Fast Five for Friday 013: Lessons from Chess, Asking for Help, and Dream 100 Clients

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.

0:41 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of empire partners alongside my co-founder and co-host Brooke Bishop. All right, dude, fast five for Friday. Let her rip. Number one, let's go. Uh, all right. So learn the game of chess. Um, what I bring that up is, uh, a, my daughter, who's 12 years old. She kicked my ass this week in a game of chess and it really upset me. Um, um, But it was really interesting parallel to look at to go, OK, so I've played chess since I was a kid, but I've never actually gotten into the strategy of it. It's just kind of like playing it for fun, which is always there's a lot of benefit and a lot of cool stuff there. But seeing my 12 year old daughter who did go do a little research and came up with some strategies and how effective they were and how much that changed the course of the game.

1:24 I'm like, duh. Go find the winning strategies. Go kick some ass. Where else does this show up in life? So just one of those big things that was just like, never again. Right? So, yeah. I love that. And there's so much value in that. Honestly, I played a lot of chess when I was a kid. And I don't play very much anymore. In fact, hardly ever. So, yeah. Good one to get back to. And a great microcosm for all of life and especially business. 100%. We should bring a chessboard on our little trip that we have later this week. That might happen. Okay. Number two, this was an interesting... Speaking of daughters, I had no idea you were going to start with that.

2:05 And now you're going from daughter and I'm going to daughter. Who knew? My youngest, you know, went to... Both of my daughters are big into musical theater. And my youngest, who was 11... went to an audition and she was super psyched up about the audition. She knew exactly what part she wanted and she didn't get the part. And she was just very, she's very upset afterwards. And, and I said, let me ask you a question. Have you gone to your teacher and said, you know, let's just call her Ms. Smith?

2:46 Miss Smith, I'd really like to get bigger roles in the shows that I'm doing. And I'm not sure what I'm missing. Can you help me understand what I should be focusing on so that I can get bigger roles? And she said, well, no. I said, okay, well, let's go do that. But daddy, I can't. Why not? Because I'm embarrassed. And I said, well... Would you rather be, would you rather feel a little embarrassment that you're asking that question and actually get the help that you need and then get the parts that you want? Or do you want to keep going through, you know, each show with a part that you don't love?

3:30 Which, which one do you want? And it was so fascinating because I recognize, you know, right in that moment, how many of us just literally will avoid getting help. And this doesn't stop when we're children, damn it. In fact, I think it gets worse as we get older. Yeah, definitely. Right. And and so that came front and center. And I had to look inwardly at myself also in that moment and go, OK, where are the areas where I'm just kind of being stubborn or white knuckling it when I could ask for help and and actually, you know, get what I need from somebody who's further along down the road?

4:11 I love that, too. What great lessons for your daughter at this age so that she can navigate through that? See, it's good parenting right there, bro. I had a moment. I mean, I don't know how many I have, but that one was good. If it's one, it's one. That's the most important one. That's right. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Number three. Number three, the who is far more important than the how. So I know a lot of us have probably heard that or even said that before. But the how is still freaking important. Right. So, you know, there's this this dynamic of You know, if I can meet that one person, if I can go, if I can go out there and just get that one breakthrough, if I could just get that land, that one client, if I can just make that one thing happen, like, boom, the game changes.

4:56 Yes, that can be true. However, if you're, you know, we've heard this before, I'm sure too, but it's like, if you're running East chasing sunsets, you're going to have a problem. And so often in our business, we are so fixated on certain things that are not the actual thing that's going to turn the dial and we let go of it. And that usually shows up when we start to scale our biz. We start to see where all the shaky parts of the house have not been bolted down and our foundation is maybe on sand instead of on stone. And so just be mindful that, yes, the who is important, but so is the how. Yeah, it really is. And I think to that point, whether you're talking about going out and getting a big client or whether you're talking about bringing somebody on your team, that's really important.

5:44 But if the how isn't if you don't pay attention to the how having the who is going to be a complete disaster. So, yeah, I agree with you 100 percent, dude. Uh, this is a question that, that popped up for me, uh, that, that I got asked by somebody this year, uh, uh, or this year, this week, um, that really kind of true. Cause it's new in the month. Yeah. New year. It is this year, I guess. Uh, but yeah, I got asked this this week and it really kind of knocked me on my butt. Got me thinking. I loved it. With my current daily habits, where will I be in five, 10, 20 years?

6:26 And it was interesting because as I was journaling that out, I was like, well, you know what? Over here, like, I'm going to be in really good shape if I keep this up, you know, 5, 10, 20 years. And then there were a couple other things where I was like, yeah, no, something's got to change here because this that that that might not be good here five, 10, 20 years from now. And I just love the question. I'd encourage you to ask it as well and journal it out, because I think that in the moment, It's super easy to just get fixated on what I'm doing right now in this moment. It's serving me, you know, or it's not serving me or whatever. But oftentimes we just, we're so wrapped up in the moment and in daily life that we don't look further on down the road and go, wow, if I don't do something about this, what the hell is going to happen?

7:14 Which is, by the way, one of the reasons that's a very powerful question in sales. Yeah. Absolutely love that. And yeah, it can be so easy to just fixate on what we're doing right in the moment to get to the end of this week or the end of this month. But it's like, wait a minute, where's that going to take you? I really love that. And that's funny. I have not done the five. I haven't done that far out in quite a while. So I think that's a note to self. I know what I'm going to be journaling today. So that was great. Great question. Love that. All right. Bring it home, buddy. Number five. And this might sound counterintuitive to what I just said a moment ago. Right. You know, the who is the who is mission critical, but so is the how. But what it relates to here is one client can transform your business.

7:58 And so why I want to highlight this in this capacity is do you have, you know, your your dream 100? Do you have those those clients that if you did make the connection and you did bring them into your world, that if you landed just one of them, it could completely shift the way your business runs and what you do. And we're had this flashback moment. I remember when Tony Robbins, he was he was about to launch a new his new book and to hit the New York Times bestseller at that point in time. And I know we know some people that can help you get there. But back then there was like, what is this? you know, nebulous thing that allows you to get on the New York times bestseller.

8:38 So he went in this, this mode of, we just need to sell a million books. If we hit a million books, no matter what, we're going to be on the list. So he goes, if we had to come up with our dream 100 that could help promote the book, who are they? And here's the crazy part. No one in the room. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah But here's the wild part. Every single person on that list. If we looked at that room, we were one to two degrees of separation to everybody that was on it. And this was like the president. This was like Oprah. This was like the biggest names in the game. But when he went, OK, great. If they promoted it, would we hit a million? And we only needed at the end of the day for people to make it happen.

9:18 And guess what he did? One to two degrees of separation. Let's make the connections. Let's make it happen in a week. Those dream 100 turned into four people that promoted that book. Poof, he's on the New York Times bestseller list. So it's just a good reminder. I was just reflecting this week of like, who are our dream 100? When we land one to two to three to four of those changes, the game goes back to making sure that your house is built on solid land, being ready to be able to house that because you never know when the cause is going to happen and you got to be prepared. So yeah. Got to be ready for the opportunity when it presents itself. Yeah, that's a brilliant one, man. And I agree 100%. And I also think that it also goes back to the power of questioning.

10:00 Most people, they'll go through the Dream 100 exercise, and it's like a fun fairy tale. And then they're like, yeah, but I could never meet that person. Yeah, but I don't know that person. It's the creativity and the power of questions. Yeah. good stuff today, buddy. Well, we did it again. Somehow we fooled him again. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation podcast. Until next time, take care, be well. Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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