David Wood, Founder Of Focus.ceo | Impact Of Life Coaching On Modern Businesses

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Today, my guest is David Wood. David is one of the largest life and business coaches in the world. He was a former consulting actuary for Fortune 100 companies. He built the world's largest coaching business. He became number one on Google for life coaching. He was coaching thousands of hours in countries around the globe, as well as helping others. He is no stranger to overcoming challenges himself. He has survived the collapse of his paraglider. He survived a fractured spine. He survived the witnessing the death of his sister at the age of seven anxiety and depression. A ton of things that have shaped him to who he is today. He coaches high performing business owners to double the revenue and their time off by focusing on less and being 30% more courageous in their business and their career. We spoke about his story, how he pivoted from working with businesses as a consulting actuary to being one of the top business life coaches in the world. We spoke about how 30% more courage can double your revenue and your happiness. We spoke about why playing it's safe is one of the most dangerous things we can do. We spoke about how to push yourself out of your comfort zone. We spoke about what is available to you in your life and your work if you practiced real daring. He'll explain what that means more often. So this is a pure business professional life mindset interview. He's an incredibly inspirational person. If you listen to this it's going to light a fire. It's going to get you off your ass and it's going to get you doing whatever it is you have to get doing and honestly he's a remarkable guy. So let's jump right into it. This is David Wood. He is a high performance coach. He's a founder of focus dot CEO and he is one of the number one business life coaches in the world. Well I'm a bit of an unusual coach in that I think most coaches choose either business coaching or they do personal slash life coaching and I'm unwilling to choose one or the other. I work with the whole person and I think it's because of how I started I had a tragedy when I was seven years old. Lost my little sister and I watched her I watched her die in a traffic accident and at the time we didn't know about therapy and you know that you should take the kid to the funeral and all of that. So none of us really knew that there was a big impact of that and I think what happened and I learned later in life I shut down my emotions. I got really good being left-brained and cerebral and logical so I came top of my school. I got paid to go to university. I had a scholarship got transferred to New York and at the age of 23 24 I'm a consulting actuary to Fortune 100 companies so I'm going to Sony Music and Ford and Exxon working for one of the biggest consulting firms in the world and helping them helping these companies to to improve their bottom line make more money. So I was really good at business numbers and systems. I didn't realize until a friend said why don't you go and do this personal growth program which I really resisted because they all wore name tags and they smiled way too much and I'm like this this can't be real and they're just a bunch of sheep. They're mindless sheep who can't think for themselves going to this you know this bullshit. Fortunately they cracked my cynicism they cracked my heart open and I discovered that there are people who've dedicated their lives to making the world better. It's not just about money I didn't know that and so I generated a new possibility for myself which is really helping people not just helping huge companies make money but helping people have their lives be better and I realized too in that course I didn't know anything about emotional intimacy about vulnerability about true authenticity and showing who you are to the world instead of hiding 90% of it. I also didn't realize that these things were critical for leadership and true influence you know funnels through to sales and all sorts of things. So the first half of my life was all about numbers systems and money and the second half has been a real deep dive into my own journey of of learning all the things I didn't get as a kid and so now I call myself a business coach. People come to me because they're already successful but they do want to grow revenue faster and they want more time off. That's great. I'll start there with you but that's all you want. You should go to someone else because the really juicy stuff is when we get into how are you showing up in the world? Are you expressed? Are you asking for everything you want? Are you saying no when you should? How are you handling your tough conversations? How's your connection with your kids? How's your connection with your partner? And the real test if you were to lie on your deathbed tomorrow afternoon and I hope it's a long time coming for everybody. If you were to do that would you be able to look back on your life and say I gave it everything? I truly lived. I melted or would you say no that was not how I really wanted to live my life. Let's ask those questions now and not wait until it's too late. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode feedback loop. Now if you're a product person entrepreneur startup guy like me you have at some point in your career try to take a product to market you've tried to come up with a new idea and it's fell flat. It's ultimately failed 85 to 90% of all new products of all new startup ideas fail. Why is this? Basically it is really hard really expensive and really time consuming to validate product market fit with your potential consumers or customers. Old-style market research is way too slow to complicated to time consuming for dynamic fast moving teams and want to build great stuff but what if you could test out your idea your product with your target consumers whenever you want before you invest in the money time energy effort that it takes to actually develop a product. Well that's what startups all the way through to four to five hundred are using feedback loop for. You get quality feedback from your target customers early and often. Feedback loop is the test before you invest product research platform. It has built-in expert templates for concept testing user discovery prioritizing features on your roadmap and much more. You can create your own test in minutes and get quality insights from your target consumers and hours. They set up a special link for everybody who's a success story podcast listener to test it out to try it go to go dot feedback loop dot com slash success you get three free tests that's go dot feedback loop dot com slash success you can try it out for free you get three free tests so if you want your next product idea or feature to be a hit test before you invest build based on data not opinion and launch with confidence with feedback loop check it out right now and I'm curious as you work with these individuals I feel like a lot of people get caught up in the rat race which is something that you probably were caught up in when you were first starting your career. As you mentioned your first half of your career was numbers and business and revenue and and then you started to understand some of the importance of I guess self-awareness and and truly understanding like what you can bring to the world and yourself and whatnot. But how do you break how do you break that cycle of rat race of needing to make more money of needing to get the next promotion or needing to get the next round of investment. How do you break that psychological cycle because that's how we're all wired now and everything just reinforces yeah it's really tricky for us humans because you know making money to feed ourselves and to feed others and to house ourselves and to clothing is a is a biological drive it's an evolutionary trait and so that's good and valid man I'm hustling I'm hustling all the time I just created a and I don't think hustling's a bad word it's just you know your hustle to make a living the trap is as you're pointing out we can get into that patent we can get into that groove and we can forget to ask how much is enough we can also forget so oh this is great it's bringing up some powerful questions that we forget to ask and my invitation is to everyone to ask these questions of themselves and you could write these down on a piece of paper so first question is how much is enough how much is enough for me to be comfortable in life and then how much would I would I really like to make and have in the bank that would that would probably make life better as a those are two those are four numbers actually so you've got an income amount that would have you comfortable and an amount in the bank that would have you comfortable and then you've got what you would like now many of us go to pass that I've got one client I'm working with now who said a goal of bringing in a company making a company that's worth about two or three million dollars and then he achieved that and then automatically thought well what's the next goal okay I'll get it up to say ten or twenty million dollars now that's not fun for him he's not having a good time it's harder to go from from the three from from say one million to two or three than it is from three to six that's what he's finding and he's not having a good time and so we're really diving into these questions how much is enough for you and I asked another great question last week and he did he did his homework if money was not an issue you won the lottery someone just gave you thirty million or someone gave you five million all right for many people let it be plenty if if money was an issue what would you do and he really had to dig deep and and things came out like he'd love to be on the beach more just taking walks on the beach swimming in the ocean more time with family playing tennis loves to train loves to be learning something also loves to be building so he might still be in business even if money wasn't an issue so it'd be really good I think for all of us to work out our core values three of his core values were passion creativity and love and so we're looking now at how he can have create more of that in his life and to your question of like how do you bump out of the right race well you ask yourself questions like this and even better have someone else ask you questions like this because it's hard to do it for ourselves you can't read the label from inside the jar sometimes you just need someone else I'm I'm about to hire a nutritional coach because I can do a lot of it on my own but I won't do a lot of it on my own and she's going to spot things that I wouldn't spot and even in our first session as as we're talking my brain started coming up with new things she didn't my my brain came up with it but because I was in a coaching session and I started writing down all the things that I knew I should be doing but I was sliding on and so just out of that one session I went and joined a gym and committed to three squash games a week I committed to being in bed by 11 instead of 12 30 stopping television by 10 I booked a singing lesson and now I'm taking singing lessons so all sorts of things can come out of someone else saying how could life be better what what would that look like and digging in into it with you and it maybe it's a friend of a friend's willing to show it once a week for you sometimes it's hard to get friends to do that maybe it's a therapist maybe it's a mastermind maybe it's a men's group maybe it's a women's group I hope that answered your question it does then so it's getting somebody to sort of just take a they can be invested in you but invested in you in in a way that they don't see things through your lens so an unbiased view an audit of your life so to speak and that's what's going to help you understand that maybe everything that you're investing yourself in some of it's going