The Asset I Neglected

What if the very thing that sets you apart is the key to everything you're striving for? Welcome to Uncommon Edge, the podcast for those who are done with the ordinary and ready to own what makes them different. I'm DJ Newman, and if you're here, it's because you know you're built for more. You're Uncommon by design, ready to break boundaries and build a life of purpose, success and impact. Each week we'll dive into hard hitting strategies, raw stories from the trenches, and. The tools that will sharpen your edge. From game changing lessons to deep diving interviews, this is your space to rise up, build and make your mark. Whether you're growing a business, dreaming of starting one, or looking to level up in life, you'll leave each episode with insights and inspiration to make it happen. You weren't designed to blend in. You were designed to stand out. So if you're ready to defy the norm and bring out your best, let's dive in. Get to work. Your journey to owning your Uncommon Edge starts now. I've probably talked myself out of recording this episode about 110 times and I'm going to record it anyway. Obviously you're listening to me right now, which is honestly, might honestly be the whole point of the next handful of minutes that we're spending together. But before I get into any of it, let me say the most important part first. Because I don't want anybody sitting there waiting for the pitch that's never coming. Because being in shape has nothing to do with, with running a successful business. Nothing. Despite what you might be seeing on social media and all this stuff. I know people who are far worse shape than I am, who will out earn out work and outthink most of the room. I've watched it my entire career. So this is not a fitness episode. I'm not qualified to give you one anyway in the first place. And this episode is really more about consistency and what it proves to you and about you. Welcome to the uncommon Edge. I'm D.J. Newman. All right, let me be really clear and let me just clear the table completely because I want you to know exactly who you're talking to right now. If you don't know me all that well, I'm not in shape. I'm six foot one, currently sitting at around £300. I'm not going to give you a program. I'm not going to tell you that you need a six pack, and I'm definitely not going to go here and sit here and tell you that you're lazy or undisciplined, or that you're a bad person if you're not where you want to be physically. There's an entire genre of content that's out there, and it can stay right where it is. I'm not interested in it. If you want that, you know where to get it. Now, I'll tell you my history with this because I think it matters for what I'm about to say. See, I've been all over the map. I've been as low as 180 pounds. I've been right around 200. And for most of my working career, I floated somewhere between 240 and 270. And I fluctuate all over the place. And I'm not speculating in either direction here. I. I know what it feels like to be in good shape. I know what it feels like to be where I am right now. I've lived both. And here's the thing that I actually believe, which might surprise you, given where this episode sounds like it's going. But a six pack will not build you better profit. It will not build you better systems. It will not fix your pricing. It will not even make you a better leader. Education and experience, build those things. Reps build those things. Nothing about your waistline is going to show up on your P and L. That's the truth. I don't care what anybody says. I'll die on that hill. I believe that when I was little, I believe that while I'm big and everything else in between. So go back and look at the American business owner and how, how they were depicted and how for. For the most of the last century, against big guy, cigar suspenders. Plenty of those guys built things that are standing today. Look at Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Elon Musk. None of these guys are like poster children for, you know, physical fitness. So let's just agree right up front that the correlation everybody assumes between fitness and business ability are not really there. Which raises the obvious question. If I believe all that, why am I making my health a priority right now in my life? And that's the actual episode. But before I answer, I want to talk to you about something that has nothing to do with health. And every single person listening to this deals with this in one form or another. So I'm talking to you right now. Look, people make snap judgments about you. Before you've even said a word, before you've opened your mouth, before you've shown them a single thing that you can do, they've already decided something about you. Maybe for you it's your weight, the lack thereof, or the excess amount. Maybe it's your tattoos and you're sitting across the table from someone who's got a thing about tattoos. Maybe it's what you're wearing. Maybe it's the truck you pulled up in. Maybe you look too young to be taken seriously. Or maybe you look too old to be relevant. Maybe it's your accent, maybe it's your last name. Everybody's carrying something into that room. And the thing I want you to understand is the specific one that comes with being a bigger guy or girl in business goes something like this. Well, if they're not disciplined with themselves, what else are they not disciplined with? I want to be really clear about this. That is often flat out wrong. But fair or not, accurate or not, it's in the room. And you've experienced it. I know you have. And here's the only genuine useful thing I've figured out about snap judgments in 30 plus years of doing business. You don't argue with them. You can't. Nobody has ever talked somebody out of a first impression by explaining it away. Someone convinced of something is typically of the same opinion still if they're convinced against their will. Right? I'm sure you've heard that quote. I butchered it up a little bit there. But you let your work answer it. That's it. That's the one, the only response that has ever worked, at least for me. I don't know about you. And then completely separately, for reasons that have nothing to do with their opinion, you go and handle your own stuff. Because here's the trap. If you go and work on yourself to prove somebody wrong, you've handed them the steering wheel. Now they're driving. That's not ownership, that's