James Laughlin — Habits of High Performers: Essential Principles to Thrive in Life and Work

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to Becoming Preferred.

The podcast to help you level up your game and become the best version of you.

If you've ever felt like your business priorities are getting diluted by the sheer noise of the day today, today's episode is your ultimate reset.

Our guest today is James Laughlin, a seven time world champion musician, global keynote speaker, elite mental skills coach and host of the Habits of High Performance podcast.

James has spent his career in the high stakes world of elite achievement, working side by side with world champions, CEOs and political leaders to turn raw ambition into radical, repeatable victory.

In this conversation, James pulls back the curtain on what actually separates the top 1% from everyone else.

We dive into how to gain radical clarity, why long game thinking beats short term hustle every time and and the simple framework for turning static corporate values into real time decision filters.

If you're ready to cut the non essentials, align your daily habits with your highest vision and lead with compounding brilliance, then please join me for my conversation with James Laughlin.

Well, hi James, welcome to the program.

We're delighted to have you,.

Michael, so great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Oh, my pleasure.

I'm excited about this.

We had in doing our homework and our research, we're going to be talking about habits.

We're going to be talking about your number one best selling book, Habits of High Performers.

And I think this is timely, I think it's important and I think in particular in the age of AI, where we're seeing lots of turmoil in the marketplace, people's habits are what's going to see them through.

So I'm looking forward to having that conversation with you.

But now James, where are we speaking to?

Where's home?

So the south island of New Zealand, just outside Christchurch.

Lovely, been there, lovely place.

Actually I used to live in Nelson, south island as well.

So you're, you're in a good spot.

It's a long way from the mainland or from the continent, but, but hey, you're there close to Australia and of course that neck of the woods.

Now you're not from there originally.

That's not a new Kiwi accent.

So let's tell our listeners where that accent's coming from.

Yes, I was born in Northern Ireland, just north of Belfast.

Very small, little Protestant working class town there and very proud to think back to my upbringing.

Again.

Another beautiful place and with more down in the South Cork Kinsale area.

Gorgeous, but beautiful.

Well, let's get into it before we get started.

You're a speaker, you're an author, you're a podcast host and award winning and you've got some very interesting guests on your own podcast.

But let's go back to school.

You're in school, you're in high school and James is going to decide to be something when he grows up.

What's going through your head?

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Yeah, so I actually wanted to be a rock star, like a drummer.

A rock drummer.

Like Ringo Starr or Phil Collins.

That was the goal.

Genesis, sure,.

100%.

And so my headmaster came to me at one point and said, you've got two options.

You've got a week of detention or a set of drumsticks.

Which one's it going to be?

I was like, goodness, this is a dream, I'll take the drumsticks.

So in my mind I was going to be a rock drummer.

But little did I know he'd actually recruited me to be a Scottish bagpipe drummer.

Lovely,.

Lovely.

But not quite as cool.

When you're 9 years of age, 10 years of age, thinking about your future, wearing a skirt, you know.

Yeah, it's not great for meeting ladies.

Not at all, not at all.

So I was in his good books.

He said, you've got a bit of talent.

So I stuck at it anyway and I was fortunate to win a World Solo drumming championship at 13, another one at 14, and I didn't get to go to LA and play rock drums, but I got to go to Vancouver, Canada and play with a band there.

And that.

That was a lot of fun.

Well, awesome.

Well, it's good.

My.

I started off, my dad was musician, so it was all kinds of.

He was trumpet, bass.

I started with percussion as well and back in school, but had very, very little talent.

So I moved out of that very quickly and Hack had a guitar now every once in a while.

So good for you.

All right, so you're musically oriented now.

You're going to go to school in Colle, you decide, hey, what's my path?

How did you transition to where you're headed?

Yeah, I skipped university, I went straight to Canada, drank a lot of beer, played a lot of drums, spent summer to summer, it was a spring summer in Vancouver and then spring summer in Christchurch, New Zealand.

I did that for six years playing drums.

Fantastic.

Not a bad existence for a 19 to kind of 24 year old.

And at that stage I thought, how do I make a living from drums?

And so I started working at a school and I was selling drums, making drums and it got to about the age of 30, Michael.

And I thought, I've kind of achieved what I want to achieve.

I was very fortunate to win seven world titles.

I helped another band win their first world title and I was getting a bit bored and some of my friends in Christchurch were professional rugby players.

Now rugby is a massive sport in New Zealand.

It's a tough one.

Very.

And so these guys were playing for a group called the Canterbury Crusaders and they were also in the All Blacks, which is our national world winning team.

Fantastic, great, fun team to watch.

Oh, they're brilliant.

What's the haka?

Is it the haka?

That's it, yeah, it's brilliant.

Yeah, they're very impressive.

And so I got a chance to actually work with some of them and started to see that what I was using in the drumming world in terms of skillset, mindset, heartset was actually translating in the sports world.

And then the corporate sponsors of these teams started going, hey, what you're doing with the sports team, could you come and do that with us?

And so again, those same mindsets and skill sets transferred to the corporate world.

So it was actually quite a natural, organic shift across.

Well, it's interesting you say that because to play music and particularly drums, you can't let up on those.

We had a nephew who's a drummer for the band 5440, if you're familiar with.

A.

Canadian band out of Vancouver there, and he has to practice every single day and if you don't, you start to lose the beat.

So he might have a click track going or something.

But it's math and you get your beats down and you get your routines down and then you have to keep practicing.

So you're forming good habits versus bad habits.

When did you first come to the conclusion though that the results of habit you talked about mindset, skill set, and then obviously they had to have the right tools in order to develop those tools.

How did you come to that conclusion?

Yeah, look, I think it's just when you look at anything that's great, a great outcome, whether it's in music, sport, business, life, finance, it doesn't really matter.

There's stacking of habits is what creates long term success.

And I see a lot of people grinding and hustling super hard, whether it's in sport or business and not getting results and actually burning out.

And sometimes they do get results, but they burn out afterwards.

And so to me it's like, how can we achieve high performance without the hustle?