to be very good some of it does move the needle some of it has to be done for the career for the job for the business but yeah we've got winders on yeah we've got blinders and that's fine right we're creatures of habit we're living in our own personal matrix if you've seen the matrix we're living in that and if that's going well for you if you're loving it and you're and you're inspired by what you're doing and you're moving at the pace it's good for you then great don't change anything but there's a reason that people even like Bill Gates goes and gets a coach and and the top athletes at the top of their game have coaches because we can't read the label from inside the jar I consider myself this is a reveal I consider myself as a very intelligent very self resourceful and motivated independent person and so the biggest thing for me to watch is my arrogance I often assume I'm the smartest person in the room and in many rooms that's probably going to be true but but the the shortfall the the real problem pitfall is that by assuming that I'm that that leaves me closed and not open to wait maybe there's a better way or maybe this would help yeah I just got coaching on the promotion that I'm that I'm doing right now and something obvious that I should have spotted was pointed out and like oh okay that's really good and then there were four other things that that I hadn't thought of so yeah outside input can be absolute gold one because in that space just someone else being in front of you asking these questions more things are going to come out of your brain than would have come out before and then there's the accountability factor when you know you got to show up once a week and you got to say if you did what you said you were going to do it's embarrassing it's embarrassing to to say I didn't do it right don't feel good about yourself you're embarrassed in front of someone else so the next week you probably do it and then you feel good hey I did what I said I was going to do it wasn't easy but I got it done I feel proud now you're now you're building a positive cycle and if you keep doing that you get in the habit of oh wait when I do what I say I'm going to do it feels powerful it feels good and look I just got these results so I'm a big fan of building positive reinforcing cycles unfortunately we get into some very unproductive habits and cycles and it's all about this is changing so let's so I want to and you made a good point there you said you know for in most rooms you could be the smartest person in the room and I'm sure you work with a lot of people that also have that mindset so if you're working with a lot of high performing individuals they all think that the smartest person in the room oh yeah until they're not so what's what's the one blind spot that is there a one blind spot that you see a lot of people have that are super high performers think they're self-aware think they figured out life but when you go in and you do that audit you notice there's a one thing that potentially keeps repeating that they don't they're not aware of that's a huge detriment and really inhibiting their success or happiness or growth whatever it is yeah we're going to go deep here so the biggest thing and this is for high performers low performers this this seems to be for the human experience is and I'll use the movie The Matrix again we're all living in our own matrix but we don't know it it's like Neo before he took the blue pill and I and I believe this is what the great teachers allude to when they when they talk about waking up and I don't pretend to be enlightened I'm a student of this but we live as if this is our reality as if oh he's a nice guy she's a bitch he's a jerk this person likes me this person doesn't like me I couldn't do that because I'm not good at it you know one of my limiting beliefs right now I'm I'm not a good singer we have this and yet we don't question these things and and this is evolutionary too I believe you know you're not going to put your finger on the hot plate every single time to check if it's hot you've got burned as a kid you know that damn things hot you don't have to check it again right that's called stable data that we have but when it comes to humans including other humans and ourselves we make all these assumptions so now we're living in our matrix this is how it is and that's fine while you're having a good time live in that dream world Byron Katie says no no story no world if you're not making up stories and beliefs about about the universe you have no world so it's fine but when things are painful I think most of us don't most of us don't realize the suffering is coming purely from what we're thinking it took me a long time to get that I was always wondering why is this man who's burned and in a wheelchair making a massive difference in the world and seems lit up speaking to groups saved a mountain in Colorado and yet this other person who's rich and famous and successful just took their life I was always curious about that and then Byron Katie was able to explain it for me it's what you're thinking it's not what you have so the good news is that can be hacked the thinking can be hacked that thinking gives us our world I'm having I'm having a good day today and it's because I'm believing a bunch of things about my day I'm believing that my energy is the right level I'm believing that it's going to be a fun film shoot later on today I'm believing all these things so I don't I don't go this deep this fast with clients generally but when they're upset when they're stressed when they're unhappy when they're suffering maybe approaching burnout I know that they're in a matrix so I can start looking at what they're believing and start poking holes in that and then you know maybe nothing in their external world changes but their internal world does and now they're now they're having a good time now they're not freaking out anymore I know someone right now not a client but this person has