hooks and maybe sometimes it throws you straight out gut punches. Right? Right. [00:14:00] Think about a global pandemic. And so you have to have, I believe you need to have an effective process in place that I call my day.
And so I take a day. And the first half of the day is a wholesale reflection of what happened in the previous month. I just shot a little video here about a week ago that said when I did my day of Zen at the end of May, and I said, Hey, are you the kind of person that says, wow, where did May? Right? Like I never, with a capital never.
Say anything like that because I don’t let months sneak up on it, right? And the entire second half of my day is in, is planning out a plan to crush that next month. And so when I finished May, I had 32 things on a list that went well in May and I had six things that I wanna do different, which is code for better [00:15:00] in June.
And I built a plan to make that happen. And then the third part of my intentional process I call carpe, right? So obviously Latin for seize the day, but it’s a very intentional process that I use to what I call Brett operationalize what’s on my one page claim and make that come to life today, right? Is may, or pardon me, juneteenth thousand 23, and we’re only going.
Yep. What we do every day matters way more than people give it credit for. I’m talking about how well we sleep, how well we eat, how well do we do our nutrition? Are we grateful for what we have? You know, I, I could go on and on. Love that
Brett Gilliland: man. It’s so, it’s so, it’s funny how, uh, in line we are. So, I, I, I pulled out here my, you know, one [00:16:00] pager, pager, my plan, you know, my, and I call ’em connected goals for 2023.
Three. I wanna be connected, right? I wanna be, I wanna be connected with goals. Goals. It, for me, it’s my after the sixth power, my, my faith, my family, my, my fitness, my firm, my, my finances, right? I list all those goals in the background. You can see ’em here when you, when you’re looking at it. There’s picture’s.
Pictures of my back here, right? There’s our, our vision, visionary logo, our future greater in your logo. Like, like these important to me. And every day I keep it in my journal. It’s right here. I pull out, I look, I look at it and I start, I start to light the ones that we’ve done. You know, cause I think that’s important.
Right? And, and then I, it’s funny, funny because here’s my, my podcasting journal. It says card harp day dm. Isn’t that funny? And that’s what you, you, uh, mentioned there, so I couldn’t agree more. How, how do will we do that? So what’s that pro process look like for you? Let’s get into detail more on this zenday.
Where do you go? How do, how do you do? What’s it look
Jeff Eschliman: like? Like, yep. So the tagline for my day is then I [00:17:00] call checking out so you can check in. So first of all, what are you checking out? Basically what you’re checking out of is your day-to-day life. So I’m really good at training people in my life how to treat me, and that includes, you know, spouse and children and business and coworkers and things of that nature.
So everybody knows on the day of Zen, they’re not gonna get ahold of. Right. Unless it’s an emergency, you don’t get me. And so you have to break the cycle of what you do every day, day to day routine. So you don’t do this at your home, you don’t do this at your office. I am a big fan of the outside. I love going the places that are bigger than me that are inspirational.
I love driving up to the Grand Canyon or Sedona, or just out in the desert to reconnect with. Something bigger and something slower than my day to day life. Yep. And again, I mentioned.[00:18:00]
From what I typically tell people that I’m trying to achieve, you know, it seems like a lot, and I don’t, I don’t, none of my clients follow my program chapter and verse. I share what I do. I offer ’em the tools, I walk ’em through. Most of my clients do have a process of zen in their life where they’re taking either a whole day, a half a day, or at a minimum they’re taking, you know, three or four hours at any given.
So review through their previous and then build that plan. The other thing, Brett, in addition to just reviewing and reflecting, I like to think of the day of Zen as a chunk of time where I can, I can just focus on something specifically. Cause we all know how this works, right? And life is dealing us changes and that’s what life does.
Like I said, just as soon as you have your great one page planned, life’s gonna start throwing you, you know, [00:19:00] curve ball. Yeah. And so the day is great. Time review and reflect on two. One, if life is given me a curve ball, then I mean to reflect. Say that’s a child that’s all of a sudden, you know, struggling in school.
