Adopting an Owner's Mentality in Your Own Life (Episode 16)

Episode Transcript

Liz Moorehead (00:02.218)
Welcome back to Beyond Your Default. I'm your host, Liz Moorhead, and as always, I am joined by George B. Thomas. How are you this morning?

George B. Thomas (00:09.575)
I am doing absolutely wonderful is I am as always super excited. My brain is always and is already going in multiple directions with the conversation that we're going to have. And I hope people really understand the importance of this conversation to help unlock other things that we've talked about and things that we will talk about in the future.

Liz Moorehead (00:35.702)
Yeah, absolutely, because in many ways, this topic is fascinating.

It is the culmination of many of the conversations that we've had so far, cultivating relationships with ourselves and with others, forgiving of ourselves and of others, fear, all of these little different pieces feed into this broader topic of adopting an owner's mentality within your own life. But at the same time, it's also setting the stage for where we're gonna go from here. This is a core tenant of

beyond your default and what it means. Not just what it means though, but also how to make it possible, how to set the conditions to even be able to do that. So I wanna start this conversation though with something fascinating that you and I both noticed doing the research for this episode, which is owner's mentality and us throwing that language out there. If you've been in an entrepreneurial circle, in startup spaces or any sort of business space, adopting an owner's mentality,

George B. Thomas (01:15.774)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (01:19.697)
Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (01:39.258)
is not exactly a new concept to you. It's something that founders will talk to their employees about a lot, to empower them to be more strategic in their decision making, yada, yada. But nobody talks about it from the perspective of adopting an owner's mentality within your personal life. It's completely segmented to the business spaces. I'd be curious to get your thoughts on that and why you think that is.

George B. Thomas (01:51.152)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (02:01.213)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (02:07.567)
You know, as far as why that is, I think, listen, and I'm speaking from experience when I say some of this stuff for a lot, a lot of my life, it was, um, I didn't want to own my ish cause my ish was ugly. So why would I even like search for or think about, um, this idea of ownership mentality in, in my own life? However, I love that you called it a core tenant because this is something that.

when the lights came on, when the switch was flipped, became a very important piece to that. And I called back to something that happened in my life. We'll talk about that in a couple of minutes. But Liz, back to your question of why do I think it's so business saturated. First of all, if I'm being completely honest, it's because business professionals have realized if they can get their employees to have owner mentality,

they're gonna work more like an owner and many owners work like dogs. Many owners don't take care of themselves. Many owners don't have a healthy hustle. Many owners are all about the bottom line. And if I can create these drones, then I can be more productive in my business and I can generate more revenue. And so some of this, honestly, I believe, comes from a selfish place.

Where what's interesting when I talk about it in the like individual personal ownership mentality, I am so far away from what that conversation usually means and where that conversation usually goes. To like, it's just, listen, there are so many traps that we can fall into. And when you have this ownership mentality,

you are far less likely to find yourself like in an Indiana Jones movie in the bottom of the pit with the snakes.

Liz Moorehead (04:10.326)
So, wow, I'm having a lot of feelings arise just from that answer. Well, because you and I come from the same industry background, and for some of our listeners, they know what that is, right? We come from the inbound marketing agency background. I also had a lot of startup experience prior to that. I worked at Living Social back in the big boom when it was Living Social versus Groupon, and yada, yeah.

George B. Thomas (04:14.735)
Okay, I'm super interested in that.

George B. Thomas (04:36.904)
I'm out.

Liz Moorehead (04:37.35)
And so I had a lot of feelings arise when you were talking about the owner's mentality because it is a double-edged sword. And it's a double-edged sword in our personal lives as well, which we are gonna be talking about later. Because in some cases, there were instances where somebody was espousing the virtues of the owner's mentality, just to get me to think beyond myself, to think about the collective and the fact that when you take this action, think about organizationally what kind of impact that will have, positive, net-neutral, negative.

George B. Thomas (04:56.71)
Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (05:07.204)
cases though, there's that toxicity to it. There's that drone enablement piece of it, right? But there is a level of toxicity when it comes to our personal lives as well. But before we go too deep down this rabbit hole, I want you to talk to me about what it means in the positive way, in the beyond your default way, to adopt an owner's mentality in one's own life. What does that look like?

