Wake Up & Level Up! Feat.Mario Armstrong

Authentic Leadership podcast, a podcast we're seeking to lead change while also seeking to understand we are also here as a platform for leaders to come together to unite, to develop, empower other leaders in the areas of business, family and community. I'm your host, Lafayette Lane, joined by My co-host John LeBrun. Today we are joined by our special guest, Mario Armstrong. Put those hands together, put those clap emoji's in the comment section, clap it up for our special guest Mario, who has joined us to have a conversation about wake up and level up just a little bit about Mario Armstrong, while Armstrong is a Two-Time Emmy Award winner. He's a lifestyle entrepreneur, a TV host, public speaker and motivator for the modern world. He focuses on delivering tactical advice to inspire people to take action pursuing their personal and professional goals, dreams and passions. He's the host of the Emmy Award winning Never Settle Show and ABC NBC Today Show contributor. He's appeared on Dr. Steve Harvey, NPR. Inside Edition, and more. He's also a public speaker with Daymond John Sharp Group's speaking division. He also has a new daily podcast entitled Wake Up and Level Up that kick start your day and under five minutes with a jolt of inspiration, advice and personal growth formulas. Feel like I'm coming out on the ring. I feel like I'm like, I'm like, Yeah, what is the role as a smokescreen where the deejay like? I appreciate that man. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Wow. It was great to listen to that. Thank you. Yeah, he's got us right, and he's joined us today where I ask about that leadership podcast. Mario, thanks for coming on. It's a pleasure, man. It's an honor to be here. Thank you both John and Lafayette. Really appreciate it. Thank you to all the listeners out there for and viewers out there really want to get to know you in the community and excited to be able to try to shed some light and give some some information and tactics and advice and inspiration to help you really achieve the thing that you have the potential to achieve? You know, my my big focus is creators and entrepreneurs like I really and those that are just looking to really develop their passion. But I'm really looking to try to give people as much as I can the blueprint of opportunity for them based off of the failures that I've gone through in some of the wins that we've had so that you don't have to go through those same potholes. So it's an honor to be here to kind of serve beyond me. And so I'm excited. Love it. A part of that, that blueprint as a mantra that you go by, that you say hustle mindfully and never settle, can you just unpack that for us when you when you talk about hustling mindfully and never settling? 00, yeah, because it's like a juxtaposition, right? It's like, Wait, what are you? Are you? Are you? Are you a hustle about the hustle culture or are you about the mindful and awareness culture? So like, you got to hustle mindfully, never settle. It's kind of like these polar opposites, but honestly, it's a blend of the two. And you know, I don't I'm not a fan of the hustle culture because of what they can do to us physically, but what it also does to us spiritually, what it also does to us mentally. Because when you are being kind of told by society that the best way to get results is that you have to work extremely hard all the time and grind, grind, grind that that's the only way something has to sacrifice in order for you to get to success. Well, it really depends on what the definition of success for you is first and foremost. But number two, no one ever told us that we had to beat ourselves to a pulp, and that is a requirement in order to have to be a success. And so the mindfulness part comes in where it says, Yeah, let's work hard, let's have work ethic. Let's work smart. But there's a difference in the culture that we've been trained, we've been trained. If you think about how business has evolved sense and even go an industrial revolution or you look at like cars being manufactured and there's and there's a plant and and you have people working on a line on an assembly line,

00 a.m.

