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If you're relying on willpower to build your personal brand while you're excelling your corporate role, you are completely setting yourself up for burnout, overwhelm, and even potentially failure. But in this episode, you're going to have a chance to learn from a multinational sales leader in the enterprise software space, Mike Dowling. He's going to share with you how he's built at the time was 368 days. Now it's well over 400 days of content, and he's done that in a streak like using very crystal clear daily strategies instead of motivation. So, let's dive into the conversation and get you to optionality.

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Today's episode is sponsored by Billy Keels Advisory Services. If you want to learn more about how to make your 99 optional, just go to Make It optional.com Once again, that's Make It optional.com

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helping you build freedom without losing your edge. This is The Going Long Podcast with Billy Keels.

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You see, the habits you create every day are being noticed, whether you know it or not. And today's guest has shown the daily grit for more than 368

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consecutive days,

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all while being focused on overseeing a team that drives the strategic growth and transformation for some of his employer's largest resale partners. Now, check this out, and if you're watching the video version, you won't believe it, but yes, with over 25 years

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of excellent service and sales leadership in the enterprise software space, he knows what it takes to not only set but to achieve an extremely high standard. He is a leading partner sales and development for the large partner leader, as a large partner leader, and he is the man, the voice behind the daily grit. It gives me great pleasure to welcome to today's conversation none other than mr. Mike Dowling. Mike, welcome to the show, man.

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That's a great, that's a great way to enter a conversation. Appreciate you inviting me here, Billy. I'm looking forward to this conference. Hey, you know what, that makes that makes two of us, and I want to jump right in, because what I have been able to witness of what you have been doing, the, you know, the social media brings people together in many different ways,

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but I just want to start by reading something,

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if you don't mind. Sure,

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since a year ago I didn't set out to write every day, I didn't plan a content strategy, I didn't mount out a brand, I didn't even think I'd make it a month,

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but you know what,

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it's really clear that you were able to do both anyway.

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So, how does that actually happen, Mike, without intending on it to happen?

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Wow, that's a great question, and it's something that I actually just

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lived through, but I've done it a couple of different times in a couple of different ways.

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It requires

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that you just

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do one thing, and that is decide to start,

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and nothing happens without that very first commitment, and then the

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action that requires it, and so the action that is required to take that step, and then you just

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do it again,

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and you do it again, and you know that's how streaks are started, I guess. But the reality is everything is one step at a time,

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one step at a time. So I wanted to set this up from the beginning, because I jumped right in. I asked the question, I've been following you,

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and know what it is that you do, but you have this motto, which is do hard things,

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which seems so counterintuitive, because nowadays everything is like the fast and the easy, and

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you know if we can have one of the LLMs do it, they'll do it, and I don't have to do it, but you're very specifically focused on

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doing hard things. What's the genesis of that?

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It's not something that I sought. I actually, I don't think people like to do hard things.

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I certainly tried to

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find the easiest path to do

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some things, because

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in reality

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doing something hard is hard. All right, I mean the

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words that describe

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it,

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but there's meaning that people are looking for.

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You do a job, yes, you get paid, but you hope that there's meaning at the end of the day

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when you do a job, and I don't know that you find a lot of meaning

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in

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jobs that are repetitive and not require no thought. I think where you find meaning

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is actually in the

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accomplishment of doing something that

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looked impossible or was difficult to do, and yet you were able to go do it over and over and over again, and I think I got to that understanding

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maybe a little bit late in life

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I didn't start doing

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long distance

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training and triathlon until I was well into my 40s, and it was during that

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that I realized that

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I was doing, you know, when I, when I did my first 10 mile run, I was like, oh my god,

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I, I can't believe I did that, that was hard, and I felt a lot of

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accomplishment doing something like that, and as I was doing

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the disciplined training day in and day out, and adding other disciplines like swimming and bike, I started to

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feel

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there's something to this,

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doing hard things that fulfills you, and

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I applied it to my work pretty quickly, because you really, you can't do one and ignore the other, you have to do them both, and you have to find a way to

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be disciplined in both sides of your life, so that's the genesis of it, really. Okay, so I love that, and so since we're talking about

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you helped us understand the genesis and being able to go through these paths

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before I get into the next question, which really a lot about the daily grid, like we talked about, or I mentioned in the very beginning, having the partner sales and development leadership, right, and having some of that across the currently the largest national resellers, resellers can you maybe tell us a little bit about how that, how that helps in terms of the motivation, the focus, and the in the so many of the different positives that come from being in the corporate environment.

