Path to Mastery Stability: Why Comfort Is Killing Your Coaching Business Growth

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. And this is going to be the second episode in our Path to Mastery series. If you're listening to this episode and you're wondering what the heck that is, please go back and listen to the startup episode before you listen to this episode. In this one, we're getting into stability. And this is really, really a great episode because we find this level of the path to mastery and this stage of business growth to really be a bit of a sticking point. It's the danger zone.

1:24 You've just come out of getting started and all the craziness that comes along with that. There's a little bit of stability and comfort here that can be a trap. You This is an absolute must listen episode because of the fact that we find the majority of people that we work with, we start with, honestly, at the stability level. Most people also never make it out of the stability level. So this one is absolutely pivotal. And what I can promise you is you're going to get all the tools that you need to not only succeed, but also to avoid the biggest pitfalls and roadblocks in this stage of the path to mastery. Buckle up. This is the stability episode of the Coaching Equation podcast.

2:06 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. My man. Buenos dias. Buenos dias, sir. And this is a continuation of our Path to Mastery series. Last time, we touched on startup and really got clear on the landmines to avoid, on how you need to show up. And today, we're going to get into stability. And the interesting part, I'm really excited about this one, man, because I actually think that stability is such a trap.

2:48 On so many different levels. I think because you've started to get out of that startup phase and you're clearly aware that number one, you're not going to quit like most people do. And you've figured out enough that you've got a little bit of momentum and again, you've already taken one step further than most ever will by getting into this category. But I do find it to be a little bit of a stuck point to navigate in the path to mastery. Yeah. And I think a huge piece of it, it comes with feelings, right? So our emotions drive our behaviors. And so when you think of, you know, for so many people, when you think of moving out of startup or survival, if we're taking that into a different context, but if we get to a place where we're stable, that's usually where people go, oh.

3:39 Like I can breathe. I'm safe. Right. Like I got away from the saber tooth tiger. I can catch my breath for a minute, but that usually leads to a proverbial pause, especially when it comes to business. Right. Cause when we're neither cold nor hot, we don't tend to move as fast because we don't have as big of a burning. Uh, it's not a forced desire, if that makes sense. Right. I love, I love that. I love that term. Just say, say more about that forced desire. What do you mean by that? So, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to drop some scripture. So for those that don't know, I grew up as a pastor's kid. So I'm going to drop, drop a bomb. I don't know what the scripture was because apparently I didn't pay that much attention, but it's in there somewhere.

4:24 But, uh, the scripture basically says, you know, is it worse to be ice cold or fiery hot? And the worst thing you can actually be is lukewarm because if you're freezing cold, you have to move in order to generate heat. If you're fiery hot, you got to get the heck out of the fire to survive. You got to find a way to cool down. It's when we're caught in that middle or the messy middle, we've also referred to it as, right? That's where things get dangerous because that internal fire has to be the thing that drives us, not an external fire. That makes sense. I hope that made sense. It made perfect sense. No, it made 100% sense. And I think that you're really hitting on something important here, which it is that danger zone.

5:08 Comfort is the danger zone, right? And I think a lot of times what's so fascinating about this too, by the way, is that everything is relative. When you've been scratching and clawing and just barely surviving, you get to any level of comfort and it's like, oh... Oh, thank you. You know, right? It just feels so good to not have your entire nervous system nuked, you know, 24 hours a day. And I think that that becomes that dangerous trap of just hanging out there too long. Because it's one thing, I don't think there's anything wrong with at least taking a moment to breathe and acknowledge the progress that you've made.

5:53 Yeah. But there's got to be something internally that starts to drive you forward very quickly because in the absence of that, I think it's really easy to just hang out and stay stuck in, you know, especially in the early part of stability. And I think that the industry can play a part in it. Like, you know, we talk often about the coaching world. And I think so many people that get into this, this business specifically, they come in with this intention of like, I just want to help people full time. That's usually kind of the starting point. Like, man, if I could just, if I could coach people full time and I could let go of my J-O-B. I could coach people full time.