For a parent that seems like they’re gonna need a different level of care going forward. In our day-today, life, we don’t really have the white right to.
Or you can use the Day of Zen and I do this like throughout the month, I’ll start adding things to my agenda for that day that I wanna think about proactively. Right? And so I started this new, you know, entrepreneurial business venture for myself and I’m, you know, busy in the, the effort of, you know, doing podcasts and with clients, marketing plan and all.
But if I don’t carve out [00:20:00] time to intentionally think about specific elements of this, of course that could be any time during the month. How about a time that you have carved out where nobody’s gonna get ahold of you? It’s a perfect time to do that.
Brett Gilliland: I love it. I absolutely love it. I do quarterly, um, about my strategic, strategic time and my little retreat for myself.
And I’m with you. I go someplace inspiring. We, we don’t have the mountains and everyone’s, and everything you have in the Midwest and in St. Louis. You know, maybe going to Forest Park, you know, beautiful views in there. Maybe go going into the Forin lobby, maybe maybe go in the ton lobby, maybe going on a nice golf course on their back deck deck, and just dreaming and thinking, thinking and just, it’s, it’s me, my bernal and, and thinking.
And, and if I could add one thing and, and, and maybe you just or not, but, but. I love at the end of each quarter, I look back at the last 90 days pictures. I’m a, I’m a big pig guy. I write out or I write out all the pictures that I’ve taken, taken and we’re thankful for, for amazing. When you actually, when you actually can physically look at that picture in your, your phone.
On, on how that [00:21:00] fills and, and, and it takes off right back to that moment. And, uh, it allows me to think, think about the experiences, but it allows me then that next step is what’s the next 90 days gonna be and what experiences can, can we create family, right? Take some prep work. So,
Jeff Eschliman: and a wholeheartedly agreed to the exact same thing.
I call that taking stock, right? So I do it in two ways. I, I create a folder. I have a folder for each month of the year and I collect, and, and I’ve been doing this since 2009, where I collect, you know, sometimes it could be a, a, well, here it’s June, right? So it’ll be a Father’s Day card from my kid that’s 12 now a Father’s Day card from when he was three years old, right?
Oh. And so I collect things like that that rewarding to me, and so much like those. It’s a place to go back and reflect on the good things that had happened in life, and it, it en, it encourages me to do even [00:22:00]
Brett Gilliland: more. Love it. That’s, that’s solid, solid advice right there. Um, how, how important to you as reading?
Reading? So, I’m, I’m a big, big reader as in April of six 16. As I was the king of like, Hey, I get a book, somebody hands it to me, read 30 or 40 or 40 pages, and then it kind of just starts to collect dust and then all of a sudden it’s, it’s in a cabinet where, and I, and I said, you know what? Enough is, enough is enough.
I’m going to start reading 10 pages a day. So 10 pay pages a day, and as resulting in about 22 to 25 books a year. There’s people that read a whole lot more than that, that I understand that. But for me it’s a, it’s a big deal. And now I’ve kind of created a fake page, uh, for those that like to read and wanna, wanna share and be around like, like-minded people.
It’s called 10, 10 pages. Get out on Facebook, join the group. But how important, if, if at all reading to you, you and Weiss, would you have around, have around that
Jeff Eschliman: critical. And so I actually used, and I’ll just call it personal development, is the key to that change that I needed to make. I actually referred to now the [00:23:00] year 2008 as a year that I had an awakening, right?
Because as I alluded to before, I had a handful of things that weren’t going so well in my life. My career was an example of good thing. My relationship with my kids was a. I was about divorced after, you know, being married to somebody, the wrong person for 17 years and about be, you know, bankrupt and Brett that.
