Craig and Meredith: Confronting Limiting Beliefs as Entrepreneurs

So when we left the corporate job and jumped into entrepreneurship, she alluded to, we fell flat on our face. We failed miserably at our first endeavor at this. And one of the big reasons why was we didn't know who we were. We lost who we were. Our identity was tied to our corporate life. Like I was a rule follower. I was a perfectionist.

I was—

People pleaser. People pleaser. I was all of these things that when I left the corporate world and everything was on our shoulders now, we didn't know what we wanted or who we were anymore. And so we had to go on a, I would say, an adventure of self-discovery, of figuring out who we were and what we wanted out of this life. And it really led us down some interesting paths on this, on the personal development side. We uncovered some really deep limiting beliefs within ourselves.

This is The Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. My name is Christian Brim, your host. Joining me today are Meredith and Craig, whose last names have been left off to protect the innocent. No, just kidding. Welcome, Meredith and Craig.

Thanks, Christian. Glad to be here.

So give us just the summary of your experience. I'd love to hear why you're here together. So, uh, give us the short version of that story.

Sure.

Good clarification, because there is a long version of that story too. The short version is that we decided to leave our corporate jobs. We were, you know, doing the whole corporate 9-to-5 thing but feeling a little bit unfulfilled, like we had more to offer than what we were able to in that, in that environment. And so we both decided to leave our corporate jobs and become entrepreneurs. We did not know what that was going to look like for us. We sort of jumped out of the plane before we actually had a parachute built to work our way down. We started figuring it out. Yeah, yeah. Big decisions, brave action, trying to figure it out as we go. And we made some mistakes. Along the way, started some businesses that failed, but eventually sort of focused on ourselves, focused on our marriage, and found our groove. And that's how we ended up here with you.

So how long ago was that, that you went— started this journey on entrepreneurship?

2021.

Okay, so fairly, fairly short. All right. And how long were you in corporate? I'm gonna back into your age at some point here.

No. Yeah, yeah, corporate, uh, 15 years-ish.

Yeah. So, you know, the Chris Project is about raising awareness around entrepreneurial mental health, mindset, self-awareness issues. What has been your experience as an entrepreneur with any of those or all of those?

So when we left the corporate job and jumped into entrepreneurship, she alluded to, we, we felt we fell flat on our face. We failed miserably at our first endeavor at this. And one of the big reasons why was we didn't know who we were. We lost who we were. Our identity was tied to our corporate life. Like, I was a rule follower. I was a perfectionist.

I was people pleaser.

People pleaser. I was all of these things that when I left the corporate world and everything was on our shoulders now, we didn't know what we wanted or who we were anymore. And so we had to go on a I would say an adventure of self-discovery, of figuring out who we were and what we wanted out of this life. And it really led us down some interesting paths on this, on the personal development side. We uncovered some really deep limiting beliefs within ourselves, one of which is I was a perfectionist. I was, I couldn't, I couldn't be wrong. I couldn't fail. And so by not being able to fail when something was challenging, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't try because I couldn't bring myself to failure. But as As you know, being an entrepreneur is all about trying, failing, and learning, and failing forward, and moving, and learning fast. So, that was one of the big lessons I took from—

Yeah. Meredith, I want to hear your response, but I want to comment on that is that I think when entrepreneurship is one of those things, maybe like marriage or parenthood, that is kind of a blowtorch and you can't really hide who you are in those environments. I think there are a lot of employee jobs that you can hide and not challenge or answer some of those questions that you had to ask yourself. But in the entrepreneurial world, there is nowhere to hide. And the alternative, I guess, you know, would be success, and then you're not forced to deal with those things, which was, was Part of my journey was I had success out of the gate. I bought a franchise, so I had some built-in stability there, but I was successful. And because I was successful, I didn't have to answer those questions about myself. So, Meredith, I'm sorry I interrupted you.

