This episode is 'How Might We Become Excellent' and my guest is Joe Templin.

Joe, has led an eclectic life.

As one of six kids (the only normal one, he insists) growing up in a small town and spending time on the family farm, Joe’s parents (John and Barb) instilled a love of learning, the outdoors, and a healthy disrespect for authority while still simultaneously embracing traditional values of hard work and “love thy neighbour but mind your own dang business.”  This is Joe’s foundation.

He was severely asthmatic but through his work ethic and love of challenge has become a martial artist and ultradistance runner.  He had a speech impediment but has built a career around communicating.  This habit of overcoming limitations is a theme in his life and his writings.

Joe shares his tips and thoughts on everyday excellence.

Joes LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-templin/

Joes Website - https://everyday-excellence.com

Transcript

Scott: [00:00:00 ] Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of how might we and today's Mike guest is Joe Templin all the way from over the pond in the us of a, and we are gonna be talking about how might we become excellent. So, Joe, would you like to introduce yourself to the guests please?

Joe: Sure. So I'm Joe Templin. I am a self-taught polymath in a lot of ways.

I say polymath as opposed to Renaissance man, simply because I can't draw a straight line even with a ruler. As you notice, I've got a little bit of an attitude and self deprecating humor. Everything's funny. I'm half Irish. So that's the way it is. And I am a human Swiss army. I am an ultra-marathoner a special needs parent, a martial arts champion and [00:01:00 ] author of the book every day excellence.

Scott: Okay. So quite a mixed bag of stuff in there and lots of experiences.

Joe: Yeah. You know, I have stuff to be able to pull out of the cabinet for almost any conversation I had with.

Scott: Okay, so that sort of flexibility is, is held you in good stead, like the experiences you've had.

Joe: Yeah. And also as some of my friends in used to say, I'm the most interesting man in financial services.

Scott: Okay. And not, not renowned for an in full of interesting people. I must admit financial services. No, not written out for you. Okay. So you wanna talk about how might we become. What do you mean by those?

Joe: So the first thing is that excellence is like happiness in that it is individually defined, but there are some consistencies across individuals about what it [00:02:00 ] constitutes happiness or excellence in a lot of ways.

So for example, Excellence is partially about, is the process of improvement because we all start off life as babies. Okay. We can't take care of ourselves. We cry, you know, we eat, we poop. That's about all that we do when we sleep, hopefully, and that is literally how every single human being on the planet has started.

Whether they become, you know, the most renowned martial artist on the planet, the greatest writer, you know, captains of industry, queen of England, they all started from the exact same position. So how do they determine where they wanna be, what they wanna become and go about the process of doing. That is the first critical component in discovering your own internal excellence, because we all have tremendous capacity that few of us even tap.

In fact, no matter [00:03:00 ] what I've accomplished, there's still so much more that within me that I could unlock if I truly invested the time to do so. And every single human being's like that. So first we need to start figuring out, okay, what does excellence mean to. And for the person who is sitting there trying to get their degree while raising three kids, it is being able to pass the exams while at uni and then be able to get that degree so they can build a better life to them.

That is the next step of excellence. And that is a very critical thing for other people. It might be, you know, winning that gold medal at the Olympics or, you know, making their first million dollars, whatever it. The first component of excellence is having a vision to be able to start working towards. And you know, that vision as says in the Bible, people without a vision will perish.

If you don't have something [00:04:00 ] really important that you're working towards, you're gonna found it. You're gonna, you know, find any excuse to not put on the running shoes and go running. You're going to sit there and eat Cheetos and watch the bachelorette. Instead of cracking the book, you're gonna find any excuse possible to avoid doing the difficult things become better simply because that is human nature.

It

Scott: reminds me a little bit. I saw somebody a quote and I can't remember who, who this quote came from. Not, I remember where I slow selling is where I saw the them talk about it. And it says those who have achieved in their lives or high performance they, their common thing, they think they they've identified outside of actually knowing where they're going is you mentioned it a little bit.

There is having or completing the habits that other people don't do.

Joe: Yes, there's a great saying from believe it's Ernie gray talk, they gave a hundred years ago, actually that successful people [00:05:00 ] do what unsuccessful people are unwilling to do. And that is whether it's, you know, cutting up vegetables and having those instead of eating crisps or it's spending five minutes, every single morning reading so that you expand your mind and spirit, it is.

Truly, as you know of CTM said, wellbeing is no small thing. Buzz made up of small things. It's those little decisions, the micro decisions, as I like to call them that over a day compound and determine whether you are better or worse over and how many good days can you stack up in a week, determines the path of your life.

Essent.

Scott: So go because what you said, it's not that these people do. That other people are unable to do is that they're unwilling to do. I think there's a big difference between those two isn't there,

Joe: there, there's a huge difference. So for example, I'm a martial artist and we all start as [00:06:00 ]white belts. We all start, you know, at the very beginning with no skills.

In fact, I being, you know, the CLTs that I am naturally, and I was highly, highly asthmatic. So I did not come on in with this immense athletic talent. But we all started and we all learned the exact same basic techniques. We learned about learned how to stand. We learned how to throw a punch and a kick.

And that's what they teach you in most places in your first couple of classes first week. What have you. And then the question is how often are you gonna practice that? So it's just like your basic language. If you're a sales person, how often are you practicing those basics? How often as a musician, are you practicing your scales so that you get that basic repetition and that basic first punch that I learned.

35 plus years ago, I still do that punch every single morning, a hundred times minimum, each hand. And I've done so essentially every day for 35 plus years, at this point, I've thrown [00:07:00 ] over 10 million punches with each hand. I don't have to think about it, but I go back to that fundamental and repeat and build off of it.

And that is how I've developed excellence in that space is starting with the fundamentals and then growing from there. And it doesn't matter what profession you're in. If you start with your fundamentals and master them, then build off of them. You can create excellence. And unfortunately, people don't wanna do that because it's too much work and it's not, you know, taking the quick pill and, you know, solving all your problems in 30 seconds.

Scott: Reminds me a little bit of what we said just before we came online, cuz this is totally unscripted and we've only just rocked up and even spoken before is say what could go wrong load to things you can't rewind life, but you can't fast forward it either.

Joe: Exactly. So, you know, you can't microwave the baby, as we say.

Scott: I've never heard that. I don't really want to microwave a baby to be perfectly honest, but so it's not really,

Joe: so it's a, it's a process, you know, it takes nine months essentially from the start of pregnancy until the time [00:08:00 ] that that baby pops out. So it doesn't matter what you do, you can't accelerate. So you need to just buy into that process.

Becoming a very good musician is a process become, you know, climbing the ranks at. Is a process. Yeah. There's things that you can do to make sure that you are doing it the proper way and sustainable comes out healthy and you're ready for the next step, but you can't jump from step one to step six.

Doesn't happen.

Scott: I would tell you what you might be able to do is accelerate through that process. But you can't, as you say, you can't jump. And I think sometimes it's, we, we look at these things, we've got like life hacks and hack your way to here. It's always like the quick fix that we seem