Becoming Inevitable: A Framework for Shaping Your Identity - Adam Tyler Smith | Ep 14

Adam Tyler Smith  
If you can become and do all of the things that a seven figure entrepreneur six figure entrepreneur does, your likelihood of creating that for yourself is way higher than if you're just shooting from the hip like trying a bunch of different stuff, without any intention.

Caleb Roth  
Welcome to the Stacking Habits podcast with your hosts, David, Matthew and Caleb, our mission each week is to dig into the habits, rituals and routines of guests who are living life to the fullest. But remember, knowledge without action is worthless. So be sure to take what you hear and put it into practice. turn these words into works in your own life. Without further ado, let's dive in. Well, hello, and welcome to episode 14 of the Stacking Habits pod. We are all well half of three, three quarters of us are in a very cold climate, Matthew is the one lucky guy in a warmer environment. But we have a very special guest today, Adam Smith, no, not that Adam Smith, not the father of economics. This is Adam Tyler Smith, a coach. And it's going to be a slight deviation from our normal podcast. Normally, we bring somebody in, we've kind of already distilled down a single habit. And then we dive into that and sort of ask questions and have a dinner conversation related to that specific habit. And that was a little bit different. As we did the pre call, he works with a lot of people from all walks of life, a lot of high performers, a lot of business people. And one of the things he does is he essentially distills down, what are the habits that you need to accomplish a goal. So a lot of his clients come to Adam with a specific goal in mind. And then he sort of builds a framework for how do you accomplish that goal. And so I don't want to steal his thunder. But that's what we're going to dive into today. So as you're listening, we're going to share a few examples from Adam's clients. And we'll change names or not share names to protect the innocent or guilty. But as we listen, as you have your own goals, I think this could be a whole episode that we dive into at some point. But once you have a goal, and how do you establish that goal, then you can break that down and come up with the habits to move in that direction. So as you listen, a lot of these skills, a lot of these frameworks will be transferable. So even if your goal is very different, let's say your goal is family oriented. And we're talking in the business space, or your goal is nutrition. And we're going to talk about sleep, whatever those goals are, take those transferable pieces, and you should be able to apply that same framework to your own life. So Adam, welcome to the show. We're really glad you're here. Yes,

Adam Tyler Smith  
absolutely. Thank you guys so much for having me. Really appreciate it. And yeah, I'm glad to glad to skip unlucky number 13. So

Caleb Roth  
beautiful. Well, a lot of hotels skipped floor 13. Of course, if you're on floor 14, you know where you actually are. But Adam, before we dive in, let's just set the stage, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and what your coaching careers look like for the last six or seven years? Yeah, so

Adam Tyler Smith  
I've been a full time entrepreneur for myself. For the past seven years, I've been in the marketing space for 13 years, I've my degree in graphic design, work with a ton of different style businesses, from personal brands, all the way up to multibillion dollar investment firms, and helping them with events and stuff like that. And what I've found was that personal development is something that we all need as entrepreneurs as just people in general. And so as I got into my entrepreneurship, personal development came up a lot. And because I was used to doing the marketing piece, I would help entrepreneurs, create more clients, create more revenue, do all of that stuff, but found that a lot of them were being held back by their habits, what they do on a daily basis, the routines, the mindsets that they have some of the past traumas that have happened in their lives. And so in order to move them forward in their business, I needed to create a framework for them to move forward in their life first, so that that could then help elevate their business or help expand their business. So that's been a passion of mine for the past seven years since since I've gotten into the coaching space. It kind of happened by accident, which is, which is funny, because I feel like a lot of coaches talk about I kind of got backed into it or it just happened, people started asking them questions, and they were the person that their friends relied on the most. And that's kind of how it happened with me to just kind of backed my way into it. And it's like, okay, let's help people make money and help impossible goals become inevitable. Like it.

Caleb Roth  
Now you talk about personal development. And is this something for you that you understood from a younger age? Or is this something where you had something that was holding you back? And then you sort of solved your own problem and then have been able to apply this to others?

Adam Tyler Smith  
So yeah, it was stuff that was holding me back. I've had anxiety, depression, diagnose ADHD I've also had, I don't know, seven to 10 concussions in my life. So sometimes it's a little bit hard for me to grab the right word or whatever. So for me, it was almost a necessity. This will last year, it was 20 years of me meditating. So I started meditating when I was 16. And it was, because I was lacking focus. That anxiety was creeping in. And I was like, trying to figure out some way out there to like, figure out how, like a just a way to kind of navigate what I was, what I was going through with being 16, and in high school, and all of that. And so it really started with meditation, as a necessity to like, being able to focus on schoolwork and then dulled down the anxiety and the depression a little bit to become more aware of who I am, what I was thinking, the thoughts, beliefs that I had, so that I can actually move forward with a lot of the stuff that I wanted to do in my life.