No, I think it's a great point because it's the beauty and the curse of entrepreneurship, especially like we did, jumped out of the plane, started from scratch, didn't know what to do, started trying to build something from the ground up. The beauty and the curse of entrepreneurship is it forces you to make— to face yourself. You know, we had success in our corporate lives. We could have continued down that road and had the corporate success, you know, the, the good job, the promotion, the raise, all those things, and never had to face these limiting beliefs and never had to sort of really look at ourselves deeply in the mirror. But once we left, once we kind of took that exit off that sort of default road highway that we were on and and we're for, you know, came face to face with failure right off the bat, and then we're forced to kind of take a look inside. That's when, to Craig's point, we discovered, you know, there's a lot of stuff inside that we haven't really examined. And, you know, he found his, and mine was really strongly tied to my self-worth. I wasn't good enough, I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't, you know, didn't make good enough decisions. I didn't fill in the blank enough. I— that was me. I wasn't good enough to do any of the things that I wanted to do. And so, it's been a real journey of building my self-worth over the last couple of years because, you know, you don't rise to the level of your hopes and dreams. You settle for what you believe you're worthy of. And I've been working on raising that floor so that I can actually live the life of my dreams because I'm worthy of living that life. And I never had to face that in my corporate experience. My people pleasing, my— all those things served me well actually in my corporate life.

Employers generally are not interested in you achieving your dreams. Like, that, that's generally not the case. Or being— or even being your best self. Like, that, you know, they want you just the way you are because you're doing fine. Thank you, sweetie. I mean, just keep, keep doing that. I had a conversation with my business coach just this morning, and I, I think it's relevant to this conversation. I've been wrestling with this problem, business problem, for, I want to say, over 10 years. And but really seriously working on it for 7 years. And through this conversation with my business coach, I realized that I didn't believe that a solution was possible. Now, I wasn't acting out of that. I was still trying to solve the problem. But at the core, if you put a truth serum in me, I would have said No, this isn't possible. And the way that showed up for me was a lot of anxiety and confusion and frustration in trying to solve this business problem, right? Well, I didn't get any epiphany this morning about how to solve the business problem, but what I did gain was clarity that what was holding me back first was my belief that it was not possible. And the thing that gave me clarity and hope was, well, okay, I've seen others do it in similar industries, and so therefore I know it is possible. So it was now about reframing my mindset of it is possible. I may not know how to do it yet, but it is possible. You have any thoughts on that, that experience?

Yeah, I mean, what came to mind for me as soon as you started speaking was, I think it was Henry Ford, whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, you're right, you're right. And so you will look for evidence to support whichever belief that you have. And when we look for negative, we will find negative. And I think it's the same in a marriage, right? Like, if I'm focused on all the things he does that annoy me, because there are some things—

which aren't a lot. There's not a lot. Yeah, just one, maybe.

There are some things, you know, usually involving beard, hair in the sink, and things like that. Like, they exist.

It could be worse, right?

It could always be worse.

It could be worse.

But if I look for those things, I'm going to find those things. On the flip side, if I look for all the things I appreciate and that I'm grateful for and that I love about him—

which, by the way, there are many.

There are lots. I will see more of them. And so, what you look for, you will find. You weren't— you were looking for the solution, you know, consciously, but subconsciously, it wasn't there. So, therefore, you weren't looking for it. So, you were never going to find it.

And I think that's been the experience of all of my entrepreneurial journey is not realizing what's going on beneath the conscious surface, like what emotions are there. I tend to avoid or suppress those emotions, like kind of like just keep marshaling on. Like it doesn't really matter what you feel. Just keep doing what you're doing because the actions are what make the difference. Your feelings don't affect the world. You know, like I can feel like I want to do something, but until I do something, I haven't accomplished anything. But the problem is that the actions are rooted in the belief and the emotions, right? So you can't separate those two.

Yeah, I think for me, uh, similar to you, I've always been kind of emotions aside, let's just do what has to be done and move forward. But I'm learning now that my emotions, they lead to all the other— the thoughts, the actions, they're all tied together, to your point, and you can't separate them. So it's really important to understand your emotions. Like, I would say historically my emotional intelligence quotient or EQ was probably relatively low. And over through this journey of entrepreneurship, it's forced me to focus on that. And it's now, I would think personally, I think it's one of my strengths actually is that I'm more in tune with my emotions and what's going on. And so that I can sit with that. So if I'm having a bad day, I can sit with that for a minute, feel it, know where it is in my body and just do something to release that, go for a walk, meditate, grounding, whatever it is, to figure out what's going on so that I can get that out of the way so that I can focus on an action that's going to move the needle, that's going to actually solve a problem that I have.

