Win at work. Succeed at life.
Jordan Raynor sits down with Megan Hyatt Miller, CEO of Michael Hyatt & Company, to talk about what cutting their team’s working day by 25%—from 8 hours to 6—has done for their business, how to be mentally present at home, and how our adoption as children of God enables us to take bigger swings.
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[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week, I host a conversation with a Christian who's pursuing world-class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery. We talk about their daily habits and routines and how the gospel of Jesus Christ influences their work.
Today's guest is Megan Hyatt Miller. She's the CEO of Michael Hyatt & Company, where they teach leaders how to “Win at work and succeed at life.” Prior to taking the reins as CEO, Megan spent a number of years, almost a decade as the company's chief operating officer, building the company's remarkable culture with a team of about 40 people.
Guys, this is a terrific episode. We talked about how Michael Hyatt & Company cut their team's working day by 25%, from eight hours to six hours a day and what that has done for their business. We talked about how practically we could be mentally present at home. I talked about the number one indicator for me personally as to whether or not I'm going to be fully present mentally with my kids and Cara, at the end of the day. Finally, we talked about how our adoption as children of God enables us to take bigger swings; one of my favorite things to talk about on this podcast. You're going to love, love, love this episode with my new friend, Megan Hyatt Miller.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:44] JR: Hey, Megan. It's a joy to have you here today. Thanks for being here.
[00:01:47] MHM: Jordan. Thank you so much for having me on. I am pumped to be here.
[00:01:52] JR: Yeah. Off-topic to start but anytime somebody comes on the show who's adopted, I host prerogative and go off-topic, because I love adoption so much. We both adopted. You adopted three kids, right?
[00:02:06] MHM: That's right. I have five children. I married into my first two, who are 20 and 17. Then in 2011, we adopted two boys from Uganda at the same time. They're now 12 and 10. We're actually going to be going back to Uganda in June, Lord willing, to see their birth families, which will be the first time we've done that since we adopted them and it’ll be really exciting. Then two years ago, we adopted a baby girl from Orlando, who is actually turning two on Easter Sunday. She was born at 1 pound and 2 ounces, a 27-weeker. She's just a little miracle. Total blast. My husband, Joel and I say, we're going to be just parents forever, because we got 20 to 2, 18 years between them. Our house is loud and fun and like you, we are really passionate about the heart and good work of adoption.
[00:02:52] JR: Why are you so passionate about this?
[00:02:54] MHM: Well, I think, unfortunately, in this world, in the fallen world, there are just kids that ultimately are not able to live with their birth families. That's certainly plan A. I feel like adoption, in some ways, is like plan Z. It's when all other options have been exhausted, that's what's left. In the brokenness and the sadness that leads up to a child being available for adoption, and even in the brokenness and sadness that is trying to become a family from that place, I think God does some pretty amazing redemptive work, not just for the kids who are adopted, but I don't know about your story and ours. I mean, I think Joel and I, my husband, have been changed as much by the process of walking with our children and their journey of healing as they have been.
It's been incredibly difficult and it's been the most valuable, fruitful thing that we've ever done, or could imagine doing as a family. I never want to romanticize it but I also feel like it is wholly good work that we are grateful to get to do.
[00:03:55] JR: We're new friends and we're going deep right off the bat. I love this.
[00:03:57] MHM: I know, right?
[00:04:01] JR: Talk a little bit more about that. For you and Joel, your husband, how has the Lord used adoption to help sanctify you?
[00:04:06] MHM: Yeah. Well, I mean, the hard truth about adoption is that no child becomes available for adoption without massive trauma. The fundamental basis for being a person is ruptured, in order for a child to be available for adoption. I think unfortunately, sometimes that gets glossed over. You see people's Instagram pictures and it looks amazing, but there's just unbelievable heartbreak and wreckage that has happened to that child before they've been adopted, which means that for probably the rest of their life, they're going to be healing from that trauma. To have the burden and the privilege of walking into someone's trauma, into their woundedness at that level, first of all, you're not going to make it as a couple, unless you have a shared vision for your family that healing is what God's called you to be about together and as a family.
I think, in many ways, it can be a lonely journey, and I think Joel and I have learned to rely on each other to become the soft place to land on the hard days, when it feels like we're not getting anywhere and that healing is never going to come. Also, nobody understands the exhilaration of seeing healing happen and going, “Man, we're not where we were three years ago, or five years ago. Look what God's doing in these kids’ lives is just amazing.” I think I can either drive you apart, or drive you together. We have really committed to each other that it was going to drive us together. It's so humbling. It also, of course, connects you intimately to the work of Christ in our own lives, because –
[00:05:41] JR: It’s the most beautiful picture.
[00:05:42] MHM: Yeah. I mean, it's a sobering picture. Yeah.
[00:05:44] JR: That’s why Paul uses the, “Oh, yeah.” I can forget it. Especially for the first year, Emery, my adopted daughter has been – my daughter, sorry. The daughter we adopted into our family, has been at our home for 18 months. Those first few months, I thought about it constantly, like, “This is me. I am only in the family of God through the adoption of it, granted through Christ.” By the way, what a beautiful picture of your child's birthday coming up on Easter.