6:34 Like I'd be winning. Like that's their version of success when they get in. So it ends up happening is they get into the startup. They get enough clients going. They replace their income at their J-O-B. So they, they move into stability where they're making enough to pay their bills, which is really another way of saying, I just referenced, um, So as soon as the bills are good, it's like, oh, well, shoot. Now what? Now I've got to change behavior. Now I've got to do things different. Now I've got to hire people. Now I've got to build a business. And like it starts to get a little shaky. So true. So true. I want to, speaking of shaky, I want to kind of start, I want to kick into looking at the landmines that we have to navigate when we're at this stage and the roadblocks.

7:20 Yeah. So let's dive in on that piece. I want you to kind of kick us off here. What's one of the first landmines that you see business owners having to navigate at this stage of the path to mastery? Yeah, I mean, you and I chat a lot about the different pillars of the business. So I'll hit on a couple and I'd love to hear your input on a few of the other areas that are really your area of expertise as well. But I'd like to kick into the first one, which is actually the sales side of things. In the sales world, so if you think about it, in startup, most people are going out to their warm networks, they're going out to friends, or they're going out to people they know, they're getting referrals, word of mouth referrals, or passive, or even generator referrals.

8:06 So they get a false... belief of their sales prowess or their sales skillset because they have really high quality leads. And it's not that hard if you've got a family member that's singing your praises and telling somebody you've got to hire Ryan Lang. Ryan Lang gets on there and he's talking to them and they're like, oh my God, I need what you have. Like that's a different world versus now I'm going to go do some ads or I'm going to go on stage or I'm going to go generate a cold lead that I have to take from front to back with, yes, I need to hire you. Those are two different worlds. And most people have not put in the effort. I don't want to say effort. They haven't put in the repetitions. Yeah.

8:47 And they don't have the right recipe and the right system. So the first thing we see is sales will either plateau or they drop as soon as they get to this phase. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is a really good one here, dude, because you're absolutely right. There is a stark contrast between the two. And it's funny because, listen, you and I, I mean, we're not afraid to say this. We've even had these conversations where, you know, we still take a fair amount of, especially you, the sales engagements that we have in our business. And for, you know, for a long time, many of them were very warm and it's easy, even when you have, even when you've built... The best sales system on the face of the planet, which we have, it gets easy to get caught and kind of get lazy in that.

9:36 It's a muscle, right? And if we don't use those muscles, they atrophy. And then if you're not building the muscles properly, you get, you know, you skip leg day. Yeah. And then you and then you end up like stick leg guy. Don't be that guy or gal. No, you don't want that. You don't want that. No, this is a brilliant one, though, man. And really a big piece of the puzzle. I also think to your point. You hit on it lightly, but you talked about the sequence and the structure and the system behind sales. I find very often that especially at the beginning parts of stability, people have been winging it in their sales. If they have any sales structure at all, they've been lucky enough in a lot of cases to have reasonably good conversations with sales.

10:25 warmer leads. And it truly is a kind of hit the wall moment when you realize that the colder these leads get and you have no system, all of a sudden you're not closing. And this can become a major trap too, by the way, as you and I both know, you talked about feelings. Well, when you've been used to warmer conversations, give yourself... 10, 20, 30, 40 cold traffic conversations in the stability level and you're not closing deals. And now all of a sudden you're freaking out. And it's an easy, I feel like it's an easy kind of path to slip right back down in a startup.

11:08 You're spot on. And we talked about the feelings before where you have to do something versus you have a completely different pull. What we usually see in stability is people, they start to go into, I'm going to qualify a heck of a lot more on who gets on my calendar. I'm going to be really over qualifying. Do I really want to work with this person? Because you don't have... have to have the revenue in order to pay the bills anymore. So we see people massively start sifting everybody out versus being on a mission to transform people's lives, having a system in play, like finding a way to put everybody into your world and making sure it's set up to support them. We see a lot of people start to go sideways because again, they're looking at it from the framework of what do they want to do versus what are they in it for?