Caleb Roth  
Yeah, so doing meditation 20 years ago, you were way ahead of the curve, was this something that you sort of came up with the idea or did a mentor or like a father or parent figure in your life sort of sort of help guide you that direction,

Adam Tyler Smith  
it was actually YouTube, I was just searching online of like, how to get rid of anxiety, how to how to stop depression, or something like that. And some YouTube videos or blog posts or something like that came up and was like, Hey, if you can sit for 10 to 15 minutes a day, it might help alleviate these symptoms. And so I started started doing that. And then I threw that dove in a little bit to like Buddhism and stuff like that. And then from there, it's like, oh, who are the top meditators? Oh, Tony Robbins, Oh, this guy, this guy, it's like, okay, so then started diving more into that stuff. More. So in college, I meditated for a long time without really diving in hardcore into personal development. But once college came around, I was like I wanted to be, I kind of always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And so I started looking for those resources. At that point, what

Matthew Osborn  
does meditation look like for you? I know people talk on meditation, but they often do it in very different ways. What does that kind of look like in your mind meditation?

Adam Tyler Smith  
Yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a ton of misconceptions about meditation that you have to, like, you can be bad at it, I guess, is one of the main ones. Like there's no real way to be bad at meditation, at least in my eyes. And for me, it's about putting in awareness reps. So like you sit down, and a lot of people think, Oh, you don't want I don't want to think of anything, or I can't have my mind calm down. But that's kind of the point. The point is to have a thought and intrusive thought a something come up when you're being quiet, and getting the wrap in of noticing that thought. And then bringing your awareness back to I normally do breath through through the nose. But there's also I mean, I've dove into Joe Dispenza, his work, which is really, really cool, too. Whether or not you're that woowoo and into the quantum and stuff like that, but and in terms of like habit, for me, it's it's a near daily practice. And I use it in the morning as part of my morning routine. And then just before this call, to create this container, talk a lot about containers in my coaching to to create this container, I did a little kind of almost breathwork II meditation session just to like calm the nerves a little bit, and get ready to dive into stuff with you guys. That's really good. All right,

Caleb Roth  
so where are we gonna go from here? Adam, we got a framework, and you have some examples? So do we want to set the stage by sharing a few examples of setting a goal and building those habits? Or do you want to start with the framework and then use that framework to explain the guests that we're going to talk about,

Adam Tyler Smith  
I think it would probably, I think framework first framework first. And just to, to kind of preface all of this, for me the the goals of personal development, it's all about self mastery, it's all about making sure that you're doing the things that you want to do, not the things that everybody else out there wants to do. So it has a sense of exploration in it as well. So I break it down into into pretty much six steps. Obviously, there's sub steps within that. As with as with all things, and to me, this process starts with knowing who you are and how you got to this current moment. So without that, you don't have a frame of reference for anything. So I think it's it really starts kind of before the goal happens before you even set that clear vision for yourself compelling future, whatever. And so some things I think about in this first step is really identifying current habits, current beliefs, current thought systems, and then asking yourself some questions Where have you quit things before? And this is all just to create that file. foundation of noticing, being self aware. Like, what are your normal pitfalls when you're going after a goal? Where do you normally find resistance, when, when going after a goal or, or moving things forward in your life, all of those things are really good to know and write down. Right? Sometimes, it's things that have happened to us when we were a child that bleed over. And that's going to all become resistance as you're trying to create these goals as you're trying to strive for these things. So it's really important to get a real good sense of who you are now, so that you can identify gaps later on in the process. The SEC is, well, let

Caleb Roth  
me just jump in real quick. We talked a little bit with Adam DAO, one of our earlier guests, he did a lot of talking on mindfulness. And he talked to about about being self aware, for some people that may struggle with that exercise of writing down things, or the process of being curious about yourself. Are there other options you can do is, are there some ways you can ask those that are close to you, maybe to help you identify some of your own trends or themes or where you are? Yeah,

Adam Tyler Smith  
I, obviously you can't, you can, you can ask friends, family loved ones, stuff like that, but they don't know, the thoughts in your head, right? They don't know what your true beliefs are about those things they can they can say, oh, yeah, when you every time you try to lose weight, you break down on the third week, because you end up going out or something like that. And then it like spirals you from there. So they can notice things maybe that you don't. But I think it's really important to get in the habit of self inquiry. And really being able to dive into who you are, what makes you tick, the beliefs, the thoughts. And for me, the when it's hard for somebody to do this, like sit in journal, I have them go on a walk and do it in voice notes. For whatever reason, when you're walking, when you're moving your body, you're in a different state, Tony Robbins talks about state different states all the time, when you're in a different state, those things can just flow out of you. So for a lot of this stuff, especially early on, and as I'm getting deeper and deeper into it, like we all are, just go move your body, talk into a voice note, a lot of stuff transcribes itself now. So you can just kind of like write that out and pick little sentences out and stuff like that. But getting used to asking yourself questions, I think is one of the most important skills that you can, you can develop. And then So step two, and step two in the process is the actual setting of the vision itself. So they can compelling future, whatever you want to call it, your goals. And it's about building the story that you want in your life, and then writing it down each individual piece, work health, business relationships, those are kind of the big four that you that you want out of out of your life. Right? This is where this is that that compelling future that end goal that that you want to achieve. Moving into step three is kind of the what we were talking about in the in the pre show, which is finding other people that have done this doing a lot of research on your goals, habits, and compelling future. What have other people, other mentors that you have people that are out there on the internet? What are their beliefs, habits, thoughts? Where do they spend their time, money, energy? What don't they do? Right? That's a big thing. People will end up compromising on on things and people that run seven figure businesses don't do that they don't compromise on their time, their energy, their sleep. And then where is the gap between where you are? And where you want to be? Where they are? Is there is there differences there. And it's all about, it's all about kind of writing those down. And you can even use like a timeline format of like, right side of the page being the end goal, left side of the page being where you are now. And what is that? What is the bridge? What are the things that are that are the bridge? A lot of the times this is where like the habits and stuff like that come into place, like the bigger habits. Step four is to actually break down into those habits, habits, beliefs, daily actions, reminders and rituals. So whether that's your what morning routines they do, do they do cold plunges do they do? Do they do direct outreach? Are they running ads, any of those things? That's kind of business examples, but it's breaking those into daily actions. To take the big overarching goal, just like for just a small example. So you want to be a marathon runner. The marathon runner is somebody that runs so what can you do on a daily basis that allows you to run one day you're going to either stretch the next day you're going to do your run the next day, you're going to make sure that you eat healthy, so you can break those down into those little fractional pieces. How Um, so that you can track on a daily basis, what's going to happen in the bigger picture. The fifth step is the consistency, you almost have to put blinders up for like, 45 to 90 days. And then the sixth step is updating your habits to make sure that you're, you're getting closer to where you are. So after that 45 or 90 days, take stock and where you are, how far have you come on your mission? How far have you gotten towards your goals? And do you need to change any of those things that you've any of those daily actions that you've, you've recorded or tracked over the past 45 to 90 days?

