Why Inner Excellence Creates Outer Success

John Jantsch (00:00.773)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jim Murphy. He’s a high performance coach, author, speaker, and the creator of the Inner Excellence Methodology. He’s coached world-class athletes, Olympians, and business leaders, helping them achieve breakthrough results by mastering their inner game. His own journey from minor league baseball player to elite coach led him to develop a practical spiritual approach to peak performance.

that goes beyond tactics and into mindset, heart, and presence. We’re going to talk about his book, Interpresence, or I’m sorry, Interexcellence, Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life. So Jim, welcome to the show.

Jim (00:44.194)

Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (00:45.851)

Few years ago, I had Captain Sullivan on the show. You may recall he is the airline pilot that landed his airplane after taking off in New York City in the Hudson River. Do you remember that a few? Sully, right. And then I turned it into a movie. Of course he had a book. So I had to start that show, you know, as he said, well, I have, you know, I have to tell that story, you know, every time I now am asked to talk about, you know, how that went. So he certainly had the story down. Not nearly as dramatic, but.

Jim (00:57.336)

So weak.

John Jantsch (01:15.451)

You have a bit of an AJ Brown story. want to, I’m sure people are asking you and I’m sure you love telling it. You’re probably getting tired of telling it, but you want to tell us kind of your kind of moment happened. Gosh, what was that now? Eight, nine months ago.

Jim (01:30.254)

Yeah, John, I’m very grateful to tell it. So on January 12th, uh, AJ Brown was a, he’s a wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles. It’s a wild card game Packers versus the Eagles. Um, Sunday night football, the only NFL game on and, um, in middle of the game, he’s reading the football reading, reading inter excellence on the sidelines during the football game. And so the TV station zooms in on it’s like, what is AJ Brown doing? And then, oh my gosh, he was reading a book and Kevin Brown and

John Jantsch (01:37.051)

me.

John Jantsch (01:57.435)

you

Jim (01:59.81)

Tom Burkhart made a big deal about it afterwards. They asked him, what were you doing? Were you bored? Were you? He said, no, it’s a book that I read before I bring to every game. Read it before the game to get centered and read it after every drive to get re centered. My teammates call it the recipe. And so that was the first time I actually heard about him doing this. I saw a picture of him on social media of like a month earlier, but I had no context. didn’t know anything about it. And so I found out what the rest of the world.

that he was doing this at that time. And just an amazing thing for him to do to be true to himself, that find something that helps him be better at what he does and to be more fearless and show all of us that we all have time to read.

John Jantsch (02:40.687)

Well, and then of course the punchline, I suppose, what happened to you next?

Jim (02:48.424)

a few things, john, a few things. Yeah, my world changed a lot. The you know, the message that selfless is fearless, as you know, spread around the world now, love, wisdom and courage. And so the book had sold maybe seven or eight or 9000 copies in nine years. mean, sorry, 16 years, initially was was published in 2009 by McGraw Hill. And then I

John Jantsch (02:49.563)

Hehehehehe

Jim (03:18.329)

put out a revised edition self-published in 2018 or 2020. And then so that’s the book AJ Brown has been reading. And since then, it’s sold, I don’t know, close to half a million copies, I would say.

John Jantsch (03:32.123)

So, I’m curious, how did you print the books without that sort of immediate demand?

Jim (03:42.21)

Yeah, so it’s amazing how the world is now with Amazon and they print on demand. so if

John Jantsch (03:44.645)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (03:48.527)

Yeah, but they were able to print on that kind of demand. Yeah, yeah.

Jim (03:52.27)

Well, apparently they did run out at some point. So they’ve got print centers all over the world. And so there was a time when the demand was so high, it’s sold tens of thousands of copies every day for the first few weeks that they did run out at one point.

John Jantsch (04:09.435)

Yeah, that’s a crazy story. Well, good for you. know, frankly, I love to hear stories like that. Persons out there doing their work and you know, as a magical moment happened, I think we all deserve it. You start the book talking about your own struggles as a minor league player, the mindset, you know, performance anxiety, self doubt. Would you say that that was instrumental to you developing kind of your own framework?

