You Can't Relive Any Moment

Meet Host, Mary Grothe

Mary Grothe is a former #1 MidMarket B2B Sales Rep who after selling millions and breaking multiple records, formed House of Revenue®, a Denver-based firm of fractional Revenue Leaders who currently lead the marketing, sales, customer success, and RevOps departments for 10 companies nationwide. In the past year, they've helped multiple 2nd stage growth companies between $5M - $20M, on average, double their MRR within 10 months, resulting in an average ROI of 1,454% and an average annual revenue growth eclipsing $3.2 million.

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Mary Grothe: Hey everyone, this is Mary Grothe — Founder and CEO — and you're listening to the Revenue Radio® podcast brought to you by House of Revenue®. Each week, we'll talk about common revenue challenges and how to get past them, share real-world experiences, and get a glimpse into my life as a CEO scaling my own business. If you're a struggling entrepreneur, or just an entrepreneur looking to be inspired, this podcast is for you. I'll give you honest, unfiltered, and practical insights into growing your business and getting past your revenue plateau.

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Back from Christmas break. What an amazing ten days. Maybe I took more days off than that. It was amazing. I'm back. I'm recharged. Thrilled to be recording for all of you. During the break, I read several books. I also took a lot of quiet time, spent it in reflection, and created this stillness inside of me that I don't often get time to do. I thrive on high stress, urgency, and moving fast. It's more difficult for me to slow down. I did it and got plenty of family time, which is such a blessing.

The topic for today came from a book that I was gifted over break. It reminded me of a movie I watched several years ago. I think the movie came out in 2013. It's called “About Time”, it has Rachel McAdams. It's very, very good. That's my homework for you - go watch this movie. It is about someone who figures out how to travel in time. It's magical with the lessons that can be learned in this movie. It's incredible how you can't relive any moment.

Every moment is such a gift. Maybe you've heard that. Maybe that's cliche, but as someone who thrives off of high-stress situations, urgency, complex problem solving, and moving quickly, my moments can become a blur. Every single one of those moments while I'm moving so fast. I don't always have the opportunity to be conscious, purposeful, and intentional. The lesson that stood out for me, the words that leaped off the page when I was reading a chapter, was about you can't relive this moment.

You've heard me talk about how passionate I am about how people experience me. All of us have a choice and how people experience us. We can be kind. We can be rude, short, or we could be warm. We could be encouragers, conductors, or judges. We have a choice.

This stillness is a time for me to unplug allowed me to see how important every moment is. Here's the reflection: if you can't relive the moment, how do you create more room around each moment so that you can be intentional, purposeful, and truly maximize your impact on the world while you are here?

People talk about their legacy. People talk about what they want to be remembered for. Those accomplishments will fade. It's how you make people feel is what they're going to remember about you. The experience you create for them, starting with your family. Then into your companies, then into your team members, and out to your clients. People will remember how you made them feel.

What are you doing to be intentional about every single moment that you can't relive? Well, here's the action that I pulled from that. I looked at a snapshot of my typical work week. I looked at the key moments that I have every morning. The key moments that I have daily. The moments I have in the evenings and then the moments I have on the weekends. They are different depending on the day.

I've mapped out the key moments I have, starting from how I greet my husband in the morning. Something as simple as that. I cannot relive that moment. I cannot relive the smile on my face that is or isn't there. I can give the kindness and warm look to him, warm in my eyes, and in my smile, even give him a hug and say good morning to him.

That is a moment that I can control. I can be intentional about it. I always feel so good. Taking just a split second, no matter what I'm doing in the morning, just stop and create that moment for us, rather than already becoming victim to the hustle of the day, running around like crazy in the mornings and glancing and "Oh, hey, good morning," walking to the other room. That's not pleasant. It can be easy.

I think about how I am between 6:55 am to 7:40 am. It is a key critical time I have with my son, those 45 minutes. How I am with him in those 45 minutes can trigger a good day or a bad day in my sweet five-year-old son. As each day passes, I'm setting the tone for him in the mornings. If I'm feeling rushed in the morning, if I get an email, I'm not real thrilled about it, if I feel like he's dragging his feet or going too slow if I'm frustrated because my husband did or didn't do something, some of those unspoken expectations that we have, and trying to get the house ready in the mornings did something perturbed me to something trigger me, I have a choice.

I cannot relive those moments with my son. I want him to look back on this time and say, "My mom woke me up every morning, she made me breakfast, she made my lunch, and she took me to school. I loved that time with my mom." Well, that's the outcome. That's the legacy. That's what I want to create. I can be intentional, create those moments, and create that outcome. I can do it by not being on my phone or my computer. I can do it by being calm and not sending off crazy energy trying to rush people to get out of the house.