And so I just started really going deep with people who were the best in their field to go.

What are they doing that off field in their life?

They can have a really healthy relationship, healthy well being and absolutely smash it on field in their chosen endeavor.

Well, it makes sense.

When I talk to people about habits, they often bring up discipline.

I'll hear the word, I'm not disciplined.

Oh, I just don't have the discipline.

And I, I say to him, and I don't know if this is accurate or not, but I go, look, I think you're very well disciplined.

I think you're really good at procrastinating.

I think you got it down to a science.

I think you just have bad habits.

Is that an accurate portrayal of what that is?

Yeah.

So it's interesting.

I was working with, he was the all blacks captain at the time.

And we're having lunch and I ordered a salad and a peppermint tea and he ordered, was it double cheeseburger, fries and a pint of coke.

And I said, dude, where's the discipline?

And he says, james, stick to your knitting.

You're not my nutritionist, you're my mental skills coach.

He says, calories in, calories out.

He's like, you get up in the morning and meditate and do yoga.

I get up in the morning and go to the gym for three hours and lift weights and then I'm on a rugby field whilst you're sitting chatting to me.

I need to eat way more calories than you, so it doesn't really matter.

I says, yeah, but you're so disciplined to become an All Black captain.

Why not with your nutrition?

He went, I'm not disciplined.

He says, you only need discipline for a set length of time until the point it becomes a habit.

Because if you're disciplined at anything, it eventually becomes habitual.

So you can be, as you say, disciplined at procrastination and eventually you'll become a world class procrastinator.

But your choice is, what do I want to be world class at?

Pick the one or two things, stick to it,.

It makes sense.

You and I have in common one of our mutual friends, Robin Sharma.

I know he wrote a forward for your book or a blurb for your book as well.

He wrote the 5am Club?

Yes.

And way back when, you know, he did for my first book as well, almost 25 years ago.

But I've always been a 5 o' clock riser.

So I get up at 5:00am, 5:15, 5:30, I go to the gym and now it's mental.

If I go to bed at 1 in the morning.

I'm still getting up at 5, so it just means less sleep.

So if I can get there by 9, 9:30, it's a good thing.

But it's really about those habits.

And it's not the first time.

It's that it's like gym memberships.

People join up in January and by February they're already fallen by the wayside.

And I think people just have no way of keeping track of habits they don't, which we'll talk about.

They don't have a way to.

How do I find the right habit?

What are the right habits that are going to serve me?

So I definitely want to explore some of that.

But let's talk about this.

In your work with world champions, CEOs and political leaders, you emphasize that vision precedes victory.

You highlight how, for instance, All Black legend Sam Whitelock stated a hyper specific goal.

149 Caps become the most capped All Black.

And maybe you can explain what that is years before even achieving it.

But for business leaders, feeling often pulled in different directions.

How do you distinguish between having a vague ambition and true radical clarity?

Look, too many people don't know what they want.

If I'm doing a coaching session with someone or a team, I'll say, what do you want?

It's the same question for every single person I ever work with.

And most of them start with that means they don't have any clue.

And it's not their fault.

It's just they haven't decided clearly what they want.

So if you don't know what you want, stop operating, stop moving forward, stop hustling, because you're going nowhere.

You're going around in circles.

So get clear on what you want.

A friend of mine, John, he decided at 7 to tell his mom, solo mother living on the breadline, three kids she was raising.

He says to her, mom, I'm going to be a millionaire.

And after that I'm going to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

And she said, good on you, son.

That's awesome.

So he was radically clear as a kid, as some kids are, some are not, but he was.

He went and worked for Merrill lynch and made mega, mega millions and then came back to New Zealand and went on to become the prime minister for eight years for the country, Sir John Key.

And he says to me, james, I just knew what I wanted and I stuck to it.

And I was stubborn and relentless with it.

We all need to be the same, whether we're 7, 27, 57 or 70.

Get clear on what it is.

That you actually want and don't let anyone else put you off.

Put your blinkers on and get after it.

Yeah, it's like most people don't put a rudder on their boat.

I see it all the time.

I even see it with some, some of the people who are close to us is they, they just have a boat and wherever the wind blows them is where they go and where, if you put that runner on the boat, sometimes the wind blows you off course.

But your habits in my mind are going to get you right back on track again.

You know, I've been a pilot for most of my adult life, about 40 plus years and piloting.

We started off with old navigation.

You used a ma, that was my map, that was my plan from A to B.

Then the technology got better and better and we used what they call a vor.

We would dial in a radio frequency.

And what most people don't realize is planes are off course 99% of the time they're off course.

They're constantly correcting.

And now we have GPS which as we get off, we don't get off track all that quickly.

And so it corrects almost instantly and there are short term corrections and that's why we have a flight plan.

And I know you've got something and I know we can give our point, our listeners to that as well where people, if they have a plan from point A, point B, what's going to get me there and what are the habits that are going to get me there?

Is there a way of defining our habits and what are good ones and what are bad ones or should we be addressing, you know, mental, spiritual, physical?

Yeah, look, there's no such thing as a bad habit or a good habit.

I don't like labeling them like that.

So I.

Would say.

That there's empowering habits.

And.

Disempowering habits so some that are enabling you to move forward towards your goal and others that are hindering you.

So when people start to say I've got bad habits, it's a really negative label and can often can end in a downward spiral.

So the worst thing you can do is go onto Instagram or TikTok and see what some famous person, Michael Jordan's doing, Elon Musk's doing, what are their top five habits?

Just keep scrolling if you see that.

Because they're not your habits.

So know what you want to achieve and then ask yourself what's the identity I need to become?

Who do I personally need to become to be that?

So for me it was A world champion drummer.

And so what do I need to do to be a world champion drummer?

Right.

A world champion drummer would practice more than anyone.

So go from 30 minutes a day to seven or eight hours a day of practice.

That's what they would do.

Exhausting.

Yeah.

At 11 years of age and my hands are bleeding.

It's like,.

Yeah,.

Let's go.

What else would they do?