George B. Thomas (05:35.067)
Yeah, so first of all, let me just tie this back to a realization that I had to have, and I hope that most of the listeners have had, but if they haven't, then today might be the seed of this realization. Liz, at some point in my life, I had to realize that nobody was coming to save me. Nobody.

Liz Moorehead (06:00.917)
Oof.

George B. Thomas (06:01.859)
Nobody was coming to save me. I had gotten my place, myself, I'm sorry. I had gotten myself into a place that was toxic, corrosive, not positive, not giving back, not adding value. Just, it was a terrible place to be in life. And I had to realize nobody is coming to save me. And it, oh yeah.

Liz Moorehead (06:27.518)
Was there a particular moment when you realized that?

George B. Thomas (06:30.839)
Yeah, absolutely. I was at a party. Sitting on a couch. Watching a half broken TV, where like everything was shorter than it should have been, because the TV didn't work right. I had been drinking. I had smoked some weed and I had popped some sort of like pill that I probably shouldn't have popped.

And Liz, I sat there and I remember hearing myself say, and by the way, this is a way younger George than who we're talking about today. But I remember saying to myself, oh man, this place could burn down and I just watched the flames. And I woke up the next morning and I thought,

Liz Moorehead (07:04.245)
Hehehehe

Liz Moorehead (07:13.248)
Whoa.

George B. Thomas (07:17.307)
What the crap are you doing with your life? Who have you become? And I doubted if it was actually me speaking to myself, but it was probably my spirit speaking to me. Like, dude, this is not what you're made for. This is not why you're on the planet. And so I had to realize, like, I gotta do something because nobody else is coming to save me. And there's a great quote, no one saves us but ourselves. No one can and.

No one may, we ourselves must walk the path. And I love this quote, it's by Buddha, by the way. I love this quote because it's our path. It's our job to save ourselves. And the only way that we're gonna be able to save ourselves is this idea of owning.

our life, designing our life, owning ourselves, owning our action. There's some words that we're going to talk about later on, like accountability, responsibility, proactivity, like respect, upkeep, things like that. But Liz, like a flood of information came back to my brain when I had this realization of like, you've got to save yourself. And it's kind of the funniest thing because it has, it feels like it doesn't have anything

directly to do with the fact that I had found myself in that place. But I was transported back to when I was a child. And I remember my dad, stepdad, but dad, I always hate that I have to like explain which one of my fathers or which one of my mothers and there's no good way to do that without using the word step and I hate the word step. But anyway, I remember my dad.

was we moved a lot when I was younger. And this conversation happened where there was a gentleman who we had been renting a house from, and we were getting ready to move out. And he said to my father, he said, man, this place looks better than when you moved in. And I remember my dad saying, treat it like it's yours.

George B. Thomas (09:27.951)
And we had a conversation like after the gentleman was gone about like, listen, no matter what you do, always treat it like it's yours. And what's funny is he was talking about a house, a building, but he wasn't. Like you could tell fundamentally he was talking about more than just a house. And so this kind of stuck with me and it just became part of my life as this moment I'm like, almost a mantra.

Treat it like it's yours. Well, my life is mine. Treat it like it's yours. Well, the house I live in is mine, even though like maybe I don't own it, right? And what's funny is like as I got older, where I live right now, we rent, okay? And what's funny is we were actually at a social committee meeting one evening and they started to have this conversation at the table and they were berating renters.

about how renters don't take care of their houses and how renters don't do this and how renters, and I just spoke up and I said, do any of you know that we rent our house? And there was pure shock amongst the people that were in that room because they didn't realize that I wasn't a homeowner, but I was a home renter.

Now, why am I telling a story? Because listen, there have been a ton of times where people thought I was the owner of the sales line, which is a historical agency that I worked for. There were even more times that people thought I was the owner of Impulse Creative, which is an agency.

that I worked for and I wasn't even an owner. I didn't own the house, I didn't own the companies, but people's mentality or perception was, well, he must be the owner. Why? Because I was treating it like it was mine. You should be treating it like it's yours. Because the positive side of this, by the way, Liz, is that when you treat it like it's yours, you treat it.

George B. Thomas (11:38.963)
differently. Now I'm going to pause there. I have more that I want to talk about like owning, borrowing, renting, and this special word that's very important when you flip this ownership mentality mindset, but let's see what you want to unpack with where we're at right now.