30. Right. That's very efficient that they're going to be there. The person is going to make sure those load notes go into the tire and and screw on that thing and that person's going to check to make sure the steering wheel is great. Like that's that's the mentality of how business started. But that's not where we are today. Nothing's really on an assembly line like that so many of us are working in so and this is even pre-pandemic. So if you even look now, it's even completely distributed differently and how we have the opportunity to work where we want to work, from what time of day we need to work. And so what I think about that idea that we've been indoctrinated to be super efficient? No. But what we have, we have lost or many people just kind of interchange these words, which is wrong. What has gotten confused or has gotten lost is the word effective. So we've been really great at being efficient. We can work long hours. We can stretch ourselves. We can push to the max. But are we working on the right things? Are we working on the things that actually matter? If you look at somebody genuine eight hour workday, how many hours are they actually working like? If you really want to assess all the breaks, all the internet time, all the notifications that pop up on the phone, the time when they check in an Instagram, they talking to the friends at the water cooler, they're doing this and doing that. They got the commute time going on, like if you actually assess the amount of actual work that really mattered. You probably had like a four hour window. Right. So the hostile thing does one thing for certain. It will burn you out. It will. It will burn you out and you will sacrifice your relationships, your family yourself. You will have some sacrifice. The mindful part comes in and says, Can we do this mindfully? Can we pursue a passion? Be ambitious about it. Really be excited about a thing that we want to work on or pursue, but do it in a way that we still don't diminish our health or or the or the people that are important to us around us. And so that's where the mind for peace comes in. So how so mindfully means to pursue your thing? Understand that you have a vision, you have a you have potential that's untapped that you need to realize. But let's do it mindfully. Let's not step on people along the way. Let's not look for shortcuts. Let's be in the present as much as possible. Let's understand that getting to whatever destination that we're trying to get to, if we can't celebrate that with other people, there's no use in going to that destination. Mm-Hmm. So hustle mindfully is kind of like this. Checks and balances for us ambitious people to say yes, I would like to hustle for my thing, but I want to make sure that I'm being a good human along in that process. Hmm. Go ahead, John. Yeah, I was listening to in a small group with a guy named Ryan Blair once, and he attributed to sort of like building a race car. He said when you take in a race car, he said, one of the things I'll do early is the rev. That thing up about is to its max to see what kind of performance is it capable of. And then they bring it down. And the reason you do that is say, OK, we can get up to here. I can. I can go for days on four hours of sleep, but then I'm exhausted. OK, you've tested it. You've given a test. That doesn't mean you keep running at that pace. You now know about where you are. Now what is the healthy that car? Where does the healthy limit for the vehicle, for that race car before needs to come in and get some maintenance? What is your healthy working level where you're as productive as you need to be to the level that you're happy with the results? But at the same time, you're not burning your family, you're not burning yourself out. You're not grumpy with your wife all the time. I'm not ignoring your children, and you haven't thrown your friends to the garbage like you said. So when you get there, you look around, you go wherever you go. And I thought it was a great visit along with what you said. I just gave me that image that I remember learning several months. Because, you know, when you think about that analogy, also when you are in the moment, you can throttle it the way you need to throttle it, if you are presently aware and you're in the moment. So when I'm working on something, I need to be focused on working on that something. But then I know that when I'm done working on that something and I'm now having lifetime or family time or spouse or partner time, I need to know that I have to have the same tenacity in that that I do what I'm on work time. And so, you know, because it it gets to this point. And when I'm with my kid, it's like, OK, shut down, shut down. The business part is done. You've you've said this is going to be the time when you're going to be hanging out with Christopher, be hanging out with Christopher. So comfortable with that. It's this constant. It's this floral that I believe that we've been kind of pushed. I don't believe in work life balance. And there is a whole movement around. You need to have more work life balance. And I understand that that's coming from a good place like, hey, how can you balance your work in your life? But I actually think that's a flawed approach. And the reason why I think that's a flawed approach is because you're not balancing work and life. You're balancing life. Work is a part of it. And so if you are in the present moment, you're balancing the thing that you're in that moment at that time. So you should