Stop Going It Alone - Lone Wolf Will Take You Down

00:00 Ever feel like you're holding it all together on your own? Like if you stop for even a second, everything's going to fall apart. Your business, your marriage, your sanity. Well, that is the lone wolf syndrome. It is a fast track to struggle to burn out. But you're not alone if you're in that space. Too many men still do this. It is the lone wolf trap. And I know because it nearly broke me. In 2015, after a lot of personal and family challenges, my brother took his own life. Two weeks later, my marriage fell apart. At the time, I was running the business, raising two kids, looking after my wife, trying to pretend everything was fine, but it wasn't. The day you searched Google for am I burnt out?

00:44 Let me tell you the answer is definitely yes. I was trying to get through it all on my own, smiling on the outside, but burnt out on the in because that's what strong men do. Now, 10 years later, I run the high value man project, coaching over 100 men during that time, helping dads go from burnt out and bitter to clear, connected and alive again. Just this week, I coached a client, a dad, a business-owning dad, through the exact same lone wolf pattern. And the breakthrough was immediate once he got out of his own head into action. And most importantly, putting more people around him, involving other people, being vulnerable.

01:22 The truth is that no man wins this game solo. The lone wolf has been put upon us by movies and fairy tales. It kills trust, it kills vulnerability, and it robs you of the love and support of those around you. That's why this episode is so important. It's a theme that comes back round. Inside today, I'm going to give you five practical tools to reset your mindset, reclaim your energy, and build real support around you. And I'll show you exactly how to set your path inside the 3XC formula, which makes this simple if you're brave enough to use it. Roll theme.

02:04 Welcome to the Johnny Jensen Show, where modern dads discover how to create the true riches, relationships, and results they deserve. Get your high-value man blueprint and join our community at highvalue manproject.com. Let's go. Hey, Johnny here. Great to have you back on the Johnny Jensen show. It's my absolute pleasure to see you all. I have had a curious week, shall we say, brought about through some attempted changes in technology. I am deeply regretting that whole process. You know, when your subscription's up and then they crank up the price and you think, oh, that's ridiculous. I can't do that. I will find another tool. I'll work out another way to do this.

02:48 And so a lot of people use Riverside. And so I've been testing it out and trying to use it. And the sound quality, and it's just, I couldn't get it to be any good. And it was just over complicated. The intros, all so many things more complicated. And then right at the point of leaving StreamYard, they make me some offer, which I was like, oh, I'm already committed now. Anyway, I'm still trying to unravel it. I have no idea what's going to happen. But we shall see. Watch this space. Have I tried to go on my own? Go alone? I don't know. Maybe I have. I think I've asked a lot of people. I've asked a few other podcasts about their riverside experience and everyone said it was really positive.

03:28 But no, it was a pain in the ass. And it broke all my systems that work so well. Anyway, sometimes it is just best to stick with what you know. And if I probably asked, were they going to make me a goodbye offer before I left? They might have told me. Who knows? Maybe they wouldn't. Lone Wolf Syndrome. We've talked about it before, though, and it comes back round because it is fundamentally at the heart of what takes so many men down. It's about trying to do it all on your own. It's about a lack of vulnerability or letting people in. You know, as far back as, oh, blind, we could go way far back. You know, they called, not nomadic, that's people that wander around.

04:10 Although it would be those, the bloody word. You know, like American Indians, those kind of trials. Indigenous, there you go. Indigenous, Aborigines, American Indians, you know, Amazonian tribes. Like there's a great history of the collective spirit of stories being passed down, of experiences and trades being passed from father to son throughout the tribe, throughout generations. Jesus had his disciples, you know, and I dare say there's similar examples in other religions of that. Napoleon Hill bringing it right up to modern 20th century personal development talked about the power of mastermind and putting that 12 people around you.

