You’re listening to Balance, Not Burnout, a podcast helping leaders rethink the speed of their business. And I’m your host, Mark Williams. Join me as I explore the power of a more intentional, balanced approach to leadership. Thanks for listening. Hey, everybody, this is Balance, Not Burnout Season Two. On today’s podcast, we’re joined by Dr. John Terry, the black belt leader. And this morning, we’re gonna we’re going to talk about finding time to rest and reset. And usually that’s really hard, especially when we’re trying to balance the demands of our work and our home life. But I will tell you time to rest is essential in finding success in any area. And so hopefully, we’re going to talk about some insights on how to reach your rest and reset goals. So please let me introduce Dr. John Terry’s a best selling author and founder of Black Belt leadership. He’s an expert in behavioral psychographics and is a real life Management Master and coach. So John, nice to see and thanks for being on the show.

Absolutely. Mark, thank you for the invitation. Been looking forward to this for a while.

Awesome. Well, why don’t you give us a little bit of background of how you got to be where you are? And what is it to be the black belt leadership founder?

Well, you know, Mark, at the age of 13, my parents relocated from a big city to a small town and I went from being the big town, nobody to the small town, somebody and that was the target of every bully in school. So my dad said, I’m gonna fix this for you. I thought he’s gonna talk to the principal. No Dad enrolls me in martial arts classes at 13 years of age, when back then they didn’t teach kids martial arts. So instructor made an exception threw me in the room, I’m in there with you know, I’m 75 pounds soaking wet. And I’m in there with a roomful of guys, mostly military and police officers. 6465. And you could snap me with the finger. And I’m thinking that what are you doing? Saving Grace was this beautiful 24 year old that had to roll at the same time that was going to be my partner, I thought, hey, this is great. I get to hang out with a supermodel. Well, little did I know she’d come out of a bad relationship. And every time I showed up to class and had to work with her, she beat the daylights out of me. to joke around the house became my dad was paying good money for me to get beat up like a girl. But when I learned to Fight Like a Girl, the bullying at school school stopped. And then five black belts and three martial arts Hall of Fame inductions later, I’ve had an opportunity to really be known as the black vote leader. Because interestingly, Mark, not only is martial arts great for self defense, it’s great for fitness, and great for just building your confidence. There’s a lot of leadership principles in the martial arts that are applicable to everyday life. And I asked people all the time, who doesn’t want to be the Jackie Chan, or the Jet Li or the Chuck Norris? Their specific art profession or trade? And that’s what I help people do I help them become a world class master and who they are and what they do.

And let’s talk a little bit about that. So your career right now is would you call it consulting? Are you a management coach, like describe for me how you would market yourself to a potential prospect?

Yeah, I describe myself as a coach and a trainer, I have an opportunity to work individually as a coach. But I also work with organizations who want to become world class at who they are and what they do to help them build high performance teams that learn to work together and apply these blackbelt leadership principles to become non leader dependent results focused teams that get more done in less time and serve their customers and clients at the highest level. Awesome.

Well, that sounds rigorous. Number one, training, I think that is vitally important. But let’s talk about the flip side of that, which again, back to our balance, not burnout. I have witnessed in my career, numerous people that are either burning the candle at both ends, not not really balancing their work in their life load. How can what you do or what you teach, help form better habits when it comes to work life balance.

You know, when it comes to leadership, the first person you have to lead mark is yourself. And if you’re not leading yourself well, and you’re not making good choices, you’re going to end up burning yourself out. And one of the things that I teach in in the Blackboard principles of success, it’s a new book I’ve got coming out in March, is I talked about the fact that as we look at these five pillars that you have to climb to get to the top of the mountain of success. One of those pillars is pleasure. And you got to take time on the journey for yourself. You’ve got to enjoy the ride of what it is you’re doing in business. But you’ve also got to step back and take time to enjoy yourself and to take care of yourself. Because if you’re climbing the Mount Everest of success and you want to be super successful, whatever is you do, it’s 23,000 feet to the top of your Mount Everest. You can’t do that in a single setting. So you got to work for a longer while stop rest, recoup, energize, learn the lessons life has taught you along the way. Take time to celebrate the little win. And then you He couldn’t get back started on the journey again to go to the next camp and get a little closer to the summit at the top of the mountain.

Great analogy. So I’m curious, you’ve got a lot going on in your life, obviously still physically fit doing the consulting, I’m sure you do some speaking engagements as well. How do you take a little bit of rest? How do you how do you relax and wind down a little bit?

