Why Your Nervous System Is a Business Asset

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Are you a law firm owner who is struggling with working in a healthy way? In this solo episode of Maximum Lawyer Live, host Tyson Mutrux explores why health is essential for lawyers, not just as a personal goal but as the foundation for professional success, sound decision-making, and balanced family life. Drawing on personal experiences and recent conversations, Tyson discusses the impact of sleep, stress, and daily habits on leadership and productivity. 

Tyson shares how leadership under stress can really impact the success of a firm, but provides some insights on how to overcome it. Under stress, most people are not thinking clearly and will make decisions that are rash and uncharacteristic. If this happens, the overall environment of a firm can suffer, leading to unhappy employees and clients. In order to move away from this, there are some things you can implement. One way is to figure out how you work best so you are not overwhelmed. Think about stacking meetings during the hours you are most productive, so you can spend other parts of the day focusing on different priorities.

Tyson delves into the idea of using health as a competitive advantage. If you are marketing yourself or your firm, you need to present yourself in a healthy way. You need to think clearly, have emotional regulation and strategic thinking in order to attract clients. For some people, your appearance on camera is the first point of contact. If you show potential clients that you are well regulated and communicate clearly, you will look healthy. This can be a big differentiator when clients are making decisions on choosing a lawyer.

Listen in to learn more!

2:28 Quality of Thoughts and Health

5:40 Leadership Under Stress

13:09 Exhaustion, Rework, and Profitability
20:54 Health as a Competitive Advantage
28:48 Health as Infrastructure

Tune in to today’s episode and checkout the full show notes here. 

Creators and Guests

Host

Tyson Mutrux

Tyson is the founder of Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers and the co-founder of Maximum Lawyer.

What is Maximum Lawyer?

Maximum Lawyer is the podcast for law firm owners who want to scale with intention and build a business that works for their life.

Hosted by Tyson Mutrux, each weekly episode features candid conversations with law firm owners, business experts, and industry leaders sharing real strategies and lessons learned in the trenches.

If you're ready to grow your firm with less stress and more support, this is your next must listen. Subscribe today.

Tyson Mutrux 00:00:00 Welcome back to Maximum lawyer Live I'm Tyson Mutrux and today we are talking about your health. this is a really important topic, something that I think that we overlook. And the idea for this episode came from a podcast interview that I did with Danny Decker yesterday. Danny interviewed me and he asked me about why I talked so much about health, and he because he said he was a little surprised whenever he came to the conference and how we had a strong emphasis on health, you know, physical health, mental health and all that. And it was a fun question. it was one that I had actually not been asked before, but I wanted to go through and talk about that today, because it really got me thinking over the last 24 hours about how we, we generally, as lawyers, we treat health as like kind of like a nice to have and not that it's, you know, a necessary thing to have. And I think that's the wrong way of looking at it. It is a failed foundational infrastructure for what we do.

Tyson Mutrux 00:01:12 if you it's not a hobby. And that's the other thing. It's like we kind of treat, health. Like it's just a hobby. It's like something we do if there's time to do it. but if you really, really think about it, health is. It's the it's the infrastructure for dealing with our family. It's our infrastructure for running our firms. It's infrastructure for all of our hobbies. if it cracks, if it crumbles, everything built on top of it is really destabilized. If you don't have your health, you really have nothing. and so I like I was asking I was kind of thinking this question last night. Like, okay, What if health is separate from your law firm but is not separate from your law firm? Like, but it's actually the foundation of it. Right. and so there's, there's a lot I think there's a lot to this too. And that's why I want to talk about I want to kind of unpack it live on, on the show. Like, if you think about that, Marcus Aurelius quote, the happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts, I think is what it is.

Tyson Mutrux 00:02:28 And the quality of your thoughts are not there. The quality is pretty low if your health is bad. Think about it. I mean, the let's say you have a cold. Okay. Just a cold. Not not like super being sick. Like just having that cold can really affect everything that you're doing. I mean, that's just an example of like how important health is. Right. Think about like you stub your toe, right? Like, think about the rage that goes through your brain in that moment. I mean, and that's that's just small stuff, right? That's just the small stuff. we talked about sleep, and sleep is one thing. And I told Danny to like, the thing that I struggle with the most is most asleep. It's something that my dad has always been the same way where my dad, whenever I was younger, he got and still to this day got up early, stayed up late, got up early, stayed up late. And I kind of I've tried to correct that.

