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Dr. John Sherk, owner and president of Operations Laboratory reveals all of his HVAC technician career happiness strategies, income improvements and killer tech-happiness tips and tricks so you can get ahead of the curve with your HVAC technician career. Discover how you can create a quality negotiated agreement with your manager that works for you so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love, whether it’s coaching your kids’ teams, getting out there for hunting season, or just living comfortably at home with your family. Since 2010, he’s been consulting his many HVAC clients on how to develop and manage a culture that is friendly to tech-happiness, and here he openly shares his wins, his losses, and all the lessons in between with the community of energetic but humble HVAC techs, managers, and owners who follow him. Self-proclaimed “Technician Happiness Guru” you’ll learn about getting paid what you deserve, building genuine and loyal relationships at work and at home, recruiting winners (tip: they all already work for someone else), building a tech-happy culture, quality communication, skills mastery, optimizing performance, negotiating compensation, professionalism, , and productivity tips so that you create an amazing, tech-happy life without burning yourself out. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from John you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Hey everybody,
welcome to the HVAC JoyLab podcast.
I'm your host,
Dr.
John Sherk.
This podcast focuses
on creating more and more conversations about what optimizes life for an HVAC technician.
My goal is to produce the most helpful content available for tax,
full stop.
Today is just going to be you and me.
For me,
every year,
October and November are months
that get me thinking about what got accomplished this year and what I want to focus on next year.
So today I'm going to give you a framework for thriving,
seven areas that are sort of gateways to better living.
My hope is that you'll pick one,
think about it,
make a plan and thrive more in 2024.
Okay,
let's get started.
Hey everybody,
welcome to the HVAC JoyLab podcast.
Today it's just going to be you and me.
I wanted to take a few minutes with one of our episodes and give you a framework to think about
what you would like to plan to accomplish for yourself next year.
Now,
when I talk about
planning,
this is the time of year when I do this kind of thinking myself,
we're into the end of this being recorded toward the end of 2023,
looking into 2024.
And I thought I would share with you my framework for areas of your life you may want to take on
and say I want to improve one of these seven areas or maybe more than one.
It's just kind of your goal for 2024.
Each of these areas
enhances your ability to thrive as a technician.
So take it,
listen to the ideas,
listen to the
concepts,
pick the one that seems like it's the most sort of low hanging fruit for you or the one
that gives you the most challenge or interest and then start putting together a plan for what
you want to do with it in 2024.
I'm going to explain what I mean here.
The seven areas
that are kind of the big seven areas where if everything's right,
you thrive in each area.
Our health,
security,
relationships,
engagement at work,
accomplishment,
delight,
and meaning.
I'm going to go through them one at a time.
And as I go through them,
I'm going to give you a
little bit of framework for if you say look,
first one's health.
If I really want to work
on my health next year,
what do I do?
How do I structure that?
Okay,
so let's dive in.
Number
one health.
This is simply having at least enough energy and physical capacity for all aspects of my
life.
Do you find that you put in your time at work and then that's all you've got?
If you have
young children,
do you have the physical energy to play with them when you get home or is it like
I spent it all today at work?
Even in terms of work itself,
do you feel like your body
is sort of running out of time?
I talked to lots of technicians who say,
man,
John,
I don't know.
I don't know how my body is going to make it another 20 years.
I just don't see it happening.
So if you want to work on your health,
let me give you a first framework.
There are five
things you need to pay attention to and have a plan for with your health.
And they are
your diet,
what you eat,
your exercise,
what you're doing with that,
your sleep game plan,
your stress management game plan.
And then let's call them supplements or prescriptions.
What kind of
meds,
what kind of supplements you're using to enhance your health?
Again,
we're talking about
physical health here.
I don't have any specific dietary recommendations.
You know,
there's a lot
of that.
It's almost like religion these days when people are talking about being vegan or
carnivore or these other things.
I don't really believe there's any one of these that's right
for every single person.