a has a stalker getting violent death threats now I can barely imagine what that would do to someone's nervous system I know my nervous system is pretty fragile so just living with someone sending vicious death threats and having to look over your shoulder now though that can be approached two ways one way is all the practicals great so I went over sat down with this person and said I'm going to fire off like 30 questions I want to know what you've tried want to know what you what what you've considered and discarded and then I got 10 ideas you know it's brainstorming some things so we did all the practicals but I was clear that equally important was how are you holding this are you against this person so you're in a fight can you bring love and compassion to this even as you set your boundaries and protect yourself so it's it's kind of strange in coaching sometimes we'll just roll up our sleeves and get practical all right you got to do this this and this and sometimes it's like hey your mindset seems like it might be causing some suffering right now it's causing a fight with you and your business partner it's causing a fight with you and your fiancee and it's having you lose sleep so yeah let's spend half the session on the practicals things you can do and let's look at what you're believing that's giving you such a difficult time right now mindset obviously is something you keep coming back to which I don't think anybody can disagree with is not important for not only happiness getting out of your own head I love the way you frame the matrix that's if I love that I love that analogy because that's that's that's quite literally what we all are in every single day just stuck in our own heads and to take it to an extreme that can impact your relationships but it can impact your health the the way that you view your job and your position in life and your financial situation and your relationships that can lead to cortisol increases which can lead to heart attacks and all these health determinants and whatnot so it's like a the big thing that probably isn't I would say probably isn't really focused on enough really focused on helping people get out of their own head it's massively undervalued yeah when you said when you said no one can really argue with mindset I was thinking but we do including me you know if I see oh there's a course on mindset my I don't need that it of course on on more money I need a course on finding a partner or whatever but fortunately someone introduced me to Byron Katie and I read the book I read a book loving what is and it didn't really stick I'm like yeah I don't know and I didn't really buy it I didn't buy it that the mind was everything I didn't buy it I didn't know that my whole reality comes through my five senses it's the only way that I know off to experience reality through my five senses and the interpretations of my mind that's the filter so my whole world is actually in here it's not out there it took me a while finally I went and did a course with her and I was like oh my god this is the holy grail and she says the worst thing that can happen to you is a thought now I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode grin now grin is the number one creator management platform helping ecommerce brands connect with their audience through the power of creator partnerships now influencer marketing it's easy to get lost in the spreadsheets and busy work coming through a messy web of communications looking for content 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iv first aid beauty movement they all run influencer marketing campaigns at scale and work with thousands of creators at the same time they're all using grin so you need to treat your creator like your brand revolves around them because in the creator economy it does experts believe that influencer marketing will become a fifteen billion dollar industry by twenty twenty two so this isn't going away anytime soon you have to figure out how to use influencers and creators at scale find out how grin can help you grow your brand watch the demo at grin dot co that's g-r-i-n dot c-o influencer marketing is easier with grin find out why at grin dot co that's g-r-i-n dot c-o yeah I want to I want to speak about mindset still but I want to speak about some of the things that you're focused on now because when we were chatting before the show we were speaking we were speaking excuse me about courage and which is another mindset thing it's another thing that we have that's not tangible but it has a major impact so you speak a lot about courage what does courage mean people say well I'm you know I'm courageous I jump into things I do this I do that but what is what is real courage and how does it actually impact your life what what you say to somebody who says I want more courage in my life what does that actually mean it's not tangible for me yet well yeah I think there's two big questions here one is do I actually need more courage like would that change my life I think you know because I think we should address why why would you why is that even important and then how do you do it is I love that practical question so firstly the why I think the reason I talk a lot about courage is because as I when I looked back over my life in fact I was in a therapy session and the and the psychiatrist said you're almost counterphobic and it's I'd never heard that word but as soon as he said it I got what he meant if I'm afraid of something I will generally go and do it I almost have to do it because I think it's because as a kid I did let fear run me so if I was being bullied and I was bullied a lot I didn't stand up to them I would back down and it's stung every single time and I wish to this day I wish I'd just punch a bully on the nose and take an beating right or who knows maybe I would have come out on top but I just let fear run me and with with with girls at school I didn't ask them out I was terrified and it felt horrible to live like