11:53 And what are they, what are they here to accomplish? Yeah, that's so well said. One of the things that I want to mention on this front, too, that I see as a major landmine, interesting. But when we're on the topic of sales, and I want to bridge this with leads for a second, I actually find that especially the beginning part of stability, you know, in... In the previous Path to Mastery episode on startup, we talked about the importance of revenue generating activities and maxing out what's in your phone, your contacts, your warm network, your affiliates, networking, having more conversations.

12:37 Yeah. I actually find at the beginning of stability, there's a really interesting crossroads because I think that most people and most business owners have not even gotten close to maxing out their foundation of what we call the pre-marketing pyramid, where we're talking about... your contacts, your contacts, friends, your networking activities, your affiliate relationships, your warm network, basically. Most people haven't maxed that out and they get real antsy and too quick to pull the trigger on trying to utilize paid traffic for immediate conversion.

13:17 And I want to come back to that in a second. But I want to get your reaction to that. What are your thoughts, sir? Yeah, it's, again, you know, when we build a house on sand, I'm making a lot of proverbial references. You are, man. Very philosophical today. See, I did read my stoic book this morning, so maybe that's what triggered it. Yep. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, when you have a faulty foundation, right, you don't have that muscle and or you think that leads are just going to always be there or they've always they've always come or, you know, these enrolling people's been easy because I've been so passionate about my product, not that I've had to actually overcome and move people in.

13:58 there's a lack of strategy that happens, right? So usually in startup, it's fostered or the fuel has been more passion and necessity. When you get into stability, the fuel has to change and it moves into more strategy. And you have to massively reassociate to a new mission because if you don't, you will fall back to where it's, you know, we talked about the word comfortable and it takes willpower. It takes fortitude to want to go, I got to change what I'm doing in order to grow. That scares a lot of people. Yeah, it absolutely. I want your input on marketing and leads because you started to open that up because that's a huge piece because that coupled with the sales, because there's usually two sides to that coin.

14:40 There's a whole shift of the marketing or the lead gen side. Plus, there's a weak muscle on the sales side. That combo gets very dangerous. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that from the marketing standpoint, when we talk about leads at this stage of the game, hopefully at this point, you've had some way to draw people into your business. We do find actually, it's really interesting, but we find a lot that people get through the startup phase just on hustle alone, and they don't yet have something clear that's sitting out front that's drawing cold traffic into their business. One of the differentiators that I want to make here, because I kind of stopped short of this a minute ago, is... I think that people can be too quick to go to paid advertising with an immediate conversion focus.

15:24 And what I mean by that is every single marketing activity that you do has to have an intention and a clear outcome behind it. And what a lot of people do is they run paid ads with the focus and the intention on, I want somebody to convert quickly off of this. I'm looking for an immediate ROI off my paid ads. And that in the absence of foundation, like if you haven't truly maxed out the foundational pre-marketing pyramid and your relationships and your warm network and the contacts in your phone and your affiliates and all that stuff, that this game of trying to get immediate conversion from paid traffic can be really dangerous at this stage because those types of funnels are typically the more expensive funnels to run.

16:12 So you can dump a whole bunch of money in there and, and, You're going to pay. We were just having this conversation at our recent event. You know, the initial round of advertising that you're going to do, you can spend a couple of months literally just paying for research, essentially. Right. Before you figure it out and before you get your ads right and all that kind of stuff. And that's if you've got the right direction and somebody by your side who's helping you figure out what to do there. So I think that can be a big mistake. By the same token, I think it also can be a mistake where instability, people rely only on their worm network and their referrals and things like that.

17:04 And they start to hit a constraint. And the constraint is volume of leads. Right. So there's a big difference between I'm going to pay for paid traffic that I'm expecting immediate conversion versus I'm going to pay for paid traffic that's going to get people into the beginning stages of the customer value journey with me. They're aware of what I do. They're engaging with my content. Maybe they've subscribed to something. You know, I've taken them through a great quiz or I've given them a lead magnet or something like that. In the stability phase, I think one of the bigger mistakes is not starting to engage that because that's where you're going to start bumping up against a ceiling where after a while, you're going to need more than just the warm conversations, depending on where you want to go in your business.