[00:06:13] MHM: I know. Isn’t that amazing? It’s so cool. So cool.
[00:06:16] JR: It's incredible. Alright, so thank you, listeners, for indulging us on that wildly –
[00:06:22] MHM: We can do a whole podcast just on that.
[00:06:23] JR: - off topic on adoption. Exactly. Alright, let's talk about Michael Hyatt & Company, the work you guys do, but let's set some context. Who in the world is Michael Hyatt, for those that don't know? What does Michael Hyatt & Company do?
[00:06:36] MHM: Yeah. Michael Hyatt is my dad. I'm the oldest of five kids. He was formerly the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the largest Christian publishing company, now HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Left in 2011 to start his own business, Michael Hyatt & Company. Basically, we are a performance coaching company for leaders and their teams. We really help people get something we call the double win, which is the ability to win at work and succeed at life. We don't want people to be choosing between those things. We really think that you can have both.
We do group coaching. We do one-on-one coaching and we do corporate training. We also have a physical paper planner product called the full focus planner, which has been really successful for us. All of this is designed to help people get that double win, to prioritize the things that matter most at work and the things that matter most at home and in their personal lives, so that they can really have lives of meaning and impact and significance. Ultimately, as you said, we don't use this language necessarily explicitly publicly, but to glorify God through their work at home and in their professional world.
[00:07:50] JR: I love it.
[00:07:51] MHM: Yeah. That’s how it’s –
[00:07:52] JR: I love it. So,I'm curious, you just got promoted to CEO in January, did you always want to take over the family business? Was this first child dream, like wanting to be in there?
[00:08:03] MHM: I probably need therapy, right? No, I didn’t. It's funny. I came to work for my dad in 2012. Actually, this ties into our adoption story. We adopted our two boys from Uganda in 2012. I got married in 2009 and inherited two kids that way. So in just a few years, I had four kids. I thought, “Well, I think I'm going to be a stay-at-home mom.” That lasted, I quit my job previously, that lasted for about nine months.
Really, the journey of having children from hard places with some significant needs was just pretty overwhelming and I thought, “Okay, I need something else in my life besides that. If I'm going to have the energy I need for that, I gotta have an outlet. I'm going to go back to work part-time.” It just snowballed, because our business just grew and grew and grew and grew. Before long, my dad came to me and he said, “Hey, I really want you to take over the day-to-day operations. I want to make you the chief operating officer.” Really long story short, I tell the story in our new book, but I said, “Well, I think I can. I think I’d do well with that and I think I could make an impact. But I've got these boys, and they need me. I have to be done by 3:30. I have to pick them up from school, because they need my full attention and focus. I cannot be available after that. Period, the end.” He said, “Fine. I don't care. I mean, all I care about are the results. If you can make it happen 9 to 3:30, more power to you.”
He's all about results, not about micromanaging. That was really the beginning of this journey to what, for me, he has his own story that he tells in our book, but what we call the double win, which is winning at work and succeeding at life.
For me, it was all about, I have something outside of work that is so important, the stakes are so high that I can't afford to neglect it. I can't afford to outsource it. It's gotta be me. That's really how I ended up ultimately, in the capacity that I am. Then a few years later after that, he said, “Hey, I really want to create a succession plan, there are some other things, other ways I want to contribute in the business and I want to go down to about three days a week and there's some other things I want to do with your mom outside of my professional life.” He's definitely not retired, but he just changed his focus.
We were on about a two and a half to three-year succession plan journey. So for that amount of time, I did know but it was us discovering together what the future was going to look like. Now, we're business partners. It's really special. I feel so grateful. This can go wrong in so many ways. Mostly, people come up to me all the time and telling me their horror stories of family business, or succession. It's a disaster. I feel very fortunate and blessed that ours has been the opposite of a disaster. It's been a huge blessing.
[00:10:42] JR: Yeah. I successfully passed the baton to a CEO of the last venture I led. Not a family business, but it's a stressful time. By the grace of God alone, that worked out really well. I want to dive into something a little deeper. You were COO for a number of years. I know culture has been a really big focus of yours, right? So within the company I imagine that you continue to be a big focus now that you’re CEO. Why is this so important to you?
[00:11:07] MHM: Well, for a couple reasons. First of all, the most practical business reason, and this is something my dad has said for a long time, is that culture is the unseen force that drives operating results. You can get good short-term results without focusing on culture. You can get it through brute force. You can get it through abusing people. You can get it through other nefarious means. What you can't get is sustained success and a kind of success that you're going to want to have 10, 20, 30, 50 years down the road. That's one thing.
I think the other thing is, it really comes from, and I'm so excited I get to talk about some of these things on your show, it really comes from a profound sense of stewardship, that people are our most valuable asset that we get to steward in our business, these families who come to us. We get to play a really meaningful role in people doing the work that they're made to do. We get to play a meaningful result, or meaningful role in our clients experiencing transformation, and getting their own double win and what that means for their families, their employees, their futures, is huge. I mean, there's a lot at stake.
