Episode 34: Work, Travel, and the Cost of Constant Motion

November 11, 2026

Episode Takeaways

You’re an executive who returns every email, makes every meeting, and travels from city to city, yet you finish the day unsure if any of it moved you closer to what you care about. The natural response is to push harder and demand more discipline from yourself. When the real gap is direction and support, more effort can simply mean spinning your wheels faster while family, health, and rest slip farther away.

On Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most, Danton Troyer and Kyle Luetters talk with Jim Harshaw Jr., President of Reveal Your Path Coaching, about work travel, burnout, and why busy days don’t always add up to meaningful progress. Danton asks how real travel demands affect accountability and what reasonable expectations look like when a week doesn’t go to plan. Jim shares how he went from feeling stuck as a business owner with a young family to recognizing that what he was missing was structure, not work ethic.

Jim discusses:

Why inconsistency often starts with a lack of clarity rather than a lack of self-discipline
How a long-term vision can be broken down into goals and monthly micro goals you can track
Why goals with a specific timeframe tend to work better than open-ended goals that start “next week” and last “forever”
How burnout can grow from going all in on a career while relationships, health, and sleep fall out of balance
Why a missed goal should be treated as data rather than failure, and how looking for the friction may lead to simple habit changes
What media, area, people, and speech have to do with building an environment that supports your goals
And more!

Connect With Danton Troyer:

Connect with Kyle Luetters:

Connect With Jim Harshaw Jr.:

LinkedIn: Jim Harshaw Jr.
Website: Jim Harshaw Jr.

About Our Guest:

Jim Harshaw Jr. is President at Reveal Your Path Coaching and works with high-performing men, typically in their 40s and 50s, on business growth, relationships, health, and fitness. He grew up in Western Pennsylvania, the son of a construction worker and a secretary, and was recruited as a walk-on wrestler at the University of Virginia, where he won three ACC championships and became an All-American. He coached Division I wrestling for about a decade, and he started and sold a business. His coaching centers on structure: a clear vision, goals with timeframes, and a supportive environment.

Resources:

Transcript

[00:00:00] -: Welcome to Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most with Danton Troyer and Kyle Luetters from Moneta Wealth Management. In this podcast, we help corporate executives and business leaders navigate the real-life uncertainty around new financial life stages, from complex benefits and career changes to retirement and legacy planning.

[00:00:21] -: Join us as we explore these career and life-shaping moments with our guests, helping listeners find clarity so they can focus on what matters most to them

[00:00:32] Kyle Luetters: And welcome to another edition of Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most. It’s a podcast with Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer team. My name is Kyle Luetters, and I’m joined by Danton Troyer and, as always, a very special guest on today’s show, Jim Harshaw.

[00:00:48] Kyle Luetters: And Danton, we get the chance to talk to a number of high-powered folks, a lot of folks in the executive world, the coaching world, but I think this truly is the first [00:01:00] time we’ve had a guy that’s won ACC championships on the podcast here. So with that being said, Jim, welcome to the show.

[00:01:08] Jim Harshaw Jr.: All right. It’s good to be here.

[00:01:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Good to be a first for you guys.

Danton Troyer: Yes.

[00:01:12] Kyle Luetters: So before we get too far deep into your story, there is some connective tissue between the two of us in that we are both F3 brothers in the globe now in, in very different areas. So we were riffing about rapid-fire questions real quick. What’s your least favorite exercise in F3?

[00:01:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Oh, that’s an easy one for me. Iron Mikes. It’s- Different people have different names for them, but it’s like jump lunges. Ah, we did them- Oh … this morning. Burn. Ooh. Just

[00:01:36] Kyle Luetters: burn. We, you have Iron Mike, we have Bonnie Blair.

[00:01:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Oh, Bonnie Blairs, yeah.

[00:01:41] Kyle Luetters: Blairs.

[00:01:41] Danton Troyer: What are you guys doing over there?

[00:01:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah.

[00:01:43] Kyle Luetters: It’s that, that’s the jumping lunge.

