 |
It's Not Rocket Science! Five Questions Over CoffeeHelping business owners explode their business growth Author: The Complete Approach
The mission of It's Not Rocket Science! is to bring a new idea for building business to growth-hungry business leaders and owners who want to do more with less time and so increase their business and influence. We deliver actionable ideas using our five questions over coffee. thecompleteapproach.substack.com Language: en Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
Five Questions Over Coffee with Brian Parana (ep. 136)
Episode 136
Thursday, 15 January, 2026
Who is Brian?Brian Parana is no stranger to the turning points that come in midlife. At 42, he’s the dedicated husband of his high school sweetheart and the proud father of four—juggling the joys and challenges that come with two high schoolers and two middle schoolers, ages 10 to 15. With 15 years as a self-employed professional and over 23 years in the health industry, Brian has seen firsthand what so many entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders experience: the demands of life and responsibility often sneak up, and self-care takes a back seat. His journey reflects the universal realization that reaching 40, 45, or 50 doesn’t always look or feel as expected—prompting him to help others redefine what thriving in midlife can truly mean.Key Takeaways00:00 Avoiding Midlife Crisis: Enhance Life05:05 Finding Balance Amid Life’s Chaos08:04 “Rice 72: Three-Day Fat Loss”11:50 “Developing Habits for Growth”13:30 “1% Improvements for Massive Success”17:32 “Health Choices Over Consequences”20:40 Appreciative Farewell Message_________________________________________________________________________________________________Subscribe to our newsletter and get details of when we are doing these interviews live at www.systemise.me/subscribeFind out more about being a guest at : link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/beaguestSubscribe to the podcast at https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/podcastHelp us get this podcast in front of as many people as possible. Leave a nice five-star review at apple podcasts : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/apple-podcasts and on YouTube : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/Itsnotrocketscienceatyt!Do You Need a P.A.T.H. to Scale?We help established business owners with small but growing teams:go from feeling stuck, sceptical, and tired of wasting time and money on false promises,to running a confident, purpose-driven business where their team delivers results, customers are happy, and they can finally enjoy more time with their family -with a results-based refund guarantee: if you follow the process and it doesn’t work, we refund what you paid.This is THE P.A.T.H. to scale your business.————————————————————————————————————————————-TranscriptNote, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)SUMMARY KEYWORDShealth and wellbeing, business leaders, productivity, midlife crisis, entrepreneurs, self-employed, diet industry, weight loss, lifestyle balance, flexibility, moderation, accountability, fat loss protocol, nutrition, mindset, radical accountability, busy professionals, sustainable habits, atomic habits, James Clear, Tony Robbins, personal development, business performance, routines, incremental change, ROI of health, confidence, energy levels, work-life balance, men’s healthSPEAKERSBrian Parana, Stuart WebbStuart Webb [00:00:00]:SA hi and welcome back to It’s Not Rocket Science. Five questions over coffee. I have my coffee monkey here. My guest Brian, Coach Brian Piranha is here with me. He has his coffee with espresso, with.Brian Parana [00:00:49]:Some seltzer water and some oat milk.Stuart Webb [00:00:52]:Coach BRIAN that’s a brilliant, brilliant recipe. Thank you for that. So Brian is a, is a, is a health and well being expert, an athlete, now a coach who helps business leaders, people who are trying to run their businesses and forget that they need to remain healthy to run their business, do better with both. So Coach Ryan, welcome to It’s Not Rocket Science. Five questions over coffee. Looking forward to this conversation and really looking forward to hearing how you can help us.Brian Parana [00:01:27]:I’m excited to be here. I’m looking forward to our five questions and the insights that I can bring, the value and some ideal takeaways for our guests that are listening in.Stuart Webb [00:01:37]:That’s what we want to hear. So let’s start with that first question. I like to always start with just give us a little bit of an oversight of the sort of person you’re trying to help. What are the problems that they have in their life that might help them identify that you’re currently talking to them, right.Brian Parana [00:01:55]:What happens when we reach our mid-40s? There’s that term of a midlife crisis, right. I’m 42, I’ve married my high school sweetheart, we’re 19 years in. We have four kids, two high schoolers, two middle schools, three boys and girls, 15 to 10. And I’ve been self employed for 15 years and been in the health industry for 23 or something. I’ve seen it time and again. Is that people, business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders, everyone ends up running into this at some point where the responsibilities of their life caught up to them. In a sense, they realize they’re not taking care of themselves and their body. And 40, 45, 50 isn’t what was expected when they got there, right.Brian Parana [00:02:44]:They’re on their way to retirement or they got money in the bank or the house or whatever this stuff, but when they see themselves in the mirror, they just their waistlines expanding. They don’t have the confidence in their, their workloads that