04:55 The, what's it called? You know, like you are the... six six degrees of separation type thing you know you are you are the the power of the people you put your the six people you put yourself around most often you see it mentioned all the time and yet so many men try to go it alone right so like I said in this episode we're going to talk about not just this this as a as a as a concept but actually five actions you can take to help yourself get out of lone wolf mindset and fundamentally it's you know it's underpinned by the work we do here at the high value man project we are a community a tribe a brotherhood of men of like-minded

05:35 dads predominantly creating the life that we desire for ourselves in home and of course uh in our in our businesses and and at work and it's it's when you get the tools and the accountability and the encouragement and support around you to actually live like this you'll realize that you stop taking the pressure of all that home you stop putting it on your wife or partner or taking it out on your kids or pretending on the outside that everything's okay but inside you're constantly stuck in this thought about what am I going to do next how am I going to fix that where do we go here they don't get the best version of you so as always if this resonates with you if this inspires or excites you in any way if it gives you an idea that actually yes that's something that would be of value to me then come on over to the high value man project so go to highvalumanproject.com forward slash group that will get you in at the base camp level

06:31 where there's a bunch of complementary tools and resources there you can book a power call with me which is a like a strategy call not a sales call with a chance for you to talk about what you're working on what your goals and challenges are and how you know and where you might be stuck in that and then we'll give you a blueprint and an action plan based on the high value man system for living that you can take and put into action and if you like the sound of that we'll talk more about the inner circle and the 3xc accelerators and working if you want elite one-on-one with me that's the exciting that's the that's the that's the only sales bit that's not even a sales bit it's just an invitation right um put this to work what we're going to talk about today so where's my notes here let me get this up i've got so many tabs open there's a guy on youtube ed lawrence i've really been enjoying his content recently um talking about you know the

07:25 the importance of planning out and setting up uh the content or what we talk about in the in these shows and i've always done that like had a had an idea of of what's going to come and and putting it into some sort of order but any feedback you want to give me about the podcast or what you'd like to see more of will be greatly appreciated if you leave a review on apple podcasts or spotify then i'll i look at those and the best review of the week will get a free strategy or not a free the the the paid strategy call which is of 150 pound or 200 value you get one of those with me

08:02 and uh so yeah go and go and go and go and do that and uh any any of the high value man socials you can leave some leave a comment or feedback on the podcast it'd be really appreciated so what do we do about lone wolf i mean like i've talked about it before and where it comes from i alluded to it in the in the introduction it's this idea this this societal idea that men are supposed to like be strong be be a capable be able to to tackle things you know to tackle it all on their own but in truth it's you know we see it in movies you know like james bond or born ultimatum um you know all the kind of fairy tales where the prince charming comes and saves the day um you know die hard you know he's he's he's on his own he's trying to save the

08:51 world um but it's just not realistic you know even even men that do solo things you know like you see people who do these um ultra marathons or insane you know 30 marathons in 30 days type thing the team they have behind them the other runners who they will network with and get tips and experience off of is extensive if you listen to them on the on on podcasts or read their books listen to their books you'll hear them talk about their teams you know entrepreneurs billionaires successful people they there's a lot of coverage right now about what meta's up to what

09:31 zuckerberg's up to in kind of um hoovering up all the best talent from within the ai industry like that's putting a team together he's not the ai expert however clever he is or whatever he's able to do he's not as clever as the most specialist ai person and he's certainly not as clever even with one person as a room full of them and that's the power of the collective collective. So, where this thought, this idea came from that men have to be strong and men have to do it on their own. And, you know, if you're in business, you've got to just plow ahead. No one else is going to be able to help me. And I know the classic for even if you know for myself is this thought that it's going to take longer to involve someone else.

10:11 I'm going to have to explain it and then they're going to get it wrong. And then that's going to be frustrating. And I'll be back where I started two weeks before. And I'll be missing deadlines. And so I might as well just do it myself. That doesn't work because you're not creating a system, a structure, a SOP, a standard operating procedure. Like you have to put this in place, both from a personnel point of view and from a system point of view. You're not the best at everything. And that's one of the tools that we're going to talk about here. Dan Sullivan, who runs, well, he's a personal development dude.