Tyson Mutrux 00:03:27 I have actually done a decent job according to my whoop of that. My I've lowered my whoop age significantly over the last about nine months or so. but actually by about five years. So it's a it's a significant reduction. I can do a lot better. But, because if you think about like, sleep is if you think about health in general, I mean, you can work out, you can eat healthy, you can do all the all the good stuff, do yoga and everything. You can make sure your mental health is good, but if you don't sleep, that is. I mean, that ruins everything. Sleep is really the most important thing. if you look at it like sleep deprivation. I mean, it leads to reduced cognitive performance. lower reaction times. You have impaired judgment. I mean, really important things as a lawyer impair judgment. I mean, reaction time. You may think like you may not think that reaction time is important, but if you're in litigation, reaction time is extremely important.

Tyson Mutrux 00:04:29 cognitive cognitive performance is important for all of us. Every one of us. Really, really important. so when it comes to the things that we do, those margins matter. If you think about, I don't know, for some reason that makes me think of, like formula one, like formula one. I love formula one. And it really comes down to seconds, like like if fractions of a second, they're always looking to cut out carve off a fraction of a second. And so I know a lot of you, for some of you, I'm talking to people that are like, that's what you're doing. You're you're ultra optimizing things like the Jeremy Jeremy Danielson of the world. You're trying to optimize every little thing for other the others of you, you. I may be talking to people that you need to make significant changes, right? so I'm really talking to all of you. so. I kind of think about and I've, I've written down a list of questions like another question to maybe ask is like, so like when you, when you've under slept or you're stressed, how does that show up in your leadership? Yeah.

Tyson Mutrux 00:05:40 Because I know that whenever I, I'm that way I can I can tend to be a little short with people. Right. that's not the greatest way to lead. Okay. if you are, you know, trying to lead by example and you are not optimal. You're not really going to be able to lead by example. Okay. Like you. So you really, really have to get that sleep. Okay. Another thing. Another way to look at it is like, think about your your last bad decision that you made. All right. Were you were you rested? Were you calm? Were you clear or. Or were you? Maybe you were exhausted. Maybe you're a bit more reactive. Like so really think about. Think about that last time that you you had you made that last bad decision. I think it might get you to think. Okay, maybe I need to adjust my thinking on this a little bit. And this is for some of you. I hope this is a little bit of a wake up call.

Tyson Mutrux 00:06:44 Where, I know before I made significant changes to my diet and my and and working out and everything else, my health, I really focused more on my health. I was just coasting. I kind of needed a little bit of a jolt as well, what I needed. I wish someone would have shaken me at like 28 and said, hey, get your shit together. You know, you got to get this together. because I was working on the business so much, I was not focused at all on my health. I was focused way too much on the business, and my health suffered for it. luckily, it wasn't too late for me. And so I'm hoping for some of you, it's the same. Okay. there's another thing that was kind of thinking about, too is like, just, there's something called in business the law of diminishing returns. And, I think that there is a point, whereas, overworked attorneys, we, we tend to do this a little bit where, we will work our butts off.

Tyson Mutrux 00:07:44 But I think there's a certain point where, the more input that you put into it, it's going to produce less output. Okay. So I think we probably violate this principle daily where we we keep just trying to beat it to death and just keep going and keep going and keep going. I remember back in, you know, early days of the firm where I was up till three in the morning working on things. I'd say probably once I got to about 7:00, everything between 7 and 3 a.m. was probably things that probably had to get redone, or the quality of it was not great. If I'm being completely honest, it just probably was not a great word product. So once you get to a certain point, whenever you are, you're exhausted. Or maybe you just put it in so many hours lately, you're just you're just kind of cooked. maybe it's time to step back a little bit and refresh. I know that, justice she's done a really good job of putting like rest time on my counter, which I think is kind of cool.

Tyson Mutrux 00:08:55 And that's something I asked for, is just something I think she may have, may have recognized that I needed, you know, where, you know, you know, on a Friday morning, there was one day, within the last few weeks where, like they said, you're just not working tomorrow. I thought that was kind of. That was kind of fun. So, so maybe ask yourself, at what point does another hour at the office stop producing meaningful value? Like, when we were when we were prepping for Max Lockhart, I remember Jason Selke, he and I were talking, and his whole idea was like, how do you how do you leave the office an hour earlier and get to the office an hour later each day? Like, how can you design your life for that? I think that's a really, really interesting thought experiment and also incredible if you can pull that off. I think that is a really, really interesting thing. Because I can tell you between the hour of 4 to 5.

