#130 - Gratitude and Ambition with Seth Buechley

In this episode of the Morning Upgrade podcast I talk with Seth Buechley about his morning routine, appreciating your goal achievements, not comparing yourself to others, entrepreneurship and more.

Take the ideas from this show and put them to work. Grateful Go-Getters is my daily accountability community...post what you're grateful for and your #1 task each morning. $5/month or $37/year. Free trial: https://www.skool.com/grateful-go-getters-8488/about

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Announcer  

Welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast with Ryan Cote, where we feature casual conversations with entrepreneurs about personal development and growth.

Ryan

Hey, Seth, welcome to the Morning Upgrade podcast. How are you?

Seth

I'm doing great, Ryan. Thanks for having me on.

Ryan  

I'm excited to talk to you. So for everyone listening, Seth and I are in the same mastermind group, iron sharpens iron, literally in the same group. We had our weekly call today. So we're very familiar with each other. I'm super excited to talk to you. You've got a book on gratitude. So it's obviously something we're going to talk about and, you know, gratitude practice. Let's start this off like I do every episode, please tell my audience of morning upgraders, who you are, which I kind of already did, but who you are, what you do for a living, and then something you're grateful for.

Seth  

So I am an entrepreneur by DNA. What I do today is I provide fun, and I provide advice to other entrepreneurs to help them do their thing. So that puts me in the role of a connector. And so I have a consulting practice, I have a finance business. And I also do angel investing. But if I really pull all that back, I connect people. And that's one of the ways that you and I got to meet each other. And so did you say what would be a good win a win or what you're grateful for either one I'm grateful for, you know, I just had a fantastic week between Christmas and New Year's with the family. And I'm a grandpa. Now I'm a young Grandpa, you know, sometimes people tell me, you don't look like a grandpa. And then I fill my bald spot. It's true. I'm a grandpa, I've got a three-year-old grandson, Ali, and a nine-month-old granddaughter, Georgia, and Georgia is at that age where she's really starting to connect, you know, she obviously doesn't have words, but just to be able to be around or for a long, extended period of time, we, we rented a house in the middle of this resort area where there was snow, and it was just one of those moments, and you're like, This is the good stuff. And, you know, actually unwind a little bit, which is not easy to do. As an entrepreneur, sometimes, as you know,

Ryan  

you're in a good spot because you've got, you've got a good family, you've got, you've had success in business. Now you're at a point where you've got your kids to have kids, and so you've kind of have, like, you see it all, and you're still young enough to enjoy it. You know, you're if someone saw you, they were like, I can't believe you're your grandpa, you know, so you've got to steal the energy to, to enjoy it all. So it must be very exciting.

Seth  

You know, it is, and you know, you mentioned gratitude. And it's something that I think a lot about, I wrote a book partly about it. But you know, the danger for many entrepreneurs is we're so busy chasing what's next. Because we actually don't value and appreciate or protect, you know, what we have. And so the challenge for me is always to make myself just really focus in on, hey, listen, you actually have the things that you are striving for. Make sure to, you know, actually be present and engaged, you know, got a little done last week, so feel good about.

Ryan  

Well, let's go there. So I want to hear what your morning routine is. But we'll come back to that. So let's stay on this on this topic about gratitude and being present. Because I know it's something that I struggle with. And a lot of people do. I know how I address it or how I'm trying to address it. But how do you use someone who wrote a book on it? Like, how do you what tips do you have for the entrepreneurs listening

Seth  

relative to gratitude or mourning? Relative to gratitude relate to gratitude?