We really feel like culture is a kind of stewardship on a larger scale. In cultivating that, not only do we get great performance, but it enables us to have a more meaningful impact, not just externally through the work that we do, but also internally in the lives of our employees and team members. Which to me, that's the most rewarding part of my job, when I know that I've got a single mom on my team who is able to pick up her child from work, because her workday ends at 3 p.m. and what that means. That gets me really excited. Things like that. That's probably not the full answer, but that's off the top of my head.
[00:12:57] JR: That’s a terrific answer. It's part of the reason why I care so deeply about culture too. Then from a practical business standpoint, you guys know this from your experience, right? I'm a big believer, customer satisfaction never rises above the satisfaction of my team.
[00:13:12] MHM: Absolutely.
[00:13:13] JR: Ever, right?
[00:13:13] MHM: 1000%.
[00:13:14] JR: We say that customers come first, but that's actually dumb. The team comes first. I was at Disney last weekend, or two weekends ago. The difference between Disney and every other theme park, sure it’s cleaner, sure the rides are better, whatever, they've got better IP. It's the people. It's the team. You can tell they love working for Disney and thus, you love being there as a guest. It's such a tangible expression. Before we go any further, what is culture? Define culture. This is such an amorphous term in business circles.
[00:13:50] MHM: Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean, I think culture is the unwritten rules of engagement. It's how we do what we do. It's what we allow, what we tolerate, what we expect, what we don't tolerate. It's really the relational operating system of our business in many ways. I think that it's invisible in a lot of cases, and it's easily ignored. It's hard to build and it's very, very easy to damage, or destroy. It's one of those things that runs on things like trust and accountability and self-leadership and integrity, things that are challenging to play out. But my gosh, you can damage it in a heartbeat without even meaning to, or without understanding the full implications. It's something we take really seriously.
[00:14:38] JR: It is really hard to build, because a lot of times it can be amorphous. I like the analogy of the relational operating system, because it's this thing that runs in the background that makes everything else work. Because of that, it becomes challenging to build, so how do you build it? How, practically, what have you done over the last, almost 10 years at Michael Hyatt & Company to build this remarkable culture?
[00:14:59] MHM: Well, here's what I think. First of all, it starts with a vision. We really believe that everything in business, or frankly, in your personal life that's successful, is going to start with a vision. No one ends up at a destination by drifting somewhere they wouldn't choose. If we're going to end up in a destination that we want to get to, it's by design. It's not going to be by drifting.
I think that's really important that we start by having a vision for our company, a vision for our culture. What culture do you want to have with your team? Then you have to make it really practical. For us, that means that we have a really clear vision, we have a really clear mission and we also have really clear core values. Those are not just posters on the wall in our office. Those really are where the operating system gets worked out.
For example, I can remember a time, years ago, when I had to fire, or I was considering firing several people who, there had been an egregious conduct violation that had happened with a number of people on a certain team. I was trying to decide. Nobody wants to fire anybody. It's brutal every time. I could look out the glass above the frosted part in the middle and I could see the core value framed outside my window that said, “Unyielding integrity.” We do what's right, even when it's expensive, embarrassing or inconvenient. I thought, “There's my decision.”
I think culture happens when you have an operating set of principles that are not just on the wall, but they're things that you act on day in and day out and as a leader, you call out. You say, “Hey, we have to make this decision. Because unyielding integrity is our first and most important value. Or, “Wow, what a great decision HR to prioritize people as one of our values.” You're connecting behaviors with values and you're holding yourself to a standard as the leader, that whatever I do becomes the de facto standard. If there's any gap between that and our stated values, first of all, whatever I do wins, and cynicism will fill in the gap between those two things, which is toxic for culture.
[00:17:01] JR: Yeah. I was talking with Dee Ann Turner, former Vice President and Talent at Chick-Fil-A, talking about how they lead by teaching principles, rather than specific things to do and the way that they integrate those, the way that they really take root is by stories. I think the same is true with values. It's one thing to define values one time. It's another thing to come back every week in an all-hands meeting, be like, “Hey, this thing that happened this week, here's why we did it.” We’re connecting it to values. How else do you guys hold your team accountable to not just your practical goals, but doing things in-line with the company's values? What does that look like?
[00:17:41] MHM: One of the fun things that we do is every year at our annual team meeting, leading up to that, that happens in early January, we have a survey that goes out, where people can nominate people on the team for embodying our core values. We want a physical, again, to use Christian language, an incarnational example of our core values, so that when – one of our values has been infectious enthusiasm. One of the guys on our marketing team, now marketing director, Neal Samudre –
[00:18:10] JR: I love Neal. Neal is a friend.
[00:18:11] MHM: Yeah. Right? Okay, so you know Neal. That totally makes sense to you. Neal is the most infectiously enthusiastic human being you've ever met in your life. He just bounces. He's so enthusiastic. I mean, just every day. He loves working here, he loves the work that he does. It's amazing. Neal has won that award a couple of years in a row. What's great about that is that it’s nominated by his peers. My dad and I don't get to vote. We've recused ourselves from that process.
