Podcast Transcription: Finding Peak Performance: How to Unlock Focus, Energy, and Balance with Ryan Hanley

Ted Ryce: Ryan Hanley, thanks so, so much for coming on the show. I was on yours and I'm happy to have you on and share some of your peak performance tips. So welcome  

Ryan Hanley: Ted,, it's such a pleasure man, and I enjoyed our conversation so much. It's fun to be chatting again.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and I've done a bit of a, uh, intro at the beginning here, but just. 

In your own words, can you talk about who you are, what you do briefly?  

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, so I have, uh, been in the insurance industry for the most part for the last 20 years. Uh, the last 15 of which have been either as an entrepreneur in that space or as an executive. I did take a brief hiatus for a year to become the CEO of a fitness franchise. 

That was really a mercenary position. And just because I know there's probably a lot of people that know a lot more about fitness yourself included on this show than I do. I was kind of the business guy in that scenario, not necessarily the fitness guru, um, although I do love fitness and take it very seriously. 

But, um, yeah, so I've been in these executive or entrepreneurial roles, uh, started companies, built them, bought them, sold them. And uh, what I do now, uh, I still operate because I love to operate. Uh, I currently am, uh, in a position where I'm helping a startup as a, as a stand in, uh, a president role, uh, helping them grow. 

Um, but I, but I still work and coach entrepreneurs all the time, particularly entrepreneurs who have hyperactivity or A DHD or these type of neurodivergent things as, um, that's an issue that I struggled with earlier in my career and made a tremendous amount of mistakes because I didn't know what was going on in my brain. 

And once I started to figure out and put systems and process in place, um, to deal with it, I turned it into a superpower. So that's where I spend my time today.  

Ted Ryce: Love it. And when it comes to helping entrepreneurs specifically with those issues, like what, what are the, some of the, the struggles that  

Ryan Hanley: those people have? 

I'd say first and foremost, it's permission to like accept that they have it. And to work through and to get them to understand what, what the superpowers are and where the parts that you're gonna struggle, no matter what. Um, oftentimes, and this happened to me early in my career. People want to help you with what they perceive as your weaknesses. 

You talk too fast, you move, make decisions too fast, et cetera, et cetera. And these are all perceptions of people from the outside. And oftentimes the people who have hyperactivity or A DHD in particular, when they're in leadership positions, their brain is just moving faster on topics that they're interested in. 

Then something like an HR meeting will come up or some, you know, nerdy IT topic if you're not on the nerdier side, right? Maybe you're on more. It's like you can't even spend five minutes thinking about it. And what oftentimes the first stages of this are, are just helping them, one, understand where those power, where the things that they can leverage as superpowers are and where. 

You know, they most likely will never be the best in the room. And two, start to give them permission to lean into what they are strong in right there. A lot of us feel this sense of, well, if I'm not good at hr, I'm not great at having one-on-one conversations or whatever parts we struggle with that somehow we then need to over index on fixing those problems. 

And it is my belief, particularly people who are neuro neurodivergent in that way, it is. You are doubly penalized by trying to fix your weaknesses versus spending time in your strengths. And oftentimes that's what we do. We figure out what your strengths are, where you can focus, where you wanna focus, and then we try to craft a work style and schedule and, and set, and a framework that allows you to spend your most time in these zones of genius versus. 

Um, trying to bring up places that you simply just will never be good in 'cause of the way your brain is wired.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I relate to that a lot. I, thankfully, I'm not the type of person who like, feels like I need to control everything. I talk to a lot of people. I remember having a conversation, he's like, yeah, well, I should probably hire someone. 

But I just kind of, it's like, dude, what, what, what is, what, what's going on there? Right. And do you feel like, do you feel like it's more because of the way their brain operates or more like the belief system that there should, they shouldn't pay to do it, or I need to be involved with everything? Like what,  

Ryan Hanley: what's the root of that? 

Yeah, there's a few different causes and, and the, let's. I try to think of everything, and not even that I was a big video game player, but I tend to think of everything in terms of video games works for me. Like, you know what I mean? Like, like, uh, and, and just 'cause it's an easy visual, right? So you have, uh, if you're gonna pick a character for a video game right before you go on your big adventure or whatever the thing is, you look at what strengths and weaknesses they have. 

They have, right? So it might be. Energy for, for someone who has, uh, A DHD or hyperactivity in particular, energy's gonna be very high. Focus will be high, but there's these caveats on these things where it's focus, where you are interested, energy, where you are interested, and this is where. The, the, the issue comes in is there's a common misbelief that is starting and, and, you know, thanks to people like yourself and, and, and all these other individuals who have expertise or interest in fitness, mental health, health related, you have doctors now you're doing interviews that are starting to propagate these ideas. 

But for so long it was, you know, Ryan can't focus. Ryan has too much energy. Ryan talks too fast. Ryan makes decisions too fast, right? These were labels that were put on me, and the truth is, in the places where I have a zone of genius marketing, leadership related activities, sales, business, business, deal making, like these are areas that are my zone of genius, I do make decisions very fast because. 

It's what I'm interested in, and I can hyperfocus on them. I can work through the topics, the ideas very quickly, and I've built a set of frameworks that allows me to do that. So yes, I can, but you put an HR decision in front of me, which I have zero interest in, and it could take me three months to make a decision. 

Right? And, and it'll be like, so. There's, there's this, there's a lot of misinformation as to how your brain actually works as it relates to these things. Now, again, I want to be clear to everyone. I, I'm not a doctor. This is, I have, this is me doing an intense amount of research. I have been fired from multiple jobs and I can kind of tie back most of that to do with me misunderstanding what was going on with me, right? 

Like I would react to situations, I would present myself in certain situations 'cause I didn't understand. That why I was different, why my brain worked in a certain way, not right or wrong, just different. And there's, so, there's, there's that part, there is a part where we have a lot of misdiagnoses, people just self-diagnose theirselves with a DHD because really what they need to do is go for a run or lift some weights or something and get outta their freaking house and use their body. 

So yeah, you, you're hyperactive, but you're hyperactive 'cause you're not actually expending energy every day. There's, you're not straining your body to put yourself. Where you, you know, you can recover and come back. You're just, you just have too much energy 'cause you're not using your body and you know, so now you have a lot of people who don't actually have these issues, you know, uh, adding their voice or their experience to the mix. 

So if you haven't spent time researching, it's easy to get lost in. So, so what do we need to do to, to kind of answer your question? So the first thing that I try to do with individuals who come to me is under, is really get a feel for. Where do they automatically dial in? What is that place? What does it look like? 

Right? Is it, is it dissecting an engineering problem with, uh, if you know, if you're coding, like, is that where you could lock in for 10 hours and just go? Is it in the deal making phase when you're. Face-to-face with someone and you're working through the problem of how to structure a deal, is that where you lock in and go? 

Right? Is it in your interpersonal activity? Is it in creating content and branding and that? So let's find that place that you naturally lock in, and then let's start to evaluate what is it about that particular activity or that particular, you know, uh, uh, knowledge set or, or. Or whatever that that allows you to lock in. 

'cause once we understand where you lock in, naturally we can figure out, okay, what other places does this expand to? And what are the things that we need to start thinking about either creating systems for, uh, outsourcing. Insourcing, et cetera, like delegating out. If you're a leader with A DHD and you are not proficient at delegation, you will get absolutely slaughtered. 

And what I mean by that is not slaughtered necessarily in your business, uh, success. 'cause what I see is a lot of people with A DHD will over index on the business side of their life. 'cause they can get those, they, they learn how to get those quick dopamine hits. What will happen is their life will fall apart first, and then once their life starts to fall apart, then the business falls apart. 

So they look like an incredible success on the outside, but on the inside they're constantly chasing dopamine. They haven't figured out how to deal with it. Um, they're spending a lot of time in places that cause them frustration and pain, which then forces them to chase the dopamine. Hit again, and it becomes this vicious cycle that ultimately leads deeper and deeper into things that are unhealthy for us. 

Drugs, um, self-medicating, uh, addictions, porn, all these other things that are, we know to be horrible for us. It's not even, I find that a lot of these particularly men, want these activities in their life or even enjoy them, but they need the dopamine hit and they don't know why, uh, because they've never done the research. 

Ted Ryce: I love that. Thanks for bringing up, like don't self-diagnose, right? Yes. Like talk to an I I had a shout out to Chris Friesen if, if you're listening, Chris, uh, a neuropsychologist who I worked with, he's a neuropsychologist and a performance psychologist and he, he's been on here talking about the differences in proper diagnoses. 

'cause that's what neuropsychologists do, right? These different, uh, brain disorders. So, yeah, and, and just because chat GPT agreed with you. When you asked it, if you were, it doesn't know, and it is an ai. It's a large language model. Okay, so stop, don't outsource  

Ryan Hanley: it. Chat. GPT. Yeah, chat. GPT in particular is very Shan, which means it is going to agree with you. 

First and foremost, unless you somehow build out your prompt to have it specifically disagree with you, but then you're, you're engineering the outcome anyways, right? So you need to be very careful and, and I wanna be honest with everyone, you know, it wasn't until about, I guess it was, it's been five years now that I got diagnosed. 

So up until the age of I'm, I'll be turning 45 this year. So let's just call it up until about the age of 40, I was undiagnosed. Essentially a, a maniac. And what I mean by that is I had more energy than I knew what to do with. I didn't know why I had that energy. I felt like for certain types of things, my brain just worked faster and better than most of the people I was, uh, competing against or working with. 

And I didn't understand why. And then there would be other things that I literally couldn't even wrap my head around that felt remedial. And, you know, it, it, it drove me crazy because I was constantly driven for more. It was always about progress, which helped me in my business life. I mean, I've been very successful in business because of this constant need for growth and progress and more and like, and not necessarily in money, but like. 

I wanted to climb that mountain and once I got to the next, same thing with my fitness goals, right? It was once I did, you know, got my body weight to this, okay, now I wanna lift this much. Now I wanna, you know, build up this muscle. And it has been that in every aspect of my life. And if there's a part of my life that I can't accumulate. 

Then I am, it like gets tossed outta my brain and I have zero interest and that's very unhealthy. 'cause there's things like, you know, your relationships, which it's very difficult. There's no calculable measurement in a relationship that you can quote, unquote accumulate, you know, which is what, which I didn't realize again, and this is the point, I didn't realize that my need for accumulation in progress was because each. 

You know, uptick in the my traffic or each new sale, or, you know, each, you know, uh, uh, goal that we would hit, you know, in a month or in a quarter, was a dopamine release in my brain, and that's what I was searching for. What I was searching for was this dopamine release in my brain because, and again, not a doctor broad stroking here, A DHD is essentially, you have issues with dopamine and the release of dopamine in your brain, and in some cases, certain aspects of your brain will. 

Operate faster than others in an effort to drive more dopamine or they burn up more dopamine, and that's why your body is constantly seeking. Again, not a doctor. I'm giving you a broad stroke understanding of what's happening here. Listen to neuroscientists. If you feel like you have this issue, go get diagnosed. 

