Mastering Time Management | State Senator Shane Reeves, PharmD., CEO Twelve Stone Health

Speech to text: 

Mike: Shane, for those that haven't come across you online,

Shane Reeves: Thank you.

Mike Koelzer: introduce yourself to our listeners. 

Shane Reeves: I'm 

Shane Reeves, I've been a pharmacist for 30 years, and so was my dad and his dad. We've been practicing pharmacy for years, almost, in Middle Tennessee. Really have pivoted from being a pharmacist in recent years and really function more in a a CEO role of my business and do a variety of things in that space. And I lost my mind in 2017 and ran for the Tennessee State Senate and won.

Mike: Congratulations.

Shane Reeves: So because of that it's given me an opportunity to have a voice. at [00:02:00] the table in Nashville in regards to business and banking and insurance and pharmacy and health care and it's been a lot of fun.

Mike: Shane, I got to tell our listeners that you and I tried this about a month ago, and we had a little bit of a technical difficulty. And you said, Hey, Mike, we can either do it now with uh, I forget, maybe the video wasn't working or something as we wanted to see each other while we were talking.

You said can do it now or we can reschedule. And I said, Shane, I really want to see you when I'm talking to you. I said, let's reschedule. I know. When somebody is organized, when all of the steps get done in the 20 seconds while we're talking. So it's a, all right, Mike, I'm going to send you an email and we're going to copy our marketing person and also our, whatever.

They'll get back to you on this and I'm going to tell so and so to do that. That kind of practice is always fascinating to me. And. It's let me do the things I want to do. I always say it doesn't necessarily let [00:03:00] me get a lot more things done, but it allows me the free time for my mind to experiment, and to have fun with things without thinking I have dropped something.

So I know looking at the size of your business and what you've done with your social leadership and also in the political scene now that you're an organized guy.

Shane Reeves: Absolutely. I would have drowned many years ago if I had not had systems in place for organization. I would say, first and most importantly, I have a lot of very talented people around me. I have an executive assistant in Nashville that runs my political office. And I have an executive assistant in Murfreesboro in my pharmacy offices.

So the two of those work together to manage everything from a time perspective. The second thing is I'm 56 years old. And I've learned over time what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. So I really gravitate toward focusing on the things where I can add the most value. And if I'm not good at it, or [00:04:00] if I really am having to work too hard to put something together, I have no problem delegating.

 And I think the third aspect of that between good people and knowing what my gifts are, lack of gifts are, is system. I have got significant systems in how I manage my time, my scheduling, how I manage my communications via email or text, and how I manage my mind, really where I invest my time . , I always say it's my time, my mind, my money where I put those things.

And, , 

it has served me incredibly well because I just follow the process, just follow the systems over and over again. And to the point, I speak to groups sometime on. The top 10 things I do for productivity.

Mike: Well, guess what, Shane, guess what we're going to talk about today. When did you realize that importance of that? Planning the organization and to get things in the right spot. Let me tell you mine, dad he'd be home like on a Sunday and [00:05:00] he'd have crap all over the kitchen table, all of his papers and all that kind of stuff. He'd be watching the golf game.

And I kind of made a promise to myself, I guess I said, I can't do it that way. I've got to start organizing from the very start. So I probably started in, early college, knowing the importance of that. And now here's the thing though. I ran into my dad's friend years ago and I told him this same story.

We were talking about something like this and he said, Mike, do you really think your dad was that disorganized with all the stuff he did? He said that was a show in order for him to sit there and watch the golf game and make it look like he was doing something important. So when did you.

the importance of this pathway in order to do the things you've done. Was there an impetus behind it or did you just kind of know you had to get things in the right order to move forward in a particular advanced way?

Shane Reeves: That's a great question, and I don't think I've ever had it asked exactly like that before, but when I graduated pharmacy school, [00:06:00] when I was 26 years of age, moved back home, bought into the family business. After I had been working for about four years, With a former business partner of mine I was working night and day.

I , had just gotten married. I was primarily a retail pharmacist back there in those early years. And we were open seven to seven Monday through Friday, eight to six Saturdays and one to five Sundays. So it was routine for me to work five days a weekend and five more days. So I would work.

12 days in a row.

Mike: I just mentioned that to my family yesterday back in the old days at the pharmacy. 

Shane Reeves: So I did that for a number of years. I had a new marriage, never had vacations. And I hit a wall after about 1999, 2000, when I was getting close to 30 years of age and said, I'm working too hard. I'm not making enough money. I don't really feel like I'm leaning into my gifts enough. And it was about that period of time that somebody said, have you ever thought about getting some professional coaching?[00:07:00] 

I'd never gotten coaching before. And they said, we don't really think you need to get coaching from a pharmacy perspective. You ought to get some business, some strategic coaching. So I actually joined a program called the strategic coach.

Mike: Really?

Shane Reeves: I was 30 years old and I went to Atlanta for this coaching program.