But you have to have some kind of game plan for where you're going with
your eating,
where you're going with food,
including with alcohol.
It's a big issue.
We don't talk about
it enough.
There's a lot of people who are sabotaging their health with alcohol.
And I'm
not Mr.
T.
Totler.
I drink Scotch myself.
But the reality is that if diet is something you
need to pay attention to for your health,
that's the first piece of health.
Next is exercise.
Let me
explain a little bit when we talk about exercise.
I'm about to record another podcast with Adam
Coolman.
We're talking about cardio and getting started with cardio.
Your body has two basic
metabolisms.
You have an aerobic metabolism and an anaerobic metabolism.
Okay.
Your aerobic
metabolism uses oxygen to create energy.
Okay.
And it's this sort of first gear metabolism.
Second gear is anaerobic and does not use oxygen.
So you can imagine in the evolutionary process,
if you need to have a fight or flight response,
your body may need to go faster for a short
time.
You're breathing oxygen in.
When you exercise,
you start breathing heavier.
It's
because you're using more oxygen.
But there's a threshold.
If you go after that threshold,
you're not using oxygen anymore.
And a different chemical thing happens to create energy
that doesn't use oxygen.
Now,
what's relevant about that?
Number one,
in order to burn fat,
you have to burn oxygen.
Okay.
So being able to grow your metabolism in a way that
best affects your weight and fat burning means you have to find that zone.
Trainers call it zone two,
but that zone that's right on the border of those two thresholds.
Okay.
Now,
if you do a little
searching online,
put in your weight,
your age,
you can usually find a target heart rate that you can
with aerobic exercise target,
and you're getting your optimal cardio and metabolism
building because as you work out at that threshold,
it goes up.
Right.
So the higher that threshold is,
the more energy you're burning every day using the part of your metabolism,
the metabolic system,
that also burns fat.
Okay.
So in terms of exercise,
especially some of us get older,
that's a big one.
Okay.
Number three,
sleep on the list that I gave you.
And if you,
if your wife tells you you snore,
if you have trouble sleeping,
if you wake up exhausted,
then go get a sleep study and get yourself a CPAP machine.
I use one myself.
It makes a world of
difference.
And I always coach guys,
if they're like wanting to address health stuff,
start with
this one because guess what?
It's the easiest one.
Why?
Because you're doing it when you sleep.
There couldn't be a more easy to access health improving first step than to fix sleep
because you're just sleeping.
That's,
it's no effort.
So it's a very important component of health,
a lot of our recovery systems,
they don't work if we don't sleep well.
Take it seriously.
It's
if you're managing your stress,
this is where you just have to get realistic with yourself about
where's the stress coming from and how do you want to address it?
We kind of have two brains.
We have
a fight or flight brain.
We have our normal thinking brain.
And when we're,
we're bumping
into that fight or flight brain a lot during the day,
we have hormones like cortisol that
kind of slow drip into our system.
And it causes lots of other health problems.
And so
finding a way out of constant fireman mode.
Now,
again,
we're in the air conditioning business.
So the reality is that there are some,
you know,
alarm sounds,
I got to move dynamics that just
go into being in air conditioning.
But,
you know,
if you have chronic issues with your service
manager,
if you have chronic issues of conflict with somebody else,
if there's this constant
ongoing stress,
that's a piece of the puzzle.
You have to find a way to address it.
And then finally,
supplements and medications.
And this is where if you want to be serious about your health,
the actual step one,
I said start with sleep,
but the actual step one is go to your doctor,
have them run a basic blood plan,
blood panel,
wear your levels,
cholesterol,
blood pressure.
If you need meds to address those,
get started there,
then go to sleep,
add exercise with a view
toward diet and manage your stress.
And then putting these pieces together,
thinking through them
individually,
if you say,
you know what I want to work on next year,
John is my health,
those are the five components,
right?