I took a battery of tests because after I was fired for the second time, essentially from a job that I really enjoyed and I didn't understand why. I went on this journey to figure out what is going on with me. I am an incredibly high performer. I've been incredibly successful. You know, I have all the receipts to back it up except for this, this conflict oftentimes inside with other C-Suite members of organizations that I'm with, and I don't like that. 

I don't wanna be the conflict guy that's not. What I was searching for, right? So I'm like going, oh my God, I'm showing up every day. I care about this organization. I wanna grow it. I wanna be part of a team. I even like who I'm working with. It's not even like I was like, I'm better than everybody. Not even a little bit yet. 

Somehow I constantly have friction, and it was because I. I was undiagnosed. I, I did not understand why I would react certain ways to certain things that would, that would put me in bad situations. And once I got formally diagnosed, not that anything changed about my life. Right. Nothing changed necessarily other than now I ha I could start to develop a toolkit that would allow me to be in those same situations, but when I feel myself maybe reacting in a way that would've otherwise been negative or moving fast, moving at a speed that I thought was acceptable, but maybe was unacceptable in a larger organization, considering, you know, to a certain extent, you do need to bring people along with you and you want people to be bought in it, right? 

So like. Now I, now I have this framework, uh, these, you know, frameworks that I've built, uh, in various aspects of my life that allow me to, to continue to leverage the superpower of A DHD, this unrelenting energy and focus for the things that you're interested in without creating as much friction and conflict in the areas where before, uh, I would have,  

Ted Ryce: what I love about this is, uh, yeah. 

So, so many people, like I did horribly in school, but in like high, let's say grade school. But as soon as I got to college where I could pick the courses, then I started excelling and I, I thought there was something wrong with me where some people can just kind of, I don't know, push through it and just. 

Get good grades, even if they have zero interest, because there's some other thing that's driving them, right? They're getting a dopamine release, not from learning, not from their interest in the subject, but from maybe getting a good grade or making their parents happy. But if you don't, you know, I mean, I always wanted to make my parents happy, but I didn't care about it as not, uh, enough to, you know, to to, to step up. 

So what I'm hearing you say, it's like. You know, getting the diagnosis helps to create the accurate story or the, the right story, and like there's nothing. Necessarily wrong with you, you just have this way of operating. Yeah. So instead of saying, oh man, I'm just, you know, I'm crazy Ted, or you know, Ryan, too much energy. 

Ryan can't focus, you know, it's like, figure out what's going on. Start to understand your strengths and your weaknesses, and then I think you're bringing up something really important. 'cause I feel I, I work with a lot of. High performing clients, and one of the reasons they're not successful, there's many reasons why they're not successful with their health, from environment to genetics to all sorts of things. 

But one of the reasons psychologically is that they just don't really like it and they're not that good at it. And when you're doing something that doesn't click with you and you have this type of brain, you're like, ah, screw this. Let's move on. However, to your point about relationships. In your situation, Ryan, where you're like, how do I accumulate points in this relationship? 

It's not how relationships work. And there's a high cost if you don't change your approach or operating system when it comes to dealing with relationships, unless you wanna be alone, right? Yeah. Which most people don't. Like, you have to start to understand, like there's some things you can't get beyond. 

You'll have to step up and do the hard thing. Whereas other times, like your, um, your example with human resources, you don't need to, like, it's hard for you, but also the ROI isn't there. You need to focus on what you're good at. How do you help people understand like, Hey, this thing's hard for you, but you need to step up and do it, and this other thing is hard for you and you just need to leave it alone. 

How do you help people with, with that?  

Ryan Hanley: Yes. Yeah, so we start with some kind of the foundational framework that I use and, and the reason I use these, these frameworks is because they're easy to remember, or at least, you know, and they're easy to teach and you know, so the first one is, is peak. This is kind of where we start. 

It stands for, uh, presence, energy, awareness, and calibration. Calibration, obviously misspelled with a K. But peak with a C didn't really make sense. So we, you know, we took a little, we took a little liberty there, but, um, the idea here is, uh, what can you be present in? So let's, so, so again, coming back to the idea of we need to figure out first, what are the things that you naturally lock in on? 

Once we understand what those things are, right, we can figure out what are the commonalities between them, and then we can go figure out what do you really struggle with and what are the commonalities of those activities? And now at least we have a map for where we know you're naturally gonna find focus and where you aren't. 

Okay. So we start with this peak framework and it's, uh, presence is what can you be present in, because I don't know if you've, if you have a DHD actual, and you're sitting in, say, a conference and a speaker comes up. And they're talking about a topic you're not interested in, it'll cause you physical pain to sit in that seat. 

Like you literally will not be able, you'll be up, you'll be down, you'll be standing in the back of the room, you'll be moving around, you'll be going to get a cup of coffee, you'll be going to get a cup of water. You'll be looking for someone to crack a joke with. You'll be like, you just like, literally can't even listen to what the person is saying. 

And it could be freaking Tony Robbins, right? It could be the best speaker in the world. You literally can't get your brain there 'cause you're not interested in the topic. So what can you be present in? What are the moments that allow you to be a hundred percent present? Is it when you're writing? Is it when you're working out? 

Is it when you're sitting down with your children at the end of the night listening to their day? Or what are those moments? Where are you present? Okay. What brings you the most natural energy? Is it, are you showing up to speak, like if you're a speaker? So I do a lot of speaking. If I could do anything in a professional capacity every single day of my life, it would be speaking, I can be present, I fill with energy. 

It, it brings energy to my life, right? So what are the energy draws where you are actually acquiring energy from that activity, that conversation, that person, that situation, and which drain you of energy. Sitting on Zoom meetings, doing bureaucratic conversations, which are necessary to business, but literally drain the life force from my body. 

I know that about myself, so I, when I run a company, have taken meetings that would normally be an hour and I condense 'em down to 20 minutes. 'cause I found I can be present and I can be energized. In those same meetings if they're under 30 and pushing 15, 20 minutes. So that's one of the things I've had to do, right? 

So we're talking through, we're using an example. So can you be present? What brings you energy? Right? So then we move to, uh, once we know where we can be present and where we have energy, what are we aware of our situation? Do we have mechanisms to be aware of situations in which we're going to have negative repercussions? 

Right? So now we're, now we're working on awareness. So I know when I go into this board meeting. This is gonna be like ripping teeth outta my face. It's gonna be tough to be present, right? And it's gonna draw energy from me. But I have an awareness for that, and I've developed a way of recalibrating that situation so that I can be present and I can bring energy in, right? 

So what are we present in? Where do we draw energy, right? Do we have a method for being aware of those situations, both positive or negative? And can we recalibrate ourselves both positive and negative to match that situation? Okay. And the calibration piece is very important because if you are in the C-suite. 

You can't get out of being in the board meeting. You have to be there. That's your job, okay? You can not like it all you want. It can be tough to be present and it can drain energy from you, but you have to be there. That's your job. So how do you make sure that, how do you recalibrate yourself so that moment you can do your job? 

And that could be. Maybe you need a little less caffeine. Maybe you need a little more caffeine. Maybe you need to pull out a St Steno pad and just do some doodling on the side so that some part of your brain is captured, right. Maybe there's, um, maybe you draw out a set of questions that you. Are gonna wanna ask in each session. 

So the anticipation of acting, asking that question keeps you focused, present in the moment, and keeps you energized, right? So for everybody it's gonna be different, what calibration looks like, but we need to know where we're present, what brings or expands energy. We need to have a system to be aware, right? 

If you walk into something, am I gonna get energy? Am I not, is this gonna be hard for me or not? And then depending on, uh, you know, what we're bringing to that situation, can we recalibrate? 'cause it also goes the other way. Let's say you draw immense energy from and can be a hundred percent present in your board meeting and now you are overwhelming those individuals. 

Now you need to recalibrate down. Now you need to say, Hey, in these meetings I get way out over my skis. 'cause I love talking about big picture issues. I love it. I, I die for this. I love whiteboarding, but I tend to overwhelm or I tend to take over meetings, which can have, can have an, an opposite but also negative effect on people's perception of you. 

So it's, it's that recalibration piece at the end that's very, very important. So that's usually where we start is, is I call it the peak framework. And you know, I usually start with, uh, the leaders that I work with there and once they get a handle for that, um. Sometimes they don't even need me. I'll be honest with you, I, the way I work with people is I don't lock anyone in long term. 

And, and I'm not trying to sell the service. I'm just saying the whole point is all, all I wanna do is give people what they need to then be able to get back out on their own. And I've had many, uh, leaders that come to me for as little as like three months. And once they lock in that peak idea, they can, you know that, that's often enough. 

To, to really get to where they wanna be and, and, and then, you know, they kind of go off on their own for a while because it's, it's simple and repeatable and it allows us to be, you know, as close to our best self in whatever situation we're in.  

Ted Ryce: I love that it's, it's very simple, but asking all the right questions. 

Right. Where do you feel most present, what gives you the most energy? Developing awareness to realize or how to answer those questions, but also when to calibrate up or down. Yeah. I, I do a lot of con well, I, I speak to a lot of clients. I also have done a lot of speaking in the past, a lot of podcasting, and you get like, some guys, they're just not aware of, of the conversation and you're just like, what's going on man? 

You so, uh, it's so important to develop these  

Ryan Hanley: things. Yeah. Ted, I'll give you a very simple example of how, like, how if we work through this process, how simple a change can have an, an impact. So I had someone come to me and they were specifically having, uh, a problem with board meetings. That's why I brought it up before, and it was, this is was just a couple months ago, so it's fresh on my brain. 

They board me, Ryan, I can't handle board meetings. I, I, I, I, I love the board meetings. I look forward to them, but I always feel like I performed bad. And, and this was the CEO, right? So he had investors and other, uh, strategic people, you know, so he's. These are the people who are essentially his boss, even though he's the founder and the CEO, he's gotta make these guys happy. 

And he's feeling like every time he comes out, there's conflict. I don't understand why there's conflict, there's conflict. He's like, and I don't get it. Like, we're doing well. And he's like, I feel like I'm a good presenter and. Okay. And what we ultimately realized was presence. He could be fully present. 

He enjoyed doing the board meetings. He's like, I just enjoy being around, you know, thinking about my business at this level. Awesome. Okay. Does it bring you energy? Yes. I, I can, I can come in regardless of where I'm at from an energy level. When I leave, I might be a little physically tired, but mentally I'm, I'm energized. 

I'm enjoying what's coming on. What we ultimately realized when we got to the awareness section was there was one particular board member. That drove this guy up a wall. Just, he's like, the way he asked questions, he's, he's entitled, he had all these preconceived notions about this guy and he drove and that he let that one individual who he, to his who he even said doesn't even speak that much. 

He said, he's like, the meaning could be growing great. And then he'll ask a question and then I'll be off. Right. So, okay. Now we're aware of what the actual problem, it's not, board meetings aren't the problem. Right. It's one particular individual and all we did from a recalibration was. We gave him, he, he, he was, I forced him to count backwards from 10. 