This was many years ago in my life. And the promise of the program was three things. One is they said, we're going to teach you the entrepreneurial time system. We're going to teach you how to manage your time. Buffer days, focus days, free days, how to really manage your time on a quarterly basis. The second promise of the program was we're going to teach you how to make more money, how to really focus on leveraging your relationships and how to use just the power, how to make more money for what you're doing. But the third aspect of this, Mike, was we're going to spend a considerable amount of [00:08:00] time really helping you to hone in on your unique abilities. Your capabilities, your gifts. And I went through about two years of really taking a step back. I went through every possible testing you could go through. And from that testing, I identified a handful of things that I'm just incompetent at, I'm a terrible handyman. I couldn't put my children's Christmas toys together. I made a list of things that I was competent at, which I'm not. Could do, but not that good at accounting spreadsheets. I can do it banking, but not the best. One more step to things I was excellent at, but I still had to work at things like public speaking communicating, but then the things that were truly my unique ability and my unique ability is around strategy and organization. That's what I'm uniquely good at. So I was about 30. I did that program for four or five years. And since that period of time, I have organized my life around leaning into [00:09:00] that gift, really trying to help using strategy, using organization, really managing my time and the areas that I can make the biggest difference in the world where I invest my money, where I invest my influence. So. if I'm going to speak to a group, I spoke to a group of 300 homecare nurses this morning. I'm going to speak to a group. It really kind of needs to fit into my wheelhouse.

I got asked to speak to a group here in about three weeks on artificial intelligence. That's not my gift. And I said, I'm not your guy.

So stand in your lane. So it was about that period of time in my life where I really determined what I was good at. So from that, I have developed so many systems on scheduling, communications, task management, delegation, meeting rhythms, just a variety of things that work for me.

So I'm able to really have a fairly large bandwidth. To manage a lot. I

Mike: Well, and the fact is, Shane You would not have had the time [00:10:00] or the ability to dedicate time to your job, your church, your whatever's going to come next. Those would have good ideas in your life maybe never happened. Or like we see, unfortunately could happen to any of us. They very well could have been.

I'm now this, but I don't have relationships with my children, or I'm now into this politics, but I've just decided that I, I like more time with my, secretary than I do with my wife back at home, those kinds of things.

And sometimes that's from time. I know it's also from wrapping up too much of your identity in some of these things without what you went through that time figuring. I know for me, Like with this show and with my family and those kind of things. It would be an idea that I hope to do someday, but never could [00:11:00] imagine how it could happen.

Shane Reeves: don't know who said this quote, so I'm going to probably botch it, but I heard this somewhere along the way and it really applies to where my life has been and is now, but I don't think I'm afraid any more of failure in my life. If I died next week, I've accomplished a lot and I'm thankful to God for the things I've been able to do in my life. I'm really not worried anymore about failure. What I am worried about is succeeding in things in life that really might not matter.

what I mean by that is this, I could be the most successful CEO in the world, but if I lose my marriage, is it worth it? I could become a Senator. I could become a governor of Tennessee, but ultimately if I completely lose my health. I can't function. What am I doing? I could become a millionaire. I could become a billionaire in finances, but if I lose my walk with God or I lose my children, what am I doing?

So really [00:12:00] trying to make sure that I'm succeeding in things in life that really matter first. And these other areas are important. I don't certainly don't have it all figured out, but I do really try to step back and reflect to make sure that I don't lose tension on the areas of my life that are really a bigger deal than being a Senator and a CEO and a pharmacist.

Mike: I'm always watching these detective shows on TV and maybe it's just part of the genre of that or the movie cliches, but it's always that the marriages have broken down 

for 

these detectives because they're on the case the whole time, that kind of thing, and I've always thought that about my job and what I do, where.

Does the tension relationships because you're in something together? Not that my wife's in the pharmacy, but you're talking about and you're kind of moving forward. Or has that taken you away from that?

I don't know what I would necessarily do if all of a sudden I'm not at this stage, but years ago, if somehow I got into something and I'm [00:13:00] rising up the ranks, and I don't know if I'd have the wherewithal to stop that and say, this is hurting my relationship 

I'd like to think I would, but I don't know, maybe some people get caught up in it and before they at it it's too late.

Shane Reeves: When I'm speaking to young people nowadays, I've quit completely using the term of work life balance

just because to me, balance means you somehow are applying equal pressure to everything at any given time.

 This is not how it works.

You have to surge sometimes

in certain areas if you want to get something done. If I want to run a half marathon, which I don't, but I have in the past it's going to require a little extra surge for me physically for a month or two to train. if I wanted to be a state senator, which I am, it was going to require me for the first 90 days of the year to surge. And I do for the first 90 days of the [00:14:00] year, the rest of the year as a Senator, I do what I have to do, but I'm primarily focused on my business. But that's why I really liked the word tension

because you kind Got, you got to keep a little tension on everything. You can't completely lose your kids

in the The process,

as you're working through things, but but it does require sometimes to really be successful to push harder, in some areas but balance to me is just it's not possible.

Mike: Shane. have my own personal ways when you have a day or a few days that just got shot to. Hell, all of a sudden you get a call and you've now got to fly out and you've got three meetings, you've got to cancel and this and that. Or, some major thing came up, some security thing or something with the business. What methods you have in place then?

To get back on track from those days, because I think that's what happened to a lot of people. [00:15:00] They just get thrown off stuff. And then there goes their diet and their meetings. And they're afraid that people now think they're not responsible because they miss this and that. What is your method then to get back on once you have one of those kinds of days or weeks?