Put them together like a puzzle piece or like a
like a puzzle with pieces,
and you'll have your plan for your health for next year.
Now what I recommend is not things like just say,
I want to hit a target weight,
because you can do a
lot of things to improve your health that aren't related to weight loss.
Okay.
Now,
if you're 50
pounds overweight,
great,
definitely,
you know,
take a view toward that.
But the way to get there is
not raw calorie burn or calorie reduction.
Good sleep has a lot to do with being able to
lose weight.
And all these things do.
Okay.
So I just recommend,
if you want to do health,
those are
your five diet,
exercise,
sleep stress,
and supplements and prescriptions.
That's health.
Number one,
number two area in order to thrive in 2024 is security.
Now this is a freedom from
fight or flight responses.
This is getting the opposite of bad,
the opposite of
security is feeling the opposite of bad stress.
There are good stresses and there are bad stresses.
The feeling of security,
when you're thriving because of security,
sometimes people get bored
because of security,
but they're the other end of the spectrum.
If you find yourself,
for example,
consistently worried about getting money all the way to the end of the month,
am I going to make the rent?
If you find yourself with increasing and sometimes crippling personal
debt,
there's a lot of reasons people have feelings of insecurity in life.
And I don't mean,
in this case,
social insecurity,
I mean,
like,
am I going to be okay?
Am I okay in life?
Am I stable?
And so this is where a lot of times personal debt is the issue.
And you may say,
you know what I want to do in 2024?
The one thing I want to take on to increase how much I thrive
is eliminating personal debt.
I'm a big fan of Dave Ramsey on this one.
If you go to
Dave,
excuse me,
RamseySolutions.com,
his basic method,
which I'll summarize,
but you know,
go to
him for this because he has many more resources,
obviously,
than I do.
But he says,
if you really
want to get rid of debt,
start an emergency fund,
then go to work paying off all your debt.
Sell things if you can,
pay off your cars,
pay off everything but the house.
After you've done that,
save three to six months of expenses
so you have a fully funded emergency fund,
then start investing 15% of your income,
build a college fund for the kids,
pay off the house,
and then go get rich.
Okay.
But the idea here is,
if this is an area that is a nagging,
lagging,
source of security theft
for you emotionally in your life,
then maybe this is the thing next year that you want to
put on the bull's eye of the target and say,
this is the thing I'm doing next year
to improve my life as a technician,
increasing the feeling of security.
Okay.
So we did health,
we did security.
Next are relationships.
This is having all the love and companionship
and isolation time,
isolation alone time that you need without excessive sacrifice or compromise.
Okay.
So how are your relationships doing?
Okay.
The one relationship that definitely
affects a lot of technicians is the one they have with their supervisor or service manager.
How is that relationship doing?
How is your relationship with your spouse doing?
You know,
do you need to make a commitment next year that you're going to take active steps
to liven up and enrich your relationship with your spouse?
I don't think she will hate that.
But you know,
this is again,
how do I increase the amount of thriving in my life?
If it's improving relationships,
then deep dive into this.
And if it's relationships at home,
you know,
I think those things are fairly logical.
That becomes a priority to get time
alone with your wife to be able to just build that relationship together,
build out recreational
time together,
all of those things.
One of the big things that's a great relationship
builder for a technician is finding a way into having a shared goal where you're both
working to contribute to a single outcome.
This is what I always coach technicians to do when
they're negotiating with their spouse about summertime over time.
And it's very easy to say,
well,
it's not my fault,
babe,
this business I'm in,
it is what it is.
But if the overtime pay is going towards something that she is also working toward,
and it's a shared goal,
now you're in it together.
And she doesn't feel so abandoned by all that.
If you're working on your relationship with your boss at work,
there's,
let me just break down that boss relationship for a minute.
There's four types of relationships
that a technician has with a service manager or a supervisor.
One where the authority
is not present.
One where the authority is present.
One that's based on a set of rules,
and the boss is policing rules.