Jim (04:37.78)

yeah, yeah, absolutely. My whole life since I was a little kid, I obsessed about being a superstar. I was going to play in the NFL like A.J. Brown or I was going to be in the NBA or Major League Baseball. And so when I got drafted by the Cubs, it was a dream come true. But I had a vision problem that was with me for my entire professional career. I played five years in the minors and then eventually had to retire because of it. And my identity was completely wrapped up in my role as a pro athlete. And when I lost it, I felt like I lost everything. And so

I got a job with him. asked got out asked to coach a high school baseball team in inner city Seattle and I had no interest in coaching but I took the job was driving a truck for FedEx and we went undefeated and I realized wow I love coaching. Who knew? And then so I went on this journey to become a pro baseball coach. I got went to grad school got a job with the Texas Rangers two weeks after graduation. So now I felt like I was somebody again and then I quit six months into the first season and so.

devastated again my identity, you know, I was somebody and I lost it and then somebody again I lost it and so I kind of got tired of this merry-go-round of feeling like I was someone and no one and end up leaving for the desert to go live a life of solitude to figure out what to do with my life and that’s where Interactionless was born. I spent five years full-time writing and researching how to have peace and confidence under the most pressure and what I found John was that that The path to having the most peace and confidence under the most pressure is the same path of building an extraordinary life

when filled with deep contentment, joy and confidence, independent of circumstance. It’s a wholehearted path where you understand what the human heart deeply needs and wants and how to get it.

John Jantsch (06:15.611)

So you started touching on this idea of your identity and you spend a lot of time or one of the core principles really is kind of this idea of letting go of the need to control the outcome, which is, you know, being very attached to the outcome. Can you, do you have a client story, executive athlete, I suppose you don’t want to name names, but where, you you help somebody kind of overcome that control of the outcome.

Jim (06:41.582)

Yeah, I’ll tell you. When I was at the Ryder Cup years ago, it’s one of the biggest events in golf pro golf. You have the team USA versus Team Europe. And one of the players top 10 in the world said Jim, I’m too attached to the results of my my performance. You know, I get too tense. What can I do? And I said, Well, imagine there’s a little kid who loves lollipops, and he’s got a lollipop and you want to take it from him, but you don’t want to struggle. Is there any way you could get him to give you the lollipop?

by volunteering it to give it to you. And he said, you know, I don’t know. And I said, well, what if you had a bigger lollipop and asked him to trade? And he said, he’d probably trade. What kid wouldn’t trade a small lollipop for a bigger one? I said, that’s what you need. Your lollipop is too small. Your lollipop is, I just want to get birdies and I want to win the tournament. And I, you know, I want to be successful. I want to get some tangible results. That’s way too small. First of all, you don’t even know if that’s good for you to get birdies and

Good results and have more success. Is that going to be good for you in the long run and your family? You don’t know what you need is to pursue fullness of life and develop yourself in that way, which we know is good for you where you feel fully alive and make that your your Pursuit go for the whole candy store. Don’t settle for these little these 10 these tangible things that you don’t even know if will make you happy let alone fulfilled

John Jantsch (08:06.651)

You talk a lot about fear. You identify a number of them. Um, one of them of which is true. don’t care what you’re doing. Fear of failure shows up in a lot of people’s lives when they pursue anything. Um, I’m curious. I’m a huge baseball fan. That’s, that’s my sport. Um, and you know, it’s very cliche to say, but I’ll say it anyway. You know, the best baseball players fail 70 % of the time, right? In the, in the, uh, hitting world. Um,

So, so how does, I mean, how do they get through that and you know, that, that idea of I’m, afraid to fail, but you know, and, what’s weird about it is 20 hits in a season might make the difference between being seen as a failure or being seen as, as a superstar. So, you know, how do you, how do you, how do, how did you, or how do you see baseball players in particular? This would apply to all athletes, I suppose, but I just.

I feel like baseball has more failure in it than any other sport. So, you know, how do, how do you, they deal with that?

Jim (09:11.534)

You got to redefine success to something that’s meaningful to you and then break it down into smaller components Specifically, how do I want to feel in my life? How do I want to live? Who do I want to become? Who am I meant to become? And What is my purpose? What do I value most if you’re not clear on those things then the default is I just need more success I need more base hits and But that’s too far out of your control. It’s just you

John Jantsch (09:37.115)

Mm-hmm.

Jim (09:40.844)

Now you’re just happy if you get hit, sad if you don’t, and stressed when you need it, and you’re never gonna be your best when you’re stressed. We need to have freedom to fail to be your best. There needs to be an element of joy and excitement to be your best. In order to have that joy and excitement, we need to focus on the reason why you want the base hit. Why do you want the base hit? Well, so I can have a good batting average. Why do I want that? So I can become an all-star. Why do you want that?

