EPISODE 217 WITH JM RYERSON: A CONVERSATION ON LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE

Ready Yet?! Podcast Episode 217 with guest JM Ryerson: A Conversation on Living Your Best Life

Transcribed with Descript

Erin Marcus: All right, welcome, welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast, where I’m remembering to turn off all the things that make noise on my computer so that I can welcome J. M. Ryerson to a conversation with me that I’m looking forward to because I don’t even know a lot about you, so I think that’s the best way to do this.

Erin Marcus: So let’s hear it. Give me a little bit of a more formal introduction of who you are and what

JM Ryerson: you do. Well, ready yet? Here we go. Yeah, my name is J. M. I am originally from Montana and I have ended up in South Florida now after being in Northern California for about 20 years. So that’s the geography of where we just have

Erin Marcus: a conversation on culture shock.

Erin Marcus: If you’d like,

JM Ryerson: we could, we could definitely do that. And you know what? I studied in the Netherlands at some point. So I tried to get out there a little bit to check it out. Let me see. This is the fourth company that I have created, and this is what I would call my legacy company called let’s go win.

JM Ryerson: And it’s not all about wins and losses. I guess maybe I’ll start there. Everybody’s like, Oh, so it’s all about winning. Well, yeah, I like to win, but it doesn’t mean that we’re going to win every single day. Let’s go. Win is literally created to inspire people to live their best lives because I wrote the first book for my two sons, my wife and I have a 17 year old and 14 year old sons.

JM Ryerson: And the whole idea is I wanted them to not skin their knees as many times as I did. So put into a little book. You know, a 200 page book or whatever it is, one 70, I think it is a page book of lessons starting with vulnerability ending with transcend and that took me on this, this journey of doing podcasts, coaching, and so everything that let’s go when is involved with has to help people inspire them to live their best lives.

JM Ryerson: So every single day, that’s what I get to wake up and do. I’m very blessed, I love it, and I get to be on cool shows like Ready Yet, so this is, this is a pretty good gig I got going. Not so

Erin Marcus: bad. Well, and one of the things that, you didn’t quite say it, but I can, I’m gonna extrapolate by the way you’re talking about it, and it’s one of the things that I believe as well, let’s go win.

Erin Marcus: It’s not about, excuse me, it’s not about achieving the most. Right. It’s more about living life on your terms. Like what is definition of winning? You get to decide that.

JM Ryerson: No, a hundred percent. Totally agree with that. I didn’t want to cut you off. It’s a profound point because look, winning, loving yourself.

JM Ryerson: It all starts within, and it’s not the first time you’ve heard it and it won’t be the last, but truly until you can love yourself, you really can’t love anyone else. That’s a, that’s just a fact of life. And same thing with winning. Like. What is winning for some people winning is literally doing a 40 hour week job nine to five That’s their that’s their gig of winning.

JM Ryerson: That sounds awful to me I don’t like that lifestyle because I don’t like to be told where to be when to be there, you know I like to Be very entrepreneurial, and I get to be at a certain place when I choose to, and I get to make however much money I want. That’s winning to me. Some people think that’s awful.

JM Ryerson: Like, my parents thought that was freaking insane. And so, I guess, to your point, you’re right. Nobody can tell you this is winning. And our parents at some point have always tried to protect us and be like, this is the way you’re going to be a doctor or lawyer. Well, mom and dad, maybe I am, maybe I’m not, but it’s going to be my choice.

JM Ryerson: And I’m going to live very intentionally. So I 1000 percent agree with that. And that’s why I started literally with vulnerability. It’s the most profound lesson I learned. Is when you are truly your authentic self truly take all the masks off that we’ve put on at some point in our life to fit in and to be liked when you take that stuff off life gets really easy and so that’s you know what I try to coach people to do, including my kids.

JM Ryerson: That’s why I started with that. And that wasn’t always the case. All right. I was taught boys don’t cry. That’s really terrible advice, but that was what I was taught. And I learned, no, dude, being vulnerable is a strength, not a weakness. And so I’ve taught my boys that, and I hope they have embraced that.

Erin Marcus: And I, I love that vulnerability for me. It wasn’t a matter of, I was not taught boys don’t cry, obviously, but I crying, you know, I’ll give you something to cry about. That was the right. The response, but. While I 100 percent agree with you and I talk about so much of what you’re talking about, it’s so funny how the universe just sends out messages at the same time.