And this, so I'm, I literally made this up, right? I'm not a neuroscience guys, we're just, we're we're FA foing this stuff to figure out what works, right? And I said, you know, pick an amount of time, five seconds, 10 seconds. When, when he asks a question. Just before you respond, 'cause he would jump, he would like jump down this guy's throat. 

That's how the, that's what it would be, right? Because 'cause he knew the guy bothered him no matter what he asked. He then would jump down his throat and then that would create the negativity. So just, I said, just count back from a number and he ultimately got to 10. So this guy would ask a question and he would count in his head. 

10, 9, 8, 7, and then he would respond and he found that his responses no longer had the bite, and when the responses didn't have the bite, even though he didn't become best friends with this guy, this isn't like some fairytale Disney ending where everyone kumbaya and going out for beers after. What ended up happening was the friction in the meeting went away. 

Because he was actually, my client was the one creating the friction, not this board member. It was his reaction to the board member's questions that were creating the friction. And then he ended up looking poor in front of his other board members. 'cause he is jumping down this guy's throat and just by the simple exercise of being aware and having a very simple recalibration, just, just count back from a number that works for you. 

And he, he found 10 was the number. And then eventually he didn't even need to do that because the, you know, after so many board meeting, I think, I think he, he texted me like, uh, no, earlier this month because we stopped working together last month. So now he's had two board meetings in that time period. 

And he said that he didn't even need to do it really after the second board meeting. 'cause he had readjusted and now he wasn't jumping down the guy's throat. So it can be even little tiny things that. Little changes like that can change the whole course of a meeting. Now he looks forward to the board meetings, no problem. 

He doesn't worry about the guy, guy doesn't even cause him any problems anymore. And, um, you know, back, back to, you know, doing the really hard part, which is growing a startup. So,  

Ted Ryce: yeah. And Ryan, do you have stories about, like the other example where you gave, where um, you know, you didn't quite. Expand on it, but it, I got the impression that relationships aren't really something that you get as enthusiastic about compared to some of the things that you do in business where you can quantify the results. 

But do you have a story about like. Helping someone to realize, hey, this other part of your life that doesn't immediately give you the dopamine release that you're looking for is still something that you need to step up and do, because it's just one of those areas. If you want to have a, if you wanna get married and not end up. 

Giving half your stuff away because you were a terrible person to be in a relationship with because you just didn't find value in the communication and you didn't get the hit of dopamine. Like do you have a story about something like that?  

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, so I had a guy, this was really early when I started working with people. 

So I'm gonna give everyone just the context of why I started doing this work very briefly and then I'll, I'll answer your question. So I started working with other. Leaders, entrepreneurs, founders, because I had a very negative experience. That was almost a hundred percent my fault. And where that came from was I, it's 2017. 

I am the, uh, number two, uh, technical title was Chief Marketing Officer. Uh, I was also in charge of revenue generation at about 40 people working for me, for in this company. And. I was outta shape big time. Uh, I had been a college athlete. I played baseball in college. I played baseball a little after college. 

I was a three sport athlete, football, basketball, baseball in high school. So like I viewed myself, my, my, my view was of this athlete. Yet in 2017, if I looked in the mirror, I, I was not an athlete anymore. I had put on probably 20 plus pounds. I wasn't working out, wasn't eating right, probably drinking too much too, and. 

What happens when you let you know we're one ecosystem? Pe You know, you can think mindset, mental health. You can think fitness, body health. You can think relational health connectivity. You can think spirituality. Maybe those are four keys. They all are interconnected. They, none of them sit on an island. 

So what I had allowed to happen was my physical health started to deteriorate. Which didn't allow my body, which already is chemically imbalanced to manage itself properly. It also started to impact my, even though I thought of myself as this athlete, I'm also a logical human being and was looking in the mirror and was starting to lose some of my self-confidence. 

I was losing some of my, you know, that. Chutzpah that you wanna have as a man, right? I mean, I'm not talking about the toxic side of like, you know, clubbing people, but like, you know, the, the, that walking around proud of who you are kind of thing. And there was a conversation with, uh, the executive team in which our chief financial officer was complaining and had been complaining for a long time about the retention of our business and retention was one of the few revenue generating areas of the business that I, that wasn't under my purview at the time. 

I had been listening to this guy for months complain about retention, retention, retention, and you know, and I had given some suggestions. And finally one day I like wasn't in a great spot with my wife at the time. Uh, I was physically not in a great spot. I was probably hungover 'cause like I said, I was drinking too much. 

I, I, I did not end. I said to the guy to shut the bleep up and you know, let me handle it, that I would fix the problem, right? Which is a, which is a wholly inappropriate response to any peer, let alone the CFO of a company, which while I did not appreciate his whining and don't appreciate whining in general, he was simply doing his job right. 

His job was to call out where he was seeing problems in our financials. Alright, so at that same time, I have a health scare at a speaking event in which. Before I go on stage, I pass out because I just was not physically in a place. I, you know, and again, I just was not taking care of myself. I wasn't sleeping, like I said, all these things. 

So now I'm not performing at, at the speaking gig in terms of now I gotta pull myself together. I'm way off. Terrible. I was able to kind of hide it, but at the same time it was. Bad. It was horrible performance. And then I get fired a few months later for this moment that I had with the CFO for. Right. Good reason. 

And this is when I started going, trying to figure out what was going on with me and, and my, so, so, okay. So. What I realized was on my health journey back was that you, all these things are interconnected, as I mentioned before, particularly fitness, mental health, spirituality, relational connections. So when you start, what happens to most people, particularly those with A D, H, D, is we only spend time in the places where we gain energy. 

Feel that presence, right? So of the peak part, the the P and the E of Peak, we only spend time there. So if I love selling, I am the best salesman. It's all I do. But I don't go home and I'm not present with my kids or I don't go to the gym because I don't love that. And what we have to force ourselves to do, and this is where, you know, again, frameworks, habits, et cetera, come into place, is we have to understand that if you wanna be the best salesperson. 

You also need to have your body in shape. You need to have your relationships in shape, and you need to have your spirituality in shape in whatever way, shape, or form that looks like. So oftentimes with high performers, and, and these are the ones that go beyond, I said, you know, a lot of guys and, and I particularly work with men 'cause men seem to struggle with this the most. 

Ladies, if you're listening to this, this is not a knock. And I'm happy to work with women, but for most, most of the time, men seem to have these, these issues and, um. What, what what ends up happening is when once we get past the business aspect, it starts to get into, okay, now we need to look at these other things that are going on. 

Right? We need to solve the immediate issue. And, and this, you know, I've had people say, well, why don't you go holistic at the beginning because we need to solve the immediate issue. If your issue's money, if you're not making enough money and you're thinking and waking up every day, I don't have enough money. 

I don't have enough money. I get why you may also not be in shape, right? I get because the most immediate carnal need of your life. We have to get past that first. So if you're waking up every day dreading signing in and working through what's going on in your business, and it's all you can think about, I can't ask you to go be present with your kids or take your wife out and, and, and make sure that your spouse or your, your wife or your partner, that, that, that person, you know, that he or she's being taken care of and that you're present for them and you're fixing that. 

I, I can't ask you to do that because all you're thinking about is what that, that carnal issue in your life. So let's solve that first. It is often business related for men. Once we get past the baseline carnal issues, now we can start to go, all right, dude. You wanna get to the next level. You want this to be consistent and not just a moment in time, not just some blip where you felt good for a bit. 

Right? Now, we need to start to dig into the other aspects and that's where, you know, I'll start to push them towards individuals like yourself. Who, who you know you need someone who's gonna help you fix. Fitness routine, if that's the issue, right? Or let's start working on a plan for how you're gonna be more present with your kids or your spouse or your partner, right? 

Let's start figuring out like, you know, you were, you were raised Christian, but you've completely lost your faith. Is that something you wanna bring back? Or should you know, is there philosophy? Can we get you into some, we need to start feeding your brain with ideas that are gonna help you understand things so. 

I tend to approach the first problem first, whatever the first problem is, whatever that primary problem is, that that is not gonna allow you to unlock the rest. We focus there first as much as I can, and then being that I'm not an expert in these other things, oftentimes I'll refer them out to other resources, uh, other individuals, et cetera, um, to help with, but we get to those things second. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. I love that. It's so important. I, I take a very similar approach. People think they have a weight loss problem, but it's like, it's really a how I live my life problem. A priority problem, right? Oh, I, I didn't work out this week. Why? Because, uh, I had things come up. And I had to reschedule and right. And it's like, no, no, no. 

You schedule those and that's your meeting with yourself and do not, right, because you can't afford it anymore. Especially in your forties and fifties where you have high blood pressure, you're on medication for cholesterol, it's like, listen, you can't keep putting this off. Eventually, it's just gonna blow up in your face. 

Or in the case of relationships, it's like. Yeah, your wife's gonna divorce you. Your kids are gonna be estranged. Your no amount of financial success, which feels comfort, that's your comfort zone, is gonna make up for the feelings of failure that you have in those other areas. But a, uh, the initial thing is like we have to deal with, right in, in my case, it's weight, fat, loss, et cetera. 

But then you start to see the other problems come up. Yeah. It's fascinating. I always love co uh, talking with coaches because there's so many similarities. Right. And also this is the type of thing you don't get from people who write books. You've  

Ryan Hanley: written a  

Ted Ryce: book.  

Ryan Hanley: Correct. Ah, a long time ago, I self published a book on content marketing in 2015 called Content Warfare, which is a little out of date today 'cause it still has a section on Google Plus. 

Got it. Yeah, no, I, I write a ton on my, uh, website, which is finding peak.com, but, and I actually have been mapping a book, 'cause you know, I, I have this idea, so I did, I did a TEDx talk back in February of this year, 2015, depending on when people, or 20 20, 25, oh my gosh. 2025. I did it in February 20, 25 and through, through my work. 

You know, kind of dealing with myself, becoming very self-aware of who I am, as well as all the people I've coached, et cetera. All the speaking gigs that I've done and people I've talked to. It's my belief that the primary issue most of us deal with is ego, is ego. Why am I unwilling to put my phone down at night and be present with my kids? 

Because One more, one more message. One more email. One more. I'm so important. I'm so important. I have to send one more email. You don't understand kids. I have to get this done or it doesn't get done right. That's ego. That's, that's. That's 100% ego. Now, maybe that email does have to go out, but the only reason you have to send it at that time when you should be present with your children is because your ego didn't allow you to outsource that or to time block as you just talked about, right? 

Or to set your business up in a way where you just don't have to do that. Where it's not an expectation that you are responding during a time when you should be present with your family. So yes, maybe you do have to send that email, but understand it is your ego that kept you from doing the things to make it necessary for you to have to send that. 

And most people don't wanna think about that 'cause we don't want to think of ourselves as having ego. I'm a nice guy, Ted. I don't have an ego. I'll tell you what, nice guys often have the biggest egos because they mask that ego with being nice. I'm. So I can't have an ego, Ted, I'm nice. And it's like, no, your ego is what, is what's keeping you from outsourcing, from time blocking, from saying no to things, from putting boundaries on things, right? 