Because I think similarly, I, I hated feeling the negative stuff, right? I avoided the negative feelings. I didn't, I didn't, didn't want it. So I would push them down, push them away. And what I've come to learn over the last couple of years is if I actually just feel it, like just let myself feel that crappy feeling, it actually tends to pass fairly quickly, within minutes. Like, it's, it's not something that sticks around. It only sticks around when I try to avoid it. When I actually just sit down and give myself a few minutes to like feel angry, feel upset, feel frustrated, feel overwhelmed, feel whatever it is, that immediate really difficult part passes relatively quickly. I can try and identify where I feel it in my body, put a name to it, and by the time I've done that I can almost take a deep breath and feel better already.

It's a really great point because back before I had kind of gone on this personal growth journey, I would bury emotions, like bury them. I would avoid them at all costs.

You're a man, of course you do.

Yeah, and it did not serve me well. And, and to her point, when I started to actually sit with them and feel them, it's way less painful, it's way less stressful when you just allow that because it does— like, your body just wants to process it and eliminate it. Like, it sticks with you for a couple minutes at the most, and then it's gone, and then you can just move forward. It's way easier than just burying it and letting it come up in some other way later on. It's going to manifest and come out some way. It's better to do it in the moment in a controlled way than it is in a, you know, heated—

100%—

or something like that.

Yeah, it's amazing to me how quickly you can change your emotions. Like, one of the ones that I have, have practiced a lot is if I'm feeling like I'm disconnected or emotionally unattached from my wife, I can, I can think back to a specific time. I have this specific memory of when I felt really connected to her, and it's amazing how the emotion just changes. It really is that simple. I was— I grew up with the— I, I don't, I don't know generationally how this works out, but I grew up with the, uh, whole, you You know, boys don't cry. Men don't show emotion unless it's anger. You know, that's the only emotion you should show. And I, by design, by God's design, I am a very emotional person. And I really struggled with that for a long time because I felt like the feelings, me having a lot of feelings, was somehow a flaw. And what I, what I came to understand about myself is, is that that's, that's just who I am. And it, you know, it's not— it's neither good nor bad that I have a lot of emotions. Uh, sometimes it's beneficial, sometimes it's not. But just accepting the fact that that's, that's who I am, uh, and not what someone else expects me to be, either, you know, my parents or society or my peer group, you know, like just being who I am, not trying to be what someone else wants me to be.

Yeah, similarly to you, my emotions run really close to the surface, and so most of them come out my eyeballs, like, whether I want them to or not. Good, bad, or ugly, like, that's generally my outlet for letting my emotions out. And like you, I always— I was frustrated by that. I didn't want to be the emotional one. I didn't want people to know when I was feeling certain feelings. I wanted to be able to bury it. And I just was never— the more I tried, the worse it got. Like, I just, I wasn't able to bury it. And it, I think, also contributed to my self-worth internal dialogue that this is me. And trying to cover parts of me and hide parts of me and be different than I am reinforces the belief that I'm not enough the way I am. I'm not good enough. I'm not the way I'm supposed to be. And being able to accept who you are, the way God made you, the way you were intended to be is so beneficial for your self-worth. And being able to accept and love yourself as you are is really the only path to living a fulfilled, happy life. Like, you— you— I firmly believe I will never, you know, reach my potential in my marriage, in my career, in my business, in my health, in my life if I don't think I'm good enough as I am.

So Craig, does— do you need to get her a shirt that says, "I'm not responsible for what my face does when you speak"? That's—

yes, please.

It's not my fault.

I will get that. That would be—

yes, yes. Let's talk about being married and working together. Well, I'm making an assumption, so do you guys work together?

Yes.