So I can make more money. What do you want that? Well, I want a great life. Really. I want a more comfortable life. Well, what is it that you really want? Is it just a $10 million house on the water? Is that what you want? Or is it what you think that will give you, which is great experiences and deep enriching relationships where you’re learning and growing and making a difference, where you feel fully alive? Is that what you okay? That’s what you want? Well, I’m going show you how to go for that directly and let everything else be added to you.

John Jantsch (10:33.932)

So we have been talking mostly about athletes, but you coach a lot of business leaders who are certainly not performing in the same way. Is it any different or is it really basically get down to the same bottom line?

Jim (10:49.582)

Exact same thing. I don’t teach people what to do, how to do their job. Unless it’s pro baseball, I might have had a few couple things there, but it doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO of Google or you’re a pro athlete or Olympic swimmer or anybody. It’s really how do you be fully engaged in the moment when you’re performing unattached to what you’re trying to do? How can you expand what you believe is possible? How can you perform with freedom and passion?

John Jantsch (10:58.361)

Yeah.

Jim (11:18.848)

unattached to what you’re trying to do. And that’s, that’s everything I’m telling you about is really clarifying these things that are most meaningful to you and, pursuing them.

John Jantsch (11:28.123)

So athletes today, I mean, obviously they’ve trained their body. mean, that’s kind of a lot. That’s, that’s what comes with the deal. Increasingly, you’re seeing sports psychologists. You know, you’re actually seeing people in the dugout, uh, that are, you know, mindset related. Business owners don’t necessarily, well, a lot of them don’t train their body like an athlete, even though they need to perform, but they certainly don’t have the same idea of training their mind. Are there exercise? I know there are exercises in your system. Uh, you want to talk a little bit about.

ones that are really geared towards entrepreneurs or even have a lot of marketers on this show that would help them train their mind.

Jim (12:08.684)

Yeah, well, with the InterEx Lancers, the number one goal every day is to learn and grow. If you want to be great at business, we need to be creative. We can’t be attached to the results and circumstances. We need to think clearly. We have to have a clear mind and unburdened heart. If you want to be great at anything, business included, we can’t be caught up in the past and future. so learn and grow every day is the number one goal. And then within that, we have four daily goals.

Give the best of what you have some days it’s not going to be good. Be present, be grateful, focus on your routines and only what you can control.

John Jantsch (12:46.575)

There certainly is, you talk openly about the spiritual elements of what you teach, presence, gratitude, acceptance, in addition to like performance metrics. Do you ever, especially with business leaders, do you ever get any skepticism, pushback that, just like give me the tools, give me the, you I don’t need that woo-woo stuff.

Jim (13:09.68)

yeah, yeah. Pro athletes, business leaders. Yeah, definitely. If you’re a high achiever, then you don’t want the woo woo. You want tangible results. You don’t want to mess around. You don’t want to waste your time. And I get it. The question is if something is really important to you, if this is the biggest year of your career, maybe your free agent or maybe you have a massive deal you’re working on or just trying to get a job and you need the money.

The more important it is to you, then the more important the process of how you live and what you do every day is, you know, then it’s more important. So the question is, what’s the best process for you to be your best every day? And that’s what InterEx is, is I present to you what I think, what I’ve learned is the best process for the majority of people to be fully engaged in the moment, heart, mind and body on a test and what they’re trying to do.

John Jantsch (14:02.297)

You talk about in the book embracing, excuse me, vulnerability and even failure in some cases. You want to talk a little bit about whether it’s on your own personal life or with the client where you’ve helped, we’re embracing that imperfection has kind of led to a breakthrough.

Jim (14:21.922)

Yeah, I define humility as an accurate view of self, not overinflated and not under inflated. And so

John Jantsch (14:25.563)

Right.

Jim (14:34.382)

pro athletes and most people they come to me because they’re underperforming and essentially they come to me wanting they’re obsessing about things that they want can’t control and then they just try harder and then the trying harder causes them to be more tense more anxious and worse performance and so then they just that causes more stress and then they feel like they need to become more needy and so it’s just this endless loop and so essentially

They’re coming to me for low level needs and desires. Become world number one. Be the best in the industry. That’s a low level need is, well, one, I call it low level because you don’t even know if it’s good for you, let alone gonna make you happy. Say you got a million followers or $10 million or $10 million house on the water. Is that gonna make you happy? You might think so and hopefully, but it may not. And so, but that’s people come to me because I’ve helped people achieve extraordinary success.

John Jantsch (15:09.275)

Mm-hmm.

Jim (15:32.438)

generally most people their first year together, they have the best year of their careers. It’s because we focus on developing themselves as people giving inner strength and inner peace, let everything else be added to them. So, this is the crucial thing.