I was able to start listening and better information from better people, and most of that came by way of look and audio tapes. And so I started my personal development journey in 2009, and I have never, again, with the capital M, never. Stop learning. And I constantly read, I think it’s the key, like, you know, good leadership, just like reading a good life is [00:24:00] just like the analogy of climbing the mountain because just as soon as you’ve gotten to the top of the mountain, you’re gonna, you’re probably gonna find another mountain, right?
Yep. Yep. And way up mountain through engine followed by action, right? Yep. And that there was.
You can’t just, you can’t just read the 10 pages, you know, how do you apply those the next day? That’s right. That, that’s another big thing. That, and that, you know, oftentimes when I’m working with my clients, that’s the biggest part of the equation is, again, I use that term when I was talking about my, how do you operationalize what you want?
Brett Gilliland: So what’s, it’s the one book if you had to re recommend If, if, if I read it and I said This is terrible, you’d pay me a hundred bucks cuz you know it’s so good.
Jeff Eschliman: Well, there’s pro, I have, I have a list of recommended reading that probably has a hundred books on it [00:25:00] and it’s broken down by category. I’ll tell you the one book that I get weigh the most.
And I give away a, i, I buy a lot of books, 50 or a hundred at a time, built to give away. Wow. One book is the book that I give to kids that are graduating from high school, kids that are graduating from college, and then I also give them, you know, gift cards, something. But I.
It’s what call, it’s what I call the most densely packed 30 minutes of personal development in history. And not that I’ve read everything history, but read most, and it is the most densely packed minutes. Yeah. And here, here’s the way.
Read it every or listen to it, right? It’s 32 minutes on on YouTube [00:26:00] every day, every week for a month. Every month for a year. Only 32 minutes long. If that doesn’t change your life. You’re not doing it
Brett Gilliland: right. I love it. That is a solid book and I’ve got it in my office and I need to read to read it cause I’ve it in years.
And, uh, you’re right, it is, that is a game changer of book. So let’s take a turn here and talk about culture. Um, obviously culture is, is, is important, whether it’s in bus, business, sports, the locker room, it’s really important to have the great culture for a winning team. Um, how, how do you help and what advice would you have for creating a just a top level next
Jeff Eschliman: cult culture?
Yeah. Cult culture is the people game, right? And whenever I talk about people, I use two words. This is long game and you gotta play small. When I said before, like what [00:27:00] you do on a day to day basis matters, it’s super important, right? And so I’m into the small things I’m into first. You’re allowing people, you know, whether that be a sports team or corporation.
Like being very specific and having a high bar is table stakes. I can’t tell you how. Founders that I work with that don’t even have job description for the people they hire, much less a crystal clear vision of who they’re about to put on their team. Next is onboarding. If you do a very thoughtful onboarding, whether that’s hanging in the dirty in the locker with the teammate name on the back of it, Or how you line somebody up with a battle buddy or somebody to be with their first.
I had an old boss that used to say, every time they [00:28:00] put somebody in this organization the first week that they’re here, just like back in grade. Right? It, it is, it is almost the same that them up making ’em feel welcome, but not just making them feel welcome, equip them with the tools that they’re going successful in their job.
And then once you have team members on your team, whether it be new or the existing, what is your frequent communication and how, you know, are you using ppi? Are you, how often are you getting together with your team communicating the message? Because with culture, just like setting the high bar with people as a leader, Always, and I mean, always should be reinforcing the message of what the vision of the organization is and what our core values and what do we want our customers to get outta this and how do we about each other.[00:29:00]
And playing the small game with people, having a feedback loop to constantly give them feedback on their own performance. And how their own performance is weighing into the performance of the overall culture of the company. Those, all of these things are critical if, if you’re, and I was always on the journey for operational excellence, right?
Performance in every metric that could be measured. In your group or subset, right? Yeah. And people, people is the name of the game. Like, you’ll win or lose with the people you decide.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Well’s. What Starbucks talks about, they’re in people business, not, not the coffee business. Right? Create the experience whether you like ’em or not.