10:52 He's like well into his 70s, 80s now. He's the guy behind Strategic Coach. And I've read a number of his books. A couple of more recent ones, he's been co-written with a guy. So who, not how, as well as 10x is faster than 2x, but who, not how, we're going to reference today in this great book, all about the idea, the concept really that how to do something is the wrong question. Who can help me? Who's done this before? Who can I get on board? Is the more powerful question? And it's, and it's not to say that like you're completely incompetent. It's not to say that you can't succeed occasionally in doing things on your own.

11:35 But have a look. Have a look at what could be achieved by spreading that load. And the guy that I was particularly mentioned in the introduction, he has in this, without being too specific about the personal information, the details of it, he had been trying to deal with a particular topic on his own. And to be honest, I ended up saying to him, This is bloody stupid. You stuck your head in the sand here, really, about what's truly going on. Because the problems that we're facing right now, as we unpack this or put it into a spreadsheet, a task list,

12:14 are way worse now, nine months down the line than they would have been at the beginning if we'd handled this together then. Like I would have been his who in this process. If he'd have shared this inside the high value man project, accountability and hot seat chats and sessions, he would have found out that multiple other men in the program would have said to him, Oh, yeah, I've faced that, I've dealt with that. This is what I did. So it's ludicrous to suggest or to presume that he was better off doing it on his own because he wasn't even dealing with it. He just stuck his head in the sand. And that's what we, that's often what we do. It's like going down a rabbit hole.

12:53 You know, you think that the goal is at the end of the tunnel. So you just keep going, keep going, keep going. And actually, you're just digging yourself into a deeper hole with no clear way out. That sounds a bit bleak, but at its worst, that's what happens. Because when things don't work out, when things don't start to fall into place as you hope they would, then your options start to run out. Time starts to run out. Money starts to run out. Energy runs out. That's the problem with the lone wolf syndrome. You're betting everything on the idea, on the hope that you're going to get through this before everything else falls to pieces. And that I can relate to that because that's what I did with

13:37 my marriage, with the miscarriages, with the financial challenges, with the relationship as it was, with a whole load of other stuff going on. And just thinking, if I can just get us through this, if I can just get us through this, everything's going to be fine. The kids will be a bit older. My wife will be back, you know, be able to get back into some work and start to, you know, put herself back on her feet, enjoy herself again. We'll get through this. And then actually, turns out I wasn't doing that well. Then my brother's death came along and then we broke up. And it was only then that I realized, oh my gosh, I'm literally on my knees here.

14:18 I hadn't even realized it. Like carrying the flipping weight of the world on my shoulders, thinking I was doing okay. And actually, like a cartoon in the newspaper, the picture of me would have been, you know, absolutely done in with the with the flipping like Atlas with the world on my shoulders, but but but squashed flat like a pancake. That would have been me. And I say, the day you search Google for am I burnt out, the answer is yes, you already are. Right. So let's dig into this. Okay. Lone wolf, it's a negative pattern. It's low value. We've talked many times about how the high value man project name came about.

14:59 It's because when we operate in the right way, we create this upward spiral. We create a momentum, a positive force. We create flow. The opposite is low value. Low value tension, stress, exhaustion, loss, lack of finances, everything. Right. One thing about Dan Sullivan in Who, Not How, right? He says, if you have a word, if you find yourself looking at a situation and you think, okay, well, I've just got to do this better. I've just got to do this faster. I've just got to do this cheaper. Those words that end up ER are often a trap. They're often an indication that you're going down a solo lone wolf route.

15:45 Trying to become smarter, faster, better on your own will generally keep you stuck. It's the rabbit hole, right? It's the how trap. When you're focused more on finding the right people to help you, then you start to actually lean on their skills of having done this before. They've solved the problem before. Okay, so that's a perfect, it's a perfect example, as Stan Sullivan said in the book. Instead of asking, how can I get better at this? Ask, who can help me achieve this result? It's a mindset trick, right? It's a programming. It's an operating system for you to come from. It's a high value way of being, right?