Tyson Mutrux 00:09:56 Don't don't typically, produce a lot of great work. I just don't. That's why we we try to stack, meetings for me later in the day. That way I'm not trying to produce work because the work, my work product and things, I'm producing, it just. I'm just not as good. I'm better in the mornings than I am in the afternoons. I know that about myself. And so we try to I try to put meetings that I've got to have to later in the day. That way I'm not having to produce things I can I can still communicate just fine. I can still talk with people just fine. I have a meeting just fine. But actual work product is is not not helpful. okay, so this is this next question I'm going to ask you is, it's going to hit some of you really hard. so be ready for it. and here it is. Is grinding actually courageous like you think it is or is it lack of strategic discipline? Okay. So you think you're grinding is is oh, it's I'm being a hero.

Tyson Mutrux 00:11:01 I'm being courageous. But are you actually just not being disciplined? Are you really not being focused on the things you should be focusing on? It's really it's I think that's a really tough pill for some of you to swallow. Okay. It's a tough pill for me to swallow sometimes, too. So not just me. I think it's, I think a lot of us have that same problem. Okay, that's not just you. I mean, it's it's it's. A lot of us have that same issue. there's a Seneca quote that I pulled for this. it's not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that things are difficult. how about that, That's a pretty. It's a spot on quote for the situation. And I think that a big part of this is that health gives you the discipline to stop when stopping is strategically smarter. Like if you really think about it, if you are on top of your game like you're feeling good, you're happy, your health is there.

Tyson Mutrux 00:12:03 Like thinking about you. It is much easier to be disciplined than otherwise. like, think about how easy it is to shut down the day just because you're not feeling well. Or maybe you're back hurts or you name the excuse, but when you're on top of your game, discipline is so much easier. It's such an easier thing. you have no excuses at that point. So why don't we do? Why don't we remove those excuses, right? Why don't we, instead of picking up that doughnut, which I love donuts. Trust me, I love donuts. my favorite breakfast food. Maybe my favorite food, actually. but instead of picking up that doughnut, maybe pick it with a protein bar or pick up a banana. something that's that's a little healthier. And here's something that I've been kind of playing around with lately is all right. Go with something healthy. You're not healthy. So baby steps. So go with something healthy or. so let's say you're going to have a dessert. Maybe you have something that is you.

Tyson Mutrux 00:13:09 Not as much sugar, not as much fat. something like that. So it's still bad for you, but just not not as bad for you. So incremental steps, baby steps. That's what. That's what matters. All right. Oh, something else I meant to bring up to, Because I'm kind of looking at my notes here. The some that we've not looked at or talked about is how exhaustion can create rework, and and rework is something that kills profit. So, I mean, just think about take yourself out of this for a second. Let's say you've got a stressed out, overworked, tired, not getting sleep employed. Okay. All right. Which we have actually had recently. We had to part ways with. Unfortunately, that's just one of those things where we gave plenty of opportunities and she just couldn't figure it out. But the amount of work that we had to do, rework that we had to do was tremendous. We had redoing the things that she had done improperly or not done at all, really.

Tyson Mutrux 00:14:16 It's just it's exhausting for the team. So exhaustion by itself can create a lot of rework. And that's something that you have to really keep an eye on. All right. So what is one activity. So think about this. What is one activity you're doing out of habit that your healthier self would eliminate. Okay. What is one activity you're doing out of habit that you're healthier self would eliminate. So can you picture yourself. We get two selves healthy Tyson. Unhealthy. Tyson. Okay. What would healthy Tyson do in the situation? What would unhealthy Tyson do in the situation? And just by labeling it or naming it or looking at it in that context is going to go pretty far in allowing you to separate yourself from the situation and actually make that better decision. All right. So now let's talk a little bit about, family and being present. and the hidden cost of being stressed out. stress is one of those things. It does not compartmentalize. And this is one of the points I was talking about with Danny yesterday.

Tyson Mutrux 00:15:25 And stress doesn't care if you're at the office or if you're at home. And that's why this is all so important. You can't there. I remember hearing this, this thing where someone said, you know, when I get home, I kind of visualize myself hanging in my my, stress on a hook or something like that. And that way when I'm at home, I'm present. I don't know. Now, years later, I don't think that's possible. I think that that is a I think it's a fun little mental trick that might work a couple times, but the reality is that stress does not compartmentalize. We where stress in many different ways. It is not something that you can just easily turn off. Okay. Stress migrates. Stress migrates from your house to work, work to house, to JiuJitsu, to taekwondo, to the sporting events, to the bowling alley, you name it. I'm just coming up with places at this point, but, what happens at the firm bleeds into the dinner table.

