Fast 5 for Friday: Giving Gratitude for Team, Family, and Lessons From the Oil Patch

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true, actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners, alongside my co-founder and co-host, Brooke Bishop.

0:47 All right, buddy, you ready to dig in? Let's dig. Fast five for Friday, the turkey day edition. Oh, that makes me want to listen to a Thanksgiving song. Damn it. Okay. Yeah. We got to get to it here. I don't have time to fuck around. All right. Kick us off with number one here, buddy. We're going to hit some gratitude today. So in terms of things most grateful for, normally I lead with my family. We're not going to lead with the family today, but things I'm most grateful for right now, honestly, is our team. Our team is, I was talking to my wife about this. We were going for a Christmas tree last night to be prepared for the Thanksgiving holiday. And it was just like, wow, we legit have the most all-star team I could have ever imagined.

1:31 Literally, if we sat down and it was like, what is it? Clearly, I don't play this football when you have the fantasy league. Like we have the fantasy league team. for what we do. And just between the brainiacs and the woman power and the manpower, the historical data and knowledge that they had bring to the table, but beyond all of that, their heart and soul, like just their dedication to serve and add more value and just to make people feel loved. Yeah. It's honestly, it's one of the first things I give gratitude for every single morning where I'm like, holy crap, I get to do this. That's so well said. And we don't have time for me to add to that a lot, but I'll just confirm that statement. We crushed it in the fantasy draft with this team.

2:12 I'm so grateful for each and every one of you. You truly are amazing. And it's an absolute dream to get to come to work with all of you amazing people every day. Okay, number two, I am going to say I'm thankful for sales calls. Now, what am I talking about? I'm thankful for sales calls. Well, listen, in what we get to do every day and in what most of our clients get to do every day, we have leads that show up on our calendar, you know, from marketing efforts, whatever those are. And typically they, you know, have some kind of engagement with us and that kind of thing. They're a warm lead. We get to have a nice, amazing sales call engagement. And, you know, I'm giving gratitude for this because sometimes even I like I'm sure you fall into this trap sometimes too, Brooke.

2:56 Like sometimes the schedule gets crazy. You kind of whine a little bit or something like that. Lord knows we hear that plenty from our clients. Guys, I am here to tell you you have nothing to whine about. I'm going to share this really quickly, you know, in my old days in my own gas business. And this is coming front and center actually right now because I just started watching Landman on Paramount Network, which I'm just going to say I'm going to give some kudos to Sheridan on this one because they're doing a good job. Like the language in the movie is accurate. It's spot on. So far, there's going to be some drama and salaciousness, but it's not too over the top yet. But, you know, I have a bazillion stories. One that comes to mind in particular is, you know, I used to go out in rural parts of the country and doorknock.

3:39 I mean, in places that I'd never been. I had no idea where I was. They didn't know who I was. And there was this guy that I was trying to get a hold of for a really long time. And I could never get him on the phone. I sent him letters, all that stuff. I finally said, fuck it, I'm going out there. It took me like an hour and 20 minutes to get from where I was to where he was. And I show up at his doorstep and, you know, it took a while for me to actually for him to let me in the house because he'd had some really poor experiences with companies before me. And eventually he let me in the house. We had a nice conversation. The dude was a hoarder and he cleared some space off of his couch for me. And the couch was literally it had a layer of ash from like chain smoking all over the couch.

4:22 Whoa. And I wasn't going to not sit down. The dude invited me into his house, asked me to sit down. And after I got the deal done, which of course I did because that's what I do. After I got the deal done, he's like, hey, he's like, you want to come out and see my shed? And I'm like, yeah, let's go see the shed. Let's go. You know, so we go out there and we get out to this dude's shed and he's a trapper. So if you don't know what a trapper is, go Google it. But he's got very small animals in cages and blood. And like I walked into fucking Hannibal Lecter's house. I was going to say, you put the lotion in the basket there, buddy. Right. Yeah. I'm like, I'm literally like, I know exactly where the door is at.