And so whenever you're wondering, “What does it look like to have infectious enthusiasm?” You think about Neal. That's so clear, because Neal just oozes that value. Similarly, I can point to other people on our team, but we always want these values to be incarnational, to be humanized, so that people understand what they look like, because it just doesn't do us any good if they're just hanging on the wall.
[00:19:02] JR: That's really good. I love that idea, tying it to specific people. That's fun.
[00:19:06] MHM: Yeah, it's been great.
[00:19:07] JR: Sometimes for a lot of leaders, spending time and money on culture, it can feel soft. It can feel expensive. It can feel hard to draw a line to ROI, until a pandemic hits, or some other crisis confronts a business. I'm really curious, how did you guys see those investments pay off over the last year?
[00:19:28] MHM: Yeah. Well, I think you're right. I mean, it's like having a savings account and you can draw on it. If there's no money in that savings account, when you need the money, you're going to be overdrawn or not. I mean, first of all, last year was so hard in so many ways, and I never want to minimize that. It was tough for our team, like every other team. What was amazing though, was the performance that we had in the midst of that was incredible. We actually beat our financial goal for profit by 50% last year, while cutting our workday down by 25%. I'm sure we'll maybe talk about that a little more later.
To me, that's only possible, because of the teamwork, the trust that we have, the camaraderie, the shared values and alignment around those things. That's critically important, particularly when things are so difficult. I'm just so proud of our team and the way they showed up. We were really intentional about trying to take care of people through that process, whether it was providing subsidies for mental healthcare as people needed it, or other things, or just doing things to help check in on people and fun stuff.
We had a virtual gingerbread decorating contest, that was super fun around Christmas, we do that in-person. People had to do a self-portrait gingerbread. It was so funny. Just like all kinds of things to try to help people stay connected and not lose what we've worked so hard to create. It certainly was not ideal, but I'm glad that we had the equity there that we did, that we could draw on when we needed it.
[00:21:00] JR: It is equity, right? It's social capital and equity. Alright, go back to this cutting your day by 25%. I didn't realize you guys did this. What was the decision? Why'd you make it? Talk us through that.
[00:21:11] MHM: Well, okay. If we go back in time to April 2020, we're a few weeks into the pandemic. We don't know what's going to happen. We're in lockdown in most of the country. Kids are home from school. There's no daycare. I mean, it's just an absolute crisis. What we found is our people were coming to us and they were like, “Working eight hours feels like working 60. I've got my toddler crawling on me. I'm trying to do virtual school, teach my eight-year-old how to use Zoom. I'm trying to figure out how to go to the grocery store. Every single thing in my life is hard right now and stressful, and I just can't do it.”
I had been working, as I said earlier in my story about our adoption, I've been working till about 3:30 every day for years, since my children were little, so I could pick them up from school. We just decided, okay, let's do an experiment and see if we can cut our workday down to six hours, and give people some extra time, so that they can go take the kids for a walk at the end of the day, so they can just have some time to decompress before it's dark outside, or whatever.
What we found is very quickly, we decided to make that a permanent thing, a permanent goal that we were going to pursue. We have almost everybody on our team doing it now. A few teams are still working toward it. By June, everybody will be there. That's one of our annual goals this year to have the entire team doing it together. It was just amazing.
What happens when you create constraints is something we talk about, my dad and I in our new book, Win at Work and Succeed at Life, is that constraints drive innovation. When you have constraints in place, all of a sudden there's more productivity, there's more creativity. For sure, there's more freedom. What happens is that you start holding people accountable for outcomes and results, not processes and tasks. I think that's just such a great lesson across the board that we could have not only not a drop in our operating results, and by the way, we didn't cut anybody's pay. We didn't lay anybody off. None of that. We just cut our hours. And we totally exceeded our already aggressive goal.
[00:23:17] JR: I love it. I talk about this in my book that's coming out in October, called Redeeming Your Time. That deep work, there's a four-hour – science has proven this over and over. There's a four-hour cap on the amount of deep work you can get done in a day. If that's true, like I know Lewis, C.S. Lewis a lot of times would just write for four hours, and then take the rest of the day off, right? I've heard other people do that. I'm like, “No, it’s actually logical.” If you've already done – you've created 80% of your value in that time, maybe 90%. You check a few emails and that's it. I don't do that but I get it. I could see how that could actually make a team even more productive. I love that.
Alright, you talked about ending your day at 3:30. I'm curious what the tick-tock of your day looks like, from the moment you wake up, to the moment you go to bed. What is a typical day for you?
[00:24:07] MHM: Yeah. As I said, I have five kids. Everything has to be really intentional, and yet, not overly rigid, because there's so many things going on in our house. Our kids are 20 to 2. We've got, every stage you can imagine we have represented our world. It's crazy. Basically, I get up at 5 in the morning.
[00:24:25] JR: Me too.