That's your ego, that's that's your self importance. That's making, that's making that the case and. When we can start to strip down our ego and, and the kind of corollary symptoms to it. So my TEDx talk was particularly about how, uh, status related decisions, it's called Stop the living of a Life you didn't Choose. 

And, and basically the whole core concept was. We oftentimes find ourselves in lives that we didn't necessarily choose for ourselves because our ego chose status in each decision over what we actually wanted, right? My brother makes half a million dollars a year and lives, you know, out in the Hamptons in Long Island with his wife and, you know, and that's their life. 

And, and so that's what I gotta go do. I gotta go make that kind of money. When you might be happy making a hundred thousand dollars a year living out in the woods of upstate New York. And, and you'd be 10 times happier, right? But you wanna look, my brother's successful, so I have to look successful. So I start making all these decisions that make me miserable, and all of a sudden I find myself in this place. 

I don't wanna be. And you know, this idea, that's what, that, there's many aspects to, to, to ego and how it impacts us. But this idea of status was what I focused on for my TEDx talk. So. What keeps people from doing the work, in my opinion, is ego, right? You're like, where are you the most present and where aren't you? 

I can be, I can lock in anywhere. Really. Really? You can lock in anywhere. All right? Like, let's talk about that. You know, why are we even on the phone then? What's going, you know, like, you know, the, the energy thing. Well, I'm, you know, I, I'm a few pounds overweight Ted, but you know, I can still, I can still kick it up when I need to. 

No, you can't. You're, you're 47 years old. Right. You, I know for a fact that if you're not, if you're not working out on a regular basis, if you don't have a diet that is reasonable, right? That mostly, you know, you would know better than I, but mostly Whole Foods maybe. Supplemented in small amounts where you may have a need, right? 

I know for a fact you can't dial that up. Right. We talked about it when you were on my show. Health is a competitive advantage in business. So even if your only and primary thing is business, right? Your health is a competitive advantage in business, your relationship to your family is a competitive advantage in business. 

Your spirituality is a competitive advantage in business, right? And, and so like, okay, if that sole thing is going to be right, is going to be business and that's where you're gonna derive, you know, most of your, or where you're gonna focus most of your effort. If you wanna be the best version of that, we have to be able to remove our ego and say, you're not as physically fit or as healthy as you could be. 

Let's work on that. Right? Your relationship with your spouse and your kids and, and the drama associated with it, or, or lack of connection or, or, uh, lack of emotional support that you could be getting because you don't invest in that relationship is keeping you from being as good as you can be. Because now you're, you're missing that or you're thinking about it when you're there, right? 

Your lack of spirituality, your lack of understanding that there is something bigger than you in the universe, which keeps you humble, right? That, that, that faith, that faith over fear. I have faith over fear tattooed on my forearm so I can see it every single day, right? That is keeping you from committing to long-term decisions or believing in, you know, uh, that there's good in people, you know, all these different things. 

So it all works together, but, uh, I find that oftentimes. Ego and our unwillingness to see ourselves for who we truly are. Right. Um, is one of the primary reasons that we don't make these changes.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. In my experience, it's the same. I talk to guys and they're like, ah, but I, I know what to do. I just need more discipline. 

I'm like, if you thought to. You're, you don't lack discipline in other areas of your life. You don't under The truth is you don't understand what's going on and you need someone to talk it through, and you need to pay someone to be accountable because if you're accountable to yourself, you give up. Why? 

Because short term, there's no consequences for giving up on your health. The consequences show up. Six months, a year, a couple years later, when you look in the mirror, you don't like what you see or you have, uh, you know, it, it's so funny, Ryan. People get super motivated with their health and then they get desperate for help when they have a heart attack, right? 

When it is like, but. Don't get to that point. So the ego thing is really tough. I think as coaches, if you're a great coach, you have to do a lot of self work to 'cause Right, we all struggle with ego. For me, it would be some of the conversations I had with my business partner where she ended up being right, but I wasn't sure. 

And you know, a anyway, but, um. I feel like if you are the, if you are the person who's been calling the shots and it's worked for you for a long time, it's why you're in the successful position that you're in. It's just more recently, let's say things haven't been working for you. I, I would imagine I've never been in that situation 'cause I've had to work very hard to get where I am. 

But, um. I could imagine, like it might be tough to kind of switch gears and say, oh, I'm blocking myself here. And the reason it is, is because ego, what do you. How, I mean, other than like your, your peak framework, like how do you help someone, especially a guy who's successful, like how do you, how do you coach 'em about that? 

How do you get them to shift their  

Ryan Hanley: perspective on, on Ego? There's some word games that I play with them, and by games I mean, um, I, I question them through a series of questions that I know is gonna lead to a specific location. Right? Which ultimately comes out with is your goal to be right or to get it right. 

So if their goal is to be right, then they're screwed. And, and honestly, I can't help them. If your goal is to be right, nobody can help you. It's not just me. No one can help you. If your goal is to be right, your goal has to get it right, because when my goal shifts, and this is a simple reframe, and it sounds silly, and it may sound trite, but I'm telling you this is paramount to success in, in, in life, but certainly in leadership. 

When we reframe from, I need to be Right, Ryan. Ryan needs to have the answer. It needs to be my answer. The answer needs to come from me. At minimum, I have to put my authoritative stamp of approval on it before it can move forward. You will find a life of friction. You'll certainly small bursts of of success because I'm assuming. 

You're in a, a smart person and, and in your zone of genius, you are good at what you do. That's how you got to the level of success that you have. But you will mo there was most likely an immense amount of friction getting there. Maybe you're one of those people that's just like, I just plow through and I club and drag the business. 

And you have like all this like, I think very misguided and mis oriented like warrior mentality when truthfully I think it's more the Jordan Peterson's take on, you know, I think we need to have more of Jordan Peterson's take, which is be the warrior. Be a monster, but know how not to use it. Right? The, the definition of meek in the in, um, that's in the Bible is actually often misunderstood. 

People think it's meek, like the poor, meek, like the, the, those that, you know, the, the weak. That's not what that word meant when the Bible was written. What meek meant at that time was a warrior who was able to be successful while keeping his sword sheathed. Right, so you have the ability to protect yourself. 

In this case, you know your zone of genius. You have the ability to grow a business, say, right? Hopefully we're not fighting for our lives, those who are listening to us. But we know how to be successful without having to pull that weapon, without having to be that authoritative juggernaut at the top. You know, blasting down on people, right? 

We are, we are authoritative in so much as people respect us for our, for our desire to get it right, not be right. When you can remove yourself, you have moments like the one I'm about to describe to you. So my, the most recent business that I, uh, founded, uh, was a national digital commercial insurance agency, which is not a startup that I would recommend. 

It's just. I had spent so much of my career in the insurance industry, I was able to do it for those listening. If you're not in insurance, this is not a starter recommendation idea. Um, however, we had a process that allowed us to grow so fast. We sold within two years, and I exited two years after that. 

And during that time, um, about a year before I ultimately exited, you know, we were. We had really set our process in place. You know, we had, we had developed systems, et cetera. I showed up for a meeting on it, or I showed up, uh, for work. I showed up. I mean, I've worked from home. We were fully remote. So I log in for the day and I see I don't have a single meeting on the calendar the entire day, and I'm like, something's wrong, right? 

What's, what's going on? So I call my, uh, my assistant, her name was Clarissa. I said, Clarissa, I don't need meetings today. What's going on? She goes, oh, yeah, we don't need you. I go, what do you mean? She goes, oh, no, we're good. I go, well, I thought we had this. She goes, yeah, yeah. We took you off that meeting. I go, why? 

She goes, because we don't need you. I go, you know? So now I'm like, you know, for a second, you know for a second. I'm like, what the hell? You know? And she goes, no, we know what we need to do. We're good. There's no reason for you to waste your time. She goes, why don't you go golfing or something? And I'm like, what? 

And she's like, yeah, like we don't need you. Like I'll text you if we need you, but you know, we took you off those two meetings because we know the direction. We have our recap meeting for the week on Friday. We'll report to you then like go do your thing. And I di I didn't go golfing. I did go to the range just so everyone's clear. 

Um, however, what I then got to spend the rest of the day doing was actually doing outreach to some higher level, uh, uh, business referral partners that I, that I hadn't had time to reach out to yet. So now I got to actually. Do high level, expansive business growing activities, right? Because I didn't care who came up with the decision in the meeting. 

They knew the direction we were going, who, you know, they would come up with a solution to whatever problems existed in, in so much as it pertained to that particular meeting. And I got to actually do what I was best at, which was high level business making outreach, business development type work. So if I had cared so much about being right, I was the one that had made the decision. 

I spend my entire day on meetings on that Tuesday, and I don't get to build or at least do the initial touchpoint on what would end up being one of our largest referral partners, uh, a few months later. So, um, this, this simple reframe of it's not about being right, it's about getting it right. And if you can get your head in that place, it is an unlock. 

It's an unlock in your marriage. It's an unlock with every relationship you have. It's an unlock in almost every aspect of your life because you stop caring whose idea it is, and you just care that the idea produces value in your life or the life of the people that you care about.  

Ted Ryce: Oh man. So powerful. 

And uh, it's, uh, I see so many people fall trapped to that. I mean, I used to and probably still do, but uh, yeah, what you're saying, it's just game changing. So Ryan, I feel like this conversation could go on easily for another couple hours, but, uh, let's get you back on instead of, uh, making it into a Joe Rogan Style three Hour podcast. 

But if you're listening right now and you. Really a appreciating the perspective that Ryan's bringing. Go to his newsletter Finding Peak. It's called Finding peak.com, or you can go to it rather the URL is finding peak.com. You can also find Ryan's podcast Finding Peak. I was a guest on that show. And, uh, you know, talking about leadership performance and the things that Ryan's discussed here today. 

Ryan, do you have any, uh, any other places where you'd like people to  

Ryan Hanley: check you out? If you like little Ditties in Instagram culture, uh, you know, I'm pretty active on Instagram. I like to share stuff there. Um, you know, lots of little snippets, ideas, communicate with people. So I'd say if you're, if you're interested in a more kinda. 

That quick hitter format, uh, Instagram would be a great connect too. And it's just Ryan Hanley on Instagram.  

Ted Ryce: I'll have that in the show notes as well. And Ryan, just a pleasure to talk with you. It's always so much fun. I can already tell the type of coach you are, just, I've been in the business and in my area of coaching for 25 years and you know, talking to you. 

Always, when I talk to a great coach, I always, uh, take away so many things personally. So thanks for coming on, sharing your wisdom, sharing your knowledge, and most importantly, your time. And man, we'll have to do this again. So much. My pleasure.  

Ryan Hanley: And I, I appreciated you coming on my show, man. And, uh, I, I really enjoyed the relationship, so thank you so much. 