Well, they'd get a coach and they'd have the very best drum teacher that they could find in the country.

And so I found that person.

What else would they do?

Oh, they would learn the theory of music so they understood the details.

So those were my habits.

Get up early, practice, do a bit of theory.

See my coach three times a week at lunchtime, instead of playing rugby or football, I'll drum.

Go to a little room and drum.

So I want the listener to go for themselves.

What do I want?

Who do I need to become to get there?

So who do I need to become?

Is it getting up early?

Is it a fitness thing?

Is it a study thing?

Is it a reading thing?

A mentor?

Those should become your habits.

And don't pick 20 habits.

Start with the one most important one.

For me, it was going from 30 minutes to almost a whole day of practice.

That was the easiest one to kind of focus on.

Well, it's interesting you say it that way.

I have a philosophy where we decide what we, and I think we're in alignment here.

Decide where you want to be.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

So for instance, when I was 19, I saw one of my first speakers, Tom Hopkins, and I thought I was in San Francisco, in the Bay Area.

I couldn't afford tuition.

It was $1,000 to go into a three day workshop.

I snuck into it.

I wore a suit on, snuck in, just nobody paid attention to me.

I went for three days and just a sidebar to that, years later he came back to the city and I was already as a speaker.

And I went, paid for a full admission and gave him a check for the last admission plus interest.

So he was very great, very gracious with that.

But I fell in love immediately in that role.

I just saw how he worked with the crowd, the teaching, the educating.

So then I decided, to your point, what would world class do in order to be a world class speaker?

What are those things?

Well, I didn't have any books.

I didn't have any.

I had to go get good at skills.

So I identified the skills in the area that I wanted to become world class at and Started, and then those were the dues, the doingness of it.

So I decided I was going to be world class.

Let the doingness come out of that mental framework, that mindset as you've outlaid it.

And then world class would get up at 5 in the morning.

World class would study other speakers.

World class would look at the technical.

World class would work on good health.

A world class would work on good language skills.

World class.

All of the doing this and the doing this comes out of the mental state of what I've declared I want to be.

So I would tell people, if you want to be a parent, be a world class one.

Don't be average.

Got lots of average.

If you're going to be a podcast host, be a world class one.

Listen to them.

What are they doing?

Well, what are they not?

Decide and determine it.

What I think a lot of people don't realize is you really can go get what you want to go get for yourself.

You really can put a rudder on your boat and get from A to B.

And so many people are just rudderless.

Why is that?

Why is that not innate to us?

That it seems like it's obvious, but it isn't.

How would you unpack that?

Yeah, Michael, common sense isn't always common practice.

And we kind of know that what you're saying makes sense, but many of us choose not to engage in that.

And I think that fear drives a lot of us.

And I think as a human, fear really drives us.

So the fear of failure is a big driver.

And so often we'll do things to not fail.

But also equally, the fear of success can be something that really holds us back.

So some of my clients, I'm like, why are you not taking a bigger swing?

Why are you not just declaring that that's what you want and getting after.

Oh, I know, but my family might think I'm a bit braggadocious or I come from humble beginnings.

I don't think it's a smart idea.

I was like, dude, if you make an extra billion dollars, imagine the lives you can impact.

This is exciting.

So I honestly think, Michael, it's people coming down to understanding what is the blocker.

And the blocker is often fear.

The great man behind me, Nelson Mandela, talked about courage, and that man had so much courage.

And he said, courage is feeling fear and doing it anyway,.

Anyway.

And that's what it's about.

So I think for the person that hasn't put the rudder on their boat yet, why not?

What's the fear?

What's the Excuse.

Well, I remember when we, you know, for years I thought about podcasts, let's do this podcast and do it.

And then it wasn't quite taking shape.

But I was scared about it, I was nervous about it.

I was comfortable in the stage front of hundreds and thousands of people, wasn't comfortable just doing what we're doing.

And finally I just said, well, just do what you fear most.

You control fear.

Do it.

And it was like, why did I wait so long for this?

And I think that's the story that we hear from most people as well as once they did it was going, what's the worst that can happen?

And usually it's ego related or what we think others that we don't even care about are going to think about us.

Right.

Or strangers rather.

I mean we always care a little bit, but just so we do.

But that's the point.

So I get that.

Let's talk about the seven pillars of what's most important.

You challenge leaders to conduct a monthly what's most important Check in across seven specific pillars.

Heartset, health, personal growth, relationships, wealth, joy and career.

Why is scoring yourself on non career pillars so vital for sustainable business performance?

Yeah, look, I've met so many people, even if I use myself as an example.

Yeah, people would say, look, welcome to the stage seven time world champion.

And I'm thinking to myself, they could equally say, welcome to the stage 13 time world champion, loser.

I've lost it way more times than I've won it.

And they could say, welcome to the stage the guy who's been married and divorced.

Welcome to the stage the guy who put business before family for way too many years.

So I learned the hard way, you can win in one area, but if you're not winning in the areas that actually matter, and I call those wmi, what's most important then what's the point?

And eventually we will get to the end.

We're all moving towards the end of our lives.

And I want to look back and go, actually my son can say I had a good dad.

I don't need to be world's greatest.

But if he can say I had a good dad, like awesome.

My partner could go, I had a good partner, brilliant.

But I know there's not going to be 5 million people at my funeral saying he was a good speaker.

You know, the speaking thing's amazing and I love it and I love impacting people's lives.

But it's a moment.

And when I step off stage, all those 5 million people, they're not There, but the people that are there is my son, my partner, my mom and my dad and my siblings.

So this check in, this monthly check in is my attempt at counterbalance.

So, Michael, I don't believe that work life balance is a thing.

It's nonsense actually, but counterbalance.

So Maybe I've got six weeks where I'm doing 70 hour weeks and I'm on the road and I'm traveling.

Cool.

This little check in of WMI goes, actually, I'm out of balance with my relationships.

I'm out of balance with my health.

Okay.

The next couple of weeks going to do a lot less work, a lot more relationship time and gym time.

So it's a way to just kind of keep things in check.

