Fast Five for Friday: Building Community, Clearing Energy, and Being Transparent

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.

0:46 What's up, man? What up, what up? Happy, happy fucking 2025, dude. It is a new year. Let's go. First... Triple F of... That can mean a whole lot of different things. I'm like, what are we going with this episode? Versus Triple F of 2025. Here we go. Let's make it happen. Number one, state over strategy. You know, this is one in particular that comes into play. like in any area of life of business but you know one in particular that we've seen this front and center we've known this for a really long time but especially front and center lately in the area of sales so more often than not we get so focused on like what's our syntax and what's our structure and what's the script and what are the words that we're saying and how are we handling objections and that kind of thing And the truth of the matter is that none of it matters at all if you are not 100% dialed in with your state.

1:44 Because when there is stuff going on behind the scenes for you, it is impossible for you to not bring that into your sales call. And more often than not, you know, the way that we see this manifest is that the sales call looks and sounds right. And yet you're not enrolling. Well, when that happens, you got to look inward and figure out what's going on. So this is a great microcosm because again, it's true in every area of life and of business. You know, as my friend Mike says, life is an inside job. So state over strategy, always. Love that. I like to attune it to, you know, if you have a brain surgeon who's going to be working on you, they might have the most incredible skill set with all the letters after their name.

2:27 If they had a huge fight with their spouse right before they came into work that day to operate on your brain. They might have the skill set, but I sure as heck don't want their head. I don't want their brain in a different zone when they're working on my brain. No kidding. No kidding. Number two. Number two, so call this the power of your cabinet. So what the heck does that mean? So when we think of the proximity, the people that we have in our life, the people that are closest to us, we have acquaintances, perhaps people we know, you know, if we saw them out on the street, we have close friends, which we can create our rules for who those might be. We have our cabinet, your cabinet should be where you have the highest standards, the These are people who you hold in the highest esteem.

3:12 If they were in the foxhole, you'd be diving in there to protect them. If you were stuck in a foxhole, they'd be diving in there to protect you. And just as it comes to, you know, with the new year, you know, having happened and us looking at our lives, a lot of times people are doing their new year's resolutions and their goals. I always encourage people to take a real hard look at who do you have in your cabinet. Because the people that are closest to you, they're gonna affect how you see the world, they're gonna affect how you vibrate, they're gonna affect how you show up to life, they're gonna either hold you to a higher level or they're gonna pull you back. So take inventory, it's one of the things that my wife and I do every year, is we really look hard at our cabinet. And full transparency, I've got like five people in my cabinet. Ryan, you happen to be one of them.

3:53 There's, again, The standards that we set and who we put in our proximity is going to have a huge effect. You go back to state management. They're going to affect how you manage your state and how you show up to life. And with the new year being here, it's kind of an important piece of the puzzle. I love that you highlighted this one because it also plays right alongside with we've been talking about this, I feel like for the last two months, especially it's the power of the people around you. It's the power of the right communities. It's the power of the collective and how much further we can go and we have the right folks. So I love that. That's a great one. All right. Number three, quote that I absolutely love, especially as we are starting the new year, you know, in the new year, one of the things I think we can get very guilty of as human beings is looking around at others and what they're doing to help us inform who we should be or what we should be doing and all of that kind of stuff.

4:42 And I think it's a very dangerous time for us to start playing the comparison game, which is a dangerous game to play at any time and one that you're not going to win, by the way. But I love this quote that I picked up from Jordan Peterson on this. He said, don't compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to the person you were yesterday. Yeah. And what I love about this, this really goes along with the idea. We talked a lot in 2024 about 10X is easier than 2X, the book by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan. And in that book, Dan really highlights the idea of how we get comparison wrong and how we can do it right by looking at how much further we've come since a certain period in our lives.

5:27 So I really love this one from Jordan Peterson. And I think it's a great way for us to kickstart our new year. If you're in a spot where you're looking to really see progress this year, start by looking at the progress that you've made in the last six months, in the last year, in the last five years, and then look at the progress that you want to make in 2025. Love that, dude. Love, love, love that. All right. Number four. Number four. Yeah, apparently there's... I have a theme happening this week. Clean out your closets. So over the holiday, we ordered a giant dumpster to be put in front of our house. And it was one of those tipping points where I'm like, I do not want to start the new year with all...