My pleasure. 

Ryan Hanley --- prepping 

Ted Ryce: Ryan Hanley, thanks so, so much for coming on the show. I was on yours and I'm happy to have you on and share some of your peak performance tips. So welcome  

Ryan Hanley: Ted,, it's such a pleasure man, and I enjoyed our conversation so much. It's fun to be chatting again.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and I've done a bit of a, uh, intro at the beginning here, but just. 

In your own words, can you talk about who you are, what you do briefly?  

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, so I have, uh, been in the insurance industry for the most part for the last 20 years. Uh, the last 15 of which have been either as an entrepreneur in that space or as an executive. I did take a brief hiatus for a year to become the CEO of a fitness franchise. 

That was really a mercenary position. And just because I know there's probably a lot of people that know a lot more about fitness yourself included on this show than I do. I was kind of the business guy in that scenario, not necessarily the fitness guru, um, although I do love fitness and take it very seriously. 

But, um, yeah, so I've been in these executive or entrepreneurial roles, uh, started companies, built them, bought them, sold them. And uh, what I do now, uh, I still operate because I love to operate. Uh, I currently am, uh, in a position where I'm helping a startup as a, as a stand in, uh, a president role, uh, helping them grow. 

Um, but I, but I still work and coach entrepreneurs all the time, particularly entrepreneurs who have hyperactivity or A DHD or these type of neurodivergent things as, um, that's an issue that I struggled with earlier in my career and made a tremendous amount of mistakes because I didn't know what was going on in my brain. 

And once I started to figure out and put systems and process in place, um, to deal with it, I turned it into a superpower. So that's where I spend my time today.  

Ted Ryce: Love it. And when it comes to helping entrepreneurs specifically with those issues, like what, what are the, some of the, the struggles that  

Ryan Hanley: those people have? 

I'd say first and foremost, it's permission to like accept that they have it. And to work through and to get them to understand what, what the superpowers are and where the parts that you're gonna struggle, no matter what. Um, oftentimes, and this happened to me early in my career. People want to help you with what they perceive as your weaknesses. 

You talk too fast, you move, make decisions too fast, et cetera, et cetera. And these are all perceptions of people from the outside. And oftentimes the people who have hyperactivity or A DHD in particular, when they're in leadership positions, their brain is just moving faster on topics that they're interested in. 

Then something like an HR meeting will come up or some, you know, nerdy IT topic if you're not on the nerdier side, right? Maybe you're on more. It's like you can't even spend five minutes thinking about it. And what oftentimes the first stages of this are, are just helping them, one, understand where those power, where the things that they can leverage as superpowers are and where. 

You know, they most likely will never be the best in the room. And two, start to give them permission to lean into what they are strong in right there. A lot of us feel this sense of, well, if I'm not good at hr, I'm not great at having one-on-one conversations or whatever parts we struggle with that somehow we then need to over index on fixing those problems. 

And it is my belief, particularly people who are neuro neurodivergent in that way, it is. You are doubly penalized by trying to fix your weaknesses versus spending time in your strengths. And oftentimes that's what we do. We figure out what your strengths are, where you can focus, where you wanna focus, and then we try to craft a work style and schedule and, and set, and a framework that allows you to spend your most time in these zones of genius versus. 

Um, trying to bring up places that you simply just will never be good in 'cause of the way your brain is wired.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I relate to that a lot. I, thankfully, I'm not the type of person who like, feels like I need to control everything. I talk to a lot of people. I remember having a conversation, he's like, yeah, well, I should probably hire someone. 

But I just kind of, it's like, dude, what, what, what is, what, what's going on there? Right. And do you feel like, do you feel like it's more because of the way their brain operates or more like the belief system that there should, they shouldn't pay to do it, or I need to be involved with everything? Like what,  

Ryan Hanley: what's the root of that? 

Yeah, there's a few different causes and, and the, let's. I try to think of everything, and not even that I was a big video game player, but I tend to think of everything in terms of video games works for me. Like, you know what I mean? Like, like, uh, and, and just 'cause it's an easy visual, right? So you have, uh, if you're gonna pick a character for a video game right before you go on your big adventure or whatever the thing is, you look at what strengths and weaknesses they have. 

They have, right? So it might be. Energy for, for someone who has, uh, A DHD or hyperactivity in particular, energy's gonna be very high. Focus will be high, but there's these caveats on these things where it's focus, where you are interested, energy, where you are interested, and this is where. The, the, the issue comes in is there's a common misbelief that is starting and, and, you know, thanks to people like yourself and, and, and all these other individuals who have expertise or interest in fitness, mental health, health related, you have doctors now you're doing interviews that are starting to propagate these ideas. 

But for so long it was, you know, Ryan can't focus. Ryan has too much energy. Ryan talks too fast. Ryan makes decisions too fast, right? These were labels that were put on me, and the truth is, in the places where I have a zone of genius marketing, leadership related activities, sales, business, business, deal making, like these are areas that are my zone of genius, I do make decisions very fast because. 

It's what I'm interested in, and I can hyperfocus on them. I can work through the topics, the ideas very quickly, and I've built a set of frameworks that allows me to do that. So yes, I can, but you put an HR decision in front of me, which I have zero interest in, and it could take me three months to make a decision. 

Right? And, and it'll be like, so. There's, there's this, there's a lot of misinformation as to how your brain actually works as it relates to these things. Now, again, I want to be clear to everyone. I, I'm not a doctor. This is, I have, this is me doing an intense amount of research. I have been fired from multiple jobs and I can kind of tie back most of that to do with me misunderstanding what was going on with me, right? 

Like I would react to situations, I would present myself in certain situations 'cause I didn't understand. That why I was different, why my brain worked in a certain way, not right or wrong, just different. And there's, so, there's, there's that part, there is a part where we have a lot of misdiagnoses, people just self-diagnose theirselves with a DHD because really what they need to do is go for a run or lift some weights or something and get outta their freaking house and use their body. 

So yeah, you, you're hyperactive, but you're hyperactive 'cause you're not actually expending energy every day. There's, you're not straining your body to put yourself. Where you, you know, you can recover and come back. You're just, you just have too much energy 'cause you're not using your body and you know, so now you have a lot of people who don't actually have these issues, you know, uh, adding their voice or their experience to the mix. 

So if you haven't spent time researching, it's easy to get lost in. So, so what do we need to do to, to kind of answer your question? So the first thing that I try to do with individuals who come to me is under, is really get a feel for. Where do they automatically dial in? What is that place? What does it look like? 

Right? Is it, is it dissecting an engineering problem with, uh, if you know, if you're coding, like, is that where you could lock in for 10 hours and just go? Is it in the deal making phase when you're. Face-to-face with someone and you're working through the problem of how to structure a deal, is that where you lock in and go? 

Right? Is it in your interpersonal activity? Is it in creating content and branding and that? So let's find that place that you naturally lock in, and then let's start to evaluate what is it about that particular activity or that particular, you know, uh, uh, knowledge set or, or. Or whatever that that allows you to lock in. 

'cause once we understand where you lock in, naturally we can figure out, okay, what other places does this expand to? And what are the things that we need to start thinking about either creating systems for, uh, outsourcing. Insourcing, et cetera, like delegating out. If you're a leader with A DHD and you are not proficient at delegation, you will get absolutely slaughtered. 

And what I mean by that is not slaughtered necessarily in your business, uh, success. 'cause what I see is a lot of people with A DHD will over index on the business side of their life. 'cause they can get those, they, they learn how to get those quick dopamine hits. What will happen is their life will fall apart first, and then once their life starts to fall apart, then the business falls apart. 

So they look like an incredible success on the outside, but on the inside they're constantly chasing dopamine. They haven't figured out how to deal with it. Um, they're spending a lot of time in places that cause them frustration and pain, which then forces them to chase the dopamine. Hit again, and it becomes this vicious cycle that ultimately leads deeper and deeper into things that are unhealthy for us. 

Drugs, um, self-medicating, uh, addictions, porn, all these other things that are, we know to be horrible for us. It's not even, I find that a lot of these particularly men, want these activities in their life or even enjoy them, but they need the dopamine hit and they don't know why, uh, because they've never done the research. 

Ted Ryce: I love that. Thanks for bringing up, like don't self-diagnose, right? Yes. Like talk to an I I had a shout out to Chris Friesen if, if you're listening, Chris, uh, a neuropsychologist who I worked with, he's a neuropsychologist and a performance psychologist and he, he's been on here talking about the differences in proper diagnoses. 

'cause that's what neuropsychologists do, right? These different, uh, brain disorders. So, yeah, and, and just because chat GPT agreed with you. When you asked it, if you were, it doesn't know, and it is an ai. It's a large language model. Okay, so stop, don't outsource  

Ryan Hanley: it. Chat. GPT. Yeah, chat. GPT in particular is very Shan, which means it is going to agree with you. 

First and foremost, unless you somehow build out your prompt to have it specifically disagree with you, but then you're, you're engineering the outcome anyways, right? So you need to be very careful and, and I wanna be honest with everyone, you know, it wasn't until about, I guess it was, it's been five years now that I got diagnosed. 

So up until the age of I'm, I'll be turning 45 this year. So let's just call it up until about the age of 40, I was undiagnosed. Essentially a, a maniac. And what I mean by that is I had more energy than I knew what to do with. I didn't know why I had that energy. I felt like for certain types of things, my brain just worked faster and better than most of the people I was, uh, competing against or working with. 

And I didn't understand why. And then there would be other things that I literally couldn't even wrap my head around that felt remedial. And, you know, it, it, it drove me crazy because I was constantly driven for more. It was always about progress, which helped me in my business life. I mean, I've been very successful in business because of this constant need for growth and progress and more and like, and not necessarily in money, but like. 

I wanted to climb that mountain and once I got to the next, same thing with my fitness goals, right? It was once I did, you know, got my body weight to this, okay, now I wanna lift this much. Now I wanna, you know, build up this muscle. And it has been that in every aspect of my life. And if there's a part of my life that I can't accumulate. 

Then I am, it like gets tossed outta my brain and I have zero interest and that's very unhealthy. 'cause there's things like, you know, your relationships, which it's very difficult. There's no calculable measurement in a relationship that you can quote, unquote accumulate, you know, which is what, which I didn't realize again, and this is the point, I didn't realize that my need for accumulation in progress was because each. 

You know, uptick in the my traffic or each new sale, or, you know, each, you know, uh, uh, goal that we would hit, you know, in a month or in a quarter, was a dopamine release in my brain, and that's what I was searching for. What I was searching for was this dopamine release in my brain because, and again, not a doctor broad stroking here, A DHD is essentially, you have issues with dopamine and the release of dopamine in your brain, and in some cases, certain aspects of your brain will. 

Operate faster than others in an effort to drive more dopamine or they burn up more dopamine, and that's why your body is constantly seeking. Again, not a doctor. I'm giving you a broad stroke understanding of what's happening here. Listen to neuroscientists. If you feel like you have this issue, go get diagnosed. 

