Rory & AJ Vaden (00:00) I’m so happy that we are finally getting to sit down and have this conversation. For those of you who don’t know, which is all of you, we were supposed to have this conversation like a couple of months ago and Megan got sick right before we were supposed to record. And then between summer schedules and life, it took us what, almost two months to find Megan Hyatt Miller (00:11) Yeah. I know, it’s kind of embarrassing. Rory & AJ Vaden (00:21) And also anticipation has been growing. So I’m so excited to be able to hit record and have this conversation today. So welcome to the show. ⁓ Megan Hyatt Miller (00:30) Thank you so much AJ. I’ve been really looking forward to this too. You know, I feel like we have so much in common, not the least of which is our red hair. It’s like really red hair day today, which I love that. But we loved having you on our Double Wind Show. Gosh, that’s probably been a year ago now. That was so much fun, you and Rory. And I just, love that we’re getting to talk today. Rory & AJ Vaden (00:51) Yes. And I, and I love that we’re getting to have this conversation because as you guys know, Rory and I, ⁓ we run different parts of our business at brand builders group and we run very differently and all spheres of life, be honest, it comes to our circles, everything. It’s like, sometimes you’re like, how do y’all function as a team? we’re really different. And one of the things that I love because we’ve had Michael Hyatt on the show before, ⁓ Megan Hyatt Miller (01:07) Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (01:20) But what I love doing is having the business perspective to come onto the show and to help our audience get to know you a little bit. Like, yes, your dad is Michael Hyatt. You are the CEO. And there’s an evolution that naturally takes place. And this is definitely personal curiosity because I come from a family business. My eldest is taking over our family business right now that I, ⁓ at a very young age, knew I was not going to be a part of. Megan Hyatt Miller (01:36) Yeah. Yeah? Rory & AJ Vaden (01:48) It’s in the construction business and I knew that it was not going to be the path for me. But I get to see like firsthand this generational shift from my grandfather started the business, my dad bought it from him in the seventies. Now my eldest brother is in the process of stepping in and starting to run the business while my dad is still in the business. And so to help our audience get to know you because you are not to discredit Megan Hyatt Miller (01:51) Wow, not for you. Yeah. Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (02:17) Michael or anyone else in the business, but you are the CEO and you are running the behind the scenes and you have been spearheading a ton of scale and a ton of growth for Full Focus Planner and so many other things over the last several years. I would just like to start with, as you stepped into the role of CEO, which I think was 2021, Megan Hyatt Miller (02:29) Yeah. 2021 kind of unofficially in 2020, but officially in 2021 January. Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (02:42) What did that transition feel like? And so that’s the first question, like to help everyone. It’s like, okay, for many of you listening, I just know it’s like, if you’re in small business mode or entrepreneur mode, it’s like you work with a spouse or a parent or a sibling or a child. There’s, there’s a lot of that that happens in this world. So that’s my first question is what did that transition feel like? But then my second question is what has surprised you about stepping into this role with family? Megan Hyatt Miller (02:55) Yeah. Mmm. Rory & AJ Vaden (03:12) that you did not expect. Megan Hyatt Miller (03:14) Yeah, I love both of those questions. A couple of things. First of all, like you, my husband works in the business. He is our chief content officer. He actually reports to me. So that’s funny too, you know? And then my sister is, my youngest sister, I have four sisters, but my youngest sister, Marissa, is our chief marketing officer. And that has not always been true. Joel, my husband has worked with us for a long time since about 2014, but she’s just come into this role in the years. And so we are really a family business. know, we have our, you know, leadership team is primarily made up of family members. And it’s so interesting. I’ll come back to that in a second. But you know, when ⁓ I transitioned into the CEO role, it was so unusual, because ⁓ COVID was still active and happening. And that was such a strange time in business, you know, in some ways, it feels like it was a million years ago. In other ways, you know, it’s like PTSD, it feels like it was just yesterday. But it was a very interesting time from a leadership perspective because I was suddenly dealing with things both in 2020 and 2021 that wouldn’t have been a normal course of a CEO transition. For example, we were dealing with the sudden transition to being fully remote like everybody else. We were dealing with the loss of family members. We had several family members who had parents or other family members who passed away due to COVID. And so I was suddenly dealing with some pretty significant challenges that would not have been the normal course that would have unfolded had that not happened. I think it was a good thing in a lot of ways. I think it challenged me to grow and to dig in, in ways to think about culture in ways that I wasn’t thinking about it before. was something that was kind of easy to take for granted before. if you are a pretty good leader, as long as you have people in your office, you know, you could connect with them. But suddenly when they’re not in your office, that presents a tremendous leadership challenge, especially under tremendously stressful circumstances, right? You know, we remember those days of everybody’s trying to work with their kids home and, you know, trying to figure out all the protocols. It was just crazy. fortunately, I had the benefit of my dad making the decision many years before that he wanted this transition to happen. So probably around 2016, 2017, probably 2016, he had made the decision that eventually this transition would happen. And I became not the CEO first, I became the COO. And that was a really great trading route. It was kind of like a little incubator for becoming the CEO where he was still acting as the CEO, but he really