Not perfect, not balanced.

But counterbalancing.

Yeah, it's constant juggling act.

I agree 100%.

And I think we deal sometimes with that imposter syndrome too.

Like I'm not good enough to do.

I don't deserve this.

You know, like, if you're fortunate enough to do what we do, we get to write books, we get to take time to do that.

We get to.

And there's a price to be paid.

We're not the best parents.

I know.

When I was starting my career, my wife and I raised seven.

I was gone a lot.

You know what that's like.

You're on the road, you're a road warrior and you're working with different audiences.

You wake up and you don't even know which city you're in sometimes.

And people look at that as glamorous and what they have to understand.

I think, and you said it well, I think it's our Personas, our public Personas are constructions.

And I know many, many speakers who divorced.

Their marriages are in shambles.

They're making tons of money doing what they do or in their businesses, but their life's personal life's a mess and maybe that's a distraction for them.

Who knows?

So it's.

It's constant juggle and then reshift your priorities.

You know, it's funny you say it that way.

I was gone a lot.

We started having Grandbabies.

We're on 9 and 10 are on their way.

Wow.

And as I know, I.

Seven granddaughters and two grandsons.

And then.

That's amazing.

We don't know what the next one's going to be yet.

But I decided, hey, you know what?

In January, at the beginning of the year 2026, I'm taking Fridays off every Friday.

So I don't work on The Fridays and those are Nana and Papa Fridays and we have five of them live right close proximity to us.

And so we go.

I was literally 8, 8 in the morning till midnight on Friday with different grandkids looking at baby sim sore kids and I loved it and I'm good with that.

And so I get the work done in those four days of the week and we both know that work always expands to the time you allow for it.

So I've created that habit and now I can and I missed a couple because of in speaking engagements but I really don't like it and so it's an easy no and or I'll reshuffle the date around or whatever the case is.

But I want to build those habits.

Working out as we get older, you know we're getting old the body we have to work on strength.

We want longevity.

You've got to start building in that structure.

And like I say, it's easy to the bad.

Why are the bad habits, the things that are bad for us, the easy ones to keep up with, but the ones that are really good for us are the toughest sometimes.

Yeah, I've heard recently actually someone's telling me hard choices, easy life, easy choices, hard life.

I thought that's brilliant.

Because the easy choice is to skip the gym.

The easy choice is to have the extra bar of chocolate.

The easy choice is to have the KFC or the McDonald's breakfast.

But it leads to a really hard life.

Whereas the hard choice is to do what Michael Vickers does and gets up at 5am, gets to the gym at 5:30am, has the smoothie, gets the protein and takes a Friday off.

So he has to do all his work in four days.

But actually yeah, they're hard choices.

But it leads to a much easier life.

Yeah, I would agree.

I love that.

That's a great quote.

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And now back to my conversation with James Laughlin.

Let's talk about filtering opportunities with what you call the VP matrix.

So leaders face overwhelming number of good opportunities, opportunities that can easily dilute their focus.

I can speak to that.

You develop the Values and Priorities Decision Making filter.

Can you walk us through how evaluating opportunities versus costs through the lens of core values prevents a strategic shift?

Yeah, absolutely.

Like so many people are torn with conflicting priorities and many people don't even know what their priorities are.

They just know that they're responsible for a lot of things.

So let me highlight, I guess the VP Decision making filter and then I'll share a story of how I've used it.

So, V and P. Simple values and priorities.

So you need to know what your core values are.

So for the person listening going, what do I do?

Super simple.

Think of one or two people in your life that you really admire, you love and you respect.

What do they do that makes you love and respect them?

What are the values?

Is it loyalty, honesty, care, kindness, love?

Get clear on what those are about those couple of people and then highlight what two or three of the most important ones are.

Those are your values.

You don't need to go through a five day course to figure out what your values are.

You already know.

So write those down in the top left of this matrix under the V. The values top right part of the matrix is your priorities.

And for me it's easy.

Family, fitness, finance, learning and business.

In that order.

Now, were they always in that order?

No.

Will our priorities change in different life stages?

Absolutely.

20 Years ago, Michael, you were not taking Fridays off to spend it with the grandkids.

That's changed and that's beautiful.

So you've got those two.

That's amazing.

Values and priorities.

You've got that.

That's locked and loaded.

The bottom left hand side is what we call opportunities.

So if I make the decision to say yes to this new career, this new job, what are the positive upsides, the opportunities, the wins that would happen for me and my loved ones?

How would they weigh up against my family, my fitness, my finance, my learning and my business?

How do they reflect on the values that I have.

And then on the bottom right is your costs.

What are the negatives or the downsides that actually conflict with my priorities and my values?

And very quickly you become objective about your decision rather than subjective and emotional.

You actually go, actually, I can see it plainly.

There's way too many opportunities and very few costs.

This is a clear decision.

This aligns with who I am and my core from a values perspective and with my priority.

So may I share an example of story?

Yeah,.

Please do.

Yeah, please.

So I'm in South Africa in a small cafe in Cape Town, and my partner's from South Africa.

And you know, they've got an amazing culture, amazing history, and they've got a pretty awesome rugby team.

So the last two World Cups they've won it, much to New Zealand's disgust.

Now, the captain is a guy called Siya Kolisi.

And his rise was phenomenal.

He grew up in Zwide, which was a poverty stricken township, 1.2 million people living in tin shacks and witnessed all the abuse you could imagine, but became a rugby player and arguably beside Mandela, is one of the most influential voices in that country.

So he has a charity.

So I'm sitting down with the Khaleesi foundation, the charity, and they said, look, James, Siya and his then wife Rachel listen to your podcast and they really align with your message and how you look at leadership.

Would you emcee his movie release?

And I was like, whoa, that's an honor.

I'd love to.

When is it?

What's next month?

London, England.

Okay.

Yes, in principle.

What do you mean, in principle?

Well, old James would have just said yes.

It's going to be at the Spotify headquarters in London, England.

I'm like, oh, as a podcaster, there's no better place to go.