Seth  

Yeah, you know, for gratitude, I really think about, I think about motivation, you know, it's like, you know, one of the things about being a driven entrepreneur is often we don't struggle to feel motivated, but But we, we misdiagnosed with motivating us, that was my observation. So, for instance, a lot of us would be motivated by fear, like, hey, if I don't make this happen, you know, my world's gonna call apps. Or in my case, I had to come to grips with the fact that I really had a lot of envy in me. Despite the fact that I had more success than I ever thought I would add, I was still envious. And the truth is, there's always going to be somebody that has something more or at least different than we have. And if we don't get control of that, that quote, unquote, that envy, I like to say, you know, nobody minds being told that they're ambitious because that sounds kind of honorable, but if you tell somebody that they are envious, that would be offensive. But the truth is, a lot of us are motivated by things that aren't good. And so I found for myself, envy and you know, fear of missing out and all these things were actually when I peeled back, what was driving me and I kind of had to reorient and, you know, I'm a person of faith. And so I feel like there's a lot of revelation that happened in that, and I really feel like kind of God revealed to me that I just wasn't a grateful person. I a really driven, but I wasn't grateful. And I began to kind of do business with my motivations and kind of how I was viewing myself in this world, and a short story short summary, I'm still motivated. But now it's a response, I can look at all the things I have, and I can thank God for them. And then I can say, in light of how good he's been to me, I'm going to act in these ways, I'm going to pursue business for these reasons, you know, I'm going to invest in my family for these reasons. And it becomes less around, I need to get more, or I need to be better, bigger, faster, and more about, hey, listen, I have a responsibility, I have an opportunity to respond to all these good things in my life. And so I kind of reframe the world in gratitude, is really the major way that I have been able to do that.

Ryan  

Yeah, it's so hard not to compare yourself to others. I'm generally pretty good about that. But I even had a situation, you know, because you're in the mastermind together. But I had a situation not too long ago where I found myself comparing myself to some new friends we made in the town that moved in and who, man and put me in a funk. The next morning was very hard to get out of bed. Thankfully, because of you guys, and just my general personal development, I was able to catch myself and realize what was happening. And so that idea, just leaned into gratitude and just kind of being present, recognizing what I do have. And there's no reason to feel this way. And I let myself feel that way for a little bit. But then I snap myself out of it. And I agree, the gratitude practice, I'm even trying to do it, like, I'll journal about it. But I'm trying to make it a habit when I first get up, like when my eyeballs open up, my eyelids open up, I just start thinking about things. I'm grateful before I get it. But I started thinking about things. I'm grateful for it maybe like a minute, just a stream of consciousness. And that's been an interesting experiment as well.

Seth  

So I call it pernicious comparison we always compare ourselves to people who have more, like we don't compare ourselves to the people who have less than us or who are struggling. Or if you go to a third world country, which I've done many times, we'll compare ourselves to those people, because if we did, we would be waking up going, Oh, my goodness, you know, look at how good it is. It's just, it's a human nature thing. And the other side of it is once we get our arms around gratitude, we have to acknowledge that we're going to drift right back to our natural predisposition pretty quickly. I mean, gratitude will change us. But as you said, we still fall back into those old patterns and routines. And what I love about gratitude is that's exactly how I got myself out of that. That bad routine if I fall into it.

Ryan  

Yeah, excellent. Excellent. All right, let's go to your morning routine. Seth, how do you start your days?

Seth  

Well, the first thing I tried not to do was get on my phone, I'm embracing and have my phone near me, but I tried to stay off of it. Unless it's blowing up, for some reason, I get up at six-ish and go to bed at 10. That's roughly that, theoretically, that gives me an idea of eight hours of sleep. I sleep pretty well. When I get up. The first thing I do is head for coffee, I have a nice little espresso maker, I make myself a double espresso and a little bit of milk. And then I grab my iPad, I do some scripture reading and Scripture memorization, and try to do that five days a week. And then, pretty much every day, I will work out. And I'm able to work out before I really get into the meat of the day with meetings and all that. So I actually traveled to my office, where we've got a fitness coach who comes into the office and does it right there. So I do that Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And then, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I do another kind of workout. And I'm kind of tweaking what I used to work out in the morning. But now I'm gonna start playing pickleball in the evening. But I'm kind of committed at this point, I'm going to exercise every day. Not super hardcore. But just as a way, I'm just better when I get that heart rate going. So those are the things I'm consistent at. I'm adding something new to that, something that everybody's told me to do for 30 years but I haven't done yet, which is to take a look at my goals every day, as well. And so because I use the iPad for the scripture reading a study that I do, I have moved all of my planning stuff into a digital planner. And so I can just easily go look at that look at my goals. And that's something that I've wanted to do for a while and probably made little progress on it in the past, but now I'm tracking it in a habit tracker, which is in that same little digital cheat. So that is my morning routine. I've been really consistent at it for me, I would say perfectly consistent, but I was probably bad and 85% last year. I'm looking to get that number up.