took me alongside him and folded me into the decision making process, explained. how we thought about things like finance, which I didn’t have a formal background in finance. And so I really had to learn on the job. And he would explain to me things like ⁓ how to read a P &L and how to think about profitability and how to think about the relationships between different business units and all those kinds of things that a lot of entrepreneurs, as I have found now, know, fast forward, I coach a lot of CEOs and business owners and they more often than not. as entrepreneurs, especially if they came from a solopreneur background, don’t have a financial background. And so I like, like everybody else had to figure it out. And he was such a great mentor in that process. And, know, he’s just such a great leader by nature. So I felt like I had the benefit of a lot of investment leading up to that transition, which was very helpful. Rory & AJ Vaden (06:53) So you said he knew that he wanted to make this transition and you in. When did you know? Megan Hyatt Miller (06:57) Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great question. You know, it’s funny when we go through these things, if you are in the middle of a family business, like document this stuff because you will just forget. It’s like, I was somewhere with one of my kids the other day and they were asking me, I have five kids, so you know, it’s a lot of details to keep up with. But somebody was like, well, when did she crawl? And I was like, hmm, I don’t know, I forgot. You know, I feel like it’s succession planning can kind of be the same way because especially in a family business, it can happen sort of organically. It’s not maybe the same as a big corporate transition where you have a succession and the board has to approve it and you know, etc, etc So I don’t know it was shortly thereafter that I knew and I knew that when he Moved me into the COO role that that was a transitional role and I was in that role for you know Quite a few years. So we talked about it I think one of the things for those who don’t know is that my dad Michael Hyatt comes out of the publishing world And in his role as CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers in Nashville, he had a couple of unique experiences that I think were the setup for how he handled our succession. Number one, ⁓ he worked with a lot of authors who will remain nameless to protect their guilt, who did really poor successions or had no plan at all. And so they’re either their children or kind of the heir apparent was not identified or. adequately prepared and all manner of mayhem kind of came on the other side of that everything from it was difficult to retain talent or attract talent because it wasn’t clear what What the future of the company was, you know if you have for example like a an 87 year old founder of a ministry who You know didn’t have a plan for when he or she was gonna step away it’s hard to attract great talent to that organization because it feels like your own certainty as a team member is unclear or insecure. ⁓ He also had a very dysfunctional transition, a succession transition when he became the CEO. His predecessor, and he talks about this openly now, who has now passed away, really had an identity crisis on the backend of that ⁓ succession. by backend, I mean like the day it happened, it was like. If I’m not the CEO, who am I? He said to my dad and then spent two years trying to unseat him. It’s just crazy, right? So ⁓ I think he had seen it go badly and he thought, I don’t want it to go badly. Rory & AJ Vaden (09:19) yeah. That’s interesting. So, ⁓ sometimes, you know, the best and biggest lessons we learn are from when it doesn’t go right. there’s some gifts, right? There’s some gifts in preparation of like, okay, ⁓ not that, right? At least process it a little bit. So, you know, one of the things that I would love for you to share with this, you know, kind of audience is, Megan Hyatt Miller (09:42) That’s right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes. Rory & AJ Vaden (09:57) we kind of get into this conversation around scale and culture and, and we, because I think you’ve done such a phenomenal job at all of those things is what would you say you have learned from the transition from employee to like executive leader and then executive leader, a CEO to the CEO? Like what, what has been the escalation of things that you would say these are defining moments that other people should realize? Megan Hyatt Miller (10:01) Yeah. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, you know, like a lot of people and probably AJ, in fact, I know because we talked about it when we were opposite seats on our own podcast. You know, we learn a lot of things the hard way. Unfortunately, I wish it wasn’t that way. I wish that somebody could just hand us, you know, the cheat code. We could bypass all the hard lessons. That would be wonderful. You know, it just sadly does not work that way. And I think part of part of that is because when we go through those difficult lessons, it really shapes who we are. And the truth is the CEO that I am today is far wiser and more mature because of the difficult things that I’ve been through and also the mistakes that I’ve made. And I think one of the mistakes that I made early on is that I was so focused on delegating, know, I knew that I couldn’t do it all, which was right, you know, of course I can’t, but it was very easy for me to find other ⁓ charismatic or or people with high, what is the word I’m looking for, command. So I can think of people that I had on my team at various points who were very comfortable being in charge, who actually had a lot of ambition to be in positions of power. And in some ways that was great. I I love ambition in a certain way. On the other hand, what that sometimes looked like is they were great at leading up to me. So the way that they served me, the way that they shared information with me, communicated was fantastic. The problem was what was happening downstream, I was insulated from and in one case in particular, there was some really dysfunctional things going on that I was unaware of. And I thought as I was hearing some things bubble up, I thought. you know, that’s a them problem. Like that’s not, this person is not the problem, but in fact, it was that person. And I had to make some hard decisions to solve that. And then what