Perfect.

Yeah,.

Brilliant.

It's, you know, there's going to be a very prestigious crowd at this, this opening event.

I'm going to be with Si Khaleesi and his wife.

Tick, tick, tick for business.

Tick, tick, tick for social connection, ego, all those things.

Yeah.

But I says, look, in principle, I just need to go and check my calendar.

So I go back, Michael, and check.

And on the same day as this big movie release, 12,000 miles away in New Zealand is my six year old boy's first ever school play.

School production.

Oh no.

Oh no.

Oh no is right.

Yeah, yeah.

So we all have these kind of predicaments where big opportunities come up.

You're like, geez, which way do I go?

So I ring my best friend I say, dude, what should I do?

Don't be a bloody idiot.

Get to London.

Your six year old will never remember that you forgot his first play.

Buy him a pony.

Yeah, exactly.

I was like, okay, this is helpful.

So then I get my VP decision making filter out.

You know what I value?

Curiosity, abundance and kindness.

What are my priorities?

Family, fitness, finance, learning, business.

At the bottom, I said, okay.

So I weigh it up and looking at the page, it became really clear what my decision was going to be.

So I email the Kholisi guys.

Hey, super excited for London.

Bring it on.

Sadly, I can't make it.

I've got another commitment.

Wish you guys all the best.

How else can I support?

And fast forward a month, Michael.

I'm sitting in the town hall in Christchurch, New Zealand, watching my little boy dressed up as a little bird dancing around the stage and for 90 seconds and I'm in tears, like tears of joy.

And I'd never change that.

And I'm glad that I've evolved because 10 years ago it would have been easy.

I would have been in London and I don't want to miss the important stuff.

So that's how I use it for family.

But you can also use it in business for big decisions and it applies across the board.

Yeah.

And what people don't realize when you're author and a speaker, when we miss an engagement, maybe we've got a, we accept engagement, 3, 4, 5, 6 months a year out.

And a lot of times we don't know what family events are coming up.

So once they're contracted, there is no going back.

It's a contract.

We can't even be sick.

So if we have to be somewhere and 500 people are flying in and we're part of that stage, you have to show up.

But there are a lot of things that we do get a choice of.

I remember, you know, when I was on the road, I used to use the speaker boxes.

We didn't have FaceTime in those days.

And I had one of those speaker boxes that you could just have a two way phone call on.

We put that in the kid's room.

And then I would take storybooks with me on the road and my wife would say, hey, go have a bath, ready for bed.

Dad's going to read a story.

I could read the kid, I could read the kids story.

And then they'd go to good night and give mom a bit of a break as well.

So I could.

There were things to do, but it wasn't like it is today.

I mean, today We a lot closer that way.

You know, you use some interesting words.

Let's go back to values for a minute.

Because core values and putting them into action.

Many companies have all these values printed on a wall that nobody remembers.

I even asked CEOs, can you read it to me or tell me your mission?

And they can't and tell me it's right behind them on the wall.

So in your book, you advocate for turning core values into a four word or fewer actionable commands or mantras, and you did that with your own values and even explaining with them, how can an executive transform static corporate values into real time operational behavior?

Yeah, values are wishy washy when they just sit on a wall or on a document, a strategy document.

You want to make them standards because standards are measurable.

Values are very hard to measure.

They're kind of like up in the east,.

Subjective.

They're subjective.

Yeah,.

Exactly.

But a standard.

You can actually go, yep, that meets the standard, or no, that doesn't.

So let's say curiosity is one of my values.

Well, that's nice to say.

I'm curious, but how do I measure that?

So my mantra is seek to understand.

So when I want to connect with Michael, have I done some research on Michael?

Do I realize what he speaks on, what his book's about?

If I'm going to work with a client who's running a $2 billion company, have I been curious about the company and the good stuff they've done, the bad stuff?

So it's about taking your value and creating a command.

Let's say discipline is one of your values.

What would the command be?

Maybe do the work.

Right.

If you're disciplined, you just do the work.

You don't have excuses.

So it's about just asking yourself, how can I take it?

So another one would be Nike.

If I ask you Nike, what do you think their command is?

Just do it.

Yeah,.

There you go.

Just do it.

And so they value action, taking action, and for them it's quite smart.

Yeah, the person wearing the shoe is going to take action and get fit.

But actually the person standing in the shop going, adidas or Nike, just do it.

Oh yeah, I'm going to take Nike.

The chances are their command is going to get you to take action and buy their shoe.

So I think it's a simple thing to do.

Figure out your values and then go, how do I actually measure them and bring them to life?

It must be a command, not a question.

No, it's interesting you say that and link it to a character.

I remember Yoda back in the days.

Do it.

You got a hybrid version of seek first to understand, then seek to be understood.

I use that one too to try and remind myself all the time.

I study the stoics all the time.

Brilliant.

And the early philosophers, and I love those guys.

Say, I'm going to a shop, supermarket, and I've got my shopping cart and I'm unloading into the car and I've walked 40 yards from where you park the carts.

Or I could just park it up on the curb and leave it there for one of the young lads or whatever is going to move it and I'll start to do it.

And then all of a sudden that mantra kicks in and goes, well, what would a stoic do?

And a stoic wouldn't leave it there.

Or if I see something that's fallen, I go with supermarket.

Somebody's knocked a bag over and it's on the ground.

What would a stoic do?

And I'm going pick it up, put it back on the shelf nicely, take the cart and go.

Walk it in and go.

Do those things, do those hard things that are easy to escape and not do, but you know it.

And I think it just goes.

And I'm not perfect at this at all.

I. I say this all the time.

And sometimes I. I don't follow that advice, but at least I.

The first mantra comes into mind.

What would a stock do?

And it's like that.

It goes to our character.

I think it just goes to a person's character.

And in today's world, we see.

I mean, you watch what's going on in North America and globally.

The world's on fire.

We got all kinds of people, the haves and the have nots.

We've got all this turmoil going on and I think we have to get back to good, solid values.

And I think most people are there.

I think innately we're there.