David Chung  
So Adam, I wrote down some notes, I'm just going to go through them and correct me if I'm wrong. Number one, take inventory of where you're currently at. Asking questions, pretty much self awareness, figure out where you are. Yeah. Number two, is that left side of the page, identifying the compelling vision? Earlier, you put impossible or you set impossible goals, right? Yeah. Number three, would be figuring out how you're going to get there or who's already there. So identifying people who mentors or public figures that have already achieved those things in the different areas that you might be interested in goal setting. Number four, being identifying the habits or the daily actions necessary in order to get there. And number five is consistency, consistency, putting those blinders up, just trudging forward for 45 to 90 days. And then number six, is updating and iterating, or improving habits, and I guess, really assessing, if you're moving towards those goals, is that more or less correct? Yes, yeah.

Adam Tyler Smith  
And it's kind of a loop, right, you got to kind of go through some of these things and continue to gain clarity over and over and over again, I think that's one of the main things that a lot of people don't realize, when we talk about clarity of goals and, and things like that is that it's an ongoing process. It's not a, it's not a one time thing that just happens. And then you get to move forward towards everything, it's got to be that that round robin effect of seeing if it's working, if it's not working, making some changes to it. So

David Chung  
I like to categorize goals personally, as like, more end state goals, and more journey goals. So kind of like, the journey versus the destination. So like, I personally believe that, like, goals that become part of habit are the best type of goals as opposed to like, destination goals. So for example, I think it's more impactful to set a goal of being a good steward of your finances and understanding how to be frugal and knowing how to be a smart spender and a Smart Saver, versus maybe just setting an arbitrary goal of saving half a million dollars. I think both are important, but I feel the latter, or I'm sorry, the the first is more powerful, just because it's a lot more actionable. And it sounds like it's kind of like the fourth step, it's already broken down. And so by, by doing it as part of your daily routine, you're achieving that goal. right for you. You said compelling, compelling vision, you said impossible goals. What do you mean by that? Are those more like, quote unquote, destination type of goals? Or is that more of a journey type of

Adam Tyler Smith  
goal? It could be either, it could be either, and something that I want to mention, too, that I kind of forgot in my sometimes when I write stuff down and scripted out, I don't, I don't fully the what you're talking about with with the spending being a spender. The idea of this, this loop these six steps, and the inevitability of the goal is to create the identity of that person. So you're creating the identity of somebody who easily saves a half a million dollars, or creating the identity of a six figure entrepreneur or seven figure entrepreneur. So and when I say compelling future, impossible goals, those are just ways that I've heard out in the, in the personal development space that they talk about, goals or vision. Right? So there's just I'm just trying to if somebody's watching here and they've think Tony Robbins talks about compelling future, so if somebody knows only Tony Robbins stuff, then they can link link that together. Could you

Caleb Roth  
give some examples, Adam of of goals that clients come up with I'm just trying to add and we'll get into some examples as well which will help us as humans, we like to imitate others so it once we've just Seeing somebody do something just like the four minute mile that used to be thought it was impossible. Soon as one person did it, the floodgates broke open. And many people were able to accomplish that, because we just have to know that it's possible or see someone do it. That's that's just who we are. Could you just give a few examples of some what a compelling future might look like? Or just a handful of goals that you see pop up?