was worse from a culture standpoint, you know, when you’ve had a toxic type of leadership in your organization, then you have to, you you have to play catch up and you have to clean it up. And I think that that was a powerful teacher for me of… I have to maintain relationships throughout my organization. I have to know what’s going on. I have to be careful that delegation doesn’t become abdication, that I don’t just have one voice in my ear that is sort of like the one source of truth. I need to have, ⁓ you know, a group of sort of internal advisors that help me to see what’s happening and really create a culture that’s safe for dissent at all levels of the organization. And without my knowing, and that was on me, That changed in our organization and I had to go fix it. Rory & AJ Vaden (13:14) That’s good. love that. think that’s sometimes a blurry line where it’s like delegation versus abdication. it’s like you can’t do all the things you need help and support, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do any of the things and you don’t stay involved and you’re not in the loop and you’re not communicating. But I think, yeah, that delegation and abdication line is, it’s a blurry one. And often all of us, have to learn through the mistakes and doing it wrong to like find your happy medium and to this is Megan Hyatt Miller (13:21) I know, it is. Yep. Yep. It is. Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (13:44) This is little gray area that I can sit in in between the two. Megan Hyatt Miller (13:47) Yeah, yes, I think that’s right. And you’ve got to have people ⁓ who will tell you the way things really are and not manipulate you. Because as you scale, as we were talking about a minute ago, as your organization scales, whether you’re going from a solopreneur to hiring your first few employees, or you have 50 or 100 or more employees, the bigger you get, the more disconnected you become naturally. That’s what will happen if you don’t do something. ⁓ to respond to that. And so you’ve got to be really careful that what information, my dad, to his credit, he told me this and I feel like this was, I was a little slow to learn on it, but I certainly did in the end, that the higher you get in an organization or the larger the organization gets, the more information is filtered when it gets to you, whether that’s financial information or HR information. And we’ve got to be on guard for that as entrepreneurs, as leaders. so that we make sure we have the information we need to make good decisions. Rory & AJ Vaden (14:47) Yeah, that’s good. ⁓ And that’s true. it’s like, again, it’s that kind of fine line of like, how vertical do you want your organization versus how small? And there’s a medium that we all kind of have to. I do I appreciate that a lot. And I think for a lot of us, like we hear a lot of people talk about, you know, delegation, right. And I love that nuance of yes, but not abdication. And I think that’s really important leadership trait of Megan Hyatt Miller (14:56) That’s right. Yeah. There is. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Rory & AJ Vaden (15:17) What do you release completely versus where do you have to keep some oversight? Now, as I mentioned earlier before I asked that question, full focus has scaled significantly for your leadership. ⁓ So a couple of quick questions. What would you say to someone who is in growth mode, who is in a season of how have you maintained culture in the midst of rapid growth? Megan Hyatt Miller (15:28) It has. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would say that culture is not something that you can delegate. If you’re the business owner CEO, this is easy to think this is just kind of like an HR function that as you build an HR team, you can just kind of hand that off, like, you know, to somebody and say, you plan the fun events and you know, maybe I’ll show up and maybe I won’t. Obviously somebody else could play in the events. don’t literally have to play in the events, but culture is really the soul of the organization. And as the CEO, ⁓ you are like the body that the soul lives in, you know, to say, to try to mix my metaphors a little bit. You’ve got to have your hands on the culture because culture is really just the externalization of your values and your behavioral norms and the connection that people feel or they don’t feel to each other. And so what I’ve learned over the years is that I’ve got to make sure that I am connected to my team. now at different points and various stages of growth. That doesn’t mean I can know everybody intimately, but I want to try my best to know as many people as possible. I want to know about their personal life. want to talk about my personal life because we’re not just robots. know, we may have robots very soon, but we’re not robots and we want to be known at work. You know, we want to be seen. We want to be recognized. We want to feel like we belong. And I think in many ways, the CEO is ⁓ the owner of that responsibility, though he or she may not do all the activities or tasks associated with that. So don’t think you can delegate that. It’s important for you to show up to things. It’s important for you to sit down and have conversations with people. It’s important that people feel like you’re approachable and accessible. ⁓ Rory & AJ Vaden (17:34) Thank Megan Hyatt Miller (17:34) I think it’s really easy, I’m an introvert, so this may be particular to being an introvert, it’s really easy to just disappear into your office and try to let somebody else handle the people. That is a mistake. It does not work well. We’ve got to have connections and relationships because at the end of the day, that’s what growth runs on, our relationships. Rory & AJ Vaden (17:56) I love that. What would you say that you have seen for your team, for your organization? What are some of the best things that you guys have done or that you have seen done that really instill culture? Megan Hyatt Miller (18:02) Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I’m gonna give you kind of a bigger, fancier idea and then I’m gonna give you something really basic. ⁓ First of all, our team is at this point mostly remote, but every Monday the team comes in and we have a team meeting and we have lunch together. And half of that lunch, so we have the meeting beforehand and then in the morning and then we have lunch afterwards. ⁓ The lunch has no agenda. It