[00:01:45] Kyle Luetters: I would say probably- Okay … my least favorite one is the Murder Bunny.

[00:01:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I was gonna say that next, Murder Bunnies, yeah.

[00:01:51] Kyle Luetters: I’ve seen far too many guys tweak backs-

[00:01:54] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Oh, yeah …

[00:01:55] Kyle Luetters: on, on the Murder Bunny. Absolutely. And for all the guys down in Greenwood, if you’re listening [00:02:00] to this, don’t ever put those in an iron packs again.

[00:02:02] Kyle Luetters: Yeah. But, uh, Jim, we kinda riffed here a little bit, but one thing, and number one, thanks for being on the show, too, but looking through your entire career all the way back to athletics, this theme of fitness, athletics, the whole nine yards really seems to be woven through the entire thing. So to, to help us level set, I wanna hear about your story and how you have gotten to the point that you’re at today with the coaching business that you have and the folks that you work with.

[00:02:31] Kyle Luetters: Kinda give us the elevator story, if you will, of Jim Hershaw.

[00:02:35] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, so athletics is played out in front of us. We get to see, this time of year, football played out on the weekends, and we see the ups and downs and the successes and the failures and the resilience and all of that, right? We get to see that played out in front of us, and- all of those, those are all lessons for us that we can apply to ourselves because we have our own setbacks and failures and struggles [00:03:00] and adversity and all of that.

[00:03:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And what I get to do is work directly with men, typically 40s, 50s, high-performing men who are at a high level, and they want to maximize their own potential, and they’re dealing with their own headwinds, whether it’s business growth or the economy or hiring and firing or their marriage or their health and fitness or anything like that, right?

[00:03:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: All of those things make up a person’s life, and I get to coach them in those in all those areas. And backing up a little bit, I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, blue-collar kid. Dad was a construction worker. Mom was a secretary. Wrestling was gonna be my way out, and my goal was to win the Pennsylvania State Championship.

[00:03:39] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And not only did I not win the state championship, I didn’t even get on the podium. I fell terribly far short. And I remember just being curled up in the in the backseat of our 15-passenger van on the way home from the state championships just in tears like Man, where did I go wrong? I put everything into this, trained year-round, all of that.

[00:03:58] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So many of my friends that I [00:04:00] competed with over the summer and everything were on the podium and won championships. And anyway, I still luckily got recruited to a couple of schools, and University of Virginia, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Brown, a few other schools recruited me. I had good grades. I was a decent wrestler, but not good enough to really get any scholarship money.

[00:04:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So ended up being a recruited walk-on at the University of Virginia. Showed up there. Everybody on the team was a state champion or a three-time state place winner. I was none of those. It was a top 10 recruiting class. I was the asterisk at the bottom. I was at the end of the list of here’s why we’re ranked so high.

[00:04:32] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And so, but I still had goals. I still knew that I had potential, wanted to reach my next level, and got there, got into the right infrastructure, and ended up winning, as you mentioned, three ACC championships and got on the podium at NCAAs in front of 15,000 people as an All-American, and graduated with two degrees from the number one public school in the country.

[00:04:55] Jim Harshaw Jr.: First person in my family to graduate from college, and it was amazing. A complete transformation, [00:05:00] but it was because of an infrastructure that was in place that took the potential that I had and helped me actually maximize it and fulfill it. So, graduated from college, got into coaching, coached Division I for about a decade.

[00:05:13] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I was the youngest Division I head wrestling coach in the country at one point, got out of coaching, got into business, started and sold my first business, and that was successful. Started another company, and about two years into it, I had revenue and customers, but not enough to keep the lights on, ended up shutting that down.

[00:05:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I found myself at this point again, where I knew I had potential. I didn’t know how to get it out. I didn’t know how to maximize what was possible. I had a young family, and balance was… There were other stakeholders in my life now, right? It wasn’t all about me like it was when I was an athlete.

[00:05:47] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It was now about family and also my business and supporting my family, and oh, by the way, trying to stay healthy and fit along the way. And I thought, “Okay, I know I’ve got potential. I know I’ve got ability here. I know [00:06:00] I’ve got the work ethic, all the things that I developed through athletics and sports over the years, but again, I don’t know how to maximize my potential.