They, they’ve, they’ve built a pretty business. Um, we think about that. Uh, everything. You just, and I, I agree. We agree with. How about feedback? How important is it even feedback up to the leader? Leader and, and I say, say that because we’ve [00:30:00] had a, uh, meeting for years now. We call it three three twenty four.
We were founded on, on March 25th. That was the day, the day we were found 2014 here at Visionary. And so we got to lit, let we meet my business partner, Tim Ham, and I sat in front of the room. There’s no agenda. There’s no paper, there’s no, there’s no pre messages. It’s been a game changer meeting for us as we go there and we just, the feedback, like my philosophy on that is I don’t want the water cooler talk to, to turn into a much, much bigger deal.
So about every, on, every eight we get together with locations, you know, the ones that are close to here or we in person other than others, we, we in the phone and stuff. But how important is that to get feedback from your people, so small things to your, to your place? Small, that smaller things don’t turn into bigger things.
Yeah.
Jeff Eschliman: You’re of that process you just mentioned getting together almost like,
Brett Gilliland: right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Eschliman: I think again, I’m gonna go, you know, you need to go small. [00:31:00] You need to go small here. When I say small, I mean you as a leader, like how do you keep your ego in check, right? Because how you act every day, how you show up, how you interact with your employees, your team.
Like do you, are you the, and you have the parking that’s, you know, closest front door. Or do you give that to the person who works the hardest, you know, each month and you let them have that space and you walk from the outside? Right? Simon Sinek wrote a book called Leaders Eat Last, right? Yep. Which is a book that he wrote after shadowing a general in the military, right?
And so these are good core principles, right? If you’re, if you’re much of your own, I hate, or if you’re using too much of your own product, right? And your ego gets too big. You’re not gonna be able to hear the method of the team. Yeah,
Brett Gilliland: I like, like that. Very solid. Solid. So [00:32:00] do you do that from a standpoint of, I mean, help mean, help your kind of go-to, um, you say crystal clear Vin, you’ve got your one-to-one pager.
How do you articulate that and how often do you do without feeling like, like you’re saying this thing over and over and over a team. So it,
Jeff Eschliman: I, I believe it’s, um, you need to have a pattern of structured communication, right? And so the one page plan for me is where that information lives. But then as you mentioned, having like aqua, well maybe you were mentioning your, your course.
We used to run a, a plan where we had a quarterly meeting with the entire organization. Right. And so we would do a quarterly leadership retreat where we would assess our quarterly goals and build out the the next quarter’s plan. And so we would use that quarter family business right. We we’re not a family, we’re a business.
We wanna [00:33:00] treat each other as much like we can like family, but at the end of the day, it’s a business. So we need to speak frankly, like a good family. We don’t stuff problems. We talk openly if there are problems, and then we celebrate successes, right? And we celebrate milestones. And that’s great on a quarterly basis because if those together, right?
Four quarter is like four, four quarter miles. A mile run. And now how do you break it down beyond that? So we would have a, a monthly KPI meeting, so everybody would like call in virtually and we would do a, a KPI meeting. We were testing on all the vital metrics from the organization, and this is the leadership team and senior leaders reporting out to the rest of the group.
This was our job to report out on. Now, obviously it was there individual performance that we’re making up, but it’s the leadership team’s job to [00:34:00] supply the metrics and how the team is doing, including the individual feedback, and then you break it down from there. I’m also a big fan. I don’t know if you’ve done daily huddles, but I’m a.
And it is super powerful,
Brett Gilliland: dead out. We don’t do, we don’t daily huddles, but we certainly huddle it all talk throughout the, the day that, that’s good. Um, last couple questions here. Habits and rituals as I ask you, or if I follow around with a cam camera every day, what are those? No miss items. I’m gonna see the, Jeff is doing day, day in and day.