Liz Moorehead (11:57.386)
What I find fascinating about this conversation right off the bat is that I think sometimes, and I've had moments in my life, including as recently as this summer, where I was angry at the world. I was projecting everything outward. How did I end up here? Girl, you walked there. You put one foot in front and you physically, you fit, maybe you ran.

George B. Thomas (12:20.263)
Yeah. Maybe you ran, actually.

Liz Moorehead (12:25.694)
You know, but I also think it, it reminds like I'm.

I'm having a strange reaction to it because very recently within the past 30 days, I woke up one morning and nothing had changed plot wise in my life. Everything has been plotting along exactly the same. And I woke up one morning and went, okay, I'm done with this sad girl stuff now. Like the cup that contained my tolerance for my own bullish has runneth dry.

George B. Thomas (12:54.94)
Yes.

George B. Thomas (12:59.748)
Yes.

Liz Moorehead (13:01.534)
Like I just got to that point where I said to myself, I'm done doing this. I'm tired of the sads and the victimization. And it's not that bad things hadn't happened.

genuinely to me, but at some point you make the decision as to whether or not life is happening to you or you are an active participant, an active architect of your own life. But here's where I think people get really tripped up with it. I think about things like therapy, 12 step programs, all of these different things. The first step is admitting you have a problem, taking ownership, all these things. But once you walk through that door.

While you have to continue to be the momentum behind your own ownership, it opens up a world of resources and help to you. I think sometimes what happens is that when we say things like, no one's gonna save you except yourself, that's true, and you also don't have to do it alone. But there is a certain level of ownership required in order to gain access

to the people, the opportunities, the things that will help lift you up and out of where you are.

George B. Thomas (14:24.347)
Yeah, without a doubt. And by the way, as I hear you talk, I'm transporting myself to a future episode that we should have, which is victim versus victor mentality. And diving a little bit deeper into that. So I can't wait for us to have that episode in the future. But Liz, can I break down kind of some things for you and for the listeners that

Liz Moorehead (14:37.37)
Oh yes. Oh yes.

Liz Moorehead (14:50.423)
Yes.

George B. Thomas (14:53.751)
I think are important to this idea of owning your own personal life, owning your own path, owning this journey that hopefully you're setting on to live a life beyond the default. Okay, so there's... Yes, good. Okay, and ask questions because I can't wait to like unpack this and just... I feel like we're at the beginning of like a multi...

Liz Moorehead (15:06.046)
Yes, absolutely. And by the way, I'm sitting here prepared to take notes. Hehehehe.

George B. Thomas (15:20.879)
episode thing that we'll talk about over time, not back to back, but we'll come back to this. So if I really start to break down this conversation, there are a couple key words and then there's one that is like a magnifier and one that I would hope that people would pay attention to and unlock in their life. So obviously, if we're talking about ownership mentality, we got to talk about the word owning, right? Owning the act, state,

or right of possessing something. Okay, it makes sense. We have purchased a computer. We own it. We have purchased a car. We own it. We can do whatever we want with it as we move forward because it's our thing. We have purchased things.

Have you purchased yourself? Mentally, mentally. Well, that's the thing. Mentally, have you purchased yourself? Have you invested in yourself? Have you taken money, time, and everything it is to say, I am mine? I...

Liz Moorehead (16:16.682)
Ooh, have you invested in yourself?

George B. Thomas (16:34.711)
By the way, I could totally go into pastor mode and tell you that your life is already bought through the blood of Jesus. But we're going to keep moving forward. We're going to keep moving forward. And the other word that I think is important is this word of borrow. Most people when they think about renting, it's like, oh, I'm borrowing it. Or I borrowed a hammer. Or right, so potentially. So borrow. Take and use something that belongs to someone else.

with the interest of returning it. Okay, so this probably isn't renting, but it could be renting. Like we could go rent a rototiller, we're borrowing it from like Home Depot or Lowe's or whatever. We can borrow a cup of sugar from our friends. Although how many times have we really got a cup of sugar back? Not very often. Yeah, just have it. Like that's not even really a borrow. So there's a difference between owning something and borrowing something.

George B. Thomas (17:30.695)
When you think about borrowing and yourself, your mind might go in 10,000 different ways. But what chunks are you allowing people to borrow from you that are actually taking from what you should be inputting into the world? Okay, just now the other word I want to think about.