And one that we call market rate,
meaning your entire
relationship is just based on you getting a check.
And if that number is right,
you have a relationship.
If it's not,
you don't.
Now the no authority one is where you have the
boss who's,
that's a lot of buddy,
buddy time.
You're kind of on your own to solve your own problems.
A lot of fear of conflict,
a lot of weird,
weird,
unclear communication to avoid conflict.
The one with the authority present is closest to the ideal version,
but only if the person with
the authority uses it with two principles.
I'm in charge,
but you technician are more important
than me in any company,
whoever is performing the work that gets invoiced is the most important
person in the company.
Always no matter what that delivery of service,
which then is paid for
is the,
is the lifeblood of the whole company.
None of the rest of it is needed or creates
value without that.
And any good manager knows that.
Okay.
So when the authority is present,
what that looks like is the,
the manager,
the supervisor sets a clear expectation,
which is about 5% of the job,
and then increases whatever level of support they need to give to
you,
the technician.
So you can meet that expectation,
which is like 95% of the job.
And that's what I mean when I say I'm in charge,
I set the expectations,
but you're more important than me.
So I'm going to do whatever I have to to make you
successful.
That context is the ultimate optimal manager tech relationship.
I mean,
research shows when people measure job satisfaction,
that scenario I just described
has the highest job satisfaction of all the different scenarios in this,
these four types
of relationships.
So if you're having to be a manager and listen to this and you say,
hey,
man,
I,
how do I,
how do I keep my people to laws?
I'm in charge and you're more important
than me.
That's the starting point.
Now you're not going to pay someone $4 an hour in this market
and so keep them.
So wages still matter.
So I'm assuming you're,
you're keeping up with wages,
but you can either do what I'm saying or you can compete for talent with wage wars,
which I don't recommend for a lot of reasons.
So it doesn't show higher job satisfaction
at all.
In fact,
the reverse someone goes and gets the highest wage they can find in town.
This becomes a job that costs too much to leave because bills increase to match that new wage.
And now I'm stuck.
And normally if an employer is investing in that direction,
highest possible wages,
generally speaking,
they think now I've done what my job is the rest
of year on your own for the rest of it.
And that creates a less respectful and a less valuable
culture to a technician because it's,
it's become more of a mercenary environment.
Okay.
So the,
that's in terms of improving that relationship,
that's what you're looking for.
Okay.
If you have a boss who is a,
I call rules is rules boss,
then there's a set of policies.
And if you have a market rate relationship,
then that's the whole relationship is that wage.
So if you want to work on that relationship with your supervisor,
find your way into
inviting them to use their authority,
but in a way that makes you successful.
And,
you know,
send them over to my podcast because I talk about this a good bit and
part of what I do and I love to do is teach service managers how to do this with technicians.
So that's number three relationships.
We talked health,
security,
relationships.
Number four is engagement.
This is routinely engaging in work or tasks
where they total focus and a feeling of timelessness feeling very skilled and knowledgeable.
So when we talk about if engagement is where you want to go to work to improve the amount
of thriving going on in your life,
you're basically saying,
how do I enjoy this job more?
Okay.
Now this is going to be very technician specific here.
I see generally two kinds of technicians out there.
There are some technicians that
they love the technology and other technicians that are really,
they're more passionate about and they
get more excited about people and customer service.
Neither one is the right one,
neither one is better.
You need both in order to be successful,
but one of those is the more engaging
one,
right?
So if you're more technical,
you need to take a look at where you work and decide
is this a place where I can keep growing technically or am I going to have an unending
boulevard of five times split systems from now until the end of time?
And if you are thrilled by
technology,
you should really take a pause and look at what you're selling,
what the company is selling
and take a look at the commercial side.
Because of the disparity in how many jobs are available,
which is many more than a number of texts that are available,
almost any tech with a few years
of experience can get a job in a commercial company if they want to.