You know, I’m fortunate mark to live in Hot Springs, Arkansas, which is a beautiful place. And if your listeners have never been there, it is a vacation destination, you got to visit but just north of town, we have an area called the North Woods. And several years ago, hotsprings experienced a drought in the 30s, very wealthy family donated several 100 acres of land, they built a three tier lake that has become a reservoir. But part of the donation of the land was you couldn’t commercially develop the property. So they turned it into hiking and biking trails, well, I have three big dogs that I absolutely love. And when I’m not speaking at a conference, or I’m not doing training with an organization, or having an opportunity to work with different financial institutions, I work with those dogs and I disappear in the woods. And my escape, is to go into the North Woods with my dogs, I get out there, there’s no cell phone service. And I’m like and bother me. And I spend 234 hours hiking and I do that three to four days a week, all throughout the year. So I get in 50 to 60 miles of hiking. That’s my unwind time. And then I’m a voracious reader, I love to read. So one of the areas where I stop and take time for me to grow myself and to learn is that take time every morning and every evening, 30 minutes to an hour that I’m going to read, reflect and just practice breathing and just enjoying being in the moment.

And I’m curious as the martial arts experience helped with that, you know, usually we much like you framed it up, we think about martial arts as more of a self defense or protect yourself for many people. I’m curious if the martial arts has also entwined in the learnings about rest, relaxation? I don’t know anything about it. So I’m curious if there’s if there’s a teaching there that goes along with the self defense and all the other stuff that it teaches?

Oh, yes, I mean, just like any combat system that you train, and every civilization throughout history has had a combat system, because every civilizations had a military, but you’re not fighting all the time, you’re training, you’re resting, you’re rehydrating, you’re getting proper fuel for your body. So there were elements of discipline and all of that, that is not just constantly Train, train, train, fight, fight, fight, because at some point your body physically wears out. It’s just like bodybuilding or any exercise we do. There’s a period when you’re active, there’s a period when you got to pause, and let your body recover. And if you don’t do that, your body ends up breaking down. And if you have to perform to save your life or someone else, and you’re physically incapable of doing that, what good is that to anybody?

Yeah, I love the term self discipline. I’m glad you brought that up. I think that a lot of people that I meet, especially entrepreneurs really pride themselves on their own self discipline, right, that the ability to get up, go to work, they’re self motivated, which I think is fantastic. One of the challenges I’ve seen with and I work with lots of entrepreneurs, most of the organizations that are affiliated with us, are started by entrepreneurs, sole proprietors, is they sometimes don’t know when to turn it off. Right? There is not that boundary of That’s correct. Yeah, at six o’clock, 715, whatever your number is, you know, I shut work off and I’m at home with my family, or it’s on a weekend, right, any customer that calls it’s a customer I have to take. And I think part of that self discipline, at least I’ve seen is really honing in on that work life balance setting, setting a boundary and making sure that we are living by those boundaries, or you do burnout. I’m curious if your own experience if you’ve if you’ve had similar situations or felt that just in your own in your own work life balance.

Yeah, you know, Mark I have because I’m a very driven individual. I get up very early in the morning, and I can work all day and all night. I’m one of those guys that don’t require a lot of sleep. So I’ve learned intentionally over the years that I’ve got to schedule just like I would schedule an appointment or I’ve scheduled time to get ready to go speak at a conference. I have to schedule me time I have to schedule time for my wife and I, I have three grandkids that I love. And now that all my kids are gone and grown and moved out of the house. When the grandkids come to see me I purposely scheduled time to be with them. Because those things are important. We can have all the drive we won’t make all the money we want. But at the end of the day, when people look back and you’re getting ready to die, you don’t say you know, I wish that I made another $100,000 you look back at the end of your life and you say I wish that I spent another day with my grandkids I wish that had taken them to the zoo one more time. I wish that had taken my grandson and taking him out hiking with me in the woods to let him have an opportunity to throw rocks in the water. Those are the things we look back and miss that driven entrepreneurs often overlook until it’s too late. And they missed that opportunity. It’s that cat in the greater story. Amen.

Some curious. So you’re talking to a roomful of entrepreneurs, self, self starters, go getters, give them some tips and or advice on how to. So you’re not a person that that, that takes on work life balance, you do work all the time, what’s the easiest way for me to ease into taking a little bit of time off?