that so as I got older and I went and did this personal growth program and I got coaching they would constantly nudge me and encourage me and push me in the direction of doing scary things and their version of scary things were making a list of everyone in your life that you're feeling complete with that you hate that you resent that you feel guilty about anyone you would not want to see on the street and initially it was hard I couldn't think of anyone maybe one name two names but as we kept going more and more and more names and they'd say oh great now call them I'm like hell no you what you want me to call the bully from school that I've hated for 20 years no you want me to call the the girl who dumped me twice and gave me the cold shoulder and who I still resent no but with coaching and we'll get to the how like how do you find the courage for that um I went and did it and I found oh my goodness the results were mind blowing heart opening that bully said at the end of the call he said well what can I say or do now to help us move forward that was the jerk and the and the girl I called said and I said I don't even apology or anything I'm just letting you know I'm letting go of it and I wanted to I wanted you to know that and she said I am so sorry I was such an idiot I was so unkind and I'm just so sorry that I had that impact on you it was amazing that was amazing so what I learned is that almost every time I lean into my fears and I face it I feel better afterwards don't feel better doing it no it's often terrifying um I went on national television in a guilt to sing and I can't sing and I literally peed my pants a little bit it was terrifying but boy did I feel good afterwards I felt good afterwards and then other things became easier once I done that and so I want that for the world the risk if you don't do it is that you'll have regret and I don't want anyone to have that so I'll just check to see if you want to say anything before we get to the hell no no no I'm just listening I'm just listening man this is this is great this is really great um I think I've never had to do some of those exercises I think I would probably calling calling people that I wasn't on good terms with in in elementary school and high school that's difficult that's very difficult so that's what that's what you did to psychologically break yourself out of this this living in not fear but like living with these these things that are weighing down on you and now you've got a few times and then you understand what's on the other side and then now that's on the you can you just do in your life I'm assuming yeah and because I've done so much of it I think that gives me the street cred like I've done things I've done some things that I can't share publicly I've done I've gone and confessed to um to a to something I did that was illegal when I was a kid and and could be prosecuted for and I risked prison to apologize to somebody now I'm not saying you're going to go and do all of these things I'm saying what I want for everyone is to find the things that would make a difference to your life even if they're scary and then decide if you're going to do them and I'll rattle off some examples just to pop some ideas into people's heads so it might be telling a co-worker that something they're doing isn't working for you I might be saying to a team member that it bugs you when they're late to meetings and you'd like them to be on time it could be asking for something sexual in the bedroom it could be making a confession to your kids asking a celebrity to endorse your product calling 10 people and ask them if they're interested in working with you you know whatever it is for you this is where courage comes in if you don't you're going to play small and if that's comfortable for you and you're loving it great don't change the thing but if you want to know what's on the other side of those fears then let's talk about the how so uh maybe we can use the the acting example I just started telling you before I think it's a good example I think it's a really good example and that the second I you started telling me about that now all the stories coming together why you do some of these things so yeah so go into the acting example what you're working on this afternoon actually when we're recording this yeah so for years I've been thinking I just love to find out what happens if I really dive into acting I'd like to try it out I'd like to learn from my own personal growth getting touched with emotions and I just you know I'd love to be the lead in a major movie that's what I you know that's a lifetime goal of mine but I didn't tell anybody I just that was kind of in the background like one day and then three months ago I thought you know what I'm single at the moment I'm mobile with my coaching and I'm in the US I think when my lease runs out which is May 1 next year 2022 that might be a time to move to Los Angeles so I started saying it which was quite scary because what if I don't do it what if I tell people and declare it and by the way I'm declaring right now on this podcast May 1 next year I'm moving to Los Angeles to devote myself to the out of acting full time for the minimum of one year so I started saying it and then you got to be careful what you say because a friend said well I'm going to an audition for a play Dracula do you want to come and audition with me now a big part of me was like no because I don't know how to act yet I haven't even done a class and I don't know I had an audition so no but then another voice said I think this is the sound the universe makes when it's knocking this is that sound this is that opportunity and what's and so here's another hack what's the worst that could happen that's a really great question ask yourself once you've got the awareness of what you'd like to do ask yourself how could it go badly how could it go well so important the mind is really good with that first question so it could go badly I could I could be