is not a meeting. The meeting part has already happened. ⁓ We end up telling funny stories about our kids, places we went for vacation. We just talk like people who like each other and we do like each other. And while that’s not productive time in the strict sense, I actually think it’s one of the most important things we do. We just hang out together and it is easy to dismiss the value of just hanging out. I don’t think necessarily you have to have some programming or play a game or whatever. We’ve done all that kind of stuff and that’s fun too. But just having a place where, again, you can be seen as a three-dimensional person, if you can get people together in person, that is certainly ideal. ⁓ And you know what’s going on in each other’s lives. You know that Dave went out for his 25th anniversary last weekend and he went on a hiking trip with his wife. Or you know that Hannah did this or that. She was visiting some family members with her dog. We just need to know about each other. And I think that’s what people really want from work. It’s not gimmicks, it’s being known. So the other thing that we’ve done at various points over the years is we’ve gone on trips with our team. So ⁓ way back, we went on a couple of cruises with our team. We have also been to local ⁓ resorts. I don’t think this has to be, by the way, super glam and fancy and expensive. It can be, and we’ve done it both ways. It’s really, of course, it’s fun. But there’s something that happens. mean, just think about like when you were in college and you went on a road trip or maybe you went to Europe and you did like a Euro rail thing with a friend. There’s something that happens when you have unstructured time with people and you’re just together. You make memories that those memories become equity. And that equity you can really draw on when you’re in an intense or a difficult season, whether that’s somebody’s personal situation or the business itself. And it’s so valuable. So I think if your culture is new or not yet in a great place, doing something like a trip could be really awesome. Even if it’s just a couple of nights. And we love including spouses whenever we can too, because we feel like people are whole people and that part of their life is really important ⁓ to integrate into our life as a company. Rory & AJ Vaden (20:49) I love that. And specifically because I think to still some degree, most people are hybrid remote at least now there is I have a growing sense of a lot of companies being like back in the office. ⁓ There is still this hybrid nature or still complete remote nature and that present itself with a new cultural challenge that really did this pre COVID. Megan Hyatt Miller (20:57) Yes. Yes, right. Yep. Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (21:16) Universally speaking, we’ve been, we’re in a unique position that we’ve always had hybrid environments, even in our company. But a part of our desire and about build buying a building last year was like, we need a home base for our people to see or to get to things that you said that I just find so fascinating because literally this earlier this week, I got totally Instagram marketed to by like one of the many parenting people I follow. Megan Hyatt Miller (21:21) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (21:45) And it was targeting me on this research study about kids and the importance of unstructured playtime with other people their age. Non-parental supervised, and it was interesting because this entire study asked children, not the parents, what parents need to know to help you stay off screens. What would incentivize you to stay off screens? And I thought the answer is Megan Hyatt Miller (21:55) Yes! Yep. wow. Rory & AJ Vaden (22:14) fascinating. And then the study also shared all these statistics around the percentage of kids that actually have non-parental supervised time outside of the home and how that has increased significantly since the 70s and then the 80s. And there’s this gradual decrease of, you know, like we track our kids everywhere, got air tags on them. They all have cell phones. Like, Megan Hyatt Miller (22:29) ⁓ Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (22:41) I’m gonna avoid any political thoughts on this. I’m just gonna state the facts. ⁓ But I do think it was fascinating that the number one thing that research studies showed and that kids actually said is, I just need unstructured time with other people. And to hear you say the exact, you haven’t said the words, unstructured time. It’s like, not all that different. Like we’re just older. Megan Hyatt Miller (22:55) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I think that’s really right, AJ. I mean, it’s funny. It’s funny to think because like I said, I have five kids and my six year old daughter, who’s my youngest, ⁓ you know, we have her now free to run around the neighborhood and we have a bunch of kids in our neighborhood and play. And it was kind of unsettling at first because, you know, my husband and I, he was born in 1975 and I was born in 1980. Like we a thousand percent did that. but that was not okay. Our 24 year old, who was our oldest, definitely he was not running around the neighborhood. That was unstructured time that was not supervised with friends. That would have been totally looked down upon at that time. feel like, like you said, there’s kind of this resurgence of letting kids be kind of wild and free, which I love. ⁓ But I think we need that as adults too. I think that as… our human connections have kind of moved away from institutions. And, you know, we could have a whole discussion about that and good or bad, and, you know, there’s lots of opinions to be had, regardless of the opinions, it is a fact. Like our human connections are not primarily coming from organizations we’re a part of outside of work or church or other places. People are looking for that kind of connection and that kind of care from other people within the workplace and as owners and CEOs and leaders, that’s easy to miss because we’re thinking about, I’ve to get this work done. You know, I need people to complete these tasks so that I can get these projects or services out the door so that I can bill for them, for example. But people are coming to us in part because they’re looking for meaning and belonging and significance. And that’s really easy to miss. But if we can tap into that and understand it, then our ability to retain those people obviously goes up, but also it’s really satisfying to be in an organization where those things are happening. Honestly, even for us as entrepreneurs, it’s fun. It’s fun to work in a place where people enjoy each other and the kind of collaboration and creativity that you get is huge. And I think a lot of that comes from that unstructured time. Rory & AJ Vaden (25:15) Yeah, I love that. And it could be as casual as a lunch or it could be as elaborate trip, but unstructured time where people can just become friends. Um, and, I love that because it really takes the pressure off of you as the leader. I have to have this detailed agenda and we’re going to do these, you know, exercises or you just need to get people together and let community happen. Megan Hyatt Miller (25:19) Yeah. Exactly. It does. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Don’t do that. Rory & AJ Vaden (25:41) And I love that. think that’s ⁓ really valuable. And I love the trip part. Again, it’s back to, it’s like what it does, like a trip doesn’t matter if it’s an overnight, if it’s local, it’s, but what happens is like it expedites the get to know you process. That’s actually about like any sort of like mastermind or group coaching program up there. Like I think the reason leaving your home environment, Megan Hyatt Miller (25:42) Yes. absolutely. Yes. Yes. Rory & AJ Vaden (26:09) and going somewhere with other people is like, if there’s this relationship acceleration that happens because you’re in a new place, you’re making memories together, you’re learning new things together, it just wouldn’t happen in a normal everyday environment. I love that. Megan Hyatt Miller (26:27) Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s really easy in like a, you know, kind of a virtual or more remote context. It can become very transactional because really you’re dealing with people on zoom and Slack and it’s, it is all structured because everything is an appointment or responding directly to a message. And that’s, know, that’s all fine. It’s just, there’s not enough connective tissue there to keep everything together. You’ve got to have the other. Rory & AJ Vaden (26:50) I love that. okay, switching gears just a little bit. And this was a little bit of a conversation that we had prior to me hitting record, but connected to a similar topic that we’re on through, you know, scale and how do you maintain culture. But, you know, I’d love to talk about like a practice or a belief that has helped you stay grounded through seasons of intense growth as a leader, but then also company and kind of tied to Megan Hyatt Miller (27:11) Mm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Rory & AJ Vaden (27:20) idea of how do we make sure if we’re winning at work we’re winning at home and this balance that kind of has to happen of what does success look like through all the different areas of your life not just your nine-to-five or just home but how do we have you know wins everywhere. Megan Hyatt Miller (27:24) Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I think that’s really important because it’s easy, especially when you’re in growth mode. was just talking with someone about this this morning, especially when you’re in growth mode, you can become myopic and the only thing you’re focused on is the growth. And then you look up and you realize, oh my gosh, I did it at the expense of my health or my family. And I thought this was going to give me more freedom and it was going to give me a greater sense of wellbeing or flourishing or abundance in my life. And it’s actually done the opposite. I feel like a prisoner. You know, and I think that that’s, that’s the opposite of what we want. Like nobody, nobody wants us. think most of us became entrepreneurs because there was a level of autonomy and freedom to align our life with our values. That is what we were chasing. And so we have to keep that in mind as we’re scaling and we don’t unintentionally kind of give that away along the way, you know, full focus. ⁓ We have pioneered this idea of the double win, which is winning at work and succeeding at life. And really what that means for us. is more than just winning or success. It really means human flourishing. You can be successful or win and not flourish, but what we want is human flourishing. And the way we think about that is ⁓ we talk about it in terms of practices. I love thinking about practices because there’s something that feels inviting and… gentle about that. And I think as entrepreneurs, know, our kind of default is much more like 75 hard, you know, or something like that. It just tends to be so intense. And we need less intensity in our life, not more. And so the six practices of human flourishing are first of all, tending to yourself, you know, we’ve got to care for our physical, mental and emotional and spiritual well being, we’re not going to ultimately arrive at a place where we can say I’m flourishing no matter what season of my life I’m in, if I’m not attending to those things. So tending to yourself. Connecting with others, just like we were talking about, and a lot of that can happen within your own company, but it’s really critical that’s happening outside of your company. You’ve got to build and nurture meaningful relationships. And then doing work that matters, and this is probably the one for a lot of us that comes most easily, but we want to be engaging in purposeful work that makes a contribution to the world. And again, that one usually we can check off without too much effort because that’s why we started our entrepreneurial journey to begin with. But this is where it gets hard in the kind of second half of these six practices, prioritizing recreation. If I have heard once, I’ve heard it a thousand times from clients who are business owners, this is really difficult. But if we don’t make time for play and hobbies, and I don’t really even like those words because I think most of us as entrepreneurs kind of viscerally react to that, but actually what we’re doing is there is a restorative Rory & AJ Vaden (30:02) Mmm. Megan Hyatt Miller (30:25) recreational as in recreative part of those things. For example, when I’m out in my garden, which I love to be, know, like I’m just out there puttering in the garden doing whatever that is kind of putting back all the little pieces of me that can feel all fragmented. puts it back