Tyson Mutrux 00:16:33 What happens at home when it comes to relationships bleeds into the courtroom. It it it is not something where it just stays where it started. It spreads. So when you walk through the door at home, are you physically present but mentally elsewhere? Okay. Is that something that because this could be a red flag, it could be a one time thing or this can be something that. Okay. Is this something we need to deal with? Right. This could be a sign of chronic stress. That's something that elevates cortisol. Elevated cortisol. It affects your mood. It affects your patients, your emotional regulation. There are a lot of things when it comes to cortisol that you want to try to keep under control. and so chronic stress can be a major, major thing that causes the, the rise in cortisol. So another thing and I talked about this, this is I had this conversation with what a guild whenever was the guild a guild member and, I. To be honest, I don't think she liked me bringing this up, but I whenever I said it to her.

Tyson Mutrux 00:17:50 But I think it's something that she probably needed to hear at the time. And the question is something along the lines of like, what exemplar are you modeling for your daughter? Right. So for those of you that don't have daughters, you have boys or you have both. Like, what example are you modeling for your kids about work or about health? You name it about relationships. And that's a really important lesson, like the things that you do, your, your kids are picking up those of you that have kids, you understand, those of you have little tiny kids, you don't maybe you don't understand yet, but you will trust me. Once they can start talking, they see everything that you're doing. So they see if you are eating potato chips on the couch watching TV every night. They also see if you are going to the gym like they see those things. They see the things that you're eating. They see the things that you're saying or hear the things that you're saying. So all of this really, really matters.

Tyson Mutrux 00:18:46 so the point of this is one of the points if you win in the firm and lose your family. Is that really success? Okay. Is that imbalance really worth it? It's probably not. At least not for me. I, I think that those of you in the association. No, you're not. You're not okay with that. You wouldn't be okay with winning in the firm and, and losing in life. You wouldn't. because it's all tied in together. It's all related. Okay. All right. So here is a question that's it's gonna be another pointing, pointed question that I think some of you may have a, a little bit of a struggle with. But what would your spouse or kids say your relationship with work looks like? And I don't think that a lot of you are going to get the answer that you want. You're really not. I think that they're going to give you, you know, Mommy or daddy spends too much time at the office. Those are those types of answers.

Tyson Mutrux 00:19:56 And I don't think that's going to make you very happy. So, if that's if you think that may be the answer, then, you you may need to make some adjustments. If not, if you're if you're doing the right thing, good. Kudos to you. Very good. I love to hear that. And there are a lot of people doing really good things. So don't. I don't want to make this, to to judgmental of an episode because I, by the way, I make many of the same mistakes that I'm talking about in this episode. That's why I'm talking about it. So it's a nice reminder for me as well. All right. So now let's talk about let's turn the corner on this a little bit and talk about health as a competitive advantage. Because we're now in a world where there's AI, there's been automation forever. at this point, you've got marketing tactics that are accessible to everyone. I think health could be that differentiator. One of the differentiators we're talking about.

Tyson Mutrux 00:20:54 You know, formula one earlier, shaving off just a fraction of a second to win. Clear thinking, emotional regulation, strategic patience. things like that can be really, really important. It could be a major differentiator. So, like, what if that edge isn't some other marketing funnel, right? But it's more of a regulated nervous system. Okay. I think that could be a big a big part of what our future is going to be is having like, because you have I mean, just go on the internet and you just scroll for a little bit and see the there's a lot of crazy going on out there. There's a lot of crazy. And you're not going to hire those crazies. You're not. But. But if you appear on camera. Well, Ray. Wellregulated, you're a clear thinker. You can communicate effectively. You look healthy. Which is, I think an it's just a to be frank about this, I think looking healthy is also a differentiator. It can be a differentiator.

Tyson Mutrux 00:22:06 But if you're that person versus a lot of the crazy stuff that we see out there, I don't know about you, but I'm going to hire the person that that walks the walk and talks the talk. I just am that's that's it. It is very, very hard for me to, you know, take business advice that had that from someone that's had several failed businesses. Right. same thing comes I'm not going to take diet advice from someone that is not healthy. That is not healthy, right? So. Same thing comes with attorneys, right? So if you walk the walk and you talk the talk, people are going to be more likely to want to hire you. Okay. So let's kind of think about it as a competitive advantage. You know, there's something else that, Danny asked me about, and it's the like, do you have a morning routine? And I said, I've tried all that. I don't I think what's more important is that you have like more of a structured week where you get in the things that you need to get in.

