How To Be The CEO Of Your Life

How To Be The CEO Of Your Life

Tim Fitzpatrick
Most of us think about being a CEO as a professional role. But can the CEO role be applicable to other areas of our lives? Our special guest today believes not only can it be applied to all aspects of our lives, but it should be. And he's going to break down this concept for us. You don't want to miss this. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks to accelerate growth, and marketing shouldn't be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am really excited to have Vamsi Polimetla from Make More Leaders with me today. Vomsey, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate you being here.

Vamsi Polimetla
Hey, Tim. Great to be here.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I'm excited to dig into this with you. As I told you just before we jumped on and started recording, I have not talked about anything like this, so I think it's going to be a great topic. We got to be able to... All the other areas of our lives have to be dialed in if we're going to be successful entrepreneurs as well. I can't wait to chat about this. Before we jump in, I want to ask you some rapid fire questions. Are you ready to do this?

Vamsi Polimetla
Yeah, born ready. Let's go.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay, born ready. I love it. When you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?

Vamsi Polimetla
I don't typically differentiate between my work and the play. Pretty much all the time I'm in play. No big difference.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. What's your hidden talent?

Vamsi Polimetla
Sometimes I'm really a creative. I design stuff, I love. I fell in love with that process. And sometimes I lose control of my time, whether I'm designing my slides for the presentation, creating content. So there is a creative inside of me.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Vamsi Polimetla
Slow down.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's one thing about you that surprises people?

Vamsi Polimetla
A lot of people, they don't know I came from India and my first language was not English. And I failed in English many times when I was in school. English was the toughest thing for me. Now, I help a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of leaders, a lot of executives, how to communicate better. It's something like surprises to so many people when I hear about that story.

Tim Fitzpatrick
As a native English speaker, I think a lot of us take this for granted, but English is a really difficult language to learn. I just don't understand why we spell the same word differently, things like that. A lot of slang. I can only imagine what it's like to try and learn English as a second language. What does success mean to you?

Vamsi Polimetla
Success is very different for so many people. It's all about in my world, if your internal world is matching your external world. That means whatever that you are talking is matching your video who you are being in the home. That is exactly what success means.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Where's your happy place?

Vamsi Polimetla
My happy place always sitting somewhere quiet and journaling. Sometimes I go for an entire day journaling.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Do you have a written journal or is it digital?

Vamsi Polimetla
Written. I got at least 100 journals I have in my home. Some of them are completed, some of them are still a half done.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?

Vamsi Polimetla
I really enjoy people who are open, willingness to share, willingness to learn. A lot of times people say that like, Oh, I already heard about it. I already know this. I love the people. I heard about it, but I never applied that, those people.

Tim Fitzpatrick
One of my mentors early on said, The day you stop learning is the day you die. And that always stuck with me, man. Because like you, man, I'm just a lifelong learner, man. I learn new things every day and always open to it. So I love that. Vamsi, tell us a little bit more about what are you doing with Make More Leaders? What people are you working with and how are you helping them?

Vamsi Polimetla
Absolutely. So very high level, Tim. I came from IT background. I spent more than two decades in the IT leadership world. And throughout my journey, I noticed that leadership is not based on your title. Leadership is not based on what you are doing at work. It's all based on who you are. And this can be developed, designed at any point of our time. So this is exactly the concept behind when I was starting my organization. I really wanted to help people to step into the true leadership. And that's how I started. And I was doing that back in the corporate when I was working. Now I'm doing it across the globe in so many formats.

Tim Fitzpatrick
So do you do one on one coaching, group coaching, both? What does that look like?

Vamsi Polimetla
Mostly group coaching. I typically don't take a one on one coaching unless there is a strong need because group is like really good environment where you learn from each other's experiences and you grow faster. Because it's all about going into... If Tim can do that, Vamsi can do that too. If Vamsi can do that, maybe Josh can do that too. So that way people will learn and grow faster.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And with your group coaching, is it ongoing? Is it more of a curriculum based program where it's for a period of time?

Vamsi Polimetla
It's both. I have a couple of programs. They are ongoing. It's evergreen. Every time, every month, we pick a team and we work on that and we go to the next one. And anyone can join anytime. And some programs that I have, it's a curriculum based. It's just a three-month program. We have certain outcomes that they are going to get in three months and then it's rapid fire. They go and they come out with those outcomes.

What it Means to Be the CEO of Your Life

Tim Fitzpatrick
Got it. Okay, cool. So let's talk about this CEO of Your Life concept. What does this mean? For those of us that aren't familiar with that, what does being the CEO of your life mean to you?