16:27 Trying to be fitter instead of hiring a personal trainer. Trying to be smarter instead of joining a mastermind. Trying to sell better instead of going on a sales course or reading some, who are we going to go for? Brian Tracy? Probably Jim Rohn. I think Zig Ziglar's got some awesome sales books as well. Oh, Grant Cardone, if we're going to go fully up to date, right? So that's a really good tip, right? Now, five ways of five systems of really breaking this down. Okay. And these pull from my own personal experience. They pull from my coaching. They definitely pull from the high value man system for living. The five tools to break lone wolf mindset. Number one, we've just talked about it, who, not how.

17:12 Stop asking, how do I fix this and start asking who can help me resolve it? Who can help me? Instead of asking, how can I move faster? Asking who can teach me to run better. A man with a team, I don't know if this is right. The man with a team moves 10 times faster, thousand times faster than in his own head. I don't know, but you're definitely going to move faster with a team around you. We'll talk about number five, setting your path about really identifying who those people might be. But you'll know them yourself, right? And if you, and if you don't, in fact, we'll do it here, right? If you don't know the specific name of someone, like I can think of if I was going to go sales and

17:53 someone around me, I might go Dave Juno, who runs the networking group I go to, right? Nutter in terms of sales or Matt Elwell, right? They're salespeople. But if you don't know someone, then put in that column or next to that challenge, sales expert. And then you start to ask your network, who do you know that is flipping epic at sales? And so if you'd asked me, then I would have told you those suggested names that I just came up with. It's as simple as that, right? Who, not how, not rocket science. Then this one. Often the thought of what we're trying to avoid or make happen is a very internal thought.

18:35 And there'll be some level of avoidance or fear that's coming from that that's having you do it all on your own. I said previously about thinking if I if I involve someone else, if I go and get a freelancer, it's probably going to go wrong. That's going to take me longer. So I should just do it, might do it myself, right? That's a kind of work, you know, what's the worst thing that could happen thought kicking you in the ass. It's not logical, right? It might make sense in the moment, but it's generally out of some kind of panic or concern that it's not going to go right. So when you look at really what's the worst that could happen here, then you start to actually, once you get it on paper,

19:16 instead of catastrophizing about it or coming up with outcomes that aren't necessarily realistic or that are holding you in fear, you get to actually work on it. So if, for example, let's imagine it was something to do with, I don't know, like a divorce, right? I do, there's a quite a lot of, quite a lot of the men inside of high male project are going through a divorce and a breakup. And we know, I posted about this last week, that we get this sort of drama, drama, avoidance trauma. trauma where we don't want to open an email because we fear what's going to be in it next you know because it's going to create a whole load of upset and it's going to wipe out our whole day anyone that's been through a divorce perhaps if you're facing financial challenges you'll know that you don't want to open the letter to the email the voice message because of that but when you put it down on paper what's

20:03 the worst that can happen okay if i don't read this then um i could end up in contempt of court i could miss a deadline i could like right great and then you start to get very real about okay now i can see the problems that are here and i can go back to that first question of who could help this with me when you leave it rattling around in your head you're generally going to come up with weird responses weird answers to the problem or you're simply going to go that's too much to handle i'm going to avoid it and by the way doing that with someone probably going to help as well okay number three on the five tools to break the lone wolf mindset

20:39 the eisenhower matrix um former president eisenhower i did read that he didn't actually come up with this but it was just something that he used and then it became synonymous with him right but basically the eisenhower matrix is a way of chunking out your tasks to see which ones are the most important to see which ones you can delegate and to see which ones you can just push aside altogether so it goes like this in the four boxes and you've probably seen it or you can if you're inside the the high value man project um trainings you'll see it referenced in inside that that work basically but it's four boxes four boxes uh the first box is important and urgent