Shane Reeves: couple of things come into mind. The first one is before I start my day every day at eight o'clock, I like to say I slay the three headed dragon. Before I come to work. So I'm up at five o'clock every day. I'm a morning person. I've always been a morning person. So I get up in the morning at five o'clock and I try to do something physical, something spiritual, and something intellectual between five o'clock and six 30 that might be some quiet time, devotional time, prayer time, and might be going on a 30 minute walk. And I listened to a lot of podcasts. So usually if I can slay those three headed dragon. The time I go to work, I'm filling myself up [00:16:00] because there's no way I can fill everyone else up if I'm not

feeding Myself. I

So how you start your day is a big deal. The second thing is, and this may not be for everyone in your audience, but you know, I do control, a lot where my schedule is going to be. I mean, I can control, not all of it. You're going to have crisis. You're going to have your, my wife's going to have a tire blow out on the interstate, and I'm going to have issues, but

majority of time I

Control my schedule. So I'll give you an example. When I'm not in Nashville, As a Senator, and I'm back working full time from May to December in my business, I created a concept called Tennessee Thursdays. Tennessee Thursdays are specifically designed for Senate. All things Senate. So when I run into anybody, any place, anywhere, I will give them one of my business cards and I will say, listen, they, this morning I had a nurse want to talk to me specifically about an Alzheimer related issue.

And I said, you need to go on my [00:17:00] website. Or you need to call my office and you need to schedule some time on a Tennessee Thursday. So on Thursdays. I may have 15 meetings back to back to back. But if it's not a Thursday I just don't have external meetings. Now, if I have to go to a ribbon cutting or tonight I'm speaking to a group of farmers, some of those things happen. Driving meetings, driving the people you want to meet with into a certain bucket makes a lot of sense. So I, even within my company, 12stone, I have certain days, I only do certain things within my business. So it really helps me to drive themes. There's a lot of synergy that builds on each other. I scheduled no meetings till Monday mornings up through noon. I have nothing on Monday mornings through noon and I have nothing on Fridays afternoon ever. Ever. So I have bookends on both sides so I can prepare and I can recover on both sides of the week. And let's just be honest, if I'm overwhelmed, I can't catch up at all. I have to do some work on the weekends, but I really try to get it done through [00:18:00] the week. So my weekends are more free days to reset myself.

Mike: Do the attendees of that meeting, do they know, I know they know the 15, but do they have any kind of a instruction before they come in? Like, hey, you don't want to spend eight minutes on this because we're gonna make this a 15 minute meeting. What kind of instruction might they get before those?

Shane Reeves: They don't normally give a lot of instruction, but when they first sit down, I will say, well, listen, I want to make sure we're making valuable use of your time. And now that I've met you let's get right into it. What do you want to talk about

today? So, I mean, I go right at it because I do want to make sure they can spend 10 minutes talking to me about their history in Tennessee.

And then the last five minutes talking about their child who's disabled, that

needs help from our Medicaid program. So I say let's get right into it.

Mike: I had a lady just this morning. I was in the store. She says, can I talk to you in your office? So I have a little side office. So she came in and. I get halfway in the office. I only have one chair, so I get halfway in. She's kind of straddling the [00:19:00] door still. But you got to be careful of these old ladies with their purses, once that purse goes down and they sit, and that's me now that I'm an old fart, I like to sit.

But once I sit down and the purse goes down, I mean, you're six, seven minutes into it. And then by the time you wrap it up, then I think they call it the Midwestern goodbye. Then it's about a six or seven minute goodbye. And you can spend the whole meeting in that. So that's important to have that timeframe on it.

Shane Reeves: No question about it. No question about it. And I'm doing them a disservice if they come in and they do too much of that. And then the last minute, I have to say, I'm sorry, our time is over because

my assistant will come in and

say, Senator Reeves, you have one minute.

And they will say to me, I've got one minute left.

So I learned early on to say, and every now and then my assistant will have a signal and I'll just say, give me two more minutes.

But if I, if do that too many times and I'm backing up other people,

Mike: And it's not that you to, we're all allowed to have our boundaries, but it kind of helps to have the assistant come in, [00:20:00] because then, not that you're looking for this, I'm tongue in cheek, but then she's the bad guy, you're like, oh, I'd love to sit and chat all day, but, Sally says it's time to move on kind of thing.

Shane Reeves: that happens. that happens.

They, and what I'll typically say is if we did not accomplish everything that you wanted to talk, do today, go back through the process, talk to them again, schedule another Tennessee Thursday, the next few weeks, we'll talk some more.

It works that way. And it really helps people to get to the point, but that has really served me well. Again, bucketing, batching tasks on those Thursdays for Senate has really helped me a lot. Something new I've also started since if you really want to get kind of crazy on

me, If somebody really is pushing me and they want more time if it's somebody I do want to give a lengthier period of time to,

I'll I'll ask them three mornings a week, I go for a walk or a run. I'll ask them to join me on that. I said, meet me at 6 30 a. m. at this park and we're going to go on a walk run for three miles. You talk to me then.

Mike: Really?

Shane Reeves: Yes.

Mike: People take you up on it?

Shane Reeves: [00:21:00] Occasionally, again, I would probably give that to, I wouldn't give it to the little lady with the bag. But if somebody really said, I really just need some of your time to talk about something, I'd say, well, I'm going to be at this park. This Thursday morning at 630 and it's about a three mile loop and I'm going to walk a little, run a little once you meet me and we

will. 

Mike: You're better than me, Shane. I would give that to the little old lady. I'd say you come and hop on the stationary bike with me. She'd be like, there's only one seat. And I'm like, eh, well, that's your problem. 

What's your bedtime with a 5 a. m. wait time? 

Shane Reeves: Until,

that my wife says is the other woman in my life. And I do not get in that chair until it's time to go to sleep.

Mike: yeah, right.