Vamsi Polimetla
Sure. We do anything for our clients. We do anything for our managers. If you are working in the corporate, maybe you have a boss at your business, we do anything for them. But when it comes to our personal life, we are not that taking our life seriously. So the concept of be the CEO of your life or grow as an exponential leader inside the home, this is the concept for all the busy professionals, whether you're running a big brick and mortar shop or maybe you're in the corporate, it doesn't matter. Tim, before I go there, I'll ask you a question. What is your favorite car?

Tim Fitzpatrick
My favorite car?

Vamsi Polimetla
Mm.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Oh, man. Honestly, I have an FJ Cruiser. That's my favorite car right now.

Vamsi Polimetla
There you go. All right. So you just got like, let's imagine you just got a brand new car and this is like a fully loaded. You got all the bells and results in the car and the car got four wheels. The driver side front wheel represents your business and the passenger side front wheel represents your fitness and your health. The rear wheel on the passenger side represents your relationship with your family, relationship with your parents. And the final rear wheel represents your spirituality. Just imagine, Tim, this car. You paid like maybe $70,000 to bring that car and you are so excited. For the majority of the people, especially people who are really working hard on their businesses, on their careers, and they are putting all their energy on the wheel, on the carreer. And that wheel is spinning at 130 miles an hour speed. And most of the time they complain about, I'm not going at 150, I'm supposed to go at 150. I said, Absolutely, you can go to 150 pretty quickly. But let me ask you a question, how do you get how is your wheel on your health and fitness? They say, I wish I'm fit. So that wheel is in a shape of triangle. And the relationship wheel... When I ask, when was the last time you had a one on one with your partner? Real one on one. When was the last time that you had a deeper conversation with your kids? And sometimes they say, They're not in my control anymore. That wheel is like a rectangle. And the final wheel, like about the spirituality, about their adventure, about their passion, to say, we do once in a while, maybe we go to Church, we go to a temple, we contribute a little bit here and there, but not that much. That wheel is a smaller circle. So you got this really good car. You are so excited about this car. And just imagine somebody sitting in that car with those four wheels. And you are working so hard and you are telling everyone, I'm working so hard for my family. But you are not spending time with your family. And you have the car with those things and you're asking your family members to jump on that car. Let's go for a ride. How is the ride going to be in that car? Not that good.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Not great.

Vamsi Polimetla
Not great, right? They all love you, but nobody wanted to sit on that car. They wanted to jump out from the car as soon as possible. We know all the strategies, all the things that we are applying in the business are going to be meaningless if you have that ride back at home. So coming back and ask yourself, we know how to fix these things. When some issues comes at work, we can go and fix those issues. The same way, if you just slow down a little bit and ask where you are with the balance in those four wheels, are you really spinning the other wheels at the same speed? If not, maybe there is a time you can claim back that, say, I really wanted to be CEO in my life before I wanted to be CEO for a big business. I spoke to hundreds of business owners in the past, maybe 10 years. Most of the time, the biggest problems that every person brings in the business is their personal problems. Once we fix that, once we claim that, whether you are a mom, you are a husband, you are a dad, you are a son, you are a daughter, it doesn't matter who you are, but you can step into the CEO. You can start taking charge of who you are. Where do you want it to go? Define your success. The moment you define your success, these are all the things. All the CEOs, I know you're already a CEO. I'm just reminding you, you can take control of that and you can run rest of your life like a big organization.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What I'm hearing you say, Vamsi, tell me if I've got this right, is that to be the CEO of our life, we need to... A lot of us as business owners take the business side of it. We're focused, we're planning, we're executing, we're taking charge there. But we need to take that same approach with these other three areas of our life.

Vamsi Polimetla
Absolutely. It could be three areas. It could be seven areas, depends on how do you define those. But you need to have that clarity.

Tim Fitzpatrick
But for you, it sounds like you break it down into those four primary categories. Business, fitness/health, relationships, and then spirituality.

Vamsi Polimetla
Mm hmm.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Got it. As a business owner, frankly, just in life in general, there are going to be times where we're going to be out of balance, I think. I'm curious to get your opinion on this. I think as business owners, I got a big work thing going on or a big project, or there's a new product launch or whatever, and I'm really trying to get that up and off the ground. Some of the other areas of my life may be a little bit out of balance while I'm doing that. Do you believe in that or do you believe that there should always be balance? What are your thoughts?