We just need roadmaps, we just need how to guides.

And I think your book, Habits of High Performers provides that and takes care of it.

Let's talk about your overcoming the busy, busy, busy, you know, versus essentialism.

You make the point that diluting your priorities will dilute your results.

And this is an important one for me as well.

And highlight that high performers focus on the critical few rather than the important many.

How do you coach entrepreneurs, business professionals who feel everything on their task list is urgent?

Yeah, it's interesting.

So if you go back and look at the studies, the Pareto's principal Durant, who did all the studies.

It's him that owns that whole phrase around the vital few.

You'll see it turn up in great books like Good to Great by Jim Collins.

You'll hear amazing sports teams talk about let's focus on the vital few over the important many.

Most of us get stuck with the important many.

So right now I'm coaching a prime minister and it's tricky work.

Why?

He has got so many responsibilities that are important, but actually, hey, what's the vital few?

What's the one or two things that if you screw those up, we are in hot water as a country, as a nation.

So that's what we've got to do when we're leading our lives and our businesses is go.

Well, actually, I know there's 37 important things, but actually if I could just focus on the one, two or three things, what would they be and how would they influence the other 30 odd things?

Because that's what happens with great leaders.

They know what actually turns the flywheel.

And it's usually one or two specific things.

So, Michael, I think that a leader has one job and one job only.

That job, if you're leading a team, a company, a family, is to make decisions.

And that's the thing that you're being paid the big, big bucks for.

Or as a parent, people or kids looking up to you for make good decisions, make clear decisions.

And I think that as people, we have decision fatigue because we're deciding, what should I wear today?

What should I eat today?

Michael, you and I are both wearing a black T shirt.

I knew I was going to wear that black T shirt six weeks ago, that today I was going to put it on.

Yeah, exactly.

I wear them for all the party.

I don't have to decide what I'm going to wear today and what works with the camera.

Steve Jobs was like that too.

His wardrobe was identical.

And.

You know that because you're curious and you've read about Steve Jobs.

And that's another sign of great leaders.

They get curious before they actually need to be curious.

So that when you need the information, it's there.

Well, and it's funny you linked it to curiosity.

We were talking prior to the show.

I have a new book coming out which I'm excited about, on staying relevant.

And it's all about the reading and learning.

It's continue.

It's a learning system is what it is.

And how do we, how do we learn as adults?

How do we learn in today's world?

And it's really about the habits.

When I'M talking to professionals and audience.

I'll go around to the audience members and I'll ask people, hey, how many books do you read a year?

You're a professional.

How many books do you read?

Be honest, no judgment.

And people are very honest.

It always shocks me.

But they'll go, 1, 2, 0, none, no.

Sometimes the odd three or four.

That's it.

And then I say, now, if I was to ask you what the name of the last book was, what you learned from it, could you tell me and 100% or no or just no.

So they feel good, they've read a book they don't read.

There was an article in the Atlantic in July of 2026 where they're talking about reading.

And 23% of people read books and read.

And when we say read books, you could do an audible, you could listen to a podcast.

There's lots of modalities for learning now.

You know, I started my career, it was books.

You learned on the book.

If you had any kind of.

If you were autistic, you're on the spectrum.

You had any disability, you can learn now.

There's no excuse not to learn.

Matter of fact, what you paid for A Harvard education 20 years ago at Harvard or MIT is now free online, all of it.

Hi,.

Brilliant.

Which is.

Yeah.

And.

But people don't go learn it.

And they don't.

And the problem is we don't learn the same way like we did when we were kids.

We aggregate our learning and our processes.

So it's being curious, how does that work?

Work?

And that's why I love that early morning time at the gym.

I can work out and then I can also, if I'm on the treadmill or whatever, I can also do email.

I can.

I have a habit of if I'm on a treadmill only.

It's the only time you can multitask.

I walk five miles, I can do my emails, and because I'm only doing 3.1, I'm there.

I don't have to look outside.

I'm not worried about cars hitting me.

And I can get a ton of emails done and respond to all taking while I'm.

So I've used that space that I used to sit at my desk and do, and now I burn off calories when I'm doing it so I can enjoy something a little later.

Honestly,.

That's brilliant.

The Japanese are amazing at that kind of stuff and I'm trying to learn from them.

So, Caroline, my partner's got a little walking pad and so Often I'll say, hey, can.

I.

Jump on and do emails or design slides?

Yeah, yeah.

And I have buddies who do the same thing.

They have the walking.

I'm on a standing desk.

And you can walk while we're talking.

But that's the only time multitasking actually works.

You can't run into it.

You can't do any of that.

It just doesn't work.

Agreed.

So let's talk about how we could get a habit or.

I think you call it the North Star goal.

And you call it defining your Altair.

And you use the celestial metaphor of Altair, the brightest star in the constellation to represent a leader's overcharging long term objective.

What makes an Altair different from a standard quarterly KPI or a annual sales target?

Yes, when you think of an Altair like a really bright shining star, you might want to call it your North Star.

It should be something that really is borderline unachievable in your lifetime.

It should be a massive stretch.

If you achieve it in a quarter, it's not an Altair, it's just a goal.

So like Nelson Mandela, great example.

Go back to him.

His mission, his Altair, was to solve the racial inequity and injustice in South Africa.

Did he accomplish that in his lifetime?

No.

Did he step towards.

It?

100%.

And so you want to pick something that's truly huge, overarching.

It's a big mission that won't be filling your ego because you will never fulfill the entire thing.

But from there you can bring back to what I call an El Capitan.

So Yosemite national park has El Capitan, one of the most incredible rock faces to climb.

Very few have ever climbed it.

That's your North Star.

That's your North Star brought back to something achievable.

So you might call it your Everest if you don't like Yosemite National Park.

But it's a big mountain, it's very specific, and it should maybe take you 10 to 20 years to climb.

So it's a goal that's 10 or 20 years out.

Most of us are setting goals for one year, two years, five years.

Think bigger.

What could you achieve in 20 years?

Be bold.

Make it almost audacious and scary.