Shane Reeves: So, so I'll get up and walk around the living room and say, is there anything else you want to talk about?

Anything else? Anything else of substance?

Cause when I get in this chair, it's over. And so normally I'm in that chair by 830 and I'd say the next 30 minutes to an hour. I'm done.

And then I'll wake up an hour or so later and go to bed. [00:22:00] 

Mike: in my personal system is, it's rarely that I think of something and do it. That's not on my list. Because I find. If I don't do it the next day, my day's bouncing around. And I'm not saying putting out fires, even fun stuff. Like my wife said, Hey, the seat on our kayak at the cottage broke.

It'd be cool to get a new one of those. And I said you going to look it up or do you want me to look it up? She said, go ahead and look it up. I said, okay. So I get out my to do list and I say kayak and I put it for tomorrow, because that would have been something that I would have spent 20 minutes on right at that point.

Is it terrible? No, but I didn't wake up in the morning saying, my goal this morning is to do the kayak seat. And so almost all that stuff goes on the next day and I might have 30 of those, but then I can decide 

When really the best time would be to do something like that.

Shane Reeves: I see the books behind [00:23:00] your desk. You see the books

back here on my wall as well. I mean, I've read lots and lots of books and, there's really, truly is nothing new under the

sun. I mean, 

Shane Reeves: Stephen Covey really did have a pretty good idea on his old time quadrants,

making sure that you're spending time on things that are non urgent, but they're important.

Mike: Yep. 

Shane Reeves: and that's things like exercise, quiet time,

planning, strategy,

dinner with your wife. Those are things that are important, but they're not urgent. Because if you spend all your time in those urgent areas that are not important, I mean, you're just not gonna be productive and you're

not gonna be Pleased with your week.

But you no matter who you are, whether you are a brand new student or whether you're The governor of Tennessee. Everyone has some say so on how they're spending their time.

 And where you're spending your mind.

Shane Reeves: If you're doing 20 hours a week of Netflix streaming,

knock yourself out but you're choosing to put your head into that.

So, you do have control over those things.

Mike: I think one [00:24:00] the universal problems that I've come across and I think many people have when I hear them talk about meetings and things like that is not having that next action step, who's going to do what? is it going to happen? Things don't leave meetings, unless they have to, they don't leave a meeting as a good idea someone should do.

And I imagine your executive assistant That's one of his or her tasks, I imagine, to make sure that we know who's going to do it and when they're going to do it and how it's going to report back and so on, because if not, you're back there next month talking about the same damn things.

Shane Reeves: That's it. Well, and also again, when I start the year with my assistant four times a year, I have an all staff meeting. It's with

Company. I just had one last week. Every month I'll have a meeting with my, what I call my leadership team of directors. That's about, about 40 people. [00:25:00] Every week I have a meeting with my C suite.

I've got five Guys on just my C suite and those are structure. And because of the way I've got those things laid out, it helps me to be intentional about what that agenda is going to look like. And if. There's no need for us to get together. I don't have any desire to get in a room and just rehash the same things over and over

again.

There, there needs to be some idea of what we're trying to do, something operation, something strategy, something clinical, something political. Where are we going with things?

And then ultimately, like you said, trying to leave there and saying, okay, you work on that, you work on that. And I got these two things.

Mike: Technology wise, Shane, are you doing a lot of that video? Has a lot of that changed since COVID or what's the status on that? 

Shane Reeves: We use Microsoft Teams. everything inside the business. It's, and it's also it's just remarkable how much, obviously this is a big part of your life too now, but, uh, it's just remarkable how much that's changed

Aspect of my [00:26:00] life professionally. Nowadays, I routinely have six to eight. Six to eight meetings every week.

The Tennessee Thursday people, they can choose to do a teams meeting. If they don't want to meet with me in person, they can just

jump in. And my assistant saying, just bringing people in either live by teams or in person, uh, they can do that. This past week, my weekly C suite meeting, all five of us were in different locations and we all just dialed in and talked for 30 minutes just to do a catch up.

So I don't know what we would do without it.

Mike: COVID put that a few years in advance, I imagine before that it's maybe, I'm sorry, but this just is going to work best to do. There's really no apologies. 

Shane Reeves: For every industry I know of,

everybody, it's more than just healthcare or politics. I mean,

it's it's everyone just the amount of telehealth that's going on in my state today,

Mike: Absolutely.

Shane Reeves: to 2018 19 is a hundredfold.

Mike: Absolutely.

Shane Reeves: difference. People that want to, people that want to meet with me from a, [00:27:00] business perspective, if it's an investor in my company and they live in Chicago or Boston or whatever, I'll do this.

Uh, real quickly, 15 minutes and we'll talk because if we had to wait for us to get on the same calendar, it could be a month as

far as face to face. So, I think it's sped up. I think it's just sped everyone's lives up, but it's also made things so much easier.

Mike: Is that all pretty much wrapped into the Microsoft Teams or do you feel you have to do it? Go outside of that 

Shane Reeves: well, let me speak to this first, which has been a big deal for me that I can comment on the

task. I find that when people are calling my office, leaving me voicemails, they're calling my cell phone, leaving me voicemails, they're sending me text. When people are trying to communicate with you in so many different ways, it really slows you down.

So 100 percent of if every single person that calls me, if you call my cell phone, you call my office, you call my executive, I direct everyone to email.