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So let me, let me understand the question, are you looking for how the daily grit helps in that role?

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No, no, no. More specifically, just in not regarding the daily grit, but just the positives of the corporate role, because you're doing the daily grit, but the focus is really on

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the day to day, the corporate role, and there's a lot of positives that come through that,

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yeah, actually

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I added

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the

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corporate role, my job components of my job, because

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I don't think people

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really seek to build a brand on something like LinkedIn.

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LinkedIn to me

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was a great way to

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network. It was a, it was essentially

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a,

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it was something that you could view a resume and get a little bit more detail and see a little bit more about way people think with posts and things that nature, but it didn't, it didn't strike me as the place where I should really be posting something like the Daily Grit, and so

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I also didn't want to just do this thing on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok, because I didn't know that it would be

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really

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anything that was unusual. I think you see a lot of, you know, people on those types of platforms that have something to say, but you just, you know, it's just noise, and

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I, I picked

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the daily grit

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for LinkedIn, just because

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I learned about this 21 day challenge that I started

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at work, right, it was at a manager's meeting, and it was a leader

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asking if you really want to change something about your life,

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do something for 21 days straight, and he said honestly, the way that you can really make a.

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Change is if you focus more on the gratitude that you have

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versus

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anything else, and if you focus on that, it kind of rewires your brain, and so I thought, all right, well,

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yes, this is a great idea, I know in my own heart that if I said it to myself I probably won't do it because I know me,

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but if I post something on something that

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only looks at me as a professional,

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as a, as an employee,

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I'm going to have to make it appeal to that

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platform, and I actually had a lot of people reach out and say, you know, oh, you should do this if you want to get more users, and I'm like, that's not the point, that's not what I'm trying to do here,

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I'm trying to just

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actually

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deliver a message

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that might appeal to the people that are on this platform, and so

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applying my job, I thought would be interesting. It would be like people always have a question about what do people at AWS do, and what does a leader at AWS think like, and I thought, here's an opportunity to do two things at once, I can do this daily gratitude thing and find a way to make

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it applicable to people who are also in my network that are doing business that might want to know a little about bit about my point of view, and just started that week, and I apologize, because I've got

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people dialing in

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now, I've got that turned off,

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so that interesting. No, yeah, it's all good. It's, you know, what I,

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what I really like about what you just said, and I really want the go along family to hear this. Is really it started about as part of a management meeting, and being able to change habits.

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You then taking, and this is, this is great, right? Because you're taking the theory that you're learning about, which is said 21 days, and you take that theory and you put it into practice, and not only do you put it into practice, you begin to also experience the own, your own rewiring, and then you start to recognize that one of the things that you want to do, and this is, I just want to make sure that I'm connecting the dots here, Mike, that you wanted to also hold yourself accountable, because you have a high level of self awareness, and one of the best ways to do that was to have public accountability. Is that correct? Which it is correct.

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I don't know how aware I am. I just know that if I'm going to throw out a challenge

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and I want to actually do

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it. I want to be accountable for it. I want to tell the people that

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I'm connected with that they should expect it, because that will force me to do it. I don't want to let anybody down, right? So, at least not on purpose, and

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actually choosing this was a very scary thing to do, because I could be doing it on another platform and nobody would really know who I was, and there's not a lot of fear there, you're just a voice, but when you're,

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you know you're in a professional environment,

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you want to be

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aware of what it is that you're offering, and

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you also want to be able to let people know that when you say you're going to do something, you are going to go do it, and that accountability

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I used as a tool to keep me going, and I'm shocked that took me this long to actually do that, because

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it's amazing the amount of information that I've been able to actually uncover, and the clarity that I've gotten out of it. I wish I had done this a much longer time ago.

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Yes. Hey, listen, the fact of the matter is, is that so many people just think about doing things, and you actually are doing now. I wouldn't even say, did you are doing, which is, which is really inspiring. So, speaking of clarity, like one of the things that I know that, and I mean, you guys have to check out what Mike has been writing,

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you know, across his social media, specifically around LinkedIn, but one of the things that you wrote, which, which I found really insightful, is that the antidote to worry,

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that clarity is the antidote to worry, which I think is just.

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In itself, powerful. When you start to remove the questions,

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you start to realize that the worry disappears.