they once had. There’s fatigue, the lack of productivity. They feel half a step behind or maybe in one or two instead. And that’s the type of person that I’m coming to the marketplace to meet is to get that priority. Let’s not have a midlife crisis where we potentially disrupt some things in life. Let’s actually Enhance what life has and be even more productive by taking care of yourself first to then have the energy, the resources, the capacity to keep pace with all the responsibilities that you are now in charge of.Stuart Webb [00:03:35]:So let’s talk a little bit about maybe there’s somebody out there at the moment thinking, hey, this guy, this guy’s talking to me. What do you think they’d be able to recognize in terms of the things they tried? You know, the health kicks that go on, the act, the diet, which constantly never seems to work. I mean, they may even be finding the soul at the moment, sitting there looking at yet another diet book or even some other ways of trying to enhance this. And I think what you’re trying to say is that’s not always all of the solution, is it?Brian Parana [00:04:06]:No, no, definitely not. Oftentimes we’ve been taught through marketing, through just literal time for, or the, the, the diet industry really started in the 1980s or so and 90s and, and continued on if you, I, I grew up in that and has infiltrated every single person that I am in association with and what I, who I’ve worked with for years, restriction. There’s these hard protocols that they have to follow. It often lines up with more of a leader type personality where they have to feel that the grind, the hustle. They have things that have to be hard. Those are, they have to cut out, restrict all that. And I’ve been in a five pound weight range for decades. Obviously it’s what I do by profession and I should look and be the part to lead those people.Brian Parana [00:05:05]:But with four kids, with self employment, with all these, these obstacles that just show up in everyday life, there is a way to find some balance. To have some ice cream after a kid’s soccer game or after a school event, or have a small sliver of cake at a birthday party because I mean, what weekend do people not have birthdays, especially if they have four kids or something, right? There’s just always those opportunities to potentially fall off track and then next, you know, we’ll start again on Monday. Well, Stuart, today’s Wednesday or Tuesday. It’s Tuesday that we’re recording this. There’s a lot of sloppiness that can, that can be created there and cause you to be setting yourself back a significant amount. We need to find a level of balance of, with some flexibility, some moderation in a way that creates a lifestyle that they can actually live. What we do in two weeks, we do in two months, we do in two years. And finding that balance is so important.Brian Parana [00:06:04]:And that that’s where I meet people every single day.Stuart Webb [00:06:09]:And I think you’ve got a very valid point then Brian, because you know, it’s if, if you are having to force yourself into something, if you’re telling yourself that you can only achieve this by constant denial, you can only do this by having to go to the gym when you don’t really feel, feel like it because you’ve got other concerns, you’ve got the family to worry about things like that. It becomes more and more difficult to actually stick with something like this, doesn’t it? I mean if the only time you ever get any pleasure is when you get that little bit of ice cream or that small amount of cake at a birthday party and suddenly you deny that, it just becomes impossible to stick to anything that you really, really want to do. You have to link it to something that’s more than that, right?Brian Parana [00:06:50]:It’s just same thing with business. If you have to grind to grow a business, it’s going to fail at some point because whether the motivation, the willpower, the lack of consistently putting out or say a high marketing budget, if you one, one or five months go by and you haven’t produced the outcomes to pay for that, now you’re in the red and things aren’t going well for the business because it’s at such a high demand of say accuracy or focus or the ROI needs to be right on point there.Stuart Webb [00:07:26]:So I’ve got a really. You’ve got a special offer that I think that the audience is going to be really interested in. This I will be putting into our vault. So if you go to www.systemize.me free stock you, you’ll get the details of exactly how Brian can help this coach. Brian, tell us how can you help us to get through some of these problems?Brian Parana [00:07:52]:Yeah, well say the free stuff thing, right? I have a.Stuart Webb [00:07:56]:That’s the one. Anything we valuable offers. Valuable free stuff. That’s what we want to give to people here. Pay it forward.Brian Parana [00:08:04]:We have a, a we’re in the, the mega information, right? Maybe I could coin that. The mega information Time of our lives, right? And with ChatGPT and all you can get a meal plan, you can get a workout, you can do all these things. And what I have, my free stuff would be what I call the rice 72. It’s just a three day fat loss protocol that has food, that has nutrition, that has some mindset things to help reset from the brain. Because it all starts here. And in that you get step by step specific things that we know and we’ve heard so much. But the point is it has to be done. So whether there’s email accountability, there’s actual text engagement with me as well.Brian Parana [00:08:52]:If you do get the free thing, the Rise 72, you’ll be able to have some level of accountability. And that’s what I want to bring into my world to. To others is create an experience, a transformative experience. Not