[00:06:06] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I feel like I’m getting in my own way.” And then I thought to myself, “Gosh, I felt like this before when I showed up in college.” I thought, “What was in place then that’s not in place now?” And I thought to myself, “It was the infrastructure.” It was the infrastructure of having coaches, and I can get into more nitty-gritty of this infrastructure, of this framework, which is the backbone of my coaching now.

[00:06:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: But a big part of it was I had a coach who called me out if I needed called out or picked me up and dusted me off, helped me see my blind spots. You’re on the… We are all on the inside of the jar trying to read the label. We need somebody outside of us who can see our blind spots. We’ve all got them, and that was a critical part of the infrastructure.

[00:06:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Being around the right people is a critical part of the infrastructure. But I’ll pause there. But that realization changed my life and is what I’m helping guys do now.

[00:06:57] Danton Troyer: Yeah, I think that translates ’cause the topic we’re talking [00:07:00] about is work travel and the cost of constant motion, and if, we haven’t even gotten into this yet, but if you don’t have infrastructure, you can find yourself going from city to city, meeting to meeting, and you’re doing things, but is it really fulfilling and is it really bringing the end goal of, or what is the end goal in some cases?

[00:07:18] Danton Troyer: So, you know, I think that’s a good segue into the topic that we wanna talk about today for sure. And from your perspective-

[00:07:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And yeah,Danton, if, can I just comment on that? Please, yeah. ‘Cause what you said is so critical for people to understand, for the listener, like- So many guys are going, uh, men and women, right?

[00:07:33] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yes. I focus on men, of course. Men and women are driven and pushing. We’re going 100 miles an hour, getting 100 things done, and at the end of the day, you can find yourself exhausted and wondering- did I even move the needle?

[00:07:48] Danton Troyer: Every day. Preach. Yeah.

[00:07:49] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And that’s where, that’s where you have to have a clear vision.

[00:07:54] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And we’ll get into the specific topic here today about travel and et cetera. But we have to have a clear vision [00:08:00] of where we’re going, what we actually want. And this is long-term vision for our lives, and then the goals that are gonna get us there. And if we don’t have those, we are just… We’re gonna do exactly what I said.

[00:08:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: We’re gonna go 100 miles an hour all day long, get 100 things done, but at the end of the day go, “I don’t even know what I did. I returned emails. I was responding and reacting all day, and don’t know if I’m really moving meaningfully towards what I want in my life,” which is what you guys help people do, right?

Danton Troyer: Yeah.

[00:08:26] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Is to really get to a point in their life where they have the finances that they want, and they can live the lives that they want. But if you don’t have that clarity, you will struggle.

[00:08:35] Kyle Luetters: No, I think it’s an insanely important point. Because again, if you just feel like you’re spinning your wheels the entire time, the base layer of things get done.

[00:08:46] Kyle Luetters: The emails get replied to, the day-to-day things happen, but it’s always that old concept of working in the business versus working on the business. It takes that separation a little bit, and I love the way you put it with infrastructure. Unless we [00:09:00] put a framework or something around this thing to help us get to where we wanna go, the traction piece, it’s just all gonna kind of fall apart

[00:09:08] Kyle Luetters: or we’re never gonna get anywhere.

[00:09:09] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. And for anybody who’s ever competed in a sport or participated in an activity at school, whether it’s band or otherwise, you know that when there’s an infrastructure, you do the thing. You do the thing that you would not do otherwise. If somebody else is telling you when to show up at practice, you’re gonna show up to practice.

[00:09:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: If you have accountability, you’re going to do the thing. But if you don’t, you’re gonna drift to your own default. And- sure enough … guys like us, and a lot of the listeners, our default is probably fine. But the listeners are also not listening to this podcast because they’re okay with just fine and their own default.

