Today is Memorial Day. A day in which we honor those who have died while serving in the United States armed forces.

I, for one, am grateful and fortunate for being born in the greatest country on earth. As we reflect on all the opportunities we are provided by living in America, let us not forget those who have died to provide our freedom. 

A. Philip Randolph was a civil rights activist, and among other things, helped lead President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue an Executive Order that banned discrimination in the defense industries during World War II.

Randolph said, “Freedom is never given; it is won.”

So as we all enjoy our day with loved ones, let us not forget those that died to win our freedom. Those brave men and women who valued liberty, and had the courage to fight so that we may be free.

Let us also not forget that freedom does not mean we can do whatever we want, but it provides us with the opportunity to do what is right.

Welcome to the Limitless Podcast with Nathan Jovanelly.  Thanks for tuning in.

This past Saturday my brother-in-law and I set out on a self-supported 153 mile gravel bike ride from Wilkes-Barre to Bensalem, PA, in celebration of my birthday.

Like last year, we planned our trip meticulously.  

We called the administrator of the trail to plan for unforeseen detours, obstacles, etc.  

We marked dozens of points of interest to stop for food and water.

We conducted multiple gear checks to ensure we had a solution for pretty much any potential mechanical failure.

After attempting to cover all the details, nothing went according to plan.

Food stops were closed, or were on the opposite side of the river.

The trail administrator told us about the washouts along the way, but we did not anticipate seemingly endless amount of mud puddles that slowed us down to a pace well below what we planned.

98 degree heat, we have been there before.

There was no quit. We had no option, but to keep pressing on. No plan B.

I pulled a lot of take aways from this journey, but I think this quote from motivational writer and success coach, Dr. Roopleen, summarizes it best.

“Quitting is never an option on the road to success. Find the way forward. If you have a positive mindset and are willing to persevere, there is little that is beyond your reach. The attitude of being ready to work even in the face of challenges and despite odds is what will make all the difference in your life.”

At mile 90 my brother-in-law was ready to call it quits. But it wasn’t an option. How would we get home or to the hotel that was more than 60 miles away?

After some encouragement, we pressed forward. We were behind schedule and every unplanned detour or stop would extend our trip, forcing us to ride deeper and deeper into the darkness of the night.  

In the soaring temperatures, water became harder to find than planned as we passed place after place that was not yet open, or already closed. Again, trying to balance the need for water with conserving energy and staying on track.  

Around 9:30pm we rolled into the hotel. In total the trip took about 3.5 hours longer than what we perceived was our conservative case scenario. 

At the end of the day, we reached our destination successfully. It didn’t go as planned, and it certainly did not happen in the time we expected. You could say that quitting really wasn’t an option, but I am sure we could have found a hotel along the way if things got really bad. 

What lead to the “successful” outcome was having a positive mindset and the willingness to persevere in the face of unexpected challenges. After all, quitting is never an option on the road to success.

Welcome to the Limitless Podcast with Nathan Jovanelly.  Thanks for tuning in.

What does Michael Jordan and YouTuber MrBeast have in common?

I really don’t watch that much TV, but I finally got around to finishing “The Last Dance” on Netflix, which is a docuseries highlighting the remarkable career of Michal Jordan.  If you haven’t watched it yet, I highly recommend it.

Also, this week I was introduced to MrBeast by my kids.  In fact, all of them from age 18 to 9 knew MrBeast, and apparently I have been living under a rock because I have never heard of the person who has the largest YouTube channel on the planet.

So what could a YouTube personality and Mr. Jordan possibly have in common?

I will start my answer with a quote from Vince Lombardi who said, “The man on top of the mountain didn’t fall there.”

After learning about MrBeast I listened to his recent interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast.  Like The Last Dance, I came to have a deep appreciation for the discipline and commitment that both MrBeast and Michael Jordan have to perfecting their craft.