I took a battery of tests because after I was fired for the second time, essentially from a job that I really enjoyed and I didn't understand why. I went on this journey to figure out what is going on with me. I am an incredibly high performer. I've been incredibly successful. You know, I have all the receipts to back it up except for this, this conflict oftentimes inside with other C-Suite members of organizations that I'm with, and I don't like that. 

I don't wanna be the conflict guy that's not. What I was searching for, right? So I'm like going, oh my God, I'm showing up every day. I care about this organization. I wanna grow it. I wanna be part of a team. I even like who I'm working with. It's not even like I was like, I'm better than everybody. Not even a little bit yet. 

Somehow I constantly have friction, and it was because I. I was undiagnosed. I, I did not understand why I would react certain ways to certain things that would, that would put me in bad situations. And once I got formally diagnosed, not that anything changed about my life. Right. Nothing changed necessarily other than now I ha I could start to develop a toolkit that would allow me to be in those same situations, but when I feel myself maybe reacting in a way that would've otherwise been negative or moving fast, moving at a speed that I thought was acceptable, but maybe was unacceptable in a larger organization, considering, you know, to a certain extent, you do need to bring people along with you and you want people to be bought in it, right? 

So like. Now I, now I have this framework, uh, these, you know, frameworks that I've built, uh, in various aspects of my life that allow me to, to continue to leverage the superpower of A DHD, this unrelenting energy and focus for the things that you're interested in without creating as much friction and conflict in the areas where before, uh, I would have,  

Ted Ryce: what I love about this is, uh, yeah. 

So, so many people, like I did horribly in school, but in like high, let's say grade school. But as soon as I got to college where I could pick the courses, then I started excelling and I, I thought there was something wrong with me where some people can just kind of, I don't know, push through it and just. 

Get good grades, even if they have zero interest, because there's some other thing that's driving them, right? They're getting a dopamine release, not from learning, not from their interest in the subject, but from maybe getting a good grade or making their parents happy. But if you don't, you know, I mean, I always wanted to make my parents happy, but I didn't care about it as not, uh, enough to, you know, to to, to step up. 

So what I'm hearing you say, it's like. You know, getting the diagnosis helps to create the accurate story or the, the right story, and like there's nothing. Necessarily wrong with you, you just have this way of operating. Yeah. So instead of saying, oh man, I'm just, you know, I'm crazy Ted, or you know, Ryan, too much energy. 

Ryan can't focus, you know, it's like, figure out what's going on. Start to understand your strengths and your weaknesses, and then I think you're bringing up something really important. 'cause I feel I, I work with a lot of. High performing clients, and one of the reasons they're not successful, there's many reasons why they're not successful with their health, from environment to genetics to all sorts of things. 

But one of the reasons psychologically is that they just don't really like it and they're not that good at it. And when you're doing something that doesn't click with you and you have this type of brain, you're like, ah, screw this. Let's move on. However, to your point about relationships. In your situation, Ryan, where you're like, how do I accumulate points in this relationship? 

It's not how relationships work. And there's a high cost if you don't change your approach or operating system when it comes to dealing with relationships, unless you wanna be alone, right? Yeah. Which most people don't. Like, you have to start to understand, like there's some things you can't get beyond. 

You'll have to step up and do the hard thing. Whereas other times, like your, um, your example with human resources, you don't need to, like, it's hard for you, but also the ROI isn't there. You need to focus on what you're good at. How do you help people understand like, Hey, this thing's hard for you, but you need to step up and do it, and this other thing is hard for you and you just need to leave it alone. 

How do you help people with, with that?  

Ryan Hanley: Yes. Yeah, so we start with some kind of the foundational framework that I use and, and the reason I use these, these frameworks is because they're easy to remember, or at least, you know, and they're easy to teach and you know, so the first one is, is peak. This is kind of where we start. 

It stands for, uh, presence, energy, awareness, and calibration. Calibration, obviously misspelled with a K. But peak with a C didn't really make sense. So we, you know, we took a little, we took a little liberty there, but, um, the idea here is, uh, what can you be present in? So let's, so, so again, coming back to the idea of we need to figure out first, what are the things that you naturally lock in on? 

Once we understand what those things are, right, we can figure out what are the commonalities between them, and then we can go figure out what do you really struggle with and what are the commonalities of those activities? And now at least we have a map for where we know you're naturally gonna find focus and where you aren't. 

Okay. So we start with this peak framework and it's, uh, presence is what can you be present in, because I don't know if you've, if you have a DHD actual, and you're sitting in, say, a conference and a speaker comes up. And they're talking about a topic you're not interested in, it'll cause you physical pain to sit in that seat. 

Like you literally will not be able, you'll be up, you'll be down, you'll be standing in the back of the room, you'll be moving around, you'll be going to get a cup of coffee, you'll be going to get a cup of water. You'll be looking for someone to crack a joke with. You'll be like, you just like, literally can't even listen to what the person is saying. 

And it could be freaking Tony Robbins, right? It could be the best speaker in the world. You literally can't get your brain there 'cause you're not interested in the topic. So what can you be present in? What are the moments that allow you to be a hundred percent present? Is it when you're writing? Is it when you're working out? 

Is it when you're sitting down with your children at the end of the night listening to their day? Or what are those moments? Where are you present? Okay. What brings you the most natural energy? Is it, are you showing up to speak, like if you're a speaker? So I do a lot of speaking. If I could do anything in a professional capacity every single day of my life, it would be speaking, I can be present, I fill with energy. 

It, it brings energy to my life, right? So what are the energy draws where you are actually acquiring energy from that activity, that conversation, that person, that situation, and which drain you of energy. Sitting on Zoom meetings, doing bureaucratic conversations, which are necessary to business, but literally drain the life force from my body. 

I know that about myself, so I, when I run a company, have taken meetings that would normally be an hour and I condense 'em down to 20 minutes. 'cause I found I can be present and I can be energized. In those same meetings if they're under 30 and pushing 15, 20 minutes. So that's one of the things I've had to do, right? 

So we're talking through, we're using an example. So can you be present? What brings you energy? Right? So then we move to, uh, once we know where we can be present and where we have energy, what are we aware of our situation? Do we have mechanisms to be aware of situations in which we're going to have negative repercussions? 

Right? So now we're, now we're working on awareness. So I know when I go into this board meeting. This is gonna be like ripping teeth outta my face. It's gonna be tough to be present, right? And it's gonna draw energy from me. But I have an awareness for that, and I've developed a way of recalibrating that situation so that I can be present and I can bring energy in, right? 

So what are we present in? Where do we draw energy, right? Do we have a method for being aware of those situations, both positive or negative? And can we recalibrate ourselves both positive and negative to match that situation? Okay. And the calibration piece is very important because if you are in the C-suite. 

You can't get out of being in the board meeting. You have to be there. That's your job, okay? You can not like it all you want. It can be tough to be present and it can drain energy from you, but you have to be there. That's your job. So how do you make sure that, how do you recalibrate yourself so that moment you can do your job? 

And that could be. Maybe you need a little less caffeine. Maybe you need a little more caffeine. Maybe you need to pull out a St Steno pad and just do some doodling on the side so that some part of your brain is captured, right. Maybe there's, um, maybe you draw out a set of questions that you. Are gonna wanna ask in each session. 

So the anticipation of acting, asking that question keeps you focused, present in the moment, and keeps you energized, right? So for everybody it's gonna be different, what calibration looks like, but we need to know where we're present, what brings or expands energy. We need to have a system to be aware, right? 

If you walk into something, am I gonna get energy? Am I not, is this gonna be hard for me or not? And then depending on, uh, you know, what we're bringing to that situation, can we recalibrate? 'cause it also goes the other way. Let's say you draw immense energy from and can be a hundred percent present in your board meeting and now you are overwhelming those individuals. 

Now you need to recalibrate down. Now you need to say, Hey, in these meetings I get way out over my skis. 'cause I love talking about big picture issues. I love it. I, I die for this. I love whiteboarding, but I tend to overwhelm or I tend to take over meetings, which can have, can have an, an opposite but also negative effect on people's perception of you. 

So it's, it's that recalibration piece at the end that's very, very important. So that's usually where we start is, is I call it the peak framework. And you know, I usually start with, uh, the leaders that I work with there and once they get a handle for that, um. Sometimes they don't even need me. I'll be honest with you, I, the way I work with people is I don't lock anyone in long term. 

And, and I'm not trying to sell the service. I'm just saying the whole point is all, all I wanna do is give people what they need to then be able to get back out on their own. And I've had many, uh, leaders that come to me for as little as like three months. And once they lock in that peak idea, they can, you know that, that's often enough. 

To, to really get to where they wanna be and, and, and then, you know, they kind of go off on their own for a while because it's, it's simple and repeatable and it allows us to be, you know, as close to our best self in whatever situation we're in.  

Ted Ryce: I love that it's, it's very simple, but asking all the right questions. 

Right. Where do you feel most present, what gives you the most energy? Developing awareness to realize or how to answer those questions, but also when to calibrate up or down. Yeah. I, I do a lot of con well, I, I speak to a lot of clients. I also have done a lot of speaking in the past, a lot of podcasting, and you get like, some guys, they're just not aware of, of the conversation and you're just like, what's going on man? 

You so, uh, it's so important to develop these  

Ryan Hanley: things. Yeah. Ted, I'll give you a very simple example of how, like, how if we work through this process, how simple a change can have an, an impact. So I had someone come to me and they were specifically having, uh, a problem with board meetings. That's why I brought it up before, and it was, this is was just a couple months ago, so it's fresh on my brain. 

They board me, Ryan, I can't handle board meetings. I, I, I, I, I love the board meetings. I look forward to them, but I always feel like I performed bad. And, and this was the CEO, right? So he had investors and other, uh, strategic people, you know, so he's. These are the people who are essentially his boss, even though he's the founder and the CEO, he's gotta make these guys happy. 

And he's feeling like every time he comes out, there's conflict. I don't understand why there's conflict, there's conflict. He's like, and I don't get it. Like, we're doing well. And he's like, I feel like I'm a good presenter and. Okay. And what we ultimately realized was presence. He could be fully present. 

He enjoyed doing the board meetings. He's like, I just enjoy being around, you know, thinking about my business at this level. Awesome. Okay. Does it bring you energy? Yes. I, I can, I can come in regardless of where I'm at from an energy level. When I leave, I might be a little physically tired, but mentally I'm, I'm energized. 

I'm enjoying what's coming on. What we ultimately realized when we got to the awareness section was there was one particular board member. That drove this guy up a wall. Just, he's like, the way he asked questions, he's, he's entitled, he had all these preconceived notions about this guy and he drove and that he let that one individual who he, to his who he even said doesn't even speak that much. 

He said, he's like, the meaning could be growing great. And then he'll ask a question and then I'll be off. Right. So, okay. Now we're aware of what the actual problem, it's not, board meetings aren't the problem. Right. It's one particular individual and all we did from a recalibration was. We gave him, he, he, he was, I forced him to count backwards from 10. 