Adam Tyler Smith  
Yeah, so a lot of it because it is, because I do work with entrepreneurs, a lot of them are money goals, right? six figures a year, $10,000 a month, seven figures a year, stuff like that. So currently, I have two clients. One's wanting to scale to seven figures. And then one is basically going from zero to $10,000, a quarter, which is would essentially be full time, a full time entrepreneurship for her. So just starting with the seven figures a year, his name, Cheyenne, he has a marketing agency. And he hired me to help him just like clarify, some things were this is a really good time to have this episode, because they're there. We I just probably two or three weeks ago had this conversation with those two people on coaching calls. And it's just helping guide them through those those six steps. So I have something in my coaching. It's called it's like a know yourself. It's like a, I think it's like 50 questions or something like that on there. It takes normally it takes my clients like a little bit over a week to go through. And it's that idea of like, where are you currently at? Who were you in the past? And like, how did we get there? So a lot of the times we'll uncover some like childhood trauma stuff, or some beliefs that were installed by other people that we didn't necessarily say, yeah, that's, that's what I want to believe. Because that's a lot of times, that's how it happens. And then just just moving through the steps, right, once we know where the resistance normally is, where those pitfalls are. So for him, one of his biggest resistances was he has some lower back issues, those lower back issues completely zap his energy. So one of the main habits and goals that we're stalking for him is like cold, cold plunge cold exposure, making sure that he gets weekly massages, making sure that he's doing yoga more than he's like lifting, let's say, and so getting those things in place, and then helping him track whether or not those things are moving the needle at all. So for him like that's where that's where we're kind of at right now is he has that that compelling future that vision, right? He wants a seven figure agency.

Caleb Roth  
And for those that are not entrepreneurs, seven figures means a million dollars. Yeah,

Adam Tyler Smith  
yeah, million dollars a year agency. And so for him, it's like the daily habits that he needs to partake in, largely are making sure that he feels really good. So it's like, can you be a seven figure entrepreneur and not sleep? Eight hours a day, a night? Yes, can he probably not, because he's going to wake up and he's going to be all His back's gonna be all jacked up, and then it's going to zap his energy, he's not going to have the willpower to move things forward, he's not going to feel good on sales calls, he's not going to do any of the things that are necessary for him to show up every single day in the way that he needs to, in order to make that revenue goal happen. So it's exploring, it's exploring those things. And then the, we're just tracking it at this point, right? We just came, he wanted to do that for 2024. Um, so we're in, we're in steps 234 And five, simultaneously, right now, tracking, revising. For him. He's been in the entrepreneur space for a while, personal development space for a while. So we're, we're accelerating the 45 to 90 day kind of thing. And just making sure that he's feeling good, every single day, as good as you can possibly feel. And I'm doing nearly daily check ins with him to make sure he's feeling great and moving things forward. Is there a particular step most people get stuck on or you see people get stuck on most frequently? I would say, I would say, breaking it down into daily actions. And sticking with those actions, they'll break it down. And the reason why I say that is they'll break down what you say creating content for an entrepreneur, right? They break down oh, I'm going to create content every single day. That in itself isn't necessarily the resistance like the creating content itself. What's behind that is right, the energy to do it the willpower to do it on a daily basis for an entire year straight. The energy to do it the idea that being able to have the ideas. So all of those, those things break down from daily actions into like, the beliefs, thoughts. resistances that happen and that's where or, like anybody can break them down. But really having somebody else as a coach to like, ask you those questions and go back and forth with that's where I think the value of like, let's say, my coaching or anybody else that does this kind of coaching, that's where the value of their of their services helps really that consistency

Matthew Osborn  
of being able to do the same steps over and over again, once I've established those, which I think we probably all struggle with, is that that consistency aspect in our own lives and businesses, I'm sure it gets us off track more than not knowing what to do.

Adam Tyler Smith  
Right. Right. Yeah, cuz we know we know what to do. Right? Create content. Cool. Got it. But when I wake up, and I don't feel good, what's the ritual to getting me to feel good, so that I can create the best content so that my business can continue to grow? So that's where like, the self awareness, that's where the step number one, when you're talking about where do I normally come up on? resistances? What are the things that have helped me move through resistances? That kind of stuff,

Matthew Osborn  
Caleb, David, do you guys have kind of like a pre work ritual you do? Or anything you do for like a minute or two before you start work? Or do you both just look at your calendar and dive right into whatever you're doing? Depends

Caleb Roth  
on the day, when I'm healthiest, I will try to set out the either the night before first thing in the morning, and sort of map out and I'll try and do this on a Sunday. Actually, I'll I've been trying to do this a lot more this year where I reflect on the previous week, I'll write down a few things that happened a few things that didn't go according to plan. And I'll actually just write a few sentences, nothing crazy. And just to remember the week, and also to reflect on, you know, hey, I set out at the beginning of the week and said I was going to do these things, did I do those things. So I'll kind of look at that. And then I'll sort of look at the week ahead. And I'm always best when I'm playing offense saying I want to do these sorts of things. And I write down, you know, one or two or three things for the week. And then I kind of break that into bite sized tasks that I can do. And when I'm healthy and I get up early and have my cup of coffee and sit there with my laptop, that's when I will go you know, tackle off those to do things and I get it feels like I'm way far ahead just on a Monday morning by doing that. So i i I'd like to say I do that consistently and all the time. That is not true. But I do know the value of that. So do you

Adam Tyler Smith  
have a journaling? Practice before journaling? Meditation, anything practice before you kind of grab coffee and dive in? Are you able to just wake up? Kind of move your body a little bit and go for it? Yeah, I'm