17:56 I was going to say, are you cool if I put some context around that? Just because I want... Please do. Anyone who's listening to this episode, I want you guys to... What this looks like or what this sounds like. So you mentioned where some of the roadblocks or the landmines that come up. It doesn't necessarily show its face here, but where it shows its face, it shows up like this. Oh man, I've got some extra cash coming in. I've got a good rhythm going. The first person I'm going to hire is a salesperson. Hmm. And that's the kiss of death because what most people aren't thinking about is what is the psyche of the salesperson? What does the salesperson need in order to be successful? Your whole freaking business is going to now land on the shoulders of that salesperson because they're going to be the only thing generating revenue.

18:42 So the mistake we see is we hire the salesperson. And then we go, because I have this extra money, I'm going to now start running leads or I'm going to start throwing money at leads, ads, whatever we want to call it. And then all of a sudden we're like, oh shit, now we've got the salesperson that's going to be wearing literally the armor to protect our whole company. We haven't tested out marketing to the point that we've generated leads consistently. We know what the quality is. We don't have a sales system that's in play. Yep. And then people go, guess what they usually say, right? Salesperson sucks. Yep. It's your fault. Yep. They want to point the finger or they do the other.

19:23 They'll go. The marketing team is sucking at getting me quality leads. It's that they suck at getting quality leads. And you see people that all they will literally hopscotch from marketing agency to marketing agency. I mean, we've seen people that have gone through eight marketing agencies in a year. Oh, easy, easy. And to your point, they haven't thought of like, what is the actual outcome of what I'm doing at this stage? It's, I'm going to throw money. And if I'm spending money, they approach it kind of like, you know, if they're trading on the stock exchange, like I put money in, it's supposed to immediately give me a rate of return. It's like, this is a whole different animal. You said a couple of things in there that I want to touch on. One, you know, I want to piggyback off of the thing not to do to tell you what to do.

20:06 So at this stage, just to be very clear, you should max out from a sales perspective and pre-marketing pyramid, max out your warm relationships, the contacts you have, your affiliate relationships and opportunities there, networking opportunities, chances to get in front of other people's audiences, max that out. From a marketing perspective, if you do that part and then you run some lower cost paid ads to a great quiz funnel or a lead magnet, that's very valuable. Something that's truly valuable that can get people into your ecosystem so you can continue to give them great content.

20:47 via social media and email and that kind of thing. Now, all of a sudden, you have a system that's really starting to work for you, that's starting to accelerate you towards that success level. Because the warm relationships are creating conversions, and you're starting to foster that cold traffic, bringing it in and creating warmer and warmer leads that's going to be a system. by way of great content that you're providing, that just gives you more at-bats when you do decide that you want to engage people in a sales conversation down the road. So that's one of the things that I would encourage you to do. One other thing, though, that you said that I think is that I want to just highlight here because truly we see it happen at every stage of business, but it is especially common here.

21:33 You know, at our last event, I gave a talk called The Unfair Advantage. And part of that talk... Maybe we'll release that one of these days. But part of that talk was about taking full responsibility for the results in your business and not giving away your power. It's interesting because oftentimes at startup, we don't know what we don't know. We're just hustling and trying to figure some things out. But then we start to realize that we need some help. But what happens oftentimes when we start realizing we need help is we start literally making other people responsible for the results in our business. Like you said, salesperson, what the fuck is wrong with you? You know, you can't sell. And that's why I don't have any revenue marketing firm.

22:15 You're not getting me the leads. Are there not the right leads? That's why I don't, you know, my revenue is inconsistent. Um, This is really the area where I would say the biggest trap, to be honest, is not taking full responsibility for all of the results in your business, despite who you have or have not hired. It is on you. And you owning that at this stage will accelerate you. You not owning it will keep you stuck and very likely can lead to the demise of your business, honestly. Yeah. I'm so glad you brought this piece up because there's, you know, some of the cliche languaging of like extreme ownership has been floating around for a few years now.