[00:09:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: They wanna operate at some level above that default. And without the infrastructure, which includes having a coach, being around the right people, having long-term clarity in what your vision looks [00:10:00] like, if you don’t have those, you’re going to just, like you said, Kyle, find yourself spinning your wheels, working really hard, but not making the progress that you know you could be making.

[00:10:12] Kyle Luetters: I like the visualization of if you ever think about driving across ice. Okay? You can spin your wheels, and you probably go in a direction. But it… We’ve all seen the comedy strip, like the wheels are spinning really fast, and there’s just a very slow movement of the object across. And that’s what I think a lot of life becomes for a lot of people, is you start to add things on top of it, and that infrastructure gets…

[00:10:38] Kyle Luetters: I hate to say that it slips away or it gets deconstructed, but it just, there’s more things that you have to worry about and less focusing. ‘Cause like you when you were a college wrestler, show up to practice at this time, do this thing, do that thing. There wasn’t like a spouse or kids or- … or a boss or this boss’s boss-

[00:10:55] Kyle Luetters: and all that other stuff. So I like what you’re saying about, hey, how do we get back [00:11:00] to level set of this is all pretty simple, but it’s difficult in a way to put that infrastructure in place.

[00:11:05] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We’re not taught how to put this infrastructure in place. We can read the books. I’ve got these books behind me, and you guys…

[00:11:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’m sure you guys are readers and learners. It’s one thing to know academically, okay, I’ve gotta have a vision for my life. I gotta understand what my core values are. I’ve gotta have the right goals identified. I’ve gotta track and measure my goals. I’ve gotta surround myself with the right people.

[00:11:27] Jim Harshaw Jr.: We know all of this academically.

[00:11:29] Kyle Luetters: Yeah

[00:11:31] Jim Harshaw Jr.: But if you don’t have the infrastructure, you will probably implement 1% of it. We can probably all spout a lot of this stuff off the top of our heads, but when you look at elite performers, let’s just use sports because that’s the thing that’s so easy to see, we see, okay, there’s no ambiguity in what they’re trying to accomplish.

[00:11:49] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Do you have that level of clarity around what is it that I’m trying to accomplish in my life, right?

[00:11:55] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Not in sports it’s… I don’t know. In the NFL, it’s the Super Bowl. I’m trying to win the Super Bowl, [00:12:00] right? That’s clarity. It’s compelling, it’s exciting, it’s tangible. You can see it, and therefore you can do really hard things and play through injury and sacrifice in the way that those guys do.

[00:12:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And if we don’t have that, then you’re gonna be like that car spinning its wheels. And this is where people get into inconsistency. “Ah, I could be more consistent. I need to have more self-discipline. I need to be more focused.”

And it starts with clarity. Long-term clarity, and then reverse engineering that down into shorter term clarity.

[00:12:31] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like, what are my goals? And having the sort of… I break these down with my guys, even down to what I call micro goals. These are the monthly goals. Like, every single month you need to come back into the system, track the micro goals so you can see progress along the way, or where you’re not making progress.

[00:12:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What gets measured gets managed.

[00:12:50] Kyle Luetters: So on that topic a little bit, I like the way that you extrapolated that out. Not only do you need to have the vision, but you also need to have a timeframe. So every year there is a Super Bowl. We know what date [00:13:00] it is. Right. We know where it’s at. And that can still be the big thing.

[00:13:03] Kyle Luetters: And I’ve often found, too, like, with a lot of different people, especially, like, executives, C-suites, a lot of the folks we end up working with, that they get… They do a good job of… maybe they’re good at casting the vision and figuring out where they wanna go, but can you speak a little bit to how timeframes matter?

[00:13:23] Kyle Luetters: Because I think sometimes without timeframes-

[00:13:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah …

[00:13:26] Kyle Luetters: burnout can show up pretty quickly.

[00:13:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. So there was a study done on cigarette smokers trying to quit smoking, and if you say, “I want to quit smoking forever”- not having a timeframe, like forever is like infinity. Like it’s just there’s no real timeframe.