just a longer leash. And I've been there, I've done that. Like you hear it all the time. Somebody says you can't do it, hold my beer. You know? Somebody says you can't do it, Watch me. Right? And sometimes that fuels people, and that's okay. And you can definitely use that fuel where it's healthy and where it's necessary. But there's a so much stronger power when you decide to look in the mirror and make a commitment to yourself to do the thing for you and not for anybody else. So back to the question. Why am I bothering if it's not about business performance and it's not about what anybody thinks? Two things I've noticed, and these are just my observations. Take them or leave them. The first one is clarity. When I'm physically exerting myself and when I'm eating well, my brain tends to work better, full stop. Like, that's just honest truth, at least for me. And that's not a study I read. That's just what I've observed about myself over, across a lot of years in good times and bad times and everything else. Gym time for me is thinking time. It's some of the only time in my day where nobody can reach me and there's nothing to respond to. And for me, that is super important. Luckily, I have someone that I go to the gym with that is in business, so we can brainstorm together from time to time. And we show up for each other as well as ourselves. And a lot of times, though, we're not really talking too much. A lot of times just processing what's going on. If something comes up, sure, you can help each other work it out. But when you're in there and your blood's pumping, your brain's getting more of creativity or whatever it is. I don't know about you, I do some of my best thinking in the morning, and that's when I do the gym time. And you know, as you're doing hard things and you, you make your way to do the things that you say you, you want to do, but you have made excuses before not to do them, but you're actually doing them now. That is something that gives you a little pat on the back and it helps you get out there. Now, the second one, you know, it surprises me a lot more than the first one because there's a lot of controversy around it. It doesn't really make as much sense as you would think because you hear the outlier stories. But it's your environment. When you go and put yourself in a room full of people who are trying to live a healthier life, that's just a different room than the one where you're standing in before. And you already know this from business. When you, you heard it, your, your whole career, most likely, you're the average of the people you spend most of your time with. You know, John Maxwell, I think, was quoted for this, like, you're the average of the six people you spend most of your time with. Get in a better room, become a better operator or better person or business, better business owner. If you're in a room full of people who, you know aren't the greatest parents, guess what? You, you're not going to be the greatest parent. Same with business, same with your health. Get around the people, because it's going to become a norm. Have you ever been in a situation where you're trying to do better by yourself in some way, shape or another, and you can feel that, like, judgment and criticism or whatever from the people that you love or you care deeply about, which is so weird? Why is it that a complete stranger in a mastermind group or at the gym will cheer for you ten times louder than the person that you've been running with for the last 10 years? We accept that completely. And when we're talking about, like, the masterminds and peer groups and who you eat lunch with, you know, at the end of the day, it turns out it's not, like, domain specific. It works exactly the same way all over the place. And there's actually a third reason as well. And I'll be honest with you, this is the real one. My dad's a big man, okay? He built a business. He did the work, he provided for his family, and nobody can take that away from him. You know, when he was an operator on the truck, you know, he was. He was a strong guy. He was six. Six. You know, he was, you know, not crazy, overweight or anything like that. He was actually physically in shape. And it's easy to do when you're, you know, he was building a carpet cleaning company. So, you know, when you're swinging a wand and when you're lifting heavy machinery and you're running around talking to customers and doing the work, it's easy to get your steps in, to get your. Your weightlifting in when it's part of your job. And then, you know, one day, as you build a successful business, you get off the truck. And when you get off the truck, you know, you're not stepping as much, you're not being intentional with it. And this comes to the point of, you know, are you building a life by design or are you building a life by default? And health was never really a priority in my household when I was growing up. You know, it was just, you know, never really talked about. And today I watch him struggle to get around. It's hard to watch. And I thought about it, and I think about it way more than I've ever talked about it. Because you. You spend your entire life building something, and the whole reason you built the thing is so that you can enjoy it, right? So you can get down on the floor with your grandkids, so you can take the trip that you spent 30 years talking about so you can get on the flight. That's not a Fitness goal. That's, you know, I want to be really, like, really specific about that. It's a mobility goal. It's more importantly an opportunity goal. You can win the entire game and not be able to collect the prize. And that's the one I don't want to lose by default. Not by deciding against it, just by never deciding it at all, you know. Okay, so here's the part that actually applies to you. No matter what kind of shape you're in, you see it every January, the same thing happens. Everybody makes it to the same promise. Hey, this is the year. The gyms are packed the first week of the month, you can't get a parking spot, and by the third week, most of it's gone. And everybody just quietly agrees to try again next year. I'm not making fun of anybody. Hey, I've been there, I've done it. I've been the number more than once. You know, every one of us has been in that group in some area of our life. But think about what actually happened here. Nobody lacked information. No one person walked into January not