Fast Five for Friday: The Question Holding You Back, What REAL Progress Looks Like, and Real Talk on Avoidance

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. And this is your Fast Five for Friday. All right. So... You might have heard us say at one point or another around here that if you can upgrade the quality of your questions, you can upgrade the quality of your life. And, you know, I think a lot of times in life and especially in business, a lot of times we have a thought. We think about something that we would love to be able to do or we think about something that we'd love to be able to accomplish. Yeah. And we typically are asking the wrong question.

1:23 And the question, by the way, is really common, which is, can I? Can I get to $5 million in revenue by the end of next year? Can I extricate myself from the inner workings of my business so that I can go off and do more ideation and creation? Can I... master sales so that I'm closing at 80%. Well, that question gets thrown around a whole lot. And here's the deal. The truth is that... In most cases, somebody's done what you want to do. That's number one to just think about, okay? Somebody has likely done what you want to do.

2:05 Has anybody ever in the history of business gotten to $5 million by the end of a year and a half? Yep, definitely. Many, many, many, many, many, many times. Has anybody ever extricated themselves from the inner workings of their business to be able to do more ideating and creating? Yes, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. And so on and so forth. So here's the thing. Here's the nuance. There's one little word that is missing when you're asking yourself that question. One little word changes everything. And that one little word is how. How can I get to $5 million by the end of next year?

2:47 How can I extricate myself from the inner workings of my business so that I can go off and do more ideating and creating? Okay. How can I is so much more empowering because it opens the door to possibility. When you ask the question, can I, you're already coming from a place of doubt. The other way around, that one little word. Creates the nuance between doubt and possibility. More possibility, the brain starts cranking. In induce more doubt, the brain starts to shut down and get overwhelmed. Add that one little word in if that's a question you've been asking. Okay, number two. Is your morning routine really working for you?

3:30 So this was a discussion I had with a friend semi-recently. And we were talking about routines and the fact that the morning routine especially has become so hot, so popular. It's a total buzzword in personal development these days. And... One of the things that I really loved that my friend said was, you know, I get bored super easily and I just like to have a menu. I'd like to have a menu of shit that I can do. And I don't always do it in the mornings. Sometimes I do stuff in the morning. Sometimes I do stuff at night. Sometimes I do stuff in the middle of the afternoon. And I love that. And I also got to thinking about the fact that while routines can be so helpful in getting us on track and keeping us on track with certain habits and things of that nature, they can also get us stuck in a rut.

4:15 And oftentimes, what we need is to be able to shake up our morning routine. Listen, I'll be the first to tell you, I love routines. Yeah. And I literally am so uncomfortable when I decide to skip a portion of my morning routine. Like it's palpable for me. But I make myself do it because it shakes things up. And oftentimes I wake up and I've got I'm like inspired to do something other than what I would normally do in the morning. And same thing in the middle of the afternoon, at night, etc. So I want to put this question to you and really challenge you, whether you do your routines in the morning, whether you got a nighttime thing going on, or your routines that you're intentionally doing, are they really working for you?

5:02 And what might happen if you got a little crazy and shook the tree a little bit? Something to consider. You might find a breakthrough on the other side of that. Number three, this quote from Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan. The only way to measure the distance you've traveled is by measuring from where you are back to the point where you started, not from where you are toward the horizon. Now, what Dan is saying, I love this quote, by the way, and what Dan is talking about is the fact that more often than not, we are looking at some ideal, whether it's an ideal version of ourselves or our business or somebody else or their business, and we're measuring When we look at going back to Kenai, we're looking at where we are right now.

5:50 We're measuring it against a future ideal. Well, what if instead you looked backwards to measure progress on where you were to where you are to inform whether you've got a good shot at doing something or accomplishing something, etc. ? And I'm going to challenge you right now. Do this as if you can. Do this as soon as you wrap up the podcast. If you can't do it right after you wrap up the podcast, do it later today or first thing tomorrow morning. I want to challenge you to look back five years ago. I want you to write out where you were five years ago in all the different areas in your business, in your health, in your life, in your relationships, whatever.

6:36 Whatever. And if you just want to do this for business, that's fine too. It doesn't matter. And then I want you to write out where you sit right now. And I want you to be real about it. Don't just throw in the good stuff. Throw in all of the stuff. But I would be willing to bet that you've made one hell of a leap. in five years in some area of your life, maybe in multiple areas of your life. And right now, you might be looking at some big goal in the future, and you're thinking to yourself, can I? And instead, you need to look backwards and go, my God, look at what I accomplished in the last five years. Holy shit. I just need to figure out the different ways that I can. Of course I can. Hell, I might be able to go even farther than that.