22:58 Right. But I love the fact that you use the word responsibility instead of ownership because it really is a responsibility. And if we're really to unpack what is an actual business, like if one day you decide you want to sell your business, like what is it? It comes down to three things. A brand. Yeah. It comes down to your product or your deliverable, and it comes down to your systems. And that third one there for the artists, because most, the mass majority of people get into business on their own, especially in this space, they tend to be artists. They're heart driven people. They want to have impact. They want to serve the world. They want to leave their mark. They're usually really good at their deliverable.

23:38 Like, honestly, I can say realistically, like 80 to 90% of the people we meet are really actually good at what they do. When it comes to their business, they're a whole different animal because it's not what they do. What they do is they coach. Running a business is a completely different piece to the puzzle. So what we usually see is at this level too, branding. Most people didn't invest in startup and quality branding. So their website's usually getting by, but it's not what they really want to be perceived as and the quality of what they deliver. We also see that the like they're just just the collateral and just all the pieces that they have usually disjointed.

24:20 So at this stage, people have to go back to the drawing board and recalibrate all that. So now you stack that on top of throwing money at leads on top of, I probably just hired somebody, usually a salesperson first. Don't do that. But then the other piece of this, so that third part of what makes a business a business, systems. And most people... And startup, they are the system because they do everything. Yeah. They're a party of one, right? So at the stability phase, this is where you really have to get down to business and go, okay, I actually, even though I maybe don't like it, I need to start documenting my process. Yes. What is my marketing process?

25:01 What is my sales process? What is my onboarding process? What is my fulfillment process? What is my accounting process? What is like all the pieces of your business you've got to document? Because why? because guess what's going to come? You're going to go hire people. And the big road, one of the biggest landmines we've seen on you. And I've seen this many times is the first hires people make friends, family, somebody they already know. Oh, they're really good at this. I'm going to bring them on and they're going to go do a thing. It's like fastest way to torpedo your friendships and your family. It's like hand them something they know nothing about. Don't train them on it. Have no process to it.

25:41 And then when they drop the ball, you get pissed, you fire them. And now you've grenaded a relationship. Yep. Yep. Amen. Amen to that. And I would say, I love your opinion on this too, but I think that at the stability level, the first hire that you make really should probably be a virtual assistant or an executive assistant of some kind. I mean, somebody that's going to sit by your side that can start taking on some of the tasks that... you know, you really shouldn't be doing and giving you more time, you know, to start freeing up to do more of the things that are really in your zone of genius. You're going to optimize that when you get to success. And we'll talk about that more.

26:22 But I really I think that's the first place to go. Yeah. You just hit the nail on the head. Income generating activities like that. Yes. That should always be like, should I be managing my calendar? Should I be managing my inbox? Should I be responding to these things? Should I be anything that's rinse repeat? That's the first person you hire that with the lowest amount of risk to the business that frees up the most amount of time for you as the business owner so that you can do more income generating activities. Right. Right. So that's why we don't say it's the opposite. When you go hire a salesperson, that's your highest income generating activity. Right. We hand that off to somebody else and we go do other stuff or we go sit on the beach or go for a walk because we don't want to do that thing.

27:07 No, you hit the nail on the head, man. Getting a VA or an assistant of some sort to take all the admin pieces to free up that stuff so you can do more sales and income generating stuff. Yep, 100%. And on that note, I want to talk a little bit about some of the people that we've worked with who've done that right. Because... Starting team building systems and making truly starting to make the identity shift. And this is a big key from employee to operator. That's the shift we're making in the stability level. And one of the ones that comes to mind right out of the gates is... our dynamic duo clients, Becca and Lene.