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You've applied this in your own

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corporate leadership, and even in the daily grit, and I was wondering if you could unpack that, because I just found it super powerful.

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Yeah,

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well, here's a word that people are pretty familiar with, anxiety, and I think anxiety

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happens a lot, and it's not because of the things people

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are going to do, it's about the questions people have about what they should do,

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or they have questions about

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their role, or decisions that they have to make that they don't want to make, and I think that creates anxiety and

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tackling things head on and asking the question you've been avoiding.

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Well, first off, yes, it's painful because it's a hard thing to do. People don't want to do it, but when you finally clear up that question and make that decision,

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well, now you don't have that anxiety, you're not worried about it anymore. Now you just have to go do it,

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and usually, like, for me,

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I don't like to do

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finances right. I don't like to pay my bills. I would rather not do all that. I don't like to get the emails or

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the letters in the mail and set it aside and set something up to pay

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Jill handles all that and she's always done that and

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I just, I have avoided knowing

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all of that my whole life and

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I didn't realize the anxiety that it was causing, I couldn't put a finger on it, but it was just because I didn't understand the patterns, I didn't ask the questions, and I didn't take the time to really understand my own habits, and once I did that, I realized A, it doesn't take very long, B, I make some stupid decisions,

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and c I probably knew I was making stupid decisions, but didn't ask the question to actually solve for what that was making me feel, and when I finally did it, I realized, wow, when you, when you're pretty clear about something, worry goes away, but have you ever wondered why, when a big thing happens in your life, like something scary, or like a traumatic event has happened,

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you get very clear about how you're supposed to respond to that, like there's no question about what the next step is. That's the kind of clarity I'm talking about, when you finally ask the question and get the decision made about what you need to do, then it's pretty darn easy to determine what that next step is going to be. Yeah, well, I appreciate you breaking that down and even tying it into, like, the emotion of anxiety, right? When you have that clarity, in

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it's one of the things I really like to say as well, like when you, the first step is to decide, and when you decide, it gives you two amazing things. First of all, it gives you the

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power to move forward and the ability to act, and so unless you have clarity, it's that's exactly what you're talking about, you're in that that state of anxiety, and so, and I know

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there's so many of you that are already listening, and I talked about in the very beginning that 368 plus, or whenever you're listening to this, will be well beyond that, I'm sure,

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but it's a matter of saying, you know, basically Mike has decided every single day

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to post something, not just writing it, but putting his face in front of the camera and sharing, and sharing in terms of being able to be grateful, share, you know, sharing a learning moment, and then being able to be grateful, and he's done this over and over and over for 360

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plus days. Yeah, one of the things that I also find

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very

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important for the going on family is this whole concept, and I know you're really big into that, you like to teach systems

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that you talk about,

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you know, design over motivation, and you literally been telling the audience to stop relying on willpower and to start relying on structure,

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yeah, help us understand how is this actually played out as it relates to your ability to go out, continue to share

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across the

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daily grit, as well as continuing to perform at a high level.

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In your role and be present at home.

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Yeah, well, first off, what I decided to do

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was

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a seemingly simple decision, which is just post your three gratitudes. As

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I,

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as I built it up, I realized that I have an opportunity to also make it a little bit more interesting for whoever is going to be watching it. I might be able to provide some insight,

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you know. As a leader, you're, you know, maybe not naturally a coach, but you do a lot of coaching, and you have to want to

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educate, or you have to want to guide, and

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my whole career I've always heard that

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you know the people who are most successful are probably pretty good storytellers, and so you just don't make it engaging for people, and so I realized that this could get complicated very quickly, and it, that right there, the idea of

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having to

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recreate the wheel every day to come up with not just three gratitudes but content on what you're going to be talking about it. Better not get that difficult. You have to have a system that will allow you to

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set the stage, and

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systems can be many different things.

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Look at the world of triathlon and fitness,

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you can't train for an Ironman triathlon

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just by running and biking and swimming, right? You have to know what your nutrition is, you have to know what your training load needs to be, you need to know what you did last week and what you're going to go do this week, and that you know how you're going to plug in rest, and so what you need to have is a plan, and that plan has blocks, and you work those blocks.

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If I just shunned all of that and decided to just swim, bike, and run, and eat, and sleep my way to a triathlon,

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maybe I could do it, but it would be painful, and it would be

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like if I skipped a day, how would I recover from that? What would that look like?