Tyson Mutrux 00:23:16 and I and another thing is, like I said, it may be more important instead of like, having a list of things that you're supposed to do every morning, that maybe the things you shouldn't do. Like, like, for example, eat a donut. You shouldn't start the day by eating a donut. Like they're, you know, maybe you shouldn't start the day by checking your email, things like that. To me, those are more important. So I don't think you should try to come up with some miracle morning. I think that's a great book, by the way. It's a really good book. I think it gives you some things that you can do throughout your day. But what is your what is your the structure of your week look like? What does it say about your standards? Because high performers and high performing leaders, they do prioritize the things that matter. They prioritize sleep. They prioritize working out. They prioritize clarity in mind, okay? And not because it's something that looks good on Instagram, but because it actually fuels execution.

Tyson Mutrux 00:24:16 That's the reality of it. So another way of looking at this is that your health is something that it multiplies what you can do. And poor health, on the other hand, it adds friction to everything you do and slows you down. Okay. So if your competition if your competitors train like athletes for their businesses. like you think about that. So think about if your your competitors are out there and they are training like athletes like for their businesses because competitors are athletes they spend all week. Like if you think about, Olympians, right, they spend years and years training for one event, one thing and think about if like your competitors did, that, what if you did that? If you let's say your competitors did it and you didn't, are you gonna win still? Probably not. Okay. Probably not. If you train and they don't, who's gonna win? You are. I'd put my money on you every single freaking time. Okay? There is a massive, massive compounding effect of of of having daily and weekly habits.

Tyson Mutrux 00:25:36 There just really are These small daily behaviors and behaviors, they compound like interest does. it really does. So, if you think of like what are, say like 20% health habits that give you 80% of clarity and energy? If you think about that and you can do the same thing, you can do this with all parts of your life, all when it comes to work. Like, what are those 20% of things or habits you can do for the firm that will give you 80% of, you know, the benefits of maybe revenue or increased profits productivity. You can kind of do this with all parts of your life, but you can kind of figure those things out and then do those things. They will compound over time. Here's something else to think about. If you improved your health by 10%, what would improve at the firm? Okay. Because I'm trying to make this very clear to you how important this is. So let's say that let's say you sleep, let's say improve your your sleep by 10%.

Tyson Mutrux 00:26:45 What would improve at the firm I think quite a bit would probably improve at your firm just by increasing your sleep by 10%. mine probably needs to be increased a little bit more, but 10%? I'll take 10%. Incremental incremental growth is important. I mean, you're probably gonna make better hiring decisions. You're going to have better strategy. You're probably gonna have calmer negotiations if you're if that's something you have to do with your leisure and litigation, you're probably going to make less mistakes. you're probably getting more, more patience with your team members. So that's just one thing. That's just one thing we're talking about that's not even talking about, you know, let's say you worked out, let's say you just increased your working out by 10%. If you're at 0%, we're at the it's going to have to be different, right. You're if you're if you're doing 0% working at we're at the at we're at the actually do something. So let's say you let's say you added a 30 minute workout to your week and you started losing a little bit of weight.

Tyson Mutrux 00:27:40 Okay. You start to feel a bit better. You're still you're going to, probably sleep a little better, which is going to help the other things too. That's that's part of it too. You're going to feel more confident, which means you're probably going to be better at closing those deals or negotiating or you name it. Okay. compounding health equals compounding profit. I would bet money on it. Absolutely. So what single habit, if you fixed it, would make everything else easier. That's something to focus on. All right, it's enough. I have all I have for today. Hopefully you got something from this. I just I hope that you understand that health is an infrastructure. without it, everything else weakens. Okay. Overwork is something that creates diminishing returns. Strategic rest fuel sustainable growth. Even if that means taking naps throughout the day. Your body and your mind are the operating system of the law firm. They just are. You gotta upgrade the system. You have to regularly maintain the system.

Tyson Mutrux 00:28:48 Okay, so if you really want, you know, a strong law firm, a strong marriage, strong relationship with your kids, you want to be present while you're parenting. You want to be a clear leader. Then health isn't optional. It's foundational. So you really need to start there with your health. So and then build from there. If you do that, you're going to watch everything else get a lot stronger, I promise you. So well, thanks for watching this show. Thanks for listening. Make sure you check out Becca's List Co so you can find the best vendors for you and find out who to avoid too. That's another benefit of it. And then check us out at the in the Association maximum. We will be senior by next week. See ya.