have these kind of peaks. But do you reach peaks? Apply to everybody. You're going to have moments when you feel like you're doing really great work and then you're going to have moments when you feel like, Man, I'm not doing the best work I should be doing. Now you're like, I'm with my kid. I'm having great moments of being completely with my kid. And then like, I'm with my kid and I'm on my phone, you know, so it's like, if you could actually recognize what you're doing in the present and really trust, I think the other part of this is trust. We have to trust ourselves that if we decide that we could, well, I might miss an email, but then then we could either. Either we could either talk about systems that you could have in place, or we could talk about how you're communicating to your staff or your peers or your clients or your vendors, so that everything is understood, that there are boundaries, that there are work times like there's a lot of other things tactically that you can do. But if you can't even agree that really what we are in is in the present, we're not in the future. The pass already happened, so I'm balancing this, so all my attention is on this interview right now. I could be getting ping left and right. I don't care. I'm on this interview right now, 1,000% when I leave this interview, going to have dinner with the wife. I'm not going to go in there and be on my phone or even talk long about this podcast interview. I might mention it if she asks, but we're going to be into. All right. What do we want? What are we doing for dinner? What are we watching something like? It's going to be like complete go in. So I believe that if we can become more presently aware of the moment that we're in, that we actually do a better of this quote unquote juggling that people are trying to get to. And instead, I think when we try to pursue Work-Life Balance, we get exhausted because who gets it? How do you know you got it? Like any of you pursuing this one thing that you think you can get, then you're like tiring yourself out as opposed to like just being the president and be as fully aware and in that moment. And I think with that, you know, with the car, it's like, Yeah, I don't need to press it 1000 miles an hour right now. I'm just going to coast at ten because I need to sit and chill. And if we trust ourselves, that will be super effective in the present moment, then you don't have to worry. You mentioned systems, Kikuyus and any systems that it's funny, you said that because I was thinking in my head when Mario has any systems in place and then you meant lots. Is there anything you have that someone could really take from man holding a tomato timer that sits right by my my computer, literally a low oven old school? Yeah, well, tomato timer. And the reason why is because I bought it as a symbol for a technique that I love. And one of those systems is the Pomodoro technique. Have either one of you ever used a Pomodoro? No, I don't know what it is. Oh, man, let me break this down to you really quick. This is how you start to get to being in the present moment and you start trusting yourself and you actually start getting results in a very short amount of time. The Pomodoro technique is a technique that says you work on one task and one task only for 25 minutes. No interruptions, no breaks, no notifications, no nothing. You are locked in to that one task for 25 minutes. You time yourself at that end of that. 25 minutes. You get to take a five minute break. That break has to also be timed. At that moment. You can get up, stretch, grab some water, maybe respond to a quick email if it all can be done within five minutes. Don't start a presentation deck because you've got a five minute break, so you're times for five minutes after that five minutes. If you didn't complete that task you are working on, you go back to that task with another 25 minute window. At the end of that, you take another five minute break. If you finish that task, you move on to the next task with another 25 minute window after that third one, you take a 15 minute break. Hmm. Timed what this has proven and shown, and it's not just from my own lifestyle, but also from my. My wife and I are in business together in the same business together. And so we've been through quite a bit like we've we've we were bankrupt. My mother in law was paying for our groceries. We were trying to raise our our son. At the time, I was digging in sofas and trying to find loose change to be able to put that in the coin star machines in the grocery stores to try to get some cash, to be able to give me gas money, to try to get to an appointment, to try to make something happen. It was. It was tough. It challenged our relationship. It challenged our marriage, it challenged our resiliency. And there were plenty of times of crying, arguing from frustration and stress and not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of how you were going to get through this thing. And I said all that to say that, you know, that's my story. Everybody's got a different version. Some have a deeper level of their story and been through worse. But my biggest concern was I saw my dad go bankrupt pursuing his dream, and I was like, Damn, am I fulfilling that same thing again? And I saw what it took for him to kind of dig out of that and try to make his dreams happen. And so I was really questioning myself as a man and a person and all this stuff. And so I was like, I have to have systems to help me. Do something different than