embarrassed and I could say what's this guy showing up for he's got no idea what he's doing I could be embarrassed how could it go well I could get a pot in the play and the next question is if it did go badly how would you handle that so I I said yes I'll go and do it now another thing I did to to help myself with the fear and also with the possibility of success I didn't just show up to this thing I went and bought the script so I had to fork out like $17.95 on this script read the whole script so I had the context because that was suggested to me so did that very few people at those auditions had the whole script second thing I did I memorized the lines for the audition because they sent them to us ahead of time I was the only person I saw there who didn't have to keep looking down at the at the script and I could actually give it my my full thing I had friends come friends come over to the house to read lines with me I googled how to do a German accent so I could speak like this and and be German and you know van Helsing I want you to do this and I'd learn how to do a German accent in like two hours and I probably out in a hide and acting coach for an hour paid 50 bucks to have someone run me through the four parts so I'd not only read the had to learn the lines for one part but four different people and then I showed up and I gave it I gave it what I had and lo and behold they offered me the lead so now you're looking at Dracula in a in a paid professional production so I now call myself a working actor others can argue with me that's fine but I'm a working professional actor and and I think it's because I I did the hacks to prepare myself and get myself to it and sure I was nervous you know if I think a lot of us think we have to be confident before we'll go and do something that's a trap because if you're going to do something new something cool something with huge upside you probably aren't going to be very good at it when you start like learning the piano you're going to be willing to suck I was willing to suck in that audition and I said I will read and if they'd like it I'll read some more and that's how it's panned out I end up reading a lot because I you know five weeks of rehearsals we got 12 shows to do every weekend man I got the things out so amazing I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode athletic greens now I'm super happy that I partnered with athletic greens because I literally use them every 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replace that it's important to choose a high quality vitamin with ingredients that your body will actually absorb athletic greens definitely takes care of that and it's way cheaper than actually getting all the different vitamins supplements ingredients if you're going to buy them separately to make it easy athletic greens is giving you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase all you have to do is visit athletic greens dot com slash success that's right that's a special URL they put together just for success story podcast listeners again that is athletic greens dot com slash success to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance there yeah see that's that so you're living it you're living it this is what people have to do I want to I want to I want to ask just one more question just get some one more piece of information to this story one thing that I've seen you speak about a lot when you when you do podcasts you say playing it safe is the most dangerous thing to do why is that for somebody who is playing it safe regret regret firstly playing it safe can get um playing it safe staying in the comfortable zone the comfort zone can get very uncomfortable if you're there long enough right you'll get five years in a job and go what the hell am I doing I know this I know how to do it for 15 20 years I served coaches I helped coaches build their practice I was the coaches coach I was the guy to go to I was the largest provider to the coaching industry in the world but I was in a 10 years too long because it was comfortable I knew how to do it I'd said everything I wanted to say say and I was like dying slowly inside so that's that's the risk I think I know speaking for myself I need something new in my life I need something probably that I'm not good at and that I have to have some humility with or I'm just slowly dying I just I'll go to television smoke weed at night and and just get just get bored now it could be it could be ping pong and take on ping pong and have someone over two three times a week and just train and get good at that it could be that I'm taking on squash right now last night when I stopped TV I did an hour of singing exercises right that's something for me that's exciting and learning the craft of acting as exciting um in business you might be like I'm going to get three celebrities involved in my business that might be exciting for you or I'm going to double revenue in six months um pick something that's a stretch and maybe you're not even sure how you're going to get it done how enlivening is that it's like I don't know exactly how to do it but I'm I'm committing to it and now I'm going to find a way and I'm going to play that game I'll tell you one thing if you do if you do do that um and you stick with it you will start to map out the steps that you need to get you need to take to get there it will start to manifest you'll start to figure it out if you just keep that vision and you just stick with it long term there'll be there'll be things that will start to appear in your life in in in the people that you know in the things that you've you know that you've done that will allow you to get to where you want to be and it'll it'll be funny how your life will move in that direction yeah and and even if you don't get that holy grail that you're shooting for at the end of the road the journey is so much more fun I I am successful now as an actor because I'm I'm having a good time that's my definition