Okay, so talk about how that has played out, how the— let's put it this way— how has the business, the process of entrepreneurship affected your marriage?

So when we first jumped into entrepreneurship, that first foray into it where we fell flat on our face, it wasn't going well. That was a challenging time for us. So up until then, our marriage was a strength of ours. It was something that was always rock solid. And when we jumped into entrepreneurship, we felt the foundation shake a little bit. In that first foray, it was very stressful. It was hard on both of us.

We were miserable.

We were both very unhappy. And we had to have a very difficult, honest, open conversation. Like, I'm not happy. Where are you at? It feels like there's something really off here and I don't want to go down this path if this is what, what it's going to be. And so right there and then we realized that, you know, it's this first and foremost over everything else. And so we, we put the kibosh to that first business. We said, nope, this is not it for us. We're not happy. This is not what we're meant for. And so we we tossed that aside and then we went on this personal growth journey and then we identified our passion and our superpower is our marriage. And so now we do help other marriages, other people help, we help them with their marriage and it's been awesome. Like we have a very strong marriage, we have a very strong business where we work with each other. We wear different hats. And so I think one of the secrets to it is knowing which hat you're wearing at what time. In which conversation am I wearing husband hat? Which conversation am I wearing business partner hat or best friend hat? And I think that's been a key ingredient for us in this second phase of entrepreneurship.

I would say another two, two other important pieces of that is one, we make a solid effort to sort of shut business down at dinnertime and go for a walk or something, some kind of boundary in the day. Like it's usually a walk. To kind of break up the sitting down, to go out, get some fresh air, come back in, make supper, and now we're, we're married again. The other thing I think that's helpful is what— something we call just the benefit of the doubt. And so because we did the work after that first giant failure to decide what do we actually want our life to be, and so we created for ourselves a North Star for our whole life, for our business, for our marriage, for all aspects of it, so we know where we're going. And when we sometimes disagree on the route to get there, because that happens— we're two human beings, we know where we want to go, but we have different ideas— we trust that we always give each other the benefit of the doubt. We're aiming for the same destination, but we may disagree on the route. And so I know you think this is what's best, and you know this is what I think is best. And, you know, we both do want what's best for each other, for the marriage, for the business. So we assume positive intent instead of jumping to conclusions We ask questions, but just give each other the benefit of the doubt, whether whatever hat we're wearing on that particular day, because we, we trust that we're on the same team always.

Even when you know the other person's wrong?

Even then. It's tough some days, but that's, that's where we're at.

You're coming with your own set of blinders, right? They may be very wrong to you.

The Chris Project is sponsored this episode is sponsored by the Rupp Group Coaching and Consulting. If you are interested in implementing some of these suggestions that you've been hearing about, or in general you feel like there's parts of your mental game or actually your implementation strategy that you feel is lacking and you'd love the opportunity to actually start to build yourself into the person that can create the success that you're looking for, please reach out vis-à-vis the link in the show notes to grab a free consultation. With us to see if we can help elevate your mental or your business game. Thank you very much. I think of my wife and I going to a football game last time, and we've had seats in this section for over 20 years. And she goes, well, this is the ramp we go up. And I'm like, no, it's not. And she's like, yeah, it is. I'm like, okay. And Sure enough, we were in the wrong section. And I didn't say I told you so, but, you know, I mean, there are some times when you're like, no, I know I'm right. But my favorite phrase and growing up, I told this to my kids all the time, be right and be quiet. It's all right to be right. You don't have to let everybody else know you're right unless we're walking into danger. Please tell me.

But for sure, I think there's a saying like you can be right or you can be happy, right?

Well, yeah, I mean, absolutely.

So, uh, was divorce ever discussed at that point?

Never.

No. Okay, excellent.

It's not something that we would ever joke about. It's not like we— it's like an off-limits— we've never gotten to the point that we'd ever discuss it, but it's not something that ever comes up day to day. We don't make jokes about it. It's—

it's— we didn't allow it to get to that point. It was— it was— there was some snippiness, some unhappiness, like we were just not ourselves. Yeah, we weren't ourselves. It never ever got close to the point of divorce.