[00:24:25] MHM: Monday through Friday. I immediately make coffee. That's my top priority, first thing in the morning. Then I have a devotional time. I plan my day in my Full Focus Planner and identify what my top three priorities are going to be for the day and review my schedule. I then plan my food for the day. That's one of the disciplines that have around self-care, just so that I make sure I'm nourishing my body. It's not really diet-oriented so much as it is just trying to be thoughtful about, “Hey, what is my body going to need today?” So I'm not, 2:30 p.m. driving through Chick-Fil-A drinking a milkshake, because I'm just starving to death. Not that there's anything wrong with the Chick-Fil-A milkshake, it’s actually of-God, I think. Just has to be the right time. I do that and then about 6:15, I go upstairs in my home gym. During COVID we made our rec room into a little gym. I lift weights or go outside for a run. That's a really important part of my day, but it has to happen between 6:15 and 7, because my two-year-old daughter wakes up at 7 and that's when things kick off and start getting kids ready and doing all the things. Then I'm at work by nine, and I'm leaving to get kids from school at 3 from there.
Most of my days are filled with meetings. Our executive team reports to me. Or big project brainstorming visionary work that I'm doing. Right now I'm in book launch season, so I'm doing a lot of interviews like this, which is really fun. I don't have a lot of downtime in my day. One of the trade-offs of the six-hour day is that there's not a lot of breaks, so to speak. I usually eat a quick lunch but I'm done at 3 and I love that.
I feel like I've really had to make intentional choices about the things that I'm investing my time in because they have to be high-leverage, or it doesn't make sense. I think that's one of the secrets of this double win idea.
Then I go home and get the kids from school. We spend the afternoon together and have dinner and they're in bed between 7 and 8. Then Joel and I have a little time together. I'm in bed by 9. It's not a real sexy schedule. It's kind of normal, but it works.
[00:26:23] JR: It works. That's exactly right. It's almost identical to my schedule. I love it. Yeah. you mentioned this book a few times that you and your dad just published, Win at Work and Succeed at Life. Part of that is being fully present at home, which I know you're really passionate about. How, practically, do you do that? You get home at 3, 3:30. What does it look like for you to be fully present?
[00:26:42] MHM: Well, I think what it looks like is, it starts – one of the practices that we talk about in this book is that we talk about constraining your workday. What we mean by that is putting hard edges on it. It means that I'm not working before 9, and I'm not answering emails at 6:15 in the morning. I'm working out at 6:15 in the morning. I wait till I have time built into my day to answer email, or to check Slack and those kinds of things, which is what we call a work day startup ritual, built in there.
I'm also not working after 3, unless it's an emergency. That's pretty clearly defined what that looks like. That means that for starters, I'm not working. I'm usually, when I get home, I'm giving my two-year-old daughter a snack. She's woken up from her nap and it's snack time and then we usually go outside and play, or we have football practice in the afternoons, just that kind of stuff. Then we're making dinner and doing homework. I mean, it's the really ordinary stuff. The difference is I don't have my laptop open, or I'm on my phone checking email and only half there. That's the difference. That's what I knew, when our boys were young, if they were going to ultimately get to a place where they were thriving, I couldn't do that, that it was too costly.
What's really interesting, though, and I don't want people to miss in this idea of winning at work and succeeding in life, this is not about some warm and fuzzy work-life balance thing, where you make a compromise and you say, “Well, I guess I just can't work that hard.” It's not about that. I mean, because in the book we say, there's these two prevailing ideas culturally. One is called the hustle fallacy, which most of us have been consumed in at one time or another, which is, “I just got to work a little extra this week. I really gotta put the pedal to the metal for this season, because I just launched this business, or this ministry, or whatever.” Unfortunately, just a little while becomes forever and it becomes the normal.
Or, the flip side of that is something we call the ambition break, which is, “Oh, I don't want to do that. My kids are only little once.” Or, “I've got to take care of my parents”, or, “I have a chronic illness”, or “I don't want to get one”, or whatever. “I'm going to just tap the brakes. I'm really not going to lean in to the full extent possible.”
We're saying, “No, there's a third option that's called the double win, where you can win at work and succeed at the rest of your life.” That's really what we want people to be pursuing. What we're talking about in this book is really a strategy for performance in all areas of your life. That this is not just about, how do you perform better at home? Because you're probably out of balance there, although it is. It's about, how do you perform at your best in all parts of your life? That comes when you're giving attention to all of the life domains that matter.
[00:29:19] JR: That's really good. It reminds me of Paul in 1st Corinthians 10:31, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, whatever you do, you’re at home, you’re at work, do it all for the glory of God. How do we glorify God? One way is just being intentional and stewarding well the gifts He's given us.
In terms of being fully present at home, I'm a disciplined guy, I'm very good at putting my phone away. I actually keep it in our master bathroom for the two hours I'm with my kids in the afternoon.
[00:29:48] MHM: Smart. I like that.
[00:29:49] JR: Yeah. It’s great. It's much harder for me to stay fully present mentally. I'm getting better at it in finding what the triggers are –
[00:29:57] MHM: Oh, you’re normal.