The reality is that everyone only sees them while they are on top.  Often people do not appreciate the tremendous amount of hard work and dedication it takes to be the greatest.  I know for me, I would have never put a thought into it had I not heard MrBeast on Joe Rogan.  

And everyone knows that Jordan is arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, but many of us do not put much thought into what it takes to climb the mountain.    

This causes many people to think that they can achieve the same results without putting in any effort.  The difference is the tireless pursuit of their passion, and the desire to be the greatest at what they do.

People need to remember this because success isn’t easy.  If it where then guess what?  Easy come, easy go.

At the end of the day, I don’t care who you are . . . Warren Buffet, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Brady . . . they didn’t get to where they are without putting in the work first. 

So next time you are admiring someone who is at the top of their industry, appreciate the discipline, dedication, and sacrifice it took to reach the top of the mountain because they surely didn’t fall there.

Welcome to the Limitless Podcast with Nathan Jovanelly.  Thanks for tuning in.

I am going to tell a quick story about the hardest working woman I know. She is a success but doesn’t wear designer clothes, or drive a fancy car. In fact, she doesn’t even have a car currently. Unfortunately, in society today most people tend to measure success by material possessions. This is foolish because “things” won’t bring you happiness.  

The great theologian, Albert Schweitzer said, “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.”

This particular woman grew up in the roughest part of town.  

She didn’t know her father.  

Education was important so she worked as a baby sitter to pay for catholic school to escape the broken city school system.  

She got married young, and is still married 49 years later.  

She never finished college, but she worked tirelessly to provide a better life for her two boys. 

Her young family started off in a trailer park until she saved enough for a modest home in a great school district.  

She worked hard, and made sacrifices.  

She didn’t have everything, but the family had all they needed and wanted.  

She never drove a flashy car, but was able to put two boys through college.  

She always gives more than she takes.  

She encourages and guides.  

She is a pillar of faith. 

She raises the bar, and sets the example.

Now she is retired in Florida. She is successful not because of what she has, but what she has accomplished. She created a better life for herself and for generations to follow. She doesn’t need to buy happiness because she knows it isn’t possible. Instead she can sit back and smile at a life well-lived. I am blessed every day to have such an inspiration in my life. I am eternally grateful for the support, encouragement, and opportunity. But most of all, the joy.    

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

Welcome to the Limitless Podcast with Nathan Jovanelly.  Thanks for tuning in.

It only takes a moment (or three months) to change your life. 

What inspired me last week was my friend and colleague, Paul. Last week Paul and I spent some time in Salt Lake City together, and he was telling me about how last year he took a two month trip with his family around the country.  To his surprise, his favorite part ended up being their visit to the Grand Canyon.  

Paul noted that it only took 6 million years for the Colorado River to carve this masterpiece. While it seems like a long time, in perspective it was only 0.4% of the 1.7 billion years it took to build the sediment that would end up getting eroded away. Therefore, it only took about 0.4% of its life cycle to carve the Grand Canyon. Relative to our average life expectancy of 75 years, that is about 3 months.

So what is the point, exactly?

Well, I did a recent Monday Motivation on procrastination and Paul’s story reminded me of this quote from Gandhi:

"The future depends on what you do today."

So stop waiting for things to happen and start making them happen. You built your foundation over years, and now you can change your life in 3 short months.  

Again, take Paul as an example. Paul was extremely successful in the oil and gas industry, but he wanted to make a change. He had no software or solar experience, but we hired him anyway. 

We hired for the person, the attitude, the leadership. The intangible things that can’t be taught. Paul will learn the rest. In fact, he has already learned more in a few weeks than people I know who have been in the industry for years.

Paul used this story to make decisions and more importantly, act on them to change his reality. Instead of sitting back defeated, not knowing how to get into a new industry. He made it happen.  

Most people won’t do that. Most people won’t put in the work. In fact, when I was leaving Salt Lake last week Paul asked if we could share a cab to the airport. I thought this was odd because my flight left at 6am and his left a few hours later. You see, Paul had some reading to do . . . he is learning. He is changing his life, and all it takes is a few short months to change everything. After all, what you do today will define who you are tomorrow.