Jeff Eschliman: So I’ll go, I’ll turn to my Carpe Diem and my Franklin planner here, which kinda dates that I’m a little bit of an old school guy, and so I, I’m gonna get up every morning and I’m gonna meditate. I’m gonna turn my coffee pot on, and I’m gonna meditate for 18 minutes. I bump that up [00:35:00] from 2022 to 23. From 1511 burpees every morning.
Whether I want to or whether I don’t. It doesn’t matter what I wanna do. I sit, I’m gonna live to, I’m gonna live to at least three years old and doing bur, which I think is one of the best exercises now, not the easiest right? But’s exercises you can do for your, your body. So why 11? Heroes do more. Most people would do 10.
Okay.
Brett Gilliland: All right. I like, yeah, I love it. Meditation. Are you use meditation app or do you use that in the quiet, quiet room and then breathe?
Jeff Eschliman: Quiet room and breathe. I do six minutes where I do follow my breath. I do six minutes where I do a mantra. And then I do six minutes where I call Sending Love. [00:36:00] So I pick, this is from Darren Hardy, so I pick three different people every day and I virtually send them love with my thighs.
And then I’m gonna write in my gratitude journal, I’m gonna fill out my carpe and I’m gonna get to get, and at the end of the day,
make sure that activity, like right now, I have a goal to make sure I get at least 6,000 steps every day, and so I take stock at the end of the day. I believe. I believe a lot in PM and pm They’re your day that you have the most influence over.
Brett Gilliland: Love it. Love it, man. Love that, that, that, uh, that’s what the question, I’m always interested in what great people are doing and, uh, and I, I agree with those things.
Uh, last question for you. So fears, a lot of people put fears in our minds. Um, but, but how many fears there’s, or, uh, beliefs, these fears you’ve put in your mind, and how many of them blown up to the mag [00:37:00] magnitude you’ve been your, in your mind to be
less than 3%? Yeah. Tell me more. Yeah.
Jeff Eschliman: Our brain is really good at protecting us. It’s overly good at being able to protect us. It keeps us, it, it’s, it’s reticular activating, right? Whatever we’re telling ourselves it, and if we don’t tell ourselves something positive or where we’re going, Then we’re gonna listen to the thought that come up naturally and, and our human mechanism is built to keep us safe.
Right? It’s, there’s that little part of our brain that still protecting us from a sea tiger, you know, jumping outta the bushes to eat us when we were a caveman, except we’re not caveman anymore, right? And so I, I actually have tool.[00:38:00]
And so the percentage of time that you should spend in the past, again, this is Jeff’s idea, is 3%, and think about how much waiting time you have in a day and the time that you should spend in the future is 5%. Spend that on, you should spend that on your vision. You should spend that on planning 5%, the rest of the 92%.
What we’re gonna do today, I like
Brett Gilliland: it. Clear. Be where, where your feet are at. That’s right. Especially you got clarity around where you’re going. You’ve got your one page pager, you’ve plan you, you show G morning. Spot on. Jeff. Appreciate
Jeff Eschliman: it. When I get together with my clients, nine times out of 10, it’s not, show me the great plan.
It’s show me how you’re
Brett Gilliland: working. Yeah. How you work. You’re working the plan. How you executing Jeff, this has been awesome, my friend. Where, where do we find review and, uh, we’re listeners, uh, and go connect with you [00:39:00] at
Jeff Eschliman: Absolutely. The best place to find me is on my website. It’s my name, so I’ll spell it out for you.
F F E S C H L I M A n. So jeff eshleman com. And on my website you can take a quick assessment to find out how much harmony you have in your life. I’ve got video to break down these three main tools that I shared with you today, or people can hit me up the chat.
Brett Gilliland: Awesome. Well, Jeff, thanks, thanks so much for on the circuit of it’s, uh, awesome having people like you, you in our world, thank you for serving our country and what and what you did in Iraq.
Greatly appreciate it, my friend. You can probably see my American flag right here.
Jeff Eschliman: Thank you so much. So,