Vamsi Polimetla
No, this is how I define this. We all going to have seasons. Just like how we have seasons, four seasons in the place where we are living. If we are living in Florida, there is no season. You have spring, you have summer, you have fall, you have winter. But these seasons are continuing that. It's not like it's going to be summer 12 months in a row. You're going to have the season. Same way, you are going to have product launches. You are going to have maybe some situations at work. You need to put your 100 % effort. You may not even go to your kid's birthdays. You may not even go to kids graduation. That's absolutely fine. But define that season. Hey, I'm in a season of product development right now. My 100 % focus goes here. So it doesn't mean that I'm not loving you. But you know, this is the season that is coming. We're going to go for a two month maybe adventure trip together. I'm going to be giving my best to you during that time. Many people, especially in the business world, when they are in the vacation, they think about the business. When they are in the business, they think about all the things they're supposed to be doing at home. So instead of doing that, define that and also communicate that to everyone around you. So the communication is the key component. We do that to our stakeholders. We do that to our clients. We do that to people. We are responsible in the business, but unfortunately, we don't do that at home. And also, we don't take care of ourselves. The biggest person, like the most important person in the business is you. And if you are not healthy, if you are not fit, you're not going to be inspiring your team members.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. Well, so to go back to your car analogy, all wheel drive car, they're not always giving the same amount of power to each wheel. Depending on what's happening and where you are with the vehicle, they may give more power to the front passenger tack. So it's totally okay when we have times in our life where things are out of balance, we just need to acknowledge that and communicate it to the people that are in our lives. That's what I'm hearing you say. Am I getting it?

Vamsi Polimetla
Absolutely.

The 3 Key Elements to Become the CEO of Your Life

Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. I love it. So what are some of the key elements we need to master to become the CEO of our life?

Vamsi Polimetla
Sure. This is again nothing new to most of the business owners. If you start a new project, if you start a new venture, you always start with the vision first. The same way, step number one, create that vision. I know this sounds like a pretty basic, pretty common sense, but most of the time it's not common practice. A lot of times we spend so much time thinking about how this vacation is going to be coming in two months. Maybe we spend maybe two, three hours every week and thinking about that vacation, but we never spend that much time thinking about how my life is going to be three years from now, how my life is going to be five years from now. And I do this exercise during my live Masterminds Tim. So we go and spend four days and nights in a nice, exotic place somewhere close to the beach. And out of those four days, we go deep on this concept. I ask all of my clients to write down their 25 year vision. 25 years, how old you are going to be 25 years from now. And a lot of times they are going to start a lot of light bulbs on their mind. Oh, my God, I'm going to be 65. And okay, who's going to be around with you at that time? And what relationship that you wanted to have? And this is almost like taking somebody into the time machine, taking into the future and start creating that future self. And we can start reverse engineering that from that point of view. So step number one, vision. You can start with the three year vision. Start with a five year vision, 10 years, 25 depends on how deep you want it to go. And also when you are creating this vision, don't create in your basement. Don't create in your kitchen. Go somewhere where you feel like a complete freedom. Maybe don't take any of your business or your work stuff there. Decide, like one day I really wanted to work on creating this vision and complete that. And after that, once you come back, you start sharing that vision with your board of directors. I know we do that at our business, we share our vision with all the executives in the company. But when it comes to your home, share with your most important people. This is what I'm thinking about. And get their buy in. For example, you wanted to lose 25 pounds, or maybe you wanted to sign up for a marathon that is coming in like six months from now, share that vision with them and get their support. So that way you are going to be getting it. And step number two, we all need to have an identity to execute that vision. This is really, really important, people. A lot of times people, they complete the step one, which is a very easy thing. You write down all the things that I wanted to have. The step two is that who do you need to be in order for you to execute that vision flawlessly? What are the characteristics of that that you need to have? What are the operating principles? Whatever that could be. You could be like, say, I really wanted to make a million dollars a year. Who do you need to be in order for you to make a million dollars a year? What are the things? You definitely need to do things that you are not doing right now. What are the things that you need to let go of from your life, from your business, from your career. Because everything what you got based on what you are already doing it, and if you want something different, you need to create space for that. Step number two, create those operating principles. And step number three, we need to have those systems in order for us to execute flawlessly. If you look at companies like McDonald's, Starbucks, most of the time these companies, like a billion dollar companies, are operated by undergrads, sometimes like a high school dropout. The reason behind, it's not based on their talent, it's based on the systems that they're following inside those organizations. And if you create the same system at your home, there is a maybe morning routines, maybe evening routines like journaling days, maybe a day off, like once every couple of maybe weeks, and say complete like you're not thinking anything about the business. You're creating space for yourself to just get everything back into normal. This is almost like you mixing the chicken, maybe marinating the chicken. You don't directly put into the oven. You let the chicken sit there for 30 minutes, maybe one hour. Are you giving the same time for yourself? If not, this is the time I think you need to add that. You need to have all the systems, like maybe system for finance, system for performance, system for diet, system for study, reading, upgrading, and also system for your communication. Being a business owner, your communication is the most important thing. If you don't have a system, I think you're missing big. It's not about how much you know, it's about how well you are communicating with other people. And also, I say this to everyone, Tim, visibility is profitability. Visibility is profitability. If you are not visible in this marketplace, no matter what you're doing, nobody knows who you are. You don't want to be the best author in this world. You want it to be the best selling author. That's the reason I think what you're doing, Tim. It's really, really important you're bringing that visibility to all this world. I'm really grateful that we are talking now on this topic. Final step is creating those systems. Step number one, create that vision, your short term vision and also your long term vision. Step number two, who do you need to be, like the core inside of that identity? Step number three, all the supporting system that will help you to execute that vision with your current identity.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. Three simple steps. I love keeping things as simple as humanly possible. It can be really difficult for us to do sometimes because I think it's so much easier to overcomplicate things. But three simple steps, we got to get those dialed in if we're going to become the CEO of our life and get where we want to go. I want to dig into identity a little bit because one of the things you said was we need to think about the person we need to become. It's not necessarily the person that we are today because a lot of times we need to become a different person to reach our end goal and accomplish that vision. Once we identify that person that we need to become, it seems to me that we have to start acting like that person today, even though we may not necessarily be there. Do you agree with that? How do we start doing that?