what I've been doing before, and the phone system that I instituted that really changed my outcomes was the Pomodoro technique. So when I teach it to others or when I see now my business, my business partner, wife and using it, it is amazing how effective you can be when you are solely focused on a task at a time. And you know that you get that five minute window. People think email is work like that's not that's not work. That's not that's being efficient, but that's not the effective work. So when I'm working on like making a deck because I know I need to present to brands because I know that in order for me to make money for the company, I need to get brands to sponsor my content. That's the effective work I need to be out selling. So what are the tools, the things that I need? Oh, I need to start approaching 30 new businesses, OK, today or my pomodoro? The goal is I got to come up with five businesses that I'm going that and their contact info to name the right person the right kind of like all that stuff. And I'm going to try to get that done in the next three pomodoro in like 25, 50, 25 minutes. And so you become very effective and you actually start looking at the end of your day and you're like, Man, I got progress today. So that's one. I mean, time blocking is another one. When you're looking at specific time blocks in your calendar and you allocate certain things to only happen in certain time blocks, that's another great way. I'm a creative. It's hard for me to lock myself down. I like to have some spontaneity. So actually time blocking spontaneity, which sounds kind of like, how do you do that? You just leave some white spaces. Mm hmm. Not everything needs to be calculated on the calendar. Give yourself room to explore. Another system is meditation and prayer. If I don't wake up and start my day right, I kind of start getting grumpy and I'm like, Man, you know you cheated on exercise today, right? Oh, man, you know, you skipped on that prayer real quick. Like, you feel it and you're like, Damn it, I got to go back and start over. Like. Let me grab my son, let me grab my daily word and actually do my prayer. Let me actually do my meditation and and start my day. So that morning routine for me. Very, very important. Another system would be the the MIT method, which is the most important task. At that moment. What's the most important task today? Well, I fill out what I'm thinking about for my day man to do. This is not ten items long as it relates to business and my goals for my business. My to do list is only three items. Mm-Hmm. It's only three items today was create new content for tick tock ads. Put together by identify five clients, new potential businesses that I need to approach. And the third goal was are did we? We had a meeting about who we were going to hire to do our ads. If I got those three things done today. It was ginormous with anything else. On top of that is icing on the cake. Mm hmm. Of. You that you are bringing in today. That's amazing. You made a statement on on Instagram that really blessed me a graphic. You said that people join movements, not ideas. Then you ask the question, What are you fighting for? Oh, can can you unpack that for us? Man, just hearing you say that back to me, it's because because my intentionality with that was really it's, you know, everything is coming to me from a higher power, right? Everything is coming to us from a higher power, right? But. I just see so many people the biggest challenge for me is to see someone who knows what their gift is. It's different if you don't know what your gift is and you need to try to kind of many people know what it is, but they may not be recognizing it or they are assuming what comes great to them, since it comes great to them naturally, that it's not a gift and they just don't understand that that was the superpower that you were given. You should lean into that. And the hardest thing for me is to see someone know what their talent is. I can't execute on it. And so. Often I'm thinking, well, what's the mental block for this? I'm saying, oh, so much, so much of what blocks us and so much of what? Gets in our way is our own ego. It's what we see for ourselves or what we're not seeing for ourselves. It's because I have this goal that I want to accomplish I and stop when I say, Who are you fighting for? It immediately shuts down the ego. Unless you are that narcissistic like I'm fighting for me, you know, and there are some people that probably will be fighting for me, but I've yet to run into those people when I do those types of posts, public speaking engagements, IG lives that I do whenever I'm using that or talking to that, to my courses and my students, they're not coming back to me, say in me, they're thinking of everything else. Normally what they say is, I'm fine. They may say I'm fighting for my family. I might say that they might say I'm fighting for my kids, aren't fighting for my spouse or my partner. They might say that, and then I'll push. I'm like, No, no. Who else growls that still kind of ego driven because that's like, you're a. Who else? Because what I'm trying to do is get you to understand that there are people outside that you don't know that need your gift and your talent. So who are you fighting for? When someone asked me that I am fighting for creators, content creators and creators overall and entrepreneurs unequivocal. That's why I'm fighting for. I am fighting to help them realize their biggest potential by giving them access to