I think Jim Collins called it the Bhag, the Big Hairy.

I don't like big hairy things.

I don't want to.

Call it.

Me either.

Yeah, no, me either.

Not in today's world.

Except my face is getting a little more.

No, that makes sense.

Let's talk about the Science of high performance rituals.

Your book highlights that high performance isn't about grand occasional gestures, but structured daily rituals.

So what is one non negotiable daily microhabit that business leaders should implement immediately to protect their energy and mental clarity?

Yeah.

One thing I would suggest for everyone is to meditate every single day.

Whether you're spiritual, you have faith, whatever.

That's besides the point.

Meditate for your mind, for your spirit.

So there's a thing I ask my clients to do every day.

Take your meds.

And I'm not a doctor, Michael, but what I mean by that is.

The.

M stands for meditation, like mindfulness.

If you're super masculine and you don't like those words, they're too soft.

Call it mental training if you wish, but it's the same thing.

And so setting aside time to close your eyes, focus on your breath or focus on a word, maybe you could pick one of your core values and say it over and over and over.

But take time out to actually focus.

The E is exercise.

Exactly what you do every morning, 5:30, move your body when you're doing your emails.

Could you do that while on the treadmill?

Yeah, you could.

D is diet.

How did you do on that front today?

Did you get enough fiber?

One of the biggest causes of death is colon cancer, Bowel cancer.

Get enough fiber, super simple protein.

You and me, we're not getting any younger.

One of the biggest reasons that people die in their 70s and 80s is because they fall.

Because they don't have enough strength and balance.

Break.

Out.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And the last one s is sleep.

That's your meds.

Sleep, sleep.

I mean, if you want to avoid Alzheimer's and dementia, get a really good sleep routine happening.

I find that's a hard one for me.

Like meditation has always been a tough one for me.

Just, I get it, I understand it, I've tried it.

The analogy I use and then I have a solution that's kind of.

I've been testing work, so I'd love your input.

To me, you got a dog that's wagging its tail and the tail wags because it's, that's what dog tails do.

And meditation is holding on to that tail and stopping it and focusing and just focus for that period of time we're meditating.

And then when, as soon as I let it go, it starts wagging again.

So my philosophy was always, how can I meditate in the chaos of our daily existence?

So for me, I find during the day it's hard.

My mind is going this Direction in this direction.

But this year my wife found a YouTube channel and actually I'll share it in case people are interested.

It's called the Sleeping Monk and it's Zen Master, so it doesn't get into religion at all, but it gets into the.

It's three hour episodes, every single one of them.

And you put them on your earbuds or whatever the case is, and you fall asleep all the time.

It tells you, go ahead, fall asleep.

And they go.

But it's a meditative process and the principles that are taught, always wake up refreshed, always wake up good.

Never remember falling asleep.

I wake up with my earbuds in and there's nothing playing.

It's quiet, it's music.

The voices are soothing and it's almost hypnotic.

It's almost hypnotic.

And then my wife and I will debrief in the morning.

What was yours about?

Here's what mine was about.

And so it's literally a couple of hours of meditation.

I'm.

I used to listen to stories, which is bad, but I find I'm always curious about this from a development point of view.

So again, it's called the Sleeping Monk.

You can check it out on YouTube.

But actually brilliant.

So I do understand the power of that because the mind is.

It's always on top, it seems right.

And it's directing it because it wants to go and do its thing and that's okay, whatever those up.

But it's the breathing, it's slowing down.

So I still would love to get seven plus hours.

And as we get older I could use a little more.

So it definitely could make sense.

But how long would you meditate?

And I realize it can be 10 minutes, it can be 20 minutes for some.

Do you have a set routine that you follow when it comes to meditation?

Yeah, often.

Honestly, during the day it could be three to five minutes.

It's very short, but right smack bang in the middle of the day, I might even be sitting outside Finn's school waiting to pick him up in the car and I'll just meditate.

The ideal for me is 30 to 45 minutes.

That's absolutely perfect.

And sometimes it's self guided.

I'm just focusing on my breath.

My mind is going a million miles a minute.

I keep coming back to my breath and then another thought, back to the breath.

So to me, meditation is not about clearing the mind or having no thoughts.

It's about just having a central focus point and coming back.

And like you, I wake up from that feeling more focused.

My vision's almost even clearer.

It's interesting.

So,.

No, I get that.

What's funny is I call it an apachino.

So I get in at noon and sometimes I do a noon workout or go to spin class and I come back, make my protein drink, or if I'm doing a noon workout, make protein drop, put a shot of espresso in, and then go lay down for 25 minutes and do just that.

I've just closed my eyes.

Focus.

It's dark.

It's just.

I'm chilling out, Just chilling out.

Focus on one or two things, the breathing.

And then the caffeine kicks in, takes about 20, 25 minutes, and all of a sudden, boom.

I'm alert for the rest of the afternoon.

Brilliant.

So it's.

It works.

But I. I know it's something we definitely need to focus on.

Is there any other rituals besides meditation that you recommend to me?

I would probably add in learning.

What am I learning today?

15, 20 Minutes on your way to work.

Are you scrolling?

Are you?

Most people spend four to six hours scrolling.

All right, we'll watch Netflix.

More people spend time online gambling than reading, which is just sad.

Right?

And then we complain about our marketplace.

Is there any other habits that are just must dos?

Yeah.

One of the most powerful habits, and I see this with people that are running countries, Formula one teams, they do this one thing, and this one thing is giving them a significant advantage on the rest of the world.

And that one thing is journaling.

Simple journaling.

So I have a very specific routine in the morning.

What did I learn yesterday?

What did I actually learn?

Well, actually, I'm reading that book how to Think Like a Roman Emperor by Marcus Aurelius.

And that's just.

I'm learning about this and self control.

So what did I learn second?

What went well yesterday?

What did I actually do well that I'm proud of?

And I executed on and I did the thing.

Okay, what does 1% better today look like?

If I could just make today 1%.

You know what?

I'm going to pick up that piece of litter.

