Dieting From The Inside Out
- Mar 6, 2023

Creating Foundational Change with Emily Frisella | DFIO Ep.258

About Today’s Episode:

I have a VERY special guest for you today—Emily Frisella.

I was actually a little nervous doing this interview because of how much I look up to her!

Emily is the wife of Andy Frisella and together they own and operate 11 companies, one of which is 1st Phorm—which as many of you know is a sponsor of this show.

We get into a lot in this episode. We talk a lot about business, we talk about success, and what I want you to take from this episode are the principles we talk about.

These foundational pieces can be applied to your transformation and your life to create positive, lasting change.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction

00:41 About Today’s Episode

03:03 Our Sponsors

05:15 Emily’s New Book

07:40 Balancing Loving Yourself and Working on Yourself

16:20 Why So Many People Aren’t Successful

18:32 How Emily Balances Her Life

28:51 Enjoying The Process

30:56 The Dichotomy of Discipline and Grace

33:48 How to Get Started with Personal Development

37:35 What’s Next For Emily

38:37 Jared's Outro and How to Apply for Coaching

Transcription (click to expand)

Emily’s New Book:

Emily recently published a new book, Relationships First. The idea was brought to her by the publisher who Emily has published her cookbooks with.

In the book, Emily shares lessons from business and coaching to guide you toward the work ethic, communication skills, and personal values that every business needs to succeed.

Balancing Loving Yourself and Working on Yourself:

Emily believes that many people aren’t aware of how good we are designed to feel.

People get used to feeling a certain way. Say they eat fast food all the time or party and stay out late—when that’s a person’s life, they don’t have a point of reference for how good they could feel if they weren’t doing those things. When a person has these habits, they probably won’t feel good in general.

When someone starts moving their body, drinking water, and taking care of themselves, they realize how good they feel—and if they go back to eating fast food, and feel like crap—they now have a point of reference for how good they can feel.

When it comes to the advice of “loving yourself,” Emily believes that the statement was originally intended to be “love yourself enough to make progress.” However, the way society has twisted the idea of self-love has turned it into a way to pacify people—and sometimes keep them in a dangerous state.

If you’re obese, you aren’t healthy—but you should love yourself enough to get healthy and be there for your family, play with your kids, etc.

Emily believes that self-love requires telling yourself the truth and if you get in shape, start eating right, etc., you will have a lot more of yourself to give to the people and things in your life that you value.

Emily finds that oftentimes people excuse themselves into complacency. She says that you don’t have to look at getting healthy as “I have 100 lbs to lose.” Instead, you can say, “I’m going to do these healthy habits today,” and then each day you repeat those same healthy habits again.

You look at every day as “it’s just today.”

Something that Andy and Emily tell people with 75 Hard is that it’s just one day and that it’s just linking one day 75 times in a row.

Jared has a similar tactic with his clients who have a larger amount of weight to lose.

Instead of thinking that they need to lose 100 lbs, he suggests they position their weight loss as just 1 pound 100 times.

Jared finds that this approach typically forces people to be more present in their actions instead of focusing on the end goal as a distraction.

Emily often sees that when someone is focused on the end goal they are more likely to give up, but those who are able to take it incrementally—and get the results beyond just physical, mental, and emotional—can’t believe how long they waited to invest in themselves.

Jared believes that a parallel can be drawn to business: people will tend to overestimate what they can do in a shorter period of time, but over a longer duration, if you take things little by little, you’ll often be surprised by your accomplishments.

Emily emphasizes that it’s that consistent effort every single day that adds up. Even though it may seem like it doesn’t add up to much in the short term, over time it makes a big impact.

She uses the example of a hail storm. One piece of hail isn’t a big deal, but one piece of hail over and over again makes a big impact—it’s the same with your habits.

Why So Many People Aren’t Successful:

Emily believes that too many people spend their whole lives waiting. They wait for the ‘perfect’ time, situation, relationship, etc., instead of just starting.

Jared says that in the world of transformation they assume that if someone is comfortable waiting for a perfect situation—when they do start, it’s likely that they will throw in the towel.

Emily agrees that those who wait for the ‘perfect’ moment are more likely to quit when things get rocky. She points out that people need to understand that they are never going to be ready. She uses the example of how people say that you’re never ready for kids, you just have them.

How Emily Balances Her Life:

Emily utilizes time management skills, but she doesn’t believe that there is such a thing as ‘balance’ in life. She believes that it’s about what is right and works for you in your life.

She always plans her full week on Sunday evenings, using a ‘Priorities, Needs, and Wants’ method.

Priorities are non-negotiables. This could be doing a podcast, having a doctor's appointment, a meeting, etc.

Needs are things that need to get done that week, but aren’t as urgent.

Wants are the things you want to do—like getting a manicure.

She starts by making a list of her priorities, needs, and wants. She then plugs the priorities into her planner for the week ahead first, followed by the needs, and lastly the wants. If she doesn’t have space for the wants, they get pushed to the next week.

Emily also doesn’t overbook herself. Five years ago, she felt that when her planner was packed, she was successful—but in reality, she wasn’t as productive as she could be. She was just busy.

Now she focuses on things that will move the needle, which leaves her with more fulfillment and happiness—and she doesn’t have the burnout of being overbooked.

Emily also typically tries to end her day at 5:30 pm so she and Andy can relax at night.

Emily points out that those who believe they don’t have time should audit themselves, like looking at their screen time.

For example, she limits herself to a maximum of 30 minutes a day on Instagram (with occasional exceptions when she makes a post and is responding to comments and DMs).

Jared finds that many people switch on a victim mentality, coming up with all the reasons why they “can’t do it,” whereas Emily stops, prioritizes her week, and builds her life around her ambitions.

Emily believes you need to be proactive, not reactive.

If you are proactive, you can be more relaxed and happier. Being proactive, everything gets better and you can be at ease knowing that you got everything done that you needed to get done.

Emily lives by the principle, “do first want you don’t want to do most.”

She goes into her office and does the thing she’s dreading the most first, which she finds makes the whole day easier.

Jared admits that he needs to do a better job of this himself because he always wants to do more and get more done when he really needs to scale back and focus on the important things.

Emily also has something she calls a ‘dungeon day’—a day where she doesn’t take any calls and doesn’t do any podcasts.

She describes it as being an offensive and defensive day. She goes through emails, does research, and handles the nitty gritty work that always needs to be done, but you never seem to have time for. This day also allows for makeup time if she has missed appointments.

Enjoying The Process:

Emily and Andy both love the building phase of business. They love scaling their businesses and evolving them.

They love it because they can be creative with it. Even though they are working, they enjoy what they do—and though it’s cliche—there is something to creating a life you don’t need a vacation from.

Emily does point out that since she and Andy don’t have kids, it may be different for someone who does because with kids there is no downtime.

The Dichotomy of Discipline and Grace:

Emily says that it’s different from person to person, but she does believe that through creating the right relationships, you can marry discipline and grace. She views it like a strand of DNA—they are wound around one another.

How to get Started with Personal Development:

She believes that reading is the best place to start, but if you aren’t a reader she says to look for personal development podcasts.

Having self-awareness through personal development allows you to better navigate issues and let go of your ego.

She also says to audit who you're following on social media and follow people and pages that will light you up.

She believes that 75% of what you follow should be things that inspire and educate you and the remaining 25% should be for entertainment.

What’s Next For Emily:

Emily is most excited about growing her business, Paper and Plan Co., and is toying around with the idea of writing another book—which would be a follow-up to Relationships First.