[00:13:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You will struggle because you can always do it tomorrow. If I’m gonna quit forever, you know what? Today, one more day, one more cigarette, one more week, one more month, next month I’ll get to it. But if you say, “I’m going to quit [00:14:00] smoking for the month.” And they identified whenever people had a clearer timeframe, they were more likely to quit.

[00:14:09] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s like, “I’m not quitting forever, I’m just going to quit for the month.” People were much more successful. And so I work with a lot of guys who come into my program, into my coaching, and they’re like, I want to, I don’t know, I wanna go to the gym four times a week. “And what’s the deadline for that?”

[00:14:27] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s like, “Forever. I wanna do it forever, and I wanna start next week. So I’ll set the deadline next week.” It’s like, no, we need a point in the future where we can stop, look back and say, “Did you accomplish the goal of going to the gym four times a week?” If you don’t have that point out in the future, it is always easy to just say, “Well…maybe next week, maybe next week,” and that’s when you get into lack of consistency and lack of sticking with habits over the long term.

[00:14:52] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So there has to be a timeframe where you can point to it and say, “That’s my goal, is to [00:15:00] get to, I don’t know, December 31st, and having had worked out four days a week every week for the entire year.” There has to be a timeframe, even if you’re just going to turn around and set that same goal for the next year.

[00:15:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Most people think that they will. I found out that most people don’t. There will be a different version of that goal. It might be, “Okay, now I did a pretty good job on that. I realize that four days a week sometimes can be hard getting to the gym, so I’m gonna say two days a week, and then I’m also gonna run two days a week and maybe do something else at home.”

[00:15:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So these goals tend to evolve over time, but if you’re not setting the deadline where you’re actually gonna say, “Okay, at this point I’m gonna stop and look back,” just like a football player in the hypothetical situation of a Super Bowl, that’s their recalibration point. If you don’t have that, if you’re just saying, “I wanna do the thing starting next week and I wanna do it forever,” it’s most likely not going to work.

[00:15:54] Danton Troyer: Oh, yeah. Interesting.

[00:15:59] Danton Troyer: Well, [00:16:00] we’re working with typically executives as well. You’re talking about working out and trying to stay healthy, and I know that was relating to more about the goal setting as well, but a lot of folks are getting burnt out. We talk about the physical side of working out, but they’re also traveling all over the place.

[00:16:12] Danton Troyer: That’s what we’re talking about. And so how do, or do you give yourself grace on those days where you know, if it’s four days a week and you don’t make it, how do you combat that if it’s a failed week because you were traveling?

[00:16:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah.

[00:16:23] Danton Troyer: I could see that and be like, “Three days was fine this week.

[00:16:25] Danton Troyer: It’ll be fine next week, too.” And then all of a sudden you’re doing three instead of four. What’s the advice you give there?

[00:16:31] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, sure. Great question. So two points here. Number one, and I don’t think I fully answered the end of the question there, which was about burnout. So we’ll talk more about that now.

[00:16:39] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. So burnout happens when you don’t… when you’re out of balance. And listen, I… everybody loves to say, there’s no such thing as work-life balance, it’s work-life integration. Oh, no, it’s not integration now. Now, it’s work-life harmony. It’s like, whatever you wanna call it, we all know what it is.

[00:16:53] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s like Marcus Aurelius said, you know, “Stop debating what a good man is and be one.” It’s the same thing. Stop debating what work-life balance is and go [00:17:00] do it, right?

[00:17:00] Kyle Luetters: Achieve it.

[00:17:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And so for when you don’t have clear goals in each area of your life, certainly your business and your career. We know that, right?

[00:17:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: For the guys listening, men and women listening, like we all know, you’ve got this career goal. But if you’re sacrificing your relationships for it, you will feel burnout. You will feel the friction when you walk in the door. Your brain will still be at work when you’re supposed to…when you’re physically at home.

[00:17:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: If you’re not getting in your workouts, if you don’t have health goals, like getting the right amount of sleep, you are not going to show up as the best version of you at work. You’re not gonna show up as the best version of you at home. That is directly what leads to burnout, is going all in, being pulled so much towards one direction that you’re sacrificing the areas that actually matter most, like your family, your health and fitness, your life and livelihood, the things that you enjoy doing.