Everybody goes to email and those emails come into my, into me. [00:28:00] If it's a business email, it goes to my executive assistant that does my business. It's a political email. It goes to my executive assistant in Nashville that does my politics. And those two will collaborate and then plug people into the appropriate buckets as far as scheduling is concerned.

And because I've been doing this a while. I typically know what the top five reasons are that people call me.

They want a job. They want me to give money to something. They want me to public speak. They're a vendor wanting me to buy something. There's somebody wanting me to have lunch and mentor them. It's just a variety. So because of that, we kind of have canned ways we handle all of those,

uh, as far as those pieces. Now, as far as my. How I manage my task. Your audience can't see this, but I've created my own tool that really helps me every single, week. I told you about that Friday afternoon, every single Friday, I'll reset my task. What are the most important things I need to work on next week?

What are the handful of things that must be done I'd like to do, et cetera. So that's [00:29:00] constantly a refreshing, constantly to try to get and make sure I'm focusing on the most important things to do for this week. So right now. The seven things that have to get done this week. are are over here to the left side of my desk.

Mike: Is that electronic Shane or Paper.

Shane Reeves: It's just paper. I just, I'd write it down.

Shane Reeves: Yeah, my specific form that I use, I have a section for 12 stone, my business, things I've got to focus on. I have a section for Senate, things I have to focus on. I have a section for personal. Personal things in my life, fixing the kayak seat, things that are in the personal area. I have a financial section, things financially that are important for me to get done. I have a section specifically that has my executive assistant in Nashville's name on it, things she needs to be working on. I have an executive assistant From a Murfreesboro group that she needs to be working on. And the things at the bottom are just the ongoing, perhaps, things I need to keep in the hopper to work on in the future. And every week I've marked off, I clean it. I start [00:30:00] over again. I do that every Friday afternoon.

Mike: My section of those, I've got a no date section that if my mind sees it. like an idea. I'll put it down there. It's not gone, but I'm not doing it right now. And I'm going through there and more often than not I'm deleting the things off of there. So I wasn't a good idea.

I don't need to do that. That's past, those kinds of things, but it's a, of a gift to ourselves to not just have to make that decision at the moment. It's like, I don't need to decide if I'm going to try to land on the moon. I'll put it on my list and more than likely I'll cross it off, but at least it's somewhere.

Shane Reeves: There's something just therapeutic about 

scratching those off every week and adding new things to it moving forward. I'm, I mentioned to you I'm 56. And I can't imagine there's ever going to be a season of my life where [00:31:00] I have more going on than I do right this second.

If so, I can't imagine it right now, what it

could look like between between family and business and politics and

everything everything that is, um, that's going on. But I have really been. I've been thinking lately about the next season that is in front of me when I'm not a CEO, I'm not a senator, and I'm not doing business, a pharmacy podcast, because nobody would care what I say anymore. When, and what does that life look like for me? Because that's going to be a cliff. Uh, in, in my world, cause I I'm a busy person, a

productive person, and I get tired, like I get burned out like everybody else does.

But I do know that once I've had about six months off, I probably driving my wife and everybody crazy.

so so what is that next? What does that fourth quarter of my life look like? from 60, 60 to 80. What is it going to look like physically, spiritually, financially purpose, the big areas of my life to kind of be designing those things now, [00:32:00] vocationally, avocationally. So I've really started working on that.

So you do this again with me in five years and I'll tell you what that plan is.

Mike: that's right. That's important to do. And I've heard it and I've said it here before. Someone told me, they said don't just look out your future in some nebulous way. It's like pick somebody that you maybe admire, maybe not, but pick somebody that you can you Balance your thoughts up against, it's like, wait, what are they doing at 915 on Wednesday morning?

Instead of saying, I'm gonna live somewhere or I'm gonna be somewhere. It's like, well, what am I going to be doing at 915 on a Wednesday morning if I was in that position? Because that's life. I mean, that's the stuff that's going to hit you every day.

Shane Reeves: President George W. Bush was in Murfreesboro two weeks ago at a big private school event that I went to, and he got asked a question specifically about managing time. And he talked about how early on in his career, when he was in his thirties, he always had an addictive personality, drank too much, he smoked too much. And somebody had suggested to him that he needed, I think it might've been [00:33:00] his wife that said, you've got to develop some healthy habits. So he took up jogging. when he was like 39 years of age. And he not only would jog, but he would jog at 11 o'clock every single day,

So he has a chapter in his book called, It's 11 a.

1. I Must Be Jogging.

And the point being, to what we're talking about, which is, it helps to have those key, those keystone habits. that are non negotiables in your life that you're going to do over and over again at that season, uh, to build the rest of your life around. Because if you're going to run 11 o'clock every day, do you really want to come back, smoke a cigarette?

Probably not. So it, it just, it leads to other areas.

So I think developing some of those make a big difference. And if you look at people out there in their eighties, you lose your health, if you lose your friends, if you lose purpose, you lose a handful of things. You don't want to live anymore.

So do what you can to protect those handful of things that are important. And [00:34:00] hopefully even when you do die whatever situation you're in, you've at least died in such a way that you felt like you you died still making a difference, 

Mike: personally, my listeners have heard this, but my personal hobby is sight reading at piano music, it's something I started years ago. In the last five years, I've really been dedicated to it, and my goal is to just like a book, I'll pick up music I've never seen before, and I probably will never see it again.

I might, but it's like I just want to read music like people read a magazine. Among a couple other things, some family or walking and things like that. But if I get that done every day, Last Friday, it was before work in the morning on my electric piano, but usually it's on my piano in the other room.