If you're not owning, if you're not borrowing, you're probably renting. Renting, pay someone for the use, something typically property, land, a car. You're renting it. You don't own it. You're kind of throwing money away because eventually it's got to go back. Right. I've been throwing money away for years because I just, A, didn't know if I wanted to buy a home at first and then got comfortable where I live. But moving forward, we're going to purchase a home.

because then it'll be ours versus renting. But the whole time that we've been renting, right? We've treated it like it's ours. Now, here's the thing, when you think about owing, borrowing, renting, here's where for me, the magic connection of no matter if you're renting, no matter if you're borrowing, no matter if you own this thing.

This word is, I think, when I say ownership mentality, a piece that I draw so close to, and that is the word stewardship. It doesn't matter if you rent it, if you're borrowing it, or if you're owning it. If you have a mindset of stewardship or the understanding of stewardship, the job of supervising or taking care of something,

such as an organization or property, I'll even add in people. Now, when I think about this...

George B. Thomas (19:21.135)
I go into my brain where it's like, renting, borrowing, potentially even owning if you're just like not paying attention to the stewardship of the things you have, many times equal leaving things in a worse place versus a better one. And Liz, I think when I talk about ownership mentality and I talk about stewardship, what I'm talking about directly aligns to this

catalyst word that we talk about, meaning it all aligns with if you can own your stuff, if you can own your life, if you can be a great steward of the things that you mentally and physically own, then you can use those resources, you can use yourself to be a great steward of the humans that actually come your way, whether that's your wife, your husband, your kids.

your friends, your community, whatever it is, now all of a sudden we're looking at this in a different way because we are to be stewards of ourselves, stewards of those around us, stewards of the things that we own. There should be this mental thing as an owner. I'm always trying to get it to the next best place. Now I'm gonna pause there. I have some words that I wanna talk about as far as around this idea of

borrowing and different things like that. But I'm gonna pause there because I wanna see where your brain goes with. I saw a visceral response when I said the word stewardship.

Liz Moorehead (20:59.118)
Well, I love the idea of stewardship. It's a word that I use a lot in my professional life, actually, because I've noticed that there tends to be thematically, there's a pattern I've noticed with the organizations and people that I tend to work with the best, they consider themselves stewards of a broader idea, a greater.

purpose that lives outside of themselves that is manifested transactionally, either through the products or services that they sell. But there tends to be some sort of greater calling or purpose. And when I think about the word stewardship and stewardship over one's own life, whether we're talking about the owning, the renting, the borrowing, it doesn't really matter. The other word that comes to mind is that there's a reverence, there is a respect, there is an understanding that no matter where you are currently in your life,

Even in the darkest of hours, there is a gift there. There is something worth preserving, something worth stewarding, something worth preserving or taking care of or making sure that it moves through to the next space. And that to me really resonates with me personally, particularly with what I just shared earlier in this podcast. I woke up.

you know, between two weeks and 30 days ago, I can't quite remember, went, oh, okay, we're done here. We're done with the sad sack parade. This is now coming to a swift conclusion. You know what I mean? And that's really where my brain goes with this. But here's where my curiosity has peaked, George. I could sit here and put myself in the position of some of our listeners and say, these words all sound great, man. It sounds great.

But when you're in the middle of the ish, it's kinda hard to find any sort of desire to be steward of anything.

George B. Thomas (22:56.423)
So I would battle against that though, because when you have an owner mentality, I think a couple of things happen. One, it's harder to find yourself in the ish. The other thing is, if you are taking ownership mentality, one of your default things is gonna be...

coming up with a plan or a method to remove yourself out of the ish. I think for me what it has shown as quicker than when I wasn't, when I didn't have this mentality. Because I let myself brew in the slop, if you will, of life for a real long time before I was able to like leverage this and harness this. And since I have,

Listen, I can show you my life before it and I can show you my life after it. And the pattern that happened after picking up ownership mentality and how I believed in myself and how I started to think about time and accountability and responsibility and respect and relate. Mm hmm. It all changed based on this, like. Owning it.

and being a good steward of it, whatever the it was. And so again, Liz, what I would challenge folks who right now are listening this and they're in the just garbage pit of life, now's the best time to invest in creating an ownership mentality to get yourself out of it.