And if that's what
you thrive on,
in particular,
I would look for a non OEM commercial company,
meaning
if you work for train,
are you going to work on our train products?
If you have a company that
works on everything,
you're going to have a wide variety of opportunities to learn different
systems,
different types of equipment and so on.
And on top of that,
if you work for a company
that specializes in maintenance more than projects,
especially in that context,
you're going to have a
lot of opportunity to grow technically.
So that is what it is.
If that's where you want to grow,
that's the place you want to thrive more,
that's where to get started.
On the other hand,
if
what you really love is customer service,
then that's a much,
it's not that you don't have
customer service in a commercial environment,
but it's not,
you're not as up close and
personal with them as you are in a residential environment.
And so,
and you're not,
man,
there's
just a,
there's just a,
if you want to be the hero,
man,
that's a very residential dynamic.
And I don't mean that,
I don't mean that cynically,
you want to be the hero.
I mean,
if there's a people,
if there's a family in a hot house and you come in and you get that,
that air going at 70 degrees,
you are the hero and they will tell you,
you know,
if you do this,
you know it.
And so if that's what you thrive in,
lean into it.
Think in terms of,
how do I study how I do this?
How do I get better at it?
How do I find some YouTube channels that
are about HVAC customer service?
How do I think through,
you know,
how do I just keep growing
and learning in terms of how to do customer service great?
I'll just give you one tip that I,
again,
I talk about this stuff on other podcast episodes,
but learn how to,
to,
from the moment you get to the front door,
even before that,
if you make a phone call first,
to create a closed loop in which the customer is always aware of the status of everything.
Now,
they don't know,
I have to know every single detail of every single thing,
but that there's never a time where they're thinking,
what's going on?
I don't know what's
happening right now.
Now,
if they're in that position,
the saying I use is in the absence
of information,
people assume the worst,
right?
So again,
learning that kind of stuff,
I do a good
bit of podcast myself.
So one of your resources should be my content.
Learning how to manage
silence and data in a conversation is really important.
All of these communication dynamics,
if you want to become a complete rockstar customer service person,
the resources are
available.
And if,
if you're stuck,
we're really for all of this stuff,
you can,
any of you can reach
out to me directly and I'd be happy to interact with you about it and give you some resources or
point you in the right direction.
But in yourself,
most texts,
maybe there's a few exceptions,
but most texts lean toward one or the other,
the technology or the people.
And so just become
aware of that in yourself and lean into it,
because as you lean into that,
you're going
to have greater engagement and greater satisfaction with your work.
Okay.
Number five is accomplishment.
This is seeing an outcome directly produced by my knowledge,
skills and abilities.
This can be
work projects or it could be hobby projects.
It could be,
you know,
you could be a woodworker
and that's where you really feel this and really feel the satisfaction of it,
that you,
you put your hands on something and you did it.
Now a lot of you are good with your hands already.
So you get this from going,
walking up to a piece of equipment that's not operating,
diagnose it,
fix it and you have this feeling of me personally,
because I'm,
I'm,
I'm work on the people side of it more.
I experienced this actually in the kitchen.
I couldn't tell you how much satisfaction I get out of cooking.
I live in the deep south and
south Louisiana where my wife is Cajun.
We love Cajun food and I just love to spend three or
four hours in the kitchen putting together,
you know,
chicken sauce pecan or a catfish,
cubion or something like that.
And,
and just the satisfaction of tasting that food and going,
wow,
I did that with my hands.
So how are you doing with accomplishment?
Do you feel like
you're getting a sense of thriving out of this feeling I'm talking about?
Or is it more like,
I don't,
I'm not feeling any satisfaction there,
but I want to.
So I could thrive more there.
Okay.
Number six is delight.
Now this is fun and pleasures from very simple to very refined.
And the question here is more versus better.
More is not better.
Better is better.
Okay.
So when I,
I use the word delight here because it's a very,
and I,
I have grown myself in this area quite a
bit in the last 10 years,
but this is where you refine your ability to enjoy things,
but not
with excess.