Ryan  

Why do you do it? If someone's listening to that does not have a morning routine, share why you do it. Why is it worth doing the morning routine for you?

Seth  

Yeah, I just think it's about being intentional. I mean, it's, it's an expression of what's important to me, because if we don't Take control of our agenda. That just means we're living somebody else's agenda. And, you know, I think too often we do that is kind of has a little bit to do with comparison, like, like, why are we measuring ourselves against other people? And then yeah, I would ask myself the same question of, like, why am I just subject to everybody else's needs, and you're just rolling into the day willy nilly when I have an opportunity to kind of set the direction myself. And so I don't know, I feel like it's a little bit around responsibility, the responsible thing to do, I also feel like it's just a way to actually feel better when I do it. And I feel like a flake when I don't. So there's some sort of intrinsic, maybe also self-respect. I respect that I'm taking my life seriously when I do that. And if I don't, I kind of judge myself as winging it. And, you know, maybe there's a little bit of a self-respect angle to

Ryan  

like that. I always talk about, like, investing in yourself, I like that, like, it's a responsible thing to do. And it's, you know, keeps your self-respect for yourself down. If that you're that you are getting up early and investing in yourself, as there's a different angle, I like that.

Seth  

Yeah, sometimes, you know, when we're when we struggle, and we don't win, it's easy to accept that because we think, Well, you didn't deserve to win because you didn't do the work, right? And when you do the work, I feel like it's a lot easier to say, Yeah, I do the work because I expect to win.

Ryan  

And I'm gonna go back to one thing you said about reading your goals cuz I have something to add that might be helpful to my audience, is, I do the same thing. So I've got a printout of my goals and my affirmations. And so I'll read that regularly. I always have a section, and this goes back to comparing yourself to people in the gratitude practice, I always have a section of things that I'm proud of that I've accomplished, throughout my 40, almost 44 years on this planet, and so on that list evolves, you know, like as I complicate things, I'll update it and print out a new version. And so it's kind of three things, Reem affirmations, reading my goals, to remind myself as to what I said was important. And then reading what I've accomplished, just to remind myself that this is easy to forget, right? Because we're all busy. And you forget what the last you've done up to this point, especially if it's, like, 1520 years ago. And so I feel like that's helped to, for someone to share that.

Seth  

No, I love that. And that is something that doesn't happen naturally for most entrepreneurs because we're so forward-focused. We don't spend much time thinking about things we already accomplished, right? Yeah, great.

Ryan  

So so, that's what I want to tap into your brain a little bit because you've got a lot of experience with the business. The first thought I had was I want to ask you, I don't know how easy this is to answer. But because I know you from the mastermind, you've got a good grasp of like, the finance and the business, like working out deals, all the stuff to me, that seems very, very complex. I'm not trying to butter you up here. Just being honest, like, a lot of stuff that's very complicated to me, like, my, my brain doesn't really go that way. So I guess my question is, are you wired that way? Or if not, what did you do to teach yourself that, obviously, experience, but is there anything like books or courses or anything you can share that would teach people the business side of business, like the real nitty-gritty details of working out deals? And this and that interview, I'm trying to say?

