The Ryan Hanley Show
From Overwhelmed to Unstoppable: The System Only 2 % of Leaders Use
Wed, 28 May 2025
Feel like your calendar owns you? Fighter-pilot-turned-leadership scientist Rob Shallenberger hands you a cockpit checklist that yanks you out of overwhelm and shoves you into the elite 2 % of leaders with a written vision—the ones who actually run life on their terms. Join our community of fearless leaders seeking unreasonable outcomes... Want to become a FEARLESS entrepreneur and leader? Visit here: https://www.findingpeak.com Watch on YouTube: https://link.ryanhanley.com/youtube Rob Shallenberger Website: https://www.becomingyourbest.com/ Book: https://amzn.to/3Sp9dmg What’s inside the hour: The Vision Gap – why 98 % of high achievers grind without direction and how one page closes it. The 3-Habit System: Vision → Roles & Goals → Pre-Week Planning. Nail all three and you’ll rack up 800-1,000 extra high-impact priorities every year—stress down, momentum up. Pre-Week Planning in 4 moves: schedule your priorities before the world schedules you. Pepsi exec redemption arc: one scheduled call ends a seven-year silence and reunites a family—proof intentional planning changes bloodlines. Founder guilt antidote: sprint in seasons, coach the Little League team, and still scale the company. Listen if you’re ready to trade chaos for clarity, default for design, and busywork for needle-moving wins. Recommended Tools for Growth OpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opus Riverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riverside Shortform - The World's Best Book Summaries: https://link.ryanhanley.com/shortform Taplio • Grow Your Personal Brand On LinkedIn: https://link.ryanhanley.com/taplio Kit: Email-First Operating System for Creators (formerly ConvertKit): https://link.ryanhanley.com/kit
Chapter 1: What is the significance of the dash in our lives?
And it might seem a little weird, but one of the things I love to do is drive through cemeteries periodically because I look at these headstones and most headstones will have a birthday, a death date and a dash. And I ask myself, what are the stories within that person's dash? Every one of us listening today as we're having this conversation, we're fortunate enough to have an open ended dash.
Our date's not there yet. So that means that every day that we wake up, we still have the opportunity to write our dash.
You wrote the book. We're going to start super high level because I know that myself as a founder, current CEO of a startup in the AI space in insurance, property casualty insurance, talked to a lot of founders, talked to a lot of leaders. How the hell do we figure out what actually matters most?
This feels like a minute-by-minute question that oftentimes, especially new founders, new owners are dealing with, but seemingly 25 years into my career, I still deal with it on a daily basis. How do we figure out what are the things that matter the most to us so we can actually focus our time there?
Yeah, so Ryan, that's a great question. And I know we're jumping right into this. So that's the reason we wrote Do What Matters Most is we spent years developing a system that people can use. So let me tell you what, this is not what it is.
Do What Matters Most is not just a few time management tips, but rather it's a program in the system by which someone can organize their lives and take control of their schedules. Because to your point, we did the research and found that 68% of people feel like prioritizing their time is their number one challenge. which I think you just well articulated.
What was interesting about that research is that 80% of those same people didn't feel like what they were doing was getting them there. In other words, to-do lists, sticky notes, you know, whatever AI delegation of time management, whatever people are using, 80% don't feel like it's getting them where they need to be. And what I'm talking about is not just work-related.
But for many of us listening, we're fathers or mothers. In other words, we're parents, we're spouses, we're sons, daughters, brothers, sisters. We have friends. How do we balance all of that? And then even most importantly, how do we take care of ourselves in the process? mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
And so what do what matters most is, is it's a program and a system to do exactly that. It's to take care of ourselves holistically in all of those key roles in our lives. And some people would say that's not possible. And I would agree without a system.
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Chapter 2: How can leaders identify what matters most?
But for 98% of people that go through this training, what I'm about to share with you is a new approach to their life. They haven't looked at their life through this kind of lens.
And so as you ask where to start and do what matters most, we've identified three habits and we've developed some tools to include a digital planner for Google and Outlook, as well as customized planners that you can order that will help people do what I'm about to describe to answer your question.