Right?
Now look,
if you drink too much,
that's maybe something you need to work on.
And if you're at a point where you say,
Hey,
I don't,
I don't know if I can drink at all.
12 steps.
I also encourage you to go onto YouTube and search what's called the Sinclair method,
which involves taking a medication called naltrexone,
which the,
with alcohol or any other
substance,
opiates,
any,
any substance,
it short circuits the thrill and pleasure dynamic that,
that is created when you drink alcohol or other substances.
So there's another method there
where Davidson Claire teaches at Harvard.
He developed this method because it had a more
biological approach to it than,
than what he found in the 12 steps.
And what it does is
changes your brain over time.
So you just don't get satisfaction from alcohol.
And it doesn't,
you know,
you don't,
you don't have that feeling like,
you know,
if,
if six is good,
12 is better
when it comes to beers or scotches or whatever.
Okay.
Now the same thing can apply to food.
I'm going through a nice health renaissance in my life right now lost a lot of weight,
well
over 50 pounds.
And a good part of that is because I leaned into better food,
instead of just feeling
like big portions is where I'm going to be satisfied,
more,
more,
more unctuous food,
more,
you know,
more flavorful food to where I feel satisfied,
not simply by shoveling food in my
mouth.
Right.
Now,
I'm trying to paint the picture here of what do I mean when I say I want to,
I want to improve in the area of delight.
I want to have things in my life,
music,
art,
food,
alcohol,
tobacco,
some versions of tobacco.
I want to have things in my life
where I develop a nice taste for it.
And I,
without going into,
you know,
crazy
expensive stuff,
I just,
you know,
you could decide you really like movies and you get into it
and you want to watch films,
you want to watch better stuff,
but it's developing a sense of
thriving around a feeling of delight that's not simply driven by excess.
Okay.
And so you
could point that toward almost anything,
frankly.
And maybe that is the area where you would want to
pay some attention to it.
And you know what,
next year,
I want to develop my taste for better food.
I want to stop guzzling alcohol,
but I don't want to stop drinking.
I want to start
drinking less but better alcohol and enjoying it more.
Okay.
I'm,
you know,
maybe
maybe music is a thing for you that you want to listen to better music and more focused,
not just
playing in a room,
but you want to,
you want to consume it differently and develop a better
taste for it,
whatever it is.
Right.
It's usually one of your senses involved.
It's usually
some sort of a thrill involved.
And usually it's a thing that you can take to excess
if it's handled incorrectly.
Okay.
This area is very important.
It's very significant
that if you want to thrive,
this can be a dog that bites or it can be a source of real thriving.
And so I encourage you to ponder whether this is the one that you want to focus on going into next
year where you want to get aligned and get thriving.
Okay.
Now the last one is meaning.
This is contributing to something greater than myself,
lifting a good and just burden.
You know,
do I want to,
you know,
yeah,
I go to work,
I do my duty,
I bring home the money,
we pay the bills,
you know,
but I don't feel any big
sense of meaning connected to something.
Now this is for some people a religious thing,
but it doesn't have to be.
It could simply be something that,
you know,
you,
you want to put on your schedule,
go to,
you know,
find at the YMC or at the,
go to a goodwill or go to some social service agency and say,
once a month,
I want to do
home maintenance for an elderly person who needs it and can't afford it.
Okay.
There you go.
Somehow contributing to something greater than yourself,
lifting a burden from someone that is,
it's a good and just thing to do.
Okay.
This is the seventh area.
Now some people,
like I said,
get this out of a religious situation,
which is fine.
If that's,
if that's
where I'm saying it just doesn't have to be religious.
It is,
it is a stance toward
an activity.
It is saying that I'm contributing to the good of something.
And other than the meaning I feel that's not coming back to me.
I'm just contributing to
something greater than myself,
something connecting myself to something that I clearly
look at and say,
that is more important than I am.