If it's 1130 at night, I will do that. I will not miss a weekday doing that because I picture my future self thanking me. I picture my retired self thanking me. It's just, thing and it's like the whole world could go to pot.

But if I get my piano practice in for that day, it's like somehow I'm beating [00:35:00] world out and I'm moving forward somehow.

Shane Reeves: I would love to hear more about that at some point in time, what you're actually doing, sight reading,

music, piano, because I've thought about that in my sixties, I would love to learn. To play the piano in, I just think it'd be something I would enjoy doing it.

I don't know if I want to sit down and take lessons for 10 years to do it. But that's, it is fascinating to me. I'd love to learn about that at some point in

time. 

But the other piece of that, that you did mention that's fascinating is. I look at my life, I'm pretty confident what I would go back and tell the Shane from 25 years ago.

I know the advice I would give him, but what I've really been thinking of recently is, what would the 75 year old Shane come back and tell me? And I'm fairly confident he would tell me, take care of your health.

He would say, Don't neglect your family. Make good decisions with your money. While you still feel good, travel and experience as much as you can learn some new hobbies, find purpose.

I sense what I think he would tell me.

So I'm trying to follow that [00:36:00] future self advice. 

Mike: My parents and in-laws, three out of the four at like 70, they, that was it for them. They lived a little bit longer, but no more travels after that, nothing. I just talked to the neighbor yesterday, and they just retired, and they say there's a ghost stage.

A slow stage and a no stage or something like that, as you retire, if you're starting things at 65 or so, at least from my perspective, History of my family. You've got about five years, doing the stuff you're talking about, going to Hawaii and things like that before, your bladder can't handle it or something like that.

 There's not much time , in that time that people think that there's going to be that time.

Shane Reeves: Yeah, I read a book years ago and I can't recall the name of it. That talked about trying to decide all the things in life that you really would like to do, the places you want to go, the hobbies you want to do, the things that are left and to break them into five year windows,

because there's things I can do between 55 and 60. That I can't do between 75 and 80, but to try and to break, okay, between [00:37:00] these five years, I'm doing this, these five years, I'm doing this. Just to try to, once again, put your life in order, as far as what you're going to focus on, uh, moving forward. But we shall see, my friend, we

shall see. 

Mike: Shane, speaking about the future, is there anything that you would, take on if the opportunity was there? And I'll throw some things out. Governor the stuff we're talking about now, being on stages across the world and stuff, is that stuff like, I don't want to do it if it happened, it'd be cool. I kind of want to do it. Where do you sit on some of those?

I don't want to say bigger things because they're not bigger for some people. For some people it's less, but where do you sit on some of those things?

Shane Reeves: Well, for one thing today, I have no margin to consider anything else. I don't want to write a book because if people started reading it and they actually wanted me to come speak about it, I would not have any time to go speak.

I have so little time to do a number of new things. But I might at some point, things like governor, [00:38:00] politics has changed. Politics is, has gotten to be very different in Tennessee and throughout the country,

And it's gotten to be a lot more mean spirited and the way people get elected nowadays is you have to run farther and farther to the right or to the left to get elected, and you have to pander to the extreme bases on both sides, and if you're not angry and you're not throwing out red meat to people on the far left or the far right on either sides,

you can't win.

So you take the governor of the state of Tennessee. Do I think I could be a governor? Sure. I'm naturally wired as an administrator or more so than I am as a legislator, but I'm not sure I'm electable

Even if I had the time, even if I sold my business and had plenty of time and plenty of money, I'm not completely sure I'm electable because I'm not going to become that far.

I'm a Republican.

But if I was a Republican or a Democrat, but I'm a Republican, I'm not sure I'm [00:39:00] willing to run as hard and as far to the right

that's necessary the things I care about probably aren't sexy enough to help me get elected. the things that really matter to people

are things like education and

healthcare and infrastructure and public safety and jobs.

I'm not going to run for office. And the only thing I want to talk about is that we need to go build the wall.

I mean, okay, can't build a wall. We're in Tennessee. But to some extent you have to be reasonable about what you can or can't do. But I think I would enjoy being governor and I think it can make a real difference for Tennessee as governor. I just don't think I'm electable.

Mike: I had a customer who ran for the congressional seat in the state for state government. And he just couldn't believe how just nasty it got so quickly. You had big, pretty big guns. Worrying or being concerned about his seat more than maybe I thought it would be. [00:40:00] And he said it was just ugly, just so ugly.

And this is like trying to represent the state congressional office. it's worse as it gets higher, but he said never again, he lost and he said, never again.

Shane Reeves: So I would say two things. Number one is if you have anyone out there who is seriously considering running for office, especially if they're a pharmacist or someone who wants to get into office and they want to get some real life experience about it, email me, call me. I want to see pharmacists.

I want to see people who are healthcare minded, people who want to get involved. So contact me. I'll make time. We'll find a Thursday,

Mike: Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Shane Reeves: But the second aspect of this is whoever it is, do not underestimate how incredibly. difficult. Running for office is. It is nasty, my friend. People when they're running for office, they will get negative and they will attack you, and they'll attack your family, and they'll [00:41:00] attack your background, and your business, and your history, and everything about you.

So you better get ready. For somebody to just bludgeon And then once you've gotten elected, as you vote on issues, it only gets worse. And of course, social media and mainstream media, all those things have just made it even harder, number of people that I always joke around at any given time, 50 percent of Tennessee hates me

for, for no, For no good reason.