And so the first habit in do what matters most of the three is to develop a written personal vision for each of the key roles in our life. Now that's the high level. Habit number two is to identify what we call our roles and goals. So our five to seven roles, same ones we would use in our vision and come up with one to four specific measurable goals around what matters most this year.
And then ultimately the most important of the three habits is pre-week planning. And that's where we sit down at the beginning of the week. We go through each of our roles and ask what matters most this week in each of our key roles, the tactical, the execution. So to back up to the point that you just brought up, you know, where are we going?
That's why we start with our vision first for each of our key roles. So the first thing I would ask everybody listening to this to do right now is to identify what are the five to seven key roles in your life? So many of us might be parents, as we talked about earlier. That would be a role. You know, whatever professionally might be your role. So founder, entrepreneur.
Maybe you wear a different hat as well professionally. Investor. Great. A couple of those are your key roles. Personal is the most important role of all those, right? We've got to take care of ourselves because we can't draw water from an empty well. And so we've got to take care of ourselves. And that's why it is the most important of all the roles. You know, husband, wife.
These are some other examples of roles. And as the starting point, what we invite you to do, and we walk you through how to do this in two chapters in the book. What specific questions can you ask yourself? How do you get in the right frame of mind? What are the things that matter most to you? All of these ultimately become a part of your vision. And the vision is not the goal.
What we're doing in the vision is creating a mental reality before the physical reality. And a vision is often talked about but rarely done because in our research, Ryan, to answer your question, only 2% of people have a written personal vision. So for as much as it's talked about, it's rarely done. And That's why it's a powerful starting point.
I mean, imagine if you're listening to this and let's say that you are in the role of parent and spouse, what would actually be your vision for those roles? At the end of your life, when people look back and think of you and describe you, especially as you look back and describe yourself, what type of parent or spouse or what type of leader or entrepreneur or CEO do you see yourself as?
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Chapter 3: What is the 'Do What Matters Most' system?
Like, so maybe, hey, I only wanna bring alcohol into my life no more than one day a week, right? A couple of social drinks with friends, cocktail here. I like an old fashioned as much as any guy. And, you know, but I don't want that to be a daily habit in my life, okay?
So say, you know, maybe I have a couple of drinks with buddies after, you know, a golfing on a Tuesday and now, and it's like, okay, What would the version of me that I wrote down as a vision statement do? What would that version of me of exactly who I would love to be, what decision would he make? And then I can say to myself, okay, he would say, I'm good. You guys can drink all you want.
I'm just not gonna have a beer today, right? I'm just, I don't need it, right? And that version of me has no problem saying that. So I'll just act like that guy, even though that guy's not me, right? Like me wants to go, put three Coors lights down and hooted up with my buddies on the golf course. That, that, you know, like the, the version of me right now wants to do that.
But this other version that I wrote down that I'm kind of committed to being to, he would say no. So I'll just act like him. And that has allowed me to come back to like who I want to be, but, but I need more structure to it. Cause I do, I do, I do find, and this is why I'm so interested in reading your book and your processes. I find,
For those of us who do sit down and do the vision or even to the goal part, it's the process of coming back to the goals oftentimes and in most systems. And this is where I want you to dive in a little deeper. The question that I'm actually working towards is I find with a lot of the. systems, right? They're so structured that the system becomes a job.
And all of a sudden you're like, I don't need another job, right? Like I'm trying to use this system to get more time in my life and be better. I don't want that system that's supposed to be helping me bring time in actually cost me all this time on the backend.
So talk to me a little bit about how you said, cause you, cause you said that you said, you know, it's a, it's structure, but it's not like so rigid, right? Like you, you kind of insinuated that a little bit. So maybe talk through
how you how you get people to keep coming back and not make this feel like just another obligation on your time like like some systems do yeah so let me preface it with one answer and then let's talk pre-replanning because that's the key the people that do pre-replanning leaving this total game changer first of all i'll say this people that go through do what matters most i say this right up front have some grace with ourselves in other words we don't expect perfection
from anything, right? I mean, I just don't. Otherwise, it's setting an unrealistic expectation. None of us are perfect. And so, for example, pre-week planning. We invite people to do pre-week planning every weekend, and it takes about 20 to 30 minutes. Now, I was a fighter pilot for 11 years.
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