I can control the outcome with the tone of my voice. I know what I can do, and I can't relive those moments. So when my flesh and my emotions get the best of me because sometimes things happen in the morning. The benefit and the curse of running a company, the number of notifications, emails, messages, and preparedness for the day and things I'm going into the day can really shift my mood. I'm making the decision to let that happen. Now coming off of this break, I'm so recharged. I'm focused. I'm centered. I'm committed to not regretting that I can't relive the moments in my life. I'm going to take my son to school. I'm going to spend that time with him. We love singing to the worship songs in the car while we drive. We have good conversations when we're waiting in the drop offline.

Then I have my hustle to the office or work from home that day. I just shoot about five minutes down the road, and I'm there. I then have an opportunity to greet my team. My tone, attitude, demeanor, and presence can make or break a team member's day. I have to acknowledge that showing up can create excitement, encouragement, peace, fear, frustration.

I am the CEO, and I have this power whether I believe it or not. I just have it. Some days I don't love it. Most days, I think it's silly. I'm just a human. I'm just a girl. I'm just a peer. These are my teammates. I see everybody as an equal inside of this company there. I just don't feel that authority. They think and see me that way. I dictate it. I can't take that moment back. I can't redo it. I can't relive it. How I show up matters. So what can I do?

Well, in my early morning time between 5:00 am and 6:00 am, it's precious time for me. I do administrative work I need to do before the day starts. I clear out my inbox. I schedule out dozen or so slack messages with information, delegation, and updates for the team. I update the project management tool and update our CRM. It's when I'm preparing notes and bullet points for every meeting I have for the day so that I'm never feeling behind or rushed.

Additionally, I also schedule 15-minute buffers at the end and before every meeting. I no longer schedule myself back-to-back. I did that for three years of my life. It was awful and draining. The most I'll do back-to-back now is meetings, but typically, I schedule these 15-minute buffers at the end of a meeting and 15-minute prep before a meeting. What I'm doing is creating space for me to be centered, calm, and not rushed. I make sure I have time to go to the bathroom, get some water, eat, and be level-headed and prepared. It's an opportunity for me to close out emails throughout the day, stay on top of the inbox, and get administrative items.

Have you ever ended a meeting, and you have to go into another meeting, but you really had to do from the meeting that just ended? It goes on the to-do list, and you can't stop thinking about it. Then that burden that's weighing on you to get that administrative task done. All of a sudden, you start with intentional or not. Suddenly, it's pouring out of you the stress from that burden, and other people start feeling it. What if you scheduled these 15-minute blocks? It's life-changing. I never thought I could do it. The number of meetings I used to have, it's shocking. It's cut in half, but I'm still getting a significant amount of work done.

I think about not having to relive the moments and not having any regret from what I'm doing throughout my day - how I show up, how I make eye contact, how I silence my phone, how I remove distractions, how I close out tasks before a meeting. I'm not walking in with a burden or anything coming into that meeting. I ensure that I create space and room for the other person to speak and intentionally ask questions. I'm not a question asker. I don't like asking people questions, which is weird. It's not that I don't care. I actually do genuinely care about the people in my life. I would do anything for them. I'm just not a question asker. I have never been. I don't like it. I love when people ask me questions. I can talk the entire day.

One of the reasons I love podcasting, I love answering questions. It's probably the most incredible thrill of my day, but I don't like asking questions. If I don't ask questions, show genuine interest in other people's lives, I may appear very direct and standoffish, closed off, not curious, and that I don't care about other people's lives. I need to ask questions. I need to engage them in my time with them. It's not an act. It's just doing something that doesn't come naturally and intentionally because it makes a difference. I allow myself to create that space to ask questions.

I'm verbose. I carry on. I talk too much. I speak in circles. I'm like an out-loud processor. I talk through things. That's how I troubleshoot things. AIf people aren't used to me, I can just sound like I talk in circles. But it's how I make decisions and process data that can drive people crazy. Coming to the meetings with agendas and being prepared helps me get through moments.

The other big thing that I can do during the workday is responding when people bring me challenges and issues. How I react or respond can shift and alter their day. That's probably one of the bigger things that I do that would negatively cause me to want to go back and relive a moment. I carry a lot of guilt when I react or respond too quickly.

Usually, responding too quickly means I'm reacting, not responding. The difference between the two is that knee jerk is triggered response typically emotional. It's typically not thought out. It can be a little hot or passionate. Whereas a response is thought out. There's usually a pause before you're potentially a little bit more strategic in your reply. You have time to remove the emotion out of it. You're not there yet. I can't wait for the transcription to pick that up. With that, being intentional in how I respond. That's something I've worked on. It used to not be that way.

One of the biggest catalysts for me to relive a moment is reacting to somebody. I always feel so bad. Afterward, I literally just did it with my husband. I feel so bad. I feel awful. I can't wait for him to come home to say, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to react that way. When you asked me that question, I thought I had communicated." I'm just carrying this with me. Reactions are complex, but you can avoid this. You can't relive those moments. What can you do ahead of time? Deep breaths, people, respond, remove the emotion, put a smile on your face, and calmly respond rather than being emotional.