[00:29:59] JR: Yeah. I am normal. Have you figured this out? If so, please share all your secrets, all the secrets.
[00:30:03] MHM: Well, first of all, I am figuring it out with everybody. I will say, I feel like I've had a hard week with this, honestly. I was talking to my husband about this. Last night, we were laying in bed and I was like, “God, I just feel like I am struggling.” I had a couple hard things that happened at work and I was just mentally tapped. First of all, I think we have to give ourselves grace, that this is going to ebb and flow. I mean, this is like, if you were practicing mindfulness, or something like that, or centering prayer, one of those kinds of disciplines, anybody will tell you, your mind wanders. It's not just like a switch. Like, “Oh, now I'm present.” Like binary. It's like you're constantly bringing yourself back.
I find that it takes me some time to settle in. I have to give myself some cues. I change clothes when I go home, which is funny, because I'm not really that dressed up at work anymore. It’s like, from one similar thing to another thing. Some of those cues are important. I also have to remember with my body, I have to breathe. Sometimes it helps me to go for a walk when I get home. In fact, Joel was telling me last night. He said, “Maybe we just need to go back to walking for 30 minutes when you get home from work.” Because he works from home and I mostly work in our office. I was like, “What a good idea. Yes.” Because it just helps to settle my brain and just to know that I'm going to have that monkey mind kind of thing going on for about 30 minutes when I get home, where I feel I'm between two places and I can't settle.
I only live a mile from our office, so I don't have any commute to decompress, which I think is also challenging in some ways. I think this is a constant challenge. The best thing we can do, like you said, is to set ourselves up where it's harder for us to get off the off-ramp, where it's not as easy to jump on Instagram. It's not as easy to answer the email. We put some friction there, so that we remember to come back to where we are.
[00:31:52] JR: It's interesting that you bring up walking, because I was actually just journaling last week that the number one indicator for me as to whether or not I'm going to be mentally present with my wife and kids in the afternoon, is whether or not I went on a run during the day.
[00:32:09] MHM: Yeah. I'm with you on that.
[00:32:10] JR: Yeah. It's like, God did not design our brains just to receive information. We have to make creative connections and we need silence and stillness and solitude to do that. On my runs, I don't listen to anything. I have headphones on so that people don't think I'm a weirdo. Yeah, I'm just trying to make creative connections. When I don't do that, I'll be playing Barbies with my girls and be working on a problem. I have my brain at work. It's a real challenge.
[00:32:35] MHM: Yeah, I agree with that. I think a lot of stress and anxiety gets worked out physically and we underestimate that, because our world is so information-oriented, we forget that we're human beings, that we have a body and that we often underutilize that. I am a huge believer in exercise. I live for exercise. I'm not some crazy nut. For my mental health, I feel that's critical.
[00:32:59] JR: Yeah. I don't run to exercise my body primarily. That's a secondary benefit. I do it to exercise my mind. Hey, so this idea of succeeding at life. I'm really curious, talking about this intersection of faith at work. How do you think your personal definition of succeeding in life is similar and different than how a non-Christian might define success?
[00:33:24] MHM: Well, yeah. I think probably, most – Well, maybe that's not fair. I was about to make maybe too much of a generalization. I think it's easy to think of success in just financial terms, if you're not being thoughtful about it. I think that is a great tool. I think money enables us to have lots of choices. It enables us to help people. I take a lot of joy in being able to employ people and provide stability for their families and opportunity. All that stuff is great.
But I think that's one part of life. I think that God made us as whole people, and there are so many aspects to our lives that need to be attended to. In the book, Win at Work and Succeed at Life, we talk about basically, three areas of non-negotiables. As you're thinking about, “Okay, what does the double win look like for me?” This is really part of the strategy of figuring out your blueprint, is identifying what your non-negotiables are. This is exactly what I did when I brought my boys home and my dad said, “I'm ready for you to take over the business, blah, blah, blah.”
Number one, what non-negotiables do you have for your own self-care? Because if that's not in place, lots of things fall apart. What about your relational priorities? Then what about your professional results? They're in that order on purpose. I would put, in self-care, I would put your own spiritual connection and well-being in that. If that is not in place, then all kinds of things fall apart. That's the foundation.
[00:34:48] JR: What's your non-negotiable there?
[00:34:50] MHM: Yeah. My non-negotiable is my devotional time, every day. I have done devotional by an Anglican woman who's actually passed away now called Phyllis Tickle.
[00:34:59] JR: What a name. Phyllis Tickle.
[00:35:01] MHM: I know, right?
[00:35:01] JR: I love this woman already.
[00:35:02] MHM: It’s like such an old name. I know. She’s great. She was amazing. It's called The Divine Hours. It's seasonal. It basically is based on the Book of Common Prayer. It's very similar, scripture in it. It's prayers. It's all kinds of stuff. It doesn't take very long. I have learned over the years to set a low bar for these kinds of things. If I set the high bar, the thing I can do on the day when I get up, 30 minutes extra, early, you know what I mean? All those kinds of things. I'm not consistent. I have been very consistent, including when our now two-year-old daughter was teeny tiny, and waking up all night long. I mean, it was like, if I can do it on those mornings when I haven't slept, then that's a good discipline, because I can reasonably do that most days. That's my baseline there.