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I didn't want that, so I end up getting coaching, and you follow a system. There's a reason that people are coaches, right? They've got the system and people adopt it. I did the same thing for the Daily Grit, and I just set up my Sundays where I looked at the week ahead. I'm like, what did I talk about last week? What might I talk about this week? And all I need to know is when I'm going to do it. When can I, you know, get most of my thoughts out onto video, and then how quickly can I get it to post? Because I don't want to take a lot of time doing this,

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and I know what you do, Billy, when you're doing this podcast, the production that's required for some of this,

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you know, if you don't have a team, you could spend all your time doing all of that, and that will actually prevent you from wanting to do the thing you like, which is have the conversation, and

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I knew myself better

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than I did when I, you know, first started early in my career, that if I prepared for it to be difficult,

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and then set up systems that allowed it to become easier, it would never be as difficult as I prepared for, which is good, and I would be able to find a way to do it as quickly as possible, so it just doesn't consume a lot of time, and I've been able to get this thing down to, you know, however long it takes me to have

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the two minute conversation on the video

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and

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throw it into CapCut and just have it set it up for me, and then I just post it to LinkedIn, and I actually do have a TikTok account that I plug it onto, and just I just

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make myself accountable that way. That takes me, I don't know, 15 minutes, and then my day can continue. So I like to get it done early in the morning, but sometimes it takes

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to the afternoon for me to get it done. Yeah, I mean, in this is one of the things that I so appreciate you just breaking down, like very much getting into the detail of the like the systems, and when you have the systems, the systems, and you have your blocks, and that blocks actually allows you to produce the output, which is the impact is the sharing of your gratitude and do.

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It at a public forum, which,

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knowing yourself, and I'm just.. I just continue to hear such a high level of self-awareness, Mike. And then having this accountability from the outside in is something that helps to motivate you to continue to produce.

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What did you.. what did this year teach you? And I just say the year.. I know this is something that's continuing to go on, and I once again, I do want to say to the going along family, I mean, you need to check out, and I'm going to ask Mike later, but Mike Dowling, you need to check him out, the things that he's been doing over this last year, plus

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I mean, you can even go back to the early, early days, and then see how they're going, sometimes it's in the morning, sometimes it's an evening, but there's this system that you come that you talk about that actually allows you to create and get the output,

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but what did this last year teach you about the importance of people that are in your corner.

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Well, I tell you what it

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taught me a lot.

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You know, when you think about the things that prevent you from doing

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something new or something hard,

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you're

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really fighting against the

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I like to call it the they right, they are the people that tell you that you can't get something done, and

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Seth Godin is a guy that I read a book called Linchpin, he's the author, author of that book,

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and

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I read that book probably 10 years ago, maybe 11 years ago,

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and

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it pretty clearly explained to me why people are afraid to do things,

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and it's

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he calls it the resistance,

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and

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he's talking about your lizard brain, and I always, I love that terminology, because it's really so true, it's this ancient

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fear center. Yeah, I think it's the amygdala, and it's in your,

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it's in the core of your brain, and it really is preventing you from experiencing pain,

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and since we're

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evolved in and we're no longer on the menu, so to

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speak. Creates monsters that want you to avoid, and those monsters are in the form of

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how you think people perceive you.

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Are you accepted?

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You know, it's a social construct, and

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that could be family that just always bring you down. It could be the people in your peer group that you

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are, you know, worried about what they think of you, and

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it, it holds people back, it holds a lot of people back,

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and what I liked about what Seth wrote was

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it's never going to go away,

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so if you think that you're going to conquer it, you got another thing coming, it will always be there,

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you just have to do it anyway, if you want to

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exceed or succeed or exceed even your own expectations. Just want to do something that's different and be successful at it. Accept that this is part of it and use

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it to move forward, and

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when you do that,

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all those people,

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the day that prevent you from feeling like you're

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capable and are going to be successful,

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they start to fade, and you realize that you'll have people in your corner that want you to succeed.

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Everybody needs a Billy Keels in their life, right?

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You've got a wife or children that want to see you succeed, and it doesn't matter what you are doing, they are going to be there to support you, and you know it's not often that people have the opportunity to cheer for people

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who aren't trying. It's the people who are trying that get the cheering, and they hear the cheers over the jeers so much more clearly, so I think having somebody in your corner

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is really great motivation to just keep going. So, well, I appreciate that. If you would allow me to just very, just make one slight adjustment to what you just said, um.