And this, so I'm, I literally made this up, right? I'm not a neuroscience guys, we're just, we're we're FA foing this stuff to figure out what works, right? And I said, you know, pick an amount of time, five seconds, 10 seconds. When, when he asks a question. Just before you respond, 'cause he would jump, he would like jump down this guy's throat. 

That's how the, that's what it would be, right? Because 'cause he knew the guy bothered him no matter what he asked. He then would jump down his throat and then that would create the negativity. So just, I said, just count back from a number and he ultimately got to 10. So this guy would ask a question and he would count in his head. 

10, 9, 8, 7, and then he would respond and he found that his responses no longer had the bite, and when the responses didn't have the bite, even though he didn't become best friends with this guy, this isn't like some fairytale Disney ending where everyone kumbaya and going out for beers after. What ended up happening was the friction in the meeting went away. 

Because he was actually, my client was the one creating the friction, not this board member. It was his reaction to the board member's questions that were creating the friction. And then he ended up looking poor in front of his other board members. 'cause he is jumping down this guy's throat and just by the simple exercise of being aware and having a very simple recalibration, just, just count back from a number that works for you. 

And he, he found 10 was the number. And then eventually he didn't even need to do that because the, you know, after so many board meeting, I think, I think he, he texted me like, uh, no, earlier this month because we stopped working together last month. So now he's had two board meetings in that time period. 

And he said that he didn't even need to do it really after the second board meeting. 'cause he had readjusted and now he wasn't jumping down the guy's throat. So it can be even little tiny things that. Little changes like that can change the whole course of a meeting. Now he looks forward to the board meetings, no problem. 

He doesn't worry about the guy, guy doesn't even cause him any problems anymore. And, um, you know, back, back to, you know, doing the really hard part, which is growing a startup. So,  

Ted Ryce: yeah. And Ryan, do you have stories about, like the other example where you gave, where um, you know, you didn't quite. Expand on it, but it, I got the impression that relationships aren't really something that you get as enthusiastic about compared to some of the things that you do in business where you can quantify the results. 

But do you have a story about like. Helping someone to realize, hey, this other part of your life that doesn't immediately give you the dopamine release that you're looking for is still something that you need to step up and do, because it's just one of those areas. If you want to have a, if you wanna get married and not end up. 

Giving half your stuff away because you were a terrible person to be in a relationship with because you just didn't find value in the communication and you didn't get the hit of dopamine. Like do you have a story about something like that?  

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, so I had a guy, this was really early when I started working with people. 

So I'm gonna give everyone just the context of why I started doing this work very briefly and then I'll, I'll answer your question. So I started working with other. Leaders, entrepreneurs, founders, because I had a very negative experience. That was almost a hundred percent my fault. And where that came from was I, it's 2017. 

I am the, uh, number two, uh, technical title was Chief Marketing Officer. Uh, I was also in charge of revenue generation at about 40 people working for me, for in this company. And. I was outta shape big time. Uh, I had been a college athlete. I played baseball in college. I played baseball a little after college. 

I was a three sport athlete, football, basketball, baseball in high school. So like I viewed myself, my, my, my view was of this athlete. Yet in 2017, if I looked in the mirror, I, I was not an athlete anymore. I had put on probably 20 plus pounds. I wasn't working out, wasn't eating right, probably drinking too much too, and. 

What happens when you let you know we're one ecosystem? Pe You know, you can think mindset, mental health. You can think fitness, body health. You can think relational health connectivity. You can think spirituality. Maybe those are four keys. They all are interconnected. They, none of them sit on an island. 

So what I had allowed to happen was my physical health started to deteriorate. Which didn't allow my body, which already is chemically imbalanced to manage itself properly. It also started to impact my, even though I thought of myself as this athlete, I'm also a logical human being and was looking in the mirror and was starting to lose some of my self-confidence. 

I was losing some of my, you know, that. Chutzpah that you wanna have as a man, right? I mean, I'm not talking about the toxic side of like, you know, clubbing people, but like, you know, the, the, that walking around proud of who you are kind of thing. And there was a conversation with, uh, the executive team in which our chief financial officer was complaining and had been complaining for a long time about the retention of our business and retention was one of the few revenue generating areas of the business that I, that wasn't under my purview at the time. 

I had been listening to this guy for months complain about retention, retention, retention, and you know, and I had given some suggestions. And finally one day I like wasn't in a great spot with my wife at the time. Uh, I was physically not in a great spot. I was probably hungover 'cause like I said, I was drinking too much. 

I, I, I did not end. I said to the guy to shut the bleep up and you know, let me handle it, that I would fix the problem, right? Which is a, which is a wholly inappropriate response to any peer, let alone the CFO of a company, which while I did not appreciate his whining and don't appreciate whining in general, he was simply doing his job right. 

His job was to call out where he was seeing problems in our financials. Alright, so at that same time, I have a health scare at a speaking event in which. Before I go on stage, I pass out because I just was not physically in a place. I, you know, and again, I just was not taking care of myself. I wasn't sleeping, like I said, all these things. 

So now I'm not performing at, at the speaking gig in terms of now I gotta pull myself together. I'm way off. Terrible. I was able to kind of hide it, but at the same time it was. Bad. It was horrible performance. And then I get fired a few months later for this moment that I had with the CFO for. Right. Good reason. 

And this is when I started going, trying to figure out what was going on with me and, and my, so, so, okay. So. What I realized was on my health journey back was that you, all these things are interconnected, as I mentioned before, particularly fitness, mental health, spirituality, relational connections. So when you start, what happens to most people, particularly those with A D, H, D, is we only spend time in the places where we gain energy. 

Feel that presence, right? So of the peak part, the the P and the E of Peak, we only spend time there. So if I love selling, I am the best salesman. It's all I do. But I don't go home and I'm not present with my kids or I don't go to the gym because I don't love that. And what we have to force ourselves to do, and this is where, you know, again, frameworks, habits, et cetera, come into place, is we have to understand that if you wanna be the best salesperson. 

You also need to have your body in shape. You need to have your relationships in shape, and you need to have your spirituality in shape in whatever way, shape, or form that looks like. So oftentimes with high performers, and, and these are the ones that go beyond, I said, you know, a lot of guys and, and I particularly work with men 'cause men seem to struggle with this the most. 

Ladies, if you're listening to this, this is not a knock. And I'm happy to work with women, but for most, most of the time, men seem to have these, these issues and, um. What, what what ends up happening is when once we get past the business aspect, it starts to get into, okay, now we need to look at these other things that are going on. 

Right? We need to solve the immediate issue. And, and this, you know, I've had people say, well, why don't you go holistic at the beginning because we need to solve the immediate issue. If your issue's money, if you're not making enough money and you're thinking and waking up every day, I don't have enough money. 

I don't have enough money. I get why you may also not be in shape, right? I get because the most immediate carnal need of your life. We have to get past that first. So if you're waking up every day dreading signing in and working through what's going on in your business, and it's all you can think about, I can't ask you to go be present with your kids or take your wife out and, and, and make sure that your spouse or your, your wife or your partner, that, that, that person, you know, that he or she's being taken care of and that you're present for them and you're fixing that. 

I, I can't ask you to do that because all you're thinking about is what that, that carnal issue in your life. So let's solve that first. It is often business related for men. Once we get past the baseline carnal issues, now we can start to go, all right, dude. You wanna get to the next level. You want this to be consistent and not just a moment in time, not just some blip where you felt good for a bit. 

Right? Now, we need to start to dig into the other aspects and that's where, you know, I'll start to push them towards individuals like yourself. Who, who you know you need someone who's gonna help you fix. Fitness routine, if that's the issue, right? Or let's start working on a plan for how you're gonna be more present with your kids or your spouse or your partner, right? 

Let's start figuring out like, you know, you were, you were raised Christian, but you've completely lost your faith. Is that something you wanna bring back? Or should you know, is there philosophy? Can we get you into some, we need to start feeding your brain with ideas that are gonna help you understand things so. 

I tend to approach the first problem first, whatever the first problem is, whatever that primary problem is, that that is not gonna allow you to unlock the rest. We focus there first as much as I can, and then being that I'm not an expert in these other things, oftentimes I'll refer them out to other resources, uh, other individuals, et cetera, um, to help with, but we get to those things second. 

Ted Ryce: Yeah. I love that. It's so important. I, I take a very similar approach. People think they have a weight loss problem, but it's like, it's really a how I live my life problem. A priority problem, right? Oh, I, I didn't work out this week. Why? Because, uh, I had things come up. And I had to reschedule and right. And it's like, no, no, no. 

You schedule those and that's your meeting with yourself and do not, right, because you can't afford it anymore. Especially in your forties and fifties where you have high blood pressure, you're on medication for cholesterol, it's like, listen, you can't keep putting this off. Eventually, it's just gonna blow up in your face. 

Or in the case of relationships, it's like. Yeah, your wife's gonna divorce you. Your kids are gonna be estranged. Your no amount of financial success, which feels comfort, that's your comfort zone, is gonna make up for the feelings of failure that you have in those other areas. But a, uh, the initial thing is like we have to deal with, right in, in my case, it's weight, fat, loss, et cetera. 

But then you start to see the other problems come up. Yeah. It's fascinating. I always love co uh, talking with coaches because there's so many similarities. Right. And also this is the type of thing you don't get from people who write books. You've  

Ryan Hanley: written a  

Ted Ryce: book.  

Ryan Hanley: Correct. Ah, a long time ago, I self published a book on content marketing in 2015 called Content Warfare, which is a little out of date today 'cause it still has a section on Google Plus. 

Got it. Yeah, no, I, I write a ton on my, uh, website, which is finding peak.com, but, and I actually have been mapping a book, 'cause you know, I, I have this idea, so I did, I did a TEDx talk back in February of this year, 2015, depending on when people, or 20 20, 25, oh my gosh. 2025. I did it in February 20, 25 and through, through my work. 

You know, kind of dealing with myself, becoming very self-aware of who I am, as well as all the people I've coached, et cetera. All the speaking gigs that I've done and people I've talked to. It's my belief that the primary issue most of us deal with is ego, is ego. Why am I unwilling to put my phone down at night and be present with my kids? 

Because One more, one more message. One more email. One more. I'm so important. I'm so important. I have to send one more email. You don't understand kids. I have to get this done or it doesn't get done right. That's ego. That's, that's. That's 100% ego. Now, maybe that email does have to go out, but the only reason you have to send it at that time when you should be present with your children is because your ego didn't allow you to outsource that or to time block as you just talked about, right? 

Or to set your business up in a way where you just don't have to do that. Where it's not an expectation that you are responding during a time when you should be present with your family. So yes, maybe you do have to send that email, but understand it is your ego that kept you from doing the things to make it necessary for you to have to send that. 

And most people don't wanna think about that 'cause we don't want to think of ourselves as having ego. I'm a nice guy, Ted. I don't have an ego. I'll tell you what, nice guys often have the biggest egos because they mask that ego with being nice. I'm. So I can't have an ego, Ted, I'm nice. And it's like, no, your ego is what, is what's keeping you from outsourcing, from time blocking, from saying no to things, from putting boundaries on things, right? 