Caleb Roth  
not very ritual driven. My habit right now is I make the coffee and I go down and sit in the hot tub. And so that's that's outside, we have a couple acres and some woods and right now beautiful blanket of snow. And so I do get a little bit of vitamin D from the sun. I do get some time in nature alone with my thoughts. And that's a way to kind of wake up and settled myself. But no, I don't typically meditate. I've tried. I'm not very good at that right now. And the only walking I do is walking my dog or going for small runs or bike rides. Okay, cool. But

David Chung  
yeah, for me, guys, I think the biggest battle is what Adam said earlier, it's just getting started, it's moving your body. And I have very strong associations with certain locations. For example, if I'm sitting on my couch, it's going to be very, very difficult to get any work done just because the habits that are associated with that location, it doesn't have anything to do with work. Same thing with my bed. I've tried reading in bed, and I usually fall asleep. It's a recipe for singing. And so, you know, I know that as long as I can move my body and get to a location that I associate with work, similar to what you were saying about walking at him. You know, as long as I can get into that motion, and like once I get my butt into the office, I know I can hone in and focus no matter what kind of day I'm I'm having. So you know, that's it. For me, it's like the easiest thing in the world. It's the biggest, it's the most challenging thing in the world. It's easy, because I know that all I have to do is get my body physically there. But that in itself sometimes is really challenging, you know, having the motivation and sort of the mental tenacity to you know, get my body there. But usually I do a good, good job. One of the things that I've done to force myself to being at a certain place at a certain time, is setting meetings. First thing in the morning, so I know that no matter what I have to be there for that meeting, and that forces me to be at a particular place at a specific time and so that that typically helps. Yeah,

Adam Tyler Smith  
see, I'm the exact opposite of Caleb, like I have. I have to have a routine in the morning, right? I can wake up grab coffee I sit down at my laptop and work. But I find that that's really, really short lived. If I do that, I'll get distracted, super easy. If I haven't sat down, really kind of like meditated gone over my goals in that in the morning, and maybe that's like your, your hot tub time or whatever, I would consider that potentially meditative, especially if you're kind of sitting out there alone. And you're not scrolling on your phone or something like that. But yeah, for me, like the, I guess Alex Hormozi, has been talking about it recently. It's like, Oh, if you just get up and do, instead of doing a two hour morning routine, you just go and you do more work, you're getting two more hours of work done. And it's like, that's great. If you can do it, my brain does not let me do that, like I have, I have to have that routine that I have to get myself, like, ready for the day. And the key for that is I kind of wake up assuming that I'm not going to be in the mood to work. And by waking up assuming that then I have these this protocol in place, go to the gym, come home, sauna, right, come meditate, do a little bit of journaling, get my coffee, sit down at my computer, kind of create the container for the first first hour of the day, which is normally when I do like my my time blocking and stuff like that, throw my phone at the other side of the room and and just get after it. So it's cool that you can do that, Caleb, but that's not that's not for everybody. So I wouldn't say

Caleb Roth  
it's, I wouldn't say it's always the most effective use of my time either. But I do have a lot of natural energy, especially in the morning. And so it's not, you know, I feel like David maybe struggles a little more to get going or clear the cobwebs out. And so certainly, I'm not going to argue that you know, exercise and sauna and cold plunge are not great things for for you know, longevity and for actually helping you focus longer. But for me, I'm I have a lot of intrinsic motivation, which helps. But but that actually brings me Adam to you mentioned a 50 question or so intake form that you've either developed or kind of borrowed from somewhere else. One of the things with habits is there's so much variability, even just with the four of us sitting right here having this conversation, there's a lot of differences. So when was it Cheyenne was the guest we were talking about when he came to you and said, Hey, I want to grow my agency to at least a million dollars in 2024. How did you identify that he had lower back issues? And how do you figure out like, do you find an avatar of another agency owner that's doing a million dollars and say, Hey, let's compare their habits and yours and figure out what the differences are? Like, what is that? What is the value of the intake form? And how did you specifically figure out that the lower back issues were holding him back.

Adam Tyler Smith  
So the lower back issues for him are self identified? Right? A lot of the times we kind of know what it is that holds us back. I'm on my phone too much. I'm not eating well. Oh, I just went out and drank last night. Probably not the best time to be productive that next day. So for him, it was it ended up being a coaching session of like going through his day. And then asking him like, Okay, well, how do you feel? today? I feel like shit, man. Like, I can't move. I can't sit in this chair anymore. And it's like, okay, well, you have ads to do for clients, you have sales calls to do like, if you can't sit there. Then we got we got to, we got to make some changes. He had he had taken that. That 50 question questionnaire, he probably took like four months ago or something like that. So it wasn't directly tied to his his goal of seven figure agency. But this has been something that's that's kind of come up. And I think we're all kind of we all kind of at some level know what's really, really holding us back. The thing, the reason why I come in or the place where I come in, is seeing if that is if there's something underneath that in terms of like a belief system that he has that his like, because if he believes that his back is is going to hold him back from that, then we need to do some some deep dive in terms of that, right? There's also trauma being held in the body and the lower back and like working through some of those things and some somatic stuff that you can do moving your body shaking, inner child work, trauma work, stuff like that, that could help alleviate that. But first thing is like can you be a little bit more limber so that your back doesn't hurt so that you can move around? Can you get a mattress topper on your mattress so that you can get into deeper sleep and recover a little bit better? Can you stop going to bed at one o'clock in the morning? And maybe see if we can push it to like 10 or 11 so that you're not skipping a circadian rhythms or Yeah, so your circadian rhythms out off so that you're not skipping a REM cycle cycle, right so that you're getting more like you're not losing out on testosterone and stuff like that. So yeah, that the questionnaire was great to find out where he was, and like some of the things that have kind of hindered him in the past. But the main thing right now is his lower back issues. And how that saps his energy on a day to day basis.