Okay, so do you work a lot with married entrepreneurs?

Yeah, we have worked with a lot of entrepreneurs.

So do you see any different challenges, or maybe more magnified challenges, working with entrepreneurs that are married, not working? Like, so, so your, yours is an unusual case. Most entrepreneurs don't work with their spouse where one is an entrepreneur and one is not. Do you find any, uh, particular challenges in counseling those marriages?

Yes, I think one of the biggest challenges there is that as entrepreneurs, we are problem solvers. We see ourselves as problem solvers, not problem creators. And so we try to protect the other person. So when things are not going well in a business, or there's a stress or some sort of challenge that you're dealing with, a lot of times we try to take that on ourselves and not share that burden with the other person. And And when we don't do that, the other person— we're also meaning-making machines as humans. We know that there's something going on. The other spouse knows that there's something going on. But because you haven't opened up and told them what it is, their imagination runs wild. And I— most of the time, their imagination is actually worse than the actual truth. So then they think it's something with them, or there's— it's way worse than it actually is. And if we just opened up and had an open and honest conversation and let them in and allow them to, one, hear, hear the issue. And maybe they have a perspective that they can help with, but at least let them in on it so that they know. That's half the battle, because a lot of times they just don't know and things go south from there.

Well, and every time you don't share something like that, like something that didn't go well, a fear, whatever's keeping you up at night, goals, dreams, positive and negative— when you don't share the thing, every time you choose not to share, you put a brick in the wall between you. And the more often you do that—

sure, you're breaking trust.

Sure, totally.

The bigger the wall gets, the harder it gets to come down.

My experience, you know, my wife and I worked together when we started, and then off and on, uh, you know, over, over a long period of time. But she was always in a support role. She was not the one making the decisions. And Um, I, I think she wouldn't have been an entrepreneur if it weren't for me. Well, I'll put it that way. She, she wouldn't have started a business on her own. And one of the things that came up in our marriage and with me for, for a long time was I avoided telling her things because I was afraid of her reaction. Right? And that led to a lot of distance and distrust that we had to work real hard to repair. Unfortunately, you know, there was the divorce term thrown around, but we both believed enough that the marriage was supposed to be, you know, our kids were grown. So it wasn't— we didn't have that glue. That sometimes hold marriages together. But, you know, I've evolved to a point where I can tell her something that I know is negative, that she's not going to like, and that's okay. Like, it's okay that she's upset. Like, that's okay. I can be okay with her being upset. And more importantly, I've come to value her perspective. Because she and I do things, do see things very differently. Right. And she sees things that I don't see. She asks questions that I wouldn't ask. And before it was, it was, you know, very immature of me. But I always felt like she was just, you know, telling me no, no, no, no. Like, you know, and once I grew enough to be okay with her feeling her feelings, her feelings being her feelings and not being my responsibility to change it. And then I was able to say, oh, there actually is value in what she has to say.

It's— that's like the personification of exactly what we were just talking about, because you were trying to protect her from that negativity. You know, you're the provider, you're the business owner, you're the decision maker. You wanted to make sure that she felt safe and secure, and by sharing some of those, you know, insecure, unsafe, scary moments with her, she might be upset. However, when you're both on the same team, to your point, a little bit of upset is okay. Like, it's okay that she's a little bit— you'd rather her be a little bit upset with the reality of the situation than being actively creating distance between you and her making up stories in her head about what's actually going on.

Yes, because that is what actually happened, is it got to the point that the distrust was such that there were things that I would tell her about that she didn't believe. And I'm like, wait a second, something's wrong here, because I, I'm, I'm like, I'm not trying to hide anything anymore. Like, I, I'm trying to be honest. And, um, and she had a lot of growing to do on her, her part too. And, and I, I think that's, I think that's been probably the biggest challenge for me is we haven't grown in the, the same ways or at the same pace, right? And being able to recognize that, um, you know, at the end of the day, you can't fix people, uh, you, you, you can't, uh, change their feelings, you, you can't wave a wand and make their problems go away. Someone you care about, that's a difficult thing to, to deal with.