[00:17:52] Jim Harshaw Jr.: That is when burnout sets in. And so what happens, Danton, and when you asked about if you miss, right? So everybody [00:18:00] misses.

[00:18:00] Danton Troyer: Yeah.

[00:18:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And first of all, it’s data. When you fail, it’s just data. It’s not you are a failure, you are a bad person. Look, a lot of people think to themselves, “Look, there I go again. I can’t do this thing.

[00:18:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I can’t grow my business to whatever level. I can’t lose that 10 pounds,” or whatever it is, right? “I can’t stick to the thing ’cause I can’t get myself to do the 10 outreaches per day to grow my business.”

It’s data. It’s data, and it’s information. Now, if you’re stuck inside your own head trying to read the jar from inside the label, you’re going to probably beat yourself up, just keep on grinding and trying to do the same thing repetitively, as opposed to having somebody outside of you or a group of people outside of you who can ask you the hard questions and say, “Okay, where’s the friction?”

[00:18:50] Jim Harshaw Jr.: For example. Where’s the friction? I’m not making the 10 outreaches per day because I’ve got a… This is actually a true example with one of my clients. [00:19:00] He’s like, “I’m not making the 10 outreaches per day because the friction is I’ve got to log into my system, I’ve got to sort through it, I’ve got to find my 10 people, create the list, and then I can…

[00:19:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: If I have the list, I’ll make the calls.” It’s like, okay, so what if once a week on Monday morning, we just set the habit of once a week creating 50 contact, creating the list of 50 contacts. Boom. Did it. His business took off. It was a simple habit change there.

But it’s data. You have to have the data to go, okay, this is working.

[00:19:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: This is not working, and it’s not like a judgment on you or how good of a human you are. So it’s data, right?

Now, here’s the second point I was gonna make. One of my clients said this to me. His name’s John. He’s been with me for 10 years probably, this guy, and high performer, driven guy, and he said this on a coaching call when we had…

[00:19:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It was a group coaching call, and he said to the one guy, ’cause the one guy said – one of his goals was to read every night. Read, like, a half an hour a night, and he’s like, “Man, I just can’t get myself to do [00:20:00] it.” And the guy goes, “If you’re not doing it because you’re doing something else or there’s a reason or there’s something better that you’re doing, maybe you’re, I don’t know, spending time with your kids or something like that, then it’s okay.

[00:20:14] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You can give yourself grace. But you also know that if you’re not doing it because you’re lazy, you’re scrolling Instagram, or you’re drinking too many beers or watching Netflix on repeat, then it’s time to get hard with yourself, and only you know that.”

And so bringing this back around to burnout is- you have to track and measure your progress in the different areas of your goals.

[00:20:39] Jim Harshaw Jr.: If you’re not getting your workouts in and you’re not getting your date nights in at home, you are gonna have burnout because you’re gonna go to work, you’re gonna be already burned out, you’re gonna show up at home, you’re gonna still be thinking about work. If you have clarity, you know that at the end of the day, I’m gonna come back, I’m gonna close the book on my business, on my work, and I’m gonna go home because I’ve got intentions and focus there [00:21:00]

[00:21:00] Kyle Luetters: I love that and I love the way that you succinctly put it and defined what burnout is, ’cause sometimes I feel when we have conversations with folks, especially around maybe they’re gonna make a job change, they’re gonna go do something different, Danton and I have, or Danton really, has shared a story sometimes about somebody that’s going to take a leap to another company in a different role, and sometimes we hear the word burnout, and it’s like defining exactly what that is, is extremely important.

[00:21:24] Kyle Luetters: I wanna go back to infrastructure for just a second. And how do you feel that infrastructure plays into the concept? You answered a little bit, but how do you feel that the infrastructure interacts with balance-

[00:21:39] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah …

[00:21:39] Kyle Luetters: when it comes to high-performing people? What does that infrastructure provide from a balance standpoint psychologically-

[00:21:47] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah

[00:21:47] Kyle Luetters: to these folks?