21:20 now it's things that are important and urgent might be a sales presentation that you've got coming up today and that you have to present at that you have to lead that's both important because you want to get the deal and it's urgent because it's in a couple of hours right probably not going to be able to avoid too many important and urgents but if your diary is full of important and urgent then you're going to be stressed out to the max you're going to have to look at how you can move some of those urgent things onto other people next up important not urgent now this is a good box important not urgent is generally where you're going to find strategic work things about planning for the future things that are really going to move the dial because you've got

21:59 time and capacity to address them properly you could even go out and find people that could help you right the who's so you're important not urgent that's the box that true leaders in your family in your business in your life there's the box you want to be working on next up not important but urgent so not important but urgent might be picking your kids up from school right of course it's important but but in in the context of business and strategizing and managing your stress workload the kids especially if they're you know little they're at junior school primary school then they've got to be picked up and they're going to finish school at three o'clock so like it's important it's not important

22:39 but it is urgent now i'm not saying that don't go and pick your kids up from school because that as a man that's created a life that truly works for him where he's got time and money freedom will have the capacity to go and pick up his kids on a on you know regularly um and if you're a divorced dad single dad then you're probably going to find yourself doing that regularly anyway so and your kids love it so it's not that it's not that it's not important but again if you find yourself dealing with lots of not important but urgent work then you might find like you're running around quite frantically and could you delegate some of that could you carpool could you create a situation where grandparents could

23:20 pick up your kids occasionally things where your kids feel loved but also you feels like you're you're managing your workload and then the fourth box is not important and not urgent this is flipping playing on your phone um social media doom scrolling um call of duty if you if you're a gamer i got at 51 years old people that game regularly i mean great we all deserve hobbies but if you're just wasting your time doing crap like that then have a look you know this the idea or if you're sleeping in till the middle of the morning at the weekends and only getting half a day like

23:59 time is precious do good stuff with it so when you look at if you chunk out what you've got going on into an eisenhower matrix you get very able to look and see what could i delegate who could i involve how can i spread the load here okay number four in the five tools to break the lone wolf mindset this is the super power matrix taken from the 3xc uh formula it's about you working in your flame it's about you being the truest version of yourself true self we call it when you know this inherently and you stick to it then delegation becomes a much more obvious uh process and action becomes much more automatic.

24:42 So just briefly, there's five boxes. The middle box is your values. Like who are you truly? When you constantly operate in congruence with your values, life gets easy. Life flows. You don't find there's a tension. It's not like rolling and driving along that bumpy bit on the motorway to stop you hitting the edges. If you're operating like that, then you are not incongruence with your values. Right? If you know, you know, family is a value of yours and you constantly getting home after the kids have gone to bed, then you're not going to love your work because you're not going to be living in line with your values.

25:23 So there's lots of different values exercises, but a really quick one is put a stopwatch for two minutes, write down all the things that are important to you, all the things that you love, all the things that light you up, all the things that you like doing, all the things that make you feel good, right? And then once the alarm goes off for two minutes, then just cluster them up. You'll find they generally pull into about five or four, five, six groups. And then you can label those groups. You will see that they are your core values. And then around that, strengths, weaknesses, passions, and commitments. Starting with weaknesses. If you work too much on your weaknesses or if you're working in an areas that aren't your strong suits, then it's going to do your head in.

26:06 For me, I can't do my books. Maths, not really a strong point. I'm quite good with spreadsheets and things like that, but just the monotonous nature of, and I'm not a trained accountant either, right? So it makes sense for me to have a bookkeeper. There are other areas of your business where you'll find, particularly if you're starting out in business and you're yet to really grow the team to the size you want, that you'll be doing things that don't light you up, that take up a lot of your time. You've got to get those low jobs, those tasks that fall into the weakness side of it out of your life. Then strengths, but it's the complete opposite, right? It makes sense that you do what you're good at. But be careful.