John Jantsch (15:48.773)

So how do you balance the fact that, especially in the field that you’re working with, mean, that people are taught their entire lives to strive for excellence, to hustle, to work harder, to outwork everybody else. I how do you balance that? Because you’re not, I mean, they obviously have to have the skills they have to put into work, but you’re telling them something completely different than what society is probably pumping in.

Jim (16:14.998)

Yeah. Society says the only thing that matters is the results, bottom line, black and white, zero sum score. Like it’s either win or lose. There’s only only so many pieces to the pie. And I’m saying, we live in an unstable, unfair world that has a lot of, horrible things in it. And, if you don’t have a clear system, you’re going to get sucked into negativity and because of all the instability and even evil and violence.

So we need to have a clear system to make sure we’re focusing on who you can become and what’s possible in your life. And so, Inter Excellence is about developing the habits of thought and action every day where you can be fully engaged in the moment more often, unattached to the results of what you’re trying to do. And we do that by training your heart to love most what’s most empowering.

John Jantsch (17:03.493)

So I’m guessing a fair amount of people you work with need like you need to strip some stuff away, you know, because they come to you with being full on being doing. What’s kind of the first step to get somebody to shift their mindset from that, you know, away from doing and more towards, I guess you would call it being.

Jim (17:25.762)

how they speak. The first thing we do is we make sure that we’re speaking the truth. That’s Inter Excellence has nine disciplines and one of the disciplines is to speak the truth about the past to create possibilities in the future. So people come to me and they want to perform better. they’re, they often will talk to me about how they’re struggling with something. And, but the thing is your subconscious is what’s running your life and creating these beliefs that are limitations on what’s possible.

It’s really, really hard to outperform your beliefs, the subconscious comfort level with what you feel is possible in your life. And so, Inter-Excellence is largely about expanding what you believe is possible by getting yourself to see possibilities and feel it as if it’s real. And so we need to be able to come to edge of our feelings and beliefs and not resist those moments where we’re super uncomfortable.

John Jantsch (18:18.393)

Because your work went from being exposed to X amount of people to a much larger X, has that changed just because I’m guessing you’re getting a lot more feedback, you have more people reaching out to you saying, hey, I want a piece of you. Has that changed not you, but has that changed anything, how you think about your system, how you think about the work, or is it only validated?

Jim (18:46.894)

Oh yeah, it’s changed a lot. My life has changed a lot. Um, I think of what if I would have died January 11th or before, you know, I, the majority of the things in the book that I wrote 16 years ago are the same. And it was selling one to two copies a day before January 12th. And then, um, you know, now it’s like I said, it’s going to be in 26 or 27 languages and it’s sold half a million copies or whatever. And so, um,

John Jantsch (18:58.255)

Right.

Jim (19:14.646)

what’s changed is is well, I want to more definitely more confidence in the message. Like in the past, I you know, I believed in the message for sure. But there’s always a wonder like, why don’t more people? Why isn’t the book more popular? didn’t understand it. And so now it’s just kind of that’s really cool. But I don’t think of myself as as the originator of this.

John Jantsch (19:32.304)

Yeah.

Jim (19:41.876)

or even author. I’m just a lowly messenger. And so because it’s so extraordinary, everything that’s happened, it’s, I mean, it’s, there’s no way that I could say, I did this. And so the moment we start to think that I’m doing it and that I’m somebody because I’m doing these great things, then we start to get afraid of, what if I make mistakes? But when you can take yourself completely out of the picture,

John Jantsch (19:52.123)

Thanks

John Jantsch (20:06.521)

Yeah.

Jim (20:10.904)

there’s no concern for self, then you can be fearless. God’s given me this gift that I realized, you know, at the very most I’ve added maybe one or 2 % to anything good that’s happened in the last six months. And since I know that there’s no like, I’m somebody now. I know I’m nobody.

John Jantsch (20:30.873)

Yeah. Well, Jim, I appreciate you taking a moment to share with our listeners. Is there some place you would invite people to connect with you? Obviously the book’s available everywhere, but if people want to learn more about your coaching or just really, you know, anything, explore anything deeper from the book.

Jim (20:53.09)

Yeah, I would go to interexcellence.com and sign up for the newsletter. We have a VIP newsletter that talks about our retreats and workshops. We’ve got a retreat coming up in Mexico here very soon. and then social media, Instagram, InterExcellence, InterExcellence, Jim Murphy, and other social media outlets. You’ll find me.

Jim (21:16.28)

Thanks so much, John.

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