Then Joel and I pray before we go to bed every night, which is a really sweet part of our evening ritual that, as parents and partners, that we just cherish that time. It’s the last thing we do before we go to sleep. That's our non-negotiable around that. Then of course, we go to church, or attend church virtually lately, which is important to us as well and pray with the kids.
Once you know what your non-negotiables are, that's how I define success. I want to make sure that not only am I making the kind of professional contribution I feel like God has enabled me to do and called me to do, but I'm very clear on what that looks like with my family. There's all kinds of things that are not on my non-negotiable list.
For example, one of the things on my list is dinner around the table with my kids five nights a week. That doesn't mean I have to cook. That doesn't mean that it's fancy. Doesn't mean it's on real plates. Sometimes it’s, back to Chick-fil-A, sometimes at Chick-fil-A. Sometimes it's leftover. Sometimes I do cook or whatever. I want to sit down at the table and I want to talk about what we're grateful for. I want to talk about what the wins were. That's what I want my kids to remember. That's a non-negotiable for me. I literally build my life and my schedule around that.
[00:36:59] JR: I love that. I'm curious, in what ways you see the work you guys are doing at Michael Hyatt & Company connecting to the work God wants to see done in the world, just connecting to his redemptive plans for the world and for human beings.
[00:37:16] MHM: Well, one of the things that is the most meaningful to me that I see with our clients, so we have a big group coaching program for business owners, senior executives and non-profit leaders. We also have one-on-one coaching. We also do corporate training. In this group coaching program called Business Accelerator, in order to be a part of this program, you already have to have a certain level of success in your business, as measured by financial metrics, because we want people at similar levels in the program.
Almost inevitably, people come to us with that piece of success on track. They might want to accelerate it. They have certainly more scaling that is ahead of them. But they usually come overwhelmed. They usually come burnt out. They usually come with some domain of their life, whether it's their physical domain, their marital domain, parental, social, avocational, whatever. Something is out of whack.
I feel like, we have this unique opportunity to help people discover a path to this double win, where they can continue to reach their God-given potential in their business, and even do that faster and better and more meaningfully, but they can also do it in a way that is sustainable with holistic success. We hear from spouses, kids, employees, whatever, these testimonials of people saying, “Man, he just took the first unplugged vacation he's taken in 20 years.” Or, “Wow, I got to go on sabbatical with my kids, right before they went off to college.” Or, “Wow, I feel totally freed up to care for my parents, who are struggling with dementia, or Alzheimer's. I can be present for that.”
That's what gets me excited is we can help people achieve not just more success in their business, which is super exciting. I love that part too. I love business. It gets me totally excited. We can help people do it in a way that their whole life changes. I think, honestly, that's why this book matters to us, is because we want more people to have access to a third option in their lives.
Because my dad's own story, we both have our own double win story. He didn't grow up with this example. Certainly, in the early years, when I was growing up, he was a workaholic. He wasn't around. He missed a lot of things. My mom was really on her own, trying to raise five kids, five girls, if you can imagine that, without a lot of input from him. It was really through some health scares, where he thought he was having a heart attack and hired a coach, who challenged him and said, “You gotta get this figured out. This is not going to end well.”
He really doubled down and figured it out and figured out, “Okay, what does it look like to be somebody who's a high-achiever with big professional goals and abilities, and also not neglect my family, my health, my most important relationships, my impact in the community, my spiritual life, all those things?” That's a very different story than mine. I think a lot of people can relate to that and that's really where a lot of our clients come to. That's really the work that God has given us to do.
[00:40:24] JR: Yeah. I love it. We started out talking about adoption. I'm really curious how your adoption, as a child of God, has impacted how you work, how you think about work, ambition. Yeah, how does that connect for you?
[00:40:40] MHM: Well, this an interesting – through the succession process with my dad, we went on a trip in August. This was actually the first trip we had taken, which was just a driving trip to a resort in East Tennessee, that’s all spread out, it was like, we could do it with COVID. It was really intended for us to just do some planning around the succession and noodle on some thoughts that our coach had instructed us. She said, “I want you guys to think about, what's the soul of your company? Because that's really what's getting passed on and what needs to be passed on, Megan even past you, as you're thinking about, how do you infuse this into the future and keep passing this baton.”
As we're talking, she's peeling back the onion layers in this conversation between my dad and I. He said, “You know, I think the heart of my leadership in this company is that I believe that our life is a gift. That fundamentally, we didn't do anything to earn it or deserve it. It was literally a gift that's handed to us, all the people, all the opportunities, all the things that have come into our care are gifts.” When we think about it like a gift, our orientation is one of gratitude, deep gratitude, humility, stewardship. We don't own anything. We're just stewards for this time, whether that's people, or opportunities, or financial resources, or whatever.