Yeah. Yeah. And you just touched on probably the second biggest thing that we see with entrepreneurs is that entrepreneurship, like we talked about earlier on, it forces you to grow in ways that you probably would never have imagined when you jumped into entrepreneurship. At least that was the case for me. I didn't realize that going into entrepreneurship was going to be this whole different personal growth journey. Like, I didn't realize that, but it has been that. And What we find with a lot of entrepreneurs who aren't doing it with their spouse is that they're on that journey and they're actually actively growing, but the spouse may not be growing at the same rate. So when you're not growing together, you're actually growing apart, like one person growing, the other person saying there's distance, because there's distance forming between you. So I would say that that is enough, that is one of the other challenges, biggest challenges with entrepreneurs in a marriage where the other spouse is not an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur as well. There's that growth difference.

Yeah. And the last thing Christian just said was, you know, I can't do it for her, I can't grow for her, I can't do lessons for her. That's a big thing that we've learned this year too. Like, when I'm going through something difficult, he wants to be able to swoop in and fix things for me, but I have to figure it out for myself. I have to work through that difficult thing for me so that I get the growth, so I get the benefit from it. If he always swoops in and, and tries to help me and save me, I'm not growing, I'm not getting the benefit of that.

And I'm robbing her of that experience because that's, that's an experience unique to her that she needs to go through. And coming in with my ego and trying to be the knight in shining armor to save her, it's like, who am I? Like, she's more than capable. She's absolutely probably more capable than I am to get out of this situation. So it's just my ego being the man wanting to protect that got in the way. And then I realized that no, no, this— we're each on our our own journey. We each have our own lessons that we need to take from this whole situation. I can be there to support her, be a shoulder when she needs it, but really the, the nuts and bolts of it, it has to come from her.

I have a colleague that is working on his doctorate in psychology. He, he was an entrepreneur that exited for a lot of money in his 40s and, uh, decided his next mountain to climb was to become a psychologist. And he and I were talking about this, this, uh, paradigm in psychology. And I don't— I'm not going to name it, and I'm probably going to describe it poorly, but it, it's, it's something around the triangulation in a marriage with their children. And like, the, what I took from his explanation was that, uh, the, the, the husband and wife don't address their issue between the two of them, but they triangulate through the child. And he's working his doctoral thesis on applying that to the merit— to the business. So in place of a child, it's, it's the business becomes the thing that the, the entrepreneur— well, and I guess the spouse, but the business becomes the, uh, method of, of dealing with the problems rather than dealing with each other. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, well, I think we see the original problem a lot, right? Like in the marriage, working things through the kids as opposed to just going directly to each other. And I think in the— from a business perspective, and coming from the two of us, I think we are pretty tuned in and aware of, you know, when the hats are on. Like, if we've got a marriage issue, we got to deal with it in the marriage hat, in the marriage mindset. If we've got a business issue, we've got to deal with it there. However, I could see how that could happen, you know, because you're— especially if you're, if you're both involved in the business, because you're both so involved and it's such a big part of your lives. I can see how easily that the transference almost happens, that, you know, instead of dealing with it over here, I'm gonna transfer it over here and work it through the business. My frustration, my whatever the situation is that's over here in the marriage, I'm gonna work it out in the business, uh, as opposed to just going directly to— I can see how very easily that could happen.

Yeah, see it all the time with, with, um, marriages with kids. Like, they, they use the kids as the kind of almost escape to escape from the marriage, and eventually over time they drift apart completely because they've never addressed the issues in the marriage because it's always been about the kids. And if you just replace the kids with a business, I can absolutely— yeah, you can absolutely see how that would happen is that, you know, everything's about the business, everything's about figuring out what's going on with the business. We will figure us out later, but right now the business is the biggest problem. But later never comes. It's always something with the business. There's always another problem that's going to come up with the business. Business. And that if you don't put that intentional effort into focusing on the challenges that are in this marriage, then they're never going to get addressed. They're always— because we know in business there's always the next challenge, always. And so if you keep kicking the can down the road, eventually you'll never get to the can.

