Ep 53. MVP: The CEO Solution for When Life Gets in the Way

[00:01:58] How are you guys doing? Are you enjoying the hot summer? This is a time when our personal lives kind of take center stage, right? We are focused at least for a week or two, maybe more, on our personal priorities, on rest, on fun, on family. And so obviously that’s gonna have some effects on the business. But today I wanna narrow in on those of you who have thought before or who feel from time to time, life is getting in the way, or maybe you think now is not the right time. So for example, right now, maybe you’re thinking, now is not the right time to execute this business strategy or to reach out to this person for a collaboration or to figure out my sales and marketing funnel or whatever it is because -Summer. But I want you to know as we start this conversation about when life gets in the way, I want you to know that if you are thinking it now at summertime, most likely you have thought it before. This is not like a brand new thought that’s never popped into your head. I want you to just think about it now. Have you thought before life is getting in the way, life is happening now is not the right time.

[00:03:27] Here’s something that just blew my mind the first time I heard it. Okay. Are you ready? How we do one thing is how we do everything and how we get there is how we will be there. So let me give you an example so you know what I mean. Let’s say that you have the dream to be a successful purpose-driven entrepreneur. You’re not fulfilled by what you’re currently doing. You wanna do something more meaningful, more purposeful, more impactful in the world that matches up with your passions. You wanna make a better income. Right? You wanna blend profits in there with a purpose too, and you wanna have time for your personal priorities, for your lifestyle, for the people in your life, for your sense of wellbeing. All right? And you have this thought, how do I make this work? Right? You think about this in the shower, you think about it when you’re on a walk. Maybe you even talk to your spouse about it if they’re supportive or if you have actually gotten to the point where you’re filling them in on this dream you have, right? You think about it when you listen to podcast, after podcast, after podcast about purpose driven business and marketing and sales, and yet you haven’t made any progress. Right? You have this thought, how do I make this work? The only thing that’s keeps coming up over and over and over again in your mind is maybe now is not the right time. I know that so many of you are in this place because I have been here before you guys, right? I have been in the place where I’m thinking. Well, once my baby is sleeping through the night, once my toddler is in preschool, once this busy project that I have going on at my current job is finished, like this quarter at work is over. Once this aligns. Once this is over. Then I can maybe say yes to really figuring out how this business idea that I have might work. Right, at that point, at that later point, I’m gonna answer the question, how do I make this work? Or maybe what’s happening in your mind, which has totally happened to me before, which is that I think that. All my problems will be fixed when I have more time in my calendar, right? Time is the only issue I have. Once the time appears in the future, bam, the business will work. Right now I’m sort of making fun a little bit, but I wanted you to know that I have totally been there and I have struggled with this roadblock, and I understand how real the struggle is.

[00:06:15] I have literally felt like time is against me and life is getting in the way, and the best solution is to figure out how something will work. I’m gonna do that at some point in the future. So my brain has just made a super convincing case for why a future point will fix all my struggles, why everything’s gonna fall into place later, and how everything’s gonna be clear and easy and flow at that future point. I did this before I launched my business, because how you do one thing is how you do everything and how you get there is how you’ll be there. I did this before I launched my business and then I did it after I started my business. Okay. So if you have this pattern of thinking life is getting in the way, life is happening. I don’t have enough time now. Now is not the right time to figure this out. This is gonna keep showing up for you over and over again, even after you have actually taken the action you haven’t been able to figure out yet, right? New problems are gonna arise and this same pattern of thinking, the same feeling of life in the way is gonna be there. How we do one thing is how we do everything. How we get there is how we stay there. Alright?

[00:07:51] I do not want this for you. I want you to learn from my mistakes. I want you to gather this coaching wisdom now, while you are still in these early stages of your business. I want you to understand that life getting in the way is not an actual circumstance that you have to wait to solve. It’s something that you decide in your mind. All right. That’s the key here you guys. It’s something you decide on. You decide that life does not get in the way. So I’m gonna spend the next couple of minutes talking you through how we do that. Okay? The first way we do that, when we are feeling like life is getting in the way. Life is happening now is not the right time. I cannot start this business right now. I cannot figure out how to make this business work. I cannot go all in on this business. I cannot figure out the sales and marketing or the financial sustainability of this business. Whenever you’ve got a thought like that, okay, you are always just one decision away from turning things around.

[00:09:09] All right, let me say that one again. This episode is just full of nuggets. Okay? Here are the nuggets so far how you do one thing is how you do everything. How you get there is how you will be there, and you are just one decision away from turning it around. You are just one decision away from actually getting your life out of the way. You are one decision away from finding the time. You are one decision away of figuring out how to make this business work. Just one decision. Right? Before I kind go into decision making, I wanna talk about the illusion of later. Okay? A later is just an illusion. All right, so you’re not saying yes to now. You’re not saying yes and deciding that now is the time to figure this out. Now is the time to figure out how to get this part of my life out of the way, right? Because you’re letting your brain default to later. All right, so the brain uses this. The brain uses the roadblock of not enough time or the roadblock of this circumstances beyond my control and I can’t change it. Now, it uses that as a tool to keep you from making a decision to change your actions. All right, because changing your actions means something new is going to happen to you, and your brain’s not so sure that it’s gonna be comfortable and cushy and nice in the new version, in the new life, in the new business, right?

[00:10:53] It doesn’t want you to make a decision. It doesn’t want you to change things. It doesn’t want you to take new actions. It would rather keep you just defaulting to later. Now’s not the right time. This circumstance is nothing you can do. You’ve just gotta wait. All right, so if you feel like this is happening to you, the first thing that I want you to know, besides that you’re just one decision from turning things around is also that later is an illusion just because your brain doesn’t wanna do scary things. Now, if this is happening to you and you’ve been stuck in the now is not the right time mindset for years or months, and you haven’t been going all in on your business, you haven’t been taking steps to make it work, or you haven’t figured out how to make it work, I don’t want you to beat yourself up. There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing broken with. You, everybody gets stuck in the later illusion. Everyone gets stuck in now is not the right time, but it’s just so important that we understand that this happens. It’s just something that our brains do, and it means that we have a working brain, when it’s happening to us, right? Our brain is designed to keep us away from risk, away from danger. It’s there to keep us alive. And so, yeah, of course it doesn’t want us to do scary things. Okay? Enter in later illusion.

[00:12:24] All right . Just be on to your brain. Just be on to this whenever you’re thinking, now is not the right time, life is happening. I don’t have enough time. I have to wait till X, Y, Z is figured out. I want you to be like, Hmm, what’s really going on here? Is there a decision that I haven’t made that’s going to put me on a new path? Is there a decision that I haven’t made that’s going to require me to step? Out and to do something for the first time that I’ve never done before. Is this a decision that’s going to require me to figure out a new skill to feel vulnerable to face failure? To maybe communicate with the people in my life more clearly in a way I’ve never done before. All of those things are scary, and so it’s very easy to get stuck there. Be on to your brain about what’s happening so that you don’t get stuck in the illusion, but you know what’s going on there.

[00:13:27] When you are in this moment where you want to default to life is happening, right? Life is in the way. I don’t have time. I can’t figure this out now. What’s happening really? Okay, if I can get like a little bit real with you, okay, are you ready? This is totally out of love, right? But what’s happening is that you are not making the decision to take full responsibility to say, no brain, i’m not gonna play that later game. I’m not gonna keep saying no to myself. I’m not gonna keep saying no to my dreams. I’m not gonna keep saying later. I’m not going to make myself wait for everything to align so that it’s easy. No brain. I’m taking full responsibility. I’m going to make a decision to move forward now. I’m gonna say yes to my dreams. I’m gonna say yes to myself. I’m gonna say yes to now, and I don’t know exactly how I’m gonna put it into play yet, but it starts with that decision.

[00:14:41] It comes down to you being willing to say yes first. That is the first skill that we have to have as an entrepreneur. If you haven’t launched yet, this is your opportunity to practice decision making, to practice saying yes to yourself, to practice saying, I’m going to decide that I’m gonna go down this path, even though I don’t know every component yet. I’m gonna be able to hold the tension of I don’t know it all and still believe in myself enough to say yes. That is the first test of the entrepreneur. If you can do it enough to start the business and to go all in on the business, then you’re more likely to be able to do that as you move forward, right? Because of how you get there is how you’ll be there. Once you can do that, you’re more likely to succeed. I think that’s so great, right? Because it means that the people who actually start businesses already have the skillset of maybe succeeding. They’re willing to make a decision and go all in, even in the unknown.

[00:15:52] One of the other skill sets of an entrepreneur is to be able to make decisions fairly quickly and then to execute it, right? Once you become an entrepreneur, you need to be able to decide what strategy, what action steps, what path, things you wanna to do, the ideas that you wanna implement in your business, and then you need to be able to decide on that and then you need to learn how to execute them, right? So you being able to make decisions is also really important once you get there. Why not use the opportunity of your life getting in the way now to learn how to handle the process of decision making?

[00:16:40] Did you know that decision making is actually a skill? There’s an actual process of decision making that makes people either terrible at decision making or really good at decision making, and it’s a learned skill. Okay? Now, this is something that you will learn when you work with a business coach, right? They’ll teach you how to make decisions. They’ll teach you how to make them quickly. They’ll teach you how to execute them quickly and reach a goal, but before you sort of do that, right? Maybe you aren’t at that part of your entrepreneurial journey, yet. The first way that you can practice this skill is practicing making decisions related to how you’re gonna get your life out of the way, and how you’re gonna make a decision to go all in on your business, how you’re gonna make a decision to figure out that particular roadblock in your business, right? Don’t just default to later. Decide that you’re going to tackle it now. That’s actually a decision, right? The decision of I’m saying yes to now, and I’m saying no to later, that’s a powerful decision and that’s actually what starts the snowball effect of being able to make all the little decisions afterwards, right? Because sometimes in coaching calls, I will be talking to an entrepreneur about how we’re going to tweak their business model or how we’re gonna tweak their offering or their pricing, or how we’re going to change the way they sell and market in order to make it more financially sustainable for themselves. We’ll start talking about the strategies in order to do that, I want you to understand that before that conversation happened, the entrepreneur already said yes to problem solving that, and that’s why they’re on the call talking about it. If they had said no to that then they would still just be in this later place where they’re playing the victim and not taking responsibility for that problem and just saying, well, now’s not the right time. Life is happening. I’m not gonna problem solve that sales and marketing. I’m not gonna problem solve that business model. I’m not gonna problem solve that price of that offer. Your first step is taking the responsibility of saying yes to now and not to later. I want you to step out of the role of the victim where life’s happening to you, right? Where you have to wait around for circumstances to line up. I want you to take that type of responsibility.

[00:19:08] A lot of times we think about taking responsibility as oh, something negative must have happened, right? We did something wrong or something wrong happened and now someone needs to take responsibility for it. The the word feels super heavy. But I want you to think about responsibility, like two words, response and ability. Response. Ability. Meaning no matter what life circumstances are happening around you, no matter what business challenges or business questions, or business confusion or whatever those circumstances that are happening around you, you always have the ability to decide your response. Right, so you can think of it this way. It’s always our responsibility to decide our response in every situation. We have the ability to respond. We have responsibility, so we don’t default to later. Ever. Right. We answer the question, how do I respond? If you wanna have a successful life and business where you wanna make an impact and an income and have time for your personal life and your wellbeing, then you’ve gotta step into that place of responsibility no matter what is being thrown at you.

[00:20:23] It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a baby or a toddler or another job or situation with your spouse or just whatever. There’s always gonna be things in life getting in your way. That’s not even the issue. Your job is to make your brain go to, okay, I am stepping into responsibility and I’m making a decision of how to respond. Not that I wait for my circumstances to change, and I default to later ’cause I don’t want you to have the leftovers. There’s nothing ever left over. Stop waiting around for the leftovers. Life is always gonna be there. Trust me. How you get there is how you stay there running a business, suddenly life is not going to align. You’re not gonna suddenly have the time to run your business once the toddler is in preschool. All right? It just doesn’t work that way.

[00:21:18] This is just a pattern that you’re stuck in. It was really such a game changer for me when I first learned about responsibility, I started to think about how it would be if I really thought of myself as a CEO, like a CEO of my life first and foremost. Then I guess underneath that would be the CEO of my business. At first, I was kind of like, wait a minute, who do I think I am? I shouldn’t be so controlling or so proud. I’m a Christian, so I had a lot of brain drama around yeah, but God’s in control. I’m not the CEO. I’m not in charge. But I wanted you to think about what a CEO is. Okay.

[00:22:08] The best CEOs, they have this sense of calm and have this sense of responsibility. They’re able to make decisions and they look over the vision and the overall strategy, and they make decisions so that everybody else underneath them can get the job done and reach and have them reach their goals. Right? So. The buck stops with the CEO, right? If anything goes wrong, it’s the CEO, right? The buck stops with them. They’re not blaming the weather. The best CEOs don’t blame the economy or COVID. The CEOs who are truly, truly tapping into the responsibility they have to make their businesses work are able to respond to whatever is thrown at them. They’re not playing the victim. They’re playing the innovator. The visionary, the action taker, the decision maker. CEOs are pros at making decisions. If you’ve ever worked in corporate, you know that the CEO just runs from one meeting to another, having conversation after the next just making decisions, yes to this, no to that. Yes, kind of, let’s do it like this. Instead, they just can make decisions so quickly. It’s fascinating to watch a very skilled CEO. The fun thing to think about is the fact that that CEO had to come to work that morning before they were able to make all those small decisions, they had to go to work that morning thinking, I am the CEO, it’s my responsibility to make decisions, and I’m making a decision about how to problem solve now. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do that. That’s the first level of channeling the CEO is I’m not defaulting to later. I am not in the role of the victim. I’m not waiting around for later. I have the responsibility to decide how I wanna respond.

[00:24:23] I also think it was really helpful for me when I was first trying to step into this concept of me being the CEO of my life to realize that the best CEOs listen to outside counsel. It’s not just because you wanna be the CEO of your life, you have to know it all or have it all together or have all the skill sets to do everything and have all the experience. CEOs have teams for a reason. Okay. They don’t know how to do it all. They’re just really good at making decisions and taking responsibility. They have boards, they have advisors, they have coaches, right? If you’re a Christian like me, it doesn’t mean that you don’t take things you’re worried about or that you’re unsure of to prayer, right? It doesn’t mean that you don’t have patience, sometimes we do have the tension of I don’t know how this is gonna work yet. I don’t exactly know the path forward. But I’m still committed to figuring it out. We bring it to prayer. We bring it to our advisors. We bring it to our mentors and coaches to help us. That’s what the best CEOs do.

[00:25:28] Okay, so I want you to think about what would change if I became the CEO of my life. What? What if I just decided ., Okay, you know, today I’m stuck in victim mentality. Today, I am not taking responsibility Today, I don’t like to make decisions. ,Today I default till later today I get stuck in the pattern of I don’t have enough time. Today, I let life happen to me. Tomorrow, i’m the CEO of my freaking life. I make decisions. Your life would be completely different. All right. I hope this is encouraging for you. I feel like I’m kind of preaching right now. I feel very fired up and passionate, but from a place of excitement. I think the more of you guys who step into to give yourself permission to become the CEO of your life and to become the CEO of your business and to just decide that you’re not gonna be tricked by the later illusion. The more of you who decide that you’re not going to give into that crap anymore, and you’re going to decide that now is the time to take steps to figure it out, the more impact that will be created in the world. That thing you’re passionate about, that problem you wanna solve, that injustice that you wanna see righted, that trauma, that hurt, that you wanna help heal, that work you feel called to do that you feel excited to spend time on. It’s just sitting there waiting for you to decide that you’re showing up as the CEO of your life. That you’re not waiting for more time, for more money, for something else to align, that you’re going to problem solve it now. That you’re going to say yes to the process now. You’re gonna say yes to getting help, to figuring it out, even when you don’t know exactly how to do it. You’re gonna say yes to that journey.

[00:27:34] I did this for the first time when I decided to start working on Rank and File Magazine before I quit my job, all right? I had to decide that that’s what I was doing no matter what. I was going to eventually quit my job. Did I go out and quit my job like the next day? No, but I had such a strong conviction that that’s the process that I was signing up to, that I had decided to take, that I figured out how to make it work. I wasn’t wishy-washy on it. I wasn’t thinking, oh, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to quit. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to do all this stuff. I was so clear and decided that it was happening. Now it’s figuring it out now. Okay. The next time I did it was another huge pivotal moment for me. I was struggling in the very early phases of Rank and File magazine and I was struggling with cashflow and eventually after being all wishy-washy and doing the things I’ve told you not to do today, I decided, I remember I had the thought it’s now or never. That was literally the sentence that was in my mind. Yeah, and I decided I gotta figure this out now or it’s caving. It’s crashing.

[00:28:52] So I spent the last $3,000 on a credit card, got debt to hire a coach to figure it out, because my thought was, it’s now or never. I don’t even care about the $3,000 on the credit card. Because I’m wasting so much money month after month not figuring it out, right? I’m spending so much more than $3,000 not getting help, than spending the $3,000 getting the help. Like I can totally go get another job and pay that off, if this doesn’t work. Is it a no brainer? But it was only a no brainer to start problem solving because I had the thought. It’s now, it’s happening now. I stopped letting later keep me in an illusion. I stepped into the CEO space. I said yes to myself. I said yes to the process of problem solving, and then I got to work with a coach, right? I gathered the trusted advisors, the coaches, the mentors around me just like a CEO would, and I committed my focus and my attention to now. To that energized committed place and together we figured it out. I totally feel like I’m preaching now. But I stand before you today honestly, telling you that I was able to reach my goal of being a purpose-driven entrepreneur, having that purpose, having those profits, having that personal life because I was willing to do that, to leave the later illusion behind and to step into the CEO to say yes to problem solving now.

[00:30:25] I promise that if you start thinking this way, you’re gonna find your ideas, you’re gonna find your solutions that you feel like are far away, right? Right now, your life is getting in your way, but you have a way out from it. Remember: how you do one thing is how you do everything and how you get there is how you’ll be there. What are you doing now? How do you wanna be now? What skills do you want to start exercising now so that you bring only strong skills with you forward when you’re scaling your business? You’re just one decision away from turning things around. All right, you guys. Keep good. Keep giving. I’ll see you in the next episode.

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