Welcome to Time To Press Pause: A Podcast for CEOs by CEOs. I'm your host, Ellen Williams, CEO of the salient strategist and today I'm speaking with 26 years ago, Ben founded Ben Renshaw Limited. He is a well-known speaker. With signature keynotes, including Leading with Purpose and Performance with Purpose. As an executive coach, his clients include Choice Hotels, Heinz, KPMG, and Unilever, to name a few. He is also a best-selling author of six books, the most recent title, How to Be a CEO, was published in 2023. Welcome, Ben. It's so great to have you here on time to press pause. I'm really pleased that you were able to join us. I've been reading your book and it's really exciting to meet you in person.
Ben: Oh, fantastic. Ellen. Look, thank you and I appreciate the time and I love the idea around time to press pause because it's hugely meaningful. In my own life.
Ellen: I'm really glad to hear that because that's what we're here to talk about. So we're going to jump right in and looking forward to you sharing a time when you realized you needed to press pause. So please talk about how you identified that it was time to press pause and then what you did during that time. And the results.
Ben: Yeah, no, absolutely. So, the the identification was exhaustion. And I remember a time where, look, you know, I had my own business. I was global traveling the world I had three young children, and anybody asked me how I was and I just my response was, “Exhausted,” and it reached the point where I was just tired of being tired. And but you know, I looked around my life. I didn't want to change it. I didn't want to change my family. I didn't want to change my career. I didn't want to change the conditions of my life. So, I realized I had to change myself. Because, you know, if you're not wanting to change external factors, then you need to really dig deep within. Now I've always had a thing where every year I take a theme to look out to really activate and drive my own personal and professional development. And so, I kind of utilize this, you know, wake up, call just around exhaustion to go right, OK, how do I wanna be and what do I think I need? Now it's always challenging for me because of the work I do. You know, in the field of executive development, I really have to take my own medicine. And that always starts for me with. You know, I think many of us and many people show up as what I describe as human doings, and they forget that they're human beings. So, you know, my styling point always is to come back to a place to recognize we're human beings and to bring the humanity back into our lives because I feel otherwise, we can become incredibly mechanistic. We get very, very transactional, absolutely driven by doing. And you know the tasks and you know and look, I love achievement and I love getting stuff done. That's a fantastic feeling. But I recognize there's a price that can be accompanied there.
Ellen: Sure. I mean, CEO's have a lot of responsibilities and they're juggling many different things. So, I'm happy to hear that you realized your exhaustion was something that needed your attention. It's not always specifically something within a business, it's sometimes it's just that we need a break.
Ben: Yeah, and I think it's not even just a break, it's a reorientation. So, what I thought as a consequence of that experience and I really stepped back and I reflected upon where I was where I wanted to be, what was the gap and what needed to happen. And I recognized the fundamental ingredient was energy. I mean energy is everything. When you have it, it's great. When you don't, it's really, really not a good place to be.
Ellen: Yeah, hard to get through a day without any energy.
Ben: So as a result of that experience, I stepped back and I paused, and I really did some deep reflection about where I got my energy from, what energized me, and what de-energized me. And so just to bring that to life, couple of examples. So, what on a practical note was exercise. Yeah. So, it was a time again where I was busy on the road a little and I would come up with every reason not to exercise. Now I clearly know I absolutely could correlate. You know, when I exercised, I had more energy than the days I didn’t, but I would come up with every excuse. I was too tired, which is always a great one. You're too tired to exercise. Tired. You haven't got enough time. It's too hot. It's too cold. I mean, you name it every excuse. So I just thought I'm gonna take the excuses off the table and I'm going to exercise every day. Non negotiable. And you know, and I just, so I started small. I'm a massive believer in just incremental steps, not you know, trying to do too much, but a mantra I live and breathe by his progress, not perfection. So, I would just like, look, I'm gonna just start. I'll quit procrastinating. Just start and start small. And just built up and this is probably about 15 years ago now and I've exercised every day since then.
Ellen: Wow!
Ben: And I don't push it. I don't ever do it, but I just keep a nice regular rhythm. COVID had a massive impact on me on that as well, because obviously then we were kind of locked away. So, I got into a habit of playing racquet sports each day. I love tennis. I've, you know, I'm in London. I'm fortunate. I've got a club about 8 minutes from me and I've really really maintained that I thought well, actually the the social benefit, the mental, psychological benefit, the physical benefit of, say, game of tennis. It was exponential, just an exponential impact. To have some fun connect with others, be competitive exercise, just phenomenal. So, I've kind of built that in, but I already had the hard wiring of exercise every day and that would have a real big impact on energy.