Would you say that if you're having problems with your marriage as an entrepreneur, that's a red flag that something's wrong in the business?

I wouldn't— red flag is not a word I might use as a— with such certainty, but I would say that they're so interrelated that they're— you have to look at both. If you're having a problem in your business, you have to also look at your marriage, and vice versa. If you're having a problem in your marriage, what's going on in the business? Because chances are you are focusing all your time and attention on the business and you're neglecting your marriage. Because it's— you're feeling more, feeling more competent, say, in the business. And so you've, you've redirected your energy into the business because that's where you feel like you're getting the most return on your time investment versus the marriage. And vice versa, if the marriage is going really well and there's a problem in the business, like they're so interdependent that when, when there's a problem in one, you need to look at the other.

I would say like it's maybe not necessarily a red flag in the moment that if there's something in the, in the business that's going on you need to look at the marriage right away, right now. But it will eventually get there. Like, if that goes to— if, if we allow something to linger for so long, eventually it's— the other is going to impact— one's going to impact the other for sure.

Yeah. I— when I, when I first started working with my business coach, and I've been working with him for 3 years now, uh, probably the first 6 months we discussed, uh, my marriage, my, my personal life. Um, and my wife was just like, found that very odd. She's like, well, I thought he was a business coach. And I'm like, yeah, but who I am at work is the same person, one. And, and two, whatever problems I'm manifesting myself, I'm causing myself are going to show up both places. Like, it doesn't necessarily show up the same way, but it, you know, and, and I, I think I'm going to speak about male entrepreneurs. I think male entrepreneurs have a tendency to not address their own shit because they have a business in which to create a framework that allows them not to address anything. Like, they control the employees, the customers, the process, you know, everything, the finances. And it's too easy for someone that has immaturity issues, emotional issues, um, to, to not address those and just use the business as an alternate reality.

If you have a bias towards avoiding your emotions and you've created this life for yourself where you're the, you're the boss, you're the, you, you create everything, then you're absolutely going to create a situation where you don't have to deal with your emotion. Like, you're just going to dive into and focus on the things that keep you from doing the things that you probably know you should but absolutely do not want to do.

Yeah. And, and my ex— my experience was that the things that were limiting me in my, my personal relationships were the same things that were limiting me in the business. And I had gotten to the point where I had Avoided it to the point of I left my business for 2 years and went and tried to do something else, but was forced to come back into the business. And only at that point was I really forced to say, okay, what's wrong with me? Like, obviously I'm, I'm the limiting factor here. Like, uh, the business has reached my capacity and, and if I, if I want the business to go further, I've got to grow.

Well, it's interesting because I think you said at the beginning of this episode that you had success quickly with your business, and so you weren't forced into the level of growth that many are required to do in order to have success in their business. So your business plateaued at the level that you were at because you hadn't yet done the work that a lot of entrepreneurs are forced into on the front end so they can get to that initial level of success.

Yes. Yeah. That's one of the biggest lessons I've learned through entrepreneurship is your business goes as far as you go. If you have a cap to your growth, your business is not going to exceed it. It's just not. And I didn't bargain for that when like we've talked about going into entrepreneurship, that never crossed my mind when we made this decision to leave our corporate job and go into entrepreneurship. I really never considered the level of growth required as a human, as a person. Important on this journey and how much it actually does, you know, impact the level that your business is going to go to. And so if you're not willing to take that next step and grow as a person and talk about your emotions and, and become that self-actualized human being, your business is never going to grow to the level that it could possibly grow to.

Meredith and Craig, how do people reach you and find out more about working with you?

You can find us on Instagram and we're @meredithandcraig, so that's pretty simple.

Nice. Uh, and we also have a website, it's www.roadoflifecoaching.com, and we're on Facebook, it's just our names, so they can reach us at any of those opportunities.

Well, thank you for doing what you do. Thank you for this conversation, it's been insightful. Well, listeners, if you like what you've heard, please subscribe, share the podcast with somebody else. If you don't like it, shoot us a message and let us know what you'd like to hear. Until then, ta-ta for now.

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