Liz Moorehead (24:46.898)
What are some small ways that you can do that though? Like what does that practically look like in those micro moments of doom and gloom?

George B. Thomas (24:51.027)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (24:56.815)
Yeah, so I'll give you some things that for me have been important and for me helped. And you may not have all of these as you're listening to this, but there might be something that you can tie in closely to this. So I want I want everybody to realize this is maybe a dart board that I'm throwing darts at and I might get close to your numbers, but you might pick a different number if you if you're not a dart player, then you have no clue what I'm talking about.

Live life, have a beer, and go play some darts tonight. Okay, so the first thing that really has helped me with this ownership mentality is the understanding, and I will use the word that used, reverence for something that I am borrowing. We just don't think about it as borrowing, but every single one of us, the minute we are born is on borrowed time.

and to realize and understand on a daily basis how short our life is. Listen, I'll ask you as listeners, I want you to think, when you think of all the numbers in the world, millions, billions, trillions, when I tell you 75, that feels like a very small number. If I were to even tell you 80, that sounds like a very small number.

But 75 to 80 summers is all we get. 75 to 80 winters is all we get. And some of us are sitting here like, oh, I just can't wait till I grow up, high school, college kids. Mm, mm-mm, mm-mm. 75 to 80 summers, winters, springs, falls, 75 to 80 birthdays, that's all we get.

Liz Moorehead (26:41.724)
You sure about that?

George B. Thomas (26:51.935)
It's a very finite number, very small. And so this realization, I'm on borrowed time. This, by the way, happened to me at 18 and a half years old, 19 years old, when I was 13 hours away from being alive on this planet and not being alive on this planet in the United States Navy. We've told the story, go listen to historical episodes. We'll try to put a link in the show notes for you. But listen, when you realize you're on borrowed time,

then your stuff, your garbage pail of life, your ish, it just gets a little bit smaller and a little bit easier to climb through because it's just a, it's a fraction of a moment. It's a fraction of a moment, even it feels like it's eternal. The other thing is I have to tie back to that, leave it better than you found it. When you start investing in property, people, whatever it is, platforms, like all the...

When you start leaving things better than they were, you start focusing on others and start focusing less on you. And what's fun about that is the reason that we feel like we're in our ish so deep is because we're in an internal cycle in our brain of like how bad our ish is versus when you get out and you start helping other folks, you realize, whoo, everybody's got a little bit of ish over here and there. Maybe mine isn't as bad. And now you get a true perspective.

of like what people are dealing with versus what you're dealing with. Because the fact that you can't afford movie tickets on Friday night, when you're helping somebody who's homeless, oh, it's real small. It's real small perspective. The other thing that I start to think about, too, is this idea of accountability. Now, sometimes we just like to play the blame game. Oh, well, it's our government. Oh, well, it's our boss.

Oh my gosh, I could do so much better if my wife, my husband, my kids, my wa- my- Take accountability for yourself, for your actions. Understand the reactions to their actions caused their next actions and if you would have actually just stopped what you did, stopped what you said, or stopped- like you have the power to own yourself, to own your words, to own the direction.

George B. Thomas (29:11.411)
that you're helping things go in, but only if you can take accountability for yourself. And there's a great Simon Sinek video, we'll make sure we put in the show notes, about take accountability for your actions. And just please stop playing this blame game. The other word that comes to mind for me is responsibility, and I had to just start taking responsibility. Listen, there's a lot of things in my life that weren't my fault.

It's not my fault my parents got divorced. It's not my fault that like I ended up being in a, you know, certain place at a certain time when I had no decisions to be there, meaning starting life, air quotes, small in a one room log cabin. It's not my fault necessarily that I started breaking out in hives. It's like, there's just a lot of things that, not my fault, but I have to take responsibility to the fact that they happened and that's where I was and that's...

part of my story and just moving forward from there. And there's two videos that I think additional resources that the listeners can dig into. One is, and I've said this before, Liz, I love Oprah. One is a video by Oprah, and it's just taking responsibility for your life. And then one is fault versus responsibility, it's Will Smith. And my goodness, they're both very powerful, right? So the idea of accountability, responsibility,

Liz Moorehead (30:20.098)
Yes.