Erin Marcus: I’m literally finishing up an e book right now called Connect as a Human First. So like this authenticity, but I want to ask you this because I have this weird thing about me. People tell me it’s weird. I probably just need to embrace that, that I’ve never thought the rules applied to me. Now there’s zero entitlement about it.

Erin Marcus: I don’t think I should just be given, you know, I understand I have to go make whatever I want to have make, but where along the way, cause you mentioned, you know, your parents want X for you, they think that’s the right path. Where do you get, where do people get. The courage, because it’s really what it is.

Erin Marcus: Courage in the face of potentially disappointing people, potentially they don’t like you, all of the things that we’re all worried about, to embrace your authentic self. Because I 100 percent agree with you, the more my world gets focused in on me just doing what I love doing, what I’m great at doing, not only am I better at it, I serve at a higher level, and I’m happier, everything’s just easier.

Erin Marcus: But my god, that’s hard to

JM Ryerson: find. Yeah, I think it is interesting and I got very blessed because I ended up choosing my first college experience. I had a full ride swimming scholarship to basically any Pac 10 school I wanted, okay? Or There was this tiny little school after I’d blown out my knee two times, like all my basketball scholarships gone, but one school, and I had this moment with my dad, who was my decision maker at the time, where, yeah, you’re going to go swim at these accredited amazing schools, right?

JM Ryerson: No, I’m actually going to go to this tiny school. Nobody’s ever heard of, and they’re going to pay for my books. And it was one of those moments where I w I was clearly disappointing both my parents in this decision as a parent today, that would be really hard to watch my child choose this school. That’s not this big name and not accredited.

JM Ryerson: And I think for me, I learned early. You know what? I have to follow what, for me, what, what my journey is. And by the way, I ended up blowing my knee out after that season, and basically my college career was never what I expected it to be. But here’s the deal. I lived it on my terms. I had zero regrets. Now, maybe I chose to go my parents route, and I go swim, and I do these amazing things, but I’m not happy.

JM Ryerson: Well, that’s not what my parents want. Our parents want us to be happy and fulfilled. And in order to do that, you have to follow your life path. No one can tell you, Hey, jam, this makes you happy because no one can feel what I feel. Only you can. So to your question, I believe courage is like a muscle. It gets stronger, the more that you use it.

JM Ryerson: And I just happened to use it when I was 17, making this college decision. I made it again when I chose to be an entrepreneur. And that was definitely frowned upon. And I’ve just learned that, you know what? I don’t choose to lose with three live with regrets, and I’m going to go give it everything I have.

JM Ryerson: I’m going to definitely scrape my knee along the way, but as long as I’m happy and fulfilled, I can live with that. I hope people can get quiet and figure out what really, really fills my cup. And when you can do that, it makes all these decisions pretty easy. Yeah. I’m a

Erin Marcus: big fan of when I’m trying to accomplish something.

Erin Marcus: Cause I really, the world’s pretty great. Like there’s not a whole lot of black and white, the world’s pretty great, but. If I can get really black and white when I’m trying to do something, is this moving me toward it or away from it? Things get real clear. If you have to be binary with, does this help me do the thing or does it make it harder to do the thing?

Erin Marcus: Decisions get a little bit easier.

JM Ryerson: I agree. And, you know, there’s Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book years ago called blink. Some people have read it. I think it’s brilliant because it’s saying trust your intuition. We actually all, I believe, know what we want. It doesn’t mean we follow it. Often we get in our head and it’s like, Oh, this makes sense because I’m going to make X amount of dollars.

JM Ryerson: So I’m going to go into this job that’s miserable. And I’m going to continue to do that because I’m checking off this, this mark versus your gut saying, no, you don’t want to be an accountant. Let’s say that’s not who you are. You want to be an act actor. Okay, cool. Even if you fall on your face, but you followed that path as an actor.

JM Ryerson: I think that’s where it’s like, look, you gave it your best shot. You can live with that, but if you follow what everyone else wants, you will always look back and go, well, shoot, what if I don’t have that? I don’t think what if I went to swim in college, because I know that wasn’t what I wanted to do. And for me, that’s always been really appealing.

JM Ryerson: Just listen to your gut, listen to your intuition. It’s right. It’s, it’s, it’s, you know what you want, but you have to be willing to have the courage to listen to yourself and then follow through no matter what the results are. And by the way, you’re gonna lose sometimes. I think that’s the beauty of life, right?