of success I'm having a good time if I get no more gigs and I just got another one this morning I'm going to be a news announcer announcing a zombie apocalypse man I'm made for the it's going to you know pretty dry so much fun right I'm having a good time sure there's more yeah I'd love to network with with you know some of the big stars and I'd I'd love to be able to call in friends and I'd love to do a musical I have other goals but it's a win now if you create a goal say 12 months from now and you are loving the journey towards that goal then I would say you can call yourself a success that's that's the test I had a friend say recently if I won the lottery I'd still be pushing this product that I'm trying to get to market this is what I'd be doing and I was like what a great test if I had you know limited money I'd still be doing this yeah that's a great test and and listeners if you do decide to work with me that's the test that I'm gonna put to you I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now the new year might have you thinking ahead to what you want out of your career so when you think about your success story what do you actually picture is it retiring early with a beautiful view of the skyline is it leaving a legacy with your name on it or maybe it's helping influence and change some of the world's most pressing issues whatever it is writing your success story starts by working smart because when you work smart your success story writes itself a HubSpot CRM platform helps your marketing campaigns work harder and smarter with intuitive visual workflows and bot builders you can create scalable automated campaigns across email social media web and chat so your customers hear your messages loud and clear are you tired of your content not adapting to mobile making it difficult for your customers to absorb your message a HubSpot CRM platform optimizes your content for multiple devices so that you can reach your customers wherever they are which is just smart learn more about how you can transform your customer experience with a HubSpot CRM at HubSpot.com I want to know if you're successful or not I want to do I want to do a couple of rapid fire to close this out before before we pivot I need your socials where are people going to go find you websites anything that you want to drop in the show and it'll go in the show notes too obviously yeah super easy super easy I create a one link that'll take you to a hidden page on my website and it'll give you a couple of resources that I offer to people who want to get twice as much done in half the time there'll be a link to my podcast extraordinary focus if you want to listen to me as well as the amazing Scott there's a link to request a coaching session if something resonated for you and you're like you know what I could fly higher faster further with with outside input request a session and we'll see if we're a fit I'm not a fit for everybody and not everyone's right for me but usually I can work that out in about 15 minutes and you can do all of those things at myfocusgift.com because I would like to give you the gift of focus so myfocusgift.com will take you straight to that hidden page on my site and in the met navigation you can find my social links if you want to follow me on Instagram and all the all the regular places where amazing people hang out awesome okay so let's do a couple rapid fire just pulling out some last insights from your career biggest challenge you've had what was it had you overcome it biggest challenge you know I'd say anxiety and depression my my my system I've been dealing with this for 20 something years and it's sometimes it makes it hard to just get through a day or to keep a date that I've made or you know we'd go into prisons here in Colorado and teach the inmates and it's been hard for me to say yes to that I found ways to manage it but definitely learning how to live with that and to live the kind of life I'm living now with that has been the biggest challenge that I have both overcome and still deal with on a on a daily basis amazing one person who's been incredibly impactful in your life there's probably been many but you have to pick one who was it and what did they teach you firing Katie the worst thing that can happen to you was a thought I love that and then a source a book or podcast you'd recommend people go check out a book or podcast well this is not a business resource this is just my book in the world and I would even drive over to the author's house to help him write the third one because he's been like eight years we've been waiting for this third book and he's having trouble with it the book is called the name of the wind the name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss and I just whenever I finish listening to the audio book for the third time I'm sad because I miss I miss the main character and I just want to hang out with him every day all day name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be sometimes it's going to seem so hard that you don't even know if you're going to survive it you don't know if you're going to make it through but you do you're much more resilient than than you think and um I forget who said it maybe it was real key uh feel the joy feel the terror none of it is final to good quote I don't know who's I've never heard that quote before that's a really good quote and last question what does success mean to you having a really great time if you're having a really great time consistently I think that's everything that's everything whether it's feeling love for you or feeling inspired or feeling energized or or making a difference if you're having a great time in the world that is success yesterday I said to myself I don't know how I'm going to face this day and then my mind said why do you have to face a day why do you pick that chunk of time why not how am I going to face this next 30 years or how about how am I going to be in this moment so fresh hot off the presses