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And I do appreciate the cheering versus cheering, but it's actually, you're not even trying, you're actually doing it's those that are doing

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that's when you have those that are cheering for you, may not be doing it perfectly, or you may not be doing it in the way that you want, but I always, I associate trying with, like, you know that famous Yoda say,

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don't try. Do it reminds me of that, and it's like, okay. Well, when you're actually doing, you're in the action of doing. Of course, people want to cheer for you, because they actually see you doing the work, and they want to help, and they want to help you to get aligned and get back on track, so that you're able to to get to your goal and be able to get to your goal much faster. So, I appreciate that, and it is really important part in terms of having those people in your corner. I actually just had two other questions for you,

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and when you talk about the daily grit, I mean the thing that you continue to wrap up with, right? You share the lesson and you wrap up with gratitude, right? And I just like

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when I go back to the, like, the what, 365 days of doing hard things taught you about leadership identity and follow through, right? You talk a lot about gratitude isn't soft,

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it's a competitive advantage,

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and so I really would like to understand how gratitude over time has, like, the importance of gratitude over time. How that actually is playing out in your day-to-day.

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Yeah, well, I don't think people pay enough attention to the things that they're grateful for, and

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certainly they don't vocalize it, and I think a lot of that

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is, I think people are afraid to be

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vulnerable, and

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they don't think that they're afraid to be vulnerable. It's just they're just not vulnerable, and so what I'm saying

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is, it's not a natural thing to vocalize anything that someone might perceive

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is a weakness,

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and

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you see a lot of bravado out there, and people want to be alpha, and the reality is I think if you're

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looking at,

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if you're looking at the things that are making you grateful,

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you don't have time for a lot of other

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bologna in your life.

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Honestly,

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you know, if you can't, if you can't wake up every day

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and see something positive about

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the day ahead of you, or what you have.

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I can't imagine living a life like that, and yet I don't know that people do it very often. I think they focus more on the problems that they've got,

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and

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I don't know who said it, but

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I mean I don't know a lot about the universe and manifesting things, but I do know this:

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if you are looking for pain, you're going to find it, and if you are looking for joy,

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you are going to find it, so why would you focus on the pain? Right, go and focus on the joy, and I think that's what gratitude ultimately should provide you. That's joy when you're grateful for the opportunity to

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do anything or to be

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anyone, I think that's

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life worth living. Yeah. No, I think, well, this is.. yeah, it's great to hear that. And also, too, just having that as a practice, and it shows where you focus your energy and your efforts,

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and it's just a reminder to everybody, right, that's watching, listening around the globe, like that is the thing that, where do you focus your energy and your attention, and you think about gratitude, and it is not,

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you know, it isn't soft, and not only a competitive advantage, it gives you this, the leg up, and a major benefit to yourself and others.

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So, before I ask my last question, I do have,

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let me see,

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let me think about this now. You know what I'm gonna ask you, the last question, second to last question. All

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right, um,

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so one of the things that you also shared with

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us

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is you said that this year didn't just change your habits,

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it changed how you see yourself,

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Mike. And so

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I really would like to know, because there's so many

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people that are, you know, you're in your corporate role, you're doing your thing.

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Um, you're achieving, you're excelling in your role, and there's this fear of being able to do something else, right?

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And you've talked to us about systems, you've talked to us about your focus, you've talked to us about gratitude,

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all while being able to excel.

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And then there's this whole thing of you sharing this year didn't just change your habits, it changed how you see yourself. So, I would love to know, and have you share with our global audience.

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Just talk us through, like, what does

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Mike Dowling of day 368

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of the daily grit

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believe that Mike Dowling of day one did not.

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That's a great question,

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because that's a long time. I mean, that's a, that's a, that's a very good investment of time, right.

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Well,

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day one of day,

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day one of the daily grid.

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I honestly, I did not think that I was going to make it 21 days straight.

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I honestly didn't even know how to start. I had no system for it, and I know that

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a year

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ahead of you

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seems impossibly long.

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I couldn't see myself getting through a month, let alone doing it for 365

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days, because that's just a lot to think about, and I couldn't.