Or when I go into the mall and something's dropped off the shelf in the supermarket, I'm going to do the right thing today that I didn't do yesterday.

Keep it simple.

And I ask everyone to define their MVP for the day.

What's your most valued priority?

Just the one thing that's your most valued.

And it could be time spent with family, it could be your health, it could be something at work.

Doesn't matter.

But pick the one thing that you're going to nail.

And the people who operate at the highest levels, they do one thing, they come back the end of the day and they actually reflect on how did I do today?

Based on what I said I was going to do?

1 To 10, did I do it well?

And I see this in sport.

The best athletes on the planet, they reflect every day.

It's one thing that many of us get too busy.

We get to the end of the day, we watch Netflix, we go straight to bed, we're knackered.

No reflection.

It takes minutes.

But there's massive upside, I promise you.

No, it's brilliant.

And I like your 1% rule too.

A lot of people don't realize what that does from an exponential point of view.

I know James Clear wrote about it, but so did others.

The British rowing team, there's lots of examples.

Yes,.

Sir.

Dave Brailsford.

Yeah, exactly.

Tell our listeners what 1% a day does on an annual basis.

What does that translate to?

Yeah, so essentially it's about, I think, a 37% increase.

So almost 40% increase in performance, which is mind blowing.

Absolutely.

It.

Works the other way too.

It works the other way as well.

So if you're not,.

You can only do 1%, right?

Well, 1% is just 1% and it's compounding and the miracle of compounding.

So I think that's brilliant.

Last question.

Time flies fast when we're having fun redefining authentic success.

Having interviewed heads of state, world champions, Fortune 500 executives, what is the single biggest misconception people hold about what it takes to reach the rare era of elite achievement?

The people who, in our opinion, reach the rare air.

So the.

The Kobe Bryant's LeBron.

If you're into politics, maybe you'll pick your favorite politician.

But we look at them as in this rare air, where in actual fact, when you go in and you spend time with those people, like Kobe would be a good example.

You go back and look what he was doing when he was at his best and was the best on the planet.

He was still at the gym at 3:30am and doing simple things like push ups.

And he gets into the basketball hoop and he's doing free throws.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.

The thing is that you never, ever feel that you are in the rare air.

You're always back to doing the basic things really well.

So I think we should stop aiming to say I'm going to reach rare air.

What we should do is find out what are the specific habits that if I become fanatical about Those things.

I naturally will put myself in a very elevated position in any field.

Wealth, finance, business, sport.

Doesn't matter what it is.

So don't, I don't think ever have a goal to be rare air.

Have the goal to be world class at a small set of habits.

Interesting.

I always like to ask this of our guests.

If you had a superpower, and you can brag here, so it's okay to not be humble.

What does James Laughlin do?

That's just.

I'm really good at this.

Other than drumming.

We already got that one world class drummer.

But other than drumming, what don't we know about you?

That, hey, I'm really good at this.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I always think, look to evidence for these things.

It's like we can tell ourselves, I'm pretty good golfer.

But then look at the evidence.

The evidence disproves that pretty quick,.

Right?

Yeah, I'm with you on that one.

So the one thing that I get the most feedback on is speaking keynote, speaking to audiences.

So I've had a five out of five rating for, I think, over a thousand keynotes and the most booked speaker in Australia and New Zealand.

So I would say that's something that I'm good at, that I get good feedback on and I love doing it, but I still feel like there's more.

So last week I read Talk like ted, and it's about these great TED talkers and how to be a better speaker.

And I was like, just because I'm the most booked doesn't mean I should sit back and go, well, I've made it.

So I'm still on a learning journey with it.

You know what?

I totally get that.

I'll leave a gig and say it's a standing ovation.

You just knocked it out of the park.

I still leave knowing I could have done better.

Yeah.

And I go knowing I couldn't do better.

It's like, maybe we're perfectionists at heart.

So versus good enough for this.

Great.

All right.

That's your superpower.

What's your kryptonite?

What's the thing?

For me, it's detail.

If I. I have to have systems and I have to have people who are way better at detail than I do, it sounds like you have some of that too.

But if you had kryptonite, something that.

I'm never going to get good at this, no matter what habit I create with it, it's just.

I'm just gonna suck at this.

What would that be?

Honestly, it's like admin tasks and keeping on top of emails and getting slides designed for events.

That stuff does not enthuse me or fire me up.

So those things I have to delegate and have great.

People Sucks your energy.

Just sucks your energy.

Yeah, and you're right.

You will never get good at.

You could have the habit of going and working on that all day long and you'll never find fulfillment and joy.

There's.

No point.

You know, the greatest of all time focus on their strength.

They don't focus on developing their weaknesses.

Yeah, and there's somebody out there who loves to do presentations.

They don't want to talk to anybody.

They're just brilliant at doing that.

So take a James, this has just been fantastic.

Good for me for sure.

And I know our listeners will appreciate as well lots of gems in there habits of high performers and essential principles to thrive in life and work.

So seven time world champion high performance leadership expert James Laughlin and the website will have all of that in the show notes, but it's jjlaughlin.com they can find your book there and I know you've got lots of bonuses that can go along with the book and they can buy the book anywhere that they find their book.

So James, thanks for being our guest today.

This was absolutely brilliant.

Thank you so much Michael.

I enjoyed it myself.

Take good care.

As you are listening to this episode.

What is one idea that you've heard that's caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you and who is one person who you can share that with?

Either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening?

Perhaps it is to ditch discipline for habits.

As James explains that discipline is only needed temporarily until a routine becomes an automatic habit that drives your long term success.

Or maybe it is to focus on counterbalance, not balance, since true sustainability comes from regularly checking in on your non career pillars rather than forcing an impossible constant work life balance.

Thank you for listening, for learning and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

If you found value in this episode, please write a review on Apple Podcasts.

If you haven't subscribed yet, please do so so you can get a new episode and start your week off right every Monday.

Until next time.

This podcast is created and associated with Summit Media.

My Executive producer is Beth Smith and Director of Research Tori Smith.

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Goodbye.