Erin Marcus: Most things don’t work. I think that’s what messes people up because it’s one thing. And the other thing I think makes this hard for a lot of people is the entitlement In a conjunction with this, like, what you’re talking about, what I’m talking about, the fact that I always walked my own path, the rules didn’t apply to me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I always knew I also had to pay my own way.

Erin Marcus: So we’re not talking about entitlement, somebody else pay for all of it, you still have to do the work. You have to pay the bills, you have to have, you know, a roof over your head and food in your stomach, and not expect it to be handed to you. And I think if you put those two things together. Then anything’s possible.

Erin Marcus: It’s when you want to, when you want to play rules, don’t apply for me. And I just want to do what I want to do, but you also want someone else to hand it to you is

JM Ryerson: when you get in trouble. Yeah. There’s I look, it’s my least favorite word, probably in existence today. I cannot stand entitlement in any way, shape or form.

JM Ryerson: It doesn’t make sense to me. At what point do you think that the world revolves around you? Cause it doesn’t, by the way. Yes, we, we have, you know, our world, but that’s only our lens. It doesn’t mean that you are owed anything. And the moment that you think you are, you’ve kind of lost. And by the way, doesn’t that sound horrible?

Erin Marcus: It’s so horrible to me to wait and let anyone else decide what I get or don’t

JM Ryerson: get. Well, yeah. And I think of like playing video games, for instance, I’m not a video game person, but let’s just say you’re really good at video games and you win every time that you play. Well, guess what? You’re going to get bored.

JM Ryerson: You’re not going to want to play. That’s the whole beauty of putting yourself out there and knowing that you may win or you may lose. It would be boring if you knew every single time I’m going to win this game, you’ll stop playing the game. And that’s the entitle, the whole thing with entitlement. I’m like, why would you expect or want it that way?

JM Ryerson: Why wouldn’t you want to go get it? Because there’s real satisfaction. You following your path, Erin, like, Hey, rules don’t apply to me, which means I’m going to chase my dreams. I’m going to go for it. And by the way, if I fail, I can look in the mirror and say, I failed. If I win, I can look in the mirror and also say, I won.

JM Ryerson: How beautiful is that? No one gave it to me. No one takes it away from me. It is mine because I earned it. So, anyway, this is, I live around some entitlement. I’m sure we all do. I don’t get it. And it literally makes me want to, like, shake them a little bit. Shake people.

Erin Marcus: And you’re not doing, you know, it’s easy for me to say this because I don’t have kids.

Erin Marcus: And I, you know, so I put that out there as my disclaimer right from the beginning. My big fear as I’m watching Generations being brought up that way. I’m not saying they should, you know, I’m a child of, I’m Gen X, like we were, I’m not saying do that because I don’t know how most of us survived, like seriously, I was what, I was 13 years old and I was allowed to take my 12 year old friend and my 11 year old brother on a bus and then a train to downtown Chicago.

Erin Marcus: So I’m not necessarily quite that, but. You’re not doing your kids any favors. I’ve had clients, especially guys, because girls tend to like figure things out differently. I’ve had clients literally tell me they’re disappointed now because they don’t know how to do things.

JM Ryerson: It truly is one of those things that at the, I have kids and I will tell you our generation of parenting.

JM Ryerson: We did a disservice in many ways. The whole everyone gets a trophy. That’s nonsense. By the way, what are you teaching somebody if they, so let’s say somebody on the team works really, really hard and the other person doesn’t do anything, you’re going to give them all the equal reward. What are you teaching them?

JM Ryerson: That, I mean, it’s awful when you say it out loud, it’s like. That’s not the way the world works. You’re going to get knocked down and to your point, I, this happened on Monday evening. My son came home and his air pods had been removed from his backpack. Okay, I’m never gonna put it on somebody that they stole it, but it let it lift his backpack.

JM Ryerson: Well, Apple has this beautiful thing where you can actually track the air pods. So about 9 30 at night, it finally tracks and it’s actually somebody in our neighborhood. I go to the home, knock on the door. Yeah. Hi, my name’s Jay. It’s 9 30 at night. What are you doing here? Well, my son’s property happens to be in your house right now and we’d like to get it back.

JM Ryerson: Well, my kids, I said, look, I’m not gonna, you might want to ask a different question, but she was just pissed that I was there at 9 30. And how dare I come at this? I’m like, look, you have my son’s property. We’re going to get it back. And her only other question, Erin was how did you get in the gates?