All of these things are given to us with the intention of entrusting them to us to be cultivated, and then returned to God, hopefully, in better shape than they started out. That's really that Eucharisteo idea that people like Ann Voskamp and others talk about. It was just a really special time for us to put words around something that I think we both knew, but had not explicitly articulated in that way. I think that is fundamentally rooted in our theology and in our faith. I mean, it's inextricable, really.
[00:42:42] JR: Yeah, it's beautiful. It's this idea that everything is a gift and it's the core of the gospel. If our adoption as children of God is something that has gifted us, which we believe it is, it's also something that we can never ever lose. To me, that enables me to take bigger swings at work. Because now –
[00:43:04] MHM: Yes. Totally. What a great point.
[00:43:06] JR: - regardless of success or failure, I have been graced the ultimate thing; peace with God through Christ, right? Period. Now, it doesn't matter if I succeed in reaching those goals. I want to do it as an act of worship to make my father proud, but I don’t have to do it.
[00:43:24] MHM: There's a freedom in it. It's not like, from this place of scarcity and anxiety. It’s really from a place of, we have a father who owns cattle on a 1,000 hills. There's no scarcity. There's just freedom.
[00:43:36] JR: It’s [inaudible 00:43:36] up to the plate in a position of freedom, rather than fear. I love it. Alright, Megan. Three questions we wrap up every conversation with. Number one, other than your own books, that doesn't count, which books do you tend to recommend or gift most frequently to others?
[00:43:51] MHM: Oh, gosh. Okay. My three favorite books right now are The Loyalist Team. These are all culture books. Radical Candor, which is another great book. Really influenced my leadership. Then Dare to Lead by Brene Brown, are just absolute –
[00:44:08] JR: Those are great. Have you read No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings at Netflix?
[00:44:13] MHM: No.
[00:44:14] JR: It's phenomenal.
[00:44:15] MHM: Is it awesome?
[00:44:16] JR: I’ll send you a copy.
[00:44:17] MHM: Okay. I’m putting it on my list.
[00:44:19] JR: It’s probably the best book on culture I've ever read. Now, it’s Netflix, so take it with a grain of salt. When you have billions of dollars in cash, you can do a lot of things. It's interesting. You guys –
[00:44:30] MHM: I can't wait to read it.
[00:44:30] JR: You guys as always, can find those books at jordanraynor.com/bookshelf. Alright, Megan, who do you want to hear in this podcast talking about how the gospel influences their work?
[00:44:41] MHM: Well, I would love to hear Chip and Joanna Gaines talk about that.
[00:44:46] JR: It’s a great answer. That’s a great answer.
[00:44:47] MHM: Yeah. I’m so fascinated by what they've done. I think they're easily underestimated. I think they're unbelievable visionaries that are just regular people, who've done something that probably won't really be appreciated until it's in hindsight. I think it’s amazing what they’ve done.
[00:45:01] JR: I agree. That's a great answer. Alright, last question. One piece of advice to leave this audience with. A lot of leaders, but a lot of people who wouldn't consider themselves leaders, across a bunch of different vocations, what they do share in common is they are apprenticing themselves to Jesus Christ and want to do great work for His glory in the good of others. What do you want to leave them with?
[00:45:21] MHM: Wow, that's a big question.
[00:45:22] JR: It is.
[00:45:24] MHM: It is a big question. I think, I would say that God wants bigger things for you and bigger dreams for you than you can imagine and that God can use you in ways, no matter how inadequate you feel. About every other day, I feel inadequate about something, or afraid about something. I just feel it time and time again, God comes through and has bigger plans for me, and not for my own glory, but something that he wants to do. I look back over the last decade or two, I'm just like, “Wow, it's amazing what God's enabled me to do, what God's enabled our company and our family to do.”
I don't think I'm very special. I think that's just how God works and I think that sometimes, we say no for God before he says no. I would just encourage people to be open to God's yes’s and to be open to what you feel God's doing in your heart, even if it feels like it's out of reach at this point.
[00:46:17] JR: I love that. It reminds me of one of my favorite verses in all scripture, Ephesians 3:20. “Now to Him, who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us.” We're able to do it measurably more than we asked or imagine, not because we're great. It's because He, the creator, God, works through you and me in the work that we do in the world today.
Hey, Megan. I just want to commend you for taking big swings, commend you for the exceptional redemptive, I believe, work that you guys do at Michael Hyatt & Company, just for serving your team and leaders through the ministry of excellence. Guys, the book is Win at Work and Succeed at Life: Five Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork. Megan, this was a ton of fun. Thanks for being with us.
[00:47:08] MHM: Jordan, thanks so much for having me. This has been really a pleasure.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:47:11] JR: I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Hey, if you did love it, do me a favor, go take 10 seconds right now and go rate The Call to Mastery on Apple Podcasts.
Guys, thank you so much for tuning in this week. I love, love, love making this show for you guys. It's a joy. It's one of the great joys of my work, sharing these stories, sharing how people are doing redemptive work in every corner of creation. I'm grateful for you guys. I'll talk to you next week.
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