together and it, puts me in a place where I’m at peace. My nervous system is regulated. I can come in and lead at a different level because I’ve prioritized recreation. So that’s number four. Rory & AJ Vaden (30:54) Can we pause on number four? Can we pause on number four for Mainly because Megan Hyatt Miller (30:54) experiencing nature? yeah, sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (31:02) I every entrepreneur I know I’m a part of EO Nashville entrepreneurs organ in Nashville and this concept of hobbies is like really hard for people to not win I mean when you think about work and then you’re like and if you have young kids and it’s like I have a spouse is like what am I supposed to have a hobby so you’re one it’s like well how do you fit that in how do you prioritize that but to Megan Hyatt Miller (31:06) Yeah. It’s really hard. Yes. Yep. Yep. Rory & AJ Vaden (31:28) You said there’s something about being, and I think this was really important, about being in your garden that just, it regulates me. how do you find that? Because I think that’s what, when we think about how this isn’t just for the sake of going to do something that’s not work, it’s like, no, like what’s something that resets you? like, literally resets your system. So how did you find that in gardening? So there are two parts of like, how does this even enter into your Megan Hyatt Miller (31:32) Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yes. Yep. Yeah. Where does it fit in? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (31:58) That is this interim time. How do you find the thing that actually sets Megan Hyatt Miller (32:02) Yeah, I love that. Well, I love that because those are the questions I get all the time. And those are the questions that I ask myself for years. I have five kids, three out of five of my kids have special needs. There’s always some crisis happening with my kids. ⁓ And, you know, I’m on the phone with the school, with IEP people, or I’m doing a therapy conference like I was last week. So my life is not… is anything but not full. It is packed to the gills with all kinds of family and professional commitment. So I feel like if I can do it, anybody can do it. I’m a good case study because it’s not an ideal scenario. What I’m not talking about necessarily, unless you’re in a stage of life where this is realistic, is that you’re gonna go play 18 holes of golf on a Saturday morning. If you had a new baby last year or you just started a business, that’s probably not realistic. And so when I think about these practices of human flourishing, I’m thinking about how can this be relevant in any season of our life? I’ve been at the stage where I did have a new baby six years ago and that looked very different than it does today. And so I think that first of all, hobbies, again, it’s not a great word. We don’t have a better word, which is so frustrating to me. like, there’s gotta be a better word. But hobbies sounds like something you do when you retire because you have so much extra time. And I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’ve not sat around any time in the last 20 years and thought, You know what, I just need something to fill up my time. I don’t have anything to do today. know, like it’s like literally never happened. ⁓ So I think instead what we need to think about this as like really enjoyable medicine to take. It’s medicine for our soul. It’s medicine for our nervous system. Most entrepreneurs struggle with anxiety. I know I do and everybody I’ve ever coached, either diagnosed or undiagnosed does, I think it just kind of goes with the territory. Our nervous systems are not naturally regulated. We are not naturally people who are at peace. That’s sort of like diametrically opposed to ambition in a lot of ways. And so what we need are experiences that are embodied. Like usually this involves your whole body. So this is part of the answer to the second question. It doesn’t count if you’re like reading and learning. That is not an embodied, I that’s great for your professional life, but if you just have a research hobby, that’s not what I’m talking about. That might be a hobby, but it doesn’t serve the purpose of what I’m talking about. I want you to do something that engages your body, your physical senses. If you can do it outdoors, all the better. The next practice is about being in nature. And so a lot of times these two things can go together. You can ⁓ make time for recreation and you can also ⁓ get out in nature. think about when you go, maybe you’re on vacation and you go do something. Maybe you go on a hike. Maybe you just go on a walk on the beach. ⁓ Maybe you go to a new restaurant and you do like a tasting menu and you just feel yourself exhale. You feel yourself come alive in some way and you just feel that sense of peace simultaneously. Like you feel at peace and you also feel alive. ⁓ and it can be literally anything. it could be, ⁓ you know, needlework. It could be a running group that you do with friends. So you’re now you’re getting connection plus the recreational part. it doesn’t have to be long. It could be 15 minutes, three times a week. Rory & AJ Vaden (35:22) Yeah. Megan Hyatt Miller (35:40) I will often go out of my garden and I’m just watering at night. You know, I put my daughter down to bed and I go water. And that’s like, it’s not any more complicated than that, you know? And that for me, just being, I try to be barefoot, I stand in my garden, I’m listening to the bugs, I’m listening to the birds and whatever other sounds are going on. I’m saying hi to the neighbors. And in about 15 minutes, like I come in and I just feel I’m breathing differently. My heart rate is at a different and lower place. And that’s what we want. And it’s not about like checking off self-care boxes. I don’t like that because that just feels like another task. It’s like what restores my soul? What gives me peace? What fills me up? What puts me back together? Like that’s what we’re talking about in this particular practice. Rory & AJ Vaden (36:29) way more than a hobby. And that’s kind of why. Megan Hyatt Miller (36:31) Way more than a hobby. Rory & AJ Vaden (36:33) And it’s because I feel like, I feel some of that. it’s like, yeah, this isn’t like just going to find something to do. It’s like, yeah, what’s that thing that we sell? That’s so good. All right. And then you said one was be in nature. Megan Hyatt Miller (36:34) Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yep, be in nature, experience nature. And then the last one is stay open to the sacred. regardless of what your spiritual perspective is, ⁓ I’m a Christian and so for me, this looks like spiritual practices related to that. But cultivating your own spiritual connection, your sense of transcendence, it’s not healthy to feel like you’re God in your own life. It’s not healthy to feel like everything depends on you. Like we need to have a sense in a healthy way of how small we are, that we’re a part of something bigger, that we’re held, that we’re cared for. Like those are very important ⁓ realizations. And so, you know, that for me, that looks like prayer time in the morning. Sometimes it looks like going to a midweek church service. It might look totally different for you. And that’s fine. There’s many ways that it can look. ⁓ But human beings are, not meant to be ⁓ everything unto themselves and the pressure of being an entrepreneur can make it feel like we have to play God a lot and I think it can be so healthy and such a relief to stay open to the sacred and realize, okay, it’s not all up to me. It’s just like, ⁓ okay, good, I can exhale again. Rory & AJ Vaden (38:03) I think gosh, I had no idea what I was doing. Megan Hyatt Miller (38:06) Right, right, I’m like just making it up. Rory & AJ Vaden (38:10) I love that. And I love those six practices. ⁓ mean, that is, it’s like when you think about the question, it’s like, what helps you stay grounded in seasons of growth or chaos or, it’s like, these are great practices ⁓ across the board. And I love it. It’s like, this is different than success. This is, what does it mean to flourish? Not just have success, to actually. Megan Hyatt Miller (38:19) Yes. Yes. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (38:35) get peace within yourself and flourish. I love that. Okay, I’m watching the clock. I know that we have limited time, but I have like three other quick questions for you. Okay. What’s one leadership myth that you have overturned since becoming CEO? Megan Hyatt Miller (38:43) Great, let’s go. Ooh, that you have to follow a conventional. Rory & AJ Vaden (38:57) Mmm. Megan Hyatt Miller (38:58) My dad before me was kind of typical ⁓ male CEO, big corporate background, ⁓ led a public company, then started a second company. That’s a pretty common story among people that are successful. I came in at the time as a mom of four kids, kids with special needs. Later we adopted a fifth child. I knew that I could only work from nine to three because I had to be home with my kids after school. And that’s not a lot of CEOs are doing that. Not a lot of CEOs would give themselves permission. In my case, wasn’t so much about permission. It was more about this is what has to happen for my life to work, for me to honor the stewardship role that I have as a mother to my children and what I signed up for when I became their mom, since it was a little bit unconventional path with adoption and so forth. I set those boundaries really early on and I’ve stuck to that. for years and years and years, and it can work. You can have big constraints, unconventional constraints, and still be very successful. Rory & AJ Vaden (40:09) Yeah, the hours you work, it’s what you do in the hours that you work. I love that. That’s so good. Okay, next one. What’s one unexpected leadership lesson you wish you had known earlier? Megan Hyatt Miller (40:11) That’s right. That’s exactly right. Ooh, ⁓ how important data is. So yeah, like most companies in a high growth phase, there was a period where we were really growing, but our data, financial data, marketing data, everything was just a mess because the way that you typically build these things, it’s like, ⁓ you know, a patchwork quilt of this platform and that platform and this spreadsheet and this person that led to this person. And it just becomes a mess. And there comes a point where you have to clean it all up. And I’m telling you that is a painful process. We are well on the other side of that now and I’m so grateful. But I think I underestimated how important it is, especially as someone who’s, ⁓ you know, to use the Colby assessment, if you’re familiar with that language. I’m a quick start, I like to take action. I’m not a systems person, like that’s not my gift. And it was easy for me to downplay how important it was to have systems that ultimately… ⁓ enable me to have high quality data that I could trust. And so I’ve had to kind of learn that lesson the hard way of making sure that all the systems talk to each other, that there’s integrity with all of them, and that I’m getting out of those things the information I need to make good strategic decisions. And so I didn’t know that early on in the way that I do now. Rory & AJ Vaden (41:38) I think that one of the things a lot of people like if I was to ever play a game and they said what’s something about you that people wouldn’t guess is that I’m a data nerd. I love I love Excel and people are like you do Yes, like I love so I love that and I think somebody told me early in my entrepreneurial career They were like the best decisions happen from good data That I just latched on to Megan Hyatt Miller (41:46) Yeah. Yes! Yes, 1000%. Rory & AJ Vaden (42:07) and became really obsessive about. ⁓ you’re right, actually getting data is not easy. It takes the right analysis, the right systems, the right analysis, the right frequencies, the right timing. ⁓ It really does take like a concerted effort. But if you do it right, which takes time and effort, it does make your decision simpler. Maybe not easier, but does make simpler. ⁓ Megan Hyatt Miller (42:14) It’s not easy. Yep. It does. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, it does, it does. Rory & AJ Vaden (42:36) the clock, I know I have two ⁓ rapid fires. So I’m going to split this into two. Right. So, and this is just for those of you who’ve never been introduced to the full focus planner and full focus. ⁓ I have a handy over there, but I use the, I use the quarterly planners. I just got like like eight by 11 planner. So here’s my question for you because it’s all in the realm of productivity and I’ve split it. What’s your favorite productivity tool? Megan Hyatt Miller (42:53) great. Rory & AJ Vaden (43:04) besides the full focus planner. Megan Hyatt Miller (43:12) I would say this is a practice in the full focus planner, but we did not come up with this. It’s not original to us. And that is doing a weekly preview process. So again, this is all guided in the full focus planner. But essentially what it’s doing is it’s looking back on the prior week and it’s saying what went well, what were my wins, which by the way, if you’re an entrepreneur, you have long since forgot your wins by the time you get to Friday. You can’t even remember what happened on Monday because so many things have happened. So that’s great for your confidence, but then also assessing what worked and what didn’t and what I want to take into the next week and then what’s coming up and what do I have to accomplish this week? So in our language, we would say, you said a weekly big three, what are the three outcomes I must accomplish in the next week? And if I don’t go into the new week without that clarity, if I step into that and I’m just kind of like being whipped around by my calendar or by incoming requests, which of course happen all the time, am not going to steward that week as well as I would if I go in with a plan. I know what’s happening. I don’t feel anxious. ⁓ And so I think that practice, typically do that on Sundays in the afternoon when my daughter’s having quiet time. I’ll just sit down for half an hour or so and I’ll go through that process. And it just makes me feel like, okay, I know what’s happening. I know what I need to get done this week. And as all the noise is swirling around, I am able to focus on what matters most regardless of what else is happening. Rory & AJ Vaden (44:35) I love that and I love just the concept of a weekly preview isn’t just the week ahead reflection of Last week that helped inform me. I love that. I wrote that down I’m gonna put that into my practice because I think what so many people do is they immediately it’s like well, that’s done What’s next that’s done? What’s next and just moment of reflecting of what worked what didn’t I think all of that is so Megan Hyatt Miller (44:40) Yeah. Yeah! Yeah! Right. That’s right. Hahaha Yes. Yes. That’s right. Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (45:02) The second part to this productivity thing has a little bit more to do with ⁓ life, work, family, all the things. So if there was ⁓ one tip or practice or suggestion that you have learned, maybe the hard way of how do you help people who are in the throes of running and managing a business and running and managing a family. Megan Hyatt Miller (45:20) You Yeah. Rory & AJ Vaden (45:29) Would you say just one thing that everyone needs to know that helps them flourish? Megan Hyatt Miller (45:33) Yeah. Yeah. I think if you want to flourish in a season where your plate is very full at work and at home, you’ve got to establish non-negotiables. And what I mean by that is you’re not going to be able to do it all. That is completely a lie. You will not be able to be at everything. You will not be able to do every, every thing you want to do. You’re to have to make choices. And the question is, what’s the criteria for the choices? You know, when I made the decision, when I middle boys came home from Uganda when we adopted them in 2011, I decided one of my non-negotiables was I was going to be done every day at three o’clock, which meant I said no to all kinds of stuff. But I was optimizing for being home at three o’clock. Like that was key. I also said one of my non-negotiables was that five nights a week we were going to eat around the table. I I cooked every night, you know, for that. Sometimes it was like Chick-fil-A, but we sat down at the table and we have done that for years and years and years. And now I can look back and say, that feels really good to me that I’m so glad I made those two choices and those were personal choices, but I made my work submit to my non-negotiables and I didn’t make non-negotiables like 20 things. Like you can probably have up to three non-negotiables and that’s it. But really think to yourself and this doesn’t apply only if you have children or children at home. Think about what are you optimizing your life for outside of work and what does work have to do to conform to serve those outcomes? Because work is not you know, of making a meaningful contribution. Success is not an end in of itself, know, money, achievement, like these are not ends in of themselves, like we’re usually pursuing these to make things happen personally in a lot of ways. And so ask yourself the question, what are my non-negotiables? Rory & AJ Vaden (47:17) and then make your work submit to those. Megan Hyatt Miller (47:20) Yeah, and make your work submit. Rory & AJ Vaden (47:22) I wrote that down. That’s so, so, so, so good. ⁓ Megan, I could ask you 15 more questions and take this another hour. And I know that we don’t have that. But I do want to encourage everyone, if you are not already connected to Megan, like connect with her. So Megan, if you were to tell people like, hey, if you just want to connect with me and hear from me, where’s the best place or what’s your preferred place? Megan Hyatt Miller (47:24) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So ⁓ first of all, check out our website at fullfocus.co.com fullfocus.co. I’m getting ready to move my newsletter. You can sign up for that on our website right now. I’m getting ready to move that to Substack. So I’m really excited about that process because I think it’ll enable me to connect with a lot more people that way. But I do write a newsletter every other week and that will soon be weekly on Substack. And I talk about human flourishing there. So that’s a great way to connect. Rory & AJ Vaden (48:16) And also everyone should also check out the Double Wind podcast. I’ll put the link in the show notes. It’s an awesome podcast, co-led, co-hosted, and just really valuable for everything we talked about today. It’s winning in multiple places of your life. It’s homework, but ultimately how do you have human flourishing? This has been a phenomenal. Megan Hyatt Miller (48:20) Yes. heat. Rory & AJ Vaden (48:38) episode. Thank you so much for being on the show. I wrote down personal notes. I now have three specific action items. So I took away something everyone else who’s listening did too. So Megan, thank you so much for being on the show for everyone who is listening. will see you next time on the influential personal brand. See you later guys. Megan Hyatt Miller (48:45) Love that.