I have the same, But I just social media, I use social media as a means to just communicate things I'm doing. I do not get in these crazy merry go rounds with people that just want to. Just hate on me.

Uh, if they want to meet with me, you can schedule a time on Tennessee Thursdays.

that's what I do.

But politics is nasty. So if somebody's going to run, you better be ready for

1. But we need good people to continue to stay involved and motivated and interested because our, the state of Tennessee, the state of Michigan, we need good people running

for office. We need [00:42:00] them.

Mike: My son tells this to me, sometimes you get people, they're so against one side. And, he says, look, It's one vote, if someone doesn't like what you're doing, that 50%, they don't have to hate you. They go in on the Tuesday and they pick one vote.

 Shane, let me see if I have this right. And you alluded to it. And I tell it to everybody. I don't know if it's right or not, but it makes sense to me. You remember back in the day, the Gerald Ford days and things, and these guys would fight all day in Congress and they would basically leave at night and maybe go get a drink together, that kind of stuff.

At least that's what I was told. And then were on the left or the right, I heard it said that people are, in reality. If you walk out with someone on the other side, you're basically going to treat someone on the street the same way. You're both going to try to lift them up, maybe give them a little bit of bite for [00:43:00] lunch.

Help them out, this kind of thing. Now there's, a lot of different visions, but when reality hits, humans and we care for people and things like that. theory, and it's not mine, but my thought is that social media, People can't come together at the end of the day. In other words, whether they're a politician or not, or just reading the news, they've read something.

And instead of going back to their family, maybe, and neighbors and talking over things they might not agree on. They're going into their camps, their Facebook cams and Twitter cams. And now they're getting it from 5 PM till midnight and they're getting more entrenched. And it just seems that you never have this meeting in the middle that real life brings about.

Is that close?

Shane Reeves: I don't think I could say it a lot better than that. I think there is 10 percent on both sides. And that 10 percent groups, they are [00:44:00] very small, but they are so loud

and they're so angry 

and they're so motivated that. You, when you decide to run for office, it's that 10 percent on one side of the other that will attack you relentlessly. I believe that 80 percent of people are somewhere in the middle, a little right of center, little left center.

And the truth is everybody kind of wants the same things across the board. You can take democratic issues, which are typically, if you're talking about immigration or education or Social, social services

or environment.

Well, there's a A lot of Republicans care about that too. You come over and you look at typical Republican issues, if it might be things about small government and a strong military. There's a lot of Democrats care about those things too. We're not that far apart,

 but these folks on the extremes ultimately impact elections. And since they impact [00:45:00] elections when people are running, those groups are.

I could give you, I could give you examples of some of those, I hate to say I'm here on your show, but those organized groups on these extremes that will put everything they have around money to, to beat you because of one vote. I can

have one vote. This coming Thursday night, I'm speaking to a group of young Republicans here in my community. There's probably a hundred of them coming out. And one of the things I'm going to do with this group when they're in there is I'm going to hand out ahead of time, a list of 20 issues. And I'm going to have them rank on a scale of one to 10, how strong they feel about those issues. Some, if you feel incredibly strong about an issue, low taxes, you make it a 10. If it's something that you don't really care all that much about, and it's an issue, immigration, it's a three. And at the very end, I will have them add up their score. So 20 issues, You can get a 10, the max you can get would be [00:46:00] 200. So I'm going to say, I want everybody in the room that has 150 or up to please stand. Well, I guarantee I'll have 20 or 30 people stand up. And I said, so everybody else that's sitting down in the room, you're a RINO, which is basically you're Republican in name only.

Serious Republican because you're sitting down. And then I'll say, see how ridiculous that is. just because these people are just a little bit more committed on these issues than you are, you're going to attack the rest of us. And we have to be able to sit down and dialogue

and recognize that my wife and I don't agree on these 20 issues. It just,

Mike: Exactly.

Shane Reeves: we just don't.

So 

can we not find a handful of things we agree on? Let's build on it.

but we really have a lack of civility. There's a decay. There's a decay of civility in our society and you see it everywhere nowadays. Just turn on the news for 15 minutes and it's everywhere.

You look,

Mike: Shane, when I was a kid there were two types of people, [00:47:00] according to my mom. There was people that I knew from the neighborhood and church and sports coaches and things like that. That was one side. other side was hippies. so if someone had a little bit longer hair, probably shorter than some of my sons do, they were hippies.

Here's what I thought about the hippies all those years. The hippies they became pretty fascinating to me because they were people that were at colleges and they shared their mind and they were liberal thoughts, opening those up, things like that.

Boy, it seemed like to me now, maybe I haven't been following closely enough, but it seemed like that to me. Changed overnight because I watched some shows now where you get some talking head who's visiting at a campus and maybe they're trying to razzle things up a little bit, but it seems like at least they're having a conversation that is conversing, not agreeing, but conversing.

some of these, [00:48:00] what I used to call hippies, they're screaming at the top of their lungs. Not. comment against the views , but a comment to shut them up. Your thoughts are not welcome here. And I heard it. Well, I heard it a few weeks ago, the guy said, Hey, if you're no longer talking, you're going to be fighting because at least talking, you're doing it with your mouth instead of your arms and things.

But boy, it just threw me that back in the day the hippies were the people that accepted every thought. And now it seems just the opposite to me.