[00:21:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So I’m gonna hone in specifically on one piece of infrastructure that’ll be really helpful. So in the environment…we call this the environment of excellence [00:22:00] is, number one, the coach, number two is the community of people you hang around, but I’m gonna go a little more granular here.

[00:22:06] Jim Harshaw Jr.: There’s really four parts to the environment of excellence. And it’s M-A-P-S, and, and that acronym, I’m gonna give you the words for each of those, but just like you need a map to get from point A to point B, you gotta have your MAPS in place to get from where you’re at to where you wanna go in your life if you wanna maintain balance, right?

[00:22:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: If you wanna do it in a meaningful way that is not sacrificing your family, not sacrificing your health, not sacrificing the things that are most important to you, you’ve gotta have the right MAPS in place. So media, area, people, speech are the four words. So M is for media. So media means this: What is the media that I need to block out of my life, right?

[00:22:46] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Maybe social media, maybe the news, right? Some of these- … news-

Danton Troyer: All of it. Yeah … all of it.

Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, a lot of times. Just block it all. Like, what do I need to block out, and what else do I need to bring into my life? What are the podcasts I need to listen to, audiobooks I could be [00:23:00] listening to, books I could be reading?

[00:23:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What is the media that I want to intentionally, the keyword here is intention, intentionally choose to bring into my life as, as opposed to just letting stuff come at me on X and Instagram and whatever other media that just kinda drifts into your life, right? So M is for media, like control, being aware and control of the media that’s coming into your life.

[00:23:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So for example,one of my micro goals actually right now in my relationship goal for me personally is to make sure I’m consuming relationship media every week. Some kind of like- watching a YouTube video by John Gottman, Dr. John Gottman Institute or something like that. He’s a great marriage coach and counselor, therapist, author, all that.

[00:23:47] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It’s such good stuff. I want that to be top of mind for me as opposed to cat videos when I’m scrolling through. You know what I mean? Like, I want to be intentional about

[00:23:54] Kyle Luetters: that. Did you just reveal something to us?

[00:23:56] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What’s that?

[00:23:56] Kyle Luetters: The algorithm. Actually.

[00:23:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah.

[00:23:59] Kyle Luetters: Sorry, go [00:24:00] ahead.

[00:24:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So that’s media. A is for area, like the physical space around you.

[00:24:03] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’ve got a standing desk. I’m sitting down at it right now, but a lot of times actually doing podcasts, a lot of times I’m standing up. But I stand up and I sit down throughout the day, so it’s like a standing desk is part of my environment. Like optimizing your environment around you for success. And another thing, for example, in my physical space around me here right now is, for the listeners you can’t…

[00:24:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: they can’t see it, but I’ve just held up my printout of my goals for the month, my micro goals for the month. I’ve got those within arm’s reach. I’ve got my journal right next to me. I’ve got water here. Like optimizing your area around you, right? Making sure that your goals are in front of you, making sure you have things that are gonna help you perform at your best.

[00:24:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It might be laying out your workout clothes the night before so you can get your workout in, right? Optimizing your environment so that success can happen for you in whatever that means. Right? Having the right apps on your phone. [00:25:00] So that’s A for area. P is people. I talked about people already, right?

[00:25:04] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Having a coach or somebody outside of you who can call you out and help you see your blind spots, having the teammates that are around you. So that’s people.

And then the last one is speech, and speech is our internal talk and our out loud voice. There’s a great quote by Josh Waitzkin, who wrote “The Art of Learning,” and he was the subject of “Chasing Bobby Fischer.”

[00:25:25] Jim Harshaw Jr.: He’s a world champion chess player, world champion martial artist. He’s just one of those fascinating people. But he said, “If our mind is a supercomputer, our self-talk is the program that’s running it.” If our mind is a supercomputer, our self-talk is the program that’s running it. We have to be intentional about our self-talk.

[00:25:44] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I don’t care who you are, you’ve got that little negative voice of doubt inside of you. And for everybody listening, look around you. There’s a great quote by Jackson Brown, the author, not the musician, but he said- … “Everybody you meet loves something, has lost something, [00:26:00] and is afraid of something.”