transparency, technology tools, advice guest that I bring on in ways that they can monetize their business. I am fighting for that audience, so it's bigger than me. And since it's bigger than me, it's easier for me to come back to center when I don't feel good, when I don't feel like working today, when it feels like nothing's going right. Well, it's not about you, though. You got people that are depending on you, not just your immediate family. You got other people that are depending on your gift. And if you don't serve it up, we are losing out. The world is losing out. So when you say who you are fighting for and you put that down on paper, you making an alarm on your phone. three times a day and it starts to become part of your unconscious thinking, your subconscious, your change in how you move because you recognize that you're a vessel for something bigger than you. We. Yeah, let's just let's let that moment just rest for a second. Then you go ahead and jump. Go ahead. It was amazing when you I haven't defined it quite, I guess for myself. I never thought, who am I fighting for as far? I mean, you have as far as missions and so forth. But as soon as you said it, the first picture came into my mind was dad's. I know I'm not a dad's podcast. They have things like that. But yeah, we are raising leaders and our goal is to help better and develop, develop and help leaders sort of level up with us. And the image in my mind when I think leaders has always been and there's females and so forth. But for me, it's been dads because my pain point has always been dads who should be more. If that makes, oh, right now everybody's got their thing and I'm here, I'm here for the female children who is I'm here for all kinds of things. But the the but the pain point that really gets my soul is right. The dads, the friends I have who are fathers and so forth, people who don't have dads because they just they just, you know, left. Yeah, so forth. It's the dads or or I think of all the women who have had been abused and so forth. Yeah, if you can fix the dads and fix this, help them fix their sons, you break the cycles. Yes, for themselves. So yeah, I love that you said it because it gets give me all eye rolling right now. I'm ready to go charge outside in the snow and. But John, it feels good to know. It feels good to hear it right. Like, I even get empowered. The listeners and the viewers should even be getting empowered because you have such clarity on and that's what it does. It helps to provide that clarity. And the reason why we spin on wheels or don't become as successful in our own eyes. Maybe the way we want to have the impact that we're looking for is mostly because we want to reach too many people or there's too broad of an audience and we haven't gotten clear with who we really wanted to help. There's nothing wrong with a secondary market. Every brand has a secondary market, but you better believe there's a primary market and you better believe Cheerios once the parent to buy Cheerios. You think that's the primary market? The kids, the kids, it's a primary market mom, dad, I want Cheerios. So the commercials go to the kids for that brand, right, but it's a primary and a secondary. You have the same thing. You want to get leaders to lead. You want the leaders to level up. But you have this primary focus on dads because you see that as a root of a lot of challenges and a lot of issues that needs to be addressed. Nothing wrong with anyone else that can benefit from your content. Benefit from your information. Take nuggets away and move it and apply it in their life. But there's no mistaking who you're fighting for. I got that clearly from you, man. That's powerful. I'm so glad to hear your clarity on that. So you had you had you ever given a morning? So I say morning, it could be any time of the day. Wake up and level up. Correct. Yeah. And you know, so great show. By the way, everybody should subscribe to Mario's podcast Wake Up and level up. What are some of the things you do like as far as getting your day started? Like that someone could really put into their life as well to really get their morning routine going? And it's something I'm always working on is making my morning routine better. Have kids try and get them off to school and so forth? Yeah, whatever. I'm more of a night person. I have a better night routine than I do morning routine. Oh, really? What is what is this night routine? Let me hear this. Yeah. Well, it's more of a. So I know our family are self-employed, so I'm there for much of the day. And then my evening is typically my break between this and and sort of unscripted work. And that would do in the evening is typically taking my kids there, sporting events or going out to eat as a family. Moments right now it's snowing. So when I do it a lot outside of it, going to the parks, so forth, then I do the dad thing. Once they go to bed. I like to do a certain amount of time of work on certain days, and then I kind of recognize how many days a week I can do that versus spending time with my wife in the evenings, that kind of thing. And then I do my workouts in the evenings, in the mornings. Uh-Huh. I get that mornings are better. No, no. I'm working on that transition. But honestly, what? I'm trying to stay consistent. I'm a lot better being consistent in the evening. And then after that shower and then I like to read at the end of my evenings because I find that reading is good for my mind and it helps me sleep kind of calms my mind down a little bit.