That's your ego, that's that's your self importance. That's making, that's making that the case and. When we can start to strip down our ego and, and the kind of corollary symptoms to it. So my TEDx talk was particularly about how, uh, status related decisions, it's called Stop the living of a Life you didn't Choose. 

And, and basically the whole core concept was. We oftentimes find ourselves in lives that we didn't necessarily choose for ourselves because our ego chose status in each decision over what we actually wanted, right? My brother makes half a million dollars a year and lives, you know, out in the Hamptons in Long Island with his wife and, you know, and that's their life. 

And, and so that's what I gotta go do. I gotta go make that kind of money. When you might be happy making a hundred thousand dollars a year living out in the woods of upstate New York. And, and you'd be 10 times happier, right? But you wanna look, my brother's successful, so I have to look successful. So I start making all these decisions that make me miserable, and all of a sudden I find myself in this place. 

I don't wanna be. And you know, this idea, that's what, that, there's many aspects to, to, to ego and how it impacts us. But this idea of status was what I focused on for my TEDx talk. So. What keeps people from doing the work, in my opinion, is ego, right? You're like, where are you the most present and where aren't you? 

I can be, I can lock in anywhere. Really. Really? You can lock in anywhere. All right? Like, let's talk about that. You know, why are we even on the phone then? What's going, you know, like, you know, the, the energy thing. Well, I'm, you know, I, I'm a few pounds overweight Ted, but you know, I can still, I can still kick it up when I need to. 

No, you can't. You're, you're 47 years old. Right. You, I know for a fact that if you're not, if you're not working out on a regular basis, if you don't have a diet that is reasonable, right? That mostly, you know, you would know better than I, but mostly Whole Foods maybe. Supplemented in small amounts where you may have a need, right? 

I know for a fact you can't dial that up. Right. We talked about it when you were on my show. Health is a competitive advantage in business. So even if your only and primary thing is business, right? Your health is a competitive advantage in business, your relationship to your family is a competitive advantage in business. 

Your spirituality is a competitive advantage in business, right? And, and so like, okay, if that sole thing is going to be right, is going to be business and that's where you're gonna derive, you know, most of your, or where you're gonna focus most of your effort. If you wanna be the best version of that, we have to be able to remove our ego and say, you're not as physically fit or as healthy as you could be. 

Let's work on that. Right? Your relationship with your spouse and your kids and, and the drama associated with it, or, or lack of connection or, or, uh, lack of emotional support that you could be getting because you don't invest in that relationship is keeping you from being as good as you can be. Because now you're, you're missing that or you're thinking about it when you're there, right? 

Your lack of spirituality, your lack of understanding that there is something bigger than you in the universe, which keeps you humble, right? That, that, that faith, that faith over fear. I have faith over fear tattooed on my forearm so I can see it every single day, right? That is keeping you from committing to long-term decisions or believing in, you know, uh, that there's good in people, you know, all these different things. 

So it all works together, but, uh, I find that oftentimes. Ego and our unwillingness to see ourselves for who we truly are. Right. Um, is one of the primary reasons that we don't make these changes.  

Ted Ryce: Yeah. In my experience, it's the same. I talk to guys and they're like, ah, but I, I know what to do. I just need more discipline. 

I'm like, if you thought to. You're, you don't lack discipline in other areas of your life. You don't under The truth is you don't understand what's going on and you need someone to talk it through, and you need to pay someone to be accountable because if you're accountable to yourself, you give up. Why? 

Because short term, there's no consequences for giving up on your health. The consequences show up. Six months, a year, a couple years later, when you look in the mirror, you don't like what you see or you have, uh, you know, it, it's so funny, Ryan. People get super motivated with their health and then they get desperate for help when they have a heart attack, right? 

When it is like, but. Don't get to that point. So the ego thing is really tough. I think as coaches, if you're a great coach, you have to do a lot of self work to 'cause Right, we all struggle with ego. For me, it would be some of the conversations I had with my business partner where she ended up being right, but I wasn't sure. 

And you know, a anyway, but, um. I feel like if you are the, if you are the person who's been calling the shots and it's worked for you for a long time, it's why you're in the successful position that you're in. It's just more recently, let's say things haven't been working for you. I, I would imagine I've never been in that situation 'cause I've had to work very hard to get where I am. 

But, um. I could imagine, like it might be tough to kind of switch gears and say, oh, I'm blocking myself here. And the reason it is, is because ego, what do you. How, I mean, other than like your, your peak framework, like how do you help someone, especially a guy who's successful, like how do you, how do you coach 'em about that? 

How do you get them to shift their  

Ryan Hanley: perspective on, on Ego? There's some word games that I play with them, and by games I mean, um, I, I question them through a series of questions that I know is gonna lead to a specific location. Right? Which ultimately comes out with is your goal to be right or to get it right. 

So if their goal is to be right, then they're screwed. And, and honestly, I can't help them. If your goal is to be right, nobody can help you. It's not just me. No one can help you. If your goal is to be right, your goal has to get it right, because when my goal shifts, and this is a simple reframe, and it sounds silly, and it may sound trite, but I'm telling you this is paramount to success in, in, in life, but certainly in leadership. 

When we reframe from, I need to be Right, Ryan. Ryan needs to have the answer. It needs to be my answer. The answer needs to come from me. At minimum, I have to put my authoritative stamp of approval on it before it can move forward. You will find a life of friction. You'll certainly small bursts of of success because I'm assuming. 

You're in a, a smart person and, and in your zone of genius, you are good at what you do. That's how you got to the level of success that you have. But you will mo there was most likely an immense amount of friction getting there. Maybe you're one of those people that's just like, I just plow through and I club and drag the business. 

And you have like all this like, I think very misguided and mis oriented like warrior mentality when truthfully I think it's more the Jordan Peterson's take on, you know, I think we need to have more of Jordan Peterson's take, which is be the warrior. Be a monster, but know how not to use it. Right? The, the definition of meek in the in, um, that's in the Bible is actually often misunderstood. 

People think it's meek, like the poor, meek, like the, the, those that, you know, the, the weak. That's not what that word meant when the Bible was written. What meek meant at that time was a warrior who was able to be successful while keeping his sword sheathed. Right, so you have the ability to protect yourself. 

In this case, you know your zone of genius. You have the ability to grow a business, say, right? Hopefully we're not fighting for our lives, those who are listening to us. But we know how to be successful without having to pull that weapon, without having to be that authoritative juggernaut at the top. You know, blasting down on people, right? 

We are, we are authoritative in so much as people respect us for our, for our desire to get it right, not be right. When you can remove yourself, you have moments like the one I'm about to describe to you. So my, the most recent business that I, uh, founded, uh, was a national digital commercial insurance agency, which is not a startup that I would recommend. 

It's just. I had spent so much of my career in the insurance industry, I was able to do it for those listening. If you're not in insurance, this is not a starter recommendation idea. Um, however, we had a process that allowed us to grow so fast. We sold within two years, and I exited two years after that. 

And during that time, um, about a year before I ultimately exited, you know, we were. We had really set our process in place. You know, we had, we had developed systems, et cetera. I showed up for a meeting on it, or I showed up, uh, for work. I showed up. I mean, I've worked from home. We were fully remote. So I log in for the day and I see I don't have a single meeting on the calendar the entire day, and I'm like, something's wrong, right? 

What's, what's going on? So I call my, uh, my assistant, her name was Clarissa. I said, Clarissa, I don't need meetings today. What's going on? She goes, oh, yeah, we don't need you. I go, what do you mean? She goes, oh, no, we're good. I go, well, I thought we had this. She goes, yeah, yeah. We took you off that meeting. I go, why? 

She goes, because we don't need you. I go, you know? So now I'm like, you know, for a second, you know for a second. I'm like, what the hell? You know? And she goes, no, we know what we need to do. We're good. There's no reason for you to waste your time. She goes, why don't you go golfing or something? And I'm like, what? 

And she's like, yeah, like we don't need you. Like I'll text you if we need you, but you know, we took you off those two meetings because we know the direction. We have our recap meeting for the week on Friday. We'll report to you then like go do your thing. And I di I didn't go golfing. I did go to the range just so everyone's clear. 

Um, however, what I then got to spend the rest of the day doing was actually doing outreach to some higher level, uh, uh, business referral partners that I, that I hadn't had time to reach out to yet. So now I got to actually. Do high level, expansive business growing activities, right? Because I didn't care who came up with the decision in the meeting. 

They knew the direction we were going, who, you know, they would come up with a solution to whatever problems existed in, in so much as it pertained to that particular meeting. And I got to actually do what I was best at, which was high level business making outreach, business development type work. So if I had cared so much about being right, I was the one that had made the decision. 

I spend my entire day on meetings on that Tuesday, and I don't get to build or at least do the initial touchpoint on what would end up being one of our largest referral partners, uh, a few months later. So, um, this, this simple reframe of it's not about being right, it's about getting it right. And if you can get your head in that place, it is an unlock. 

It's an unlock in your marriage. It's an unlock with every relationship you have. It's an unlock in almost every aspect of your life because you stop caring whose idea it is, and you just care that the idea produces value in your life or the life of the people that you care about.  

Ted Ryce: Oh man. So powerful. 

And uh, it's, uh, I see so many people fall trapped to that. I mean, I used to and probably still do, but uh, yeah, what you're saying, it's just game changing. So Ryan, I feel like this conversation could go on easily for another couple hours, but, uh, let's get you back on instead of, uh, making it into a Joe Rogan Style three Hour podcast. 

But if you're listening right now and you. Really a appreciating the perspective that Ryan's bringing. Go to his newsletter Finding Peak. It's called Finding peak.com, or you can go to it rather the URL is finding peak.com. You can also find Ryan's podcast Finding Peak. I was a guest on that show. And, uh, you know, talking about leadership performance and the things that Ryan's discussed here today. 

Ryan, do you have any, uh, any other places where you'd like people to  

Ryan Hanley: check you out? If you like little Ditties in Instagram culture, uh, you know, I'm pretty active on Instagram. I like to share stuff there. Um, you know, lots of little snippets, ideas, communicate with people. So I'd say if you're, if you're interested in a more kinda. 

That quick hitter format, uh, Instagram would be a great connect too. And it's just Ryan Hanley on Instagram.  

Ted Ryce: I'll have that in the show notes as well. And Ryan, just a pleasure to talk with you. It's always so much fun. I can already tell the type of coach you are, just, I've been in the business and in my area of coaching for 25 years and you know, talking to you. 

Always, when I talk to a great coach, I always, uh, take away so many things personally. So thanks for coming on, sharing your wisdom, sharing your knowledge, and most importantly, your time. And man, we'll have to do this again. So much. My pleasure.  

And I, I appreciated you coming on my show, man. And, uh, I, I really enjoyed the relationship, so thank you so much. 

Ryan Hanley: My pleasure.