JM Ryerson: Meaning how did you get in this neighborhood? And I was like, these are your questions. You’re not wondering why your child has somebody else’s property. There’s something seriously wrong here now. Hopefully there was some repercussions for this little girl that had somehow ended up with my son’s AirPods, but I was shocked if somebody came to my door at 9 30 and said, you have my child’s property.

JM Ryerson: It’s a whole different conversation. Hey, Trey, get your butt down here. What in the world is going on? Not why are you here at 9 30? And how did you get through the gates? Like what? So anyway, I could go on for days on this subject. Well,

Erin Marcus: it is, I, I understand, like, my theory, I just call it my Erin’s Pendulum Theory, like, everything’s a pendulum, and so you have the greatest generation, right, who are a bunch of rural followers, and then they raised a bunch of hippies, which is very interesting, right?

Erin Marcus: How did that happen? The pendulum swung and they raised a bunch of hippies, and a bunch of hippies raised The Generation of Greed, right? Us Gen X ers, they put, they raised a bunch of feral kids, Generation of Greed, right? We all know that, the Boiler Room, the movies from the 80s. They raised a bunch of feral kids who then turned into helicopter parents, like.

Erin Marcus: That is fascinating. It is crazy, right? It’s fascinating, and I say this in business as well, like, If all you can do is put bumpers in your gutters so that the pendulum doesn’t swing as far to either side, it doesn’t hurt as hard when it hits you. Because you can move forward with the pendulum. But think about it, if it, here we have the Museum of Science and Industry is like four stories tall and there’s this cord, there’s a sterile with a big ass pendulum in it, right?

Erin Marcus: And all I could think about is like, If we can narrow how far it swings, maybe it doesn’t have to hurt as hard when it knocks you on your butt. I

JM Ryerson: think this is so true. This, this applies to so many things and not to get political, but let’s just for a moment, imagine I’m not right. And you’re not right.

JM Ryerson: And we’re going to just, the left is crazy. The rights like crazy. Hey, let’s find a little middle ground here, guys. Just like you said, me swimming in the Missouri river at eight years old, where there’s under toes and all that’s crazy. Also, the fact that my 8 year old son can’t be in a pool by himself, that’s crazy.

JM Ryerson: Let’s find some middle ground here. And I

Erin Marcus: do think, when you talk to people, what is it like, a person is great, people are idiots, but a person is fantastic. Like, when I talk to one other person, we all agree on this. Not all. Most people agree on this. And yeah. Put, what is it? Never underestimate the power of a few flakes in a large group, right?

Erin Marcus: I mean, it’s a snowball effect. And I just, as I, maybe it’s an age thing, as I get older, I just start to wonder, how in the world did we get here? And what can you actually do about it? And, and kind of to your point, to bring this back to where we started, The more I’m in control of my own world, the more I can tune out all of this noise that I, whether I do or don’t agree with it, to whatever extent

JM Ryerson: that’s possible.

JM Ryerson: No, it’s true. You know, I say this often. I say, look, what anybody else thinks of you is none of your business. Like, it’s a complete waste of your time if you’re worried what the neighbor across the street thinks of you. Because guess what? You already put your, your foot forward. And they like you or they don’t, but if your intentions are pure to live your best life and they don’t like you, that’s on them.

JM Ryerson: That’s not on you and stop wasting any time. I just think there’s some things where if your intentions are good, which I think. The values of my company are happy, healthy, wealthy. Well, why? Because after 20 some odd years of coaching, I realized people want the same thing. They wanna be happy, they wanna be healthy, and they wanna be wealthy.

JM Ryerson: And I’m not talking just financially, I’m talking spiritually, I’m talking wealthy in relationships. It’s not much more complex than that. And so if we can do that, and if somebody chooses to be whatever they choose to be, and that makes ’em happy, well good. How does that affect you? I don’t understand this idea.

JM Ryerson: Like I’m right. You’re wrong. And now we’re just going to battle. It’s like, dude, everyone has an opinion. Now, are there certain things we should agree upon? Like murder? It’s bad. Yeah. That’s not good. Hating a group of people, any group of people, that’s a bad idea. But outside of that, like, look I want to marry somebody of my own sex, like.