Caleb Roth  
Along those lines, do you have a hierarchy of needs sort of like Maslow Do you? Do you sort of look at sleep and nutrition and movement? And some of those things first, or is it completely dependent on who you're working with?

Adam Tyler Smith  
Sleep for me is the non negotiable for everybody. I think the people that say, oh, I can do, I can do four hours of sleep five hours of sleep, I think they're kidding themselves. And they don't know how good they can feel. By consistently getting seven, eight hours of sleep. All the other stuff is like, I don't want you to add more to your morning routine than actually helps you. That's where like the Self Mastery itself, it's not what Adam thinks is mastery, right? It's, it's what you are feeling good doing, and what helps you be productive, if that's what you want to be, or what helps you become the person that you need to be in order to achieve your goal. But sleep for me is easily number one, then I would say some form of movement would be number two. So whether that's I would just say if you can go walk for half hour every single day, go walk for half hour every single day. I'm not a huge nutrition nerd, right, like eating candy on the weekends and having a couple beers and stuff like like, I will totally do that. So I'm not super strict on my nutrition. But I know that if I have a bunch of sales calls, I should probably not eat a bunch of candy the next day or the night before, because I'm going to go to those sales calls and not feeling very good. So it's one of those things where you kind of have to know how your be your body reacts to those things. But sleep and movement, I think everybody could probably dial that up or dial that in a little bit more. And they would feel much better about their pretty much your life. Life in general, I think I think

Caleb Roth  
both of those categories are great candidates where it's easy to get hung up on all the specific details, and what's the exact protocol and what's the temperature and my cold plunge need to be. And those are all great. And I'm glad that people nerd out over those. I'm a numbers guy. And so I geek out over that as well. But I don't think anybody's going to argue directionally, that sleep is important and moving your body is important. And so if you're if you're very static now don't move around, or sedentary, I suppose is the word, then getting out for even 15 minutes a day and simply walking. So you know, I might not like running or weightlifting is intimidating. But simply moving your body and doing something little to sort of at least get that baseline moved up is probably going to be beneficial.

Adam Tyler Smith  
Yeah, absolutely. And the the thing with that, too, is like those two things, in particular, whenever a client comes to me, and they're like, Oh, I'm having a really, really bad day like I'm so I have so much anxiety I have this I have this, it's like did you move today? And how and how many hours of sleep did you get last night? Because if you don't if you didn't get if you didn't get seven hours of sleep, let's just say and you haven't moved yet, you got to give yourself a little bit of grace in terms of like, your body just might not be in the in the zone for you to be productive that day. Or if you went out the night before. And then the next day, you think you're going to be super productive. And you're like, Oh, well, I had five beers last night, of course you don't feel good. So it's one of those. It's a lot of people like anxiety. Obviously it's a real thing. But it's held in the body like the sensations are going on in your body. But a lot of those things anxiety not being productive, unfocused, stuff like that can be helped by those two things. Like go walk around the block, come back, turn your phone off and sit down and tell me you're not going to be more focused for the next at least half hour. So those are the two things that I'm sure my clients Hate. Hate messaging me when they're not in the best mindset, because then they just get those two questions asked over and over and over. But it makes sense. And it works. Because a lot of times it allows them to give themselves a little bit of grace, instead of spiraling downward. Yeah, I think those are great. Yeah. Not not Oh, I'm not productive. No, you just didn't rest. Yeah,

Caleb Roth  
those are phenomenal categories for simply going upstream and saying, Hey, I've got all these other things that are starting to feel like they're falling apart. Well, how'd you do on your sleep? How'd you do on movement? Right, Adam? You mentioned a 45 to 90 day sort of rhythm in terms of adopting habits and then coming back and doing a reflection period to see how they're going. Is there some sort of science behind that? You mentioned Cheyenne was able to speed that up because he's a little bit more of a high achiever. I'm just curious, where does that timeframe come from? And is that mostly the same for people or is that pretty flexible?