[00:26:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Everybody you meet, and that is true even for the most confident person that you see down the street who looks like everything is perfect in his or her life. They love something, lost something, and are afraid of something, and so we all have to battle that voice of doubt. I had Michael Chandler on my podcast.

[00:26:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: He’s a UFC fighter. He’s an All-American wrestler like I was, and he was at Missouri, and he’s one of the top UFC fighters in the world. He’s been on my podcast a few times now, and I saw a recent Instagram post from him. Mind you, this is one of the best highest performers on the planet, and he talked about this voice, this negative voice of doubt that he has to battle every day, and how he has to use his language, his words, to literally speak out loud to override that little voice, negative voice of doubt that will grind you down, wear you down, push you into burnout, just mentally make you feel burnt out if you’re not [00:27:00] actively managing that.

[00:27:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And guys, I’m sorry, I could keep on going. I’m gonna share one more point here. ‘Cause I talk about this stuff, and teach this stuff, and coach this stuff, and speak on this stuff all the time. There’s a guy named Dr. Nate Zinsser. Dr. Nate Zinsser was the Director of Performance at West Point for 30 years, and even he works with the, the most elite performer.

[00:27:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: He was Eli Manning’s mindset coach when Eli Manning beat Tom Brady. Eli Manning needed a mindset coach, and- the best in the world do, so the average folk like us, we could also benefit from that mindset work, from managing and being aware of the words that are coming out of our mouth and internally as well.

[00:27:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So environment of excellence, media area, people, speech. When you’re intentional about those things, you will fend off burnout, you will have more clarity, and you will be… you’ll feel more balanced in your life

[00:27:59] Kyle Luetters: So as we [00:28:00] head for home here, like what I’m really gathering from you, Jim, is like all of this stuff really does matter, but a lot of it comes back to the infrastructure you put in place around you, both internally and externally, those forces that are working upon you, as well as the things that you put in place.

[00:28:15] Kyle Luetters: We, again, we alluded to at the beginning, we’re both F3 guys. It’s the daily bricks that you stack internally, and then also, too, the people that you bring in on the outside that help provide more of that infrastructure-

[00:28:28] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah …

[00:28:28] Kyle Luetters: in your life.

[00:28:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Absolutely.

[00:28:30] Kyle Luetters: If folks wanted to learn more about you, ’cause I feel like we, we barely scratched the surface of all the other stuff you’ve done.

[00:28:34] Kyle Luetters: There’s a TEDx talk. There’s a whole host of other things you mentioned, a podcast. If folks wanted to learn more about you, infrastructure, the MAPS, the micro goals that you… all of the stuff that you have, to dive deeper into that work, where could they visit you? Where’s the best place to find you?

[00:28:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Just Google my name, Jim Harshaw, H-A-R-S-H-A-W, Jim Harshaw. You’ll find me; you’ll find my podcast; you’ll find my website, my TEDx talk, Why I Teach My Children To Fail. And if you wanna book a call, you can – I offer free [00:29:00] initial calls, like if you wanna book a call, and I can talk about how this framework would apply directly to your life, ’cause you might be sitting there going, “Yeah, but…”

[00:29:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And so I can share with you directly how this would, like how to implement this on your own. So go to jimharshawjr.com/apply, or just go to my website, and you’ll see where you can book a call there.

[00:29:18] Kyle Luetters: I appreciate you a great deal.

[00:29:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Likewise, guys.

[00:29:21] Kyle Luetters: Won’t speak for Danton, but it’s always great to talk to you.

[00:29:23] Kyle Luetters: We get a chance to talk every so often, but now it’s great to do it in an official capacity, and it’s just been an honor.

Danton Troyer: Yeah. Likewise, appreciate you coming on.

[00:29:30] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, Kyle, Danton.

[00:29:30] Kyle Luetters: Yep. Perfect.

Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most is a production of Moneta’s Gast Freeman Troyer team. Until next time, enjoy what matters most.

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