27:49 They are absolutely amazing, but one of the things that they did really, really well. First of all, when they came in, Becca had already done six figures in her coaching business. She had surpassed the startup level. But they had undefined offerings and not specific lanes that they were running in. They had done a good job with some of those foundational pieces, but there weren't clear ways to get clients in the door. There was no clear cadence of, Hey, we've got a couple of different offerings here. When do we run one? When do we run another? What's really going to be the thing that we're known for in our flagship?

28:31 And they came in and did an unbelievable job of clarifying all of that stuff. And in addition to that, one of the ways that I really saw them step up where I see a lot of other people get stuck is they were willing to make that identity shift. It was not always easy. My God. We had some really hard conversations. But they made the identity shifts that they needed to make in order to start creating more clarity in their business. And one of the things that I appreciate about what they did is that they used action to create that identity shift. They did the things that they needed to do. They implemented the systems like crazy.

29:13 They brought on the team members that they needed to bring on to free themselves up. You know, when we first started, Becca was all up in the business and not that she doesn't do anything in there now, but she's freed herself up tremendously. You know, when they was like a taskmaster, just checking boxes all over the place. Now she's like this freaking dialed in, uh, operations slash customer experience fucking guru. It's pretty impressive what they've been able to accomplish. But that was through intention and clarity and action. Yeah, no, they really did step up and holy crap. I mean, the caliber and quality of their business outputs now is in a, it's in a different universe.

29:57 Yeah. So not only are they incredibly good looking, they're also hyper intelligent. So really, really, really, really ridiculously good looking. Yeah. Touch on Amanda for a second too, while we're on the topic of people who want at this level. Amanda, she's a freakazoid in a great way. So Amanda, she's just hyper intelligent, right? So she literally, her previous endeavors, she worked for NASA of Europe. So she's on the, I forget what the space commission, she helped put rovers on Mars. Let's just, let's put it that way. That's good. Wicked smart. So she's crazy intelligent.

30:37 She's been doing amazing on her own. She has a VA. She's got her little micro team that's there, but she's put a ton of energy and effort over the last year into her sales skills. And, And she has massively up-leveled her sales skills. So she's moved into a whole new level. The other part, which we scratched the surface on in the marketing world at stability, is when you start adding new pillars to your lead gen. So we touched on that, right? Yeah. So she's really gotten more into like, great. I want to be on stages. Okay. Now I'm doing paid ads. Okay. Now I'm also going to be getting some PR stuff going. Okay. Now like she's strategically adding those pillars and her growth has just been doing this.

31:17 And so there's just this beautiful piece of when you really take that time and energy to really focus on the strategies at this level, you can accelerate. And it's that hockey stick. It's like, okay. oh, okay, maybe I'm not getting nearly as much growth. And then it goes, whoa, and it slingshots up. And so, man, there's a great representation of that. Yeah. Yeah, I agree a thousand percent. And one of the things I'll just say too about Amanda is that on the lead gen side, what she did that most people don't do is she locked something in that was creating consistent lead flow for her and then went and stacked these other things on top. And that's the big difference. On the flip side, I mean...

32:00 If we're talking about cautionary tales, and we're going to wrap this up here in a minute, but we're talking about cautionary tales. We have a client, let's just, let's call her Madeline. And Madeline, interestingly enough, you would look out on the surface and probably think, and I think she probably thought that she was at the success level, as opposed to stability. And she was really just in a very shiny on the outside looking form of stability. Because internally, shit was just all over the place.

32:41 I mean, burn through salespeople like crazy. It was always somebody else's fault. Yeah. would constantly be changing direction all the time. I mean, you couldn't... You got a neck ache working with this gal after a while because of how quickly direction would change and completely on a whim. And you said something earlier that I think this is actually the perfect example of, which is feelings. I saw a lot of her feelings driving her decision making and driving the way that she interacted with her team and people inside of her business.