Then, I think about how I wrap up my day. I have learned to leave work at work. When I pick up my kid, he's five, he doesn't understand what I do for a living and the stresses or situations that I could bring home with me. He doesn't get it. He does see that if I'm distracted, on my phone, or just thinking about a situation. I'm not paying attention to him, making eye contact, or listening intently and responding to him, other than, uh-huh, uh-huh. Uh-huh. It can really hurt his feelings. He's five. Now he's an emotional creature. It's so beautiful to see how he's growing and evolving with his emotional intelligence.

I'm using my EQ to pick up on when I can put his feelings in a negative state. One way that I do that is by not being intentional and just being present with him. He has the same love language as my husband, quality time. My husband receives that as a distraction-free zone and intentionally eye contact conversation. No uh-huh or hmmm, phones down away from the screens, sit next to me and communicate. That is my husband's love language. I think my son has a very similar love. The way he experiences and feels love is when I'm explicitly acknowledging him. I can't relive those moments.

I had a rough beginning this school year, shifting my schedule. My son used to be in pre-K, which was a full day. It was part of a daycare. We could drop him off at 7:30 and pick him up at 5:30 or 6:00. That was full, full, full-day coverage. I used to be able to get a lot more work done. Well, now it's a drop-off at 7:45 am, and it's pick up at 3:00 o'clock. With that, my work hours have shifted. Ending my workday early has been an adjustment. I didn't do it so gracefully.

At the start of the school year, I underestimated what it meant to lose that many hours. We now take advantage of the after-school program, which is definitely a blessing. I do that a couple of days a week, just to give myself two or three days a week with a couple of extra hours. It's a beautiful balance. My son is fine with it, but here we are. I have to be intentional when I pick him up because I cannot get this time back. I cannot relive those moments. I cannot adjust or shift how my son experiences me after I've already done what I don't want to do. I have to be intentional. It has to get done the right way the first time.

My son is so beautiful. He's so smart. His heart is the heart of gold. He is so caring. He's a good friend. He's a good boy. I get to protect that and continue to mold, shape and teach him. I have these precious two hours every day where it's just my son and me. If I'm drowning in work, scrambling around, or on a call when I promised him I wouldn't, what example is that setting? I am mirroring or modeling for him what's acceptable as a parent. I don't want to be that kind of parent. Some days call for that. Some days, I just can't avoid those moments. I get to be intentional about that time.

Then my husband comes home. I never know what time. He works overtime a lot. We never know the end time of his day. It could be any time between 4:30 and extreme could be eight o'clock. That only happened a handful of times. I make dinner every night. I sit with my family. Sometimes it's just me and my son eating, and then my husband comes home later. As soon as I get the family situation in order, my husband comes home and eats. I can then pick up anything I need to with work, close it out for the day, and spend the rest of the time home and intentional.

I can't relive these moments. I think about the outcome. What is it that I want at the end of this life? How do I want people to remember me? Is it not too soon to be thinking about your legacy? Will my kid be excited when I'm no longer here to say, "My mom worked so hard? She ran a great company. I got to watch her be a CEO while I grew up." Or is he going to say, "Even though my mom ran a company, I felt like she was always with me, especially when it mattered? I had time with her every day. She was intentional with me while I grew up. So thankful for that time with my mom."

What will my husband say? He was just the most selfless person and pretty much give everything to pursue my dream. At what expense will he feel admirable when it comes to having such a great support system for my wife that she was able to achieve everything she said she wanted to? But at what expense like that's not fair is I don't have an end, I did it, and I was a great wife. It is so easy to put my attention to the urgent. There are moments I want to relive in my relationship. Usually, my husband gets the shortest end of this stick. I think that's my intention for 2022. I think it's time now. The company's in such a beautiful spot. Thank you, Jesus.

I think I'm ready to dive back into my marriage in that quality time and put down the phone. I just can't relive these moments with him every night. I've enjoyed all this time with him over break. We've both had the last seven days off together eight days off together. Nine days, eight days, nine days off. "Oh my gosh, we've had nine days off together. What a blessing." What can I do to take that in as I go forward?

You cannot relive any moment in your life, good or bad. Watching a playback on film does not count as a human being. I mean, you can't redo it. You can't relive that moment. Yet the moments you live in right now, tonight, tomorrow, next week. It's in your control to show up intentionally, purposefully, in a calm, kind, gracious, caring manner. Be a great spouse, be a great parent, be a great CEO, be a great leader, be a great teammate, be a great co-worker. It is not that hard to show up, be kind, and gentle to the people around you. I promise, living the moment the right way, the first time, will bring you more joy than any material item that you could ever be fed by this world.

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Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're interested in being on our show or want to learn more about how we can help you scale your company, connect with us at houseofrevenue.com or with me Mary Grothe spelled G-R-O-T-H-E on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram.

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