7:18 If I project myself another five years out, where could I be then? Right. Right? So look at what you've been able to accomplish in the last five years span. And I think you're going to find that you're truly amazed. I also think you're going to find you don't think enough about what was happening five years ago and the massive amount of progress you've probably made from then until now. Great quote from Dan Sullivan. All right. Number four, the most impactful move that you can make in your business right now. Wait for it. Drum roll. Brr. It's confronting the real problem, all right? Now, in every business, there is a real problem.

7:58 There's a real bottleneck. There's a real roadblock that is stopping us from getting where we wanna go, okay? And I want to ask you a couple of questions. If you really want to move the needle, what you need to do is to be able to truly confront the real problem. So number one, do you even know what the real problem is? If I ask you this right now and you're like, shit, I don't know. I don't know what the real problem is. I have no idea. Okay? Uh, and if you don't know, then you may need another set of eyeballs on your business. We get extra sets of eyeballs on our business. And likewise, you probably are going to need some extra sets of eyeballs on your business.

8:43 Okay. Uh, if you can't figure out the real problem, you're in big trouble because if you can't solve for it, then you're going to stay stuck. Okay. Now, maybe right now I ask that question, you're like, yeah, I know exactly what the damn problem is. Here's my follow up. Have you been avoiding? Have you been avoiding the real problem? Because we do that, by the way, when we know what the real problem is, a lot of times we do not run towards it. We have a tendency to want to go fix something else, right? Oh, man. You know what? Golly, my sales are sucking right now.

9:27 But hey, you know, right now, there's this landing page that I've got right now. And I know that I probably could go revamp the bullets. And I probably should go do that. Yeah, so I'm going to go do that. Well, you know, I mean, I really need to get on the inside of my go high level and clean up my contacts and all that. I probably should go do that right now. Are you avoiding it? If you know what it is, are you avoiding it? OK, ask yourself, number one, do I know what the real problem is in my business right now? The big the one big, hairy, scary problem. Number two, if I do know what it is, am I avoiding it? And sub question, if you don't know what it is, are you getting eyes on your business so that you can get some help to figure it out?

10:13 All right. Number five. And I spent this past week with two of my amazing partners, Dipika and Kulian Shah, down in beautiful Boca Raton, Florida. And I had the great pleasure of also spending a couple of days with my friend Mariana Lacombe and some amazing entrepreneurs and CEOs. And it just reminded me the true value of having friends and colleagues that actually understand you and your business. I feel like we don't get enough of that right now. And especially if you're playing in the crazy world that we play in, most of the people in your life are not going to understand you.

10:58 They're going to have no fucking idea. That's the truth. And it's not because they don't want to. They just don't. They're not in your shoes. They're not doing the crazy stuff that you're doing. They're not pushing the envelope the way that you are. They're, you know, they're not business owners and entrepreneurs. Yeah. And it really... I left on such a high mainly because I really got to dig in on those things. And it got me thinking how vital and important it is that we surround ourselves with more people like that and take more opportunities. Yeah. You know, I feel like I probably don't take as many opportunities as I should to spend around even more people that truly understand me and my business.

11:40 And that's why I wanted to share this with you as well. Because, heck, if I'm doing this, my guess is you probably are too. How many environments are you in that have people that truly understand you and your business? How much time are you spending with those people? How often are you doing things like going to events and retreats and meetups and... lunches and dinners and coffees with people like that, right? It's so important because in the absence of that, we have a tendency to try to solve problems on our own. We feel alone out on an island and we're always going to get farther, faster together. So on that note, I'm going to leave you with this. If you want to come hang out with a group of people that truly understands you and your business, and everything that you're going through, and really are amazing humans, and high achievers, and deep thinkers, and impactful people, and business owners just like you, then I want you to come to our next event.

12:34 You can apply for our next event and learn more about it. by going to www.quantomempire.io forward slash event. That's quantumempire.io forward slash event. We'll throw the link in the show notes. You can go check out the page. If this resonates with you, Apply. Apply for the event. We don't let everybody in the room because it's important to us that we have the right people in there. But apply for the event if this is something that's popping off at you and you really want to be in a room full of amazing, driven, heart-centered people and business owners just like you. It's going to be an incredible experience. It's June 5th through the 7th in beautiful Avon, Colorado, the Vail Valley at the Westin Riverfront.

13:16 It's going to be an incredible event. If you'd like to join us, once again, go to the webpage and check it out. www.quantomempire.io forward slash event. With that said, I'm signing off for today. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Until next time, take care. 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.

14:09 Thank you.