33:23 And quite frankly, it was very interesting because when we started working together, there was a stuck point and she never did move beyond that stuck point. And by the way, it was always somebody else's fault. Not just somebody else's fault, but then there was heated fire behind that. Right. And so, you know, the reality is this. The business is going to trail the psychology of the leader always. So I'm going to say that one again because I want everyone to grab this. The comet is the leader. The rest of the people on your team and your clients are going to be that trail that's left in the night sky that you see.

34:04 Yep. And so if you're volatile and you're up and down and up and down and up and down as a leader, guess what? Your revenues are going to be up and down and up and down. And you're going to be making moves up and down and up and down. And people are going to feel the up and down roller coaster. And you're just going to have a perpetual conveyor belt of people coming and going. And that translates into changing marketing over and over and over. Changing your sales approach over and over and over. Changing personnel over and over and over. Changing your process over. I was in a meeting this last week. Yeah. No one even looked at the process in this particular business. And they were just splintered going everywhere. And there was nobody holding the line. And that's really critical. And I love the fact that you did the whole piece just in terms of the unfair advantage.

34:45 Because it really is. It is the secret sauce to getting from stability to success is that shift of psychology. Yes, the tactical pieces. Yes, adding in leads. Yes, hiring the right people. Yes, firing the wrong people. All that stuff's critical. But beyond anything is that identity shift that has to transpire. Yeah, a thousand percent. That's really where it's at. And I would just leave with this as we start to wind down this episode. I think that when we think of other people that we've thought about at this stage of the game that have not gotten as far as they should have, one of the other critical mistakes that we've watched people make here is...

35:26 At a level of stability, oftentimes people start thinking, oh, now I need to change direction so that I can get to the next level of my business. And one of the other people that we were kind of discussing, you know, as we were kind of outlining this episode, made this just insane. Everything was working like so nicely. And literally just like dropped the grenade and blew up her whole frigging business when she was making a massive impact and literally could have scaled to any level that she wanted at that point. And it was really just really, really hard to watch. So be aware of that, because I think that at this stage...

36:08 You can start to pump yourself up and say, hey, you know, I've gotten to this point. In order for me to get to the next level, I got to go do this whole new thing or I got to drop a bomb and restructure my business. Please don't do that. More often than not, this becomes about finding the things that are working and doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on those things and then getting more people in the door to help you scale so that you can do exactly that. You're going to say something. Yeah, I was gonna say, and I won't go into the weeds too deep on this, but I just want to highlight the learning within that because I think it's so powerful because the belief that came up. So here's somebody who was crushing it in their business. And the belief was, I want higher quality clientele.

36:51 Yeah. And so this is the equivalent of saying, if we look at high school as an example, this person had a business that was so freaking good at generating freshman students into their school. And freshman students become sophomores, they become juniors, and then they become seniors, and then they graduate, right? Well, this person went, I am burning out on these freshmen. I want more seniors, and I only want to be talking to seniors in senior-level conversations with people who are already mature, who've already gone through puberty, who have grandiose visions of the world. Right? And they let go of all those freshmen. And then they tried to go figure out how do I just generate seniors? And that's what torpedoed their world is they let go of the very thing that made them successful because they didn't want to do the work or they didn't build other systems.

37:36 So I just want to, I want to throw this out to everyone as a cautionary tale of if you're rocking and rolling with your business, don't get caught in that trap of, I want to be having higher level conversations. Therefore, I let go of my business that brought the people here that I'm going to help turn into higher level conversations. That is a massive distinction, bro. A huge, huge distinction. And as we finish up here, we talked about the identity shift. The identity shift is going from employee to operator. Just very clearly, what does that mean? When you start your business, you basically bought yourself a job. You're doing everything. You've got to now pivot from that into the identity of business owner and truly starting to become an elite operator with systems, where you've got one or two team members that are also operating at a high level.

38:26 You take complete responsibility and ownership, which is what an elite operator does. And if you can do that and double, triple down on the things that are working, now you're on the right track to get yourself to the success level, which is exactly where we are headed in the next episode, sir. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Coming back with the success episode next... We'll catch you on the flip side. Take care, everybody. 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'd be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform.

39:14 To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.