00 in the morning. Then you hit the sack. It's a great process, bro. Yeah, that's my process. Look, you know, the point is we have to know what works for us. There are some certain things that many of us underestimate, like getting good seven hours to eight hours of sleep because you can go one, four or five. Does that mean you should be going on four or five? And I would venture to say that if I actually put you into a test because I've seen these tests of aptitude versus someone that's having four or five hours of sleep just because they can versus someone that's getting seven to eight hours of sleep, you can see the clear difference from the schematics that you're not operating at your fullest. So there's a whole sleep factor and then there's they're going to bed without the news. Like, there's a reason why doctors say get off the screens an hour before bedtime because they know not only from the blue light that's stimulating you, but also the content is stimulating you. And so, you know, there's no news in our household. There's none of that stuff because it's usually, you know, nothing of real value. You can get news from other sources that are valuable to you, and you can still be clued in to what's going on in the world. You don't have to watch it the way it's reported because that is a high stress proposition. So that's my kind of evening routine is to, you know, chill out, shut down, relax before I go to bed. When I wake up, my morning routine is the first thing. The first thing I do is I wake up and thank God for waking up. Hmm. second thing I do is I stretch my body. I have to wake my body up, move my wrists, move my ankles, stretch the body, let it know. Like, Hey, we're waking up not long, just a few stretches just to wake it up. Next thing I do is I say a prayer, usually using the daily word as my guide daily were prayer for the day. And then I'll think about my family and my friends in that in that prayer, close my eyes, think about other people that I'm grateful to have around that I'm I'm alive and I'm able to see or talk to them, and I'm wishing everyone, I, you know, really good health and and then I say, if any of my energy can be used to help anyone else see the light, to get help, to have hope, God use my energy in the best way possible for me today. And then from there, I go into a Buddhist prayer where I actually will do about maybe five to ten minutes of a couple of Buddhist prayers that help me to get centered. All of that, by the way, is only taking me about 15 minutes. This isn't like, Oh my god, Mario, you're sitting for an hour. It must be nice for you to be, you know, this is going down and like. 15 minute window people listen like, but it's but it's concentrated. It's not rushed, and I haven't touched my phone yet. You got to fight the urge to many people are reaching over to grab that phone. That is that is when you start living your life on defense and not living in your life on offense, when you are reacting to something else that's coming at you as a way to start your day. It's really hard to switch out of that mode. And what we believe over time is that the mode that is the mode of life, you know, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, you actually you get two choices when you wake up every single day. I don't care who you are. I don't care what your socioeconomic status is. I don't care what happened to you last night. I don't care if you got an argument. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Nothing. None of that matters. two choices every single day. Once you realize, Oh, I'm still here, I woke up two choices. one, you get a chance, a chance to do something better than you did yesterday. A chance to forgive. A chance to forget. A chance to make something happen. A chance. You get a chance. Chance to be a better dad today. A chance to be a better husband. Whatever it is, you get a chance. And then the other thing that we all get is we get a choice. We get to choose what energy we want to bring to that day. Do you want to bring energy from yesterday when yesterday's energy ended on a bad note? You want to still hang on to that brand new day. What are we talking about? People consistently believe that they're having these bad days. How was your day yesterday? Oh, it was a bad day. Oh, really? What happened? Well, in the morning, you know, spills of coffee on the computer didn't connect to the internet, and I missed my first meeting. Oh well, how the rest of day go. Oh, well, you know, lunchtime was great. You know, by the way, I caught up with such asides and we had this conversation, and then I talked to blah blah blah. And and this afternoon I sent out three proposals. Well, I used to say, you had a bad day. Right? Like, we allow these bad moments to become bad days because of how we process the moment. And so what I'm saying is every single day that we wake up, we actually got a clean slate. It's all about how you want to carry it. You know? Mario, we are in a series for February called Black Excellence Remix, the name from Black History to Black Excellence, because as