JM Ryerson: Cool, man. Do you, if that makes you happy, I don’t understand this idea that I’m right and you’re wrong. And I think that’s where the whole thing goes wrong, historically and in today’s society. And so it’s like, let people be happy and we can all just be kind to each other. Let’s start to win a little bit.

JM Ryerson: I, that’s what I would love to

Erin Marcus: see. Right? And I think it goes back. Personally, I think it goes back to fear. It goes back to fear. And if you just look at hierarchy of needs, right, self actualization is at the top, you can’t get there, you can’t even think about it, unless you feel safe in your basic, basic, basic needs.

Erin Marcus: And somewhere along the way, for whatever reason, a whole lot of people stopped feeling safe for their basic needs. And I’m curious, and let’s, I’m curious your opinion on this for my own personal use, so I’m, I always assume if I have a question, other people have this question. I like that. What do you recommend?

Erin Marcus: You can be tactical about this or theoretical about this. Considering, I’m just gonna say, the world’s on fire right now, figuratively and literately. I agree with you and the values and that people want happy and I absolutely agree with you. How do you stay in that place? Because you cannot create from a place of suffering.

Erin Marcus: As entrepreneurs it’s very hard to grow business, hard to reach those amazing goals from a place of suffering. So how do you insulate yourself?

JM Ryerson: Yeah, so my answer is, is very basic and it’s, I give myself about three hours every morning to me. Now, a lot of people reach for the cell phone, go to the email, check out social media, turn on the news.

JM Ryerson: All of those are agendas and they’re not yours. They’re people telling you Oh, I like it that way.

Erin Marcus: They’re

JM Ryerson: agendas. It’s agendas. They’re all being thrown your way and that’s the first thing you’re gonna feed your mind. I think it’s a bad idea now for me. I tell my wife and my kids know for the first three hours.

JM Ryerson: There’s nothing bad in dad’s world. Everything is sunshine and rainbows unless it’s catastrophic. Because that’s when I’m doing my self work. That’s where I’m doing my journaling. I’m doing my meditations. I’m doing my grateful practice. I’m working out. I’m doing my breathing exercise. I’m doing all these things so that I can now show up as the best version of me.

JM Ryerson: And if I choose to turn on the news, social media, whatever the world is on fire, I have a better chance of Having a level of perspective than waking up and becoming cynical because every single day I just see the world’s on fire the world’s on fire the world’s on fire We all need to slow down and say hey, let me take care of me first Let me lead myself first so then I can show up as the best citizen employer dad brother, whatever hat I’m wearing And I think people have lost perspective on that because our world so busy because it’s so easy to grab a cell phone or turn on a TV.

JM Ryerson: And again, I’m not saying media is bad. You could say that, but I’m not, it’s just an agenda. And what is that agenda? And so that’s one of the biggest things I start with clients. I’m like, look, let’s take care of you first so that you can be the best version of you and then deal with the, the situation in Israel is what’s going on right now.

JM Ryerson: We’re deal with, you know, whatever awful things that are out in this world. And you’ll come from a, from a level of perspective to say, okay, well, life is not horrible here. I can deal with this and I can, and, and actually bring something to the table.

Erin Marcus: No, I love that. I do a version of that. I just call setting my stage, right.

Erin Marcus: And reminding myself what it is I’m trying to do. And I make sure that’s in front of me first thing every day, because it helps me then make better decisions. So like reminding myself. That this is what we’re working on. So, you know, cause it’s easy to go get a squirrel, even in business decisions, it doesn’t even have to be an external distraction, but an internal distraction that I create for myself.

Erin Marcus: No, I absolutely love it. So this is awesome. Thank you for your time and your energy and your insight. If people want to continue this conversation with you, and I highly recommend they do what is the best way that they find you.

JM Ryerson: I think two places where you’re going to hear more of this, the let’s go in podcast, which I assume you’re going to be a guest on.

JM Ryerson: And I look forward to it. You’re probably scheduled. And I don’t know, cause

Erin Marcus: that’s part of my world show up, talk to people, have

JM Ryerson: fun. Yeah. And you’re good at it. You’re dang good at it. So I’d say let’s go in podcasts or on Instagram. Let’s go win three 65 and Erin. Thank you for having me. Like you’re awesome.

JM Ryerson: I could chat with you for a long time on this. And I love the fact that you’re like, what are we talking about? I don’t know. Let’s go, let’s go ready yet. Let’s go. Let’s go win. It was awesome.

Erin Marcus: Thank you so much.