just, hey, here’s the meal plan that you’re supposed to eat, but it’s got to be more because nobody I the one of two things. I’m busy. Every single person, I think has always said that. And they usually say it’s in all cats B, U S Y with multiple exclamation points after. That’s how they describe their life.Brian Parana [00:09:27]:And I get it. I’m busy too. But I still have found a way to prioritize my health.Stuart Webb [00:09:32]:Yeah.Brian Parana [00:09:33]:So let’s find a way to do that for you. The other thing is that they. So they’re. They’re busy and they always want to just jump in with. With both heels, in a sense. And we have to find those small little pivot points to again create that sustainability. And through talking with thousands of people over the last 20 years, so many conversations, we need to. To be able to do the things that we already know we need to do.Brian Parana [00:10:09]:And that’s a high level of radical accountability I want to bring to.Stuart Webb [00:10:14]:Yeah. And it’s about finding that way of, as you say, prioritizing using the. Using triggers. You know, one of the things I’ve often heard that.Brian Parana [00:10:22]:Yes.Stuart Webb [00:10:23]:One of the great ways of sort of building your. You’re building this sort of thing in as you’re talking about mindset is linking it to pleasure. You know, yes, you’re going to go for a, for a run, but you’re going to go for a run in the outside and listen to your favorite podcast or whatever it is, this podcast. So. And so you actually sort of. And you, you. You have to set yourself up with. The only time I listen to the podcast is when I’m going for the run or when I’m going for the walk.Stuart Webb [00:10:49]:And so that you get that sort of mindset shift. If it’s not something hard, it becomes a pleasure to do some of this stuff.Brian Parana [00:10:55]:Right, Exactly. And, and that’s a huge gap where people are. An example would be, say, the 75 hard. It’s a very strong reset accountability protocol where you have to work out twice a day, you got to drink a gallon of water, you have some you got to read a book. All these things are great. Let’s do 75 hard on your own terms. That makes it so that on day 76 or day 2000, you’re still doing the things. Yeah, it’s my job to help figure that out.Stuart Webb [00:11:28]:Brilliant. Love it. Brian, you’ve gone to the stage where you understand exactly how this works. Was there a book or a program or something that actually sort of allowed you to understand how to get that sort of mindset, that body work, everything sort of coming together, which is how you explain it to people.Brian Parana [00:11:50]:The book that comes off top of my head is there’s so many personal development things I’ve done. I actually went to Tony Robbins seminars, I was a fire walker, I did it twice. And so many other different certifications and all that. I guess when it all comes said and done, we, we’ve heard it again a million times. Is that the, the James Clears is a really easy that everyone we know atomic habits. How do we build habits 1% better at a time? We take these small incremental, consistent steps to get us and we consistently keep doing that. And, and the other thing is to understand the analogy that is used in there as well. An ice cube melting at 22 degrees, it’s not going to melt.Brian Parana [00:12:36]:At 23, it’s not going to melt. At 29, it’s not melting. At 32, it might start to melt. At 33, it’s melting, it will take a while. At 40, it’s melted. It’s definitely on its way. And today in Miami in July, it’s done melted. You know, the moment it touched the ground, even maybe on the way down to the ground, it’s already evaporated because it’s so hot.Brian Parana [00:13:00]:And in the beginning of these changes, even just in business, we can tie it back to business since that’s who’s listening. In the beginning of the business, it was so small and incremental and you didn’t see those, those 1 degree changes over time. But then you built that momentum and all of a sudden you have a business with employees and it’s successful and all of a sudden you’re wow, I don’t have time for myself. But that 1% better is going to be the key thing to build consistency into your life.Stuart Webb [00:13:30]:I’m a, I’m a great fan of somebody you may or may not have heard of a guy called David Brailsbridge who was the coach of the Great Britain cycling team. And he was a very great fan of sort of 1% improvements and he was looking at 1% improvement, improvements all the time, which took the British cycling team to the top of the world. And the reason that he did it was because he was looking at tiny, tiny changes every single time they raced, to the extent that he started sending the team out to meetings with their own pillow so that they got a slightly better night’s sleep the night before they raced. It really does take tiny, tiny changes to produce a massive result, doesn’t it? But it has to be consistent. It has to be continuous. You can’t just do it once and then hope it’s all gone back to it. You know, it’s gonna be easy from that. You make that tiny change, but you have to continue to make that change.Stuart Webb [00:14:22]:You need the accountability to do it.Brian Parana [00:14:24]:Yeah. KPIs for ROIs, right? In the business world, we have those and these SOPs to get to the ROIs that we want to go, but it has to be done every day. Yeah. Same thing in our body. We need to. These are basic. We need to move so much. We need to drink our water, get enough sleep.Brian Parana [00:14:46]:We need to eat healthy food. Those are basic tenets of taking care of yourself and living in a healthy body that’s energetic and you feel confident in and you fit in your clothes in. But we let distraction take us away.Stuart Webb [00:15:01]:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian, there must be one question that you’re left at the moment thinking he’s still hanging on to the really critical one, that one question that we need to sort of get to get to, and I should ask it, but I obviously don’t know what it is. So what is the question that you would have liked me to have asked by now, which I obviously haven’t. And then obviously, as you know the answer, you better answer it for us, otherwise it’ll never get answered.Brian Parana [00:15:27]:I thought long and hard on this. And what is the true ROI of taking care of yourself and your health?Stuart Webb [00:15:34]:Oh, that is a good question. I like that.Brian Parana [00:15:37]:Huh? I thought about it a little bit. Make sure it was juicy. What is it? People at first just think, oh, I’m at a healthy body weight, or I can. I don’t fall asleep in the middle of the day anymore. Or I can be productive at work, or I can go one meeting to the next to the next, or when I come home, I can engage with my family and children. Those are all really important things. But we. One thing is.Brian Parana [00:16:03]:Is say the confidence that you have, if you aren’t in a healthy body, then you don’t necessarily have the confidence that you think that you’re portraying when you go into a meeting, right. Even this is a good old Tony Robbins example. But I’m standing here, but I can take a big deep breath in and, and I can get up here. All of a sudden I’m, I’m just 1% taller in a sense, but I am. It’s been multiplied. It’s 10x in my energy flow, my breath. I can get oxygen in my lungs and I can start to think clearly. And people notice that and they see it, they can feel that confidence and that energy coming from.Brian Parana [00:16:48]:And, and you don’t know that you’re walking around like this all day. You might feel the same, but it’s, there’s a difference. So what does that mean? That means that we can, if the true ROI of a healthy body is better connection with those around in your, your, your family circle, your social circles, how you show up at work and lead. We want that lead. What type of ability are you to be able to produce deals and make things happen in your career? These are all big, big ROIs that can happen. And you don’t. The, the thing that you don’t see. And I love sharing this with my four kids, especially my oldest right now, because he’s teenage for sure, at 15, almost 16.Brian Parana [00:17:32]:But you choose your actions, but you don’t choose your consequences. Therefore, if you’re not taking care of your health in the 40s, you might have a heart attack by your 50. Hey, I’m so glad that you’re retiring as a millionaire or whatever, but you’re going to spend all of it on health care and assisted living and having someone wipe your butt because, because you have a disease, right? We have, everyone has lots of problems until they have a significant health problem, then we only have one problem. And everything else fades quickly because you have diabetes, you’ve had a heart attack, there’s a stroke, there’s cancer, there’s all these, these things that are trying to kill us. And health is the most easy, say, almost free thing to do outside of your time. That you can get a huge ROI for now, but also into the future.Stuart Webb [00:18:24]:That’s absolutely brilliant. And if nobody, if nobody takes anything away from this, they should take away the fact that doing something for their future is actually looking after their kids, their grandkids, their great grandkids. You know, you need to be around for those. I’m going to go back. You need to come on to systemize me free. Go find out about what Brian has been talking about, talking to us about today and make sure that you understand exactly how somebody like Brian can really help you to focus, to make sure that you are available to the future. And I’m going to put in my own little request to you, please. I send out an email just, just once a week with who’s coming up on the podcast and you can come on and watch the live stream, ask questions.Stuart Webb [00:19:15]:If you want to please come onto the newsletter list. You go to Systemize Me subscribe and that gets you onto the newsletter list and you’ll get an email just enabling you to listen to such brilliant advice from people like Coach Brian. Brian, thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us. Really appreciate you taking the time and if I take anything else away from this, I’m going to go and find a way now of going back out for Cycle Ride, which is something I haven’t done for a while and that will help me to sort of just live a little bit longer. Yep.Brian Parana [00:19:49]:So, you know, wrapping it up, I have the, the free thing that I’ll be given with Stewart is the right 72. It’s a three day fat loss protocol. Men and women can do it. And then what the call to rise is is it’s a hundred day fat loss transformational experience that really focuses on weekly challenges, quarterly assessment. There are small cohorts of. This is more of a men’s focus group called the Brotherhood where we have a small knit group of people, men that are like minded, that want to thrive in their health too along with all these other areas in their life. And, and it’s, it’s again getting out of just information but actual doing the things because you’re in a. It’s a catalyst for transformation and that’s what the call to rise is.Brian Parana [00:20:34]:So answer your call to rise to better health and a better quality of life.Stuart Webb [00:20:40]:Right. I love it. Thank you so much and I really appreciate you spending a bit of time for us. Go get that stuff. Thank you. Bye bye. Get full access to It's Not Rocket Science! at thecompleteapproach.substack.com/subscribe