The only hard part is getting started. So what are you waiting for? Some day or day one. It is your decision.  

Welcome to the Limitless Podcast with Nathan Jovanelly.  Thanks for tuning in.

As many of you are probably aware, this past Friday, April 22, was Earth Day.  This is a good reminder that we only have one planet and it is our responsibility to protect it.

While I am generally optimistic that humans can use technology to tackle the toughest problems we face, I also think that we all need to make sacrifices so that future generations do not get stuck with our problem.  

I believe firmly that have both a moral and economic duty to ensure that we are setting up future generations for success.

The founder of Earth Day was a former US Senator and Governor of Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson. He put it this way, “The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will never be heard.”

I think it is time that as a species we understand that houses, cars, money, power . . . none of this matters if we don’t have an inhabitable planet.  

I also feel that we need to realize that poverty and environment are linked. If we want to get people to care about the environment then we need to lift as many people out of poverty worldwide as quickly as possible. It is hard to care about saving the planet when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from.

Unfortunately the poor are disproportionally affected by pollution and climate change.  We must break this cycle.  

In honor of Earth Day, I want you to think about what small sacrifices you can make today for a better world tomorrow.

Welcome to the Limitless Podcast with Nathan Jovanelly.  Thanks for tuning in.

This week I want to talk about my lovely wife, Angela.

Ang is a lot of things, but a good test taker is not one of them.  However, she had a desire to get her realtors license as part of a greater plan and ambition.  Over the past few months I watched her put more energy into this goal than pretty much anything else other than our children.

First, to be able to take the actual license exam she needed to pass a sort of pre-exam or practice test.  Only she didn’t know that was just the warm up.  She studied and studied to pass the pre-exam only to to get her bubble popped at the peak of her excitement when she found there was yet another test.

As disappointed as she was, she got back to work and passed the state exam on her first try.  The time and effort reminded me of a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “Patience and fortitude conquer all things.”

Fortitude is strength of mind, and patience is the capacity to accept delay.  Both of these things apply to her situation.

She could have thrown in the towel and quit after she found out there was another test.  After all, she doesn’t really need to become a realtor.  

Quitting wasn’t an option though. 

Instead, she used two traits that are hard for anyone to conjure, patience and fortitude.  

Take a lesson from my wife this week.  Find an area in your life where you need to find more patience and strength of mind, and apply it to conquer anything that is holding you back.     

Welcome to the Limitless Podcast with Nathan Jovanelly.  Thanks for tuning in.

What is the most important aspect of a high-functioning team? Alignment.

A lot of conflict in our lives is because we are not living in alignment. This could be the result of not being true to ourselves [our values] or it could be because we are not in alignment with our spouse, team, department, company, etc.

In business, I believe that agreement is a nice-to-have, but alignment is a must have.

Karen Kimsey-House is the co-creator of the Co-Active Training Institute, which is known for world-renowned coaching and leadership programs. Karen, put it this way, “When there is alignment and understanding, it is much easier to navigate forward together, moving in and out of agreement.”

Building a team of individuals that trusts each other is the foundation of being able to have productive disagreements, and therefore, being able to make the best decisions.  

One pro tip is to call the discussion a debate instead of a disagreement. I do this all the time, and it is proven that by calling it a debate participants are more likely to share information. This is because teammates are perceived to be more receptive to differing opinions in a debate. 

Either way, the bottom line is that alignment doesn’t require agreement. Alignment requires that you support the decision of the team or leader even if you don’t fully agree with it. If you can’t come to alignment, then you need to move or leave. It sounds harsh, but it is true.

Sometimes if there is no agreement a decision gets put off by the leader. This is another reason why leaders should strive for the best idea, not consensus. In business, we see all the time that failure to make a decision can be as damaging as a wrong decision. Remember that indecision comes because there is no perfect answer in business, and there never will be.