Adam Tyler Smith  
I think it's mostly the same for people from just looking back at my I mean, I've journaled for a really long time. So I have journals from years and years and years ago and what I've what I've noticed. And it, it, it's directly related to like, even just like creating content, and business and doing outreach, stuff just has a lag time to it, right? Like the, your goals. You can't say I want to have a six figure business, oh, I've I've made two pieces of content. And I've gotten on to sales calls. Like, no, the success is a lag factor to all of the things that you do on a daily basis. So for me, it's just been a knowing, based on all the things that I've tracked, that generally, if I start something now, and I go really, really hard after it 45 to 90 days later is when I start getting more clients, it's when I start feeling better about my running, it's when I start really seeing the cognitive effects of sleeping really well. So for me, it's just been kind of trial and error. And I think there's been some research, it must have been years ago that I saw something about the lag indicators of fitness, or like fitness or hydration or something like that. That makes

Caleb Roth  
sense. So roughly, what you're trying to do is stick with something long enough so that you can see results, right? If you do if you run every day for one week, and then assume you can go out run a marathon or your times are going to improve dramatically. That's not the case, a lot of the best things in life tend to compound the longer you do them. And then you don't want to go too long, where you try a habit for let's say a year, and you're getting no results. And if you were going to you would have already and so you want to try and find that sweet spot between long enough that it's functional, you can actually see results, or not too long that you're wasting your time. Yeah,

David Chung  
exactly. Exactly. You know, perfect. Gino Wickman. We've talked a lot about this book on the podcast traction, we need to get him on the pod. Yeah, Gino Wickman. The entire framework of traction. Eos, is there on 90 day cycles. And one of the reasons he says there are 90 day cycles is because the human mind just tends to lose focus or concentration after about 90 days, too. And so I think having this cycle, you know, the six steps, sort of reset or recalibrate every 45 to 90 days is also really powerful. Because, you know, if you try to do a habit for a year without having that sort of cycle built into it, you may just lose focus. Yeah,

Adam Tyler Smith  
absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. Alright. And

Caleb Roth  
then Adam, you mentioned you had a second client, you wanted to share their story. So why don't you set the stage again, and then walk through your framework with the second client, what they come in with their goal? And then how did you walk through the steps and sort of prod them along? Yeah, so

Adam Tyler Smith  
her name is Ivy, she's currently in college, she is going for textiles. So she wants to kind of be her own fashion designer kind of thing. She does knitting and crochet and stuff like that. And she's wanting to build kind of her online presence, then her Etsy store and then going to flea markets and stuff like that. And so really, it kind of, she kind of came to me with with her big goal of I want to make $10,000 Each quarter of this year. So that's around 40 40,000, which is above the 33,000, minimum or median household income, or median income of the United States. So I would consider that something full time. And so really, it was it was about creating the daily steps that she needs to get to get enough inventory so that she can sell things on Etsy, enough content so that she can get awareness for her for her Etsy and then also enough rest rejuvenation so that she can do that for the long term for that 90 day cycle, right three months, that 90 day cycle. And so for her, I mean, it's a lot a lot of the times it's it's kind of straightforward. But we went from Okay, how many hours of sleep? Are you getting a night, she wasn't getting that that many. So we bumped it up to like seven and a half right? Just to try it for the next couple of weeks to see if she's feeling any better. We we found that in order to get to this flea market that's in March, she has to have a certain amount of things built so that you can have enough product there for her display. Okay, well, how many? How long does that take you to make one of those things so you need 20 of them? How many hours a week do you need to work on those things and then break that down into a daily goal of I think it was like 45 minutes crocheting or something like that, which is not anything super crazy. And then it's the the decision making from there I think is big too. It's like you're one Working, your new identity that you want to become is a full time, full time entrepreneur. So that question of What Would full time IV do in this situation? is a big question for her right now. So when she wakes up, and she knows that going for a walk is going to make her more productive. What does full time IV do? Does she sit and knock on that walk? Or does she actually go on that walk? She goes on the walk. So it's like, A, most of my I use WhatsApp. Most of my whatsapp thread for her now is like, like, Good morning, full time entrepreneur. What is full time IV do today. But it's full time IV do today. And she just has her like schedule set out. And we've just moved forward with that. And so she's been doing that for two weeks. She's absolutely crushing it. And then we're going to probably middle of next month, reevaluate whether or not she's she needs to up production, or if she can pull back a little bit, or does she need to start making more content so that her Etsy store can get more traction and stuff like that? Or if we need to change business models to potentially get to that $10,000? A quarter,

David Chung  
you mentioned that, you know, for EIV, a lot of the framing is done with you know, what does? What would full time IV do in a situation like this? Could you from your experience? Is there a difference between I guess creating this figure of you know, someone who's already accomplished it versus maybe historic figure live or, you know, deceased that has accomplished it, for example? You know, rather than being like, what would full time IV do maybe she might say, I really like Elon Musk, I'm gonna make you on my, you know, Avatar? Is there a difference? Do you recommend one or the other?

Adam Tyler Smith  
So I recommend doing it as yourself, right that Elon Musk is the is the model for it. But to really solidify it as your own identity, you want to talk about it as yourself. Right? So it's you making the new decisions, it's you making the better decisions? Yeah. Within that, asking yourself, what would I be do within that is all of the research that we've done on all of her mentors? So within that question, all of those other people are, are in there, she has some YouTubers that she that she really, really likes that are in the craft space and stuff like that. So it's like, we've pulled all of that information into her new identity already. So it just makes more sense to just ask that question of yourself. Right? What does that end goal version of you do on a daily basis? And what would they do in this situation?

David Chung  
Is there a benefit to have you ever heard or taught her? Have you ever heard of Todd Herman?

Adam Tyler Smith  
Adam Todd Herman? No, I haven't.