Ellen: That's amazing. That sounds incredible. And it sounds like very beneficial on many levels. So, with all the things you were doing that caused exhaustion, what fell off your plate in order to give you the time to do all the exercise?
Ben: I think that well, it's not really it's, so for me when I look at time and prioritization, it's never about time. Time is just a symptom. It's always about intent and clarity. So, you know once you get really clear about something, then you make choices. Everything is a choice. So, I just chose to get up earlier. You know, building exercise into my schedule and then it just becomes a habit. So, it's very it's very straightforward for me that so now you know, I will just get up earlier or I will build it in at the end of the day and I will. But it's a non-negotiable and I think when you build in those non-negotiables, you know, they just they just don't move. And I think one of the things with high performers is that you know most of the high performers I know are very goal orientated, very disciplined, very focused. So that's easy for me that's yeah, it's just a non-issue. I don't even think about it and so it's very hard for me to comprehend, you know, when people struggle with, like, you want to do something, you do it. But that's my wiring, that's how I am. I think then a few other elements. So, another critical ingredient for me was about who I spent time with. And again, because obviously, yeah, you, you know, your time, your energy, your life is so precious. And I always remember I actually once coached a CEO, a fantastic woman and she used to describe the kind of energy vampires. These were people that just sucked the lifeblood out of her. It's challenging because particularly we, you know, if you're in a CEO role, everybody wants a bit of you and so you know the ability then to be present, be visible, give that time to people because one or two minutes in your presence, genuinely can have a lifetime impact on people. It is massive it, it's totally, you know, the impact ratio of a time with the CEO is exponential. So, you have to be highly sensitized to that. So as a consequence of that, I have become very, very intentional. Very deliberate about who I spend my time with, what that means, what that looks like. The conversations I have, what I say yes to what I say no to. And again, you've really gotta orchestrate that. So, you're not leaving anything to chance because that just becomes high risk. Then again, intend to the impact on your energy and your well-being.
Ellen: I love that the fact that. Everything's a choice, that is a great lesson. Sometimes it's a hard lesson. Not everything feels like a choice, but it truly is. And I also appreciate that you didn't have a strict schedule. I've definitely wavered back and forth times in my life where exercise was a priority and it should, I guess, always be a priority, but there was always the, “Oh I have to get up at 5:30 and exercise, and if I don't then I just don't have any other time in my day.” So, I appreciate that it didn't have to be a strict schedule that these were choices, but they have flexibility.
Ben: Yeah. And I think what's important is to understand your own personal preference. Everybody's very individual and, you know what gets the best out of some doesn't work for others, so it's really about obviously really understanding your own rhythm and your own patterns. That's where building in that falls, and what I've done as well since then, and that would be my third point, would be around daily pause. So, you know, I've always meditated, for example, that's just the practice of mindfulness for me. I've done that for 40 years. I'm a total novice. I still consider myself, you know, beginner's mind, and it's ... But what I've learned is, you know, you often hear, “Oh, you need to do 20 minutes twice a day.” Well, I never got anywhere close to that, and rather than just use that as an excuse then, “Oh well, I just won't meditate or this or that.” I've just built in a routine of 6 minutes a day and I don't know. I just for me I find 6 minutes works really well. I kind of built it up from a minute a day to two minutes and I'm at 6 minutes a day and I just do that every day. And again, I just built that into my routine. But I absolutely can tell you know the days, the benefit, the benefit of that daily pause and just clear my mind and focus. Again, it just has exponential benefits on the day. So, for me, these are the habits that I've really cultivated and developed in terms of my daily exercise, which really, really fuels my energy. Me, the people that I spend my time with again, just very intentional, which really creates that connection. And then thirdly, that daily pause, which really allows me much, much better mental acuity and clarity out of having that space.
Ellen: So, you've given us two pauses. You've given us this great big one during your time when you identified you were exhausted and you need to make it make a change, time to step back and you, you evaluated all the the elements you just over viewed for us. And then you've got these little daily pauses that help you level set on a daily basis. I think that's wonderful. So, with the overcome of your exhaustion and the focus on being mindful and how you're spending your time, what was the outcome from prior to when you were exhausted, to the way your life is going now?