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I spent a lot of time thinking about that, and it got real scary. And I'll tell you, it got real scary

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the first Saturday I had

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to do it. Right? Yeah, you go to work every day, Monday through Friday, no problem. You go Saturday, all of a sudden I'm like,

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what am I going to say on a Saturday? What the heck? And I got to do this on Sunday, and so now everything starts to become impossible to achieve.

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365

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days behind you feels like a snap of a finger,

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and it's weird how time works that way.

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It so

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it, it changed

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the way that I think about myself. I've always been kind of a grinder,

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and

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doing triathlon or lifting weights, seeing progress. I know how hard that is, right? It's.. it requires commitment, but when you're doing something that you can physically see, like my time's getting better,

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my body changing. Right, those are things that you can see.

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Can you see

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growth in your own

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perception of your own success? It's that's a little bit more difficult to see,

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I still get nervous when I get ready to get in front of the camera. I want to, I want to, I want to be good at what I do, and yet you don't have the same feeling every day that you want when you start something, but

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I, I also want to be known for something, and so, while I may be nervous every single day to do something, I'm nervous about maybe different things. I see

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the growth that I've made only when I reflect on it. Oh, yeah, I did this before.

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This is a little bit different for me.

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I'm now starting to say, what's next? What do I get to do next? Now that I've done this thing, I know that I can do it. What do I add to it, or why am I doing this? And I'm starting to ask those types of questions, and I don't have all those answers either, but

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it's a great question, because you just don't think of things that way, especially when you're starting. When you're starting, you're like, How am I going to finish now that you've done it? It's like,

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what's next, and what is this doing for me, how is it evolving me, and am I asking the questions that I should be asking?

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It's, you know, it's never ending. My

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day 790

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I don't even know what that's going to look like. I don't even know if I'm going to get to that. I'm just knowing that.

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That

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I've grown,

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and I will be doing something that this started, and so I guess that's all you can ask for. Yeah, well, it sounds to me like you're asking different questions. The first is, how do you just get across the bar, and they're very limiting, and now it sounds like they're much more expansive types of questions and just different types of goals, which I think is great insight, and I appreciate you sharing that with me, and with the Goinglong podcast, is so many different lessons to learn from what you've been doing, and just from you as well, Mike. So, but there's one last question I do want to ask you, and it's just one of the things that,

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and we may or may have not spoken about this, but in 2023 I realized that, you know, for much of my life things always went according to plan. In 2023

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things happened in a different, different light for

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me. Marriage didn't go the way that I wanted, business partnership didn't go the way that I wanted, and hey, you know what, I started reflecting on life, and I started realizing, you know, when things are going really well, Mike, we tend to just kind of gloss over it, because things are going well, we don't really think about it, and then when things are not going according to plan, there can be a tendency to just really get stuck in that moment, but you realize that they're all moments. Earlier, you talked about the people that are in your corner, and there were.. I allowed you know, I was very

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much.. didn't want to let a lot of people in. People usually come to me to have their problem solved. I don't go to other people to help them get me thinking through things,

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but when I allowed others to pour into me, I realized how much people cared about me, how much people love me.

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But nothing changed really until I, and I have this memory, or vivid memory, of being in front of a mirror, and just I said something to myself, and it was from that moment that really

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the trough we started moving in their other direction, and started moving out of that trough, and into,

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into better space, right, and so just kind of knowing that there's always moments, highs, lows,

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as you move forward. They're going to be moments that are going to be highs. You're going to probably not think about them as much, but those moments that are lows, you've shared so much with us today. I would love to know, like Mike, you're going to project three years from now, right?

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And I want you to think about those low moments,

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regardless of all the people in your corner and pouring into you and being there for you, you're going to have to come to a moment where you have to say something to yourself to get you out of that rut. Yeah, I would love for you to share with me the going long family, what is that one thing that you know you got to tell yourself, Mike, so that you can get out of that rut and get moving, so that three years from now you can look back and go, Mike.

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One heck of a job. Glad you said exactly what you said, because that's exactly what I needed. What's that one thing you need to tell yourself?

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Well,

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I've probably had those conversations many times.

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Things don't go the way that you plan, and

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the thing that brings me back

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is

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this one question: Did you think it was going to be easy?

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And he,

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you have to keep asking your question, that question, because

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you have to prepare, right? You have to prepare for those difficult experiences.

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Is it going to kill you if you're in a position where things aren't great? Well,

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the answer better be no, because then you know all you're dealing with is fear, and I think it's what are you afraid of, right? Are you afraid of a little discomfort, right? What is that discomfort?