Seth  

I do. Yeah, I do. So I think part of what I try to remind people is I've been working on an idea. Lately, I call it the aligned leader. But it kind of starts with understanding your own temperament. And sometimes, people are so oriented in one direction that they just kind of naturally have blind spots and other disciplines. They're really strong and one and you know, nobody's strong and all of them, right. And so I would argue, I feel the same way when you start talking about digital media and things. I'm just like, dang, you know, I'm super impressed. But you've developed muscle there, and you had an interest there, and you've got all this experience. So I think some of it is this natural inclination towards, Hey, are you a detail person? Are you kind of quick and creative, which is more my personality style? And so, so there's that, and I will also say, one thing I will say I have done, and I would say I'm pretty proud of it is I have put myself in positions to learn many times at the expense of even short-term opportunity. So I've gone to work with an investment banking firm making 36 grand a year after I'd already sold the business for literally millions of dollars. But I took this job because I wanted to be around people and because I realized I had a gap in actual finance. You know, I was good at sales, I could communicate well, I understood an industry that I was in telecom, but I just I judged myself as not having a grip on finance. And to this day, I still do not enjoy accounting. Even though I have a consulting firm with a CFO, a publicly traded CFO, a lady on our team who does accounting, I don't enjoy his talent, I understand it, but I don't enjoy it. But I benefited from the investment banking term, I learned about how to structure the finances of companies, which is different than accounting. And I had already sold the business, and then we were in the job helping sell other businesses, so I got to see deal structures. And then over time, having sold a few more businesses, and then helping other companies sell or buy businesses, you know, you just learn things. And it's like anything else, right, is that there's a, there's a lingo that you pick up on over time, you know, there's a set of elements that are present pretty much in every deal, but they're called different things. And it's just something that comes with practice and intention. Fortunately, there are some really good resources out there, I think one of the areas that I'm really interested in right now is establishing a holding company, which is how I have something that sits over the top of the consulting company, the finance company, I have investments I have. And so I'm in the process now, kind of learning about holding company. So think about what's the tax advantage, who's doing it, well, that kind of stuff. And so whenever I find an area where I have an interest or a need, I've been willing in the past to kind of both time and money and even join a company, if I had to, to learn it. But it's all learnable there's that quote, everything is figured out double. But you may figure out at the beginning of that process that it's actually one thing you don't like and change your mind, right?

Ryan  

But I love that takeaway of like the fact you went to work for an investment banking firm, for, for not a lot of money just to learn the ins and outs, because you're right, it's like sometimes I find myself get in the habit of reading too many books and I have to remember like, doesn't really feel good, but doesn't really do anything else you actually learning something and taking action. And so, like that, you kind of threw yourself right into the chaos to learn it all. It also reminds me of I was listening to, you know, Alex for Mosaics. We talked about him a little bit mastermind he was talking to in his recent podcast episode, he was talking about stopping reading so many books. Just pick like a handful of really, really good books that are important that marry up to your goals. And just keep on reading them, reading them, reading them to you like mastering them, and to the point where you could teach it, you know, something that was an interesting perspective.

Seth  

And it's funny, I have literally done that the book I refer the most people to is called the advantage by Patrick Lencioni. And I've literally talked with treats around the topics that are in there, even though he's got a full-blown certification and blah, blah, blah, but I've never done, but I've just internalized it so much. Because it's very simple, it's very understandable and approachable for the leaders that I like, and you're the second person last two or three days that I've heard the letter, the phrase, quit reading so many books, just pick a few and take action rather than telling yourself you need more knowledge, right?

Ryan

How about reading fewer books by I'm going to, I'm going to read?

Seth  

No, I hear you. I'm with you. And I listened like I hadn't read atomic habits by James Clear, but I just started reading some of the stuff recently. I think I'm gonna read up. So I kind of wait for them to sneak up on me.

Ryan  

I mean, he's got like, 80,005 star reviews or some ridiculous number on Amazon. So I'm like, Okay, well, obviously, there's something to this book. Well, Seth, this was excellent. Our time is up here. If people want to connect with you and learn more, where should we send them?

Seth  

You know, they can just hit cathedral consulting.com. It's much easier than remembering how to spell Seth directly. But I'm always glad to connect and be a resource. It's something that gives me a lot of joy. So thank you for introducing me to your audience. And I appreciate all that you've done for me walking alongside you in the mastermind this last couple of years, and thanks for having me on

Ryan

your show. Yeah, thanks. That's a great job.

Announcer  

Thanks for listening to the morning upgrade podcast. Please subscribe and review. And don't forget to visit us at morning upgrade.com For more content