Ben: Yeah, I mean, look, I think what I experience now is just, you know, a lot more stability, a lot more consistency with all of that. You know my energy, I mean, I manage that in a very different way. I'm very proactive with it. I can anticipate. I understand it. I'm not. I mean now having said that, I am in a slightly different life circumstance where my children are older. So therefore, you know the impact of that and I get that, you know, when you've got young children and you're not sleeping and you know. And then you're traveling as well and you're jet lagged and I mean, obviously sleep is incredibly precious. And I still have not mastered sleep, so that is an area for me where I still thought that's why I have not used that as an example because you know, I still don't, you know, I haven't got the right rhythm of sleep yet. And I think just after years and years of being on the road and getting impacted with that, you know my sleep cycle, it's still not where it needs to be so, but yeah. So overall though, just much, much more consistency, stability, and the ability to bounce back. A lot quicker. And so I think that bounce ability is really key into coming back with that renewal. And again, just actually when I think about it like in the past, I used to really, really hang out for my vacation and for my holiday, it'd be like I'd be just wait, wait till I get to Christmas, then wait till I get to Easter then wait till I get to the summer. I don't have any of that now. And it's just not present for me. I have no, there's no real distinction for me between my life and then a vacation. It's not. I don't have a big need for vacation. I enjoy vacation, but it's not like I'm hanging out for a vacation, so that would be another significant change from that.
Ellen: That is a significant change. I am looking forward to taking your advice and hopefully, one day being in your shoes because I definitely look forward to vacation. Bounceability, I think that's going to be my new favorite word.
Ben: Definitely that bounce back, you know, which ties in with the grit and the resilience. And but I like that idea of, you know, coming back in a better place than where you were.
Ellen: Wow, you've really been able to achieve a lot from your ability to press pause from that acknowledgment that it was something you really needed to do. So, I would like to ask you, what advice do you have for the listeners as far as how they can identify when it's time to press pause? Certainly, if they're exhausted, that's a red flag. But are there other ways to identify when it might be time to take that step back?
Ben: Yeah. Well, look, I mean, a lot of my work is to do with purpose and to have a very, very clear articulation of your own sense of purpose. You're raison d’etre. You're why? So, the advice I would have is threefold. When I look at purpose, I break purpose down into three key areas to focus on. So, number one is energy. #2 is meaning and #3 is impact. So, I think that ways to kind of really when you're looking at pressing pause, I've talked about energy. So, I think that's, you know, energy management is vital and there are four lenses to look through for energy management, physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. So, you know, for me it's about really ensuring you're looking after your physical energy, your emotional energy, your mental energy, psychological energy and spiritual energy, which very much for me has to do with things like inspiration and your values. So, energy, meaning that this for me is absolutely vital to press pause. To really understand what is meaningful for you, where do you get meaning from in your work? So, as an example, the idea of retirement is a total joke for me. It's like if you love what you do, why would you ever want to stop doing what you love? I mean, I have no, no concept of retirement and I coach, you know, many CEO's who when I start working with them, they're literally waiting to retire. Hmm. I remember one CEO, 50 years old, really miserable in his role. And I said, "What's your best bet for happiness?” And he just said, “Retirement. 10 more years of misery and then watch me. I'll have a great life.” This is crazy. This is, you know, madness. So, you know, it's really challenging people to understand where they get their meaning from. So, what we then did was, you know, I really held up that lens for him. And what he recognized actually there were multiple, multiple ways that he derived tremendous meaning, you know, from his work and his life. So we literally we just landscaped everything you know as a father, as a partner, with friends, community and then obviously as CEO, as a board member in the community with investors, shareholders, colleagues, customers, you know, really define what is successful for him, what was really meaning, what was the difference he wanted to. And then that leads to the third area, which is about impact and really what is that value, what is that impact? What difference do you want to make in the world? And as a CEO, it's critical to be very, very closely connected to that because the risk of being, you know, pulled from pillar to post, everybody wants something of you. Your ability to be very clear where you get your meaning from, that will sustain you. So, for me, the advice is be clear about energy, meaning, and impact. Have a plan. You need a plan. To drive, because if you don't have a plan, then just stuff will happen to you. So, have a plan to progress those along with obviously the running of an organization. And I just think you'll be in a better place.
Ellen: Fascinating. One of the things you said, of course, everything you said was on point, and thank you so much for sharing all that. I found, listening to you that a lot of times pressing pause, taking that step back is to catch your breath is to really push back against maybe some overwhelm a lot of information. You know, in your case exhaustion. But what I heard you say here as well was when you take the time to press pause, it gives you an opportunity to see things through a new lens. To think differently, and I think that's something that hasn't come out in some of the stories we've heard, and I appreciate that you've brought all this, this wealth of knowledge and somewhat different way to look at what you can achieve when you press pause. So, thank you.
Ben: And it's lovely to speak with you. And I wish you all the best going forward as you press a daily pause just to, you know, re-energize and refocus every day.
Ellen: I will, starting today.
Ben: Fantastic. Thank you.
Ellen: Thank you, Ben. Thank you for listening to this episode of Time to Press Pause. To. More about Ben Renshaw go to benrenshaw.com. To learn more about me, go to thesalientstrategist.com and be sure to join us again wherever you listen to your podcast.