To me, its the PA throw principle. You spend, you know, the lady 20 rule, you spend 80% of your time doing the 20% of things you’re best at doing. But out of the time that you’ve allotted yourself to work, you’ve got to give yourself at least 20% of that day for you. So if you’re going to work 10 hours a day, then you’ve got to be able to say, okay, eight hours is work. Two hours is me. Yeah, and be able to build that margin in because you’ve got to have that margin in your life. Otherwise, if you look at your calendar is just completely slammed full, from appointment to appointment, call the call meeting the meeting, you never have an opportunity to stop, absorb, and pick up the nuggets that you may miss, that could give you these tremendous insights to serve your next client or to serve your next customer. Or you never pick up on those personal things that gives you the opportunity to learn and grow and become better. Because you’re just so focused on going going, going, going going. You never take time to pause and reflect and look back and say, What did I experience? What did I learn? And how can that apply that to make me better, and serve the people I serve at a better level than I’m doing now?

Totally true. And I’ll give a real life example. In 1997, I was working for a company in Atlanta, I had a boss by the name of Jim Carrey, great guy, who every day after lunch, literally scheduled in his calendar, a 20 minute walk outside. And we used to leave the insurance company building and walk in the parking lot. Literally, he would walk in the parking lot and it was invited to anyone that would come and I will tell you every single day easily for 15 or 20 minutes it was on his calendar if you needed Jim Carrey. The only way to get to Jim Carrey was to walk with him outside for that 20 minutes. So it was fantastic lesson and to this day I’ve done you know, walking with Mark videos, I swear by walking every single day. I’m curious, let’s talk a little bit about your book. Um, so you’re wrote a new book, and it’s coming out very shortly. Let’s talk a little bit about that. What’s in the book? How can people find you and find the book?

You know, the new book coming out at the end of March is the black belt secrets of success. This is book number eight. And I’m really it’s really the Mount Everest story that I shared earlier. It’s how we become super successful, and the five steps in the journey to get there. So I’m really excited about this book coming out. I had an opportunity to keynote part of that book just recently for the first time. Audience absolutely loved it. So I know it’s going to be another best seller. The easiest way most of the folks can find me is they can go to my website, be a black belt leader.com That’s be a black belt leader.com My bookstores, they’re all my social medias there they can access my newsletter, my podcast, all the things I do to help people become a better version of who they are what they do, they can find it be a black belt leader.com.

And we will make sure to have some links to that website as well on the podcast. So we’ll definitely be able to find Dr. John Terry. John, I asked every guest the same question. Close to the end of the show. And I’m curious for you, I may already know the answer, because you may have already answered it. But it’s Saturday or Sunday morning, you have no responsibilities you can be with whom you want to be you can go where you want to go describe for me your perfect Saturday or Sunday morning.

If I’m not working or traveling, I get up I have some time with my wife. And then I grab my three dogs, and we disappear into the woods. And we go explore the incredible Ozark National Forest that butts right up next to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and have an opportunity just to enjoy nature, get my dogs a great walk, interact with some great people out biking or hiking. That to me is the perfect getaway. And if my grandkids are with me, that’s gravy because we turn it into an adventure and we get off trail and we go places no man probably should go. But we have a great time exploring and just enjoying God’s great creation.

That’s awesome. I love that answer. And I thought of something else as as you’re answering that. I’m curious, is martial arts for everyone?

Absolutely, I believe it is because I’ve taught you what leadership training you get from that the discipline that you get. I think every parent should enroll their children in martial arts, not just for the physical aspects which are great and getting kids physically fit. But who doesn’t want well behaved kids that have good character, good values, and learn to make good choices that are going to serve them well through their entire life. That’s what they get in the martial arts. It’s not just punching and kicking is not just going in and learning how to compete and learning how to be a winner, but learning how to lose gracefully as well. It’s those important characters and values respect, discipline, honor, integrity, goodness, kindness, gentleness, things you wouldn’t expect to learn in the martial arts, those things are taught. And young children that go through the martial arts for several years tend to be more successful in life, because they develop that work life balance, and they understand how to lead themselves well to make good choices that make them much more successful down the road.

Beautiful way to finish Dr. John Terry, the black belt leader, Best Selling Author and founder of Black Belt leadership, again, also an expert on behavioral psychographics, and real life Management Master and coach, I want to thank you very much for spending spending a little time with us today. Again, we’re going to have links to not only your website, but for your book. And if anyone would like to reach out to Dr. John Terry, we would recommend it. Thanks again, John, for being on really appreciate it. Absolutely, Mark. It’s good to see you, my friend. Thanks for the invite. You bet. Take care. Thank you. Thanks for listening. If you think balance is as important as it at work and all throughout your life. Help the show out by leaving me a five star review following me on social media, or sharing the podcast with someone you think would appreciate it. If you have comments or questions. I’d love for you to join the conversation with me on LinkedIn. I want to thank OBI Creative for producing the podcast and swells beats forgetting the music for me. Thanks for sharing your time with me today. And until next time, this is Mark signing off.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai