Ep 22. The CEO Goal-Achievement System: Double Revenue and Cut Stress in Half

[00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello, founder and welcome to today’s episode. Today’s conversation is really meaningful and important to me, because really today I’m going to be talking to you about [00:01:00] my life’s work. Over the past eight years I have developed my own brand, started my own company, been through all the ups and downs and stresses of that. And really interacted with coaching tools, mindset tools, and of course, practical strategies. And come out on the other side, really a changed individual. Not only with how I have approached being an entrepreneur and my business. But the same tools that I’ve started to use and adapt to my company have also completely changed my personal life. And these set of tools that I have been using for the past, I would say five years or so. Are so important to me that now they are really the essence. The core. Of [00:02:00] what I offer into the world and how I help founders. [00:02:03] And so today I want to take you behind the scenes and talk about some of my. Early struggles and recent struggles and show you how the tools have really helped me. So that you can understand the suite of tools. And I want to also teach you how these tools form a really organized system that you can plug into your business as well. This suite of tools, these suite of practices. They do something really interesting for founders because I have not only tested them on myself. [00:02:41] I’ve used them for years and years with founders. And when you put them into your business, when you plug them into your business, they increase your revenue in a more organized, structured, calm. Strategic way. But they also decrease stress. And so that’s why I can [00:03:00] also say, Hey, these tools not only help your business, but they revolutionize your personal life. [00:03:06] If you’ve been following me for awhile, you know, I talk a lot about, Hey, let’s help you reach your goals. Let’s help you make an impact in the world. Let’s help you reach your income. That part is so important to me. And I can say that with a lot of confidence that you’re going to be able to do this while also building up at the riving personal life and wellbeing, because these tools that I’m going to tell you about today. They really do that automatically. [00:03:32] So while you’re actually growing your business, you’ll see the ripple effects in your life. I think a lot of times founders think. Okay, I’m going to have to sacrifice my personal life. I’m going to have to sacrifice. My wellbeing for my business. Have you ever thought that I know I have this constant voice in my head sometimes still, that wants to bring me back to this limited scarce fear-based way [00:04:00] of thinking. Telling me that, if you’re going to run this business, then something’s going to fall through the cracks. [00:04:05] You’re going to lose your relationship. You’re not going to be a good mom. And we have these voices telling us, be careful, you can’t go off to that dream. Or we really think, I don’t have time for all of those things because I need to be really focused on the business. [00:04:21] And what I am here to tell you is that these tools. They not only help you to increase your income and impact. But what they do is at the same time, we’ll change who you are and how you’re showing up at home. And they’ll change your mental health and they’ll actually, improve it, bring it to a thriving place. [00:04:45] So entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be. This sacrifice in this struggle. Because you’re so committed to your product and your service and your cause and your mission, and making it work. It can actually be a tool that you use to [00:05:00] develop yourself and to enhance your wellbeing. , could you, , I just want you to try that on for just a second. That your business can actually be a tool that you use to improve your wellbeing. I am hosting an event at a large conference here in Oslo in just a couple of weeks. I’m going to be speaking to hundreds of female founders. And part of that, program is a lounge area where I’m inviting some founders who I think are just doing really incredible things in the local area to come and display they’re companies. During the mingling portion. And so I was reaching out earlier this week and I was saying, Hey, , you know, we’re a couple of weeks away. [00:05:43] Here’s all the logistics about your table set up and dimensions. And when you need to be there and all that. And I had a founder write back to say, oh my goodness, thank you so much for this opportunity. I’ve been looking forward to it for months. I’m going to have to drop out this year. [00:06:00] Because I have to take a step back. [00:06:03] I’ve made a difficult decision to step back from my business and to pause my business because of my mental health. I’ve been struggling with depression. For a month and months. And in order to, care for myself. I need to step away from the business. And unfortunately I hear these stories all the time. Where the business has just weighed down on the founder and they have had so much pressure and they’ve exuding so much effort. And they’ve been really grinding and hustling day after day after day. That their mental health. Pops up and says, Hey, we can’t do this anymore. [00:06:42] And what I want to share with you is it doesn’t have to be that way. And in fact, when we think about, and we approach our businesses with the right. Mindset. It gives you energy. It gives you purpose. It brings you the [00:07:00] fulfillment. So much so that it’s injecting. Your mental health and your personal life with energy. It’s not depleting it. And it all comes down to just understanding how. You might accidentally be approaching entrepreneurship the entirely wrong way because most entrepreneurs are, and they don’t even know it because the world is just giving terrible examples. Of how to do it or telling you to do it in the entirely wrong way. [00:07:31] So it’s first understanding, how do we unravel ourselves from. This really limited scarce. MIDI aggressive energy that we normally bring to entrepreneurship. And how do we switch it to a more abundant. [00:07:48] A more freeing, a more fun way of approaching entrepreneurship. And when you do this, your business grows. So we don’t have to sacrifice our goals. We [00:08:00] don’t have to sacrifice sales. We don’t have to sacrifice. Impact in the world in order to care for our personal life, it’s not an either or situation. They can go together when we’re thinking about them in the right way. And I’m really passionate about this topic, especially for female founders. Because I feel they’re the ones that feel they have to juggle all the things and do them all well. Now, I know that men have pressure as well. [00:08:27] So all you men listening, I know that there’s pressure there. There’s pressure there to be a good parent and good at work and to perform at all of those places. [00:08:38] But I think that women especially just feel like they’re just not enough in all of the places more often. And so I really want to speak to you today. To tell you, Hey. You actually can flip this on its head. You can flip your business on its side. You can approach it from a totally different mindset. And get [00:09:00] the result that you want for your company. While also seeing your home life and your wellbeing and your sense of purpose and the amount of energy that you have every day go up. [00:09:10] What if that’s possible? And this is the journey that I have been on for the last several years as I’ve started my own company. And then began interacting with coaching tools. And then using those coaching tools on myself and then using them on other founders. Seeing the profound effect of changing the way you think and approach your business. [00:09:36] I literally just got off the phone with one of the founders that I’m working with. And we were talking about this very same thing. She felt , you know what? I’ve got so much going on in my business right now. She’s a startup. She just got funded. And she was telling me we have about an 18 month runway. And I know that cash is king in a startup. And so we have to really make good [00:10:00] choices and we have to do the right things so that we don’t run out of the money. And we can’t make a wrong decision because it’s going to set us back. If we do. And I asked her, I said, how did those thoughts feel when you say them to yourself? What kind of emotion does it produce in you? When you say we only have this much runway, I have to make the right choice or else. [00:10:25] These kinds of thoughts, create negative emotions. They cause your survival brain to turn on your fear-based brain. That says, oh my gosh, we don’t have what we need right now. We don’t have enough time. We don’t have enough money. We don’t have the right answers. [00:10:45] And when you’re thinking I don’t have something in my business. [00:10:51] It keeps you away from the results that you want, but it also keeps you away from the energy and the purpose and the fulfillment that you want. So it, [00:11:00] it actually hurts your wellbeing. [00:11:03] And it keeps you far away from all those lovely feelings of fulfillment and joy and purpose that you want. But also makes you activate. Your survival brain, the fight flight freeze stress response in your brain. That tells you, oh my gosh, there’s a huge threat here. And we don’t have what we need to solve it. [00:11:25] And when you think that way. It causes you. To make decisions in a less valuable way. It causes you to make low quality decisions. Based on surviving, not thriving. Getting the to-do list done instead of making an impact with the investments that you’re focused on in your business. It keeps you away from serving your audience. And your customer at the highest level, because you’re so self focused on survival. And some of these thoughts can be so [00:12:00] innocent. [00:12:00] And I think that that’s the part that I really want you to think about. I literally just happened. This happened to me last night. I was cooking dinner for my family. We picked up me and my husband. We both drove back into town from Oslo, where we were working that day. We both drove back. A home. From the city. And we picked up our kids from daycare and we brought them home and my kid or my husband was jumping on the trampoline with my toddlers while I was cooking dinner. [00:12:32] And I just noticed, because I’ve been doing this work for a while that I was fast paced. But I was a little rushy. With how I was doing the dinner. Have you ever done this? I got to get dinner on the table and then I got to do this. And then I got to do that. Now this is a real life example, but you can imagine how this would apply in your business. [00:12:52] Right? We’ve got to get this done. We’ve got to get that done. [00:12:56] And I paused. And I said, oh, [00:13:00] This is your survival brain. This is the part of your brain that tells you you don’t have enough of what you need right now. [00:13:09] That you need to hurry. Because you don’t have enough time. [00:13:16] It gets you scrambling. Focused on tasks, task, orientation. [00:13:22] And it not only sucks the joy out of what you’re doing. It makes you less effective at what you’re doing. So, yes, while I don’t need to be very precise and high quality when I cook dinner. Right. Last night was literally chop up leftover chicken and poor tikka masala. Pre-made tikka masala, you know, Indian sauce in it. You know, stirred around and boil some rice that was dinner last night. Oh, but the kind we get it is so good. [00:13:50] A brand that we, that we buy from the store. Thank you to the immigrant woman who founded this Indian. Company here in Oslo because [00:14:00] her food is delicious. But anyways, [00:14:03] When I think those thoughts, I don’t have something that I need right now. Or someone else doesn’t have what they need right now. [00:14:13] It puts me into this. Self-focused get grabby. Hustley needy energy. [00:14:21] That makes me less effective. And I see this all the time and founders. They tell themselves with God to make this decision right now because it’s urgent. We’re running out of money. We have to make the right choice here. I have to perform because if I don’t get a yes from these investors, then it’s going to set us back. [00:14:38] These are all not enoughness fear based. Thoughts. And what it does is, is it causes the entrepreneur to go into that decision. Or that strategy session or that sales environment. [00:14:52] In a really ineffective way. [00:14:56] When you are in your survival brain. [00:15:00] You don’t access an important part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex. We’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast. Your prefrontal cortex is where you problem-solve and you do math and you make a plan. And it’s really effective at getting you where you need to go, but you have to have access to it. [00:15:21] You also have a part of your brain called the rectangular activating system. [00:15:25] This part of your brain literally is wired to help you to reach your goals in the most effective way possible. The. The most, the fastest streamlined way that will be the least complicated and use the least amount of calories for you. It’s amazing that we have this. [00:15:46] But we can’t access it unless we’re in a rest state. So you can imagine if you’re ramped up on adrenaline and cortisol thinking, I need to perform, we have to perform. If we don’t something bad’s going to happen, we don’t have a lot of time. We only have [00:16:00] this amount of time. The ideas that come into your brain in that state are really low quality ideas. [00:16:08] And the things that you’re focused on solving might not even be necessary. It’s just that your fear based brain is filtering everything in your business. And bringing these things up to the surface. And if you would’ve gotten out of this needy, Fast paced. Survival-based fear braced mindset. Those things wouldn’t even be a part of your plan. [00:16:31] They wouldn’t even be a part of your business model. They wouldn’t be a part of your to-do list that week. Or they wouldn’t feel so hard and confusing and there wouldn’t be pressure related to them. [00:16:43] So going back to that example of last night, I was standing in my kitchen and I was stirring the sauce. [00:16:50] And I noticed you’re fast paced, what the hell are you doing? . This is so unnecessary. This is , this is an optional thing you’re doing right now. [00:17:00] And I just took a deep breath. And I just felt the buzzy energy, the fast-paced energy around me. And I just let it all go. [00:17:11] And I said, Carrie, You have everything you need right now. You have enough time? There’s no need to get this dinner done more quickly. [00:17:22] The rice needs 13 minutes to boil and I’m not going to , change that. [00:17:28] Your kids have everything they need right now. [00:17:33] They have enough love. They have enough fun. [00:17:38] They have enough secure attachment. [00:17:42] They have everything they need. Your husband has everything he needs right now. He does not need you. He does not need your help to parent. He is fully capable. And in fact, he has all the fun he needs right now and all the relaxation he needs right now. Everybody has everything they need. [00:18:00] [00:18:01] And I let myself drop into the present moment and enjoy the process of. The easy prep dinner, right. It was really fun after I, I got out my self-focused survival brain. [00:18:16] And this type of thinking is what you can do in your business. In the moment, I was just on a call with the founder and she said , I understand when I’m doing meditation or when I’m praying or when I’m, I’m doing yoga because she’s practiced yoga for several years. [00:18:30] I understand how to get myself into this calm, restful state after work. You know, I go, go, go, go, go all day at work. And then I go and I decompress at yoga and I know how to do that, but how do I blend the two together? [00:18:45] She said, I understand the concept of what you’re telling me. [00:18:48] I understand that I need to access the prefrontal cortex. And ordered for my business to feel easier and for my ideas to be better. And for me to make stronger decisions. And I want to do it. [00:19:00] And I also understand how to get into this calm, grounded in control. Inspired place after work, but how do I do it in the moment? [00:19:12] And I told her, you have to keep on educating yourself about the science and you have to keep on practicing. [00:19:22] You have to have the monthly or the weekly coaching sessions, right. Just say, Hey you, do you remember that thing called your rectangular activating system? Do you remember how important that is? Hey, do you, do you remember. How. Easy it is to fall into scarcity thinking and not enoughness and how easy it is to get fast spaced and clingy in your business. This is the human condition. [00:19:49] Right? So now nothing’s wrong with you. If you tend to fall. Into that category, right. But that’s why we need to have [00:20:00] people to bring us back to, Hey, here is the science. Here is the education. Here are the practices and the tools that you need to use. So that you can fall into. Those default responses. Less often. [00:20:18] So I gave her homework. [00:20:20] I said, listen, this week, I want you to notice all of the times in your business. When. You’re acting from not enoughness. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough of a skill set to not worry about this thing. So I’m going to ramp up pressure and be a strict parent and try really hard to prep for this thing, because I don’t have the. Amount of confidence I need right now. [00:20:47] I don’t have the amount of self-trust that I need right now. [00:20:51] Just notice when your brain does this. [00:20:55] And have a conversation with yourself. That this is not a necessary [00:21:00] way to interact with. With what you’re up against. It’s not a necessary thing to do before you pitch your company to investors. It’s not a necessary thing to think when you’re making a decision about how to spend the next month in your business. [00:21:15] It’s something optional. [00:21:19] That’s actually causing you to get further away from your goal and produce more stress. [00:21:25] And we can drop it all. If you want to, and nothing bad will happen. [00:21:31] When you practice. Catching yourself from operating. You know, in this state and you shift yourself to a more abundant. Purposeful. Type of emotion in your business. [00:21:49] Your business model and your strategies will be simpler. More easy to execute. And you will get more traction. [00:22:00] [00:22:00] I was giving her the example of a sale scenario. I said, you know, that 90% of what you say is unspoken. We’ve, we’ve heard of that science, right? I’m sure you have. You know, body language is so important for communication. [00:22:16] But body language is coming from. What you’re thinking in your brain and how you’re feeling in your body. You don’t just have random body language that doesn’t reflect what you’re thinking and feeling. [00:22:29] So in a sales scenario, you can’t go into a conversation. Or you can’t produce content for your online marketing. Thinking. A negative thought is scarce thought and not enoughness thought and producing a scarce feeling, even if it’s just a little fast paced or a little pressure. You can’t have those feelings in your body and not have it reached the audience. [00:22:55] So you have to produce the abundant in [00:23:00] service. Calm grounded enoughness type of thoughts and feelings in your body. If you want to sell, if you want to produce really good content. [00:23:12] So it’s absolutely necessary in your business that you learn how to do this. [00:23:20] It’s necessary so that you can simplify the business. And it’s also necessary, so you can sell more effectively and it’s also necessary. So you can have the wellbeing and the life that you want. You literally can tackle all of those things with one skill set. [00:23:37] And it has been so fun for me to go on this journey. [00:23:40] The last several years of exploring just how powerful. [00:23:45] These tools are right of actually noticing when you go into your survival stress response, this not enough-ness. Emotion. [00:23:57] Shifting it to a [00:24:00] safe, abundant in service emotion. With strong, helpful thoughts and seeing the ripple effects that it has on your life in business. It has been so fun. [00:24:12] Both in my business. And in the dozens and dozens of founders who have used these tools. [00:24:19] So I want to tell you now more about what the suite of tools is, the system that I’ve developed in order to actually help you. To get rid of the stress. [00:24:33] To get out of your survival brain to get out of those fear-based emotions that you probably don’t like in your business, irritation and frustration. And overwhelm and procrastination, [00:24:44] they’re really helpful at that. But they’re also helpful for driving sales in a more simple way. Okay. So let’s talk about what. The suite of tools is for a few minutes. [00:24:57] I call this the CEO system. And the [00:25:00] reason why I call it, the CEO system is because it is basically a system that you plug your business into. It’s a container that holds you as the founder. Isn’t that nice that there’s a container that can hold you as the founder. I think founders all the time are just thinking all about everything they have to do for the business. [00:25:22] And they feel a little scattered and a little unorganized and a little, not on top of things. [00:25:28] And this is a little, a hammock. That can hold you. That says, look, I’m going to help you to feel you’ve got everything under control. You know exactly what to focus on. You know exactly what you’re going to improve and how you’re going to improve it. And we know how to troubleshoot it. If anything goes wrong. We have a suite of tools. [00:25:48] To hold you. And the safe little container. That’s what the CEO system is. And it’s made up of just four parts. So I’m going to go through those four parts. In a little bit of [00:26:00] detail and then show you how they all come together. To help you derive. Up sales while lowering stress. [00:26:10] The first step of this CEO system. As what I call the mind, body fundamentals. [00:26:17] The reason I call it, the fundamentals is because it’s the most important part of the system. If you don’t have this part of your system, Then the other three steps are not possible. [00:26:29] The fundamental thing for you as a founder related to your mind and your body. Is how to actually catch on helpful thinking. That produces the fight flight stress response. I just told you how to catch those and shift those. And to safe, abundant, confident, simple, grounded, calm, flowing, thoughts and feelings. [00:26:55] And this is a skill set. [00:26:56] This is a fundamental skill set that you have to have. And [00:27:00] so many entrepreneurs and founders are using their circumstances in order to dictate how they think and feel. Right. So if they’re trying to raise capital, then they don’t even realize. That that circumstance, by default is causing them to think really stressful thoughts and feel really stressful feelings. [00:27:18] And they don’t feel they have a choice. It’s like,, no, no, this is just a stressful time. [00:27:23] I have no option here. I have to think this way and I have to feel this way. [00:27:29] But really, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re cooking a dinner. That’s not a big deal. Or you’re up against a really tight deadline and you need to get capital investment or else your startup’s going to fail. You actually have the skillset and the power and the ability to think how you want to think and feel how you want to feel. And the faster you can learn that skill set the better because everyone with more success than you have right now learned it and is applying it. [00:27:56] And they didn’t let their brain say, Hey, I, you know what? [00:27:58] No, [00:28:00] I’m different. My circumstances are more stressful. Then everybody else’s. [00:28:06] I mean, they had compassion on themselves in the moment that yeah, they do feel stressed. And this is maybe a high stakes environment that they’re not used to solving. [00:28:16] And they can love on themselves. Right. For for being in that situation, but they don’t let themselves stay there. They recognize that. They have the ability to think and feel differently in that scenario. And as you become a founder and as you grow your business, you’re going to need to build the capacity and the capability. To handle more and more responsibility and more and more high stakes things. This is what success is. [00:28:45] You just learn to hold more mentally and emotionally. That is the key to success. [00:28:51] This is why you see people. More successful people than you. Holding it all. And you’re thinking out of they do that. [00:29:00] How do they actually have all of that going on in their business and all of that, that responsibility. And then they can just flip and play with their kids. I answer their phone and flip in the middle of a high stakes meeting. [00:29:13] It’s because they’ve just built the capability. And the capacity. To hold, whatever they’re doing. Hold that high stakes meeting. Hold that high stakes conversation. Hold that responsibility without their survival brain activating. [00:29:30] And they have a threshold. Everyone has a threshold. And it’s up to us to continue to push through that threshold, to unlock more ease. And more. Grounded-ness and more calm. [00:29:46] With the next stressful thing. Right. And we just keep breaking through the mental construct of , oh, this is too much. I don’t have what I need for this. I don’t have enough time support money for this. We break through that. And then we go to the next [00:30:00] level. It does not matter what the circumstance is. There’s always the ability to build the skill set there. [00:30:10] But you don’t have to feel bad about your current limitations, because everybody has a limitation. And once you get through your current limitation. The current scenario that you’re stressed about. They’ll just be another one that, that you’re aware of. And then you’ll want to go in and grow in that area. [00:30:26] And there’s just continues for your entire life. So there’s really no. And to point here, right? To growing your capacity and your capability. It’s just a fun game. [00:30:36] And once you realize that that’s what you’re doing. You’re learning how to be with and relate to. [00:30:43] A new type of scenario and you break through that and you understand that your mindset and the way you handle your body in that situation is the fundamental way to do it. Then it’s fun because then you can just do it for the next thing and the next thing, and the next thing. [00:30:57] So this is the fundamental skill set that you [00:31:00] have to learn first. How to think helpful thoughts. And generate helpful feelings in your body and what to do with the unhelpful feelings in your body, overwhelm or pressure when they arise, instead of just letting them be there. And trying to bulldoze through them or ignore them. Because your overwhelm and your stress and your irritation or frustration or impatience, or any of these other fear based and not enoughness. Stress full feelings. They’re having an effect, whether you believe it or not, they’re showing up in how you make decisions and in your strategies. They’re showing up in the sales conversation. [00:31:40] So, this is the first thing. [00:31:42] This is the first part of the CEO system. And it’s totally learnable and doable. It’s just a couple of concepts. [00:31:51] It’s two tools. [00:31:53] And these tools are literally just illustrations to help you to understand. How to shift in the moment, right? [00:32:00] That, that founder who asked me earlier today, how do I do this in the moment? We, we use a worksheet with a couple of visuals. [00:32:08] And this is what’s so fun for me as a coach is that we can take some of these big concepts and we can put them into some graphics into some illustrations for you to guide yourself through. So that you can understand how it works. [00:32:21] Once you learn how to get control over your thoughts and feelings and to operate how you wanna operate regardless of the circumstance. Then you do the next three parts of the CEO system. [00:32:32] And really the next three parts are just a cycle. Meaning you just go through these three steps over and over and over in your business every single day in every single week. [00:32:43] So it’s really simple. You make decisions, you implement them, and then you evaluate them. So that you can make a little tweak to it. And then you go around the cycle again. You implement that small little mini tweak decision. And then you [00:33:00] evaluated. Let me make a little tweak decision and then you implement it in. [00:33:02] Then you evaluate it and you go over around the cycle over and over and over again. [00:33:08] And you do so really effectively when you’re thinking really helpful thoughts and generating. Regulated grounding emotion. [00:33:19] Let’s go through the three steps of the CEO system in just a little bit of detail, so you can understand what I’m talking about and why the mind body fundamentals make so much of a difference. All right. The first one is decision-making. And I want you to think about decisions in your business as basically the building blocks of your business. Your business is just a collection of decisions. [00:33:39] That’s it. So it’s not a fancy business model and a marketing strategy, Ana. Ana cashflow analysis PNL. It’s a bunch of people making decisions. [00:33:53] And so every time you go to the table, whether or not you’re doing your business model for the first time or outlining your sales strategy, [00:34:00] Or just deciding what am I going to do for the next 30 days to move my business forward? You’re always just making a decision. [00:34:07] And when you are in this, this sense of lack and scarcity and fear in your stress responses on. You might be making. An unnecessary decision or complicating that decision. Because of what your brain automatically does when it’s in this state. Not because you’re not smart. Cause when you are acting. In this abundant, I have everything I need. This is simple. Mindset. You’re going to be able to make decisions really fast. And you’re also going to just leave a lot of the clutter off of the plan because you have what you need and it is enough. [00:34:44] So we really need you to be accessing those fundamentals. When you sit down to design a business model. And when you make an action plan. And that’s why I teach a tool called the three essentials. We pick just three essentials in your business. Those needle movers that [00:35:00] are going to be the things you focus on implementing and evaluating. For the next period of time in your business and you go all in on only those things and you leave the rest on the nightstand for later. [00:35:10] And you don’t let this fear of, I don’t have enough time. [00:35:13] I don’t have enough money. Clutter your plan with trying to pack too much in, at any given time. Packing too much in, at any given time is the biggest mistake that, that startup founders make. They spread themselves thin and they become a chicken with their heads cut off. I to call it the splattered paint. Founder instead of the strategic founder. Because they think I don’t have enough. I need to be everywhere. [00:35:37] We need to get the cashflow going. And it causes a lot of clutter, which is the opposite of the minimal viable product mindset that we need to have founders really understand the concept of minimal viable product when it comes to their actual product. But they don’t understand that they’re. Their marketing and their sales should also be following the minimal viable product. [00:35:56] Mindset of simple is better. Less is [00:36:00] more. When you have less to focus on, you can practice the right mindset needed in that environment. [00:36:09] You’re going to have to allow yourself to have more space and more time. To regulate your central nervous system and to get in the right mindset before those marketing activities and before those sales conversations and before those investor meetings, You can’t schedule yourself and pack yourself from task to task running. Because then you’ll show up in effectively in those conversations with real humans. [00:36:33] And that’s when you need to be present and in service and really listening, you need to open up space, got to slow down. [00:36:42] So you really want to be able to use the founder of mind, body fundamentals in the mindsets, when you’re actually making strategy decisions. And I’ve developed a really great training all about decision-making. In my group course that walks you through exactly how to make [00:37:00] good strategy decisions in your business. [00:37:03] What to focus on what not to focus on. How would we get out of confusion, how to simplify. [00:37:11] So that you understand how to rethink decision-making as an entrepreneur and not just , I gotta, I gotta decide to move. Right, but how do I make a smart decision accessing the most helpful part of my brain? [00:37:24] Once you decide on your strategies. Then you start to implement them. And a lot of founders also do implementation using their fight flight freeze stress response. They act from adrenaline and cortisol and not enoughness and they need the sale and they need the money and they need this to work and they don’t have the answers and they don’t have the skillset and they need to perform. [00:37:48] And like I said before, they show up in that, that conversation in those most important moments. Not performing as well as they could be because they haven’t remained. In the right mindset. [00:38:00] And they haven’t learned how to generate the right kind of feelings when they go into those settings. [00:38:05] And the implementation also includes. Really great planning. Most of the implementation actually happens during the planning process. If you have a great. Plan. And it’s been really organized. Well, Then you’re more likely to actually implement it all the way through. In the most impactful way possible without a lot of stress and without a lot of clutter. And so that’s why also in the program, walk my founders through exactly how to set up an action plan. [00:38:40] A lot of founders just blow through the action plan and they use whatever pops into their head as a good idea in order to make the plan. [00:38:47] They’re like,, I want to accomplish these things and this amount of time done. [00:38:52] And they don’t check into to think about, okay. How does that deadline to make you feel? What kind of emotions does that [00:39:00] deadline generate in your body? Are you leaving this strategy session? With overwhelm procrastination, fast paced energy. Or are you leaving this planning session feeling super grounded and inspired? And you’ve got the most simple step forward and you just have to walk into it and have fun doing it. So you can’t just blow past. Goals objectives, deadlines, budgets, timelines. You can’t just use these tools. In an amateur mindless way. You have to check in with , what is this doing to me and I, how can I meet us? Make a smarter goal that helps me tap into fueling emotions. [00:39:44] I told a founder that I talked to earlier this week. , why did you set that deadline? , why is this the goal and why is this the timeline? [00:39:54] Let’s check it with how you’re feeling about that. And we completely re [00:40:00] reworked the plan and reworked the goal in the deadline. In order to work with her founder brain. And she actually didn’t realize before that, that she had permission to do that. [00:40:12] So often we set these arbitrary goals and deadlines. And they’re making us spin and none of it is necessary. And we could actually rework those and get further faster if we were willing to be less rigid. With some of those just impulse thoughts that pop into her head. [00:40:33] And I think it even applies to, if you have investors giving you deadlines and giving you develop deliverables. There’s what the investor is saying to you. And then there’s the conversation that you’re having in your brain internally. [00:40:47] And how that’s affecting your mental and emotional state. Those are two different things. [00:40:53] And you’re always in control of producing those abundant, fueling clear, confident feelings for [00:41:00] yourself. So that you can execute a plan really well. The other part of implementation is selling the mindset required for selling actually being able to stand up and be visible. Sometimes being visible. Really activate your central nervous system. Right. [00:41:15] Cause , Our brains are pretty primal and it’s not really normal for one human being to be talking to thousands of people. It might not even be normal for your particular central nervous system to be standing up and to have three people focused on you. That might be the threshold that you’re at currently, your central nervous system is three people that’s not safe. [00:41:38] So we have to break through that so we can talk to 10 people and then 50 people, and then a thousand people. And this is a skillset that you can learn. But you have to understand how to create safety with visibility. So that you can emotionally connect with the audience instead of being focused on yourself. And your lack of skillsets and your lack of perfect words, because as long as you’re [00:42:00] internally focused on, I’m not good enough, I’m not enough. [00:42:02] This is not enough. Then you can’t serve the world and get your message out there in the most impactful, connected way possible. And so part of the simply sustainable. Program where I teach the CEO system. It’s about forming compelling messaging. And delivering it in a very impactful way. Using the building blocks of messaging, but also your emotional state, those mind, body fundamentals. [00:42:31] Another important part about evaluation or implementation. It’s what to do when your plan doesn’t go. Perfectly. Whereas planned. Right. You get halfway into implementing it and then something changes. This happens to you, right? This happens to every founder. What do you do when that happens? How do you react? [00:42:50] What’s the internal conversation that’s happening. And what do you do with your strategies and your actual plans and your goals? Do you get frustrated? Do you try to run [00:43:00] faster? Do you beat yourself up for not reaching the goal? Or do you know how to have an internal conversation that’s helpful and useful to you? [00:43:06] Both your wellbeing and the business at the same time, that’s a skill set. And that’s something that I also teach in simply sustainable. The last part of the CEO system is called evaluation. And this is the most important, and I think. The most. Exciting part of what I teach. Because most founders are not evaluating their task orientated because they’re in that fight or flight freeze, stress response. [00:43:32] They’re trying lots of things. And they’re trying too many things. [00:43:37] So they don’t have time to sit down and evaluate them because they’re just doing too many things too quickly. So how could we take an entire afternoon to evaluate just one of those things? Right. Or they just haven’t been told, Hey, you need to evaluate and you need to do so. In shorter increments, you need to be doing it on a daily basis or a weekly basis or a monthly basis, depending on what your marketing strategy is. [00:44:00] So I teach how to do an evaluation. [00:44:05] And it’s really simple. [00:44:06] It’s four questions. [00:44:08] But it’s important when you evaluate you that you uncover what’s working and what’s not. So you can double down on what’s working and get rid of, what’s not. [00:44:17] And the more often you do this, the more you can build momentum and move the needle, but without reworking your strategies or adding more action steps. So many founders are just dropping what they’re doing. They’re implementing it a couple of times and they’re not actually tweaking it before. They’re , oh, that’s not working. [00:44:33] And then they try something different. [00:44:36] That creates so much more stress and so much more action taking. Literally reinventing the wheel. [00:44:45] Painting the room and then repainting it. [00:44:47] Instead of building momentum and doing something different. [00:44:51] So evaluation is about how do we stick with the original decisions and love those strategy decisions and how do we stick with those marketing channels? And make small [00:45:00] tweaks to the fewer things that we’ve actually decided to do. [00:45:04] That’s why I love the three essentials. You pick three ways that you show up in the world and you don’t give up on them. And you think really helpful thoughts and feelings about when you show up there? And each time you evaluate you just to be one thing, and then you let it run again. [00:45:20] A really important part of evaluation. You might’ve guessed it. Is your mindset. Because if you go into evaluation thinking this didn’t work, I failed. I’m not enough. Right? These are all not enough emotions. Then. The evaluation is going to cause you to feel really bad about yourself. It’s basically a self punishment session, right? [00:45:42] Where your inner critic just beats the crap out of yourself. And this has happened to me. And this has happened to a lot of founders. This is just the human condition. You’re not enough. This isn’t enough. [00:45:54] And so it’s important to understand how to get yourself into eight. Enoughness feeling. [00:46:00] [00:46:00] And a celebratory feeling and a curious and objective and fun feeling before you do an evaluation. [00:46:08] So that you can actually be objective to uncover what you could improve. Because if you’re in this place where there’s a lot of drama and a lot of negative self-talk and a lot of negative emotion. You cannot be objective. You’re not accessing the prefrontal cortex. So your brain will not be able to find the objective things. [00:46:25] So you have to learn how to get yourself and shift the energy around the emotion. [00:46:29] This is a skillset. Some founders naturally do this. And they just don’t know the thoughts and feelings that are more normal to them and other founders. It’s a steeper learning curve. They tend to get more into that inner critic. But even if you can naturally be objective. The evaluation framework is going to help you to organize this process so that it’s really fast. [00:46:52] And you can just get back. To taking action. And evaluation doesn’t have to take forever, especially when you know which questions to ask and what to look [00:47:00] at. [00:47:01] The other part too evaluation is what to do when, when you did fail and you, you can’t get past those negative emotions. How do you get out of those, those really down moments when you just want to cry or give up or get angry or frustrated, how do you stay inspired? How do you create energy? For your business. So that you don’t start to bring the stress into your personal life and wellbeing because failure will happen. [00:47:28] It’s kind of part of the process. You can’t get out of failure, right? That’s literally how you test it. Tweak. [00:47:34] But how can you hold that failure without it depleting your energy? Right. Just how you in the same way that you can learn how to feel safe and confident speaking to two people and then 50 people, and then thousands of people. You can also learn. How to hold small failures and then bigger failures and the bigger failures and the bigger failures. [00:47:53] It’s the same skillset. It’s capacity. [00:47:58] And the people more successful than you. [00:48:00] They’re more safe with visibility and they’re more safe with responsibility, but they’re also more safe with failure, bigger amounts of failure than you. So when you look at everyone else, you might think they’re so much smarter than me. They have the best business idea. I got lucky there naturally, despite no, they have the capacity to handle more negative emotion than you. [00:48:22] All right. With more ease. [00:48:25] And they have a threshold just you, that they are working on breaking through. [00:48:29] So it all comes back down to the founder fundamentals and then how you actually use them when you’re making decisions, implementing them and evaluating them. And when you put these four things into place for your business, a really great thing happens. You feel held as the founder, not like you’re scattered and spinning and you don’t really know what’s happening and everything just kind of feels like you’re treading water. Every week, right? What needs to be done next? [00:48:57] You have a system and a structure to rest [00:49:00] into. You know, when to make decisions and when not to make decisions, you know, when you’re implementing and how to implement. And you know, when to evaluate and how to evaluate. And the entire time you practice mind, body fundamentals, you think helpful thoughts, you feel helpful feelings to help it all feel more fun and more light. [00:49:25] And as you do this, you start to see things move. And it doesn’t have to feel as heavy as it does now. And this is why I can confidently say that this system will help you to double revenue and cut tress in half. [00:49:39] Because these mind, body fundamentals will have ripple effects on your personal life. Once you realize that in the moment you can shift. Your mindset, you can shift the emotion in the room is so powerful. You don’t have to rely on outside circumstances to go your way or to go as planned in order to feel how you want to feel during [00:50:00] your Workday and to feel how you want to feel at home at the end of the day. It’s totally. Yours to decide. Once you learn the skillset. [00:50:11] And when you learn the skills that you automatically start to make more simple, fast decisions, your business model simplifies, your implementation goes faster. [00:50:21] Your evaluation gets more simple and the whole machine runs and it just gets better and better and better. And of course you’ll fall into the trap sometimes. Of getting out of that abundant. In service. Flowing. I have everything I need. Emotion because we’re humans, it’s the human condition to fall. Into that. But do you have the tools to bring yourself back out faster? Do you know how to spot it in the moment? And shift it. Without beating yourself up. [00:50:53] Can you have compassion for the human parts of you and then say, oh, I know I have the tools to shift myself. [00:50:58] Okay. Let’s shift and let’s keep [00:51:00] going. [00:51:00] That’s probably the, one of the most powerful parts of the CEO system. It’s what to do when you are a human. And you do feel negative and you are frustrated. [00:51:12] I am so excited. About teaching founders, the CEO system. It feels like my life’s work. And I want more and more and more founders to get access to the system, to get access to these tools. It will revolutionize the way you operate. You will never think about goals and deadlines the same again, you will never think about sales the same again. You will never think about your to-do list in your calendar. [00:51:39] The same again. [00:51:41] And it will help you to move the needle on those goals. While enjoying the side effects on your mental health. And your personal life and all of the other things that you really desire in your life. That connected relationship with your, with your spouse, that present ness that you want with your children. That [00:52:00] space to just relax at the end of the day, where you turn off your business brain and you feel . Things aren’t going well. [00:52:07] That is what’s possible and available to you when you learn these tools. To hold your business with more ease while you’re watching it work. [00:52:16] So I want to invite you to join simply sustainable. We just opened yesterday to the group program. It includes an on demand. Video based curriculum where you learn the CEO system. I teach you the mind body fundamentals. I give you the simple tool sets to follow. Those visual tools of what to do to shift your thinking and feeling to a more helpful state. [00:52:40] And then I teach you how to make decisions, implement and evaluate. [00:52:45] While keeping your mindset really strong. The curriculum is full of inspirational stories. An example. So you really know, you can catch yourself where you might be thinking. In a, in a [00:53:00] way that gets you stuck. And examples of how to use the tools to get yourself out into a more helpful state. And it includes a very practical tools. I do not group programs and courses and stuff with tons of clutter, right? [00:53:15] That’s the opposite of what we want to do for our founder. And we need less things, less documents, less workbooks. So the tools in this program are based on helping your founder brain. And using simplicity as much as possible. So there’s only a couple of templates. And there’s only a couple of practices. [00:53:33] There’s the daily self coaching practice. Where you get to a helpful state of mind. To regulate your central nervous system. And there is a CEO day practice. Where you make decisions, plan your implementation, get in the right mindset. And evaluate. [00:53:52] And there’s some templates where you can put all of your decisions and all your plans in one place. [00:53:57] So you don’t feel a chicken with your head cut off. So, you know [00:54:00] exactly these are my three essentials. This is where I’m moving. This is the vision. This is what we’re doing. And you can put the rest on the metaphorical nightstand. So they can open up more bandwidth for fun. And enjoyment and family and wellbeing. [00:54:15] There’s also in the program group coaching calls. [00:54:18] And I think that this is the secret sauce, right? Because it’s one thing to go through the course and to implement the tools. And it’s another thing to come to a coaching call and say, Carrie, I’m having a hard time making this decision. Or Carrie, we have this deadline and I’m feeling pressured, or I’ve got this big sales meeting coming up and I’m , Really feeling insecure about it. [00:54:38] Or I’m not really sure what I should be focusing on right now. [00:54:41] Should I do this or that? Or I can’t get this sales funnel working. I can’t get this marketing thing working. , how do I evaluate, how do I tweak this? [00:54:50] Or I’m really overwhelmed. Or I’m full of procrastination. And I don’t know how to get myself inspired again and motivated to take action for this thing. I just feel I’m frozen. And I’ve told myself [00:55:00] that I need to do this and I haven’t done it in three weeks. [00:55:03] You can bring literally any nuanced situation to those group calls. And we will use the CEO system and the skillsets. To work you through it in real time. [00:55:15] And even if you don’t want to talk on those group calls, you come, you watch it live, or you watch the recording and you watch other founders move through very specific problems. [00:55:26] And as you do this, you have your own aha moments for your own business. Because every founder deals with. Needing to improve sales. Needing to lower stress. Eating to make a deadline. Needing to troubleshoot, needing to shift their mindset, maybe to get rid of negative emotion, right? . Every founder deals with similar things and the skill sets that you’ll learn here, can it be applied to all of them? [00:55:50] So it’s so helpful for you to watch from the outside, someone else getting coached. You have sometimes more breakthroughs when you’re watching someone [00:56:00] else get coached. Then when you’re coaching. So you can take advantage of the replays of all those calls. There’s going to be a bank of all the calls, recordings, where you can sort them by topic. So if you show up to your business one day and you’re , We’re stressed about cashflow. You can search that as we build that library over time. You can search through that search tool and find a video clip of me, coaching a founder on that topic. I’m so excited to build that, that library. [00:56:33] And you can refer back to the course. And the tools whenever you get stuck. So, if you’re trying to make a decision, for example, a hard decision and you feel you’re stuck in indecision and you can’t make it. You can just open up the decision making modules. And watch a little clip. [00:56:51] Of maybe the chapter that looks the most relevant for you. And have me almost like I’m sitting in your office. Saying like,, [00:57:00] Hey. Have you thought about this? And I’ll help you shift your mindset in the moment so that you can move more effectively through. Your company on a weekly basis. So you have those monthly group coaching calls. [00:57:15] You also have Q and a meaning that you never have to stay stuck. [00:57:20] You can literally write in and the team will give you written coaching. On where to refer to in the course to get your question answered and some really good question coaching questions for you to think about in order to get yourself unstuck. It’s like having a business partner and a business coach on-call. [00:57:39] So I am so excited for you to have these tools. It is so important that as you engage. In. Courses and professional development and, and strategy and tactics and different things to move your business forward, because I know that you. [00:58:00] You have a lot on the table that you could learn right now. Maybe you want to take this course to help you with this type of sales funnel, or you want to work with this type of consultant to help you on this thing. That you really prioritize your founder brain. [00:58:16] And the structure. That you plug your business into. The container that holds your business. Do you have a process to follow. Where you know, that you’re making the most solid decisions that you can, you’re implementing them with the best planning structure possible and the best mindset possible. And you’re evaluating with the best framework possible. Do you have those tools because if you don’t have those tools and you don’t understand the mindset that you need to bring to your business, it doesn’t matter. [00:58:45] All of the tactical things you do. It’s kind of showing up in that investor meeting. With the feeling of pressure, . Just the energy. That you bring to your business will cause it to fall flat. Right? [00:59:00] [00:59:01] The emotion that you bring into the room. And the brain that you bring into the room. It’s not operating as well as it could be. If you were regulated and you had those mind, body fundamentals. [00:59:13] And it really doesn’t matter if you, if you practice mindfulness, if you do yoga, if you, if you’re really into, you know, other mindset tools, are you using them in your business? [00:59:25] I think that this is one of the most important questions for founders to ask. [00:59:29] It doesn’t matter if you do yoga in the mornings, do you know how to bring those. Emotions. To the decision-making table. To your sales conversations. [00:59:40] To your evaluations, , are you actually copying and pasting those? Thoughts and feelings and injecting them into your Workday. If not, then we need to do that as step number one before you go about, and you learn another tactic. I to say your, your business is just your brain, your business equals your brain. And how [01:00:00] well you learn to utilize, it will determine your level of success. [01:00:05] So the most important skillset for you to learn as to how to access and use your founder brain. [01:00:11] And the steps that you need to follow. While you’re using it. This is what the CEO system does. It’s it’s fundamental founder education, and I’m so excited for it to be in the hands of whore founders. I’m so passionate about this. [01:00:26] This is something that accelerators are not teaching. They’re saying, do this, try that. Or they’re saying like,, think like this. Right in a very like,, Very simple app simplified way without actually giving you the examples and the analogies and the metaphors and the visual tools in order to actually help you to think like that in real life. [01:00:49] You’ve all heard it. [01:00:50] Think lean, fail fast, get out of your comfort zone. These are all statements. That the entrepreneurial world is telling you, but they’re not actually telling you how [01:01:00] to get out of your comfort zone. How to fail fast. How to do these things in real life. You need tools in the moment in your Workday in order to actually execute. What those people are telling you to do. And that’s why I love this program is because I built it in a way that actually allows you to have aha moments. [01:01:20] So you actually understand how to think that way. And over time, it becomes who you are and you bust through that current threshold that you have, and you can go to the next level, but it doesn’t have to feel it hard and heavy. You don’t have to push yourself to get yourself out of your comfort zone. [01:01:34] You just see yourself doing things bigger and bigger and bigger. [01:01:39] So I’m so excited about this. We just opened the program. For the next 10 days. You get the promotional price. And then after that, the price is going to go up. I wanted to do a really exciting launch promotion to get as many people into the program is possible. So you have 10 days. To get in. [01:02:00] So I’m going to link up to the page. In the show notes, but of course you can just go to do business better school.com. [01:02:07] And you’ll find it there. [01:02:10] And you can learn more about simply sustainable and the CEO system. And you can get into the program during this exciting time. And the most exciting thing about this is during this launch period, you get three private coaching calls with me. Where I can actually help you to look at your individual founder brain over an hour. [01:02:31] So that’s three hours with me. And we can really map out what’s holding you back. And where you need to shift to and how you can simplify your business models and your strategies. And how you can think about your planning and execution and evaluation differently. To get these tools working for you. But this is limited. [01:02:49] It’s only for the next 10 days. So you need to snatch it up. So that we can get you implementing these tools. [01:02:57] Really quickly, right? Because you have that [01:03:00] one-on-one. Support with me. [01:03:03] So I’m so excited. You guys, first of all, I’m excited for you. Thank you for, for listening to this episode. I know, I sound a preacher in church right now. I grew up going to church every Sunday. [01:03:16] Right. Watching the preacher, get fired up, you know? From the pulpit. And creating a lot of, a lot of inspiration. So thank you for being a part of this sort of . This. Really inspirational. Feeling that I’m, that I’m in today. I want more founders to have these tools. And I’m so excited. So if you know, I want to be less scattered. [01:03:43] I want to be. [01:03:45] More effective at growing my business. I want to feel more organized. I want to have a simple business. I want to feel better in my business. I want to. To learn how to deal with overwhelm or procrastination or stress. I want to [01:04:00] be more effective at sales. I want to be more competent. [01:04:04] I want to reach this goal, but I want to do it with less stress. I want to make a bigger impact in the world, but I know I need to show up bigger. If you’re thinking any of these things, we need to get you into simply sustainable. I get the four parts ecosystem working for you. And let that transform the way you’re operating as a founder. [01:04:23] All right. I am so excited to see you inside simply sustainable. I have a wonderful week. Making sales, serving the world and making time for self care. [01:04:36] And I will see you founder inside the program. I’ll see you soon.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download