George B. Thomas (30:36.947)
Proactivity. Quit sitting around and waiting and go out and take it. Take the day. Seize the day. Carpe diem. Right? Like I don't sit around and wait for people to... Liz jokes because she's like, Oh, since the last time we talked, did you start another business? Like you have to seize...

Liz Moorehead (30:55.102)
That's a valid concern. That is a valid concern. And I will restate my concern of if I get a slack over the weekend, you never know what's gonna happen. You never know.

George B. Thomas (31:03.899)
Yes. You never know. You never know. But you got to you got to be proactive in life. Right. And again, it kind of ties back to like nobody's coming to save you. Nobody's coming to do your work. Nobody's like get out there. Get after it. Get it in a healthy way. Of course, check out the healthy hustle episode. But in a healthy way, get after it. And then here's the other two. And I think these go real nice together. And especially when we're talking about stewardship and then I'm going to pause. Listen, we'll dig in a little bit deeper.

Liz Moorehead (31:09.878)
Hehehe

George B. Thomas (31:33.767)
but this idea of respect and upkeep. Respect for yourself, respect for others, respect for the things that have come in your life, respect for the things that might be in your life no more but were a key part of that. Like respecting the moments in time and giving them the importance that they deserve. Just this idea of living a life where you respect the things that need to be respected and upkeep.

the things. Now, in my case, in the story, it was it was the upkeep of the house. Man, this looks better than when you got it. But but think about upkeep. Are you are you focused on upkeep when it comes to the valuable relationships in your life? Are you paying attention to upkeep when it's how do I keep my engine running for the next 75, 80, 85 years? Are you think about upkeep when you're you know.

downloading the latest software upgrade to your brain so that you can actually live a life beyond your default. Like, do you respect yourself and respect those around you to upkeep the things that need to be kept up? Or are you like, nah, just time to do some Netflix and chill. I'm just gonna take time to do nothing. Just do nothing. Not that there's a wrong, you know, you can pause, you can take a break.

I'm going to that deeper like, oh, this is going to like potentially ruin your possibilities in life type, take a break. It's like when you take a break and you never come back from the break type thing. Now you got to be kind of paying attention. So listen, borrowed time. Countability, responsibility, productivity, respect and upkeep. These are the words that I feel like are this spiderweb.

of information around this stewardship and ownership mentality in your personal life conversation.

Liz Moorehead (33:33.614)
When I think about this conversation, one of the places where my brain goes, to quote your favorite saying, is that leaving aside the philosophical benefits of accountability and owning your ish, it's also just more practical. Like if you are living in a space right now where you're not happy with how things are and there are a lot of things that need to change,

The faster you are completely honest with yourself about why you are where you are, the quicker you will be able to actually solve the problem because the more you deflect and displace blame and ownership for why you are where you are, the longer it will take you to get where you wanna go because you will forever be solving the wrong problem. Or what I have noticed is moments where I think when we adopt more of a victim mentality,

There's a part of us that knows that on the inside. So what we do is we end up doubling down and talking about it more. There's a lot more verbal scaffolding that happens in our lives. There's a lot more talking about what's happening in our lives, as opposed to actually living and designing our lives. And so when I think about it, again, if you're a practical lazy gal like me, more it's like, I would like things to hurt less faster.

That would be fantastic. The quickest pathway forward is to be honest with yourself. You're going to exert less energy, again, the laziness piece here, right? I brought, I brought, like it's true. Like if you would just like to exert, if you would like to feel less tired in your own life, think about how much more energy you would have if you were not trying to figure out who to blame.

George B. Thomas (35:12.728)
That's funny.

Liz Moorehead (35:25.918)
If you were not having to basically act like a politician giving a stump speech during campaign season about why something isn't your fault. And what if that energy was instead focused toward, okay, so how do I fix this? How do I find people who can actually help me? How do I actually do this thing? And then it goes away. And so trying to convince the world, and most of all yourself, that something isn't your fault.

George B. Thomas (35:49.487)
Yeah. So Liz, it's funny because I kind of said that's funny, like, you know, when you were talking about that, but they're actually, it's funny because my brain just works in unique and interesting ways and it surprises me on a daily basis. But when you were saying that, I wanted to be like, oh, that's funny, like lazy. But then all of a sudden I got punched in the center of my brain and I was like, oh, actually, there's nothing wrong with trying to get maximum results with minimum effort.