Vamsi Polimetla
Absolutely. Again, we are not completely transforming overnight. So what we can do is we can take some key ingredients. So before even we go into the future identity, because we were playing that identity in the past as well. That is the reason that we are here. That is the reason we got all this success so far. Instead of looking at what you don't have, look at what you already accomplished in your life. For example, you ran maybe two marathons in the past, like maybe when you are in 20s, or maybe you got your first prize in public speaking championship somewhere. So go back to that and ask yourself, who I was in that moment? Or maybe when you're launching your business, you got maybe $100,000 in six months, and you may be stuck right now at $500,000 and you're not making any more progress. You go there and say, What did I do to get $100,000 in six months? And bring that identity to now because it's already there in you. So you need to start tapping into that. So that way those things will come up. So it's like a great exercise. I do it for at least maybe 4, 5 hours on that. But I wanted to just simplify here, get those internal characteristics that you already have and give life to those characteristics. Maybe just start seeing that. Start small, start one at a time and see how you can just maybe get into the next one. And over the time, just like maybe if you're doing this for maybe 30 days, you're going to see compound effect. You're going to see the dominoes, the small domino is going to hit the big domino and the big domino and the big domino over the time. You'll see, Wow, I made so much progress in the last 30 days than I did maybe in the entire first six months of this year.

Simple Steps to Get Started

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love that. So if we want to get started on this, what are some of the simple steps we can take to start going down this path of becoming the CEO of our life?

Vamsi Polimetla
Absolutely. One simple exercise. Everyone can do that who's watching this or listening to this. Give yourself three hours and write down 100 questions that comes to your mind. 100 questions, very simple. So you take maybe a notebook and pen, go somewhere where it's calm, and don't get out in this exercise in between. Schedule a two hours and complete all the 100 questions that you can write it down.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And the 100 questions, say this again, so a hundred questions about what?

Vamsi Polimetla
A hundred questions about whatever that is coming to your mind. Why I'm not making a million dollars? Why I'm still fat? Why I don't have great relationship with my kid? Or maybe why this customer is always bothering me? How come I'm not getting good from that? So the first 10, 20 questions are pretty easy that will come out, but you stay until the last question. This is really going to blow your mind. The moment you complete those hundred questions, give yourself maybe a day or two and go back and watch those questions, you will understand the pattern that's going on in your brain and create maybe a pattern there. Is this more on the business side, more on the relationship side, more on the health side, more on the fitness side, more on the spiritual side, you see, majority of the questions are driving based on maybe three or four things. Identify that pattern and write down the questions again. Maybe you can consolidate the questions and write down your top four questions. Those questions will give you more clarity. You don't need to hire anyone. You don't need to go to any Tony Robbins or any of the seminars. Just spend some time with yourself. A lot of times people pay a lot of money for other coaches. Hey, I'm having this problem, but they are not spending time with themselves. So this simple exercise is going to get a lot of clarity, Tim. That's something that they can start. And if you still have more time, go back to what I was sharing before about the vision. Spend some time on writing down your five year vision. Where do you want it to be five years from now? How old are you going to be? How old your family members will be at that time? And write every single thing that comes to your mind and say, how can I achieve this vision? Not in five years, maybe in the next six months. So that is exactly what I help people. I help them to achieve their ten year goals under 12 months, not by doing more work, by doing the most important work.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that reminds me. One of my mantra this year is to focus on less, to accomplish more. What you just said reminds me exactly of it. Sometimes we feel like we have to do all these things to get where we want to go. In reality, it's that 20 % that's really going to move the needle and help us get to where we need to go. We need to identify that 20 % though.