Shane Reeves: I just don't know how we've gotten here, but we just have, we have so little discourse and the ability to communicate and solve problems. And, Tennessee is in Michigan or microcosms of minding your world. But in Washington, DC. The differences, the divide between those groups are so massive that everything's about political points, 100 percent of it.

And so to truly try to solve some of the enormous [00:49:00] issues we have in this country, and we do enormous issues, I just don't see it happening anytime soon. I really don't. And that's unfortunate because I feel like I can sit down with people, Democrats, independents, Republicans, libertarians. We can find something to agree on. We just can't. There's no reason to be mean spirited.

Mike: some of the, social media again, In the old days, to give of yourself , you had to start by obeying your parents and then having the lawn look good and then, showing up for your little league team and then going to school and pretty soon going to college and learning about these deeper issues and then maybe lending yourself to the communities either as business owner or someone in politics.

And that's how you grew and help these very complex issues. So complex. Now though, it's just easier to, spout off. And with your voice, you think you've become at the same level of other people and you're not bringing [00:50:00] anything to this complicated issue typically.

And I'm not saying you have to stay quiet until you totally understand something, but to really get in there and push without. Lending to the complex issue just doesn't seem productive.

Shane Reeves: it's not. I speak to a number of elementary schools and. Schools and high schools, with different groups. And I kind of have my typical, what does it mean to be a Senator type of speech I give. But at the end of all of those talks, the, I'll always allow them to turn in little postcards with questions for me. So most of the time it's things like, do you have a bodyguard and do you have a private jet

Mike: Yeah. 

Shane Reeves: and the answer is no.

Mike: Yeah, right. 

Shane Reeves: But but occasionally I will get a question from a young person that is thought provoking. So last fall I had a young lady, I think she was in eighth grade, and she said, Senator Reeves, why don't Republicans care about poor [00:51:00] people? And I said, wow. I said, We do care about poor people. And I said, and Democrats care about poor people. I just think we're coming at it from different angles. I just believe the best way to get out of poverty is for you to get a good education and for you to get a job and for you to wait till you get married if you have children, and then for you to, Work your butt off for about 10 or 15 years and when you're in your mid 30s, you'll be out of poverty. Now you can also get out of poverty if the government's trying to help you over time when they're paying for housing and paying for your health care and paying for your

educational those areas. So we do care about poor people. It's just we have different philosophies on how to get out of that

along the way. So we as Republicans and Democrats ought to be able to talk about that together.

can the government help and where can the private sector help and where can we bring those two areas together? But it's very difficult. They're very difficult, my friend, very difficult.

Mike: To not listen to [00:52:00] that and to make it. when there's even an opposing view heard it Shane you said it and certainly alluded to it, but I've heard that You want to get in front of people. You got to be an angry politician.

And that's just kind of goes against what we're talking about here.

Shane Reeves: Well, again, that's why I'm probably not electable at a higher office. If I wanted to become a U. S. Senator, if I wanted to become a governor it would be very challenging for me because that's not who I'm going to be to win.

I'm just not, I'm not going to call people names and I'm not going to scream and I'm not going to try to make everybody afraid to get elected.

I'm going to say, this is who I am.

This is where I came from.

These are things we need to work on and here's how I think we ought to do it.

Um, but sometimes you can't. You can't win elections doing that.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I was kind of thought it'd be fun to be a politician when I was a kid, just for the notoriety. But then I realized that views were too I'm not saying they were right, but they were too one sided. you really have to up [00:53:00] to be a politician.

And I know you're not getting it that you're saying you really have to be nasty at those other levels. 

Shane Reeves: Yeah. You have to play to the red, that 10% crowd.

'cause that 10% crowd are the loud ones that are mobilized, that are gonna spend money to beat you.

The people in the middle they're not super engaged until

you get right up to election time. So I put a palm card and it comes in the mail to your house.

And I talk about, well, these are the things I did to try to make a difference in the certificate of need laws in Tennessee.

People don't know what Certificate of Need means.

in those red meat issues.

And I'm gonna go vote for this guy, 

Mike: remember Jay Leno did a thing. where he'd walk up with all of the talking points from the one side of the aisle 

That they agree with. 

Mike: and say that it was from the leader of the other side of the aisle and people wouldn't agree with anything.

They'd say those are terrible policies, so it's just too much. The optics are too strong. I think then the reality [00:54:00] 

Well, Shane, golly! There's so many things you're doing, with your 300 and so many employees and your, 12 stone business, your Political endeavors.

But I feel we've talked about the most important stuff because I'm a firm believer that if you don't get things organized, one, you can't do the things you want to do, and two, your mind is so flustered. There's no room to dream about being in politics or running a business and things like that, and the family stuff you want to do.

So thanks for spending that kind of time on this. Getting tools together in order to shape your future. So very fascinating.

Shane Reeves: Thank you. I could spend one week with anybody that's listening to this podcast, and if I could watch where they spend their time, where they spend their mind, where they spend their money, and who are their key relationships, one week, and I can give you a pretty good sense of what their life's going to look like in three to five [00:55:00] years.

Because it puts you on a path, and that's where you go. Everything worth doing is hard. Until it's not,

And it eventually does not become easy if you have the systems in place to keep the momentum going. But I'm delighted to be on your show today, and I hope this adds some value to somebody out there.

Mike: Well, Shane, you're a busy guy and I appreciate you taking time out to speak to us. I look forward to keeping in touch.

Shane Reeves: Great. Thank you. Blessings. ​ 

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