Liz Moorehead (36:01.846)
Hehehehe

Liz Moorehead (36:18.391)
Mm-mm.

George B. Thomas (36:18.887)
The problem is that most people don't measure what the heck's going on to understand what the minimum effort is for the maximum result they're going to get. Like I go back to, you know, a couple of years ago, I was walking, uh, seven to nine miles a day, three different one hour walks. And I went from like 79 pounds down in seven months. Now I'm getting ready to go back on this journey.

And the thing that's interesting in my brain is I don't have three hours in a day, and I'll use the word waste in, gosh, don't send me hate email. I don't mean to waste, but I have to streamline this effort. So now in this new journey, I'm actually going to measure what's the minimal amount of time I can walk and distance I can walk to get the same effect of losing the weight over time. Does it have to be seven months? No. Can it be nine? Sure. Can it be 12? Yes. But

what's the minimal so I can take care of myself and take care of work and take care of family and take care, like, right? So there's nothing wrong with that. And I wouldn't call that laziness, I'd call that strategy. Like have a fricking strategy in your life. Yeah, exactly. The other thing too, I gotta give the listeners the punchline. You said the phrase, if you're sitting there and you're wondering why you're where you're at, because...

Liz Moorehead (37:31.502)
called efficiency.

George B. Thomas (37:44.271)
Listen, you are where you are because of one thing, you. That's it. When you can embrace that mentality, now you can start to fix stuff. It's hard to fix others, impossible to fix others. And if you're blaming others, it'll never get fixed. But if you realize you are where you are because of you, that's one of the first great steps.

Liz Moorehead (38:10.562)
We've been talking a lot about the owner's mentality in terms of the reactive posture, right? You are in a den of sad and gloom. Use the owner's mentality to get out. But you and I have started touching upon the what's possible piece, right? And there's something that you talk about quite a bit that I really love, which is that your life is yours to design, so do it.

George B. Thomas (38:29.944)
Oh my gosh.

Liz Moorehead (38:38.99)
This is the other side of that piece, right? Like I think when we talk about accountability, responsibility, everybody's like, oh my God, this feels, it sounds like homework, and I'm just gonna have to walk around being like, shame, shame to myself. And that's not what this is all about, is it?

George B. Thomas (38:54.635)
No, not at all. And when you get on the other side of kind of what we've been talking about in this episode, you get in a side of gratitude and positivity. And when you're living in like positive intent, right? When you get into this world of positive intent, gratitude, positivity, now all of a sudden you start to design your life in a different way because you start to believe in different things. You start to understand

the capabilities of the journey that you've taken and where it's gotten you thus far. A prime example of what we're talking about is this podcast, is the newsletters that we're putting out, is the community that we're growing. If you ask the dude sitting on the couch looking at the broke ass TV, hey, are you ready to impact the world?

Yo bro, I'm ready to take a nap, dude.

But that's because I wasn't owning it. I wasn't owning my history. I wasn't owning my future. I wasn't owning my present decisions. And so did I have to use ownership mentality to get myself out of the garbage pit or armpit of life? Absolutely. When this switch flipped, I had a wife.

and some new kids that were coming along the way over the next couple of years. I did not know how many and at what frequency they were coming, but I knew one was there and I knew another one was being baked in the oven. And I was like, oh, my God, if I don't own this, where do we end up? What life do they end up living? Like, I have to own my ish right now. And this is the moment when I started

George B. Thomas (40:54.027)
going to a job that I shouldn't have even gotten and watching Linda.com tutorials at night so I could do the work in the day. This, which led me to then an agency that led me to Inbound, that led me to HubSpot, that led me to this decade of educating myself and educating others in a owning who I'm going to be, owning how I'm going to show up.

owning and designing what I wanted my future and the potential future of my wife, children, and Liz, what's funny when you start on this track, you start picking things up along the way, and as this ownership mentality, even before I owned my business, I came to the realization of I'm out here hustling for my last name, not my first.

Liz Moorehead (41:49.428)
Oh, explain that.