26:51 If you're in a leadership position, one of the guys I work one-on-one with, a very good project manager, but he's the leader in his business. So getting out of that project manager mindset, hiring a really good project manager, and he kept hiring poor ones, which was then just sucking him back into it. Finally got himself an awesome project manager and he has transformed his business over the last eight months. So yes, have your strengths, but know when it's time to delegate those as well. Okay, then the final two boxes are passions and commitments. And these two can overlap quite a lot. Commitments are your kids. Okay. Now kids could also be a passion, yeah. But

27:30 knowing what your commitments and passions are allows you to make sure that you're getting enough of that in your life, that you're providing enough time and capacity to do those things. If you find you have got very little time for the things that are your passions and commitments, then you're probably stuck in lone wolf. You're probably filling your life up with too much stuff, trying to go it all alone, and it will start to weigh you down. It will start to knock the life out of you. That's the importance of the superpower matrix. When you get it all down and look at it and say, oh, yes, I am living that life, then it's highly likely that you've put a lot of good people around you.

28:13 If you are, if you're really struggling, if you've got a lot of stuff going on in the area of weaknesses, if you're overloaded in your strengths areas, and if you're incongruent, not living aligned with your values, then you're going to burn out. It's going to take you down. And then finally, number five in the tools to break out of the lone wolf mindset is a process called setting your path. And it's not just goal setting, it's beyond that. Setting your path is a simple ladder of actions that starts with the goal that you want, okay? Both a bold and essential goal there, you know, so you actually stretching yourself.

28:55 Business finance and sort of money targets are the obvious ones around bold and essential. Because if you've got a particular target, which is to cover your costs and sustain the business, that's an essential target. But a bold goal will be to put a number down there that's really going to move the dial on the growth and performance and success of your business. Then you put why, you know, what will it, what will a tangible outcome for that goal look like? Could be, if we stick with that same example, it'll be a number. It would be a monetary goal. And then what will like your why? Why does that goal matter? And you can go different layers on your why. The first layer is probably going to be what it means.

29:34 to you like having that financial reward what it's going to mean to you but if you want a why that's truly compelling it's probably going to be about someone else it's going to be a why that is about your kids your family your community it's going to be about the impact you can make the difference you can make the life that you can provide for people that's when you find a why that not just motivates you because motivation comes in and out but when you've got a why that is truly like core operating system stuff then there's no question about have i got enough uh motivation for this it's just it's just an inherent commitment and it's a why

30:13 um and then and what will happen next box is on the ladder what will happen if i don't achieve this like literally what's at stake here if this doesn't happen what's at stake where what will life look like if this goal isn't achieved so that's really the eye-opener that's your that's your baseline like ouch because very often a pain will push us forward quicker than um than a desire and we know this if you look at someone who's been diagnosed with lung cancer they suddenly give up smoking the next day where they haven't been able to for the previous 30 years it's that kind of awareness and then quite simply the final two boxes in the um set your path ladder

30:53 is who are you going to involve clearly we've just been talking about that throughout this whole session and uh the five the first five actions you are going to take to move forward in this area now when you do that when you set your path that's a leadership principle you've booked you've gotten clear on what it is you're doing where the target is what's at stake who you're going to involve and then what are the actions you're going to work on together so those five steps who not how the what's the worst that could happen exercise eisenhower matrix to chunk out your your tasks your weekly task the superpower matrix to ensure that you're operating consistent with who you are and then the set your path ladder

31:42 so you've got a clear plan of action that's how you break free from the lone wolf mindset and finally on this whole point is that none of us are alone if you think about the you know the phone ringing and someone from your life whether it was someone from a long time ago or someone you see all the time if they said to you i really could do with some help over this particular topic what do you know about it or who do you know who does imagine that was round the other way what are you what would you say to those people oh sod off i'm not helping screw you how dare how dare you share that with me you wouldn't do it you wouldn't do it you would be there for that person you would create something and and that's the