And I'm contributing to it.
And I get the,
my payoff is the meaning I feel when I do it.
So that may be the thing that you want to get
into going into next year.
So let me review them again.
Health,
having at least enough energy
and physical capacity for all aspects of my life.
Security,
freedom from a fight or flight response.
Relationships,
having all the love and companionship and isotime I need without excessive sacrifice
or compromise.
Engagement,
routinely engaging in work or tasks with a total focus and a feeling
of timelessness,
feeling very skilled and knowledgeable.
Accomplishment,
seeing as outcome
directly produced by my knowledge,
skills and abilities includes both work and creative projects.
Delight,
fun and pleasures from very simple to very refined where I'm asking the question
more versus better.
And finally meaning contributing to something greater than myself,
lifting a good and just burden.
Okay.
Now what I encourage you not to do,
don't try to go for all seven.
It's too much,
right?
Now maybe over time,
I mean hopefully over time,
we will get to all seven.
But of that list,
identify the one that
jumps out at you the most.
You may say,
man,
John,
that you said,
what you said about security,
that just you just kicked my ass.
Good.
Or you know what,
John,
you just that stuff you just said
about delight,
there's something there.
I mean,
that,
you know,
that really made my ears perk
up.
I need to think about that more.
Excellent.
Do that.
Or health,
you know,
with the on the podcast,
at least half of all the positive responses that I get about the podcast are specifically about
the podcast we do on health.
So I think this on a lot of guys minds,
a lot of technicians feel
like,
and it's not entirely false,
that their body is kind of on a ticking clock,
and it's
going to run out faster than,
you know,
than,
than 65 years old.
So,
you know,
getting at the health thing
and making that your focus.
But what I'd want to encourage you to do is pick the one that jumps
out at you the most,
put your game plan together for what you're going to do with it.
Here's what
I invite you to do when you put your plan together and you get started with it,
reach out to me,
come be on my podcast,
come be on tell the story because one of the big values that I want to create
with the podcast are just conversations about stuff like this for technicians.
There's just
not enough conversations about what it what goes into creating a thriving life for a technician.
There's just not enough.
It's all practical.
I respect all the technical stuff 100%.
I had on Brett Wetzel that the advanced refrigeration podcast fantastic podcast.
But listen,
you're a whole person,
you're not just a brain and hands in a toolbox,
right?
The whole
of you should be thriving,
especially in the in the current labor environment.
And a lot of the
reasons sometimes is just that we don't pay enough attention to that.
We're so busy.
We got to get up
again tomorrow and go to work again.
And we don't take pause and put together a game plan
for where I want to thrive more.
And then as you as you get one of those going,
and you have it,
then the add a second one,
man,
I'm on track,
I think with my health.
Okay,
well,
now I'm
going to pay off some debt.
Great.
Or I'm on track with my health.
Now I want to add meaning to this thing.
Or I'm going to really get at better relationships and enjoying the people around me more.
Great.
Now when you're there,
now I'm going to add health to that.
And then I'm going to add security,
and then delight and so on and so on and so on.
Right?
This big seven is the framework.
I don't
believe there's an eighth.
I did a good bit of research into this list.
I did quite a bit of reading.
There's an expert in happiness at Harvard that I read a lot of took his advice on this.
So I think
these are the seven.
I think this is it.
I don't think there's an eighth.
These are the categories.
So but just pick the one that's for you and put a game plan together.
And then do reach out to me
even if you don't want to come on the podcast,
do reach out and let me know how it's going
because as always,
this is I'm doing this for you all.
Right?
I mean,
I don't mean that.
And there's nothing in it for me,
but I want this to be a benefit for you guys.
So,
you know,
reach out to me,
let me know what worked and what didn't in this thing.
And we'll keep refining it so it becomes the best possible version for you because
I want you guys to thrive.
All right.
So there you go.
Get out there and thrive.
We'll