In order to avoid indecision, it is important to have a well-run process and a team where everyone feels like they can voice their opinion. Bruce Chizen, former CEO of Adobe, calls this “making decisions with integrity”. Simply meaning that you need to follow a good process and always prioritize what is right for the business over what is right for the individual.  

I used to do this at my former employer all the time. Many times teammates and other Executives would be surprised when I would pitch an idea that would personally make me less money in favor of what was best for the business. To me this was simply making decisions with integrity (Note:  You can avoid this type of conflict by aligning compensation with the business goals and objectives.).  

If I did something that was not aligned with the business for personal gain, the business would suffer. This would eventually lead to the downfall of the business and the people that worked in our Division. This is never a good long-term strategy.  

At the end of the day, I consider myself to be a seeker of truth. I believe through the process of understanding that the best idea always should win and this is more important than having consensus from everyone on the team.  Alignment leads to better ideas and results.   

Welcome to the Limitless Podcast with Nathan Jovanelly.  Thanks for tuning in.

A friend pulled me aside last week and asked me last week how to avoid procrastination.

First let’s break down what procrastination is . . . the word means “moving or acting slowly so as to fall behind.” It is a blameworthy delay of not doing something against our better judgement.

Like most psychological things, procrastination is negative cycle of thoughts and emotions. There could be something unpleasant about the task like cleaning a dirty bathroom, but procrastination can also be rooted in deeper feelings like self-doubt, anxiety, or insecurity. 

Regardless, by not doing the task you are rewarding yourself with a brief reprieve.  It is this reward cycle that enables us to keep repeating the action to create the aforementioned procrastination loop that ends up making you feel worse in the long run.

Abraham Lincoln said, “you cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” I guess we all know that though since we are avoiding the task against our better judgement.

So then how can we avoid procrastination? Here are my top five things that can help.

 1) Set goals. Write them down and have a plan. Having a plan removes the energy of having to make the decision to get started, and it also plants the seed in your mind that it is going to get done. 

2) Prioritize. You only have so much time, and you need to manage priorities. The big things. The things that if you drop will cause catastrophic damage to your life, family, career, etc. If the task is meaningless then maybe you are not procrastinating, you are prioritizing!

3) Just start. Leonardo Da Vinci said, “It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

4) Remove distractions and put up road blocks to procrastination to make it less convenient.  You can also tie your plan to existing habits to establish a routine and create new, better habits.  

5) Manage your inner dialog. I am going to break this one into two parts: A) Perfection is the enemy of good enough so aim for done over perfect, and B) Remember, if you tell yourself you are a procrastinator than you are setting yourself up for failure. Start telling yourself that you are a person of action. A person that takes care of their priorities, and a person that gets things done.

Welcome to the Limitless Podcast with Nathan Jovanelly.  Thanks for tuning in.

I read Trillion Dollar Coach while I was on vacation earlier this month.  The book is about Bill Campbell, who was on of the most influential people in Silicon Valley.  One of Bill Campbell’s mantras really stuck with me.  It was some advice he received while he was CEO of Claris from Donna Dubinsky who said, “Your title makes you a manager; your people make you a leader.” 

We all know people that demand respect, but have not earned it.  If you want people to respect you then you must have empathy, project humility and selflessness to show that you care about the company, people, and culture.

Managing is all about the people that work for you.  They are the foundation of a successful company, and it is the responsibility of management to help people be more effective in their job so they can grow and develop (both in and out of the workplace).

Managers create an environment that amplifies the energy that employees come to work with through support, respect, and trust.

Leaders trust people and enable them to do their jobs and make decisions.  They believe in their teams ability. 

Great leaders gain respect through understanding each individual’s unique career goals while being sensitive to their life choices.

The bottom line is that people are always the greatest asset of any company.  If you want their respect, it must be earned.

Welcome to the Limitless Podcast with Nathan Jovanelly.  Thanks for tuning in.