George B. Thomas (41:52.463)
Listen, it's all about legacy. It's all about significance. It's all about understanding that the time that I have, and by this time, by the way, it could be tomorrow, but it could be 10 years, 20 years, right? If God is good, I might have another 30 years. Pardon me, the next 30 years for me.

is all about setting up the people who I love and the people that I don't even know that don't exist yet for the possibilities of things that I never had. The opportunities that I wish were there. I want to be the guy.

that when looking back, my grandchildren's grandchildren go, whoo, great, grandpa George boy, whoo, that dude right there. And then when they do that, they're like, why was he like that? And then they stumble upon this thing that no longer exists called a podcast. And they start listening to Beyond Your Default.

and they start realizing how powerful it is to own their own life, and to create their own legacy, and to become their own master of the things that they want to do in life. That's what I'm doing here.

Liz Moorehead (43:37.302)
I want to wrap up today's conversation with a self-reflection opportunity for our listeners. Because I think even with the best of intentions, or maybe we're looking at ourselves through the worst lens possible, it can be very hard to evaluate with clarity whether or not one has an owner's mentality. And let me give you an example of that. You might have someone listening who is exceptionally hard on themselves.

who is potentially placing way too much burden on themselves and actually could stand to lighten up. Yeah, but then you could also have other folks who are like, I have an owner's mentality. I own all my ish. I'm totally accountable for it, but they're not. So what I would be curious, yeah.

George B. Thomas (44:10.396)
Stop it.

George B. Thomas (44:18.935)
If it comes that easy, hit your forehead against the wall and try again. No, I'm just kidding. Don't hit your forehead against the wall.

Liz Moorehead (44:24.894)
So how do, yeah, we need you to know math, so don't do that. But what are some questions people can ask themselves as we leave them on this conversation to help them understand where they are?

George B. Thomas (44:38.639)
Yeah, listen, and again, I say these things in the understanding of that I'll for always and ever be working on them myself. But start to, I would say journal, because you're going to have to look back. I literally mentioned the thing of measuring it earlier. The only way you're going to measure it if you write it down or have a way that you're tracking these things. But when you have ownership mentality, you have to start to think a couple of things.

What percentage am I being reactive versus proactive? And I literally have a thing where I'm like, okay, today. Like proactive, reactive. Many of my days are very proactive at this point. Sometimes has to be reactive to like client work and stuff like that, but pretty much proactive. The other thing that I think that you ask yourself is

What percentage of today was spent in gratitude? The other thing that I would ask yourself is how much of a percentage of today was it me taking care of myself? Did I meditate? Did I go for a walk? Did I, if I'm spiritual, did I watch a sermon or read the Bible or whatever it is for you, right? I'm just, whatever it is for you. So like think about

Here's where I'll go with this. If there's a holistic matrix that you could create for yourself, how much time did I spend investing in relationships? How much time did I spend in my spirituality? How much time did I spend in my health? How much time did I... When you can start to say that there are a larger percentage of days that you're spending a larger percentage amount of time in the matrix that is important to you, you have reached this

idea of designing your life. You've reached this idea of owning your stuff. You are literally measuring and programming and moving and adjusting and pivoting so that you can win those metrics, right? And we're literally bouncing around this idea of habits and goals in the matrix conversation that I'm having right now. But these are the things that I would set up and the questions that I would be asking myself.

George B. Thomas (47:01.243)
Because again, if we go back to your relationship with time, your relationship with accountability, your relationship with responsibility, right? Respect and upkeep, like, what does that framework look like for you? What are those answers to those questions around that framework look like to you? And then I will say this, Liz.

Because there's another quote that I love, but I got to give context to this quote. First of all, I love this quote just because who said it? And I'm like, really? Willie Nelson, by the way. I love Oprah and I love Willie. Willie's kind of the man on a couple of different levels for me. But Willie Nelson has a quote that says, freedom is control in your own life. And now.

When I say this, and I love this quote, not in a control freak way, but in a design your own life way. Okay? And the reason I'm bringing up this quote is one of the questions that you have to ask yourself, that I ask myself is, how much of today did I own? How much of today was because of freedom?

George B. Thomas (48:26.343)
to do those things that we want to do, freedom to do those things that we love, freedom to spend time with people that we love and enjoy. All of these things lead to happiness and joy. And the punchline to this entire episode is the reason I wanted to have the conversation around ownership mentality is because I...

realize that it could be the streamlined process to get you to happiness and joy. And that's really what's important in one's life.