knowing what to do. The information has never been the problem. And today with AI, information is never the problem. You got it there. What happened is that a whole lot of people made a promise to themselves and then found out that their own word doesn't carry any weight when it comes to them. And that's the thing that transfers and hits so hard. Have you ever shown up for someone else? Way harder and stronger than you showing up for yourself. Because if you can't keep a commitment to yourself in the easiest possible arena, the one where nobody's counting on you, nobody's checking, no client is waiting, no money's on the line. Then what do you think is happening with the commitments you're making about your business? At least that's what people think. The strategy time you keep scheduling and canceling, that happens. What about the follow up call that you keep not making the conversation with that employee that you've been putting off for what, like five weeks now? Same muscle every time. So here's my actual position on all of this. This is the whole thesis of the episode. A six pack won't help you build profit. It won't build your systems. I meant that. But staying consistent at something, anything, proves that you're a person whose word means something to themselves. And that belief that shows up everywhere in your business, in your marriage, in how you show up for your team, that's why I'm doing this episode. It's not to look A certain way at £300. Believe me, that's not the goal. It's realistically to rebuild the evidence to myself, to no one else, that I do what I say I'm going to do to build irrefutable proof I am who I say am. See, in business, I've learned a lot. It's really easy to grab a book and to dive in. At least it is for me. I truly, genuinely enjoy it and I show up for people in immense ways. But it's time to declare for myself. Maybe it's time for you to do the same. That I'm showing up and doing the things that I said I'm going to do. I'm going to own the outcome. I'm going to do the hard things. And sometimes that is getting up and doing the thing that you said you were going to do. The promise that you made yourself the future self. It's like, I don't know if you ever heard that Matthew McConaughey speech where he's talking about his. The person he looks up to most is the version of himself that I think is like 10 years in the future. If you haven't heard that, I highly Recommend Go on YouTube and look it up. But it's amazing because you never reach the goal that you're striving for. Because when you hit that 10 year goal, you have a new version of yourself that you're looking 10 years out to chase. And that's the same thing. So the time's gonna pass one way or another. So start leveling up the systems in your business so it's one less hurdle, or I shouldn't say systems, your business systems in your life. So it's one less hurdle for you to get over when you walk into the room. You don't have to let your work prove itself, or, you know, it should still be proving itself, but you don't have to get over that initial judgment. You know, you're removing boundaries that don't have to be there. I mean, if you want them there, that's fine. If there's a creative reason for you to put yourself in a hurdled position, fine, do that. But just be intentional with whatever it is. So you're designing your life, not living a life by default. So I'm not gonna give you like an assignment about your body. You know, I always give assignments or whatever, but I'd have no business doing that at all. And you'd be right to ignore me if I did. But what I will do instead is I'll Provoke you just a little bit. Look at the actions you took this week, not your intentions. Remember, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, not what you meant to do. Your actual actions and just ask yourself whether they move you closer to what you say you want or further away from it. That's the whole question. That's it. And notice it works no matter what you're plugging it into. It works if the goal is a healthier life. It works exactly the same if the goal is a bigger business or a better marriage or being the kind of father your kids talk about a certain way when they're 40, closer or further away. At some point, you decide to own the outcome. Not because somebody guilted you into it, not because some guy on a podcast told you to do it, but because you finally got tired of being the person who breaks their own promises. Next week, we've getting back into the business side of things and I've got a good one lined up for you. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it. You can catch us on all the major platforms. Spotify, Apple. We're out on YouTube, Apple, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Thank you for listening. And before you go, I told you at the top that I talked myself out of things for this episode 110 times. Like recording it. And I recorded it anyway. Not because I've got this figured out, I clearly don't on this one part. But since I am at a higher peak of my weight in a few months, into the gym, I've been back and I got a long way to go. But because doing the thing that you keep talking yourself out of, that's a muscle. That's what I want you to understand. Like, I could have easily made 110,000 excuses not to get behind this mic. And even as I'm finishing up the recording of this episode that there's still a little voice in the back that says, ah, you can scrap this one, we'll record another one. But I'm going to put it out there because it's a hard thing to do, to sit there and genuinely look in the mirror and put a version of yourself out there that is vulnerable and doing the hard thing and being honest with yourself in an environment that is safe to do so. And you'll grow from it by doing hard things. You learn a version or you meet a version of yourself that you don't know right now. And because doing the things that you keep talking yourself out of, you know, like I said, that muscle, that's the one that actually transfers into reality. So everything's@ UncommonEdgePodcast.com I'm DJ Newman. Stand out and stay sharp. You've been listening to the Uncommon Edge with DJ Newman, where average goes to die and your next level begins. If you're ready to go deeper with real strategies to build a stronger business and a stronger life, head over to uncommonventures.net new episodes every week. Now get out there and do something Uncommon.