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What if you lose your job? Right, what if

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you

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don't

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succeed in this business venture that you've got, what if you lose money, and how are you going to go replace that? You better have an answer, because the question that you have to ask yourself

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is, so what?

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What are you going to do next? And I don't think people like to think about that. I think people are very risk averse, and they're saying, "Oh, I'm not young anymore. Well, you know, I don't feel like I'm going to die tomorrow, so that means I got to get through tomorrow. Like, all that matters is the day that you have, and so why wouldn't you be pushing to do something more? I am not looking to

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stop, and then coast. I think that would, I think that would kill me, right? I am looking to figure out what is going to put a smile on my face. What am I going to learn? I don't feel my brain is slowing down. I need to fill it up. I want to do more things.

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Things, and experience more things, because

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I don't have

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another life to do this with. It's this life, so

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I love that life goes like that, right? Why do you think it's going to be in a straight line, the high and the low? No, I appreciate that. And did you think it would be easy, and that gets you in focused and moving in the in the direction and so like Mike, here's one of the things that, and one of the reasons that I love this podcast platform, and it also breaks my heart, is these conversations literally fly by, I'm like, I can't even go to the end of time, and, and you know, I think about the beginning of the conversation, and you really just getting into it and helping us to understand, like, yeah, there's different times, different ways, but nothing happens until you decide to start right, and so you being able to take us from that to being able to have this feeling and meaning of accomplishment, and whether it was the first 10 mile run that you, that you made, or getting to a point where it's actually the things that you're doing are providing you the sensation of

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fulfillment, right. You're getting to your, you're talking to us about this as you're on this offsite, and you're at your managers meeting, that you wanted to be able to change some habits, and you heard that it took 21 days, and so even though you weren't really sure, and you were asking more questions, like, can I even get through the 21 days, you did it, you started, and you took that first action. Then you went Monday through Friday, and all of a sudden it was Saturday, and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I got to do it on Saturday, and then, "Oh my gosh, I got to do it on Sunday. And then before you knew it, you looked up

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and you were sharing what it was like to go 365

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now plus days. You're beginning to continue to share, continuing to excel in your, in your role. You're continuing to do hard things, and even sharing like what the 365 days of doing hard things taught you about leadership, identity, and follow through. You've shared with us about systems, you've shared with us about how you are fighting against the they, as you talked about, and you know what, making sure that even when things are not going according to plan, that you continue to say, did you think it would be easy? Now, I know the entire Go Along family is like, yeah, Billy, but just get to the point. So, help us understand, Mike, you shared so much goodness with us today. How can the Go Along family find out more about you, more about what you have going on at the at the Daily Grid, and also learn from you in the leadership concepts as you, as you continue to share every single day.

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Just go to LinkedIn and follow me, I'll be

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Michael Dowling

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AWS The

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Daily Grit. You can find me all sorts of ways.

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If you have something that you want to ask me, fire away. Otherwise, just see what happens next. I have no idea what's going to happen next, but it'll be fun to see it together. I'm looking forward to it. Alright, fantastic. Well, listen, Mike, and I'm going to make one small correction, because we've got a global audience. Listen, when you go to

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LinkedIn, when not if, and you reach out to Mike, it's actually Mike Dowling, and you will see his great, great picture. He's got a great head shot, and you will see him there. And so it's Mike Dowling, D O W L I N G. We're going to include it in the show notes. We'll include a link there, so if you're running on the treadmill, if you're swimming underwater, or you're in the car, or you're in the airplane, don't worry, all you have to do is click the link, and you'll be connected directly with Mike. So, listen, Mike, I would just like to say, on behalf of the entire Go Long family, thank you very much for continuing to be focused and doing hard things, for continuing to have your daily grit for continuing to lead with excellence, and for deciding to be here and share the platform with me on the Goinglong Podcast, and the Going Long Podcast family. Really appreciate it. It's been awesome. Thanks, bud. I really appreciate you inviting me. Pillable Billy, it's been nice getting to know you as well. Yeah, likewise, man. Appreciate it. Really, really appreciate it. So, listen, go along, family, the last words are to you. Thank you very much for deciding to invest time with me, with Mike. Make sure you check him out, make sure you continue to do hard things, and,

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and, hey, like I said, I'll be here preparing for the next conversation. Till then, go out and make it a great day. And thank you very, very much.

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