6:09 All the stuff that's migrated its way down to the basement and the things that have found their ways into the back of the closets and just the stuff that has just mysteriously found its way into our world. So I'm going a little woo-woo this week, but with cleaning out the closets, getting that energy that no longer serves, getting rid of the stuff that you don't need, like making the donations, getting... Get it out of your orbit. Get it out of your space. You know, something that my mom used to always talk about, you know, we get what we tolerate. And it's like, how many times have you walked past that item that's sitting there on the shelf where you're like, why do I have that? Why did I keep that? Does it serve me? Does it not serve me? Like, let it go. So, you know, there's this element of we can't get to the next level if we don't let go of the level we're currently at.

6:52 And it starts with our crap, with the stuff that we have. For me, that was just a huge, huge, amazing experience that I got to participate in and just getting rid of the stuff and starting the new year fresh. I really like this because obviously in the physical world, it's 100% we get what we tolerate. Your mom's absolutely right, by the way. Brilliant lady. Boy, maybe we ought to bring her on board. Oh, we should hire her. Yeah, one of our top coaches, by the way. Shout out, Melissa. But it obviously is a big thing in our physical world, and we do tolerate a lot of bullshit in our physical world that we just walk by every single day. It really is an amazing cleansing process. But you know, one of the reasons I love highlighting this at the beginning of the year, is that when I'm looking ahead at the next year, I actually have started the last two years doing this very differently.

7:38 Instead of saying, what do I want to accomplish in 2025? I asked myself the question, who do I want to be in 2025? And it's who I want to be that is going to inform what I want to accomplish, because it has to be in alignment with the person that I want to show up as. And to your point, Brooke, You cannot show up expecting to craft and cultivate a new version of yourself if you're still hanging on to the old version. So brilliant, brilliant, brilliant point. And by the way, I also had done a whole lot of cleaning this holiday season as well. And I'm ready and fresh to go into the new year. All right, so number five, this is a big one, and it's be transparent and make sure that you communicate well with your team and your clients.

8:27 And we've seen some really powerful examples in the last, I'd say, eight weeks or so situations where we have been working with a group and there's been some lack of communication and lack of transparency that has led to some of the people on the team just feeling very, very disempowered, feeling resentful. And you know, here's the interesting thing about it. In the last Fast Five for Friday episode, we talked about making the hard decision, right? Well, it's also sometimes being willing to have a hard conversation with your team members or your clients. Sometimes you got to make a decision as a business owner and a leader that may not be popular or may be difficult for you to convey.

9:12 Not telling people about it ain't the way to go. If people know and they know your intention behind it, they can find a way to get behind it. If they don't, they can't and they won't. And in the case of clients, a lot of times we either have to have tough conversations or sometimes we fuck shit up. And we got to, you know, we got to call ourselves out on the carpet and be honest about it and have the tough combo. Be willing to do that. People appreciate that more than you know. And in fact, a lot of times we avoid having that conversation because we're afraid of bad will that's going to come across. If you will do this and double down on it and get good at it, you will create incredible goodwill out of some very difficult situations.

9:55 So I was going to add one little nuance and I know we're going to, it'll push us a little bit over time, but, and I just think it's such an important piece to the puzzle. If, when you're transparent with your team or with your clients, be mindful to, if you open loops, meaning you you're transparent about something that has a timeline. So like, you're like, Hey, here, here's the reality of where our situation is. We should know where we're going to be at in two weeks from now. make sure you close that loop with whatever the thing might be. Cause one of the biggest hiccups I see in leadership as it relates to this is people will be transparent on the front end and they never close the loops. And so their team members, they start to make stories or they, you know, because we don't come back to that loop that we opened, they'll come up with their own version of whatever it means and how it plays out.

10:39 And it'll give them a lot of uncertainty as it relates to whatever the situation might be. So I just want to just little sprinkles of close the loop. Well said, well said. All right, my friend, we got to get out of here. This has been the first Fast Five for Friday episode of 2025. Let's kick off your year right, everybody. Super excited to be alongside you in 2025. We got a lot of good stuff ahead here on the Coaching Equation podcast. Until next time, Brooke. Thanks, buddy. Happy New Year. Dude, happy New Year, bud. 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.

11:24 To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.