David Chung  
So his sort of claim to fame is he's coached some of the top athletes I think he coached like Kobe Bryant and like some other big, big athletes, and his entire framework is built on alter egos. He actually has a book called alter egos and essentially, you know, Mamba mentality Mamba, the Black Mamba. He essentially helped Kobe Bryant I don't know if Kobe Bryant was one of his clients, actually. But like, he essentially helped Kobe Bryant come up with the black mamba and what that looks like. And, you know, during the game, what type of shots does the black mamba make? And I think he actually worked with like, royalty, and like, Ronaldo and all these big athletes. But that's this whole thing. This Alter Ego, and it's essentially, creating the ideal version of yourself in that situation is very similar to what you're seeing right now. Just wondering if you, you know, heard of him? Yeah,

Adam Tyler Smith  
I haven't I call that the hero and anti hero. So like, my hero self is a wizard whose name is random. And like, I kind of like, that's been my nickname for for a while, but it just reminds me of like, I haven't like drawn out and everything with like, a bunch of his attributes basically, like trying to game with gamify my, my new identity that I want to step into. And then I think it's good to have the antihero piece too. It's like, Who do you want to become and who do you want who what are the things that you want to leave behind? But yeah, that that definitely does sound really, really similar. And that's, I just think it's such a great framework, right? Yeah, create an alter ego create, they could have the same name as you they could have a different name of you as you but install the attributes that you want. And try to embody those on a day to day basis. And if you can do that, that's where the inevitability of the goal happens if you can become and do all of the things that a seven figure entrepreneur six figure entrepreneur does your likelihood of creating that for yourself is way higher than if you're just shooting from the hip like trying a bunch of different stuff. Without any intention. I

Caleb Roth  
think a way to boil that down is your identity matters incredibly, so you're at not only your identity in terms of who you are, and where you are currently, and what are your, you know, what are your common attributes or shortfalls? That's a big piece just to kind of set the stage. But then we've talked about on the pod before, what is what is future Caleb, what would he want me to do in this moment today? Or what would that person that you identify with? What would a successful business person what would a successful Father, what would have fulfilled? You know, husband look like? Any of those questions? That identity is incredibly powerful and moving? Yeah,

Adam Tyler Smith  
absolutely. Have any of you guys read PSYCHO CYBERNETICS by Maxwell Maltz.

David Chung  
We talked about habits. Yeah, we just talked about it. Yeah.

Adam Tyler Smith  
Okay. Yeah, that's one of my like, just that the self image stuff, right? It's kind of along the same lines is the identity piece that's like one of the books that somehow got lost in the self development world. And it's one of the most powerful books that you can read, because I feel like it's where a lot of the current people, whether they got their ideas from the book or not, but that's like, that's almost like the seeds of all of the personal development stuff that is out there right now.

Caleb Roth  
Well, there's a there's a phrase that there's no new ideas under the sun. Especially with all the technology and access to information that we do. I tend to mostly agree with that. I think a lot of the things that get brought back up are sort of rhymes of things we've heard in the past. So people say history repeats itself. I think that truth resonates. And truth rhymes, and we just keep stumbling back across it just at different points in human history.

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, for sure.

Caleb Roth  
So well, as we wind things down, Adam, is there anything else you want to leave our audience with or any other comments as it relates to the framework or next steps for somebody that says, hey, this is awesome, I have a goal. And I want to kind of run through this framework. Is there any last thing you'd like to leave? Yeah,

Adam Tyler Smith  
absolutely. I think that we're in one of the best times right now, especially with technology of being able to do on your own, be an entrepreneur, move things forward in a big way in your life, maybe even build generational wealth for, for your family down the line. It's going to take a lot of work. But it's so worth it. And to to really get clear on what the hell you want out of this one time that we have on Earth. And it doesn't have to be in one day, it doesn't have to be in one afternoon or weekend. But if it's the constant pursuit of you getting clear on what your ultimate potential is, just keep going. Just keep trying to get as clear as you possibly can, eliminating the things that you don't like about your life about the world, and installing the things that really, really fire you up. I think that's the when I started this six years ago, I never thought that I would be in the position that I am today talking to cool people online via podcast, but it's it's so worth betting on yourself. And getting clear on what you actually want. Because this is this was part of my vision. Six months ago, eight months ago was to do more podcast stuff. Kayla posted on threads wanting pod or maybe I posted it and he was like, yeah, come on. So it's like, take advantage of the technology that we have right now to connect with people and move things forward in a big way in your life. Awesome.

Caleb Roth  
And then Adam, if our listeners do want to track you down or learn more about your coaching, or just some of your content, how can they do that?

Adam Tyler Smith  
Instagram is easiest place. It's Adam T Smith on Instagram. Pretty easy. My name is not super hard to spell. So it should be pretty easy on that.

Caleb Roth  
Perfect. And we will link to that in the show notes. Well, Adam, thanks for coming on for sharing your framework, again, a little bit of a different episode for us in general, but I hope it's incredibly useful and practical. As people want to get more clarity and want to move toward their goals. It's a great framework to understand where you are, where you want to go and then sort of find those avatars or those heroes that you want to emulate. Build those habits, repeat them every 45 to 90 days, have some sort of a reflection period, and then iterate back through that process again, and hopefully I just hit all steps one through six, but if not, they're they're pretty darn close. So thanks again for coming on and we'll catch everybody again next week.