nice a lot of times that word history seems like black excellence and black achievements is a thing of the past. Right? So we're calling it black excellence. You know, it's not only a thing of the past, but this think of the present and it's also a thing of the future. Right? That's right. Yeah, love it. Wow. That's great, guys. That's great. Well, when it comes to living a life of excellence, what does that mean to you? Move? first thing that comes to mind integrity? Mm hmm. Doesn't matter what the zeros are in my bank account. Doesn't matter when I'm driving, it doesn't matter. He was a good person. Did he take care of other people? Did he do unto others as he wanted done on them? I mean, we'll be talking about it once the integrity. So that's that's number one. It comes right immediately to the forefront. Then it's. How much did his share? Because especially when we're talking about the black community. Mm hmm. But this could also go for any community. Or any person that always felt like the underdog or always felt like they got scraps? That's good because what you're fighting against is the crabs in the barrel mentality, because maybe you've been conditioned or maybe you been in a tough environment growing up. Maybe you didn't get a chance to get exposed, to see things that other people got a chance to see, so they knew the world could be different for them. And so I think that if I'm not depleted with my sharing, I didn't do much just. Because it's not for me to hold on to information, people think the value is that these smart people or these wealthy people, they've been holding on to information. They execute on the information, no one. They don't talk about it. They may talk about it. They may not talk about it. But I tell you what they do do is that they execute on it. They execute on the information number one, but number two. Everybody that I know that's been that's been wealthy, that I've had a chance to bump into because I've been in some really blessed spaces. I'm on the Today show, I've been in the green room. For I mean, a lot. Several years. So I've seen everyone from David Mary J. Blige to Warren Buffett, I mean, you named it, I've met so many of them just sitting in the green room.

45, they're going on at 8:15

15. They're going on in 745. But I was always that guy that even though I had a segment that I was going to be doing it like the 8:00

00 hour, I showed up at the studio at 7:00 a.m. and the producers would always be like, you're segments. Not until like an hour and 45 minutes from now. You don't have to be here, but like 20, 30 minutes before you. I don't. I know you just don't know my game plan. My game plan is, I mean, everybody that's coming by the show today. I'm sitting in this green room because this is the one space where I had to worry about the bodyguards and listen to that trying to like block me, trying to say hi to somebody. So, so it was strategic for me to wake up and be early, but that's hustling mindfully. So I would say, you know, integrity is really important. I would say sharing. The most valuable information that I think I can offer to people would be the second most important thing. And then I would probably say. Pulling other people, pulling other people up is my definition of creating excellence. If I'm only benefiting from it, I'm sharing it, but I'm also not pulling somebody else or pulling a bunch of people up with it. Then what kind of pathway am I leaving for others? That is excellence. Connect with Mario, you can do that several ways on social media, he is at Mario Armstrong. Check out his website www. Mario Armstrong.com. And as John mentioned. Download subscribe to his podcast Wake Up and Level Love. Listen, this has been an amazing conversation with Mario Armstrong today about waking up and level up. You can listen to this episode on all streaming podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on our social media platforms that unscripted leadership and our website is unscripted. That's leadership dot com. As always, we pray that you be the leader that God has called you to be. We're here to build bridges and not walls. Bridges connect and walls divide until next time. 00, that's you. Lafayette John. Everybody that watched or listened or shared this. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time. It's been an honor. I love this title. I love this podcast. I love this format. I hope at some point maybe I get a chance to come back and maybe we get a chance to get you guys on doing something I'm doing. But unscripted podcast is exactly that. You guys just like Let it breathe unscripted and I really enjoyed the conversation and being able to be a part of your vision and your impact to help leaders lead. Yeah, this is Mario Armstrong, a two time Emmy winner telling you, this is one of the hottest podcasts I've been on in a minute and I've really enjoyed it. The unscripted podcast. So thanks again for having me, and I would just say the people, man, if you believe there's something that is important enough to you, you have to do it even if all the odds are against you.