I got a landline. 📞

Yes, an old school phone. 

There’s a saying that I had while training martial arts in the early days of the @UFC, “everything works but nothing works for long”. 

This statement can be applied to all forms of warfare, life and business. In hand-to-hand combat anyone can land a lucky punch or kick or knee and often it’s the most unorthodox strike that will hurt you.  Same thing applies to business, it’s the out of the box thinking or lucky move that can make, or break, your fortune. 

Last year, after participating in a zillion Zoom calls on the computer, and on my cell phone, I begin to realize that I was feeling less connected. And this Zoom fatigue was noticeable with all my clients and colleagues, as we juggled notifications, emails and texts (kids and dogs too) all while trying to stay connected and project our best in virtual meetings.

When the New Year came around, I remembered that old saying that had always kept me ahead of other fighters. I wondered if there was a better way to share my thoughts while continuing to develop deeper connections with my clients and partners.

My journey to the landline started by examining the screen time on my iPhone. The daily average was over five hours each day, over half of that was on social media. 

Five hours was approximately the same time that I trained each day to become a world champion in mixed martial arts. Yet, I was no longer chasing any titles. 

Once I realized where all the time was going, I cut my social media down to 15 minutes each day (thanks @buffer), I then began to look at how to nurture that connection that was slowly fading. 

It was my 12-year-old daughter, who incidentally has never seen me on a landline as I did not have one in my house, that inspired me. While watching her audio conversations with friends, I noticed how animated and excited she was in sharing, how deeply connected she was to the conversations. 

I remembered back when I was 12, when there were no cell phones, how I loved to speak on the phone and how elated I felt when I heard the phone ring, imagining who it might be. 

I would speak for hours to my friends and family, sometimes parents would randomly hand me the phone to speak with cousins I had never met, and after the awkward silence passed, we would be sharing everything about our lives. 

And still, I was not sold on the landline. Until I spent a day on @clubhouse. Just hearing the voices of others, with zero distractions, thrilled my imagination about them, many I knew personally and even worked with, but somehow I felt like a little kid again. There was a magic in hearing just a voice - and nothing else. Listening for emotions and inflections. 

I got the landline. But being an entrepreneur, there was no chance I was going to pay the $30 monthly that my blazing fast Internet service provider wanted to charge me. 

So I opted for a VoIP service with one year free and stopped by Target for a cheap wireless phone. $68 dollars (for a year of calls to Canada and the US) and now I am having deep and meaningful conversations each night with old friends, and new, and enjoying every minute of it. My phone is set up to only make outgoing calls so I will never be awakened or robocalled, which also means there is no call waiting or interruptions. Just a voice from someone I care about. 

As an added bonus, I am no longer on the cell phone while watching TV. After my 30 minute phone calls are done, I am just sitting back and watching TV - just like in the old days. 

#warriorscode