5:02 And I'm like, I'm like, okay, I could legitimately end up at the bottom of a well here. So the next time that you start whining about your sales calls, just think. You could be sitting on an ash-leaning couch in a hoarder's house who takes you out to a shed and shows you all of the dead animals that he's got trapped up in cages. And you could think that, you know, yeah, it's a Jodie Foster moment. So anyway, we got to move on here. Number three. Oh, the memories. Oh, the memories. Oh. Number three, gratitude for our clients. This is an interesting one. So I think so many people who are in business, they're grateful to their clients because they provide or generate revenue.

5:46 Yes, that's a nice byproduct. But honestly, our gratitude stems from the fact that the clientele that we have is literally transforming the planet. So through the work that they're doing and the people that they're out there, I mean, these are mission-driven, heart-centered, spirit-filled human beings that want to serve, that want to help. The marriage between our heart-driven team and our heart-driven clients, it's just, we have a lot of good that's happening. So I'm super, super grateful for the work they're doing. I'm grateful for the energy that they put in. I'm grateful for them being coachable and them showing up, willing to get outside their comfort zone for the sake of helping others. So yeah, that's where... Mine's not like putting animals in cages though. So no, no, thank you for bringing us back to like the light side of.

6:29 It's why you do what you do, right? Oh, the world. Because of that experience. Yeah, that's exactly right. Never again. Yeah, never again. And I'll just say thank you. Double down on that. Thank you to all of our clients. You guys are absolutely amazing. It's a joy and an honor to get to coach you every day. And the way that you show up and what you're doing in the world is incredible. All right, number four, I want to give gratitude for the opening up of opportunity. And what I mean by that, you know, I'm reaching the end of a year long consulting engagement that has been absolutely amazing in every way possible over the last year and years. As I do that, I'm really so grateful for the opportunities that are coming on the other side of it. You know, oftentimes, I think this time of year, especially if you're in the business of client getting and client service in some way, shape or form, as it gets into the holidays, you know, a lot of times you can have clients that are going to, take a break or they're going to decide to not renew this month.

7:24 You know, oh, it's Thanksgiving. It's December. I'll come back in January, whatever. I just want you to remember that every single time, every single time God in the universe closed one door, if you will stay open forever, another door will open and another door will open. And more often than not, it's another something that is amazing, that's not just going to replace but augment what you had before. And so I'm giving gratitude for that because literally that's already happened in our case. And I'm grateful for what gets opened up as we close other things out. Just reminded me of the surrender experiment, just as the book. If anyone hasn't read that book, dear God, go get it. But it's just, it's so timely.

8:05 And I'm going to make that commitment. I'm going to read it again before the end of this year because it's due. It's that time. Dude, you know what's funny? Ironic. I literally just gifted that book to a client on Audible yesterday. Yesterday. It's in the ether. Not a coincidence. There it is. Not a coincidence. Not a coincidence. Cinco, bringing it down the line, super gratitude for our families. Most may not know that both your family and my family and Vanessa's, actually all the families that are involved in our organization, they're just huge supporters of what we do, of supporting us, of supporting the effort that we're going through when we have to work late nights or early mornings or weekends or when we have events or things that pull us away. I'm just super grateful for them and their understanding and their encouragement of us living out our mission.

8:46 It's just really cool. Just I know both of us have our kids super involved in that and they get to witness what we do and they get to see the impact of what we're doing. Just, yeah, super grateful for them and the effect they're having in our world, too. We couldn't do what we do every day if not for the amazing families that we have. And yes, thank you for each and every one of you and the way that you support us and allow us to go out and serve and fulfill our mission. So with that, hope that you're listening to this with an awesome, nice turkey hangover and you've had a beautiful Thanksgiving and have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Until next time, thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. Happy Turkey Day weekend, everybody. Happy holidays, y'all.

9:28 Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.