Vamsi Polimetla
100 %, yeah. Once we identify, we can easily scale, whether it's a business, whether it's your fitness, whether it's your health, whether it's your relationship. You need to identify what is that 20 %, and you are the creator of your life. Again, going back to the CEO concept, you need to define that what is that the future looks like, because we cannot hit a target that we do not see. We need to set that clearly. We need to have that on the paper. And also we need to put it in a place where we see every single day. It's not just like maybe you do it once and you put the book somewhere. You need to communicate that with your board of directors, and you need to have that radical accountability. The radical accountability is the key piece as well, because we are always getting into multiple things and we completely ignore what we're supposed to be doing. When we are accountable, we need to report our status. We definitely go back and execute those things.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Vamsi, you mentioned journaling, too. It sounds like journaling is a huge part of what you practice as well. This is a little somewhat off topic, but I'm just curious, how do you approach journaling? And how do you recommend your clients approach it?

Vamsi Polimetla
Sure. Very simple. Every morning before you start your work, maybe this is something that everyone can do it starting tomorrow morning. Before you start your work, just spend five minutes writing down all the things that you are grateful for. Because the moment you get into that the place of gratitude, you are going to be operating with a different frequency. And your clients, maybe your customers will feel that. And all of your team members, all of your employees that are working for you, are also going to feel that and say, Oh, you're so good today. So that's a good place. Put a 10 minute Timer, maybe you can buy a Timer just to complete that and just see for next 10 days how that is going to be impacting. And once you complete that, yeah, there are multiple other things that you can do that. But again, always less is more. Start there.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's right. Do you go back and review your journals on a periodic basis?

Vamsi Polimetla
I have multiple journals that I use, Tim. Some I'll never go back, some I'll never even not let anyone to see that as well. So I have something called morning pages. Every time when I feel like I'm a little overwhelmed, I just use that morning pages. My intention is I will never look back into that. Everything that's going on in my mind, I'll drop into that the morning pages journal. It could be anything. Why Tim is wearing red shirt today? Those things. Whatever that mind is processing, it's going to put it there.

Conclusion: How To Be The CEO Of Your Life

Tim Fitzpatrick
Got it. Cool. I love it. Vamsi, this has been fantastic, man. I've really enjoyed the conversation. Any last minute thoughts you want to leave us with today?

Vamsi Polimetla
Yeah, one thing. Everything what you're looking right now is already available to you. Start before you are ready. Most of the time people are just thinking that I wanted to start something. I wanted to just do that after completing my MBA, after completing my certification, after making a million dollars, maybe after getting my kids to the whatever that is, start right now. Everything what you're looking is already available to you. You just need to choose it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Where can people learn more about you?

Vamsi Polimetla
Linkedin is the best place. You can search me, Vamsi Polimetla at LinkedIn. And also my website is pretty straightforward, Vamsi.coach.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. So that's VAMSI.coach. We will also make sure that Vamsee's LinkedIn URL is in the show notes. But like you said, are there many other Vamsi Polimetla that you found on LinkedIn?

Vamsi Polimetla
No, not like a Tim.

Tim Fitzpatrick
No, exactly. So I'm sure if you search them, you'll find them, but we'll make sure those links are there. Vamsi, this has been a great conversation, man. I really appreciate you taking the time to just share this concept with us because I think there's so many of us that can benefit from this. Thank you for taking the time. Those of you that are watching, listening, I appreciate you. If you want to connect with me, you can always do that over at RialtoMarketing.com, which is Rialtomarketing. Com. If you've been watching this or listening for any period of time, you know that I focus on B2B revenue acceleration. If you want to identify which revenue roadblocks are slowing down your growth, you can do that over revenueroadblockscorecard.com. Thanks so much. Until next time, take care.